Called inept and facing impeachment, Hegseth cuts a fifth of generals and calls it bare minimum.

…(cont) Six days later, September 22, Hegseth posted a video announcing what he called a "Joint Warfighter Evaluation," a new battlefield test standing between a colonel or Navy captain and a first star. He framed it as a cut to "bureaucracy" and a demand for "true meritocracy." What the evaluation actually changes about who gets picked, the department did not say that day, and it has not said it since.

Then on September 30, at Quantico, in an address to a room already screened for waistline and haircut, he supplied the number the video had left out: a 20 percent cut to the slots reserved for generals and admirals, which he called the "bare minimum." In the same address he announced a new officer training program, built in partnership with a slate of universities the Pentagon picked itself, branded "patriotic."

Line up the month and count what got narrower. The professors who can teach a cadet: fewer, every tenured civilian now barred. The universities that can train an officer: fewer, a hand-picked list instead of an open field. The colonels eligible for a star: fewer, run first through an evaluation the department has not explained. The seats open to become a general or admiral: fewer, cut by a fifth, on the Secretary's own word the floor and not the ceiling.

Two lawmakers from two parties spent September asking for less of Pete Hegseth. A senator asked for his job. A House member filed the paperwork to take it. He answered both by holding more of the building than he did in August — more hiring authority, more say over promotion, more control of the curriculum — and called the smallest of those moves the bare minimum.