Pentagon

NEW YORK — With the Pentagon’s press room largely cleared of mainstream reporters, conservative activist and presidential ally Laura Loomer says she has been granted a credential to work there.

Loomer has an influential social media presence and the ear of President Trump, frequently campaigning for the firings of government officials she deems insufficiently loyal to his administration. Some targets have been in the field of national security, including Dan Driscoll, secretary of the Army.

Pentagon officials did not immediately return a message seeking comment on Tuesday. The Washington Post first reported the news of her attaining credentials.

Virtually all Pentagon reporters for legacy media outlets walked out last month rather than agree to a new policy they say would restrict their ability to report news not given approval for release by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. Several right-wing outlets have taken their place, although the banned journalists are continuing to work on stories related to the Pentagon.

“I’m excited to announce that after a year of breaking the most impactful stories that pertain to our national security and rooting out deceptive and disloyal bad actors” from the Defense Department, she was ready to join the press corps, Loomer said on X, formerly Twitter. She did not immediately return a message seeking comment.

Earlier this year, she criticized Driscoll for publicly honoring a Medal of Honor recipient who had previously spoken at a Democratic National Convention. Separately, Driscoll rescinded the appointment of a former Biden administration official to teach at West Point after Loomer attacked him for it.

Although Trump later downplayed Loomer’s influence, the president last spring fired a handful of National Security Council officials after she had presented him with evidence of their supposed disloyalty.

Still, she’s been a polarizing force among some in the administration, wary of her influence, which has included riding on Air Force One with Trump. Although granted space in the Pentagon press room, Loomer has not received reporting credentials at the White House. Loomer has also been criticized for entertaining conspiracy theories and making anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim posts.

“There is no denying that my investigative reporting has had a massive impact on the landscape of personnel decisions within the Executive Branch, our intelligence agencies and the Pentagon,” Loomer wrote on X. “I look forward to covering the Pentagon and breaking more stories that impact our country and our national security.”

In her social media post, she also reached out to people to alert her to news through “the Loomered Tip Line, the most influential Tip Line in all of DC.”

Phil Stewart, a national security reporter for Reuters, noted on a social media post Tuesday that Hegseth’s new media policy would make reporters subject to having their access revoked for seeking out information from Defense Department personnel that had not been authorized for release.

However, Loomer’s appeal for tips did not explicitly target people who work at the Defense Department.

Bauder writes for the Associated Press.

Richard B. Cheney, the former vice president of the United States who was the architect of the nation’s longest war as he plotted President George W. Bush’s thunderous global response to the 9/11 terror attacks, has died.

Vexed by heart trouble for much of his adult life, Cheney died Monday night due to complications of pneumonia and cardiac and vascular disease, according to a statement from his family. He was 84.

“For decades, Dick Cheney served our nation, including as White House Chief of Staff, Wyoming’s Congressman, Secretary of Defense, and Vice President of the United States,” the statement said. “Dick Cheney was a great and good man who taught his children and grandchildren to love our country, and to live lives of courage, honor, love, kindness, and fly fishing. We are grateful beyond measure for all Dick Cheney did for our country. And we are blessed beyond measure to have loved and been loved by this noble giant of a man.”

To supporters and detractors alike, Cheney was widely viewed as the engine that drove the Bush White House. His two-term tenure capped a lifetime of public service, both in Congress and on behalf of four Republican presidents.

It often fell to Cheney, not President Bush, to make an assertive, unapologetic case for the American-led wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and for the controversial antiterrorism measures such as the Guantánamo Bay prison. And after the election of President Obama, it was once again Cheney, not Bush, who stood among the new president’s fiercest critics on national security.

In an October 2009 speech — one emblematic of the role he embraced after leaving the White House — Cheney blasted the Obama administration for opening a probe of “enhanced” interrogations of suspected terrorists conducted during the Bush years.

“We cannot protect this country by putting politics over security, and turning the guns on our own guys,” he said. The rhetoric was textbook Cheney: blunt, unvarnished, delivered with authority.

While Cheney at the time was attempting to occupy the leadership vacuum in the GOP in the age of Obama, there was little doubt that he also was motivated to preserve a legacy that appears to be as much his as former President Bush‘s. For eight years, Cheney redrew the lines that defined the vice presidency in a way no predecessor had. His office enjoyed greater autonomy than others before it, while working to keep much of his influence from plain sight. That way of operating led to a challenge before the Supreme Court as well as a criminal investigation over a leak of classified information.

Moreover, the image of a powerful backroom operator managing the Bush administration’s “war on terror,” combined with his service as Defense secretary during the Persian Gulf War and his stint as a chairman of defense contracting giant Halliburton, made Cheney a towering bête noire to liberals worldwide. To them, he embodied a dangerous fusion of politics and the military-industrial complex — and they viewed his every move with deep suspicion.

To his champions, however, he was the firm-jawed, hulking, resolute defender of American interests.

Standing with the administration was more than a duty to Cheney; it was an article of faith. The invasion of Iraq “was the right thing to do, and if we had to do it over again, we’d do exactly the same thing,” Cheney said in a 2006 interview, even as the nation slowly learned that U.S. intelligence suggesting Saddam Hussein’s regime possessed weapons of mass destruction was simply not true.

Three years earlier, Cheney had pledged that the U.S. would be greeted in Iraq as “liberators” — a comment that haunted him as insurgents in the country gained strength, killed thousands of allied troops and extended the conflict for years. The war in Afghanistan would drag on for 20 years, ending in 2021 as it had begun, with the Taliban back in control.

While Cheney will largely be remembered for his leading role in the response to the 9/11 terror attacks, he had long worked the corridors of power in Washington. He was a White House aide to President Nixon and later chief of staff to President Ford. As a member of the House from Wyoming, he rose quickly to become part of the Republican leadership during the 1980s. In the early ’90s, he ran the Pentagon during the Gulf War.

Richard Bruce “Dick” Cheney was born in Lincoln, Neb., on Jan. 30, 1941, and spent much of his teenage years in Casper, Wyo. His father worked for the U.S. Soil Conservation Service.

As a young man, he was more interested in hunting, fishing and sports than in academics, and a stint at Yale University was short-lived. He eventually obtained bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the University of Wyoming and studied toward a doctorate at the University of Wisconsin.

In 1964, he married Lynne Ann Vincent, who became a lifelong political partner while strongly influencing Cheney’s conservatism. Daughter Elizabeth, who was elected to Congress in 2017, was born in 1966 and her sister, Mary, arrived three years later. The sisters became embittered years later when Elizabeth — who preferred Liz — took a stance opposing same-sex marriage, which seemed a slap to Mary and her wife. Cheney, however, offered his support for such unions, an early GOP voice for same-sex marriage. Years later, he came to Liz’s defense when she broke with fellow Republicans and voted to impeach President Trump following the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol. In addition to his wife and daughters, Cheney is survived by seven grandchildren.

A fellowship sent Cheney to Washington, where he soon began working for a politically shrewd House member who also was a lifetime influence, Donald H. Rumsfeld. When Rumsfeld joined the Nixon administration, Cheney followed.

