Congress requires the Pentagon to support the scouting program’s Jamboree, a gathering of thousands of young scouts held every three or four years. The U.S. military lends trucks, ambulances and medical teams, and puts on aviation and skydiving demonstrations, all at no cost to the Scouts. For the military, it’s both a training exercise and an opportunity to recruit highly motivated, civic-minded kids.
But the law includes an exemption: the Secretary of Defense can withhold support if he determines providing it would be “detrimental to national security.”
Drafts of a report to Congress obtained by NPR show Hegseth invoking that clause — accusing Scouting America of fostering “gender confusion.”
His memo to the House and Senate Armed Services committees argues the Scouts have strayed from their mission to “cultivate masculine values.” It also claims that with international conflicts and a tight budget, sending troops, doctors and vehicles to a 10-day youth event would harm national security by diverting resources from border operations and protecting U.S. territory.
I think that I know the direction of this storm. This will lead to a new “trump boys youth corps” structured on a sleazier version of the ἀγωγή. Neo-helots will be immigrants, homeless, drug addicts, and those that question authority. In order to graduate one will have to kill a Neo-helot.
I was thinking more like pull funding, supports, and in a few years claim girls ruined the ‘boy scouts.’
Would not be surprised to see a Trump’s League of American Worker Youth pop up, either.
I was pretty much done with scouting when the whole “protecting pedophile leaders” came out.
Also, when protecting those monsters caused them to lose all (or a shit-ton) of the land they had been buying to set aside for conservation and restoration.The Secretary of Defense can withhold support if he determines providing it would be "detrimental to national security.
Drafts of a report to Congress obtained by NPR show Hegseth invoking that clause — accusing Scouting America of fostering “gender confusion.”
Republicans have shown they have no problem going nuclear and burning it all down to enforce their culture-war opinions. If they have the power to cancel this long-established event for “national security”, they should have to prove it, with actual evidence to a board of bipartisan military leaders before action is taken. Treat everything they say as suspect unless proven true…
This is especially funny, given the Boy Scouts were propped up by the Mormons for years.
Oh no the fascist government won’t support scouting now that the Mormons have their own thing. Oh no.
Jamborees are also held in other countries and for some magical reason they don’t need the military or are even opposed to be associated with military.
So this could turn out to be a good thing that prevents kids to be raised militant, even if it causes logistic problems at first.