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elizabeth warren
Warren Leads Demand for Probe Into Hegseth's Reported Efforts to Profit From Iran War
Democratic lawmakers said if reports of Hegseth attempting to buy defense stock weeks before the war are true, it "would be a profound conflict of interest" and a "betrayal of the nation paying the price for this war."
Apr 02, 2026
Senate Democrats are pushing for an investigation into US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth following a report that he attempted to make a “big investment” in weapons stock just weeks before President Donald Trump launched an aggressive war against Iran.
Three Democrats on the Senate Armed Services Committee—Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.), and Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) were joined by Sens. Gary Peters (D-Mich.) and Jeff Merkley to send Hegseth a letter on Wednesday.
They told the secretary that his reported attempt to broker the deal "would be a profound conflict of interest and a potential violation of your federal ethics agreement—and betrayal of the nation paying the price for this war and the troops you are sending into harm’s way."
The Financial Times reported earlier this week that Hegseth's "broker at Morgan Stanley contacted BlackRock in February about making a multimillion-dollar investment in the asset manager’s Defense Industrials Active ETF... shortly before the US launched military action against Tehran.”
However, the purchase was reportedly never made because the massive bundle of stocks was not available to Morgan Stanley clients at the time.
A Pentagon spokesperson has also denied the story, calling it "entirely false and fabricated" and claiming that neither Hegseth nor any of his representatives ever approached BlackRock.
But, as the lawmakers noted, FT reported that the inquiry was significant enough for BlackRock to flag it internally.
Hegseth and other Pentagon officials confirmed by the Senate are prohibited by law from owning or purchasing publicly traded stock in the 10 companies that have received the largest Defense Department contracts over the past five years.
But the fund held stocks in several of these companies, including Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, General Dynamics, Huntington Ingalls, Boeing, RTX Corporation, and L3Harris Technologies.
Reports of the proposed deal by Hegseth's broker come as the Trump administration has faced other accusations of trading on insider information about the president’s next moves to win big on prediction market services. Platforms like Polymarket have seen bettors take home monster winnings by placing wagers predicting major military actions in Venezuela and Iran just hours before Trump launched them.
The lawmakers noted that while the war is costing American taxpayers more than $1 billion per day and has saddled Americans with soaring gas prices, it has proven highly lucrative for major defense contractors, whose stocks jumped significantly in the days after the war was launched, even as the rest of the market took a tumble.
The Trump administration is currently demanding another $200 billion to prosecute the war on top of a $1.5 trillion budget request to fund the Defense Department, which the lawmakers said would likely result in these companies’ profits and stock prices continuing to climb.
The US-Israeli war against Iran, launched on February 28, has been condemned as illegal by many international law experts and human rights groups, who have accused the US of violating the UN Charter and committing war crimes.
According to a report on Wednesday from the Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA), a US-based human rights monitor for Iran, more than 1,600 civilians have been killed since the war began, including 244 children. At least 13 US troops have also been killed since the conflict broke out.
The lawmakers told Hegseth regarding his reported investment attempt: “If this report is accurate, it would appear to represent an appalling effort to profit off of your knowledge of the president’s plans for war.”
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Warren Says Trump Knows Iran War and Price Hikes Are Unpopular, So He's 'Trying to Rig' Midterms
"Trump knows Americans are angry that he's made everything more expensive," said Sen. Elizabeth Warren.
Apr 01, 2026
US Sen. Elizabeth Warren on Tuesday accused President Donald Trump of trying to sabotage the 2026 midterm elections as his illegal war on Iran jacks up gas prices and threatens higher inflation throughout the economy, angering voters across the political spectrum.
The Massachusetts Democrat's warning came shortly after Trump signed an executive order aimed at restricting mail-in voting, a move that was widely seen as unconstitutional. Warren wrote on social media: "Trump knows his war with Iran is unpopular. Trump knows Americans are angry that he's made everything more expensive. Instead of reversing course, Trump is trying to rig the next election. It's illegal—and we will fight back."
Ben Raderstorf, a policy advocate at the nonprofit group Protect Democracy, said that "just like the war in Iran, the war against the midterms is extremely dangerous and will do so much damage to our elections and our democracy."
A Reuters/Ipsos poll released Tuesday evening found that 66% of US voters—including 40% of Republicans—want a quick end to Trump's war on Iran, even if his administration doesn't achieve its vague and constantly shifting objectives, which have ranged from thwarting an imminent threat that analysts say was not present, to full-scale regime change, to destroying a nuclear weapons program that US intelligence has repeatedly found does not exist.
