War Secretary Pete Hegseth directed Army Secretary Dan Driscoll to remove Col. Dave Butler from his position as chief of Army public affairs and senior adviser to the Army Secretary. The order came last week while Driscoll was overseas in Geneva working on negotiations aimed at ending the war in Ukraine.
Driscoll confirmed that Butler will retire after 28 years of military service, issuing a statement that praised the colonel's career:
"We greatly appreciate COL Dave Butler's lifetime of service in America's Army and to our nation. Dave has been an integral part of the Army's transformation efforts and I sincerely wish him tremendous success in his upcoming retirement after 28 years of service."
Fox News, which first reported the story, indicated that Driscoll initially resisted Hegseth's demands before ultimately complying. The Pentagon directed press inquiries to the Department of the Army, which did not respond to a request for comment.
Butler's removal is the latest in a series of leadership changes Hegseth has driven since taking over the Pentagon in 2025, the New York Post reported. Under President Trump, he has pushed out or forced into retirement several top military leaders, including the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and multiple service chiefs.
The pattern is consistent and deliberate. New leadership. New direction. A military refocused on its core mission rather than the bureaucratic and cultural priorities that defined the previous administration.
Critics familiar with Butler's ouster told the New York Post that the move has more to do with internal administration politics over ridding the Pentagon of the last holdouts from the Biden administration than with any specific failing on Butler's part. That framing is worth examining, but not for the reason those critics intend.
Every incoming administration faces the same challenge: a federal workforce populated by appointees and career officials whose institutional loyalties were shaped under the previous regime. The Pentagon is no exception. If anything, the sheer scale of the defense bureaucracy makes it one of the hardest places to execute a genuine change of direction.
Unnamed critics casting Butler's removal as mere "internal politics" are doing exactly what you'd expect defenders of the status quo to do. They reframe personnel accountability as pettiness. They treat any leadership transition as inherently suspicious rather than inherently necessary. They ignore the simple reality that a War Secretary has every right to install people he trusts in positions that shape how the military communicates with the public.
The chief of Army public affairs isn't a potted plant. The person in that role shapes messaging, manages crises, and serves as a senior adviser to the Army Secretary. That requires alignment with the current leadership's vision, not residual loyalty to the last one.
The reporting that Driscoll initially pushed back on Hegseth's directive before ultimately agreeing deserves context, not breathless interpretation. Cabinet-level officials occasionally disagree on timing, process, or personnel decisions. That's governance, not chaos. Driscoll was in the middle of sensitive diplomatic work in Geneva. Raising concerns about the timing of a personnel move while conducting negotiations is reasonable, not rebellious.
What matters is the outcome: Butler is retiring, Driscoll confirmed it publicly, and the Army moves forward.
Butler served 28 years. That's a long and honorable career by any measure. But the broader significance of his removal lies in what it represents: a Pentagon leadership that is serious about installing its own team at every level that touches public communication and strategic decision-making.
Butler had traveled with Driscoll to Ukraine in late 2025 as part of diplomatic efforts to jump-start peace talks. He was embedded in consequential work. Replacing someone in that position signals that Hegseth isn't content to simply swap out the generals and admirals at the top while leaving the supporting infrastructure untouched.
This is how institutional change actually works. Not through speeches about transformation, but through the unglamorous, often controversial work of putting the right people in the right seats. The left spent four years doing exactly this across every federal agency. They just never got criticized for it.
The question now is who fills Butler's role, and whether the broader leadership overhaul begins producing measurable results in military readiness, recruitment, and strategic posture. Personnel moves are means, not ends. They matter only insofar as they enable a different kind of Pentagon.
Hegseth has made his theory of the case clear through action: the military's senior ranks needed a reset. Whether the reset achieves its aims will be judged by outcomes, not op-eds.
Twenty-eight years of service earn respect. But no single career outweighs the prerogative of civilian leadership to shape the force it commands.
