Defense Department

Subterms

    Latest story

    150 Shares27 Views

    Dan Caine, Trump’s Joint Chiefs Pick, Had Unusual Path to Top Ranks

    by

    The general made an impression in 2018 when he said, according to the president, that the Islamic State could be defeated in a week.In President Trump’s telling, Dan Caine, the retired Air Force lieutenant general whom he wants to be his next chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, made an impression on him when the two men first met in 2018.The general told the president that the Islamic State was not so tough and could be defeated in a week, not two years as senior advisers predicted, Mr. Trump recounted in 2019.And at a Conservative Political Action Conference meeting last year, Mr. Trump said that General Caine put on a Make America Great Again hat while meeting with him in Iraq. (General Caine has told aides he has never put on a MAGA hat.)On Friday, Mr. Trump said he would nominate General Caine after firing Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr., a four-star fighter pilot known as C.Q.“Today, I am honored to announce that I am nominating Air Force Lieutenant General Dan ‘Razin’ Caine to be the next Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff,” Mr. Trump said in a message on Truth Social. “General Caine is an accomplished pilot, national security expert, successful entrepreneur, and a ‘warfighter’ with significant interagency and special operations experience.”General Caine is a 1990 graduate of the Virginia Military Institute, where he received a degree in economics. He later got a master’s degree in air warfare at the American Military University.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

    More stories

    • 138 Shares24 Views

      in Elections

      Trump Fires Joint Chiefs Chairman Amid Flurry of Dismissals at Pentagon

      by

      President Trump fired the country’s senior military officer on Friday after weeks of turmoil at the Pentagon, injecting politics into selecting the nation’s top military leader.Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr., a four-star fighter pilot known as C.Q. who became only the second African American to hold the chairman’s job, is to be replaced by a retired three-star Air Force general, Dan Caine, who endeared himself to the president when they met in Iraq six years ago.“Today, I am honored to announce that I am nominating Air Force Lieutenant General Dan ‘Razin’ Caine to be the next Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff,” Mr. Trump said in a message on Truth Social. “General Caine is an accomplished pilot, national security expert, successful entrepreneur, and a ‘warfighter’ with significant interagency and special operations experience.”Joint Chiefs chairmen traditionally remain in place as administrations change, regardless of the president’s political party. But current White House and Pentagon officials said they wanted to appoint their own top leaders.Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth also indicated, in a statement about General Brown and General Caine, that Adm. Lisa Franchetti, the first woman to lead the Navy, was being fired, as was the vice chief of the Air Force, General James C. Slife.“I am also requesting nominations for the positions of chief of naval operations and Air Force vice chief of staff,” Mr. Hegseth said. “The incumbents in these important roles, Adm. Lisa Franchetti and Gen. James Slife, respectively, have had distinguished careers. We thank them for their service and dedication to our country.”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

