US Army recruitment surges to 15-year high after dangerous shrinkage
After shrinking to its smallest size since World War II under the Biden administration, the US Army has reached the highest recruitment numbers in over 15 years.
President Donald Trump announced the news last week, saying the Army is welcoming 350 new sign-ups daily.
“I want to share some very exciting news from our military,” Trump said. “After years of shrinking force numbers at levels that nobody has ever seen before – four years of this we went through and missed recruiting targets every single month – it was just announced that in December, the U.S. Army had its single best recruitment in more than 15 years.”
“Every single day, nearly 350 new soldiers enlisted to defend our nation. And they’re very, very happy to have done so. We’ve done lots of interviews and we asked why this was taking place now, and they just said there’s a spirit about our country that they haven’t seen in many, many years. And I happen to agree with that,” he added.
Former Army Secretary Christine Wormuth said last month that the Army expects to welcome over 81,000 new recruits, the Daily Wire reported. This does not include potential re-enlistments by service members who were discharged for refusing the COVID-19 vaccine and have been offered their jobs back by the Trump administration.
The vaccine mandate’s impact on the military
The Biden-Harris administration’s vaccine mandate has been partly blamed for the US Armed Forces' shrinking to their smallest size since 1940. According to Pentagon figures, active-duty service members under the Biden regime dropped by 64,000 since 2020. The Army, Navy, and Air Force consistently failed to meet their recruitment targets despite increased signing bonuses and aggressive campaigns.
That administration’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate resulted in the discharge of 8,000 service members. As of last year, only 43 of those service members re-enlisted. The mandate may also be why the number of service members and veterans who would recommend joining the military dropped significantly between 2019 and 2021.
Not only were unvaccinated soldiers discharged, they were forced to repay their signing bonuses. One service member had to sell 60 of his vacation days to repay most of his $7,000 signing bonus to the US Army after he was fired for refusing the COVID injections.
In June 2022, now-House Speaker Mike Johnson predicted the effect of the vaccine mandate on the US military, saying:
The Biden Administration is destroying the readiness of our Armed Forces by creating an unnecessary recruiting and retention shortfall, and trying to make up the difference by lowering other crucial education and fitness standards. All of this over an illness that is very, very, very, unlikely to have any significant effect on the young men and women of our military, and a vaccine that lacks long-term data on safety and efficacy for this cohort.
There is simply no other way around it: Until [the Secretary of Defense] withdraws, delays, or modifies the vax mandate, or begins rapidly granting more exemptions, our military will have to continue lowering recruitment standards—degrading the readiness and professionalism of our Armed Forces.
On January 27th, Trump signed an executive order reinstating service members who lost their jobs for being unvaccinated, offering them full back pay and benefits.
Impact of wokeness
Another likely cause of the personnel crisis in the US Armed Forces was the prevalence of totalitarian woke ideologies.
A report last year revealed that US military academies have “eyes and ears programs” for training cadets to report their colleagues for criticizing DEI, even in private conversations. In the Air Force Academy, DEI enforcers were told to wear special uniforms and report to a separate chain of command.
In 2023, then-US Army Secretary Christine Wormuth announced that the Army would prioritize the “war against climate change.”
In 2022, all Army personnel were forced to undergo mandatory gender dysphoria training.
In 2021, the Army released recruitment videos emphasizing the importance of same-sex attraction while omitting any visuals of weaponry. One ad, titled “The Calling,” featured a girl named “Emma” who said she was inspired to join the US Army by her homosexual mothers.
The US Military Academy at West Point has been known to teach courses on critical race theory, which maintains that white people are natural oppressors of black people.
In 2021, then-Army Gen. Mark A. Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told Congress he wanted “to understand white rage,” which he suggested was behind the January 6th rally.
