Tag Archives: Pentagon

Military.com reports: The Army is quietly considering a sweeping reduction of up to 90,000 active-duty troops, a move that underscores mounting fiscal pressures at the Pentagon and a broader shift in military strategy away from Europe and counterterrorism, according to three defense officials familiar with the deliberations. Internal discussions are exploring trimming the force to between 360,000 and 420,000 troops …

The Associated Press reports: The Pentagon’s acting inspector general announced Thursday that he would review Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s use of the Signal messaging app to convey plans for a military strike against Houthi militants in Yemen. The review will also look at other defense officials’ use of the publicly available encrypted app, which is not able to handle classified …

Military.com reports: The U.S. Naval Academy has confirmed that officials there removed items commemorating female Jewish graduates from a historic display ahead of a visit to the school by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Tuesday. The Military Religious Freedom Foundation, or MRFF, a nonprofit group that advocates for religious freedom, first reported on the move after its members noticed the …

The Daily Beast reports: Trump’s pick to be chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff refused to lie for the president and instead threw his prospective boss under the bus at a confirmation hearing. Retired Lt. Gen. Dan “Razin” Caine told a Senate committee on Tuesday morning that he was not wearing a red MAGA hat when he first met …

The Washington Post reports: Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has reoriented the U.S. military to prioritize deterring China’s seizure of Taiwan and shoring up homeland defense by “assuming risk” in Europe and other parts of the world, according to a secret internal guidance memo that bears the fingerprints of the conservative Heritage Foundation, including some passages that are nearly word-for-word duplications …

The New York Times reports: Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s office has ordered the Naval Academy to identify books related to so-called diversity, equity and inclusion themes that are housed in the school’s Nimitz Library, and to remove them from circulation. This week, according to a defense official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss policy decisions, Mr. Hegseth’s …

The Wall Street Journal reports: Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who is facing scrutiny over his handling of details of a military strike, brought his wife, a former Fox News producer, to two meetings with foreign military counterparts where sensitive information was discussed, according to multiple people who were present or had knowledge of the discussions. One of the meetings, a …

The Associated Press reports: A U.S. judge in Washington state has blocked enforcement of President Donald Trump’s order banning transgender people from serving in the military, the second nationwide injunction against the policy in as many weeks. The order Thursday from U.S. District Court Judge Benjamin Settle in Tacoma came in a case brought by several long-serving transgender military members …

NPR reports: A Pentagon-wide advisory went out one week ago warning against using the messaging app Signal, even for unclassified information. “A vulnerability has been identified in the Signal messenger application,” begins the department-wide email, dated March 18, obtained by NPR. The memo continues, “Russian professional hacking groups are employing the ‘linked devices’ features to spy on encrypted conversations.” It …

The Hill reports: Rep. Pat Ryan (D-N.Y.), a military veteran, on Monday called for a congressional hearing following a news report that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth texted The Atlantic’s top editor key details of the U.S. plan to bomb Houthi targets, just two hours ahead of the attacks. “Only one word for this: FUBAR,” Ryan wrote in a post on …

Axios reports: Members of Congress in both parties exploded in anger Monday after the editor-in-chief of The Atlantic revealed he was inadvertently included in a highly-sensitive Trump administration Signal chat on airstrikes in Yemen.  “This is an outrageous national security breach and heads should roll,” Rep. Chris Deluzio (D-Pa.), a member of the Armed Services Committee, said in a statement …

Jeffrey Goldberg writes for The Atlantic: The world found out shortly before 2 p.m. eastern time on March 15 that the United States was bombing Houthi targets across Yemen. I, however, knew two hours before the first bombs exploded that the attack might be coming. The reason I knew this is that Pete Hegseth, the secretary of defense, had texted …

“Since ‘Judge’ Reyes is now a top military planner, she/they can report to Fort Benning at 0600 to instruct our Army Rangers on how to execute High Value Target Raids…after that, Commander Reyes can dispatch to Fort Bragg to train our Green Berets on counterinsurgency warfare.” – Pete Hegseth, after the judge blocked Trump’s ban on transgender military service, writing, …

CNN reports: The Department of Defense is investigating “recent unauthorized disclosures of national security information” and plans to use polygraphs as part of the probe, according to a memo published to the department’s website Friday. “The use of polygraphs in the execution of this investigation will be in accordance with applicable law and policy,” DOD Chief of Staff Joe Kasper …

First, some history about the name: In 1789, the Department of War was established to oversee all military affairs, including naval affairs, with the Secretary of War as its head. The National Security Act of 1947 established the Department of the Air Force and merged it with the War Department and the Navy Department to create the National Military Establishment. …

Politico reports: Donald Trump’s top adviser Elon Musk has openly threatened Pentagon employees who may have leaked information that the tech billionaire was due to get a briefing on a potential American war with China. The story, published by the New York Times on Thursday evening U.S. time, said that — according to anonymous American officials — the Pentagon planned …

The Washington Post reports: The Trump administration has sidelined a senior Defense Department spokesman, defense officials said Thursday, ending a brief and tumultuous tenure in which he clashed with colleagues and journalists who cover the Pentagon, and aggressively defended the agency’s purge of government-produced content recognizing the contributions of minorities in the military. John Ullyot’s removal followed an uproar Wednesday …

Axios reports: A federal judge on Tuesday temporarily blocked the Trump administration’s efforts to ban transgender people from serving in the military. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth vowed to appeal. “The Military Ban is soaked in animus and dripping with pretext,” wrote U.S. District Judge Ana Reyes in a scathing ruling that found the restrictions that were due to take effect …

CNN reports: Articles about the Holocaust, September 11, cancer awareness, sexual assault and suicide prevention are among the tens of thousands either removed or flagged for removal from Pentagon websites as the department has scrambled to comply with Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s order to scrub “diversity” content from all its platforms. A database obtained by CNN shows that more …

NBC News reports: The military story of Jackie Robinson, who broke the color barrier in Major League Baseball after serving as a 2nd lieutenant in the Army, no longer exists on the Department of Defense’s website as part of the Trump administration’s wiping out of diversity, equity and inclusion within the federal government. Robinson trained as an officer and was …