Converse dropped an ad earlier this month for its Chuck 70 X collection featuring K-pop girl group aespa’s Karina. She’s Korean. She’s beautiful. And she’s wearing Converse. That should have been the whole story. It wasn’t.
Within hours, the leftist mob online decided the Converse star projected onto her somehow resembled a Ku Klux Klan hood, while the pair of sneakers dangling from her hand evoked a lynching. As if a Korean woman and Converse’s marketing team wanted to revive memories of slavery from the Antebellum South. Is Woke 1 back? Are we back in 2017? I’m exhausted from the fake moral panics and race hoaxes.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
Karina did nothing wrong with this Converse ad.
If you looked at this and saw a KKK ad, you&#8217;re psychotic and need to be checked into a mental asylum. <a href="https://t.co/1moVP3flzI">pic.twitter.com/1moVP3flzI</a>
— Kangmin Lee | 이강민 (@kangminlee) <a href="https://x.com/kangminlee/status/2101817251225575634?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">September 20, 2026</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.x.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
A lot of this meltdown isn’t really about KKK imagery in an ad. It’s about what Korean success does to people who are used to being the center of every culture war. When Korean stars, Korean soft power, and Korean brands keep winning worldwide, some people scramble for any excuse to tear that down because of their seething jealousy; hence the race hoaxes and the current online craze of insecure subversives trying to paint Korea as irredeemably “racist.”
Karina didn’t invent American history; Koreans weren’t a part of chattel slavery in America. They don’t owe anyone a ritual apology for the pop star standing in a Converse ad and holding up shoes.
Megastars such as Karina threaten a certain kind of narcissism — the kind that needs the world obsessing over one group and one narrative forever. Some ideologues grew so accustomed not only to America but to the world bending over backward at every accusation of racism that they’ve gotten addicted to it. Worldwide Korean recognition threatens that addiction, and manufacturing race hoaxes allows them to exercise power over others as they wait for brands and celebrities to fold. They view Koreans like me as “white-adjacent” for this very reason; they hate merit, excellence, and success because they have not attained it. 
The irony of it all is that the chief marketing officer of Converse is Rodney Rambo. He’s black. Yes, he is the one they accuse of intentionally using KKK imagery in the company&#8217;s ad. And here’s the hypocrisy. While a cropped picture of a K-pop star holding shoes gets treated like a moral emergency for “anti-blackness,” actual black-on-Asian violence keeps stacking Korean bodies, and the same activist class looks away.
In Seattle, Cordell Goosby walked up to a car and <a href="https://www.fox13seattle.com/news/man-not-guilty-killing-woman-seattle">killed</a> Eina Kwon, a pregnant Korean restaurant owner, along with her unborn daughter, Evelyn. In Los Angeles, 19-year-old Joonhee Han was beaten unprovoked by a black attacker on a scooter and later died of the head injury. In Dallas, Jeremy Smith <a href="https://www.fox4news.com/news/dallas-man-receives-lengthy-prison-sentence-2022-hate-crime-shooting">opened fire</a> in a Koreatown salon and shot three Korean women in a racially motivated attack.
These are but a few of thousands of instances of black people attacking Koreans. Where was the outrage? There are Korean families burying their dead while activists point their fingers at them, accusing Koreans of anti-black racism.
And the same race hustling industry that can turn a Converse spotlight into a lynching also keeps Americans hypnotized by a lynching archive from a century ago while ignoring that, in America today, more black Americans are murdered every few months nationwide than the Tuskegee Institute recorded lynched across nearly nine decades.
But they don’t care about any of these instances of death and tragedy because they can’t virtue signal and make money off of them. Accuse a K-pop star of racism over lighting angles, and the internet detonates. Name a destructive pattern of black predation against Asians and the intra-black body count that dwarfs the historical lynching tally, and you’re the villain for noticing.
That is not justice. That is a caste system of empathy: We Asians must continue to twist ourselves into a pretzel to prove we aren’t “anti-black,” while black aggression against Asians is ignored or forgotten. If your anti-racism only activates when it can tear down Koreans and goes quiet when Koreans are the victims, you were never fighting racism. You were protecting your own sense of racial hierarchy.
Wokeness isn’t only a Western pathology anymore. It is infecting the East. It’s not only Korean entertainment, brands, and corporations, but also Japanese ones. The pressure is always the same: Treat every American racial script as universal law, then punish anyone who won’t kneel. Koreans do not have to entertain that. We can say no.
Yet Converse apologized and pulled the ad. And that’s why the Left continues to gain ground in politics and culture. Leftists throw tantrums, and the most powerful political and cultural institutions bend the knee.
Koreans are not required to accept those tantrums. No one is. Reject the racial grievance script; do not give bad actors any leeway.
The way we win is not by appeasing and pandering to these insane radicals. The way through will be forged by those unafraid to be called mean names to fight for goodness, truth, and beauty and defeat chaos and disorder. As the late Charlie Kirk said, “I would rather battle the left with 300 courageous fighters than thousands of weak spineless &#8216;conservatives&#8217; who run for the hills every single time the media calls them a mean name.”
The answer is just to say no. We&#8217;re not entertaining racial grievance nonsense or people acting like petulant, narcissistic children. We&#8217;re done. A Korean woman selling shoes is not a KKK lynching ad — no matter how badly the grifters want it to be.
***
Kangmin Lee is a Korean-American political and cultural commentator, speaker, and host of the Kangmin Lee Show. He speaks and writes on politics, culture, and the ideas shaping the modern world, focused on restoring faith, identity, and civilization.
This article is part of <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/upstream" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Upstream</a>, The Daily Wire’s new home for culture and lifestyle. Real human insight and human stories — from our featured writers to you.

