Pentagon Reverses ‘Gender-Neutral’ Award Policy Following Heritage Exposé

• Less than two weeks after The Heritage Foundation exposed a Department of Defense rule forcing service members to use the gender-neutral word “themself” for the six highest joint military awards, military leadership has now distanced itself from the controversial plan. 
• On Sept. 1, Heritage Senior Legal Fellow Charles “Cully” Stimson and Senior Research Fellow Dakota Wood, retired Navy and Marine Corps officers respectively, wrote about the Pentagon’s revised policy to existing rules, explaining how Change 5 to the Manual of Military Decorations and Awards required the military to use the progressive and grammatically incorrect word “themself” when bestowing some of the highest military honors upon our brave men and women in unform.
• Following the Daily Signal report, members of Congress and everyday Americans expressed outrage.
• On Sept. 13, the Pentagon retreated, issuing a clarification that the Department of Defense will not ban the terms “himself” and “herself” after all. 
• The clarification is troubling as it confirms that the default pronoun is “themself” and raises additional questions as who signed off on this change, whether services members must request their preferred pronoun in an award, and why this change was made in the first place.
• The Heritage Foundation has repeatedly criticized the rise of “woke” policies in the U.S. military and condemned the Biden administration for using our armed forces as a taxpayer-funded vehicle to advance progressive policy ideas. 

Schedule an Interview: Cully Stimson and Dakota Wood

Conservative Groups Demand GOP Border Security Bill’s Inclusion in Funding to Avoid Shutdown

• A coalition of conservative immigration groups, led by the Heritage Foundation, is calling for the inclusion of the call for the Secure the Border Act (H.R. 2) -- which passed the chamber earlier this year in a stop-gap funding bill to avoid a possible government shutdown at the end of the month -- calling it a "singular opportunity" to tackle the migrant crisis.
• The letter warns that Americans will have an "indisputable account" of where lawmakers stand on border security when it "gives a clear chance to finally end the crisis."  
• "It is your duty to use any means necessary to address the Biden administration’s open-borders agenda that not only undermines the rule of law, but threatens national sovereignty, economic security, and public safety daily. Congress cannot simply continue to fund the flood of illegal aliens this administration is ushering into America every day," the letter says.

Schedule an Interview: Lora Ries and Mark Morgan

Hiding Students’ Gender Identities From their Parents Is Immoral

• Today, there are more and more reports of schools adopting policies that quietly facilitate the social transitions of self-identified transgender students without the consent or knowledge of parents.
• Despite the fact that these social transitions almost invariably lead to later medical interventions, these schools insist on accommodating students by using their requested pronouns, new names, preferred bathrooms, and more. In most cases, school leadership instructs staff to actively lie to parents if the school deems the parents to be "unsupportive" of their child's gender identity.
• These policies are often boosted by child welfare proposals like California's AB 957. If that bill is signed, as Governor Gavin Newsom has promised, California judges will be required to consider whether a parent "affirms" a child's "gender identity" during custody battles. 
• Such breathtaking interference with parent-child relationships is not only illegal, it is immoral. Parenting one's own children is not just an interest protected by federal law, it is a universal and inalienable precept that pre-dates government itself.

Schedule an Interview: Sarah Parshall Perry