Senator Duckworth Delivers Scathing Rebuke of Pentagon Leadership, Citing Failed Missions and Political Misuse of U.S. Military

WASHINGTON — In one of the most forceful and personal confrontations on Capitol Hill this year, Senator Tammy Duckworth, Democrat of Illinois and a decorated combat veteran, delivered a blistering critique of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth during a tense Senate Armed Services Committee hearing. Her remarks, which blended operational detail, national-security warnings, and moral indictment, offered one of the sharpest challenges yet to the direction of the Pentagon under President Donald Trump.

The exchange began with Duckworth recounting what she described as a pattern of expensive military failures, including a $1 billion campaign against the Houthi movement in Yemen. Despite the scale of the mission, she noted, the campaign failed to restore the flow of U.S.-flagged commercial vessels through the Red Sea — its central strategic objective. The operation also resulted in the loss of two F/A-18 Hornets and several MQ-9 Reaper drones, amounting to hundreds of millions of dollars in aircraft losses.

“This mission did not achieve its goal, and we lost assets to an adversary without a navy,” Duckworth said, framing the episode as emblematic of broader mismanagement.

Her critique quickly widened. She accused Hegseth of sending classified operational information over the messaging app Signal to impress his wife — who does not hold a security clearance — a decision she said endangered U.S. service members. The allegation, which Hegseth did not fully address during the hearing, underscored what Duckworth portrayed as a persistent breakdown of judgment at the highest levels of the Pentagon.

The senator’s challenge was not merely bureaucratic. It was personal. Drawing on her own service as a helicopter pilot in Iraq — an experience that left her a double amputee — Duckworth rejected Hegseth’s recent comments defending the historic names of U.S. military installations honoring Confederate officers. When he suggested that troops “to a man and to a woman” preferred the old names, Duckworth responded sharply.

“I served at Fort Rucker, which was named for a traitor who took up arms against the United States,” she said. “It has since been renamed for Mike Novosel, a Medal of Honor recipient who saved 29 American lives. I would much rather be associated with a hero than a Confederate general who killed Americans.”

But the most consequential portion of Duckworth’s remarks focused on what she called an “unjustified, un-American misuse” of the U.S. military for domestic political purposes. Citing a series of Trump administration directives, she accused Hegseth and senior Pentagon leaders of diverting military resources to domestic law enforcement missions — deployments she argued were better suited to local police and federal agencies.

In her telling, the administration had steadily expanded the military’s domestic responsibilities, from deploying Marines to Los Angeles for policing support to ordering thousands of troops to assist Immigration and Customs Enforcement with administrative work. She pointed to executive orders directing the Department of Defense to use “national security assets for law and order,” describing them as an attempt to repurpose the military as a political instrument rather than a defense institution.

“We have qualified police officers for these missions,” she said. “We do not need Marines patrolling American streets or filling out spreadsheets for ICE. Every hour spent on these deployments is an hour not spent training for real combat.”

When Duckworth pressed Gen. Christopher Kaine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, on whether current Pentagon planning included expanded use of active-duty forces inside the United States, the general offered a cautious response. He said he was not aware of such planning at his level but noted that other commands might be reviewing directives he had not yet seen. The exchange highlighted what Duckworth described as a broader lack of transparency surrounding the administration’s domestic-force posture.

Her closing remarks amounted to a warning about the erosion of long-standing norms that separate military power from domestic political activity. “Let the military return to its real mission,” she said, adding that if Hegseth wanted to run the Department of Homeland Security, “he can apply for that job when he is fired from this one.”

Duckworth’s comments carried unusual weight not only because of her military background but also because of the gravity of her accusations. In recent years, lawmakers from both parties have expressed concern about increasing political pressure on the military, particularly during moments of domestic unrest. But few critiques have been delivered with the level of detail and moral urgency on display in Tuesday’s hearing.

What emerged was not simply a dispute over policy but a broader argument about the proper boundaries of American civil-military relations. In Duckworth’s view, the Pentagon under Hegseth has blurred those boundaries — at significant cost to readiness, democratic norms, and the safety of service members.

As the session ended, the room remained unusually silent. It was clear that Duckworth’s indictment had landed with force far beyond the usual rhythms of congressional oversight.