Senators urge Hegseth to consider religious exemption to military facial hair ban

"No more beards, long hair, superficial individual expression. We’re going to cut our hair, shave our beards, and adhere to standards.

"If you want a beard, you can join special forces. If not, then shave.”

Such is the strength of his anti-beard feeling that he even reportedly refused to meet bearded troops during a visit to South Korea as part of President Trump’s tour of Southeast Asia.

However, the move has met with resistance from several lawmakers, with Democrats Gary Peters, Elizabeth Warren, Tim Kaine and Kristen Gillibrand writing to Hegseth, asking him to consider a potential religious exemption to the rules.

"Given the deep and profound importance of religious accommodation to certain Sikh, Jewish, Muslim, Christian, Rastafarians and other service members currently serving our nation, we urge you to pause the memo’s 60-day implementation timeline to gather more information and issue further clarifications,” they wrote.

According to the latest data published by the Department of Defence (now the Department of War), there are around 4,000 Jewish military personnel in the US, a small minority of whom are Orthodox.

There are also around 6,000 Muslims and several hundred Sikhs and Orthodox Christians, all of whose religions forbid them from being clean shaven.

Hegseth’s push to end what he termed “woke” culture in the military has also extended to increasing fitness requirements to weed out “fat troops”, with the standards also made gender neutral, potentially reducing the number of women in senior roles.

“If that means no women qualify for some combat jobs, so be it. That is not the intent, but it could be the result... It will also mean that we mean that weak men won't qualify because we're not playing games. This is combat. This is life or death,” he told a gathering of top military staff at Quantico in September.

He went on: “The era of politically correct, overly sensitive ‘don't hurt anyone's feelings’ leadership ends right now at every level.

"No more identity months, DEI offices, dudes in dresses, no more climate change worship, no more division, distraction or gender delusions.”

However, more recently, Hegseth’s job has come under significant pressure after he was accused of ordering a “double tap” strike on a boat in the Caribbean, which the Pentagon has maintained was involved in smuggling drugs from Venezuela and was crewed by “narco terrorists”.

Per the Washington Post, an initial drone strike destroyed the vessel, leaving two crew members clinging to the wreckage. Sources reportedly told the paper that Hegseth ordered a second strike against the survivors, claiming that he ordered troops to “kill them all”.

In the wake of the report, several Democratic lawmakers have claimed that the second strike may constitute a war crime and called for Hegseth’s resignation. The White House has dismissed the claims as a “witch hunt”.

Hegseth’s office claimed the Post’s report was false, calling it “fabricated, inflammatory and derogatory”, while the Pentagon said the “entire narrative was false”.

Several lawmakers, both Democrats and Republicans, among those who viewed footage of the incident in closed-door Senate hearings, have also claimed that one of the naval officers involved testified to them that Hegseth did not give an order to “kill them all”.