Pete Hegseth's Secret Plot for Pentagon Purge Exposed

Laura Esposito
Tue, September 29, 2026 


Photo Illustration by Eric Faison/The Daily Beast/Getty

Pete Hegseth is slashing a fifth of leadership positions across the Pentagon as his paranoia and deep distrust of leaders who could potentially undermine his own power deepen.

The defense secretary, who never reached a rank higher than major, will announce plans to cut positions reserved for generals and admirals across the armed forces by 20 percent during his State of the Forces address on Wednesday, a Defense Department official told the Daily Beast.

Hegseth's cuts double the 10 percent reduction in leadership he ordered last year. It also follows his May 2025 order to slash four-star active-duty positions and general officer positions in the National Guard by 20 percent

The former Fox & Friends Weekend host will order that the latest cuts are completed by Jan. 1, 2027, according to a report from Fox News.

“I don’t care,” Hegseth reportedly told Joe Kasper, his chief of staff, after he handed the defense secretary a card listing reasons to keep a top general. / Win McNamee/Getty Images

In a September memo, Hegseth directed Pentagon officials to identify general and flag officer positions eligible for a downgrade, Fox News reported. Others will be eliminated along with their positions.

Since the start of Hegseth's tenure, numerous former and current Pentagon officials have spoken out against the culture of fear that the seemingly insecure Hegseth has created inside the department, clashing with anyone who potentially commands more respect than he does.

All told, Hegseth has already fired or blocked promotions for some 80 of the nation's top officers—roughly 10 percent of the U.S. military's highest-ranking officers.

For example, his widely questioned ousting of "once-in-a-generation general" Christopher Donahue stemmed in part from the fact that Donahue was revered, respected, and admired—three attributes that reportedly, don't exactly describe Hegseth within the halls of the Pentagon.

"I don't care," Hegseth told Joe Kasper, his chief of staff, after he handed him a card listing reasons to keep Donahue, according to The New York Times.

Army Secretary Dan Driscoll, a close friend of JD Vance from Yale Law School, also attempted to orchestrate an intervention from the vice president to keep Donahue. But when Hegseth discovered that Driscoll had set up a meeting between Vance and Donahue, he canceled it, according to the report.

Soon after, Driscoll resigned.

Donahue made headlines when he was captured on military surveillance footage as the last U.S. service member to leave Afghanistan. / XVIII Airborne Corps/Handout via Reuters

Then there's Hegseth's so-called war on wokeness. During his tenure, the secretary has focused much of his enthusiasm on blocking promotions for women and minorities, as well as instituting his own version of MAHA: Making the Armed Forces Hot Again.

At his Wednesday address, for example, Hegseth is casting troops who fit specific "physical standards" to support him in the audience—asking top military brass to nominate service members who exhibit "impeccable grooming and uniform standards" and conform to certain body fat requirements to attend his speech, according to The Wall Street Journal.

The service members selected must pass the Army's fitness test and meet its waist-to-height ratio requirement, the Rupert Murdoch-owned newspaper revealed, citing an email sent to Army commanders. Some of the chosen service members will also participate in a workout with Hegseth.

Hegseth has repeatedly come under fire for staged outings with military personnel. / X/Defense Department

Additionally, Hegseth, who has faced scrutiny over his drinking and alleged affairs during and between his three marriages, has been repeatedly accused of eroding the separation of church and state.

Among other institutional changes, he has launched a monthly Christian worship series at the Pentagon, where he invited his self-described Christian nationalist pastor, Doug Wilson. The pastor, who has supported repealing women's right to vote and criminalizing homosexuality, delivered a sermon in the Pentagon auditorium.

Hegseth directs military academies to stop giving tenure to civilian professors

Joe Walsh
Tue, September 29, 2026 

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth signed a memo Tuesday directing institutions like the Military Academy at West Point and the Naval Academy in Annapolis to immediately stop granting tenure to civilian faculty, in Hegseth's latest change to military higher education.

"Tenure often leads to academic stagnation, faculty complacency, and institutional inability to adapt to emerging needs," he wrote. "Additionally, it contributes to curriculum that drifts from the mission of educating our warfighters to the research priorities of the tenured academics."

Hegseth said his goal is to "address the structural mechanisms that have allowed civilian academic norms to dilute our focus on lethality."

The move comes two months after CBS News exclusively reported that top Pentagon officials were considering ending civilian tenure at the military academies and launching a "line-by-line" review of their courses, eliminating classes that were judged to be "ideologically driven."

The service academies' teaching staff includes a mixture of active-duty officers and civilians. Only about 25% of the faculty at the Army's West Point academy are civilians, while the Naval Academy has roughly equal numbers of civilians and officers.

For decades, civilian faculty members have been granted tenure. During a Senate hearing last year, Vice Adm. Yvette Davids, then-superintendent of the Naval Academy, described tenure as a "wonderful recruiting tool" that attracts "the best and the brightest."

The service academies have long sought to balance their roles both as military institutions that prepare future officers and accredited, rigorous universities. Retired Lt. Gen. Steven Gilland, former superintendent of the Military Academy, told lawmakers last year the school is designed to equip future military leaders with "the intellectual agility needed to make critical decisions in the chaos of war."

But Hegseth has pushed for sweeping changes, alleging the military's educational system is ideologically skewed. Since he took the helm as defense secretary, the Pentagon has scrutinized library books that address race and gender, cut ties with graduate programs at Harvard and Princeton, and directed the military to halt all instruction on diversity, equity and inclusion.

Hegseth suggested during his Senate confirmation hearings last year that he planned to take aim at civilian faculty.

"We need more uniformed members going back into West Point, the Air Force Academy, the Naval Academy as a tour to teach with their wisdom of what they've learned in uniform," he said, "instead of just more civilian professors that came from the same left-wing, woke universities."