Hegseth, under Senate scrutiny, mutes critique of women in combat

Contributing sentiments towards policy:

42% : We're tracking the people Trump has picked for key positions in his administration.
40% : Like Trump, the 44-year-old Hegseth, a Princeton and Harvard graduate who served stints in Iraq and Afghanistan, has decried "woke" policies at the Pentagon, including diversity initiatives he has said are responsible for degrading battlefield effectiveness and fueling crises in military morale and recruitment.
39% : Speaking on a podcast that aired shortly before being tapped by Trump, Hegseth acknowledged that female troops serving in roles such as truck drivers or mechanics have found themselves in combat situations in what he called the "360 battlefield" of recent counterinsurgent wars.
31% : As defense secretary, Hegseth would have authority to reverse that policy, which was controversial within the military at the time, but it's not clear whether Trump would support such a move.

*Our bias meter rating uses data science including sentiment analysis, machine learning and our proprietary algorithm for determining biases in news articles. Bias scores are on a scale of -100% to 100% with higher negative scores being more liberal and higher positive scores being more conservative, and 0% being neutral. The rating is an independent analysis and is not affiliated nor sponsored by the news source or any other organization.