Pete Hegseth's uncertain future.

I’m Isaac Saul, and this is Tangle: an independent, nonpartisan, subscriber-supported politics newsletter that summarizes the best arguments from across the political spectrum on the news of the day — then “my take.”

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Today's read: 13 minutes.

Biden really did make a mess.

Last week, Executive Editor Isaac Saul used part of his “My take” to make the case that President Biden and Democrats really did make a mess of immigration. The flourish drew rebukes and criticism in the comments section from some Tangle readers, so Isaac decided to flesh out his argument this Friday in a members-only opinion piece.

Quick hits.

1. The Trump administration has reportedly presented Ukraine with a final offer for a peace deal with Russia, which includes U.S. recognition of Crimea as Russian territory and unofficial recognition of Russian control of most areas occupied since the start of the war. The U.S. expects Ukraine’s response on Wednesday. (The report)
2. President Donald Trump said he does not plan to fire Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell but reiterated that Powell should lower interest rates. President Trump also said that current U.S. tariffs on China would “come down substantially.” (The comments)
3. A federal judge blocked the Trump administration’s efforts to dismantle Voice of America and other outlets under the U.S. Agency for Global Media, directing the agency to reinstate employees placed on leave. (The ruling) Separately, the Environmental Protection Agency moved to fire approximately 280 workers involved with environmental justice and diversity, equity, and inclusion programs. (The dismissals)
4. The Supreme Court appeared likely to side with a group of parents who want to opt their children out of educational content that includes LGBTQ+ themes. (The arguments) Separately, a federal jury found The New York Times not liable for allegedly defaming Sarah Palin in a 2017 editorial about gun control. (The trial)
5. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Commissioner Marty Makary said the FDA plans to revoke authorization of two synthetic food colorings and work with food producers to phase out six others by the end of 2026. (The announcement)

Today's topic.

Pete Hegseth’s position as secretary of Defense. In the past week, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has been the subject of scrutiny from former staffers and anonymous sources within the federal government, leading to an unconfirmed report that President Donald Trump was considering replacing him. On Saturday, April 19, three senior Department of Defense (DoD) officials who had been fired for allegedly leaking sensitive information criticized their dismissals in a public statement on X. Then on Sunday, The New York Times reported that Hegseth shared sensitive information about U.S. strikes in Yemen in a second Signal chat that included his wife, brother, and personal lawyer. Also on Sunday, former chief Pentagon spokesman John Ullyot wrote an op-ed in Politico describing the DoD as in “total chaos” under Hegseth and calling for his firing. Finally, NPR reported that the White House had begun to search for Hegseth’s replacement on Monday, though the White House denied the report.

Back up: On March 24, The Atlantic’s editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg reported that he had been added to a group chat on Signal — a free encrypted messaging app — with Trump administration officials as they discussed impending military operations against the Houthis in Yemen. Monday’s New York Times article stated that Hegseth posted the same information in the second Signal chat on the same day, against warnings from an aide not to share sensitive information over unsecured networks.

Weeks later, on April 15, two senior Pentagon officials — senior adviser Dan Caldwell and Pentagon deputy chief of staff Darin Selnick — were placed on administrative leave while the DoD investigated alleged leaks of sensitive information that included reports about Elon Musk’s visit to the Pentagon and military plans regarding the Panama Canal, the Red Sea, and Ukraine. Caldwell, Selnick, and Colin Caroll — the chief of staff to Deputy Defense Secretary Stephen Feinberg — were then fired on April 18 for mishandling classified information. 

The three officials disputed the DoD’s reasoning, saying, “Unnamed Pentagon officials have slandered our character with baseless attacks on our way out the door.” Ullyot corroborated this sentiment in his Politico op-ed, writing that “Hegseth’s team has developed a habit of spreading flat-out, easily debunked falsehoods anonymously about their colleagues on their way out the door.” Although they were critical of the DoD, Caldwell, Selnick, Caroll, and Ullyot all expressed continued support for President Trump in their writings.

Secretary Hegseth denied the accounts from the fired officials in an interview with Fox News’s Brian Kilmeade on Monday. “None of this is based in reality,” Hegseth said. “Those folks who were leaking, who have been pushed out of the building, are now attempting to leak and sabotage the president’s agenda.”

The White House expressed support for Secretary Hegseth and pushed back against the recent reports. “He's doing a great job — ask the Houthis how he's doing,” President Donald Trump said, while White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt dismissed the NPR report as “FAKE NEWS based on one anonymous source who clearly has no idea what they are talking about." 

