There is shrunken Trump seated between Rubio and Hegseth looking like a couple of unwilling pallbearers called at the last minute to serve at his funeral. The whole cabinet of losers, liars, and suck-ups was there Friday afternoon. Trump dragged them all the way out to Camp David in Maryland’s Catoctin mountains, saddling the lot of them with the usual requirement to root around in their office drawers to come up with something ass-licky to say about the Fart-meister in Chief. It was pathetic. RFK Jr. bragged that he had been to Camp David before with his father and his uncle, who both “loved the place,” before taking a shot at Eisenhower for naming it after his grandson. President Kennedy, he contended, would have renamed it “Shangri-La” had he survived. Then he heaped praise on Trump for bringing down the cost of drugs at the end of the week that Trump imposed tariffs on foreign-made generics that will raise their prices 100 percent in 2028 and 200 percent a year later.

But who said facts are anywhere to be found at a Trump cabinet meeting? Certainly not the medically-certified genius who has lost count of the number of dementia tests he’s passed. Secretary Suck-aholic Hegseth got things off to a rip-roaring start. He had spent his week manipulating casualty figures to make it look like Trump was winning the war he kept bragging had “obliterated” Iran’s military – the same Iranian military that somehow keeps lobbing missiles and flying drones into U.S. bases all over the Middle East, so Hegseth couldn’t talk about that. Instead, Hegseth praised Trump, the showman, who he said had presided over “parades, 250 flyovers, the American people seeing and feeling their military in ways they have not in the past.” Hegseth took a breath, nearly popping the buttons on his cheap suit. “That’s spirit,” said the buffoon who is being taken to the cleaners by Iran’s Republican Guard.

But enough with the usual praise and puffery. Trump was eager to whine. Nothing is going right for him. He’s down in the polls. He’s losing in nearly every court he’s in – he lost E. Jean’s defamation case and had to pony up $5.8 mil. D.C. U.S. Attorney Box Wine had to pull her indictment of the guy they arrested and charged with felony destruction of government property for touching a sliver of loose bottom paint in the Reflecting Pool. In a court filing, she had to explain that it was the fault of the “botched” paint job, not vandals, that was responsible for the multi-million dollar clusterfuck that used to be one of the biggest tourist attractions on the Mall.

What’s really gotten under Trump’s loose jowly skin is how his attempt at immunity from tax audits and a terrorist slush fund has been stalled by his appointment of his chief-errand-boy and pimp-handler, Todd Blanche, to run Retribution Inc., which used to be called the Department of Justice. This week Trump announced that if Cornyn and Tillis, the two Republican senators he personally ran out of their jobs, continue to oppose Blanche’s nomination, he’ll just keep him on as Acting Attorney General until the next session of Congress when the two Republican hold-outs won’t be around to withhold their votes. “Todd Blanche is a very, very good man,” and Cornyn “has become a very angry person,” Trump explained.

He’s losing his grip. Judges in about half the states have ruled against the Department of Homeland Security for ICE excesses, phony prosecutions of protesters, individual immigrants Trump has personally taken an interest in deporting, grant funding for education, the environment, transportation projects – you name it. When Blanche’s U.S. Attorneys aren’t losing in court outright, they’re being sanctioned for court filings that are tardy, filled with misspelled words, and in one case, written with the help of an AI program that invented citations of court cases that didn’t exist.

Now he has gone back to the Supreme Court against E. Jean Carroll, this time to get them to either reverse the loss he was dealt by a New York jury that awarded her nearly $100 million in damages for his defamation and lies about her, or overturn the huge award against him. It’s hard to know what the Supreme Court will do – Trump is trying to use his freshly-awarded presidential immunity this time. But there are four women on the Supreme Court, including one appointed by Trump himself, who just might recognize Trump’s court maneuvers for what they are. He raped E. Jean the first time in a dressing room, and now he’s attempting to rape her in court filing after court filing.

Look at that photograph of Trump at his cabinet meeting at Camp David. He’s old. He’s frail. His weakness is showing up in a photograph, and it’s showing up in practically everything he tries to do. Democrat Roy Cooper is ahead by nine points in the race for Senate in North Carolina. James Talarico leads Paxton in Texas by five points in a recent poll. Trump is deeply underwater in polling on every issue from the economy to the war to inflation, even immigration.

