Hegseth Announces Hiring Freeze, Massive Layoffs Within Pentagon

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While the Department of Government Efficiency’s efforts to root out waste and fraud within the dark recesses of the federal bureaucracy have been fruitful thus far, some skeptics wondered how deep the cuts would go when the Trump administration began investigating the military.

As it turns out, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth appears to be serious about trimming the fat while maintaining a battle-ready force.

He outlined a plan to achieve that goal in a recent social media post, as reported by The Hill:

“It is simply not in the public interest to retain individuals whose contributions are not mission critical,” Hegseth said in a video posted to the social platform X late Thursday. “Taxpayers deserve to have us take a really thorough look at our workforce top to bottom — and it will be top to bottom — to see where we can find and eliminate redundancy.”

He did not give a headcount of how many workers the Defense Department was looking to cut or when, only saying “we’re going to be thoughtful, but we’re also going to be aggressive, up and down the chain,” and that they would start with axing probationary employees.

Hegseth added that the Pentagon has “put out a hiring freeze” on all employees while it takes the time to identify “a performance-based standard.”

Following Hegseth’s initial announcement, the Defense Department offered some details about the size and scope of the upcoming layoffs, as reported by WRIC:

The Defense Department said Friday that it’s cutting 5,400 probationary workers starting next week and will put a hiring freeze in place.

It comes after staffers from the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, were at the Pentagon earlier in the week and received lists of such employees, U.S. officials said. They said those lists did not include uniformed military personnel, who are exempt. Probationary employees are generally those on the job for less than a year and who have yet to gain civil service protection.

“We anticipate reducing the Department’s civilian workforce by 5-8% to produce efficiencies and refocus the Department on the President’s priorities and restoring readiness in the force,” Darin Selnick, who is acting undersecretary of defense for personnel and readiness, said in a statement.

The effort to streamline and refocus the military has received some positive reviews thus far, particularly from Trump supporters:

Here’s some additional commentary regarding Hegseth’s influence thus far within the Pentagon:



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