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'Wild childs': Republican senators brush aside Pete Hegseth misconduct allegations after meeting with him
Republican senators who met Monday with Pete Hegseth, President-elect Donald Trump’s pick for defense secretary, brushed aside sexual assault and other allegations against him.
Sen. Cynthia Lummis, R-Wyo., called the allegations a “side issue” while lauding Hegseth’s ability to lead the Defense Department.
“Again, they’re throwing disparaging remarks at someone who has earned a great deal of credibility. Are soldiers sometimes wild childs? Yeah, that can happen,” Lummis said when she was asked whether the allegations concern her, “but it is very clear that this guy is the guy who, at a time when Americans are losing confidence in their own military, in our ability to project strength around the world, that Pete Hegseth is the answer to that concern.”
Around 10 to 12 senators on the Republican Steering Committee, a group of conservative senators led by Mike Lee, of Utah, met with Hegseth behind closed doors in the Capitol for less than an hour Monday.
Hegseth, an Army National Guard veteran and former Fox News host, has faced several misconduct allegations since he was named as Trump’s pick to lead the Defense Department (he has denied any wrongdoing). Most recently, a New Yorker article published Sunday revealed the contents of a previously undisclosed 2015 whistleblower report from a veterans’ organization Hegseth ran, which claimed he was repeatedly intoxicated on the job.
NBC News has not independently verified the report. Hegseth’s attorney declined to comment. In a statement to The New Yorker, an adviser said that the claims were “outlandish” and that they came from a “petty and jealous disgruntled former associate.”
The Trump transition team referred NBC News to a previous statement in support of Hegseth. Hegseth did not respond to shouted questions from NBC News about the New Yorker article and other allegations.
Senators offered their full-throated support to Hegseth after the meeting, downplaying the accusations.
“I’ve known Pete for a while, so in my experience with him has always been positive. I think he’s clearly committed to making sure we have a lethal military that scares the crap out of our enemies, is respected by our allies and is somebody that our allies can rely on,” said Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla.
Lee did not say whether the senators had discussed any of the allegations with Hegseth, saying they discussed his vision for the Pentagon.
Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, said the media was “obsessed” with personal allegations against Hegseth and told reporters that each Cabinet nominee will be subject to a background check but potentially not from the FBI — a new point of contention among lawmakers, as some Republicans say the FBI should not be in charge of carrying out the background checks, breaking with the usual practice.
A woman told police that Hegseth sexually assaulted her in 2017 after a Republican women’s convention in California, according to official records of a police investigation released last month. Hegseth has denied the accusations and was not charged. He acknowledged having paid his accuser an undisclosed amount as part of a settlement.
Last week, The New York Times reported that Hegseth’s mother sent him an email calling him an “abuser of women” amid his contentious divorce in 2018. She told the Times later that she regretted the email, which NBC News has not obtained.
Hegseth’s lawyer declined to provide a statement but passed along a statement from the Trump transition team that said: “It is shameful but not surprising that the NYT is publishing a story about one out of context snippet from an illegally obtained private conversation between a mother and her son. The entire purpose of this exercise is to malign Mr. Hegseth.”
Speaking to reporters Monday after the meeting with Hegseth, Cruz referred to the New York Times story as “shameful.”
Senators also cited Hegseth’s ability to raise retention and recruitment levels in the military among young men and women, despite his having previously suggested that women should not serve. Asked about those comments, Lummis said they do not concern her.
“I think when he gets some fighter pilots that are women, that are, you know, the best of the best, he might, he might think twice about that,” she said.
In a podcast interview last month, Hegseth said women should not be allowed to fight on the front lines, claiming their presence has made fighting “more complicated.”
“I’m straight up just saying that we should not have women in combat roles,” Hegseth said on “The Shawn Ryan Show” podcast last month. His remarks drew swift backlash from female veterans and service members.
The Trump transition team did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the Republican senators’ remarks.
Dr. Tracy Beth Hoeg, the Food and Drug Administration’s top drug regulator, said she was fired from the agency Friday after she declined to resign.
She said she did not know who had ordered her firing or why, nor whether Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. knew of her fate. The Department of Health and Human Services did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The departure reflected the upheaval at the F.D.A., days after the resignation of Dr. Marty Makary, the agency commissioner. Dr. Makary had become a lightning rod for critics of the agency’s decisions to reject applications for rare disease drugs and to delay a report meant to supply damaging evidence about the abortion drug mifepristone. He also spent months before his departure pushing back on the White House’s requests for him to approve more flavored vapes, the reason he ultimately cited for leaving.
