Republican lawmakers split over Hegseth's removal of top Army general in Europe

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth forced out Gen. Chris Donahue, the commander of U.S. Army Europe and Africa and the last American soldier to leave Afghanistan in 2021, drawing sharp and divided reactions from Republican lawmakers who cannot agree on whether the move strengthens the military or guts it.

Donahue submitted retirement paperwork after Hegseth verbally ordered his departure shortly after firing Army Chief of Staff Gen. Randy George on April 2. He will relinquish command on July 2, with his deputy, Maj. Gen. Christopher Norrie, stepping in to perform commanding general duties. No official explanation for the ouster has been given. The Pentagon referred questions to the Army.

The four-star general's removal marks the latest in a string of more than two dozen senior military leaders pushed out since Hegseth took charge of the Pentagon. But this one landed differently on Capitol Hill. Donahue is a former Delta Force commander, an Army Ranger, a former head of the 82nd Airborne Division and the 18th Airborne Corps, and a man President Trump himself praised just months ago.

Trump's own words hang over the decision

In January, during a call with Fox News host Brian Kilmeade broadcast from Clay Kaserne Army Base in Wiesbaden, Germany, Trump told Donahue directly:

"You are doing a fantastic job. Your reputation is great."

Five months later, Donahue is out. No public accounting of what changed. No written rationale delivered to Congress. The contrast between Trump's January praise and Hegseth's April retirement order sits at the center of the discomfort now rippling through Republican ranks.

Kilmeade, who has a direct line to the president, called Donahue's departure a "huge loss" for the United States and compared it to "losing Tom Brady" in the prime of his NFL career. During the same January broadcast, Kilmeade said Donahue might be the most "talented 4-star in this generation."

Tillis unloads, from the right

Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina, a Republican who has announced his retirement at the end of his term, delivered the sharpest rebuke. Tillis, familiar with Donahue's service during his time representing North Carolina, wrote on X Thursday:

"Strong leaders are not threatened by accomplished commanders. Weak ones are. His paranoid micromanagement of senior military leaders and promotion lists is pure insecurity dressed up as reform. He is more interested in purging people he perceives as insufficiently loyal than empowering proven patriots who can actually lead."

Tillis went further, describing Hegseth's approach as "bro-culture bravado rather than restraint, humility and careful stewardship of the finest fighting force in the world."

"This is not reinvigorating the warrior ethos. This is not a leader prioritizing merit. It's sophomoric. It's unserious. And it's bringing great harm to our Department of Defense. Our military deserves steady, serious civilian leadership. Right now, it's getting the opposite."

Those are not words from a Democrat. They come from a retiring Republican senator with nothing left to lose, and they carry weight precisely because Tillis has no reelection incentive to posture.

House Republicans praise Donahue but hedge on the decision

In the House, the picture is more fractured. Several Republican members of the Armed Services Committee praised Donahue in personal terms while stopping short of directly challenging Hegseth's authority to make the call.

Rep. Michael McCaul of Texas, the former chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, told reporters Thursday:

"He was in Afghanistan when it fell. He set up the Army depot to get logistics into Ukraine from Poland. I don't understand why Mr. Hegseth is firing him, and as a result, we're going to lose a very talented general from the Pentagon."

Rep. Rich McCormick of Georgia, an Armed Services Committee member, said Hegseth did not even address Donahue's ouster during a Wednesday meeting with the Republican Study Committee. McCormick told reporters:

"Unfortunate. I have mad respect for that guy. I don't know the details, so I'm not going to continue to talk about it, because I don't know, I don't know him personally, but I have mad respect for the guy. He's earned that, great leader."

Rep. Don Bacon of Nebraska, a retired Air Force brigadier general and Armed Services Committee member, was more direct. Speaking after the same Wednesday meeting, Bacon said:

"We have probably about 20 generals and admirals [who] have been fired for no reason. I know many of them and they're very good. That is concerning."

He added: "It's not decent when you fire people with no explanation."

The friction between Hegseth and Army Secretary Dan Driscoll adds another layer. A U.S. official told The Hill that Driscoll advocated to Congress, the White House, and the Joint Staff to install Donahue as Army Chief of Staff after George was fired. Driscoll was also open to having Donahue serve as the Army's vice chief of staff after Gen. James Mingus was removed. That effort apparently went nowhere.

Defenders say trust the chain of command

Not every Republican is troubled. Rep. Clay Higgins of Louisiana, also on the Armed Services Committee, urged caution:

"I don't automatically presume some improper decision was made by chain of command when somebody is let go and removed from a chain of command that was unexpected. I don't automatically doubt the integrity of that decision."

Higgins argued the Pentagon has long had a culture of promoting problems away rather than confronting them:

"It's been far easier within the Pentagon culture to promote than it is to fire. Like we'd rather take a guy that's giving us trouble and actually put him in another position and give him a promotion just to get him out of this office, so we moved that problem along, because they didn't want to face the heat of removing them. Now you have seen your chain at the Pentagon as courageous enough to make those decisions."

