Pentagon Pulls Promotion Of Admiral Who Allowed Drag Shows After Federalist Inquiry

The Defense Department is pulling the recommendation for Rear Admiral Michael Donnelly’s promotion, one week after the DoD refused to answer The Federalist’s inquiries, as the Daily Wire first reported.

“Secretary Hegseth has chosen to withdraw Admiral Donnelly’s nomination to lead [the] 7th fleet. The Secretary is thankful for his continued service and wishes him luck in his next position. The Department will open up nominations for the 7th fleet commander.”

Donnelly gained infamy for allowing drag shows aboard his ship, the USS Ronald Reagan, during Trump’s first term. The Federalist reached out to the White House to ask why Donnelly was being promoted despite his apparent opposition to Trump’s vision for the military, but did not receive a response. Upon reaching out to the Secretary of Defense’s Office with the same question, the Federalist was referred to Navy Public Affairs, which also did not respond.

On the campaign trail, Trump promised to fire woke generals and admirals, rid the military of other woke elements, and make the armed forces strong again. He even featured a video that spliced clips of Full Metal Jacket alongside Admiral Rachel Levine and Navy drag queen “Harpy Daniels” to illustrate the strength of the military under Trump versus wokeness under Biden.

“Harpy Daniels,” an openly nonbinary sailor and drag performer whose real name is Joshua Kelly, was crowned a Navy digital ambassador in 2022. In 2017 and 2018, he performed drag for Morale, Welfare, and Recreation Department events onboard the aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan. Donnelly was the ship’s captain at the time.

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Two Chinese Nationals Arrested, Accused of Espionage Targeting U.S. Navy Personnel

Two individuals believed to be working on behalf of the Chinese Communist Party’s intelligence agency have been arrested by U.S. authorities for allegedly spying on U.S. Navy service members and recruiting military personnel to assist their efforts.

The Department of Justice (DOJ) announced that Yuance Chen, residing in Happy Valley, Oregon, and Liren Lai, who entered the country on a tourist visa and was apprehended in Houston, Texas, were taken into custody last Friday. 

Both men face serious charges for acting as agents of China’s Ministry of State Security (MSS)—the country’s primary foreign intelligence service—conducting covert operations across the United States.

According to the DOJ, the pair engaged in a range of clandestine activities, including gathering sensitive information on Navy bases and personnel, facilitating cash payments through “dead drop” techniques and attempting to recruit U.S. Navy members to cooperate with the MSS.

FBI Director Kash Patel emphasized the importance of these arrests in protecting national security.

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US Navy Used Munitions at ‘Alarming Rate’ To Intercept Iranian Missiles Fired at Israel

A senior US military official told Congress on Tuesday that the US Navy used munitions at an “alarming rate” while defending Israel from Iranian missiles during the 12-day war that Israel started with massive strikes on Iran.

Adm. James Kilby, the acting chief of naval operations, was asked during a Senate Appropriations Committee hearing whether the US Navy had enough SM-3 interceptors, an advanced missile that can reach space and can cost between $10 million and $30 million for a single missile.

“We do, sir, but we are, to your point, using them at an alarming rate,” Kilby told Sen. Brian Schatz (D-HI), who said the US was using a large number of munitions to defend Israel.

Kilby continued, “As you know, those are missiles procured by the Missile Defense Agency and then delivered to the Navy for our use. And we are using them quite effectively in the defense of Israel.”

It’s unclear how many SM-3 missiles the US Navy fired to defend Israel during the 12 days of war. The munitions were also used last year when Iran fired missiles and drones at Israel in April 2024 in response to the Israeli bombing of its consulate in Damascus and in October when Iran launched another attack over Israel’s assassination of Hamas’s political chief, Ismail Haniyeh, when he was in Tehran.

The US also expended a lot of munitions during its bombing campaigns against the Houthis in Yemen. President Trump’s airstrikes in Yemen, which lasted from March 15 to May 6, were particularly violent and killed more than 200 civilians. Despite the heavy attacks, the Houthis, officially known as Ansar Allah, were able to keep up attacks on US warships, and Trump eventually gave up trying to stop them from firing at Israel.

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Violent Trump-hating anonymous X account is revealed to be high-ranking Naval JAG officer…

Another day, another unhinged leftist crashing and burning on social media… this time, it’s a Navy JAG officer who thought hiding behind an anonymous X account would give him a free pass to spew violent, anti-American garbage online.

Boy, was he wrong.

Meet Benjamin “Benny” France.

Just last year, he was posting proud updates on LinkedIn about joining the US Navy JAG Corps—something he was doing to follow in his dad’s footsteps—and taking the oath to defend the Constitution. Fast forward to this week, and Benny, behind a burner account, was threatening to “hunt down” federal agents, including ICE officers and January 6th defendants. Yes, you read that right: an active-duty US military officer publicly threatening federal agents.

When his identity was finally exposed, Benny panicked. He quickly deactivated his account and hoped to slip quietly back into the shadows. But the internet doesn’t work that way. The damage was done.

