Ron DeSantis pledges to improve military recruitment by banning trans people again

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) says he’ll re-ban transgender people from joining the military and roll back other “woke” military policies if he’s elected president in 2024.

In a Tuesday CNN interview, DeSantis told CNN anchorperson Jake Tapper said that the military is “losing its way, not focusing on the mission,” and pointed to the army’s falling 25% short of its 2022 recruitment goals as proof.

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His blistering response comes as House Republicans are holding up military funding to take health care access away from servicemembers.

So, to fix the problem, DeSantis said he would re-ban trans people, even though that would lower the number of eligible recruits. He also pledged to eliminate efforts to increase racial diversity and eliminate extremists from the troops, to forbid the military from trying to combat climate change, and to block former military leaders from participating in politics.

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Many of DeSantis’ ideas are things that House Republicans are currently trying to insert into the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). Former President Donald Trump originally announced his ban on trans military members in 2017, but President Joe Biden removed the ban in January 2021.

DeSantis’ pledge was criticized by David Stacy, vice president of government affairs for the Human Rights Campaign.

“A military that is open to all qualified Americans is a military that is stronger and better—but instead of honoring our service members, Ron DeSantis would turn back to an era of discrimination and witch hunts,” Stacy said. “All of this in service of his cruel and cynical politics of division and scapegoating to appeal to a small, but radical, political base.”

DeSantis has also expressed support for denying military funds to service members seeking abortions. On Monday, an admiral with the National Security Council said that denying such funds and repealing inclusive policies hurt military recruitment.

During his CNN interview with DeSantis, Tapper noted that most U.S. young people between the ages of 18 and 28 say they don’t want to join the military because they don’t want to be killed, injured, separated from their families, or experience racism and misogyny in the ranks. Of all the reasons not to join the military, “wokeness” ranked ninth among them, Tapper said, suggesting that it’s not as big of an issue as DeSantis claims.

DeSantis responded, “Well, but I think there’s an issue about — not everyone really knows what wokeness is. I mean, I’ve defined it, but a lot of people who rail against wokeness can’t even define it.” Even though he didn’t provide a definition to Tapper, in early June, DeSantis defined woke as “a form of cultural Marxism” that puts “merit and achievement behind identity politics” and is “basically a war on the truth.”

Cultural Marxism is a conservative term with anti-Semitic underpinnings, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, that claims that inclusive, liberal, progressive, and multiculturalist policies are an academic and intellectual plot to destroy Western Christian culture.

It’s also ironic that DeSantis considers wokeness as a war on “truth” considering how he has signed multiple laws in his state to deny the existence of LGBTQ+ people and forbid any teachings on systemic racism, sexism, oppression, or privilege.

Racism is also a bigger problem in the military than DeSantis thinks. A 2019 Military Times poll of active-duty service members found that over 30% of white service members had personally witnessed examples of white nationalism, including white supremacist tattoos and Nazi-style salutes by fellow service members. Over 50% of non-white service members polled had personally witnessed examples of white nationalism or ideological-driven racism.

The Department of Defense’s proposed 2021 budget included $30.8 million for “punitive regulation on extremist activities,” Newsweek reported. The budget sought to money to improve “vetting protocols,” social media monitoring to screen out extremists, a case management tool for tracking concerning extremist activities, and punishments for service members found guilty of furthering extremism.