Stephen K. Bannon, Caroline Wren, Mike Howe, and Pete Hegseth outline a maximalist midterm strategy involving map redrawing after the Voting Rights Act ruling and mass deportations to dismantle Democratic coalitions. They condemn gerrymandering and illegal immigrant census counting while addressing Texas's alleged Islamist takeover and King Charles III's visit. The discussion concludes with Senate hearings where Jack Reed accuses Hegseth of an unauthorized Iran war and domestic troop deployment, which Hegseth defends as restoring meritocracy against social engineering despite unclassified assessments of Iranian capabilities. [Automatically generated summary]
Mike Howe is going to join us in a minute for the mass deportation coalition.
If we're going to win, we need to get some policies rolling here.
Howe and these guys, Rosemary Jenks, others, are fighting hard.
You got the new H1B bill of Eli Crane.
You got what Mike Howe's doing on mass deportations.
I think the king put his head outside on the portico to kind of wave.
I think that's it.
No need.
Look, already had a great, you know, passing review on the South Lawn.
You had a terrific, the king gave a speech for the joint session that I think had a lot of power to it.
He took a couple of shots.
That's okay.
He's a king.
Of course, you had the no kings guys slobbering all over him.
That shows you they're not just hypocrites.
They don't really understand what they stand for.
It's just a clown show over there, the Democrats.
And then the dinner did a great job of the dinner.
So it's nice.
No need to make a big deal.
You know, you've been here, check out, move on back to England with all the problems you got there, including a Muslim takeover, just to toss that out there.
Caroline Wren, maximalist strategy.
Once again, this is going to be between the hardcore MAGA base and the feckless.
Controlled opposition, participants in the color revolution, Republicans, all the donor class and the business community, they live with this.
First off, this should have been done decades ago.
There's nothing in that opinion, Caroline Wren of Alito, that is new news.
We have lived, Nancy Pelosi should have never had, Nancy Pelosi should have never been the speaker.
We've lived with this long enough.
It is outrageous that these southern states, and I say this as a southerner, We're not prepared or not like the minute it happens, step to the mic and go, boom, special session.
If we've got an election next week or a primary next week, I'm canceling it until August.
We'll do what the Midwest and the Far West done.
A lot of those states out there have always had, you know, August primaries, leading to then have a final run up to the November election.
It's fine.
I'm not crazy about that, but it works.
It'll particularly work here.
The South has lived with this for too long.
Read Alito's opinion.
The South has sat there and taken this.
And look at New England.
Look at the Yankees up 24 to nothing in New England, with I think 44 or 45% of New England being Republican.
New York State's almost as bad.
These guys play smash mouth.
I think they're in 48 to four or something like that.
If you take New England and combine it with New York, it's outrageous.
It's like a California.
Why are we sitting here, Rent?
Rent, I want to go and I want to put people on notice.
Look, the Democrats, the only reason why they hold any power is due to decades of unconstitutional rigging of congressional districts based off of two things VRA holding the South hostage on their maps, and the second is counting illegal aliens in the census.
So, if we, you know, VRA got handled yesterday, but if Donald Trump and his team could get on top of eliminating illegal immigrants being counted in the census, you would have a collapse of congressional districts in California, New York, Illinois, these different states.
That is the larger picture here.
Now, honing in on the picture as to what can happen between now and November, Speaker Johnson just came out and said, any state that is affected by VRA and now has an unconstitutional map can and must redistrict before the primaries.
And I agree with him 100%.
And there are a couple of states that I'm not sure how they would do that, seeing as the primary has already passed.
That's Mississippi and North Carolina.
However, the Mississippi governor came out and said, yeah, I'm calling a special session.
I believe the special session is the first week of May.
And so we'll see how they deal with that.
But again, just because your primary is passed, I mean, you're still proceeding with an unconstitutional map based on the Supreme Court's ruling.
And so in North Carolina, it's the same.
I have less confidence in that just because they have a Democrat governor.
But however, there should be lawsuits being filed immediately.
So I'm hoping we see that happen.
I also don't know how this affects Virginia.
