Secretary Pete Hegseth will be pushed out of his role heading the Department of War early next year and Army Secretary Dan Driscoll will be his likely successor, a Pentagon official tells The New York Sun.

“We’re hearing that Hegseth is not going to last deep into ’26,” the official said, “because Trump has been very dissatisfied with him, and that Driscoll is seen as the best replacement.”

This official said the mood in the Pentagon is “positive” about the change, and “everybody’s kind of prepping themselves for a shuffle.” He said he met with a general this week who told him of Mr. Hegseth, “I can’t wait for him to go, because he’s the least qualified Sec Def we’ve ever had.”

The Pentagon official called Mr. Hegseth “a chaos agent,” and said the secretary is “decision averse,” which is negatively impacting the functionality of the department. “And one of the things that Trump doesn’t like is that Hegseth is a f***ing glory hound, and Trump’s feeling is that he’s the main guy,” the official said.

Mr. Driscoll, a friend of Vice President Vance from Yale Law School and only 39 years old, is fast becoming a rising star in the Trump administration. President Trump dispatched Mr. Driscoll to Kyiv last week for a surprise visit with Ukrainian president, Volodmyr Zelenskyy, where the Army Secretary was tasked with presenting the administration’s latest 28-point peace plan, which would require Ukraine to make serious concessions.

Mr. Driscoll, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Special Envoy Steve Witkoff, and the president’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, met with Ukrainian officials in Geneva on Sunday to further negotiate a peace deal with Russia. Notably absent was Mr. Hegseth.

“They’ve been grooming him for some time with the work that he’s doing lately,” the Pentagon official said of Mr. Driscoll. “The stuff that he’s been doing in the meetings in Davos, for example, are not the kinds of things that the Secretary of the Army does.”

Mr. Driscoll’s job description has expanded in other ways as well. He now not only leads the Army but is the acting head of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, and is the point person for National Guard deployments to United States cities and the border.

Mr. Driscoll defended Mr. Trump’s deployment of National Guard troops to American cities in an interview with Politico last week, saying “crime has plummeted in D.C.” and calling it “a noble use of the National Guard.” In that interview he also notably departed from Mr. Hegseth in his assessment of whether women can hold combat roles, saying he hopes his seven-year-old daughter joins the Army Rangers when she’s old enough.

A combat veteran in Iraq, Mr. Driscoll met Mr. Vance at Yale, and they have remained close friends. “Dan’s relationship with JD certainly helped him get the job, but all of his success has been on the merits,” a person close to the White House told Politico.

CNN reported that there will likely be Cabinet shakeups early next year, naming Homeland Secretary Kristi Noem, Energy Secretary Chris Wright, and Mr. Hegseth as possible departures. Talk of replacing Mr. Hegseth reached a fever pitch earlier this year after The Atlantic reported that the secretary and other high level officials were allegedly sharing classified information over the encrypted messaging app Signal. 

The upcoming release of a Pentagon watchdog report on Mr. Hegseth’s use of Signal could reignite calls for him to resign. It’s not unusual for some Cabinet members to leave after the first year of an administration. The Pentagon official stressed that Mr. Hegseth’s departure is the talk of the building but that nothing is set in stone.

The Pentagon did not return the Sun’s request for comment. Mr. Trump’s press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, denied CNN’s report and any talk of a Cabinet shakeup.

“This story is 100% Fake News,” Ms. Leavitt posted to X. “The truth is: President Trump could not be happier with his Cabinet.”