Braxton Taylor
Hegseth’s big day: Pete Hegseth is expected to become America’s 29th defense secretary in a full Senate vote expected Friday evening. His nomination progressed in a procedural vote Thursday, with 51 of the upper chamber’s 53 Republicans supporting Hegseth as the country’s next Pentagon chief.
GOP Senators Susan Collins of Maine and Alaska’s Lisa Murkowski joined Democrats and two Independents in opposition. Murkowski cited “allegations of sexual assault and excessive drinking” that have followed Hegseth, as well as “past behaviors Mr. Hegseth has admitted to, including infidelity on multiple occasions.”
Despite Hegseth’s testimony in a confirmation hearing last week, “I am not convinced that his position on women serving in combat roles has changed,” Collins said in a statement Thursday. “Hegseth also appears to lack a sufficient appreciation for some of the policies that the military is required to follow because they are codified in the laws of the United States of America,” including “prohibitions against torture…Therefore, I will vote against the nomination,” she said.
But due to the 53-47 balance of power, “Senate Republicans can afford to lose one more vote to get Hegseth’s confirmation over the finish line, in which case Vice President JD Vance would be called upon to break a tie in Hegseth’s favor,” CBS News reports. (Kentucky’s Mitch McConnell was rumored to possibly also oppose Hegseth’s nomination; but that did not materialize in Thursday’s vote.)
Another allegation from Hegseth’s checkered past emerged publicly Thursday after he “told the Senate Armed Services Committee that he paid $50,000 as part of a confidentiality agreement to a woman who alleged he sexually assaulted her,” CNN reported.
Why it matters: “We cannot risk installing a leader who may have a history that is exploitable by our adversaries,” Rhode Island’s Sen. Jack Reed, the ranking Democrat on the Armed Services Committee, said on the floor of the Senate Thursday. “Nor can we risk confirming a secretary of defense who has shown that he is incapable of being responsible, accountable and law-abiding 24 hours a day, seven days a week, as that job requires,” he added.
Second opinion: “Pete Hegseth Succumbed to Blackmail. He Can’t Be Confirmed to DOD,” Marine veteran and Newsmax host Greg Kelly argued two weeks ago in a commentary for Newsweek.
But that did not matter to Armed Services Chairman Republican Roger Wicker. “His experience in the line of fire and his service member advocacy make at least one thing clear: Pete Hegseth will put the men and women of our military first,” Wicker said Thursday.
Army veteran and Republican Sen. Joni Ernst was similarly unconcerned by the new allegations. “His ex-wife has denied it. So it really doesn’t go very far” and “carries no weight,” she told Igor Bobic of HuffPost on Thursday.
By the way: The U.S. Army briefly “outright removed its sexual assault and harassment prevention rules, (AR 600-52) which govern record keeping for criminal prosecution & victim protection,” Steve Beynon of Military.com reported Thursday on social media. “Strangely – they did not formally rescind the regulation. Instead, they just removed it from being able to read” so they could search it for anything in it related to diversity, equity and inclusion, officials told Beynon. The document now appears to have been restored for public viewing.
Welcome to this Friday edition of The D Brief, brought to you by Ben Watson and Bradley Peniston. Share your newsletter tips, reading recommendations, or feedback here. And if you’re not already subscribed, you can do that here. On this day in 1915, the British and German navies in the vicinity of the North Sea fought each other in the Battle of Dogger Bank. More than a thousand German sailors were killed compared to just 47 of their British counterparts.
Trump 2.0
The Senate on Thursday confirmed John Ratcliffe to lead the CIA in a 74-25 vote after sailing through the Senate Intelligence Committee in a 14-3 vote Monday.
A former congressman and prosecutor from Texas, Ratcliffe had been accused of politicizing intelligence assessments during his service as director of national intelligence in the last months of President Donald Trump’s first term, Nextgov/FCW reports. Ratcliffe was also accused of distorting intelligence to overemphasize China’s role in a 2020 presidential election influence assessment to downplay election-meddling by Russia and other nations. More, here.
ICYMI: The Defense Department and other federal agencies have 30 days to implement President Trump’s order to end telework and remote work, the Office of Personnel Management said on Wednesday.
