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 28.

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 29. 30. 30. 31. 32. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 36. 36. 37. 38. 36. 36. 36. 36. 36. 36. 36. 36. 36. 36. 36. 36. 36.

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 37. 39. 49. 36. 38. 38. 39. 45. 49. 45. 46. 47. 35. 36. 37. 36. 36. 38. 36. 38. 35. 36. 41. considerations in military personnel and program decisions.

[01:00:43;16 - 01:01:19;03]
 Doug, I think this is probably one of the most salient issues and the most pernicious of issues that has, that our military has faced for decades now. You know, to me I think it's it's also always important to remember that this started back in 1965 when Secretary of Defense at the time Robert McNamara made the explicit decision to ensure that the military was the first federal organization to adopt and abide by the standards of the Civil Rights Act.

[01:01:19;03 - 01:05:15;26]
 the Civil Rights Act mandated that a federal organization, an agency, the military in this case, must look like the country or we could therefore presume injustice and in essence illegality even if there were was no mal intent. That was a sea change for the country but for the military explicitly I thought it was really problematic because you know the military can never make decisions based on any other considerations besides those that contribute to the lethality and the readiness of the force. So it was this formalized injection of politics into the military. I look at it, you know, which is something we've talked about a lot is the cultural piece. You have to have the civilian culture which is great. Let's have a good American civilian culture, that's what we want, but you have to have a separate military culture and you can't call them the same and that's when you talk about that and the crossover something like no no we're gonna make it look exactly the same. Well the problem there is if you want to have a military culture that's purely designed as it should be to just close with and destroy the enemy, right, you get hamstrung by some of these things and it's like no no we can't do that can't do that and then what starts to happen is that original Lee Valley that we all wanted starts to get moved to the side and the goal becomes you know what you're talking about. I'm so glad we're getting into this and thankful for all you've been working on over the years because we have to get clarity on this and I think that's happening right now is that people I'm thankful for Trump I'm thankful for HECS Act. There's work to do. Well there's a lot of work to do and I think Americans like us want this change to persist beyond the administration and I think it returns to this reality that you touched on that we forgot what the military does. The military as was very true in World War II and Korea is the institution that exercises violence at massive scale in order to preserve American interests. It is not a social engineering institution it's not a jobs program it is a center of excellence for lethality and you know I think the left they kind of clung to this footnote in the Harvard vs. Students for Fair Admissions ruling you know footnote from Chief Justice John Roberts where he said the the ruling to end affirmative action does not apply to the military academies because national security might dictate different considerations and again that was kind of thrown in our face but my response to that was yes that's exactly the point. A national security environment is different right but even more so it means that it can't be a place for things like affirmative action. Absolutely well we all think that that's on you and I think that's on borrowed time but it still creates the problem of oh no we can get away with this. Right and and I think the the left you know they they view this now as an opportunity to begin to in some ways control the senior military ranks over time because if it turns out to be who you want it to be and all the people that you know like we're gonna get into America second I'm sure you know those folks like I'm not I'm not doing what dealing with this and then who rises are the folks that are playing along which is also playing along with the left's political game exactly and then we have a military that one can't fight our wars and two becomes some kind of weird political arm of the left which is super dangerous obviously.

