Americans’ confidence in the military has plunged to the lowest point since 1997, according to a Gallup poll released Monday.

Just 60 percent of Americans have confidence in the military, the lowest number in 25 years, the poll found. The decline occurred across political lines, with Republicans’ confidence plummeting by more than 20 points over the last three years. Democrats’ confidence decreased by 6 points over the last year, while independents’ military confidence saw a sharp drop of 13 points since 2020.

The poll comes just months after an expert panel of military veterans warned Congress that the Biden administration’s focus on “woke” measures is causing a “once-in-a-generation military recruitment crisis,” the Washington Free Beacon reported.

Retired Army captain Jeremy Hunt and other experts told Congress in March that the administration’s focus on “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) training” caused the Army to fall “a historic 15,000 soldiers short of its recruitment goal,” the Free Beacon reported. As U.S. servicemembers are forced to complete “11-week resident DEI training classes,” Hunt said, the Chinese military is growing and the Russian military is waging war on Ukraine.

DEI programs and other “woke” initiatives have “left our military unfocused, untrained, unmanned, and unprepared for combat,” according to Hunt.

The Pentagon has “pumped around $114 million into DEI programs,” Navy veteran and Heritage Foundation senior research fellow Brent Sadler told Congress, and the “corrosive impact” of these programs has sent America’s faith in the military plummeting.

Other institutions have also seen slumps in public confidence, Gallup found. Americans’ confidence in the Supreme Court sits at 27 percent, according to Gallup, while their confidence in the presidency is at 26 percent.

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