The Virginia map is clearly now unconstitutional.
There's an active lawsuit going on.
That one is not based off of VRA, but the process is.
To which that map and the referendum happened.
And so putting those three states aside, we are now looking at you've got Louisiana and Florida.
Florida passed their map.
So now we have Louisiana.
And again, I don't understand why they would do a 5 1 map.
It is a 6 0 map in Louisiana.
I just put one out on my X feed of like, here's an example of what a 6 0 map looks like.
Congressional districts 2 and 6 in Louisiana are absolutely absurd and should not exist.
You move right down to Alabama.
They need to deal with this immediately.
Their primary is May 19th.
The Alabama Attorney General came out yesterday and said, We need to deal with this immediately.
We need to call a special session and fix this in our map.
It's now unconstitutional.
And an hour later, the governor of Alabama comes out and says, We are not calling a special session.
We can't because there are active court cases.
I'm like, Well, your attorney general just came out and said the opposite of what you just said.
And if this is the premise of you can't because of active legal cases, I would defer to the attorney general.
And I could go on and on about the governor of Alabama, who I think has the same cognitive function as Biden.
So, I'm going to go ahead and say that we should revisit this Alabama announcement by KIV.
Moving down to Georgia, Georgia is actively voting right now.
And so we'll see what Brian Kemp does with this.
You had every candidate who's running for governor come out and say, we need to call for redistricting.
And I think, Brian Kemp, declare an emergency.
Stop the voting, push the primary back, and redistrict.
That's what you should do because they are currently voting on an unconstitutional congressional district in your state.
Moving on to South Carolina, I'm deeply disappointed so far.
I'm like, where are you, Governor McMaster?
I love, I'm all in for.
Pamela Evett, the lieutenant governor, she should be out there screaming about this right now.
Alan Wilson, you're running for governor.
You're the attorney general.
Are you in court right now?
I saw him announce this morning something about like a waste management program.
I'm like, what are you people?
Are you this tone deaf?
Like, this is all that matters right now.
It is the difference between a majority in the House or not.
It's 13 seats that we could get before November.
So wake up and recognize the moment.
Missouri, their primary is not until August 4th.
You have plenty of time to get this done.
We have a Republican governor there, and we can pick up.
One potentially two more seats in Missouri.
And then Tennessee, you had Marsha Blackburn running for governor.
Yesterday, she put out a statement that said, We should redistrict.
This current map is unconstitutional.
This is a great ruling.
And when I am governor, we will get it done.
And I came out and said, When you're governor, no, that is too late.
We need to do it right now.
And so she came out with a second statement that is calling for her governor to get it done now.
We've been talking about this for, like, I've been yelling about this for years.
They just aren't.
They want to look at Indiana.
What a missed opportunity that was.
Like, because these Republicans, you know, they claim democracy or, um, I don't know what they, I can't even think of what the excuse could be because I can't put my like head into their headspace.
In South Carolina, I was calling around.
I'm calling every governor, attorney general, state senator, and state house member I have on my phone in any of these states that we are discussing.
And one of the pushbacks I got was, oh, well, the South Carolina legislature doesn't want to do a special session because a lot of them have vacations coming up this summer and their kids are out of school.
And I just, I have no patience for those types of answers.
Like, you must, Be kidding me.
And so, you know, it's different state by state as to why, but all I know is we have got to put pressure on these folks.
We need to get the war room posse calling over to them.
The White House, I think, is all over this, but also, you know, the White House, they have a lot going on right now.
Like, we need to step up and be helpful to them and also be voices and say, like, especially if you live in any of these states, like, you're living in a state where your representation is not abiding by the Constitution.
Yeah, the left in this country understands that illegal immigration is the glue that holds their coalition together.
They're a legitimate coalition, unconstitutional coalition.
And on the other hand, the mass deportation coalition understands that mass deportation is what holds our coalition together.
It is the biggest animating force going into the midterms if we can get the program rolling.
That's why they're fighting us tooth and nail, and not just through people with the D next to their name, but the Republicans that have been bought off by special interests and industry, even in, you know, plus 30 Republican districts like in Indiana with Rep Baird, that just want to keep the cheap illegal labor here.