GettyImages-2288999083

Apparently, Even Selling Sneakers Is Racist Now

asian american

cancel culture

converse

opinion

race relations

wokeness

A troubling trend is emerging as medical schools place higher value on producing politicized research over academic excellence, a watchdog report found. 
Do No Harm, an organization focused on getting politics out of medicine, discovered that as medical school students have produced more research, they have increasingly focused on leftist-driven research at the same time. This occurred as schools moved away from the traditional letter grade system to pass/fail standards, according to a <a href="https://donoharmmedicine.org/wp-content/uploads/Why-Johnny-Cant-Stop-Writing-Paper.pdf">study</a> from Do No Harm first obtained by The Daily Wire. 
Jay Greene, the director of research at Do No Harm, told The Daily Wire the shift away from traditional grading as institutions placed higher emphasis on research production triggered an “arms race” that has significantly lowered the quality of the nation’s future doctors. 
“Without the use of the letter-grade system, students are searching for other ways to stand out for fellowships and residency programs, which has inevitably led to an arms race in publications authored by medical students,” Greene told The Daily Wire. 
Greene found in his study that fewer than a dozen student-authored or co-authored papers were published per year in the early 2000s, but grew to over 700 per year by the 2020s. 
“The increase in medical-student research was driven in large part by their desire to pad résumés and compete for residency positions as other signals of quality,” the study found. 
<div id="attachment_1134423" style="width: 1585px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-1134423" class="size-full wp-image-1134423" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/07/Screenshot-2026-07-13-at-11.05.28-AM.png" alt="" width="1575" height="774" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/07/Screenshot-2026-07-13-at-11.05.28-AM.png 1575w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/07/Screenshot-2026-07-13-at-11.05.28-AM-300x147.png 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/07/Screenshot-2026-07-13-at-11.05.28-AM-1024x503.png 1024w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/07/Screenshot-2026-07-13-at-11.05.28-AM-768x377.png 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/07/Screenshot-2026-07-13-at-11.05.28-AM-1536x755.png 1536w" sizes=" (max-width: 1575px) 100vw, 1575px" />Do No Harm.</div>
Greene noted that most medical students are not trained in scientific research techniques. 
“Medical students are generally very smart and motivated, but they are no better able to conduct scientific research without adequate preparation than they would be to conduct open-heart surgery without formal training,” the study found. 
While production has increased, quality has not kept up as more research has focused on political topics emphasizing racial or sexual identity. 
“To compound the problem, quantity is incentivized over quality — leading to shoddy research and focus on politicized topics,” Greene told The Daily Wire. 
Greene measured this by analyzing publications by student-authors cataloged in PubMed that had descriptions featuring terms like “equity,” “disparities,” “social,” &#8220;justice,&#8221; “diversity,” or “racism,” among others. He found that just 6% of publications between 2000 and 2013 fell into the woke category before the number ballooned to 11% in 2014 to 2020 and 21% between 2021 and 2025. 
<div id="attachment_1134425" style="width: 1741px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-1134425" class="size-full wp-image-1134425" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/07/Screenshot-2026-07-13-at-11.06.48-AM.png" alt="" width="1731" height="949" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/07/Screenshot-2026-07-13-at-11.06.48-AM.png 1731w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/07/Screenshot-2026-07-13-at-11.06.48-AM-300x164.png 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/07/Screenshot-2026-07-13-at-11.06.48-AM-1024x561.png 1024w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/07/Screenshot-2026-07-13-at-11.06.48-AM-768x421.png 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/07/Screenshot-2026-07-13-at-11.06.48-AM-1536x842.png 1536w" sizes=" (max-width: 1731px) 100vw, 1731px" />Do No Harm.</div>
Greene examined competing academic studies on student research output. One <a href="https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12928410/">study</a> from the Wayne State University School of Medicine argued that research quality had improved while a study <a href="https://www.rjmedicine.org/publications/e00002">published</a> in the Researchers&#8217; Journal of Internal Medicine demonstrated that quality had not improved as production increased. 
Do No Harm argued that the problem could be addressed by returning to letter grading and capping the number of student publications medical school students can list on applications to residency placement. 
“By returning to objective letter grading, schools would incentivize students to focus on mastering their skill set in the clinical space rather than fluffing their résumés with baseless research endeavors,” Greene said.

Close Up Of Student Dentist Taking Notes Using Laptop

The ‘Arms Race’ Making America’s Future Doctors Dumber

academia

medical research

medical school

medicine

TV writer Rebecca Sonnenshine recently defended making her latest project, a reboot of the beloved series “Little House on the Prairie,” a lot more woke.
At this point, it would be more surprising if she had left politics out of it. And to hear her tell it, the word “woke” has lost its meaning anyway. But Sonnenshine did go on record defending the aspect of the new storyline which conservatives are most likely to take issue with, namely, making a local Native American family a key feature of the show despite them not being featured prominently in the best-selling books.
While Laura Ingalls and her family are still main characters, much attention is paid to the mixed-race Osage family, the Mitchells, as Variety noted in an <a href="https://variety.com/2026/tv/news/netflix-little-house-on-the-prairie-woke-comments-tradwife-1236804646/">interview</a> with the showrunner.
“As an adult, everything is different. Especially ‘Little House on the Prairie,’ it’s all about the Osage,” Sonnenshine says. “The Osage are all over that book, but we don’t know them at all. And I thought, well, we have to know them. I have to figure out a way that we can know them, and how do you do that? Trying to create a family that parallels the Ingalls. I had to do a lot of research to figure out how to do that, and I did and we worked with a story consultant named Robert Warrior,” Sonnenshine told the outlet. 
“I’m not even sure what ‘woke’ means to people anymore, to be honest,” she went on. “I know what I think it means, which is the definition of it being aware and alert to social injustice and prejudice, in particular racial prejudice. So, when people say, ‘I hope it’s not woke,’ I think, ‘Really? Oh, that’s interesting.’ But I don’t think people are using it in that manner; I think it’s just become a catch-all word for things that I don’t quite understand. If I had to sum it up, what people are afraid of is that something from their childhood will be portrayed in a way that scares them.”
Sonnenshine reiterated what she’s “been saying from the beginning,” which is, “I feel like people are worried for no reason.”
A Slate reviewer <a href="https://slate.com/culture/2026/07/little-house-on-the-prairie-netflix-series-2026-reboot-laura-ingalls-wilder.html">agreed</a> that the “Little House” reboot has indeed been altered to suit progressive sensibilities. 
“There’s no other way for me to put this: Netflix did indeed woke-ify Little House on the Prairie,” wrote Rebecca Onion. “This new version makes a deep bow to contemporary concerns about the politics of the source material. Some of the Ingalls family’s closest new friends on the show are an Osage couple, a black doctor and black storekeeper, and a French Canadian woman who wears trousers and practices free love.”
She also notes a new antagonist in the form of a stodgy, traditionalist family. 
“Netflix’s Ingalls family are good people, even by 2026 standards, and you can see it in contrast with the Jameses,” she writes. “The Jameses are town-dwelling rich folk who don’t appear in the Little House books but seem to be an adaptation of the Oleson family … The Jameses’ vision for Independence — hierarchy,  respectability, a church, a school — first seduces, then repels, the more gentle-minded Ingallses, Ma and Mary. The James matriarch, Jemma, played by Mary Holland, brings a welcome comedic hateability to this sunny show.” 
Prominent conservatives predicted this long before it happened. Podcast host Megyn Kelly <a href="https://x.com/megynkelly/status/1884765394914681141">posted</a> on X in January, “Netflix, if you woke-ify ‘Little House on the Prairie’ I will make it my singular mission to absolutely ruin your project.” 
This prompted actress Melissa Gilbert, who starred on the original “Little House” series for nine seasons between 1974 and 1982, to reply, “Ummm…watch the original again. TV doesn’t get too much more ‘woke’ than we did. We tackled: racism, addiction, nativism, antisemitism, misogyny, rape, spousal abuse, and every other ‘woke ‘ topic you can think of. Thank you very much.”
Gilbert has been making headlines lately as she defends her husband, Timothy Busfield, amid allegations of child sexual abuse.
The new Little House on the Prairie adaptation debuted all 8 episodes of its first season on Netflix on July 9. The show has been officially renewed for a second season.