Rep. Andy Harris of Maryland, the chair of the House Freedom Caucus, said his "bandwidth is not that wide" but added the decision is up to Hegseth and President Trump. Rep. Keith Self of Texas, a former Army Ranger who retired as a lieutenant colonel, acknowledged the principle while praising the man:

"You serve at the pleasure of the president when you're a four-star general, so you know that's a given. I think he was a very talented, capable, competent four-star general."

Self said he spoke with Donahue last week and recounted Donahue telling him about his Delta Force days: "When I was Delta commander, we did four of those", referring to operations comparable to the Venezuela mission.

The cumulative cost

The Donahue case does not exist in isolation. Hegseth has removed or pushed out the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. CQ Brown Jr.; the Navy's chief of naval operations, Adm. Lisa Franchetti; the commandant of the Coast Guard, Adm. Linda Fagan; and the Army's vice chief of staff, Gen. Mingus, among others. He has also blocked promotions of officers across the Army, Navy, and Air Force, arguing the Biden administration unfairly advanced some while passing over more qualified candidates.

AP News reported that the Army is now discussing downgrading U.S. Army Europe and Africa from a four-star to a three-star command, a move consistent with Hegseth's "less generals, more GIs" mantra and his broader criticism of European allies' defense contributions.

Hegseth has ordered at least a 20 percent cut in active-duty four-star generals and admirals and a 10 percent cut in overall general and flag officers, Breitbart reported. He has also initiated a six-month review of American forces in Europe, telling NATO allies that some countries "will fail" the review.

That posture toward European defense spending echoes Hegseth's recent public pressure on European allies to shoulder more of their own security burden, a position most conservatives support in principle.

But the question raised by Donahue's removal is whether the pace and opacity of these personnel decisions serve that goal or undermine it. Kevin Carroll, a retired Army reserve colonel who served in the office of the Secretary of Defense and on the Joint Staff, told The Hill:

"Any individual officer is replaceable, but cumulatively, the damage Hegseth is doing to the armed forces by sacking so many of its top leaders in just a year and a half is serious."

Carroll described Donahue as "perhaps" the most respected officer in the Army and said his retirement will be "demoralizing" to the force. He warned that Hegseth is replacing experienced leaders with "'yes-men' who will do bad things, instead of leaders of high character."

Conservative commentator Erick Erickson put it more bluntly on X Wednesday morning, writing that Hegseth is "purging the American military at a faster rate than Xi Jinping is purging the Chinese military and refilling the ranks with political apparatchiks."

Congress moves to demand answers

The House Armed Services Committee has taken a concrete step. Earlier this month, the committee adopted a provision in the annual National Defense Authorization Act that would require the Pentagon to inform Congress, in writing, why senior military officers were fired or dismissed, within five days of the action.

That provision exists because no such requirement currently forces the Defense Department's hand. Donahue's case is a textbook example: a decorated four-star general with over 16 years in special operations, combat experience at every rank, and a record that includes evacuating allies from Kabul, building the logistics pipeline for Ukraine through Poland, and forming the Eastern Flank Deterrence Initiative, removed with no public explanation.

The Washington Examiner noted that Donahue's departure adds to a growing pattern of high-ranking officials leaving under Hegseth, following Navy Secretary John Phelan, Brown, and George. The New York Post reported that insiders attributed Donahue's frustration to Hegseth's leadership style and the planned downgrade of his command, with one Pentagon insider saying, "He was tired of dealing with the static of working under Hegseth and LaNeve."

Gen. Christopher LaNeve, whom Hegseth installed as Army Chief of Staff after George's firing during the Iran conflict in April, was described by an anonymous source as "very political" and aware that "Pete is playing to an audience of one in the president."

The broader shakeup at the Pentagon has also drawn legal challenges to Hegseth's authority and raised questions about whether the Defense Department's leadership churn mirrors a pattern seen elsewhere in the administration, where new Pentagon staffing decisions continue to reshape the department's civilian and military ranks alike.

The right question

Conservatives have long argued, correctly, that the military brass grew too political under the Obama and Biden administrations. The push to restore a warfighting culture, cut bureaucratic bloat, and hold generals accountable to civilian leadership is legitimate and overdue.

But accountability runs in both directions. When a defense secretary removes more than two dozen senior leaders without public explanation, blocks promotions across three service branches, and ousts a general the president praised five months earlier, Congress has every right, and every obligation, to ask why.

Rep. Bacon, who wore the uniform for decades before coming to Congress, framed it simply: "It's not decent when you fire people with no explanation." That is not a liberal complaint. It is a conservative principle. Civilian control of the military means the civilians owe the public a reason, not just a pink slip.

Reform without transparency is not reform. It is just power exercised in the dark, and no conservative should be comfortable with that, no matter who holds the office.