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DOGE team welcomed at the Pentagon but some remain skeptical

The Department of Defense has received a list of DOGE officials tasked with cutting 8% from next year’s budget. “We welcome DOGE to the Pentagon,” said Secretary Pete Hegseth. “And I hope to welcome Elon to the Pentagon very soon.”

The Pentagon employs 3.7 million personnel with a budget exceeding $850 billion, but it has never passed an audit.

Tara Dougherty, CEO of Govini a defense software company, worked for three former Defense secretaries going back to Robert Gates. She says the biggest savings will be found in overhauling the decades-old weapons acquisition process, which still uses manual spreadsheets and fax machines.

ACTING HEAD OF SOCIAL SECURITY QUITS AFTER CLASH WITH DOGE OVER DATE

The Pentagon, headquarters of the Department of Defense – file photo. (DoD photo by Master Sgt. Ken Hammond, U.S. Air Force.)

“I would put a big red bull’s eye on the process by which we manage weapons systems and military platforms,” Dougherty said in an interview with Fox News. “The defense acquisition process is massively broken….It’s too slow. I mean, the United States is issuing missile purchases through fax machines. It’s using spreadsheet sheets and data calls in order to get nuclear capable platforms off of production lines.”

As a result F-35 5th generation stealth fighter jets can’t get out of depot because they’re missing parts and the defense industrial base in the US doesn’t produce what they need. The next generation intercontinental ballistic missile, a key part of the nuclear triad, is $35 billion over budget. And the cost of the B-21 nuclear bomber is rising and behind schedule.

“A lot of the weapons systems and the ships, jets, tanks and other capabilities that the department relies on for the military have such complex supply chains that the Department of Defense doesn’t actually know where all of those parts are coming from. And because they’re using spreadsheets to manage the programs overall means they have no ability to see if there are foreign suppliers or in some cases, Chinese suppliers of critical components like microelectronics in our military systems. This is the kind of thing that Elon Musk, DOGE, and the Trump administration are saying, this is no longer acceptable, and that’s what they’re going to root out,” Dougherty said.

NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISOR SAYS PUTIN, ZELENSKYY AGREE ‘ONLY PRESIDENT TRUMP COULD GET THEM TO THE TABLE’

The Pentagon employs 3.7 million personnel with a budget exceeding $850 billion. (Celal Gunes/Anadolu via Getty Images)

To get ahead of the DOGE team the Navy is considering cutting its fleet of frigates, while the Army is looking for savings by eliminating outdated drones and surplus vehicles.

Republican Senator Roger Wicker says it is about time.

“I, for one, as Chairman of the Armed Services Committee, welcome, DOGE coming in to the Pentagon and helping us cut red tape, make the acquisition process more efficient and spend our dollars better,” Wicker said in an interview with Fox’s Maria Bartiromo.

But not everyone is happy that DOGE is coming to the Pentagon where there are many classified systems and a lot of secret information that US adversaries would like to gain access to.

“We’ve already seen that this DOGE, I call it the Department of Government inefficiencies, is causing a reign of terror chaos across the federal government,” Cong Eugene VIndman of Virginia told CNN. “Just this week, they released classified information about a US intelligence agency. They have access to the American people’s personal information, bank accounts and things like that that that they’re frankly not entitled to. And so I have a major, major concern about them going into the Department of Defense and sitting around with, you know, the internal systems there and US national security.”

The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) found code linking US Treasury payments to a budget line item that was not required before, and accounts for nearly $4.7 trillion in payments and left blank. (Musk: Reuters / Money: iStock / Trump: Getty)

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Concern the DOGE team will move too fast at the expense of national security materialized after it purged 2000 federal workers from the Department of Energy, including 350, many of whom oversaw the nation’s nuclear arsenal. Many of these federal workers were working at the Pantex Plant near Amarillo, Texas, reassembling nuclear warheads, one of the most sensitive jobs that requires the highest level of security clearance.

The administration did an about-face last week and quickly tried to locate and rehire the Department of Energy employees overseeing the nukes.

At the Department of Veterans Affairs, the agency announced the dismissal of over 1000 employees, following DOGE guidance. Veterans Affairs employees joined Democratic lawmakers outside the D.C. headquarters to protest DOGE’s actions at the VA last week.