Little House on the Prairie

Yes, The ‘Little House On The Prairie’ Reboot Went Woke

entertainment

hollywood

netflix

television

The Smithsonian National Museum of American History pushes left-wing activism, featuring bizarre displays including chest binders, a crotch harness, and the diary of a gender-confused girl, according to a scathing White House report released Monday. 
The Trump administration’s Domestic Policy Council released a 162-page <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/Smithsonian-Report-Saving-Americas-Story.pdf">report</a> concluding that the Smithsonian “fails in the basic task of illuminating our heritage” and instead promotes woke political causes. The report argues that the museum portrays the Founding Fathers primarily through the lens of slavery while marginalizing their broader influence on the nation&#8217;s founding.  
“Our central finding is not that the Museum has simply added overlooked stories, corrected perceived errors, or broadened its historical scope,” the report found. “Rather, it is that Museum leadership has explicitly adopted an ideological framework that no longer treats the American story as a shared national inheritance to be taught or celebrated, but as a political instrument to divide, dispirit, and discourage our citizens.”
Anthea Hartig, the director of the National Museum of American History, has previously <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QxKVJ1pYcEw&amp;t=2484s">said</a> that she wants to use the museum to “advance social justice” and <a href="https://americanhistory.si.edu/press/releases/slaverys-shadow-george-floyd-and-american-legacies-anthea-m-hartig-elizabeth">wanted</a> to “work to reframe the traditional, celebratory narrative of U.S. history for visitors”
Hartig has also made derogatory statements about “whiteness,” claiming that she was propped up “by the cushions of whiteness and the pillows of the bourgeoisie.” 
The report highlighted past <a href="https://americanhistory.si.edu/explore/exhibitions/gay-history-beyond-stonewall/online/how-far-will-you-go">displays</a> that included a crotch harness accompanied by a description of clothing being used as “acts of resistance as well as self-identity” for the LGBTQ movement, a chest binder that belonged to a transgender-identifying skateboarder, and a diary page from a young girl who wrote that she prayed &#8220;every night for my penis to grow.&#8221; 
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
In accordance with <a href="https://x.com/POTUS?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@POTUS</a>&#8216;s &#8220;Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History&#8221; order, a new report exposes how the Smithsonian turned the Nat&#8217;l Museum of American History into a vehicle for Radical Left propaganda and degeneracy.
Here are some of the worst examples.
🧵THREAD:
— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) <a href="https://x.com/RapidResponse47/status/2074317861443559809?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">July 7, 2026</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.x.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
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<div id="attachment_1129653" style="width: 1510px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-1129653" class="size-full wp-image-1129653" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/07/Screenshot-2026-07-07-at-11.32.09-AM.png" alt="" width="1500" height="524" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/07/Screenshot-2026-07-07-at-11.32.09-AM.png 1500w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/07/Screenshot-2026-07-07-at-11.32.09-AM-300x105.png 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/07/Screenshot-2026-07-07-at-11.32.09-AM-1024x358.png 1024w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/07/Screenshot-2026-07-07-at-11.32.09-AM-768x268.png 768w" sizes=" (max-width: 1500px) 100vw, 1500px" />Smithsonian Exhibit.</div>
It also cites displays suggesting it was discriminatory to keep boys who identify as girls out of female sports and videos featuring drag queens.
According to the report, museum staff also pushed an &#8220;anti-racist&#8221; toolkit encouraging employees to “confront whiteness” by “making the case for inclusion.&#8221;
The report criticizes the museum&#8217;s treatment of the nation&#8217;s founders, arguing that visitors &#8220;will find no major exhibits dedicated to America&#8217;s Founding era,&#8221; George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, other Founding Fathers, the Continental Congress, the Pilgrims, the Puritans, or major moments of the American Revolution&#8230;  
“Instead, visitors will find Founders, such as Benjamin Franklin, introduced chiefly through their connection to slavery while their decisive roles in building the Republic and their anti-slavery efforts are minimized or ignored,” the report found.
A Smithsonian spokesman told The Daily Wire that it has ”served the American public with nonpartisan and independent scholarship, and we remain committed to doing so.&#8221;

SMITHSONIAN UNDER FIRE

The White House Just Highlighted These Absurd Displays At The Nation’s Top History Museum

American History

Smithsonian Museum

Social Issues

transgender

U.S.

