RESOLVING THE LEDGER
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0 Share Newsweek is a Trust Project member See more of our trusted coverage when you search. Prefer Newsweek on Google to see more of our trusted coverage when you search. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is facing mounting controversies, from a monthslong crisis aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln to growing concerns over dwindling munitions stockpiles, but prediction markets think he has a good chance of remaining in the Trump administration for the foreseeable future.
Kalshi, asking whether Hegseth will be out before September 1, puts the chances at just 4.8 percent, up nearly a point in recent trading, as of early Thursday afternoon ET. Earlier Kalshi asking whether Hegseth would be gone by July 1 or August 1 have already resolved as "no." The latest contract has drawn just under $1 million in trading volume.
Polymarket is somewhat less confident in Hegseth's staying power over a longer horizon. The market asking if he will be out by December 31 puts his odds at 24 percent, on $324,000 in volume. A narrower market asking if he will be gone by August 31 sits at just 3 percent. A separate contract on whether Hegseth will be impeached by the end of the year is at 4 percent.
On a broader market asking who will be the next Trump Cabinet official to leave, bettors give a 46 percent chance that nobody exits before 2027, with FBI Director Kash Patel drawing the largest share at 31 percent.
The market skepticism about an imminent Hegseth departure comes despite polling that shows him as the least popular member of President Donald Trump's Cabinet. A CNN analysis released this month by senior data reporter Harry Enten found Hegseth's net approval rating at -22, the worst of any senior administration figure CNN tracked. Secretary of State Marco Rubio sits at -8, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is at -9 and Vice President JD Vance is at -17, according to Enten's review.
Enten called Hegseth "the lowest of the low" and said the -22 figure has turned up "in every single poll" he could find covering Hegseth's time leading the Pentagon .
A Marquette Law School poll conducted July 22-29 found a similar pattern , with Hegseth tied with Trump for the lowest net favorability among the administration figures tested, at -22 points. Hegseth had a 23 percent favorable rating and a 45 percent unfavorable rating. He was also the least familiar figure in the survey, with 32 percent of respondents saying they had not heard enough about him to form an opinion, despite having spent months leading the Pentagon through the Iran war .
The numbers come as Hegseth faces scrutiny on two fronts. The first involves conditions aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln , which left San Diego in November and has spent more than 200 days continuously at sea, the longest deployment on record for a carrier of its kind. The ship was rerouted from the Pacific to the Middle East ahead of the U.S. war with Iran that began on February 28.
Family members of sailors aboard the Lincoln have told military news outlets that at least two service members attempted or appeared to prepare to go overboard amid what they describe as exhausting conditions, spotty hygiene supplies and mental health strain.
California Representative Mike Levin, a Democrat, said this week that sailors lacked basic hygiene supplies and access to working showers and toilets. Arizona Senator Ruben Gallego, also a Democrat, has called on the Navy to allow bipartisan congressional oversight visits to the ship. Connecticut Senator Richard Blumenthal, a Democrat, wrote in a letter to Hegseth this week that extended deployments compound the risks already inherent to carrier life through fatigue and deferred maintenance.
"Based on information available to the command, we have not identified an increase in reported suicidal ideation or suicide attempts aboard the ship," the spokesperson said. "We take every service member’s well-being seriously and have religious, medical and mental health professionals available to assess and address concerns as they arise."
Complaints about conditions on the ship first surfaced in April. The Navy denied them at the time, and Hegseth dismissed the reports as "fake news." Acting Navy Secretary Hung Cao has since told families that the Lincoln will eventually be relieved by the USS Theodore Roosevelt, though he did not specify a timeline.
The renewed attention drew a sharp on-air reaction Thursday from MS NOW host Joe Scarborough, who said on Morning Joe that the Pentagon under Hegseth was failing at “job one,” military readiness, while also losing track of its own munitions stockpiles.
The munitions controversy has opened a second front for Hegseth. Trump reportedly confronted him at Camp David over reports that Patriot and THAAD interceptor stockpiles had fallen sharply during the Iran war, with Hegseth reportedly deflecting blame toward his deputy, Stephen Feinberg. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt called the account “100 percent fake news” and said Trump has “the utmost confidence in Secretary Hegseth.”
Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell also denied the reporting. Hegseth, meanwhile, has publicly insisted that the country is not facing a shortage, telling reporters: “Our stockpiles of defensive and offensive weapons allow us to sustain this campaign as long as we need to.”
Taken together, the polling, carrier crisis and munitions dispute have left Hegseth facing some of the toughest scrutiny of his tenure. Still, prediction markets think the man Trump chose to lead the Pentagon is not going anywhere soon.
Trump has also shown his support for Hegseth in a more literal way. During the president’s secretive plane switch out of Turkey following last month’s NATO summit, Hegseth was the only Cabinet official who flew with Trump aboard the covertly rerouted aircraft. Rubio and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, both in the presidential line of succession, remained on the publicly identified decoy flight alon...
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