All posts tagged "Defense Department"

Some soldiers are already seeking to escape an event Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth plans to put on full public display.

At least six service members plan to seek religious exemptions to stay off the firing squad that will execute Fort Hood shooter Nidal Hasan, an execution Hegseth has promised to livestream, the head of a military religious liberty group told The Washington Sun for an article on Friday.

Hasan killed 13 people in a 2009 mass shooting at the Texas base. An order signed Monday by Acting Army Secretary Adam Telle set his execution for December 3....

As war wages in Iran — spiking gas costs for millions of Americans across the nation — the Department of Defense kicked off the weekend by posting videos of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth yelling about "redcoats."

In a series of videos posted on Saturday, Hegseth shouted Bible verses in the middle of a football field while wearing a T-shirt with the words "THIS IS WAR" tucked into his gym shorts. He was speaking to Texas A&M students serving in the National Guard who worked out with Hegseth.

"I'll swear an oath to something timeless, the Constitution that doesn't bend, it doesn't break," Hegseth said. "The Lord said, 'Who do I send?' and Isaiah says, 'Lord, I'm here, send me'...send me to go fight the redcoats, send me to go fight the communists, send me to go fight the Islamists."...

The Trump administration erased language criticizing slavery and the Confederacy from a memorial sign and website at Arlington National Cemetery.

According to a Monday article by the Washington Post, the changes are part of a broader effort to reshape how the Civil War is portrayed. The Confederate Memorial was a 32-foot bronze statue commissioned by the United Daughters of the Confederacy and unveiled in 1914.

The statue was pulled from the military cemetery in 2023 after Congress ordered the removal of names and symbols honoring the Confederacy from U.S. military property. The bipartisan Naming Commission recommended taking the statue down amid backlash over its imagery, which included an enslaved woman carrying the infant child of a white officer and an enslaved man following his owner to war, according to The Post....

A judge stepped in Thursday to block the Pentagon's move to try and reduce Sen. Mark Kelly's (D-AZ) rank or censure him — a loss for Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and major win for Kelly.

Federal Judge Richard Leon in Washington, D.C., a Republican appointee, decided in favor of Kelly in the emergency action and in his decision — using multiple exclamation points — ruled that Kelly should have protections, CNN reported.

"He sees that Mark Kelly, a retired Naval officer and now a U.S. senator, is able to have First Amendment protections and that unfortunately the Trump administration has come in and tried to have some sort of censure or process for Mark Kelly that could hurt him as a former service member because of the things he has said publicly about the Trump administration and the military," CNN reporter Katelyn Polantz said. ...

Newly-confirmed Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth announced Monday — his first day in the job — that President Trump will be issuing a spate of executive orders for the military, including one to create an "Iron Dome" defense system like the one used by Israel to deflect incoming missiles.

Trump promised to create an iron dome as a candidate if he were to win a second term.

ALSO READ: Inside the parade of right-wing world leaders flocking to D.C. for Trump's inauguration...

Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK), the ranking minority member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, released a statement today expressing "great concern to [a Defense Department] policy issued on August 13, 2013, especially the intent to extend special uncharged leave benefits to same-sex partners and not to all military couples." He claims that Defense's proposal -- which would afford gay enlisted men and women a short administrative leave to travel to one of the 13 states in which same-sex marriage is legal -- will "create disparate treatment between same-sex and opposite-sex couples in our armed forces contrary to the Department’s stated policy."