Video: Pentagon cutting 20% of senior generals
Announcing the memorandum, titled 'Less Generals, More GIs,' in a video on X, formerly Twitter, Hegseth said, 'We're going to shift resources from bloated headquarters elements to our warfighters.'
Hegseth explained that the U.S. military currently has 44 four-star and flag officers for a force of 2.1 million service members, compared to only 17 four and five-star generals during World War II for a force of 12 million service members. The secretary of defense warned that having a higher number of top generals and admirals 'does not equal more success.'
Addressing the upcoming reduction of four-star generals and flag officers, Hegseth said, 'Now, this is not a slash-and-burn exercise meant to punish high-ranking officers. Nothing could be further from the truth. This has been a deliberative process, working with the Joint Chiefs of Staff with one goal: maximizing strategic readiness and operational effectiveness by making prudent reductions in the general and flag officer ranks.'
READ MORE: Video: SECDEF Hegseth orders 'same standard' for men, women in combat roles
In Monday's video, Hegseth explained that there will be 'two phases' in the 'Less Generals More GIs Policy.' For the first phase, Hegseth has ordered the Pentagon to implement a 20% reduction of four-star and flag officers and a 20% reduction of general and flag officers in the National Guard.
Hegseth also announced that the second phase of the Pentagon's new policy will include an additional 10% reduction in general and flag officers and will be conducted 'in conjunction with a realignment of the Unified Command plan.'
'It's going to be done carefully, but it's going to be done expeditiously,' Hegseth said. 'We confront a complex and evolving threat environment. We cannot afford to wait. We got to be lean and mean. And in this case, it means general officer reductions.'
Introducing the 'Less Generals More GIs Policy.' pic.twitter.com/bQLRL2MqSC — Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth (@SecDef) May 5, 2025
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Politico
39 minutes ago
- Politico
Trump's AI order steers straight into one of DC's biggest arguments
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Ted Cruz (R-Texas) to Trump himself, who have complained about 'woke' AI and the wider role of tech companies in moderating online speech. Other provisions call for eliminating federal AI rules intended to support diversity and inclusion, and limit misinformation. 'It is essential that these systems be built from the ground up with freedom of speech and expression in mind,' one section reads. The policy marks a sharp about-face from President Joe Biden, who also saw AI as an important vehicle for American values — but focused on a different set of values, and a different definition of bias. When he issued a sweeping executive order on AI in 2023, it emphasized eliminating discrimination and bias against marginalized groups. Reflecting liberal concerns about AI, it addressed fairness in AI decision-making — and also would have forced corporations to be more transparent about their most powerful AI models. The new plan evokes the wider culture war that has roped in Big Tech companies at every level. Republicans have been raging for years against what they allege is an anti-conservative bent on social media platforms — especially after Trump and other Republicans were widely deplatformed for their posts after the riot of Jan. 6, 2021. Republicans in Congress have hauled in a number of Big Tech CEOs for hearings on how content moderation might suppress conservative viewpoints. Musk, an erstwhile Trump ally, even bought Twitter for $44 billion to turn it into the laissez-faire public square now known as X. The notion of AI specifically being 'woke' has riled up the GOP as of late. AI and crypto czar David Sacks, who helped develop the action plan, has been demonizing 'woke AI' during his White House tenure. Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), Sen. Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.) and other Republicans in Congress sent letters to Google last year demanding information on why its Gemini model generated an image of a Black George Washington. For all the attention to the problem, figuring out how to promote open discourse and objective truths on social media has been a tough knot to untie. The same may be true for AI, which some argue can never be truly neutral. 'The Trump framing ignores a crucial technical reality: every AI model reflects the values, priorities, and perspectives of its creators,' Alondra Nelson, a sociologist who was an architect of Biden's AI policy, wrote to DFD. So how does the White House think it can solve it? A senior White House aide told reporters Wednesday that the General Services Administration is expected to come up with contractual language that would require federally procured models to be ideologically balanced. Gracie Englund, press secretary for Lummis, told DFD in a statement that a clear goal of the action plan is to ensure that 'AI serves as a reliable tool that reflects reality rather than any particular agenda.' As an indicator of just how divisive the idea of 'bias' can be, Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.), has already sent letters to Google, Meta and four other Big Tech companies advising them that the anti-bias provisions in the AI Action Plan would unconstitutionally force them to 'adopt certain political viewpoints.' 'I don't quite even know what it means for an LLM to show liberal bias,' said Suresh Venkatasubramanian, a computer scientist who served in the Biden White House's Office of Science and Technology Policy. He told DFD that bias of some kind is all but unavoidable. Developers of any LLM have to put guardrails on its output, and those decisions can often be construed as ideologically tilted. 