Transcription
The Secretary of Defense has just responded last week and admitted that the $1 billion mission that he led against the Houthis, who do not have a navy, uh, uh, has not restored the transit of US flag commercial vessels through the Red Sea. And in fact, has resulted in the loss of two F-18, uh, Hornets to the tune of $200 million, $60 million a piece, as well as, I believe, the last count was seven Reaper drones to the tune of another $200 million.
You are blowing through money like my cadet, fellow cadets and I did in our first liberty after basic camp. Luckily, I didn't end up with a questionable tattoo. Your failures, Mr. Secretary, since you've taken office, have been staggering. You sent classified operational information over Signal to Chessump in front of your wife, who, by the way, has no security clearance, risking service member lives in the process. You blew the one million, $1 billion, uh, fight against the Houthis, whom, um, again, as my colleague says, has no navy, and yet you lost all of those aircraft. You've created such a hostile command environment that no one wants to serve as your chief of staff or work with you in other senior DoD leadership roles.
And here's where the hearing takes a sharp turn because Duckworth doesn't just list failures. She exposes what she calls a systematic attempt to repurpose the US military for domestic political gain. And that's the part almost no one is talking about. Watch this.
But what we should all be talking about more than all of this is that you have an unjustified, un-American misuse of the military in American cities, pulling resources and attention away from core missions to the detriment of the country, the war fighters, and yes, the war fighting that you claim to love. I don't know if this is because you are too inexperienced and incompetent to understand the real threats facing our country, or if it's because you are just an unqualified yes man who can't tell the president how to keep Americans safe.
You are focusing on renaming bases for Confederate generals. You said just now to Senator King that, uh, to a man and to a woman, we would rather be associated with the old Confederate names. Well, I am one of those women. I served at Fort Rucker, Alabama, a base that was named for a traitor who took arms against the United States of America, led troops to kill Americans. It was renamed for Mike Novasel, a Medal of Honor recipient, who, in his citation for the Medal of Honor, includes that he saved 29 American lives, to include hovering backwards in a helicopter towards an enemy bunker where a wounded American was laying and saved that and saved that person, including after being taken fire himself. I know a little something about what it takes to fly a helicopter when you've been hit by enemy fire. That was heroic. I'd rather be associated with Mike Novasel than a failed Confederate traitor. I don't know whether you are inexperienced or too incompetent, but I wonder when you will actually focus on our nation's war fighting mission.
We know that California is just a deliberate, systematic political endangered campaign led by you. We should not be using our military to pay cops against Americans. General Kaine, as chairman, a key part of your job is to coordinate military planning across the joint force. Is the department currently incorporating into any military plans expanding the use of the reserve forces to include the National Guard or active duty troops to support domestic law enforcement, including in other locations in the United States?
Senator, you know, we, we, uh, carefully. No, General. Well, it's, it's not really a yes or no question, Madam Senator. We, we plan all kinds of different things. I'm not aware of any. I'm not aware of anything, but the reason why I'm answering is the tags may be looking at something that I'm not aware of.
What are you doing at your level? You're not aware of that being happening at your level? Because we know that on his first day, President Trump directed US Northern Command to revise its unified command plan to add new planning requirements to combat, and I quote, criminal activities. A series of follow-up executive orders continue to redirect DoD priorities to supporting domestic law enforcement, including one in April that tells DoD, and I quote, use national security assets for law and order. In other words, do law enforcement's job. I'd like to enter these executive orders into the record. Mr. Chairman, is there objection? Without objection. So.
HexF, you say you are force focused on war fighting and warriors. These are your words. Yet you are diverting unto DoD resources and attention to fundamentally non-military mission of domestic policing. Across our country, we have qualified police officers who are trained for that mission. They know those streets better than the Marines you deploy to Los Angeles, who normally focus on the Indo-Pacific. And you recently approved 700 more troops in three other states to do admin and logistics work for ICE. You say all of this is valuable training, but I would much rather have our troops do tough, realistic training relevant to high-end combat. Instead of typing in spreadsheets for ICE, they should be conducting live fire maneuver exercises. Instead of patrolling American neighborhoods and standing in front of federal buildings, they should be rehearsing call for fire missions. We have local police who can stand in front of those federal buildings. And the list of distractions goes on. You are encouraging the DoD workforce to go work for DHS in increasing numbers. You're pulling the military away from facing foreign enemies who literally say things like death to America, and you're putting troops with weapons aimed at Americans. Mr. Secretary, let the military get back to its real job. Stop forcing them to do DHS. And if you want to be the DHS Secretary, maybe you can apply for that job when you're fired from this one due to your incompetence.
What Senator Tammy Duckworth delivered in this hearing wasn't just a political jab. It was a full, meticulously documented indictment of what she views as the collapse of competence and integrity inside the Department of Defense under Secretary Hegsth. And it's important to understand why her voice lands differently. Duckworth isn't just another senator with opinions. She's a combat veteran, a helicopter pilot, a double amputee who has personally lived the consequences of reckless leadership. When she warns that someone is endangering troops, she speaks from the perspective of someone who has already paid the price. That's what gives this moment so much gravity.
Duckworth begins by grounding everything in facts: money lost, missions mismanaged, aircraft destroyed, outcomes not achieved. She highlights that Hegsth's billion-dollar military campaign against the Houthis, an adversary without a navy, failed to restore commercial shipping, failed operationally, and burned through hundreds of millions in US aircraft losses. She frames it not as an isolated mistake, but as a pattern: misjudgment, carelessness, and a stunning lack of accountability.
Then she moves to something even more alarming: the security breach. Hegsth allegedly sent classified operational details over Signal, not for mission-critical reasons, but to impress his wife. Duckworth calls it what it is: a reckless endangerment of US troops for vanity. It's a moment that forces viewers to confront how unserious leadership can translate directly into risks on the ground.
What's especially powerful is how she contrasts Hegsth's behavior with her own lived military experience. When he complained that bases shouldn't have been renamed because troops preferred the old Confederate names, Duckworth made it personal. She served at Fort Rucker, and she doesn't mince words. She'd rather serve under the legacy of a Medal of Honor recipient who saved lives than a Confederate officer who killed American troops. This is an example of moral clarity, of someone who understands that the symbols we honor reflect the values we claim to defend.
But the heart of Duckworth's takedown is her accusation that Hegsth is misusing the US military for domestic political purposes. She draws a straight line from Trump's directives to the deployment of active duty troops and National Guard forces for domestic policing, not to fight foreign adversaries, but to carry out the administration's political agenda inside US cities. And her warning is blunt: America has law enforcement. America has police. America does not need Marines on city streets performing ICE paperwork or standing outside buildings for show. She's highlighting a constitutional danger: the erosion of the long-standing American principle that the military is not a domestic police force.
This is where her commentary shifts from criticism to urgency. She warns that real military readiness is being sacrificed. Instead of preparing for high-end conflict, training, drilling, sharpening combat capabilities, troops are being turned into domestic political ornaments. She argues that the administration is weakening national security, not strengthening it. And all of this builds toward her final point: If Hegsth wanted to run DHS, he could have applied for it. But weaponizing the Pentagon to chase political narratives, she argues, is unacceptable. Her message is clear: The military exists to defend the country, not to perform PR stunts for politicians.
This moment wasn't about theatrics. It was about drawing a red line. And in a political environment where the boundaries between law enforcement, national security, and political power are being blurred, Duckworth is issuing a warning that goes far beyond the room she was sitting.