Pete Hegseth

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    Pentagon sending up to 600 military lawyers to serve as immigration judges

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    The US defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, has approved sending up to 600 military lawyers to the federal justice department to serve as temporary immigration judges, according to a memo reviewed by the Associated Press.The military will begin sending groups of 150 attorneys – both military and civilians – to the justice department “as soon as practicable” and the military services should have the first round of people identified by next week, according to the memo, dated 27 August.The effort comes as Donald Trump’s presidential administration cracks down on immigration across the country, ramping up arrests and deportations. Immigration courts are also already dealing with a huge backlog of roughly 3.5m cases that has ballooned in recent years.However, numerous immigration judges have been fired or left voluntarily after taking deferred resignations offered by the administration, according to their union. The International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers (IFPTE) said in July that at least 17 immigration judges had been fired “without cause” in courts across the country.That has left about 600 immigration judges, union figures show, meaning the Pentagon move will double their ranks.The move is being done at the request of the justice department, and the memo noted that the details will initially last no more than 179 days but can be renewable.When asked about the move, a justice department spokesperson referred questions about the plan to the defense department. Pentagon officials directed questions to the White House.A White House official said on Tuesday that the administration was looking at a variety of options to help resolve the significant backlog of immigration cases, including hiring additional immigration judges. The official said the matter should be “a priority that everyone – including those waiting for adjudication – can rally around”. More

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      Hegseth fires top US general after Iran assessment that angered Trump

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      The US defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, has fired a general whose agency’s initial intelligence assessment of damage to Iranian nuclear sites from US strikes angered Donald Trump, according to two people familiar with the decision and a White House official.Lt Gen Jeffrey Kruse will no longer serve as head of the US Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), according to the people, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss it publicly.The firing is the latest upheaval in the US military and intelligence agencies, and comes a few months after details of the preliminary assessment leaked to the media. It found that Iran’s nuclear program has been set back only a few months by the US strikes, contradicting assertions from Trump and the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.The Republican US president, who had pronounced the Iranian program “completely and fully obliterated”, rejected the report.In a news conference following the June strikes, Hegseth lambasted the press for focusing on the preliminary assessment but did not offer any direct evidence of the destruction of Iranian nuclear production facilities.“You want to call it destroyed, you want to call it defeated, you want to call it obliterated – choose your word. This was an historically successful attack,” Hegseth said then.Kruse’s exit was reported earlier by the Washington Post.Trump has a history of removing government officials whose data and analysis he disagrees with. Earlier in August, after a disappointing jobs report, he fired the official in charge of the data. His administration has also stopped posting reports on climate change, canceled studies on vaccine access and removed data on gender identity from government sites.The firing of the DIA chief culminates a week of broad Trump administration changes to the intelligence community and shakeups to the military leadership. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence – which is responsible for coordinating the work of 18 intelligence agencies, including the DIA – announced that it would slash its staff and budget.The Pentagon announced this week that the air force’s top uniformed officer, Gen David Allvin, planned to retire two years early.Hegseth and Trump have been aggressive in dismissing top military officials, often without formal explanation.The administration has fired Air Force Gen CQ Brown Jr as the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, as well as the navy’s top officer, the air force’s second highest-ranking officer, and the top lawyers for three military service branches.In April, Hegseth fired Gen Tim Haugh as head of the National Security Agency and Vice Adm Shoshana Chatfield, who was a senior official at Nato.No public explanations have been offered by the Pentagon for any of these firings, though some of the officers were believed by the administration to endorse diversity, equity and inclusion programs. More

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      JD Vance booed during hamburger handout to national guard troops in DC