He’s a sick man. It’s on his face. It’s in his garbled syntax. It’s in his gait. It was on display at gold-leafless Camp David.

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The nursing shortage in Texas has placed immense pressure on healthcare systems and increased demand for skilled professionals in both urban hospitals and rural clinics. Reasons for the shortage include demographic shifts, workforce challenges, and rising healthcare needs.

Why is there a nursing shortage in Texas?

One of the most significant contributors to the shortage is rapid population growth. Texas continues to be one of the fastest-growing states, which naturally increases demand for healthcare services. Another reason is that the population is aging, which calls for more frequent and complex medical care.

Sticking to the topic of age, Texas is also facing an aging nursing workforce. A large portion of experienced nurses are nearing retirement, creating employment gaps  that are difficult to fill quickly. Educational bottlenecks also play a role. Nursing schools often face faculty shortages, limiting enrollment capacity and slowing the pipeline of new graduates entering the profession.

The impact on  hospitals and patient care

Healthcare facilities are feeling the strain. Hospitals are operating with limited staff which results in increased workloads for existing nurses. This can contribute to burnout , job dissatisfaction, and higher turnover, further worsening the shortage.

The effects of the above have a massive impact on patient care. Longer wait times, reduced access to care in rural areas, and stretched resources can impact the quality and timeliness of treatment. In critical care settings, staffing shortages may even influence patient outcomes.

Career opportunities to help address the gap

For those considering a career in nursing, the shortage is both a challenge and an opportunity. Entering the field now means stepping into a profession where job stability and long-term growth are highly favorable.

Education is the first step. Aspiring nurses can pursue pathways such as Associate Degree in Nursing (ADN) or Bachelor of Science in Nursing (BSN) programs. Many institutions, including Baylor University Online, offer flexible options designed for working adults.

Photo: Daniil Kondrashin via Pexels

After completing an accredited program, graduates must pass the NCLEX-RN exam to obtain licensure. From there, additional certifications and specialized training, such as critical care or pediatric nursing, can enhance career prospects.

Ultimately, addressing the Texas nursing shortage  will require a combined effort that includes everything from expanding educational access to supporting current professionals. For new nurses entering the field, the path forward offers not just opportunity, but the chance to make a meaningful impact where it’s needed most.

Photo: RDNE Stock project via Pexels

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The post Understanding the Nursing Shortage: Causes, Impact, and Career Opportunities appeared first on DCReport.org.

It has been nearly three months since a press briefing was held at the Pentagon. During this time, the United States has been in a protracted war with Iran. American soldiers have died. Hundreds have been wounded. What has Hegseth’s Pentagon been doing during this official silence? It’s been moving war statistics around. The deaths of four soldiers recently killed, three in an Iranian airstrike in Jordan, and one during the “controlled detonation” of an Iranian drone in Iraq, have been recategorized. The Pentagon had previously reported that 18 service members had been killed in the war with Iran. Now they say it’s 14 killed during “Operation Epic Fury,” and four killed during “Overseas Operations.”

I can’t believe I had to write that, and I can’t believe having to write this: it doesn’t matter how you count them, dead soldiers are dead soldiers.

What’s going on here? The Pentagon, clearly at the behest of Donald Trump, is trying to hide what is going on in the war against Iran. The number who have been wounded has had to be dragged out of the Pentagon like a bad tooth. The number of wounded was 482 last week, according to CNN. Now the official tally is 624, as the Pentagon was forced to admit that 140 more were wounded during “Overseas Operations,” the category that was added after July 7, when Trump told the world that the ceasefire that had been negotiated with Iran was over.

So, are we at war with Iran, or not? What about the sporadic attacks in both directions that took place during the so-called ceasefire?

We don’t know what the truth is, because Donald Trump wants to pretend that the war he is waging against Iran isn’t a war, but an “excursion,” one word among many others he has used to describe the war.

In fact, there is much we don’t know about Trump’s war. We do know from Hegseth’s congressional testimony that $37 billion has been spent on the war, but we don’t know why the Pentagon has asked for $67 billion as supplemental funding for the war. Oh, the Pentagon broke down the funding request, saying that $46 billion is for “capabilities” and $21 billion is for “readiness,” but that is just Pentagon gobbledegook, especially since the Pentagon is sitting on about $75 billion in unspent funds from $150 billion that was the Pentagon’s slice of a previous reconciliation bill. Hegseth was asked why the Pentagon needs the additional $67 billion, and he explained that they can’t use the $75 billion that’s already sitting there because it is committed to the “golden dome” missile defense system that hasn’t been built and probably never will come into being, at least in our lifetimes.

