″I think it’s time for a new republican to be your nominee that can do 12-14 hours a day and hold this seat,” Bacon said.

In May at an Omaha roundtable with business leaders to discuss Congress’ recent tax bill, Bacon acknowledged that the dysfunction in Washington contributed to his decision.

“It’s one thing when you have the opposing party fighting you, but when you have divisions in your own party, you know — it makes it harder,” he said.

An Air Force veteran first elected in 2016, he won reelection in 2024. He serves on the House Armed Services Committee and has been at the center of many debates in Congress. He has also been chairman of the conservative-centrist Republican Main Street Caucus in the House. He plans to finish his term.

Bacon has earned a reputation as a centrist — an increasingly rare designation among Republicans as the party has moved farther to the right. But he has long acknowledged that moderation is a necessary attribute for anyone seeking to represent the Omaha-centered district, which is closely divided between Republican and Democratic voters.

Nebraska is one of two states that doesn’t follow a winner-take-all system of awarding Electoral College votes. Instead, Nebraska and Maine allow presidential electoral votes to be split by congressional district. Bacon’s district has seen its elector vote go to a Democratic presidential candidate three times — to Barack Obama in 2008, to Joe Biden in 2020 and to Kamala Harris in 2024.

The political climate is rapidly changing in Omaha, where voters recently rejected a fourth term for Republican Mayor Jean Stothert in favor of her Democratic opponent, John Ewing.

Seeing an opportunity to flip a vulnerable seat, several Democrats have already announced their candidacy. The most widely recognized is John Cavanaugh, a state senator from Omaha who’s father, John J. Cavanaugh III, represented the 2nd District in Congress from 1977 to 1981.

Bacon has managed to survive the district’s swing to the left by staying squarely in the middle. In his most recent campaigns, he touted his bipartisan credentials in political ads and cited his willingness to buck his party to support measures such as the Biden administration’s popular 2021 infrastructure investment bill.

Despite Bacon’s willingness to rebuke both his party and the Trump administration, he has consistently voted with most of their agenda. But his criticism of Trump has been enough to draw the growing ire of his party. Bacon faced a primary challenger in 2024 who was endorsed by the Nebraska Republican Party, which is led by Trump loyalists.

Even so, Bacon has grown more vocal in his criticism of the Trump administration. That includes the president’s chaotic tariff policies, with Bacon going so far as to introduce a bill to return authority to issue tariffs to Congress.

On Sunday, Republican Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina also decided to not seek reelection next year. He had held to his opposition of President Donald Trump’s tax breaks and spending cuts package because of its reductions to health care programs.

Margery A. Beck, The Associated Press

Trump thinks Hegseth will ‘get it together’ amid Pentagon staff chaos

toggle caption Andrew Harnik/Getty Images

President Donald Trump said he spoke with his embattled Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth following reports he used the unsecure Signal chat to discuss classified information and fired some of his top aides, leaving the Pentagon embroiled in chaos.

“I think he’s gonna get it together,” Trump said of Hegseth, during an interview with The Atlantic magazine over the weekend. “I had a talk with him, a positive talk, but I had a talk with him.”

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Meanwhile, one former senior staffer, Colin Carroll, who served as chief of staff to Deputy Defense Secretary Steve Feinberg, said in a lengthy interview with Megyn Kelly on Saturday there’s a “culture of fear and toxicity” in Hegseth’s office. “No one’s going to want to come into that environment.”

Carroll, along with Hegseth’s former top aides, Dan Caldwell and Darin Selnick, were fired amid accusations by the defense secretary that they leaked classified information to the press. Both Carroll and Caldwell strongly deny any leaks in separate interviews and on X, and instead say they were fired because they had trouble working with Hegseth’s chief of staff Joe Kasper, who oversaw what they call a dysfunctional office. NPR has repeatedly contacted Kasper, who has not returned phone calls.

In her interview with Carroll, Kelly says she reached out to Kasper, who released a statement: “The idea that there was dysfunction is an argument of convenience, which in hindsight is being weaponized by a small group which is rallying against the president and the secretary in their own interests.” Kasper has since stepped down as chief of staff and will now serve as a “special government employee” working on science, technology and industry.

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Meanwhile, Trump’s National Security Adviser Mike Waltz went on Fox News on Sunday to defend Hegseth. “He is leading the charge, and he has no tolerance for leaking,” Waltz said, calling any suggestions of chaos or dysfunction a “media narrative,” and that Trump officials “are going to power through.” Waltz, who took responsibility for creating a Signal chat group that inadvertently included a journalist last month, sidestepped a question about the departure of senior aides, including Kasper.

