Defense & National Security Newsletter

Hegseth in the hotseat

by Ellen Mitchell - 05/12/26 6:03 PM ET

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by Ellen Mitchell - 05/12/26 6:03 PM ET

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The Big Story

Hegseth in the hotseat

House and Senate GOP lawmakers vented their frustrations with the Pentagon on Tuesday, using a pair of back-to-back hearings to grill Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.

Republicans in both chambers pressed Hegseth on President Trump’s mammoth $1.5 trillion Pentagon budget request, appearing skeptical of his proposal to fund $1.1 trillion through the regular appropriations process and another $350 billion through a reconciliation bill.

Budget reconciliation is a process that Republicans could use to bypass a Democratic filibuster in the Senate but it is difficult and time-consuming — and a number of Republicans had previously expressed doubts about their ability to pass a third such bill after using their second shot at it to pass immigration enforcement funding.

During the House hearing, Hegseth said that “there’s a reality in this town of what can get done and how it gets done and in a perfect world everything would get done in regular order and with a $1.5 trillion topline but there are a lot of challenges and dynamics, some of which I don’t control.”

Later, at the Senate Appropriations defense subcommittee hearing, Chair Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) hammered the Pentagon chief over the plan, objecting to leaving crucial Pentagon programs outside the normal defense budget.

“Political realities will not always allow a party-line budget reconciliation, and if the department’s top priorities aren’t built into annual appropriations, we’re actually taking a big risk,” McConnell said

Later under intense questioning from several Senate lawmakers, Hegseth repeatedly declined to offer any hint of the U.S. strategy in Iran or how leaders plan to deal with the closure of the Strait of Hormuz.

“It seems there has been a different plan almost daily with dealing with this problem,” Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) said of the blockade of the strait.

After Hegseth claimed that the U.S. “ultimately” controls the vital shipping corridor, Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.) repeatedly asked what the administration’s strategy was for reopening the strait to commercial shipping.

“If we control it, how do we reopen it?” Coons asked.

Hegseth shot back that Coons was being “highly disingenuous” and ignoring the U.S.’s “incredible battlefield successes.”

Read the full report at thehill.com

Welcome to The Hill’s Defense & National Security newsletter, I’m Ellen Mitchell — your guide to the latest developments at the Pentagon, on Capitol Hill and beyond.

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