number

The immense pride which Kartal felt about becoming the British number one came shining through, describing it as being “up there” in her career achievements.

While she will only initially hold the status for a week, Kartal’s impressive comeback and Boulter’s decent run creates a fascinating subplot for the leading British women in the final throes of the season – and the start of 2027.

Boulter will have the chance to further improve her ranking when she plays in Tokyo and Hong Kong in the coming weeks, with Kartal’s plans for the rest of the season still uncertain as she sensibly manages her workload.

And don’t forget about Emma Raducanu. It seems increasingly unlikely she will play again this season because of the shin injury which ruled her out of Wimbledon, but is clearly too good a player not to be pushing back into the top 50 when she does return.

When all three are back competing on the WTA Tour at the same time, it promises to be an interesting tussle between them in the rankings.

Boulter and Raducanu both insisted they were not transfixed by the British number one spot when they exchanged positions in 2025, instead preferring to focus on their own career paths and the bigger picture of the world rankings.

But there is no doubt that Boulter, in particular, could see the opportunity to cement her place as the nation’s best player as an extra incentive to continue finishing 2026 strongly.

Katie Boulter moved into the quarter-finals of the Japan Open after she beat Viktorija Golubic in less than an hour.

The British number two defeated her Swiss opponent 6-2 6-1 in Osaka and will face either Croatia’s Antonia Ruzic or American Kayla Day in the next round.

Boulter saved a break point in the opening game but dominated from 2-2 in the first set, winning nine games in a row before Golubic took the penultimate game of the match.

The 30-year-old lost the British number one spot to Sonny Kartal on Monday, but is set to retake the position following her run this week.

Boulter, who is seeded eighth in the competition, said she was pleased with how she handled “difficult conditions”, with a strong wind affecting play.

“I think one of the biggest things for me is staying patient in the wind,” she said.

“Sometimes I can get a little frustrated, and I’m very pleased that I didn’t allow that to affect me today and I think I ended up playing some really good tennis in the second set. I’m really pleased with the performance.”

If you’d like to live near the water along the spectacular California coast at some point in your life, you have a number of options.

You can settle in, say, Culver City, which is several miles inland, and wait for rising tides to arrive.

Or, if you just can’t wait that long, I saw a listing you might be interested in. It’s in Capitola, near Santa Cruz, right next to the wharf. The three bedroom, two bath, 1,850-square-foot condo, one of a string of Venetian, pastel beachfront homes, is listed for $3,995,000.

“The beach is your backyard, the cool ocean is your pool,” says the promo.

Given what’s happening right now along the California coast, you might not have to leave that condo to go for a swim. But UC Santa Cruz oceanographer and geologist Gary Griggs, who has seen the thrashing of that row of homes in previous years, is not going to make an offer.

“I’ve got a number of photos,” he said, “that show waves breaking over the top.”

Someone will buy the place, eventually, despite the chance of it becoming a fish tank. California is flush with dumb money and bad judgment, and an insatiable romance with an epic 1,200-mile shoreline.

But it’s time to rethink the relationship.

Last weekend in Long Beach I said a few words at the 50th anniversary of the California Coastal Act, which has kept our shoreline from looking like Atlantic City or Miami Beach by balancing sensible development with conservation and public access.

“The coast is never saved, it’s always being saved,” I said at the 50th, borrowing as I often do from the late Peter Douglas, hammering home the need for constant stewardship, from one generation to the next.

But in an ironic twist, part of the parking lot was underwater, a tractor had raised a berm to hold back the ocean, and just to the south, homes were being thrashed by waves. The coast wasn’t being saved, it was being reclaimed by the sea.

From there I headed south for a friend’s planned birthday party on the sand in Newport Beach, but city streets had been flooded and beaches were closed. The party was moved indoors.

We have not seen the worst of it, with a fall forecast that includes the possibility of an epic Super El Niño that could coincide with king tides, Kelvin waves and a peak lunar nodal cycle, all of which my colleague Rosanna Xia laid out a couple of days ago.

It’s not going to rain hammerheads and sea horses, I don’t think, but coastal destruction could be dramatic.

“We’re likely going to break a number of water level records,” said Timu Gallien of the UCLA Coastal Flood Lab. “It’s not implausible to see some of the piers wiped out, or breakwaters or jetties.”

“This is a glimpse of our future,” said former California Coastal Commission Director Jack Ainsworth. “This is it. It’s here.”

Some low-lying communities have been warned for years to prepare for rising sea levels, Ainsworth said, but have put off the inevitable.

