Washington
CNN
—
Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth heads to Capitol Hill for a series of congressional hearings over the next week that are likely to be a major test of his leadership following what is widely viewed as a rocky first few months on the job.
The hearings, which begin Tuesday in front of a House subcommittee, will be the first time Hegseth will testify to Congress since his confirmation hearings in January and negative headlines earlier in the spring about chaos and dysfunction at the Pentagon.
Lawmakers will have their first chance to question Hegseth under oath about his role in Signalgate, in which he and other national security officials discussed detailed military plans in a text chain that inadvertently included a prominent journalist.
Hegseth – who will be testifying alongside Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan Caine – is also likely to face questions on a number of other thorny topics, including his plans to mobilize Marines to Los Angeles; the large-scale military operation against the Houthis in Yemen that ended abruptly last month; and his clashes with the Pentagon’s Joint Staff.
Drama consumed Hegseth’s office this spring. He invited Elon Musk to the Pentagon for a classified briefing without first informing the White House and fired three senior Defense Department officials he accused of leaking to the press. Hegseth also faced significant blowback after sharing detailed military plans in a secure messaging app about a forthcoming strike on Yemen back in March.
The tumult and negative headlines Hegseth created – including one from his former spokesman John Ullyot, who said the Pentagon was in “chaos” under his leadership – led key White House officials to warn him that the drama needed to stop, officials familiar with the matter told CNN.
In a statement ahead of the hearing, chief Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said, “The entire OSD team is working diligently together to return the DoD to its core mission of warfighting and to deliver results. Our accomplishments thus far are proof of that effort, and as the White House stated Monday, Secretary Hegseth has ‘the full support’ of President Trump.”
Following his appearance before the House Appropriations subcommittee on Defense on Tuesday, Hegseth is set to testify before the Senate Appropriations subcommittee on Defense on Thursday and the House and Senate Armed Services committees also in the coming days.
There might also be split-screen moments that reveal some daylight between Hegseth, who considers himself a fierce MAGA warrior, and Caine, who has no social media presence and prefers to stay under the radar. Caine has also disagreed with Hegseth in the past – particularly when it came to the Houthi campaign in Yemen, which Caine was deeply skeptical of, people familiar with the matter told CNN.
White House officials will be monitoring Hegseth’s testimony, particularly when it comes to Signalgate, which received bipartisan criticism from lawmakers in March. At the time, the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee Sen. Roger Wicker, a Republican from Mississippi, said the information Hegseth posted should have been classified, and asked the Pentagon’s inspector general to probe the matter. Hegseth has repeatedly claimed the information he posted, about the military operation against the Houthis in Yemen, were not classified “war plans.”
The administration will also be watching how Hegseth defends President Donald Trump’s use of the military domestically – both at the border, where nearly 10,000 active duty troops have been deployed to help deter migrants from crossing into the US, and in California, where Trump activated the California National Guard over the will of state and local officials in response to protests in Los Angeles.
On Saturday night, Hegseth posted on X that “the@DeptofDefense is mobilizing the National Guard IMMEDIATELY to support federal law enforcement in Los Angeles. And, if violence continues, active duty Marines at Camp Pendleton will also be mobilized — they are on high alert.”
That comment raised eyebrows both at the Pentagon and the Department of Homeland Security, where officials wondered why Marines would need to be deployed in addition to National Guard troops and what their tasks would be. Lawmakers will likely have similar questions about how the troops have been trained, what their mission is in LA, and what their instructions are for the use of force.
On Monday, US Northern Command confirmed that roughly 700 Marines based in California were being activated and heading to Los Angeles to “seamlessly integrate” with California National Guard troops on the ground there that were mobilized by Trump over the weekend.
It is still unclear what their specific task will be once in LA, sources told CNN. Like the National Guard troops, they are prohibited from conducting law enforcement activity such as making arrests unless Trump invokes the Insurrection Act, which permits the president to use the military to end an insurrection or rebellion of federal power.
Those questions will likely be particularly pointed during hearings before the Armed Services committees. The ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Sen. Jack Reed, said on Sunday that the guard deployment and Hegseth’s decision to put active-duty Marines on high alert “sets a troubling precedent for military intervention in local law enforcement.”
More broadly, though, the hearings come as Hegseth has tried in recent months to lay low and project calm to convince the White House that he’s up to the job. But he still has no chief of staff after his first one, Joe Kasper, was pushed aside amid complaints that he was fighting with other Pentagon advisers and generally just difficult to reach. And the White House remains deeply skeptical of one of Hegseth’s closest aides, Ricky Buria, because he worked under former Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin.
Meanwhile, Hegseth has remained fixated on leaks behind the scenes, people familiar with the matter said, further annoying some White House officials. A wide-ranging leak investigation he ordered in April is ongoing, a defense official said, and Hegseth has continued to push for polygraph tests of senior Pentagon officials.
“Secretary Hegseth is absolutely right to be concerned about leakers who are risking our nation’s national security,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told CNN in a statement. “Pete is doing a fantastic job leading the Pentagon, and the President has full confidence in him.”
Most recently, Hegseth was particularly angry about critical reporting on the anti-Houthi campaign, people familiar with the matter said. The operation, the largest to date on Hegseth’s watch, had limited success and did not end on the Pentagon’s terms. Rather, it ended because of a negotiated deal brokered by Trump’s Middle East envoy.
While Hegseth and CENTCOM Commander Michael Kurilla routinely touted the success of the anti-Houthi operation, Caine routinely asked tough questions about it and appeared deeply skeptical that it would yield useful results, the sources said. He ultimately recommended to Trump that it be wound down, especially since it did not appear to have a clear goal or end-game.
For now, Hegseth remains in Trump’s good graces, and he was at the White House on Monday along with other members of Trump’s national security team to discuss the situation in Los Angeles.
“We have an obligation to defend federal law enforcement officers,” Hegseth posted on X, announcing the Marine deployment, “even if (California governor) Gavin Newsom will not.”
