Pete Hegseth gloats after pressuring Scouting America to ban trans kids...

[Jessica_Rose ✅]

Pete Hegseth gloats after pressuring Scouting America to ban trans kids & end DEI

https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2026/02/pete-hegseth-gloats-after-pressuring-scouting-america-to-ban-trans-kids-end-dei/ 🔗

Greg Owen (27 Feb 2026)

Pete Hegseth's obsession with Boy Scouts continues, and Scouting America has bent to his will by banning trans kids from joining as their gender identity and agreeing to dissolve its DEI board committee.

Hegseth's rationale for dictating the behavior of a private organization? Dollars the Defense Department provides to help with the Scouts' annual Jamboree in the mountains of West Virginia, and a long, now-threatened, synergistic relationship with the military.

Reporting from NPR late last year indicated that Hegseth was going to do something about the Scouts' "woke" ideology, a longtime obsession of the former Fox & Friends host.

"This is a tragedy!" Hegseth ranted on the network after Scouting America's name change two years ago. He laid blame at the feet of "the left."

"They wanted to destroy it," Hegseth whined.

For the record, Pete Hegseth was never a Boy Scout.

In January, Scouting America responded to the rumors, quietly offering to dial back programming the secretary found objectionable to maintain their longstanding ties to the military.

Among the concessions, the Scouts swapped out a Citizenship in Society merit badge, which Hegseth claimed advanced DEI "activism", and introduced a Military Service merit badge in its place.

Membership in the Scouts, Hegseth said, will now be based solely on "biological sex at birth" and not gender identity, a de facto ban on trans kids in the organization.

"That means that the application, any application, will have only two sex designations, male and female," Hegseth said of the paperwork to join the organization, "and the application must match the applicant's birth certificate."

[Lori Dee ✅]

It would appear that not only is the GOP the Genital Obsessed Party, but that extends to children as well. I joined the Cub Scouts at eight years old, the Webelos at ten, and the Boy Scouts at eleven. Scouting had a long tradition in our family, with both of my parents active adult cadre. No one cared about sex, gender, or orientation.

A lot has changed since then. It is a crying shame when an American institution is willing to forgo its principles for money.