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Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth may be looking for his next job. According to Puck, senators are discussing Hegseth’s interest in an appointment to Marsha Blackburn’s seat if she wins Tuesday’s election to become Tennessee governor. The prospect comes as lawmakers prepare to pursue Hegseth’s impeachment over his conduct in office. The Pentagon has dismissed the reporting as gossip and insists Hegseth’s priority remains leading the department. Whether he stays or goes, Congress must require him to answer for his record.
The administration has argued that Hegseth’s “results speak for themselves.” If that is true, then he and his department should welcome the opportunity to defend that record with documents and testimony under oath.
Military service requires extraordinary trust. Americans volunteer to accept assignments, deployments and dangers over which they often have little control. They entrust their lives to civilian and military leaders, expecting competent decisions, fair treatment and lawful orders. Military families build lives around those commitments. The civilians who direct the military and the senior officers who lead it are responsible for honoring that promise.
Hegseth’s personnel decisions over the last two years have betrayed that trust. He has blocked promotions of women and Black officers selected by professional military boards. The Pentagon denies that gender or race determined those decisions. He has also overseen the exclusion of transgender Americans who volunteered, trained and served honorably. These policies have damaged livelihoods, disrupted families and undermined confidence that honorable performance counts. Excluding qualified service members also deprives the force of trained, experienced personnel whose skills the country has spent years developing.
This responsibility extends to the people killed by military force under Hegseth’s direction. He has overseen strikes on suspected drug traffickers at sea without publicly establishing why those individuals are lawful military targets. Those killed cannot contest the allegations against them. The Americans ordered to carry out the strikes are owed lawful direction and an explanation of the authority under which they are being ordered to kill.
Hegseth must also answer for the February strike that killed 123 children in a school in Minab, Iran. Eight months later, his department has still not released its findings. The children’s families deserve answers. The American people deserve to know what was done in their name and who bears responsibility for the decisions that led to those deaths.
The Pentagon’s accounting of American deaths also demands scrutiny. Hegseth must explain reports that his department’s casualty figures omitted deaths among service members deployed in the Middle East. How those deaths were classified matters. Americans are entitled to know whether those decisions accurately described the losses or concealed the costs of war. Troops, their families and the public deserve candor about the human cost of this war.
The damage also reaches into how Americans understand their time in uniform. Military members who believe they participated in an unjustified killing may struggle to reconcile that act with the principles that led them to serve. Someone forced out after years of honorable service may feel betrayed by the institution they trusted. Such experiences can cause moral injury — lasting distress from violating deeply held beliefs or being betrayed by trusted leaders in circumstances of grave consequence. It can involve guilt, shame, anger and a profound loss of trust in oneself and others.
Lawful orders, fair treatment and honest leadership are more than aspirations. They are essential obligations to those who serve. Violating them damages the institution and harms the people in it. Replacing the defense secretary does not repair that damage.
Congress must obtain the personnel records, targeting decisions, legal advice, investigative findings and casualty classifications behind Hegseth’s record. It should subpoena him to testify under oath whether or not he stays. Even if Hegseth receives a presidential pardon, he and other responsible officials must explain what they knew, what they authorized and what they told the public. A pardon would not take away the public’s right to those answers.
That investigation must reach beyond Hegseth. The standards enforced against service members must reach those with the greatest authority over their lives. President Trump and other civilian officials must answer for their decisions. Combatant commanders and service chiefs must answer for their own. Civilian control requires obedience to lawful orders; it does not absolve senior officers of responsibility for the operations they command or the personnel policies they implement.
There is a cautionary precedent. The day after the 2006 midterm elections, President George W. Bush announced Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s departure. Two years later, the Senate Armed Services Committee concluded that Rumsfeld’s authorization of aggressive interrogation techniques had directly caused abuse to detainees at Guantanamo and contributed to abusive practices in Afghanistan and Iraq. The inquiry also traced responsibility to other senior civilian and military officials. Yet the report called neither for further investigation nor punishment. Congress established responsibility without a reckoning appropriate to its findings.
Exposing what happened is only the beginning. Findings must lead to consequences appropriate to the misconduct, including criminal referrals where the evidence warrants them. Those harmed by wrongful personnel decisions deserve review and meaningful redress. If Trump attempts to shield Hegseth from prosecution, lawmakers must still establish responsibility and pursue every remedy that remains available.
Hegseth should resign. If Trump will not fire him, Congress should pursue his impeachment and removal. He has betrayed the trust of Americans who volunteered to serve and undermined the standards that give their service meaning. His departure would end his authority over the institution. It would not settle his responsibility for what he did with it. The people harmed by his leadership will carry its consequences long after he leaves. He must face consequences of his own.
Jon Duffy is a retired naval officer. He writes about leadership and democracy.
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Ideas expressed in the piece
- The article argues that Hegseth’s personnel decisions have undermined trust in the military by sidelining officers selected for promotion and excluding transgender service members. Critics likewise say the promotion process has become opaque and note that women and Black officers have been disproportionately affected; the Pentagon disputes that race or gender determines its decisions.[1][2][3]
- It contends that lethal strikes on suspected drug traffickers require a clear legal basis and public explanation. The administration says the strikes target people involved in narcotrafficking and are lawful, but the United Nations and other critics reject its claim that the campaign amounts to an armed conflict.[8][11]
- The article calls for answers about the Minab school strike, the reporting of U.S. military deaths and the decisions behind both. Reuters reported that U.S. investigators initially believed American forces were likely responsible for the school strike, while the Pentagon said the inquiry was ongoing; the department later said it was revising how casualty information is reported.[7][5]
- It argues that replacing the defense secretary would not resolve questions of responsibility. Congress should obtain relevant records, hear testimony under oath and pursue consequences where evidence warrants them, the article says—an approach consistent with calls from some lawmakers for the Pentagon to release its school-strike findings.[10]
Different views on the topic
- Hegseth and Pentagon officials say their personnel policies are intended to restore merit-based promotion, readiness and common standards, not to discriminate. The department has said it does not use race or gender as promotion factors, while Hegseth has argued that earlier diversity efforts elevated identity over merit.[1][3][4]
- The administration defends the boat strikes as necessary to disrupt narcotics networks and protect the United States, asserting that the operations are lawful under U.S. and international law. The White House has also said a Navy admiral acted within his authority in ordering a follow-up strike; critics dispute the administration’s legal rationale and question the evidence made public.[8][11][12]
- On the Minab school strike, U.S. officials have said the military does not deliberately target civilians and that the incident remains under investigation. A U.S. commander described the inquiry as complex, citing the school’s location on an active Iranian missile base, and said the military would follow the law of war.[9]
- The Pentagon has said it remains committed to accurate casualty reporting and is revising its public database to address reporting issues. Hegseth also rejected reporting that the public figures understated deaths, though the department later added deaths to its official count.[5][6]
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