NC, SC senators share blame in the dangerous Hegseth leak of military plans | Opinion
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth appears to have spent more energy honoring a racist enslaver on North Carolina’s most-iconic military base than competently leading the most lethal fighting force on Earth.
Hegseth would not be defense secretary if not for North Carolina’s Thom Tillis, or President Donald Trump relentless insistence on replacing highly-qualified Black men with less-qualified white men while pretending the goal was to prioritize merit. Nearly every Republican in the U.S. Senate voted to confirm the least-qualified man to ever hold that position, including Sen. Ted Budd of North Carolina, and senators Lindsey Graham and Tim Scott of South Carolina. But Tillis was reportedly on the fence and in the final hour decided to do what Trump demanded. Because of that decision, U.S. troops were put directly in harm’s way.
Hegseth unknowingly texted specific war plans to the editor of The Atlantic on March 14 — a man sitting in his car in a Safeway grocery store parking lot staring in disbelief at his cell phone. That editor, Jeffrey Goldberg, couldn’t believe the texts were real because they were so dangerously stupid.
Hegseth’s 21st century military innovation: War planning by chat group.
Those war plans concerned our recent attack on the Iran-backed Houthis in Yemen who have been attacking commercial ships in the Red Sea. Hegseth told the group chat of national security officials and Goldberg when our fighters would launch, and where and when they would be flying. Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio were among those in that group chat.
Despite Trump officials and Fox News Channel hosts doing their best to minimize that recklessness, it’s easy to see why this is the worst security breach in decades. It was self-inflicted. No one hacked into the system, though given that the chat took place over a commercial system and with cell phones, maybe our enemies saw the messages, too. It comes just weeks after the administration accidentally fired several of the men and women in charge of our nuclear arsenal and had trouble rehiring them.
No matter what you think of egg and grocery prices, if you vote for Republicans or Democrats or are angry that the Commerce secretary said it wouldn’t be such a big deal if the elderly missed a Social Security check as the world’s richest man undermines that invaluable safety net program, everyone must understand how unsafe we’ve become since Jan. 20. The Trump administration’s high-level amateurishness is endangering us all.
Hegseth’s confirmation illustrates that better than anything else. The Trump administration’s anti-trans and anti-DEI rhetoric has shielded their incompetence, keeping tens of millions of Americans blinded to our unnerving new reality. Make no mistake, only a straight white man with a resume as thin as Hegseth’s, in addition to personal baggage that included accusations of drunkenness and sexual assault, could have become defense secretary.
He had only been in charge of a couple of small nonprofits — which ran into problems — before being given the keys to a department of 3 million people. It was the opposite of diversity, equity and inclusion, which requires people to be qualified. He was chosen because he’s committed to a 21st century of white supremacy, which has little to do with Klan hoods, cross burnings or lynchings, and is more about attaining and retaining power no matter the cost to those around you.
One of Hegseth’s first acts as defense secretary was to re-honor Confederate Gen. Braxton Bragg. North Carolina’s highest-profile base was renamed Fort Liberty during the Biden era so the U.S. could stop honoring traitors. Hegseth proudly renamed it back to Fort Bragg, ingeniously claiming it was to honor a soldier who shared Bragg’s last name rather than the general fighting to make race-based slavery permanent.
He did this while declaring the U.S. military would no longer recognize Black History Month and stopping it from honoring American heroes who just happened to be Black, women or Indigenous. Hegseth was too busy scrubbing the Jackie Robinson story from the Department of Defense website to protect our troops.
We have Tillis, Trump and those who voted for them and continue supporting them to thank.
This story was originally published March 27, 2025 at 5:00 AM with the headline "NC, SC senators share blame in the dangerous Hegseth leak of military plans | Opinion."