Today, we’ll explore what the left and right are saying about Secretary Hegseth, then I’ll give “My take.”

What the left is saying.

• The left argues Hegseth has again shown he is not fit to be Defense secretary.
• Some suggest his time at the Pentagon may be coming to the end.
• Others say Trump is standing by Hegseth in defiance of the media and his critics.

In The Atlantic, David A. Graham said “Hegseth is running out of excuses.”

“Of course Pete Hegseth had other Signal chats… The latest article, like Goldberg’s, raises questions about whether highly classified information is really safe. Members of the military expressed anger after the first leak, noting that breaches could put them in danger, and that if they had handled such material the same way, they would have received serious discipline,” Graham wrote. “The fact that four separate people were willing to speak about this to the Trump-detested New York Times is an indication of dysfunction, just as the constant stream of leaks from within the first Trump White House laid bare the internecine warfare there.”

“A secretary facing the scandals that Hegseth has might well have been forced out by now in any other administration—though, to be fair, they might also never have been confirmed or even nominated in the first place. The president’s reluctance to get rid of Hegseth apparently stems from his belief that he let the media push him around too much during his first term, and that if he cans any official who’s under fire, he will only encourage and empower the press,” Graham said. “This is a dangerous game to play with national security, though. If Trump is unwilling to take a political loss now, what kind of geopolitical loss does he risk later?”

In The American Prospect, Ryan Cooper suggested “Hegseth may be too incompetent even for Trump.”

“It was just less than a month when Hegseth was embroiled in a scandal that would have meant the end of his career and permanent ignominy for any official in a normal administration,” Cooper wrote. “It’s hard to know where to start with these stories. For one thing, all these group chats basically have to be a violation of multiple laws regarding classified information. Now, American law in this area, particularly the Espionage Act, is kind of a mess. People like Reality Winner and Charles Littlejohn have gone to prison for years for disclosing information that didn’t harm national security in the slightest.”

“One can only speculate as to the motives of whoever leaked these chats to the Times. Perhaps a certain faction among Trump’s herd of squabbling morons is embarrassed by Hegseth and trying to get him fired… Or perhaps members of the military, fed up with Hegseth putting American soldiers’ lives at risk—or angry about being fired for no reason—got wind of them,” Cooper said. “The sheer number of possibilities is another demonstration of why you don’t conduct highly sensitive discussions on your personal cell phone. At least the Russians and the Chinese, and probably a half-dozen other nations, must be assumed to have a periscope into top American military communications at all times.”

In CNN, Stephen Collinson wrote about “why Hegseth looks safe — for now.”

“President Donald Trump spent huge political capital getting Hegseth confirmed because the Pentagon chief mirrors Trump’s own riotous political identity and instincts. The point of his selection was to show the conventions and traits that normally define top national security officials don’t apply in the president’s tear-it-down second term,” Collinson said. “This is why Hegseth seems safe for now despite stunning new revelations that he shared sensitive military plans in a group chat that included his wife and brother, among others, following an earlier scandal over his communicating details about strikes on Yemen in a chat with top officials.”

“Firing Hegseth three months into a tenure that started with national security experts warning he was dangerously unprepared to lead the Pentagon would force an embarrassed Trump to admit he’d made a mistake,” Collinson wrote. “And, critically, Hegseth has not yet committed the unpardonable transgression that led to the departure of two Trump first-term defense secretaries – trying to thwart the president… Fresh drama around Hegseth is another reminder that the 47th president’s orbit doesn’t follow the rules of normal administrations, in which the breach of sensitive information would be a career-ending disgrace.”

What the right is saying.

• The right mostly backs Hegseth, suggesting the attacks on him are being led by protectors of the status quo in the Defense Department.
• Some say Trump should continue to stand behind Hegseth. 
• Others suggest Hegseth is validating the concerns of his critics. 

In The Federalist, Shawn Fleetwood said the “new anti-Hegseth op illustrates the media’s campaign to protect the Pentagon status quo.”

“While Democrats have predictably latched onto these new hatchet jobs to re-up their demands for Hegseth to lose his job, the media’s latest ‘bombshells’ aren’t the earth-shattering scandals they wish they were. If anything, the use of anonymous sources and disgruntled former colleagues is straight out of the same playbook these ‘journalists’ have been running to try and oust Hegseth since he was tapped to lead the Pentagon last year,” Fleetwood wrote. “The D.C. establishment’s continued campaign to oust Hegseth comes from its fervent opposition to the much-needed change he’s bringing to the Pentagon.”

