If Pete Hegseth’s critics have their way, his “State of the Force” speech to non-commissioned and junior officers at Marine Corps Base Quantico in September could be among his last as secretary of defense. Although House Republicans shut down an effort to impeach Hegseth on Nov. 10, pushback against the secretary is still gaining momentum due to the Democrats’ landslide victory in the midterm elections. For now, President Donald Trump seems committed to keeping Hegseth, but calls to fire him are not going away.
Indeed, Hegseth’s September speech reveals a great deal about why so many people want him replaced. He opened it by referencing a similar speech he gave a year prior, in September 2025, to many of the country’s generals and admirals, saying the earlier speech marked “Liberation Day” for the Defense Department’s military leaders. As Hegseth explained, that day was the moment when those who “clung to the Woke Department” were no longer welcome in the military. As he originally put it in 2025, under his leadership there would be “No more identity months, DEI offices, dudes in dresses. No more climate change worship, no more division, distraction or gender delusions, no more debris,” adding that, “If the words I’m speaking today are making your heart sink, then you should do the honorable thing and resign.” A year later, Hegseth glowingly reported to the junior military leaders before him that 10 percent of the country’s 800 or so generals and admirals “no longer work here,” having been fired or forced out under his direction.
As he says, Hegseth has been working hard to remake the complexion and character of the U.S. military to match his ideological vision for the force. He has fired or forced into retirement dozens of officers. Just last month, he ousted Army Lt. Gen. Brett Sylvia from his role as director of strategy, plans and policy on the Joint Staff, despite the fact that the United States is mired in a war with Iran. The Pentagon not only fired Sylvia but referred him to the Department of Justice for a potential criminal investigation into his role in an alleged leak case.
Hegseth has also quashed the promotions of many other senior officers and precipitated a significant brain drain in the officer corps. Talented officers are self-selecting out of the military or choosing not to pursue leadership roles, in response to the signals Hegseth has sent about who he believes is fit to serve in the military and run it. A late September poll by Common Defense, a progressive veterans-led advocacy organization, found that 53 percent of active-duty personnel surveyed said that the “military becoming more politicized” was making them more likely to want to leave service.
This transformational effort threatens the U.S. military and the country’s national security. It harms morale among those who do not match Hegseth’s preferred partisan, gender, or racial identities or who simply don’t want to serve in a politicized military, while more broadly undermining the cohesive teams and unity of purpose that underpin military effectiveness. The politicization of the military also reduces the overall talent pool by compelling officers to select out of the military after the services have invested heavily in training and preparing them for leadership roles. And it creates a zero-defect mentality in which saying or doing something that does not conform to Hegseth’s preferences and world view might lead to marginalization, if not firing. Perhaps most alarmingly, though, it undermines the bond between the military and the country’s citizens, by encouraging service members to side with one faction of society against the rest.
Whether Hegseth stays or goes, there are steps a new Congress can take to begin rebuilding what the Department of Defense has lost over the last two years. Lawmakers can seek to impose more oversight on personnel matters, including officer appointments and promotions—something they are already working on. But restoring morale across the force and repairing the harm done to the military profession will be harder. Addressing those problems will take sage leadership by Congress and support from a future secretary of defense if Hegseth is ultimately removed from his job.
Forced Out
To date, Hegseth has forced the resignation or fired more than two dozen senior officers. Among the highest profile were the firing of Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. C.Q. Brown and of Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Lisa Franchetti, in February 2025. At that time, he also fired the services’ top lawyers, and has since interfered in the advancement of senior officers across the force, disproportionately striking names of many women and Black officers from promotion lists compiled by the services.
Among those Hegseth has ousted is Army Chief of Staff Gen. Randy George. The four-star general maintained a close relationship with former Army Secretary Dan Driscoll, a rival of Hegseth’s who resigned in September after months of feuding with him. George had sought unsuccessfully to meet with Hegseth after the defense secretary removed names from the Army promotion list right before George was fired. George had also reportedly resisted efforts to quash an investigation into Army helicopter pilots who in March hovered near the home of entertainer Kid Rock, a well-known Trump ally, and flew over a No Kings protest in Nashville, Tennessee. Hegseth ultimately intervened in the Army’s disciplinary procedures against the pilots, announcing the end of their suspension on social media, while urging them to “Carry on, patriots.”
Another telling case is that of Army Gen. Chris Donahue, who, before Hegseth fired him, had been widely revered as a generational talent who could spearhead critical innovation in the Army. On the surface, it might appear that Donahue was merely an unfortunate casualty of Hegseth’s reorganization plans. The defense secretary is reducing the number of four-star officers (the country’s top generals and admirals) by 20 percent, ostensibly on the grounds that the military is top-heavy, although conveniently, this initiative has also provided Hegseth the opportunity to be more selective in shaping who is promoted into the military’s seniormost positions. Among the reductions, Hegseth downgraded the four-star command leading U.S. Army forces in Europe and Africa, the position Donahue held. Without a four-star billet to serve in, Donahue was forced to retire from the Army in the middle of his tour.
