Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, Don’t Change. Don’t Win.
Why Former USAF Chief of Staff Merrill McPeak’s
“Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” Memories Don’t Apply To Today’s Military, Or To Today’s America, And Will Make Us Lose Every Battle, Foreign And Domestic.
This week saw more momentum toward repealing “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” Senator Joe Lieberman introduced his “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” repeal bill in the Senate. Congressman Patrick Murphy, author of the House’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” repeal bill, headlined HRC’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” Citizen’s Lobby Day. But in a New York Times Op-Ed, Merrill A. McPeak, the 74 year-old former Chief of Staff of the United States Air Force, who retired more than fifteen years ago, urged America to, “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, Don’t Change.”
“Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, Don’t Change.” What an exquisite epitaph, that should be engraved on the tombstone of the conservative movement.
“Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, Don’t Change.” It’s the very language and practice that embodies and explains America’s financial crisis, America’s housing bubble, America’s health care crisis, America’s eduction crisis, America’s infrastructure crisis, America’s misguided “War on Drugs,” America’s misguided “War on Terror,” America’s diminished world reputation, and, well, most everything else that’s wrong with America today. Not to mention, most everything that was wrong with the America of yesterday.
“Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, Don’t Change” explains why the insurance and financial industries have been able to rule Congress without sufficient regulation.
“Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, Don’t Change” explains why this country has a secret child homelessness problem, yet allows the bigoted policies of some states to deny same-sex couples the right to adopt.
“Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, Don’t Change” explains when the NRA is quietly one of the most powerful and richest lobbyists in America, why school shootings have more than doubled over just the past few years, and why 32 Americans — eight of them children — die every day from gun violence.
“Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, Don’t Change” explains why people like California’s vehemently anti-gay state senator Roy Ashburn, who represents a stridently conservative district, ultimately had to go down in flames, pulled over and arrested for DUI after leaving a gay bar,
“Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, Don’t Change.” Frankly, it’s what head-in-the-sand ostriches and head-in-the-air, too-stupid-to-stop-drinking turkeys do. “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, Don’t Change” means we don’t move forward, we don’t solve problems, and we don’t win. “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, Don’t Change” means we all lose.
Keeping quiet about issues that need improvement is not only bad for America, it’s downright un-American. Imagine if the Founding Fathers told folks, “Oh, that whole taxation without representation thing? We’ve decided on a policy of ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, Don’t Change.'” America would still be an English colony.
Now, all that said, let’s look into what else McPeak is offering.
McPeak retired from the military in 1994, just one year after “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” was adopted. So, any experience with that law he may have had in his distinguished career would be minimal.
“I was one of the service chiefs when the “don’t ask, don’t tell†compromise was reached in 1993. Until then, every person coming into the military was asked questions directed at establishing sexual orientation, and admitted homosexuals were automatically rejected.”
(Ah, the “good ole days,” right, McPeak?)
Second, McPeak is 74. He comes from a different time, a different world. Americans, and the soldiers of today, are far more comfortable with gay men and lesbians than the soldiers of his day, which ended in 1994.
Remember 1994? The Menendez brothers had their first trial, Apple sold its first “PowerPC,” Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman were murdered, Kurt Cobain committed suicide, and George W. Bush was first elected Governor of Texas. In 1994, a man named Marc Andreessen, founded a company called “Netscape,” which introduced its first version of something called a “web browser,” named the “Netscape Navigator.” And in 1994, Marc Andreessen spoke at the “first conference devoted entirely to the subject of the commercial potential of the World Wide Web.”
That was 1994, McPeak’s last year in the military. My, things sure have changed, haven’t they?
McPeak’s argues are that the military is not about civil rights. “Why should exclusion of gay people rise to the status of a civil-rights issue?,” he asks. He says the money we expend on training “people who were eventually removed on account of homosexuality [is] minuscule.” And finally, and most importantly to him: the military is not about the individual, but the team.
