Joshua Kelley

Many joining the Navy will no longer have a General Educational Development Diploma, marking the second time in about a year that the service has welcomed lower-performing recruits as it seeks to achieve enlistment goals. The decision was made in December 2022 to admit a greater number of recruits who score poorly on the Armed Services Qualification Test. Both are relatively rare steps that other military services largely avoid or limit, although they are all finding it increasingly difficult to recruit the small number of young people who can meet the military's physical, mental, and moral requirements.

The Navy denied the existence of a recruiting assistance service that included an active-duty drag queen, according to a phone call from the House Armed Services Committee. Joshua Kelley, a drag performer named Harpy Daniels, was one of five digital ambassadors on the course, spanning from October to March. The Navy is currently facing a recruitment crisis and is likely to fall short of its target by 8,000 recruits for the year, as well as a campaign with Kelley, a non-binary drag queen influencer, in an attempt to foster diversity in their workforce. Representative Jim Banks (R-Indiana), Chairman of the HASC Subcommittee on Military Personnel, announced the denial.

The former Navy SEAL who appeared to have killed Osama bin Laden has slammed a Navy recruitment plan that involved an active service drag queen ambassador. During Varney & Co. on Monday, Rob O'Neill, 47, said that the US military "needs to be ferocious, not spectacular." The Navy is currently in the middle of a massive recruitment crisis, with estimates that it will lose 8,000 people this year compared to its recruitment targets for the year.