1. United States
2. Ohio
3. Letter

I am writing as your constituent to demand that the House and Senate Armed Services Committees immediately convene emergency public oversight hearings regarding Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's ongoing purge of senior military leadership and his disregard of formal warnings from combatant commanders during an active conflict. Army Secretary Dan Driscoll resigned this week after eighteen months on the job, following repeated clashes with Hegseth over the firing of senior Army leaders, including Army Chief of Staff Gen. Randy George in April. Sources say Driscoll had directly warned the White House, including Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, about the scope of Hegseth's firings before he resigned. His departure leaves the Army, the military's largest service, without Senate-confirmed leadership at either the civilian secretary or uniformed chief of staff level, in the middle of an active war. Since Hegseth took office, more than two dozen senior military officers have been fired or sidelined without public explanation, and the Army alone has gone from ten four-star generals to five. At the same time, Hegseth's own combatant commanders are formally objecting to his decisions on the record. Per the Aug. 14 Secretary of Defense Orders Book, first reported by the Washington Post, the commanders of European Command, Indo-Pacific Command, and Southern Command, along with the Navy's top admiral, each logged a formal "non-concur" against orders extending force commitments to the Iran campaign. A non-concur does not block an order. Commanders who file one still carry it out. But it is an on-the-record objection reserved for when an officer believes a mission poses unacceptable risk, and four commands logging one in the same orders book has been described as the closest thing the uniformed military has to a collective vote of no confidence in the current operational tempo. Their stated reason: ships, aircraft, and equipment meant for Europe, the Indo-Pacific, and Latin America have been pulled to the Middle East, degrading readiness and, in Europe's case specifically, weakening the ability to defend against missile threats to the U.S. Gen. Alexus Grynkewich, the head of European Command, has separately and privately warned the Pentagon that he lacks adequate naval forces to shield Israel and the U.S. from missile attacks. Congress cannot abdicate its constitutional duty under Article I to oversee the readiness, supply, and leadership of our armed forces. A service without confirmed leadership, and four combatant commands on record saying current orders carry unacceptable risk, is not a personnel dispute. It is a readiness crisis happening in real time, in the middle of a war. I urge you to immediately call on Armed Services Committee leadership to: 1. Convene emergency oversight hearings to examine the operational impact of the ongoing general officer firings and the wave of civilian resignations on combat readiness. 2. Formally compel the Department of Defense to transmit all written non-concurs, fleet readiness evaluations, and deployment risk assessments from combatant commanders directly to Congress. 3. Halt unilateral force restructuring by using Congress's Title 10 authority in the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) to freeze the arbitrary 20% purge of four-star billets until a comprehensive wartime risk assessment is completed. Partisan loyalty cannot take precedence over the survivability of our troops and the integrity of our national defense. Our service members and our country need decisive congressional action, not silence or excuses.