After Ford succeeded Nixon in the wake of Watergate, Rumsfeld served as chief of staff, with Cheney at his side. Ford eventually appointed Rumsfeld secretary of Defense, and Cheney, at 34, ran the White House. Even then, his calm reserve was a hallmark.

Although nearly everyone working for him was older, “He was very self-assured,” James Cannon, a member of Ford’s White House team, said years later. “It didn’t faze him a bit to be chief of staff.”

Ford lost a narrow election to Jimmy Carter in 1976, but Cheney’s Washington career was just getting underway. He headed back to Casper and in little more than a year was running for Congress.

His health, though, already was a factor. In 1978, at age 37 and in the midst of a primary election campaign, he had a heart attack, the first of several. He would undergo multiple surgeries, including a quadruple bypass, two angioplasties, installation of a heart pump and — in 2012 — a transplant. His frequent trips to the hospital and seeming indestructibility provided fodder for late-night talk show hosts during Cheney’s vice presidency.

With the help of television ads reminding voters that Dwight D. Eisenhower and Lyndon B. Johnson had served full White House terms despite having had heart attacks, he narrowly won the Republican nomination and, in November 1978, secured election to the House of Representatives from Wyoming’s single district.

In Congress, he was known as a listener more interested in problem-solving than conservative demagoguery, even as he quietly built a voting record that left no doubt about where he stood on the political spectrum. He quickly moved into the ranks of GOP leadership.

Cheney stepped into the public spotlight after he was named Defense secretary by President George H.W. Bush in 1989. As the Berlin Wall fell and the Cold War cooled, Cheney was charged with overseeing a Pentagon that was more fractious than usual. In a test of political and managerial will, he oversaw major reductions in the Defense budget, a profound downsizing of forces and the closing of obsolete military bases. He helped implement the U.S. invasion of Panama in 1989 to oust the country’s leader, Manuel Noriega, for drug trafficking and racketeering.

But Cheney — along with his hand-picked chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Colin Powell — made his mark in the American response to the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1990. Cheney played a key role in persuading the Saudi royal family to allow American troops to be stationed in Saudi Arabia to defend against a looming attack from Hussein’s forces.

The Cheney-led Pentagon then shifted to offense in 1991, amassing an enormous American force that totaled more than 500,000 soldiers, nearly twice the number employed in the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq. The U.S. military, with help from allied countries, overwhelmed the Iraqi forces in Kuwait in only 43 days and easily entered Iraq.

Characteristically, Cheney would defend the then-controversial decision to halt the U.S. advance toward Baghdad, which left Hussein in power. “I would guess if we had gone in there, we would still have forces in Baghdad today. We’d be running the country,” he said in a 1992 speech. “We would not have been able to get everybody out and bring everybody home.”

Cheney’s efforts to station U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia, considered critical to the push to repel Iraq, would have unforeseen ramifications. The military presence there helped radicalize young Islamic militants such as Osama bin Laden.

After President Clinton’s victory in 1992, Cheney left government service. Three years later, he assumed the helm of Halliburton, one of the world’s leading oil field companies and a prominent military contractor. The company thrived under Cheney’s leadership: Its relationship with the Pentagon flourished, its international operations expanded and Cheney grew wealthy.

In 2000, then-Texas Gov. George W. Bush, the Republican nominee for president, asked Cheney to head up the search for his running mate, then ultimately chose Cheney for the job instead. He brought to the ticket an element of maturity and Washington gravitas that the inexperienced Bush did not possess.

Cheney’s lack of design on the presidency, and his willingness to return to government 10 days shy of his 60th birthday, seemingly gave Bush the benefit of his experience and earned Cheney a measure of trust — and thus authority — commanded by few presidential advisors.

Once in office, Cheney, mindful of lessons learned in the Ford White House, sought to revitalize an executive office he believed had become too hemmed in by Congress and the courts. He termed it a “restoration.”

“After Watergate, President Ford said there was an imperiled president, not an imperial presidency,” said presidential historian Robert Dallek. Cheney, he said, felt “he badly needed to expand the powers of the presidency to assure the national security.”

In office barely a week, Cheney created a national energy policy task force in response to rising gasoline prices. A series of meetings with top officials from the oil, natural gas, electricity and nuclear industries were closed to the public, and Cheney refused to reveal the names of the participants. Cheney would exert similar influence over environmental policy and, with an office on Capitol Hill, forcefully advance the president’s legislative agenda.

A lawsuit seeking information about the task force made its way to the Supreme Court, which ruled in the vice president’s favor in 2004. One of the justices in the majority was Antonin Scalia, who was a friend and, it was later revealed, had recently gone duck hunting with the vice president.

Another hunting trip gone awry earned Cheney embarrassing headlines in 2006 when he accidentally shot and wounded a member of the party with a round of birdshot while quail hunting on a Texas ranch.

More troubling to Cheney was a federal criminal probe in connection with the 2003 leak of the identity of covert CIA operative Valerie Plame Wilson. The investigation resulted in the conviction four years later of Cheney aide I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby for perjury and obstruction of justice. Libby was later pardoned by President Trump.

Cheney, however, will be largely remembered for his unwavering belief that the U.S. invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq — especially the latter — were essential, a stance he maintained even as the missions in both theaters evolved from rooting out suspected terrorists to nation-building, and even as the casualties skyrocketed and it became clear the 20-year mission was doomed.

When U.S. troops and civilians were pulled out of Afghanistan in a fraught and fatal departure in 2021, it was Cheney’s daughter who spoke up.

“We’ve now created a situation where as we get to the 20th anniversary of 9/11, we are surrendering Afghanistan to the very terrorist organization that housed al Qaeda when they plotted and planned the attacks against us,” Rep. Liz Cheney (R.-Wyo.) said.

The former vice president’s steely resolve was captured years later in “Vice,” a 2018 biographical drama in which Christian Bale portrayed Cheney as a brainy yet uncompromisingly uncharismatic leader.

It was Cheney who insisted early on that Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction. “There is no doubt he is amassing them to use against our friends, against our allies, and against us,” Cheney said in August 2002. The U.S. eventually determined that Iraq had no such weapons.

He argued forcefully that Hussein was linked to the 2001 terror attacks. When other administration officials fell silent, Cheney continued to make the connections even though no shred of proof was ever found. In a 2005 speech, he called the Democrats who accused the administration of manipulating intelligence to justify the war “opportunists” who peddled “cynical and pernicious falsehoods” to gain political advantage.

Cheney also frequently defended the use of so-called extreme interrogation methods, such as waterboarding, on al Qaeda operatives. He did so in the final months of the Bush administration, as both the president’s and Cheney’s public approval ratings plunged.

“It’s a good thing we had them in custody and it’s a good thing we found out what they knew,” he said in a 2008 speech to a friendly crowd at the Conservative Political Action Conference.

“I’ve been proud to stand by him, the decisions he made,” Cheney said of Bush. “And would I support those same decisions today? You’re damn right I would.”

Oliphant and Gerstenzang are former Times staff writers.

Staff writer Steve Marble contributed to this story.

