Hegseth orders service academies to ignore ‘race, ethnicity, or sex' in admissions
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth commanded the nation's military academies Friday to stop considering 'race, ethnicity, or sex' in their admissions process, the latest blow by the Trump administration against Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) programs at the Pentagon.
'The Military Service Academies (MSA) are elite warfighting institutions with long histories of producing world class military officers,' Hegseth wrote in the memo to senior Defense Department leadership.
'The Department owes it to our Nation, our Service members, and the young Americans applying to the MSAs to ensure admissions to these prestigious institutions are based exclusively on merit,' he added. 'This ensures only the most qualified candidates are admitted, trained, and ultimately commissioned to lead the finest fighting force in history.'
Advertisement
'Selecting anyone but the best erodes lethality, our warfighting readiness, and undercuts the culture of excellence in our Armed Forces.'
Hegseth argued that merit-based admissions will improve the military's 'lethality' and 'warfighting readiness.'
AFP via Getty Images
The directive – aligned with President Trump's January executive order promoting 'meritocracy and … the elimination of race-based and sex-based discrimination within the Armed Forces of the United States' – instructs military academies to 'apply no consideration of race, ethnicity, or sex' and 'offer admission based exclusively on merit' for the 2026 admissions cycle.
Advertisement
Hegseth notes that MSAs, such as the US Military Academy West Point, the US Naval Academy and the US Air Force Academy, may give weight to applicants with 'unique athletic talent or other experiences such as prior military service.'
'Going forward, MSAs shall rank-order candidates by merit-based scores,' the Pentagon chief said, explaining that the Department of Defense expects only the highest-ranking candidates to receive appointments.
'The Department must remain steadfast in its pursuit of excellence and never compromise the high standards at our MSAs,' Hegseth continued. 'A strong officer corps is essential to ensuring the United States military remains the most lethal the world has ever known.'
The nation's military academies were exempted from a 2023 Supreme Court ruling outlawing affirmative action in college admissions.
Getty Images
Advertisement
In 2023, the Supreme Court outlawed the overt consideration of race in higher education admissions in a landmark ruling which struck down affirmative action programs at Harvard University and the University of North Carolina.
The high court's ruling, however, specifically exempted America's military academies.
Under the Biden administration, West Point faced accusations of setting benchmarks for how many black, Hispanic and Asian cadets the institution should admit in each class — discriminating against white applicants in the process.
In 2023, West Point touted that minority enrollment in its class of 2027 was roughly 38%, with approximately 14% of the intake Asian American, 11% Hispanic, 10% black, and 1% Native American.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
28 minutes ago
- Yahoo
'When He Least Expects It': Michael Cohen Warns Elon Musk Of Trump's Revenge
Michael Cohen, former longtime personal attorney to Donald Trump, on Sunday warned Elon Musk that the president isn't done with him yet. 'They're going to really go after Elon Musk like nobody has seen, ever, in this country because they can,' he said on MSNBC on Saturday. 'And one thing Elon doesn't understand is this political guerrilla warfare that they're going to conduct against him.' Cohen warned that Trump can use the power of government to target Musk's companies and even his citizenship. Musk and Trump last week had a spectacularly public falling out, and over the weekend the president slammed his one-time pal as 'very disrespectful' and warned him of 'serious consequences' if he supported Democrats. Cohen said that while Trump has also downplayed the feud, the president is likely already plotting against the billionaire behind the scenes. 'I just wish him well,' Trump said on Friday. 'No he doesn't,' Cohen said. 'Because while Elon Musk is taking a step back thinking Trump is taking a step back, what Trump is actually doing is weaponizing the Department of Justice through his attorney general and other people, and they are gonna drop the hammer on him out of nowhere when he least expects it. That's the playbook.' See more of his conversation with MSNBC's Ali Velshi below:
Yahoo
33 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Trump branded 'unlawful' over handling of LA riots
Police clashed with demonstrators after a third day of protests in Los Angeles against Donald Trump's immigration crackdown. Gavin Newsom, the governor of California, branded the US president's deployment of the National Guard in the city as "unlawful" and "purposely inflammatory". Demonstrators have been protesting since Friday against the Trump administration's immigration raids, which last month aimed to detain as many as 3,000 people per day. Police in LA have said the downtown location is now an "unlawful assembly" area, while there have been reports of looting and vehicles have been set on fire. Trump posted on his Truth Social platform that things are "looking really bad in LA" and said: "Bring in the troops!" Read more from our media partners below or click the headlines to skip ahead > How Trump's immigration crackdown sparked LA uprising > Downtown LA is a scene of pandemonium and lawlessness > Trump orders law enforcement to 'liberate' LA from 'migrant invasion' > LA protesters, enraged by Trump, flood the streets > British photographer hit by non-lethal bullets during LA protests It began with co-ordinated raids on locations throughout Los Angeles on Friday. Immigration officials, backed by heavily armed FBI officers with assault weapons and body armour, stormed a clothing factory and at least two other locations in Latino areas of the city, trying to make good on orders to ramp-up the pace of deportations. The raids were the trigger for two days of clashes between protesters and federal officers in Los Angeles, where fires flared and fireworks exploded, prompting Donald Trump to order 2,000 National Guard troops onto the streets of the city. Read the full story from The Telegraph A shirtless man waving a Mexican flag stands atop a burning car in the heart of Los Angeles, as another man throws a traffic cone into the flames and some play drums and shout chants in opposition to immigration officials. The downtown district of one of America's biggest cities was a scene of pandemonium and lawlessness as protests, which had previously been mainly peaceful, turned ugly. Read the full story from Sky News Donald Trump has vowed to 'liberate Los Angeles from the migrant invasion,' amid violent clashes between members of the state national guard and anti-immigration enforcement protesters. The president took to Truth Social on Sunday, where he promised that 'the illegals will be expelled' and that the city would be 'set free,' as troops confronted demonstrators on the streets of downtown LA – using tear gas and 'less lethal munitions' to disperse crowds. Read the full story from The Independent Thousands of Angelenos enraged by Donald Trump's decision to commandeer their state national guard swamped the downtown streets on Sunday, bringing a major freeway to a standstill. But the national guard, hemmed in by the protesters and by dozens of Los Angeles police cruisers, played almost no role in any of it. A vocal, boisterous but largely peaceful sea of protesters engulfed the north-eastern corner of downtown Los Angeles around city hall and the federal courthouse. Read the full story from The Guardian A British news photographer has undergone emergency surgery after being hit by non-lethal rounds during protests in Los Angeles. Nick Stern was documenting a stand-off between anti-Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) protesters and police outside a Home Depot in Paramount, a city in LA county and a location known as a hiring spot for day labourers, when a 14mm 'sponge bullet' tore into his thigh. Read the full story from PA Media
USA Today
38 minutes ago
- USA Today
Former Biden press secretary is ready to tell Americans the truth? Give me a break.
