Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth is seeking a drastic cut to the number of high-ranking military officials.
According to CNN, a new memo issued by President Donald Trump's Pentagon chief directs the department to cut 20 percent of four-star generals and admirals, and "also directs the Pentagon to cut the number of general officers in the National Guard by 20%, and to cut the total number of general and flag officers across the military by 10%. There are currently about 900 general and flag officers — those with the rank of one star or higher — across the military."
Hegseth is describing the move as a “critical” step to “removing redundant force structure to optimize and streamline leadership by reducing excess general and flag officer positions.”
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But this comes after Trump spent months entertaining the idea of firing generals, after being constantly frustrated in his first term by senior military officials he had promoted to top administration positions, only for them to push back on many of his more controversial and illegal policy orders.
Hegseth, for his part, has long wanted to wage war on military leadership as well, explaining in a podcast last year that “I would say over a third [of generals] are actively complicit" in politicizing the military, "and then you have a lot of grumblers who are sort of going along, trying to resist the nonsense as much as they can, but they’re not fundamentally changing it.”
Trump's Pentagon chief has battled an avalanche of controversies in recent weeks, most notably the Signalgate scandal, in which it was revealed that he and other high-ranking national security officials leaked highly sensitive military war plans in group chats to journalists and other people not cleared to receive that information.
