As the dust settles on the fight over Pete Hegseth's nomination, his confirmation is emblematic of a larger truth about the state of Republican politics.

Pete Hegseth has vowed to bring his “warrior” ethos to the Pentagon. Democrats had assailed him as unfit for the job, and his confirmation came down to Vice President JD Vance serving as tiebreaker.

A Princeton and Harvard-educated former combat veteran, Hegseth went on to make a career at Fox News, where he hosted a weekend show. Trump tapped him as the defense secretary to lead an organization with nearly 2.1 million service members, about 780,000 civilians and a budget of $850 billion.

Hegseth wants to restore honor to Confederate Gen. Braxton Bragg, the native North Carolinian whose name was replaced at Fort Bragg last year. | Opinion

The US Senate on Friday approved Pete Hegseth as President Donald Trump’s defense secretary by a razor-thin margin, in which, Vice President JD Vance had to cast the tie-breaking vote.

President Donald Trump suggested at a Friday briefing on North Carolina’s hurricane recovery that he would sign an “executive order to begin the process of fundamentally reforming and overhauling FEMA,

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s first day at the Pentagon is expected to include an array of executive orders, including “removing DEI inside the Pentagon, reinstating troops who were pushed out because of Covid mandates” and an “Iron Dome for America.

President Donald Trump is visiting hurricane-battered western North Carolina and wildfire-ravaged Los Angeles on Friday, using the first trip of his second administration to tour areas where politics has clouded the response to deadly disasters.

Trump's administration has cleared the way for arrests in schools of people suspected of being without legal status. And, Pete Hegseth battles new allegations before receiving Senate confirmation.

Senator Tim Kaine, Democrat of Virginia, quickly condemned the Trump administration’s offer to roughly 2 million federal employees to resign in exchange for pay, saying in a Senate floor speech that the deal was a trick, that the president didn’t have the authority to make the offer and employees who resign may not be paid.

Donald Trump’s Secretary of Defense nominee Pete Hegseth wants to honor ... well-regarded military base in North Carolina now known as Fort Liberty. Hegseth probably wants company because ...

Vice President J.D. Vance cast his first tie-breaking vote on Friday night to help the Senate confirm Pete Hegseth as defense secretary, as the nominee convinced just enough Republicans that attacks on his character and qualifications were unfounded.