Democratic lawmakers are asking Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to share plans for cuts to civilian faculty members at the military academies and war colleges.
The May 1 letter signed by 14 Democratic representatives asked for Hegseth to provide the timeline and scale of cuts to the institutions and the metrics used to justify the changes.
The letter drew on Gazette reporting highlighting the coming cuts to civilian faculty and staff at the Air Force Academy and it could hurt technical majors. West Point and the Naval Academy have not announced cuts and did not respond to Gazette requests about whether the schools are planning cuts.
The lawmakers sent their request as the Department of Defense is cutting 5%-8% of its civilian workforce to focus on the president’s priorities and restoring readiness, a news release said.
The letter expressed concern that cutting civilian faculty could lead to cuts to majors and minors and hurt the diversity of thought at the institutions.
“Gutting civilian faculty can harm educational quality, stretch military instructors even thinner, damage research partnerships, and limit the critical thinking skills that save lives when plans fall apart in the field,” the letter said.
The letter gave a deadline of 14 days to respond to a series of questions about cuts and their potential impacts.
The questions asked for impact assessments of the coming cuts and for details about the processes to ensure that high academic standards will continue to be met.
The letter was also sent to the leaders of West Point, the Naval Academy, the Air Force Academy, the Coast Guard Academy, the Merchant Marine Academy, the Naval War College, the Army War College, the Air University, the National Defense University and the Marine Corps War College.
The letter did not have any signatories from Colorado, but Rep. Jeff Crank, R- Colorado Springs said he planned to be engaged in the issue at the Air Force Academy.
“As a member of the Air Force Academy Board of Visitors, I anticipate this being discussed in the coming months. I look forward to examining how any proposed changes would affect the curriculum at the Air Force Academy,” he said.
Former Army Ranger Rep. Jason Crow, D- Aurora, said he has heard about the concerns about cuts at the military academies.
“I will always fight for young Americans who have made a commitment to serve our country,” he said, in a statement.
The same day lawmakers sent their letter, the Denver Post published an opinion piece that raised similar concerns and garnered more than 90 signatures, including six retired generals. It specifically addressed the Air Force Academy.
“Civilian faculty, almost all with PhDs and deep backgrounds in both education and related research (including many experienced U.S. military veterans), bring depth, balance, continuity, and forward-looking insights to cadet education,” the opinion piece said. It also said the cuts would put the school’s accreditation in technical fields at risk.
The school employs 491 faculty members, with 308 uniformed members and 183 civilians, the Gazette reported previously. Civilians represent about 37% of the faculty.
At West Point, civilians represent 26% of the faculty and at the Naval Academy it’s a 50-50 split between civilians and uniformed instructors.
The cuts at the Air Force Academy are expected to extend beyond faculty to other civilian positions, such as child care, finance roles and communication. In January, the Academy employed about 1,360 civilians.
Since the Air Force Academy is overbudget for its civilian workforce, Superintendent Lt. Gen. Tony Bauernfeind said on April 11 he is preparing to cut 240 civilian positions. He did not know at the time if 140 people who he said had resigned voluntarily or retired early would count toward the 240 positions to be eliminated.
The Secretary of the Air Force press desk said Monday it could not say how many Academy employees had currently taken deferred resignations or early retirement.
Navy Lt. John James Powers lost his life dive-bombing Japanese ships during World War II and received a posthumous Medal of Honor for his bravery and leadership and for going above and beyond the call of duty to ensure the success of his missions.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, a former Fox News host and National Guard[1]sman, has attempted to reframe the role of the Pentagon's top civilian leader during his first months on the job, casting himself as a relatable everyman -- "one of the guys."
Instead of the standard suit and tie, he regularly appears in khaki hiking pants, rolled-up sleeves that reveal tattooed forearms and occasionally a trucker hat emblazoned with an American flag. He often posts videos and photos of himself working out with troops[2].
But that carefully curated image -- so different from past defense secretaries -- may not be totally landing with the rank and file. Interviews with service members and a review of hundreds of social media posts on message boards suggest the image the Pentagon chief is trying to project is seen by some as overly manufactured and desperate for affirmation.
"He seems too preoccupied with his personal brand," one Army[4] captain told Military.com on the condition of anonymity to avoid retaliation. "This is the 'vet bro' Pentagon."
Across military Reddit forums and enlisted meme pages, Hegseth has become a regular target of satire, often referred to with nicknames such as "DUI Hire,"[5]"Whiskey Leaks"[6] and "Kegseth." The references allude to past controversies, including alleged alcohol abuse and an incident in which he shared sensitive Yemen attack plan details in an unsecured Signal group chat that included a journalist.
The Pentagon did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Friday.
Military.com spoke with more than a dozen service members ranging from noncommissioned officers to a general. They were all given anonymity out of concerns over retaliation.
The jabs at and mocking of Hegseth, while not unprecedented for senior military officials, appear unusually persistent and pervasive. Other high-ranking leaders have been the butt of jokes and the target of online irreverence -- such as Sergeant Major of the Army Michael Weimer, the Army's top enlisted leader who was mocked online [11]for his perceived preoccupation with grooming standards -- but those moments have tended to fade quickly.