Yet Hegseth could have rolled out these changes differently: in 2025, when a similar Air Force command was downgraded, the change was not implemented until the four-star commander in charge retired. Hegseth also “stonewalled” the Army’s efforts to find Donahue another four-star position. Hegseth has since announced the creation of a new four-star command, the U.S. Army Western Hemisphere Command and has plans for a new functional, autonomous warfare-focused combatant command.
The New York Times reported that Donahue may have been forced out because he was the unwitting subject of a photo showing him as the last soldier leaving Afghanistan after President Joe Biden ordered the military to withdraw from the country in August 2021. For Hegseth, Donahue symbolized an officer that had followed Biden’s orders and firing him was Hegseth’s misguided attempt to hold the military accountable for its role in the withdrawal. Donahue had also once dismissed concerns about the military becoming woke, stating in 2023, “We’re focused on people, war fighting and making sure that we’re prepared for the next fight. There ain’t no ‘woke’ here.”
Hegseth is also reshaping the force through interfering in the services’ promotion processes. He has removed the names of officers from promotion lists created by the Army, Air Force, and Navy before their names could be forwarded to Congress. Given Hegseth’s penchant for secrecy, that meddling is likely the tip of the iceberg in his efforts to contort promotions and appointments. Not counted are the leadership roles that qualified candidates are being passed over for because they do not clear his ideological bar, or because they are women or minorities, or because they once worked for Gen. Mark Milley, with whom Trump famously clashed.
Hegseth is also making changes that will further affect who advances and occupies key roles. He has recently directed that colonels and Navy captains being considered for promotion to one-star general or admiral undergo a “joint warfighting evaluation,” which, depending on the service, involves a written assessment and participation in an online or in-person wargame. This new evaluation is being portrayed as a way of objectively assessing warfighting skills apart from the long trail of evaluations done by the officers’ superiors that comprise the conventional assessment by the services’ promotion boards.
But the criteria for performing well as a “warfighter” on these new tests have not been explained; nor have the role or weight they will be given in the evaluation process been determined. The ambiguity about the metrics involved leaves the services trying to read Hegseth’s mind, drawing inferences about the attributes that supposedly make for a “warfighter” in the secretary’s eyes and to pick candidates for promotion that will pass muster with him. Because the services need officers to be promoted to fill essential billets, they have strong incentives to choose people who will make the secretary’s cut—that is, people who fit his preferred racial, gender, and partisan-inflected criteria for military service.
Little Choice But to Leave
These high-profile interventions have gotten a lot of attention, for good reason. But they overshadow an equally consequential dynamic unfolding in the officer corps: the self-selection out of the military by talented officers across the force. Those leaving variously cite as their reasons disillusionment with the current dysfunction in the Pentagon; the Iran war, which Hegseth pushed; as well as discomfort with his politicization of the military; or because they were pushed out for questioning the secretary’s policies. Future deployments on controversial missions could drive even more to leave. Retention rates threatened to plummet when the National Guard was deployed to support federal authorities’ immigration enforcement effort in California.
Recent survey research we conducted helps explain why the option of leaving service might appeal to these officers as an easy way out of an institution they no longer feel welcome or comfortable serving in. Our fall 2024 survey of service members, veterans, and members of the public shows that all three groups view it as an uncontroversial and nonpolitical act to leave service through routine processes, especially when the military is asked to undertake missions they oppose.
Hegseth is also adopting policies aimed at encouraging people to leave service. Take some of his actions in regard to women serving in the military. As one former Air Force pilot, Lt. Col. Jessica Ruttenber put it, Hegseth’s actions with respect to women amount to an effort to “limit access. Reduce Influence. Discredit their work.” Hegseth ended the Defense Advisory Committee on Women in the Services, which has studied and advised the Department of Defense on issues affecting service women for 75 years. In doing so, he weakened “the broader ecosystem” that allows individuals voice in the system. DACOWITS has made over 1,000 recommendations—including on issues related to training, harassment, and pregnancy—almost all of which have been implemented.
Hegseth has also signaled that female service members’ achievements are not important by overseeing the removal of references to them from DoD websites and the curricula of professional military education institutions, while leaving those of white, male servicemembers intact (some websites were restored under pressure). He has implicitly raised doubts about whether women should serve by framing questions about the impact their service has on standards and readiness, while advancing policies that intensify the barriers to reporting abuse and maltreatment. In July, Hegseth directed a review of the role of women in combat roles, putting a known skeptic in charge of it, and assigning it to the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory instead of one of Washington’s think-tanks, which presumably would be better suited to carrying out the assessment. He ordered the review despite the fact that women have formally served in combat roles since 2015, and numerous studies have shown that the policy shift has been successful.
