WASHINGTON — Long before he was the top official at the U.S. Postal Service, David Steiner was a corporate executive surfing mid-oughts television when he came across Donald Trump on “The Apprentice.”
He was unimpressed.
“If that is leadership, if that’s what we’re telling people that our culture and our media portrays as leadership, we’re screwed,” Steiner, then the CEO of Waste Management, said during a 2007 speech at the University of Arkansas Clinton School of Public Service. “If that’s leadership, count me out.”
“And for God’s sake,” he added to laughter, “if I have to get my hair to look like that, if I have to do that to be a leader, you can definitely count me out.”
Nearly two decades later, Trump has migrated from reality television to the presidency. And onetime detractors — Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, for example — now loyally execute his agenda.
Trump’s effort to use the Postal Service as a tool to reshape American elections is testing whether Steiner will follow a similar path.
When Trump signed an executive order restricting mail ballots this year, Steiner moved quickly to finalize a rule implementing the measure, arguing he had little choice. But after the U.S. Supreme Court rejected the effort, Steiner told The Associated Press that work had stopped on one of the plan’s most controversial elements, a government portal for voter rolls.
He refused to endorse the Republican president’s order as sound policy, saying he was focused on implementation and letting the courts ultimately decide the matter.
“I don’t get to decide what rules that are put on us that I decide to accept or not accept,” he said. “We are an independent agency of the executive branch.”
The episode prompted fierce criticism of Steiner for allowing Trump to deploy an agency designed to be shielded from politics.
Jena Griswold, Colorado’s Democratic secretary of state, called him a “Trump lackey.” Nevada Secretary of State Cisco Aguilar, a Democrat, recently asked Congress to deploy observers to ensure postal workers can scan envelopes holding mail ballots without disruption, saying the Trump administration “has attempted to weaponize federal agencies to interfere in our elections, and the leadership at USPS is going along with it.”
Sen. Elissa Slotkin, D-Mich., accused Steiner of being a Trump “pawn” during a congressional hearing this summer. Dozens of congressional Democrats have pressed Steiner to reveal his interactions with the White House during the development of the mail ballot rule.
Some Republicans have joined in the criticism. Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri, incensed by abandoned mail, called for Steiner’s resignation and introduced legislation to block him from receiving a bonus.
During a lengthy interview, Steiner seemed surprised at points by his reception in Washington. He insisted he wasn’t a “political person” and said he had no intention of stepping down despite the criticism. He dismissed heated congressional appearances as “theater” at odds with more substantive private interactions on Capitol Hill.
Steiner was chagrined, however, at the mention of his 2007 remarks on Trump, delivered well before he launched a political career. Steiner recalled speaking at the university but said he didn’t remember his comments, acknowledging a tendency to be “flippant.”
“That’s funny,” he said. “I don’t recall it.”
The White House didn’t respond to a request for comment on Steiner’s remarks or his stewardship of the Postal Service.
The Postal Service dates to Benjamin Franklin, the first postmaster general, whose portrait and bust are displayed in Steiner’s office overlooking the Washington Wharf. The agency has more than 630,000 employees, dwarfing many Cabinet departments.
While the quickest way to top jobs in Trump’s Washington is often by writing big checks, the 66-year-old Steiner doesn’t appear to have followed that course. He has largely donated to Republicans but also gave to John Kerry’s Democratic presidential campaign in 2004. Unlike his predecessor as postmaster general, Louis DeJoy, Steiner was not a major GOP donor or Trump backer.
Born in Oakland, California, as one of eight children to a father who spent his career at Chevron, Steiner worked in corporate and securities law before moving to Waste Management in 2000. He became CEO in 2004 and ran the company for 12 years. He was also a longtime director at FedEx, where board chairman Brad Martin recalled him as “outcome oriented” and rarely political.
“He’s going to follow the rules. He’s going to follow the law,” Martin said. “I don’t recall us ever talking politics.”
By the time a headhunter contacted Steiner about the postmaster general job, he was largely removed from daily corporate life and initially demurred.
“I talked to my wife, and we both agreed I was happily retired,” he said.
He changed his mind, he said, during a visit to the beaches of Normandy, feeling a sense of civic duty.
Now at the Postal Service, he earns about $346,000 in annual salary along with a relocation bonus that amounts to half his salary, far less than the $17 million in compensation he earned during his final year at Waste Management. His current role is designed to exist one layer removed from the political process, reporting to a board of governors that is selected by the president and confirmed by the Senate.
