New U.S. defense secretary promises to bring major changes to military
WASHINGTON – Pete Hegseth narrowly secured enough votes on Friday to become the next U.S. defense secretary, and promised to bring major changes to the Pentagon, but his leadership will be under intense scrutiny following a contentious confirmation process that highlighted concerns about his qualifications.
Hegseth was confirmed after a 50-50 vote in the Senate, when Vice President JD Vance came to the chamber to break the tie in his role as president of the Senate, after three Republicans joined every Democrat and independent in voting no.
“We have not had a secretary of defense like Hegseth before,” said Jeremi Suri, a University of Texas, Austin, history professor and presidential scholar.
Hegseth is the most divisive candidate to clinch the U.S. military’s top job, a position that has historically gone to candidates with deep experience running large organizations and who enjoy broad bipartisan support.
It was only the second time in history a cabinet nominee needed a tie-break to be confirmed. The first was also a Trump nominee, Betsy DeVos, who became secretary of education in 2017.
Hegseth will lead 1.3 million active-duty service members and the nearly 1 million civilians who work for the U.S. military, which has a nearly $1 trillion annual budget. Hegseth told lawmakers that, up until this point, the largest group he had managed was 100 people, and the largest budget was $16 million.
Trump, whose nominees for FBI and intelligence chief are also under Senate scrutiny, stood staunchly by his pick, and he put extensive pressure on his fellow Republicans to back the 44-year-old former Fox News personality.
Regarding U.S. foreign policy, little is known about where Hegseth stands on key issues like arming Ukraine, how to prepare the U.S. military for a potential conflict with China, and whether he would seek to scale back the U.S. military footprint in places like Syria and Iraq.
Separately, U.S. military C-17 aircraft began on Friday flying detained migrants out of the country following orders from Trump, in the first such involvement by the U.S. military in deportations in recent memory.
The Pentagon has announced plans to send 1,500 active-duty troops to the border in response to Trump’s orders, a number that looks poised to quickly grow. Moreover, U.S. officials told Reuters that the military was preparing to send a second wave of troops, likely from the 82nd Airborne.