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      JD Vance was booed and heckled with chants of “Free DC!” during a photo op with national guard troops at Union Station in Washington on Wednesday afternoon.Handing out burgers to troops deployed last week by Donald Trump, at the station’s Shake Shack alongside the defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, and White House deputy chief of staff, Stephen Miller, Vance told soldiers “we appreciate everything you’re doing” and asserted: “We brought some law and order back.” Meanwhile, a crowd of demonstrators protested outside.The crowd shouted slogans such as “Free DC!” and “From DC to Palestine, occupation is a crime.” Some also shouted expletives as the three men walked into Union Station and gathered at the restaurant, and continued as they tried to speak to reporters and eventually left.Asked why the troops were at the station instead of parts of the city where crime rates were statistically higher, Vance claimed it was being overrun with “vagrants, drug addicts, the chronically homeless and the mentally ill” and that visitors didn’t feel safe. “This should be a monument to American greatness,” he said, later adding: “We do not have to live like this.”Addressing the protests, Vance said: “It’s kind of bizarre that we have a bunch of old, primarily white people who are out there protesting the policies that keep people safe when they’ve never felt danger in their entire lives.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionAppropriating the protesters’ chants, he added: “Let’s free Washington DC, so that young families can walk around and feel safe and secure. That’s what we’re trying to free DC from.”His sentiments were echoed by Miller, who belittled those who had gathered in protest as “crazy communists”. “We’re going to ignore these stupid white hippies that all need to go home and take a nap because they’re all over 90 years old, and we’re going to get back to the business of protecting the American people and the citizens of Washington DC,” he said.Last week, the president federalized the city’s Metropolitan police department and directed Hegseth to mobilize national guard troops, claiming he was cracking down on “crime, bloodshed, bedlam and squalor” in the nation’s “lawless” capital, despite a sharply falling crime rate with violent crime at a 30-year low.An estimated 1,900 troops are being deployed in DC. More than half are coming from Republican-led states including Louisiana and South Carolina. Besides Union Station, troops have mostly been spotted in downtown areas, including the National Mall and metro stops. More

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      Pete Hegseth reposts video that says women shouldn’t be allowed to vote

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      The US defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, recently shared a video in which several pastors say women should no longer be allowed to vote, prompting one progressive evangelical organization to express concern.Hegseth reposted a CNN segment on X on Thursday that focuses on pastor Doug Wilson, a Christian nationalist who co-founded the Idaho-based Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches (CREC), In the segment, he raises the idea of women not voting.“I would like to see this nation being a Christian nation, and I would like this world to be a Christian world,” Wilson said.Another pastor interview by CNN for its segment, Toby Sumpter, said: “In my ideal society, we would vote as households. I would ordinarily be the one to cast the vote, but I would cast the vote having discussed it with my household.”A congregant interviewed for the segment remarked that she considers her husband as the head their household, and added: “I do submit to him.”Hegseth reposted the nearly seven-minute report with the caption: “All of Christ for All of Life.”Later in the video, Wilson says he does not believe women should hold leadership positions in the military or be able to fill high-profile combat roles.A statement from Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell on Saturday said Hegseth “is a proud member of a church affiliated with” the CREC.“The secretary very much appreciates many of Mr Wilson’s writings and teachings.”Hegseth and his family were in attendance at the Wilson church’s inaugural service in Washington in July, according to CNN.Doug Pagitt, a pastor and the executive director of the progressive evangelical organization Vote Common Good, told the Associated Press that the ideas in the video are views that “small fringes of Christians keep” and said it was “very disturbing” that Hegseth would amplify them.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionHegseth’s repost on Thursday came as the Trump administration ramps up efforts to promote Christian nationalism. The push follows Donald Trump’s renewed alliance with the Christian right in his second presidential term, whose moves have included an executive order creating a federal taskforce to investigate what he calls “anti-Christian bias” in government agencies.The president also created a White House faith office in February, saying it would make recommendations to him “regarding changes to policies, programs and practices” and consult with outside experts in “combating antisemitic, anti-Christian and additional forms of anti-religious bias”.In May, Hegseth invited his personal pastor, Brooks Potteiger, to the Pentagon to lead the first of several Christian prayer services that the defense secretary has held inside the government building during working hours. Defense department employees and service members said they received invitations to the event in their government emails.The US constitution’s first amendment prohibits the government from establishing a state religion. But the US courts’ administrative office says the precise definition of “establishment” in that context historically has been unclear, especially with the constitution also protecting all citizens’ right to practice their religion generally as they please. More

