Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth became embroiled in controversy this week after he was accused of illegally sending classified information in an unauthorized chat system to a journalist.
While conceding that Atlantic editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg was “accidentally” included in a high-level Signal group chat, Hegseth and other senior U.S. officials have claimed no classified information was disclosed.
The Signal leak
Goldberg said the Trump administration is lying, and he published additional information from the group chat that included times of operations and weaponry used.
JEFFREY GOLDBERG SAYS HEGSETH LIED IN DISMISSING INTELLIGENCE LEAK
Other Trump officials have been scrutinized for the leak, including national security adviser Mike Waltz, but Hegseth, in many ways, has taken the brunt of the blame, as he leads the Department of Defense.
And though the most recent, this isn’t the first instance of adversity Hegseth has dealt with since being confirmed as Pentagon chief. One expert told the New York Times, “He’s not yet demonstrated that he’s running the department.”
Comments about Ukraine’s borders
In his debut trip abroad, Hegseth slammed the foreign policy establishment and raised eyebrows in the U.S. over his approach to the Ukraine war. It was “unrealistic” to seek to restore borders between Ukraine and Russia as they stood before the war initially broke out in 2014, he said in February. Hegseth’s remarks in Brussels six weeks ago marked a critical shift from traditional European positioning and the Biden-era policy that stated Ukraine must not cede any territory in a peace deal.
“We will only end this devastating war and establish a durable peace by coupling allied strength with a realistic assessment of the battlefield,” Hegseth told world leaders. “We want, like you, a sovereign and prosperous Ukraine, but we must start by recognizing that returning to Ukraine’s pre-2014 borders is an unrealistic objective. Chasing this illusionary goal will only prolong the war and cause more suffering.”
Some U.S. allies, such as British Defense Secretary John Healey, expressed support for Hegseth’s speech. However, European Union chief diplomat Kaja Kallas was among those who criticized the U.S. about the new stance, pledging that the EU would stand by Kyiv even if it turned down a Trump-backed peace deal.
“It’s not good negotiation tactics if you just give away everything before the negotiations have even started,” Kallas said. “Appeasement will always fail.”
And although Hegseth has gained support from longtime Ukraine enthusiasts such as Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), Sen. Roger Wicker (R-MS), the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, voiced deep concern over what he described as a “rookie mistake” from the Pentagon’s leader.
“I don’t know who wrote the speech — it is the kind of thing Tucker Carlson could have written, and Carlson is a fool,” he told Politico.
Plans for NATO
Wicker has also led Republican criticism of Hegseth’s reported move to restructure NATO and stop military expansions in Japan. In an effort to streamline military operations, increase efficiency, and save hundreds of millions of dollars, the Pentagon is considering giving up the role of NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander Europe, or SACEUR, and consolidating the U.S. European Command and U.S. Africa Command into one command based in Germany, NBC News reported last week. The U.S. is further eyeing an option to stop the planned expansion of U.S. Forces Japan, the outlet reported, as such a move could save roughly $1.2 billion.
Wicker and Rep. Mike Rogers (R-AL), the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, put out a joint statement pouring cold water on the Pentagon’s reported plans.
“We are very concerned about reports that claim DoD is considering unilateral changes on major strategic issues, including significant reductions to U.S. forces stationed abroad, absent coordination with the White House and Congress,” the pair wrote.
They added: “We will not accept significant changes to our warfighting structure that are made without a rigorous interagency process, coordination with combatant commanders and the Joint Staff, and collaboration with Congress. Such moves risk undermining American deterrence around the globe and detracting from our negotiating positions with America’s adversaries.”
Botched anti-DEI initiative rollout
Hegseth has also faced pushback over his efforts to cut diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives out of the military.
Last Tuesday, an ESPN columnist expressed significant outrage after the Defense Department appeared to remove an article about famed black baseball player Jackie Robinson, who served in the Army, from the agency’s website. Although the article was promptly restored the following day and the Pentagon suggested it may have been “mistakenly” or “maliciously” removed in an unauthorized manner, the incident and similar mistakes with other war heroes such as Navajo Code Talkers and the Tuskegee Airmen have put a cloud over Hegseth’s anti-DEI efforts.
The Pentagon chief was also targeted by critics after the Trump administration made it a mission to fire military leaders who promoted DEI initiatives or were involved in the deadly 2021 withdrawal from Afghanistan.
Gen. Charles Q. Brown, who served as the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff from 2023 to 2025, defended aspects of the Afghanistan withdrawal, and pushed DEI initiatives. President Donald Trump fired him from the post after Hegseth called for his ouster for pushing “woke s***.” Hegseth also replaced Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Lisa Franchetti and Air Force vice chief of staff Gen. James Slife, though reasons for these firings were not given.
Those actions received harsh criticism from Democrats, with Sen. Jack Reed (D-RI) suggesting the moves represented “corrosive attempts to remake the military into a partisan force.”
“A professional, apolitical military that is subordinate to the civilian government and supportive of the Constitution rather than a political party is essential to the survival of our democracy,” Reed, the ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said. “For the sake of our troops and the well-being of every American, elected leaders — especially Senate Republicans — must defend that enduring principle against corrosive attempts to remake the military into a partisan force.”
Legal setbacks to new transgender military policies
When Trump took office, he issued an executive order stating that expressing a gender identity different from one’s biological sex at birth is inconsistent with military standards. Hegseth has since sought to keep transgender people from serving in the military, arguing that they don’t medically meet military requirements.
“Remember, if you go to MOB station to deploy, if you had a Class 4 dental, they pulled your tooth because you can’t be out in the field with a major dental emergency,” he said during an appearance on the Shawn Ryan Show last November. “Yet, we’re now allowing people who used to be men or women join, and then after that, we pay for medical or physical transitions to another gender, which by definition, makes them nondeployable and nontrainable because they’re in the same thing with asthma medication or inhalers.”
“Like, when you’re in basic training, you can’t have an inhaler when you’re doing your exercises, because you can’t count on having an inhaler in a combat situation,” Hegseth continued. “Well, if you’re medically dependent on drugs to maintain your gender or a particular balance of chemicals inside your body, you’re by definition nondeployable, and so you’d have a state of soldiers who can’t train, can’t deploy.”
However, his efforts to keep transgender people from enlisting in the military and kick out transgender members already in the armed services have been met with stiff legal opposition. In response to a lawsuit from LGBT groups earlier this month, a federal judge in Washington, D.C., blocked the Trump administration from implementing the ban on transgender service members.
“The cruel irony is that thousands of transgender servicemembers have sacrificed – some risking their lives – to ensure for others the very equal protection rights the Military Ban seeks to deny them,” U.S. District Judge Ana Reyes wrote, noting that the defendants “have not shown they will be burdened by continuing the status quo pending this litigation, and avoiding constitutional violations is always in the public interest.”
WALTZ SUGGESTS GOLDBERG MAY HAVE ‘DELIBERATELY’ HACKED INTO SIGNAL CHAT
Hegseth blasted the ruling in a post to X, suggesting that Reyes had overstepped her authority to dictate Pentagon policies.
“Since ‘Judge’ Reyes is now a top military planner, she/they can report to Fort Benning at 0600 to instruct our Army Rangers on how to execute High Value Target Raids…after that, Commander Reyes can dispatch to Fort Bragg to train our Green Berets on counterinsurgency warfare,” he wrote.
