{"id":3943,"date":"2026-07-26T12:38:32","date_gmt":"2026-07-26T12:38:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nextaddressamerica.com\/?p=3943"},"modified":"2026-07-26T12:38:32","modified_gmt":"2026-07-26T12:38:32","slug":"the-militarys-new-mandatory-test-could-backfire-big-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nextaddressamerica.com\/?p=3943","title":{"rendered":"The military’s new mandatory test could backfire \u2014 big time"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

On Tuesday, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Dan Caine appeared before<\/u> the Senate Appropriations Committee, hats in hand. The Pentagon is burning through appropriations, with both Navy and Air Force 2026 operations budgets set to run out by the end of July. The war in Iran has depleted key weapons stockpiles, reducing U.S. inventories of interceptor missiles<\/u> and stealth cruise missiles<\/u> to less than half and costing over $37 billion<\/u> to date. To the naked eye, these costs reflect disastrous mismanagement of an unauthorized and escalating war.<\/p>\n

Read more Trump slammed for waging \u2018narcissistic crusade\u2019 over election loss while remaining silent on surging pandemic<\/a><\/p>\n

On Wednesday, the GOP-led <\/u>House approved<\/u> a whopping defense funding bill anyway, authorizing an unprecedented $1 trillion<\/em><\/em> for military spending. Not only did the MAGA wing<\/u> reward Trump\u2019s incompetent war in Iran with a massive spending boost, it codified Hegseth\u2019s rebrand<\/u> of the \u201cDepartment of War,\u201d snuck in Trump\u2019s voter suppression bill<\/u>, and blocked hormone therapy coverage for gender care just as Hegseth is braying about testosterone levels.<\/p>\n

Hegseth expected lawmakers to correct his urgent shortfall, but wouldn\u2019t correct, clarify or explain his own false claims about Iran. Hegseth\u2019s early-in-the-war announcement<\/u> that Iran\u2019s military had been \u201cdestroyed and made combat ineffective\u201d<\/u> was obviously untrue<\/u>, but republicans still put an unprecedented $1trillion budget in his hands. Arming a blowhard who delivers braggadocio instead of sober analysis is not confidence inspiring, it\u2019s irresponsible. It\u2019s also scary as hell.<\/p>\n

Hegseth\u2019s bloodlust <\/strong><\/p>\n

As a Fox News commentator, Hegseth lobbied hard<\/u> for presidential pardons for war criminals<\/u>, leading Trump to fully pardon<\/u> a Lieutenant convicted of murdering<\/u> two Afghan civilians, and a Major who admitted to the CIA<\/u> that he killed someone off base in 2010 and buried his remains<\/u>. For his own activities in Iraq, Hegseth kept a \u2018kill board\u2019 totaling up his kills<\/u>, including dead civilians, providing context for his bloodlust today (\u201cmaximum lethality not tepid legality<\/u>\u201d) and his disdain for restraint (\u201cstupid rules of engagement<\/u>.\u201d)<\/p>\n

Hegseth seems to be grooming U.S. servicemembers for war crimes<\/u>, taking them to a place where rules and laws do not apply. Added to over 200 extrajudicial killings<\/u> in South America, they bombed a school<\/u> in Iran, killing 175 grade-schoolers, and are now bombing Iran\u2019s civilian energy infrastructure<\/u> and water desalination facilities, more war crimes<\/u>. Millions of Iranians are living under fire in nightmarish hellscapes, compounding anti-American hatred<\/u> sure to outlast Trump for generations.<\/p>\n

This is the same idiocy that blames other countries for climate-chang<\/u>e induced wildfires, while pouring gas on the flames<\/u>. But of all the mistakes<\/u>, bloodlust, and incompetence displayed to date, none is more dangerous than Hegseth\u2019s new obsession with testosterone.<\/p>\n