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      Pete Hegseth’s aides used polygraphs against their own Pentagon colleagues

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      Senior aides to the defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, conducted polygraphs on their own colleagues this spring, in some cases as part of an effort to flush out anyone who leaked to the media and apparently to undercut rivals in others, according to four people familiar with the matter.The polygraphs came at a time of profound upheaval in his office, as Hegseth opened a leak investigation and sought to identify the culprits by any means necessary after a series of sensitive disclosures and unflattering stories.But the polygraphs became contentious after the aides who were targeted questioned whether they were even official, given at least one polygraph was ordered without Hegseth’s direct knowledge and sparked an intervention by a Trump adviser who does not work at the Pentagon.The fraught episode involved Hegseth’s lawyer and part-time navy commander Tim Parlatore seeking to polygraph Patrick Weaver, a senior adviser to the secretary who was at the White House in Donald Trump’s first term and has ties to Trump’s deputy chief of staff, Stephen Miller, the people said.When Weaver learned of his impending polygraph, he complained to associates that he had been suspected without evidence, the people said. That led the external Trump adviser to take his complaint to Hegseth – only for Hegseth to say he did not even know about the test.The external Trump adviser called Parlatore on his cellphone to shut down the impending polygraph, shouting down the line that in Trump’s second term, career employees did not get to question political appointees, according to two people familiar with the conversation.Weaver does not appear to have escalated his complaint to the White House, telling associates that he preferred not to bother Miller with problems. Earlier reports suggested the White House intervened on Weaver’s behalf but the people said the White House learned of the test after it was cancelled.A White House spokesperson declined to comment. A Pentagon spokesperson, Sean Parnell, said in a statement: “The Department will not comment on an ongoing investigation.”The extraordinary episode underscored ongoing concerns around Hegseth’s ability to manage the Pentagon – he is still facing an inspector general report into his disclosures in a Signal chat about US strikes against the Houthis – and why a Trump adviser ended up staging an intervention.Weaver’s cancelled polygraph was earlier reported by the Washington Post. But the effort at the Pentagon to weed out leakers with lie detector tests continued against uniformed military officers even after the incident with Weaver, three of the people said.Hegseth’s then-military aide and current acting chief of staff, Ricky Buria, at one point ordered polygraphs against several people connected to possible and perceived rivals at the Pentagon including senior adviser Eric Geressy, despite his own polygraph coming back as inconclusive.View image in fullscreenBuria, who is said not to care for Geressy, did not order a polygraph against him in the wake of the Weaver incident. Instead, the people said, he ordered polygraphs for officers who worked for Geressy, including Hegseth’s military assistants Capt William Francis, a former Navy Seal, and Col Mike Loconsolo.In an additional twist, the polygraphs for the uniformed officials became fraught after one person complained his had not been conducted by the Defense Intelligence Agency but a defense department contractor, and was separately told his polygraph could just double as being for his regular background investigation, two people familiar with the matter said.Hegseth himself threatened polygraphs to catch leakers, including against two top military officials, the Wall Street Journal earlier reported: navy Adm Christopher Grady, the vice-chair of the joint chiefs of staff, and army Lt Gen Douglas Sims, the director of the joint staff.According to two people familiar with the case of Sims, Buria had privately suggested that he might have played a role in leaking a classified plan for the Panama canal to NBC News, among other transgressions that included an allegation that Sims had been disrespectful.While it does not appear that Sims was actually polygraphed, Hegseth revoked his promotion to a four star general, despite earlier agreeing to the move at the recommendation of multiple career and political officials, the New York Times earlier reported.Hegseth told Sims that his connections to Gen Mark Milley, the former chief of the joint staff that Trump hates, were disqualifying – although Sims had ironically helped remove Milley’s portrait off the wall at the Pentagon when Hegseth arrived at the Pentagon, one of the people said.Several officials, including the chairman of the joint chiefs, Gen Dan Caine, told Hegseth that Sims was not a leaker and deserved better. Hegseth told officials he would sleep on it but never revisited the matter, the people said. More

