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      Mayorkas says no known foreign involvement in mass drone sightings

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      Alejandro Mayorkas, the US homeland security secretary, has said federal authorities “know of no foreign involvement” in the apparent mass drone sightings across the nation’s north-east region, though social and political anxieties nonetheless continued surging over the weekend amid a lack of official information.“I want to assure the American public that we are on it,” Mayorkas said.He called for “extended and expanded” authority to shoot down drones, beyond only those that pass over restricted military airspace. And the New York governor, Kathy Hochul, announced on Sunday that the federal government was prepared to deploy a high-tech drone detection system in response to the spate of sighting there, in New Jersey and Connecticut, where state and local officials are demanding more assertive federal action – with one calling the drones a “very considerable danger”.The Democrat US Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer, later added his name to the request for drone detection technology. And congressman Mike Waltz of Florida, who has been chosen as the incoming White House national security adviser, said the drone issue points to gaps in security between federal agencies, and with local law enforcement.“Americans are finding it hard to believe we can’t figure out where these are coming from,” he told CBS’s Face the Nation. “From the defense department standpoint, they’re focused on bombers and cruise missiles. It’s pointing to gaps in our capabilities and in our ability to clamp down on what’s going on here.”Meanwhile, reports that an Iranian drone ship is patrolling off the US east coast were discarded as unfounded.The US domestic security chief told ABC News that there are “thousands of drones flown every day in the United States, recreational drones, commercial drones”. He also pointed out that – in September 2023 – aviation regulators enacted rules allowing drones to be flown at night, leading to more such activity.US authorities are anxious to avoid vigilantes’ responding to New Jersey’s drone invasion, fearing that innocent bystanders could be hit by falling debris or that legitimate commercial aviation could be mistaken for unexplained drones.“We want state and local authorities to also have the ability to counter drone activity under federal supervision,” Mayorkas said.Hoping to counter the relative impotence of officials to quell the public anxiety stemming from the drone sightings, Mayorkas said some were drones and others manned aircraft mistaken for drones.“There’s no question … people are seeing drones,” Mayorkas remarked. “And I want to assure the American public that we, in the federal government, have deployed additional resources, personnel, technology, to assist … in addressing the drone sightings.”A Chinese national was arrested on 9 December in California, allegedly for flying a drone over Vandenberg air force base, used for space launches and missile testing. Other military bases have also reported drone over-flights.“If we identify any foreign involvement or criminal activity, we will communicate with the American public accordingly,” Mayorkas added.Meanwhile, as Donald Trump prepares to begin his second presidency, he has demanded greater official transparency around what he has called “mystery drone sightings all over the country”.“Can this really be happening without our government’s knowledge? I don’t think so,” Trump added. “Let the public know, and now. Otherwise, shoot them down.”On Sunday, the former New Jersey governor Chris Christie was asked if the state’s residents were experiencing an outbreak of mass hysteria.“To say that this is not unusual activity is just wrong,” Christie said. “I’ve lived in New Jersey my whole life and this is the first time I’ve noticed drones over my house.”Christie said that a lack of official information had allowed conspiracy theories to overwhelm authorities’ officialese.“If you don’t fill that vacuum then all the conspiracy theories get filled in there,” Christie added. “So you get congressman Jeff Van Drew saying there’s an Iranian mothership off the coast which is provably not true.”Joe Biden’s outgoing presidential administration and state authorities have to be more vocal and let people know what they’re doing, he added.Pointing to a newish technology used in conflict zones as weapons, Christie said it was understandable that people were concerned.Hochul on Saturday joined a chorus of other elected US officials pressuring the White House for a federal response after runways at Stewart international airport were temporarily closed due to what was described as “drone activity in the airspace”.Phil Murphy, the New Jersey governor, has also contacted Biden to voice “growing concern about reports of unmanned aircraft systems”. In Connecticut, another state with elevated drone sightings since mid-November, US senator Richard Blumenthal said the aircraft should be shot down “if necessary”.But the lack of a coherent response by officials has set residents off on their own search for answers.The director of the Rebovich institute at Rider university,Micah Rasmussen, told NJ.com that the Biden administrations’ response was “a textbook case of exactly how misinformation happens and disinformation happens.“When people don’t know what to believe, they don’t believe anything,” Rasmussen said, “and that’s a dangerous position for us to be in”.The federal response had achieved the near impossible by bring Republicans and Democrats in the state together over the issue, said the New Jersey Republican assemblywoman Dawn Fantasia.“I don’t know who’s running crisis communication from the White House, but it’s embarrassing,” Fantasia told the outlet. “You know, we’re at the point now where I feel like I’m watching Star Search from the ‘80s, and they’re just auditioning spokesmodels to say stupid things.”Another New Jersey political figure, Democratic congressman Josh Gottheimer, said that hundreds of reports of drones flying overhead in federally-controlled airspace “leaves a large vacuum of information”.Since 13 November, when an unauthorized drone was spotted flying near Picatinny Arsenal, a US army research facility in New Jersey, hundreds more sightings of unidentified flying objects have been reported.Some have been described as “SUV-sized”. Some were reportedly flying in coordinated clusters. Domestic security agencies have consistently maintained they do not pose any national security or public safety threat.But military officials have confirmed 11 sightings over Picatinny base and multiple sightings over a naval weapons station, fueling anxiety.The done sightings come after the Biden administration sought to downplay a Chinese spy balloon crossing the US in early 2023 before it was ultimately shot down off the east coast.The White House national security spokesperson John Kirby has said that “it appears that many of the reported sightings are actually manned aircraft that are being operated lawfully”.But that hasn’t satisfied New Jerseyans, Rasmussen told NJ.com.He said: “You only get so many chances to explain something before people say, ‘I’ve heard enough from you. I don’t believe what you have to say. I’m done listening to you now, because clearly you’re going to insult my intelligence.’” More

