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Sep 27, 2026· Updated

Hegseth Pitches His $1.5 Trillion Defense Budget on Capitol Hill and Locks Democrats Out of Every Classified Briefing — and It Is Senate Republicans Who Tell Him to Stop

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth made at least two closed-door trips to Capitol Hill in early August 2026 to sell President Trump's record $1.5 trillion defense budget, and lawmakers in both parties said he excluded Democrats from every session. The sharpest criticism came from Republicans on the Armed Services Committee, who warned that the appropriations portion of the package cannot pass without Democratic votes. Sen. Thom Tillis said Hegseth "calls himself the secretary of war" but will not "go to war and win the argument with nearly half the members of the Senate." Sen. Lisa Murkowski said the briefings "need to be bipartisan," and Sen. Mike Rounds said Democrats "need to be brought up to speed," while adding that classified material must stay classified. Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, the ranking Democrat on Foreign Relations, said the pattern extended past the Pentagon to routine committee-staff briefings. Senate Democrats threatened to withhold support from defense spending bills over the exclusions. The Pentagon said it "remains fully committed to working with Congress."

“I agree there's friction. … Anybody who thinks that we're going to get money for the Pentagon, which needs it, other than through reconciliation, needs to put down the bong.”
John Kennedy (R-LA) · Sep 27, 2026

pentagon

defense-budget

congressional-oversight

10 statements

Sep 25, 2026· Updated

Senate Democrats Demand a Navy Accounting for the USS Abraham Lincoln's Record 250-Day Deployment as Hegseth Calls Reports of Sailors Going Overboard "Completely Misrepresented"

On Wednesday, August 12, 2026, Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), the ranking Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, sent a letter to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and acting Navy Secretary Hung Cao demanding an accounting of conditions aboard the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln, the flagship of Carrier Strike Group 3 supporting operations in the war against Iran. The Lincoln left San Diego in November 2025 on what was scheduled as a roughly seven-month deployment. By mid-August 2026 it had been at sea more than 250 days and had gone more than 200 days without a port call, a record for consecutive days at sea. Reporting by Military Times and Stars and Stripes, drawing on sailors' families, described shortages of basic supplies, water contamination, plumbing failures, deck safety problems, disrupted mail, and deteriorating mental health aboard the ship — including accounts that at least two sailors had been stopped from jumping overboard and that another entered the water and was recovered. A U.S. official confirmed to ABC News that a sailor went overboard in early August and was quickly recovered; CENTCOM disputed the broader characterization. Blumenthal's letter was joined by demands from other Senate Democrats: Sen. Ruben Gallego (D-AZ) called for a bipartisan congressional delegation to visit the ship, and Sen. Mark Kelly (D-AZ), a former Navy combat pilot, called the reports "disturbing" and tied them to an undefined mission. On Thursday, August 13, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) called for Hegseth's firing. Hegseth pushed back the same day, telling reporters the accounts were "completely misrepresented" and defending the Navy's support for the crew. A Navy official said the Lincoln was "operating in a highly contested environment where traditional supply hubs in the Middle East were disrupted by combat actions" and that the command had not identified an increase in reported suicidal ideation. The Pentagon subsequently announced the USS George Washington would deploy to the Middle East to relieve the Lincoln. No Senate or House Republican was found on the record about the Lincoln's conditions during this window; Congress was in August recess.

“That this administration can find endless taxpayer dollars for bombs, ballrooms, and billionaires, but cannot take care of our service members, is completely unacceptable. … The American people need hearings, accountability and a clear plan to protect our service members and prioritize American families.”
Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) · Sep 25, 2026

Sep 24, 2026· Updated

The Justice Department Says It Will Send a Record ~1,000 Monitors to the Midterm Polls — and a Senator Asks the Pentagon to Put in Writing That It Will Not Send Troops or Seize Ballots

