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      Pete Hegseth forced out of non-profit leadership roles for misconduct – report

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      President-elect Donald Trump’s pick for secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth, was reportedly forced out of two leadership roles at veteran-focused non-profits amid allegations of financial mismanagement, drunkenness and sexist behavior.A lengthy account in the New Yorker, based on interviews with whistleblowers, described Hegseth’s behavior at two organizations where he held leadership positions: the Koch-backed group Concerned Veterans for America (CVA) and the “AstroTurf” billionaire-backed Vets for Freedom (VFF).A whistleblower report accused Hegseth, who was CEO, of appearing frequently drunk at CVA social events, fostering a hostile work environment for female staffers and spending non-profit funds on personal expenses.The news follows allegations of sexual assault in 2017, controversy over Hegseth’s criticism of women serving in combat roles in the military and an email from Hegseth’s mother in which she told him about his mistreatment of women: “get some help and take an honest look at yourself.”Hegseth’s mother, Penelope, later disavowed the email, said she had written it in anger and called it “disgusting” to publish its contents. Trump’s transition team has said the sexual assault allegations were found to be “false”, a statement contradicted by local police reports.The Department of Defense is one of the nation’s largest employers, with roughly 3 million military and civilian employees and had a budget of $820bn in 2023.“I’ve seen him drunk so many times. I’ve seen him dragged away not a few times but multiple times. To have him at the Pentagon would be scary,” a former staffer told the magazine.In one instance described in the whistleblower report, Hegseth reportedly took CVA staffers to a Louisiana strip club and then got so drunk he attempted to get on stage with the strippers.The senator Richard Blumenthal, a Democrat from Connecticut who serves on the Senate armed services committee, told the New Yorker: “Much as we might be sympathetic to people with continuing alcohol problems, they shouldn’t be at the top of our national-security structure.” Hegseth needs Senate confirmation, if he is to take up the cabinet-level position.At VFF, a former associate told the magazine that Hegseth had effectively run it into the ground, spending in a way that nearly forced the organization into bankruptcy. The findings of a forensic accountant hired by the organization’s donors were described as “appalling”, and one former staffer described parties that, “could politely be called trysts”.Eventually, VFF merged with another non-profit in a way that removed Hegseth’s leadership power. Hegseth worked at VFF from roughly 2007-2012, and at CVA from 2014-2016.The allegations come after Trump has stood by Hegseth following an investigation into sexual assault allegations by Monterey, California, police in 2017. In that incident, Hegseth was accused of assaulting a woman after a Republican women’s event.Investigators recommended the complaint be forwarded to prosecutors for review. Hegseth paid a confidential settlement to the woman involved in the alleged incident in 2023 to head off the threat of a lawsuit.At the time, a spokesperson for Trump’s transition team said: the “report corroborates what Mr Hegseth’s attorneys have said all along: the incident was fully investigated and no charges were filed because police found the allegations to be false”. More

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      ‘I had to get out’: the US military officers filing for conscientious objector status over Gaza