“Unlike his predecessors, Hegseth is someone who comes from outside this incestuous system that’s responsible for the decay witnessed throughout America’s armed forces. Much like Trump, he’s a disruptor — and by every measure, he’s doing exactly what the president appointed him to do,” Fleetwood said. “The loudest voices within the D.C. establishment aren’t concerned that Hegseth doesn’t have what it takes to lead the Pentagon. Rather, they’re afraid of the changes he is and will continue to implement that directly disrupt the status quo they’ve spent years protecting.”

In Hot Air, Ed Morrissey wrote about Trump’s continued confidence in Hegseth.

“This is just the same Signal ‘scandal’ dressed up again for a re-run in April. Yawn,” Morrissey said. “That's not to say that these were good practices by the nat-sec team at the White House. Hopefully they learned a lesson about using chat platforms for sensitive discussions, especially after letting Jeffrey Goldberg into the room. However, this is hardly the stuff of dismissals, especially lately, and especially at the DoD. Did anyone in the media or the DoD demand the firing of Lloyd Austin when he went AWOL at the same time his deputy was on vacation? Did Austin and others get fired for botching the Kabul withdrawal?”

“This is what the media does to officials they don't like. They didn't do it to Austin, even though he eminently deserved it for Afghanistan and his inexplicable disappearance without notice. The media didn't bother to wonder why Austin didn't get cashiered for either of those debacles, so their interest isn't in national security or military readiness, and not even in government accountability. They simply want to dismantle the Trump administration by any means necessary. And Trump won't play that game with them.”

In The Dispatch, Michael Warren asked “will Pete Hegseth be Trump’s first cabinet casualty?”

“Chaos and upheaval plague the office of the Secretary of Defense as the fallout from last month’s ‘Signalgate’ revelations persists. All of it seems to stem from the management style—or lack thereof—of Pete Hegseth,” Warren wrote. “In the last week, Hegseth has fired most of his inner circle of advisers, ostensibly in response to an investigation into leaks. Joe Kasper, Hegseth’s chief of staff, who called for the investigation, is also reportedly leaving for another post at the department… Meanwhile, two people with knowledge of the department’s inner functions say much of the policy work there has ground to a halt.”

“Part of that inertia is thanks to Hegseth’s order for an eight percent cut to the defense budget with a vague promise to redirect funding toward other Pentagon priorities. But that instruction is the exception for Hegseth, who spends a lot more time than his predecessors in the job on social media and doing television hits,” Warren said. “Whether Twitter posts and Fox News hits will save Hegseth remains to be seen, though the report that the White House is already looking for a successor is not a good sign that the president has much confidence in him.”

My take.

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• Hegseth is leading the DoD exactly as I thought he would — incompetently.
• As with Lloyd Austin, calling for Hegseth to be fired is asking for reasonable accountability.
• Trump would be right to ask for Hegseth’s resignation now, before he has to respond to a major national-security threat.

I’m not really sure what people were expecting.

To pull from some writing I did in January:

The vast majority of the issues facing our Department of Defense involve wasteful spending, inventory issues, shaky leadership, and the fact we are falling behind on advanced military technology. I don't see any reason to believe Hegseth — who as a leader of several smaller, less complicated organizations has been followed by allegations of poor leadership, disorganization, sexual misconduct, poor financial management, and drunkenness — is the right person to solve these issues.

This is the Hegseth story: Everything he touches turns to chaos. Since his confirmation hearing, Hegseth has proven himself to be wholly and obviously unqualified to lead a department that employs three million people and has a budget of over $800 billion. In a matter of weeks, Hegseth has been implicated in the Signal chat controversy, a spate of leaks, another Signal chat scandal that involved sending classified information to his family members, and then resignations or dismissals of some of his closest allies and top aides. We’re not even at the 100-day mark yet.

As tired as the exercise of “what if some official from the other party did this stuff” can be, it's worthwhile nonetheless. The previous Defense secretary, Lloyd Austin, underwent surgery to treat prostate cancer, then spent three days in the hospital due to complications from his surgery. He had his deputy assume his responsibilities for a couple days and kept his hospitalization hidden from the public and the president, later justifying his actions by asking for privacy. In Tangle, I called Austin’s absence an “inexcusable and fireable offense” and said it was “incomprehensible” that Biden would not relieve him of his duties. I was not ambiguous. You don’t get to be Defense secretary and then hide prostate cancer from the country and go AWOL after a medical procedure. Commentators from the right seemed to unanimously agree, and Austin’s defenders looked like little more than Democratic Party sycophants.