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Guidelines roll out for AI education grants The Education Department issued guidance Tuesday regarding school districts' use of federal dollars for artificial intelligence in the classroom, POLITICO's Morning Education team reports. The department is encouraging funds to be used for AI instructional tools, AI-enhanced tutoring and AI-assisted career exploration and college advising. The letter also outlines a set of principles when using AI, such as ensuring its implementation is teacher-led and in compliance with education privacy law. The department's proposal is open to a 30-day public comment on the Federal Register. The appropriations committee talks tech in new report The House Appropriations Committee is asking a number of federal agencies about their tech plans as it makes funding decisions for next year, reports POLITICO's Cassandra Dumay. The committee released a report on Wednesday for a fiscal 2026 bill that will fund science agencies, as well as the Justice and Commerce departments. The committee requested more information from agencies on topics ranging from semiconductors to renewable energy infrastructure. Appropriators also directed NASA and the National Science Foundation to develop plans for how they will distribute funds to universities that allegedly fail to punish antisemitic behavior. Appropriators called on the Bureau of Industry and Security to investigate the economic and national security risks of using foreign-made solar panels in the U.S. They further directed the Patent and Trademark Office to look into relaxing guidelines for inventions that are partly developed by AI, and pressed the Commerce Department to focus on U.S.-based mineral projects when awarding funding from the CHIPS Act. 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New York Post
41 minutes ago
- New York Post
Dem Senator Elissa Slotkin complains party is too worried about ‘p—ing off' the Internet
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Time Magazine
42 minutes ago
- Time Magazine
To Bounce Back, Democrats Need a New John F. Kennedy Moment
Democrats are still reeling from their second defeat at the hands of President Donald Trump in eight years. They are fighting back against his policies while trying to assess where the party went wrong and how to rejuvenate its hopes. Thankfully for them, the Democratic Party's almost 200 year history offers cause for hope. Democrats have bounced back many times before, including seminal victories in 1912, 1932, 1960, 1992, and 2008. This history reveals that Democrats win when they present their own, clear vision for the country and a concrete platform articulating just what they will do if victorious—one that connects with the public's interests, desires, and needs. No case better illustrates this paradigm than John F. Kennedy's win in 1960. Democrats had controlled the White House from 1933 until 1952, when Republican Dwight Eisenhower, a World War II leader who promised to end the Korean War and to uproot corruption in Washington, beat their lackluster presidential candidate, Illinois Governor Adlai Stevenson. That led to a period in which Democrats struggled to figure out what the party stood for. But the creation of the Democratic Advisory Council (DAC) in 1957 helped to develop a new, forward-thinking agenda. And Kennedy provided a youthful, charismatic spokesperson. This combination catapulted Democrats back to the White House and led to major domestic policy achievements over the next eight years. Early in 1953, economist and Democratic strategist John K. Galbraith issued a call to action. He observed that his party understood that opposing Eisenhower and his agenda wasn't sufficient to rebound. Yet, 'it would be hard at this moment to say what the Democratic Party is for.' Galbraith acknowledged that his party had broad principles. Democrats favored 'tidying up the unfinished business of the New Deal' and wanted to expand the economy. But virtually no one could explain what that might involve in 'any great detail.' Read More: Remember JFK Not for His Assassination, But for His Civil Rights Advocacy Initially, party leaders ignored Galbraith's plea. In 1956, Eisenhower beat Stevenson by an even bigger margin than he had in 1952, despite Democrats adopting a slightly more progressive platform shaped by Galbraith and his reform-minded colleagues. The second consecutive loss suggested that only more dramatic changes could produce a Democratic comeback. In 1957, Democratic National Committee Chair Paul Butler established the DAC to stake out issues that would support a positive platform in 1960. The Council identified five policy stances that should anchor the party's agenda: federal aid to education, a national health insurance program (the forerunner of Medicare), housing for the elderly, urban renewal, and a firm stance on civil rights. It selected some of these positions because of concerns percolating up from the grassroots. For example, the public wanted a stronger educational system. As the DAC recognized, however, many states 'cannot do all that must be done and financial assistance from the Federal government has become imperative.' Similarly, the DAC's 'Policy Statement' noted that the growth in families in the 1960s was projected to require 'doubling the annual rate of house production to a level of about 2,000,000 per year.' The country also confronted 'the necessity to proceed rapidly with slum clearance and urban renewal.' On other issues, the DAC was simply reemphasizing longstanding Democratic priorities. Presidents Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman had proposed national health insurance, only to see opposition from