This article is part of <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/upstream" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Upstream</a>, The Daily Wire’s new home for culture and lifestyle. Real human insight and human stories — from our featured writers to you.
***
The funny thing about the new “Masters of the Universe” movie is that nearly everyone seemed determined to misunderstand it before it premiered.
The trailer features a <a href="https://ew.com/he-man-pronouns-in-masters-of-the-universe-trailer-spark-conservative-outrage-11891874">shot</a> of the main character, Adam, at his desk behind a nameplate that says “He/Him.” Of course half the internet panicked while the other half preened, and almost everyone walked straight into the bit. Conservatives saw the clip and assumed another childhood franchise had been stuffed into a DEI binder. Leftists were happy to claim another cultural trophy. Both missed the joke.
Apart from being a nostalgia filled blast, the new “He-Man” movie works because it understands something Hollywood usually treats like a thought crime: Evil is not defeated by a group therapy session. The movie isn’t an endorsement of that worldview, but a mockery of it.
The live-action “Masters of the Universe,” released theatrically June 5, stars Nicholas Galitzine as Prince Adam/He-Man, Jared Leto as Skeletor, and Idris Elba as Duncan/Man-At-Arms. Amazon’s own description frames the story around Adam saving “his family and his world” from Skeletor’s rule. That matters because the film’s central jest is not just cultural; it’s moral.
Beneath the explosive, nostalgia-fueled spectacle, “Masters of the Universe” is a thinly veiled satire of the modern corporate grievance complex. It pokes fun at HR culture, it mocks the blue hair brigade, and it skewers the childish postmodern fantasy that every conflict is just a misunderstanding waiting to be resolved by therapy speak.
Skeletor is not waiting for someone to validate his trauma and invite him into a restorative justice circle. He does not care about your shared emotional space. Skeletor is a genocidal maniac.
This is the key to the whole movie. Its moral universe is not complicated in the lazy, modern way so many blockbusters now pretend to be complicated. It makes clear that evil exists, evil chooses evil, and evil sometimes loves being evil. And when evil refuses to stop, refuses to negotiate, and keeps coming for your home and your family, the moral response is not weakness dressed up as compassion. The moral response is courage.
This is where the film becomes more than a joke at the expense of corporate wokeness. It becomes the defense of something older, deeper, and much more important: strength ordered toward the protection of the innocent.
Elba’s Man-At-Arms drives this point home as he trains a young Adam. The lesson is not that masculinity means cruelty, nor that a man should go looking for violence. The lesson is that a man has a duty to stand between danger and the people he loves.
That is what He-Man represents. He fights because there are things worth defending. He protects because protection is one of the foundational duties of manhood. And that, more than anything, is what makes the movie feel almost radical in the current cultural moment.
For years, audiences have been told that traditional heroism is suspect. Fathers are fools, warriors are dangerous, courage is primitive, protection is patronizing, moral clarity is simplistic. Every villain needs a grievance dissertation, and every hero needs to learn that the real battle was inside himself all along. “Masters of the Universe” does not play that game.
But the movie is not merely a rebuke to the woke Left. It’s also a rebuke to the woke Right, or the New Right, whatever we’re calling them now. I mean the perpetually online, performative “Right” that mistakes reflexive isolationism for wisdom, “swagger” for strength, and cynicism for seriousness.
The Left’s error is obvious: It thinks evil can be managed by language, empathy, and institutions that specialize in avoiding reality. But the woke Right has developed its own mirror-image error. It sees real evil abroad, in Iran or in the imperial ambitions of Russia&#8217;s Vladimir Putin, and responds with a shrug masquerading as prudence. It looks at tyrants who have already told the world what they want and insists that the truly sophisticated move is to pretend they don’t mean it. That is not prudence. Prudence begins by seeing reality as it is.
Iran is not a misunderstood actor seeking emotional validation from the international community. Nor is Putin’s war against Ukraine an unfortunate misunderstanding caused by insufficient empathy. Iran is the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism, and the Ukrainian conflict is an imperial war waged by a man who wants territory, control, and submission.
This is what evil looks like in practice. It doesn’t always announce itself with a skull for a face and a horned staff. Sometimes it arrives in a suit, gives speeches about historical destiny, bombs apartment buildings, demands territory, and calls the whole thing peace.
But whether in Eternia or the real world, the moral principle is the same: When a regime has built its identity around revolutionary domination, terrorism, and the pursuit of weapons that would alter the balance of civilization, you don’t defeat that regime by pretending that your refusal to act is a moral strategy.
And here the woke Right makes the same mistake as the woke Left, with different branding. The woke Left says, “Surely we can defeat evil with empathy and feelings.” The woke Right says, “Surely evil will stop if we simply declare it none of our business.” Both positions are fantasies, and they both allow evil to continue while the people who should know better congratulate themselves for being &#8220;above the fight.&#8221;
That doesn’t mean America should rush blindly into every conflict. It doesn’t mean every foreign crisis requires American troops. And it doesn’t mean every enemy is best answered with bombs. Prudence, strategy, cost, and national interest all matter.
A strong country, like a strong man, does not fight because it enjoys fighting. It fights when fighting is necessary. It arms allies when allies are standing between civilization and conquest. It deters enemies before deterrence becomes war. It understands that weakness invites aggression and that the time for talking eventually ends when the other side uses every negotiation as a pause between attacks.
In this way, He-Man’s line lands heavy during his final battle with Skeletor: “The time for talking is over.”
This is not a rejection of reason. It’s the recognition that reason has already been rejected by the other side. It’s the realization that mercy cannot mean surrender to tyranny. And that seriousness is exactly what so much of the online commentary missed.
“Masters” also offers a clean break from the fake masculinity peddled by <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/andrew-tate">Andrew Tate</a> and his imitators. Tate-style masculinity is not strength. It sells young men the idea that being a man means becoming unaccountable and unburdened by anyone else’s needs.
It’s also not a coincidence that Tate was recently glazing Russia and Putin. Fake masculinity is often drawn to fake strength. It sees a strongman and mistakes him for a strong man.
He-Man understands that his strength is not ordered toward conquest. It’s ordered toward protection. His masculinity is not chest-thumping or cruelty. It’s duty. It is love strong enough to become dangerous when the people he loves are threatened. That is the part Hollywood keeps missing. And it is the part the online woke Right too often misses as well.
A man who refuses to protect his family is not enlightened. A country that refuses to recognize evil until it arrives at the doorstep is not wise. It’s asleep.
The appeal of “Masters” and of He-Man is not complicated. Audiences are tired of heroes who need to be deconstructed before they are allowed to be heroic. Sometimes the good guy should simply be good. Sometimes the bad guy should simply be stopped. Sometimes the lesson really is that a man protects his family, defends his home, and refuses to let evil win.
He-Man wins because he understands the truth our culture keeps trying to forget: When evil will not stop, good men must make it stop.
***
Justin Siegel is the executive producer of The Ben Shapiro Show.

Nicholas Galitzine stars as ‘Adam’ in MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE.

