Interactions between congressional offices and federal agencies are as common as the sunrise. They happen every day, several times a day, and have been the norm for generations for an obvious reason: Lawmakers rely on the information to do their jobs.
But in June, the White House picked a difficult fight by announcing plans to limit intelligence sharing with members of Congress. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer soon after declared, “The administration has no right to stonewall Congress on matters of national security. Senators deserve information, and the administration has a legal obligation to inform Congress precisely about what is happening right now abroad.”
Four months later, the stonewalling appears poised to get worse. USA Today reported:
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has largely banned military officials — including the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the secretaries of the Army, Navy and Air Force — from speaking with Congress unless they coordinate with a centralized office that reports to him. Hegseth and his deputy, Steve Feinberg, announced the move in an Oct. 15 internal memo obtained by USA Today.
According to the Pentagon memo, first reported by Breaking Defense, officials were told that “Unauthorized engagements with Congress by DoW personnel acting in their official capacity, no matter how well-intentioned, may undermine Department-wide priorities critical to achieving our legislative objectives.” (Team Trump remains committed to politicized nomenclature, which is why the memo referred to the “DoW,” or “Department of War.”)
To the extent that institutional power structures are still relevant in the Trump era, Congress has oversight authority over the Defense Department. The proposition that Pentagon officials would curtail “engagements” with elected federal lawmakers and their offices isn’t just new — it’s at odds with how the system is supposed to work.
It’s also the latest development in a related DOD pattern: Hegseth and his team want to limit what journalists and the public know about developments at the Pentagon, and now they also want to limit what congressional offices know about developments at the Pentagon. Democratic Sen. Jack Reed of Rhode Island, the ranking member on the Senate Armed Services Committee, told NBC News that Hegseth and his team appear to be “afraid of the truth” and guided by “paranoia.” “We don’t want any lawyers, we don’t want any press, we don’t want anybody from Congress,” Reed said, commenting on the DOD’s apparent perspective. “And as a result, I think they’re, they’re positioning themselves — ‘we do what we want, no one checks us.’ The press doesn’t, Congress doesn’t, the courts — well, that’ll be a few years from now.” As for what, exactly, the beleaguered defense secretary is so eager to hide, Hegseth hasn’t said. Presumably, a reporter would ask him about this, but the former Fox News host doesn’t hold press conferences.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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