Jennifer Griffin currently serves as a national security correspondent for FOX News Channel (FNC) and is based out of the Washington D.C. bureau. She joined the network in October 1999 as a Jerusalem-based correspondent.

February 18, 2025
Hegseth welcomes DOGE Pentagon audit, but says Defense is ‘not USAID’

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Tuesday that the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) is “welcome at the Pentagon,” telling reporters in Stuttgart, Germany, during his first overseas trip at the helm that the Department of Defense (DoD) will also be reviewing U.S. military posture globally to account for different “strategic assumptions” between President Donald Trump and former President Joe Biden.

Upon arriving at the headquarters of U.S. European Command and Africa Command, Hegseth did push-ups, dead-lifts and other PT exercises with the 1st Battalion, 10th Special Forces Group (Airborne) – a gesture the secretary, a combat veteran himself, said was meant to interact with the troops directly and hear about their missions, rather than solely communicating through four-star generals.

Taking questions from reporters afterward, Hegseth, who has vowed to restore the “warrior ethos” at the Pentagon, addressed how Trump has called on NATO members to spend 5% of their GDPs on defense. Asked if the U.S. should also spend that amount, Hegseth said he and Trump share the view that U.S. defense spending should not go below 3% GDP, adding that the current administration ought to spend more than the Biden administration.

HEGSETH SAYS FORT BRAGG IS COMING BACK, BUT WITH A TWIST

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth talks to the media during his visit to the headquarters of U.S. European Command and Africa Command at the Africa Command at Kelly Barracks in Stuttgart Germany, on Tuesday, Feb. 11, 2025. (AP Photo/Michael Probst)

Hegseth accused the Biden administration of having “historically underinvested in the capabilities of our military,” adding that Trump is committed to “rebuilding America’s military by investing.”

Asked if he expects Elon Musk to start unilaterally slashing defense programs, Hegseth described the DOGE leader as a “great patriot interested in advancing the America First agenda” who knows “Trump got 77 million votes in a mandate from the American people, and part of that is bringing actual businesslike efficiency to government.” Hegseth spoke of a “partnership” with DOGE to reduce Pentagon waste, agreeing with Musk’s assessment that it could be to the tune of “billions” of dollars.

But the secretary stressed that spending at the Pentagon did not equate to the “globalist agendas” pursued by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID).

“As I said on social media, we welcome Doge to the Pentagon,” Hegseth said. “And I hope to welcome Elon to the Pentagon very soon. And his team working in collaboration with us.”

Hegseth said, “There are waste redundancies and headcounts in headquarters that need to be addressed. There’s just no doubt. Look at a lot of the climate programs that have been pursued at the Defense Department. The Defense Department is not in the business of climate change, solving the global thermostat. We’re in the business of deterring and winning wars. So things like that.”

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth participates in PT with the 1st Battalion, 10th Special Forces Group (Airborne), a U.S. Army Special Forces battalion based in Stuttgart, Germany. (DefSec Hegseth on X)

NOEM, HEGSETH, BONDI PLEAD WITH CONGRESS FOR MORE BORDER FUNDING AMID LARGE-SCALE DEPORTATIONS

“There’s plenty of places where we want the keen eye of DOGE, but we’ll do it in coordination,” he added, pointing to potential changes in weapons procurement programs as well. “We’re not going to do things that are to the detriment of American operational or tactical capabilities… President Trump is committed to delivering the best possible military.”

“The Defense Department is not USAID,” Hegseth said. “USAID has got a lot of problems that I talked about with the troops – pursuing globalist agendas that don’t have a connection to America First. That’s not the Defense Department. But we’re also not perfect either. So where we can find billions of dollars, and he’s right to say billions inside the Defense Department, every dollar we save, there is a dollar that goes to warfighters. And that’s good for the American people.”

Hegseth was also asked if there were plans to shift U.S. forces from Europe to the Indo-Pacific to focus on the Chinese threat.

“There are no plans right now in the making to cut anything,” Hegseth said. “There is an understanding that we’re going to review force posture across the world.”

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“President Trump’s planning assumptions are different in many ways, or at least strategic assumptions, than Joe Biden’s,” he said. “We certainly don’t want a plan on the back of the withdrawal from Afghanistan. And what happened on October 7th and the war that was unleashed in Ukraine. You have to manage and mitigate those things by coming alongside your friends in Israel and sharing their defense, and peacefully resolving the conflict in Ukraine. But those shouldn’t define how we orient.”