“[I]t would be a serious mistake to imagine that personal performance is what matters in combat. Combat is not a contest between individuals, like poker or tennis; it is a team event whose success depends on group cooperation and morale. So the behavior that concerns us is not individual achievement but the social dynamics of relationships and groups. The issue is whether and how the presence of openly declared homosexuals in the ranks affects the solidarity of the unit.”
Let’s repeat that.
“[T]he behavior that concerns us is not individual achievement but the social dynamics of relationships and groups.”
This is McPeak’s main argument, that “homosexuals,” (as he writes clinically and disparagingly,) adversely affect “unit cohesion.” That argument is not just plain false. It is outdated.
Taking McPeak himself to task, along with The Times, Media Matters says it best:
“[N]umerous studies have considered and debunked the unit cohesion myth and the Times itself has reported on a prominent study that found that allowing gays to serve openly “does not undermine unit cohesion, recruitment, retention, morale, or overall combat effectiveness.”
As they did last month, as well:
Award-winning Joint Force Quarterly essay: Unit cohesion argument “not supported by any scientific studies.” In an essay published in the fourth quarter 2009 issue of Joint Force Quarterly — which is “published for the Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff, by the Institute for National Strategic Studies, National Defense University” — Col. Om Prakash wrote of “don’t ask, don’t tell”: “[T]he stated premise of the law — to protect unit cohesion and combat effectiveness — is not supported by any scientific studies.” The essay won the 2009 Secretary of Defense National Security Essay Competition.
Face it, McPeak, the “team” doesn’t have the problem you feel they do with “openly declared homosexuals in the ranks.” Perhaps you do, but today’s soldiers do not.
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U.S. Rep. Adelita Grijalva (D-AZ) is accusing U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents of pepper-spraying her in her face while she was at a local Tucson, Arizona restaurant.
Rep. Grijalva in a video on social media said she saw about 40 mostly-masked ICE agents at a restaurant she frequents weekly.
The agents were “in several vehicles that the community had stopped right here, right in the middle of the street, because they were afraid that they were taking people without due process, without any kind of notice.”
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She said that the community was “protecting their people” when she was “sprayed in the face by a very aggressive agent,” and “pushed around by others when I literally was not being aggressive.”
“I was asking for clarification, which is my right as a member of Congress,” she continued. “So, once I introduced myself, once I did, I assumed that it would be a little calmer, but there was literally only one person that was trying to speak to me in any kind of civil tone, and everyone else was being rude and disrespectful, and I just can only imagine if they’re going to treat me like that, how they’re treating everybody else.”
Congresswoman Grijalva said she saw “people directly sprayed,” including “members of our press” and staff members.
She blasted President Donald Trump, saying that he “has no regard for any due process, the rule of law, the Constitution — they’re literally disappearing people from the streets.”
Critics slammed the agents’ action.
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U.S. Senator Ruben Gallego (D-AZ) wrote that Rep. Grijalva “was doing her job, standing up for her community.”
“Pepper-spraying a sitting member of Congress is disgraceful, unacceptable, and absolutely not what we voted for. Period,” he added.
“This is unacceptable and outrageous,” observed Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes. “Enforcing the rule [of] law does not mean pepper spraying a member of Congress for simply asking questions. Effective law enforcement requires restraint and accountability, not unchecked aggression.”
The Bulwark’s Sam Stein noted, “quite the beginning for Grijalva, who wasn’t seated for weeks, [cast] the decisive vote to get the Epstein files, and now has apparently been pepper sprayed in the face by immigration agents.”
Also calling the action “outrageous,” U.S. Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA) wrote: “We are Members of Congress with oversight authority of ICE. Rep Grijalva was completely within her rights to stand up for her constituents. ICE is completely lawless.”
“First they tackle a sitting Senator,” noted U.S. Rep. Adriano Espaillat (D-NY). “Now they’re pepper spraying a Representative. It’s clear ICE is spinning out of control. We will hold the agency accountable.”
