Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth sat for hearings with Congress this week to discuss his handling of the Iran war, along with fielding questions about the Trump administration’s controversial $1.5 trillion defense spending proposal for 2027. Meanwhile, his support among Republican lawmakers is wavering following his firings of numerous high-profile military leaders, which experts say is both concerning and unusual.
Since becoming head of the Pentagon last year, Hegseth has overseen a dozen dismissals, retirements and reassignments among some of the highest positions in the U.S. military. Among them were the first female commandant of the Coast Guard, the head of the Army’s Chaplain Corps, and a four-star general overseeing the Army’s Transformation and Training Command.
However, it was the recent firing of Army Chief of Staff Gen. Randy George in the middle of the ongoing Iran war that first spooked Congressional Republicans. House Armed Services Committee Chair Mike Rogers, R-Ala., said that George “made great progress on increasing recruitment, improving efficiency, and modernizing the Army.”
Rep. Rich McCormick, R-Ga., said the move was “concerning,” and that George appeared to do nothing to run afoul of President Donald Trump‘s political agenda. “I thought he’s done a really good job getting the Army ready for war,” McCormick said.
George, a decorated general with more than four decades of service, is credited with pulling the Army out of a recruiting crisis in 2024 and pushing for the adoption of new drone-based technologies in the military. Earlier this year, he locked horns with Hegseth over the latter’s attempts to block the promotion of four Army officers from becoming one-star generals— two are Black and two are women. George was subsequently replaced by Gen. Christopher LaNeve, Hegseth’s former senior assistant at the Pentagon.
It was firing of Navy Secretary John Phelan last week that pushed some Republicans in the Senate to voice their growing concerns over Hegseth’s management of the military. Phelan, a former businessman with close ties to Trump who helped fundraising efforts for his presidential campaigns, ran afoul of both the president and Hegseth during his tenure, according to CNN.
Hegseth and Trump were frustrated by his lack of progress in implementing shipbuilding reforms to create Trump’s so-called “Golden Fleet,” led by the theoretical new “Trump-class” battleships. Hegseth was also reportedly irked by Phelan communicating directly on the matter with Trump, which Hegseth took to be a slight.
“We don’t really understand why they’re being removed … There aren’t clear criteria or mistakes that they’ve made. So it’s hard to say what the motives are.”
An anonymous Republican Senator told The Hill on Monday that these firings had them worried about Hegseth’s plans for the military. “The hollowing out of incredible leadership at the Pentagon has been a big concern,” said the senator. “It really came to a tipping point when Gen. George was dismissed.”
Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., said Hegseth’s firings have been “less than ideal,” calling the dismissed generals “extraordinary.”
“I think he’s missing the mark on personnel,” Tillis told The Hill. “I don’t quite know what’s going on there.”
Justin Logan, director of defense and foreign policy studies at the libertarian think tank Cato Institute, called Hegseth “a Fox News pundit in the Secretary’s office.” Hegseth served as an Army National Guard infantry officer in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Guantanamo Bay before becoming a contributor to Fox News in 2014.
“The firing spree has mostly destroyed without creating,” Logan told Salon.
Barry Posen, a professor of political science at MIT and former director of its Security Studies program, said Hegseth appears to “have a preference for people who look like him.”
“More importantly, a preference for people who think like him. It means that whatever he calls ‘woke’ is bad,” Posen told Salon. “Anybody who disagrees with his notion of how war is to be fought, which is with incredible and relatively unrestrained ferocity, they’re also suspect.”
It is certainly not uncommon for a defense secretary to relieve generals and other military leaders. Indeed, there is a long precedent for high-level dismissals during wartime. President Abraham Lincoln cycled through five commanding generals during the Civil War, and dozens of generals were retired or relieved of command during World War II.