On his decision to reverse Biden’s 2023 renaming of Fort Liberty back to Fort Bragg, Hegseth said, “It means Bragg is back. It means the legacy of an institution that generations of Americans have mobilized through and served at is back.”

“I never called it Fort Liberty because it wasn’t Fort Liberty. It’s Fort Bragg. And so I was honored to be able to put my signature on that,” Hegseth said. The North Carolina base’s original namesake was Gen. Braxton Bragg, a Confederate general, but Hegseth said it would now be named after Pfc. Roland L. Bragg, a World War II hero who earned the Silver Star and the Purple Heart for his courage during the Battle of the Bulge.

Danielle Wallace is a breaking news and politics reporter at Fox News Digital. Story tips can be sent to [email protected] and on X: @danimwallace.

February 11, 2025
$1,300 coffee cups, 8,000% overpay for soap dispensers show waste as DOGE locks in on Pentagon

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President Donald Trump’s team of zealous cost-cutters under Elon Musk will soon set their sights on the U.S.’s largest discretionary budget.

With an annual budget of $850 billion, the Pentagon has long been plagued by accusations of waste and inefficiency in its defense programs and recently failed its seventh straight audit.

“We’re going to find billions, hundreds of millions of dollars of fraud and abuse,” Trump predicted in an interview with Fox News’ Bret Baier on Sunday.

Congress appropriates the Department of Defense (DOD) budget each year in great detail, and urging lawmakers to trim costs may be where Republicans publicly break with Musk and his burn-it-all-down style.

Here is a look at where the Department of Government Efficiency team could set their sights.

MUSK’S NEXT TARGET? TRUMP SAYS DOGE WILL LOOK AT DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION, PENTAGON FUNDING

President Donald Trump’s team of cost-cutting gurus under Elon Musk, pictured here, will soon set their sights on the U.S.’s largest discretionary budget. (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

Personnel and contracting

The inclination of Musk and his team seems to be to cull federal employees, but cost-cutting advocates argue that outsourcing work to contractors could have the opposite effect.

Typically, around half the Pentagon’s budget goes to contractors, corporations that have a profit motive unlike the government itself. The government relies on contractors for software support, training, weapons and to act as paramilitary forces in foreign missions.

“A major driver of Pentagon waste is actually service contracting for what are really core government functions and administrative capacities, like simple things [such] as IT support,” said Julia Gledhill, a researcher at the Stimson Center’s National Security Reform program.

“It might run contrary to their larger project based on efforts to cut the civilian workforce, but there are a lot of areas to cut Pentagon waste by actually building up government capacity to do basic administrative functions rather than outsourcing them at a very high cost.”

HEGSETH WELCOMES IN ELON MUSK’S DOGE FOR ‘LONG OVERDUE’ DOD SPENDING OVERHAUL

The Pentagon is seen from Air Force One as it flies over Washington, D.C., on March 2, 2022. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky, File)

In 2015, the Defense Business Board, at the request of DOD leaders, found that the Pentagon could save $125 billion over five years by renegotiating service contracts, streamlining the bureaucracy through attrition and early retirements, and consolidating IT processes.

The report found the Pentagon was paying an eye-watering 1,014,000 contractors to fill back-office jobs far away from the front lines. The DOD currently only lists around 1.3 million active duty troops.

However, the plan was never widely implemented, and Pentagon leaders took steps to “bury” it for fear of budget cuts, according to a Washington Post report.

In October 2024, a two-year audit by the Defense Department Inspector General found Boeing overcharged the Air Force by 8,000% for soap dispensers that the service branch paid $149,072 over market price for. Of a selected 46 spare parts that were scrutinized by the audit, the report found the Air Force overpaid about $1 million for 12 of them for its C-17 transport planes.

That followed a 2018 congressional inquiry that revealed the Air Force was spending $1,300 for each reheatable coffee cup on its KC-10 aircraft – and then replacing them instead of repairing them when their handles broke. Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, found the Air Force spent $32,000 replacing 25 cups.

Weapons programs: F-35s and land-based ICBMs

Musk has suggested that he will look to eliminate the F-35 stealth fighter jet program, long dogged by cost overruns, glitches and delays. In posts on X, he called it the “the worst military value for money in history,” and the jet itself “an expensive & complex jack of all trades, master of none” and added that “manned fighter jets are obsolete in the age of drones anyway.”