He was hired in 2025 by a board that was made up of five members, three of whom were Democrats. All but one were appointed by President Joe Biden. That makeup could change as four Trump nominees — all Republicans — await Senate confirmation. Steiner can be fired only by the board.
Steiner said he first met Trump along with Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick at the board’s urging after he was already selected as postmaster general. Since then, he described a minimal relationship with the White House.
“We don’t fly on the radar,” he said.
That is, until Trump revived his effort in March to crack down on mail voting. Steiner said he “wasn’t in on the development piece” of the order and first saw it about a month before it was signed.
“They gave it to us to say, ‘Have your lawyers look at it, and how do you operationalize it?’” Steiner said.
The portal spurred a massive development effort inside the Postal Service while some states criticized it as federal overreach. A whistleblower report released by Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., argued the system was hastily built and riddled with errors, though Steiner said he was confident it could have been unveiled around Sept. 15.
“The heavy lifting was clearly, clearly the IT work,” Steiner said.
Though the Supreme Court dispensed with the rule, the dynamics for the Postal Service don’t get easier.
The agency posted a $9 billion net loss last year, and Steiner has warned it could soon run out of cash unless Congress lifts a $15 billion borrowing cap. Political hurdles have prevented potential cost savings from cutting service or closing some post offices.
And while Trump’s executive order won’t take effect, the Postal Service will still play a critical role in this year’s elections. There are mounting concerns that mail ballots could be rejected for late postmarks. Steiner encouraged voters to get their ballots in a week before the election to avoid problems.
The Postal Service is a rare corner of government still viewed favorably with more than half of Americans, 56%, saying it was doing an “excellent” or “good” job in a Gallup poll conducted last year. That could change if the agency is seen as increasingly political.
Steiner, however, said Americans will judge the Postal Service by their experience of it.
“What they care about is when they get that wedding invitation after the wedding or when they send a package and it disappears,” he said. “If we want to have the trust of the American public, let’s be the best service provider. Everything else is noise.”
Sloan writes for the Associated Press.
NEW YORK — The nation’s cybersecurity agency on Thursday released an election infrastructure security plan 40 days before November’s midterms, laying out potential threats to election systems and listing services it would offer to election officials to protect the vote.
Election officials said the plan is both inadequate and belated after the administration gutted the agency’s election security work last year, prompting the officials to pay for private services to ensure they were prepared for the upcoming elections.
“For them to come in five weeks before the election, yeah, nice effort,” said Nevada’s Democratic Secretary of State Cisco Aguilar, who added that he would have liked to see the federal government provide more funding for cybersecurity, rather than Nevada taxpayers having to pay for it.
Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin had originally promised to release the plan by mid-August as part of the Trump administration’s move to kickstart election security assistance after a hiatus. He announced the plan at the same time he threatened election officials for not cooperating with the administration’s preferred methods to hunt down noncitizen voting, a phenomenon that research shows is extremely rare.
The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, which is housed under the Department of Homeland Security, has since its founding in 2018 helped warn state and local election officials about potential threats from foreign governments.
But CISA, as it’s known, was largely absent from that role in last year’s elections after the Trump administration dismantled much of its role in election security. The administration cut some 1,000 employees from CISA and slashed $10 million from two cybersecurity initiatives, including one dedicated to helping state and local election officials.
CISA has also gone the entirety of Trump’s second term without a Senate-confirmed director, instead cycling through a series of acting leaders.
The 13-page document released Thursday warns of various threats to election security, including software vulnerabilities, hacks of voter registration databases, insider threats and physical security incidents, such as bomb threats that targeted several polling locations in the 2024 elections.
But it affirms that many longstanding election practices can address such threats and says the agency’s goal is “to ensure the American people can trust voting systems and know that physical safety measures will be in place when they go to their assigned polling locations to cast their votes.”
It states that DHS has “consistently supported CISA’s delivery of cybersecurity and physical security services to election officials,” something numerous election officials around the country have said isn’t true.
Multiple secretaries of state told the Associated Press that services previously provided by CISA, such as live tabletop exercises and penetration tests to evaluate security of their systems, were not available in the lead-up to this year’s midterms.
