Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth refused to say Thursday whether he would follow a federal district court order if it rules that the Trump administration's troop deployments^[1] to Los Angeles are illegal.

"What I can say is that we should not have local judges determining foreign policy or national security policy for the country," Hegseth said in response to a question from Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., during a House Armed Services Committee hearing.

Asked again by Khanna whether he would respect a court decision, Hegseth reiterated that, "What I'm saying is local district judges shouldn't make foreign policy for the United States."

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When pressed later in the hearing by Rep. Sarah Elfreth, D-Md., specifically whether he would follow a Supreme Court ruling, Hegseth said, "We're not here to defy a Supreme Court ruling."

Hegseth's evasiveness on Khanna's questions was part of a pattern of dodging inquiries from Democrats on Thursday.

Among the topics where Hegseth did not provide direct answers: his disclosure of real-time attack plans on the unclassified messaging app Signal; whether he believes women are capable of "lethality," one of his favorite buzzwords; why he and the president have fired several top military officers; and whether it is Pentagon policy to be prepared to invade Greenland and Panama, as President Donald Trump has sometimes floated.

Thursday capped off a week of congressional testimony for Hegseth, who faced pointed questions^[3] at each hearing^[4] about the Trump administration's decision to deploy the National Guard^[5] and Marines to Los Angeles to respond to protests against immigration raids.

Trump ordered about 4,000 National Guardsmen and 700 Marines to protect federal property and immigration officers from the protests, which have been punctuated by some violence but have been largely peaceful and confined to a few blocks in downtown LA.

The deployments were done over the objections of California Gov. Gavin Newsom, who quickly filed a lawsuit alleging Trump illegally usurped state authority.

The Justice Department, in a court filing Wednesday, called Newsom's lawsuit a "crass political stunt." A court hearing on the lawsuit was taking place Thursday afternoon.

The Trump administration has repeatedly violated court orders since taking office in January, particularly on cases related to immigration, one of the top issues he campaigned on.

Trump and other administration officials have sought to differentiate between lower court rulings, which they maintain have run amok and shouldn't dictate nationwide policy, and the Supreme Court, which they have said they would respect.

But the Trump administration has also ignored the Supreme Court.

After the Supreme Court ruled the Trump administration had to "facilitate" the return of a man wrongly deported to El Salvador, administration officials spent months claiming they couldn't bring him back and did not have to. The man was ultimately brought back to the United States last week and charged with transporting undocumented immigrants.

The Pentagon, though, has been following court orders, such as waiting until after the Supreme Court ruled in its favor to enforce the Trump administration's ban on transgender troops.

In response to Hegseth's comments at the hearing Thursday, Newsom posted on social media that "this is not normal."

Related: Marines Authorized to Temporarily Detain Protesters in LA, Raising Legal Concerns^[6]

House Republicans are on track to allow job cuts at the Pentagon and Department of Veterans Affairs^[1] to proceed in the annual spending bills for each department.

The House Appropriations Committee's fiscal 2026 defense appropriations bill includes a cut to civilian personnel funds that Republicans said accounts for the Pentagon's plan to slash about 45,000 civilian jobs. The full committee is debating the bill Thursday after it was advanced out of the defense subcommittee earlier this week.

Meanwhile, at a full committee debate Tuesday night about the fiscal 2026 VA appropriations bill, Republicans rejected a Democratic amendment that would have pumped the brakes on the VA's plans to fire about 80,000 employees.

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House Republicans are moving forward with the 2026 appropriations process even as the Trump administration has yet to provide Congress with its full, detailed budget request. Republicans have described the top-line dollar figures in their bills, which are based on the White House's so-called skinny budget request, as "interim."

In the defense appropriations bill, Republicans are proposing a total of $831.5 billion for the Pentagon, which is essentially flat compared to this year.

The White House also requested a flat budget for the Pentagon. But it argued that when its request is combined with a separate $150 billion defense budget boost working its way through Congress^[3] right now, the defense budget will hit a record $1 trillion.

