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    Hegseth Mandates Uniform Fitness Standards for Combat Roles

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    The Pentagon this week ordered the elimination of lower physical fitness standards for women in combat units, a move that is likely to hinder the recruitment and retention of women in particularly dangerous military jobs.An order by Pete Hegseth, the defense secretary, dated Sunday and announced on Monday, mandated that all physical fitness requirements for combat arms positions — units likely to see significant fighting in wartime — be “sex-neutral,” which is likely to significantly reduce the number of women who meet the requirements. The order directs military leadership to implement the new fitness standards by the end of October.The U.S. military has fiercely debated the issue of how to fairly grade women’s physical fitness in testing to determine their placement into physically demanding combat jobs and their advancement in leadership roles.After years of internal deliberation over new annual fitness tests, the Army eased the grading standards for women and older service members in 2022. A study by the RAND research corporation published that year found that women and older troops were failing the new test at significantly higher rates than men and younger troops.Other branches of the military have also had different fitness test standards for men and women. For example, the Marines have a strength test for all recruits: Men must complete three pull-ups or 34 push-ups in under two minutes. Women must complete one pull-up or 15 push-ups in the same time frame.Those gender-specific standards will remain for some military jobs, Mr. Hegseth said in a statement accompanying the order. But he argued that women should not be allowed in combat units if they could not meet the same fitness standards as men.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      The Secret History of America’s Involvement in the Ukraine War

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      <!–> [–><!–> [–><!–>On a spring morning two months after Vladimir Putin’s invading armies marched into Ukraine, a convoy of unmarked cars slid up to a Kyiv street corner and collected two middle-aged men in civilian clothes.–><!–> –><!–> [–><!–> –><!–> [–><!–> –><!–> [–><!–> –><!–> [–><!–> –><!–> [–><!–> –><!–> –> <!–> [–> <!–> ]–> <!–> –><!–> –><!–> […] More

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      Spartz, Republican Lawmaker, Faces Anger at Town Halls Over Musk Cuts and Hegseth

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      House Republicans have been told by their party’s leadership to avoid town halls after Democrats and others began to seize on the events to vent frustration with the Trump administration.Representative Victoria Spartz, a third-term Republican from suburban Indianapolis, decided not to heed the warning this weekend — and was met with fury over cuts to the federal government’s services and work force.On Friday and Saturday, Ms. Spartz hosted gatherings with constituents. And each day, she found herself in hostile territory.She was booed, jeered and scolded over the Signal scandal at the Defense Department (she acknowledged the Trump administration needed to do a “better job”), and the Homeland Security Department’s efforts to deport immigrants without due process (she declared that unauthorized immigrants were entitled to “no due process”). And she was accused of standing idly by as Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency steered cuts to government services (she said the Trump administration was trying to stop fraud).She faced chants of “Do your job!” At times, the events turned into shouting matches. Some of the exchanges have circulated widely on social media.“You don’t have to scream,” she pleaded at a crowded town hall in Westfield, Ind., on Friday night. The event lasted for two interruption-filled hours.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Naval Academy Takes Steps to End Diversity Policies in Books and Admissions

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      The Pentagon and U.S. Naval Academy are proceeding with actions in support of the Trump administration’s push to eliminate “woke” initiatives throughout the federal government.The U.S. Naval Academy said it had ended its use of affirmative action in admissions, reversing a policy it previously defended as essential for diversity and national security, according to a federal court filing on Friday. And 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 office became aware that the nation’s military service academies did not believe that President Trump’s Jan. 29 executive order to end “radical indoctrination” in kindergarten through 12th-grade classrooms applied to them, as they are colleges. The defense secretary’s office informed the Naval Academy that Mr. Hegseth’s intent was for the order to apply to the academies, and that the secretary expected compliance.“The U.S. Naval Academy is fully committed to executing and implementing all directives outlined in executive orders issued by the president and is currently reviewing the Nimitz Library collection to ensure compliance,” said Cmdr. Tim Hawkins, a Navy spokesman. “The Navy is carrying out these actions with utmost professionalism, efficiency, and in alignment with national security objectives.”The academy’s library in Annapolis, Md., houses roughly 590,000 print books, 322 databases, and more than 5,000 print journals and magazines, Commander Hawkins said.The court filing on the admissions policy, submitted by the Naval Academy, the Department of Defense, Mr. Hegseth and other officials, states that the Naval Academy changed its admissions policy in February in response to federal directives prohibiting the practice of considering race, ethnicity and sex during the admissions process.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Trump Administration Deflects Blame for Leak at Every Turn

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      It was a hoax. The information wasn’t classified. Somehow the journalist got “sucked into” the Signal chat, either deliberately or through some kind of technical glitch.In the days since the editor in chief of The Atlantic revealed he had been inadvertently included in a group chat of top U.S. officials planning a military strike on Houthi militants in Yemen, senior members of the Trump administration have offered a series of shifting, sometimes contradictory and often implausible explanations for how the episode occurred — and why, they say, it just wasn’t that big a deal.Taken together, the statements for the most part sidestep or seek to divert attention from the fundamental fact of what happened: Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth used Signal, an unclassified commercial app, to share sensitive details about an imminent attack in an extraordinary breach of national security.Here’s a look at the main players and what they’ve said about what happened, and how much their reasoning matches up with what transpired.President Trump said the Atlantic’s article was a “witch hunt” and called the journalist a “total sleazebag.”President Trump told reporters on Wednesday that the fervor over the Atlantic’s article was “all a witch hunt,” suggesting that perhaps Signal was faulty, and blaming former President Joseph R. Biden Jr. for not having carried out the strike on Yemen during his administration.“I think Signal could be defective, to be honest with you,” he said, after complaining that “Joe Biden should have done this attack on Yemen.” The fact that he didn’t, Mr. Trump added, had “caused this world a lot of damage and a lot of problems.” While the Trump administration has criticized Mr. Biden for not being aggressive enough against the Houthis, his administration led allied nations in several attacks on Houthi sites in Yemen in 2024.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Why the Pentagon Scuttled Its Briefing of Elon Musk on China War Plans