Dr. Hoeg’s hiring had startled public health leaders who were familiar with her track record as a vaccine skeptic, and she played a leading role in some of the agency’s most divisive efforts during her tenure. She worked on a report that purportedly linked the deaths of children and young adults to Covid vaccines, a dossier the agency has not released publicly. She was also the co-author of a document describing Mr. Kennedy’s decision to pare the recommendations for 17 childhood vaccines down to 11.
But in an interview on Friday, Dr. Hoeg said she “stuck with the science.”
“I am incredibly proud of the work we were doing,” Dr. Hoeg said, adding, “I’m glad that we didn’t give in to any pressures to approve drugs when it wasn’t appropriate.”
As the director of the agency’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, she was a political appointee in a role that had been previously occupied by career officials. An epidemiologist who was trained in the United States and Denmark, she worked on efforts to analyze drug safety and on a panel to discuss the use of serotonin reuptake inhibitors, the most widely prescribed class of antidepressants, during pregnancy. She also worked on efforts to reduce animal testing and was the agency’s liaison to an influential vaccine committee.
She made sure that her teams approved drugs only when the risk-benefit balance was favorable, she said.
The firing worsens the leadership vacuum at the F.D.A. and other agencies, with temporary leaders filling the role of commissioner, food chief and the head of the biologics center, which oversees vaccines and gene therapies. The roles of surgeon general and director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are also unfilled.
The U.S. Supreme Court
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The U.S. Supreme Court refused Friday to allow Virginia to use a new congressional map that favored Democrats in all but one of the state’s U.S. House seats. The map was a key part of Democrats’ effort to counter the Republican redistricting wave set off by President Trump.
The new map was drawn by Democrats and approved by Virginia voters in an April referendum. But on May 8, the Supreme Court of Virginia in a 4-to-3 vote declared the referendum, and by extension the new map, null and void because lawmakers failed to follow the proper procedures to get the issue on the ballot, violating the state constitution.
Virginia Democrats and the state’s attorney general then appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, seeking to put into effect the map approved by the voters, which yields four more likely Democratic congressional seats. In their emergency application, they argued the Virginia Supreme Court was “deeply mistaken” in its decision on “critical issues of federal law with profound practical importance to the Nation.” Further, they asserted the decision “overrode the will of the people” by ordering Virginia to “conduct its election with the congressional districts that the people rejected.”
Republican legislators countered that it would be improper for the U.S. Supreme Court to wade into a purely state law controversy — especially since the Democrats had not raised any federal claims in the lower court.
Ultimately, the U.S. Supreme Court sided with Republicans without explanation leaving in place the state court ruling that voided the Democratic-friendly maps.
The court’s decision not to intervene was its latest in emergency requests for intervention on redistricting issues. In December, the high court OK’d Texas using a gerrymandered map that could help the GOP win five more seats in the U.S. House. In February, the court allowed California to use a voter-approved, Democratic-friendly map, adopted to offset Texas’s map. Then in March, the U.S. Supreme Court blocked the redrawing of a New York map expected to flip a Republican congressional district Democratic.
And perhaps most importantly, in April, the high court ruled that a Louisiana congressional map was a racial gerrymander and must be redrawn. That decision immediately set off a flurry of redistricting efforts, particularly in the South, where Republican legislators immediately began redrawing congressional maps to eliminate long established majority Black and Hispanic districts.
An explosion and fire drew a large emergency response on Friday to a lumber mill in the Midcoast region of Maine, officials said.
The State Police and fire marshal’s investigators responded to Robbins Lumber in Searsmont, about 72 miles northeast of Portland, said Shannon Moss, a spokeswoman for the Maine Department of Public Safety.
Mike Larrivee, the director of the Waldo County Regional Communications Center, said the number of victims was unknown, cautioning that “the information we’re getting from the scene is very vague.”
“We’ve sent every resource in the county to that area, plus surrounding counties,” he said.
Footage from the scene shared by WABI-TV showed flames burning through the roof of a large structure as heavy, dark smoke billowed skyward.
The Associated Press reported that at least five people were injured, and that county officials were considering the incident a “mass casualty event.”
Catherine Robbins-Halsted, an owner and vice president at Robbins Lumber, told reporters at the scene that all of the company’s employees had been accounted for.
Gov. Janet T. Mills of Maine said on social media that she had been briefed on the situation and urged people to avoid the area.
“I ask Maine people to join me in keeping all those affected in their thoughts,” she said.
Representative Jared Golden, Democrat of Maine, said on social media that he was aware of the fire and explosion.
“As my team and I seek out more information, I am praying for the safety and well-being of first responders and everyone else on-site,” he said.
This is a developing story. Check back for updates.
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