In some areas, the only sane maneuver is what’s called “managed retreat,” meaning relocation of structures farther inland. But that is fraught with legal and political challenges and resistance.

Look, if you want to live on the sand and can afford to do so, good for you. But the general public should not be on the hook for your losses. Along the entire coast, public infrastructure that we all benefit from is under threat, including roadways, parks and railroad tracks, and that’s where any public investment ought to go.

Among the tools available are sand berms, cobble berms (sand on top of small stones), jetties, dredging and relocating sand, and below-surface breakwaters. Living shorelines, such as those along the Orange and San Diego county coasts, involve piling sand atop boulders or smaller stones and covering the berms with vegetation.

But these projects don’t happen overnight, Gallien said. “Right now we’re seeing reactive responses. OK, let’s throw up some sandbags and plywood.”

Kelsey Ducklow, coastal resilience director for the Coastal Commission, said the agency has awarded millions in grants for local planners to study the threat to their communities and come up with plans. Some locales are further along than others, Ducklow said, but there’s no single strategy that will work everywhere, and one typical response is, “Yeah, we know we need to do something. But where’s the money to do it?”

The three choices we have are mitigation, adaptation and suffering, Griggs said. We’re likely to do some of each, but on the mitigation end of things, sea walls, rock revetments and armored cliffs are temporary fixes.

“In the long run, there’s nothing we can do to hold back the Pacific Ocean,” said Griggs, 83, who has been teaching for 59 years. “Everything we do is a Band-Aid, and comes with different price tags and lifespans.”

Griggs was featured in Xia’s award-winning book “California Against the Sea: Visions for Our Vanishing Coastline,” which explores the impact of sea level rise and community responses that range from denial to respectful intervention.

Precious ecosystems are under threat, Xia wrote, “trapped between rising water on one side, pavement on the other.” And multiple Southern California beaches that are “so deeply tied to the state’s heart and soul” could be lost.

I asked Xia what she thought about the rising threat this year.

“So many people think about the coast as a place — a place that doesn’t move,” she said. “But the coast in reality is a living dynamic process that changes every time a wave crashes ashore. That’s the heart of the issue — we’re fundamentally trying to impose permanence onto a space that is meant to be constantly changing.”

We haven’t been the best stewards of the planet, and maybe what’s happening now is a bit of a reckoning. From the first time I saw the California coast as a young lad on vacation from the hot interior, I think I understood that the truest way to love the sea was to fear and respect it.

I now have more fear and more respect.

And maybe, too, a deeper love.

steve.lopez@latimes.com

Alexander Zverev is guaranteed to finish the 2026 season as the world number one after Carlos Alcaraz’s surprise defeat in the Shanghai Masters.

German Zverev was on course to climb above current world number one Jannik Sinner, who has been ruled out for the rest of the year with a knee injury.

Alcaraz still had a mathematical chance of stopping Zverev until he was beaten 7-5 7-6 (7-4) by Belgium’s Zizou Bergs in the third round on Monday.

“It’s been a fantastic season for me. Knowing that I will finish the year on top of the rankings is just a dream come true,” said Zverev.

After losing three major finals, Zverev landed the first Grand Slam title of his career by winning the French Open in June, and followed that with victory at the US Open last month.

The 29-year-old has taken advantage of the injury problems suffered by Spaniard Alcaraz and Italian Sinner – the dominant pair on the ATP Tour in the previous two seasons – to become the world’s leading player.

Zverev cannot overtake Sinner until 2 November at the earliest.

He will become the first German to end the year as number one, and the oldest player to achieve the feat for the first time.

After suffering a serious ankle injury in the 2022 French Open semi-finals which kept him out for seven months, Zverev regained his place in the upper echelons of the sport and been ranked inside the top four continuously since March 2024.

“So much work and effort have been put into achieving this goal, especially after coming back from the ankle injury. I look forward to finishing the season in style,” he said.

The Dodgers were spiraling.

Their general manager had been fired for racist comments. Their famous manager had loudly lost his touch.

They had not won a full-season championship in more than two decades. They were just a blip on a Los Angeles sports landscape dominated by Showtime.

The Dodgers were plunging into a purgatory of irrelevance from which seemingly nobody could save them.

A sportswriter saved them.

Fred Claire saved them.

The most forgotten hero in Dodger history stepped out of the shadows in 1987 as their instant general manager and created the miraculous monster that came to be in 1988.