What Hegseth has done in these first few months is at least as inexcusable and fireable. The (first reported) Signal chat alone should have cost him his job — not just using an unauthorized chat platform to share details of classified war plans (yes, they were obviously classified war plans), but inadvertently sharing them with a reporter, and then refusing to take any responsibility for it. His office, by his own telling, is leaking like a sieve — which is also his responsibility, as the people closest to the secretary are the people he hired. 

More broadly, the DoD is in complete disarray. Stories about Hegseth attempting to give Elon Musk access to the most sensitive materials we have about China or about “attempted coups” inside the Pentagon haven’t even reached the public consciousness yet.

Anyone who was calling for Austin’s resignation should be calling for Hegseth to step down, too.

Now Hegseth is running the predictable and obvious play, framing the last month of news as some kind of “hit campaign” coordinated by “the media” and “anonymous leakers” who want to sabotage President Trump. On the contrary, Hegseth is ducking accountability for a mess entirely of his own making. He fired a group of top aides in the midst of an investigation that he has admitted may prove they were innocent (one of the aides claims he was already exonerated). Dan Caldwell immediately went on Tucker Carlson’s show to tell his story, making the case that he was dismissed for opposing a strike on Iran.

And Hegseth’s description of the investigation has not made sense. He’s called these aides leakers over and over again, yet says they may still be innocent. The administration has claimed the aides had their phones examined and were given polygraph tests, but the investigation reportedly did not include those steps. Those aides may very well have leaked information before or after Hegseth did, I personally have no idea — but he doesn’t seem to know, either. 

The most damning statement, though, wasn’t made anonymously — it was written by John Ullyot.

In January, Ullyot argued unequivocally that Hegseth was the best man for the job. Now — after experiencing Hegseth’s dysfunctional leadership firsthand — he insists the president must fire his secretary of Defense to be able to execute his agenda. This is not a vague smear from “the media.” This is not an anonymous leak. This is a stonecold Trump ally who after working directly for Hegseth is now warning the country that we need to cut bait (it’s worth noting, too, many of Hegseth’s critics are conservatives).

Unfortunately, Trump seems determined to dig in. Though credible reports indicate the administration is already searching for his replacement, I could easily see Trump keeping Hegseth on out of a desire to resist any calls for action from his number-one enemy: the media. As Stephen Collinson put it, “Firing Hegseth three months into a tenure that started with national security experts warning he was dangerously unprepared to lead the Pentagon would force an embarrassed Trump to admit he’d made a mistake.”

To be fair to Trump, firing a defense secretary is close to unprecedented — and the forced resignations of previous secretaries have mostly followed much larger issues (like Donald Rumsfeld being forced out for his handling of the Iraq War). Trump could easily keep pushing a Hegseth vs. The Media narrative while touting increased military recruitment and likely mitigate the political risk of keeping him around, but I don’t think he should.

Again: This was predictable. In our very first coverage of Trump’s cabinet appointees, I was most critical of these three picks: Matt Gaetz, Tulsi Gabbard, and Pete Hegseth. Gaetz, obviously, didn’t even make it to a vote. Gabbard has so far been a major disappointment on her promises to usher in transparency and hold leakers accountable (a standard that would have already sent Hegseth out the door). And Hegseth, as I think is obvious by now, is clearly not up to the job. 

Just as Hegseth is responsible for the staff he hired, President Trump bears the blame for these picks. But he has plenty of time to set them right — and he should start by finding a competent replacement for Hegseth, who is a self-evidently incompetent leader holding one of the most important jobs in the country. Trump should do that now, before we actually need to rely on Hegseth (and his inadequate leadership skills) to defend us from any potential future threats.

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Your questions, answered.

Q: If you are considered a moderate, why don’t we keep a check list of each of your daily positions? Left, Neutral, Right. I already know as well as you that it will end up Left majority by a long shot. NPR radio went the same way as your posts and NPR is just another CNN copycat. How sad you have turned out to be.

— Anonymous from St. Augustine, FL

Tangle: What really matters here is how you define left and right, and if “right” just means “supporting President Trump’s position.” 