See how confusing this gets? They’ve got money in this pocket and money in that pocket, and it’s all our tax dollars, and they’re telling us that the war on Iran is so important that we’ve got to keep fighting it because Iran might get a nuclear weapon, or they need to reopen the Strait of Hormuz…or something. And now they’ve got to reopen the Bab-el-Mandeb Strait at the mouth of the Red Sea because the Houthis have started shooting at tankers on their way to the Suez Canal…

Which is it? What the fuck is going on?

Here is where we’re at: You can learn as much from what you don’t know, as you can from what you do know, so let’s take a look at what we don’t know.

We don’t know what’s going on in the Pentagon. Hegseth yanked the credentials of mainstream media reporters because they wouldn’t sign what amounted to a loyalty oath. A federal judge ordered that their credentials be restored. Then Hegseth shut down their offices in the Pentagon and banished them to an annex building and ordered that reporters could only come into the Pentagon with an “escort” to conduct pre-approved interviews. That building, and everyone in it, is paid for with our tax dollars, and we’re not being told what they’re doing in there.

Why? Because what they are doing in the Pentagon doesn’t make sense. They started a war they cannot win, and they cannot get out of. They don’t want you to know that, so they parked anyone who can tell you down the road from the Pentagon where they can control them.

We don’t know what is the status of our missile and bomb stockpiles, because they won’t tell us. Oh, there are leaks galore. The Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a Washington defense think tank, estimates that the number of Patriot interceptors we had before the war, which stood at 2,200, has fallen to fewer than 827. CSIS estimates that the number of THAAD missile interceptors we had has dropped from 452 to fewer than 278. Note the use of the word “estimates.” That is because not even CSIS, which spends all its time studying the defense of this country, knows for sure. The Pentagon won’t give the real numbers, because they say it’s a national security secret.

Iran already knows the secret that we’re running out of missile defense ammo. Do you know how we know that? Because Iran keeps firing missiles and drones at our bases around the Middle East, most recently at Jordan and Kuwait and Iraq. They launch strikes on our bases, so we will have to use our Patriots and THAADs to shoot down their missiles and drones.

And still we have 18 dead and 624 wounded from Iran’s attacks.

Trump is fond lately of telling us that Iran “will be hit very hard.” But what does that mean, exactly? Well, Central Command says that the U.S. has hit many Iran Revolutionary Guard targets “including military command centers, missile and drone facilities, coastal surveillance and defense sites and maritime capabilities.”

But even after all of Trump’s threats and the reports by Central Command, the Strait of Hormuz is still closed because Iran has plenty of drones and missiles to shoot at ships that attempt to transit it. The Houthis have plenty of missiles and drones supplied by Iran to shoot at ships attempting to enter or exit the Red Sea.

There is so much that we don’t know about what is going on with Trump’s war on Iran, but we do know that oil and gas prices are rising again, because whatever Trump is telling Hegseth to do, it’s not working. The New York Times published a big story today on that very subject. Headlined “Trump Encounters a More Determined Iran as War Widens,” the story reports on the latest back-and-forth strikes between Iran and the U.S. The Times says that “officials” are not talking about the “priorities” that were mentioned all the time at the beginning of the war, such as knocking out Iran’s nuclear weapons program, damaging its missile “capabilities” and “curbing” the proxy forces controlled and supplied by Iran such as Hezbollah and Hamas and the Houthis.

The Times quotes one expert who says that Iran has wanted to seize the initiative to “keep the U.S. and Israel on their back foot.” Another expert tells the Times that Iran has widened the war “so the United States has to defend a broader battlefield.”

That sounds to me like experts telling us that Iran has a strategy that they are executing very effectively. What is the U.S. strategy? Well, according to Donald Trump, if Iran won’t stop hitting our bases in the Middle East and if they won’t reopen the Strait of Hormuz, they will be “hit very, very hard.” I consulted Clausewitz again, and nowhere in his book “On War,” did I find a chapter that says retaliation is a strategy.