Kirk Gibson’s home run? He contrived it. Tommy Lasorda’s Hall of Fame career? He enabled it. The infamous championship Stunt Men? He formed it.

The resuscitation of a Dodger brand during what was quite possibly its darkest moment? It all started with Fred Claire, the longtime Dodger executive who died Monday in his Pasadena home on his 91st birthday.

His quiet presence will forever be missed. His audacious impact should never be forgotten.

Claire was an endlessly kind, disarmingly honest and eternally humble sort whose love for the Dodgers was perhaps best illustrated by the story of his most prized souvenir.

After the Dodgers clinched the 1988 World Series championship in a stunning victory over the heavily favored Oakland A’s, catcher Rick Dempsey approached Claire in the champagne-soaked clubhouse. In Dempsey’s back pocket was the game ball used by Orel Hershiser to strike out Tony Phillips for the game’s final out.

Fred Claire talks with Dodgers coach Joe Amalfitano at a batting cage during spring training.

(Kirk McKoy / Los Angeles Times)

Dempsey handed the ball to Claire in gratitude for the belief shown by the general manager in signing Dempsey and several other journeymen who helped lead the team to the title.

Claire quietly accepted the ball, took it home, put it on a shelf, but several years later realized it was needed elsewhere. At the time, the National Baseball Hall of Fame only had two final-out balls. Once again believing that the Dodgers were more important than himself, he donated his jewel to Cooperstown. The shelf remained empty.

“I just played one role in all this,” Claire told me several years ago. “In getting through our difficult times, I always believed in ‘We.’”

Referring to the Dodgers’ 1987 season as a difficult time was an understatement.

In April, longtime general manager Al Campanis was fired for making racist remarks about Black Americans on the TV show, “Nightline.”

Peter O’Malley, the Dodgers’ president at the time, made the sudden and strange choice to replace Campanis with Claire, the team’s public relations boss who had spent the first 11 years of his career as a sportswriter.

There was much criticism. There was overwhelming disbelief. But instead of apologizing for the promotion, Claire ran with it. One day after taking the job he cut popular pitcher Jerry Reuss and signed unemployed Mickey Hatcher and set the stunt man tone.

”I wanted some fire, and Mickey was the guy who could give us that,” Claire told me. “I don’t know if there were people who doubted me, but I never doubted myself. I knew I had the job for today, and I was going to make the most out of that day.”

He slowly turned a stuffy and entitled team into a lean and scrappy one, and by the time he made the brilliant move of signing free agent Kirk Gibson in January of 1988, the stage had been set.

Nine months later, it was only fitting that Gibson’s famous walk-off homer against Dennis Eckersley of the A’s in the World Series opener scored Mike Davis, who was also signed by Claire.

And the most valuable position player in that series? None other than the guy Claire signed first.

“Fred Claire was amazing,” Hatcher told me. “For a guy who was suddenly put into the limelight, he asked all the right questions, listened to everyone, and believed in all of us.’’

It was this great belief in collaboration that burned Claire in 1993 when he traded seemingly frail pitcher Pedro Martínez for second baseman Delino DeShields on the advice of his medical staff.

Martínez, of course, became a Hall of Famer while Claire became saddled with the stain of one of the worst trades in Dodger history. The perception surely irked a man who was just following organizational advice, but Claire never backed down from his role in the deal.

“The facts have to be the facts, and those facts are, I traded Pedro,” Claire told me.

Another trade ended his Dodger career, as he was fired by the new Fox ownership in 1998 when he publicly announced he had nothing to do with the horrible trade of Mike Piazza to the Florida Marlins.

That was Fred Claire personified, honest to the end, refusing to sacrifice his integrity, never surrendering his dignity.

Because he was too modest for acclaim and too quiet for headlines, Claire essentially disappeared from the Dodgers orbit for nearly two decades after his firing, instead focusing on teaching, consulting, and co-writing an autobiography entitled, “Fred Claire: My 30 Years in Dodger Blue.”

During this time he also became a touchstone for all Dodger alumni, as many former players contacted him daily for advice or help or just to remember the good old days. He never failed to answer a call, never turned down a request, seemingly every former Dodger knew his number and leaned on his goodness.

He was finally honored at Dodger Stadium in the summer of 2017 in an emotional ceremony that was long overdue. By then, he was heavily involved in the last great fight of his life, a battle against cancer that led him to become an important advocate and fund raiser for City of Hope.

In one of his final visits there last month, Claire didn’t focus on his illness, but rather his room number. He was quite proud that it was 4217, because Jackie Robinson was 42. Claire was with Robinson shortly before his death and constantly stressed the connection between the icon and his franchise.

