Hegseth Moves To End “Woke Department”: Restores “Highest Male Standard,” Physical Intimidation In Training
At a rare in-person gathering for hundreds of U.S. military officials from around the world Tuesday, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and President Trump outlined what they see for the future of U.S. armed forces.
Trump said the military should use American cities as “training grounds” to fight against what he called a “war from within,” defending his legally-questionable deployments of US troops domestically.
Hegseth accused past administrations of turning the Defense Department, now called the Department of War, into “the woke department,” lowering standards for political reasons.
Last week, about 800 general and flag officers at the one-star level and above were told to fly to Quantico, Virginia, from their duty stations without any word about the topic of the meeting.
The extraordinary in-person meeting highlights the administration’s move toward more traditional — even stereotypical — military norms, aiming to restore a “warrior ethos” and roll back past efforts to make the military more inclusive.
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Hegseth unveiled a sweeping overhaul of the U.S. military, outlining 10 new directives aimed at restoring rigorous fitness requirements.
“Standards must be uniform, gender neutral, and high,” Hegseth declared, adding all combat positions will return “to the highest male standard.”
”Would you want [your child] serving with fat or unfit or undertrained troops? Or alongside people who can’t meet basic standards?...The answer is not just no, it’s hell no,” he said.
All service members will not need to pass a PT test and meet height and weight standards twice a year.
Rewind: Back at his confirmation hearing in January, Hegseth said that “women will have access to ground combat roles … given the standards remain high. And we’ll have a review to ensure the standards have not been eroded.”
The line of questioning came after he said in a November 2024 podcast interview, “I’m straight up just saying we should not have women in combat roles” and noted standards being lowered to hit quotas, which critics say is more about bolstering enlistment numbers than gender.
In 2015, a Marine Corps study suggested women lagged in performance and injury rates compared to their male counterparts.