Pete Hegseth Announces Unhinged Changes to Military Training

War Secretary Pete Hegseth announced Tuesday that he plans to reduce mandatory training, and use hazing to get his soldiers ready for a fight.

Speaking at a meeting of hundreds of U.S. military officials he’d summoned to Washington, Hegseth explained that he wanted to shift training standards to improve retention. Doing that would involve “drastically reducing the ridiculous amount of mandatory training that individuals and units must execute,” he said.

“We’ve already ended the most egregious, now we’re giving you back real time. Less Powerpoint briefings, and fewer online courses. More time in the motor pool, and more time on the range,” Hegseth said.

It’s not entirely clear what online training Hegseth hoped to skip, but he seemed intent on getting officers off the computer and outside. But even in the military, learning is done in a classroom.

For example, Army mandatory training requires trainees to complete virtual courses on anti-trafficking and anti-terrorism, threat awareness, and information security and awareness. But it shouldn’t be all that surprising that Hegseth may be willing to skip out on a course teaching Operational Security, after he shamelessly sent war plans into a group chat with a civilian journalist.

The Army previously reduced the mandatory training standards in April, making it optional for officers to learn the law of war, including what Hegseth termed Tuesday as “the politically correct rules of engagement,” as well as the soldiers’ code of conduct.

If virtual classes won’t teach recruits, what will? Hegseth has an answer: hazing.

“Basic training is being restored to what it should be: scary, tough, and disciplined. We’re empowering drill sergeants to instill healthy fear in new recruits, ensuring future war fighters are forged,” Hegseth said.

“Yes, they can shark attack, they can toss bunks, they can swear, and yes they can put their hands on recruits. This does not mean they can be reckless, or violate the law, but they can use tried and true methods to motivate the troops, to make them the warriors they need to be,” Hegseth continued.

“The tougher and the higher the standards in our units, the higher the retention rates in those units. Warriors want to be challenged, troops want to be tested. When you don’t train and you don’t maintain, you demoralize,” he said.

In fact, combat-deployed soldiers who experience hazing are statistically more likely to experience mental health problems and thoughts of suicide.

While working to improve morale on one end by making training more hands-on, Hegseth plans to remove safeguards preventing trainees from targeted violence from their superiors, as part of his sweeping efforts to transform the U.S. military into a mindless, lawless militia.

Women can say goodbye to combat opportunities in the U.S. military.

Speaking to hundreds of America’s top military commanders at a mandatory in-person assembly in Quantico Tuesday morning, War Secretary Pete Hegseth unveiled his latest efforts to de-woke the country’s armed forces. Unfortunately for half of the population, that included resetting military combat requirements to the “highest male standard only.”

“When it comes to any job that requires physical power to perform in combat, those physical standards must be high and gender neutral,” Hegseth said. “If women can make it, excellent. If not, it is what it is. If that means no women qualify for some combat jobs, so be it.”

Women made up 17.3 percent of America’s active-duty force in 2021, with more than 231,000 members. That same year, they composed 21.4 percent of the National Guard, according to a demographics report from the War Department.

“But in many ways it’s not their fault, as foolish and reckless as the ‘woke department’ was, those officers were following elected political leadership,” Hegseth said. “An entire generation of generals and admirals were told that they must parrot the insane fallacy that ‘our diversity is our strength.’

“They had to put out dizzying DEI and LGBTQI+ statements. They were told males and females are the same thing. Or that males who think they’re females are totally normal,” he continued.

Despite fearmongering over the supposed rampant encroachment of transgenderism, an August study by UCLA’s Williams Institute found that less than 1 percent of the country actually identifies as transgender. Their representation among those in uniform is even lower—about 0.2 percent of the country’s military has received a diagnosis of gender dysphoria, according to February figures from the military.

But fueling the culture wars was at the forefront of Hegseth’s mind. The former Fox News host’s new policies will also discriminate against enlisted people of color by nixing medical beard waivers, a decision that will disproportionately affect Black service members due to the potentially injurious effects of frequently shaving their faces, given the curl pattern of their hair.

“No more beardos,” Hegseth said. “Calling someone to shave, or work hard, is exactly the kind of work force we want.”

(The military has a long and strange history with beards, changing its hygiene requirements and regulations every few decades.)

Any service member who disagreed with the order was welcome to resign, according to Hegseth.

“If the words I’m speaking today are making your heart sink, then you should do the honorable thing and resign,” Hegseth said. “We would thank you for your service.”

Hegseth has openly said before that he does not believe women should serve in combat roles. During a November interview on the Shawn Ryan Show, Hegseth said, “I’m straight-up just saying we should not have women in combat roles. It hasn’t made us more effective. Hasn’t made us more lethal. Has made fighting more complicated.”