His chain of command has been notified, and for anyone interested in following up with Benny’s bosses, the contact info is already circulating. And it should be. This kind of threatening behavior toward law enforcement agents, who are already under constant fire, cannot be tolerated, especially from an officer whose entire job is to provide legal advice to command and influence policy that impacts thousands of sailors.

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Trump’s Pentagon keeps sending destroyers that fought in the Red Sea to the US southern border — a fourth one is on its way

A fourth US Navy destroyer that participated in the Red Sea conflict is on its way to support President Donald Trump’s southern border mission, bringing a range of advanced naval combat capabilities to a very different operating environment.

The Navy announced Friday that the Arleigh Burke-class destroyer USS Cole had left its homeport in Florida to support US Northern Command’s “border security objectives.”

The Trump administration has made cracking down on maritime-related criminal activity, including weapons smuggling, drug trafficking, and illegal immigration, a top priority, and the Defense Department has sent military assets to the US-Mexico border. Among these assets are five destroyers and a littoral combat ship on staggered deployments.

Cole, like the other warships, is set to be accompanied by a US Coast Guard Law Enforcement Detachment. They specialize in military operations at sea, such as counterterrorism, counterpiracy, and anti-immigration missions.

Arleigh Burke-class destroyers like the Cole are advanced naval surface ships with robust communications and sensor suites and are suited for long-endurance missions. These vessels can be armed with surface-to-air and land-attack missiles. Other armaments include the ship’s five-inch deck gun, machine guns, and a Phalanx Close-In Weapons System.

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Media, Democrats Breathlessly Defend Having Naval Ship Named After Gay Pederast

The Democrats and the corporate media came out guns blazing with a temper tantrum about how a U.S. Navy vessel may no longer be named after gay pedophile Harvey Milk.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth reportedly told the Office of the Secretary of the Navy to make plans for renaming the ship USNS Harvey Milk, according to Military.com, to come into “alignment with president and SECDEF objectives and SECNAV priorities of reestablishing the warrior culture.”

The left considers Milk a “gay rights icon” for being the first openly homosexual elected official in California. Milk was serving on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors when he was murdered in 1978.

Milk, however, was a predator of young boys, as The Federalist reported. Milk’s biographer wrote that the then-33-year-old pursued a 16-year-old boy who was apparently in a vulnerable place and “looking for some kind of father figure.”

The pedophile, who was dishonorably discharged from the Navy after being questioned about his sexual activities in 1955, would also use alcohol and drugs to subdue underage boys and young men and manipulate them into perverse sexual activity.

He also had an affinity for infamous cult leader Jim Jones, a fellow sexual predator and architect of the mass murder-suicide of his followers in Jonestown, Guyana. Jones funded Milk’s political career, and Milk praised Jones’s cult, telling him, “Rev. Jim, it may take me many a day to come back down from the high that I reach today. I found something dear today. … I found a sense of being that makes up for all the hours and energy placed in a fight. I found what you wanted me to find. I shall be back. For I can never leave.”

In the wake of the murder-suicide claiming the lives of more than 900 people, Milk flippantly called it “a great experiment that didn’t work. I don’t know, maybe it did.”

Milk was not exactly the person anyone would have expected to be honored with being the namesake of a U.S. Navy vessel — an idea first floated by the Obama administration. But at the news of the potential renaming, Democrats and their bootlickers in the corporate media immediately fell into a frenzy.

Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said the renaming is a “surrender of a fundamental American value: to honor the legacy of those who worked to build a better country” and that it was “a shameful, vindictive erasure of those who fought to break down barriers for all to chase the American Dream.”

Apparently for Pelosi, being a pedophile is part of building a “better country” and the “American Dream.”

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PETA thanks Trump for ending Navy experiments on cats and dogs, calls for broader ban

The People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) has thanked the Trump administration for banning Navy-funded experiments on dogs and cats.

On Thursday, PETA wrote a letter to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Navy Secretary John Phelan, thanking the administration for the new ban and requesting a broader ban on all animal testing in all military branches.

Phelan announced on Tuesday that all Department of the Navy testing on cats and dogs would be banned.

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Retired 4-star Navy admiral found guilty in bribery case

The Navy’s former No. 2 officer on Monday was found guilty of bribery and other counts related to steering work to a company in exchange for a job after leaving the service, according to a statement from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia.

Retired Adm. Robert Burke, former Navy vice chief of naval operations, was convicted of bribery and conspiracy to commit bribery, performing acts affecting a personal financial interest and concealing material facts. His conviction makes him the senior-most member of the U.S. military ever found guilty of committing a federal crime while serving on active duty.

“When you abuse your position and betray the public trust to line your own pockets, it undermines the confidence in the government you represent,” interim U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro said in a statement. “Our office, with our law enforcement partners, will root out corruption — be it bribes or illegal contracts — and hold accountable the perpetrators, no matter what title or rank they hold.”