In our final correspondence, on the day before he died, Claire texted me and several others with seven photos.

There were images of him with wife Sheryl, with Lasorda, with Dave Roberts, with several champagne-stained Dodgers in a celebratory clubhouse.

There was also a picture that did not contain him but spoke volumes about his character. It was a simple photo of a plaque bearing the number 42 and accompanied by a quote.

“A life is not important except in the impact it has on other lives.”

Jackie Robinson said it.

Fred Claire lived it.

The United States Department of Justice has filed 40 new cases seeking to strip naturalised Americans of their citizenship over alleged crimes they have committed.

In a statement on Monday, federal prosecutors said they were targeting individuals accused of “serious offenses”, including money laundering, child sexual abuse, visa fraud and tax evasion.

The statement touted the 40 cases as the largest volume of denaturalisation petitions submitted in such a short period under President Donald Trump. The petitions were filed from late August through early October.

“Today’s announcement marks the largest denaturalization effort in modern history,” said Attorney General Todd Blanche.

“Under President Trump’s leadership, the Department of Justice will continue to employ the denaturalization process to maintain our national security and protect the American people.”

The 40 citizens targeted in Monday’s announcement include people from a range of countries, including Mexico, Pakistan, China and Sierra Leone.

They are accused of concealing criminal acts and other facts about themselves as they sought to obtain citizenship. Their criminal convictions largely came after they took their oaths of citizenship.

Two people on the list are also accused of engaging in espionage on behalf of China. Committing these crimes before they became citizens, the Department of Justice alleges, meant these individuals lacked “good moral character” and should have been denied citizenship.

Expanded use of denaturalisation law

The laws to denaturalise US citizens have been used for decades, but historically, they have been reserved for serious crimes.

After World War II, for instance, the US government moved to denaturalise dozens of citizens accused of concealing involvement in the Holocaust or engaging in war crimes.

Notable cases include that of Emma Goldman, a Lithuanian-born anarchist and women’s rights activist who was jailed in 1917 for her antiwar activities, before being denaturalised and deported to the Soviet Union.

But the practice has become much less frequent since the end of the Cold War.

Top officials in the Trump administration, however, have sought to expand denaturalisation as part of a push to conduct the largest deportation operation in US history.

Under US law, prosecutors can ask courts to strip citizenship from those born outside the country if they wilfully concealed a “material fact” during their citizenship application that would have otherwise disqualified them.

But Trump’s efforts to widen denaturalisation proceedings have received pushback from human rights groups, which argue they could leave people stateless.

Critics have also warned that Trump has sought to leverage denaturalisation against specific groups he perceives to be political rivals or enemies.

Last year, for instance, the Trump administration indicated it would seek to denaturalise large numbers of Somali Americans after allegations emerged in Minnesota of daycare fraud involving the Somali diaspora.

“Send them back from where they came, Somalia, perhaps the worst, and most corrupt, country on earth,” Trump wrote at the time.

Members of Trump’s Republican Party, notably Representative Andy Ogles, have also floated the possibility of yanking citizenship from New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who was born in Uganda. Trump himself has falsely suggested Mamdani may be in the country illegally.

At one point, Trump even floated the idea of withdrawing citizenship from tech entrepreneur Elon Musk, a close ally and adviser to his second administration, after the two men had a falling-out in 2025.

Trump has also pushed to do away with birthright citizenship, which is granted to virtually all children born in the US. The few exceptions include the babies of diplomats and foreign military forces.

Birthright citizenship is protected under the US Constitution and cannot be taken away the way naturalised citizenship can.

In June, the US Supreme Court struck down Trump’s efforts to dismantle birthright citizenship, but legal battles continue after the president issued a second executive order also seeking to restrict how birthright citizenship is applied.

Luke Littler missed out on the chance to hold the senior and youth world titles simultaneously after suffering a surprise semi-final defeat at the World Youth Championship.

The 19-year-old world number one was beaten 6-5 by world number 68 Cam Crabtree, who will face German Jan Schmidt in the final on 29 November.

That match will take place on finals day at the Players Championship Finals in Minehead – an event Littler has also yet to qualify for having skipped the majority of Pro Tour events this season.

He is currently ranked 126th in the Players Championship order of merit and only the top 64 qualify.

Four Players Championship events remain, but two of those are in Den Bosch in the Netherlands – where Littler withdrew from events recently after being subjected to boos by the crowds.

