Tag: General News

Military recruiting is down sharply. More than half of adults under 30 years hold a negative view of the military. White progressives are least likely to volunteer. If the freefall is not arrested, a draft will be necessary.

Equally disturbing, the Department of Defense has undercut its own recruiting base. For 50 years, noncommissioned officers have tirelessly recruited our force, testing fitness and intellect firsthand. Recruiters were empowered to exercise judgment on the other bureaucratic requirements, including a 59-page health order, subject to a final group examination by military doctors inclined to let the determined volunteers serve.

The Pentagon has shifted judgment from our recruiters to an electronic screening system inaptly named “Military Health System Genesis,” instantly shrinking the recruiting pool. Genesis is an invasive magnifying glass that scours the cloud, highlighting doctor visits and prescriptions back to childhood. Understaffed health units — mostly civilians today — must investigate all the red flags. This is the equivalent of ordering a small police force to interrogate every speeding driver. The DoD additionally banned group physicals for fear of body-shaming. Instead of examining a dozen recruits in 15 minutes, doctors now take up to 90 minutes to complete individual interrogations.

The bureaucratic result was predictable. Genesis’s perverse incentive system has resulted in risk aversion among the health screeners, who demand that recruits spend time and money tracking down amplifying evidence, from retired doctors to fifth-grade prescriptions. The processing time for acceptances has doubled. Tens of thousands of other dispirited volunteers file appeals, drop out of the queue or are altogether disqualified. The armed services now override doctor refusals for one out of six recruits.

This is clear evidence that regulations have replaced commonsense. Genesis should be removed from the recruiting process before it does further damage.

The military never wanted Genesis. It was imposed to minimize the number of soldiers who lost duty time to preexisting conditions, which contributed to ballooning Veterans Affairs payments after service. During the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Congress dramatically expanded VA eligibility. 15 percent of WWII veterans received disability benefits; 43 percent of post-9/11 veterans receive payments, at higher disability ratings.

What changed? Troops who are injured in combat and training, or debilitated after long laborious careers, remain undercompensated. Those who briefly serve stateside and invoke preexisting traumas receive too much. This is a thorny differentiation problem that our generals have refused to tackle. Restricting upstream entry — and greatly increasing recruiting costs — to reduce downstream VA payments is self-defeating.

Our senior service leaders have been reluctant to complain — a $5 billion program will have that effect. Fortunately, Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) are investigating, asking, among other questions, whether all this red tape is causing some healthy applicants to drop out of the recruitment process altogether.

That depends on the definition of healthy. The DoD lists over 500 disqualifying conditions. For example, asthma has spiked over the last two decades and is the most common condition among Olympic athletes, with rates approaching 25 percent in cardiovascular sports. Clinging to caricatures of easily manageable conditions, the DoD disqualifies thousands who would serve at the highest physical levels.

Genesis is also biased against athletes. Teen athletes are injured at rates three to five times higher than their sedentary peers, triggering additional screening. 25 percent of special operations troops are injured each year; most have athletic backgrounds. Are they disqualified? The result of this perverse system is that an overweight high school dropout is accepted, while a top collegiate athlete with normal sports injuries is rejected before being examined.

Genesis goes well beyond eradicating the American tradition of permitting the impaired to get into the fight, as Audie Murphy and John F. Kennedy did. Had Genesis been back-tested on the all-volunteer force of the past three decades, tens of thousands who performed superbly in stressful physical levels would have been barred from entry.

The service chiefs and service secretaries must present a unified front and remove Genesis from the recruiting ecosystem. Health requirements must be replaced by a simple, modern standard based on performance. We no longer have the luxury of stapling restriction upon restriction to winnow a volunteer overflow. Finally, recruiters must be given back latitude to use their hard-earned experience to detect who will perform well. It’s time to get back to commonsense at the grassroots, which the military-industrial bureaucracy seeks to stifle.

Owen West is a former assistant secretary of defense for special operations and served two tours in Iraq with the Marines.

COLUMBIA, S.C. — Polls will close at 7pm Eastern in today’s South Carolina GOP primary.

A big win is expected for former President Trump over his only remaining serious rival, former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley.

Haley, born and raised in the state, was twice elected governor here. 

If Trump wins — any another outcome would be a colossal shock — he will have swept to victory in all four of the first primary contests. 

Here are five things to watch.