Quantifying the impact: Nearly 62,000, or 8 percent, of the Defense Department’s 783,000 civilian employees teleworked or worked remotely in April and May of 2024, OPM reported last year. About 10 percent of all federal workers do so, Erich Wagner of Government Executive reported Thursday.
Fine print: Employees will have 30 days, or until late February, to “fully comply” with the order, with notable exceptions for the aforementioned exempt employees and for employees covered by collective bargaining agreements with provisions governing telework. Continue reading, here.
ICE agents raided a New Jersey seafood store and detained a U.S. military veteran on Thursday, Newark’s Pix11 reported afterward, citing a statement from Mayor Ras Baraka. “Store owner Luis Janota said 10 or 12 ICE agents entered the retail area after receiving complaints and were looking for documentation,” Pix11 reports.
Jonota: “I asked them [the agents] what documentation they were looking for, and they said it was a license or a passport. I thought, ‘Who walks around with a passport?’”
Three people were taken into custody. “One of the guys was a military veteran, and the way he looked to me was because he was Hispanic,” said the store owner. “He is Puerto Rican and the manager of our warehouse. It looked to me like they were specifically going after certain kinds of people — not every kind, because they did not ask me for documentation for my American workers, Portuguese workers, or white workers,” Janota said.
Mayor Baraka: “This egregious act is in plain violation of the Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which guarantees ‘the right of the people be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures,’” he said in a statement.
An ICE official called it “a targeted enforcement operation at a worksite,” and added, “This is an active investigation and per ICE policy, we cannot discuss ongoing investigations.” More, here.
Related reading:
Around the Defense Department
Update: U.S. active duty troops began arriving to the U.S.-Mexico border region overnight, a senior defense official said in a statement Friday morning. They did not say how many had begun their transit, but the Pentagon earlier this week announced at least 1,500 troops would be headed there soon, supplementing the approximately 2,500 already in place. An estimated 10,000 troops are publicly planned to assist Homeland Security personnel in accordance with President Trump’s executive orders issued earlier this week.
Additional reading:
Industry
Trump: NATO members should spend 5% of GDP on defense. “I’m also going to ask all NATO nations to increase defense spending to 5 percent of GDP, which is what it should have been years ago,” the president said in a virtual address to the Davos Forum on Thursday.
Background: NATO established the 2%-of-GDP guideline at the 2014 Wales Summit, not long after Russia’s initial invasion of Ukraine, and members began upping their contributions at then-President Obama’s urging in 2016. Two years later, Trump moved beyond cajoling with threats to withdraw from the alliance.
More recently: On the campaign trail over the summer, Trump floated a 3-percent target, which has since been mentioned by Angus Lapsley, the alliance’s assistant secretary general for defence policy and planning, and more recently by Secretary General Mark Rutte. In December, an official told the Financial Times in December that Trump would use 5 percent as a starting point for negotiations, but would likely accept 3.5 percent.
Europe to fund U.S. production? A former senior White House official who is familiar with discussions between former President Joe Biden’s national security team and Trump’s told Defense One that the two teams were considering a plan where the United States would provide needed arms to Ukraine, but NATO members would absorb the costs. Defense One’s Patrick Tucker reports.
Developing: Two German Patriot air defense systems will be up and running in Poland by Monday, Berlin’s Defence Minister Boris Pistorius said Thursday. “The two German Patriot units will remain close to the Polish-Ukrainian border for six months to protect the airspace in the region,” Reuters reports.
Berlin is also sending Eurofighter jets to Poland to help with an air policing mission over the summer. More, here.
And lastly this week: Boeing’s defense business faced another tough quarter, with a projected loss of $1.7 billion when it reports its fourth-quarter earnings next week—bringing total losses for the sector to nearly $5 billion for the year, Defense One’s Audrey Decker reported Thursday.
What’s going on: A major program contributing to the losses is the Air Force’s KC-46 tanker, which alone incurred an $800 million hit. Its T-7A trainer program lost $500 million this quarter, while the remaining $400 million in losses come from other BDS programs: Starliner, VC-25 Air Force One, and MQ-25 refueler drone. Read the rest, here.
Additional reading: “AWS and Booz Allen Announce Expanded Partnership to Speed Digital Transformation for U.S. Federal Agencies,” Amazon and BAH announced Friday.
Read the full article here