President Donald Trump on Monday established the Military Spouse Commission, which will advise him on policies affecting servicemembers’ spouses and families.
In the Oval Office in the early afternoon, Trump signed an executive order creating the commission, which will be chaired by Jennifer Hegseth, wife of Secretary of War Pete Hegseth.
“This commission will provide recommendations for improving the quality of life for military spouses, so that we can better support both our military families and the entire United States armed forces,” Trump said.
“The commission will develop suggestions to address particular challenges in housing, employment, healthcare, education, childcare, and just about everything else you can think of,” he added.
Along with Jennifer Hegseth, Christie Mullin, who is the wife of Secretary of Homeland Security Markwayne Mullin, and 20 other military spouses of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the service secretaries, and top enlisted leaders of each service will serve in the commission, according to the White House.
“The Order directs the Commission to engage directly with military spouses, identify challenges affecting military families, and develop policy recommendations to address housing, employment, healthcare, education, child care, and deployment-related support,” the White House said in a release.
“The Order directs the Commission to provide annual recommendations to the President to improve the quality of life for military spouses while supporting the highest standard of military readiness,” the release adds.
Jennifer Hegseth lauded Trump as “a champion for the military” and said the issues that the commission will address are “generational” and “are long overdue to address.”
“We have the most amazing women here who have decades of experience as military spouses themselves to take a look at it,” she said. “There’s really nothing we’re going to find that they haven’t experienced, and so between what they’ve experienced and what they know, we’re going to really tackle these things.”
“I’ve spent the last year traveling around, meeting with military spouses and families around the world and around the country, and it’s the same from Kentucky to Singapore; it’s housing, it’s healthcare, it’s employment, it’s childcare, it’s education, and so we’re going to take a look at all of those things,” she added.
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