As a Marine, even though we have Army members in our family that we do publicly acknowledge, I've fought against my natural inclination to crack on that service too much. Cherished inner-service rivalries aside, the United States Army has been subjected to a horrible trial at the hands of the previous administration, one that it pained me to see as a descendant of a proud family tradition of service, as a professional military member and veteran myself. As the mother and aunt of current young Americans in uniform.
Nobody who is willing to volunteer to serve their country, live that often difficult life, and perhaps, someday, sacrifice their own deserved what xPOTATUS and his gang of woke wusses dished out.
I've written often about my dismay at what was happening and my disgust with Army hierarchy in particular, as their recruitment numbers slid off a cliff and morale dissipated like smoke in the wind. Army Secretary Christine Wormuth's disdain for a 'warrior caste' was ever so egregiously hurtful to families like mine, with colonial ancestors in uniform going back to the 1637 Pequot Wars whose descendants then have served honorably and fought as Americans from the Revolution onward.
...Why on EARTH would you have anyone other than a Bud Light-type marketing executive and her little friends running your recruiting campaigns if you wanted to discourage white, patriotic, traditional backbone-of-the-US military enlistees? If anyone knows what turns off a red-blooded American male, it’s the Karen-y Wharton/Harvard/Groton ad grad type.
The US army has seen a dramatic drop in the number of white recruits, according to a study.
Last year, according to the Military.com website, the army fell 10,000 short of its 65,000 enlistment target.
Underpinning the drop is a dramatic decrease in white recruits from 44,042 in 2018 to 25,070 in 2023, representing a six per cent reduction in just one year.
It meant that the proportion of white recruits fell from 56.4 per cent in 2018 to 44 per cent.
At the same time, the number of black and Hispanic recruits remained static.
White guys don’t jump to enlist anymore. And it seems that’s a problem.
No, this new and improved woke Army of theirs was looking for anyone but the traditional meat on their bones.
They were looking everywhere.
The US Army's recruiting crisis is so bad they're putting on cosplay shows at anime conventions. pic.twitter.com/tZgZoag9ee
Trying hard to appeal to every demographic, but that despised caste who simply served to serve.
It bags a few questions.
Why our military faces the biggest recruitment shortages in 50 years if it’s not for Wokeness and promoting people like Maj. Rachel Jones? pic.twitter.com/7yq5U5YXKM
— I Meme Therefore I Am 🇺🇸 (@ImMeme0) July 2, 2023
And then Donald Trump got elected.
And, almost as soon as the ballots were counted, Trump nominated not a policy wonk, an ethics professor, or a DEI bureaucrat, but a red, white, and blue-blooded member of that very warrior caste to be Secretary of Defense.
Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand yells at Hegseth for statements about not wanting to have women serve in combat roles: "We have hundreds – HUNDREDS of women who are currently in the infantry...You degrade them. You say, we need moms but not in the military, especially in combat units. pic.twitter.com/LhNKrD4FoV
With a SecDef who loves his troops. Who will turn the military back towards the proud, professional, lethal force for American security it was always meant to be, and who demands no less of himself than of those around him in that effort. Leadership 101.
Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth: “It is colorblind and merit-based…The era of DEI is gone at the Defense Department, and we need the best and brightest whether it’s in our air traffic control, or whether it’s in our generals, or whether it’s throughout government.” pic.twitter.com/N55fD0P1j8
Hegseth will lead by example, of that I am sure. That in itself will be an inspiration to those who choose to serve - not for a paid transition to a different sex or college money, etc - but to those who proudly serve their country.
That concept, so sadly lacking lately, is making a resurgence. Both in uplifted spirits for those already in the military - major dad has been telling me how charged up everyone is with Trump's official portrait finally on the quarterdeck wall - as well as in...dare I say it?
Recruiting.
Hegseth had a blockbuster announcement today.
BREAKING: In December 2024, the @USArmy had its best recruiting number in 12 years.
In January 2025, the Army hit its best recruiting number in 15 YEARS.