And so we're going to keep this coalition together, this beautiful coalition that sent Trump to the White House, but it needs to see commas in the deportation numbers.
In the millions, and so that's what we're advocating for every single day.
I mean, temporary protected status is guess what, temporary, and the president who has the authority to issue it in some cases also.
Inherently, it has to have the authority to end it.
And so that's what the Supreme Court is grappling with.
But the arguments are, you know, defending it are borderline absurd, ignoring those key issues.
You see a lot of the Supreme Court justices wanting to get into basic race realism theory and basically say, you know, by any means to keep people illegally here, we will do.
And if you don't agree with us, you must be inherently racist.
It's obviously an argument of last resort, but it's because the Democrat justices, and I say that with great, you know, particularity, On the Supreme Court, know that this is the source of their power, just like these unconstitutional, racist, gerrymandered districts.
It is a Democrat party that is fighting tooth and nail to keep as many people in this country and all the artificial constructs.
It's to get as many illegal aliens in here as possible and to artificially inflate their Democratic power through fake districts, fake populations, fake voting systems, so they can then go forth with their evil Marxist plan.
And this is why we got to confront it at every step of the way.
Now, this article the other day, President Trump, this was the central, as you said, what knits not just border security, but the deportations is what knits together and connects every part of the MAGA movement.
DHS has got a very different take on things right now, sir.
Yeah, it's no secret post Minneapolis, there was some buckling, both in the rhetoric and the policies and the operations.
That's why the Mass Deportation Coalition formed.
Said no, now's not the time to pump the brakes just because some rioters got out there and got an ice in his face.
It's actually time to go faster.
The deportations haven't been high enough.
They need to be much higher to get to mass deportation levels.
And so, you know, with the change in leadership and new Secretary Mullen coming in, everyone's giving him a little grace period.
But in this grace period, a lot has been said and a lot has been done that I think weighs counter to the cause of mass deportation.
Things like giving away the store on judicial warrants or, you know, some of the statements about going about things quieter.
Or even agreeing with Democrat senators for cooperation if an ICE facility is going to be built in their states.
And so you have those things happening on one hand.
The numbers are still low, way too low, about a couple hundred thousand last year.
There needs to be at least a million this year.
And that's super easy to get done.
We've laid it out.
But not a lot has been done to re embrace what we all fell in love with to send Trump back to the White House, the cause of mass deportation, which remains popular.
And so this was had out.
In the rag of the Washington Post a couple days ago, where they pointed to some of these issues, and a lot of people who want to see mass deportations were, you know, charting a path towards getting back on track.
And that's a path that I hope Secretary Mullen decides to take instead of trying to take one that'll somehow fail to convince some liberals that things are quieter and okay now.
We're just going to do what the Democrats have done previously by not deporting people at scale.
It's a concession that has been provided by DHS to the anti American forces that want to keep illegals here.
And that's not right.
It shouldn't have been made that way.
What its overall scope on the impact remains to be seen.
But I'll tell you this like, the one thing.
That people should look at if you want the numbers to go up is whether or not DHS and ICE will focus at work sites.
That is where illegals are geographically concentrated at any given time.
It's common sense.
It's how Eisenhower got the numbers through the roof in 1954.
And it's why Trump said he's going to beat Eisenhower.
But he can't beat Eisenhower if he doesn't go to the work sites, the hospitality, the agriculture, the leisure you name it.
All those places with deep pocketed lobbyists who have friends in the White House and throughout the administration and campaign consultants who are telling Republicans if you do this, we will pull your.
Funding, and we don't care that the voters want it, but the money doesn't want it to happen.
That's what's at play right now.
That's why the mass deportation coalition is ascendant.
It is the counterweight to those corrupt lobbying forces who would rather see a cheap buck than a country that can sustain itself.
So Islamists across the country are basically creating cities, new jurisdictions to be Sharia law compliant.
It's a takeover of the United States.
And one place where this is happening at scale, as you know, is down in Texas.