Reuters reported that two in three respondents to the new survey "said they expected gas prices to worsen over the next year, including 40% of Republicans."
While oil prices fell sharply on Tuesday after Trump declared that US forces would end their assault on Iran in "two weeks or maybe a few days longer," the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP) estimated last week that the gas price surge stemming from the war was on pace to cost American drivers an additional $9.4 billion per month.
"Alabama is the most affected state in the nation, with residents spending an extra $52 per person, per month," ITEP found. "Other heavily impacted states include Mississippi ($51), Wyoming ($49), Kentucky ($47), and New Mexico ($44)."
Trump is expected to address the nation on the Iran war at 9 pm ET on Wednesday, more than a month into a military campaign that was not authorized by lawmakers and that has sparked a regional conflict, killing thousands and displacing millions.
The president told reporters on Tuesday that Iran "doesn't have to make a deal" to end the war, and Trump has privately told aides that he's willing to end the assault without securing the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz.
“We leave because there’s no reason for us to do this,” Trump said.
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'Shameful': Trump Threatens to Redirect Student Loan Borrowers to Most Expensive Repayment Plans
More than 7 million borrowers booted from a Biden-era loan forgiveness program will have to quickly switch to a new plan using a system that's been backed up for months.
Mar 27, 2026
After axing a Biden-era student loan repayment program, the Trump administration is threatening to kick its millions of mostly low-income beneficiaries onto the government's most expensive plan unless they switch to a new one quickly.
The Washington Post reported on Friday that the Department of Education was beginning to email the more than 7 million people enrolled in the Saving on a Valuable Education (SAVE) program, telling them they needed to change their plan within the next 90 days.
Around 4.5 million of those borrowers earn incomes between 150% and 225%, allowing them to qualify for zero-dollar monthly payments under SAVE, which the Trump administration effectively killed in December after settling with Republican states who'd brought lawsuits against the program under former President Joe Biden.
Anonymous officials told The Post that those who do not switch plans within three months of receiving the email will automatically be re-enrolled in the Standard Plan. Unlike SAVE, which is income-based, the Standard plan has borrowers pay a fixed rate over 10 years.
Standard typically carries the highest monthly payments, and those transitioning to it from SAVE could pay more than $300 extra per month in some cases, with the poorest borrowers seeing the sharpest increases.
While 90 days may seem like plenty of time to switch to a less expensive repayment plan, it's not nearly that simple.
Due to the large exodus of borrowers, the Department of Education has struggled to process all the forms, processing only about 250,000 per month. Many borrowers who have tried to transition have found themselves waiting months for a reply.
To make matters more confusing, many of these borrowers will have to switch programs again soon, since all but one repayment program will be dissolved on July 1, 2028 as a result of last year's Republican budget law. The remaining plan will also be income-driven, though it is still expected to cost borrowers more each month.
According to a report released last month by the Century Foundation and Protect Borrowers, two groups that support loan forgiveness, nearly 9 million student loan borrowers are in default. During Trump's first year back in office, the student loan delinquency rate jumped from roughly zero to 25%, which it called "precedent-shattering."
"Much of the rise in delinquencies can be linked to the Trump administration’s actions aimed at increasing student loan payments," the report said. “The US Department of Education blocked borrowers from accessing more affordable payments through income-driven plans, having ordered a stoppage in application processing for three months and mass-denying 328,000 applications in August 2025. As of December 31, 2025, a warehouse’s worth of 734,000 applications sat unprocessed.”
Being in default has major ramifications for borrowers' finances. Those with delinquent loans saw their credit scores decrease by an average of 57 points during the first three quarters of 2025, dragging around 2 million of them into "subprime" territory, which forces them to pay thousands of dollars more for auto and personal loans and makes them more likely to have difficulty finding housing and employment.
The report estimated that if those booted from SAVE defaulted at the same rate as other borrowers, the number of student loan borrowers in distress could rise as high as 17 million.
According to Protect Borrowers, the typical family will pay more than $3,000 per year in additional costs as a result of the end of SAVE.
The end of SAVE comes as oil shocks caused by Trump's war in Iran have spiked gas prices and threaten to raise them throughout the economy, adding to the already elevated costs of food, housing, and transportation resulting from the president's aggressive tariff regime.
"In the middle of an affordability crisis driven by Donald Trump," said Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), "Trump is killing a plan that lowers student loan costs. It's shameful."
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