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      Daniel Penny will be JD Vance’s guest at Army-Navy football game in Maryland

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      JD Vance, the vice-president-elect, confirmed that Daniel Penny, a Marine Corps veteran recently acquitted of homicide charges, will be his invited guest at the Army-Navy football game on Saturday in Maryland.Penny will watch the game from a suite alongside president-elect Donald Trump and other figures in Trump’s next administration, including his defence secretary nominee, Pete Hegseth.“I’m grateful he accepted my invitation and hope he’s able to have fun and appreciate how much his fellow citizens admire his courage,” Vance posted on X, confirming news first reported by the non-profit publication Notus.The invitation follows Penny’s acquittal on Monday by a New York jury, which found him not guilty of criminally negligent homicide in the 2023 death of Jordan Neely, a 30-year-old homeless man with a history of arrests, mental illness and medical conditions. Medical evidence revealed that Neely had sickle cell trait, an inherited genetic condition that under extreme physiological stress can potentially compromise blood oxygen transport, a factor Penny’s defence team argued could have contributed to his death.The case sparked nationwide controversy after Penny placed Neely in a chokehold on a New York City subway train in May 2023. Witnesses reported that Neely had been shouting and acting erratically, with one passenger, Juan Alberto Vazquez, telling NBC News at the time that Neely was making aggressive statements about not caring about potential consequences.It will be Penny’s first public appearance since his acquittal, and a high-profile event with deep ties to the military at that.Vance was vocal in his support of Penny, describing the prosecution as a “scandal” and praising the jury’s decision.“Daniel’s a good guy, and New York’s mob district attorney tried to ruin his life for having a backbone,” Vance posted on X.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionPenny, in a sit-down interview with Fox News this week, maintained that he feared for his own safety and that of other passengers during the incident, describing himself as being in a “vulnerable position”.“The guilt I would have felt if someone did get hurt, if he did do what he was threatening to do, I would never be able to live with myself,” Penny said. “I’d take a million court appearances and people calling me names and people hating me just to keep one of those people from getting hurt or killed.” More