The New He-Man Movie Exposes A Dangerous Lie The Left And Right Both Believe

Hollwyood

iran

masculinity

Movies

Putin

upstream

A financial giant accused of debanking a gun store is facing increasing pressure over allegations it targeted conservative customers. 
Consumers&#8217; Research, a conservative organization, launched a &#8220;woke alert&#8221; campaign targeting Capital One on Thursday. Last week, The Daily Wire <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/read-it-the-message-a-financial-giant-sent-to-a-gun-shop-after-blocking-payment-access?author=Leif+Le+Mahieu&amp;category=News&amp;elementPosition=11&amp;row=0&amp;rowType=Vertical+List&amp;title=READ+IT%3A+The+Message+A+Financial+Giant+Sent+To+A+Gun+Shop+After+Blocking+Payment+Access">reported</a> on a lawsuit filed by a Maryland gun store suing Capital One after claiming it blocked it from using its payment platform after identifying it as participating in a “prohibited industry.”
The <a href="https://www.scribd.com/document/1036217722/Filed-Melio-CapitalOne-COMPLAINT">lawsuit</a> from the Rockville-based United Gun Shop says it received messages in 2025 and 2026 from Capital One and Melio Payments suggesting that they could not work with the firearms industry. The messages came after the gun store attempted to use Capital One’s payment platform, administered by Melio Payments, for multiple business-related transactions and bill payments.
“Capital One has been caught debanking law-abiding citizens again. It apparently isn’t enough for Capital One to fund and promote racist DEI, climate activism, and extreme transgender policies; the company is also debanking its own customers simply for holding views outside leftist ideology,” Consumers’ Research Executive Director Will Hild told The Daily Wire. 
The “woke alert” from Consumers’ Research pointed to a lawsuit filed by the Trump organization accusing Capital One of cancelling more than 300 of the company’s accounts in 2021 after President Donald Trump’s first term ended.  
This lawsuit was noted in a recent <a href="https://ir-capitalone.gcs-web.com/node/61736/html">financial filing</a> from Capital One, noting it was dealing with “a civil lawsuit filed by the Donald J. Trump Revocable Trust and several affiliated corporate entities against Capital One.”
Additionally, the filing noted that it was “responding to demands and requests from various federal agencies” regarding “fair access to banking,” prompted by an executive order from Trump directing “government agencies to review financial institutions’ policies and practices for providing, maintaining, or discontinuing financial products or services to certain clients or potential clients.”
Capital One is one of the nine major financial entities being <a href="https://www.occ.gov/news-issuances/news-releases/2025/nr-occ-2025-123.html">probed</a> by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency.
The “woke alert” flagged other gun industry owners who complained they had services cut off by Capital One, including the owner of a silencer company, who testified that he was unable to use their banking services to sell federally regulated suppressors. 
A <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20190326020509/https://www.capitalone.com/legal/corporate/terms">previous version</a> of the company’s corporate terms of service contained a provision saying that “ammunition, firearms, or firearm parts or related accessories” were prohibited payments for corporate accounts. That provision has since been removed from the <a href="https://www.capitalone.com/digital/corporate-terms/">current terms</a> of service. 
Capital One has a history of pushing corporate activism, including announcing a $200 million investment back in October 2020 into “growth in underserved communities,” <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20260501160548/https:/www.capitalone.com/about/newsroom/impact-initiative-announcement/">focusing</a> on “black and Latinx” communities. 
“From law-abiding gun sellers to President Donald Trump&#8217;s own family, conservative Americans are being disgracefully treated like criminals because of Capital One&#8217;s discriminatory policies,” Hild said. “Every consumer needs to know that &#8216;woke&#8217; is what&#8217;s in Capital One&#8217;s wallet.&#8221;

Capital One Headquarters

Big Bank Caught In Conservative Crosshairs Over Gun Store Debanking Claims

Debanking Battle Heats Up After Gun Store Claims Against Capital One

Corporate America

debanking

Guns

Disney World just took a giant step away from wokeness with a small change in its parks that has the normies cheering.
According to park visitors, the automated announcements are once again using the phrase “Ladies and Gentlemen.” This is a change from the parks originally pivoting to use more “inclusive” language on their properties.
The revelation about Disney’s foray into progressivism came in 2022 when journalist Chris Rufo <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/not-at-all-secret-gay-agenda-disney-employees-break-down-adding-queerness-to-shows-and-degenderizing-theme-parks">released video recordings</a> from employee all-hands meetings at the company. One of the clips showed Vivian Ware, who was at the time serving as Disney’s diversity and inclusion manager, explaining how Disney altered gendered greetings and language in its theme parks for live spiels and other aspects of the park in 2021.
“We trained, we provided training for all of our cast members in relationship to that. So now they know it’s ‘Hello, everyone,’ or ‘Hello, friends,&#8217;” Ware explained.
“We don’t want to just assume because someone might be, in our interpretation, may be presenting as female, that they may not want to be called ‘princess,’” she went on. “So let’s think differently about how do we really engage with our guests in a meaningful and inclusive way that makes it magical and memorable for everyone.” 
The company released a <a href="https://disneyparksblog.com/disney-experiences/a-place-where-everyone-is-welcome/">statement</a> that same year, confirming that its aim is for “guests to see their own backgrounds and traditions reflected in the stories, experiences and products they encounter in their interactions with Disney.”
“That means cultivating an environment where all people feel welcomed and appreciated for their unique life experiences, perspectives and culture,” it said. “Where we celebrate allyship and support for each other. And where diverse views and ideas are sought after as critical contributions towards our collective success.”
Now Disney World visitors are overjoyed to hear their favorite theme park is ditching the virtue signaling.
“It was very nice to hear that ‘Ladies and Gentlemen’ has returned to the Magic Kingdom Express Monorail recently!” one X user<a href="https://x.com/GreenCheetah99/status/2041370321744167371"> shared</a> earlier this month alongside a video clip of the greeting being used. “For context, it was removed around 2021 when Disney tried to make the parks more ‘inclusive,’” a follow-up post added.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
It was very nice to hear that “Ladies and Gentlemen” has returned to the Magic Kingdom Express Monorail recently! <a href="https://t.co/PqtBI6u2qx">pic.twitter.com/PqtBI6u2qx</a>
— Theme Park Cheetah (@GreenCheetah99) <a href="https://twitter.com/GreenCheetah99/status/2041370321744167371?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">April 7, 2026</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
“We’re so f***ing back,” a reply to that post <a href="https://x.com/chazzimusslots/status/2041521972920680835?s=46&amp;t=vdDC8_Kq-sBDxiYlIfWGVw">said</a>.
“Thank goodness!” Elon Musk agreed, prompting another person to <a href="https://x.com/RitaChizoba2/status/2044671923003502608">reply</a>, “Finally, sanity returns to the Magic Kingdom. Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls;  the spell is broken. The woke experiment failed, and reality just won the day. Disney heard the parents. The kids deserve magic, not lectures. Thank goodness indeed.”
&#8220;The world is healing,&#8221; Libs of TikTok <a href="https://x.com/libsoftiktok/status/2044562287176868033">added</a>.