The leader of America’s armed forces risked U.S. national security Tuesday in order to taunt the Trump administration’s perceived foreign enemies.

Speaking to the country’s top military commanders during an unprecedented mandatory in-person assembly, Pete Hegseth emphasized that the recently renamed War Department was reimagined for a reason.

“To our enemies: FAFO,” Hegseth said, using an acronym that translates to “Fuck around and find out.”

Hegseth ordered hundreds of U.S. military officials around the globe to meet him at a spontaneous assembly in Virginia, keeping the details of the gathering extremely hush-hush.

There are approximately 800 U.S. generals and admirals in total. Hegseth’s order applied to “all senior officers with the rank of brigadier general or above, or their Navy equivalent, serving in command positions and their top enlisted advisers,” insiders told The Washington Post. It does not apply to military officers who hold staff positions.

The message shocked members of the U.S. military, who could not recall another instance in which a defense secretary summoned so many commanders for a sudden in-person meeting—especially without a clear rationale. Some warned that having so many integral military leaders in one place could pose a national security risk.

As it turns out, the rationale was to rail against the culture wars. Hegseth, pacing back and forth onstage, also leveraged his time in front of America’s military to criticize “woke” ideology. He ordered the armed forces to reset its combat requirements to the “highest male standard only,” a decision that would effectively force women out of the military.

“If women can make it, excellent. If not, it is what it is,” Hegseth said.

The Pentagon chief also nixed medical beard waivers, a decision that will disproportionately affect Black service members due to the curl pattern of the hair on their face.

“No more beardos,” Hegseth said. “Calling someone to shave, or work hard, is exactly the kind of workforce we want.”

New reporting from MSNBC thickens the Tom Homan bribery plot.

Earlier this month, the outlet revealed that Homan was caught accepting $50,000 in cash from undercover agents in September 2024, as part of an FBI investigation that’s since been closed by the Trump administration. The soon-to-be border czar had reportedly promised the agents, who posed as businessmen, he’d help them secure federal contracts once Trump won the election and he assumed his post.

On Monday, MSNBC reported that the FBI investigation into Homan began after Julian Calderas—a former ICE official, who worked under Homan during the Obama administration—allegedly told the undercover agents that Homan could help them eventually score contracts if they coughed up $1 million.

Calderas, who, like Homan at the time, ran his own private government contracting consulting firm, allegedly brought the plan to the undercover agents in May 2023—which ultimately led to the meeting in which Homan accepted the $50,000, and during which Calderas also reportedly accepted $10,000.

According to “sources familiar with the probe,” MSNBC reports, the FBI felt it must initiate an investigation into Homan “after Calderas told agents in an unrelated investigation that Homan was willing to influence which companies would win federal contracts in a second Trump administration in exchange for money.”

When asked if he knew about the criminal investigation, Calderas told MSNBC “I know nothing about this,” and, “If this is the case, I’m going to need to talk to my lawyer.”

That the Homan investigation branched off of an existing investigation into Calderas—an associate and supporter of Homan, per his digital footprint—cuts against the Trump administration’s already fatuous argument that Homan was the victim of a “blatantly political investigation” by the Biden administration “to target President Trump’s allies.”

Democratic Illinois Governor JB Pritzker once again used his bully pulpit to rebuke President Trump after federal agents marched through downtown Chicago, kidnapped people, shot a pepper ball (essentially a paintball full of pepper spray) at a journalist’s vehicle, and fired tear gas at peaceful protesters.

“In any other country, if federal agents fired upon journalists and protesters, when unprovoked, what would we call it? If federal agents marched down busy streets, harassing civilians and demanding their papers, what would we say? I don’t think we’d have any trouble calling it what it is: authoritarianism,” Pritzker said at a press conference Monday afternoon. “So let’s not pretend it’s something else when it happens in our American cities.”

This weekend, there was a surge in federal immigration enforcement in Chicago as armed agents patrolled the city. Pritzker on Monday said that Trump is also planning to deploy 100 military troops to Illinois.

Chicago has been on Trump’s hit list since Trump announced his federal takeover of Washington, D.C., in August, along with multiple other mostly Black cities like Baltimore and Memphis. Earlier this month, Trump posted an AI-generated image of himself dressed as Lieutenant Colonel Kilgore—Robert Duvall’s character from Apocalypse Now—with Chicago burning in the background.

Pritzker—along with California’s Gavin Newsom—has been among the loudest voices as governors across America prepare to have their power and state sovereignty stripped. Only time will tell how much they’ll be able to stop Trump, as any resistance to the president’s draconian federal invasions will require cohesion from state leaders, local leaders, businesses, and neighbors. A fight is certainly coming, and Pritzker and Chicago seem up for it.