And they're picking Texas because they know if they could tilt Texas away from red and away from an American crown jewel, then the rest of the country falls shortly thereafter.
Well, one prime example of this is a place called Epic City.
They now call it the Meadow after they did a little brand shift.
And it's this huge development that's got a lot of scrutiny.
And we did a report.
We did came at them from all angles, including you know, getting some new materials and uh, looked into the failure of the Texas Workforce Commission's investigation into it, which was basically shut down in a very odd way.
And then some of the IRS issues that the federal government can pick up on, where basically we think they're in flagrant violation of IRS laws.
It relates to a non profit because it's a non profit overseeing basically a private business which funnels all the money back up to the non profit.
It's obscene.
And I'll tell you this you know, I spoke to Harmie Dillon about this over the holidays, Christmas time.
And she told me that if Texas wasn't doing the job, the feds would step back in.
And so I think we found evidence that Texas is indeed demonstrably not doing the job, but for Ken Paxton down there.
This thing would be soaring if it weren't for Ken Paxton, standing up new litigation that has slowed it down.
But this thing can end.
And if we can end it in Epic City, we got a lot more to do.
As you know, this is a civilizational fight.
It's been happening for hundreds and hundreds, it's not thousands of years.
But we got to stop some of these things in their tracks to show we can build off this, get some momentum, retake our country.
And of course, mass deportation also makes all this a lot easier.
This is America.
It's not an Islamist republic.
The Oversight Project's not going to stand by and let Texas become an Islamist republic.
And so we took the fight to Epic City.
Key South and the Sharia Free Caucus, Chip Roy, those guys are all standing up with us.
Let's get some points on the board and stop this in its tracks.
So basically, Texas kicked the investigation to this entity called the Texas Workforce Commission.
You know, there's a lot of public outcry about it.
People have been upset.
And so the Republican quote unquote officials there are like, all right, let's do something about it to quiet this down.
But it wasn't really a real something.
They launched what they called an investigation.
They got back these basically no records returned on it, which makes no sense.
Any reasonable investigator looking at a $40 million entity would expect some board minutes, financial records, communications, et cetera.
Basically, gave them a bill of clean health and then a forward looking agreement to be monitored by a left wing law firm.
And it has all the elements of just a cover up job to deal with public outcry.
It wasn't a serious thing.
And so we're saying that the TWC investigation was facially insufficient and should give rise to the feds now getting involved on a number of grounds to include the constitutional issues, the IRS issues, and so forth.
The House of Reps seems to agree with us in the Sharia Free Caucus.
We hope the DOJ, per Harmid Dillon, saying if new evidence emerged, they would look at it, agrees with us.
Secretary Hegseth, General Kane, Mr. Hurst, welcome.
And please convey my appreciation, all of our appreciation, to our military service members and defense civilians.
We owe them our deepest sense of gratitude.
Mr. Secretary, this is your first public appearance before this committee in nearly a year.
Since your last public testimony, you and President Trump have unwisely taken the United States to war with Iran.
You ordered an attack on Venezuela and have directed ongoing Illegal boat strike campaign in the Caribbean and Pacific.
At your direction, our forces have bombed Yemen, Somalia, Iraq, Syria, Nigeria, and Ecuador.
In the United States, you have deployed thousands of troops to cities like Washington, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Portland to police American citizens.
And you have personally intervened to end the careers of dozens of military leaders without explanation.
These actions will have significant and long term consequences.
Now you appear before us to ask for a $1.5 trillion budget, a 45 percent increase above last year.
I must say I am skeptical, and such a request demands intense scrutiny.
61 days ago, President Trump unilaterally began the war in Iran.
He had no coherent strategy.
He refused to make a case to the American people or consult Congress.
He failed to present any evidence of an immediate threat, and he ignored the advice of military and intelligence experts who warned him of the consequences.
Today, our Nation is in a worse strategic position.
The Strait of Hormuz was open, now it is closed.
Thirteen service members have tragically lost their lives, and more than 400 have been wounded.
We have lost dozens of aircraft.
Sustained significant damage to our bases in the area and expended an alarming amount of our missile inventory.
