‘The Army Is Collapsing Under a Defense Secretary’s Arbitrary Rule’: Army Secretary Resigns After Appealing Directly to Trump

Dan Driscoll went to the White House to tell Donald Trump that the U.S. Army’s leadership gaps had become too serious to ignore. He then resigned as Army secretary, according to The Atlantic, which cited multiple sources.

Driscoll reportedly warned that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s mass dismissals and decisions to block promotions had left vacancies among senior Army officers and were disrupting the military’s planned modernization. Trump was said to have been surprised by the scale of the vacancies and concerned about the rapid reduction of the command structure.

Hegseth has pursued what the article describes as a “culture war” against progressive ideas in the military, including “wokeness” and political correctness. The article says his personnel policy has removed or passed over Black and female senior officers, while also pressuring officers who did not support the approach to leave. Driscoll, a former Army lieutenant and longtime acquaintance of Vice President JD Vance from Yale Law School, ultimately did not remain in the post.

Driscoll had led an effort to modernize drone capabilities that saw extensive use in the war in Ukraine. The Atlantic said the dismissals and personnel actions had left the Army, which operates 450,000 troops around the world, with fewer generals than at any point in its history.

The personnel shake-up continued. The New York Times reported that Hegseth was seeking to remove seven Army officers whose promotions to major general had already been approved. Two were Black and two were women. More than 80 military officers had reportedly been fired or passed over for promotion by Hegseth.

One senior officer in Italy’s 137th Airborne Brigade was passed over for brigadier general after allowing a mentoring group for female paratroopers and women-only airborne training. An Army official said those policies had existed before the officer arrived, but that fact was not taken into account. Another female officer had been selected for promotion for her leading role in developing the Maven system, which analyzes information to identify bombing targets, but the reason for her being passed over remained unclear.

Driscoll’s resignation leaves the Army without a Senate-confirmed leader. Acting Army Chief of Staff Christopher LaNeve, the vice chief, has not cleared the Senate because of opposition from some Republicans. Concerns have also grown over the gap between a military in which more than 40% of personnel are nonwhite and a senior leadership that remains overwhelmingly white and male. The New York Times counted eight women among 201 military officers and admirals promoted this year, or 4%, the lowest share in 25 years.