BOTTOM LINE: America’s youth want to serve under the bold & strong “America First” leadership of @realDonaldTrump.
The US Army recently announced it shattered previous recruiting records, with December 2024 being the most productive December in 15 years.
The branch reported it enlisted nearly 350 soldiers every day that month, Army officials announced Tuesday on social media.
“Our Recruiters have one of the toughest jobs – inspiring the next generation of #Soldiers to serve. Congratulations and keep up the great work! #BAYCB,” Army recruiting officials wrote in a post on X.
HOLY SMOKES
From a service that had to cut back commands and training spaces because of a lack of bodies to fill them to suddenly having to open up boot camps and ways to clear a backlog (!) of bodies, the Army, thanks to confidence in the vision laid out by a bold, America First commander in chief, is scrambling while living large.
There are worse problems to have. And God knows they've had them.
The Army is set to dramatically expand how many new recruits it can send to basic training this spring, riding the momentum of recent gains toward reversing a recruiting slump it has struggled with in recent years.
By April, the service expects to have 10 additional basic training units established across Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri, and Fort Sill, Oklahoma -- some of which are already established. In total, that would allow the Army to train up to 9,600 new recruits per year, according to Lt. Col. Randy Ready, a service spokesperson.
The move comes as the Army hit a major recruiting milestone. In January, Military.com was first to report the service reached the halfway mark toward its ambitious goal of bringing in 61,000 active-duty soldiers this fiscal year, which began in October. With recruiting numbers trending upward, officials are banking on a surge to sustain momentum and close the gap left by past shortfalls.
But the Army is also dealing with a logistical challenge: a growing backlog of recruits waiting to ship out. Nearly 11,000 recruits were placed in the Army's delayed-entry program last year -- a program both of applicants who have not yet finished high school or cannot ship to basic training. That figure is double the usual in previous years -- partly due to the service running out of space in its existing basic training classes.
A chunk of that training real estate was reallocated to the Future Soldier Preparatory Course, a program launched in 2022 that has been touted as a game-changer in solving the Army's recruiting crisis.
The course helps applicants who initially fail to meet body weight or academic standards get up to par for enlistment -- effectively widening the Army's recruiting pool at a time when the service is striving to find qualified applicants.
In short, the Army was recruiting faster than it had the ability to get new enlistees into training.
I think this is a tremendous sign of confidence in the Trump administration, its promises to the folks in uniform, to their parents and families, and to potential service members that the strength of the US military will not be in its 'diversity' anymore, but in its cohesive purpose - the defense of our nation and overwhelming lethality.
These December numbers are a testament to American youth's faith in that promise, in that return to pride in your uniform.
With all that's wrong with the military in the reign of POTATUS the First under his Secretary of Defense, doofus Lloyd Austin, the one thing the military needs above all else has been the one thing consistently jacked up almost from Day 1, particularly on the Army side of the house.
Here we are four years later, and I am about to raise hell after reading about it yet again. What makes the recurrences even more egregious is that the poltroonish Austin is a retired Army general himself and, while not supposed to be playing favorites in his position, you'd think he'd at least keep an ear to the ground watching out for his former peeps.
Illustrative of the entire attitude of this DoD is what keeps happening with chow halls or 'dining facilities' (DF) as they've been renamed.
Food is the issue here...repeatedly.
The military runs on food.
For some reason, known only to God and the military hierarchy, maintaining convenient access to sufficient FOOD for troops to functionhas proven to be an epic challenge for the dolts behind the desks. And contrary to popular impression, there are still plenty of junior troops who live in barracks and rely on those chow halls for their FOOD, as they havewhat are known as 'meal cards.' Instead of being paid a 'Basic Allowance for Subsistance' (BAS), or the extra bucks you get if authorized to live off base that is meant to cover your food costs, kids in the barracks have all their needs attended to by the service. The roof over their heads, the heat in the building, electricity, and, most importantly, those three meals a day.
You MUST prove yourself worthy of these young lives, Army.
There's no stopping us if you all finally get your s**t together.