    • 100 Shares41 Views

      in Elections

      Opinion Today: Decoding the Chaos of Trump’s America

      by

      Where America Stands: Donald Trump’s reckless and illegal campaign to remake the government crossed more lines in Week 4, but we’re seeing the emergence of heroes and fresh demonstrations of courage.What Times Opinion Is Doing: “The actions of this presidency need to be tracked,” our editorial board wrote last weekend, as Trump tries to overwhelm people so he can blaze ahead unchecked. We are sorting through the chaos by identifying what matters most in columns, guest essays and podcasts, and we are rolling out ways to track Trump’s moves and the good work of others. Today’s newsletter is one way — looking at where Americans can’t afford to turn away from.Trump Abhors Independent Voices, Part I: Danielle Sassoon and Hagan Scotten are new names to many of us, and they are among the heroes of the Southern District of New York for standing up to Trump’s Department of Justice and its farcical orders to dismiss the Eric Adams case. Read The Times’s annotations of Sassoon’s letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi for insight into what courage and duty look like, and Justice’s Emil Bove’s letter of reply for the plain purpose of this administration: Crush anyone, even appointees and friends, who stakes out independence from Trump.Worth reading: Two deeper articles about Bove in The Times and The Wall Street Journal.Trump Abhors Independent Voices, Part II: The administration is trying to redefine free speech into state-permitted speech, with the Federal Communications Commission going after NPR, CBS and now NBC-owned Comcast, and the Trump White House penalizing The Associated Press for not using the president’s new name for the Gulf of Mexico. Keep an eye on this: Trump has long labeled facts as “misinformation,” but now he’s escalating a crackdown on disfavored speech. What happens when he renames the Panama Canal “the American Canal”?A Notorious Science Denialist Takes Power: Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was confirmed Thursday as health and human services secretary — a dark day for the Senate, where many Republican members would have voted against Kennedy on a secret ballot. America will need watchdogs and whistle-blowers to protect public health from Kennedy.Worth reading: A Post examination of Kennedy’s public statements.A Terrible Message for Europe and Ukraine: Trump started negotiations on ending the war in Ukraine — with Vladimir Putin, and initially without Ukraine — at the same time Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told Europe that the United States is no longer the guarantor of European security. So Putin can take any part of Europe he wants (except maybe Greenland)?Musk in the Oval: While he wasn’t quite behind the Resolute Desk, Elon Musk held forth in the Oval next to Trump, whose moments of assent made clear for anyone who wondered if Musk was at the wheel. “The fraudsters complain the loudest,” Musk said of the brave people standing up to illegal efforts to disband agencies and cut off grants and funds authorized by Congress.Worth reading: Three closer looks at Musk from my colleagues David Brooks and Tressie McMillan Cottom (or watch her TikTok) and from The Post.Heroes in the Land: And I’d like to end with a few more heroes to read about: Brian Driscoll at the F.B.I.; Chrystia Freeland, former deputy prime minister of Canada; and the federal judge John McConnell and other judges who have issued temporary restraining orders against Trump actions. Some of these folks are heroes simply for doing their duty — a great American value that is no small thing in Trump’s America.With contributions from M. Gessen, Binyamin Appelbaum, Mara Gay, Michelle Cottle and Serge Schmemann of Times Opinion.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

    • 113 Shares93 Views

      in Elections

      Hegseth Says Return to Ukraine’s Pre-War Borders Is ‘Unrealistic’

      by

      A return to Ukraine’s pre-2014 borders is “an unrealistic objective” and an “illusionary goal” in the peace settlement between Ukraine and Russia that President Trump wants to accomplish, the U.S. Defense Secretary, Pete Hegseth, said on Wednesday at a NATO meeting in Brussels.In his first meeting with NATO and Ukrainian defense ministers, Mr. Hegseth told them that Mr. Trump “intends to end this war by diplomacy and bringing both Russia and Ukraine to the table.” But for Ukraine to try to regain all of the territory Russia has seized since 2014, as it insists it must do, “will only prolong the war and cause more suffering,” Mr. Hegseth said. “We will only end this devastating war and establish a durable peace by coupling allied strength with a realistic assessment of the battlefield,” he said.Mr. Hegseth also told the meeting that Mr. Trump expected Europe to bear more financial and military responsibility for Ukraine’s defense.Europe, he said, must take more responsibility for its conventional defense and spend more money on its armed forces, up to 5 percent of national output, as the United States deals with its own security risks and the challenge of China.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

    • 175 Shares118 Views

      in Elections

      Her Brother Disappeared in War 80 Years Ago. She Finally Got to Say Goodbye.

      by

      Margery Hop Wong last saw her older brother Sgt. Yuen Hop in 1943. He was a soldier missing in action, until researchers solved the mystery behind his death.When Margery Hop Wong bade her older brother goodbye in 1943, she was just a 12-year-old girl who loved it when he took her for joy rides in his used convertible around the apple orchards their family worked.Yuen Hop left their home in Sebastopol, Calif., a small town 55 miles north of San Francisco, at 19 to join the U.S. Army. His little sister never saw him again. She knew he had died in the war, but she did not know how. Or where. Or what had happened to his body.On Friday, Ms. Wong, now 94, sat in the front pew of a mortuary just south of her home in San Francisco, her brother’s remains in a casket draped in an American flag. Younger generations of the Hop family and military veterans filled the rows behind her as a singer led the group in “Amazing Grace.”For 80 years, Sergeant Hop was lost. Now, he was found.Yuen Hopvia the Hop familyMs. Wong was the youngest of seven children born to Gin and Chan Hop, immigrants from China who spoke Cantonese and struggled to communicate with their American-born children, who grew up speaking English.Life was difficult because of anti-Chinese sentiment fueled by the Chinese Exclusion Act, passed by Congress in 1882 to dramatically restrict Chinese immigration. Chinese immigrants were regularly prohibited from living or working where they wanted, Ms. Wong recalled in an interview. She said her brother was proud to have scraped together money working as a mechanic and drying apples to buy a used convertible and tried to make life fun for his brothers and sisters.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

