'Rogue President': Trump Removal of Senior Military Leaders, Military Lawyers Raises Alarm

Feb 25, 2025 | Former Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall talks with Rachel Maddow about Donald Trump's dismissal of senior military leaders, and former Fox News personality, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, removing the U.S. military’s top judge advocates general, and his concern that Trump's disregard for the rule of law will extend to U.S. military conduct.

Trump Fires Black Joint Chiefs Chair Hegseth Accused of Promoting Diversity

THE GUARDIAN: US secretary of defense had questioned whether history-making air force general CQ Brown Jr got job because of race

Donald Trump abruptly fired the air force general CQ Brown Jr as chair of the joint chiefs of staff on Friday, sidelining a history-making Black fighter pilot and respected officer as part of a campaign to purge the military of leaders who support diversity and equity in the ranks.

The ouster of the second Black general to serve as chair of the joint chiefs comes three months after Pete Hegseth, the secretary of defense, outlined a plan for ridding the US military of diversity, equity and inclusion efforts during a podcast interview.

“First of all, you’ve got to fire the chairman of the joint chiefs,” Hegseth said during a November interview on the Shawn Ryan Show. “Any general that was involved, general, admiral, or whatever, that was involved in any of that DEI woke shit has got to go.” » | Guardian staff and agencies | Saturday, February 22, 2025

Thom Hartmann: Why Hegseth Is Trying to Ban Military Religious Freedom w/Mikey Weinstein

Feb 18, 2025 | Donald Trump's Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth is attacking the religious freedom of America's military by working to ban the military from contacting the Military Religious Freedom Foundation. Mikey Weinstein joins Thom Hartmann to let Pete Hegseth know what we think of his Christo-fascist plan.

Donald Trump Orders Military to Stop Recruiting Black People!

Feb 11, 2025 | Jesse talks about reporting from Military.com about Trump’s direction to the Pentagon to stop recruiting highly skilled and capable candidates because they’re Black.

Donald Trump Bans Trans People from Serving in the Military in Hateful Executive Order

LGBTQ NATION: His order says that no trans person is "honorable, truthful, and disciplined."

President Donald Trump has signed an executive order banning transgender people from the military. The order refers to trans identity as a mental disorder that is selfish, dishonorable, deceitful and undisciplined. It gives the secretary of defense 60 days to implement its directives and will affect an estimated 8,000 trans soldiers. The order also comes at a time when the military is experiencing a recruitment shortage. The Human Rights Campaign and Lambda Legal have pledged to challenge the ban in court.

The directive follows others recently issued by Trump gutting the military branches’ diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) efforts, getting rid of military leadership that supported these efforts, and also follows an executive order from his first day in office directing the federal government to recognize only two “immutable sexes,” male and female. » | Daniel Villarreal | Tuesday, January 28, 2025

Trump Moves Toward Pushing Openly Transgender People Out of Military

THE NEW YORK TIMES: The president also ordered the Pentagon to end diversity programs, reinstate many service members dismissed for refusing the coronavirus vaccine and create a new missile defense system.

President Trump on Monday moved toward pushing openly transgender people out of the military, directed the Pentagon to end diversity programs and ordered the reinstatement of many service members dismissed for refusing the coronavirus vaccine as he sought to reshape America’s armed forces.

The directives, contained in a batch of executive orders, advanced what Mr. Trump and his new defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, have described as an effort to return the military to an unapologetically masculine professional culture, while rejecting the sorts of equitable hiring and staffing practices that Mr. Hegseth has blamed for lowering the military’s standards and warfighting capacity.

In some respects, the orders on Monday mirrored others Mr. Trump signed last week aimed at eliminating diversity, equity and inclusion programs across the federal government and limiting government recognition of an individual’s gender to their sex at birth.

But the new guidance related to gender went much further by authorizing the Defense Department to potentially bar transgender soldiers by considering identifying as a gender other than the one assigned at birth an impediment to the physical and mental well-being necessary for military service. » | Zach Montague | Reporting from Doral, Fla. | Tuesday, Januardy 28, 2025

Biden Pardons Veterans Convicted under Military Ban on Gay Sex | BBC News

Jun 27, 2024 | US President Joe Biden has pardoned thousands of veterans who were convicted of crimes under a military law that banned gay sex for more than 60 years. The veterans were convicted under a provision of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, which criminalised sodomy from 1951 to 2013. The US Congress had repealed the portion of the code that outlawed consensual sodomy in 2013.

This military provision is separate from the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" President Bill Clinton-era policy, which banned openly gay and lesbian Americans from serving in the military.

The BBC’s Caitríona Perry spoke with Steve Marose, a former US Air Force officer who was charged with three counts of consensual sodomy in the late 1980s. Marose served two years in prison for those charges.

US Soldier Intentionally Crossed North Korean Border - BBC News

Jul 19, 2023 | North Korea has detained a serving US army soldier who crossed the heavily fortified border from South Korea without permission. Travis King, 23, was on an organised tour of the UN-run zone dividing the two countries. Officials in Seoul have confirmed that King, a Private 2nd Class, recently spent two months in prison in South Korea previously for assault charges. He was then released from prison on 10 July and escorted to the airport for a US-bound flight. According to reports, he was able to leave the terminal and get a tour of the border, from where he crossed over into North Korea.

