Braxton Taylor
Top leaders at the Pentagon say they have begun making budget cuts in pursuit of President Donald Trump’s efforts to dramatically scale back the federal government, but have not offered much in the way of details or evidence for those moves as questions and skepticism mount.
Meanwhile, the firings of 5,400 Defense Department civilian employees announced Feb. 21 may finally begin this week, according to Pentagon documents. But whom the firings will target and whether those people are actually low performers were still unclear.
The result is that, despite promises of a transparent and accountable Defense Department, the new administration has mostly kept the public in the dark about what is happening in the military as Trump and his cabinet aggressively slash the size of the government and its workforce.
Read Next: GOP Chairmen Brush Off Call for Immediate Hearings on Firings of Top Military Leaders
In a video message posted to social media Monday evening, the Pentagon’s top spokesman, Sean Parnell, said that billionaire Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, which was recently granted access to the Pentagon as it fires employees and terminates programs across the government, made “initial findings” that “will probably save $80 million in wasteful spending.”
As evidence, Parnell offered four examples of programs that are being cut: a $1.9 million Air Force program for “holistic DEI transformation and training;” $6 million in funds to the University of Montana “to strengthen American democracy by bridging divides;” $3.5 million in support to groups at the Defense Human Resources Activity; and $1.6 million in funds to the University of Florida “to study social and institutional detriments of vulnerability and resilience to climate hazards in African Sahel.”
The cuts that Parnell laid out total $13 million — not $80 million — and DOGE has already developed a track record of inaccurate or inflated claims about the savings it is generating by slashing government spending. The Trump administration has targeted programs it considers related to “diversity, equity and inclusion,” or DEI, which has been widely interpreted by the military to mean programs that support women and troops with minority backgrounds.
Musk has also repeatedly said that he and his team will make mistakes.
Military.com was told Tuesday that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s office didn’t have a statement or any information to provide on the video or its claims. One defense official directed questions about the cuts to DOGE and not the Pentagon’s internal budget office.
Taken at face value, if the $80 million in cuts is accurate, it represents a reduction of about .001%, given the Pentagon’s current annual budget is $841.4 billion.
Despite Hegseth and Parnell’s claims that the Pentagon will be transparent under their leadership, it appears that they are not only shying away from offering details to the public but to Congress as well.
Asked Tuesday whether he knows the details of what’s in the $80 million DOGE allegedly found to cut, House Armed Services Committee Chairman Mike Rogers, R-Ala., said he “hasn’t seen anything” about it. The committee is tasked with congressional oversight of the military, including its budget priorities.
“I didn’t even know that figure,” he added, saying he hadn’t seen the video the Pentagon posted to social media.
Hegseth briefed House Republicans on Tuesday morning about his plans for the Pentagon, but that meeting included no discussion of the DOGE cuts, Rogers said.
“It was very generic, at the 50,000-foot level,” he said.
Rogers has advocated for a massive boost to the Pentagon budget, backing a House GOP plan to add $100 billion in the coming years. But he said he does not see any conflict between that goal and DOGE’s cuts.
“My view about whatever DOGE is looking at is they’re looking for stupid stuff,” he added. “And if they find stupid stuff and say we ought to get rid of it, I’m all for it. If they find stuff that they think is stupid and I disagree with, we’re going to have a discussion.”
Asked for a definition of stupid, Rogers said he’s “got to see what they find.”
Meanwhile, officials inside the Pentagon are also staying silent about whether they have begun to execute their plan to fire thousands of civilian workers.
The Pentagon announced its intent to fire the 5,400 civilian, probationary employees on Feb. 21 as part of an “initial effort” to cut the Defense Department’s civilian workforce by 5% to 8%, which was originally set to begin the following week.
Darin Selnick, the man who is currently performing the duties of the under secretary of defense for personnel and readiness, framed the planned firings as a purge of people “whose contributions are not mission-critical.”
Now, a week after the cuts were set to begin, it’s not clear whether anyone has actually been fired.
Military.com reviewed a memo signed by Selnick on Monday that directed the firings of probationary employees to begin the same day. This memo, however, did not offer an explanation for why the firings didn’t start last week as originally planned.
Military.com asked Selnick’s team for an explanation or details of any firings but was told they didn’t “have anything to share at this time.” However, a federal judge recently ruled that the mass firings, as they are currently being carried out, are likely unlawful.
In the absence of actual terminations, details about who expects to be fired have begun to emerge, and the cuts appear to target people who provide services like child care to troops, employees of the service academies, or departments that exist to offer a check on military power.
Hill Air Force Base in Utah is expecting major cuts to hit the base’s child development centers, or CDCs. A memo sent out to troops on the base said that day care employees who either voluntarily took a deferred resignation offer from the administration or fell within a probationary employment period are being targeted for firings by the White House’s Office of Personnel Management.
Last Thursday, the Air Force Academy dean of faculty warned her staff of potential layoffs among civilians set for Friday. It was not clear whether those firings took place.
The Washington Post has also reported that the Pentagon is looking to shutter efforts to protect civilians from danger posed by U.S. military operations, and specifically the effort known as Civilian Harm Mitigation and Response.
This push comes as Hegseth has rolled back constraints on U.S. commanders’ ability to authorize airstrikes and special operations raids outside traditional battlefields. The move means that a far larger group of people can be targeted by the military.
On Friday, The Wall Street Journal reported that Hegseth also told top military officials in Mexico that he was prepared to act without their buy-in — a statement that they took to mean the U.S. was prepared to take military action inside their country.
Related: Hill Air Force Base Prepares to Scale Back Child Care Services Amid Mass Federal Firings, Resignations
Story Continues
Read the full article here