Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced earlier this week that in December, the U.S. Army had its best recruiting number in 12 years. The next month saw the best recruiting number in 15 years.
Confirming those figures, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt says the administration expects them to "skyrocket over the next four years" as Trump and Hegseth's anti-woke military reforms, like eliminating DEI policies, have restored faith in military culture.
"Young Americans are signing up under a commander-in-chief committed to peace through strength," said Leavitt.
A conservative military watchdog says the arrival of the new administration has inspired confidence as Army recruitment numbers are up. Read more...
"Bottom line: America's youth want to serve under the bold and strong 'America First' leadership of @realDonaldTrump," Hegseth posted on X.
Early this legislative session, Rep. Pat Harrigan (R-North Carolina), a former Green Beret, sponsored a bill to reinstate 8,400 service members who were discharged for refusing to take COVID-19 vaccines. The bill also aimed to clear their records, restore their benefits, and prevent future administrations from using mandates against the armed forces.
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) led parallel legislation in the Senate.
Both measures largely became obsolete on Jan. 27, when Trump signed an executive order reinstating the fired personnel with full rank and benefits.
"We were thrilled when President Trump took our legislation and made an executive order out of it," Harrigan told Washington Watch Thursday.
But noting that Trump's EO does not prevent a future president from attempting to force a vaccine or similar medical treatment on military members under his or her command, Harrigan added, "We've got to keep in mind why this was so important."
"We truly had a weaponized vaccine mandate for political purposes," he said.
Differences remain
That is why he believes Congress must act to remove the mandate decision-making authority from the executive branch.
"Taking that away from the president, away from the secretary of Defense, puts it in Congress's hands. What that does is that in any type of future vaccine mandate scenario, it slows the process down and requires broad consensus of both parties to determine what ought to be getting injected into the veins of our servicemen and women," the former Green Beret told show host Tony Perkins.
The good news is the two bills now become very narrowly focused.
"President Trump has come in and taken everything that we put in the bill and already enacted it, which is fantastic," Harrigan said. "We want things to move quickly, and we want the right outcomes to happen. That's happened."
Personnel who objected to Biden's mandate lost their healthcare benefits and retirement benefits that some were close to cashing in.
"It was stripped from them when they were kicked out of the military and given either … honorable or general discharges. This has never before happened in our military, and it was something that Sen. Cruz and I were adamant needed to be corrected," Harrigan said.
Trump obviously agreed.
Now it seems young recruits find Trump agreeable. And they are not the only ones.
The Army has announced that it will expand its spring training sessions by 10 additional units that could accommodate up to 9,600 new recruits each year.
In recent years, the Army has struggled in recruiting numbers and in the performance of the recruits who did sign on. In 2022, the Army fell 15,000 short of its enlistment goal of 60,000. The following year, the 50,000 recruits who signed on were still well short of the Army's publicly stated goal of 65,000 recruits.
In 2023, the Army was forced to add several initiatives to try and help lower-performing recruits, NewsNation reported.
How did we get here?
Army leaders, though, are not so sure the election and the increases are connected.
From the moment his nomination was announced, Hegseth has pledged to remove "woke" culture from the military.
But as its own surveys have revealed that only about 5% of respondents listed "wokeness" as a reason for not wanting to join the military, Army leaders say the Trump administration's direction has not played a role in the recruitment increase.
Still, the fact remains that the highest increases in years have come since the election.
The combination of Trump's moves and the energy and visibility of a younger Defense secretary who personally visits troops at the border may have made the difference.
"There is a resounding consensus that that leadership is back," Harrigan said. "This is a military that our young men and women want to join again."
If there is any doubt that voters delivered Donald Trump a mandate on Nov. 5, he thinks hopeful military service men and women's confidence in the commander-in-chief is crystal clear.