    • 150 Shares99 Views

      in Elections

      Colonel Found Guilty of Sexual Harassment in Trial Seen as a Milestone

      by

      The conviction is considered one of the first of its kind since Congress required the military to change how its legal system addresses sexual assault and harassment.A former Army battalion commander has been found guilty in a military court of sexually harassing a subordinate, one of the first cases of its kind brought after an overhaul of the military’s legal system that established sexual harassment as a criminal offense.The officer, Lt. Col. Herman West of Joint Base Lewis-McChord in Washington State, was accused of repeatedly sexually harassing a female officer in his command, making unwanted comments and touching her inappropriately. He faced additional charges over his treatment of other female officers at the base.A court-martial judge on Friday found him guilty of sexual harassment, conduct unbecoming of an officer and maltreatment. Colonel West, who had been removed from his leadership role in the battalion as a result of the case, was fined over $92,000 and received a written reprimand in his personnel file. The conviction is considered to be a felony-level offense.According to court documents, Colonel West used sexually suggestive language when talking with the officer in his command. The documents also said that he had unbuttoned his pants in front of her, in addition to the inappropriate touching.During a Friday afternoon sentencing hearing, Colonel West apologized to the victims. According to a local television station in Washington, he looked directly at the female officer at the center of the case and said, “My actions were despicable.” He added, “You’ve done nothing wrong.” The woman’s name has not been publicly released.Criminalizing sexual harassment in the military was part of a broader set of changes mandated by a bipartisan law passed by Congress in 2021, the largest overhaul in generations of the Uniform Code of Military Justice. (Previously, the military’s legal system did not specifically include sexual harassment as an offense, and prosecutors had to rely on other misconduct charges to bring criminal cases.) The changes also stripped commanders’ authority to decide whether to pursue charges in sexual abuse cases and other serious crimes, transferring that responsibility to specialized prosecutors.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

    • 88 Shares119 Views

      in Elections

      Trump Brings Hegseth to Watch Army-Navy Game

      by

      President-elect Donald J. Trump made a public show of support for his choice to lead the Defense Department.President-elect Donald J. Trump attended the annual Army-Navy football game in Maryland on Saturday with Pete Hegseth, his embattled choice for defense secretary, sending a message of support ahead of Senate confirmation hearings that are likely to take place next month.Allies and aides of Mr. Trump’s posted video of the president-elect and Mr. Hegseth on the social media site X. In one video, the two men, along with Vice President-elect JD Vance, can be seen standing for the national anthem.In another video, Mr. Trump can be seen arriving in a suite at the stadium, pumping his fist into the air as fans cheer and applaud his presence at the game.The Army-Navy game pits the football teams of the two military services against each other in one of the highlights of the college football season. Saturday’s game was the 125th meeting of the rivals — the Army Black Knights and the Navy Midshipmen. They played at Northwest Stadium in Landover, Md., the home of the Washington Commanders football team.National politicians rarely take sides in the rivalry. The service academy team with the best record at the end of the season wins the Commander-in-Chief’s Trophy.But the game is often a good place for a president to be seen looking patriotic. President Barack Obama attended the 112th game between the two teams in 2011, and performed the coin toss at the beginning of the game to determine who had the first possession of the ball. The next year, in 2012, Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. attended the game.Mr. Trump has spent most of his time since Election Day out of the spotlight as he assembles the personnel he wants to fill his new government and plans actions he will take when he assumes office next month.Mr. Trump was also accompanied at the game by Daniel Penny, a former Marine who was acquitted this week on a charge of criminally negligent homicide after putting a man in a chokehold in a New York subway car. Other allies of Mr. Trump’s, including Elon Musk and House Speaker Mike Johnson, were also at the game.Mr. Hegseth, a former Fox News host and military veteran, faces numerous questions about his qualifications to head the Defense Department, allegations of personal misconduct toward women and reports that he has abused alcohol while on the job. He has called the accusations baseless and has vowed not to withdraw from consideration.Mr. Trump initially appeared willing to consider an alternative choice for defense secretary if Mr. Hegseth proved too controversial. But even as several senators voiced concern about Mr. Hegseth, the president-elect issued a statement forcefully backing Mr. Hegseth for the job.The appearance of the two men at the football game appeared calculated to put to rest any questions about whether Mr. Trump still supports Mr. Hegseth to lead the Pentagon. More

