WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump is expected to sign three executive orders Monday focused on the military, a White House official told Spectrum News’ Taylor Popielarz.
Newly confirmed Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth fully supports the orders and expects them to happen quickly, he told reporters as he arrived at the Pentagon on Monday for his first day on the job.
One of the orders would direct Hegseth to reinstate any members of the military seeking to do so after being discharged for refusing the COVID-19 vaccine. The reinstatements would include full back pay and benefits.
Another of the orders would direct the Defense Department to update its medical standards to prioritize readiness and lethality, as well as to determine a policy regarding transgender service members.
“Every moment that I’m here, I’m thinking about the guys and gals in Guam, in Germany, in Fort Benning (now known as Fort Moore) and Fort Bragg (now Fort Liberty), on missile defense sites and aircraft carriers,” Hegseth said. “Our job is lethality and readiness and warfighting.”
He said the U.S. “will be no better friend to our allies and no stronger adversary to those who want to test us and try us.”
A third executive order would end existing diversity, equity and inclusion, or DEI, programs in the military. It would also ban the use of race- or sex-based preferences by any element of the armed forces.
One day after U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement announced it had made 956 arrests in a single day, as part of Trump’s pledge to deport masses of undocumented immigrants, Hegseth said, “The Defense Department will support the defense of trhe territorial integrity of the United States of America at the southern border to include reservist National Guard and active duty in compliance with the Constitution” and “the directives of the commander in chief.”
Two days after Trump was sworng in as president, the Defense Department ordered 1,500 active-duty troops to the U.S. border with Mexico.
On Monday, Hegseth said he plans to work with the White House “to ensure we’re securing our southern border.”