Author’s Note: The following article contains facts, public records, and journalistic inquiries regarding Secretary Pete Hegseth’s policies. When I attempted to research this topic, ChatGPT completely blocked the line of inquiry, stating the content couldn't be shown for safety reasons. This is the blog post the AI didn't want you to see.
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Beginning around 2013, the Army researched and developed the Occupational Physical Assessment Test (OPAT). Those standards were based on years of research into the physical demands of combat occupations. The Army is now using new standards, including the Army Fitness Test (AFT) and Combat Field Test (CFT), but questions remain about how their development and validation compare with the extensive research behind OPAT.
Last year, the Secretary called all of his high-ranking military leaders to a meeting. This is what AP News had to say about it.
By JULIE WATSON, LAURIE KELLMAN and DEEPTI HAJELA
September 30, 2025
Armed with a 10-point plan and pacing a stage in Quantico, Virginia, on Tuesday, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth enumerated for hundreds of assembled military leaders just how much of the force’s policy, philosophy and culture will change for more than 2 million Americans in uniform under President Donald Trump’s command.
“For too long, we’ve promoted too many uniformed leaders for the wrong reasons based on their race, based on gender quotas, based on historic so-called firsts,” Hegseth said. The approach, he said, made the Pentagon “less capable and less lethal.” Hegseth talked up his and Trump’s focus on “the warrior ethos” and “peace through strength.”
“No more identity months, DEI offices, dudes in dresses. No more climate change worship, no more division, distraction or gender delusions. No more debris,” he declared.
Secretary Hegseth is bringing more and more of his version of the perfect warrior into fruition. (Hint: It does not include women, gay people, and minorities.)
‘The highest male standard’
WHAT HE SAID: “Any place where tried and true physical standards were altered, especially since 2015, when combat arms standards were changed to ensure females could qualify, must be returned to their original standard.”
THE BACKSTORY: It’s not clear what Hegseth meant by returning physical expectations to their “original standard.” But military culture and the role of women have changed dramatically in recent decades, and Hegseth aims to change them back.
He has some image a Greek mythos of riding a white stallion carrying the banner in to battle... you know like a Walter Mitty fantasy. But it goes deeper then that.
Hegseth belongs to the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches (CREC), an extreme conservative networkthat has it roots in Christian nationalism. Hegseth has several tattoos tied to the Crusades—including the Jerusalem Cross and the phrase "Deus Vult" ("God Wills It") but it is also tied in the Christian nationalism. The church hold that men and women have strict, separate biblical roles, and that women should not occupy positions of physical authority or combat leadership.}
Many Christian nationalists believe a woman's place is in the home, bearing babies. They see LGBTQ+ people as abominations and Black people as inferior.
The Christian Science Monitor reports;
In a grassy square dotted with Adirondack chairs that lies at the heart of the Pentagon, evangelist Franklin Graham delivered a special sermon in December at the request of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.
“We know that God loves,” Mr. Graham said. Then, he took a turn. “Did you know that God also hates?” he asked the dressed-up children and troops attending. “Do you know that God is also a god of war?”
Mr. Graham then told a story about God taking revenge on ancient Israel’s enemies. “Kill them, both man, woman, infant, nursing child, ox, sheep, camel, and donkey,” Mr. Graham said, quoting the Bible. For those who don’t believe in a vengeful God, “Well,” he warned, “you’d better believe in him.”
Secretary Hegseth thanked Mr. Graham for his “bold” message. And in the following weeks, as the United States launched major military attacks against Venezuela and Iran, he echoed it.
He seems to believe that he is on a crusade to bring god back to a country that has lost its way. The article goes on to write:
It is not just about prayer. Mr. Hegseth has railed against America’s “internal enemies” in religious terms. And, last week, he compared U.S. journalists with the Pharisees – “the so-called and self-appointed elites of their time,” he said – who opposed Jesus.
Hegseth wrote a book, The War on Warriors and various public speeches, Hegseth openly embraces a "theology of Christian warfighting" and a "warrior ethos" inspired by medieval campaigns like the Crusades, which he views as a model for defending Western civilization against Islamism.
Hmm... sound familiar?
High-ranking nominations for women dropped to a 25-year low under his tenure. Internal Pentagon whistleblowers reported that Hegseth stalled or actively blocked promotion tracks for senior female officers.
