Combat roles have been open to women for a decade, but President Donald Trump's Pentagon still questions whether women can be lethal. Army veteran Emelie Vanasse says the debate over women's battlefield fitness is long settled. This episode was produced by Victoria Chamberlin with help from Denise Guerra, edited by Miranda Kennedy, fact checked by Laura Bullard, engineered by Andrea Kristinsdottir and Patrick Boyd and hosted by Noel King. Listen to Today, Explained ad-free by becoming a Vox Member: vox.com/members. Transcript at vox.com/today-explained-podcast. Army veteran Emilie Vanass outside Army Ranger School at Camp Rogers in Fort Benning, GA. Image courtesy Emilie Vanass. Help us plan for the future of Today, Explained by filling out a brief survey: voxmedia.com/survey. Thank you! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth came into his job promising a war on wokeness and weakness in the U.S. military.
No more pronouns. No more climate change obsession. No more emergency vaccine mandates. No more dudes in dresses. We're done with that shit.
Hegseth has taken aim at women. He's challenged the idea that women should serve in combat roles, as they have for 10 years now. He's danced around whether women make the military less lethal, including at his Senate confirmation hearing.
Commanders meet quotas to have a certain number of female infantry officers or infantry enlisted, and that disparages those women who are incredibly capable of meeting that standard.
Next month, he's updating the Army fitness test to make it more difficult and to make the standards the same for men and women. Coming up on Today Explained, the war over women warfighters.
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Hey there, this is Peter Kafka. I'm the host of Channels, the show about what happens when tech and media collide. And this week, we're talking to Adam Mosseri, who runs Instagram and who also runs Threads. And he told me what Threads was originally going to be called. I called it Textagram as a joke, which unfortunately stuck as a name for months before I managed to kill it.
Textagram, great name. You're making me regret telling you this. That's This Week on Channels, wherever you listen to your favorite podcast.
Megan Rapinoe here. This week on A Touch More, we are live from New York for the Liberty's home opener with an extra special guest, Brianna Stewart. We talk about the Liberty's newest additions, the best lessons Stewie ever got from Sue, and what it was like to be at the Met Gala this year. And of course, we couldn't let her go without asking her about that 2024 foul call.
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