Former Biden press secretary is ready to tell Americans the truth? Give me a break. | Opinion The knives are now out inside the Democratic Party. And the party is bleeding, not only Americans' support and trust but also its last remaining drops of honesty and truth. Show Caption Hide Caption Karine Jean-Pierre talks exit from Democratic party in new book Former White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre talks about leaving the Democratic party in her upcoming book slated for release in October. The Democratic Party continues to self-destruct, and I am here for it. Former White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre has teased a tell-all memoir about former President Joe Biden and the administration she served for nearly three years. 'Independent: A Look Inside a Broken White House, Outside the Party Lines' is stoking claims that Jean-Pierre is a grifter, profiting off her time in the administration by trashing the former president and the political party that gave her prominence. Knives are out among Democrats for one of their own who has now betrayed them. Like other books that have recently exposed details about Biden's poor health, Jean-Pierre's book raises questions about the White House cover-up that attempted to hide the president's mental and physical decline from voters. It also calls into question Jean-Pierre's honesty: Why did she wait until now, when she can profit from it, to tell the truth about the former commander in chief? Former White House colleagues turn on former Biden press secretary Democrats are now a minority party in America. The GOP controls the White House, the Senate and the U.S. House along with a majority of governor's offices and state legislatures. The Democratic Party has lost Americans' trust because of its leaders' penchant for gaslighting, not just about Biden's health but also on issues like immigration, border security and the economy. Jean-Pierre, who now claims to be an independent, certainly isn't helping her former colleagues rebuild that lost trust. Details from the book are still sketchy, but Jean-Pierre should provide readers with an inside look at what happened after Biden's disastrous debate with Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump a year ago this month. Jean-Pierre's coworkers have already reacted to the book with contempt. "Former colleagues expressed confusion at how Jean-Pierre seemingly intends to paint Biden as a victim while pinning her own decision to leave the party on his 'broken' White House," Politico reported, citing multiple former Biden administration officials who spoke on condition of anonymity. Opinion: Biden's cancer diagnosis raises the question: Was he ever in good enough health? Caitlin Legacki, a Democratic strategist who worked on the Commerce Department's communications team during Biden's presidency, took umbrage with Jean-Pierre's assertion that the Democratic Party betrayed Biden. 'Kamala Harris and the entire Biden/Harris campaign did hero's work to avoid losing 400 electoral votes and giving Republicans a supermajority in Congress, which is what would have happened if he stayed on the ticket,' Legacki told Politico. 'It's more productive to focus on that, and thank Biden for doing the responsible thing by stepping aside, than it is to pretend this was an unwarranted act of betrayal.' But party insiders continuing to squabble over whether a now former president was or was not betrayed by fellow Democrats entirely misses the larger point. Opinion: Guess who Americans want to run the economy? Hint − it's not Democrats. Far too many Democrats, Jean-Pierre included, worked hard to deceive Americans. Their willful lack of self-awareness about their gaslighting and dishonesty is why the party has shown no signs of recovering from the last disastrous election cycle. Karine Jean-Pierre's book about Biden isn't the first Jean-Pierre's book will be far from the first to address the deception at the heart of the Biden White House. On May 20, journalists Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson released "Original Sin," which describes in detail Biden's cognitive decline and the mind-boggling efforts with which his inner circle and the Democratic Party tried to hide the truth from Americans. Opinion: Texas woman's death would have been prevented if Biden had secured the border Conservatives had long been suspicious about Biden's health, but journalists with White House access failed to ask tough questions then. Now that it's too late to make a real difference, those who were silent when it mattered most are more than ready to profit from belated exposés about the former president's failing health. The knives are now out inside the Democratic Party. And the party is bleeding, not only Americans' support and trust but also its last remaining drops of honesty and truth. Nicole Russell is an opinion columnist with USA TODAY. She lives in Texas with her four kids. Sign up for her newsletter, The Right Track, and get it delivered to your inbox.