Disney World

Disney Quietly Reverses Woke Move And It’s The First Thing You Hear Walking In

disney

disney world

florida

“Malcolm in the Middle” fans are trashing the series reboot, saying it went totally woke to the point of including a “non-binary” child, among other crimes against the original.
The shoehorning of modern leftist elements into a beloved series should come as no surprise, especially since it’s coming from a company like Disney, which now owns the show through its acquisition of 21st Century Fox, the studio behind the original.
“Malcolm in the Middle: Life’s Still Unfair” debuted four back-to-back episodes on Friday, and due to the busy schedules of the cast, there won’t be any more. The latest episodes follow the titular star (played by Frankie Muniz) after he’s all grown up and has grown apart from his family. 
The original series, which ran from 2000 to 2006, focused on Malcolm, an exceptionally intelligent child who made his way through life with a dysfunctional family. The sitcom was a massive hit, winning seven Emmy Awards and attracting a cult following.
It ended with family matriarch Lois (Jane Kaczmarek) finding out she’s pregnant. “Breaking Bad” star Bryan Cranston played the dad, and reprises his role in “Life’s Still Unfair,” too. Their surprise child, Kelly, is a teenager in the new version and uses they/them pronouns. The actor playing the part, Vaughan Murrae, identifies as &#8220;non-binary&#8221; in real life, too. Stevie Kenarban, who was Malcolm&#8217;s best friend in the original series, is depicted as gay in the reboot.
Many fans are not happy about the changes. 
“So. Disney brings Back [‘Malcolm in the Middle’], which ended decades ago with a proper send off. They made Stevie gay, despite him crushing on Malcolm’s babysitter, pretending to be in critical condition to get another girl to like him, there’s stacking amounts of evidence proving he likes girls,” one popular reaction on X <a href="https://x.com/anime_esh202/status/2043078136976273667?s=43">says</a>. 
“And the child Hal and Lois had at the very end is, wait for it……..non binary. If you had even a shred of hope that you were going to ‘relive the glory days’ you were kidding yourself… Don’t waste your time, it’s modern Disney being modern Disney again, and again, and again!”
“What a disgusting, soul-crushing disappointment,” another viral reaction <a href="https://x.com/FloppingAces/status/2042954425137009066">said</a>. “It&#8217;s absolute trash. No laughs. No chaos. No nostalgia. Just four episodes of pointless, preachy slop that feels like it was written by a committee of blue-haired Disney interns who hate straight families and actual comedy.”
“Woke isn&#8217;t gone. It&#8217;s just suppressed for the moment,” another person <a href="https://x.com/IamSvented/status/2043008792191816182">agreed</a>. “They will be back the moment they get the political support they need, and they will be angry, and they will be in full-on retribution mode.”
Show creator Linwood Boomer and his wife, executive producer Tracy Katsky, said they drew inspiration from their personal lives. 
“I gotta tell you, it’s a really important thing to us,” Katsky <a href="https://deadline.com/2026/04/malcolm-in-the-middle-creator-ep-wife-lgbtq-kids-1236786214/">told</a> Deadline during a recent interview just ahead of the reboot’s premiere. 
“Three out of four of our kids are queer, and without making it a thing and without making an issue, I think it’s really nice to have a character that, that’s just a facet of their personality as opposed to the entire story.”

Life’s Still Unfair

‘Malcolm In The Middle’ Reboot Hit With Backlash Over ‘Woke’ Changes

Bryan Cranston

Celebrities

Non-binary

According to a <a href="https://www.wsj.com/business/media/see-how-hollywoods-job-market-is-collapsing-230be437?mod=e2tw">new report</a> from The Wall Street Journal, the Hollywood job market is collapsing at an alarming rate.
The news outlet found that entertainment motion picture and video production employment saw a 30% reduction in jobs as compared to 2022. That includes work for actors, carpenters, costume makers, and the hundreds of other professions behind movies and TV shows.
WSJ noted that studios are making fewer movies and shows in general, and that when they do, those projects are often being made in countries that offer cheaper prices for filming.
Noah Wyle, who stars in and serves as executive producer of the popular medical drama “The Pitt,” said it was “a near cratering of our once thriving industry.”
The outlet noted that studios, labor unions, and soundstage owners have been pushing for a federal tax incentive of 15%, which could be combined with state incentives ranging from 20% to 40%. They claim this would entice studios to bring production back to the United States.
But even if those incentives brought the action back to Hollywood, it wouldn’t solve the issue of a general downturn in output. Hollywood has been serving up <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/hollywood-just-had-its-worst-summer-box-office-in-over-40-years">a lot of flops lately</a>, and that track record has led to major studios being more cautious with what they’re willing to make. This likely has a lot to do with churning out woke crap that audiences are sick of seeing, even if they’d never admit it.
The bad box office results are being blamed on the rise of streaming, short attention spans in the TikTok age, and a general refusal of audiences to return to theaters in a post-COVID world, among other issues. Hollywood analysts insist there is too much competition to make a great hit. But then a success story like “Project Hail Mary” comes along and <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/hollywood-learned-the-wrong-lesson-from-project-hail-mary">blows that theory to shreds</a>.
In September, President Trump addressed the issue, threatening a “100% tariff” on films made overseas in an effort to bring movie production back to the United States.
“Our movie making business has been stolen from the United States of America, by other Countries, just like stealing ‘candy from a baby.’ California, with its weak and incompetent Governor, has been particularly hard hit! Therefore, in order to solve this long time, never ending problem, I will be imposing a 100% Tariff on any and all movies that are made outside of the United States,” the president shared in a Truth Social post at the time, echoing similar statements he made in May.