It’s no wonder that Secretary Pop-a-Cork is keeping reporters out of the Pentagon and requiring them to be escorted inside the building are approved. Hegseth doesn’t want anyone to know how fucked up things are. He wants to limit what we know about the war, because he thinks that the less we know, the better. If that’s his media strategy, it isn’t working, either. Trump’s war is hugely unpopular. Quinnipiac reported yesterday that six in ten voters oppose Trump’s war on Iran. In the same poll, Trump stands at 32 percent approval, while 58 percent disapprove.

There are three months until election day. Prices are high on everything. Trump can’t bring down inflation, even with his hand-picked Fed chief, and he can’t even get his own law-poodle approved as Attorney General.

What’s he going to do? He’s going to launch some kind of huge attack on Iran and try to bring the war to something he can lie about as a victory, but it’s not going to work. Iran can shoot missiles and drones at U.S. bases for another hundred days and never run out, even if Trump knocks out bridges and power to Tehran.

Trump can nap his way through Lindsey Graham’s funeral, but he won’t be able to sleep through the war he cannot end.

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I’ve written about this before: No matter how loudly Trump screeches and stamps his feet and threatens and shits his diaper, Senate Republicans WILL NOT get rid of the filibuster. It is the one thing, the ONLY thing, that stands between them and extinction. And they know it. Senate Leader John Thune, a well-known ally of democracy and the rule of law, just whacked Trump’s knuckles with a ruler yet again and told him and his demands to end the filibuster to fuck allllll the way off.

That’s why the closer we get to Democrats reclaiming control of the upper chamber and eyeing a trifecta in 2029, the louder the signals from the right that the filibuster is sacred. Can’t be touched. Must be preserved “for the good of the nation.” Today, we just got the most concrete (and obnoxious) sign of this yet.

I need you to understand this for what it is. This is not a backstabbing scumbag selling out his party, although it IS that, too. This is a huge flashing neon sign that the Republicans who own Fetterman know that they are fucked. Completely, utterly, hilariously fucked. Hard, fast, and without lube.

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They’re going to lose Alaska. They’re going to lose North Carolina. They’re going to lose Ohio. They’re going to lose Iowa. They’re going to lose Maine. Shit, Texas is in real jeopardy, and that means they can’t even play their, ahem, Trump card and have Fetterman switch parties.

Because let’s be 100% clear: If Democrats hold a 51-seat majority this coming January, John Fetterman will “suddenly” discover he can no longer, in good conscience, caucus with the party that got him elected. Gosh darn it! He’ll be “forced” to become an “independent!” And wouldn’t you know it? All of his votes will just so happen to help Republicans when they need it the most.

But a 52-seat majority fucks all of that up. All of the money Republicans promised Fetterman? Or the blackmail they promised to burn? That won’t mean a fucking thing. Can’t be a backstabbing scumbag if your backstabbing doesn’t change anything. Go fuck off to the GOP, ya overgrown shitstain. You’ll be out of office in 2029, and no one will give a good golly goddamn about you.

Not for nothing, the only thing anyone knows about treasonous twatwaffle Krysten Sinema these days is that she’s being sued for being homewrecking trash. I spelled her name wrong, and you didn’t even notice. Those that did? You don’t care.1 Remember Joe Manchin? Not really. He’s desperate for attention because everyone forgot he existed three minutes after he left office. How desperate for attention is he? Manchin is trying to start a not-a-third-party-but-it’s-really-a-third-party of, you guessed it!, “independents.” That’s “independents” pronounced “professional ratfuckers.” Gee, I wonder if all the money is coming from right-wing billionaires? I’ll bet you a shiny nickel it is. Please hurry up and die, Manchin. I want to celebrate your death in style.

But, back to the point, Fetterman’s “sudden” reversal on the filibuster cannot be blamed on his stroke. He was for filibuster reform when it was safe to do so, when it looked like the Senate was too heavy a lift for Democrats. It allowed Fetterman to burnish his “liberal” street cred while he stabbed us in the back in other areas.

But now? Now the GOP can only watch in horror as their Dear Leader sends it all down the drain. Trump escalating his war of choice in Iran just three months before the midterms is the move of a fucking imbecile. Inflation will rise. The price of gas will rise. Groceries will get more expensive. The economy will not stumble along for much longer, and the AI bubble is popping.

Republicans are already deeply unpopular, and their midterm message of “communism!” is going to crash and burn harder than Trump’s lame-ass attempts at comedy at the second White House Correspondents’ Dinner. When they switch back to pure, unadulterated racism sometime in September or October,2 it will be too late to move the needle. The crass and heavy-handed appeals to white nationalism will do more to piss off the left and independents than they will to motivate Trump’s base.