However, doing away with the F-35 has run into opposition in Congress every time it has been suggested.

A recent report put out by Taxpayers for Common Sense, Quincy Institute and Stimson called for retiring the F-35 jets and eliminating a ballistic missile program.

Elon Musk has suggested that he will look to eliminate the F-35 stealth fighter jet program, long dogged by cost overruns, glitches and delays. (Andrej Tarfila/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)

Halting the F-35 fighter jet program, dogged by cost overruns, glitches and delays, as some have advocated for, would trim $12 billion per year, according to the joint report.

But Congress would need to get on board with defunding the F-35 in its yearly defense bill, and Lockheed Martin produces the plane’s parts in many states across the country, where lawmakers have constituents with jobs at risk.

“Defunding weapons that are overpriced, underperforming, and out of step with current missions, like the F-35 combat aircraft and the Sentinel intercontinental ballistic missile, would allow us to invest more in real priorities while also tackling the nation’s tremendous debt,” said Gabe Murphy of Taxpayers for Common Sense.

TRUMP DOD CREATES TASK FORCE TO ABOLISH DEI OFFICES THAT ‘PROMOTE SYSTEMIC RACISM’

“The ICBM no longer necessarily the most accurate, you know, weapon we have in our nuclear arsenal,” added Gledhill.

“We have our sea and air legs of the nuclear triad that are just as accurate and, you know, not as vulnerable as our ICBMs are because, you know, ICBMs are in the ground, we know where they are. It’s public knowledge.”

The report found that eliminating the Sentinel ICBM program would save $3.7 billion per year.

Base realignment

The Stimson report found that “targeted closures and realignments” of U.S. military bases could save another $3-5 billion per year.

“Even if say I accept all the missions we have now in the world, you could probably cut some overseas bases without even really rethinking strategy,” said Ben Friedman, policy director at Defense Priorities.

“If you accept that we’re trying to manage the Middle East through US military troop presence or at least the ability to deploy troops and say, okay, we could do with fewer bases.”

The Trump team is reportedly considering shutting down its presence in Syria, where 2,000 troops are currently stationed.

In the 1980s, under President Ronald Reagan, the government took up an effort known as Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC), a post-Cold War process to coordinate the end of force postures that are no longer needed. Five rounds of BRAC shut down 350 installations at a savings of $12 billion, but the last BRAC process ended in 2011.

Targeted base closures could save taxpayers between $3-5 billion. (Photo by Hedil Amir/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)

Defense research

Some of the Pentagon’s $143.2 billion budget for research may also come under scrutiny.

Lawmakers last year demanded to know how an AI researcher in China acquired $30 million in U.S. grants. In 2021, Song-Chun Zhu was the lead investigator on two projects totaling $1.2 million from DOD grants seeking to develop “high-level robot autonomy” that is “important for DoD tasks,” and “cognitive robot platforms” for “intelligence and surveillance systems.”

Additionally, the Defense Department inspector general found last summer that $46.7 million in defense funds from 2014 to 2023 had gone to EcoHealth Alliance, the nonprofit that funded gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, a lab many suspect was the origin of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa., a veteran, is chairwoman of the Senate DOGE Caucus and has called out wasteful spending at the Pentagon. (Reuters)

Use-it-or-lose-it spending

Under a use-it-or-lose-it policy, in the last month of the fiscal year, federal agencies work to spend all that is left in their federal budgets, worried that Congress will appropriate them a smaller amount next year if not. The Pentagon is no exception.

In September 2024, the DOD spent more than it had in any other month since 2008, with a hefty taxpayer price tag for fine dining.

It spent $6.1 million on lobster tails, $16.6 million on rib-eye steaks, 6.4 million on salmon and $407,000 on Alaskan king crab, as highlighted in an X thread by Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa.

That same month, DOD spent $211.7 million on new furniture, including $36,000 on foot rests.

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Political headwinds

Cost-cutting initiatives will face opposition from a Congress that has never been keen to take a scalpel to the nation’s defenses.

“If history is any kind of precedent, I do think that this is where you’ll start to see at least a real sort of tension arise,” said Diana Shaw, former State Department Inspector General. “There are a lot of vested interests, and not just economic.”

