President Donald Trump is implementing a temporary solution to minimize the pain inflicted on American servicemen during the Democrat-induced government shutdown.
Trump announced Saturday that he has identified funds for Secretary of War Pete Hegseth to use to ensure American troops don't miss a paycheck on Oct. 15. This action comes after the Senate reached a stalemate, sending lawmakers home until votes resume Tuesday.
'I will not allow the Democrats to hold our Military, and the entire Security of our Nation, HOSTAGE.'
With no end to the shutdown in sight, Trump decided to take matters into his own hands.
"Chuck Schumer recently said, 'Every day gets better' during their Radical Left Shutdown," Trump wrote in a Truth Social post Saturday. "I DISAGREE! If nothing is done, because of 'Leader' Chuck Schumer and the Democrats, our Brave Troops will miss the paychecks they are rightfully due on October 15th."
RELATED: White House deploys nuclear option amid Democrat-induced shutdown stalemate
"That is why I am using my authority, as Commander in Chief, to direct our Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth, to use all available funds to get our Troops PAID on October 15th," Trump added. "We have identified funds to do this, and Secretary Hegseth will use them to PAY OUR TROOPS."
Democrats allowed government funding to lapse past the Sept. 30 deadline, refusing to pass the Republican-led continuing resolution. Although spending fights have turned partisan in the past, Republicans simply proposed a clean 90-page CR that kept funding levels at the same rates that Democrats voted for in the past. Their bill had no partisan line items, with the only anomaly being a bipartisan boost in security funding for politicians following Charlie Kirk's assassination.
On the other hand, Democrats proposed a $1.5 trillion funding bill that is chock-full of ideological provisions aimed at reversing the legislative accomplishments Republicans secured with the One Big Beautiful Bill. Democrats have also attempted to make the spending fight about renegotiating Obama-era health care subsidies, although they don't expire until the end of the year.
RELATED: White House dares Democrats with nuclear response to looming shutdown
"I will not allow the Democrats to hold our Military, and the entire Security of our Nation, HOSTAGE, with their dangerous Government Shutdown," Trump said. "The Radical Left Democrats should OPEN THE GOVERNMENT, and then we can work together to address Healthcare, and many other things that they want to destroy. Thank you for your attention to this matter!"
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With Beijing preparing to seize Taiwan and Washington bleeding resources in Ukraine, Americans are asking the question no one in the Pentagon wants to answer: Is the U.S. military ready for World War III? The truth is worse than most people realize.
We’re not even close.
America deserves a military led by warriors, not bureaucrats. The time for excuses is over.
Under the last three Democratic presidents, the armed forces have been systematically weakened. Bill Clinton lowered physical fitness standards to shoehorn women into combat roles. Barack Obama elevated Marxist generals who smuggled diversity, equity, and inclusion into the ranks under the banner of “modernization.” Joe Biden went further, purging the unvaccinated, fixating on gender ideology and climate change, and leaving supply chains dangerously dependent on foreign — often Chinese — manufacturers.
The result is a hollowed-out military that struggles to meet recruitment goals, maintain readiness, or inspire confidence. War Secretary Pete Hegseth has begun the long process of repair — firing the worst woke officers, reinstating real fitness standards, and banning DEI.
But the rot runs deeper. Unless we reform the institutions that produce our officers, we’ll fail at the most important mission of all: restoring the warrior spirit.
As a West Point graduate, I know the academies’ first duty is to forge warrior-leaders. Everything else is secondary. Yet West Point Superintendent Steven Gilland has traded that mission for racial quotas and “whiteness” seminars that divide cadets and undermine cohesion. The dean even tried to install Biden’s “disinformation czar” as “distinguished chair” of the Social Studies Department — until the Trump administration intervened.
The rot extends across all five service academies. At the Merchant Marine Academy, former Superintendent Joanna Nunan persecuted Christians and promoted transgender ideology until Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy fired her in June.
Civilian faculty have made matters worse. At the Air Force Academy alone, nearly 200 professors push progressive politics in uniform. One mocked her students as “White Boy 1, 2, 3.” Another championed critical race theory and insisted America was “racist from the beginning.” This isn’t military education. It’s Berkeley activism in uniform. And it’s driving away the next generation of patriots.