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      Hegseth falsely cited weapon shortages in halting shipments to Ukraine, Democrats say

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      Pete Hegseth, the US defense secretary, unilaterally halted an agreed shipment of military aid to Ukraine due to baseless concerns that US stockpiles of weapons have run too low, it has been reported.A batch of air defense missiles and other precision munitions were due to be sent to Ukraine to aid it in its ongoing war with Russia, which launched a full-scale invasion of its neighbor in 2022. The aid was promised by the US during Joe Biden’s administration last year.But the Pentagon halted the shipment, with NBC reporting that a decision to do so was made solely by Hegseth, Donald Trump’s top defense official and a former Fox News weekend host who has previously come under pressure for sharing plans of a military strike in two group chats on the messaging app Signal, one of which accidentally included a journalist.Hegseth has now halted US military supplies to Ukraine on three occasions, NBC said, with the latest intervention purportedly coming due to concerns that the US’s own weapons stockpile is running too low.When the president was asked about the pause in shipments to Ukraine by a reporter on Thursday, he claimed that it was necessary because “Biden emptied out our whole country, giving them weapons, and we have to make sure we have enough for ourselves”.A White House spokesperson said last week that the decision “was made to put America’s interests first following a [defense department] review of our nation’s military support and assistance to other countries across the globe. The strength of the United States armed forces remains unquestioned – just ask Iran.”“This capability review,” Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell told reporters on Wednesday, “is being conducted to ensure US military aid aligns with our defense priorities.”“We see this as a commonsense, pragmatic step towards having a framework to evaluate what munitions are sent and where,” Parnell added. He also seemed to confirm that there is no current shortage of arms for US forces. “Let it be known that our military has everything that it needs to conduct any mission, anywhere, anytime, all around the world,” he said.The decision surprised members of Congress, as well as Ukraine and the US’s European allies. Democrats said there is no evidence that American weapon stocks are in decline.“We are not at any lower point, stockpile-wise, than we’ve been in the three-and-a-half years of the Ukraine conflict,” Adam Smith, a Democrat and ranking member of the House armed services committee, told NBC. Smith said that his staff had “seen the numbers” on weapon supplies and that there is no justification to suspend aid to Ukraine.The weapons being delayed include dozens of Patriot interceptor missiles that can defend against Russian missile attacks, as well as howitzers and other missile systems.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionRussia has recently stepped up its bombardment of Ukrainian cities, using missiles and drones to wreak havoc and terror among Ukrainian civilians. The delay in getting help to fend off these attacks is “painful”, a senior Ukrainian lawmaker said last week.“This decision is certainly very unpleasant for us,” said Fedir Venislavskyi, a member of the Ukrainian parliament’s defense committee, according to Reuters.“It’s painful, and against the background of the terrorist attacks which Russia commits against Ukraine.”The Department of Defense did not reply to a request for comment on the aid pause. More

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      Briefing on Iran strikes leaves senators divided as Trump threatens new row