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      Pete Hegseth decried out gay troops in US military as part of Marxist agenda

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      Policies allowing out gay people to serve in the US military have been denounced as part of a “Marxist” agenda aimed at prioritising social justice above combat-readiness by Pete Hegseth, Donald Trump’s embattled defence secretary pick.The assertion was among many contentious “anti-woke” views expressed in Hegseth’s latest book, The War on Warriors, published this year, in which he lambasted a previous policy – known as don’t ask, don’t tell (DADT) – that tolerated gay service members as long as they did not disclose their sexual orientation, while also excoriating its repeal.DADT was introduced as a compromise during Bill Clinton’s presidency in 1993 to allow lesbians and gay men to serve in the military in the face of opposition from senior commanders. The policy overturned a previous blanket ban that had been in place since the second world war.It was repealed in 2011 during the presidency of Barack Obama following numerous complaints of discrimination resulting from the dishonourable discharges of armed service personnel after their sexuality had come to light.Hegseth – whose nomination has become imperilled following allegations of drunkenness, sexual misconduct and financial mismanagement – has denounced DADT as the start of ideological “tinkering” with the armed forces for social justice ends, CNN reported .But he has also voiced regret over its repeal, calling it “a breach in the wire” that opened the path to a wider ideological and cultural change in the armed forces.Recalling how he was getting ready to deploy to Afghanistan when the policy was annulled, he wrote: “Our commander briefed the unit, peppered with a few jokes. You know, infantry stuff.“We mostly laughed it off and moved on. America was at war. Gays and lesbians were already serving in the military. I had seen the enemy with my own eyes. We needed everybody.”He now says that inclusive and tolerant attitude was a mistake, suggesting it paved the way for admitting transgender people into the military and allowing women to serve in combat roles, from which they were barred until a 2013 reform.“It started with Clinton under ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’,” Hegseth told the conservative broadcaster, Ben Shapiro, in an interview this year in which he cited a military recruitment advertisement of a soldier with two lesbian mothers as illustrative of a shift in military culture.“At least when it was an ‘Army of One’, they were, you know, [a] tough-looking, go get ’em army,” he said.“Now you just have the absurdity of ‘I have two mommies and I’m so proud to show them that I can wear the uniform too.’ So they, it’s just like everything else the Marxists and the leftists have done. At first it was camouflaged nicely and now they’re just open about it.”Hegseth’s aversion to gay people in the military and women in combat was expressed before Trump nominated him for a cabinet position that would give him decision-making power over both policies.Interviewed this week by CNN, Hegseth – a former army national guard soldier and Fox News host – declined to say whether he still believed it was a mistake to repeal don’t ask, don’t tell.He also said he supported “all women serving in our military” – despite previously arguing that their presence led to an “erosion in standards”.Hegseth repeatedly took issue with the concept of female combatants in a chapter of his latest book titled “The (deadly) obsession with women warriors”.“I’m going to say something politically incorrect that is perfectly commonsensical observation,” he wrote. “Dads push us to take risks. Moms put the training wheels on our bike. We need moms, but not in the military, especially in combat units.”In another provocative passage, he wrote: “If you train a group of men to treat women equally on the battlefield then you will be hard pressed to ask them to treat women differently at home.”Hegseth conflated the issue of women and gay people in the military in comments to Fox News in 2015, Meidas News reported.“Through don’t ask, don’t tell and women in the military and these standards, they’re going to inevitably start to erode standards because they want that one female special operator, that one female Green Beret, that one female Army Ranger, that one female Navy Seal, so they can put them on a recruiting poster and feel good about themselves – and [that] has nothing to do with national security,” he said. More

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      Why I’m voting against the military budget | Bernie Sanders