ROTC programs, which produce most of the Army’s officers, have followed the same Marxist path. Cadets can now major in grievance studies at universities like Wisconsin-Madison, then enter the officer corps unprepared for actual war-fighting. That’s not how you beat China.
Postgraduate institutions such as the Naval and Army War Colleges, Air University, and the National Defense University have become bureaucratic echo chambers for climate activism and social justice rhetoric. Their accrediting agencies enforce DEI mandates and even filed briefs opposing the Supreme Court’s ruling against race-based admissions. Civilian faculty dominate the classrooms, feeding officers a steady diet of leftist ideology and contempt for the commander in chief.
RELATED: Memo to Hegseth: Our military’s problem isn’t only fitness. It’s bad education.
This didn’t happen overnight. It’s the product of cultural Marxism’s “long march through the institutions,” a decades-long campaign to hollow out American strength from within. From boot camp to the War College, officers now absorb ideology instead of discipline. The price of that indoctrination will be paid in blood if war comes.
The tide is beginning to turn. For the first time in decades, the left is on defense. President Trump has given the military a mandate to purge Marxism and restore its fighting spirit. Patriots across the country are watching — and acting.
Through RestoreTheMilitary.com, we’ve outlined a blueprint to rebuild the force: Fire ideological officers, overhaul the National Defense Authorization Act, remove civilian faculty from service academies, ban DEI, reward war-fighters who risk their lives, and end our dependence on foreign supply chains.
The message to Congress couldn’t be clearer: Do your duty — or step aside. America deserves a military led by warriors, not bureaucrats. The time for excuses is over.
In a striking speech this week, Secretary Pete Hegseth — now head of the newly renamed Department of War — addressed a rare gathering of top military officials in Quantico, Virginia. He laid out his vision for reform and announced directives aimed at restoring the fighting spirit of the U.S. armed forces.
Hegseth began by explaining why the Department of Defense has once again become the Department of War. “To ensure peace, we must prepare for war,” he said, reviving the older and more honest title abandoned in 1948.
Circumstances change, and tactics must adapt. But adaptation should always sharpen lethality, not serve social experiments.
That explanation drew from the Roman writer Vegetius, who coined the maxim si vis pacem, para bellum — if you want peace, prepare for war. But Hegseth’s reasoning also echoes St. Augustine, the Christian bishop whose writings helped shape just war theory.
In a letter written in 418 A.D. to the Roman general Boniface, Augustine commended the nobility of military service. He reminded him — and us — that the proper object of war is peace.
“Peace should be the object of your desire,” Augustine wrote. “War should be waged only as a necessity, and waged only that God may by it deliver men from the necessity and preserve them in peace. For peace is not sought in order to the kindling of war, but war is waged in order that peace may be obtained.”
He concluded with a hard truth for every soldier: “Let necessity, therefore, and not your will, slay the enemy who fights against you.”
Though peace may be war’s ultimate goal, necessity requires militaries to pursue their purpose without hesitation: engage and destroy the enemy. Only with that assurance can a nation’s people live free and fully.
That is the mission Hegseth intends to restore. “From this moment forward, the only mission of the newly restored Department of War is this: warfighting, preparing for war, and preparing to win,” he said Tuesday.
In practice, that means reversing the U.S. military’s long drift toward an agenda of “diversity, equity, and inclusion.” This ideology, a hybrid of HR jargon and academic postmodernism, demands that “marginalized” groups be elevated into power regardless of merit.
Corporate America and universities may tolerate such illusions. The military cannot. A fighting force depends on unity and unflinching standards, not favoritism. When leaders promote based on identity instead of ability, when they lower fitness thresholds or soften training to accommodate politics, they weaken the institution tasked with defending the nation.
Even basic training, once the crucible that broke down civilians and forged soldiers, has been watered down. Risk aversion replaces rigor. Cosmetic rules are relaxed. Officers signal more concern with optics than with readiness. None of this produces warriors.
If the United States wants to remain the premier fighting force in the world, those trends must end. The alternative is a military built for press releases and photo ops, not for victory.
