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WASHINGTON (AP) — Five former secretaries of defense are calling on Congress to hold immediate hearings on President Donald Trump’s recent firings of the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and several other senior military leaders, according to a letter obtained by The Associated Press. The five men — who represented Republican and Democratic administrations over the past three decades — said the dismissals were alarming, raised “troubling questions about the administration’s desire to politicize the military” and removed legal constraints on the president’s power. Late last week, Trump fired Air Force Gen. CQ Brown Jr. as chairman of...

VIENTIANE, Laos — Women and racial diversity are vital to the strength of U.S. armed forces, outgoing Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said in an exclusive interview with NBC News as he prepares to shortly exit the top military post after four years. “I have spent 41 years in uniform, three long tours in Iraq, one in Afghanistan, and everywhere I went on a battlefield, there were women in our formation,” Austin said. “I would tell you that, you know, our women are the finest troops in the world. Quite frankly, some of the finest in the world.” President-elect Donald Trump’s...

Hegseth, a staunch opponent of DEI initiatives and former guard at Guantanamo Bay, has less leadership experience than current Secretary of Defense, Lloyd Austin, and critics have called him “unqualified.” America’s next secretary of defense could be starkly different from what the country has ever seen before. On Tuesday, just a day after Veterans Day, President-elect Donald Trump selected Pete Hegseth, 44, a former FOX News commentator and former Army National guardsman, to lead one of the world’s most powerful militaries. Hegseth will succeed Secretary-General Lloyd Austin III, the nation’s first Black Secretary of Defense, a historic choice made by...

Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin arrived in Kyiv early Monday morning, as the future of US aid to Ukraine hangs in the balance of the imminent US presidential election and as Russia continues to make small but steady gains on the battlefield. Austin met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and Defense Minister Rustem Umerov while in Kyiv to discuss Ukraine’s weapons needs and how the US can continue to support the country’s military over the next year, the secretary told a small group of reporters traveling with him to Kyiv on Sunday night. The secretary’s visit will also serve as...

Top Democrats are so alarmed about Joe Biden's ailing health some fear a shadowy cabal is keeping him in power so they can pull levers behind the scenes, it is claimed. The astonishing theory was detailed in the liberal New York magazine. Its reporter Olivia Nuzzi revealed that even Democrat elites are stumped as to how and why the fast-declining 81 year-old is being allowed to continue his re-election bid. Nuzzi said she had heard questions being posed by high-ranking Democrats on the east and west coasts about whether Biden is a puppet whose strings are being pulled by another...

We're PRETTY sure RFK Jr. didn't mean to give the Biden administration up since it sounds like he is trying to defend Biden and give him the benefit of the doubt even though he has been denied Secret Service protection. By the Biden administration. So maybe he did mean to? After all, it does sound like he is calling out the shadow president ... From the rest of his post: I suspect that the White House decision to deny me Secret Service protection — and many other more important decisions — are being made, not by the President himself, but...

(Robert F. Kennedy Jr.) "The Russians tried repeatedly to settle...major thing they wanted was for us to keep NATO out of Ukraine. The Big Military Contractors want to add new countries to NATO...Why? Because that country has to conform its military purchases... Northrop Grumman, Raytheon, General Dynamics, Boeing and Lockheed get a trapped market... We committed 113 billion dollars...we then committed another 24 billion since then... Biden's asking for another 60 billion. But the big, big expenses are going to come after the war when we have to rebuild.... Mitch McConnell was asked "Can we really afford to spend 113...

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin warned Congress on Tuesday during a private briefing that if they do not pass more aid to Ukraine, it would “very likely” lead to U.S. troops fighting a war in Europe.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken says democratic principles are on the decline around the world while human rights abuses are on the rise. The US State Department issued a dire warning about the state of democracy in several countries. While speaking about the department’s 46th Annual Report on Human Rights Practices in nearly 200 countries around the world, Secretary Blinken said there was a trend in backsliding in 2021. “For many years running, we have seen an alarming recession of democracy, the rule of law, respect for human rights in many parts of the world,” he stated. “In the time...

“Therefore, for the sake of our diplomatic effort to resolve this crisis, we believe it is vital to restore Iran’s fear that its current nuclear path will trigger the use of force against it by the United States,” the letter signed by Leon Panetta and David Petraeus read. Al Arabiya English reports now that Two former CIA directors and a handful of former senior US officials urged President Joe Biden to “restore Iran’s fear that its current nuclear path will trigger the use of force,” in a letter published Friday. “Diplomacy appears to be moving backward,” the letter read on...

Former government officials Tony Blinken, Michele Flournoy & Lloyd Austin may run Biden’s national security agencies — their firm is telling investors it expects to profit off ties to those officials. Two former government officials who may now run President-elect Joe Biden’s national security team have been partners at a private equity firm now promising investors big profits off government business because of its ties to those officials, according to government documents reviewed by The Daily Poster. Pine Island Capital Partners lists former Under Secretary of Defense Michele Flournoy and retired General Lloyd Austin as a partner in the firm,...

Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said Saturday that China's increased military activity near Taiwan seemingly indicates a "rehearsal" of the country's future intentions. Austin made his comment during a keynote discussion with Fox News anchor Bret Baier at the Reagan National Defense Forum in Simi Valley, California. Pointing out how China has been launching multiple air operations near Taiwan in recent months, Baier asked Austin, "Do you think that these are training flights for future operations?" Austin noted that he didn't want to speculate, but said, "Certainly, it looks like them exploring what their true capabilities [are], and sure,...

@RudyGiuliani : A meeting is coming out in 1-2 days in State Dept. in which Hunter snuck in the back door ... That meeting took place with Tony Blinken."