Key takeaways:
- Adam Telle, the assistant secretary of the Army for civil works, was named acting Army secretary by President Trump on Thursday.
- Daniel Driscoll resigned after 18 months as Army secretary and did not publicly give a reason for stepping down.
- CBS News reported Driscoll had raised concerns that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth pushed out generals tied to Army transformation plans.
President Trump named Adam Telle, a senior civilian official in the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, as acting Army secretary Thursday after Daniel Driscoll resigned from the service’s top civilian post amid reported friction with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.
Telle is currently the assistant secretary of the Army for civil works. Trump announced the appointment on Truth Social, writing, “He is a Great Patriot, who is respected by all.”
Hegseth praised the move in a post on X. “Huge congrats to Adam. Strong and whip smart,” he wrote. “He is indeed a great Patriot — and will be an immediate asset to the @USArmy.”
Telle brings a long record of work in Republican politics and government. According to an Army biography, he spent more than 20 years working for Republican senators and served in Trump’s first-term White House as the president’s chief liaison to the Senate. The Guardian, citing Legistorm, reported that Telle has been at the Army Office of Civil Works since August 2025, previously served as chief of staff to Republican Sen. Bill Hagerty of Tennessee from 2021 to 2025, worked for more than 10 years for the late Republican Sen. Thad Cochran of Mississippi, and spent 18 months as a special assistant to the president for legislative affairs during Trump’s first term.
Driscoll stepped down this week after 18 months as Army secretary. He gave no public explanation for his departure, saying Tuesday that serving under Trump and Hegseth had been “the honor of a lifetime.” He added, “We could not have made the progress we did without the support of secretary Hegseth.”
Behind the scenes, however, Driscoll’s clashes with Hegseth had been widely reported. CBS News reported that Driscoll, an Army veteran and ally of Vice President JD Vance, had raised concerns with the Trump administration that Hegseth pushed out generals who were responsible for carrying out plans to transform Army operations. The Guardian reported that some of Driscoll’s allies in the Army were ousted this year by Hegseth.
Among them was Gen. Randy George, the Army chief of staff and a close friend of Driscoll, whom Hegseth asked to step down in April, CBS News reported. Less than three months later, Gen. Chris Donahue, commander of U.S. Army Europe and Africa, submitted retirement papers. The Guardian reported that Gen. Christopher LaNeve took over as acting Army chief of staff and recently ended a drone modernization program Driscoll had championed.
George and Driscoll had rolled out the Army Transformation Initiative last year, a plan to bring more drones and emerging technology into units, change force structure and eliminate obsolete equipment. CBS News reported that George and Donahue supported a newly formed Army drone battalion created to draw lessons from drone warfare in Ukraine, but that the Army began planning last month to phase out the unit after tension between officers who supported it and LaNeve.
Telle now takes over the nation’s largest fighting force while the United States remains engaged in conflict with Iran and significant Army forces are stationed in the Middle East. The war has contributed to shortfalls in critical weapons, including Patriot and Terminal High Altitude Area Defense missile interceptor systems, which are operated by the Army.
Lawmakers in both parties lamented Driscoll’s departure. Sen. Thom Tillis, a North Carolina Republican who is retiring and has sometimes clashed with Trump, said on social media that Hegseth “is creating a leadership void at the top of our military ranks.”
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