military

Army secretary refuses to resign despite direct pressure from Trump’s defense chief

Amid a slew of departures and firings in the Trump administration one Army Secretary says he’s not going anywhere, despite his clashes with headstrong Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth.

Washington Post reports Army Secretary Dan Driscoll has no plans to resign or leave his role at the Pentagon, according to a statement to The Washington Post on Tuesday, regardless of a series of internal clashes with Hegseth that have caused other U.S. officials to question how long they can coexist.

“Hegseth and Driscoll have disagreed on numerous issues, including Hegseth’s moves to block the promotions of several Army officers,” said the Post, according to anonymous sources.

“Serving under President [Donald] Trump has been the honor of a lifetime and I remain laser focused on providing America with the strongest land fighting force the world has ever seen,” Driscoll said in a statement to The Post, which has not previously been reported. “I have no plans to depart or resign as the Secretary of the Army.”

“Driscoll’s statement follows last week’s abrupt ouster of the Army’s top officer, Gen. Randy George, and two other senior military leaders — and as Hegseth’s top spokesman, Sean Parnell, has privately told colleagues that he is interested in Driscoll’s job should it become open, according to officials familiar with the matter.”

Driscoll has touted the Army’s role in the Trump administration’s weeks-long Iran war, but sources told the Post that he began to grate on Hegseth after Driscoll’s name was floated within the Trump administration as a potential replacement for a floundering Hegseth.

Last spring, the Post reports Hegseth was struggling “to gain his footing amid a number of controversies and other upheaval that consumed much of his first year in the role.”

More recently, Driscoll had found ways to delay George’s dismissal, even though Hegseth had “voiced interest last year in removing him,” the officials said.

“There have been multiple instances where Secretary Hegseth has tried to remove George, and Driscoll has said, ‘No, he’s done nothing wrong. He’s good,’” one official told the Post. “Driscoll has been very clear that merit should speak for itself.”

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Troops aren't feeling Trump’s glorious 'macho' war on social media

The Guardian reports that posts from the White House suggest President Donald Trump’s Iran invasion looks like a scene from Top Gun or Braveheart—or maybe a video game.

But boots on the ground say something entirely different.

“Such macho posturing squares with secretary of defense Pete Hegseth’s desire to bring ‘warrior culture’ back to the military. The former Fox News host has railed against DEI, ‘fat troops’ and ‘beardos’, … and envisioned a military full of ‘the right people’ who fit his imposed standards of virility and masculinity.”

But a look beyond the White House jingo machine reveals active service members on #MilitaryTok – a subset of TikTok – are conveying “vulnerability, anxiety,” and plenty of mockery and snark over the idea of going to war in the Middle East.

One Army member preparing to deploy posted on TikTok that “all [he could] think about” was his infant child, in words that crawled beneath images of a newborn baby swinging in a chair and fetus being depicted on a sonogram.

A day after the first U.S. drone strike on Iran, a young woman in fatigues posted about “[concern] getting louder as my mom watched the news yesterday knowing her daughter’s in the military.”

Also prevalent is a swathe of gallows humor as newly enlisted soldiers march off to a fight they did not see coming under a president who’d promised specifically to avoid such things.

“I took YOLO too seriously,” claims the caption from another young woman getting sworn in to the national guard “in the middle of a war.”

Still another user mouthed along to lines from the 2005 Gulf war drama “Jarhead” about being “dumb enough” to sign a military contract at 18. The caption below suggests she had signed up for the military’s housing allowance to service people.

While soldiers convey their feelings online, Trump’s military has been forced to raise the enlistment age to 42 to encourage recruitment.

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'Worst of all the bad ideas': Trump’s high-risk Iran commando raid scorched

Experts are blasting President Donald Trump’s “high-risk” commando raid plan to build a runway in Iran to seize Iran’s nuclear stockpile.

“The U.S. military has given the president a plan to seize nearly 1,000 pounds of highly enriched uranium in Iran that would involve flying in excavation equipment and building a runway for cargo planes to take the radioactive material out,” reported the Washington Post, citing two sources. “The complex plan was briefed to the president in the past week after he asked for a proposal, they said, as were its significant operational risks.”