To begin reversing these trends, Hegseth offered two simple tests for every new policy: the “1990 test” and the “E-6 test.”
The 1990 test asks: What were the military standards in 1990, and if they changed, why? That baseline matters. Since then — arguably even earlier — political agendas crept in and steadily displaced common-sense practices. Policies that once kept the force lethal and focused have been diluted or discarded.
Hegseth acknowledged that modern battlefields evolve. Circumstances change, and tactics must adapt. But adaptation should always sharpen lethality, not serve social experiments. Policies that weaken cohesion or cater to fashionable causes betray the mission.
By holding today’s standards up against those of 1990, the military can begin identifying what was lost — and whether those losses made the force deadlier or merely more compliant with political fashions. The answer, in most cases, is obvious.
RELATED: Hegseth declares war on woke military policies: ‘We are done with that s**t’
The E-6 test asks a blunt question: Will this policy make the job of an E-6 easier or harder?
In the Army, an E-6 is a staff sergeant. In the infantry, that usually means a squad leader. A squad is the smallest real tactical unit — second only to the four-man fire team. It’s the squad leader who carries the burden of leadership where it matters most: training, maintenance, discipline, and, in combat, life-or-death decisions under fire.
So the E-6 test forces policymakers to think from the ground up. Will a new directive help the staff sergeant lead his squad more effectively, hold his soldiers accountable, and keep them lethal? Or will it mire him in distractions, paperwork, and politically driven nonsense?
In other words, the test measures policy by its effect on the sharp end of the spear. If it makes the staff sergeant’s mission harder, the policy has failed before it begins.
For too long, Washington has imposed policies without regard for the men who actually lead soldiers in the field. Often those policies made their jobs harder, not easier. The simple discipline of asking whether a change helps or hinders an E-6 restores the right focus: The military exists to fight and win wars. Nothing else.
War will never be pleasant, but it remains necessary. Peace and human flourishing require strength — an armed force capable of deterring aggressors and defeating enemies who would sow chaos and fear. That is the first duty of government: to ensure the military is as lethal and effective as possible in defense of the people.
Hegseth understands this. His reforms strip away the distractions of ideology and return attention to standards, readiness, and the hard truths of combat. As he reminded his audience, paraphrasing G.K. Chesterton, true soldiers fight not because they hate what is in front of them, but because they love what’s behind them.
That truth, often forgotten in recent decades, is the cornerstone of a warrior ethos worth rebuilding — an ethos that can win wars, safeguard peace, and keep the republic secure.
Pete Hegseth’s new title is "secretary of war," and BlazeTV host Sara Gonzales doesn’t think the name could be more fitting for the administration's departure from woke nonsense and focus on masculinity in the military, calling it "totally badass."
And after he laid out the administration’s plans for the military, Hegseth proved that he — and Trump’s military — fit the new title perfectly.
“This administration has done a great deal from day one to remove the social justice, politically correct, and toxic ideological garbage that had infected our department, to rip out the politics. No more identity months, DEI offices, dudes in dresses. No more climate change worship. No more division, distraction, or gender delusions. No more debris,” Hegseth said.
But Hegseth didn’t stop there, also addressing the health of men and women in the military.
“This is not about preventing women from serving. We very much value the impact of female troops.
"But when it comes to any job that requires physical power to perform in combat, those physical standards must be high and gender-neutral. If women can make it, excellent. If not, it is what it is,” he said.
“It will also mean that weak men won’t qualify, because we’re not playing games. This is combat. This is life or death,” he added.
Gonzales couldn’t be happier with the Trump administration’s stance on the military, saying that anyone who “feels like this is controversial” deserves to “be laughed off the face of the planet.”
“This should not be controversial. It is not personal. It is just business. The military has one job: to be really strong and really good at protecting our country. That’s it. There’s no time for personal debate or upset feelings about it," Gonzales says.
“It’s despicable what the Biden regime turned our military into,” she adds.
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These are not idle musings. It is dangerous to encourage trained and weaponized warfighters to turn on the commander and chief.
For first time in a long time, service members have leaders who actually give a damn about the mission and their well-being.
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