Minnesota Secretary of State Scott Simon, a Democrat, said in August that his office expects to spend roughly $250,000 on private vendors to conduct penetration testing, which can expose security vulnerabilities and recommend actionable fixes.
Shenna Bellows, the Democratic secretary of state in Maine, told the AP the same month that communications with CISA had been “sporadic and irregular, to say the least.” She said it would be helpful if the Trump administration could restore intelligence briefings that used to be granted to election officials about threats from foreign adversaries, but noted that trust with federal officials had been broken with the cuts to the agency.
Thursday’s plan doesn’t mention any specific 2026 threats from adversaries like Russia, Iran or China, all of whom have sought to meddle in U.S. elections — either directly through hacking or indirectly through influence campaigns.
Kris Warner, the Republican secretary of state in West Virginia, said Thursday that some of CISA’s assistance to his state had been continual throughout the Trump administration, including no-cost reviews of its public-facing websites for cybersecurity issues.
Warner acknowledged CISA had cut back under the Trump administration but said he views the agency “as a resource and not as a service provider” and said his office had last year hired a departing CISA election security advisor who has helped fill any gaps that may exist.
In early August, two CISA officials — acting director Nick Anderson and assistant director for integrated operations Jim Harrell — joined a National Assn. of Secretaries of State call attended by a bipartisan group of secretaries of state, according to several election administrators.
The call grew tense when Arizona’s Democratic Secretary of State Adrian Fontes voiced his concerns about the withdrawal of federal resources.
Fontes told the AP at the time that he told the CISA officials he didn’t trust them. He said it seemed to him the officials were there “to cover their butts.”
“They even acknowledged on the call that it was too late for them to do anything for 2026,” he said.
Simon said the officials appeared interested in rebuilding relationships and previewing their future plans, which he appreciated. But he said the effort at goodwill came later than election officials needed.
“Secretaries of state have already moved on and sought other partners and other resources for the services that CISA has retreated from over the last year and a half,” Simon said.
In Michigan, where mail ballots have already been sent out for the Nov. 3 elections, Deputy Secretary of State Aghogho Edevbie said the state’s relationship with CISA has been “nonexistent” this year despite working together closely in previous election cycles.
“If the federal government wants to be helpful, they can’t do so at the 11th hour,” the Democrat said.
Ashiya Brown, the Michigan state director of the voting rights group All Voting Is Local, agreed. She noted the new plan says CISA has 10 regional directors to support election administrators but still doesn’t answer her biggest question.
“Does CISA still have the people and capacity to provide that support when clerks need it?” she asked. “I’m glad CISA has put forward a plan, but what matters now is whether the support described in it reaches local election officials before November.”
CISA has been hiring on its website for new positions, Brown said, but it’s unclear whether they are all staffed yet.
Meanwhile, Brown, a former security official with the Michigan Department of State, said her group has hired former CISA employees to help provide training and other support to election clerks and fill the gap.
Edevbie said even without collaboration with CISA, he is confident the state’s elections are secure.
“We are always prepared to defend our elections and to ensure that every voter who is eligible to cast a ballot can do so here in Michigan,” he said.
Swenson writes for the Associated Press. AP writers Jessica Hill in Las Vegas and Jacqueline GaNun in Lansing, Mich., contributed to this report.
By Moriah BalingitAP Education Writer
WASHINGTON — A federal judge in Rhode Island struck down a Trump administration directive that would have barred some immigrants from accessing certain federal programs, including Head Start preschools, community health clinics and adult education initiatives.
U.S. District Judge Mary McElroy, who was appointed by President Trump in 2019, temporarily barred his administration from moving forward with the rule last year, so it never was implemented. On Monday, she made the injunction permanent.
Officials from the Republican administration had said the directive would stop “illegal aliens” from accessing federal benefits by reclassifying broad swaths of social services programs under a Clinton-era law, the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act.
But the rule also would have swept up many immigrants in the U.S. legally, including work and student visa holders. It also would have barred services from Temporary Protected Status holders, who are granted work permits if the U.S. government determines conditions in their home country are too dangerous to return, along with recipients of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, who were brought to the country illegally as children and receive temporary protection from deportation and work authorization.
Those groups, which are considered “nonqualified aliens” under the law, already are unable to access full Medicaid benefits and federally funded food aid and cash assistance.
The Trump administration issued its directive in July 2025. Democratic attorneys general from 20 states and the District of Columbia sued.