“This would be one of, if not the largest, most complicated special operations in history,” Mick Mulroy, a former deputy assistant secretary of defense and retired CIA and Marine officer, told the Post. “It’s a major risk to the force.”

The operation, never before attempted during wartime, would take weeks and “would require the airlift of potentially hundreds or thousands of troops and heavy equipment to support the excavation and recovery of radioactive material.” Those troops would be subject to being under fire inside Iran.

Asked about the plan, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt did not appear to deny the Post’s reporting, stating: “It’s the job of the Pentagon to make preparations in order to give the Commander in Chief maximum optionality. It does not mean the President has made a decision.”

Last month, Brendan P. Buck at The Cato Institute wrote of an apparently similar idea, stating that in “reality, the so-called ‘commando option,’ while perhaps technically feasible, would be extraordinarily risky, operationally complex, and unlikely to accomplish its stated mission.”

The Trump plan was quickly denounced.

Foreign policy and defense expert Ilan Goldenberg, who has extensive government experience covering Iran’s nuclear program according to his bio, slammed the plan.

“An operation to seize Iran’s HEU [Highly Enriched Uranium] by force is the worst of all the bad ideas that are on the table right now,” wrote Goldenberg, a former advisor to Vice President Kamala Harris. “I cannot see this being a realistic military option.”

“Every single thing about this idea screams disaster, to the point where I wonder whether even Trump could be this dumb,” wrote Toronto Star columnist Bruce Arthur.

“If Trump goes ahead with this and it’s a high-casualty debacle what do you think he’d do then?” asked Mike Prysner, executive director at the Center on Conscience & War. “Take the L and deescalate? A ‘commando raid’ would only remain as such if it was a huge success.”

“This zero dark thirty: uranium plan is so goofy,” declared author Adam Johnson. “Everyone knows they cant possibly get it all. At best it’s a delusion / distraction for our idiot president, at worst it’s a pretext for a regime change invasion designed to create hostages and deaths to rally public sentiment.”

“Feels like Trump wants his version of the Bin Laden raid, and he’ll take on enormous risk–or, more accurately, he’ll place that risk onto U.S. military forces–to get it,” noted Jacob Stokes of the Center for a New American Security.

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Anonymous sources claim Pentagon recklessly cutting key officials out of decisions

The Atlantic reports internal sources are sounding the alarm on the Trump administration removing the military lawyers who would normally be warning against blowing up little girls.

“One of Pete Hegseth’s first actions after taking charge at the Pentagon was to fire top lawyers in the Army, Navy, and Air Force — senior officers who the defense secretary said functioned as ‘roadblocks’ to the president’s orders,” reports Sarah Fitzpatrick and Missy Ryan. “The former National Guardsman has a history of hostility toward military lawyers and the legal restraints they impose on the use of military might. They are known as judge advocates general. Hegseth calls them ‘jagoffs.’”

This week, the Atlantic reports Hegseth proposed a “ruthless” overhaul of the military’s uniformed and civilian lawyers, in a ploy for “maximum lethality.” But anonymous sources inside the Pentagon warn Hegseth is setting the U.S. up for heavy legal damage and major violations of international law.

“We just have no faith that this is a good-faith thing,” one anonymous source told the Atlantic, adding that Hegseth and his top advisers are committed to “absolutely cutting JAGs out of key decisions.”

But JAGs serve a vital oversight function on whether drone strikes are aimed at legally justified targets or whether to prosecute accusations of abuse inside the military. Attorneys were particularly stricken at the thought of twisting attorneys into weapons, and interpreted the message as a signal to pay less regard to the international laws of war, such as those enshrined in the Geneva Convention, to which the U.S. is a member.

“If you’re advising on operational law, your goal as a lawyer is not to increase lethality. If that were the goal, then lawyers would just say, ‘Yes, bomb everything.’ But that would be a blatantly unethical goal for a lawyer,” said Sarah Harrison, a former civilian Pentagon attorney.