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      Republican and Democratic senators have offered starkly contrasting interpretations of Donald Trump’s bombing of Iranian nuclear facilities after a delayed behind-closed-doors intelligence briefing that the White House had earlier postponed amid accusations of leaks.Thursday’s session with senior national security officials came after the White House moved back its briefing, originally scheduled for Tuesday, fueling Democratic complaints that Trump was stonewalling Congress over military action the president authorized without congressional approval.“Senators deserve full transparency, and the administration has a legal obligation to inform Congress precisely about what is happening,” the Senate Democratic leader, Chuck Schumer, said following the initial postponement, which he termed “outrageous”.Even as senators were being briefed, Trump reignited the row with a Truth Social post accusing Democrats of leaking a draft Pentagon report that suggested last weekend’s strikes had only set back Iran’s nuclear program by months – contradicting the president’s insistence that it was “obliterated”.“The Democrats are the ones who leaked the information on the PERFECT FLIGHT to the Nuclear Sites in Iran. They should be prosecuted!” he wrote.The partisan divisions were on display after the briefing, which was staged in the absence of Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, who previously told Congress that Iran was not building nuclear weapons, before changing her tune last week after Trump said she was “wrong”.Instead, the briefing was led by CIA director John Ratcliffe, secretary of state Marco Rubio and defense secretary Pete Hegseth, who had publicly assailed journalists over their reporting on the strikes at a Pentagon press conference.With intelligence agencies apparently in open dispute over the strikes’ effectiveness, Thursday’s briefing did little to clear up the clashing interpretations on Capitol Hill.Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina senator and close Trump ally, said “obliteration” was a “good word” to describe the strikes’ impact.“They blew these places up in a major-league way. They set them back years, not months,” he said. “Nobody is going to work in these three sites any time soon. Their operational capability was obliterated.”But he warned that Iran would be likely to try to reconstitute them, adding: “Have we obliterated their desire to have a nuclear weapon? As long as they desire one, as long as they want to kill all the Jews, you still have a problem on your hands. I don’t want the American people to think this is over.”But Chris Murphy, a Democrat from Connecticut, said Trump was “misleading the public” in claiming the program was obliterated and questioned why Gabbard had not attended the briefing.His skepticism was echoed by Schumer, who said the briefing gave “no adequate answer” to questions about Trump’s claims.“What was clear is that there was no coherent strategy, no endgame, no plan, no specific[s], no detailed plan on how Iran does not obtain a nuclear weapon,” he said, adding that Congress needed to assert its authority by enforcing the War Powers Act.Gabbard and Ratcliffe had scrambled on Wednesday to back Trump, with Gabbard posting on X: “New intelligence confirms what POTUS has stated numerous times: Iran’s nuclear facilities have been destroyed.”The ranking Democrat on the House intelligence committee, Jim Himes, dismissed the destruction claims as meaningless. “The only question that matters is whether the Iranian regime has the stuff necessary to build a bomb, and if so, how fast,” he posted.The destruction response has also rankled Republican senators in the anti-interventionist wing of the party such as Rand Paul, who rejected claims of absolute presidential war powers.“I think the speaker needs to review the constitution,” said Paul. “And I think there’s a lot of evidence that our founding fathers did not want presidents to unilaterally go to war.”The Senate is expected to vote this week on a resolution requiring congressional approval for future military action against Iran, though the measure appears unlikely to pass given Republican control of the chamber.The White House also admitted on Thursday to restricting intelligence sharing after news of the draft assessment leaking.Press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters the administration wants to ensure “classified intelligence is not ending up in irresponsible hands”. Leavitt later said the US assessed that there “was no indication” enriched uranium was moved from the nuclear sites in Iran ahead of the strikes.Trump formally notified Congress of the strikes in a brief letter sent on Monday, two days after the bombing, saying the action was taken “to advance vital United States national interests, and in collective self-defense of our ally, Israel, by eliminating Iran’s nuclear program”.The administration says it remains “on a diplomatic path with Iran” through special envoy Steve Witkoff’s communications with Iranian officials. More

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      Trump officials cite ‘new intelligence’ to back president’s claims of success in strikes on Iran

