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Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth ended his third and final day hearing on Capitol Hill on Thursday and had several clashes with lawmakers as he evaded issues of invasion of Greenland, Ukrainian aid, use of app signals and deployment of troops in Los Angeles.
Hegseth was quickly attacked by inquiries from the group Democrats when he made his debut on the House Armed Services Committee, starting with ranking member Adam Smith (Washington State). Smith imposed a request to the Pentagon head as the Ministry of Defense’s policy of whether it is ready to seize Greenland or Panama by force.
Heggs will not rule out the possibility of future military invasions on Arctic territories and Central American countries, suggesting such plans to Pentagon lawmakers, and the United States is interested in protecting both regions from China.
He said the Department of Defense “plans any particular contingency plan”, adding: “I think the American people want the Pentagon to have any plans.”
The answer leads Smith to laugh at him, answering: “I don’t think the American people will vote for President Trump because they hope we will invade Greenland.
Smith also warned that the Trump administration is sending a message to the rest of the world that “the United States is purely for itself and does not care about the alliance” in order to seek to take over its allied states.
President Trump has been refusing to rule out the possibility of such an action to use military power to take over Greenland and Panama.
The idea shocked allies including Denmark, which owns Greenland and opposes any U.S. efforts to occupy the territory.
Hergs was later under pressure from Rep. Mike Turner (R-Ohio), who begged him to confirm: “Today, the Pentagon’s plan to have force or invade Greenland is not your testimony, right?
Heggs can only repeat, “the Pentagon has any number of unexpected plans” and officials “look forward to working with Greenland to ensure it is protected from any potential threats.”
Rep. Seth Moulton (D-Mass.) took five minutes to provide Hegseth with the most direct question of whether he shared the U.S. attack plan in Yemen through a signal messaging app.
Morton asked Heggs if the U.S. Central Command would strike out in March when it launches on fighter jets in March, Houthi’s radical targets—the Pentagon head will continue to chat with at least two signal groups—the information was conveyed on confidential or unclassified systems.
Hegseth declined to answer, asserting: “Any way the Secretary of Defense communicates or provides information itself is classified without discussion.”
Nor would he say what the classification marks in the central order were, prompting Moreton to become angry.
“It has not been revealed whether it is classified yet,” he said. He eventually made Hegseth admit that he was not saying that the information was not classified.
“So you get classified information from the central order because it is required by the Department of Defense regulations and then put it on an unclassified system,” Moldon said.
But Heggs continued to hide: “I served in the honor of the president, like everyone else.”
Rep. Salud Carbajal (D-Calif.) then slammed the Defense Secretary as “embarrassing” and demanded that he resign on a range of issues, including Signal Group Chat, deploying Marines to Los Angeles in protests and views on Russia’s war in Ukraine.
Kabahar said: “I call on you to resign. I don’t think you are qualified before confirmation and you have done nothing to inspire your confidence in what is capable of.”
Later, Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) exerted a U.S. military posture on the secretary, and Israel reportedly threatened to launch an attack on Iran. Khanna repeatedly asked Hegseth whether he could not directly attack Iran unless the Islamic Republic fired the United States for the first time. Heggs would not make such a guarantee.
“For me, it’s not a prudent to commit or not. My job is to be posture and preparation.”
He also said that Trump “provided ongoing negotiations for Iran, but he also fully recognized that there would be a threat of a nuclear explosion in Iran.”
Khanna also asked Hegseth whether he promised to comply with the federal court or the Supreme Court ruling on the extraordinary deployment of the Pentagon’s National Guard members and Marines to Los Angeles.
But the Pentagon head repeatedly avoided the issue, saying, “My job is to make sure the troops we have in Los Angeles can support law enforcement.”
Another effort by Hegseth said the United States should not have “a local judge decide on the country’s foreign policy or national security policy.”
Khanna noted that the Trump administration (particularly Vice President Vance) signaled that they could ignore court orders they disagree with.
The hearing began on a long week in Hegseth on Capitol Hill, which began Tuesday with relatively quiet House grants, a defense subcommittee hearing.
But on Wednesday, Hegs faced intense problems with the Senate version of the grant panel that bombed Hegseth’s bombing of the Russian-Ukrainian war, the Pentagon’s delay in providing budget information and the government’s focus in its Arctic strategy.