They said the change upended three decades of policy allowing people to access community health clinics, domestic violence shelters and Head Start centers without proving their immigration status. They warned the harms could spread, deterring any immigrant from seeking services and throwing up barriers even for U.S. citizens unable to document their legal status. The new rules also would have put administrative burdens on underfunded social service agencies, including Head Start operators, which might have been forced to close if they were unable to comply with the directive’s new requirements, the lawsuit said.
In her ruling, McElroy declared the directive “unlawful” and said the Trump administration did not follow the proper avenues to rewrite the rules. She called the administration’s actions “procedurally invalid.” She added that the administration still could pursue rule changes through the federal notice-and-comment process, which officials bypassed when they issued the directive last year.
Requests for comment were sent to the departments named as defendants in the wide-ranging lawsuit. The Administration for Children and Families, a division of the Department of Health and Human Services that oversees Head Start, said it does not comment on ongoing litigation. The Labor Department referred inquiries to the Justice Department, which did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
In a statement, New York Atty. Gen. Letitia James, who was among those who sued, hailed the judge’s ruling.
“From cancer screenings to food banks to early childhood education, the federal government’s attempts to decimate the social safety net would have been catastrophic for working families,” James said.
Balingit writes for the Associated Press.
WASHINGTON — President Trump’s AI-fueled vision for a drone port he intends to install atop the new White House ballroom includes missile-bearing unmanned aerial vehicles and gun-toting troops, ostensibly to protect the 18-acre complex and the nation’s capital.
A few hundred feet away, a drone port, run by the U.S. Secret Service and not the military, is already quietly operational. Equipped with cameras and sensors to scope out potential threats from a bird’s-eye view, the small UAVs stand on alert in four gray weatherproof boxes until deployed at officers’ commands.
The agency is using a model known as “drone as first responder,” deploying speedy unarmed drones from outdoor stations to serve as flying cameras. That model has been adopted by hundreds of police agencies across the U.S., often powered by AI software to help dodge obstacles or track targets.
The existence of the surveillance drones on a Treasury Department building adjacent to the White House complex has not been previously reported, and could undercut Trump’s legal claims that the ballroom construction is necessary “to protect the White House and surrounding region from aerial attacks.” The need for the drone port underpinned Trump’s national security defense for the construction project — a justification he is now citing for the construction of a massive arch outside the gates of Arlington National Cemetery.
The installation is thus far markedly less imposing than the vision outlined by Trump, with its rows of futuristic attack drones, apparently modeled after those used in U.S. military strikes, that drone experts describe as outlandish.
“To be honest, if a drone was so close to the White House that it needed interdiction, it’s already gotten too far,” said Matt Sloane, co-founder of SkyfireAI, which makes software for drones used by public safety agencies.
It would be more realistic for the White House to build something akin to what the Secret Service is using next door, Sloane said: “The drone takes off and does some type of perimeter sweep or whatever, and then puts itself back in the box.”
The White House did not comment for the story. The Secret Service declined to comment on the specifics of its drone operations but said the new docks are separate from Trump’s ballroom drone port.
Security of the president and the White House complex is generally the domain of the Secret Service, which works in close concert with the White House Military Office and other military elements when needed.
Trump has said the drone port came at the request of U.S. military officials. Speaking to reporters in May, he said the building’s plans were expanded to meet the request: “They wanted more drone capacity,” he said. On social media, he boasted that the drone port might end up being the “most sophisticated” in the world.
What Trump is ultimately aiming to build, and how far it goes beyond what has already been installed, remains unclear. Beyond Trump’s AI images, some of which he filed in his appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court to lift lower courts’ blocks on the construction, the White House has not disclosed what kinds of drones will be used or for what tactical purpose.
The Secret Service is using smaller surveillance drones that are a fraction of the size of the attack drones depicted in Trump’s AI images. The U.S. Air Force bought similar drones from Skydio in April to protect bases across the Middle East. The company also supplied drones to help protect World Cup matches this year.
The Secret Service has been building out its drone- and counter-drone programs for years. But work has accelerated since the 2024 attempted assassination of Trump at a campaign rally in Butler, Pa., when the agency failed both to take action against a drone used by the shooter to scout out the attack and to fly one of its own to provide overwatch of the event.
In the weeks that followed, tethered and untethered surveillance drones became commonplace at campaign rallies and large events at the White House complex.