Burke, 63, of Coconut Creek, Fla., was arrested last year and charged with the crimes along with the co-CEOs of technology services firm Next Jump — the company he joined after retirement — Yongchul “Charlie” Kim and Meghan Messenger. 

Kim and Messenger, both of New York, were each charged with bribery and conspiracy to commit bribery, according to the case’s unsealed indictment. They face trial in August, which is when Burke will be sentenced. 

The saga marks a devastating blow to the Navy, which in the past several years has struggled with a loss of confidence in numerous top officers, command failures and bribery scandals. 

Burke, who served aboard attack and ballistic missile submarines, rose through the ranks to eventually become chief of naval personnel in 2016 followed by vice chief of naval operations in June 2019. He then took command of U.S. Naval Forces Europe-Africa and Allied Joint Forces Command in June 2020 before retiring in summer 2022.

Kim and Messenger, meanwhile, via their company Next Jump, provided a workforce training pilot program to a small component of the Navy from August 2018 through July 2019. The deal appeared to turn sour, however, and the Navy terminated a contract with the company in late 2019 and directed it not to contact Burke.

But in summer 2021, Messenger and Kim met with Burke in Washington, D.C., to reestablish their company’s business relationship with the Navy. While at the meeting, the two “agreed that Burke would use his position as a Navy Admiral to steer a contract” to their firm — as well as influence other Navy officers to award another contract to the company — in exchange for his future employment there, according to the Justice Department. 

Burke in December 2021 then ordered his staff to award a $355,000 contract to Next Jump to train personnel under Burke’s command in Italy and Spain, which the company performed in January 2022. 

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Navy Scraps Biden-Era ‘Climate Action’ Plan, Returns Focus To Warfighting

The U.S. Navy officially scrapped a Biden-era “climate action” plan for the force on Tuesday, signifying the Trump administration’s ongoing efforts to refocus the military towards warfighting.

“Today, I’m focusing on the warfighters first, and I’m rescinding the Biden administration’s climate action program. Our focus needs to be on lethality and our warfighters,” Navy Secretary John Phelan announced in a video message.

Released in May 2022, the Climate Action 2030 program contained a series of actions and goals the Department of the Navy (DON) has taken or planned to undertake to tackle what Biden Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro characterized as the “urgency of the climate crisis.” In the document’s opening foreword, Del Toro claimed the Navy and Marine Corps “are in the crosshairs of the climate crisis,” and that “[c]limate change is one of the most destabilizing forces of our time, exacerbating other national security concerns and posing serious readiness challenges.”

The action plan identified two “performance goals,” one of which included the DON’s stated aim of reducing “greenhouse gas emissions and draw[ing] greenhouse gases out of the atmosphere to stabilize ecosystems, and achieve, as an enterprise, [President Biden’s] commitment to net-zero emissions by 2050, as well as other targets.”

In order to achieve these objectives and comply with a 2021 climate-related executive order by Biden, the DON laid out a series of targets for the branch to work towards in the years ahead. This included commitments to “[a]cquiring 100 percent zero-emission vehicles by 2035, including 100 percent zero-emission light-duty vehicle acquisitions by 2027” and “[a]chieving a 50 percent reduction in emissions from buildings by 2032.”

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New footage shows the mystery Tic Tac UFOs that rise from the Pacific Ocean and photographed by the Navy

When a UFO expert released a new video showing the infamous Tic Tac aircraft, it revealed bombshell theories about the phenomena.

Jeremy Corbell, an investigative journalist and filmmaker, has once again ignited public debate over UFOs since footage captured aboard the USS Jackson in 2023.

The video released on April 8, after a multi-year verification process, shows what Corbell and military witnesses describe as a ‘self-luminous, wingless, tailless’ craft rising from the Pacific Ocean.

But Corbell insists the new footage is far from an isolated event and says it fits a broader and increasingly alarming pattern: repeated sightings of intelligently controlled craft that defy known aerodynamics, appear regularly in the same offshore military training zone, and may originate from below the ocean’s surface.

According to the expert , the 2023 incident echoes two other major military encounters: the 2004 Nimitz sighting and a lesser-known but well-documented 2019 event in which a swarm of UAPs surrounded ten Navy warships over multiple nights.

The new footage, Corbell argues, is not a standalone revelation but part of a growing body of evidence pointing to intelligently controlled craft – capable of transmedian travel (moving seamlessly through space, air, and water) – that have repeatedly appeared over decades in the same region, warning Area 291, off the coast of Southern California. 

The 2023 release was supported by a new military witness: an active-duty U.S. Navy combat information center operator who claims to have seen the object rise from the ocean with his own eyes. 

Corbell and paranormal journalist George Knapp, known for handling sensitive testimonies, vetted the witness and aligned his account with radar data and forward-looking infrared (FLIR) imagery.

The Navy vet tracked the object using the ship’s high-powered Sapphire FLIR thermal-targeting system. Radar detected four unknown targets in the area, though two were captured on video. 

According to the witness, all four UAPs performed an instantaneous, synchronized maneuver – shooting off simultaneously without visible propulsion, suggesting intelligent coordination.

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