In Hegseth's case, satire has become part of the daily discourse.
Another simply asked[15] “can we have Mattis back, please?” That was a reference to former Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, who served more than four decades in the Marine Corps before taking the civilian post in the first Trump administration.
Duffle Blog, the Onion-style military satire blog, even has merchandise based on the jokes[16], including a "Whiskey Leaks" drinking glass and a bottle of hand wash with the label "Clean on OPSEC," another reference to Hegseth's comments on the unsecured Signal chat about Yemen strikes that was inadvertently made public.
Hegseth also routinely uses the phrase "warfighter" to refer to American troops, a phrase that itself has long been met with eyerolls within the military community, which is known for its signature gallows humor and scoffing at anyone being overly serious.
”No more ‘woke’ bullsh*t that undermines commanders and command climates,” Hegseth recently told service members[17] at the Army War College. “We are laser-focused on our mission of warfighting," he added.
The lion's share of his messaging is done on X -- a social media platform owned by billionaire Elon Musk and a preferred platform of the Trump administration -- while the bulk of service members spend their time on other platforms such as Instagram and TikTok.
"Morale isn't built through X," one Pentagon official noted.
U.S. Marine Corps Sgt. Maj. Carlos A. Ruiz, the sergeant major of the Marine Corps, and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth participate in events leading up to the reenlistment ceremony of Medal of Honor recipient Sgt. Dakota Meyer, Arlington, Va., April 17, 2025. (U.S. Marine Corps photo by GySgt Jordan E. Gilbert)
Much of the communication on X from Hegseth focuses on touting the president's agenda, namely cultural grievances and border security – none of it relating to the troops or their day-to-day issues. The defense chief often points out that what he's doing is a directive from President Donald Trump.
Hegseth's apparent push to make the defense secretary a public personality more than just a public figure, mostly through social media, also sets him apart from many who served in the role in the past. Almost everyone who spoke with Military.com for this story noted that rank-and-file troops shouldn't need or want to care much about someone so far removed from their daily lives.
Several service members remarked that before Hegseth, the only time they thought about the defense secretary was when they needed to brush up for a board or inspection where they may have had to answer questions about their chain of command.
One Navy[18] officer noted that when news of former Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin's hidden cancer diagnosis became public last year -- a major scandal and now a talking point[19] in Pentagon communications -- the news didn't ever register with their sailors despite significant media coverage.
Meanwhile, some of Hegseth's big policy moves, arguably done in the name of service members, have left them perplexed.
On Tuesday, Hegseth announced that he was ending the "Women, Peace and Security" program that was aimed at supporting women on security teams, especially overseas where men may run into cultural or religious barriers.
One junior officer said that while they knew about the program from personal connections and a previous deployment[21], it's likely that they were the only person in an office of dozens who did.
Many who spoke with Military.com remarked that the military, especially the rank and file, don't have time to be focused on the kind of policy moves that Hegseth is making. They are more concerned with their day-to-day lives in the military -- an area that Hegseth and his team have largely been silent on in their view.
"It's a lot of 'look at me' stuff. He has said nothing about quality of life," Rob Evans, an Army veteran whose Yelp-style app Hots & Cots collects reviews of housing and dining facilities on military bases. "If he's for the troops, why has he not touched on quality-of-life challenges, whether that's food or housing?"
However, multiple female service members said Hegseth's comments and policy changes have made them sit up and take notice, because they worry that he will make their lives more difficult or even make it impossible for them to keep serving.
U.S. Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, trains with Naval Special Warfare sailors at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickman, Hawaii, March 25, 2025 (U.S. Navy photo by Petty Officer 1st Class Joseph Rolfe)
Quality-of-life issues in the military have been long-simmering; concerns such as feeding soldiers at dining facilities, or DFACs, is a perennial issue that has cropped up several times during Hegseth's tenure.
When a recently deployed unit returned to Fort Johnson, their cards had lapsed and they were met with signs that said they would be turned away if their cards weren't fixed.
"Why are we creating barriers to food?" one of the leaders of the Army Reddit forum told Military.com on Thursday, noting that the issue is now being seen at other Army bases[23] as well.
The issue, as the Reddit moderator sees it, is an easy policy fix and ripe for someone such as Hegseth to tackle.
And yet the Pentagon's weekly "SITREP" videos and many of Hegseth's social media posts focus on the secretary. When Sean Parnell, the Pentagon's top spokesman, released a list of what the Hegseth Pentagon feels it accomplished in its first 100 days on Tuesday, quality-of-life issues didn't make the cut.
"You'll see a lot of pictures of [Hegseth] jogging with troops, visiting flight lines, American flag suit ... but what you won't see are ribbon cuttings for new barracks," Evans wrote in a social media post Tuesday.[24]
"When leadership prioritizes optics over outcomes, photos over plumbing, troops notice. When DoD leadership talks about 'lethality' but ignores that soldiers are getting sick from their own living conditions, credibility suffers," he wrote.
