GOP senators are breaking with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth in growing numbers, warning that his management of a prolonged war with Iran has shaken confidence inside the Pentagon and on Capitol Hill alike.
Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina did not hold back. The Republican, who announced last year he would not seek reelection, told The Hill flatly that Hegseth has lost his support, and predicted other GOP senators are close behind.
"I don't have any confidence in him anymore. I think he's all over the place, he's accelerating the retirement or forcing out some of the most distinguished leaders in the DOD that we have."
Tillis went further, citing what he described as Hegseth's lack of experience running large organizations and a tendency to micromanage rather than delegate to career military professionals. He said the Defense Secretary "has a massive insecurity complex" and has "lost my confidence." He added that other Republican senators are "probably one decision or another" away from speaking out themselves.
The criticism lands at a volatile moment. The U.S. conflict with Iran is approaching its fifth month. The Strait of Hormuz, the narrow waterway through which roughly a fifth of the world's oil supply passes, has been closed since February. Oil and gas prices have climbed sharply. And in recent days, the fighting has expanded beyond the Persian Gulf into the Red Sea, where Iranian-backed Houthi militants have targeted Saudi oil shipments near the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, another chokepoint that connects the Red Sea to the Gulf of Aden.
President Trump projected in early March that the conflict would last four or five weeks. Nearly five months later, there is no clear endgame. Hegseth told the Senate Appropriations Committee last week that the war has cost $37.5 billion. Independent analysts at Moody Analytics put the figure at a minimum of $132 billion, more than three times the Pentagon's own number.
That gap drew pointed questions when Hegseth appeared before the committee on Tuesday. Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, the committee's chair, pressed him on the forced departure of senior military officials and demanded clarity on the administration's strategy.
Collins told reporters she found the personnel moves "deeply troubling," adding in her testimony:
"These are men and women who volunteered to serve our country and swore an oath to support and defend our Constitution."
After the hearing, Collins said it was "somewhat helpful, but questions remain." She wants "more information" from the administration on "the strategy and endgame for the war." For the chair of the committee that controls Defense spending to publicly demand a clearer strategy is not a routine ask, it is a warning.
The forced retirement earlier this month of Chris Donahue, the top U.S. Army commander in Europe, added fuel to the frustration. Donahue is among the senior leaders Tillis described as being pushed out, and his departure fits a pattern of Republican lawmakers challenging Hegseth's conduct at the Defense Department.
Tillis is the most vocal critic, but he is not alone. One Republican senator who spoke anonymously because of the sensitivity of the matter, described as close to Defense policymakers, said the doubts extend well beyond the Senate.
"I have heard out of the Pentagon that there's a loss of confidence, within the Pentagon. And of course then everyone here on the Hill hears those same concerns."
A second unnamed Republican senator acknowledged that the administration's strategy has fallen short of expectations, particularly on the Strait of Hormuz and Iran's willingness to strike neighboring countries.
"I think there's a sense it's taken longer than what we thought and that maybe our strategy didn't factor in the Strait of Hormuz or [Iran's] ability to be willing to hit their neighbors. I think there was some miscalculations maybe."
Iran has struck Jordan, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia during the conflict, attacks on allied nations that several senators said the administration failed to anticipate. The expansion of hostilities into the Red Sea only deepened the sense that the Pentagon was reacting to events rather than shaping them.
That unease is not confined to anonymous sources. The Washington Examiner reported that a broader undercurrent of exhaustion has spread among Republican senators and their staffs, fueled by repeated controversies including two separate Signal chat leaks, one involving a journalist and a second in which Hegseth shared military operations details with family members and legal counsel. Hegseth's recently departed communications chief publicly criticized his management in an op-ed, and staffers were fired amid internal fears of leaks. Sen. Kevin Cramer of North Dakota, while stopping short of calling for Hegseth's removal, acknowledged that "he's going to need some help around him" and that Hegseth has "lacked in the early days... some real institutional expertise in the building."
So far, Rep. Don Bacon of Nebraska remains the only congressional Republican to openly call for Hegseth's removal. But the distance between Bacon's position and the posture of senators like Tillis and Collins is narrowing.
Not every Republican critic wants to pull back. Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, a longtime defense hawk who has clashed with the White House on other fronts, argued that the answer is more force, not less. He called for the U.S. to reopen the Strait of Hormuz by demonstrating a "decisive military edge."
"The problem of endless wars, in my view, is gradual escalation. Until then, you are stuck and there is no way out other than just sort of capitulation. So I think a decisive outcome by opening the Strait of Hormuz should be the goal."
Cornyn added bluntly: "If anybody can do it, the United States can."
Senate Armed Services Committee Chair Roger Wicker of Mississippi has similarly urged Trump to "finish the job" by stepping up the intensity of strikes. That puts the hawkish wing of the party in an awkward position: they support the war's objectives but have growing doubts about the man running it day to day.
Sen. Joni Ernst of Iowa, who sits on the Armed Services Committee, voiced a concern that cuts across both camps, cost and transparency. She said Congress remains in the dark on the true price of the conflict even after Hegseth's testimony.
"Collectively those of us in Congress are worried about the costs associated with the Department of War and the transparency. I think... why they've asked him to come to the Hill and present the numbers, and I still don't know that there's a lot of clarity on that."
Ernst's frustration reflects a basic failure of accountability: if the Pentagon's own cost figure is $37.5 billion and outside analysts say the real number exceeds $132 billion, senators cannot make informed spending decisions. Earlier this summer, four Republican senators broke ranks to support a symbolic war powers resolution on Iran, a sign that the appetite for oversight has been building for weeks.
Tillis offered the sharpest portrait of dysfunction. He described infighting between Hegseth and other service secretaries, comparing the atmosphere to a power struggle.
"Everybody knows about some of the Game of Thrones stuff going on with some of the other service secretaries and Hegseth. It seems like he wants to run the whole place."
He argued that Hegseth's approach was actively undermining the military's ability to fight the war effectively.
"When you're a leader, you better d*** sure have people smarter than you in the room. You're supposed to be air traffic control for all these brilliant people and he's undermining the DOD's success by undermining these brilliant people who spent their career in uniform."
Sen. Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia offered a quieter but no less pointed observation in an interview with NewsNation: "I do think that the American public's growing weary." That weariness matters politically. The Senate must pass a $95 billion reconciliation package, $73 billion of which is earmarked for the Pentagon and U.S. intelligence agencies, before the August recess. Tillis's vote is considered critical to advancing it.
Complicating the math further, Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky has not voted since June 11 due to a health issue. His absence narrows the Republican margin at a moment when Hegseth already faces bipartisan scrutiny over his handling of the conflict.
The Department of Defense did not respond to The Hill's request for comment on the senators' criticisms. That silence leaves the public record one-sided, and the picture it paints is bleak. A war projected to last weeks has dragged past four months. Its cost remains disputed by a factor of nearly four. Senior military leaders have been forced out. The conflict has spread to new theaters. And the Defense Secretary's own party is running out of patience.
None of this means Republicans are ready to break with the war itself. Hawks like Cornyn and Wicker want more intensity, not less. But the question of whether Hegseth is the right person to lead the effort is now being asked out loud, by senators who supported his confirmation and have every political incentive to stay quiet.
When the people who put you in the job start saying so publicly, the problem is no longer a rumor. It is a crisis of leadership at the worst possible time.