Tag: pentagon

300 Investigations Opened Since Pete Hegseth Cracked Down on Celebrations of Charlie Kirk’s Death

There are reportedly 300 Defense Department investigations that have been opened as a result of Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth cracking down on celebrations of Charlie Kirk’s political assassination, according to reports.

The Washington Post reports that the investigations, which include inquiries into “service members, civilian workers, and contractors,” have resulted in what the outlet described as “a smattering of disciplinary action so far.”

Per the Post:

As of Sept. 30, 128 service members have been investigated following Kirk’s death, and most of those cases are still under review, according to documents reviewed by The Post.

Of those, 26 have received administrative reprimands — an adverse mark that can hinder future assignments or promotions. Three have received “nonjudicial punishment,” which can lead to a reduction in rank or other disciplinary action, and three others are in the process of either being kicked out or leaving the military, the documents show.

A total of 158 non-uniformed personnel have been investigated as of Sept. 30, including 27 Defense Department civilians, according to the documents viewed by The Post. Two have been “removed from employment.” The status of the remaining civilians or contractors was not immediately clear.

Five former Defense Department employees are also under investigation, per the report.

Hegseth initially announced on September 11, 2025 — one day after Kirk’s horrific public assassination — that his department would be investigating all reports of Department of War and military personnel celebrating the murder of the Turning Point USA founder.

“We are tracking all these very closely — and will address, immediately,” Hegseth vowed. “Completely unacceptable.”

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Pete Hegseth Launches Counter-Narcotics Task Force Under President Trump’s Order to Destroy Cartels

Secretary of War Pete Hegseth announced on Friday that a counter-narcotics task force in the Caribbean will be launched under an order from President Trump.

Hegseth explained that the intention of the task force was to destroy the cartels and keep the United States safe from drugs.

The task force will be in SOUTHCOM, which is in the Caribbean and Latin America geographical locations.

Fox News Reported:

Secretary of War Pete Hegseth on Friday announced that the Department of War (DOW) is establishing a new counter-narcotics Joint Task Force in the Caribbean Sea.

Hegseth said the task force’s aim would be to “crush the cartels, stop the poison and keep America safe. The message is clear: if you traffic drugs toward our shores, we will stop you cold.”

The task force is launching at the direction of President Donald Trump, he said, in the SOUTHCOM area, which covers the Caribbean and Latin America.

The Trump administration has aggressively targeted drug boats that were intended to traffic drugs into the United States. Numerous drug boats have been blown up to stop the flow of drugs into our country.

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War Secretary Pete Hegseth Vows to Investigate Biden-Era Pentagon Funding for Gruesome Animal Testing Using Aborted Fetal Tissue

War Secretary Pete Hegseth has announced that the Department of War (DOW) will investigate multimillion-dollar grants funded under the Biden administration for horrifying experiments involving the implantation of aborted human fetal tissue into lab animals.

This probe follows a bombshell investigation by the White Coat Waste Project (WCW), shared exclusively with investigative journalist Laura Loomer, which exposed ongoing taxpayer-funded atrocities.

The WCW report, released earlier this week, details how the Pentagon has been pouring millions of dollars into these “Frankenstein-style” experiments, with some grants set to remain active until at least August 2026 unless immediate action is taken.

These practices involve implanting various body parts from aborted human fetuses, such as scalps, fingers, skin, organs, bone marrow, thymus, liver, and intestines, into mice, rats, and even monkeys. The investigation highlights the ethical nightmare of using aborted fetal tissue in animal testing, funded by American taxpayers without their knowledge or consent.

One particularly disturbing example uncovered by WCW involves the creation of “BLT mice,” where researchers implant bone marrow, thymus, and liver from aborted human fetuses into rodents to study human immune responses. In another grotesque procedure, human fetal intestines were grafted directly onto the intestines of live mice. Perhaps the most harrowing detail comes from experiments at the University of Texas, where fingers from 18-week-old aborted fetuses were implanted onto the backs of 5-day-old mice. After four weeks, these implanted fingers were deliberately fractured and left untreated on the animals for an additional two weeks, all in the name of “scientific research.”

The institutions implicated in these Biden-era grants include prestigious universities such as the University of Texas, Wistar Institute, University of California-Los Angeles (UCLA), Rutgers University, and the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

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Senate passes $925 billion NDAA bill for military, national security

The National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2026, a $925 billion bill setting funding levels for America’s national defense spending, passed in the Senate Thursday night and included more than a dozen amendment votes. 

The legislation authorizes roughly $879 billion for the Pentagon and about $35 billion for national security programs in the Department of Energy. It also sets aside nearly $11 billion for other defense activities.

“We’re ready to show on both sides of the aisle that the Senate can act in the interest of national security and get something done on a bipartisan basis,” Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Roger Wicker, R-Miss., told lawmakers Thursday.