When he’s not forcing out lawyers, sources say Hegseth is reassigning them to temporary duty as immigration judges and leaving military commanders without legal counter-advice to the Trump administration’s potentially unlawful commands.

Additionally, congressional staff say JAGs and other members of the military are contacting lawmakers with concerns that the Pentagon’s leadership is targeting or sidelining JAGs on purpose. One source warned the Atlantic that the administration “has shown that if there is an opportunity to seize greater control and power over lawyers, whether it’s civilian or uniforms, they will take that as far as they possibly can.”

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Behind the shadowy network pushing Trump to deploy the military domestically

Emails reveal some of the most notorious organizers backing President Donald Trump’s plan to militarize US soil were Chistian nationalists comprising the controversial Project 2025, according to the Phoenix New Times.

Writer Beau Hodai called the Border Security Workgroup’s meeting the “insurrectionist brunch,” and it went down before the 2024 election, when a cadre of MAGA enthusiasts plotted ways to use the military domestically.

“Emails show there were more Project 2025 brunches at the Army Navy Country Club, and the group also received continued guidance from Project 2025 leadership … relating to this ongoing guidance and development of hybrid military/domestic law enforcement plans,” reported Hodai. “… To be very clear: Documentation shows that the group envisioned … militarized ‘border security’ operations taking place in all 50 states, not just at the border.”

“Many leading contributors to the project were unabashedly Christian nationalist, and entities of the anti-immigrant network founded by white nationalist John Tanton were among the project’s leading contributors,” said Hodai. “An examination of groups and the individuals involved in the world of Project 2025 also reveals a deep culture of anti-democratic actors who have long worked to restrict voter access, and/or have taken part in efforts to overthrow elections and undermine election systems. As such, Project 2025 was a synthesis of these pernicious threads of Christian nationalism, white nationalism and those who would seek to seize political power — seemingly at any cost.”

In 2024, current and former Trump advisor Jeffrey Bossert Clark was already urging participants to “become experts” on sections of federal law codified under the Insurrection Act and to “bone up on Section 253 of the Insurrection Act,” which states that “the President, by using the militia or the armed forces, or both, or by any other means, shall take such measures as he considers necessary to suppress, in a State, any insurrection, domestic violence, unlawful combination, or conspiracy.”

“A draft policy paper produced by the group toward the end of 2024 recommended plans to facilitate the deployment of up to one million Army soldiers … on American soil, noting that the president would need to declare an emergency to initiate such a deployment,” said Hodai. “Trump did just that soon after taking office, allowing him to deploy troops at the border, and he has threatened, attempted or executed military deployments to a number of cities.”

According to emails and reports, The Border Security Workgroup also contemplated “counter-intelligence” work to combat “insider threats” working “to subvert the President’s plan.”

“Records show the group considered using a variety of means to target a number of different groups, including certain non-governmental organizations, government agencies, judicial districts and a number of states or cities governed by the Democratic Party,” said Hodai. “They also contemplated targeting college students who were protesting Israel’s actions in Gaza. In a July 2024 email, group member Collin Agee — the “senior Army operations advisor” to the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency — railed against immigrants who, “under the guise of free speech,” protested against Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza.

Members of the work group have filed out in different directions inside the Trump administration, and many of the group's policies have been implemented in Trump’s first year in office.

“While many things called for by the Border Security Workgroup have transpired, events that have unfolded during this Trump term have not perfectly mirrored its plans,” said Hodai. “The Trump administration’s many overreaches have prompted spirited and vociferous pushback. Several states, including California, have successfully blocked Trump’s domestic military ambitions in the courts. Trump’s ‘surges’ of thuggish masked immigration agents to Democratic-led cities — which have resulted in the shooting deaths of two American citizens — have sparked a backlash that has tanked Republicans’ approval numbers and resulted, at least for now, in a drawdown of those hamfisted deployments.”

But Trump and his faithful are persistent opportunists, said Hodai.