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      Today in America, 60% of our people live paycheck to paycheck, 85 million people are uninsured or underinsured and 21.5 million households are paying more than 50% of their income on housing. We have one of the highest rates of childhood poverty of almost any developed country on Earth, and 25% of older adults are trying to survive on $15,000 a year or less. In other words, the United States has fallen far behind other major countries in protecting the most vulnerable, and our government has failed millions of working families.But while so many Americans are struggling to get by, the United States is spending record-breaking amounts of money on the military. In the coming days, with relatively little debate, Congress will overwhelmingly pass the National Defense Authorization Act, approving close to $900bn for the Department of Defense (DoD). When spending on nuclear weapons and “emergency” defense spending is included, the total will approach $1tn. We now spend more than the next nine countries combined.I don’t often agree with Elon Musk, but he is right when he says the Pentagon “has little idea how its annual budget of more than $800bn is spent.” The Department of Defense is the only government agency that has been unable to pass an independent audit. It recently failed its seventh attempt in a row and could not fully account for huge portions of its $4.126tn in assets.Very few people who have researched the military-industrial complex doubt that there is massive fraud, waste and cost over-runs in the system. Defense contractors routinely overcharge the Pentagon by 40% – and sometimes more than 4,000%. For example, in October, RTX (formerly Raytheon) was fined $950m for inflating bills to the DoD, lying about labor and material costs, and paying bribes to secure foreign business. In June, Lockheed Martin was fined $70m for overcharging the navy for aircraft parts, the latest in a long line of similar abuses. The F-35, the most expensive weapon system in history, has run up hundreds of billions in cost overruns.Today, as a result of massive consolidation in the industry, a large portion of the Pentagon budget now goes to a handful of huge defense contractors like Lockheed Martin, RTX, General Dynamics and Northrop Grumman. That consolidation has been extremely profitable for the industry: since 2022, these four contractors have brought in $609bn in revenues, including $353bn in US taxpayer funds, and recorded $57bn in profits. During that same period, they have spent $61bn on dividends and stock buybacks to make their wealthy stockholders even richer.These defense contractors also provide their CEOs with exorbitant compensation packages. In the last three years for which information is available, these companies paid their CEOs more than $257m combined – with annual salaries that are about 100 times more than the secretary of defense and 500 times more than the average newly enlisted service member.How does this happen? How do we keep handing huge amounts of money to companies that routinely overcharge the American taxpayer and often engage in fraud? The answer is not complicated. These companies – like the drug companies, insurance companies, Wall Street and the fossil fuel industry – spend millions on campaign contributions and lobbying. In the recent election cycle, defense contractors spent nearly $251m on lobbying and contributed almost $37m to political candidates. Surprise, surprise! Most members of Congress vote for greatly inflated military budgets with few questions asked.The lack of accountability at the Department of Defense is not just costing American taxpayer dollars. It’s costing lives. The United States is providing many billions of dollars to help defend Ukraine from Putin’s invasion. When defense contractors said they couldn’t ramp up production without more taxpayer support, Congress repeatedly appropriated emergency funding, with roughly $78.5bn going to buy equipment and services from the major defense contractors.How did those “patriotic” companies respond? They jacked up prices. RTX increased prices for Stinger missiles from $25,000 in the 1990s to $400,000 in 2023. Lockheed Martin and RTX raised the price of the Javelin missile system from about $263,000 per unit just before the war to $350,700 this year. Similar price hikes took place for Patriot missiles and other weapons. And make no mistake: every time a contractor pads its profit margins, fewer weapons reach the frontlines. The greed of these defense contractors is not just costing American taxpayers; it’s killing Ukrainians.The United States needs a strong military, but we do not need a defense system that is designed to make huge profits for a handful of giant defense contractors. We do not need to spend almost a trillion dollars on the military, while half a million Americans are homeless and children go hungry.In this moment in history, it would be wise for us to remember what Dwight D Eisenhower, a former five-star general, said in his farewell address in 1961: “In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.” What Eisenhower said was true in 1961. It is even more true today.I will be voting against the military budget. More