“We have a great product before us,” Wicker added. “It makes huge changes, significant changes, and we need to send the signal that we can do this, get it then coordinated with the House version, which has already been passed, and move it to the President of the United States for his early signature.”

Multiple new offices, groups, and positions within the DOD would be established under the bill, including those focused on cybersecurity; nuclear security, deterrence, and energy; and AI innovation and oversight.

Hundreds of billions of dollars for munitions stocking and defense infrastructure are included, as well as billions for American defense activities in the Indo-Pacific, Europe, and the Middle East.

The bill also includes significant accountability reforms to how the DOD contracts with third parties and how it fulfills statutory reporting requirements. Additionally, it requires the Pentagon, which has failed seven consecutive audits, to report on current audit progress as the 2028 statutory deadline approaches.

Military members would receive a 3.8% pay raise, and education services for their children would receive a $50 million boost.

Senators will begin voting on dozens of amendments to the 1,454-page bill Thursday evening. Given the current government shutdown, lawmakers may have to delay a vote on passage. Once the bill passes, the Senate must conference with the House to ensure the lower chamber’s version of the NDAA matches their own.

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GREEN ARMY? Pentagon to Force Millions of Plant-Based Rations on U.S. Troops Beginning in 2027

The Department of Defense has announced that U.S. troops will soon be eating plant-based rations, a move being celebrated by left-wing activists and animal rights groups.

According to a press release from the organization Mercy for Animals, this “monumental shift” comes after years of lobbying from progressive lawmakers and advocacy groups.

Beginning in 2027, four of the 24 current military MRE (Meals, Ready-to-Eat) options will be replaced with fully plant-based versions.

The organization boasts that the change could result in over 6.5 million plant-based MREs distributed annually to service members.

The U.S. Army’s own website confirmed the changes in a September 22, 2025 report.

Julie Edwards, a senior food technologist at the Combat Feeding Division, revealed that the upcoming MRE 47, set for release in 2027, will include:

  • Fully plant-based entrees replacing the current vegetarian MREs
  • Plant-based “animal crackers,” protein bars, recovery bars, and fruit-flavored cereal

Mercy for Animals openly celebrated this as a cultural breakthrough, saying it represents “compassionate choices integrated into one of the world’s largest institutions.”

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Hegseth Announces 4th Deadly Strike On ‘Narco-Terrorist’ Boat Off Venezuela

Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth announced Friday another military strike on an alleged drug-smuggling boat off Venezuela which killed four people.

This marks at least the fourth such attack, and after President Trump formally notified Congress this week that the US was entering a “non-international armed conflict” with drug cartels. Hegseth made clear on social media, “These strikes will continue until the attacks on the American people are over!!!!”

Hegseth affirmed in a social media post that he had directed the latest strike on Trump’s orders, and released overhead drone video of the attack.

“The strike was conducted in international waters just off the coast of Venezuela while the vessel was transporting substantial amounts of narcotics – headed to America to poison our people,” Hegseth said on X.

“Our intelligence, without a doubt, confirmed that this vessel was trafficking narcotics, the people onboard were narco-terrorists, and they were operating on a known narco-trafficking transit route,” he added.

Trump’s rationale for the attacks in the aforementioned memo states the cartels are “non-state armed groups” whose actions smuggling drugs “constitute an armed attack against the United States”.

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Pentagon Confirms US Troops Will Stay in Iraq After Drawdown

The US Department of War has confirmed that US troops will remain in Iraq indefinitely under a deal signed with the Iraqi government last year that called for an end to the US-led anti-ISIS mission in the country.

According to Stars & Stripes, a senior Pentagon official has said that the US is slightly reducing its troop presence, bringing the total number of US military personnel from 2,500 to under 2,000. The majority of the remaining troops will be based in Erbil in the northern Kurdistan region.

The War Department official said that US troops were in the process of leaving the Al-Asad Air Base in western Iraq. The US will be keeping some military personnel in Baghdad who will be tasked with “bilateral security cooperation.”

While the US is keeping troops in Iraq, the official claimed that the drawdown was ending the “forever war” in the country. “First, we’re ending the forever war in Iraq,” the official said.

“Second, we’re shifting the burden of responsibility for combating ISIS in Iraq, from US and coalition forces to our Iraqi partners. We’ve trained them for a decade and they have the capability to counter ISIS and they have the will. And third, high credit to the Iraqis themselves,” the official added.

The Pentagon is also consolidating its presence in neighboring Syria, where it plans to reduce troop numbers to under 1,000. It has closed some bases in northeastern Syria, handing them over to the US-backed Kurdish-led SDF. The majority of the US troops in Syria are expected to be based at al-Tanf Garrison in the south, which is situated where the borders of Syria, Iraq, and Jordan converge.