Hegseth<\/strong> is mandating testosterone testing<\/strong><\/p>\n

On July 16, Hegseth<\/u> announced mandatory<\/em><\/em> annual testosterone screening for troops 30 years and older, a new initiative that Hegseth claims will ensure enlistees \u201chave the right testosterone levels to operate at your absolute \u2060best.\u201d What he didn\u2019t announce is that testosterone supplements can cause infertility<\/u>, shrink testicles, and drive up red blood cell counts<\/u>, which thickens blood and raises the risk of blood clots and pulmonary embolism. <\/p>\n

Even worse is what T supplements can do to overall IQ and cognitive functioning. Medical studies have tracked how increased testosterone levels can induce aggressive behavior because they also change brain wave patterns<\/u>.<\/p>\n

Although Hegseth and other chest beaters think increased testosterone will make men quicker and sharper, medical research suggests the opposite<\/u>. The relationship between T and IQ is shaped like an inverted U: cognitive performance is strongest when testosterone sits in a <\/u>moderate<\/em><\/u><\/em> range<\/u>, and dramatically declines at both low and high ends of the spectrum. <\/p>\n

Read more Did the pandemic ruin sex? Scientists say it could constitute a health crisis<\/a><\/p>\n

In short, when T levels are too high, men get stupid. While that may explain some of Hegseth\u2019s frequent blunders, excessive testosterone among the troops would present obvious risks.<\/p>\n

Too much T rots your brain<\/strong>: How excess testosterone impairs cognitive performance<\/strong><\/p>\n

In controlled studies that raised serum testosterone in healthy men to \u2018supraphysiological\u2019 levels \u2014 beyond what the body normally produces \u2014 researchers measured how verbal and spatial memory<\/u> changed, confirming a downturn in cognition levels at high doses. Rather than testosterone being simply \u2018good\u2019 or \u2018bad\u2019 for the brain, research shows that it can help or hurt cognition depending on where a person’s levels fall relative to their own physiological baseline<\/u>. <\/p>\n

This pattern shows up in the medical research repeatedly, across different populations and cognitive domains. But Hegseth\u2019s directive aims to establish hormonal baselines <\/u>across the force, which cannot measure or indicate how a person’s levels compare to their own past historical baseline.<\/p>\n

None of this makes testosterone a villain. Men with low testosterone face meaningfully higher risk of dementia<\/u>, and testosterone loss with age also contributes to cognitive decline<\/u>. The nuance assuredly lost on Hegseth is that pushing testosterone artificially high \u2014 whether through unsupervised supplementation, misuse of steroids, or aggressive hormone therapy \u2014 can backfire, and erode memory and executive function<\/u>. Hegseth seems to think that hormones are simple dials where more is better, but they are biometric signals the brain has evolved to interpret within complex ranges, and stepping too far outside that range \u2014 in either direction \u2014 comes at a cost. <\/p>\n

Will Hegseth have the cognitive bandwidth, or even the professional discipline, to consult medical research before pushing T supplements to millions<\/u> of servicemembers? Color me skeptical. He\u2019s chief mouth-breather to the most incompetent, administration the world has ever seen. But he knows that when Trump starts deploying the military against U.S. citizens, aggressive soldiers with low brain function will make the perfect Praetorian Guard<\/u>.<\/p>\n

Sabrina Haake is a political analyst and 25+ year federal trial attorney specializing in 1st and 14th A defense. She writes the free Substack, The Haake Take.<\/em><\/p>\n

Read more WSJ tears into Trump over \u2018obsession\u2019 he can\u2019t quit despite major \u2018harm\u2019<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On Tuesday, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Dan Caine appeared before the Senate Appropriations Committee, hats in hand. The Pentagon is burning through appropriations, with both Navy and Air Force 2026 operations budgets set to run out by the end of July. The war in…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3942,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3943","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nThe military's new mandatory test could backfire \u2014 big time - Next Address America<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/nextaddressamerica.com\/?p=3943\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The military's new mandatory test could backfire \u2014 big time - Next Address America\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"On Tuesday, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. 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