Littler has won successive full World Championships and won the youth title as a 16-year-old in 2023, but the semi-final loss to 23-year-old Crabtree was his second successive exit at that stage having lost to Beau Greaves in 2025. He could though enter four more times, with the tournament open to players aged 23 or under at the start of the season.

The loss is the latest in a series of surprise exits for Littler, who was knocked out of the World Grand Prix in the first round by Luke Woodhouse and lost to Jonny Clayton in the quarter-finals of the World Series of Darts finals.

WASHINGTON — Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is launching an office of religious affairs, the latest of his faith-related reforms at the Pentagon.

He announced in a speech Wednesday that the office will help offer “first-class religious support” and will report directly to him.

“Our department is, you might say, putting on the full armor of God, because while we wage physical war, we all know the real battle is spiritual,” he said.

Hegseth has infused his evangelical Christianity into his leadership of the Pentagon, hosting Christian worship services for employees and often speaking of the United States as a Christian nation.

The Office of Religious Affairs, or ORA, will advocate for military chaplains and religious support “at the highest level of the Department,” according to a Pentagon statement. It will not “compel religious participation, favor one faith, or diminish the rights of personnel of any faith or lack thereof.”

Some criticism of the initiative surfaced quickly.

The Pentagon “owes it to the nation’s service members to defend religious freedom,” said Rachel Laser, head of Americans United for Separation of Church, which has sued the Pentagon over its worship services. “Hegseth’s latest announcement violates that promise by elevating Christianity to an even higher role in shaping U.S. military policy.”

Other federal agencies have had religious or faith-based offices, which were established under President George W. Bush and were continued in different forms under the Obama and Biden administrations. President Donald Trump established a White House Faith Office and had a similar effort during his first term.

Shaun Casey, a religion scholar, led the State Department’s Office of Religion and Global Affairs during the Obama administration. The office did not promote religion or spiritual well-being, he said. “It was there to understand what were the political implications of lived religion in the various hot spots around the world.”

The leader of the new office has not been named. A Pentagon memo said the religious affairs director will coordinate spiritual resources, including “faith-based homeschool support for military families.” Hegseth has also pushed the military school system to introduce more coursework that draws from conservative and Christian influences.

The memo mentions “faith-based initiatives supporting Department-wide suicide reduction.” In recent years, the military has become increasingly dependent on chaplains to help address the growing numbers of troops in mental health distress. Hegseth has said he wants chaplains to focus more on God and less on therapeutic “self-help and self-care.”

The secretary has pushed other changes within the military’s chaplain corps, which provides spiritual care to troops. He ordered chaplains, who are commissioned officers, to no longer wear their rank on their uniform but instead be identified by religious insignia.

The Defense Department also slashed the number of religious affiliations it officially recognizes, down to 31 from more than 200 previously recognized traditions. The list no longer includes atheists, Unitarian Universalists, pagans and Wiccans.

Hegseth spoke directly to chaplains in his address Wednesday at Marine Corps Base Quantico in Virginia. Using Christian-inflected language, he said: “Live your calling. Stand firm. Preach truth. Minister to the flock.”

He then quoted from the Bible: “The Lord is on my side; I will not fear. What can man do unto me?”

Stanley writes for the Associated Press.

Sept. 30, 2026 1:27 PM PT

QUANTICO, Va. — Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth confirmed Wednesday that the U.S. military will cut 20% of its generals and admirals as he delivered what he is calling his “State of the Force” address.

Hegseth was speaking to junior officers and enlisted leaders at the Marine Corps Base Quantico in Virginia, the second year in a row that he has given such an address. This time, the U.S. military is seven months into a war with Iran with no clear end in sight, has captured Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro and killed more than 200 people in strikes on alleged drug trafficking boats in Latin America, among other actions worldwide.

The speech is not a usual fixture among Pentagon leaders. While Hegseth’s predecessors regularly addressed troops and top officers, they traditionally have done so in small or private settings.

The Pentagon chief, however, again focused on how he has drastically retooled the U.S. military by targeting what he calls “woke” culture — through a rollback of diversity programs, a review of ground combat units with female troops and a new screening program for “testosterone deficiency” among male personnel.

Pentagon officials had previewed that Hegseth would announce more cuts to the number of generals and admirals. He directed all military services to double the 10% reduction he ordered last spring for roughly 800 flag and general officer positions, making it a total 20% decrease to be completed by Jan. 1.

“I call it accountability and long overdue,” he said.