However, Hegseth has seen the dismissal of a relatively large number of high-ranking leaders in a short time. Jennifer Kavanagh, a senior fellow and director of military analysis at the military think tank Defense Priorities, says that’s “notable.” While she isn’t concerned about running out of competent, capable leaders among the high brass, she does have her concerns.
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“I think what’s most concerning to me about it is that we don’t really understand why they’re being removed,” Kavanagh told Salon. “There aren’t clear criteria or mistakes that they’ve made. So it’s hard to say what the motives are.”
“Unless these things are urgent and must be fixed right away, it’s hard to understand why you would do it during [the war], when things are already uncertain, and you probably want stability,” she explained.
Kavanagh can, however, point to Hegseth’s chief priorities: “lethality and getting rid of wokeness.” Hegseth is a loud, fierce opponent of policies he views as “woke” or as indicative of support for DEI initiatives, and uses “kill talk” to tout the firepower and dominance of the U.S. military.
Hegseth has challenged the idea of “toxic leadership,” raised standards to keep women out of combat roles, and called for purging “the social justice, politically correct and toxic ideological garbage that had infected our department.” Though Hegseth has denied that his policies are racist or bigoted, he does have close connections to far-right Christian nationalists and has faced criticism for his Crusader tattoos, symbols that have alleged connections to extremist groups.
“We became ‘the woke department’,” Hegseth said in an address to military leaders in October. “Not any more. We’re done with that s**t,” he said.
“Anybody who disagrees with his notion of how war is to be fought, which is with incredible and relatively unrestrained ferocity, they’re also suspect.”
Just so, Hegseth saw to the dismissal of Joint Forces Chairman Charles Q. Brown, Jr., a four-star fighter pilot and the second Black chairman, shortly after becoming secretary. Hegseth accused him of being “involved” in supporting DEI policies. Admiral Lisa Franchetti, the first woman to serve as the chief of Naval Operations, was also removed the same day.
Posen says that George and his contemporaries are not “failed generals” who would otherwise be fired and replaced during wartime. “They’re people that, for whatever reason, have simply fallen afoul of Hegseth,” he said.
For example, the military campaign in the Caribbean and Pacific, which has targeted alleged drug-trafficking boats, has killed nearly 200 people and drawn accusations of war crimes. Hegseth, who has overseen operations, reportedly clashed with Admiral Alvin Holsey, former commander of U.S. Southern Command, who stepped down from his position in December. While no official reason was given for the abrupt retirement, anonymous sources told The New York Times that Holsey had not been conducting boat strikes “aggressively” enough.
National Security Agency Director and U.S. Cyber Command Chief Gen. Timothy Haugh was fired last April after pressure from far-right conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer, who claimed that Haugh and others were “disloyal” to the Trump administration.
Posen can certainly understand the lawmakers’ concerns, especially regarding George. “Is he purging not just perfectly competent people, but highly competent people, the people you would want in your foxhole?” he asks. “I think many senators believe yes, he is purging people who are, in fact, quite competent.”
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Hegseth is undercutting another official seen as competent: Army Secretary Dan Driscoll.
The two have reportedly been feuding increasingly since George, who was Driscoll’s chief of staff, was fired, according to The Hill. Hegseth reportedly first saw Driscoll as a rival after Trump selected him to participate in negotiations last year to end the war in Ukraine, and allegedly sees him as his replacement, should Trump fire him. Driscoll has said that he “has no plans to depart or resign.”
Logan surmises that Hegseth is engaged in a power struggle in the Pentagon. “He is worried about having people more capable than him in leadership, which explains his effort to marginalize his Army secretary,” he said.
For his part, Trump reportedly remains pleased with both Driscoll and Hegseth, praising the latter as “a great choice” despite being “treated very unfairly” by the Senate, at a press conference on Monday. Despite what may occur at Hegseth’s House and Senate hearings, Logan thinks the secretary is safe for now.
“In a better world, the Senate would assert itself and rein in his chaotic tenure,” he said. “As long as the president is happy with him, he’s not going anywhere.”
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