1. United States
2. Wash.
3. Letter

Pete Hegseth has gutted the senior military leadership and left this country dangerously exposed, and Congress needs to act now to hold him accountable. He has cut the Army's four-star generals from 10 to five with no announced replacements, fired senior officers across the Navy and Air Force, and disbanded the Army's only drone warfare battalion — not for strategic reasons, but because of his obsession with culture war politics. The consequences are real and alarming. Pentagon leaks confirm that U.S. munitions stockpiles are so depleted after Trump's Iran campaign that we lack sufficient Patriot anti-missile launchers to defend Europe from Russia or our Asian allies from China and North Korea. CIA Director Ratcliffe was sent to Moscow this week to warn Russia not to attack NATO — which tells you we have intelligence suggesting they're considering it, and we don't have the arsenal to stop them. That is a national security crisis, and Hegseth created it. Generals and admirals earn under $200,000 a year. They are not in it for money or politics. They swore an oath to the Constitution. Hegseth is trying to replace professional military leadership with loyalists, and by all accounts he's failing — which is why he's reportedly summoning all generals and admirals to Quantico for a second dressing-down in under a year. Congress must investigate Hegseth's firing of senior officers, the state of our munitions reserves, and whether civilian leadership at the Pentagon is actively undermining military readiness.