Commentary: The Powerful 'Pansies' of the U.S. Military

Major General Randy Taylor
ADVOCATE: Former Army Secretary Eric Fanning has a few thoughts on Republicans smearing the armed forces.

This week, under questioning from Matt Gaetz, perhaps the least ethical member of Congress right now (and wow, that is a hard title to get!), the Joint Chiefs Chairman, Army General Mark Milley, fought back at the pervy congressman’s whine about the military being woke.

"And I personally find it offensive that we are accusing the United States military, our general officers, our commissioned, noncommissioned officers of being, quote, 'woke' or something else, because we're studying some theories that are out there."

Later, Gaetz had the gall to tweet about Milley: "With Generals like this it’s no wonder we’ve fought considerably more wars than we’ve won." Gaetz wouldn't last 10 minutes at West Point.

Never in American history has a political party gone after the U.S. military. The military is sacrosanct. It is revered. It protects our freedom, our democracy. It is the envy of the world.

Gaetz and his bigoted lot are trying to ignite shitstorms over being "woke" and the teaching of critical race theory. These are attempts to score political points with the racist Trump base, and they are using the venerable U.S. military as the whipping post for their lies and slander.

This is the same Republican party that wrapped itself in knots for years over trying to label itself as vanguards of the armed forces. But now the party follows someone like Gaetz's lead on how to untie itself from the military. The old Grand Old Party, now renamed as the Grotesquely Obnoxious Perjurers, are falsely accusing the military of being weak and disgustingly lambasting it for supporting equality. » | John Casey | Friday, June 25, 2021

Why Is the US Removing Military Assets from Saudi Arabia? | Inside Story

The United States is removing its Patriot anti-air missiles, and other weapons systems from Saudi Arabia. Donald Trump says it is part of an effort to scale back on a military presence that he says doesn't benefit the US

American weapons and fighter jets were sent to the Kingdom last year after Saudi-Aramco oil facilities were attacked. They were also intended as a deterrent, as tensions rose between Tehran and Washington.

But the reduction in the U.S. military presence is believed by some to be based on assessments Iran no longer poses an immediate threat to U.S. strategic interests. So, what's exactly changed? And is oil politics at play?

Presenter: Peter Dobbie | Guests: Joel Rubin, President of the Washington Strategy Group; Mahjoob Zweiri, Director of Gulf Studies Center at Qatar University; Mohammad Marandi, Head of the American Studies Department at Tehran University

Bertram Schaffner on Helping Gay Soldiers during WWII

WWII Veteran Bertram Schaffner, a gay man himself, talks about how he dealt with the military's anti-gay policy while evaluating draftees.

Trump Allegedly Said Dead Soldier ‘Knew What He Signed Up For’, Says Congresswoman

A Florida congresswoman alleged on Tuesday that Donald Trump told the widow of a soldier who died in combat that he ‘knew what he signed up for’. Representative Frederica Wilson said she was in the car with Myeshia Johnson on the way to Miami airport to receive the body of Johnson's husband, Sgt La David Johnson, when Trump called. Wilson said she heard part of the conversation on speak

Don't Be a Sucker - 1947

In this anti-fascist film produced by US Military in the wake of WWII, the producers deconstruct the politically motivated social engineering of Germany by the Nazi regime. Its argument is just as timely today.

How a 1947 US government anti-Nazi film went viral after Charlottesville: Don’t Be a Sucker, a 17-minute film made in 1947 by the US war department to warn against fascism, was retweeted over 130,000 times last weekend »

Bill O'Reilly On ‘The Glenn Beck Show” (July 28, 2017)

Bill O’Reilly joins Glenn to discuss the GOP’s healthcare failure and his theory on why Sen. John McCain voted against getting rid of ObamaCare. What is going on between President Trump and Attorney General Sessions at this point? Why is President Trump allowing The New York Times into the White House? Who is the high level leaker in the West Wing? Why did the president bring the transgender debate into the week’s news cycle? Are things moving to another nasty level with Vladimir Putin and Russia?

Trump's Transgender Backlash

Donald Trump Bans Transgender People from the US Military

Trump's Military Transgender Ban Draws Quick Outrage

The 'Special Report' All-Star panel weighs in

Outrage as Trump Bans Transgender People from Serving in US Military

Outrage as Trump bans transgender people from serving in US military. There is growing anger in the US after President Donald Trump abruptly announced he was banning transgender people from serving in the military. Tweeting his decision, Trump said Washington cannot be burdened with the medical costs and the disruption of having transgender people in the armed forces. Protests have been growing since his announcement. Al Jazeera's White House correspondent Kimberley Halkett reports from Washington, DC.

Spending Blitz: Trump Unveils $54 Billion Hike in the Military Spending (Parts 1 & 2)

America to Allow Women to Serve in All Military Roles

THE TELEGRAPH: Ash Carter, the defence secretary, announces that woman will be able to apply for any job in the military

America is to allow women to serve in all roles in the military – including in front line combat roles – in a sweeping decision announced on Thursday by the defence secretary in a historic move to strike down gender barriers.

Ash Carter, speaking at the Pentagon, said he had decided to overrule objections raised by the Marine Corps that mixed-gender units were, in some cases, less efficient.

"I am announcing my decision to proceed with opening of all these remaining occupations and positions to women," said Mr Carter. "There will be no exceptions." » | Harriet Alexander, New York | Thursday, December 3, 2015