GOP defense hawks have fumed at that reasoning, arguing they crafted the $150 billion bill to be in addition to a regular $1 trillion defense budget. But House GOP appropriators are using the same reasoning as the White House in defending their proposal.

"Together, with the significant defense funding advancing through Congress as part of the reconciliation process, the FY26 bill will lift total defense spending over $1 trillion in the next fiscal year, representing a historic commitment to strengthening and modernizing America's national defense," Rep. Ken Calvert, R-Calif., chairman of the Appropriations Committee's defense subcommittee, said in a statement this week.

The funding in the House appropriations bill would go toward providing service members with a 3.8% pay raise^[4] next year.

On the civilian side, though, the bill would endorse the hefty cuts being pushed by the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, the advisory agency previously led by billionaire Elon Musk before he left the White House, got into a public feud with the president, and then backed off the feud.

The bill would codify "both the department's cooperation with DOGE and streamlined functions and management improvements at the Pentagon," as well as cut "$3.6 billion and almost 45,000 civilian full-time equivalents to capture Workforce Acceleration and Recapitalization Initiative efforts," according to a GOP summary.

The Pentagon announced in March^[5] that it was aiming to slash about 5% to 8% of its civilian workforce, or about 50,000 to 60,000 jobs.

While officials initially planned to achieve the cuts through a mix of hiring freezes, firings and resignations, they have increasingly relied on resignations as firings have run into lawsuits and other hurdles.

DOGE first offered a program to employees across the federal government in January, and the Pentagon reopened the deferred resignation offer^[6] for its employees in April. The program allows government workers to leave their jobs while still getting paid until October, or risk getting fired later.

In written testimony this week^[7], Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said about 22,000 employees were approved for deferred resignation in January and noted the second window for deferred resignation in April without saying how many employees took the offer then. Service officials previously said they were poised^[8] to lose thousands of employees after the April window.

Meanwhile, the VA is planning its own DOGE-inspired mass firings. Under a memo leaked earlier this year^[9], the department is supposed to have more details on its plans to fire up to 83,000 employees this month and could start the firings by August.

The VA has signed an agreement with the Office of Personnel Management, essentially human resources for the federal government, to help with the firings, news outlet Government Executive reported this week^[10].

The fiscal 2026 VA appropriations bill proposed by House Republicans does not address the VA firings one way or the other.

But Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Fla., ranking member of the Appropriations Committee's VA subcommittee, offered an amendment during Tuesday night's debate on the bill that would have blocked any "reduction in force," as such mass firings are formally called, unless Congress specifically approves it.

"There is absolutely no way that the secretary can achieve his goal without it having an impact on the health care provided to our veterans," Wasserman Schultz said at the committee meeting. "Does this administration really believe the arbitrary firing culture it is creating at the VA will make it an attractive place to work? No one wants to work at a place where the threat of being fired for no reason looms over their head every day."

The amendment was voted down along party lines, 27-34, with Republicans arguing it was unnecessary.

"The bill as written and the budget request does not include personnel cuts," said Rep. John Carter, R-Texas, the chairman of the committee's VA subcommittee. "VA has reinforced health care and benefits by safeguarding … mission-critical positions to ensure uninterrupted services."

While appropriators are ignoring potential staff cuts at the VA, they appear uneasy about other cuts at the department.

In the nonbinding report that accompanies the bill, lawmakers expressed concern that recent contract cancellations^[11] at the VA have been done haphazardly and without congressional approval.

"The committee is concerned that the department canceled many contracts and purported to reprogram funding originally dedicated to these contracts without proper analysis on the impacts to the veteran community, or without transparency about which contracts were ended, or proper notification to Congress," said the report, which was released Tuesday night after the committee approved the bill. "If the department seeks to reprogram previously appropriated funding, congressional approval is required by law."

The report called on the VA to provide lawmakers with a list of all contracts canceled since January that includes "a detailed analysis of the decision-making process that led to the cancellations," as well as a list of where the funding from the canceled contracts was redirected to.