Several senators viewed Hegseth’s move as nothing short of a “purge” of the military’s top ranks that will take years to rebuild.

“He’s got some kind of like deep-seated grievance about leadership in the military,” said Sen. Mark Kelly, D-Ariz., the former Navy combat pilot and NASA astronaut, who has been critical of Hegseth. “He’s purging a generation of great leaders of the military, and it’s going to take a generation to recover from it.”

Republican Sen. Mike Rounds of South Dakota, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said he wanted to understand Hegseth’s reasoning behind the decision.

“If it’s simply a matter of eliminating a very heavy top, there may be some validity to it, but I want to see it first,” Rounds said.

Hegseth and President Trump already have fired or pushed to retire more than two dozen military leaders since taking office, including the Army’s top uniformed officer, Gen. Randy George, a move that angered both Republicans and Democrats in Congress. The purge also has included a number of senior officers who are women or people of color.

Previous leaders who were ousted include Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. CQ Brown; Chief of Naval Operations Lisa Franchetti; and Vice Adm. Shoshana Chatfield, the U.S. military representative to the NATO Military Committee.

Although Hegseth never gave specific reasons for those firings, most were tied to the belief that they endorsed or spoke openly in support of diversity, equity and inclusion programs, which have been targets of Hegseth and Trump.

As part of last year’s cuts, Hegseth also ordered the active duty military to shed 20% of its four-star general officers — the highest-level leaders — and the National Guard to shed 20% of its top positions, but it is unclear if all those cuts have been made. The new cuts could include any one-star general or above, or an officer of equivalent Navy rank.

When Hegseth first announced the effort to trim the highest levels of the military ranks, he argued it was intended to remove “redundant force structure to optimize and streamline leadership.” In a memo released in May 2025, he said the aim was to free the military from “unnecessary bureaucratic layers.”

The number of general officer positions in the military is set by law, but it is possible to let positions remain unfilled by not submitting replacements to Congress.

Hegseth’s efforts have extended well beyond personnel changes among the top ranks. He oversaw Trump’s ban on transgender troops while announcing new directives for “gender-neutral” or “male-level” standards for physical fitness.

Toropin and Finley write for the Associated Press. AP writers Lisa Mascaro and Meg Kinnard contributed to this report.

Pentagon official says the plan will be announced in the defence secretary’s ‘State of the Force’ address in Virginia.

United States Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth will cut the number of positions reserved for generals and admirals by 20 percent, a Pentagon official has told Al Jazeera, in a change that will affect leadership across the Army, Navy and Air Force.

Hegseth is expected to announce the decision on Wednesday during a visit to the Marine Corps Base Quantico in Virginia, where he will deliver his “State of the Force” address in front of junior officers and enlisted officials, the official said.

The Associated Press news agency, citing Pentagon officials, reported that Hegseth will direct all the military services to double the 10 percent reduction that he ordered last year to the roughly 800 flag and general officer positions. This would make it a 20 percent total decrease and is to be completed by January 1, 2027.

Fox News reported the new reductions could include any one-star general or above or officer of equivalent Navy rank.

The Washing Post reported that the cuts could affect the careers of “hundreds of current and rising military leaders following scores of firings and denied promotions”.

US President Donald Trump or Hegseth have fired, or pushed into retirement, more than two dozen military leaders since taking office in January 2025, including the Army’s top uniformed officer, General Randy George, in April.

The administration also fired the only two women serving as four-star officers, along with several other senior female officers. Other top officials have left through retirements and resignations, including the Army secretary, Dan Driscoll, who resigned this month after repeated clashes with Hegseth.

When the defence secretary first announced the effort to trim the highest levels of the military ranks, he argued it was intended to remove “redundant force structure to optimise and streamline leadership”. And in a memo released in May 2025, he added that his aim was to free the military from “unnecessary bureaucratic layers”.

At this time last year, Hegseth also declared an end to “woke” culture and announced new directives for troops that included “gender-neutral” or “male-level” standards for physical fitness.

Senator Jack Reed, a Rhode Island Democrat and ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, expressed concern over Hegseth’s latest move in a statement. He said eliminating senior leadership positions must be done in consultation with Congress and warned that the planned cuts “should alarm every American”.

“Congress has been clear with the Secretary that he must consult this body and explain his reasoning for senior officer removals and promotion holds. To date, we have not received satisfactory answers,” Reed said.

“Our military is conducting major operations around the world, and the force is already under strain,” he added.

The number of general officer positions is set by law, but positions can be left unfilled if the administration does not submit nominees to Congress.