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‘PREPARE FOR WAR’: Pete Hegseth announces new mission, high standards for US Armed Forces

Secretary of War Pete Hegseth spoke to military leaders at Quantico on Tuesday morning, letting them know just what the change from Department of Defense to Department of War really means. The new mission of the War Department, he said, is “preparing for war.”

“Fighting, preparing for war and preparing to win, unrelenting and uncompromising in that pursuit, not because we want war—no one here wants war—but it’s because we love peace,” Hegseth said. This mission is alongside his intense effort to eliminate “wokeness” from the military, which is an element in the Armed Forces that the administration believes puts service men and women at risk.

He announced 10 new directives, including that the “highest male standard” will be in place for all of those in the Armed Forces. A combat field test will also come into place, “that must be executable in any environment at any time and with combat equipment.” 

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Trump and Hegseth declare an end to ‘politically correct’ leadership in the U.S. military

U.S. President Donald Trump and U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth declared an end to “woke” culture in the military and targeted other policies of past administrations Tuesday before hundreds of top U.S. military officials who were abruptly summoned to Virginia from around the world.

Hegseth announced new directives for troops that include “gender-neutral” or “male-level” standards for physical fitness, while Trump bragged about U.S. nuclear capabilities and criticized the military leaders’ previous commander in chief, U.S. President Joe Biden.

“We must be so strong that no nation will dare challenge us, so powerful that no enemy will dare threaten us,” Trump said. ”And so capable that no adversary can even think about beating us.”

Hegseth had called military leaders to convene at the Marine Corps base in Quantico, near Washington, without publicly revealing the reason until this morning. Hegseth’s address largely focused on his own long-used talking points that painted a picture of a military that has been hamstrung by “woke” policies, and he said military leaders should “do the honorable thing and resign” if they don’t like his new approach.

Meetings between top military brass and civilian leaders are nothing new, but the gathering had fueled intense speculation about the summit’s purpose given the haste with which it was called and the mystery surrounding it.

Admirals and generals from conflict zones in the Middle East and elsewhere were summoned for a lecture on race and gender in the military, underscoring the extent to which the country’s culture wars have emerged as a front-and-center agenda item for Hegseth’s Pentagon, even at a time of broad national security concerns across the globe.

During his nearly hour-long speech, Hegseth said the U.S. military has promoted too many leaders for the wrong reasons based on race, gender quotas and “historic firsts.”

“The era of politically correct, overly sensitive don’t-hurt-anyone’s-feelings leadership ends right now at every level,” Hegseth said.

He said he is loosening disciplinary rules and weakening hazing protections, putting a heavy focus on removing many of the guardrails the military had put in place after numerous scandals and investigations.

Hegseth said he was ordering a review of “the department’s definitions of so-called toxic leadership, bullying and hazing to empower leaders to enforce standards without fear of retribution or second guessing.”

He called for “changes to the retention of adverse information on personnel records that will allow leaders with forgivable, earnest, or minor infractions to not be encumbered by those infractions in perpetuity.”

“People make honest mistakes, and our mistakes should not define an entire career,” Hegseth said. “Otherwise, we only try not to make mistakes.”

Bullying and toxic leadership has been the suspected and confirmed cause behind numerous military suicides over the past several years, including the very dramatic suicide of Brandon Caserta, a young sailor who was bullied into killing himself in 2018.

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All Analysis and Records Withheld on DoD’s Own Released UAP Footage

The Department of Defense (DoD) has denied a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request seeking records connected to the review, redaction, and release of a UAP video published by the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) earlier this year.

The request, filed May 19, 2025, sought internal communications, review logs, classification guidance, legal opinions, and technical documentation tied to the public posting of the video titled “Middle East 2024.” The video, showing more than six minutes of infrared footage from a U.S. military platform, was released in May 2025 and remains unresolved by AARO.

The DoD confirmed that responsive documents exist, but a September 19, 2025, final response stated that all records are being withheld in full.

The denial cited multiple FOIA exemptions, including:

  • Exemption (b)(5): covering deliberative inter- and intra-agency material.
  • Exemptions (b)(7)(A), (B), (C), and (E): law enforcement provisions shielding records that could interfere with enforcement proceedings, risk an unfair trial, invade personal privacy, or reveal law enforcement techniques.

AARO described the video as depicting “an apparent thermal contrast within the sensor’s field of view” that may be consistent with a physical object, but noted that without corroborating data, “the available data does not support a conclusive analytic evaluation.”

The Pentagon’s decision continues a recurring pattern in UAP transparency efforts: footage may be released for public viewing, but records explaining the deliberations and analysis behind such releases remain withheld.

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