Related: Budget for Veterans to See Private Doctors Would See Big Boost in GOP's VA Funding Proposal^[12]

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth suggested Wednesday that the Trump administration could send troops to any city in America over the objections of state and local officials, as it is doing now in Los Angeles.

During a Senate Appropriations Committee defense subcommittee hearing Wednesday, Sen. Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii, asked Hegseth about the fact that the order^[1] President Donald Trump issued Saturday that has sent Marines and the National Guard^[2] into L.A. mentioned neither a specific location nor specific units that it applies to.

"Do you think this order applies to any Guard anywhere, any service branch anywhere?" Schatz asked. "Did you just potentially mobilize every Guard everywhere and every service member everywhere. I mean, create the framework for that?"

Read Next: Bragg Soldiers Who Cheered Trump's Political Attacks While in Uniform Were Checked for Allegiance, Appearance^[3]

Hegseth responded that one intention of the order "is getting ahead of a problem, so that if in other places, if there are other riots in places where law enforcement officers are threatened, we would have the capability to surge National Guard there if necessary."

Hegseth added that "hopefully" governors in other states would mobilize their Guards themselves and took a swipe at California Gov. Gavin Newsom for "playing politics."

Trump ordered about 4,000 Guardsmen and 700 Marines into Los Angeles in response to protests against immigration raids in the city and its suburbs despite the fact that Newsom and L.A. officials said local law enforcement had the situation under control and did not need military assistance. The Marines were still being trained on crowd control tactics and had apparently not been sent into the city yet on Wednesday afternoon.

While there have been isolated incidents of protesters throwing rocks, burning cars, vandalizing buildings and committing other violent or destructive acts, local reports have said the protests have been largely peaceful^[4] and limited to a few blocks in downtown L.A.

Meanwhile, protests against immigration raids have spread to other cities, including Seattle, Austin, Chicago and Washington, D.C., according to The Associated Press^[5].

Some states with governors aligned with Trump, such as Gov. Greg Abbott in Texas^[6], have deployed their National Guard to quell protests.

The Trump administration is also reportedly planning on expanding the type of immigration raid that sparked the L.A. protests to other cities or areas with Democratic leaders, including Seattle, Chicago, Philadelphia, northern Virginia and New York, according to NBC News^[7].

The administration is pursuing increasingly aggressive mass deportation raids across the U.S. Images of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents -- often in tactical gear and masks -- arresting people in communities across the country have proliferated, while high-profile deportations to a mega prison in El Salvador without court hearings have triggered lawsuits.

Trump's Saturday order that provided his legal framework for deploying troops to L.A. called for "at least 2,000 National Guard personnel," but otherwise had few specified details, including any geographic constraints. The order said the deployment^[8] would be 60 days, but could be extended "at the discretion of the secretary of defense."

It also said the secretary "may employ any other members of the regular armed forces^[9] as necessary" and that deployments could happen anywhere protests against immigration officers are "occurring or are likely to occur."

National security law experts have said the vague wording^[10] of the memo could presage Trump deploying troops anywhere he wants.

Trump himself said Tuesday^[11] that the L.A. deployment "is the first, perhaps, of many."

The legal authority Trump invoked for the deployments was Section 12406 of Title 10 of the U.S. Code, according to the Saturday memo.

That law stipulates that the National Guard can be federalized in three scenarios: if the U.S. "is invaded or is in danger of invasion by a foreign nation;" if "there is a rebellion or danger of a rebellion against the authority of the government of the United States;" or if "the president is unable with the regular forces to execute the laws of the United States."

In addition to pressing Hegseth on whether the administration believes it can deploy troops anywhere in the U.S., Schatz on Wednesday pressed Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Dan Caine on whether the country is being invaded by a foreign nation.

"At this point in time, I don't see any foreign state-sponsored folks invading," Caine replied, though he added he is "mindful" of immigration issues and would defer to the Department of Homeland Security.

Schatz also asked Caine whether there is "a rebellion somewhere in the United States."

Caine said only that he thinks "there's definitely some frustrated folks out there."

Related: Hegseth, Democrats Tangle over Troop Deployments to Los Angeles^[12]