Morale and readiness across the force, especially among overdeployed units and vessels like the USS Gerald R. Ford aircraft carrier, have suffered.
Gasoline and fertilizer prices throughout the world have surged.
American families are bearing the cost of a war they wanted nothing to do with and have gained nothing from.
And yet, Secretary Hedsteth, you declared victory a month ago.
On April 8th, you said, in your words, Operation Epic Fury was a historic and overwhelming victory.
By any measure, Epic Fury decimated Iran's military and rendered its combat forces ineffective for years to come.
Let me be clear.
Tactically, the United States military performance against Iran has been remarkable, and I salute the service members who have executed this mission with skill and bravery.
The problem with your statements, Mr. Secretary, is they are dangerously exaggerated.
Iran's hardline regime remains in place, it still retains stockpiles of enriched uranium, and its nuclear program remains viable.
Iran's military retains enough combat effectiveness to keep the conflict at an impasse.
Its missiles and drones remain a far greater threat than you have acknowledged, and the regime has demonstrated it can effectively control the Strait of Hormuz when it chooses.
Mr. Sekhti, I am concerned that you have been telling the President what he wants to hear instead of what he needs to hear.
Bold assurances of success are a disservice to both the Commander in Chief and the troops who risk their lives based on them.
Our military has performed heroically, but military force without Assad's strategy is a path to long term defeat.
I would like to know what options you are considering now, given the cost from this war and the stalemate President Trump has put us in.
More broadly, Mr. Secretary, too often you have made dangerous statements that are counterproductive to the mission.
You boasted about, quote, no stupid rules of engagement, just days after hundreds of Iranian schoolgirls were tragically killed in a missile strike.
You have made troubling statements about showing no mercy and no quarter to the Iranians.
Orders that would constitute war crimes.
As importantly, while our men and women are fighting and dying overseas, you have focused unduly on your own personal agenda.
In the past two months alone, you have taken upon yourself to overhaul the Chaplain Corps, cancel flu vaccine requirements, repeal firearm restrictions on military posts, and bar service members from attending certain universities.
Just this week, you brought performer Kid Rock to an Army base to go for a joyride on an Apache helicopter.
After dismissing an earlier investigation into the pilots who recklessly chose to hover above his home, that runs directly counter to the chain of command and maintaining good order and discipline.
Most disturbingly, during your tenure, you have fired dozens of our most senior military leaders and personally intervened to block the promotions of many others.
That is a betrayal of the merit based system that forms the foundation of our military.
You are hollering out the military's bench of experienced and highest performing senior officers while making young officers wonder if they should continue to serve.
My colleagues and I have heard from countless service members throughout the ranks, many of whom will be watching right now, who are confused and disturbed by your actions.
Hopefully, you can explain them to me.
Additionally, the military expects a full summary.
Well, Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member Reed, Senators, thank you for the opportunity to testify in support of President Trump's.
Historic, as you said, Mr. Chairman, $1.5 trillion fiscal year 2027 budget for the Department of War.
The President's budget request reflects the urgency of the moment, addressing both the deferment of longstanding problems as well as positioning our forces for the current and future fights.
I'm honored to appear alongside General Dan Kane, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Jay Hurst, our Chief Financial Officer and Comptroller.
I'd like to start by thanking this committee and Congress for your partnership in securing the investment needed for a stronger, Prouder and more secure military.
Your focus on acquisitions, your focus on efficiency are the reflection in our department as well and in this budget.
A nation's ability to build, to innovate, and to support the critical needs of its warfighters at speed and at scale is the foundation upon which its deterrence and survival rests.
However, upon taking office on January 20th, 2025, President Trump inherited a defense industrial base that had been hollowed out by years of America's last policies.
Resulting in a diminished capacity to project strength.
Under the previous administration, we were offshoring, outsourcing, beset by cost overruns and degraded capabilities.
But under the leadership of President Trump, our builder in chief, we are reversing this systemic decay and putting our defense industrial base back on a wartime footing.
Urgency informs everything we do.
We're rebuilding a military that the American people can be proud of.