Distressed image of movie clapperboard

Hollywood Is In Deep Trouble And May Have Itself To Blame

employment

Jobs

los angeles

The unpopular spinoff series “Star Trek: Starfleet Academy” has been canceled after airing just one season, per <a href="https://variety.com/2026/tv/news/star-trek-starfleet-academy-canceled-season-2-1236696816/">Variety</a>.
The show was picked up by Paramount+ in 2023 and was renewed for a second season before the first one premiered, the outlet noted. “Starfleet Academy” earned high praise from critics but was largely trashed by the audience, in part due to its outlandish leftist elements.
This included the first-ever gay Klingon in “Star Trek” history and a drag queen, among other elements that made it off-the-charts woke. 
Unsurprisingly, the series never gained traction and failed to capture the audience it needed to survive. Variety noted that “Starfleet Academy” never cracked Nielsen’s Top 10 streaming rankings during its debut season earlier this year. The second season is already filmed and will be released on an undisclosed date.
“People hated it because it was an attempt to shove more woke nonsense down our throats. It takes a special kind of stupid to ruin Star Trek,” one commenter on X <a href="https://x.com/h2av8tor/status/2036280551137747082">wrote</a> in response to the cancellation news.
“Damn, they managed to check all of the woke boxes, which of course creates a show few people will want to watch. And no, it&#8217;s not because people are racists or don&#8217;t like gay people, it&#8217;s because these types of shows are contrived, preachy, and insult the intelligence of millions of viewers. Why anyone invests in this garbage is beyond me,” a second person agreed.
Even some leftists said it was terrible. 
“I&#8217;m a dirty woke liberal and I didn&#8217;t watch it/am glad it&#8217;s dead for one simple reason: It&#8217;s just not Trek,” another reply <a href="https://x.com/isthisnessicary/status/2036444933658198431">said</a>. “Trek has always been woke: first interracial kiss, the right/left black side racists, Riker and Soren, Measure of a Man. The fact that it&#8217;s ‘luxury gay space communism.’”
Series co-showrunners and executive producers Alex Kurtzman and Noga Landau reacted to the cancellation with an open letter. 
“Whether you’re working on ‘Star Trek’ or part of the marvel that is ‘Star Trek’ fandom — its very heart, soul, and conscience —the joy comes from adventuring across boundaries of time, space, and the humanly possible in service to Roddenberry’s transformative vision of the future,” they wrote in part. 
“That incomparable vision was fueled by an inexhaustible optimism. ‘Star Trek’ places its bet on the best in human nature. It dares to imagine a society of ‘infinite diversity in infinite combinations,’ free of war, hate, poverty, disease, and repression, and dedicated to the spirit of scientific inquiry and respect for all life, whether carbon or silicon-based, green-skinned or blue.”
CBS Studios and Paramount+ also released a joint statement. “We’re incredibly proud of the ambition, passion, and creativity that went into bringing ‘Star Trek: Starfleet Academy’ to life,” it said. 
“The series introduced audiences to a bold new group of characters, welcomed familiar faces, and expanded the ‘Star Trek’ universe in exciting new ways. We’re grateful to Alex Kurtzman, Noga Landau, Gaia Violo, and the entire cast and crew who pushed storytelling boundaries in the spirit of Gene Roddenberry’s vision. We look forward to sharing the upcoming second and final season with everyone, and continuing to celebrate the cast, crew, and all that was accomplished with this series.”

Starfleet Academy

Another Ultra-Woke Spinoff Series Just Got Canceled

paramount

Star Trek

A Lutheran minister looking for a promotion to Congress once claimed that challenges to the traditional definitions of men and women are “very threatening” to white men and downplayed concerns about the dangers of transgender ideology for women. 
Sarah Trone Garriott, a Democrat candidate for Iowa&#8217;s 3rd Congressional District, claimed that Evangelical Christians oppose “GLBTQ” ideology not because of theology, but racial angst, according to an October 2023 speech uncovered by The Daily Wire. Trone Garriott, a former state senator and minister in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, hopes to unseat incumbent Republican Rep. Zach Nunn.
During her <a href="https://www.iaumc.org/newsdetail/sen-rev-sarah-throne-garrett-encourages-laity-to-confront-christian-nationalism-18119210">speech</a> on &#8220;Christian Nationalism&#8221; at Ames First United Methodist Church, Trone Garriott argued that Evangelical Christians needed “threats” to react against to maintain their identity. 
“A new threat that we see today is the GLBTQ movement,” she said. “It&#8217;s a challenging of that status quo, of the way that things have been, of who&#8217;s a man and who&#8217;s woman and how relationships are. It&#8217;s very threatening to the idea of the white male, powerful figure, because it muddies the waters and makes things ambiguous and confusing.”
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<iframe style="aspect-ratio: 16/9; max-width: 100%; width: 100%; margin: 20px auto 5px; border: 0;" src="https://player.mux.com/lMLDZ9vvCDBzGB3j3HUW8yTYObDTTif7?metadata-video-content-type=embed_video&amp;metadata-video-id=5399ab90-7bc5-41da-96a7-a5dacadb390d&amp;metadata-video-stream-type=on-demand&amp;metadata-video-title=2026-03-13%3A%20Iowa%20Pastor's%20Speech%20On%20Christian%20Nationalism&amp;poster=https%3A%2F%2Fdailywireplus-v2.imgix.net%2Fimages%2Fembedded-videos%2F4a34e6b4-8679-4471-8eed-665a7de8e203.png&amp;autoplay=false&amp;accent-color=%23DB3D3B&amp;primary-color=%23ffffff&amp;secondary-color=%23000000" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen"></iframe>
Credit: Iowa Conference United Methodist Church
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“We see all kinds of responses happening in legislation and in community conflicts … a lot more emphasis on, you know, really funding and supporting the separation, the private schools, the parents&#8217; rights,&#8221; she said. &#8220;And within that, the parents&#8217; rights piece is used to enact book bans, sports bans about who can play and who can compete,” she said. 
Trone Garriott then suggested that laws to keep males out of female sports or protect kids from sexually explicit books were motivated by a misguided belief that “white men” are “responsible” for protecting women. 
“It&#8217;s really couched in the language of there&#8217;s a threat against women and white men are responsible to protect women from threats. So a lot of the legislation is about we&#8217;re going to protect these feminine, fragile, weak women and girls from a threat to their bodies, their persons, their identity in this way.”
During her time in the State Senate, Trone Garriott <a href="https://www.legis.iowa.gov/docs/publications/SJNL/20220302_SJNL.pdf#page=4">voted against</a> a bill to keep boys out of girls’ sports and <a href="https://www.legis.iowa.gov/docs/publications/SJNL/20230307_SJNL.pdf#page=26">opposed</a> a bill shielding children from transgender procedures. 
Republican spokesman Zach Kraft told The Daily Wire that Trone Garriott’s positions were out of step with Iowans. 
&#8220;Sarah Trone Garriott is a preacher of the woke gospel,” he said. “It is sickening to see her twist Christianity as a justification to force sex changes on young children. That may have been popular with her friends at Harvard, but Iowa voters will reject this radical lunatic.&#8221; 
Trone Garriott spent much of her speech attacking “white Christian men” and “white evangelical leaders,” an aggressive strategy in a state where white evangelicals compose a major voting bloc. She even attacked famed evangelist Billy Graham for having an “attractive, strong, macho guy persona.” 
She also challenged traditional Evangelical Christian understandings of Jesus Christ and the Bible. Her denomination, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, is much more liberal than its counterpart, the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod. 
 “There&#8217;s a lot of different ways to think about what Christ did on the cross,” she said during the speech. “There&#8217;s not just one way. It makes us wonder, well, who is this Christ?”
Trone Garriott said the Evangelical understanding of the Gospel was tainted by the “white patriarchy.” 
“What we see more and more is that the good news that a specific variety of Christianity is professing in the world is white patriarchy,” she said. “So white masculine power, violence, dominance, over and against.”
She also downplayed biblical writings of the Apostle Paul, calling  him a “great guy and all” but “a product of his time.”

