Trump, Hegseth underwater on approval from military members, veterans: Poll
I'd want to know more about the sample before reading too much into this. Common Defense is an advocacy group with a progressive bent, so a poll it runs on its own members and contacts may skew toward people who already hold critical views of this administration. Seven hundred thirty-one people is a decent size, but who exactly they are matters a great deal when you're claiming to speak for the whole military community.
Still, the 67 percent figure on political decision-making is worth taking seriously, even if the exact number is debatable. The Pentagon under Hegseth has seen a lot of churn in a short time, and service members tend to be sensitive to anything that looks like the chain of command being used for partisan ends. That instinct runs deep in military culture.
What I'd want next is a neutral, larger survey, something along the lines of a Military Times or RAND poll, to see whether these findings hold up outside an advocacy sample. If they do, that's a genuine problem for the administration. If they don't, it's a reminder that polling on hot-button topics often reflects who got asked, not what the whole country thinks.