“They’ve persevered despite adverse court rulings and other impediments. It stands to reason that they’ll continue to grab for as much power as they can before what appears to be an inevitable vivisection in the 2026 midterms,” he said

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Grand jury shuts down Trump's latest revenge prosecution in 'remarkable rebuke': NYT

The New York Times reports a Washington D.C. grand jury has again refused to acquiesce to President Donald Trump’s quest to prosecute his political foes, with the paper calling the rejection “a remarkable rebuke” from ordinary citizens.

The Times reports: “Federal prosecutors in Washington sought and failed on Tuesday to secure an indictment against six Democratic lawmakers who posted a video last fall that enraged President Trump by reminding active-duty members of the military and intelligence community that they were obligated to refuse illegal orders, four people familiar with the matter said.”

The Times additionally reports it was already remarkable that the U.S. attorney’s office in Washington — led by Trump ally Jeanine Pirro — even authorized prosecutors to approach a grand jury with an indictment of the six members of Congress, all of whom had served in the military or the nation’s spy agencies.

It is rare for grand jurors to snub prosecutors’ indictment requests, considering prosecutors get to dominate the jury with one-sided arguments leading up to their decision. However, the Times reports it has happened with increased frequency with Trump’s Justice Department “as his appointees push ahead with questionable cases.”

It is doubly surprising considering the president of the United States accused Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.) and the other legislators of seditious conspiracy and said they could potentially be put to death. The U.S. Department of Defense later announced that it was launching an investigation into Kelly for participating in the video warning active-duty troops to not follow illegal orders from Trump and also threatened to court martial the NASA astronaut.

But the jury apparently disagreed on all counts and refused to indict any of the legislators incriminated by Trump.

Trump’s targets also Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.) and four colleagues in the House: Jason Crow (D-Colo.) Maggie Goodlander, (D-N.H.), Chrissy Houlahan (D-Pa.) and Chris Deluzio (D-Pa).

Kelly is already suing the Pentagon over its attempts to punish him.

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How much Trump's military deployments to US cities is costing you

President Donald Trump's deployments of U.S. military personnel to various American cities throughout 2025 came at a hefty cost to U.S. taxpayers, according to a new report.

The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimated on Wednesday that taxpayers had to fork over more than $496 million last year alone for Trump's deployments in just a small handful of cities. Punchbowl News founder Jake Sherman reported that the nearly half a billion-dollar cost broke down to tens of millions of dollars per month.

"Continuing the deployments at their end-of-2025 size would cost about $93 million per month, and looking ahead, deploying 1,000 National Guard personnel to a U.S. city in 2026 would cost $18 million to $21 million per month, depending largely on local cost-of-living differences," the CBO estimate read, according to Sherman.

Last year, Trump deployed National Guard troops to Chicago, Illinois; Los Angeles, California; Memphis, Tennessee; New Orleans, Louisiana and Washington D.C. Troops in D.C. spent most of their time picking up trash and cleaning up public parks.

In November, a gunman shot two members of the West Virginia National Guard outside of the Farragut West Metro station, killing one and critically injuring another. The shooter was found to be an Afghani national who drove to D.C. from Washington state to carry out the attack.

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Trump's threats to NATO allies are 'utterly perverse' to military officers: Naval expert

The men and women of the armed forces are likely reeling in response to President Donald Trump's threats to attack NATO allies over Greenland, according to one longtime military expert.

In a Monday essay for the Atlantic, Tom Nichols — the former chairman of the Strategy and Policy Department at the U.S. Naval War College — wrote that officers typically follow the commander-in-chief's orders without question, given that civilian leadership of the U.S. military is a core tenet of the American system. However, Nichols noted that many officers are likely having a crisis of conscience now that Trump may commit military forces to Greenland despite the autonomous island territory already belonging to the Kingdom of Denmark – a key NATO ally.

"[T]hese will be orders that force U.S. military minds to step into a horrifying mirror universe where the United States is the aggressor against NATO, a coalition that includes countries that have been our friends for centuries," he wrote. "Should Trump pursue this scheme of conquest, the military’s training will have to be shattered and reassembled into a destructive version of itself, as if doctors were asked to take lifesaving medicines, reconstitute them as poisonous isomers, and then administer them to patients."