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WATCH: Democrat Candidate Says Christians Who Oppose Trans Ideology Are Racist

2026 Midterms

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Democrat

Racism

For years, the radical Left has treated America’s civilian universities as laboratories for anti-American indoctrination — peddling &#8220;whiteness studies,&#8221; seminars on gender-based genocide, and even the celebration of Hamas. On Thursday, War Secretary Pete Hegseth made it clear that toxic &#8220;woke&#8221; rot ends at the doors of the Department of War.
Hegseth delivered a blistering ultimatum to the military’s educational bureaucracy, directing the Undersecretary of War for Personnel and Readiness to establish an immediate task force. Hegseth announced a 90-day &#8220;scorched earth&#8221; assessment of the nation’s senior service colleges, including the Army War College and National Defense University. The mission? To &#8220;rip out&#8221; the DEI playbook and return the focus to what actually matters: lethality, meritocracy, and winning wars.
“Seminars on genocide through the analytic of gender. Hmm, sounds interesting,” Hegseth mused. “So-called ‘whiteness studies.’ Courses that celebrate the history of Hamas, where a professor calls Islamist militants and their attacks ‘astounding’ and ‘incredible.’ Graduate studies that focus on the abolition of law enforcement. Classes on leadership that are just recycled garbage from the old DEI, diversity, equity, and inclusion playbook: These are examples of classes that our leaders in our civilian colleges and universities too often celebrate.”
“The truth is, they help cultivate a radical hate America agenda, and we can&#8217;t afford that same toxic ideology in America&#8217;s War Department,” he declared. “It degrades our readiness. It&#8217;s a risk to our forces. And it undermines our mission of peace through strength.”
He continued:
<blockquote>
At the Department of War, we have a duty to ensure that our professional military education develops real leaders, warfighters who dominate into the future. We&#8217;re committed to making our own senior service colleges maintain the highest of standards, that those places align with President Trump&#8217;s commitment to the American people, that our military will remain the strongest in history.
That&#8217;s why I&#8217;m directing the Undersecretary of War for Personnel and Readiness to establish a task force effective immediately. The mission of that task force is to evaluate our senior service colleges, where we educate our own. Think places like the Army War College, or National Defense University, the Naval War College, Marine Corps University, or the Air War College, where our senior officers go to continue their education.
We&#8217;re going to ensure that the professors, administrators, and curriculum of those institutions are focused on national security, strategy, history, and overall excellence, confirm that high standards and meritocracy are forefront, and make sure that what we&#8217;ve seen in our civilian institutions never surface in our military education institutions.
Trust me, I&#8217;ve heard the stories. I know some of our own senior service colleges, some of those that I just listed, have similar courses and similar ideologies. We need to rip ‘em out, and we&#8217;re going to.
This task force will have 90 days to assess whether our senior service colleges — the list I just provided — are actually effective. They&#8217;re going to identify any deficiencies and make sure they&#8217;re focused on core national security issues.
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
Professional Military Education should produce warfighters and leaders—not wokesters.
That’s why we are establishing a Task Force to evaluate our Senior Service Colleges and ensure the focus is where it belongs.
No distractions. Just warfighting. <a href="https://t.co/zQhUA2bk9I">pic.twitter.com/zQhUA2bk9I</a>
&mdash; Secretary of War Pete Hegseth (@SecWar) <a href="https://twitter.com/SecWar/status/2032271118665396517?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 13, 2026</a></blockquote>
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The move is a sharp course correction from the Lloyd Austin era under the Biden administration, where the Pentagon became a playground for Critical Race Theory and gender-neutral linguistics. In 2021, Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/watch-cotton-reveals-military-whistleblower-complaints-on-woke-training-bidens-secdef-insists-diversity-equity-and-inclusion-is-important-to-this-military?utm_source=chatgpt.com">exposed</a> hundreds of whistleblower complaints from service members forced into &#8220;privilege walks&#8221; and told that the U.S. military was a &#8220;fundamentally racist&#8221; institution. In 2022, academics even <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/marines-receive-woke-report-which-says-to-stop-calling-drill-instructors-sir-maam?utm_source=chatgpt.com">pressured</a> the Marines to drop &#8220;sir&#8221; and &#8220;ma&#8217;am&#8221; to avoid &#8220;misgendering.&#8221;
Hegseth’s directive signals a total rejection of those priorities. By targeting the curriculum and the administrators of senior service colleges, the War Department — a name restored to emphasize the military’s true purpose — is shifting back to the warrior ethos. Hegseth emphasized that if the military is pulling officers out of civilian universities because they have become too &#8220;woke,&#8221; the military’s own institutions must be beyond reproach.
The Secretary’s mandate is clear: the task force will evaluate whether these schools are effectively producing critical thinkers grounded in the principles of the Founding Fathers. No more &#8220;white fragility&#8221; readings; no more &#8220;abolition of law enforcement&#8221; studies. As Hegseth noted, the focus is now on ensuring those rising to the highest ranks are prepared to dominate the battlefield.
Under the new leadership, the era of treating diversity and inclusion as a &#8220;warfighting imperative&#8221; is over.

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‘RIP ‘EM OUT’: Hegseth Declares War On Wokeness In Military Schools, Launches 90-Day Review

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