“There are folks with philosophical interests in the entire defense infrastructure and the military. And so, this is an area that has been well protected historically. And so I do think this now will be an interesting test case to see whether there will be, even within the Republican Party now, some pushback to the sort of aggressive cutting and picking apart that we’ve seen happen at other agencies that have historically been sort of less favored by members of the Republican Party.”

February 11, 2025
Musk’s next target? Trump says DOGE will look at Department of Education, Pentagon funding

President Donald Trump has tasked SpaceX and Tesla CEO Elon Musk to evaluate wasteful spending at the Department of Education and the Pentagon, under the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) Musk is leading.

DOGE is tasked with eliminating government spending, waste and streamlining efficiency and operations, and is expected to influence White House policy on budget matters.

“I’ve instructed him to go check out Education, to check out the Pentagon … and sadly, you’ll find some things that are pretty bad, but I don’t think proportionally, you’re going to see anything like we just saw,” Trump told reporters about his plans for Musk Friday during a press conference while hosting Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba.

USAID STAFFERS STUNNED, ANGERED BY TRUMP ADMIN’S DOGE SHUTDOWN OF $40B AGENCY

Elon Musk, pictured here, is leading the Department of Government Efficiency. (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

On Monday, Trump and DOGE launched an effort to shutter the U.S. Agency for International Development, a group that works to deliver aid to impoverished countries and development assistance.

The group has come under scrutiny from DOGE, and in an X audio message Musk said Sunday he was “in the process” of “shutting down USAID,” for corrupt spending, and that Trump reportedly agreed.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio, now acting director of the independent agency, said Monday that USAID was not “functioning” and that the organization isn’t a “global charity.”

“It needs to be aligned with the national interest of the U.S,” Rubio said. “They’re not a global charity, these are taxpayer dollars. People are asking simple questions. What are they doing with the money?

“We are spending taxpayers’ money,” he said. “We owe the taxpayers assurances that it furthers our national interest.”

WHAT IS USAID AND WHY IS IT IN TRUMP’S CROSSHAIRS?

Secretary of State Marco Rubio that USAID was not “functioning” and that the organization isn’t a “global charity.” (Mark Schiefelbein/The Associated Press)

DOGE has been tasked with cutting $2 trillion from the federal government budget through efforts to slash spending, government programs and the federal workforce.

Musk has faced some backlash for his interference in governmental affairs thus far. For example, Senate Democrats have accused DOGE of conducting a “hostile takeover” after reports emerged Musk had access to the Treasury Department’s Bureau of the Fiscal Service’s central payment systems.

The Department of Education and the Department of Defense have some of the largest budgets of government agencies. For fiscal year 2024, the Department of Education received a budget of $79.1 billion, while the Department of Defense received a budget of $841.4 billion, according to government documents.

Meanwhile, Trump has signaled he’s seeking to completely nix the Department of Education through an executive order.

Even so, Congress would need to pass legislation to completely disband an agency, under Article II of the Constitution.

MUSK’S DOGE TAKES AIM AT ‘VIPER’S NEST’ FEDERAL AGENCY WITH GLOBAL FOOTPRINT

President Donald Trump has tapped Linda McMahon, former Administrator of Small Business Administration, to lead the Department of Education. (Mike Segar/Reuters )

Trump told reporters on Tuesday that while he has tapped Linda McMahon, former CEO of World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE), to lead the Department of Education, he wants her to eventually lose her job.

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“What I want to do is let the states run schools,” Trump said. “I believe strongly in school choice. But in addition to that, I want the states to run schools, and I want Linda to put herself out of a job.”

Fox News’ Stephen Sorace and Emma Colton contributed to this report.

Diana Stancy is a politics reporter with Fox News Digital covering the White House.

February 7, 2025
Transgender service members and rights groups file suit against Trump’s Pentagon directive

A group of transgender service members and rights groups are filing a lawsuit against President Donald Trump’s restrictions on transgender troops in the military.

The lawsuit, filed on behalf of six active duty transgender service members by GLAD Law and the National Center for Lesbian Rights (NCLR), argues that the new executive order violates the equality guarantees of the U.S. Constitution.

Filed in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, the suit says the six transgender service members would lose access to healthcare and retirement benefits as a result of the executive order.