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      Trump pick a threat to US military’s counter-extremism effort, experts warn

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      Pete Hegseth, Donald Trump’s embattled choice for secretary of defense, will struggle to handle the serious problem of extremism in the US military due to his own far-right political views, experts in the subject have warned.“I think it’s going to be an absolute disaster,” said Kristofer Goldsmith, an Iraq war veteran and the CEO of nonprofit watchdog Task Force Butler. “Pete Hegseth is a domestic extremist.”One of president Joe Biden’s earliest policy initiatives was tackling extremism among government workers, including soldiers in the military.Fresh off January 6, when scores of active duty or former US servicemen were caught participating in trying to overthrow the Capitol, current secretary of defense Loyd Austin issued a historic “stand-down order” in February 2021, demanding all servicemen in every branch of the military reflect on the issue of extremism.Not long after that, the DoD rolled out expanded guidelines, a broad definition of extremism and extremist activities while in uniform, policing of soldiers’ social media accounts and new recruitment requirements. But Republicans, clearly sensing a campaign issue, began attacking the Pentagon’s working group and criticizing its counter-extremism activities as a recruitment killer.“They gave it a good start, but the lack of backing for many efforts, and the failure to support the extremism working group left the effort rather bereft,” said Heidi Beirich, the co-founder of the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism (GPAHE). “Just as the insurrection was downplayed by Republicans, so too has extremism in the military.”Though the Biden administration made some of the first real attempts at addressing the issue, it didn’t go far enough, says Beirich, particularly as Trump is set to take back control of the government in January and will decide if any of those initiatives live on.“Also a new screening database for tattoos was created, some tightening up of clearances, and some more investigative clarity, but a more fulsome effort should have been on the table,” she said. “Of course, Republicans are far more to blame as they politicized the whole process, made light of the problem and claimed efforts to root out extremists were giving the military a bad name.”As for Hegseth, there has been public speculation about some of his tattoos of crosses and medieval imagery and whether they would disqualify him from recruitment today.Hegseth, an Iraq and Afghan war veteran, was barred from attending Joe Biden’s 2021 inauguration after a fellow national guardsman accused him of being an “insider threat” and an extremist with problematic tattoos.Goldsmith continued: “I know that there’s been a lot of attention on his crusader tattoos. There hasn’t been enough attention on his actual books. He wrote a book that is titled American Crusade. The guy has tattoos … However, the bigotry and the hatred that he put in black and white, that is more important.”Hegseth’s 2020 book is replete with conspiracy theories and anti-Muslim rhetoric. His 2024 book, The War on Warriors, he also directly scorns the “woke” American generals pursuing counter extremism policies.“He’s made it clear he doesn’t care about this issue,” said Beirich. “I think we can assume whatever efforts that are happening are about to end. And that, to me, should be disqualifying for the position.”The problem with extremism in the American military and its veteran community dates as far back as the civil war. Following the end of the bloodiest conflict in US history, the Ku Klux Klan was founded and headed by Confederate veterans, while hundreds if not thousands joined in its earliest surges of racist violence during Reconstruction. After the world wars, the Klan targeted the recruitment of thousands of veterans, revitalizing their political significance in both eras.Historians have also well shown that stateside extremism, which includes white nationalism and neo-Nazism, booms after every major US war.For example, Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh was a soldier who served in Operation Desert Storm in the Gulf war before he planned his attack with conspirators who were also fellow veterans he had met during his service.In the contemporary era, neo-Nazis in groups like the Base and the now-disbanded Atomwaffen Division had members who had links to the US military. Both groups specifically sought out veterans and active duty servicemen for their combat and weapons training. Likewise, recent University of Maryland data found that at least 480 people with military service backgrounds were accused of extremist links between 2017 and 2023, which includes 230 people involved in the January 6 attacks.If successfully nominated, how Hegseth plans to prevent recruits with extremist backgrounds from joining up, has yet to be seen.Instead, Goldsmith forecasts Hegseth will be settling scores with whoever the former Fox News host sees as his political enemies.“If and when extremism is addressed by the department of defense under the Trump administration,” said Goldsmith, “I do think that they will take efforts to root out these imaginary communists that I’ve never fucking met in my life, and antifascists like myself.”Hegseth has long claimed he could easily address the Pentagon’s major recruitment shortfalls in recent years, but still advocates for halting the integration of women and transgender soldiers who are currently serving.“Trump wants to kick out everyone who’s trans,” said Goldsmith, “I think the number is 15,000, so if you overnight kick out 15,000 active duty troops just because of their gender identity, you’ve got an even bigger shortfall.“I think they are going to put ideology before national security.” More