With both chambers of Congress in Democratic hands, Trump will turn into a rabid fucking animal. Moreso than he already is. Congressional investigations, even with all of the obstruction we know is coming, will reveal corruption and murder and treason on a level the legacy press will have to work 24/7 to whitewash. Trump, whose health, both physical and mental, is already hanging by a thread, will be pushed over the edge, and if he survives to the 2028 election, I would be quite surprised.

Even if he makes it that far, Trump will spend every waking moment screaming in blind rage instead of doing his fucking job. That means his idiot war will continue to spiral out of control. Plus, he’ll start new ones to try to look tough. While he’s throwing away the lives of American troops, the coming economic downturn will be met with denials of reality until it, too, spirals out of control.

In short, Trump will sabotage the entire Republican effort to hold and regain power in 2028. I know it, and so do Republicans. That means losing the House and Senate in November makes it vastly more likely Democrats will have a trifecta in 2029. Democrats, for their part, have made an awful lot of noise about doing away with the filibuster to clean up the Supreme Court and end gerrymandering and restore voting rights. In 2021, Republicans had Manchin and Sinema to save them. Now? They only have Fetterman, and he’ll be gone by then.

The only play Republicans have is to reinforce the idea that the filibuster is so inviolate that Democrats will refuse to get rid of it when they have power. Because, as I keep pointing out, once they do, that is the end of the Republican Party for a generation, if not forever.

Pay attention to this. The closer we get to November, I believe, the louder the pro-filibuster shrieking from the right (with a healthy assist from their collaborators in the legacy press) will get.3 Democrats have to tune that bullshit out. They have to tune Fetterman and HIS bullshit out. Once they have a 52+ seat lock on the Senate, they should kick his lying ass out of the party until he’s primaried out of existence. He can go make a living on Fox News with the other scumbag sellouts and traitors like we allll know he wants to.

Republicans are terrified. They elected a pedophile with dementia to lead their party, and now the bill for decades of lies and corruption and hate and propaganda and cruelty and spite is coming due. Aren’t you looking forward to collecting? I know I fucking am.

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I’m sure Trump loves the gold-plated bathroom fixtures and the birds-eye maple wood veneer and the Corinthian leather seat surfaces and the king-size bed he’ll never sleep in because he’s busy Truth Socialing. He really loves the new paint scheme he required for the plane, even though he was told the dark blue underbelly would cause more heat absorption and possibly interfere with special communications and electronic equipment that must be installed on Air Force One.

Just as he didn’t give a shit whether his personal paint job would compromise the equipment necessary for Air Force One, Trump didn’t give a shit about the ballooning costs of refitting the jet from Qatar in time for him to fly the thing by the 4^th of July this year. The Air force had to lease one 747 for pilot training and buy at least two more 747’s, one to retrain aircrews and the other to use for parts. A report published in the New York Times today says the cost of the extra 747’s was at least $400 million, which was the amount they announced the Qatari bribe-jet was worth when it was “donated” for Trump to use as an “interim” Air Force One. There were lots more extra costs. The Times reported that the Air Force estimated that it would cost “more than $1 billion” to install the same stuff that the old Air Force One has.

According to the Times, the Qatar bribe-jet lacks many of the features of the old Air Force One, including a lower entrance/exit in the fuselage that has its own set of folding stairs so it can be used in emergencies, and it lacks one of the two back-up generators the old Air Force one has available for emergencies and to start the four engines quickly if necessary.

Not to mention that its lack of the anti-missile technology that caused Trump to fly the old Air Force One out of Turkey recently because of a “credible” threat that Iran would try to attack Trump’s jet as he left the NATO summit to return to the U.S.

Trump’s attitude seemed to be, to hell with all that. He told Air Force experts that he knew all about big jets because he owns an ancient 757 that is about half the size of a 747 and has none of the high-tech security features of Air Force One.

Trump doesn’t care about emergency exits. He doesn’t care about potentially compromised communications because of his new paint job. He doesn’t care about extra generators and crap like that. The Times reported that for Trump, the old Air Force One was “an embarrassment.” Trump told Hannity in an interview on a flight on the old Air Force One in 2025, “When you land and you see Saudi Arabia, and you see U.A.E., and you see Qatar and you see all these — and they have these brand-new Boeing 747s mostly, and you see ours next to it, this is like a totally different plane. And we’re the United States of America. I believe that we should have the most impressive plane.”