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      Donald Trump’s administration ratcheted up its defence of the US’s weekend attacks on Iran, citing “new intelligence” to support its initial claim of complete success and criticising a leaked intelligence assessment that suggested Tehran’s nuclear programme had been set back by only a few months.The growing row came amid reports that the White House will to try to limit the sharing of classified documents with Congress, according to the Washington Post and the Associated Press.“This was a devastating attack, and it knocked them for a loop,” Trump said on Wednesday, apparently backing away from comments he’d made earlier in the day, that the intelligence was “inconclusive”.Senior Trump officials publicly rejected the leaked initial assessment of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) which concluded key components of the nuclear programme were capable of being restarted within months. Director of national intelligence Tulsi Gabbard said in a post on X that “new intelligence confirms” what Trump has stated.“Iran’s nuclear facilities have been destroyed. If the Iranians chose to rebuild, they would have to rebuild all three facilities (Natanz, Fordow, Esfahan) entirely, which would likely take years to do,” she said.CIA director John Ratcliffe in a statement said that new intelligence from a “historically reliable” source indicated that “several key Iranian nuclear facilities were destroyed and would have to be rebuilt over the course of years.”During a news conference at the Nato summit, Trump briefly ceded the stage to defence secretary Pete Hegseth, who lashed out at the media and claimed reporters were using the leaked intelligence assessment to politically damage Trump. “They want to spin it to try to make him look bad,” he said.In the wake of the leaked DIA report, the White House will reportedly to try to limit the sharing of classified documents with Congress, a senior official told the Associated Press.Democratic Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer criticised the reported decision to limit information sharing, saying “senators deserve information, and the administration has a legal obligation to inform Congress precisely about what is happening right now abroad”.Classified briefings for lawmakers had been scheduled to take place on Tuesday, but were postponed, prompting outrage from members of Congress. The briefings are now expected to take place on Thursday and Friday.The leaked DIA assessment also found that much of Iran’s stockpile of highly enriched uranium, which would provide the fuel for making any future nuclear warhead, had been moved before the strikes and may have been moved to other secret nuclear sites maintained by Iran. That claim was backed up by the UN nuclear watchdog – the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) – which said it lost “visibility” of the material when “hostilities began”.However, in an interview with French television, IAEA director-general Rafael Grossi said: “I don’t want to give the impression that it’s been lost or hidden.”View image in fullscreenOn Wednesday, the White House pushed back on those claims, with press secretary Karoline Leavitt telling Fox News the US had “no indication that that enriched uranium was moved prior to the strikes, as I also saw falsely reported”.“As for what’s on the ground right now, it’s buried under miles and miles of rubble because of the success of these strikes on Saturday evening,” she said.The US military said it dropped 14 GBU-57 bunker-buster bombs – powerful 13,600kg (30,000lb) weapons – on three Iranian nuclear sites. Since the attacks, Trump has repeatedly claimed that the sites were “obliterated”.The White House highlighted an Israeli statement that Iran’s nuclear efforts were delayed by years, while a spokesperson for the Iranian foreign ministry also said the facilities have suffered significant damage.On Wednesday evening, Trump said that Hegseth – whom he dubbed “war” secretary – would hold a news conference at 8am EST on Thursday to “fight for the dignity of our great American pilots”, referring to the pilots of the B2 bombers that carried out the strikes. He said that “these patriots were very upset” by “fake news” reports about the limited impact of the strikes.As the row grew over how much the strikes set back Tehran’s nuclear programme, diplomatic efforts to prevent Iran from rebuilding the programme also gathered pace.Trump said US and Iranian officials would meet soon, resuming a dialogue that was interrupted by the nearly two week war, even as he suggested that negotiations were no longer necessary.
      “I don’t care if I have an agreement or not,” Trump said, because Iran was too badly damaged to even consider rebuilding its programme. “They’re not going to be doing it anyway. They’ve had it.”View image in fullscreenThe IAEA has rejected an “hourglass approach” involving different assessments of how many months or years it would take Iran to rebuild, saying it distracts from finding a long-term solution to an issue that had not been resolved.“In any case, the technological knowledge is there and the industrial capacity is there. That, no one can deny. So we need to work together with them,” Grossi said, adding that his priority was the return of IAEA inspectors to the nuclear sites, the only way he said they could be properly assessed.Meanwhile, Iranian authorities are pivoting from their ceasefire with Israel to intensifying an internal security crackdown across the country with mass arrests, executions and military deployments, according to officials and activists.Iran’s intelligence services have arrested 26 people, accusing them of collaborating with Israel, state media Fars news agency reported.Some in Israel and exiled opposition groups had hoped the 12-day military campaign, which targeted Revolutionary Guards and internal security forces as well as nuclear sites, would spark a mass uprising and the overthrow of the Islamic Republic.While numerous Iranians expressed anger at the government, there has been no sign yet of any significant protests against the authorities.With the Associated Press and Reuters More