In an online video released by the agency highlighting their deployment, the Secret Service said the Skydio drones are used to provide “real-time situational awareness” and “aerial overwatch.”
“It allows you to see the threat before it becomes an issue, and to task assets accordingly,” Dustin Talbott, of the Secret Service’s Aviation and Airspace Security Division, said in the video. “We no longer wait for the threat to reveal itself. We find it first.”
Skydio did not provide comment for this story.
Trump has made it a priority to build a stronger drone presence around the White House, responding to an increase in political violence and the evolution of drone warfare.
Paul Eckloff, a former supervisor of the Secret Service’s presidential protection division, said the Russia-Ukraine war has highlighted the risks posed by drones, even off-the-shelf models that can cause massive damage. Drones now represent one of the largest emerging threats the White House must defend against, he said.
During Trump’s first term, conversations about drones often centered on their use in places like Iraq and Syria, said Javed Ali, who served on the National Security Council during at that time and now teaches national security at the University of Michigan. Since then, it has become a matter of domestic security, he said.
Yet there would be major logistical hurdles involved in putting a busy drone port on top of the White House, he said. “There’s a whole host of questions, like who is responsible for overseeing it, and how would there be any de-confliction with commercial airspace?” he said.
Complexities around federal oversight were laid bare this year when the U.S. military used a laser to shoot down a drone near El Paso, Texas, only to find it belonged to Customs and Border Protection. The mishap briefly led the FAA to close nearby airspace.
A drone hub at the White House would navigate crowded and complex airspace around Washington, not far from Reagan Washington National Airport and flight paths shared by other military aircraft.
Trump started talking about the drone port in May, weeks after a federal judge halted ballroom construction but allowed work on security components to continue. Trump later went on to refer to the ballroom as a “military complex,” leaning on that security role as a legal justification.
The Supreme Court in August cleared Trump to continue construction as the legal challenge moves ahead.
Opponents say the president is going too far in his hardening of the White House, turning it into something closer to a fortress. Edward Lengel, a former chief historian for the White House Historical Assn., said Trump has militarized the White House at a scale that’s at odds with its legacy as “the people’s house.”
“It turns it into a big giant porcupine that has its spines pointing out against the people and against the world,” Lengel said.
Trump has argued that the White House was in “very bad condition” when he returned to office, saying it had become vulnerable to modern threats.
At times, he has expressed concerns about his own safety and the risks posed by drones and other air threats. Speaking at a Rose Garden dinner for law enforcement officials in May, Trump quickly glanced up from the lectern as a low bird flew overhead.
“I thought that was a drone,” Trump said, bringing laughs from the crowd. “They make them in all different sizes nowadays — they can be very destructive, as you’ve probably heard.”
Binkley writes for the Associated Press.
WASHINGTON — Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass declined to testify Tuesday before a House subcommittee investigating alleged fraud and mismanagement in the region’s homelessness system, but that did not stop her from going after Republican leaders on the panel.
As the hearing began, Bass’ reelection campaign accused “extremist Republicans in Congress” of staging a politically motivated attack on Los Angeles and its efforts to address homelessness, months after the Trump administration attempted to suspend federal funding for the city.
“Los Angeles will not be bullied,” Bass wrote. “Not by this President, and not by this Congress. I’m going to keep doing my job — cleaning up encampments, getting Angelenos inside, and making LA safer.”
Bass had notified Rep. Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.), the chair of the Subcommittee on Delivering on Government Efficiency, on Sept. 4 that she would not be available to testify, but her absence still drew criticism from Burchett, who told The Times he was willing to use the “fullest extent of the law” and possibly issue subpoenas to compel her to testify.
“I’d like to get her in,” he said after the hearing. “I realize that we have elections coming up and she knows that as well as anybody … but I would hope that she would come up here and answer questions.”
Burchett added that there are “legitimate questions” about how federal homelessness funds were used in Los Angeles and what he believes was their mismanagement. In his opening remarks, Burchett said he was concerned about how the city spent federal funds given the ongoing homelessness issue in the area.
“Los Angeles is at the center of American homelessness,” Burchett said, and specifically pointed to Skid Row as an example of the “abject failure” of the city’s approach to homelessness. “Under Mayor Karen Bass, law and order in the neighborhood has collapsed.”