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      For Joy Metzler, a second lieutenant in the US air force, joining the military had felt like answering a calling. An adoptee from China who was raised in a conservative Christian family, she believed she owed a debt to the United States.But the Hamas attacks in Israel last year, and Israel’s war that followed, rocked Metzler’s convictions. Within months, she filed for conscientious objector status, one of a small number of US military personnel seeking to end their service because of their moral opposition to US support for Israel.“I didn’t know Palestine was a place before October 7,” Metzler told the Guardian.“All of a sudden it felt like a light clicking on for me.”As the war in Gaza enters a second year, some disillusioned members of the US military have turned to the Vietnam war-era conscientious objector policy to terminate their military service because of religious or moral convictions.There are few avenues to express dissent in the army. Earlier this year, Harrison Mann, an army officer assigned to the Defense Intelligence Agency resigned in protest of US support for Israel. In a far more extreme gesture, 25-year-old US airman Aaron Bushnell died after setting himself on fire outside the Israeli embassy in Washington in February.The conscientious objector route is a seldom-invoked alternative that few service members are aware of – though some advocates say there has been an uptick in interest in the last year.The defense department referred questions about the number of conscientious objectors to each branch of the military. A spokesperson for the air force said that it has received 42 applications since 2021 and granted 36. Applications since 7 October “are on trend with pre-conflict averages”, the spokesperson added. (The army, navy, and Marine Corps did not respond to requests for comment.)But while the numbers remain relatively low, the war in Gaza is top of mind for those service members who have considered conscientious objector status this year, said Bill Galvin, a Vietnam-era objector and director of counseling at the Center on Conscience and War, one of a handful of groups that helps military members navigate the complex bureaucratic process.Galvin said his group helps roughly 50 to 70 applicants a year, across military branches, and that there’s been more interest than usual this year.The US has subsidized Israel’s war in Gaza to the tune of nearly $18bn over the last year, and is growing more deeply entangled as the conflict spills into the broader region. The Biden administration recently announced the deployment of 100 troops to Israel to man a missile defense system in anticipation of an escalation against Iran.“Almost everyone that I’ve talked to has at least cited what’s happening in Gaza as a factor in causing them to rethink what they’re doing,” Galvin said. “Some have actually said: ‘I know that the airplane that I’m doing maintenance on is delivering weaponry to Israel and so I feel complicit.’”Metzler said she was raised to believe that Israel is “the nation of God’s chosen people” and “terrorists were morally bankrupt people, who hate us because of who we are”.When the war in Gaza started, the images of Palestinian civilians’ suffering disturbed her, but it wasn’t until Bushnell’s self-immolation that she started reading about the history of the conflict and the role of the US government in it. “A lot of the things I had been told about the US’s role in the world were wrong”, she said.The war pushed Metzler to re-evaluate her time in the air force academy. She recalled laughing with her classmates as they watched footage of people running from a drone – she wasn’t sure in which country. She felt ashamed.“I had come out of the academy glorifying the act of warfare,” she said. “There’s a certain disregard for human life that you just have to have to be a member of the military.”Metzler learned about the conscientious objector option when she met a group of veterans at a pro-Palestine protest at the Georgia Institute of Technology, where she’s completing a master’s in aerospatial engineering.The defense department first introduced the objector application process in 1962. Tens of thousands obtained the status over the following decade, as the Vietnam war, and a mandatory draft, sparked a mass antiwar movement. But since then, the number of applicants has fallen drastically, with many members of the military unaware that the option even exists.“It’s not common knowledge,” said Metzler. “You don’t want to advertise to the people that are working for you that there’s a legal way for you to break your contract if you start to feel weird feelings.”For the few who embark on it, the process is rigorous and lengthy – Metzler’s application filled 19 pages and she is still waiting for final word after filing it in July. Applicants must demonstrate that they are opposed to all wars and that their beliefs about military service changed after they enlisted. They have to interview with a chaplain and with a mental health professional before an investigating officer reviews their case and makes a recommendation to a committee that decides whether to grant the status. In the past, the military has approved about half the conscientious objector applications it received.Larry Hebert, another US senior airman, said the process was “excruciatingly long”.A six-year veteran, Hebert reached what he called “a moral break” as horrific images of Palestinian children resembling his own filled his TikTok.During a leave from his service in Spain in March, he traveled to Washington and staged a hunger strike in front of the White House to highlight the plight of starving children in Gaza. He later applied for conscientious objector status, but as the wait became unbearable, he filed for voluntary separation, another avenue to legally end one’s service. When that was rejected, he took off his uniform and refused to obey orders. He was disciplined and is currently waiting to be released on administrative grounds“I had to get out,” he said. “I didn’t want to be a part of any of it.”Juan Bettancourt, a US airman who also filed for conscientious objector status earlier this year, told the Guardian that many of the service members he has spoken with have fear of speaking out but are privately appalled by US support for Israel. “There’s a lot of deep-seated criticism and moral disgust at the complicity of our government in the genocide in Gaza,” he said.Because dissenting voices are so rare, the military just tries to “brush them under the rug”, Bettancourt added, noting that Bushnell’s self-immolation was portrayed by the air force exclusively as a matter of “mental health,” Bettancourt said.View image in fullscreenThe air force spokesperson wrote in a statement that the force is committed to ensuring its members “never feel compelled to resort to self-harm as a means of protest”. She added that policies like the conscientious objector process “provide a safe avenue for individuals to voice their concerns”.But service members say voicing dissent is not easy, with a number of them incorrectly believing it’s illegal for them to do so or fearing they may get into trouble for raising questions. (Metzler, Bettancourt and Hebert all stressed they are speaking for themselves, and not on behalf of the military.)To address that, a coalition of military personnel and veterans groups have launched an “appeal to redress” campaign, modeled after an earlier one during the Iraq war, as a way for service members to register their opposition with legislators to the US’s Israel policy.Metzler, Bettancourt and Hebert have also launched Servicemembers for Ceasefire, offering resources for fellow members who are opposed to the war, including an explanation of the conscientious objector process.Metzler stresses that they are not encouraging people to leave the military – they just want those with doubts to know that they have options.“I’m not saying you have to jump ship or refuse orders,” she said. “But at the very least, pick up a book, figure out what’s going on in the world, and understand the context of what you’re doing.” More

