A Pentagon-funded study relied on old data to conclude extremism isn’t a major problem in the U.S. military, according to a new analysis. Meanwhile, incoming President Trump reportedly plans to sign an executive order removing thousands of trans service members from the military. And body camera footage shows locals in Columbus, OH, fought back when neo-Nazis came to town.
Over the last few years, USA TODAY has closely followed the Pentagon’s approach to tackling extremism in the armed forces. In 2021, weeks after the Jan. 6 insurrection, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin announced a big push to weed extremists out of the military, but as USA TODAY reported, that push largely fell apart in the years that followed.
A big part of the anti-extremism effort was the release of a report commissioned by Austin seeking to show how bad the military’s extremism problem really is. That report, which was finally released just under a year ago, offered scant new data on the problem and concluded extremism was vanishingly rare in the armed forces.
But a new analysis this week from the Associated Press concludes the report was based on old data that underplayed the extent of the military’s extremism problem.
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