It will take a simple majority of 50 senators to advance Hegseth’s confirmation in Thursday’s vote. Most Republicans, who hold a 53-seat majority in the chamber, have signaled they will back the nominee, including Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, herself a combat veteran and sexual assault survivor.

He is the real deal,” former U.S. Sen. Norm Coleman said, but Minnesota native Hegseth faced tough questions from Democrats on the Senate Armed Services Committee.

Pete Hegseth, President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee for Defense Secretary, will appear before the Senate on Tuesday morning.

Pete Hegseth, President-elect Donald Trump's pick to lead the Pentagon, faced some tough questions from Democrats on the Senate Armed Services Committee.

Pete Hegseth, center, President-elect Donald Trump's choice to be Defense secretary, appears before the Senate Armed Services Committee for his confirmation hearing with Rep. Michael Waltz, R-Fla., left, and former Sen. Norm Coleman, at the Capitol in ...

Who’s sitting with Hegseth? Pete Hegseth is seated between two close allies who’ve helped advocate for his nomination on Capitol Hill. On Hegseth’s left sits Norm Coleman, former Republican U.S. Senator from Minnesota, and to his right sits Rep.

President-elect Donald Trump’s pick to lead the Defense Department sat for a Senate confirmation hearing on Tuesday after hearings for Veterans’ Affairs Secretary nominee Doug Collins and Interior secretary nominee Doug Burgum were postponed.

A telling moment in the supremely depressing Senate confirmation hearing for Pete Hegseth, the Fox News personality who is Donald Trump’s pick for defense secretary, came right at the beginning, when the former Republican senator Norm Coleman introduced him.

Pete Hegseth, Trump's nominee to lead the Defense Department, promised to be a change agent and keep politics out of the military in his confirmation hearing.

Fashion is essentially a story of what the paleontologists Stephen Jay Gould and Niles Eldredge called “punctuated equilibrium,” a theory positing that significant change comes in spurts that interrupt lengthy periods of stability or slow evolution. It’s how we got L.B.D.s, the New Look, pants, the possibilities of destruction.

President-elect Donald Trump’s pick to lead the Pentagon fields tough questions about his fitness for the job.

Hegseth used his opening statement at his confirmation hearing to promise a decisive shift in Pentagon culture should he succeed in his nomination.