[01:05:15;26 - 01:14:21;26]
 also think it's important to be pretty clear about what this actually looks like inside the military. Again the narrative the culture tells us is that diversity is important you must foster it make sure there's no discrimination you include everyone. You know I think honestly there's some problems with even that logic to the military but what the military was doing at least before President Trump's second term was in my opinion and I think by any objective standard the most aggressive affirmative action regime of any institution in America. There is a memo from August of 2022 signed by the former Air Force Chief of Staff and the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General C.Q. Brown where he literally on a one-page memo put a chart with percentage-based quotas for each race and sex combination of Air Force officers. His directive to Air Force recruiters and to some subcommands of the Air Force was make sure that our Air Force looks a certain way and is a certain percentage of man and woman if you want to get promoted if you want to keep your job. And to me that you know in this Harvard for students for Fair Admissions case that we discussed there was you know through probably almost a decade of discovery never a similar kind of quota or memo or policy letter from any of the Ivy League student Ivy League colleges that out that outlaid such a specific brazen quota regime but in the military it was this is what we're going for and it's like okay well I'm glad he said it out loud which gets us to the place of like this is a real problem it's not just something that's a little floating around out there and is a reference to here and there now they're going straight to quotas. And I think and I think the military kind of you know use this equity this cultural equity and support from the American people to have some of the most brazen policies like this. That's right because you want every American to that point I think this is and this is why I'm always happy to be working on this stuff with you because we're vets. Yeah. And it's easier for us to say no problem right you don't want to be no patriotic civilian that didn't serve wants to say anything untoward about the military love it that's wonderful it's very nice but there are problems and we got to get to it and this is a huge problem still brewing. And it's patriotic to want to fix it and so to the point of fixing this you know restoration proposed a legislative solution for this year's National Defense Authorization Act and you know we try to be pretty explicit in this policy to say for no future personnel decision or program decision can the military account or evaluate a soldier sailor airmen or Marines or or guardian now sex or race. And I think that's the important thing to highlight. We've had years of examples when legislation and policy memos reaffirmed merit or affirmed the importance of evaluating professional characteristics but never before has there been language that specifically banned the considerations of race and sex that are the the the predicate for some of these really abusive policies. And we've got to get down to this level because we have been operating underneath a little bit of a here's an executive order here's our own memo things like that we have to codify this stuff because as we both know and conservatives know in general local is not dead it's just hiding. We get a new Democrat president it's all coming back at scale and so we have to get this stuff into into legislation into law and that's the you know that's going to be the theme here as we go forward on all these podcasts is here's some here's what's going on on the inside here's some inside baseball to about what happens and how this works but we are making sure and we want to get as much support as we possibly can obviously people saying to their senators and their representatives hey there's a problem here you guys should work on it because they've they've frankly been getting away forever with the NDAA the National Defense Authorization Act just kind of it's over there on the side and I'm just gonna move this thing around and move it through and then again we're back to like oh as a civilian I want to say anything bad about the military but in this process it's like well some bad stuff is happening to the military and we have to fix it. Well and that's happened specifically in this context yeah like I said we get a lot of affirmations and attestations about the you know vagary importance of merit. Last year Senator Ted Budd of North Carolina sponsored legislation that would ban affirmative action at service academies in the kind of meeting the standard that we're talking about for our current proposal it passed through the Senate there was a lot of support from Senate Republicans House Republicans too but then when the bill went to essentially be litigated with the House version of the National Defense Authorization Act this process called conference produced a quote-unquote compromise legislation that to in you know to Senator Budd's dismay didn't include any of this any of his proposal to ban affirmative action at the service academies and I think that goes to the point of why it's important and what you said Doug that an executive order is not enough because it's legislation and law that really sends a signal to the bureaucracy and to the left that things are changing for good. That's right and we have to have people we have to have educated citizenry on many levels this is one of them where they have to understand how this works because the problem becomes you could have senators like Senator Budd and other folks that are like this is what needs to happen and there's this conference piece and you have these these kind of permanent staffers on these on these committees and it gets really opaque and what's going on in there and then something else come something comes out of the black box and was like what happened what is this about and so and then before you know it the whole process is over we're moving on and and now we got to talk about the next years and we were involved somewhat last year but we're heavily involved this year making sure this is gonna happen and so you know we just like I said I just want everybody that is interested in this stuff to know the exact process so that they can weigh in. Exactly we have to kind of take this through the finish line because when it when when senators themselves don't have any visibility into what's happening with pieces of legislation it's this kind of dark you know dark negotiation between like you said permanent staff you know they do the Lord's work they write the bills but at the end of the day we have to make sure that there's accountability for the entire legislative process and you know that's why I think the risk for this year for this year in 2026 we're litigating the 2027 National Defense Authorization Act I think there's still a high risk that it could happen again you know there's perhaps a little bit more tumultuous of a political environment and you know the midterms are here and so I think that creates some uncertainty into the extent to which different members different staff are gonna want to really push hard for the kind of victories that we need you know this year before perhaps some political conditions change and so it's it's far from certain but I think that's the purpose of these kinds of conversations is because yeah. Trying to shape the battlefield real little bit right? From a political standpoint you gotta know who's in who's gonna do what? It changes every year and this is gonna be another one of those years like you who's where on this thing but transparency is gonna help that's what this is. It will exactly and at the end of the day for an issue like you know considerations of race and sex and military decisions I don't think it's that much of a red meat for the right wing I think this is something that any American can get behind to understand that the military is no place for considerations of race and sex that even factor into decisions regarding military personnel matters. That's right because the long term here is you haul out the military in any way there will come a day where you're gonna start losing plenty of wars and especially you know countries are coming after us right now and we can't act like it's not it's not real they are coming after us and if they let if we just basically haul it out ourselves you know become our own worst enemy in this way you know we're just helping the helping the guys that are after us and everybody gets that back to your point about everybody in this country needs to understand that this is this is a real problem and it's gonna be a problem for your kids and grandkids maybe even for you right? That's right it sounds like a bipartisan problem to me.

[01:14:21;26 - 01:14:58;06]