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      In Michigan, these US veterans call Trump ‘the devil’ – and phone-bank for Harris

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      Like so many military veterans, the ageing group of men and women adorned with badges of fighting forces and theaters of war hesitated to talk about their past lives. But after one finally spoke up to denounce the man they called “the devil”, the floodgates opened to an anger and alarm that went far beyond normal political discourse.The veterans turned out on a warm evening to phone-bank for Kamala Harris in Saginaw, Michigan – a swing county in a key battleground state. But first they got to tell each other about where they served and the ways in which that shapes how they see next week’s presidential election.Most enlisted decades ago, some for only a few years. But that was long enough when fighting in Korea or Vietnam to have marked out the course of their lives and shaped their views of the world. From that vantage point, the veterans look upon Donald Trump with undisguised disgust.Some refused to even speak his name, including former air force electrician Josie Couch.“This man here, that Kamala is running against, he’s like the devil and, you know, he ain’t even trying to hide it,” she told her fellow veterans.A younger generation of Americans is fearful that another Trump presidency will further erode the rights they thought were set in stone, particularly in the wake of the supreme court striking down the constitutional right to abortion.The veterans bring a longer view shaped by early lives without many of the rights now under threat, not least greater racial and gender equality, and after having to fight for them in the first place. Couch, a Black woman, remembers her service and working life in the 1970s as a time of sexism, harassment and hostility that she and others struggled against.View image in fullscreenNow, she said, Trump wants “to take away everything that we done work hard for, our parents worked hard for”.“We all didn’t have a great service life because the men, they didn’t really want us to be there. I was called everything but Josie. I kind of forgot what my name was,” she said.“It’s going to be terrible if we take steps back because we don’t know how to go back.”Others in the hall shouted out: “We’re not going back.”Couch continued.“For them to take away women’s rights, come on now. How did we get here? If we didn’t stand up for our rights, we wouldn’t be here today,” she said.“Men can’t tell you what to do with your body. I haven’t heard yet what they’re gonna do with the men’s bodies, so why do they want to keep pushing us down?”Trump divides veterans in the same way he polarises other Americans. Some who served in the most senior positions in the military are now denouncing him openly.Trump’s ex-chief of staff, retired marine corps general John Kelly, has warned that his former boss meets the definition of a fascist and would rule like a dictator if he were to return to the White House.Other former generals and intelligence officials have joined in denouncing Trump, including the ex chair of the joint chiefs of staff Mark Milley, former CIA director John Brennan and Trump’s defence secretary Mark Esper.But for the veterans in Saginaw, their anger is more visceral. They speak with unusual passion as their contempt for Trump spills out about the former president’s repeated disparaging of those who have served in the military and his targeting of some of the most vulnerable in society.Dave Salogar stepped up to speak wearing a cap marking him as a veteran of the 101st Airborne in Vietnam. He began by telling the story of his grandparents, who fled the collapsing Austro-Hungarian empire in 1918 for Canada and then crossed the border illegally into the US.Salogar’s grandfather was killed in a mining accident in Michigan in 1924 and his grandmother raised her children as a single mother while working in a cannery.“So technically I’m the grandchild of illegal immigrants, and I hear the way immigrants are being beat up for all the ills when they’re the people that make America great. My grandmother, the illegal immigrant, eventually became a citizen at the age of 80. She sent two of her sons to fight in world war two. She sent a third son to Korea to fight and he was wounded,” said Salogar.View image in fullscreen“Myself and two of my cousins, this illegal immigrant’s grandchildren, went off to Vietnam.”Salogar joined a combat unit in 1968 at the age of 19 and served for nearly two years. He told the Guardian that the trauma of that war defined his life and cost him a series of jobs in the transportation industry after he sought refuge in alcohol for a decade. It’s one of the reasons he’s so contemptuous of Trump’s claim to have been unfit for military duty because of bone spurs.But Salogar reserves his real ire for how the former president talks about other veterans. Several of those in the room expressed disgust at Trump’s 2015 attack on Senator John McCain, who was a prisoner of war in North Vietnam.“He’s not a war hero. He was a war hero because he was captured? I like people who weren’t captured,” Trump said.As president, Trump also derided American war dead as “suckers” and “losers” after refusing to visit a second world war US military cemetery in Normandy in 2020. In August, the US army publicly rebuked Trump campaign officials for turning a ceremony at Arlington national cemetery to mark the deaths of American soldiers in Afghanistan into a photo opportunity for the Republican presidential candidate.Salogar does not hide his contempt.“He said we’re suckers and losers. The man could not go to Normandy on June 6 to go to the cemetery because it was raining and he was going to mess his hair. What kind of man is that?” he said.“I wasn’t old enough to vote when I was in Vietnam. Now I’m 76. This will probably be the last election I vote in, but it is the most important one.”Jerry and Dale Blunk met and married while serving on a now-defunct US military base in Iceland. He was in the navy for nearly 24 years and she was in the air force.Speaking to the Guardian, Jerry Blunk said he was supporting Harris because “it’s about time a woman became president of the United States”. Dale interrupted him.View image in fullscreen“Well, that’s not the only reason because both of us agree that Trump can’t be allowed into office again. He has no respect for anyone except himself. He has no respect for the constitution. He has no respect for veterans. He doesn’t have any respect for anyone. So he can’t go back to the White House,” she said.They, too, were infuriated by Trump’s disparaging of other veterans.“The minute he said McCain wasn’t a warrior, it was an insult to everyone who fought and died,” said Dale.But she is concerned about more than insults. Like others in the room, she questioned whether US democracy could survive another bout of Trump in the White House.“I don’t think the rule of law will prevail. The supreme court has already given him unlimited power. You give that to an egotist and a fascist, then we’ve lost our country. Literally, we’ll lose our country,” she said.Still, for all his anger at the former president’s failure to serve while disparaging those who did, Salogar pauses and reflects that Trump would have been a liability as a soldier.“When I was 19, I learned you’re white, Black, brown, you all bleed red,” he said.“I’m glad he wasn’t beside me, because I’ve witnessed unbelievable acts of courage, unbelievable acts of compassion and unbelievable acts of sacrifice by other 19- or 20-year-olds like myself.” More