“When you put on the uniform, differences fall away and what matters is your ability to do the job,” said Army 2nd Lt. Nicolas Talbott, named as plaintiff in the suit: Talbott v. Trump.

The new order, signed by Trump on Monday evening, requires Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to update medical standards to ensure they “prioritize readiness and lethality” and take action to “end the use of invented and identification-based pronouns” within DOD.

TRUMP SIGNS EXECUTIVE ORDERS BANNING ‘RADICAL GENDER IDEOLOGY,’ DEI INITIATIVES IN THE MILITARY

Advocates protest Trump’s transgender military ban during his first term. (Getty Images)

It says that expressing a “gender identity” different from an individual’s sex at birth does not meet military standards.

The order also restricts sleeping, changing and bathing facilities by biological sex. It’s not an immediate ban, but a direction for the secretary of Defense to implement such policies.

It revokes former President Joe Biden’s executive order that the White House argues “allowed for special circumstances to accommodate ‘gender identity’ in the military – to the detriment of military readiness and unit cohesion.”

The categorical ban on transgender service members was lifted in 2014 under President Barack Obama.

“I’ve been military my entire life. I was born on a military base,” said Navy Ensign Dan Danridge, student flight officer, a plaintiff in the suit.

DEFENSE SECRETARY PETE HEGSETH SAYS ‘NO MORE DEI AT DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE’: ‘NO EXCEPTIONS’

“Every day I lace up my boots the same as everybody else. I pass the same tests as everybody else. Being transgender is irrelevant to my service. What matters is that I can complete the tasks that are critical to our mission.”

“I’ve spent more than half my life in the Army, including combat in Afghanistan,” said Army Sgt. 1st Class Kate Cole. “Removing qualified transgender soldiers like me means an exodus of experienced personnel who fill key positions and can’t be easily replaced.”

Trump’s new order builds on another directive he issued last week that revoked a Biden-era order allowing transgender people to serve in the military.

Lawsuit filed against Trump’s latest executive order. (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

Trump directed DOD to restrict accommodations for transgender troops. (Greg Nash/Pool/AFP via Getty Images)

On the campaign trail, Trump promised to reinstate the ban on transgender troops he imposed during his first term. In his inauguration speech, he said he would formally recognize that there are only two genders: male and female.

There are an estimated 9,000 to 14,000 transgender service members – exact figures are not publicly available.

Between Jan. 1, 2016, and May 14, 2021, the DOD reportedly spent approximately $15 million on providing transgender treatments (surgical and nonsurgical) to 1,892 active duty service members, according to the Congressional Research Service.

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The move comes as part of a campaign taken up by Trump and Hegseth to weed out any diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) practices across the military. And GOP lawmakers successfully included an amendment in their 2025 defense policy bill that bans irreversible transgender care for minors in the military healthcare system.

January 28, 2025
Hegseth, on 1st day at Pentagon, says Defense’s job is US ‘sovereign territory’

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth arrived for his first day at the Pentagon on Monday with a message regarding the Department of Defense’s (DOD’s) mission.

Greeted by Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr. and a gaggle of reporters, Hegseth said it was “an honor to serve on behalf of the president and serve on behalf of the country,” adding, “The warfighters are ready to go.”

Hegseth quickly turned to the border crisis, acknowledging how President Donald Trump was “hitting the ground running” with executive orders declaring an emergency at the southern border and designating cartels foreign terrorist organizations. Hegseth said the DOD “snapped to” last week in sending more troops to aid in erecting barriers along the southern border, as well as to “ensure mass deportations,” adding: “That is something the Defense Department absolutely will continue to do.”

“He’s made it very clear. There is an emergency at the border,” Hegseth said. “The protection of the sovereign territory of the United States is the job of the Defense Department.”

DEFENSE SECRETARY PETE HEGSETH SAYS ‘NO MORE DEI AT DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE’: ‘NO EXCEPTIONS’

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth arrives at the Pentagon on Monday, Jan. 27, 2025. (AP Photo/Kevin Wolf)

Last week, the Defense Department announced 1,500 active-duty service members and “additional air and intelligence assets” were being sent to the southern border “to augment troops already conducting enforcement operations in that region.”

When asked if more troops would be deployed to the border now that he is taking the helm, Hegseth said, “Whatever is needed at the border will be provided. Whether that is through state active duty, Title 32 or Title 10, because we are reorienting.”