Burchett added that the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority was “ripe for corruption and financial mismanagement,” and raised concerns about contracts that have been doled out to nonprofits in Los Angeles and the surrounding areas.
Bass had served on LAHSA’s 10-member board since 2023 but stepped down last week, in part citing scheduling issues. Burchett suggested she “suddenly removed herself” from the board to dodge accountability after being asked to testify.
In a letter sent this month, Burchett noted that he wanted to scrutinize how homelessness has gotten worse during her tenure as mayor. David Michaelson, the mayor’s attorney at City Hall, pushed back on Burchett’s assertions, saying unsheltered homelessness in L.A. — the number of people living outside or in their vehicles — has dropped by 11% since Bass took office in 2022.
“She has achieved these results by focusing on interim housing, not ‘Housing First,’ and has also challenged certain ‘Harm Reduction’ strategies that are ineffective,” Michaelson wrote. “For example, Mayor Bass ordered that City contractors no longer provide needles to drug users and instead focus on services that encourage rehabilitation and protection of human life.”
Burchett’s effort to force Bass to testify over concerns about “potential misallocation of federal dollars” by LAHSA is the latest example of congressional Republican leaders trying to examine California’s handling of regional issues and finances. In the last year, Republican have launched investigations into the Palisades wildfire preparations as well as the distribution of charity funds for the victims of the Palisades and Eaton fires.
Rep. Melanie Stansbury (D-N.M.), the top Democrat on the subcommittee, said Tuesday’s hearing was an “unserious and political show targeting” the most vulnerable Americans and the services they need.
“Housing is a human right, and we’re not going to sit here while you use the housing and homeless crisis of this country to try to cough up whatever you’re trying to do politically before the midterms,” Stansbury said.
During the hearing, Burchett showed a short video of Skid Row, filmed by Jonathan Choe, a MAGA-aligned news influencer, who offered testimony during the hearing as well. Choe mostly focused his testimony on his concerns about substance abuse not being enough of a priority in addressing homelessness.
Paul Webster, a senior fellow at the Cicero Institute and executive director of the L.A. Alliance for Human Rights, also testified. Prior to the hearing, he testified in writing that LAHSA — the region’s primary Continuum of Care administrator — has been marked by financial mismanagement and fraud even as its federal funding has grown.
“Los Angeles and its utilization of federal homeless assistance policy is not an outlier,” Webster wrote. “It is the leading edge of a system that lacks accountability, effective monitoring, and prioritizes inputs rather than outcomes.”
Burchett said the panel will continue to take a “good hard look” at homelessness in Los Angeles and other “leftists” cities. He added that he intends to file legislation to require federally funded housing services to offer substance abuse treatment.
Also Tuesday, the LAHSA board voted not to compete with the city and county to keep carrying out many of its core duties, such as operating a homeless database and applying for federal funds on behalf of other agencies.
With L.A. city and county agencies preparing their own applications, a decision to compete with them “would only fracture regional collaboration during an already complex time,” LAHSA said in a statement.
The decision comes a few months after the Trump administration sought to suspend LAHSA from applying for and receiving federal funds. The agency sued to block that effort, winning a partial victory in federal court. The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals stayed that decision on appeal.
In response to the suspension and the ongoing legal battle, the federally mandated board that contracted with LAHSA for those functions put next year’s contract out to bid, forcing the agency to compete.
LAHSA, already diminished by the county’s decision last year to divert its homelessness funds to a new county homelessness department, now retains contracts for programs in the city. But Bass has said the city needs to take over those as well.
Ceballos reported from Washington, Smith from Los Angeles.
Three foreign frigates – Japan’s Mogami class, the South Korean Chungnam class, and the Istanbul class from Turkey – are reportedly included in a study of ships the U.S. Navy could procure. The Trump administration has been openly pushing to leverage ships designed in friendly countries to rapidly bolster the Navy’s fleet while also working to rebuild America’s shrunken domestic shipbuilding capacity. So, it is worth examining what each design brings to the table, as well as the broader opportunities and major hurdles procuring any of them would represent.
USNI News was first to report on Tuesday that the Japanese, South Korean, and Turkish frigates are included in an ongoing Navy study, citing anonymous sources. The review is in direct response to one of the provisions in a larger memo President Trump sent out last month, titled “Rebuilding the United States Navy and America’s Shipbuilding Industrial Base.” This also comes amid strong opposition in Congress to the basic idea of buying foreign warships for the Navy.