    • 163 Shares129 Views

      in Elections

      Want a Job in the Trump Administration? Be Prepared for the Loyalty Test.

      by

      Applicants for government posts, including inside the Pentagon and the intelligence agencies, say they have been asked about their thoughts on Jan. 6 and who they believe won the 2020 election.At the Trump transition offices in West Palm Beach, Fla., prospective occupants of high posts inside the Pentagon and the intelligence agencies typically run through a gamut of three to four interviews, conducted in recent weeks by a mix of Silicon Valley investors and innovators and a team of the MAGA faithful.The applicants report that they have been asked about how to overhaul the Pentagon, or what technologies could make the intelligence agencies more effective, or how they feel about the use of the military to enforce immigration policy. But before they leave, some of them have been asked a final set of questions that seemed designed to assess their loyalty to President-elect Donald J. Trump.The questions went further than just affirming allegiance to the incoming administration. The interviewers asked which candidate the applicants had supported in the three most recent elections, what they thought about the events of Jan. 6, 2021, and whether they believed the 2020 election was stolen. The sense they got was that there was only one right answer to each question.This account is based on interviews with nine people who either interviewed for jobs in the administration or were directly involved in the process. Among those were applicants who said they gave what they intuited to be the wrong answer — either decrying the violence at the Capitol on Jan. 6 or saying that President Biden won in 2020. Their answers were met with silence and the taking of notes. They didn’t get the jobs.Three of the people interviewed are close to the transition team and confirmed that loyalty questions were part of some interviews across multiple agencies, and that the Trump team researched what candidates had said about Mr. Trump on the day of the Capitol riot and in the days following. Candidates are also rated on a scale of one to four in more than a half-dozen categories, including competence.Karoline Leavitt, the incoming White House press secretary, declined to address specific questions about the topics being raised in job interviews. Instead, she said: “President Trump will continue to appoint highly qualified men and women who have the talent, experience, and necessary skill sets to make America great again.”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

    • 125 Shares99 Views

      in Elections

      Elon Musk and the Tech Billionaires Steering Trump’s Transition Team

      by

      The involvement of wealthy investors has made this presidential transition one of the most potentially conflict-ridden in modern history.The week after the November election, President-elect Donald J. Trump gathered his top advisers in the tearoom at his Florida resort, Mar-a-Lago, to plan the transition to his second-term government.Mr. Trump had brought two of his most valued houseguests to the meeting: the billionaire Tesla boss Elon Musk and the billionaire co-founder of Oracle, Larry Ellison. The president-elect looked around the conference table and issued a joking-not-joking challenge.“I brought the two richest people in the world today,” Mr. Trump told his advisers, according to a person who was in the room. “What did you bring?”Mr. Trump has delighted in a critical addition to his transition team: the Silicon Valley billionaires and millionaires who have been all over the transition, shaping hiring decisions and even conducting interviews for senior-level jobs. Many of those who are not formally involved, like Mr. Ellison, have been happy to sit in on the meetings.Their involvement, to a degree far deeper than previously reported, has made this one of the most potentially conflict-ridden presidential transitions in modern history. It also carries what could be vast implications for the Trump administration’s policies on issues including taxes and the regulation of artificial intelligence, not to mention clashing mightily with the notion that Mr. Trump’s brand of populism is all about helping the working man.The presence of the Silicon Valley crew during critical moments also reflects something larger. Silicon Valley was once seen as a Democratic stronghold, but the new generation of tech leaders — epitomized by Mr. Musk — often has a right-wing ideology and a sense that they have an opportunity now to shift the balance of power in favor of less-fettered entrepreneurship.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