On January 24, 2025 the United States Senate confirmed Pete Hegseth as secretary of the U.S. Department of Defense. The final vote was 50-50, with Vice President J.D. Vance breaking the tie.
Hegseth, a graduate of Princeton and Harvard University, served in the Minnesota Army National Guard and subsequently deployed to both Iraq and Afghanistan. He is an author with extensive experience in the non-profit sector, including as executive director of Concerned Veterans of America, and as Fox News contributor.
In January 2024, while co-hosting the weekend panel of Fox & Friends, Pete Hegseth enthusiastically endorsed the New Hampshire House of Representative’s passage of the Defend the Guard Act. His full statement is below:
“New Hampshire is simply pointing out that it’s supposed to be Congress that declares war. It has become an executive branch function, and as a result unless the Congress declares war, New Hampshire doesn’t have to send troops for foreign wars. To me it makes a lot of sense. I spent most of my career as a National Guardsman, deployed multiple times with the National Guard to foreign wars. We got used to the idea that state National Guard are part of expeditionary forces, which is not traditionally the use of a National Guard. And so this is New Hampshire saying we don’t trust how the federal government is going to use our troops, so we’re willing to commit them when the American people, through their elected branch in Congress, commits those troops to a foreign war, then you can. I love this idea. I’m sure the National Guard Bureau is [grumbles]. I love states exerting their influence through a system of federalism, and the idea of protecting the prerogative of—why are we sending some young guy from New Hampshire to the eastern province of Afghanistan when you have a northern border problem, or floods that happen in New Hampshire and they’re not there to provide support for that? It’s an interesting development, it’ll be interesting to see if other legislatures do this and how the military reacts to it.”
In December 2024, Hegseth had an extended in-person meeting with Dan McKnight, chairman of Bring Our Troops Home, and reaffirmed his support of the Defend the Guard movement.