On Kilmar Abrego Garcia’s imprisonment in El Salvador, my biggest takeaway was that the federal government was not granting him due process. I think that was a pretty centrist position, but does holding it put me on the left for disagreeing with the Trump administration? Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III, a conservative, Reagan-appointed district judge in Texas blistered the Trump administration’s challenge to a lower court’s ruling — is he on the left? And how would the many conservative commentators who took similar stances be classified?

Or, when we covered the first Signal leak controversy, I said that it was a misuse of information handling that required accountability. I think that was a pretty centrist position, but again, does holding it put me on the left for disagreeing with the Trump administration? National Review’s Noah Rothman, a respected columnist with strong conservative bona fides, wrote that the leak was “undermining U.S. security in measurable ways.” I doubt anyone would accuse Rothman of being on the left.

For yet another example, every time we’ve covered the Trump administration’s tariff plan, I’ve criticized it for being harmful to our economy and lacking strategic vision. I think that opposition to tariffs is actually a traditional, free-market conservative position. Peter Navarro, the White House adviser behind Trump’s tariff policy, has pushed for higher taxes on the rich and has run for office as a Democrat four times. You get my point. 

Finally, while I’ve never personally done a meta analysis of all of Tangle’s posts, we have been rated center and nonpartisan by the three major media watchdogs. I’ve also asked Grok to analyze 300 of my last posts, which it said it was incapable of doing. But it took a sample of 15 “My takes” at random, and it found that 12 out of 15 were “center” positions, two were rated “left” (one for denying election fraud claims, another for supporting the vaccine rollout during Covid), and one was rated “other.” Our full exchange can be found here. It has also analyzed my personal bias and given encouraging answers. So — before attacking me — it might be worth thinking about how personal biases may impact the lens you see me through.

Want to have a question answered in the newsletter? You can reply to this email (it goes straight to our inbox) or fill out this form.

Under the radar.

In recent weeks, the Trump administration has heard proposals from various advocates on strategies to increase the birth rate in the United States. The ideas have ranged from scholarship allocations for married people or parents, to a “baby bonus” for mothers after delivery, to government funding for education on conception. The U.S. birthrate has declined since 2007, raising concerns across diverse swaths of society who seek to reverse course. While some promote child-rearing to uphold traditional family values, others emphasize the economic and social consequences of a low birthrate and encourage the use of reproductive technologies like in vitro fertilization. The White House says it is hearing out all ideas but has not indicated which path it might pursue. The New York Times has the story.

Numbers.

• 7 years, 39 days. The length of time that Robert McNamara served as secretary of Defense (from 1961–1968), the longest tenure for a secretary of Defense in U.S. history. 
• 114 days. The length of time that Elliot Richardson served as secretary of Defense (in 1973), the shortest tenure for a secretary of Defense in U.S. history. Richardson left the position after he was appointed U.S. attorney general.
• 54% and 22%. The percentage of Americans who think Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth should resign and stay on the job, respectively, according to a March 2025 J.L. Partners poll. 
• 38% and 33%. The percentage of Republicans who think Hegseth should resign and stay on the job, respectively.
• 54% and 20%. The percentage of independents who think Hegseth should resign and stay on the job, respectively.
• 68% and 14%. The percentage of Democrats who think Hegseth should resign and stay on the job, respectively.
• $6 billion. The approximate amount of cuts to Defense Department spending announced by Hegseth, as of April 10.

The extras.

• One year ago today we had just written about Congress reauthorizing FISA.
• The most clicked link in yesterday’s newsletter was the explanation for why Isaac abbreviates “G-d.”
• Nothing to do with politics: How being polite to ChatGPT costs OpenAI millions.
• Yesterday’s survey: 1,912 readers answered our survey on Pope Francis’s papacy with 62% saying it was positive or very positive. “It's hard to understate the pride that South Americans have in this Pope. He truly was a saint,” one respondent said. 

Have a nice day.

Many assume that a dementia diagnosis is incompatible with a modern digital workplace. However, new research from the University of Bath suggests that AI can help dementia patients, potentially allowing them to continue their careers. “It is superb at solving many of the problems faced by those with dementia, such as finding words, organising text and putting words in the right sequence. Couple that with the potential offered by hybrid working for those with dementia, and you can see the benefits for both employees and companies," Dr. James Fletcher of the University of Bath School of Management said. Science Daily has the story.

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