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🇺🇸 A judge ordered the Pentagon to restore press credentials and stop screening journalists. The Pentagon's response: comply with the ruling, close the entire correspondents' corridor, and relocate media to an external annex that's still under construction. The court said you can't control who covers the military. The military said fine, but you're covering it from across the parking lot now. This is happening during the biggest U.S. military operation in two decades, when press access to the Pentagon matters more than at any point since Iraq. Source: @SeanParnellASW @BreannaMorello

“A federal judge has struck down some of the Defense Department's strict controls on how journalists with access to the Pentagon are allowed to report — ending a policy that caused many news outlets to leave the Pentagon. U.S. District Judge Paul L. Friedman sided with the New York Times and a reporter at the newspaper, Julian E. Barnes, who sued in December, arguing the new Pentagon policy violated the First Amendment, Fifth Amendment and due process provision of the Constitution.”

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer’s push to revive expired enhanced Obamacare tax credits by contrasting their cost with Pentagon spending is colliding with fresh scrutiny of the Affordable Care Act, as policy experts warn the program is riddled with improper enrollments, fraud vulnerabilities and rising taxpayer costs. "We need to reform the ACA, not throw more taxpayer money at it," Brian Blase, president of the health policy research group Paragon Health Institute, said. He added that "government subsidies don’t make the coverage more affordable. They make it more expensive overall because you have to consider the taxpayer amount." Blase spoke...

WASHINGTON, March 18 (Reuters) - The ​Pentagon has ‌asked the White House ​to ​approve a more ⁠than $200 ​billion request ​to the U.S. Congress to ​fund ​the war in ‌Iran, ⁠the Washington Post reported ​on ​Wednesday, ⁠citing a senior ​administration ​official.

Palantir is still using Anthropic’s Claude as the artificial intelligence startup’s clash with the Pentagon plays out, CEO Alex Karp told CNBC Thursday. “The Department of War is planning to phase out Anthropic; currently, it’s not phased out,” Karp told CNBC’s Seema Mody at Palantir’s AIPcon 9 in Maryland. “Our products are integrated with Anthropic, and in the future, it will probably be integrated with other large language models.” The Department of Defense officially designated Anthropic a supply-chain risk last week, but is still using Claude models to support the war in Iran, as CNBC previously reported. Anthropic sued the...

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The Pentagon has ordered a Marine expeditionary unit with about 2,200 Marines and three Navy amphibious warships from Japan toward the Middle East, a significant new U.S. force movement amid tensions tied to the war with Iran. U.S. officials told ABC News that the deployment centers on the 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit, a forward-deployed force based in Japan that normally operates in the Indo-Pacific. At the center of the movement is the Tripoli Amphibious Ready Group, led by USS Tripoli, an America-class amphibious assault ship. USNI News reported that the Tripoli had been operating in the Philippine Sea earlier this...

SpaceX and Tesla CEO Elon Musk gave a two-word retort after Anthropic leader Dario Amodei claimed in an interview that he isn’t sure if his company’s AI models have gained consciousness. "Anthropic CEO says Claude may or may not have gained consciousness, as the model has begun showing symptoms of anxiety," read a post on X by cryptocurrency-based prediction market Polymarket, to which Musk replied, "He’s projecting." The comment from Musk, who is also the founder of xAI, comes as Anthropic is at odds with the Pentagon over its use in a separate matter. In an interview with The New...

Senate Armed Services Chair Roger Wicker said Tuesday that lawmakers are considering whether the Pentagon may need additional funding as questions grow over U.S. munitions supplies and the strain of ongoing U.S. strikes on Iran. The cost of the operations are likely to surface at the Trump administration’s briefing later in the day for both chambers of Congress. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, CIA Director John Ratcliffe and Joint Chiefs Chair Gen. Dan Caine are expected to brief lawmakers amid widespread Democratic opposition. “Well, we’re talking about that, and that will undoubtedly be discussed at...

A Democrat running for office in California has reportedly called to defund the Pentagon, but her husband works for a company that built missiles the United States is believed to have used during the recent strikes on the Islamic regime in Iran. Fatima Iqbal-Zubair is a candidate for the state’s 65th Assembly District and her husband, Fazlul Zubair, is an engineer manager for Raytheon, the New York Post reported Monday. The United States and Israel launched a joint military operation targeting Iran on Saturday in part to ensure the regime will never have the capability to threaten the world with...

