On April 27, 2026, The Hill reported that a growing group of Senate Republicans is losing confidence in Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's leadership and that some GOP lawmakers want him to 'move on.' Republican senators speaking on condition of anonymity told the publication that Hegseth would not be confirmed today if Trump renominated him. Hegseth's original confirmation in January 2025 came on Vice President Vance's tie-breaking vote.
The stated concerns are concrete. Senior staff turmoil at the Defense Department under Hegseth's leadership is described as a major factor. His long-running battle with Army Secretary Dan Driscoll, who is well-regarded across the conference, has further eroded his standing. Republican lawmakers also questioned his judgment in announcing that U.S. service members would no longer be required to receive flu vaccinations, ending a military requirement that had been in place for decades. Independent reporting has documented preventable U.S. casualties in the Iran war and the September 2025 Caribbean drug-boat strike in which a follow-up round killed survivors in the water, after what the Washington Post reported was Hegseth's directive to kill everyone aboard.
The political timing matters. Hegseth is scheduled to meet with senior members of the Senate Armed Services Committee in the coming days, where lawmakers will have the opportunity to voice their concerns and ask for more information about the plan to end the war in Iran. The 60-day War Powers Act deadline is approaching. The administration is also navigating fallout from NBC's reporting that Iran inflicted more than $5 billion in damage to U.S. bases and that 13 service members died and nearly 400 were wounded — figures Hegseth's Pentagon has not publicly acknowledged.
What the report does not include is any named GOP senator on the record. The shift is therefore real but quiet — the kind of erosion that precedes a more public break.
Update (October 6, 2026): A Republican senator is now on the record. In a book published October 6, Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) calls his deciding vote to confirm Hegseth in January 2025, which brought the tally to 50-50 before Vice President JD Vance broke the tie, the “biggest regret of my career,” the AP reported. He writes that the Iran war can only end if Trump gets “Pete Hegseth the hell out of the way,” and that at least 30 GOP colleagues have “expressed reservations (to put it mildly) about many of the president's actions in private.” Tillis, who is retiring, largely spares Trump himself: “my beef is not with him, but the idiots he's got working for him.”