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      Senior Biden aide commits to giving Ukraine avalanche of military assistance

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      The White House has gamed out a last-minute strategy to bolster Ukraine’s war position that involves an avalanche of military assistance and sweeping new sanctions against Russia, according to a background briefing from a National Security Council spokesperson.National security adviser Jake Sullivan met with the head of the office of the Ukrainian president Andriy Yermak for more than an hour on Thursday, committing to provide Ukraine with hundreds of thousands of additional artillery rounds, thousands of rockets and hundreds of armored vehicles by mid-January, according to the briefing shared with the Guardian.The US is also pledging to support Ukraine’s manpower challenge, offering to train new troops at sites outside Ukrainian territory. This comes alongside a nearly finalized $20bn in loans, which will be backed by profits from immobilized Russian sovereign assets.The United States is tying that to a number of new sanctions to come in the coming weeks, all with the intent of complicating Russia’s ability to sustain its war effort and boosting Ukraine’s bargaining power at the negotiation table that could lay the groundwork for a future settlement.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe White House’s latest move comes a little more than a month in advance of Donald Trump’s inauguration, when the US may unload an all-new strategy for a ceasefire altogether.According to a Reuters report, the president-elect’s team is quietly developing a peace proposal for Ukraine that would effectively sideline Nato membership and potentially cede significant territory to Russia, signaling a dramatic shift from current US policy. Trump, for his part, has often stated that he would end the Ukraine and Russia war within 24 hours.Still, Ukrainian officials, including Yermak and Ambassador Oksana Markarova, have been meeting with key figures in Trump’s transition team this week, including JD Vance, Florida representative and potential National security adviser Mike Waltz and Trump’s pick for Russia and Ukraine envoy Keith Kellogg, in a bid to secure continued support.These meetings carry heightened urgency, particularly after House speaker Mike Johnson blocked a vote on $24bn in additional aid to Ukraine. The Pentagon has nonetheless committed to sending $725m in military assistance this week, the largest shipment since April. More

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      Trump’s nominee for secretary of defense should alarm all of us | Moira Donegan