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      US investigates leaked documents alleging Israel plans to attack Iran

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      The US government is investigating an unauthorised release of classified documents that assess Israel’s plans to attack Iran.The US House speaker, Mike Johnson, confirmed the investigation in remarks to CNN’s State of the Union programme on Sunday, saying the leak was very concerning.“There’s some serious allegations being made there,” the Republican from Louisiana said. “The investigation’s under way, and I’ll get a briefing on that in a couple of hours.”A US official told the Associated Press the documents in question appeared to be legitimate, but the Guardian was not immediately able to verify their authenticity.The documents are attributed to the US Geospatial-Intelligence Agency and National Security Agency. They are written in a style similar to documents previously leaked from the Pentagon, using classifications familiar to the national security community.The first document has the title “Israel: air force continues preparations for strike on Iran and conducts a second large-force employment exercise” and the second “Israel: defense forces continue key munitions preparations and covert UAV activity almost certainly for a strike on Iran”. Both are dated 16 October and were first leaked a day later.In general terms, they note that Israel was still positioning military assets as of the middle of last week to conduct a military strike in response to Iran’s ballistic missile attack on 1 October.Based on monitoring from satellite imagery and other geospatial intelligence, they focus on Israeli preparations relating to air-launched ballistic missiles, refuelling aircraft and covert long-range drone surveillance in Iran and elsewhere in the Middle East.That could imply that Israel was planning a long-range missile response to Iran’s attack, described at one point as similar to the long-range strikes it conducted against the Houthis in Yemen on 29 September.It appears to reflect an effort by the US and its closest partners to independently monitor Israel’s plans to attack Iran, though they do not predict its scale or scope. No potential targets in Iran were mentioned in the documents.The two documents appear to represent a snapshot in time, and are likely to represent the outcome of continuous monitoring. At one point, it is said there is no evidence that Israel is planning to use a nuclear weapon.They refer to preparations to use long-range Rocks missiles, made by the Israeli company Rafael, which are designed to destroy targets above and below ground. Another ballistic system called Golden Horizon is also referred to, but no system of that name is publicly known.Israeli media speculated that could refer to Blue Sparrow missiles, which have a range of about 1,200 miles (2,000km) and are thought to have been used in Israel’s limited strike against Iran in April in response to an previous attack by Tehran. Israel keeps elements of its long-range missile programme secret to avoid its enemies becoming fully aware of its capability.Many elements in the two documents are described as shareable within the Five Eyes intelligence network made up of the US, the UK, Canada, New Zealand and Australia. Others are marked as only shareable between the US and the UK.The documents, which are marked top secret, were posted to the Telegram messaging app and first reported by CNN and Axios.US officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to discuss the matter publicly. The investigation was also examining how the documents were obtained – including whether it was an intentional leak by a member of the US intelligence community or obtained by another method, like a hack – and whether any other intelligence information was compromised, one of the officials said.As part of that investigation, officials were working to determine who had access to the documents before they were posted, the official added.The US has urged Israel to take advantage of its elimination of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar and press for a ceasefire in Gaza, and has likewise urgently cautioned Israel not to further expand military operations in the north in Lebanon and risk a wider regional war. However, Israel’s leadership has repeatedly stressed it will not let Iran’s missile attack go unanswered.In a statement, the Pentagon said it was aware of the reports of the documents but did not have further comment.Johnson on Sunday said he spoke with the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu – referring to him as “my friend” – and explained how he had made it a point “to encourage him”. He also said there would be “a classified level briefing, and then others, but we’re following it closely”.The Israeli military did not immediately respond to a request for comment over the leak of the two documents. Israeli security officials were expected to meet on Sunday evening.The documents first appeared online Friday via a channel on Telegram, claiming they had been leaked by someone in the US intelligence community, then later the US Department of Defense. The information appeared entirely gathered through the use of satellite image analysis.One of the two documents resembled the style of other material from the US National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency leaked by Jack Teixeira, an air national guardsman who pleaded guilty in March to leaking highly classified military documents about Russia’s war on Ukraine and other national security secrets.Analytical intelligence documents have a wide distribution within the US national security apparatus, but the Pentagon has been engaged in an effort to clamp down on leaks by restricting them after Teixeira leaked dozens of slides on Discord, a social media site popular with gamers, in April 2023.The Telegram channel involved in the leak identifies itself as being based in Tehran, Iran’s capital. It previously published memes featuring Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and material in support of Tehran’s self-described “axis of resistance”, which includes Middle East militant groups armed by the Islamic Republic.The Associated Press contributed to this report More