The right wing‘s war on Netflix wages on.

The Pentagon issued a statement blasting the streamer’s programming and leadership Friday following an inquiry about the new series “Boots” from Entertainment Weekly. While the response from Pentagon press secretary Kingsley Wilson did not directly address the gay coming-of-age military show, it did slam Netflix for following an “ideological agenda” that “feeds woke garbage to their audience and children.”

“Under President Trump and Secretary [Pete] Hegseth, the U.S. military is getting back to restoring the warrior ethos,” Wilson’s statement said. “Our standards across the board are elite, uniform, and sex neutral because the weight of a rucksack or a human being doesn’t care if you’re a man, a woman, gay, or straight. We will not compromise our standards to satisfy an ideological agenda, unlike Netflix whose leadership consistently produces and feeds woke garbage to their audience and children.”

The Trump administration’s efforts to restore this “warrior ethos” thus far has included banning transgender people from serving in the military, body-shaming top military brass and other service members and declaring an end to “woke” culture and policies. The statement comes amid the Pentagon’s move to enforce a new unprecedentedly restrictive media policy that paints basic reporting methods as criminal activity.

Based on Greg Cope White’s 2016 memoir “The Pink Marine,” “Boots” follows Cam Cope (Miles Heizer), a gay teenager who enlists in the Marines at a time when being gay in the military was still a crime. Noting the show’s timely themes, Times television critic Robert Lloyd called it a “perfectly decent, good-hearted, unsurprisingly sentimental miniseries” in his review.

The show’s creatives also worked closely with several advisors with past military experience to authentically portray the Marines and military life in the 1990s.

The Pentagon’s criticism against Netflix follows the recent campaign led by billionaire Elon Musk calling for people to cancel their subscriptions to the streamer. The on-again/off-again Trump ally railed against Netflix on X earlier this month after clips of “Dead End: Paranormal Park,” an animated Netflix series featuring a trans character, was making the rounds on the social media platform. The show was canceled after its second season was released in 2022.

Despite being the target of right-wing ire, Netflix also has a history of being called out for its anti-trans programming. In 2021, transphobic remarks made by comedian Dave Chappelle in his special “The Closer” led to protests, walkouts and even a resignation of a trans employee. The streamer followed that in 2022 by releasing a comedy special from Ricky Gervais that also featured transphobic material.

WASHINGTON — Dozens of reporters turned in access badges and exited the Pentagon on Wednesday rather than agree to government-imposed restrictions on their work, pushing journalists who cover the American military further from the seat of its power. The U.S. government has called the new rules “common sense.”

News outlets were nearly unanimous in rejecting new rules imposed by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth that would leave journalists vulnerable to expulsion if they sought to report on information — classified or otherwise — that had not been approved by Hegseth for release.

Many of the reporters waited to leave together at a 4 p.m. deadline set by the Defense Department to get out of the building. As the hour approached, boxes of documents lined a Pentagon corridor and reporters carried chairs, a copying machine, books and old photos to the parking lot from suddenly abandoned workspaces. Shortly after 4, about 40 to 50 journalists left together after handing in badges.

“It’s sad, but I’m also really proud of the press corps that we stuck together,” said Nancy Youssef, a reporter for the Atlantic who has had a desk at the Pentagon since 2007. She took a map of the Middle East out to her car.

It is unclear what practical effect the new rules will have, though news organizations vowed they’d continue robust coverage of the military no matter the vantage point.

Images of reporters effectively demonstrating against barriers to their work are unlikely to move supporters of President Trump, many of whom resent journalists and cheer his efforts to make their jobs harder. Trump has been involved in court fights against the New York Times, CBS News, ABC News, the Wall Street Journal and the Associated Press in the last year.

Trump supports the new rules

Speaking to reporters at the White House on Tuesday, Trump backed his Defense secretary’s new rules. “I think he finds the press to be very disruptive in terms of world peace,” Trump said. “The press is very dishonest.”

Even before issuing his new press policy, Hegseth, a former Fox News Channel host, has systematically choked off the flow of information. He has held only two formal press briefings, banned reporters from accessing many parts of the sprawling Pentagon without an escort and and launched investigations into leaks to the media.

He has called his new rules “common sense” and said the requirement that journalists sign a document outlining the rules means they acknowledge the new rules, not necessarily agree to them. Journalists see that as a distinction without a difference.

“What they’re really doing, they want to spoon-feed information to the journalist, and that would be their story. That’s not journalism,” said Jack Keane, a retired Army general and Fox News analyst, said on Hegseth’s former network.

When he served, Keane said he required new brigadier generals to take a class on the role of the media in a democracy so they wouldn’t be intimidated and also see reporters as a conduit to the American public. “There were times when stories were done that made me flinch a little bit,” he said. “But that’s usually because we had done something that wasn’t as good as we should have done it.”

Youssef said it made no sense to sign on to rules that said reporters should not solicit military officials for information. “To agree to not solicit information is to agree to not be a journalist,” she said. “Our whole goal is soliciting information.”

Reporting on U.S. military affairs will continue — from a greater distance

Several reporters posted on social media when they turned in their press badges.

“It’s such a tiny thing, but I was really proud to see my picture up on the wall of Pentagon correspondents,” wrote Heather Mongillo, a reporter for USNI News, which covers the Navy. “Today, I’ll hand in my badge. The reporting will continue.”

Mongillo, Youssef and others emphasized that they’ll continue to do their jobs no matter where their desks are. Some sources will continue to speak with them, although they say some in the military have been chilled by threats from Pentagon leadership.

In an essay, NPR reporter Tom Bowman noted the many times he’d been tipped off by people he knew from the Pentagon and while embedded in the military about what was happening, even if it contradicted official lines put out by leadership. Many understand the media’s role.

“They knew the American public deserved to know what’s going on,” Bowman wrote. “With no reporters able to ask questions, it seems the Pentagon leadership will continue to rely on slick social media posts, carefully orchestrated short videos and interviews with partisan commentators and podcasters. No one should think that’s good enough.”

The Pentagon Press Assn., which has 101 members representing 56 news outlets, has spoken out against the rules. Organizations from across the media spectrum, from legacy organizations like the Associated Press and the New York Times to conservative outlets like Fox and Newsmax, told their reporters to leave instead of signing the new rules.

Only the conservative One America News Network signed on. Its management probably believes it will have greater access to Trump administration officials by showing its support, Gabrielle Cuccia, a former Pentagon reporter who was fired by OANN earlier this year for writing an online column criticizing Hegseth’s media policies, told the AP in an interview.

Bauder writes for the Associated Press. AP writer Laurie Kellman in London contributed to this report.

Oct. 14 (UPI) — News organizations on Tuesday broadly rejected new rules from the Pentagon demanding journalists only report approved information or risk losing their press credentials.

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth unveiled the new rules last month requiring journalists to sign a pledge stating they would neither access nor report any information that had not been signed off by the Pentagon – even if it was unclassified. The Department of Defense threatened to revoke the press credentials of journalists, barring them from accessing facilities, if they refused to sign.

