{"id":77359,"date":"2026-08-13T10:55:16","date_gmt":"2026-08-13T15:55:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/2026\/08\/13\/hegseth-criticized-for-locking-democrats-out-of-closed-door-defense-budget-talks\/"},"modified":"2026-08-13T10:55:16","modified_gmt":"2026-08-13T15:55:16","slug":"hegseth-criticized-for-locking-democrats-out-of-closed-door-defense-budget-talks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/2026\/08\/13\/hegseth-criticized-for-locking-democrats-out-of-closed-door-defense-budget-talks\/","title":{"rendered":"Hegseth criticized for locking Democrats out of closed-door defense budget talks"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Republican lawmakers express concern after US defense secretary repeatedly excluded Democrats from briefings<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/us-news\/live\/2026\/aug\/13\/karoline-leavitt-white-house-primaries-trump-politics-latest-updates\">US politics live \u2013 latest updates<\/a><\/p>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Republican senators have criticized the Pentagon for locking Democrats out of classified briefings on defense spending, warning that Pete Hegseth\u2019s approach could jeopardize passage of Donald Trump\u2019s record $1.5tn military budget increase.<\/p>\n<p>The US defense secretary has made at least two trips to Capitol Hill in recent weeks to pitch the budget, but has repeatedly excluded Democrats from the closed-door sessions, according to lawmakers from both parties.<\/p>\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/us-news\/2026\/aug\/13\/pete-hegseth-democrats-budget\">Continue reading&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Republican lawmakers express concern after US defense secretary repeatedly excluded Democrats from briefings US politics live \u2013 latest updates Republican senators have criticized the Pentagon for locking Democrats out of classified briefings on defense spending, warning that Pete Hegseth\u2019s approach could jeopardize passage of Donald Trump\u2019s record $1.5tn military budget increase. The US defense secretary &#8230; <a title=\"Hegseth criticized for locking Democrats out of closed-door defense budget talks\" class=\"read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/2026\/08\/13\/hegseth-criticized-for-locking-democrats-out-of-closed-door-defense-budget-talks\/\" aria-label=\"Read more about Hegseth criticized for locking Democrats out of closed-door defense budget talks\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-77359","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77359","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=77359"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77359\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=77359"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=77359"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=77359"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}