Remember the good old days, when men were men and scouts were boys? US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth apparently does, and believes that, in fact, the sun set on those golden days in 2018, when the organization then known as Boy Scouts of America amended its rules to allow girls to join. Things got darker still on February 5, 2025, when the entity officially changed its name to Scouting America.
Hegseth is reportedly prepared to order the government to cut all ties with the organization, ending a relationship that dates back more than a century.
NPR reported Tuesday that the outlet had received drafts of memos Hegseth intends to send to Congress mandating a severing of ties with Scouting America. Hegseth, who never participated in Boy Scouts, wrote in the draft that the organization now serves to “attack boy-friendly spaces,” accusing the group of being “genderless” and promoting “gender confusion.”
“The organization once endorsed by President Theodore Roosevelt no longer supports the future of American boys,” Hegseth reportedly wrote in a memo.
According to the Scouting America website, “The mission of Scouting America is to prepare young people to make ethical and moral choices over their lifetimes by instilling in them the values of the Scout Oath and Law.”
Hegseth, however, reportedly believes that the group’s mission is to “cultivate masculine values,” per one memo, and that they are failing at it.
When contacted by Vanity Fair for comment, an official from the Department of Defense said, “The Department will not comment on leaked documents that we cannot authenticate and that may be pre-decisional.” Representatives for Scouting America did not immediately respond to Vanity Fair’s request for further comment.
The about-face comes amid attempts by the Trump administration to quash many diversity, equity, and inclusion programs. In 2020, Scouting America added a new requirement for scouts working to achieve the group’s highest rank, Eagle Scout: A “diversity, equity, and inclusion” badge, later renamed the “Citizenship in Society” badge.
Though the scouts have never been formally integrated with the U.S. government or military, they’ve had a somewhat symbiotic relationship, with the foundations of the scouting program drawing on military handbooks, and scouting providing opportunities for military recruiting. The armed forces also provide medical and logistical aid, as well as demonstrations, at the National Jamboree, a quadrennial scouting event that sees some 20,000 scouts flocking to West Virginia in the years it’s held. Additionally, military bases often have affiliated scout troops, an association that would be banned under Hegseth’s reported orders.
