Senator demands Hegseth's firing; he answers with a new base, a new command and a new university partnership.

As it ran on the front

The month runs in a straight line, and the line only bends one direction. On September 2, Senator Thom Tillis, a former member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, called on the administration to fire Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth over what he called "inept management," pointing to the resignation of Army Secretary Dan Driscoll — a departure the same dispatch explains only as the result of "repeatedly clashing," with whom the wire's sentence never finishes saying. The next day, Vice President JD Vance told reporters the wave of military departures under Hegseth amounted to a needed "culture shift," and that same day the former Air Force secretary, Frank Kendall, who served under Biden and Obama, called the department under Hegseth "dysfunctional." Thirteen days later, September 15, Representative Thomas Massie introduced articles of impeachment against Hegseth, citing military action against Iran that Massie said Congress never approved. The next day, the Pentagon set the terms for the room Hegseth would eventually stand in: a Wall Street Journal report, relayed by the Hill, said troops summoned to a coming "State of the Force" address would need to clear waist-to-height and grooming standards to get through the door. On September 21, a Washington Examiner newsletter titled the coming days a "testosterone-fueled weekend." The next day, Hegseth's office announced a new battlefield test for promotion to general, a "Joint Warfighter Evaluation" his office called an "equalizer."

Then came Wednesday. And he announced a "patriotic" officer training program in partnership with select universities, the Daily Caller's word for it: exclusive.…