Two announcements eleven weeks before the November 2026 midterms put the question of federal presence at American polling places back in front of Congress. On Monday, August 17, 2026, Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon, who runs the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division, told Bloomberg Law that the department would deploy roughly 1,000 election monitors in November — "probably going to be a historic number for a Republican administration." Dhillon said the monitors would observe rather than intervene, would be trained on the same materials used by previous administrations, and would watch for language-access and disability-access barriers as well as suspected fraud. The number is many times what the department has typically fielded, and it lands as President Trump repeatedly predicts Democrats will "cheat" to retake Congress and after his call for Republicans to "nationalize" elections. The next day, Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.), a former CIA analyst and Pentagon official, wrote to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Dan Caine asking them to confirm in writing that the Defense Department "will not send Federal troops to the polls or to seize election materials of any kind." She pointed to Trump's 2020-era consideration of using the military to seize voting machines, his National Guard deployments to cities over Democratic governors' objections, and the 2025 deployment of active-duty Marines to Los Angeles. The Pentagon said it would respond through normal congressional correspondence channels; the Joint Chiefs did not comment. Hegseth, asked a version of the same question at an April 2026 hearing, called it a "gotcha hypothetical" but said he had never been ordered to do anything illegal and would not follow such an order. Republicans on the Senate Armed Services Committee had earlier blocked a Democratic amendment to strengthen the existing statutory bar on federal troops at polling places. Democrats had already gone to the department about the monitors: on August 3, 2026, Sens. Mark Warner and Tim Kaine led a ten-senator letter pressing DOJ to confirm the program would stay within its statutory limits and would not target jurisdictions on partisan lines. Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes, whose state saw monitors during the summer primary, has filed public records requests seeking the factual basis for the deployments.

“We are taking strong, joint legal action to block Donald Trump's threats to deploy federal agents, including ICE and FBI agents, to polling places this November. Sending armed federal agents into American neighborhoods to intimidate voters is not only wrong – it's illegal and would mark a new and extremely dangerous escalation of this administration's disregard for the rule of law and repeated attempts to rig the midterms. … Federal law explicitly forbids voter intimidation and stationing armed federal agents at polling places. Our case is clear, and we're confident we'll defeat Trump in court yet again.”
Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) · Sep 24, 2026

Sep 19, 2026· Updated

A Chatbot-Assisted Intelligence Report Sent Armed U.S. Troops to Board a Chinese Ship for Nuclear Weapons Parts That Were Never There — and the Top Democrats on Intelligence, Armed Services and Defense Appropriations Demand an Inspector General Investigation of AI Errors in Military Targeting

On September 18, 2026, CNN reported that earlier this year, during the Iran war, a U.S. Special Operations Command analyst used an AI chatbot to help produce an intelligence report claiming a Chinese ship in the Middle East was carrying components for a nuclear weapons program. The report circulated across the military; armed personnel suited up to board the vessel and military aircraft were already airborne before senior officials examined the underlying sourcing and concluded the report was "entirely false." One source told CNN the "hallucination" reflected a trend rather than an isolated incident, and another said it "almost started a war." On September 19, Senate Intelligence Committee Vice Chairman Mark Warner, Armed Services Ranking Member Jack Reed and Defense Appropriations Subcommittee Ranking Member Chris Coons wrote to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Director of National Intelligence Jay Clayton demanding an "immediate investigation by relevant Inspectors General." The letter also cited the February strike on a school in Minab, Iran, which killed nearly 200 people, after commanders bypassed warnings in AI-powered databases that the target intelligence was badly outdated. The Pentagon, which under Hegseth has pushed to accelerate AI adoption across operations, had not publicly responded as of September 19.

“[We call for an] immediate investigation by relevant Inspectors General, with a higher degree of public transparency in the ultimate findings, given the impacts these perceived failures have on public confidence in our intelligence and warfighting missions.”
Jack Reed (D-RI) · Sep 19, 2026

artificial-intelligence

pentagon

intelligence

3 statements

Sep 19, 2026· Updated

In Forty-Eight Hours the Commerce Secretary Says "There Haven't Been American Deaths" in Iran, the Vice President Says "I Wouldn't Call It a War," and an Airman's Widow Is Told Her Combat Benefits Depend on Congress Declaring One