Press organizations immediately blasted the rules, calling them an affront to the First Amendment and independent reporting on the military and national security. Now, many national media outlets have refused the ultimatum.

ABC News, CBS News, CNN, FOX News Media and NBC News issued a joint statement indicating declined to agree to the new requirements.

“The policy is without precedent and threatens core journalistic protections,” the outlets said in the statement. “We will continue to cover the U.S. military as each of our organizations has done for many decades, upholding the principles of a free and independent press.”

Hegseth has had a contentious relationship with the media, blaming the press after he came under scrutiny for sharing sensitive military information on the Signal app. The former Fox News personality has previously issued a series of rules restricting press activities within the Pentagon to prevent inadvertent leaks.

The Pentagon Press Association also issued a statement Tuesday saying the latest rule contradicted Hegseth’s pledge to improve transparency at the department. The association called it an “entirely one-sided move” that would cut the public off from reporting on issues of sexual assault in the military, conflicts of interest, corruption, as well as the well-being of service members.

“The Pentagon certainly has the right to make its own policies, within the constraints of the law,” the association said. “There is no need or justification, however, for it to require reporters to affirm their understanding of vague, likely unconstitutional policies as a precondition to reporting from Pentagon facilities.”

Hegseth on Tuesday downplayed the rules, writing on X that the “Pentagon now has same rules as every U.S military installation.”

Other outlets that refused to sign the pledge include The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Atlantic.

Hegseth responded on X with an emoji waving goodbye.

WASHINGTON — An extraordinary new policy from the Defense Department that equates basic reporting methods to criminal activity has prompted a revolt among Pentagon journalists that could leave the nation’s largest agency and the world’s largest military without a press corps.

The new policy, from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, is a dramatic departure from historic standards at the department, which previously required credentialed reporters to sign a simple, single-page document laying out safety protocols.

Replacing that document is a 21-page agreement that warns reporters against “soliciting” information, including unclassified material, without the Pentagon’s official authorization, characterizing individuals who do so as a “security risk.”

The policy would force journalists and media organizations to refrain from publishing any material that is not approved by the military — a clear violation of 1st Amendment protections to free speech, lawyers for media outlets said.

Major news organizations including the New York Times, Washington Post and Wall Street Journal, as well as right-leaning outlets such as Newsmax and the Washington Times, have refused to sign the document, with only one far-right outlet — the cable channel One American News — agreeing to do so.

The Los Angeles Times also will not agree to the policy, said Terry Tang, the paper’s executive editor.

In a rare joint statement, ABC, CBS, CNN, Fox News and NBC said that the policy “is without precedent and threatens core journalistic protections.”

“We will continue to cover the U.S. military as each of our organizations has done for many decades, upholding the principles of a free and independent press,” the news outlets said.

But Hegseth, who has aggressively pursued leaks and sources of unfavorable news stories since the start of his turbulent tenure as secretary, has doubled down in recent days, posting emojis on social media waving goodbye as media organizations have issued statements condemning the policy. Journalists were given a deadline of 2 p.m. PDT on Tuesday to either sign the document or relinquish their credentials.

It is unclear whether it will be viable for the Pentagon to maintain the policy, leaving the secretary without a traveling press corps to highlight his official duties or public events. And it is also uncertain whether President Trump approves of the extreme measure.

At a White House event Tuesday, Hegseth said that the policy was “common sense” and that he was “proud” of it. He said credentials should not be given to reporters who will try to get officials “to break the law by giving them classified information.”

Asked last month whether the Pentagon should control what reporters gather and write, Trump said “no.”

“I don’t think so,” Trump said, adding: “Nothing stops reporters.”

But Trump said Tuesday that he understands why Hegseth is pushing for the new policy.

“I think he finds the press to be very destructive in terms of world peace and maybe security for our nation,” Trump said. “The press is very dishonest.”

The widespread revolt has generated a show of solidarity from the White House and State Department correspondents associations, which characterized the Pentagon policy in a joint statement Monday as an attack on freedom of the press.

“Access inside the Pentagon has never been about convenience to reporters,” the statement reads. “The public has a right to know how the government is conducting the people’s business. Unfettered reporting on the U.S. military and its civilian leadership provides a service to those in uniform, veterans, their families and all Americans.”

Beyond the restrictions on media outlets, the Pentagon has taken a series of steps this year to try and identify officials who are deemed disloyal or who provide information to reporters.

In April, the Pentagon dismissed three top officials after an investigation into potential leaks related to military operational plans. That same month, Hegseth’s team began subjecting officials to random polygraph tests, a practice that was temporarily halted after the White House intervened, according to the Washington Post.

Then, in October, the Pentagon drafted plans to renew the use of polygraphs and to require thousands of personnel to sign strict nondisclosure agreements that would “prohibit the release of non-public information without approval or through a defined process.” The nondisclosure agreements include language that is similar to what reporters are being asked to sign by Tuesday.

Notably, many of Hegseth’s plans to target leaks have been leaked to news outlets, probably contributing to the Defense secretary’s suspicion about whom he can trust.

The timing of his efforts are also noteworthy, as they gained traction after he personally shared sensitive details about forthcoming strikes in Yemen in a private Signal group chat that mistakenly included a reporter from the Atlantic. Hegseth also shared information about the attacks in a separate Signal chat that included his wife, a former Fox News producer who is not a Defense Department employee.

Hegseth denied that any classified information was shared in the chat. Yet the situation led to an internal review of whether the disclosures were in violation of Defense Department policies.

The Pentagon has taken an even more aggressive approach to restricting reporters’ access than the White House, which months ago took control over press operations from the White House Correspondents Assn. — an independent group that had organized the White House press corps for decades.

Still, the White House has refrained from implementing changes to the briefing room seating chart, evicting outlets from workspaces within the White House complex or revoking press passes, after facing a legal challenge over an attempt to bar one major outlet — the Associated Press — from covering some presidential events at the beginning of Trump’s second term.

Trump, meanwhile, has continued to single out individual outlets he dislikes. On Tuesday, for example, the president refused to take questions from ABC News because he said he did not like how a news anchor had treated Vice President JD Vance.

“You’re ABC Fake News,” Trump said at a public appearance in the White House. “I don’t take questions from ABC Fake News!”

Reporters must promise not to publish unauthorised material to obtain press credentials.

Major media organisations, including conservative outlets, say the Pentagon is placing unlawful restrictions on journalists and their ability to cover the US military under a new set of reporting guidelines.

The guidelines were first announced in a September memo from the Department of Defense, and said that reporters must sign an affidavit pledging they would not publish unauthorised material – including unclassified documents – to keep their Pentagon press credentials.

Following pushback from the media, the wording was modified last week to say that reporters must simply “acknowledge” the new rules, but many organisations remain critical of the latest version of the rules.

Media companies, including public broadcaster NPR, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, CNN, and the Reuters and Associated Press news agencies, have all said they will not sign the rules in recent statements.

They also say the rules violate the US Constitution, which offers broad protections for freedom of speech and freedom of the press under the First Amendment. These rights were reaffirmed in a landmark 1971 Supreme Court case, New York Times Co v United States, that allowed US media to publish classified military documents during the Vietnam War.

