Much has been made of the fact that, with President Donald Trump's return to the White House, military recruiting numbers exploded with all branches of the military, meeting their fiscal 2025 recruitment goals. And the Pentagon has announced that 2026 recruiting numbers suggest "a strong and promising start."
In an op-ed published in the Wall Street Journal entitled "How DEI Caused a Military Recruitment Crisis," the authors showed how the Biden administration's DEI policies had driven recruiting numbers down, including discouraging white recruits.
According to the article, the number of white army recruits between 2018 and 2023 dropped to 25,070 from the previous 44,042. There was also a decrease in recommending military service to young family member among white male veterans, dropping from 81% in 2019 to 63% in 2024. The main reason was because of “DEI and other social policies,” surpassing other factors like death, injury, or psychological problems.
Elaine Donnelly is president of the Center for Military Readiness. She agrees with the article, that Secretary of War Pete Hegseth has turned things around by stressing meritocracy.
"DEI and the bad feelings that it engendered turned whole families against the military for so many years. And here comes Trump with his executive orders and Pete Hegseth, saying no more of that and no more DEI,” says Donnelly. “Well, this is great."
However, Donnelly says that Congress has to step up to the plate.
"They should have codified meritocracy, and they didn't do that,” states Donnelly. “We were pleading with Congress to take advantage of the opportunity and say, very simply, that promotions, admissions, and all of these things will be decided based solely on merit, not any other factor.”
She also adds that they should ban all other factors, such as racial discrimination or sexual preferences and things relating to that.
“And they just didn't step up to do it. It's really a shame because Trump did do that in his executive orders,” concludes Donnelly.
