A chief campaign promise from President-elect Donald Trump — which has also been echoed by his secretary of defense pick Pete Hegseth — centers on getting rid of military generals who they deem as too “woke.”
“I would fire them. You can’t have woke military,” Trump said in a Fox News interview in June summing up his views.
“Any general that was involved — general, admiral, whatever — that was involved in any of the DEI woke shit, it’s got to go,” Hegseth said in a podcast interview released in November that was conducted prior to his nomination.
They claim the military has been so distracted by efforts to promote diversity in its ranks that it’s negatively affected the body’s readiness for conflicts as well as its ability to recruit new soldiers. Pentagon officials have refuted these statements, however. And a 2022 RAND Corporation report laid out key ways that leveraging diversity could be beneficial to the military and its ability to develop new technology and build stronger teams. According to many national security experts, there’s scant evidence to support Trump and Hegseth’s claims.
That said, if Trump wants to fire generals once he takes office, he can.
“The president has unilateral authority to fire general officers,” says Katherine Kuzminski, the director of the military, veterans, and society program at the Center for a New American Security, a think tank specializing in national security. Under the wide-ranging powers presidents are given by the Constitution as the country’s commander-in-chief, they can remove generals at will over a loss of confidence in their leadership.
According to a Wall Street Journal report, the incoming administration is already laying the groundwork for such firings. Per a draft executive order the publication obtained, the Trump White House is considering establishing a “warrior board” of former generals and military officials who will be dedicated to reviewing current military leaders. Following their review, the panel will reportedly determine which officers they’d like to remove, with the aim of retiring them at their existing rank within 20 days.
Trump has only spoken in sweeping terms about changes to military leadership, so it’s unclear exactly how many high-ranking troops might be fired. However, were the president-elect to follow through on his promises — particularly at a larger scale — they could have a disruptive effect on military operations.
A mass firing would need to be followed with the elevation of lots of new leaders, some of whom might lack the experience of their predecessors. Several national security experts also told Vox they worry about the message a mass firing would send — including the idea that military officials have to express political views in line with Trump’s in order to hold onto their jobs.
Trump has avenues to “fire” generals
There are two ways Trump could get rid of top generals.
The first is to issue an explicit call to resign. The second is the removal of a military leader’s assignment. For example, three- and four-star generals, the highest levels an officer can achieve, attain that rank because they’re given an assignment — like being named chief of staff of a military branch — and have responsibilities related to it. If that assignment was revoked, they’d revert to two-star rank. Typically, leaders who lose assignments retire, military experts note.
That’s because individuals maintain their title and benefits upon retirement. Those who retire at a higher rank stand to receive thousands more in retirement pay than those who revert to a lower rank. So, a three-star general about to lose their assignment would likely retire in order to hold onto better retirement benefits than a two-star one.
“If you have the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff or another senior military leader holding a particular position of command or responsibility, the president can relieve them pretty much on a very vague notion that he’s lost confidence in their ability to lead,” Victor Hansen, a New England Law school professor and former judge advocate general in the Army, tells Vox.
There’s little recourse for generals to appeal a decision to remove them from their assignments, experts tell Vox. And since military officers serve at what’s often described as “the pleasure of the president,” there’s not much Congress can do to intervene beyond holding hearings to raise awareness about potential staffing changes.
In the less likely scenario that a general chooses not to retire from the military — and chooses to go back to a lower rank — the president could also try to kick them out of the armed services completely, if he wanted them fully out of the military. The process for doing so is more complicated, however.
In the 186os, Congress approved legislation that limits a president’s ability to entirely dismiss someone from the military. Under this policy, the individual in question needs to either face a sentence from a court-martial to be removed, have a court-martial sentence commuted, or be dismissed during a time of war by the president.
Because the policy is relatively vague — including in what it defines as a “time of war” — the president still has significant leeway to terminate individuals, but any attempt to do so could face court challenges.
If Trump does remove senior military leaders, he also wouldn’t be able to replace them on his own. Nomination of new generals of three- and four-star status requires Senate confirmation.
Any attempt to follow through on these promises would set a disturbing new precedent
There are past examples of presidents firing generals, though there isn’t a precedent of the type of wholesale purge Trump has alluded to.
Previously, President Harry Truman fired Gen. Douglas MacArthur due to disagreements they had over the handling of the Korean War. President Barack Obama also fired Gen. Stanley McChrystal after he made disparaging comments about Obama’s approach to the war in Afghanistan and criticized other members of the White House.
Trump’s plans would be unique because they aren’t founded upon a general’s specific approach to a military conflict and would be tied more to their perceived political ideology, given Republicans tend to have a far more negative view of diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives than Democrats. The scope of potential firings could also make his approach different.
Some military experts warn that a mass firing could create the very problem Trump’s allies say they are trying to solve: that removing lots of leaders at once could hurt readiness.
“It would be very disruptive,” Hansen told Vox. “There’s ongoing operational combatant commanders. They’re in the thick of it all over the world now.”
And other national security experts told Vox that forcing military leaders to ascribe to a certain views on diversity could be seen as a personal loyalty test for Trump, given his stated positions.
“There’s the fear that these processes will be perverted by an administration that’s bent on revenge, retaliation, and on vetting officers based on loyalty tests to the president versus loyalty to the Constitution,” says Rachel VanLandingham, a professor at Southwestern Law School and a former active duty judge advocate in the Air Force. “That’s how we become an authoritarian state when you have the most powerful military in the world that’s swearing an oath… not to their Constitution and to the American people, but to a person.”