“The proposed restrictions undercut First Amendment protections by placing unnecessary constraints on gathering and publishing information. We will continue to vigorously and fairly report on the policies and positions of the Pentagon and officials across the government,” said Matt Murray, executive editor of The Washington Post, in a statement on X.

Conservative news outlets The Washington Times and Newsmax, a cable news channel and competitor to Fox News, also said they would not sign the rules.

Newsmax cited “unnecessary and onerous” rules in a statement to Axios.

The Pentagon Press Association, an industry group representing defence reporters, said in a statement on Monday that the Pentagon has the right to make its own reporting rules, but they cannot set “unconstitutional policies as a precondition” to report there.

The association previously said the rules were “designed to stifle a free press”, and could open reporters up to legal prosecution.

The Pentagon reporting rules have been championed by US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, a former Fox News presenter who was sworn into his post in January under President Donald Trump.

Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell said the department had “good faith negotiations” with the Pentagon Press Association, but that “soliciting [military] service members and civilians to commit crimes is strictly prohibited” in a statement on X.

Donald Trump is directing US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth to pay military personnel despite the federal government shutdown.

The president said on Saturday that Hegseth must make sure troops do not miss out on their regular paycheque, scheduled for Wednesday. The directive comes as other government employees have already had some pay withheld and others are being laid off.

“I will not allow the Democrats to hold our Military, and the entire Security of our Nation, HOSTAGE, with their dangerous Government Shutdown,” Trump posted on his Truth Social platform.

The Republican and Democratic parties blame each other for failing to agree on a spending plan to reopen the government.

Trump’s message asks Hegseth to “use all available funds to get our Troops PAID” on 15 October, when military personnel would see their pay withheld for the first time since the shutdown began on 1 October.

Many US military employees are considered “essential”, meaning they must still show up for duty without pay. Some 750,000 other federal employees – about 40% – have been furloughed, or sent home, also without pay.

Furloughed employees are legally supposed to receive back-pay after a shutdown ends and they return to work, but the Trump administration has insinuated this might not happen.

“The Radical Left Democrats should OPEN THE GOVERNMENT, and then we can work together to address Healthcare, and many other things that they want to destroy,” Trump posted on Saturday.

Democrats have refused to vote for a Republican spending plan that would reopen the government after nearly 12 days shut down, saying any resolution must preserve expiring tax credits that reduce health insurance costs for millions of Americans and reverse Trump’s cuts to Medicaid, the healthcare program for elderly and low-income people.

Republicans accuse Democrats of unnecessarily bringing the government to a halt, and blame them for the knock-on effects caused by the federal work stoppage.

Finding a way to pay for military salaries could help reduce some of the political risk for congressional leaders if the shutdown drags on.

In an effort to pressure Democrats, the Trump administration has also begun laying off thousands of government workers, an unprecedented move during a shutdown.

“The RIFs have begun,” White House Office of Management Director Russell Vought announced in a post on X on Friday morning, referring to an acronym for “reductions in force”.

The administration disclosed later on Friday that seven agencies had started firing more than 4,000 people, making good on the president’s repeated threats to use the shutdown to further his long-held goal of reducing the federal workforce.

The reductions included dozens of employees at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), according to the BBC’s US partner CBS news, citing sources familiar with the situation.

The agency’s entire Washington DC office was laid off, the sources told CBS, adding that among the laid-off employees were those working on the CDC’s Mortality and Morbidity Weekly Report, the agency’s Ebola response and immunisations. There were also reductions in the human resources department, they said.

Andrew Nixon, a spokesperson for the Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees the CDC, told CBS that the let-go workers were not essential, and that “HHS continues to close wasteful and duplicative entities, including those that are at odds with the Trump administration’s Make America Healthy Again agenda”.

Employees at the Treasury Department and in the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency in the Department of Homeland Security were also among those laid off on Friday, those agencies confirmed.

The American Federation of Government Employees and AFL-CIO, two major unions representing federal workers, have filed a lawsuit in northern California, asking a judge to temporarily block the layoff orders.

“It is disgraceful that the Trump administration has used the government shutdown as an excuse to illegally fire thousands of workers who provide critical services to communities across the country,” AFGE president Everett Kelley said.

A spokesman from the White House budget office told the BBC on Saturday that the layoffs were just the beginning.

“These RIF numbers from the court filing are just a snapshot in time,” he said. “More RIFs are coming.”

In a court filing opposing the unions’ request for a temporary restraining order, the justice department revealed that agencies such as the Departments of Education, Housing and Urban Development, Commerce and Energy and the Environmental Protection Agency could also see staff cuts.

The government lawyers said the labour unions had failed to establish that their members would be irreparably harmed by the layoffs, which is needed for the judge to grant the restraining order. But they said a restraining order would “irreparably harm the government”.

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The Battle of Wounded Knee, also known as the Wounded Knee Massacre, took place in South Dakota in 1890.

The National Congress of American Indians has strongly condemned a Pentagon review that decided against revoking medals awarded to US soldiers at the 1890 Battle of Wounded Knee, an event which many historians consider a massacre.

“Celebrating war crimes is not patriotic. This decision undermines truth-telling, reconciliation, and the healing that Indian Country and the United States still need,” Larry Wright Jr, the Congress’s executive director, said in a statement issued on Saturday.

US President Donald Trump’s secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth, said in a video posted on X late Thursday that a review panel had recommended allowing the soldiers to keep their medals, in a study completed last year, and that he followed that recommendation.

“We’re making it clear that they deserve those medals. This decision is now final, and their place in our nation’s history is no longer up for debate,” Hegseth said.

The defence secretary criticised his predecessor for not making the same decision, saying that the former Pentagon chief was more interested in being “politically correct than historically correct”.

The Wounded Knee Massacre

The Battle of Wounded Knee, also known as the Wounded Knee Massacre, took place on December 29, 1890, in South Dakota, when US soldiers killed and wounded more than 300 Lakota Sioux men, women, and children.

The events at Wounded Knee marked the end of the Indian Wars, during which Native Americans were coerced into ceding their lands and then forced onto reservations.

Lloyd Austin, who was defence secretary in the administration of US President Joe Biden, had ordered a review of the military honours, but had not made a final decision before leaving office in January.

In 1990, Congress passed a resolution expressed “deep regret” for the conflict.

“It is proper and timely for the Congress of the United States of America to acknowledge … the historic significance of the Massacre at Wounded Knee Creek, to express its deep regret to the Sioux people and in particular to the descendants of the victims and survivors for this terrible tragedy,” the resolution said.

Hegseth has taken aim at diversity, equity and inclusion efforts at the Pentagon since he took office.

The Pentagon has ended commemorations of identity month celebrations, like Native American History Month and Black History Month.

The Pentagon drew fire earlier this year for briefly erasing online references to the Navajo Code Talkers, who developed an unbreakable code that helped Allied forces win World War II.

WASHINGTON, Sept. 24 (UPI) — The Pentagon has failed to implement methods to prevent and treat gambling disorders among service members, even as diagnoses have risen, according to a new Government Accountability Office report.

