• Only 1 percent of the U.S. population serves in the armed forces. Some in the former president’s camp say it’s time more young adults put “some skin in the game.”

TEXARKANA, Tex. — Kyra Rousseau remembers feeling trapped in her high school media center last fall when a phalanx of military personnel and faculty members shut the doors behind her and about 100 classmates before gathering everyone’s phones.

Rousseau, 18, was a senior here at Liberty-Eylau High School. The service members were recruiters. She recalled asking to leave but being told to sit down — that her graduation hinged on completion of a military aptitude test.

“They tricked us,” Rousseau said. “They said ‘ASVAB,’ but they didn’t say what the ASVAB was.”

It stands for the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery, a standardized test developed by the Defense Department decades ago to help the military funnel recruits into occupations that match their skills and intellect. And if Donald Trump’s last defense secretary could have his way, all public high school students would be required to take it.

Christopher Miller, who led the Pentagon during the chaotic closure of Trump’s tenure in Washington, detailed his vision for the ASVAB and a range of other changes as part of Project 2025, the conservative Heritage Foundation’s aspirational government-wide game plan should the presumptive Republican nominee return to the White House. Though Trump has not publicly endorsed its policy proposals, Miller is among a cluster of influential former administration officials and GOP lawmakers who have mused aloud about a national service mandate and other measures to remedy what they see as a “crisis” facing the all-volunteer military.

Trump has been complimentary of Miller’s performance during his administration and suggested that, if there is a second term, he might reprise his role as defense secretary, a powerful Cabinet post with sway over Pentagon policy. And though the former president has not weighed in on this Heritage strategy document, he did embrace many of the organization’s proposals at the outset of his first term.

[…]

On Tuesday, after publication of this report, Trump wrote on social media that the idea he would call for mandatory military service was “ridiculous” and attacked The Washington Post for what he said was a “failed attempt to damage me with the Voters.”

“In fact,” he said, “I never even thought of that idea.”

Trump’s own relationship with the military is complicated. As a teenager, he attended a military academy but later sought deferments to avoid service during the Vietnam War. As president, he embraced the role of commander in chief but routinely clashed with the Pentagon as its leaders balked at many of his impulses and recoiled when claims surfaced that he’d disparaged those killed in combat.

Trump’s campaign sought to tamp down speculation about his agenda. In a statement, top advisers cautioned that unless announced by the former president or “an authorized member” of his reelection team, no conjecture about future staffing or policy “should be deemed official.”

Spokespeople for the Heritage Foundation did not respond to requests for comment before publication of this article. After it appeared online, a spokesperson said that Project 2025 does not “speak for President Trump or his campaign, who alone set his agenda.”

[…]

Source: Juliann Ventura and Julian Andreone, washingtonpost.com/national-security/2024/06/10/trump-military-draft-mandatory-service/

Hannah Knowles contributed to this report.