In his perpetual assault against “DEI,” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is now targeting one of America’s premier institutions for developing young men—Scouting America.
Formerly known as the Boy Scouts of America, Scouting America has reentered Hegseth’s crosshairs after he, as a host on Fox and Friends Weekend, had previously railed on the organization’s 2024 rebranding and inclusivity efforts.
Now, as the boss of his so-called “Department of War,” Hegseth issued an ultimatum to the American institution, which has long maintained a mutually beneficial partnership with the U.S. military, requiring their cooperation in “terminating radical DEI preferencing in federal contracting.”
“Over the past several months, the Department of War has been reviewing its relationship with Scouting America—formerly known as the Boy Scouts of America,“ Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell said in a statement shared to X. ”A great organization, that has—in many ways—lost its way.”
Parnell’s statement referenced President Donald Trump’s executive order from Jan. 21, 2025, that called for “restoring merit-based opportunity” and said that “all affiliations must meet the standard.”
“For more than a decade now, Scouting America’s leadership has made decisions that run counter to the values of this administration and this Department of War, including an embrace of DEI and other social justice, gender-fluid ideological stances,” the statement continued. “This is unacceptable.”
Parnell then posed an apparent threat to withdraw the organization’s federal funding if they don’t fall in line, including a hint to Scouting America’s upcoming National Jamboree—a quadrennial camping excursion that incorporates active-duty military personnel for support.
The statement concluded by saying they were “near a final agreement,” but that Scouting America was “on the clock, and we are watching.”
No stranger to hijacking symbols of youth, as evidenced by his AI-generated abomination of children’s book character Franklin the Turtle to promote his extrajudicial boat strikes in the Caribbean last year, Hegseth’s disdain for the staple of American boys is nothing new.
After the Scouting America rebrand in 2024, Hegseth, 45, said that “Boy Scouts has been cratering itself for quite some time” and blamed their inclusivity push on “the left.”
“[Democrats] didn’t want to improve it,” he said about the organization on Fox and Friends Weekend in May 2024. “They wanted to destroy it, or dilute it into something that stood for nothing.”
Despite his obsession with the Boy Scouts, Hegseth has never been a member of the organization.
The organization’s president and CEO, Roger A. Krone, had said at the time that the new name did not reflect a change in their “mission,” and that it was a “very important evolution” to “ensure everyone feels welcome in Scouting.”
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