The hive of bigotry buzzing around Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is a national security threat. And it should be a top investigative target for Democrats if they retake the House.

Democrats are already pondering how to force the scandal-plagued former Fox News host from his Cabinet post if they prevail in next week’s midterm elections. But even if that happens, House committees will need to address the culture of abject bigotry Hegseth has enabled at the Pentagon, particularly his permission of white supremacist ideologies — given that officials in various administrations, including Donald Trump’s first one, have deemed white supremacists as the country’s biggest domestic security threat.

CNN is out with a new report showing that this racist rot has reached the marrow at the Defense Department. The report homes in on deranged social media posts from Ryan Higgins, a top faith adviser at the Pentagon who CNN said has helped shape some of Hegseth’s unhinged speeches. Per the report:

On his social media platforms, CNN found Higgins defended a video President Donald Trump shared depicting the Obamas as apes, said same-sex marriage was “abominable,” and speculated about how many abortions former Vice President Kamala Harris might have had, citing her age and claiming she had a “long record of sleeping around.”

He’s also asserted that the “Separation of Church and State does not exist” and has posted extreme rhetoric about immigrants.

“They act like barbarians, killing and raping our white women,” he wrote in one post responding to tabloid coverage of sexual crimes allegedly committed by immigrants in Europe.

I recently wrote about how MAGA world has borrowed from groups like the Ku Klux Klan in using the threat of rape as an anti-immigrant scare tactic. CNN’s report cites numerous other bigoted posts from Higgins that portray him as an election denier and someone who loathes the idea of women aspiring toward anything but baby-making, thinks LGBTQ people are satanic and — crucially — believes brown Muslim people are the scourge of the earth.

Yet when asked for comment by CNN, a Pentagon spokesperson touted Higgins and the job he’s doing:

Higgins did not respond to requests for comment on this story. A spokesperson for the Department of Defense called Higgins a “valued member of the Secretary’s team” who “does an outstanding job serving as a senior adviser.”

“He has been completely focused on the spiritual health of our troops and the historic establishment of the Office of Religious Affairs,” Chief Pentagon Spokesman Sean Parnell said in a statement.

Parnell did not respond specifically to detailed questions about Higgins’ posts reviewed by CNN.

These are the kinds of people surrounding Hegseth as he has expended Americans’ lives and tax dollars to carry out what he has described as a 21st-century “American crusade.”

My colleague Steve Benen has written about Hegseth’s disturbing relationship with the Rev. Douglas Wilson, who has spread Islamophobia, advocated for repealing women’s voting rights and tried to glorify chattel slavery. And I’ve written about Joshua Haymes, another pastor associated with Hegseth who shares those same wretched views.

Probing this web of influence and the ways it’s infecting the Defense Department should be a priority for Democrats. And the good thing, politically speaking, is that — thanks to Hegseth — it has never been easier for liberals to help voters draw a connection between this kind of bigotry and the nation’s biggest woes.

A major reason Americans are paying more for everything from gas to groceries these days is that a bunch of Islamophobic, hypermasculine hate-mongers in Trump’s regime are choosing to play war games with the Islamic Republic of Iran — and apparently failing.

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