In October 2024, at a Trump campaign town hall meeting in North Carolina, a former fighter pilot stepped forward and told the president he had been fired from his high-level job with Space Force for criticizing the DoD’s Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion indoctrination programs. The Biden/Harris administration implemented them across the service branches. Trump promised to establish a task force to rid the military of that divisive nonsense if elected and declared, “I’m going to put you on that task force.”

This is the story of LtCol Matthew Lohmeier, a native of Tucson, Arizona.

Matt graduated from the Air Force Academy in 2006. As the parent of an Air Force Academy graduate, I had read in 2020 about Matt’s role in the newly created Space Force in my son’s Checkpoints magazine.

After graduating from USAFA, Matt became an instructor pilot in the T-38 and then flew F-15Cs as commander of the 67th Fighter Squadron at Kadena Air Base (Japan), accumulating over 1,200 hours. He also earned two graduate degrees from the School of Advanced Air and Space Studies, one of the DoD’s premier strategy schools. In 2015, he shifted from flight operations to space operations at Buckley Air Force Base in Aurora, Colorado, and was chief of training for the 460th Operations Support Squadron. In 2020, he was among the first Air Force officers to transfer to the U.S. Space Force, taking command of the 11th Space Warning Squadron at Buckley.

And it was there a year later that then-LtCol Lohmeier ran head-on into the new DoD DEI directives, instituted after Joe Biden embraced the corrupt Marxist “Black Lives Matter” radicals and claims of “systemic racism.” The curricula being force-fed to military personnel insisted the ranks were heavily influenced by the discredited 1619 Project and critical race theory propaganda, and declared the military was infested with white supremacists.

After Lohmeier raised concerns about the DEI curriculum, his commanding officer not only ignored them but also ordered him to stand down.

At the time, he said:

I reject the premise or the basis of all of our diversity and inclusion training, and I’m not opposed to diversity or inclusion, although it depends on how we define terms. The premise or basis of all of that should be the foundational ideals that we have codified in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, not critical race theory, which makes race the view or the lens through which the entire world is interpreted. And so these videos that we’ve had to watch here at our base teach us just that.

Ignored by Biden’s Air Force leadership, Lohmeier boldly self-published a book about the indoctrination, Irresistible Revolution: Marxism’s Goal of Conquest and the Unmaking of the American Military, in which he detailed the leftist agenda.

Of his book, he said:

I’ve been largely apolitical in most of my adult life. I participate in the political process. I don’t care what the political views of my fellow service members are — the young airmen and guardians that I was a commander for. I don’t care what their religious or non-religious views are because that has nothing to do with their oath to the Constitution. Frankly, they’re entitled to their beliefs and their opinions. And so when we start to see within the services a break or a fracture of the force because people are being trained certain groups are oppressors and others are oppressed, that’s when it’s time to speak up and identify, as the secretary of defense invited us to do, extremist ideological views that are divisive. So that’s what I attempted to do with the book.

Consequently, refusing to retract his objections, Space Force LtGen Stephen Whiting relieved Lohmeier of his command, noting that Department of Defense Directive 1344.10 prohibits active-duty personnel from engaging in “partisan political activities.” He cited “loss of trust and confidence in his ability to lead.”

But there was nothing partisan about Matt’s objections.

As he noted:

My intent never has been to engage in partisan politics. I have written a book about a particular political ideology (Marxism) in the hope that our Defense Department might return to being politically nonpartisan in the future as it has honorably done throughout history. ... My book is essentially an invitation to senior leaders, to every service member, to knock off political partisanship, to maintain our obligation to be apolitical. I condemn all forms of extremism, whether they’re right-wing, left-wing, or anything in between, if it results in conduct that undermines good order and discipline, whether morale of our armed forces that doesn’t belong in our services. ... It is not politically partisan to expose or attack critical race theory or Marxism. Critical Race Theory and Marxism are antithetical to American values.

