{"id":558914,"date":"2026-04-30T15:31:10","date_gmt":"2026-04-30T15:31:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/558914\/"},"modified":"2026-04-30T15:31:10","modified_gmt":"2026-04-30T15:31:10","slug":"live-updates-hegseth-faces-another-day-of-grilling-on-capitol-hill","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/558914\/","title":{"rendered":"Live updates: Hegseth faces another day of grilling on Capitol Hill"},"content":{"rendered":"

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth faces another day of grilling<\/a> on Capitol Hill, with senators getting their first opportunity on Thursday to confront or praise the Pentagon chief<\/a> over his handling of the Iran war.<\/p>\n

Hegseth battled with Democrats \u2014 and some Republicans \u2014 a day earlier during a nearly six-hour House Armed Services Committee hearing<\/a>, where he faced sharp questioning over the war\u2019s costs in dollars, lives and the diminishing stockpiles of critical weapons<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The Senate Armed Services Committee will hear a similar presentation on the Trump administration\u2019s 2027 military budget proposal<\/a>, which would boost defense spending to a historic $1.5 trillion. Hegseth and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Dan Caine, will again stress the need for more drones<\/a>, missile defense systems and warships.<\/p>\n

Other news we\u2019re following:<\/p>\n

Jerome Powell said Wednesday he plans to remain<\/a> on the board of the Federal Reserve<\/a> after his term as chair ends next month \u201cfor a period of time, to be determined,\u201d saying the \u201cunprecedented\u201d legal attacks by the Trump administration have put the independence of the nation\u2019s central bank at risk.The price of Brent crude oil briefly surged past $126 a barrel early Thursday<\/a> as stalled U.S.-Iran talks raised doubts over the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz and a permanent end to the Iran war.<\/a> Benchmark U.S. crude climbed 1.3% to $108.28 per barrel. Before the war began in late February, Brent crude was trading around $70 per barrel.That shock to oil supplies and prices is putting pressure on Trump, who on Thursday floated a new plan<\/a> to reopen Strait of Hormuz<\/a>. Under the plan, the United States would continue its blockade on Iranian ports, while coordinating with allies to impose higher costs on Iran\u2019s attempts to subvert the free flow of energy, according to a senior administration official.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth faces another day of grilling on Capitol Hill, with senators getting their first opportunity…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":558915,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[6491,5611,141,96,14992,164199,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-558914","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-celebrities","tag-congress","tag-donald-trump","tag-entertainment","tag-government-and-politics","tag-iran-war","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/558914","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=558914"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/558914\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/558915"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=558914"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=558914"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=558914"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}