Of course! It’s not about the plane. It’s not about security. It’s not about anything but feeding the black hole that is Trump’s enormous un-earned ego. He wants to be able to take members of Congress and corporate CEO’s and jealous foreign leaders on his bribe-jet and fly them around and show off its gold-plated excess and its lie-flat seats and his flying Oval Office and the king size bed he’ll never use.

Remember his speech at the White House Correspondents Dinner? He spent several minutes just bragging that he built the ballroom where the dinner was held when the hotel was the Trump International, and he picked the glorious “Czech crystal” chandeliers hanging over the heads of the supine press. And now, according to the Times, Trump has his own personal chandelier in a “lounge” on the plane. When I read that, Tracy and I spent a couple of minutes trying to imagine what a flying chandelier looks like when the plane hits turbulence, swinging from side to side, its crystals tinkling wildly.

If I were the CIA or the NSA, I would check the chandelier carefully for listening devices, because that’s the one thing Trump will never allow to be removed from his Bribe Force One. The chandelier is there to stay, and I, for one, am willing to bet it is gold-plated and the ugliest fucking thing in the sky.

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They were waiting for me when I got up this morning, email after email, asking what I thought about the Washington Post story published today about Tim Bakken, the West Point law professor who has sued the Academy over a new Trump-era policy that requires professors to get official approval before giving speeches, publishing papers and books, or even appearing on a podcast.

Bakken, before the Trump policy was imposed, wrote a book called “The Cost of Loyalty,” making a case that the military’s aversion to different points of view and condemnation of those who question official policy as disloyal has caused the United States to lose every war it has been involved in since World War II.

He is correct. If you create a system in which military leaders are puppets, you don’t have an army, you have a puppet show.

A scene in the Post story pictures a faculty meeting at which Bakken rose to declare that the Academy’s new rules stifling speech were unconstitutional. A colonel, the deputy head of the law department, stood up and ordered Bakken to “stop talking and sit down.” When Bakken attempted to continue his argument, saying that it violated the oath he had taken upon being hired at West Point to support and defend the Constitution and comparing the policy unfavorably to the requirement that officers refuse to obey illegal orders, the colonel raised his voice and told Bakken, “We’re a military institution. We follow orders.”

Bakken has been shunned by his fellow law professors, who are both civilians and army officers. At the first all-faculty meeting in a large lecture hall at the Academy after Bakken raised his objections to the new policy, all the seats were filled except for the four rows surrounding where Bakken was sitting.

To me, as a West Point graduate, that sort of treatment is reminiscent of “silencing,” a process engaged in by cadets to isolate a cadet who was in disfavor. Years ago, Black cadets at the Academy were silenced, including the cadet who would go on to become General Benjamin O. Davis, the famed commander of the first all-Black fighter squadron in World War II. Davis entered West Point in 1932 and graduated in 1936. During his four years at the Academy, he lived alone in a barracks room without roommates. He ate alone at a table for 10 in the mess hall. Cadets did not sit at desks in classrooms on either side of him. And he was “silenced,” meaning that other cadets refused to talk to him.

Here is what West Point does not understand today and amazingly has never really understood. Because the United States Military Academy, founded by Thomas Jefferson in 1802, is the most visible and arguably the most famous military academic institution in the world, this country’s enemies watch and listen closely to everything that goes on there. Iran is watching right now. China has been watching West Point at least since the days of Chairman Mao. Putin’s Russia has studied West Point since the before its revolution.

A policy that stifles speech at an academic and military institution such as West Point is direct evidence of fear. Our enemies are saying to themselves, look at them! They’re afraid of their own shadows! We can beat them with our inferior weapons and our weaker economies, because they are so busy beating themselves!

With the Trump policy imposed by Pentagon chief Hegseth, the United States has shown the world that our military is afraid of speech that challenges the conventional wisdom, afraid of officers – and in the case of Bakken, civilian professors – who speak out on controversial issues in ways that the military does not officially endorse.