On Friday the Pentagon announced four new senior advisers had been promoted; they include Col. Ricky Buria, a former junior military assistant; Justin Fulcher, a member of the DOGE team embedded at the Pentagon, and Patrick Weaver, formerly a Department of Defense “special assistant.”

Sean Parnell, who had been the Pentagon’s chief spokesman, was promoted to assistant to the secretary of defense and senior adviser.

All those named have little experience at the Pentagon, and those jobs are often filled by those with years serving in the military, government or industry.

Parnell, a Pittsburgh native, served in the military for six years, ran unsuccessfully for the U.S. House in 2020, and the next year launched a short-lived campaign for the U.S. Senate. Fulcher, who Forbes magazine featured in its 30 under 30 list in 2017, came into the Pentagon as part of tech billionaire Elon Musk’s DOGE team. Forbes later featured him again in an article questioning his credentials as an entrepreneur. Weaver graduated from college in 2017, and served in the first Trump administration at the Department of Homeland Security.

Kingsley Wilson, 26, had been deputy press secretary and will now be acting press secretary. Just last month, she was criticized by members of Congress and Jewish groups for online posts and past public commentary she made before joining the Trump administration.

It’s uncertain if those appointments will be permanent or placeholders. The White House has reached out to officials who served in the first Trump administration, searching for staff who will “right the ship,” at the Pentagon, according to one former Trump official who requested anonymity to describe internal administration deliberations. Another official has told NPR that the White House has begun the preliminary process of seeking a replacement for Hegseth.

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Carroll in his interview with Megyn Kelly worries that the disruption at the upper reaches of the Pentagon could spell trouble in a crisis. “We have not had a major challenge at this point,” said Carroll, a Marine combat veteran and Naval Academy graduate. “So I don’t know how the department would function if we had like the fall of Kabul,” referring to the chaos when U.S. forces left the Afghan capital in August, 2021. “That’s my biggest fear.”

Carroll said he would like to return to the Pentagon and resume his work with Deputy Secretary Feinberg and worries about the programs he was working on without the needed staff. “The president’s agenda is at risk right now,” he said, pointing to the proposed Golden Dome missile defense system and shipbuilding, concerned there will be delays with the personnel shakeup.

A number of Democrats have called for Hegseth’s ouster, and on Sunday, Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said on CBS that Hegseth has “created chaos” at the Pentagon.

“The fact is, Pete Hegseth was not qualified to take the job as secretary of defense, and he has shown that time and again,” Shaheen said Sunday on Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan.

One Republican, Rep. Don Bacon of Nebraska, a retired Air Force brigadier general, said he didn’t believe it was in his place to call for Hegseth’s resignation but was critical of the defense secretary’s Signal chats about an imminent attack on Yemen.

“I had concerns from the get-go because Pete Hegseth didn’t have a lot of experience,” Bacon, who now chairs the subcommittee on cyber issues, told reporters last week. “I like him on Fox. But does he have the experience to lead one of the largest organizations in the world? That’s a concern.”

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Hegseth, 44, is a former Fox News host and National Guard major who served in Iraq and Afghanistan but had no experience in government when he was nominated by Trump to lead the Pentagon, which oversees some 3 million civilian and military employees and has a yearly budget of some $900 billion. Hegseth had less experience than any other defense secretary since the position was created in 1947. He also overcame allegations of sexual assault, public drunkenness and questions of financial mismanagement at two veterans’ groups he ran.

Hegseth addressed his lack of experience at his Senate Armed Services Committee confirmation hearing in January, saying he had “dust on his boots” from his combat deployments and vowed to be a “change agent” and “disruptor” at the Pentagon that was too focused on a “woke” ideology and diversity, equity and inclusion. He narrowly won Senate approval by a vote of 50-50, with Vice President Vance casting the necessary tie-breaking vote.

Hegseth immediately became a “disruptor” and faced some criticism for firing the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. CQ Brown, the second African American to hold the post, and Adm. Lisa Franchetti, the first female top officer in the Navy. He also ended minority and women’s student clubs at West Point and had books on race, gender and transgender issues removed from the Naval Academy library.

But within the last month, he’s faced scrutiny that he was relaying classified information to those without clearances. Hegseth was being given details – including timing, targets and ordnance for a March 15 strike on Houthi targets in Yemen – by Gen. Erik Kurilla, who oversees Middle East operations, and was communicating through a classified system. Hegseth in turn gave minute-by-minute updates to top White House officials through Signal, unaware that a reporter was mistakenly added to the chat.

