And the hearings almost un- almost unanimously choose to, to separate the, the service member in that case?

In most cases so far, that seems to be what's happening.

There are a couple of exceptions, but yes.

I've covered a couple of them in terms of interviewing the lawyer and the person going through them.

And so you have some people with really exceptional records, but at the end of the day, it, it really comes down to this question of, you know, have you started to, to transition or have you transitioned? And in that case, I think the boards feel like they don't have much of a choice.

And even if they vote to retain, that's not the final decision.

It then goes to the secretary of the Army, Navy, Air Force, um, who will decide ultimately whether to retain the person or not.

Could we have a military that would weigh in when there's a terrible political controversy, when there's another attack on the Capitol?

Could you describe the state of play over there?

So I would say both talk to the press and also talk to members of Congress.

Like their ability to share information with Congress has really been clamped down on.

And I completely agree.

We know probably less about this war than any in terms of what the strategy is, how we're doing, all those sorts of things.

And that should be really troubling.

And it's hard for us to get a beat on whether things are trending upwards or trending downwards.

At both the Naval Academy and at West Point, instructors have been reprimanded and even fired for teaching the truth, the politically unpopular truth.

How does he do that?

Yeah, so it's really interesting and, and this is something that I had never encountered before.

So, you know, Hegseth is nominated for the job.

It's not clear that he's going to get the job.

It's looking pretty dicey for him.

And so what we heard from several officials familiar with the interaction is that at this point, Admiral Caudle directs a senior officer on his staff to reach out to Hegseth to help Hegseth prepare for his confirmation hearing.

He makes this offer several times over the course of the month of December.

What is the status under Hegseth, who is clearly not sharing that priority, of women in the leadership of the military?