Senate Democrats are demanding answers from Secretary of War Pete Hegseth about his plan to call hundreds of the nation’s top generals and admirals, along with their senior enlisted advisers, to Marine Corps Base Quantico in Virginia on Tuesday.
President Donald Trump also is expected to attend the meeting. Although no reason was given for the gathering, Hegseth reportedly is to speak about the “warrior ethos” and military standards he wants enforced at the Department of War.
In a letter to Hegseth on Saturday, Sens. Tammy Duckworth of Illinois and Mazie Hirono of Hawaii, members of the Senate Armed Services Committee, called the move an unprecedented, costly, and risky gathering that could pull more than 1,000 service members from their posts worldwide at taxpayer expense. They warned that the meeting lacked precedent and clear justification.
“For an administration obsessed with rooting out waste, this abrupt, time and resource-intensive meeting of our military’s top commanders, all of whom have earned their positions through superior performance over decades of service, to reportedly hear you, the least qualified Secretary of Defense in living memory, lecture about military standards and warfighting is absurd,” they wrote.
They warned the event would create a “rich target” by concentrating senior military leaders in one place and saddle taxpayers with steep travel, lodging, and security costs. They wrote it could also disrupt command and control during ongoing global operations and break with precedent, given that no Pentagon chief has convened such a large in-person meeting without a clear crisis or mission, not even during the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Gulf War, or after 9/11.
The senators also criticized what they described as a pattern of “deeply troubling” conduct under Hegseth, including political misuse of the military, removing senior officers, “sometimes at the urging of a far-right social media influencer and conspiracy theorist,” and “your own humiliating mishandling” of classified material in unsecured chats.
The senators were alluding to the “Signal chat” controversy in March, when Hegseth shared operational details of planned U.S. strikes against Houthi terrorists in Yemen in an unsecured group thread that critics said amounted to classified information, though the administration insists it did not.
Duckworth and Hirono also posed 19 specific questions, including the full cost of the event, why a secure virtual option was not considered, and what contingency plans exist if there is a security breach. They set a Monday deadline for a briefing or written response.
Newsmax reached out to the Department of War for comment.
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