“Gambling is widely available to military members, who may be more likely than the general population to have gambling problems due to being younger and more risk-taking.” said the report, which was released this week.

The GAO found that although Department of Defense guidance was updated in January, outlining steps military services should take to prevent and treat gambling disorders, the guidance did not designate who was to implement those measures.

As a result, critical services like medical treatment, assessments and annual training were left without clear accountability the GAO said.

In 2024, 185 active duty services members were diagnosed with gambling-related disorders, but the number could be higher, according to the report.

“What that does not include is any individual who did not seek treatment from a medical provider and possibly any that might have sought help but did not meet the diagnostic threshold,” said Kristy Williams, a defense, capabilities and management director at the GAO.

The independent agency issued nine recommendations to the Pentagon to improve care of service members with gambling issues.

The Defense Health Agency, the GAO said, must take lead to implement prevention, diagnosis and treatment for gambling disorder, adding that each military branch needs to update its policies.

Slot machines are highly popular on overseas bases, with revenues used to fund morale, welfare and recreation programs that include child care, fitness and libraries, the GAO said.

Revenues from what are called the Army Recreation Machine Program, the Air Force Venture Entertainment Program and Naval Station Diego Garcia generated $91 million in revenue just last year, according to the report.

While the military operates slot machines on overseas bases, it does not restrict access to service members with a gambling problem or post signage at the slot machines to offer resources for gambling problems, the GAO said.

In the 2024 study, 4.7% of military personnel answered yes to “Have you ever lied about gambling or felt you needed to bet more,” the GAO’s Williams said.

The report also noted that of the 15,039 respondents who have gambled in the last 12 months before the study was conducted, 2.7% of them admitted to having feelings of irritability and restlessness when trying to stop gambling.

Of the respondents who gambled, 56% said they had depression, 50% had anxiety and 8% had substance abuse disorders.

The GAO said financial counselors told service members that gambling could impact their security clearances.

“There is a definition of gambling disorder, and it really focuses on a persistent and recurrent problem with gambling behavior that would lead to some kind of clinically significant impairment,” Williams said.

“You have to exhibit four or more traits in a one-year period to get that diagnosis. It might be things like, are you lying to conceal the extent of your involvement with gambling, do you need to gamble with increasing amounts of money, do you need to gamble with increasing amounts of money to achieve a desired excitement?”

In preparing its report, the GAO met with military members at Naval Base San Diego, Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune in Jacksonville, N.C., Fort Liberty in Fayetteville, N.C., and Nellis Air Force Base near Las Vegas.

According to a 2021 study the GAO cited in its latest report, it suggested that service members may be at a high risk for gambling disorders due to many being young and the stressors tied to military life.

In a 2017 report, the GAO found that individual readiness for service members was at risk due to being preoccupied with gambling, which can heighten financial hardship and risk of suicide.

In its response to the new report, the Department of Defense outlined medical treatments and annual training service members should undergo to prevent and treat gambling disorders. The department said it plans to release an internal findings report on service members’ gambling disorders by June.

The GAO conducted the study at the request of Congress, with the results sent to the chair and ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Miss., and Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., respectively, and to the chair and ranking member of the House Armed Services Committee, Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Ala., and Rep. Adam Smith D-Wash., respectively.

Sept. 24 (UPI) — The Trump administration has terminated the nearly 75-year-old advisory committee aimed at encouraging and retaining women in the armed forces over accusations of promoting a “divisive feminist agenda,” Pentagon officials said.

The decision to disband the Defense Advisory Committee on Women in the Services was made by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Pentagon press secretary Kingsley Wilson said in a Tuesday statement on X.

“The committee is focused on advancing a divisive feminist agenda that hurts combat readiness, while Secretary Hegseth has focused on advancing uniform, sex-neutral standards across the department,” she said.

Joel Valdez, Department of Defense acting deputy press secretary, defended the decision to disband DACOWITS, suggesting online that the committee was no longer needed.

“The panel, DACOWITS, existed during the last administration’s recruitment and retention crisis,” he said on X.

“With female recruitment numbers soaring under President Trump @SecWar’s leadership, it is clear that DACOWITS is not the reason women are joining the military.”

The Pentagon added: “We are cleansing the Department of wokeness.”

The committee was established in 1951, making it one of the Defense Department’s oldest advisory bodies. According to its website, it is composed of civilian women and men appointed by the Defense secretary to advise on matters and policies related to the recruitment, retention, employment, integration and well-being of women in the military.

Its disbandment comes as the Trump administration conducts a cultural overhaul of the military, in an effort to remove so-called left-leaning ideology.

Among the changes imposed by Hegseth are grooming standards to be clean-shaven and “neat in presentation,” banning transgender Americans from serving in the armed forces, tightening restrictions on media coverage and eliminating diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, among others.

It has also signaled a cultural transformation through promoting a so-called warrior ethos as counter to a “woke” culture as well as renaming military bases after Confederate soldiers who fought against the United States in the Civil War.

He has also attempted to rename the Department of Defense the department of war, a change that requires congressional approval.

During his confirmation hearings, Hegseth came under Democratic criticism for sexual misconduct, which he denied, as well as for saying that women should not serve in combat roles in the U.S. military.

Sept. 22 (UPI) — The U.S. Defense Department on Monday identified four soldiers who died last week in a helicopter crash during routine training.

The four U.S. Army service members were Chief Warrant Officer Andrew Cully, 35; Sgt. Jadalyn Good, 23; Chief Warrant Officer Andrew Kraus, 39; and Sgt. Donavon Scott, 25. Good and Scott were from Washington, while Cully was from Missouri and Kraus was of Florida.

Col. Stephen Smith said the four service members were from the 4th Battalion, 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment. The regiment is headquartered at Fort Campbell in Kentucky and often operates at night, earning members the “Night Stalkers” nickname.

“These exceptional warriors … embodied the unwavering dedication, selflessness and excellence that define the very spirit of the Army and Army Special Operations,” he said.

“Their service to our nation will forever be etched in our hearts and in the legacy of the Night Stalkers. These heroes were not only elite professionals but also cherished teammates, friends and family members whose absence leaves an immeasurable void.”

The four special operations soldiers were aboard an MH-60 Black Hawk helicopter that crashed Wednesday in Washington. The aircraft went down in a rural location about 40 miles west of Joint Base Lewis-McChord — about 50 miles south of Seattle — and caused a 1-acre fire that hampered rescue efforts.

United States President Donald Trump’s administration has announced new restrictions on media outlets’ reporting of the country’s military, including a requirement that journalists pledge not to publish unauthorised information.

Under the new rules unveiled by the Department of War, previously the Department of Defense, reporters could lose their credentials to cover the military if they refused to sign a pledge agreeing to only disclose approved information.

The rules, contained in a memo published by The New York Times following its circulation among media outlets on Friday, stipulate that information must be approved for release by “an appropriate authorising official before it is released, even if it is unclassified”.

The measures also limit the movements of journalists within the Arlington, Virginia-based Pentagon building itself, designating much of the facility off-limits without an escort.

