The prospect of a war typically leads lawmakers to rally around the military. That’s not what happened on Wednesday.
While President Trump was demanding the Iranian leadership’s “unconditional surrender,” senators were accusing their rivals of politicizing the military and undermining support for the armed services.
The setting was an Armed Services Committee hearing, ostensibly on the defense budget. Democrats complained that Mr. Trump’s deployment of Marines and National Guard forces to Los Angeles, over the objection of state and local leaders, was putting the military at odds with the citizens it was supposed to protect.
“All of my colleagues across the aisle, especially the ones that served, should want an apolitical military and not want citizens to be scared of their own military,” Senator Elissa Slotkin, Democrat of Michigan, argued.
Republicans countered that former President Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s policies, which allowed transgender troops to serve openly and funded troops’ travel for abortions, had done the real damage. “We’ve never seen the military politicized in a way that it was over those four years,” said Senator Jim Banks, Republican of Indiana.
For the Pentagon, which appears to be on the cusp of a major conflict with Iran, the timing could not be worse. Mr. Trump refused to say explicitly on Wednesday whether he would order U.S. forces to attack Iran’s nuclear sites and join Israel in its war.
“I may do it,” he told reporters on the White House lawn. “I may not do it. I mean, nobody knows what I’m going to do.”
The possibility has highlighted deep rifts inside the Republican Party between traditional defense hawks and those who believed Mr. Trump would keep America out of wars in the Middle East.
The Senate hearing exposed another major divide between Democrats and Republicans over how and when the military should be used on U.S. soil — an increasingly common occurrence in Mr. Trump’s second term.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth was asked early in the hearing whether he would ignore court orders regarding the domestic use of troops, if ordered to do so by Mr. Trump.
“I don’t believe district courts should be setting national security policy,” Mr. Hegseth said as Democrats questioned him about the legality of sending military personnel to Los Angeles amid protests over immigration raids. Pressed further, he said he would honor a ruling by the Supreme Court.
Mr. Hegseth sidestepped questions about whether he was preparing options for the president to strike Iran or to assist the Israelis in their operation to destroy Iran’s nuclear capabilities.
“At the Defense Department, our job is to stand ready and prepared with options,” Mr. Hegseth said. “And that’s precisely what we’re doing.”
So Democrats and the independent senator Angus King instead pressed Mr. Hegseth on his decision to restore the names of military bases originally named for Confederate generals.
“Why are you doing this?” asked Mr. King, of Maine. “I don’t understand what the motivation is to rename bases for people who took up arms against their country on behalf of slavery?”
Mr. Hegseth replied that veterans and active-duty troops felt a “legacy” and a “connection” to the bases and the old names.
The committee’s Democrats also repeatedly pressed Mr. Hegseth on whether he had plans to continue deploying U.S. troops domestically. “We should not be using our military to play cops against Americans,” said Senator Tammy Duckworth of Illinois, an Army veteran who lost her legs in the Iraq war.
Ms. Slotkin raised the issue in even starker terms, asking the defense secretary whether he had given troops orders “to shoot at unarmed protesters in any way?”
Mr. Hegseth laughed.
Ms. Slotkin reminded him that the former Defense Secretary Mark T. Esper wrote in his memoir that Mr. Trump had asked during racial justice demonstrations in 2020 why the military could not “just shoot” protesters in Washington in the legs.
“He had more guts and balls than you because he said, I am not going to send in the uniformed military to do something that I know in my gut is not right,” Ms. Slotkin chided the defense secretary.
“I’d be careful what you read in books,” Mr. Hegseth warned, “except for the Bible.”
“Oh God,” an exasperated Ms. Slotkin replied.
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