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      Mark Milley fears being court-martialed if Trump wins, Woodward book says

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      Mark Milley, a retired US army general who was chair of the joint chiefs of staff under Donald Trump and Joe Biden, fears being recalled to uniform and court-martialed should Trump defeat Kamala Harris next month and return to power.“He is a walking, talking advertisement of what he’s going to try to do,” Milley recently “warned former colleagues”, the veteran Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward writes in an upcoming book. “He’s saying it and it’s not just him, it’s the people around him.”Woodward cites Steve Bannon, Trump’s former campaign chair and White House strategist now jailed for contempt of Congress, as saying of Milley: “We’re gonna hold him accountable.”Trump’s wish to recall and court-martial retired senior officers who criticized him in print has been reported before, including by Mark Esper, Trump’s second secretary of defense. In Woodward’s telling, in a 2020 Oval Office meeting with Milley and Esper, Trump “yelled” and “shouted” about William McRaven, a former admiral who led the 2011 raid in Pakistan in which US special forces killed Osama bin Laden, and Stanley McChrystal, the retired special forces general whose men killed another al-Qaida leader, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, in Iraq in 2006.Milley was able to persuade Trump to back down, Woodward writes, but fears no such guardrails will be in place if Trump is re-elected.Woodward also describes Milley receiving “a non-stop barrage of death threats” since his retirement last year, and quotes the former general as telling him, of Trump: “No one has ever been as dangerous to this country.”Milley spoke to Woodward for his previous reporting. Woodward now reports the former general as saying: “He is the most dangerous person ever. I had suspicions when I talked to you about his mental decline and so forth, but now I realize he’s a total fascist. He is now the most dangerous person to this country.“A fascist to the core.”Woodward, 81, made his name in the 1970s with Carl Bernstein during Watergate, the scandal that brought down Richard Nixon. Woodward’s new blockbuster, War, will be published on Tuesday. His fourth book at least in part about Trump – after Fear, Rage, and Peril – stoked uproar this week with the release of revelations including that Trump sent Covid testing machines to Vladimir Putin early in the coronavirus pandemic, and that Trump has had as many as seven phone calls with the Russian president since leaving office.Milley was chair of the joint chiefs of staff from 2019 to 2023. His attempts to cope with Trump have been widely reported – particularly in relation to Trump’s demands for military action against protesters for racial justice in the summer of 2020 and, later that year, Trump’s attempt to stay in power despite losing the election to Biden.Last year, marking his retirement, Milley appeared to take a direct swipe at Trump, then a candidate for a third successive Republican presidential nomination.“We don’t take an oath to a king, or queen, or tyrant or a dictator, and we don’t take an oath to a wannabe dictator,” Milley told a military audience at Joint Base Myer-Henderson Hall in Arlington, Virginia. “We don’t take an oath to an individual. We take an oath to the constitution, and we take an oath to the idea that is America, and we’re willing to die to protect it.”Since then, Trump has brushed aside Republican rivals to seize the nomination, campaigned against first Biden then Harris, and survived two assassination attempts. Less than a month from election day, he and Harris are locked in a tight race.In office, Trump memorably insisted senior military officers owed their loyalty to him, even reportedly telling his second chief of staff, the retired marine general John Kelly, US generals should “be like the German generals” who Trump insisted were “totally loyal” to Adolf Hitler during the second world war. Kelly mentioned military assassination plots against Hitler but Trump was not convinced.As told by Woodward, in 2020 Trump became enraged by pieces McRaven wrote for the Washington Post and the New York Times – writing in the Post that “there is nothing left to stop the triumph of evil” – and comments McChrystal made on CNN, calling Trump “immoral” and “dishonest”.