In a video posted to social media on Friday, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth said his department will discontinue all graduate-level professional military training, fellowships and certificate programs for active-duty service members at Harvard University starting in the 2026-27 school year. Currently enrolled service members will be allowed to finish their courses, he said. "For too long this department has sent our best and brightest officers to Harvard hoping the university would better understand and appreciate our warrior class," Hegseth said.
Headquartered at the Pentagon, the Department of Defense employs nearly 2.6 million people and has an annual budget of more than $870 billion, making it the largest, and one of the best funded agencies in the federal government. Thousands of DOD employees, including both civilians and active-duty service members, are stationed in each of the 50 states, as well as Washington, D.C.
The Defense Department and White House have secure ways to communicate across countries and timezones, Axios' Colin Demarest reports, and it's unorthodox to have leaders simultaneously depart their stations. The gathering that Trump is framing as a sort of military pep rally came after months of high-profile retirements and removals that wiped away decades of the country's national security experience and a historic rebrand to the "Department of War."
CEO Jim Taiclet said on Thursday that there is "a very active engagement at an extremely high level with the Department of Defense" about the upgraded F-35, and that "I expect it will be taken to the White House sometime soon, hopefully, to consider this kind of concept." Speaking at Morgan Stanley's Laguna Conference, he said there is no contract yet, but that if the jet is kept under the Pentagon's current approved plan, the souped-up F-35 would, over time, get near sixth-generation capability.
So, today I gave [reporters] about a three-hour press conference on changing the name of the Department of Defense to the Department of War, because you know, we won World War I, World War II, everything in between and everything in front of it. It was called the Department of War And then we went woke after the Second World War. Incredible victory. And we said, Let's change it to Defense. And look.
We call it the Department of Defense, but between us, I think we're gonna change the name, Trump said. I think we're gonna have some information on that maybe soon, because I think, you know, Department of Defense, we won the World War I, World War II. It was called the Department of War. And to me, that's really what it is. Defense is a part of that. But I have a feeling we're gonna be changing.
Different officials within the Pentagon have reported various figures for savings attributed to DOGE, creating discrepancies and uncertainty about the exact amount of taxpayer dollars saved.
Happy to be with you and happy to highlight this incredible success that we are seeing across our armed forces women in particular. These numbers are fantastic.
The Department of Defense faced a copyright issue after posting a video highlighting drone capabilities set to 'Enter Sandman' by Metallica, requiring the video to be removed.
Concerns have arisen over the potential conflicts of interest regarding tech executives who joined the Army Reserve while holding lucrative AI contracts with the Department of Defense.
The President's FY '26 National Defense Budget requests $1.01 trillion, which is a 13 percent increase from FY '25 enacted levels. This includes $848.3 billion for DoD's discretionary budget and $113.3 billion in mandatory funding for DoD.
Harvard is currently the top performing team on the AMPHORA program. Inadequate knowledge of the biological threat landscape poses grave and immediate harm to national security.
