How much do you engage with others when you’re out in public? Lots of people don’t actually engage with others much at all. Think of commuters on public transportation staring down at their phones with earbuds firmly in place.

As a professor of social

Richard Garwin, who died on May 13, 2025, at the age of 97, was sometimes called “the most influential scientist you’ve never heard of^[1].” He got his Ph.D. in physics at 21 under Enrico Fermi – a Nobel Prize winner and friend of Einstein’s –

The Pentagon has directed the military services to cut the amount of money they spend on permanent change-of-station, or PCS, moves for troops in half by 2030 as part of an ongoing effort to reduce spending.

The services are tasked with cuts that amount to an initial 10% of the $5 billion PCS budget in 2027 and that increase annually -- hitting 50% by 2030, according to a May 22 memo that was publicly released Wednesday. The memo, by the under secretary of defense for personnel and readiness, says the services should target “discretionary move” budgets.

Pentagon leaders framed the push to cut those PCS moves as a way to reduce costs and provide stability for families. However, department officials did not offer clear definitions on what moves are discretionary and what guardrails will be put in place to keep the cuts from affecting families or careers.

Read Next: Pentagon Diverts $1 Billion from Army Barracks to Fund Border Mission^[1]

Tim Dill, a top official in the Pentagon’s Office for Personnel and Readiness, told reporters that the department is giving the services four months to come up with plans to “reduce the frequency of PCS moves for service members, driving much needed efficiencies for the department and improving the quality of life for warfighters and military families.”

The memo charges each service to consider altering troop career pathways or just how many opportunities service members get to serve outside of their specialties.

Dill wants the service to “look at where is a move absolutely necessary to accomplish” giving troops “the right leadership opportunities,” and where “a move [is] not necessary to accomplish it.”

While the emphasis is being placed on “discretionary moves,” officials at the Pentagon on Wednesday struggled to define the term, and one explained it as moves that include operational travel inside the U.S., rotational travel to or from overseas, and individual service member training travel -- three categories that include a broad majority of military moves.

The memo and Pentagon officials stressed the outcome of the changes should be a boon for families, but they stopped short of offering guarantees on all possible scenarios.

The overall idea is also not entirely new. Several years ago, the Marine Corps made a push to offer more opportunities for families to stay put^[2] for longer as part of an overhaul of its retention policies.

When asked whether a possible outcome of the new policy would be more family separations, given the tightening budget for moves, Dill said they were “not dictating the way in which this needs to be done and we would want to hear from the services, their concerns … about some of the examples you named.”

“We understand there's some risks associated with some of the methods,” Dill added.

Dill also pushed back on the idea that the new policy, framed as protecting military families, would result in single service members bearing the brunt of the burden to support jobs in less popular or less family friendly locations.

“This is not a policy where we just think we need to take the moves away from the families and put it on someone else -- it's for everyone,” he said.

Dill also said he is aware that some military locations are just broadly unpopular, and the department is “very open” to talking to the services about those dynamics. But Dill also said he thought “that there are service members out there that are perfect for any installation, but we want to make sure that where we can, we match up with service member preferences as much as possible.”

According to officials, cutting PCS moves is separate from another effort to address problems with the privatization of PCS household goods shipments^[3] and shortcomings with the contractor that is taking over those shipments.

In a memo Tuesday to senior leaders and combatant commanders^[4], Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced he ordered U.S. Transportation Command to address what he called "recent deficiencies" in performance by the company that manages the $7.2 billion contract to run the department's moving process.

Military families have reported numerous issues with scheduling and executing moves^[5] that included issues such as packers not showing up, delayed pickups and deliveries, and surprise cancellations.

Related: Hegseth Orders Review of Defense Department's Support for Homeschooling^[6]

Secretary Pete Hegseth has ordered a review of the Department of Defense's support of military families who choose to homeschool their children in the U.S. and overseas.

In a memo released Tuesday, Hegseth said the assessment is part of an overall departmental review of educational choices for military families, done in accordance with a Jan. 29 presidential executive order that directed the DoD to consider the use of Pentagon funds^[1] to pay for private, religious or public charter schools for military dependents.

Hegseth said homeschooling should be included in any review of educational opportunities for military children.

Read Next: Tricare Errors Put Military Families at Risk of Paying Higher Costs, Audit Finds^[2]

"Through these efforts, the department will uphold the directive to improve the education, well-being and future success of military-connected students, supporting parents in choosing the best educational options for their children," Hegseth wrote in the memo, signed May 15. "This is vital to the department and the quality of life of our service members, who deserve no less."