“The ‘press’ does not run the Pentagon – the people do,” Secretary of War Pete Hegseth said in a post on X following a report about the changes.

“The press is no longer allowed to roam the halls of a secure facility. Wear a badge and follow the rules – or go home.”

Mike Balsamo, the president of the National Press Club, blasted the changes as an attack on independent journalism “at the very place where independent scrutiny matters most”.

“If the news about our military must first be approved by the government, then the public is no longer getting independent reporting. It is getting only what officials want them to see. That should alarm every American,” Balsamo said in a statement.

“Independent reporting on the military is essential to democracy. It is what allows citizens to hold leaders accountable and ensures that decisions of war and peace are made in the light of day.”

Multiple media organisations, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal and the Reuters news agency, joined in the condemnation of the restrictions.

Seth Stern, director of advocacy at the Freedom of the Press Foundation, said that decades of US Supreme Court precedent affirmed the right of the media to publish government secrets.

“That is essentially the job description of an investigative journalist. The law is also clear that the government can’t require people to contract away a constitutional right, like the right to obtain and publish secrets, in exchange for a benefit, like access to government buildings or press credentials,” Stern told Al Jazeera.

“This policy operates as a prior restraint on publication, which is considered the most serious of First Amendment violations. As we learned in the Pentagon Papers case, the government cannot prohibit journalists from public information merely by claiming it’s a secret or even a national security threat.”

The Pentagon Papers case, aka the New York Times Co. v. United States, refers to a 1971 ruling by the Supreme Court that affirmed the freedom of the press by allowing The New York Times and The Washington Post to publish classified documents detailing the history of US involvement in the Vietnam War.

The Trump administration’s new restrictions are the latest in a series of moves by the US government to curtail the media.

On Wednesday, the ABC announced that it had suspended Jimmy Kimmel’s long-running talk show after the head of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) threatened regulatory action over remarks the host made about the assassination of the conservative activist Charlie Kirk.

FCC chair Brendan Carr has signalled that further action to rein in voices critical of the administration could be on the way.

In an interview with Fox News on Thursday, Carr, a Trump appointee, said that his agency would continue to hold broadcasters “accountable to the public interest”, and that those who did not like that could “turn their licence in”.

Days before Kimmel’s suspension, Trump filed a $15bn lawsuit accusing The New York Times of defamation, following similar suits against CBS News, ABC News and The Wall Street Journal.

On Friday, a judge in Florida threw out the suit against The New York Times, finding that the complaint relied on “tendentious arguments” and contained “repetitive” and “laudatory” praise of Trump that was not relevant to the case.

The Pentagon says it will require credentialed journalists at the military headquarters to sign a pledge to refrain from reporting information that has not been authorized for release — including unclassified information.

Journalists who don’t abide by the policy risk losing credentials that provide access to the Pentagon, under a 17-page memo distributed Friday that steps up media restrictions imposed by the administration of President Trump.

“Information must be approved for public release by an appropriate authorizing official before it is released, even if it is unclassified,” the directive states. The signature form includes an array of security requirements for credentialed media at the Defense Department, which Trump has moved to rename the War Department.

Advocates for press freedoms denounced the nondisclosure requirement as an assault on independent journalism. The new Pentagon restrictions arrive as Trump expands threats, lawsuits and government pressure as he remakes the American media landscape.

“If the news about our military must first be approved by the government, then the public is no longer getting independent reporting. It is getting only what officials want them to see,” said National Press Club President Mike Balsamo, also national law enforcement editor at the Associated Press. “That should alarm every American.”

No more permission to ‘roam the halls’

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, a former Fox News Channel personality, highlighted the restrictions in a social media post on X.

“The ‘press’ does not run the Pentagon — the people do. The press is no longer allowed to roam the halls of a secure facility,” Hegseth said. “Wear a badge and follow the rules — or go home.”

The Pentagon this year has evicted many news organizations while imposing a series of restrictions that include banning reporters from entering wide areas of the complex without a government escort — areas where the press had access in past administrations as it covers the activities of the world’s most powerful military.

The Pentagon was embarrassed early in Hegseth’s tenure when the editor in chief of the Atlantic, Jeffrey Goldberg, was inadvertently included in a group chat on the Signal messaging app where the Defense secretary discussed plans for upcoming military strikes in Yemen. Trump’s then-national security advisor, Mike Waltz, took responsibility for Goldberg being included and was shifted to another job.

The Defense Department also was embarrassed by a leak to the New York Times that billionaire Elon Musk was to get a briefing on the U.S. military’s plans in case a war broke out with China. That briefing never took place, on Trump’s orders, and Hegseth suspended two Pentagon officials as part of an investigation into how that news got out.

On Saturday, the Society of Professional Journalists also objected to the Pentagon’s move, calling it “alarming.”

“This policy reeks of prior restraint — the most egregious violation of press freedom under the First Amendment — and is a dangerous step toward government censorship,” it said in a statement Saturday. “Attempts to silence the press under the guise of ‘security’ are part of a disturbing pattern of growing government hostility toward transparency and democratic norms.”

And Matt Murray, executive editor of the Washington Post, said in the paper Saturday that the new policy runs counter to what’s good for the American public.

“The Constitution protects the right to report on the activities of democratically elected and appointed government officials,” Murray said. “Any attempt to control messaging and curb access by the government is counter to the First Amendment and against the public interest.”

Lee writes for the Associated Press.

Sept. 20 (UPI) — Journalists covering the Pentagon will have to pledge to access only authorized information or lose their press credentials, the Department of War announced Friday.

The new policy enables Pentagon officials to revoke the credentials for any press staff that they might deem a security threat, according to The Washington Post.

War Department officials published a 17-page document explaining the changes for press coverage.

“DoW remains committed to transparency to promote accountability and public trust,” the document says, as reported by NPR.

“However, DoW information must be approved for public release by an appropriate authorizing official before it is released — even if it is unclassified.”

War Department Sec. Pete Hegseth earlier restricted the media’s ability to freely move about the Pentagon and required an escort from department-approved personnel.

“The press does not run the Pentagon, but the American people do,” Hegseth said Friday on social media.

“Wear a badge and follow the rules — or go home,” he said.

The new rules for media drew a rebuke from National Press Club President Mike Balsamo.

“This is a direct assault on independent journalism at the very place where independent scrutiny matters the most: the U.S. military,” Balsamo said Friday in a prepared statement.

President Donald Trump recently changed the Defense Department’s official name to the Department of War.

Sept. 11 (UPI) — President Donald Trump spoke at the Pentagon Thursday giving his condolences and telling the stories of those who died in the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

In his speech, Trump mentioned that the Pentagon was built 84 years ago, and “On Sept. 11, 2001, those same walls built with the sweat and muscle blood of our parents and grandparents were scarred by flame and shaken by terror as our country came face to face with pure evil on that fateful day, savage monsters attacked the very symbols of our civilization.”

“That terrible morning, 24 years ago, time itself stood still,” he went on. “The laughter of school children fell silent. The rush of our traffic came to an absolute halt, and for 2,977 innocent souls and their families, the entire world came crashing down so suddenly. … To every member that still feels a void every day of your lives, the first lady and I unite with you in sorrow and today, as one nation, we renew our sacred vow that we will never forget Sept. 11, 2001.”

