Hegseth Summons 800 Generals to Quantico as Trump Floats Using U.S. Cities as 'Training Grounds'

On September 30, 2025, roughly 800 generals and admirals, along with senior enlisted leaders, were summoned on short notice from commands in more than a dozen countries to Marine Corps Base Quantico in Virginia. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced ten directives, including combat field tests, "male-level" fitness standards for all personnel, twice-yearly fitness tests and height and weight requirements applying to four-star generals as well as junior troops, looser limits on hazing, a review of whistleblower complaint channels and reduced mandatory cybersecurity training. He told the officers that the era of the Department of Defense was over. Trump then spoke for more than 70 minutes, saying the military should use "some of these dangerous cities as training grounds," naming Chicago and Portland, and saying of the "enemy from within" that "we have to handle" it. Sen. Jack Reed, the ranking Democrat on the Armed Services Committee, called the gathering "an expensive, dangerous dereliction of leadership."

Pulling nearly every senior commander off station at once carries operational and security costs the department did not publicly account for. The substance compounds it: urging uniformed leaders to treat American cities as training environments, and to think of domestic opponents as an internal enemy, asks the officer corps to view domestic politics through a warfighting frame that the tradition of an apolitical military exists to prevent.

The directives were issued to the force in the following weeks.