According to a report published earlier this year by Johns Hopkins' Institute for Education Policy^[3], active-duty military families homeschool their children at twice the rate of civilian Americans, with 12% of military families participating, compared with 6% of civilians in the 2023-2024 school year.

Angela Watson, a senior research fellow at Johns Hopkins, said the reasons why military families homeschool vary, but they largely choose the nontraditional setting based on the unique needs of their children.

"There are a variety of reasons that maybe the traditional school system isn't working super great for those families, because somebody is deployed and, when the parent is home, they value their family time together, or they want to homeschool because it's more flexible. Or they don't want to move their kids in and out of schools ... and it's just more stabilizing for them to homeschool," Watson said during an interview Tuesday.

A survey of nearly 750 military families who homeschool^[4], conducted by the Military Homeschoolers Association, found the reasons they decided to educate their children themselves were: religion, with 58% citing their faith as a factor in their decision; bullying, with nearly 48% saying they had concerns with traditional school settings, especially for children with special needs; and school violence, something 58% of families factored into their decision.

Nearly 30% were concerned with the educational offerings of their local schools, citing a need for their children to learn critical thinking, or a desire to reduce their child's exposure to age-inappropriate content, topics that didn't align with their world views or incorrect information.

"Traditionally, military families are moving right every two or three years, so you can understand continuity, consistency, flexibility," said Natalie Mack, the association's founder, during an interview. "But there's these new reasons ... rising school violence ... bullying rates. You have people who are homeschooling for traditionally Christian conservative values, and then you have ones who are not -- they're secular and they're just saying, 'My kids have special needs, and we're not feeling confident they're getting what they need."

Hegseth himself is a vocal proponent for Christian-based education. A graduate of a public high school in Minnesota, Princeton University and Harvard, Hegseth wrote the book "Battle for the American Mind: Uprooting a Century of Miseducation," arguing that American K-12 public schools are failing to educate students and losing sight of "virtue and excellence."

"[American culture] is really fragile and not heading in the right direction, and a lot of it does come back to our education system," Hegseth said during a 2023 interview on The Kevin Roberts Show^[5]. "If you've removed God, and you're teaching people the country they've inherited is evil and racist, then what optimism can they have? What are they defending?"

The Jan. 29 executive order from President Donald Trump directed the Defense Department to "review any available mechanisms under which military-connected families may use funds from the Department of Defense to attend schools of their choice."

Trump said the provisions in the order seek to "support parents in choosing and directing the upbringing and education of their children."

An exact number of students who are homeschooled in military families was unavailable by publication. Active-duty troops had nearly 500,000 school-aged children as of 2023, roughly 67,000 of whom attend schools run by the Department of Defense Education Activity.

DoDEA students have recently made headlines for protesting changes instituted by the Trump administration at their schools^[6], including banning certain books from libraries, dropping portions of curriculum that conflict with the administration's stand on gender identity and race, and restricting extracurricular activities tied to diversity initiatives.

Regarding Hegseth's memo, Mack said homeschooled military children could benefit from more support from the Defense Department, particularly in access to facilities and services.

At Fort Belvoir^[7], Virginia, where Mack has served as a homeschooling consultant, she helped partner with the base to use an unoccupied meeting space for classes and academic fairs, and teamed up with the chaplain's office to use buildings on a space-available basis.

The group of families also was given access to a swimming pool during school hours, and they have had opportunities to host clubs and work with school liaisons.

"Have we looked at all of our resources on installation, and can we allocate a building that's not, maybe, being used as often or a gym? Can we allocate a PE teacher? What can the library do to reach out? What can the chaplains do?" Mack said.

She added that military families who homeschool are concerned about the laws that govern homeschooling because they vary from state to state. While the federal government can do little to change those laws, the Defense Department can do more to recognize its homeschooling community and the challenges it faces, she said.

"We want to be respected as a vital part, you know, of the military educational landscape, and so it's really important to make sure that, you know, they receive the resources and support that they are potentially seeking," Mack said.

Related: How to Get Military Homeschooling Help Ahead of Your PCS^[8]

Male fertility rates have been plummeting over the past half-century^[1]. An analysis from 1992 noted a steady decrease in sperm counts and quality since the 1940s^[2]. A more recent study found that male infertility rates increased nearly 80% from 1990 to 2019^[3]. The reasons driving this trend remain a mystery, but frequently cited culprits...

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