The Daily Beast reports that;
Pete Hegseth’s block on promotions for senior female and Black officers is just the tip of the iceberg of Pentagon discrimination, sources have told the Daily Beast.
The secretary of defense has embarked on a demotion rampage targeting women and Black men while touting his “warrior ethos” makeover of the military.
The demotions result from the purge of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion from the DOD, in compliance with an executive order signed by President Donald Trump in March last year.
The US defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, stripped nine navy officers including women and Black service members from a promotion list last month, according to a person familiar with the matter, resulting in an all-male, overwhelmingly white slate of 22 advancing as nominees to become one-star admirals.
But remember, there is a war on! Don't we want the best leaders? These people had years and years at their job... and they get axed! And replaced with "Yes men"
NPR
Lauren Hodges
February 21, 2026
As 71-year-old retired four star Gen. Stanley McChrystal approaches the podium, the room applauds.
"I can't believe he's here," someone whispers.
Almost as if he heard them, McChrystal says this into the microphone.
"First off, we shouldn't be here."
"Here" is a retirement ceremony for five transgender service members who have been forcibly separated from the military under the Trump administration's second ban. The ceremony, which normally would be given by the Pentagon, has been hosted by the Human Rights Campaign in Washington, D.C.
[...]
"We gather today to recognize Col. Bree Fram, United States Air Force; Cmdr. Blake Dremann, United States Navy; Lt. Col. Erin Krizek, United States Air Force; Chief Petty Officer Jaida McGuire, United States Coast Guard; and Sgt. 1st Class Cathrine Schmid, United States Army."
Between them, they had decades of experience... and now there is a war,
In a memo filed February 2025, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth gave the following rationale for the reversal:
"The department must ensure it is building 'one force' without subgroups defined by anything other than ability or mission adherence. Efforts to split our troops along lines of identity weaken our force and make us vulnerable. Such efforts must not be tolerated or accommodated."
"It's systematic oppression," says Corcoran. "You're creating unnecessary paperwork for commanders and service members to navigate when it should be the same standard of care in the same process as anybody you would have with a shoulder surgery or a knee surgery."
Early in the interview, Hegseth reads aloud the dramatic tagline on the back cover of his new book, The War on Warriors: “I joined the Army to fight extremists in 2001. Twenty years later, that same Army labeled me one.” Later, Hegseth flashes his right pectoral muscle, and the tattoo that, he says, led to the label: a large, inky Jerusalem cross associated with the Christian right.
The question that needs to be asked is: What are these purges doing to the military? These people are experts in their fields but are being let go because of their sex, the color of their skin, because they're gay, or because they're trans—not because of their job performance.
In another PBS News article they write...
Since becoming defense secretary, Pete Hegseth has found no shortage of ways to bring his strand of conservative evangelicalism into the Pentagon.
[...]
Now the defense secretary's Christian rhetoric has taken on new meaning after the U.S. and Israel went to war with Iran, an Islamic theocracy.
"The mullahs are desperate and scrambling," he said at a recent Pentagon press briefing, referring to Iran's Shiite Muslim clerics. He later recited Psalm 144, a passage of Scripture that Jews and Christians share: "Blessed be the Lord, my rock, who trains my hands for war and my fingers for battle."
Hegseth has a history of defending the Crusades, the brutal medieval wars that pitted Christians against Muslims. In his 2020 book "American Crusade," he wrote that those who enjoy Western civilization should "thank a crusader." Two of his tattoos draw from crusader imagery: the Jerusalem Cross and the phrase "Deus Vult," or "God wills it," which Hegseth has called "the rallying cry of Christian knights as they marched to Jerusalem."
Now we are in the sixth month of an eight-week war... "Trump's War!" From the opening salvoes, it has been a disaster! And now we have a two-front war with the Strait of Bab al-Mandab , with the possibility of the straits being blocked...
Matthew D. Taylor, a visiting scholar at Georgetown who studies religious extremism and has been a frequent Hegseth critic, said, "The U.S. voluntarily going to war against a Muslim country with the military under the leadership of Pete Hegseth is exactly the kind of scenario that people like me were warning about before the election and throughout his appointment process."
Taylor said Hegseth's rhetoric and leadership "can only inflame and reinforce the fears and deep animosity that the regime in Iran has towards the U.S."
Has Hegseth's policies prolonged the war because he fired the best and the brightest? Is it that he hired "yes men" to replace them?