The Washington Post story describes the anti-DEI policies that were imposed by the Pentagon last year on all the service academies. Cadet clubs that studied Black history and women’s history were cancelled as DEI, and the teaching of subjects that were not approved by the Pentagon was forbidden, such as climate change and the study of authoritarian regimes. One cadet at West Point who sought to write a paper on the detention of Japanese Americans during World War II was ordered to change the subject of his essay. Professors like Bakken were ordered by the dean not to share their opinions with cadets during class.

Here is what they’re thinking over in Iran and China and Russia: what are they so afraid of?

Of course, our enemies are also asking what are Republicans so afraid of that they cower in the presence of a buffoon like Donald Trump, but you get my point. The culture of fear that begins in Washington and is forced throughout the government and even into the classrooms of West Point and the Naval and Air Force Academies does indeed affect the readiness of our armed services to fight wars. An army with soldiers who are too afraid to question bad orders, not to mention refuse illegal ones, is an army that can be pushed around and beaten on the battlefield. That is the case Bakken makes in his book, and he’s exactly right.

There was a phrase we were taught at West Point when I was a cadet that captures everything that is wrong with the place, and everything that is wrong with a military culture that rewards unquestioning obedience and punishes anyone who speaks their mind or has views different from those that come from the top: go along to get along. As cadets, we called it ghosting: keep your head down, don’t make waves, do what you’re told, and you will be promoted. Act differently from everyone else, and you will be singled out and punished.

West Point was, comparatively speaking, a bastion of liberalism when I was a cadet. The chairman of the Department of Social Studies was Colonel George A. Lincoln, who had worked as a top aide and strategic planner for General George C. Marshall, the Chief of the Army during World War II. After the war, Lincoln was one of the authors of the Marshall Plan that provided aid to nations that had been decimated during the war, and he was part of the U.S. delegation to the committee that formed NATO. He did a lot more than that, moving seamlessly between his position at West Point and various tasks given to him by Presidents Eisenhower and Nixon.

He was most famous, among those “in the know,” for running the Department of Social Studies at West Point. He helped to form SCUSA, the Student Council on United States Affairs, that put on a kind of model U.N. at West Point every year, inviting students from 50 or 60 other universities to the Academy, including all the Ivies. Lincoln was a classic liberal, in the sense that he fostered an atmosphere of inquiry and study unfettered by political ideology or command influence. My classmate Bill Taylor ran SCUSA under Lincoln and went on to become head of USAID in Afghanistan and Ambassador to Ukraine. Bob Kimmitt, another classmate, after leaving the army, became Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs and Ambassador to Germany. Other classes at West Point during Lincoln’s time had graduates who went on to become generals and diplomats and presidents and CEOs of major corporations.

That is not to say that such a “liberal” education at West Point during Lincoln’s time was a be-all and end-all of academic and military excellence. Yet another West Point graduate, HR McMaster, wrote a book called “Dereliction of Duty,” which described the failure of high-ranking generals to question the wisdom and strategy of Secretary of Defense McNamara and President Lyndon Johnson in their prosecution of the war in Vietnam. McMaster went on to become National Security Adviser under Trump in 2017, but went on to be fired the next year. But he was one of those who advised General David Petraeus when he revised the Army’s counterinsurgency manual and came up with the tactics used to fight the Iraqi insurgency, leading to the “surge” in 2007.

We lost that war, as Professor Bakken accurately points out in his book, and we lost the war in Afghanistan, as well.

It very well may be that there is no education that can be given to future leaders of the U.S. Army that can prepare them for a world that is changing as fast and as brutally as the one we live in. This is especially true if the military-industrial complex that was named by outgoing President Eisenhower continues its grip on the U.S. defense establishment, and if idiots and fools continue to be elected to the U.S. House and Senate who approve defense policy and budgets such as those being put forth by Donald Trump and his single-digit Secretary of defense or war or anti-DEI or Christian Nationalism or whatever he’s calling himself these days.

It certainly does not help when the lunatics in Washington impose policies on places like West Point that are bound and determined to produce even more chickenshit fools who will go on to lose even more wars, such as the one we’re in the process of losing against Iran right now.

So, Professor Bakken, hang in there. You have support from fellow-travelers such as myself, who was one of those who helped to end mandatory chapel at West Point, and Terrence Goggin, who taught me history at West Point under Colonel Lincoln and now writes his excellent Substack, West Point History Professor . We may be few, but because we are unafraid to question authority, we have power. We can win the war for this nation’s soul because we believe and act on the principles that make us free.

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