The margin of Trump’s near-certain victory

Trump is leading by 31 points in the polling average maintained by The Hill and Decision Desk HQ (DDHQ).

If the actual results are similar — or more favorable for Trump — it will be implausible for Haley to argue she poses a credible threat to the former president.

Trump won the Iowa caucuses by 30 points and the New Hampshire primary by 10 points. In the third state to vote, Nevada, a dispute led to a caucus and a primary being held separately. Trump was effectively unopposed in the caucus, while a “none of the above” line in the primary attracted more votes than Haley.

It is of course possible that Haley makes the race tighter than the polls say. There could be a display of home-state loyalty for her. Moderate and liberal-leaning South Carolinians who did not vote in the Palmetto State’s Democratic primary earlier this month might lend her their backing to thwart Trump.

Still, Haley would need to outperform the polls by a big margin if she is to make the battle for the nomination competitive. 

A rough benchmark would be if Haley were to whittle Trump’s advantage down below 15 points.

How hard will Team Trump push to get Haley to quit?

Assuming the polls aren’t wrong by an absurdly large margin, Haley is about to go down to defeat in her home state.

Trump allies are pushing hard for Haley to get out of the race already. Those calls will grow louder if the result is broadly as expected this evening.

At Trump’s final rally before the primary in Rock Hill, S.C., on Friday, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) told The Hill that Haley needed to exit because she was being “humiliated,” while Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.)  said that the continuing attacks on Trump from Haley needed to end.

Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.), speaking from the stage, declared “the Republican primary is over and Donald Trump is our nominee.”

Scott, Mace and Greene have all endorsed Trump. But if the former president wins by around 30 points tonight, the broader GOP could ratchet up the pressure on Haley to quit.

Will Haley accede and bow out?

The official line from the Haley campaign is that she in the race until at least Super Tuesday, March 5.

In a conference call with reporters on Friday morning, Haley campaign manager Betsy Ankney said the candidate had booked a “seven-figure” ad buy across the Super Tuesday states.

“We know that this is an uphill battle,” Ankney acknowledged. “We know that the road is difficult, we know that the math is challenging. But this has never just been about who can win a Republican primary. This battle is about who can win in November.”

Underlining the no-surrender mentality, Haley is slated to be in Michigan on Sunday. The Wolverine State will hold primaries for both major parties on Tuesday.

Haley’s campaign does not appear to be hurting for money, having reported a $16.5 million haul in January.

But candidates hardly ever telegraph that they are dropping out until it happens. And Haley has at times said she needs to show continued momentum, implying she has to do better here than in New Hampshire, where she captured 43 percent of the vote.

Tonight, it is worth watching whether Haley ramps up her attacks on Trump even further or begins to dial them back. If she chooses the latter path, it could be a sign that she is preparing to bring her campaign to an end.

Is Tim Scott moving up in the Trump ‘veepstakes’?

Trump raised some eyebrows at his Friday rally with his emphatic praise of Scott.

The South Carolina senator had pursued his own quest for the nomination this cycle, but he failed to gain traction and withdrew in November, long before anyone actually voted. Scott endorsed Trump in January.

On Friday, Trump pronounced Scott “the greatest surrogate I’ve ever seen.” Alluding to Scott’s abandoned campaign, Trump added that he is “a much better representative of me than he is a representative for himself.”

It’s easy to see why Scott could appeal to Trump as a running mate. A well-liked senator who never excoriated the former president even while running against him, he is also unlikely to overshadow Trump on the campaign trail.

As the sole Black GOP senator, he could perhaps boost Trump’s standing with African American voters. 

The list of contenders to be Trump’s running mate is long. 

But it will be interesting to see how prominent Scott is in media appearances tonight and tomorrow morning. If Scott seems to be accorded a leading role by the campaign, it could auger well for his chances in the veepstakes.

Does Trump carry every district?

The race for delegates will soon become moot if Trump keeps rolling up victories.

Still, the former president would no doubt like a clean sweep of the 50 delegates at stake here.

Assuming, again, that there is not a seismic upset, Trump will claim 29 of those delegates by winning the state overall. 

The remaining 21 delegates will be awarded to whichever candidate carries each of the state’s seven congressional districts. Each district win earns three delegates.

State experts think Haley’s best chance of notching a district-level win is in the 1st district on the southern coast, anchored in and around Charleston. If Haley were to carry the 2nd or 6th districts, it would signal an unexpectedly good night for her.