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      “You wouldn’t show it to a businessman,” President Trump said in denying that Elon Musk was to be briefed on top-secret plans in the event of war with China.Over the past 24 hours, my colleagues’ report that Elon Musk was set to be briefed on the military’s top-secret plans in the event of war with China has shaken Washington. It even seemed to take President Trump by surprise.Musk’s planned visit to a secure room in the Pentagon was called off after The Times published its article on the visit, according to a person with knowledge of the matter.This morning, Trump denied the briefing had been planned. But he also made clear that he thought Musk should not have access to such war plans.“Certainly, you wouldn’t show it to a businessman who is helping us so much,” Trump said. He added, “Elon has businesses in China, and he would be susceptible perhaps to that.”I called Eric Schmitt, a Times national security reporter, who kindly stepped into one of the few Pentagon hallways where you can actually get cell service, and asked him to bring us up to speed.JB: Let’s start at the beginning. What did you learn yesterday about what was originally planned?ES: The Pentagon was scheduled to give a briefing to Musk this morning on the classified war plan for China. We were told it was going to be in this secure conference room called the Tank, which is typically where you’ll have very high-level military briefings with members of the Joint Chiefs or senior commanders. The idea that a civilian like Elon Musk, who’s not in the chain of command, would be getting any briefing in the Tank — much less on highly sensitive war plans for China — was certainly unusual, and it was alarming to some people.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Musk Set to Get Access to Top-Secret U.S. Plan for Potential War With China

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      The Pentagon is scheduled on Friday to brief Elon Musk on the U.S. military’s plan for any war that might break out with China, two U.S. officials said on Thursday.Another official said the briefing will be China focused, without providing additional details. A fourth official confirmed Mr. Musk was to be at the Pentagon on Friday, but offered no details.Providing Mr. Musk access to some of the nation’s most closely guarded military secrets would be a dramatic expansion of his already extensive role as an adviser to President Trump and leader of his effort to slash spending and purge the government of people and policies they oppose.It would also bring into sharp relief the questions about Mr. Musk’s conflicts of interest as he ranges widely across the federal bureaucracy while continuing to run businesses that are major government contractors. In this case, Mr. Musk, the billionaire chief executive of both SpaceX and Tesla, is a leading supplier to the Pentagon and has extensive financial interests in China.Pentagon war plans, known in military jargon as O-plans or operational plans, are among the military’s most closely guarded secrets. If a foreign country were to learn how the United States planned to fight a war against them, it could reinforce its defenses and address its weaknesses, making the plans far less likely to succeed.The top-secret briefing for the China war plan has about 20 to 30 slides that lay out how the United States would fight such a conflict. It covers the plan beginning with the indications and warning of a threat from China to various options on what Chinese targets to hit, over what time period, that would be presented to Mr. Trump for decisions, according to officials with knowledge of the plan.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Arlington Cemetery Website Loses Pages on Black Soldiers, Women in Military and Civil War

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      Materials on the Arlington National Cemetery website highlighting the graves of Black and female service members have vanished as the Trump administration purges government websites of references to diversity and inclusion.Among the obscured pages are cemetery guides focused on Black soldiers, women’s military service and Civil War veterans. Some of the materials were still online Friday, but they were no longer easily accessible through the cemetery’s website.A part of the site devoted to segregation and civil rights was largely scrubbed. That section once included a walking tour focused on Black soldiers and a lesson plan on reconstruction.The cemetery, which is operated by the Army, said in a statement on Friday that it remained committed to “sharing the stories of military service and sacrifice to the nation with transparency and professionalism” and that it was working to restore links to the content.“We are hopeful to begin republishing content next week,” Kerry Meeker, a cemetery spokeswoman, said in an email on Friday.On Friday, the cemetery’s website still had an active page describing Section 27, which includes the graves of thousands of African Americans freed from slavery. Another active page listed prominent African Americans — including Medgar Evers, Thurgood Marshall and Colin L. Powell — buried on the grounds.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Hegseth Closes Pentagon Office Focused on Future Wars

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      Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth ordered the shuttering of the Office of Net Assessment, a small, often secretive and sometimes opaque office that for more than 50 years has helped the Pentagon’s most senior leaders think about the future of war.The office costs about $10 million to $20 million a year — a fraction of the Pentagon’s $850 billion annual budget — but its work and staff of about a dozen civilians and military officers has often had an outsize impact on how the Pentagon prepares for possible conflicts.In a short note posted on Thursday, the Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell suggested that the office would be restructured and then reopened with a new focus on the country’s most “pressing national security challenges.” He did not explain how the office’s new mission would differ from its previous approach.For most of its history, the Office of Net Assessment was run by Andy Marshall, its founder, who pioneered an innovative and somewhat mysterious approach to comparing the strength of U.S. forces with that of its potential enemies. The office also developed inventive ways of fighting adversaries. Jim Baker, a retired Air Force colonel, succeeded Mr. Marshall in 2015.The office’s influence often depended on the defense secretary’s priorities and personal relationship with its director. In the early 2000s, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld relied heavily on Mr. Marshall to develop ways of fighting that relied on speed, precision munitions and rapidly improving surveillance capabilities to quickly defeat adversaries.More recently, the office focused on developing concepts for a possible war with China. It championed a concept called Air-Sea Battle, which envisioned an initial “blinding campaign” by stealthy U.S. bombers and submarines that would knock out China’s long-range surveillance radar followed by a larger naval assault.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More