ICE just conducted a raid by Taco Giro in Tucson – a small mom-and-pop restaurant that has served our community for years.
When I presented myself as a Member of Congress asking for more information, I was pushed-aside and pepper sprayed. pic.twitter.com/gPx0p3IXP2
— Rep. Adelita Grijalva (@Rep_Grijalva) December 5, 2025
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Image via Reuters
A well-known conservative commentator has a warning for the Republican Party: take action now or face a repeat of the 2018 midterms when the GOP lost 41 House seats in a landslide. And this time, he says, the Senate could go to the Democrats as well.
Award-winning writer and journalist Bernard Goldberg reminded readers at The Hill that in 2018, during President Donald Trump’s first term, “Republicans got walloped … and a good chunk of that had President Trump’s name written all over it.”
Trump’s “approval ratings were in the low 40s, and independents — the folks who usually decide elections — had seen enough. They broke hard for the Democrats,” Goldberg noted. “Now here we are, staring down 2026, and you can almost hear history clearing its throat, getting ready to repeat itself.”
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Goldberg noted that Trump’s approval rating is currently the lowest it’s been this term.
“Among Republicans, his support dropped from 91 percent right after the 2024 election to 84 percent last month. Among independents, it cratered — from 42 percent to just 25 percent.”
“If the trend continues,” he warned, “Republicans could be headed for another blue wave — and this time, it could wash away not just the House majority, but control of the Senate too.”
Why?
“It’s the economy — still,” he wrote.
“Trump is out there saying the economy is humming. Biden said the same thing before him. But voters didn’t buy it then, and they’re not buying it now. Why? Because it’s not GDP numbers that matter. It’s affordability,” Goldberg noted.
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That’s a word that President Trump continues to call a “con job,” while his own administration tries to claim he is focused on.
He pointed to a Karl Rove Wall Street Journal column and wrote: “The Republicans may have ‘avoided disaster’ in Tennessee, but the result should be a wake-up call for Republicans. He’s right.”
Goldberg asked: “will anyone in the Republican Party actually pick up the phone?”
“Because if Republicans don’t wake up — and fast — they’re going to find out the hard way what happens when you keep rerunning the same movie and expecting a different ending. To lose in 2026, all they have to do is nothing. And right now, that’s pretty much what they’re doing.”
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President Donald Trump is claiming that the top priority of Democrats is the “total obliteration” of the U.S. Supreme Court. His remarks came just hours after SCOTUS gave Republicans a 6-3 win along partisan lines, in the form of approving Texas’s redrawn mid-decade congressional maps that could help add five GOP-held seats to the U.S. House of Representatives. A lower court had ruled the redrawn Texas maps were likely racially biased.
Although there are different ways to measure, one study by Court Accountability this fall found that the Supreme Court has ruled in Trump’s favor 90% of the time.
“Most of these wins for the president came from the court’s ‘shadow docket’ slate of opinions — where the court has typically, in the past, only ruled on administrative measures,” according to Truthout. “However, in recent years, the Supreme Court has been making announcements on cases, issuing injunctions or allowances of actions to remain in place, that have the same effect, essentially, as a final decision.”
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On Friday, the president declared that the “Democrats number one policy push is the complete and total OBLITERATION of our great United States Supreme Court.”
“They will do this on their very first day in office, through the simple Termination of the Filibuster, SHOULD THEY WIN THE UPCOMING ELECTIONS,” he wrote.
Trump has strongly advocated for Republicans to eliminate the Senate filibuster.
“The Radical Left Democrats are looking at 21 Justices, with immediate ascension,” he wrote, claiming that Democrats would more than double the current size of the court.
“This would be terrible for our Country. Fear not, however, Republicans will not let it, or any of their other catastrophic policies, happen. Our Country is now in very good hands. MAGA!!!”
Some court reform advocates have suggested the Supreme Court be expanded to 13 justices, one for each of the thirteen U.S. Courts of Appeals.
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Image via Reuters
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