January 29th, 2025: How Trump Is Shaking Up The US Military & A Russian Hit Job in Germany
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What executive orders is Trump issuing for the military?
It's Wednesday, 29 January. Welcome to the President's Daily Brief. I'm Mike Baker, your eyes and ears on the world stage. All right, let's get briefed. First up, we're looking at a series of new executive orders from President Trump that are shaking up the U.S. military, from banning transgender service members to dismantling diversity, equity, and inclusion programs. Later in the show, a senior NATO official confirms a Russian plot to assassinate the head of German arms manufacturer Rheinmetall, part of a larger effort to target Europe's defense industry and intimidate EU nations. Plus, a developing situation in Africa, where a rebel alliance has seized the largest city in the mineral-rich eastern region of the Democratic Republic of Congo, threatening the stability of the region. And in today's back of the brief, do you remember the mystery drones over New Jersey? Seems like ages ago.
Well, we're now getting some answers from the White House on last year's drone sightings across the Northeast. And spoiler alert, they were not alien spaceships. Well, at least that's what we're being told. But first, today's PDB Spotlight. President Trump's executive order blitzkrieg shows no signs of letting up as the president seeks to shake up the U.S. military and purge its ranks of, quote, woke ideology. On Monday, Trump issued a wave of executive orders reshaping Pentagon operations, namely banning transgender service members from the military and gutting diversity, equity and inclusion programs. The actions build off of an executive order Trump signed on his first day back in office, revoking the Biden administration's 2021 directive allowing trans people to serve openly in the military. That's according to an exclusive report from the New York Post.
The new orders specifically prohibit, quote, gender radicalism in the military, barring any service member who identifies as a gender other than their birth sex from serving or enlisting on the grounds of mental unfitness. Now, it's not clear how the administration will deal with the estimated 9,000 active duty and 6,000 reserve troops already enlisted who identify as transgender, though it directs the Pentagon to determine a policy for those individuals within 30 days. Furthermore, the orders ban biological men and women from sharing bathrooms, bedrooms, and changing areas while in the service and prohibits the use of, quote, invented and identification-based pronoun usage, end quote. President Trump said Monday, to ensure we have the most lethal fighting force in the world, we will get transgender ideology the hell out of our military.
It's going to be gone, end quote. Regarding more specific DEI initiatives in the armed forces, the orders direct the Pentagon to ban the, quote, race or sex-based preferences system. It also directs Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to investigate and rectify any instances of discrimination based on DEI practices, suggesting some of the generals that Trump has criticized as woke could soon be on the chopping block. Additionally, Trump has issued a ban on all bureaucratic bodies dedicated to DEI initiatives and has tasked the Secretary of Defense and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem with reviewing all academic curricula being used at U.S. military academies to ensure it's free of, quote, radical DEI and gender ideologies. The orders are already having an immediate impact.
Late Monday, Fox News revealed that the Department of Veterans Affairs has placed nearly 60 employees on leave who oversee DEI initiatives. The DEI employees reportedly had a combined total salary of more than $8 million. Now, if you're keeping score at home, that averages out to about $133,000 annually per person. The VA also plans to cancel multiple contracts for DEI-related consulting services that are estimated to cost more than $6 million. Well, thus endeth the DEI cottage industry. The Trump administration argues that current DEI practices constitute a woke assault on the military driven by both the Obama and Biden administrations.
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