On September 2, 2026, in a CNBC interview from the G20 finance meeting, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said of the six-month-old Iran campaign that "there haven't been American deaths, it's really just an economic choke out." The Defense Department's own casualty database records 18 U.S. service members killed and more than 400 wounded in action since the war began on February 28. Lutnick apologized the next morning on X, saying he had been thinking of the January operation that captured Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela. President Trump offered the same explanation on Truth Social. Hours later, at a White House briefing on September 3, Vice President JD Vance was asked whether the conflict would be over before the midterms and answered, "I wouldn't call it a war. Right now, there is no active shooting" — in a briefing where he had described Iran shooting at commercial shipping repeatedly, before and after. The semantics are not academic. Libby Klinner, whose husband Air Force Maj. John "Alex" Klinner was killed March 12 in a KC-135 crash during refueling operations, wrote that a casualty assistance officer told her combat-related entitlements — Hostile Fire Pay, Imminent Danger Pay, the Combat Zone Tax Exclusion — were unavailable because Congress had not declared war. The Air Force opened a review and later said classification confusion, not denial, was the cause; a Defense Department review found the family was receiving all eligible benefits. Vance told reporters the administration would "work that on the back end." Rep. Yassamin Ansari (D-AZ) called Vance's framing "profoundly disrespectful" to the families of the 18 dead. Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-IL) had already introduced legislation in August to stop the Pentagon from resetting the war's casualty count by moving deaths after July 7 onto a separate page labeled "Overseas Operations."

“22 of our service members have been killed in Trump's illegal war. Not 18 like we were told. The Pentagon hid four more heroes' deaths from us for months. Congress cannot let them get away with this.”
Tammy Duckworth (D-IL) · Sep 19, 2026

The Pentagon’s Europe Review Puts Its First Numbers on Paper — 25,000 to 40,000 of the 80,000 U.S. Troops in Europe, Below the Floor Congress Set in Law — and Eight Senate Democrats Tell Rubio That American Ambassadors Have Been "Excluded From Consultations"

The Europe Force Posture Review, launched in June 2026 and run out of the office of Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Elbridge Colby, is due to deliver a final recommendation to Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth on November 6, 2026. On September 17 and 18, Reuters and NBC News reported the first numbers the review has put on paper: options to withdraw between 25,000 and 40,000 of the roughly 80,000 U.S. military personnel stationed in Europe, along with aircraft and ships, with Germany, Italy and Spain among the countries hosting the largest affected deployments. Either figure would take the U.S. presence below the 76,000-troop floor Congress wrote into the fiscal 2026 National Defense Authorization Act, which bars a reduction below that level without a prior security assessment and certification to lawmakers. On September 17, Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.), the ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, led seven Senate Democrats in a letter to Marco Rubio — who holds the dual role of Secretary of State and National Security Advisor — objecting that the review is being conducted without meaningful State Department participation, and that U.S. ambassadors in the countries that would be affected have been kept out of it. The senators wrote that the Pentagon had sent allied governments a questionnaire covering diplomatic priorities that properly sit with the State Department. The same week, Trump posted that "major progress" was being made toward a U.S. Army base in Poland — the administration’s answer to the drawdown reporting being that forces are being repositioned toward NATO’s eastern flank rather than pulled off the continent. A final recommendation is not due until November 6, three days after the midterm elections.

“Thanks to the bold leadership of my friend, Karol Nawrocki, President of Poland, major progress is being made toward establishing a U.S. Army base in Poland.”
Donald Trump (R-FL) · Sep 17, 2026

The Pentagon Owes the Senate Armed Services Committee a Defense Strategy Update and Elbridge Colby Arrives Without One — a Republican Says He Would "Just Sort of Dodge and Punt," Another Says "They Owe Us a Report, and We Did Not Get the Report," and Asked About Troops at the Polls He "Never Once Said 'Yes' or 'No'"

Under the annual National Defense Authorization Act, the Pentagon owed the Senate Armed Services Committee a classified briefing and implementation report on the Trump administration's National Defense Strategy by September 15, 2026. On Thursday, September 17, Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Elbridge Colby appeared before the committee in a closed session — and, senators of both parties said afterward, did not deliver it. Lawmakers said Colby gave unsatisfying answers on the Iran war, depleted munitions stockpiles and whether the administration has discussed deploying the National Guard to polling places during November's midterm elections. According to Republican Sen. Kevin Cramer, Colby acknowledged he "had heard about some of those discussions taking place" but said he was not leading on the issue and never answered yes or no. Republicans Cramer and Mike Rounds joined Democrats Jacky Rosen and Mark Kelly in criticizing the session. Republican Jim Banks dissented, calling it "constructive" and "substantive." Committee Chairman Roger Wicker declined to comment on the classified briefing. The session came days after the Pentagon Inspector General reported "strategic inventory shortfalls" from munitions spent in the Iran war, and amid a broader fight over the flow of information from the Pentagon to Congress.