“As commander-in-chief” of US armed forces, Woodward writes, “Trump had extraordinary power over retired commissioned officers. It was within his authority to recall them to active duty and court-martial them. But it had only been done a few times in American history and for very serious crimes. For instance, when a retired two-star [general] was charged in 2017 with six counts of raping a minor while on active duty in the 1980s.”So Trump summoned Milley and Esper. The president demanded action but the two men told him not to seek to punish McRaven and McChrystal, because they had a right to voice their opinions and because it would backfire, drawing attention to their words.“The president didn’t want to hear it,” Woodward writes.So Milley switched tack.“‘Mr President,’ Milley said. ‘I’m the senior military officer responsible for the good order and discipline of general officers and I’ll take care of this.’“Trump’s head whipped round. ‘You really will?’ he asked skeptically.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“‘Absolutely,’ Milley assured him.“‘OK, you take care of it,’ President Trump said.”Such dramatic Oval Office scenes are familiar from previous books by Woodward and legions of competing reporters and former Trump officials. According to Woodward’s new reporting, Milley did take action after fending Trump off, calling McRaven and McChrystal and warning them to “step off the public stage”.“‘Pull it back,’ Milley said. If Trump actually used his authority to recall them to duty, there was little Milley could do.”Woodward then quotes Milley speaking this year about his fear that Trump will seek to punish his military critics if he returns to power.McRaven, now a professor at the University of Texas at Austin, did not immediately respond to a request for comment about Milley’s fear of retribution and whether he shared it.Trump has given such figures plenty of reason to worry. Among proliferating campaign-trail controversies, the former president has frequently voiced his desire for revenge on opponents and critics, including by using the FBI and Department of Justice to mount politically motivated investigations. At rallies, Trump has frequently told crowds: “I am your retribution.”The Utah senator Mitt Romney, the Republican presidential nominee in 2012, was recently asked about possible consequences of his own opposition to Trump including votes to convict in both his impeachment trials.“I think he has shown by his prior actions that you can take him at his word,” a “suddenly subdued” Romney told the Atlantic. “So I would take him at his word.”Woodward also reports Milley’s harrowing experiences since stepping down as chair of the joint chiefs.“Since retiring, Milley had received a non-stop barrage of death threats that he, at least in part, attributed to Trump’s repeated attempts to discredit him.“‘He is inciting people to violence with violent rhetoric,’ Milley told his wife. ‘But he does it in such a way it’s through the power of suggestion, which is exactly what he did on 6 January” 2021, the day Trump incited supporters to attack Congress, in hope of overturning his election defeat.“As a former chairman, Milley was provided round-the-clock government security for two years. But he had taken additional precautions at significant personal expense, installing bullet-proof glass and blast-proof curtains at his home.” More

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      Biden reaffirms US support for Israel amid Iran’s missile attack