Ultimately, several service members told Military.com they feel Hegseth's idea of what a defense secretary is expected to do doesn't line up with what the job actually requires of him.
"He'd make a great company commander," one officer said. "But that's not the job he's in right now."
Meanwhile, online, one Reddit member who is widely known on the Navy’s forum as a recently retired Navy captain, recently wrote[25] that Hegseth and others in the Trump administration “are not the leaders we need or deserve.”
“If you are left leaning, Hegseth only serves to poke at and antagonize you. If you are right leaning, he only serves to embarrass and demoralize you with his incompetence,” they added.
Democratic senators voiced serious concerns Thursday about a former Space Force[1] officer's political social media posts, as well as being fired from command in 2021, at a hearing weighing his nomination to serve as the Air Force[2]'s second-highest civilian leader.
Former Lt. Col. Matthew Lohmeier, who was nominated by President Donald Trump earlier this year to serve as the under secretary of the Air Force, previously served as commander of the 11th Space Warning Squadron at Buckley Space Force Base[3] in Colorado. But he was fired from his position in 2021 after an appearance on a podcast where he promoted his self-published book, "Irresistible Revolution: Marxism's Goal of Conquest and the Unmaking of the American Military."
Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., the ranking member on the Senate Armed Services Committee, told Lohmeier he was concerned about comments the former Guardian made once leaving the military and also expressed concerns that he'd seek retribution for those who sought his removal from command.
"I must confess, I have deep concerns about your ability to represent these men and women," Reed said. "While I appreciate your past military service, your record of troubling conduct in uniform, extreme partisanship and animosity towards military members with whom you disagree politically, is, in my view, disqualifying to be the under secretary."
Reed bought up a post that Lohmeier made on X on Oct. 19, 2024,[5] where he wrote: "If we are fortunate enough to see a Trump presidency once again, then there will be serious consequences for those senior leaders who have broken their oath, betrayed the trust of the American people, and participated in the hyper-politicization of the uniformed services."
The former Space Force officer declined to provide follow-up comments to Military.com on Thursday.
Lohmeier said during the hearing that the "post was put on X in my private capacity as a private citizen in 2024," adding that he "enjoyed my ability to speak freely and express a full range of the expression of my ideas" since leaving the military.
He said during the hearing that he would seek accountability from service members and leaders, but the post "was not intended to be retroactive or retributional in nature."
Several other Democratic leaders joined Reed in criticizing Lohmeier's views and opinions shared on social media.
Sen. Mazie Hirono, D-Hawaii, took aim at his views on the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the Capitol, when hundreds of Trump supporters broke into the building and assaulted police officers in an effort to overturn former President Joe Biden's election win.
Sen. Mark Kelly, D-Ariz., questioned his stance on Russia's invasion of Ukraine after the former officer shared in a Feb. 9, 2024, post on X[7] a 2014 paper titled: "Why the Ukraine Crisis is the West's Fault."
Lohmeier claimed the posts were mischaracterized, saying of Jan. 6 that there is "so much uncertainty about what was really going on" during the day of violent protests and adding "all heads of state have to make determinations for their own security" when asked about Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
Lohmeier told lawmakers last year that he submitted an inspector general complaint, alleging that the garrison commander of Buckley Space Force Base had "unethically used his position to promote anti-American propaganda." He said his complaint "was never investigated and was later dismissed" by then-Lt. Gen. Stephen Whiting.
After writing and promoting his book, Lohmeier was fired from his command of the 11th Space Warning Squadron at Buckley Space Force Base by Whiting.
Notably, Whiting was later promoted to four-star general and now currently leads U.S. Space Command.
On his firing, Sen. Tammy Duckworth, D-Ill., questioned why Lohmeier did not file an Article 138 complaint, a formal process where a service member can express wrongdoing by a commander, after his inspector general complaint into the Buckley commander was dismissed.
Lohmeier said he did not file an Article 138 complaint but claimed he had "exhausted all of the means that I understood available to me" prior to publishing his book.
Duckworth said she was concerned.
"How can we expect you to lead airmen and Guardians?" Duckworth said. "You were relieved of command not for your beliefs, but for how you chose to express them on active duty while holding a position of authority over others."
In October, during a town hall in North Carolina where Trump was campaigning for his second term, Lohmeier took the stage and told Trump he should establish a "special task force, office or position" to remove diversity, equity and inclusion efforts throughout the military.
"I'm going to put you on that task force," Trump told him and later nominated him to serve as the under secretary of the Air Force.
When questioned by senators on Thursday whether he'd seek retribution for those who have differing political ideologies, Lohmeier claimed he would not and that airmen and Guardians would welcome him to the position.
"I think that we have many great men and women in uniform, high and low, who all have the right to try their best to serve this country faithfully and I don't necessarily agree with all the decisions they make, but I'm not a vindictive person," Lohmeier said. "I love all people, and I think that men and women in uniform will be very grateful to see me come back into service if confirmed."
