Secretary of War Pete Hegseth did something this past week that many former Scouts had been hoping to see years ago.
The Pentagon head drew a clear line in the sand and told Scouting America that its era of pushing diversity, equity, and inclusion mandates is over if the organization expects continued government support.
According to a Department of Defense news release, the Pentagon will conditionally continue to provide support to Scouting America, formerly the Boy Scouts of America, after the group committed to pulling all DEI initiatives and vowing to align itself with its historic mission.
Hegseth said he had been “seriously considering” ending support altogether because of the moral rot, but wanted to offer a lifeline before ending a long relationship.
“After 2012, however, the Boy Scouts lost their way, and a once-great organization became gravely wounded,” Hegseth in a video accompanying the release.
“[DEI] crept in, the name was changed to ‘Scouting America,’ girls were accepted [and] the focus on God as the ruler of the universe was watered down to include openness to humanism and Earth-centered pagan religions,” he said.
He also made note of Scouting’s declining numbers.
The number of Scouts has plummeted from 10 million boys in 1970 to fewer than one million boys and girls this year.
Hegseth said Scouting America agreed to scrap its DEI programs entirely. As Hegseth put it, “No more DEI. Zero.” That includes the death of the recently-created “citizenship in society” merit badge, which has been forcing kids to “realize the benefits of diversity, equity, inclusion, and ethical leadership.”
The group will also rid itself of any and all gender confusion, Hegseth said.
The Department of War has officially put Scouting America on notice.
It’s time to get back to basics — and DoW is leading the charge. pic.twitter.com/EnY9mvaFLX
— Secretary of War Pete Hegseth (@SecWar) February 27, 2026
Hegseth said he hopes Scouting will eventually find its way back.
I voted for this kind of leadership, and I am grateful that someone with some authority finally confronted what so many families walked away from years ago.
But I don’t think Hegseth can save Scouting.
You can have all the conversations you want about policies and DEI, but you can’t rebuild a culture that was dismantled over a period of decades by leftists and other perverts who infiltrated Scouting to corrupt children.
I was a Boy Scout in the late 1990s and early 2000s, when campouts, oaths, and uniforms meant something, because the men leading us lived the standards they demanded from us.
Our troop leaders were veterans, teachers, and one was a full-time minister. They talked to us about God without looking around to make sure no one was listening. They dressed us down when we needed it.
Sometimes I heard them cracking beers open in the late hours of the night. They were real men.
When we failed to represent the insignia on our shirts, we were corrected firmly, because the badge stood for something larger than ourselves.
Years later, my son brought home a Scouting pamphlet from his government school. I wanted him to experience that same rite of passage, so I took him to meetings led by a well-meaning former Eagle Scout who was clearly trying to preserve what he once loved.
By the second meeting, it was obvious that the institution above him had lurched so far to the left that the name on the patch no longer meant anything.
Girls were there. I saw a rainbow somewhere. Some of the parents were the stereotypical blue-haired liberal wine moms. I think I saw a septum piercing.
There were some real freaks talking about sharing a campground with my little boy. I refused to hand my son over to people that I would not trust to be alone in the woods with him.
What do you do with a group that abandons the mission in its name? I know that for years, the organization tried to save itself in court from some of this stuff, but it lost its identity a little at a time.
The meetings we went to were sterile and weird in a way that’s hard to describe, but we never went back after two of them.
And nothing against girls, because I love being a girl dad, but Scouting was created for boys.
What damage could some Scouting mom with a gender-confused daughter do to my kid if given the chance? Why put him around someone whose Munchausen by proxy has her daughter or son playing dress-up?
Scouting wasn’t allowed in my home.
Hegseth might be able to slow the bleeding going on over at Scouting America, and I commend him for trying.
But the military cannot regulate Scouting back to being honorable with threats, any more than it can regulate normal boys to want to be a part of it.
There is no shortage of boys in this country looking for direction, and enough people know they’re not going to get it from a group that has to be compelled not to be perverse.
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