The Pentagon has failed its audit eight years running - the only major federal agency never to pass one Military Times, 19 December 2025
The Pentagon’s Roid-Fueled Craze Was Cut Off After Only One Day‘what the f*ck? What is he doing’
Page A3From§Eachthe early evening edition — 4 September 2026
Pentagon issues testosterone-screening guidance for troops, rescinds it one day later, explains nothing.
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As it ran on the front
Let's be clear about what happened, because the coverage has gotten ahead of itself: the Pentagon issued new testosterone-screening guidance for the force, and issuing guidance is not an emergency, it's readiness. That's the message, and I stand behind it — a standard, applied evenly, protects everyone downrange. It's not a scandal. It's a standard.
Then, one day later, the same building temporarily rescinded the same guidance it had just made public. I want to be fair to the process here — sometimes an agency writes something one day and reads it back the next and decides it needs another pass. That's called quality control. That's called — actually, that's not what quality control looks like when you publish first and edit after the cameras are already rolling. I'll come back to that.…
…(cont) Here is what I can defend: a standard existed, on paper, for twenty-four hours, and then it didn't. I was going to tell you the reversal reflects careful, deliberate review of a complex policy. I don't have anything showing that review happened. I have a policy, and then I have the same policy, rescinded, one day apart, with no stated reason in between. That is the entire record. I keep reaching for the part where someone explains the twenty-four hours, and there isn't one.
So let me try this again, straight: the Pentagon put out a testosterone-screening rule for the force. It pulled the rule back the next day. It has not said why. I was prepared to argue this is normal iterative policymaking. I was also prepared to argue it's evidence of a chain of command in good order. Both of those arguments need the missing twenty-four hours to say something, and they don't say anything, because nothing has been said.
The public reaction landed harder than the paperwork itself, which happens when a building moves this fast in both directions inside a single news cycle. One outlet ran the plainest headline quote of the week on the episode: "what the f*ck? What is he doing." I am not going to defend that as messaging strategy, because it isn't messaging — it's the sound a policy makes when it contradicts itself before the ink dries.
I was sent out here to tell you the guidance was sound. Then to tell you the rescission was sound. I can't make both arguments in the same paragraph, which is apparently also true of the Pentagon.
“They floated a testosterone rule for the troops, yanked it back a day later, and won't say why — that's not caution, that's covering for whoever wrote it in the first place. When the building can't keep a policy standing for twenty-four hours, the people it applies to find out they're the pilot program, not the priority. That's the con: make the rule, eat the headline, drop the rule, keep the headline off the next budget request.”
“This is basic quality control — you issue guidance, you review it, you pull it back if it needs work, that's the system operating exactly as designed. Did I say review? There's no review in this. There's a rule that existed at nine in the morning and didn't exist by the next one. That's not a process, that's — okay, that's not what I meant to say.”
The receipts
The Pentagon has temporarily rescinded its new guidance for testosterone screening one day after making it public.
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front.