U.S. President Donald Trump and U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth declared an end to “woke” culture in the military and targeted other policies of past administrations Tuesday before hundreds of top U.S. military officials who were abruptly summoned to Virginia from around the world.
Hegseth announced new directives for troops that include “gender-neutral” or “male-level” standards for physical fitness, while Trump bragged about U.S. nuclear capabilities and criticized the military leaders’ previous commander in chief, U.S. President Joe Biden.
“We must be so strong that no nation will dare challenge us, so powerful that no enemy will dare threaten us,” Trump said. ”And so capable that no adversary can even think about beating us.”
Hegseth had called military leaders to convene at the Marine Corps base in Quantico, near Washington, without publicly revealing the reason until this morning. Hegseth’s address largely focused on his own long-used talking points that painted a picture of a military that has been hamstrung by “woke” policies, and he said military leaders should “do the honorable thing and resign” if they don’t like his new approach.
Meetings between top military brass and civilian leaders are nothing new, but the gathering had fueled intense speculation about the summit’s purpose given the haste with which it was called and the mystery surrounding it.
Admirals and generals from conflict zones in the Middle East and elsewhere were summoned for a lecture on race and gender in the military, underscoring the extent to which the country’s culture wars have emerged as a front-and-center agenda item for Hegseth’s Pentagon, even at a time of broad national security concerns across the globe.
During his nearly hour-long speech, Hegseth said the U.S. military has promoted too many leaders for the wrong reasons based on race, gender quotas and “historic firsts.”
“The era of politically correct, overly sensitive don’t-hurt-anyone’s-feelings leadership ends right now at every level,” Hegseth said.
He said he is loosening disciplinary rules and weakening hazing protections, putting a heavy focus on removing many of the guardrails the military had put in place after numerous scandals and investigations.
Hegseth said he was ordering a review of “the department’s definitions of so-called toxic leadership, bullying and hazing to empower leaders to enforce standards without fear of retribution or second guessing.”
He called for “changes to the retention of adverse information on personnel records that will allow leaders with forgivable, earnest, or minor infractions to not be encumbered by those infractions in perpetuity.”
“People make honest mistakes, and our mistakes should not define an entire career,” Hegseth said. “Otherwise, we only try not to make mistakes.”
Bullying and toxic leadership has been the suspected and confirmed cause behind numerous military suicides over the past several years, including the very dramatic suicide of Brandon Caserta, a young sailor who was bullied into killing himself in 2018.
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