What we know about Defense Department memo cutting ties with Scouts for promoting DEI

On Nov. 25, 2025, NPR published a story claiming that U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth had authored a memo cancelling the military’s support of Scouting America, the organization formerly called the Boy Scouts. In the memo, Hegseth reportedly justified the decision by saying the Scouts no longer promoted “masculine values,” instead focusing on “gender confusion” and diversity, equity and inclusion. 

The story went viral on social media, and Snopes readers wrote in asking for more information. As part of our research, we reached out to the defense department, Scouting America and the journalist who initially wrote the NPR article. 

A duty officer at the defense department said it “will not comment on leaked documents that we cannot authenticate and that may be pre-decisional.” Scott Armstrong, the National Media Relations director for Scouting America, told Snopes via email that the organization received no advance notice about the memo. In a letter on a Scouts website responding to the NPR report, Scouting America President and CEO Roger Krone said he was “surprised and deeply saddened by this news,” and that the memo’s claims were “clearly uninformed.” The NPR reporter had not responded to our inquiry at time of publication. 

Because the defense department declined to confirm the authenticity of the memo, and Snopes was not able to independently verify its existence, this story is unrated. Here’s what we do know about the claim: 

Many Scouts have become leaders in US

Scouts have become U.S. president, walked on the moon, played professional sports, and made award-winning movies. According to a 2017 post from the Scouting Magazine blog Aaron on Scouting, 28% of representatives in the U.S. Congress either were a Boy Scout or serve(d) as an adult volunteer. The House of Representatives even maintains a Congressional Scouting Caucus.

The movement’s military connections are even stronger. Krone’s letter claimed an “enormous percentage of those in our military academies are Scouts and Eagle Scouts.” A different 2017 post from Aaron on Scouting found that about 20% of West Point cadets, 12% of the Naval Academy Class of 2016 and 10% of Air Force Academy cadets were Eagle Scouts, the highest award in Scouting. In fact, the military considers Eagle Scouts so valuable that enlisted Eagle Scouts enter the military at a higher rank than non-Eagle Scouts.

The NPR story claimed that if put into effect the memo would remove that benefit. Even more, it would also stop allowing “Scout troops to meet at military installations in the U.S. and abroad, where many bases have active Scout programs.” Krone’s letter noted that those troops “provide stability for the children of military families deployed around the globe,” and vowed that Scouting would “never turn its back on the children of our military families.”

In a statement to The Hill, U.S. Rep. Glenn Thompson, a Republican from Pennsylvania who co-chairs the Congressional Scouting Caucus, said it “would be nearsighted” for the defense department to cut ties with scouting. 

Memo also would pull military funding from the jamboree

Large gatherings called jamborees have been a part of Scouting since 1920, according to World Scouting. In the United States, Scouting America hosts a national jamboree every few years, with attendance numbers for recent jamborees, reaching over 15,000 Scouts. Since 2013, the jamboree has been held at the Summit Bechtel Reserve in West Virginia, a property owned by Scouting America. 

In a 1966 law, Congress authorized the Department of Defense to lend the Boy Scouts “tents, cots, blankets, commissary equipment, flags, refrigerators, and other equipment and services as may be necessary or useful” for the upcoming National Jamboree. In 1972, the law was amended to allow the defense department to lend the Boy Scouts the equipment for “any national or world Boy Scout Jamboree.” Scouting America does not receive any funding from the federal government, according to an April 2025 report from NBC News. The law is simply a lease of equipment. 

According to Armstrong, the West Virginia National Guard currently provides “medical, logistical and communications support” for the jamboree. Hegseth’s memo would cut that support on the grounds that sending resources to the jamboree would be “detrimental to national security,” according to NPR’s report. 

Scouting has always had military connections

Scouting has held close ties with the military since its founding in the early 1900s. Its founder, Robert Baden-Powell, was a British army officer regarded as national hero for his service in the South African War (also called the Second Boer War), a brutal conflict fought between the British Empire and the Boers, descendants of Dutch settlers who colonized the region in the 1700s.

According to Britannica, when he returned to Britain, Baden-Powell discovered that teachers and youth organizations were using a military manual he wrote called “Aids for Scouting” to teach adolescents woodcraft. In 1907, Baden-Powell organized an experimental camp for boys aged between 11 and 17 on an island in the south of England. The camp was a huge success, and he published a book, titled, “Scouting for Boys” the following year. The Scouting movement was born.

The Boy Scouts of America were founded in 1910, the same year Baden-Powell persuaded his sister to start a similar movement for girls, called the Girl Guides. A woman named Juliette Gordon Low met Baden-Powell in 1911 and brought that movement to the United States, where it eventually changed its name to the Girl Scouts.

In the decades since, the organizations grew into cultural touchstones, and as a pipeline for leadership roles and for the military. They also kept expanding. According to Scouting America, the organization established a set of programs targeting older teenagers as early as 1935. Program reshuffling in the 1940s created a branch called Explorer Scouts, now called the Venture Scouts. The Venturing program has admitted young women since 1971. 

Controversies led to change in recent years

As the organization entered the 21st century, the Boy Scouts faced a number of serious and significant controversies, which left it worse off financially and scrambling to adapt. 

Allegations of sexual abuse and misconduct have plagued the organization since its beginning. In 2020, the organization filed for bankruptcy after several states passed laws allowing decades-old abuse victims to file suit. In 2023, it settled the cases of over 80,000 men who said they were abused by leaders for a record-breaking $2.46 billion, according to Reuters.

For a long time, the organization banned openly gay members and leaders from participating, a fact that reportedly made Steven Spielberg leave his post in the organization in protest. That policy officially changed in 2014 to allow gay scouts to participate, and the policy on LGBTQ+ individuals in leadership roles followed suit in 2015.

In October 2017, seeking to bolster their membership, the Boy Scouts announced that it would allow girls to join the organization by creating new, single-gender troops (the Girl Scouts were not directly impacted by the change). At this point in time, the organization changed its operational name to “Scouts BSA.” It announced a pilot program for combined, co-ed troops in 2024, and renamed itself to Scouting America in 2024.

The recent changes to the organization’s inclusivity would explain why Hegseth (who was never a Boy Scout) might have issued the supposed memo. In May 2024, he claimed on Fox News that the Scouts had been “cratering itself for quite some time.” The memo aligns with other policies around diversity, equity and inclusion that U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration have attempted to revert or eliminate completely. The department has been investigating pulling its funding for Scouting America for months, according to the April 2025 NBC News report.