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      It takes a lot to get a man’s mother to declare him an “abuser of women”. Mothers, as a rule, are not known for their ungenerous assessments of their sons’ behavior. But Penelope Hegseth, the mother of the Fox News personality Pete Hegseth, Donald Trump’s nominee to lead the Department of Defense, once did just that in an email to her son.“I have no respect for a man that belittles, lies, cheats, sleeps around and uses women for his own power and ego,” Hegseth’s mother wrote to him. “You are that man (and have been for years) and as your mother, it pains and embarrasses me to say that, but it’s the sad, sad truth.” The email – which Hegseth’s mother later disavowed – appears to have come around the time of the dissolution of Hegseth’s second marriage; during Hegseth’s first marriage, according to a new report by Vanity Fair, he confessed to no fewer than five affairs.The April 2018 email from Hegseth’s mother came just months after an October 2017 incident in which a woman alleges that Hegseth raped her at a Republican women’s conference in the seaside town of Monterey, California. In a police report, the woman said that while she was intoxicated at the time of the incident and believed she may have been drugged, she “remembered saying no a lot” and claimed that Hegseth had blocked her from a hotel room door with his body when she had tried to leave. The woman subsequently went to the hospital; Hegseth later paid her a settlement, and she signed a non-disclosure agreement. Hegseth denies any misconduct and has not been charged with a crime.That 2017 incident, in which heavy drinking at a work event allegedly culminated in Hegseth committing sexual assault, is in line with another slew of allegations against the defense secretary nominee published last Sunday by the New Yorker, in which whistleblowers at not one, but two of Hegseth’s former employers compiled allegations of his drinking, financial mismanagement, and disrespectful, lewd and abusive behavior towards women, going so far as to risk their own careers in order to report Hegseth to management.During his three-year tenure as the president of the conservative group Concerned Veterans for America (CVA), Hegseth was repeatedly so intoxicated at work events that he had to be carried out, according to a report compiled by multiple former CVA employees that was sent to management in February 2015. That report also claims Hegseth took employees to a strip club in Louisiana as part of a work event and was almost thrown out of the venue by security when he tried to climb on stage with the dancers. A separate letter sent to CVA management – there seem to have been many letters about him sent to management – claims that when Hegseth was at an Ohio bar in May 2015, he drunkenly chanted: “Kill all Muslims! Kill all Muslims!”According to the New Yorker, Hegseth’s alleged misbehavior at the CVA was consistent with drunken impropriety that Hegseth is alleged to have engaged in as the head of another conservative non-profit, Vets for Freedom, which was dissolved after Hegseth’s leadership drove it to insolvency amid many work parties that were described by one insider as “trysts”.Hegseth was pushed out as president of CVA in 2016, and landed his Fox News gig shortly thereafter. But his heavy drinking appears to have continued. NBC News interviewed 10 current and former employees of Fox News who reported that Hegseth smelled of alcohol at work and complained of being hungover before going on the air. One of them said they had smelled alcohol on him at work as recently as last month.Together, the allegations paint a picture of a drunken, incompetent and sexually entitled man, prone to over-indulgence and short on self-discipline, who abuses alcohol, is habitually unprofessional, mismanages other people’s money and treats women as one might a Kleenex. He comes off as ineffectual, disrespectful, wasteful and unworthy of respect. Trump wants to put him in charge of 3 million civilian and military employees, one of the largest budgets of any government agency in human history and the nation’s security and military readiness.Incompetence has never been a disqualifying quality in Trump’s orbit, and abuse of women, at times, has seemed like it counts, in Trump world, almost as a virtue. Trump’s is a masculinity of domination and swagger, in which women’s bodies are a theater on which men prove their own strength; respect or kindness towards others is a sign of weakness; and good governance is for nerds and losers who simply don’t have the balls for self-dealing.By that metric, allegations that Hegseth sexually abused women, cheated former employers out of money and was habitually drunk may not even be seen as negatives. They may be interpreted, in Maga world, as signs of a man with the kind of baseless self-assurance, disregard for others and determination to dominate that the Trump administration has always prized most highly, not least of all in Trump himself.But there are signs that some Republicans, at least, remain capable of something like embarrassment. NBC News reported on Tuesday that as many as six Republican senators are cooling on the prospect of voting to confirm Hegseth; in the narrowly divided Senate that will convene next year, he can afford to lose only three.Perhaps the senators are put off by the allegations of Hegseth’s alcohol abuse in a way they were not by his allegations of sexual abuse. But ultimately, the senators will only withhold their votes from a Trump nominee if they feel they can politically afford to do so. Like many of Hegseth’s alleged encounters with women, the vote will come down to an exercise in domination – and that is the kind of contest that Trump has always aimed to win.

      Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist More

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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