Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced that Scouting America, formerly Boy Scouts of America, will be changing some of its policies to continue its partnership with the Pentagon.
Hegseth said on Friday that members of the organization will use “biological sex at birth and not gender identity,” The Associated Press reported.
He also said that the Citizenship in Society merit badge will be discontinued, while Scouting America will introduce a Military Service merit badge.
The Defense Secretary added that registration fees will be waived for children of military members.
A Pentagon-appointed designated liaison will work with Scouting America, according to a memo of understanding between the department and the organization.
Scouting America did not immediately comment on the changes announced by Hegseth, the AP reported.
But later in the morning released a statement which read in part:
“Scouting America is proud to uphold our longstanding commitment to military families across the globe through a renewed, strengthened partnership with the Department of War. Over several months, we engaged in dialogue with Department leadership to align on how we could deepen our service to military families, while making programmatic updates to comply with Executive Order 14173.
“Today we are moving forward with implementing new programmatic elements that deliver on that mission: waiving registration fees for military families, launching a new merit badge focused on military service and veterans, and reinforcing our commitment to Scouting’s foundational ideas: leadership, character, duty to God, duty to country and service. ”
You can read the entire statement here.
The changes will be reviewed in six months, and if it does not comply, Hegseth said the Pentagon will no longer support the group, the AP reported.
“We hope that doesn’t happen, but it could,” Hegseth said in the video posted to X. “Ideally, I believe the Boy Scouts should go back to being the Boy Scouts as originally founded, a group that develops boys into men. Maybe someday.”
The Department of War has officially put Scouting America on notice.
— Secretary of War Pete Hegseth (@SecWar) February 27, 2026
It’s time to get back to basics — and DoW is leading the charge. pic.twitter.com/EnY9mvaFLX
The U.S. military has supported scouting by allowing troops to meet on military bases as well as providing logistical support at the National Boy Scout Jamboree, which started in 1937. The next National Jamboree will be held at Summit Bechtel Reserve in West Virginia in July.
The Boy Scouts was started by Robert Baden-Powell in England in 1907 with an experimental camp, then became a full movement in 1908 with the publication of his guide “Scouting for Boys,” according to World Scouting.
It crossed the Atlantic a few years later when Scouting America was founded in 1910 under the name of Boy Scouts of America. It currently has more than one million members between the ages of 5 and 21 and another 628,000 volunteers. Since it started 116 years ago, more than 130 million youth have participated in the program.
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