“[It was a] constructive, substantive [briefing that] answered all my questions.”
Jim Banks (R-IN) · Sep 17, 2026

pentagon

national-defense-strategy

elbridge-colby

6 statements

Sep 15, 2026· Updated

The United States Admits for the First Time That It Has Weapons in Orbit — Air Force Secretary Troy Meink Says the Space Force "Now Has On-Orbit Space Control Weapons," and the Chief of Space Operations Says "It Was Time" to Say So Out Loud

On September 14, 2026, in his opening keynote at the Air & Space Forces Association's Air, Space and Cyber Conference in National Harbor, Maryland, Secretary of the Air Force Troy Meink said that the Space Force "now has on-orbit space control weapons capable of defending the joint force against hostile adversary action." It was the first time any US government official has publicly acknowledged that the United States has deployed weapon systems into orbit. Meink later told reporters the acknowledgement was deliberate and the phrasing "very well thought out," while declining to say whether the systems are kinetic or non-kinetic, or whether they have been tested — arguing that specifics would undercut their deterrent value. A Space Force spokesperson subsequently said "space control" encompasses both kinetic and non-kinetic means, used to disrupt, degrade or destroy, offensively as well as defensively. The next day, Chief of Space Operations Gen. Douglas Schiess confirmed and expanded on the disclosure, framing it as an overdue act of transparency about capabilities the service already fields. China called on Washington to stop weaponizing space; Russia warned of potentially catastrophic consequences and renewed its call for "the complete demilitarization of space." As of this writing, congressional reaction has been notably muted — the House adjourned until after the midterms two days after Meink's remarks.

“Today, Guardians operate on-orbit weapons that can defend the joint force against space-enabled attacks.”
Douglas Schiess (I) · Sep 15, 2026

The Pentagon Fires the Publisher, Editor-in-Chief and a Reporter of Stars and Stripes for "Insubordination" — the Editor Says It Was for Saying on CBS That Censoring the Troops’ Newspaper Would Be a Red Line

On Friday, August 21, 2026, the Pentagon issued separation notices to three people at Stars and Stripes: publisher Max Lederer, who had held the job for 19 years; editor-in-chief Erik Slavin; and Middle East reporter Lara Korte. The stated cause was insubordination. Slavin said he was told his dismissal was tied to a "CBS Sunday Morning" segment that aired in July, in which he was asked a hypothetical about censorship of news for service members and answered that it would be a red line. Stars and Stripes is partially funded by the Defense Department but has operated with statutory editorial independence since the Civil War era. The firings capped a months-long sequence: a March memo tightening the department's oversight of the newsroom and imposing content restrictions; the April termination of the paper's ombudsman, a post Congress created specifically to protect its independence; and, this month, the installation of an active-duty Navy public affairs officer, Capt. William Urban, as a "military deputy" to the publisher — reportedly without consulting Lederer, who announced his retirement days later. Defense Department spokesman Sean Parnell was unapologetic, saying the department would "refocus its content away from woke distractions that syphon morale" and that the paper would be "custom tailored to our warfighters." Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) called the firings "political interference and intimidation" and said he would seek Senate Armed Services Committee hearings and changes in the National Defense Authorization Act. The day before the firings, Blumenthal, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.) had written to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth demanding answers by August 28 about the Urban appointment and Lederer's departure. The firings followed Stars and Stripes reporting on conditions aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln during its record 250-day deployment — coverage that is itself the subject of a separate Senate inquiry.

“He’s pushed out journalists. He’s pushed out media. This is part of his effort to create fear and to clamp down on information.”
Jason Crow (D-CO) · Sep 6, 2026

Hegseth Pentagon Purge of Senior Military Officers

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has fired or forced out more than a dozen senior military officers since taking office, including Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. CQ Brown, Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Lisa Franchetti, and Army Chief of Staff Gen. Randy George. The purge, framed as removing "woke" generals and restoring a "warrior ethos," has drawn bipartisan concern — particularly after the firing of Gen. George in April 2026 during the active U.S.-Iran conflict. Five former defense secretaries condemned the firings as "reckless" in a joint letter to Congress.