Trump also mentioned the “Department of War,” what he’s renamed the Department of Defense, though it hasn’t yet been approved by Congress.

“In the years that followed, America’s warriors, avenged the fallen and sent an unmistakable message to every enemy around the world, ‘If you attack the United States of America, we will hunt you down, and we will find you, go all over the sometimes-magnificent Earth. We will crush you without mercy, and we will triumph without question.’

“That’s why we named the former Department of Defense the Department of War. It will be different. We won the first World War. We won the Second World War. We won everything before that and in between. And then we decided to change the name. Well, now we have it back to where we all want it. Everybody wanted it. Everybody is so happy to have it back. You will fail, and America will win, win, win. The enemy will always fail.”

He then went back to telling stories of those killed in the 9/11 attacks and the families of those killed.

At the beginning of his speech, Trump mentioned the “heinous assassination” of political commentator Charlie Kirk who was shot and killed while hosting an event in Utah on Wednesday.

“Charlie was a giant of his generation, a champion of liberty. Our prayers are with his wonderful wife Erika [Frantzve] and his beautiful children. Fantastic people, they are,” Trump said.

He then announced that he will posthumously award Kirk the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Before Trump spoke, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth — introduced as Secretary of War — spoke, mentioning that “Islamist terrorists” attacked the United States.

“War is an enduring aspect of the human condition, a tool that, when wielded wisely, punishes enemies intent on terrorizing or subjugating our nation,” he said. “War must not become a mere tool for global social work eager to risk American blood and treasure for utopian fever dreams. We should hit hard, reap vengeance and return home.”

According to the 9/11 Memorial & Museum, 2,977 people died during the attacks, including 2,753 in New York City, 184 at the Pentagon and 40 on Flight 93 that crashed in Pennsylvania.

The president is expected to travel to New York later Thursday to attend a Yankees game. The Yankees are expected to have a pregame ceremony to recognize the victims and heroes of 9/11.

Vice President JD Vance was scheduled to attend a ceremony in New York, but changed his schedule to head to Utah to offer condolences to the family of Charlie Kirk.

Sept. 10 (UPI) — The Trump administration approved an assistance package worth $14.2 million to assist Lebanon with its efforts to disarm Hezbollah, the U.S. Defense Department announced Wednesday.

The Lebanese military will use funds from the Presidential Drawdown Authority package to dismantle arms held by non-state groups, including Hezbollah.

On Friday, the Lebanese government welcomed a plan by its army to disarm the Iran-backed Hezbollah. This came after Lebanon’s Cabinet approved of a U.S. proposal to direct the Lebanese military to enforce a state monopoly on weapons by the end of the year.

A release from the Pentagon said the package will provide the Lebanese military with the ability to carry out patrols and dispose of unexploded ordnance.

Through the package, the U.S. Defense Department is “empowering” the Lebanese military “in degrading Hezbollah in alignment with the administration’s priority to counter Iranian-backed terrorist groups in the region,” the release said.

During last week’s meeting between the Lebanese Cabinet and military, all five Shiite ministers, four of who represent Hezbollah and its main ally, the Amal Movement, left in protest of the disarmament plan. They said any plan to disarm Hezbollah must start with discussing a defense strategy to protect the country.

As part of the Nov. 27 cease-fire deal to end the 14-month war between Lebanon and Hezbollah, all parties agreed to discuss a national defense strategy. Hezbollah, however resisted government plans to set a deadline for disarmament.

Dalal Saoud contributed to this report.

WASHINGTON — Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has approved sending up to 600 military lawyers to the Justice Department to serve as temporary immigration judges, according to a memo reviewed by the Associated Press.

The military will begin sending groups of 150 attorneys — both military and civilians — to the Justice Department “as soon as practicable,” and the armed services should have the first round of people identified by next week, according to the Aug. 27 memo.

The effort comes as the Trump administration is cracking down on illegal immigration by ramping up arrests and deportations. And immigration courts already are dealing with a massive backlog of roughly 3.5 million cases that has ballooned in recent years.

At the same time, more than 100 immigration judges have been fired or left voluntarily after taking deferred resignations offered by the Trump administration, their union says. In the most recent round of terminations, the International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers said in July that at least 17 immigration judges had been fired “without cause” in courts across the country.

That has left about 600 immigration judges, union figures show, meaning the Pentagon move would double their ranks.

The Justice Department, which oversees the immigration courts, requested the assistance from the Defense Department, according to the memo sent by the Pentagon’s executive secretary to his Justice Department counterpart. The military lawyers’ duties as immigration judges will initially last no more than 179 days but can be renewed, it said.

A Justice Department spokesperson referred questions about the plan to the Defense Department, where officials directed questions to the White House.

A White House official said Tuesday that the administration is looking at a variety of options to help resolve the significant backlog of immigration cases, including hiring additional immigration judges. The official said the matter should be “a priority that everyone — including those waiting for adjudication — can rally around.”

The memo stressed that sending the additional attorneys is contingent on availability and that mobilizing reserve officers may be necessary. Plus, the document said the Justice Department would be responsible for ensuring that anyone sent from the Pentagon does not violate the federal prohibition on using the military as domestic law enforcement, known as the Posse Comitatus Act.

The administration faced a setback on its efforts to use the military in unique ways to combat illegal immigration and crime, with a court ruling Tuesday that it “willfully” violated federal law by sending National Guard troops to Los Angeles in early June.

Cases in immigration court can take years to weave their way to a final determination, with judges and lawyers frequently scheduling final hearings on the merits of a case more than a year out.

Toropin writes for the Associated Press. AP writers Will Weissert, Rebecca Santana and Eric Tucker contributed to this report.

WASHINGTON — Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has ordered that National Guard troops patrolling the streets of Washington for President Trump’s law enforcement crackdown be armed, the Pentagon said Friday.

The Defense Department didn’t offer any other details about the new development or why it was needed.

The step is a escalation in Trump’s intervention into policing in the nation’s capital and comes as nearly 2,000 National Guard members have been stationed in the city, with the arrival this week of hundreds of troops from several Republican-led states.

Trump initially called up 800 members of the District of Columbia National Guard to assist federal law enforcement in his bid to crack down on crime and homelessness in the capital. Since then, six states have sent troops to the city, growing the military presence.

It was unclear if the guard’s role in the federal intervention would be changing. The guard has so far not taken part in law enforcement but largely have been protecting landmarks like the National Mall and Union Station and helping with crowd control.

The Pentagon and the Army said last week that troops would not carry guns. The new guidance is that they will carry their service-issued weapons.

The city had been informed about the intent for the National Guard to be armed, a person familiar with the conversations said earlier this week. The person was not authorized to disclose the plans and spoke on the condition of anonymity.

Spokespeople for the District of Columbia National Guard and a military task force overseeing all the guard troops in Washington did not immediately respond to messages seeking comment.

Toropin writes for the Associated Press. AP writer Anna Johnson contributed to this report.