Nichols pointed out that while a president could order senior offices to draw up war plans to invade Greenland, it could be seen as merely one more "war game" for officers to plan for, though he observed that war games typically involve crafting plans for nonexistent nations with made-up names. But when the planning involves the hypothetical invasion of a longtime ally, Nichols argued that this may be a bridge too far for many officers — including though who served alongside members of the Danish military during the War on Terror.

"[A]fter years of experience with American military officers, I believe that even these hypothetical instructions will sound utterly perverse to men and women who have served with the Danes and other NATO allies," he wrote. "Denmark not only was our ally during the world wars of the 20th century, but also, as my colleague Isaac Stanley-Becker has written, joined our fight against the Taliban after 9/11 and suffered significant casualties for a small nation. Their soldiers bled and died on the same battlefields as Americans."

The former Naval War College professor wrote that while officers are routinely prepared for countless different wartime scenarios, one case they never considered was the commander-in-chief being a "megalomaniac" who threatens hostility against a key ally because he didn't win the Nobel Peace Prize. He also cautioned that should the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the Pentagon carry out potential orders from Trump to take Greenland by force, it could lead to a "global catastrophe."

"It is not up to the armed forces to put a stop to Trump’s ghastly ideas," Nichols wrote. "... Americans, and their elected representatives, must take this burden away from the armed forces — now."

Click here to read Nichols' full essay in the Atlantic (gift link).

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Military newspaper hires screened for loyalty to Trump's 'policy priorities'

Editor's Note: This story has been updated to include a disclosure.

Stars and Stripes, a US military news publication funded in part by the government, is intended to have editorial independence, but according to the Washington Post, new hire applicants are now being asked what they will do in order to forward Donald Trump's "policy priorities."

The publication first began in 1861 at the dawn of the Civil War, but did not begin continuous publication until World War II, providing news for military members and veterans about the military. Across all platforms, it currently has an audience of roughly 1.4 million. The Department of Defense provides part of the funding for it, and its employees are considered Pentagon staffers, but despite that, efforts have been made over the decades to ensure its editorial freedom, including action from Congress.

As the Post reported on Wednesday, however, applicants looking to work for the historic publication have been asked a new question, one that has triggered alarm and concern from media watchdogs and current staff members about Stars and Stripes' ability to remain independent.

“How would you advance the President’s Executive Orders and policy priorities in this role?" the question reads. "Identify one or two relevant Executive Orders or policy initiatives that are significant to you, and explain how you would help implement them if hired.”

This marks the latest example of a persistent trend over the last year, with the Trump administration attempting to exert control — in this case, ideological control — over agencies, departments and programs once deemed independent.

Jacqueline Smith, ombudsman for Stars and Stripes, told the Post that the outlet's leadership had not been made aware of the question's addition to the hiring process. Smith's position is mandated by Congress as a means to ensure the paper's independence. An inquiry into the matter revealed that the question was being posed to applicants using USAJobs.com, the government's official online jobs portal. The Office of Personnel Management, led by Project 2025 architect Russ Vought, was responsible for adding the question.

“Asking prospective employees how they would support the administration’s policies is antithetical to Stripes’ journalistic and federally mandated mission,” Smith said. “Journalistically, it’s against ethics, because reporters or any staff member — editors, photographers — should be impartial.”

“Regarding our recruiting, the federal government’s platform wasn’t designed with Stars and Stripes in mind,” Erik Slavin, editor-in-chief for Stars and Stripes, explained to the Post. “We pride ourselves on objectivity. We’ve reinforced our commitment to scrupulous balance and accuracy. We do not shy away from holding military officials accountable when a story calls for it.”

Max Lederer, the newspaper’s publisher, added that no applicants had so far brought up the question to leadership, noting that it appears to be an optional part of the process that does not disqualify applicants who ignore it.

Disclosure: AlterNet Publisher & Editor-in-Chief Roxanne Cooper served as Stars & Stripes' Director of Advertising and Marketing at their Tokyo facility from 2002-2003 and at their Washington, DC headquarters from 2003-2004.