Per that memo, the Secretary of the Navy (currently Acting Secretary Hung Cao) was directed to “submit a plan to the President … that includes timelines and resourcing requirements, for a new competitive acquisition approach for surface combatants with sufficient inherent capabilities to perform anti‑submarine warfare, surface warfare, and convoy escort duties.” The memo also said the “plan should address meeting the requirements for Consolidated Cargo Replenishment at Sea (CONSOL) Tankers and — separately — Roll-On, Roll-Off Vessels.”
The study could lead to “an international warship competition [that] could include building up to two of the ships in foreign shipyards before transitioning to domestic yards as part of the Trump administration’s push to rapidly expand the fleet, three industry sources familiar with the deliberations confirmed,” according to USNI News‘ report. The outlet also said the Navy declined to “directly address the potential for an open competition for a new frigate” when asked.
The acquisition approach described here is in line with what the Trump administration is currently calling the “Finland Model,” which entails construction of an initial batch of ships overseas before moving further production to yards in the United States. The name comes from a partnership the U.S. and Finnish governments announced last year regarding the construction of new icebreakers for the U.S. Coast Guard. Canada’s Seaspan Shipyards is also involved in that plan.
Broader plans to explore foreign surface combatant designs for the U.S. Navy, and potentially more to acquire one of those ships, were mentioned in the Pentagon’s 2027 Fiscal Year budget request released earlier this year. President Trump, former Secretary of the Navy John Phelan, and other U.S. officials have also openly raised the possibility of cooperation with shipbuilders in Japan and South Korea, specifically, including with regard to surface combatants. USNI‘s report says that the Istanbul class was included in the current review after it came up in discussions between Trump and Turkish officials on the sidelines of the NATO summit in Ankara in July.
Turkish Navy I-Class Frigate TCG ISTANBUL (F-515) – Istanbul Strait, October 29th, 2023
Many questions remain, but there are clear signs the Trump administration wants to move in pursuing the acquisition of foreign naval vessels. The particular focus on frigates also aligns with a clear Navy need for new ships in that size class.
Before exploring the specific designs the Navy is now said to be reviewing, it is worth taking a step back to understand why frigates are so important to the service’s shipbuilding plans, in general. The United States has not technically operated frigates since the retirement of its last Oliver Hazard Perry class type in 2015. The expectation had been that the Freedom and Independence class Littoral Combat Ships (LCS) would fill the resulting gaps. However, those ships struggled for years with a variety of major issues over the years and still have not lived up to their promised potential, despite certain strides having been made in expanding their operational employment in recent years.
The Navy’s announcement of a new frigate program in 2019, dubbed FFG(X), was widely seen as a rebuke of the core concepts behind the LCS. This, in turn, led to the Constellation class frigate, which became a debacle unto itself and was finally canceled last year. It is important to point out the Constellation design was based on the established Franco-Italian FREMM frigate. The expectation was that only relatively minor changes would be made before putting the ship in American service. In the end, the U.S. derivative had only 15 percent design commonality with its European ‘parent,’ which directly contributed to the demise of the program.
A new FF(X) frigate program has since emerged. Through that effort, the Navy is now in line to get ships derived from the U.S. Coast Guard’s Legend class National Security Cutter (NSC), with the goal being to have the first one in the water by 2028. However, those frigates, at least the ones built in the initial tranche, will lack a Vertical Launch System (VLS) and certain other features that were seen as critical for the preceding Constellation class. This has immediately raised questions about the operational utility of these new small surface combatants, as TWZ has previously explored in detail.
None of this diminishes the Navy’s current desire for new frigates, and more of them, to provide smaller, lower-cost platforms that can be used to bolster larger surface action groups or operate more independently in roles that do not require larger, more capable designs. When fielded in sufficient volume, they can also free up other types of surface combatants for other, higher priority duties or similar help relieve strain on those fleets.
Today, the Navy’s fleet of Arleigh Burke class destroyers “gets used with a very high demand signal combatant commanders. The Navy can’t operate with only one size of ship,” Rear Adm. Brian Metcalf, the Navy’s Deputy Portfolio Acquisition Executive for Maritime for Combatants, said in an official video in June. “The [FF(X)] frigate will fill that gap. They can be used in less contentious waters. They can be used as high-value escorts. There are all kinds of things the frigate can fill the gap for and allow destroyers to execute the high-end mission set.”
