Pete Hegseth

Pete Hegseth was confirmed as Secretary of Defense by the narrowest margin in modern history — Vice President Vance casting the tie-breaking vote — after a nomination by Donald Trump. A Princeton and Harvard Kennedy School graduate, he served in the Army National Guard with deployments to Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay before a decade as a Fox News weekend host.

On 29 April 2026, Hegseth filed a 27-page Posture Statement to HASC (the House Armed Services Committee), signed Secretary of War. The phrase DoW (Department of War) appears 18 times in FY27 appropriations text; Operation EPIC FURY is named in a congressional document for the first time; NATO allies who refused base and overflight rights during the Iran campaign are condemned as 'unconscionable, and we will remember' . The statement surfaces a $25 billion Iran war cost — the first public figure of the conflict, mostly munitions — and a $1.5 trillion FY27 defence request, 40% above FY26 and the largest absolute rise since 2003. He led the campaign overseeing over 9,000 targets struck and 130 Iranian warships destroyed in the first 25 days .

His management of the conflict has drawn scrutiny from both parties. Republican opposition blocked the $200 billion war supplemental , and DNI Tulsi Gabbard contradicted Pentagon claims under oath. He held a 7 April press conference claiming the day's strike volume was 'the largest since Day 1' as both US carriers repositioned out of Iranian missile range and Iranian outbound volume reached its lowest level since the war began . Hegseth's transition from cable news pundit to wartime defence secretary — now publicly rebranding the department he leads — is without precedent in American history.

On 12 May 2026, Hegseth testified before the Senate Appropriations Committee on $29 billion of Iran war spending. Asked by Senator Lisa Murkowski whether an AUMF would be 'helpful', Hegseth replied that Trump has 'all the authorities he needs under Article 2' and that 'we don't need' an AUMF. The testimony was the first time a cabinet officer formally named the verbal-track method as policy rather than merely leaving it unstated, converting 75 consecutive days without a signed Iran instrument from an oversight gap into a stated doctrine .

The statement drew intense bipartisan frustration (WaPo) and rendered Murkowski's threatened AUMF procedurally moot — her filing preconditions are now irrelevant if the administration asserts no authorisation is needed. Hegseth had previously told SASC on 30 April that the WPR 60-day clock pauses during a Ceasefire, a theory Senator Tim Kaine rejected as unsupported by statute .