Further, of these Marxist curricula, Matt said:

Our enemies are very aware that this is going on in the United States, specifically China. There’s nothing that Xi Jinping or the Chinese Communist Party would like more than to have U.S. citizens, worst of all U.S. service members in uniform, getting at one another’s throats because they are starting to entertain divisive and competing, and fundamentally incompatible, narratives of American history, for example.

At the same time, Biden Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin testified before the House Armed Services Committee, insisting, “We do not teach critical race theory, we don’t embrace critical race theory, and I think that’s a spurious conversation.” That was a lie. According to Imprimis, “Despite repeated denials by Austin and others in the Pentagon that critical race theory is being taught in the military, there is no shortage of evidence to the contrary.”

In that testimony, Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR), a combat Veteran, asked Austin if he believes the military is a “fundamentally racist organization.” Austin replied, “I won’t give you a yes-or-no answer on that, Senator, because it deserves more than a yes or no.” He then declared, “I do not believe that, and that is why we have diversity, equity, and inclusion focus in the military.”

Cotton said, “The military for decades has been one of the institutions in this society where you are most likely to get ahead based on your own performance, on your own merit, irrespective of the color of your skin or where you came from or who your parents were.”

Austin asserted, “We’re going to make sure that our military looks like America and that our leadership looks like what’s in the ranks of the military.”

That DEI “focus” is based on quotas, not merit-based advancement.

Recall that Austin also called for a military-wide stand-down to address what he insisted was “extremism” in the ranks. Ironically, Lohmeier’s objections were about extremist ideologies being infused into military indoctrination curricula mandated by Austin.

For his part, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, wokester Mark Milley, insisted, “I personally find it offensive that we are accusing the United States military … of being ‘woke’ because we are studying some theories that are out there.” Right, just “studying some theories.”

Ahead of taking office, Donald Trump said:

If you want to have a sex change or a social justice seminar, then you can do it somewhere else, but you’re not going to do it in the Army, Navy, Coast Guard, Air Force, Space Force, or the United States Marines. The military brass that led these absurd and insulting initiatives will likewise be removed, and they will no longer be in command. They’re going to be gone.

Our military suffered great indignities during the Biden/Harris years, and the direct result was that service branches were missing recruiting goals by a wide margin. Maybe it was Austin’s drag queen recruitment effort. That downtrend was reversed immediately after Trump’s election, with record recruitment numbers. And the recruitment surge continued.

The difference between Pete Hegseth and his woke stumblebum predecessor couldn’t be more stark, and the proof couldn’t be more manifest. Hegseth announced in May of this year: “Recruitments are up across the joint force, and I’m pleased to announce that just two days ago, the U.S. Army met its 2026 recruiting goals four months early. A second record year in a row.”

As for Lohmeier, after he sacrificed his career in 2021 to challenge the infusion of leftist orthodoxy in the military, he spent the next few years working with the nonprofit organization STARRS (Stand Together Against Racism and Radicalism in the Services).

In 2024, he was called to testify before Congress about how leftist ideologies were being infused into our military and creating division, which undermined military readiness.

But as a result of that chance meeting with Trump, in July 2025, in what was characterized as a “striking victory for accountability, strength, and common sense within America’s armed forces,” Lohmeier was officially confirmed as the new Undersecretary of the Air Force, the second-highest civilian post below Air Force Secretary Troy Meink.

Lohmeier now manages the day-to-day operations of the Department of the Air Force, including its $200 billion budget and oversight of nearly 700,000 military personnel, civilian employees, and their families.

From ousted squadron commander to second-in-command of the Department of the Air Force — that is a remarkable turnaround.

His path from the Air Force Academy to being discredited by his Air Force commanders to becoming Undersecretary is well documented in the documentary “Call Sign Courage,” and the official trailer can be viewed here. It is available on Amazon Prime.

Matt Lohmeier, thank you for your courage.

Join us in daily prayer for our Patriots in uniform — Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, Marines, and Coast Guardsmen — standing in harm’s way in defense of American Liberty, and for our nation’s Veterans, First Responders, and their families.

(Read more Profiles of Valor here.)

Semper Vigilans Fortis Paratus et Fidelis
Pro Deo et Libertate — 1776