“This is a shift. This is not the way things have been done in the past,” Hegseth said. “The Defense Department will support the defense of the territorial integrity of the United States at the southern border to include reservists, National Guard and active duty with compliance with the Constitution, the laws of our land, and the directives of the commander in chief.”

Hegseth, a combat veteran who deployed to Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, Iraq and Afghanistan, said he anticipated more executive orders from the White House later Monday. Those would include orders to remove diversity, equity and inclusion inside the Pentagon, reinstate troops who were “pushed out” over COVID-19 vaccine mandates and to implement the construction of an “Iron Dome for America,” Hegseth told reporters, vowing to comply with Trump’s directives “rapidly and quickly.”

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, center right, talks to members of the press after arriving at the Pentagon on Monday, Jan. 27, 2025 in Washington, D.C. (AP Photo/Kevin Wolf)

“Every moment I am here I am thinking about the guys and gals in Guam, in Germany, in Fort Benning, in Fort Bragg, on missile defense sites and aircraft carriers,” Hegseth said. “Our job is lethality and readiness and warfighting.”

TRUMP TO REINSTATE SERVICE MEMBERS DISCHARGED FOR NOT GETTING COVID-19 VACCINE

“We hold people accountable. I know the chairman agrees with that,” Hegseth, who most recently was a Fox News host before Trump nominated him to lead the Defense Department, continued. “The lawful orders of the President of the United States will be executed in this Defense Department swiftly and without excuse. We will be no better friend to our allies and no stronger adversary for those who want to test us and try us.”

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, right, pats Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr. on his shoulder as he answers questions from reporters after arriving at the Pentagon on Monday, Jan. 27, 2025 in Washington, D.C. (AP Photo/Kevin Wolf)

When asked about a wristband he was wearing, Hegseth said he wore it every day to remember Jorge Oliveira, a soldier he served with in Guantánamo Bay when he was a platoon leader. Oliveira was later killed in Afghanistan while Hegseth was there in a separate unit.

“It’s these guys that we do this for. Those who have given the ultimate sacrifice,” Hegseth said.

The secretary was also asked about assistance for Afghans who worked with the U.S. government. Last week, Trump issued an executive order pausing all U.S. foreign development aid for 90 days pending an assessment into whether the funds align with his administration’s foreign policy. Reuters reported that flights for approximately 40,000 Afghans who were approved for special visas following former President Joe Biden’s botched withdrawal have been suspended as a result.

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“We are going to make sure there is accountability for what happened in Afghanistan, and we stand by our allies,” Hegseth said.

Danielle Wallace is a breaking news and politics reporter at Fox News Digital. Story tips can be sent to [email protected] and on X: @danimwallace.

January 27, 2025
McConnell voted no on Hegseth as Pentagon head, forcing Vance to cast tiebreaker

Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., was one of three Republicans to vote on Friday against Pete Hegseth, who was narrowly confirmed as defense secretary in the new Trump administration.

The other Republican “no” votes came from moderates Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, and Susan Collins, R-Maine, forcing Vice President JD Vance to break the 50-50 tie to confirm President Donald Trump’s choice to lead the Pentagon.

“The most consequential cabinet official in any Administration is the Secretary of Defense,” McConnell wrote, explaining his opposition to Hegseth. “In the face of the gravest threats to U.S. national security interests since World War II, this position is even more important today.”

“Major adversaries are working closer together to undermine U.S. interests around the world,” he said. “And America’s military capabilities and defense industrial capacity are increasingly insufficient to deter or prevail in major conflict with China or Russia, especially given the real risk of simultaneous challenges from other adversaries like Iran or North Korea.”

PETE HEGSETH CONFIRMED TO LEAD PENTAGON AFTER VP VANCE CASTS TIE-BREAKING VOTE

Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., takes a question from a reporter during a news conference following the weekly Senate Republican policy luncheon at the U.S. Capitol on Nov. 19, 2024, in Washington, D.C. (Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)

Hegseth, a former Fox News host, had faced questions ahead of his confirmation over his infidelity, allegations of sexual assault and excessive drinking, his previous comments opposing women serving in combat roles in the military and his leadership abilities.

Married three times, Hegseth has admitted he was a “serial cheater” before he became a Christian and married his current wife, Jenny. He also originally said he opposed women in combat, before later saying that he only opposes standards for women in combat that are different from those for men. Hegseth has additionally denied the sexual assault allegations and has said he would abstain from alcohol as defense secretary.