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      Joe Biden has reaffirmed US support for Israel after Iran’s ballistic missile attacks, describing the barrage as “defeated and ineffective” and ordering the US military to aid Israel’s defense against any future assaults.“The attack appears to have been defeated and ineffective, and this is a testament to Israeli military capability and the US military,” the US president told reporters on Tuesday after Tehran launched an unprecedented salvo of 180 high-speed ballistic missiles.US destroyers in the eastern Mediterranean Sea destroyed several Iranian missiles, US defense officials said. Vessels currently in the region include the USS Arleigh Burke, USS Cole and USS Bulkeley. Additional destroyers are in the Red Sea.“Make no mistake, the United States is fully, fully, fully supportive of Israel,” Biden said.Initial reports suggested that Israeli air defenses intercepted many of the incoming missiles, although some landed in central and southern Israel, and at least one man was killed in the West Bank by a missile that fell near the town of Jericho.Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said that the missile attack was conducted in retaliation for Israel’s killings of the Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, and Iranian Revolutionary Guard deputy commander Abbas Nilforoushan.The White House National Security Council said that Biden and Kamala Harris were monitoring the Iranian attack on Israel from the White House situation room and were receiving regular updates from their national security team.Biden’s national security adviser Jake Sullivan hailed the response to the attack, which he described as “defeated and ineffective”.But before the missile barrage had even ended, Donald Trump, on his own social media platform, Truth Social, described the current conflict in the Middle East as “totally preventable” and claimed it would never have happened if he were president.In a lengthy statement, the former president and current Republican nominee attacked Biden and Harris, saying the world was “spiraling out of control” and asserting that the US had “no leadership” and “no one running the country”.“When I was President, Iran was in total check,” Trump added. “They were starved for cash, fully contained, and desperate to make a deal.”It remains unclear how the escalating tensions in the Middle East will play into the US election on 5 November.Iran’s attack on Israel comes just hours before the highly anticipated US vice-presidential debate on Tuesday night, 38 days from the US presidential election, and as the conflict in the Middle East appears to continue to escalate.A poll conducted by CNN shortly after the presidential debate between Harris and Trump in September found that more voters who watched the debate viewed Trump as a stronger candidate when it came to handling the role of commander in chief.Lindsey Graham, the Republican senator from South Carolina, wrote in a statement that the missile attacks against Israel on Tuesday “should be the breaking point and I would urge the Biden Administration to coordinate an overwhelming response with Israel, starting with Iran’s ability to refine oil.“These oil refineries need to be hit and hit hard because that is the source of cash for the regime to perpetrate their terror,” he added.In another statement, Graham said that he had spoken with Trump, who he described as “determined and resolved to protect Israel from the threats of terrorism emanating from Iran.“While I appreciate the Biden administration’s statement, we cannot forget that when President Trump left office, Iran was weak economically, and he sent the regime the ultimate message with the elimination of Soleimani,” Graham said.Graham continued: “The only thing the Iranian regime understands is strength. Now is the time to show unified resolve against Iran, the largest state sponsor of terrorism.“We need decisive action, not just statements,” he added.On Twitter/X, Marco Rubio, also a Republican senator, described the attack as a “large scale (not symbolic) missile attack from Iranian regime against Israel” and added that “a large scale Israeli retaliatory response inside Iran is certain to follow”.Bob Casey, a Democrat senator for Pennsylvania, wrote in response to the attacks that he stands “with Israel and unequivocally condemn Iran’s missile strikes”.“The United States must continue doing everything it can to intercept Iran’s missiles and help our ally defend itself,” Casey added.Jerry Nadler, a Democratic representative, condemned the attack in a post on X, adding that his thoughts were “with the Israeli people at this time”. More

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      More than 700 national security officials endorse Kamala Harris for president

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      More than 700 national security leaders and former military officials publicly endorsed Kamala Harris for president in a letter released on Sunday, calling her a candidate who “defends America’s democratic ideals”.They also said her Republican rival, Donald Trump, was “unfit” for the job.The letter, signed by retired US navy R Adm Michael Smith and hundreds of others, criticized the former president’s remarks about “terminating” the US constitution over his lie that the 2020 election was stolen and his suggestion of becoming a “dictator” if re-elected.The group also condemned Trump’s lack of remorse for the January 6 Capitol attack.The letter is a further boost to the vice-president and her bid for the White House. Since Joe Biden dropped his bid for re-election in July, Harris has opened up a narrow lead over Trump and performed more strongly in the crucial swing states needed for victory. She has also secured the endorsement of some key anti-Trump Republicans.The security and military officials wrote in the latter that Harris “grasps the reality of American military deterrence, promising to preserve the American military’s status as the most ‘lethal’ force in the world”.“The contrast with Mr Trump is clear: where Vice President Harris is prepared and strategic, he is impulsive and ill-informed,” the letter reads.Among those signing the letter is the former secretary of state and 2016 presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, Jeff Bleich, who served as the US ambassador to Australia under Barack Obama, and the former CIA director John Deutch.In her new book, Clinton expressed her excitement of the prospect of a woman becoming president.“When I imagine Kamala standing before the Capitol next January, taking the oath of office as our first woman president, my heart leaps,” she said. “After hard years of division, it will prove that our best days are still ahead and that we are making progress on our long journey toward a more perfect union.”The letter made public also criticized Trump’s relationship with leaders overseas, including China’s president, Xi Jinping, the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un, and the Russian president, Vladimir Putin.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe national security leaders also slammed Trump’s decision to criticize leaders in the UK, Israel, Australia, Canada and Germany.“Mr Trump denigrates our great country and does not believe in the American ideal that our leaders should reflect the will of the people,” says the letter. “Mr Trump is the first president in American history to actively undermine the peaceful transfer of power, the bedrock of American democracy.”The pro-Harris letter comes on the heels of another endorsement earlier this month by a group of 10 retired top US military officials, including retired Gen Larry Ellis, condemning Trump’s comments disparaging members of the military.Last month, Trump was pictured giving a thumbs up with family members at a ceremony to mark the deaths of US soldiers in Afghanistan. The army accused two campaign officials of pushing aside a worker at the cemetery who told them that it was not permitted to take photographs at the graves of recently deceased soldiers. More

