By MARY CLARE JALONICK, LISA MASCARO and LOLITA C. BALDOR
WASHINGTON (AP) — Pete Hegseth has spent the week on Capitol Hill trying to reassure Republican senators that he is fit to lead President-elect Donald Trump’s Department of Defense in the wake of high-profile allegations about excessive drinking and sexual assault.
But senators in both parties have also expressed concern about another issue — Hegseth’s frequent comments that women should not serve in frontline military combat jobs.
As the former Army National Guard major and combat veteran fights to salvage his Cabinet nomination, meeting with senators for a fourth day Thursday with promises not to drink on the job and assurances he never engaged in sexual misconduct, his professional views on women troops are coming under deeper scrutiny.
North Dakota Sen. Kevin Cramer said Wednesday that he confronted Hegseth about the issue when they spoke one-on-one.
“I said to him, just so you know, Joni Ernst and Tammy Duckworth deserve a great deal of respect,” Cramer said, referring to two female senators who sit on the Senate Armed Services Committee — both of whom are combat veterans.
The role of women in the military is another entry in the far-right’s efforts to return the armed forces back to an earlier era, something Hegseth has embraced with Trump’s approach to end “woke” programs that foster diversity, equity and inclusion in the ranks. The DEI movement is coming under attack as Trump prepares to return to the White House, and he has vowed to fire generals whom he deems “woke.”
Military and defense leaders, however, have argued that it would be fundamentally wrong to eliminate half the population from critical combat posts, and they have flatly denied that standards were lowered to allow women to qualify.
In remarks Wednesday, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin touted the service of women, including in his own combat units when he was a commander in Iraq.
“If I get a little fired up about this, it’s just because this isn’t 1950. It isn’t 1948. It is 2024,” Austin said.
As Hegseth went office to office this week meeting with GOP senators, he brushed back questions about his past views that women should not serve in combat roles.
“We have amazing women who serve our military,” Hegseth said Tuesday, “amazing women who serve in our military.”
Pressed if they should serve in combat, Hegseth said they already do.
But that’s a turnaround from his earlier statements. Hegseth said as recently as last month that women “straight up” should not serve in combat roles.
It “hasn’t made us more lethal. Has made fighting more complicated,” he said in a podcast before he was nominated by Trump.
In his own writings, he has expanded on views of a more masculine-focused military. Those views are running into icy resistance in the Senate from both sides of the political aisle.
Ernst of Iowa — herself a former Army National Guard member, a retired lieutenant colonel who spent more than two decades in the service — was circumspect after her meeting with Hegseth, saying only that they had a “frank and thorough conversation.”
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She demurred Thursday on whether she will support his nomination, praising his service but telling Fox News that a “very thorough vetting” is needed.
A Republican, Ernst has championed women in service and also, having spoken openly about surviving sexual assault while in college, worked to ensure a safe environment for women in uniform.
On Thursday, Hegseth said his meeting with Ernst was “productive” and that Trump “is behind us all the way.”
As he walked into a meeting with South Dakota Sen. Mike Rounds on Thursday, Hegseth said he’s “fighting and ready to go.”
Sitting with Rounds in his office a few minutes later, Hegseth told reporters that there is “an incredible amount of knowledge” in the Senate and on the Senate Armed Services committee and that “I welcome that knowledge, I welcome that advice. That’s why we’re here.”
Hegseth has yet to meet with Duckworth or any of the other Democrats on the committee. Duckworth, a Democrat and Purple Heart recipient who piloted a Blackhawk helicopter during the Iraq War, and lost both legs when it was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade, also rose to the rank of lieutenant colonel before retiring after 23 years in the Reserve forces. She later served as an assistant secretary at the Department of Veterans Affairs.
Cramer added that he told Hegseth that his confirmation hearing “won’t be pleasant” as Democrats, in particular, grill him on his views.
Trump, for now, appears to be standing aside as Hegseth fights to preserve his nomination, even as suggestions float about a possible replacement pick, including former Trump rival Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, to lead the Pentagon.
About 17.5% of the more than 1.3 million active-duty service members are women, a total that has grown steadily over the past two decades. They have served in combat in a wide array of military jobs, including as pilots and intelligence officers for years.
The Pentagon formally opened all combat jobs to women in 2015, including frontline infantry and armor posts, and since then thousands of women have been in jobs that until that time were male-only.
As of this year, nearly 4,800 women are serving in Army infantry, armor and artillery job, more than 150 have completed the Army Ranger course and a small number have qualified for more elite special operations units, including as Army Green Berets.