the American Medical Association and indifference by Republican leaders kill it. Many of the DAC's positions found their way into the 1960 Democratic platform. But a better agenda alone wasn't sufficient. Democrats needed a fresh messenger, and Kennedy fit the bill. The Massachusetts senator had youth and charisma and he was vigorous and dashing. He also came across well on the new medium of the day—television. Kennedy projected an energetic America; he promised "to get this country moving again," and he used the word "future" often in campaign speeches. Kennedy and the Democrats captured the public spirit of the times: a desire for change and a sense of America's potential. There was a growing public restlessness. The Soviet Union's 1957 launch of Sputnik, the first earth satellite, had jarred Americans into realizing that they were falling behind in science and education. The widespread, though incorrect, perception that the Soviets had more intercontinental ballistic missiles than the U.S.—the so-called missile gap—also fueled a sense that the U.S. was slipping. This prodded Americans away from the complacency of the post-war era and toward a more progressive and assertive attitude on everything from Civil Rights to scientific research. Even Eisenhower knew that the public was losing faith in the status quo. In 1960, he empaneled a 'Commission on National Goals.' Its report, Goals for Americans, called for investment in education and the arts, while recommending progressive economic policies to keep the economy expanding and unemployment low. The report also called for 'equality of justice and opportunity, better government, better education, better medical care, more productive economy.' But Americans were alienated for reasons that ran even deeper. As part of a series in Life magazine and The New York Times on 'the national purpose,' historian Clinton Rossiter explained that the nation had lost the 'youthful sense of mission' that had propelled it to greatness. We were once a people 'on the make' but now Americans were more like a people who 'has it made,' content to tolerate mediocrity and unwilling to energetically confront new challenges. Other writers sounded the same theme: it was time to get America out of its mood of complacency and moving into the future. Democrats capitalized on these sentiments. In his opening speech to the Democratic Convention in Los Angeles, Butler set the tone. 'In the day when our republic was young, national ideals overwhelmed all else,' he said. 'Today, almost everything else seems to overwhelm national ideals. If there is any meaning to the American purpose, it has become obscured in eight years of purposelessness.' Kennedy's acceptance speech built on that theme: America needed to do better—and could with the right leadership. The candidate promised an exciting future but one that would require meeting challenges: '[T]he American people expect more from us than cries of indignation and attack. The times are too grave, the challenge too urgent, and the stakes too high‚to permit the customary passions of political debate…. Today our concern must be with [the] future.' Read More: What These 3 Longstanding JFK Myths Reveal About America The nation needed to deal with the threat of Soviet communism abroad. At home, 'an urban population explosion has overcrowded our schools, cluttered up our suburbs, and increased the squalor of our slums.' Further, the 'peaceful revolution' for civil rights demanding an end to racial discrimination 'has strained at the leashes imposed by timid executive leadership.' Like the essayists in Life and The New York Times, the candidate recognized that the country needed more than policy prescriptions. 'Too many Americans have lost their way, their will and their sense of historic purpose. It is a time, in short, for a new generation of leadership—new men to cope with new problems and new opportunities.' Kennedy called for the nation to advance a 'New Frontier,' a term that 'sums up not what I intend to offer the American people, but what I intend to ask of them.' Meanwhile, Kennedy's opponent, Vice President Richard Nixon, seemed to embody what voters were tiring of—the stale complacency and status quo of the 1950s. Kennedy put it this way in one of his final campaign rallies, on Nov. 1: 'Mr. Nixon and the Republicans stand for the past. We stand for the future.' Some may say it was an oversimplification, but it connected with the public. Arthur Schlesinger Jr., who served as a Kennedy advisor, explained that he won by stressing 'peril, uncertainty, sacrifice, and purpose." These new ideas resonated with voters. Kennedy narrowly defeated Nixon, ushering in eight years of Democratic control and seminal achievements: the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act, enactment of Medicare and Medicaid, and more. Today, Democrats are once again in the doldrums. But they can rebound by following the prescription that elevated John F. Kennedy to the White House. They need to provide fresh answers that address the problems plaguing the U.S. Once they have an agenda, the party will also need a youthful, charismatic candidate to communicate this agenda. That combination will convince voters that the Democrats are the party of the future, while Republicans are the party of the status quo. Bruce W. Dearstyne is a historian in Albany, New York. His most recent book is Progressive New York: Change and Reform in the Empire State, 1900-1920 -- A Reader (2024). His next book, Revolutionary New York: 250 Years of Social Change, will be published early in 2026. Made by History takes readers beyond the headlines with articles written and edited by professional historians. Learn more about Made by History at TIME here. Opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of TIME editors.