McConnell said “dust on boots” in reference to Hegseth’s military service “fails even to distinguish this nominee from multiple predecessors of the last decade. Nor is it a precondition for success. Secretaries with distinguished combat experience and time in the trenches have failed at the job.”

“Effective management of nearly 3 million military and civilian personnel, an annual budget of nearly $1 trillion, and alliances and partnerships around the world is a daily test with staggering consequences for the security of the American people and our global interests,” the senator said. “Mr. Hegseth has failed, as yet, to demonstrate that he will pass this test. But as he assumes office, the consequences of failure are as high as they have ever been.”

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Pete Hegseth testifies during his Senate Armed Services confirmation hearing on Capitol Hill on Jan. 14, 2025, in Washington, D.C. (Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)

McConnell stressed that Hegseth, in his testimony before the Armed Services Committee, “did not reckon with this reality” that the U.S. “faces coordinated aggression from adversaries bent on shattering the order underpinning American security and prosperity.”

“President Trump has rightly called on NATO allies to spend more on our collective defense. But the nominee who would have been responsible for leading that effort wouldn’t even commit to growing America’s defense investment beyond the low bar set by the Biden Administration’s budget requests,” McConnell said.

The senator also said Hegseth’s testimony lacked “substantial observations on how to defend Taiwan or the Philippines against a Chinese attack, or even whether he believes the United States should do so.” McConnell said Hegseth failed “to articulate in any detail a strategic vision for dealing with the gravest long-term threat emanating” from China.

Pete Hegseth at the completion of his confirmation hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee, at the Capitol in Washington, Tuesday, Jan. 14, 2025. (AP Photo/Ben Curtis)

McConnell additionally noted a lack of “substantive discussion” of “countering our adversaries’ alignment with deeper alliance relationships and more extensive defense industrial cooperation of our own.”

“This, of course, is due to change,” McConnell said. “As the 29th Secretary of Defense, Mr. Hegseth will be immediately tested by ongoing conflicts caused by Russian aggression in Europe and Iranian-backed terror in the Middle East. He will have to grapple with an unfinished FY25 appropriations process that – without his intervention – risks further harming the readiness of our forces.”

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“By all accounts, brave young men and women join the military with the understanding that it is a meritocracy,” he added. “This precious trust endures only as long as lawful civilian leadership upholds what must be a firewall between servicemembers and politics. The Biden Administration failed at this fundamental task. But the restoration of ‘warrior culture’ will not come from trading one set of culture warriors for another.”

January 25, 2025
Pentagon sending additional 1,500 troops to southern border: US official

The U.S. Pentagon is sending an additional 1,500 active-duty troops to the southern border by the end of the month, a U.S. official told Fox News on Wednesday.

It was not immediately clear what specific units would be sent, though the Trump administration is expected to make a formal announcement later Wednesday.

There are already 2,500 U.S. service members stationed at the southern border. The troops were ordered there in May 2023 during the Biden administration under title 10 authorities, were approved by former Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and are planned to be in place until the end of FY2025, according to a U.S. Northern Command spokesperson.

The 1,500 additional service members will deploy to different locations along the southern border by the end of the month, the U.S. official said.

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The U.S. Pentagon is sending an additional 1,500 active-duty troops to the southern border by the end of the month, a U.S. official told Fox News on Wednesday. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak, File)

The added troops will act in the same roles as the service members already there, providing aerial reconnaissance, data entry, training, vehicle maintenance, detection and monitoring, and some other logistical support roles.

Migrants walk along the US-Mexico border fence in Lukeville, Arizona, on Tuesday, Dec. 12, 2023. An influx of migrants crossing the border unlawfully has overwhelmed U.S. border officials. (Eric Thayer/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

The announcement will mark the third time that U.S. troops have been sent to the southern border in the last two years.

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In May 2023, former President Joe Biden and Austin approved a request from former Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas to send an additional 1,500 active-duty troops to the southern border for 90 days to assist with the influx of migrants after pandemic era health restrictions ended in May 2023.

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In March 2024, Austin approved another DHS request for 2,500 service members, including national guardsmen under Title 10 duty status.

Liz Friden is a Pentagon producer based in Washington, D.C.

January 23, 2025