One that instills nothing less than unrelenting fear in our adversaries and inspires historic morale and recruiting in its ranks.
We fight to win in every scenario.
The $1.5 trillion budget put forward by the President will build upon a previous $1 trillion FY26 top line and will continue to reverse the four years of underinvestment and mismanagement of the Biden administration.
The $1.5 trillion budget will ensure that the United States continues to maintain the world's most powerful and capable military.
As we grapple with a complex threat environment across multiple theaters.
Not to mention, the budget also includes a historic troop pay increase, 7% for junior enlisted, and the budget eliminates all poor or failing barracks.
Quality of life for our troops is front and center in this budget.
By supercharging our defense industrial capacity and transforming how the department does business, we are restoring American commercial dominance at a pace unseen in generations, transforming the defense industrial base.
The $5 trillion defense budget, of course, that's got to be tied to.
It should be tied directly to the hemispheric defense in the major geoeconomic and geostrategic rebalancing and refocus of the United States national security.
I'm not 100% sure that's occurring.
We're still way too engaged in the Middle East and way too engaged in areas that I don't think, I think the necessity of that geostrategically has lost its importance.
But we're currently fighting a war to make sure we.
Can extract yourselves hopefully from that region permanently.
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Well, as I did then, and I'll say now, we thank General George for his service.
And out of respect to him and other officers, we never talk about the nature of why certain officers are asked to step down.
But we all serve at the pleasure of the president.
And ultimately, my view in coming into this department, as I stated in my confirmation hearing, was to change the culture of the department.
And it's ultimately challenging to change the culture of a department with the same people who are a part of or in that department.
So I have made many changes.
With general officers.
We will continue to make changes as necessary with general officers, and they will be in keeping with the trajectory of where we would like to take the department, but it doesn't take away from the service of those.
And I think you will note that every officer that's been asked to leave has been treated with respect.
And as we've emphasized at this department from the beginning, the only metric is merit.
Members on this committee and the previous leadership of this department were focused on social engineering, race, and gender in ways that we think were unhealthy for the department, focusing on those things, making decisions based on those things.
In President Trump's War Department, we make decisions based on only one thing merit.
And that's how we've made decisions going forward.
That's how we've made them, and that's how we'll make them going forward.
As I've said, I don't talk about the nature of dismissal out of respect for these officers.
But ultimately, we want to take the department in a particular direction, certain services in a particular direction, and we want leadership that's running as fast in that direction as possible, and in some cases, we make changes accordingly.
Well, I think that direction from your behavior is an intense interest in Christianity, in nationalism, and in not recognizing the talents of women and non white gentlemen.
I'm sorry, Mr. Secretary, but broadcasting before the national religious broadcasters, stressing the need for more Christianity in the military forces.
Doesn't seem like a neutral position in which you tolerate and accept all religions.
Let me move on.
The strategic aspects of this operation in Iran.
The president declared that we're going to destroy their missiles and raise their missile industry to the ground.
And after more than 13,000 strikes, unclassified assessments conclude that Iran retains more than 40 percent of its drone arsenal and 60 percent of its ballistic missile launches compared with pre.
War levels.
That's one of his objectives.
The second objective was regime change.
To the great, proud people of Iran, I say tonight that the hour of your freedom is at hand and we will finish, take over your government.
Well, when we finish, we'll take over the government.
That has not succeeded.
And then one of his other things is the onset of the war, the President said, we will ensure that Iran does not obtain a nuclear weapon.
Military operations with Iran have not achieved that goal yet.
And it also seems to indicate that his pronouncements about Operation Midnight Hammer obliterating the nuclear policy and structure of the Iranians was false.
So you have not achieved any of the objectives yet, as the President mentioned.
Well, in this setting, I won't talk about the nature of metrics, which are classified, as you know, Senator, but I can say that looking at the objectives we set out to achieve from the beginning, some of which you laid out, Our military objectives have been stunningly effective.
Take, for example, their defense industrial base.
They're completely incapable at scale at any level of reconstituting the capabilities you referred to, which is a devastating result for any country, especially one who's in the United States.