Hegseth digs in as Democrats demand resignation

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is digging in his heels amid calls from Democrats for his resignation in the wake of several high-profile Pentagon staff firings and the revelation of a second Signal chat reportedly looping his wife, brother and personal lawyer into military planning. 

Despite a steady drip of bombshell headlines over the past several days — the latest of which accuses Hegseth of sharing information over at least two unsecure Signal group chats that he pulled directly from a secure military channel — the former Fox News host remained defiant Tuesday. 

Returning to his oft-touted line that no “war plans” were shared in the chats, Hegseth took to his former employer to defend himself on a program frequently watched by President Trump. 

“Disgruntled former employees are peddling things to try to save their a‑‑, and ultimately, that is not going to work,” Hegseth told Brian Kilmeade on “Fox & Friends.”

The president said Monday he still supported Hegseth, a position his top spokesperson repeated at a White House press briefing Tuesday.

“Let me reiterate, the president stands strongly behind Secretary Hegseth and the change that he is bringing to the Pentagon, and the results that he's achieved thus far speak for themselves,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters.

She blamed the slew of recent headlines on “a smear campaign” by “a lot of people in this city who reject monumental change.”

But the latest Signal scandal is raising concerns from lawmakers on both sides of the aisle, with Democrats calling for Hegseth’s head, and some Republicans questioning whether he is the right man for the job.

“Hegseth needs to be fired,” Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.), a military veteran, wrote Tuesday on social platform X. “The intel he shared via Signal, including to his wife, was sent to him on a secure channel. He knowingly exposed our pilots to unnecessary danger with his show boat antics.”

“When the Secretary of Defense screws up, servicemembers’ lives are on the line,” Sen. Mark Warner (Va.), the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, wrote Tuesday on X. “Pete Hegseth has shown time and time again he screws up way too much to do this job. He must resign or be fired.”

Rep. Mikie Sherrill (D-N.J.), a former Navy helicopter pilot, joined the chorus calling for Hegseth’s ouster. 

“If Pete Hegseth was serious about turning our military into a meritocracy, he would be packing up his office and turning in his resignation letter immediately,” she wrote Monday on X. 

Rep. Carlos Gimenez (Fla.) on Monday became the second Republican in Congress to publicly express worries about Hegseth this week. 

“If, in fact, he did discuss what’s called top secret or things that only need to be discussed inside a [Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility] with his wife, if she doesn’t have that kind of security briefing, yes it would concern me,” Gimenez said on CNN.

That follows remarks from Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.), a member of the House Armed Services Committee, who on Monday suggested Hegseth should step down.

“If it’s true that he had another [Signal] chat with his family, about the missions against the Houthis, it’s totally unacceptable,” Bacon said. “I’m not in the White House, and I’m not going to tell the White House how to manage this … but I find it unacceptable, and I wouldn’t tolerate it if I was in charge.”

Another Senate Republican told The Hill Monday that many members are in “wait-and-see mode” on Hegseth, as they are betting more negative news is on its way.

Hegseth has been on the offensive since last week, when three former Pentagon officials  — Dan Caldwell, Colin Carroll, and Darin Selnick  — were fired over alleged media leaks. In a joint statement, the men attacked “unnamed Pentagon officials” they said were slandering their character “with baseless attacks on our way out the door.” 

That was followed by a damning op-ed from outgoing Pentagon spokesperson John Ullyot, published in Politico Magazine on Sunday, in which he said the “total chaos” at the department will likely cost Hegseth his job.

“[E]ven strong backers of the secretary like me must admit: The last month has been a full-blown meltdown at the Pentagon — and it’s becoming a real problem for the administration,” Ullyot wrote. “The Pentagon focus is no longer on warfighting, but on endless drama.”

The latest round of controversy started with a New York Times report on Sunday revealing the second Signal chat, which Hegseth has sought to discredit by blaming so-called fired “leakers.”

“In this point, those folks who were leaking, who have been pushed out of the building, are now attempting to leak and sabotage the president’s agenda and what we’re doing. And that’s unfortunate. It’s not what I do. It’s not how we operate,” Hegseth said Tuesday on Fox, at times his voice rising.

Caldwell, Carroll and Selnick denied leaking any information and say they have not been told what they were fired over. 

While not outright denying the second Signal chat, Hegseth claimed the information provided was “informal, unclassified coordinations for media coordination and other things.”

But that defense was challenged shortly thereafter when NBC News dropped a report that Hegseth, using his personal phone, shared information on the Signal group chat that he had pulled from secure messages sent to him by U.S. Central Command head Army Gen. Michael Erik Kurilla. 

Hegseth reportedly shared the information less than 10 minutes after Kurilla had sent it and days after an aide warned him to take precautions and not relay sensitive information on unsecure communications systems, according to the outlet.

The scandal is also playing out in court. The nonprofit watchdog group American Oversight on Monday expanded its federal lawsuit against five Cabinet members including the Pentagon chief over the use of Signal to coordinate the U.S. airstrikes in Yemen. 

American Oversight originally filed the lawsuit on March 25 in Washington, D.C., asking a federal judge to order the Cabinet members to preserve the Signal messages as the use of the app violates federal law that governs the preservation of government records, the group alleges.