Washington — Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced Friday that the Pentagon would be canceling troops' attendance at graduate programs at some of the nation's top universities, calling them "woke breeding grounds of toxic indoctrination." "Today, just like we did with Harvard, I am ordering the complete and immediate cancellation of all Department of War attendance at institutions like Princeton, Columbia, MIT, Brown, Yale and many others, starting next academic year, 2026-2027," Hegseth said in a video statement. "We cannot and will not continue to send our most capable officers, senior officers, into graduate programs that undermine the very values they...

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth summoned Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei to the Pentagon on Tuesday morning for what senior Defense officials made clear was anything but a courtesy call. The meeting represents a breaking point between the U.S. military and the AI company behind Claude — the only artificial intelligence model currently operating inside the military’s classified systems — over whether a private technology company gets to set the rules for how its tools are used in war. The core dispute is over what conditions Anthropic will place on military use of Claude. The company has sought formal assurances that its...

YORBA LINDA, California — Fifty yards from Richard Nixon’s grave, which sits not quite in the shadow of the modest home where he was born, a series of exhibits at his presidential library describe him as a psychologically unbalanced fool. The Nixon White House, museum display panels announce, was consumed by “a climate of deep suspicion.” The infamous Plumbers took action against “perceived political opponents within the Federal Government.” A video display allows visitors to choose clips on the theme of Nixon’s “Conspiracy Thinking.” Paranoid, the president mindlessly lashed out at enemies that he hallucinated. This is still the official...

The Pentagon has ordered a pause on training new recruits living with HIV. What’s more, military leadership is considering reinstating a ban that prohibits Americans who are HIV positive from enlisting in the Armed Services altogether, reports CNN. A decision is likely to come down “in the next few weeks.”

Pete Hegseth flashed a Vulcan salute Monday as he joined Elon Musk at SpaceX headquarters, where the war secretary touted the Pentagon’s wartime approach to unleashing technological innovation. “We want to make Star Trek real,” Musk said as he welcomed Hegseth to Starbase, the small South Texas town incorporated by SpaceX employees and home to the tech tycoon’s massive rocket-building facility and launch site. “Star Trek real,” Hegseth quipped after being introduced by Musk. The war secretary’s remarks – part of his “Arsenal of Freedom” tour – emphasized the need for the US to “win the strategic competition for 21st...

A pizza place near the Pentagon received an unusual rush in orders just an hour after the US launched its attack on Venezuela. Pizzato Pizza in Arlington, Virginia, “suddenly surged in traffic” at 2 a.m. Friday, according to Pentagon Pizza Report, an online account that tracks a pizza spot supposedly favored by federal agents.

The new Pentagon press corps entered the imposing building on the Potomac for the first time this week as those disgruntled members of the former press corps took to their pages to complain about it. The New York Times went a step further and is suing the Pentagon over what they say is a violation of the First Amendment. The Times claimed that the outlets that are currently covering the Pentagon were selected "based on viewpoint." They state that in "In describing the '[n]ew media outlets' willing to accede to the Department's 'media access policy,' [Sean] Parnell wrote that they...

NEW YORK (AP) — The New York Times filed a lawsuit Thursday against the Pentagon, attempting to overturn new rules imposed by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth that have led to most mainstream media outlets being banished from the building. The newspaper said the rules violate the Constitution’s freedom of speech and due process provisions, since they give Hegseth the power to determine on his own whether a reporter should be banned. Outlets such as the Times walked out of the Pentagon rather than agree to the rules as a condition for getting a press credential. During her briefing Tuesday, Pentagon...

The New York Times sued Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Thursday over the Pentagon's new policy that requires media outlets to pledge not to gather information unless defense officials formally authorize its release. That policy, unveiled in September, includes a ban on credentialed journalists reporting even unclassified material that isn't expressly approved for public consumption by Defense Department brass. The Times said the Pentagon policy represents an attempt to force reporters to rely solely upon officials for news involving the military and would unlawfully permit their punishment for failing to do so. The Times — and NPR — are among...

In a development that has rattled European capitals and raised alarms across NATO, the Pentagon has abruptly halted its working-level communications with Germany’s Defense Ministry, effectively severing one of the alliance’s most important military coordination channels. The revelation, reported by The Atlantic, comes from German Lieutenant General Christian Freuding, who described the sudden silence from Washington as both unprecedented and deeply worrying. According to Freuding, communications that once flowed freely “day and night” between U.S. and German military officials have now been cut off entirely. Messages go unanswered. Routine coordination has stopped. And Germany — a central pillar of Europe’s...