Are Girls Scouting a thorn in the Pentagon's side? Hegseth is preparing drastic cuts

Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth is expected to announce the severance of ties with the main Scouting organization, Scouting America (formerly Boy Scouts), accusing it of “attacks on boy-friendly spaces” and moving away from cultivating masculine virtues, NPR radio reported on Tuesday. In 2018, the organization began accepting girls.

National Public Radio cites sources in the ministry and a draft report to Congress in which Hegseth intends to announce that continued cooperation with the Scout movement is contrary to America's national security and the military will no longer provide logistical support for the annual Scout Jamboree organized by Scouting America, an over 100-year-old organization originally known as the Boy Scouts.

According to NPR, the Secretary of War intends to inform Congress that the organization is no longer driven by considerations of meritocracy and has instead become a group “invading boy-friendly spaces”promoting “gender confusion” and that it has strayed from its mission of cultivating masculine virtues.

Hegseth is to invoke a clause in the law requiring support for a 10-day scout rally, giving him the ability to circumvent the law in the event of a threat to national security. The document also states that the ministry cannot afford to deplete resources, among others. in the face of the need to protect US borders. Hegseth is also to prohibit the organization of Scout meetings at military bases in the US and abroad.

A Pentagon representative declined to comment on the documents made public as a result of the leak, the authenticity of which he cannot confirm and on which a decision has not yet been made.

A Scouting America spokesman, quoted by NPR, said in a statement that the organization has always been bipartisan.

“For more than a century, we have worked constructively with every U.S. presidential administration—Democrat and Republican—to focus on our common goal of raising future leaders with integrity, accountability and community service,” he said.

As the radio notes, the US president is the honorary president of Scouting America, and Donald Trump visited the annual Scout rally in West Virginia in 2017 and delivered a speech there praising the Scout movement and the civic values ​​it promotes.

From Washington Oskar Górzyński (PAP)

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