The most recent casualty of Pete Hegseth's troubled tenure as Secretary of Defense is Dan Driscoll, who resigned Monday as Secretary of the Army after repeatedly clashing with Hegseth. Driscoll is not a critic from the political left — he is an old friend of JD Vance from their Yale Law School days. Notably, Driscoll began his Pentagon tenure as Hegseth's own chief of staff before moving to the Army's top civilian job, making his departure a break from within Hegseth's inner circle. According to The Wall Street Journal, he stepped down over concerns that Hegseth is undermining the Army's efforts to modernize and adapt to the 21st-century battlefield — where drone warfare is playing an increasingly central role — by firing or pushing out the leaders who were spearheading those efforts. A defense official in Europe told CNN that despite Hegseth's rhetoric about technology reform, his actual focus has been on "muscles, dudes in dresses, testosterone."

Hegseth's tenure has been problematic from the outset. Rather than delivering sound advice to President Trump, he has pursued grievances about DEI, promoted testosterone, and denigrated or fired women and Black officers.

The Army now has no Senate-confirmed secretary or chief of staff; the nominee to replace General Randy George, General Christopher LaNeve, so far does not have the votes to be confirmed. The double vacancy is unusual for the service: under normal practice, civilian secretaries and uniformed chiefs are confirmed sequentially to preserve continuity of leadership, and extended gaps leave the Army run by officials in acting capacities at the very moment the Pentagon is managing a major regional conflict.

Meanwhile, the Iran war is requiring the ongoing deployment of 19 warships, air-defense units, fighter squadrons and paratroopers across the region — straining service members and their families and creating a maintenance backlog that could take years to unwind, according to The Wall Street Journal.

The Washington Post reports that multiple remaining senior military leaders have warned Hegseth that the United States cannot indefinitely extend military operations against Iran. Even the chief of naval operations, Admiral Daryl Caudle — who campaigned for the job by signaling agreement with Hegseth's culture-war preoccupations — told Hegseth that the Navy cannot "sustain its current level of support for the Iran conflict because there is no anticipated end date." Hegseth's response was to castigate the media for revealing classified information.

I have known many defense secretaries, starting with Cap Weinberger, who served under Reagan. I can say without fear of contradiction that Pete Hegseth is the least qualified of them all.

Hegseth's incompetence and his determination to please Trump helped launch the war against Iran in the first place. Among senior administration officials, Hegseth was the only one who supported Trump's notion of a quick victory. Marco Rubio was against the war, as was JD Vance; even then–Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard told Trump that a war with Iran was not winnable.

Since then, Hegseth has issued a series of contested statements through more than six months of Pentagon turmoil and the Iran war.

At a press briefing in March, Hegseth disputed a CNN report that the Trump administration had underestimated Iran's ability to disrupt global oil traffic by closing the Strait of Hormuz. "Patently ridiculous," Hegseth told reporters, adding — even as the strait's blockage proved to be Iran's most powerful leverage in the war — that "we don't need to worry about it." The claim came as the American public faced soaring gasoline prices directly attributable to that blockage.

He also denied that the U.S. bombed a school where some 175 children were killed — a denial contradicted by mounting evidence that the U.S. did bomb the school. His insistence that the U.S. "never targets civilians" was further challenged by the U.S. military's killing of over 200 people on small boats in the Caribbean without evidence they were "narcoterrorists" rather than civilians.

Hegseth also downplayed the severity of Iranian attacks on U.S. bases in the Persian Gulf that disrupted logistical support for American forces, contributing to deprivations suffered by the crew of the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln.

Hegseth appears to see his role as defending Trump, with claims such as "We didn't start this war, but under President Trump we're finishing it," "America is winning decisively, devastatingly, and without mercy," and "we will show no quarter for our enemies." ("No quarter" — killing everyone and taking no prisoners — constitutes a war crime.)

In the days before the U.S. attack on Iran, Hegseth spent his time criticizing "wokeness" at American universities and pressing Scouting America to abandon diversity programs.

Last year, he shared the military's plans not only with the editor of The Atlantic; it later emerged he shared them with a second Signal group that included his wife, brother, and personal lawyer.

John Ullyot, who resigned as Pentagon spokesman, said Hegseth had brought "total chaos" to the Pentagon and that the Pentagon "is in disarray under Hegseth's leadership."

Hegseth dismisses war crimes, downplays the rules of engagement, and projects unambiguous belligerence at a time when the United States is losing much of its moral standing in the world. He is a clear and present danger to the security of the United States and the world. If Trump won't fire him, Democrats should impeach him if they take over the House next January, and two-thirds of the Senate should convict him.

Robert Reich is a professor of public policy at Berkeley and former secretary of labor. His writings can be found at