The resignation of Army Secretary Dan Driscoll underlines how Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is increasingly imposing his will on the Pentagon after nearly 20 months in the role. Driscoll’s departure, which came sooner than expected, followed months of tensions with Hegseth, who has forced out or stalled the promotions of dozens of…
Page A8From§Eachthe early evening edition — 1 September 2026
Hegseth targets seven more officers; his own Army secretary resigns days later.
As it ran on the front
Let's call this what it is instead of what the press release says it is. 'Hegseth Targets 7 More Officers' is not personnel management, it's a target list, and the word 'targets' is doing the work of about four euphemisms at once — 'restructuring,' 'realignment,' 'streamlining,' 'ensuring alignment with priorities.' Strip those away and what's left is: the Secretary of Defense is picking off Army officers by name, seven of them, on top of however many came before, and the person whose actual job it was to run the Army looked at that list and quit.
That's the part that should stop you cold. Not the seven officers — officers get moved, promoted, forced out, that's the machine working as designed, sometimes ugly, usually survivable. It's that the Army Secretary, Driscoll, the person appointed to run the institution day to day, took one look at how Hegseth was 'imposing his will' — their words, not mine — and decided their signature wasn't going anywhere near it. You don't resign from running the United States Army over a scheduling conflict. You resign because you can see the org chart being rewritten around you and you don't want your name on what comes out the other side.…
…(cont) This is the oldest move in the authoritarian playbook and it's not subtle once you see it: you don't need to fire everybody who might push back, you just need to make it clear what happens to the ones who do, and let the rest sort themselves out the door. Seven officers targeted, one secretary gone — that's not a coincidence, that's a demonstration.
And here's the stakes part nobody's saying out loud: this is the United States Army. Not a cable news network, not a state agency board — the institution that runs the actual chain of command for the actual guys with the actual guns. When the civilian secretary meant to check that power walks away rather than sign off on how it's being reshaped, the check didn't fail. It resigned. Somebody still has to run that building tomorrow morning, and right now the answer is whoever Hegseth targets next.
“When the Secretary starts picking off officers one by one and the person running the Army walks out the door right after, that's not turnover, that's a purge with a press release. You don't lose your own service secretary over a policy disagreement — you lose them because they saw where this was headed and got out before their name was on the list.”
“Personnel changes happen in every administration; Secretary Hegseth is simply ensuring the Army's leadership aligns with the Commander-in-Chief's priorities. Secretary Driscoll's departure was a personal decision, unrelated to — well, it was announced the same week as the officer review, but timing isn't causation, it's just... very close timing.”
The receipts
The defense secretary’s cuts, which have hit about 10 percent of the military’s top officers, are dividing the Pentagon, officials said.
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front.