“Well, it's not my place to have confidence in him.”
John Kennedy (R-LA) · Sep 6, 2026

Three Four-Star Combatant Commanders and the Chief of Naval Operations Formally Tell Hegseth "Non-Concur" on Extending the Iran War — and When It Leaks, the Pentagon's Answer Is That Publishing It "Is a Crime"

The August 14, 2026 edition of the Secretary of Defense Orders Book — the classified internal document that allocates which forces go where — asked the services and the combatant commands to sign off on extending the units committed to the Iran war. According to reporting published by The Washington Post on August 30, they did not. The commanders of U.S. European Command, U.S. Indo-Pacific Command and U.S. Southern Command, along with Adm. Daryl Caudle, the chief of naval operations, entered a formal "non-concur" — the military's institutional way of putting disagreement on the record. The chiefs of the Army and Air Force concurred but attached warnings that doing so carried significant risk. The substance of the objection was readiness. With so many aircraft, ships and air-defense systems pulled into the Iran campaign, the commanders responsible for Europe, the Pacific and Latin America told Hegseth they could not execute their own war plans if a crisis opened in their theaters — or, in one framing, defend the homeland. Caudle told Hegseth the Navy cannot sustain its current contribution when the campaign has no anticipated end date, and reported that barely a quarter of the destroyer fleet was ready to deploy. The Pentagon's public response was not to engage the readiness argument but to attack the disclosure. Chief spokesman Sean Parnell wrote that publishing the orders book is "a crime" and "a betrayal of the force," while simultaneously arguing that non-concurs are routine and that the secretary "sees them constantly." A Washington Post spokesperson said the paper was confident in its reporting and sourcing. In Congress — still in recess until mid-September, which sharply limited on-record reaction over the holiday weekend — the first responses came from House Democrats. Rep. Gil Cisneros, a Navy veteran on Armed Services, said the episode was "another example of mismanagement by Pete Hegseth" and that his decisions "will have a negative impact on readiness for years to come." Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi, a senior Intelligence Committee member, tied it directly to China: with the carrier USS George Washington moved out of the Pacific and munitions stockpiles depleted, he told Bloomberg the United States is inviting Beijing to test it over Taiwan.

“The Department does not comment on internal personnel or investigative matters but takes all leaks of classified national security information extremely seriously and investigates accordingly. Securing classified information is critical to ensuring the security of the United States and of our troops deployed around the world.”
Sean Parnell (R) · Sep 5, 2026

Every Branch of the U.S. Military Tells Ron Wyden It Has Switched Off the Advertising Trackers on Its Devices — Months After Foreign Adversaries Began Buying Commercial Location Data to Target American Troops in the Middle East

On Friday, September 4, 2026, Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) released letters from the Air Force, the Army, the Navy and U.S. Special Operations Command confirming that each had disabled the advertising identifiers on the phones and computers its personnel use — the persistent codes that feed the commercial location-data market. The letters are the Pentagon’s answer to a bipartisan warning Wyden and Rep. Pat Harrigan (R-N.C.) delivered on May 28, 2026, when they and twelve other members of Congress revealed that foreign adversaries were buying commercially available location data to track U.S. servicemembers deployed in Middle East hotspots and using it to aim attacks. The Air Force said it had turned the identifiers off two months earlier; Special Operations Command said it had done so "recently"; the Army said advertising IDs had been blocked on its Windows computers since before 2021 but were only disabled by default on Android and Apple mobile devices as of February 2026. Wyden and Harrigan were not satisfied. The same day, they asked the Pentagon to investigate whether the Defense Department had ever properly countered the danger — with the war against Iran in its seventh month and U.S. bases in Jordan, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates having taken Iranian missile and drone fire in the preceding weeks.

“The steps the Defense Department has taken so far, Wyden said, “have not been effective at neutralizing this threat.””
Ron Wyden (D-OR) · Sep 4, 2026

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