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      Trump shares posts of Gold Star families praising cemetery visit and criticizing Harris

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      Donald Trump shared statements from the relatives of 13 soldiers killed during the chaotic US evacuation from Kabul as they hit out at Kamala Harris after she criticized the former president’s involvement in a ceremony honoring the service members.The dispute over the ceremony at Arlington national cemetery, during which Trump campaign aides allegedly shoved a cemetery worker so they could film Trump laying a wreath, contravening rules against political activity at the site, escalated after the vice-president said Saturday that Trump “disrespected sacred ground, all for the sake of a political stunt”.But eight members of the “Gold Star” families who lost relatives posted messages on Trump’s Truth Social platform Saturday saying they had invited Trump to the ceremony and criticized the Biden-Harris administration for the Afghanistan pull-out three years ago.“Why did we want Trump there? It wasn’t to help his political campaign,” Mark Schmitz, father of Marine lance corporal Jared Schmitz, said in one video. “We wanted a leader. That explains why you and Joe didn’t get a call.”Darren Hoover, the father of Marine staff Sgt Taylor Hoover, said Harris lacks “empathy and basic understanding” about the event, and emphasized that Trump’s appearance was respectful.The army said this week that a cemetery official was “abruptly pushed aside” while interacting with Trump’s staff.On Saturday, congressional Democrats called on the army to deliver a report on what had taken place at the cemetery on Monday. Harris later posted on Twitter/X that the military burial site is “not a place for politics”.“Let me be clear: the former president disrespected sacred ground, all for the sake of a political stunt,” Harris added, and said she would “never politicize” such an event.The dispute continued on Sunday, when former Democratic congresswoman and Iraq veteran Tulsi Gabbard, now a member of Trump’s transition team, told CNN’s State of the Union that she was at the ceremony and saw “a very grave and somber remembrance and honoring of those lives that were lost”.Gabbard said she saw Trump “spending time at the invitation of these Gold Star families with them” and did “not see or hear about any kind of altercation until something came out in the news later on”.Gabbard rejected Harris’s statement saying she stood with the veteran’s families. Gabbard told CNN: “President Biden and Harris, I heard, were invited by some of these family members. They not only didn’t come – they didn’t even respond to that invitation.”Senator Tom Cotton continued the Republican pushback, telling NBC’s Meet the Press that the Gold Star families had invited Trump, but also Joe Biden and Harris, and he disputed that photos and video were meant for political purposes.“Joe Biden was sitting on a beach. Kamala Harris was sitting in her mansion in DC … She was four miles away. Ten minutes. She could have gone to the cemetery and honored the sacrifice of those young men and women,” Cotton said.A White House official and a Harris aide disputed Cotton and Gabbard’s account that the president and Harris had been invited to the ceremony, according to NBC News.As the political fallout from the Arlington ceremony continues, it has drawn in Utah governor Spencer Cox, a moderate Republican who kept his political distance from the Republican presidential candidate until the attempted assassination on Trump at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, in July.Cox, a Latter-day Saint, later said he believes God had a hand in saving Trump’s life, even calling it a miracle.Cox attended the controversial ceremony and published photos from the event on his official account. Cox’s re-election campaign later issued an apology.“Honoring those who serve should never be ‘political’,” it read, adding that the campaign was committed “to ensure that we run the best campaign possible and we’ll accomplish that by not politicizing things that shouldn’t be politicized”. More