These moves to stigmatize women in the force are magnified by the purging of women from promotion lists. Out of 22 Navy Captains promoted to one-star admiral in June, all were male, and out of the 29 promoted since December 2025, none have been women. This is even though 15 percent of Navy Captains are female. It later emerged that Hegseth had struck nine Captains from the June 2026 list of 31, including all three women that originally appeared there.
Notably, Hegseth’s defenders contend that the secretary is merely trying to get rid of low-performing officers, but when pressed, they admit that ideological reasons are a central motivation behind his personnel decisions.
Costs to National Security
Hegseth’s campaign to remake the military poses a direct threat to the U.S. military’s human capital, resiliency, and effectiveness in war. Consider the loss of talent brought about by his forced ousters, vetoed promotions, and clear signal that certain people are not welcome in the military anymore. One glance at the details of the years of military service of people like Gen. Brown, Adm. Franchetti, Gen. George, or Gen. Donahue, and the skill and experience lost due to Hegseth’s ideologically driven campaign become apparent. At a time when the secretary is pressing the military to transform and modernize, Hegseth removed two of its chief advocates in the Army, George and Donahue.
His political maneuvering is also leaving gaps in the leadership structure throughout the military’s senior levels, especially in the Army. Unable to get confirmed by the Senate, the current Vice Chief of the Army Gen. Christopher LaNeve is also serving as the Army’s acting Chief of Staff, while the civilian service secretaries for the Army and Navy are serving in an acting capacity. In many offices in the Pentagon today photos of Trump and Hegseth appear alongside empty picture frames representing the lack of confirmed leaders in senior uniformed and civilian roles.
Hegseth’s interventions also discourage the free flow of information by inducing military personnel to self-censor or conform their views and advice to what they think civilian leaders, or their military superiors who answer to them, want to hear. If they don’t, they risk being marginalized or damaging their careers or imperiling their retirements. This apprehension can affect formal interactions across the military-civilian divide as well as routine discussions within military circles, degrading the culture of communication that has long distinguished the U.S. military from its autocratic counterparts.
Hegseth’s ideological and identity-based firings and quashed promotions also have the second order effect of corroding trust and undermining morale. Research on what makes militaries’ effective at warfighting has long emphasized the importance of unit cohesion and bonds among service members in shaping the will to fight. Creating a homogenous military does not foster that cohesion; rather, its members’ mutual faith in each other’s competency and commitment to the unit and mission does. By dividing the force ideologically and setting Hegseth’s partisan allies against his adversaries inside the force, the secretary is undercutting the trust and camaraderie that underpins those bonds.
Ironically, Hegseth contends that his actions do not harm morale and, in fact, do the reverse. As he frames it, his efforts to advance “accountability” for those holding unfavored ideological views or identities has intensified patriotic fervor and commitment to service within the U.S. military. Hegseth’s claim dismisses—and not by accident—the disillusionment experienced by those who prefer to serve in a professional, nonpartisan force or who don’t fit his ideological vision for it.
Restoring the Force
How long Hegseth will remain in his job as secretary of defense remains to be seen. If he is replaced, Congress must devote significant effort to investigating and repairing the damage he has done. If he remains in the role, lawmakers will have to work doggedly in their oversight capacity to check Hegseth’s harmful interventions in personnel and other matters. Fortunately, there are already efforts underway to strengthen sections of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2027 so that the Pentagon informs lawmakers when it withholds or delays promotions. Congress might also investigate whether Hegseth broke the law in intervening in promotion processes, as some lawmakers have suggested. Oversight committees in the House and Senate might also seek information about senior officers who have voluntarily retired from military service in the last two years so that lawmakers can better understand whether and how Hegseth’s actions played a role in those decisions.
These efforts by Congress overall should aim to re-establish merit-based promotions and affirm non-partisanship in the military. To be sure, these efforts will undoubtedly be fraught: rolling back Hegseth’s efforts will likely be painted as a partisan attack on the military by the secretary’s allies on the right. For that reason, as experts advocate, the establishment of a nonpartisan commission to study the state of the military profession and provide recommendations would be a wise step. Notably, both Democrats and Republicans have in the past raised concerns about the impact of Hegseth’s leadership on the well-being of the profession and its effectiveness. Regardless, Congress must consider the effects of both formal policy changes and informal shifts in culture and conventions that have occurred under Hegseth.
Senior military leaders, both retired and active duty, can also do their part to shore up the military’s nonpartisan ethic, including by explaining how it helps safeguard the military’s effectiveness in wartime. Civil society groups must also raise public awareness about the importance of the military’s nonpartisan ethos and other vital conventions of democratic civil military relations. These efforts must consider holistically how the Department of Defense is being transformed into a very different entity than Americans have previously known in their lifetimes—and what must be done to restore its health.
