President Trump and Defense Secretary Hegseth Announce New Directives for the Military
President Donald Trump revealed that he wants to use American cities as training grounds for the armed forces and joined Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Tuesday in declaring an end to “woke” culture before an unusual gathering of 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 warned that “America is under invasion from within.”
“After spending trillions of dollars defending the borders of foreign countries, with your help, we’re defending the borders of our country,” Trump said.
Background on the Summit
Hegseth had called military leaders to the Marine Corps base in Quantico, near Washington, without publicly revealing the reason until this morning. His 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.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, center, sitting with Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Air Force Gen. Dan Caine, third from right, and U.S. military senior leadership as they listen to President Donald Trump speaks at Marine Corps Base Quantico, Tuesday, Sept. 30, 2025 in Quantico, Va. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
Evan Vucci / AP
End of Politically Correct Leadership
In keeping with the nonpartisan tradition of the armed services, the military leaders sat mostly stone-faced through Trump’s remarks, a contrast from when rank-and-file soldiers cheered during Trump’s speech at Fort Bragg this summer.
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.
That was echoed by Trump, who said “the purposes of America’s military is not to protect anyone’s feelings. It’s to protect our republic.″
″We will not be politically correct when it comes to defending American freedom,” Trump said. “And we will be a fighting and winning machine.”
Loosening Disciplinary Rules
Hegseth 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.
He 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.”
The defense secretary 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 have 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.
A Navy investigation found that Caserta’s supervisor’s “noted belligerence, vulgarity and brash leadership was likely a significant contributing factor in (the sailor)’s decision to end his own life.”