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Trump's aggression is 'stretching the military thin': conservative

Former RAND Corporation senior political scientist Jennifer Kavanagh warns in an op-ed for the American Conservative that President Donald Trump is endangering the U.S. homeland by splashing a thin military all over the globe.

When Trump made good on this commitment to raid and arrest Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and then “run” the nation and its oil industry, Kavanagh said he increased the U.S. military presence without pulling it back from other wasteful assignments.

The military presence in Latin America now includes at least “10,000 personnel, dozens of fighter aircraft, and more than 10 percent of the U.S. Navy,” said Kavanagh, a senior fellow and military analysis director at Defense Priorities. But she pointed out that Trump still has at least 80,000 forces in Europe, costing “tens of billions per year.”

Plus, the U.S. military has increased its presence and involvement in the Middle East since Trump returned to the White House, complete with aircraft, warships and the defense of Israel and multiple campaigns in Iran.

Meanwhile, Kavanagh said the United States hasn’t pulled anything out of Asia.

“Despite widespread speculation that Trump seeks a grand bargain over Taiwan, his administration has not given any sign that it plans to back away from its efforts to deter China from seizing the island by force,” Kavanagh said, adding that Trump represents “yet another manifestation of the same old American pattern: the addition of new military commitments without shedding old ones.”

Add to this Trump’s threats of military action against Colombia, Cuba and Mexico and Kavanaugh says Trump is “stretching the military thin” in a manner that should worry people.

“The United States should be more careful and judicious with its use of military force close to home than it is elsewhere. After all, if a military intervention goes wrong (as so many U.S. efforts have) it will be much harder for Washington to seal the U.S. homeland off from the consequences,” Kavanaugh said. “If Venezuela ends up being the next Libya, for example, regional instability will rise, drug flows and violence will increase, and opportunities for Chinese involvement could grow. These outcomes will undermine Trump’s broader domestic and foreign policy agendas while also doing direct harm to U.S. interests.”

Read Kavanagh's American Conservative report at this link.

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Trump wants his name on new fleet of battleships that would have 'zero tactical use'

President Donald Trump's ongoing efforts to cement his legacy by adding his name to U.S. government property has now spread to the Navy, according to a new report.

According to a Monday article in the Wall Street Journal, the president is now planning to announce a new fleet of "Trump-class" battleships for the Navy's "golden fleet." Trump's plan comes on the heels of the Navy's recent announcement that it will be building a series of frigates, with the first — dubbed the "U.S.S. Defiant" — scheduled to be on the open water by 2028.

"The self-aggrandizement spree continues," observed New York Times Chief White House Correspondent Peter Baker on X.

The company HII Ingalls Shipbuilding is in charge of construction of the "golden fleet," with the first of the new ships being built in Pascagoula, Mississippi. The Pascagoula shipyard is the current home of the U.S. Coast Guard's Legend-class Legend-class National Security Cutter (a ship roughly the same size as a frigate).

As the Journal reported, the U.S. Navy currently has 287 ships in its inventory, which include aircraft carriers, destroyers, cruisers, amphibious ships and submarines. The new battleships would replace the current fleet of Arleigh Burke-class destroyers, which Trump has frequently (and unfavorably) compared to ships in other countries' naval fleets.

Former Rear Admiral Mark Montgomery — who is now the senior director at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies — told the Journal that the "golden fleet" was "exactly what we don't need" and estimated the cost of each ship to be roughly $5 billion. He noted that the new ships would have "zero tactical use" as they lack a vertical launch system and would not be equipped with the Aegis ballistic defense system.

"We do not need ships that are not optimized to provide lethality against the Chinese threat," Montgomery said. "... That is not what these are focused on — they are focused on the president’s visual that a battleship is a cool-looking ship."

Trump's pending announcement of the new fleet of battleships named for him comes after last week's news that the president's hand-picked board of the Kennedy Center voted to add his name to the facility (even though officially changing the name requires an act of Congress). Rep. April McClain Delaney (D-Md.) recently introduced legislation aiming to stop Trump from adding his name to federal property, though its passage is unlikely given that Republicans control both chambers of Congress.

Click here to read the Journal's full report (subscription required).

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