Hegseth claimed the chats included only “media strategy,” but the reporter in the chat, Jeffrey Goldberg, provided a transcript of some of that information, which members of Congress and retired military officials said was clearly classified. And their concern was that an adversary could hack those unsecured communications and put pilots in danger.

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Then last week, The New York Times reported that there was a second Signal chat with the same information that included Hegseth’s wife, brother and personal lawyer.

Meanwhile, Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America released the results of a survey of their membership about the Signal controversy.

In the survey, IAVA veterans overwhelmingly (86%) believe that there should be accountability for the leak of classified information over Signal by administration officials, including more than 3 out of 4 of IAVA veterans that identify as Republican. “It’s clear that IAVA veterans are taking note of the actions of the new Administration,” said IAVA’s CEO Allison Jaslow. “Most want to see accountability for the leak of classified information by Administration officials that made headlines recently, just as they know they’d be held accountable for the same.”

NPR disclosure: Katherine Maher, the CEO of NPR, chairs the board of the Signal Foundation.

Quil Lawrence contributed to this story.

One of the few remaining critics of Donald Trump on the Republican side of Congress is mulling retirement following his current term.

Don Bacon, who was elected in Nebraska’s 2nd District on the crest of the wave of Trump’s victory in 2016 and served ever since, said Friday that he may be quitting Washington.

Bacon, 61, most recently made waves as the first Republican to urge Trump to fire Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth amid the recent chaos at the Pentagon.

Multiple sources told NOTUS Friday that Bacon is seriously considering not running again in 2026.

Bacon, who is consistently grilled by representing a swing district he’s never won by more than three points, confirmed he’s thinking about leaving.

‘I’ll make any final decisions in late summer. It is a family decision,’ Bacon said.

He would face a tough environment, as Kamala Harris won his district by four points in 2024, while he held on against Democrat opponent Tony Vargas by less than 6,000 votes.

The Nebraska Congressman has largely voted with Republicans, though he has been critical of Trump and was one of the few members of the GOP to vote to establish the January 6th Commission.

Don Bacon (pictured), who was elected in Nebraska’s 2nd District on the crest of the wave of Trump’s victory in 2016 and served ever since, said Friday that he may be quitting Washington

The Nebraska Congressman has largely voted with Republicans, though he has been critical of Trump (pictured) and was one of the few members of the GOP to vote to establish the January 6th Commission

Bacon was the first Republican to call for Hegseth’s firing on the same day that Trump defended his head of defense on the day of the White House Easter Egg Roll.

‘I had concerns from the get-go because Pete Hegseth didn’t have a lot of experience,’ the Nebraska lawmaker told Politico, becoming the first House Republican to call for Hegseth to go.

‘I like him on Fox,’ Bacon said of the former cable TV commentator. ‘But does he have the experience to lead one of the largest organizations in the world? That’s a concern.’

Bacon’s scalding remarks follow a stunning op-ed in the publication by Hegseth’s former Pentagon press secretary John Ullyot.

Ullyot, a Marine Corps vet who served as a White House national security spokesman during Trump’s first term, announced his resignation from the Pentagon Wednesday.

The spokesman called himself ‘a longtime backer of the secretary,’ but went on to write that the Pentagon was in ‘a full-blown meltdown’ and ‘total chaos’ amid the Signal chat scandals.

He said ‘the dysfunction is now a major distraction for the president – who deserves better from his senior leadership.’ He even went on to predict: ‘It’s hard to see Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth remaining in his role for much longer.’

He had helped push the MAGA agenda inside the Pentagon by forcing legacy media outlets out of their workspace, then issued confusing comments defending the decision to take down a page honoring the military service of baseball great Jackie Robinson.

Bacon was the first Republican to call for Pete Hegseth’s (pictured) firing on the same day that Trump defended his head of defense on the day of the White House Easter Egg Roll

Trump brushed off the development Monday at the White House Easter Egg roll, dismissing the criticism by his own former aide.

‘It’s just fake news, they just bring up stories I guess it sounds like disgruntled employees. You know he was put there to get rid of a lot of bad people and that’s what he’s doing. You don’t always have friends when you do that,’ Trump said.

And Hegseth insisted at the same event that he’s ‘on the same page’ with Trump.

Three senior Pentagon staffers were put on leave over the weekend as part of a leak investigation they claim was fabricated, creating a power vacuum.

The Pentagon IG said it opened up an inquiry following the first Signal chat controversy, which involved Hegseth sharing information about an attack on the Houthis in Yemen on a group chat created by National Security Advisor Mike Waltz. Atlantic editor Jeffrey Goldberg was inadvertently included on it.

The newly revealed signal chat, as reported by the New York Times, was created by Hegseth himself.