Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth faced congressional questioning for the first time since the United States went to war with Iran, testifying Wednesday and Thursday before both chambers on the conflict’s $25 billion cost and the Pentagon’s $1.5 trillion budget request for fiscal year 2027. Hegseth dismissed Democrats pushing the War Powers Resolution of 1973 — which gives the administration until June to seek congressional authorization or begin a withdrawal — as “reckless, feckless, and defeatist.” Some previously skeptical Republicans praised his performance.
Before the House Armed Services Committee on Wednesday and the Senate Armed Services Committee on Thursday, Hegseth and Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Dan Caine said U.S. and Israeli strikes have eliminated more than half of Iran’s missiles and drones, destroyed its entire conventional navy and air force, and that fighting is on hold with the military maintaining its blockade of the Strait of Hormuz. Democrats and some Republicans questioned the war’s cost, its economic fallout, and the administration’s strategy for ending the conflict, now in its ninth week.
Hegseth and Caine also faced questions about the Pentagon’s dismissal of several top military leaders, including Army Chief of Staff Gen. Randy George. Hegseth defended each removal.
Intelligence officials faced separate scrutiny in March. Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, CIA Director John Ratcliffe, and FBI Director Kash Patel testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee March 18 for the annual worldwide threats assessment. Gabbard stated that Iran’s nuclear enrichment program was “obliterated” by last year’s strikes and that the regime “appears to be intact but largely degraded.” She declined to detail what intelligence she provided Trump before the war, frustrating Democrats seeking a public accounting. Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA), the top Democrat on the committee, pressed Gabbard on the fact that the ODNI’s 2026 threat assessment was the first since 2017 not to mention foreign election interference. Gabbard did not directly answer.
Patel, making his first public Capitol Hill appearance since video surfaced showing him at a social event with Russian military members, said the FBI’s focus is tracking individuals with terrorist ties and cartel connections. Gabbard separately faced questions about her presence at an FBI search of a Fulton County, Georgia, election office in January, which Warner called “an organized effort to misuse her national security powers to interfere in domestic politics.” Gabbard said she was present at the president’s request and did not participate.
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