The last president (what was his name again? Seems like a long time ago now) left our nation's armed services in a real mess. The implementation of DEI programs, and the use of the armed forces as a jobs program for anyone with the neurosis du jour, all was poison to the few remaining real warfighters. When my Dad left the Army at the end of WW2, the United States military stood astride the world like a Colossus; the largest and most effective military machine ever assembled. Even in my own time, during the last years of the Cold War, we were still a power to be reckoned with; in 1990 and 1991 we conducted the largest mobilization of American forces since World War 2, moved people, weapons, the logistical train and everything else into theater in a matter of weeks, took on the largest army in the Middle East and went through them like a dose of salts.
President Trump has vowed to restore our military, and his appointment of Pete Hegseth, a combat soldier who has seen the elephant, as Secretary of Defense was a good step towards that. The president has since taken another, mass-firing members of the Boards of Visitors of the nation's military academies.
President Trump announced Monday he would be dismissing members of the Boards of Visitors of four service academies to combat “woke leftist ideologues.”
“Our Service Academies have been infiltrated by Woke Leftist Ideologues over the last four years. I have ordered the immediate dismissal of the Board of Visitors for the Army, Air Force, Navy, and Coast Guard,” Trump, 78, wrote on Truth Social.
“We will have the strongest Military in History, and that begins by appointing new individuals to these Boards. We must make the Military Academies GREAT AGAIN!”
The various Boards of Visitors to the service academies are one of three groups that oversee operations and curricula. The others are the Office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness (OUSD/P&R) and the secretaries for each respective service (Secretary of the Army, Navy, etc.). According to a 2023 update of the Congressional Research Service Defense Primer: Military Service Academies, the Board of Visitors (BoV) has these duties:
The BoV serves as an independent advisory body on matters related to morale, discipline, social climate, curriculum, instruction, physical equipment, fiscal affairs, and academic methods. By statute, the BoV for each military academy includes three Members from both the House and Senate, and the Chairs of the Armed Services Committees or their designees. Two of the Senate appointees must be members of the Committee on Appropriations. The President appoints six additional members to each Board.
It's unclear as to whether the president can remove the members of Congress from those roles, but the six additional appointees, like other presidential appointments, serve at the pleasure of the president. But the Board of Visitors has great influence over the academies, and since these people are presidential appointees and members of Congress, it's certain their "recommendations" carry the weight of orders.
See Related: Two New Trump Executive Orders Are Guaranteed to Make Pete Hegseth's Life Really Interesting
Before the left starts to recoil in horror (they will regardless, but still) we should note that, on taking office, Joe Biden (oh, yeah, that was the other guy) asked 18 BoV members to step down.
Former President Joe Biden pushed out Trump’s first-term appointees in September 2021, asking 18 board members to step down.
The move was meant to ensure the members were “aligned” with Biden’s vision for the military and to make sure they were “qualified to serve on them,” then-White House press secretary Jen Psaki said at the time.
The Biden "vision" for the military was destructive to morale and readiness. Trump's vision couldn't be more different.
Full disclosure: I have a great personal concern about the readiness of our nation's armed services. My family has served in the American Civil War, in two world wars, and several smaller ones. I was hoping that would end with me. But the world is a tense place, and as George Santayana said, "Only the dead have seen the end of war." I have grandsons, one of whom is less than four years from military service age. If my family has to answer the call again, I want those boys to serve in a lean, mean military trained and equipped to close with and destroy the enemy by fire, maneuver, and shock effect. No other considerations matter. President Trump seems to share that vision. I'm glad that he does, and this is another action by the Commander-in-Chief that will move our military back in the right direction.
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