With all this in mind, it is not surprising that the Navy would be seeking to further bolster its future frigate fleets on a shorter timetable by leveraging foreign shipbuilders. There are also clear benefits to taking advantage of capable, in-production designs, which leads us to the Mogami, Chungnam, and Istanbul classes.
Japan’s Mogami class, with its stealthy design characteristics, has long been a standout among modern frigates currently in production globally. The ship is designed as a multi-mission platform with anti-air, anti-surface, anti-submarine, and mine warfare capabilities, the latter of which includes both mine-hunting and mine-laying.
TWZ has covered the ship in detail in the past, writing:
“The original Mogami class design (also known as the 30FFM), the first of which only entered Japanese service in 2022, is already a very modern design with its shape featuring some stealthy characteristics. The 436-foot-long, 53-and-a-half-foot-wide, 5,500-metric-ton displacement frigates have a combined diesel and gas (CODAG) propulsion system that allows for fuel-efficient normal cruising operations and an additional burst of speed in combat. The ships have an active electronically scanned array (AESA) main radar, as well as a host of other advanced sensors and mission systems. One of the Mogami‘s most distinctive features is its NORA-50 UNIted COmbined Radio aNtenna (UNICORN) mast on top of the main superstructure, which contains various antennas. The frigates also have especially futuristic-looking Combat Information Centers (CIC)…”
“Armament-wise, the baseline Mogami class frigate has two four-round launchers for Type 17 anti-ship cruise missiles, a SeaRAM close-in defense system loaded with RIM-116 Rolling Airframe Missiles (RAM), and a five-inch main gun in a turret at the bow. There are also two remote weapon stations, each armed with a .50 caliber machine gun, on top of the bridge for additional protection against close-in low-end threats.”
“The Mogami design was originally slated to feature a 16-cell Mk 41 launch system array, but the seventh ship in the class, the JS Niyodo, which was commissioned in May, was the first to be fitted with it. The first six of these frigates were delivered without this capability, but they are expected to be back-fitted with it in the future. Mk 41 cells on Mogami class frigates are expected to be primarily filled with domestically-developed A-SAM or U.S.-designed RIM-162 Evolved Sea Sparrow Missiles. Four ESSMs can notably be loaded in a single Mk 41 cell.”
The Mogami class frigates also have a flight deck and hangar designed to accommodate a single Seahawk helicopter. The ships can also deploy uncrewed underwater and surface vessels (UUV/USV), as well as rigid-hull inflatable boats (RHIBs), via a ramp at the stern.
MHI in Japan has also developed an enlarged derivative that is close to 466 feet long, almost 56 feet at its widest, and displaces some 6,200 metric tons. This version also features a 32-cell VLS array, along with an upgraded radar, other improved sensors, and updated mission systems. Last year, the Australian government announced it would be acquiring a fleet of these ships with certain unspecified country-specific features as part of its SEA 3000 program.
The Australian deal is one of, if not still the most significant foreign arms sale for Japan since the end of World War II. It also helps ensure that the Mogami production line will remain hot for years to come. For the U.S. Navy, sharing a frigate with two of America’s two highest-profile allies in the Pacific, and which could therefore be readily serviced in those countries, would be very advantageous.
The Mogami is also a contender to become New Zealand’s next frigate, and there have also been discussions about sales to Indonesia. The Japan Maritime Self Defense Force only has two more of these frigates on order, the last of which is expected to be commissioned into service by March of next year.
The Chungnam class (also sometimes referred to as the FFX-III or FFG-III) is the latest frigate for the South Korean Navy, and feature a mix of anti-air, anti-ship, and anti-submarine capabilities. The first example entered service in that country in 2024. These ships are just over 423 feet long, approach 49 feet at the widest point in the hull, and displace some 4,300 tons with a full combat load. The design is based on the earlier Daegu class, which was itself an evolution of the preceding Incheon class that traces its roots back to the late 1990s.
As was the case on the Daegu class, the Chungnam class uses combined diesel–electric or gas (CODLOG) propulsion, which offers benefits for power management and efficiency, as well as when it comes to reducing maintenance requirements and operating costs. The design features a prominent integrated mast structure with four fixed-face arrays for the main multi-function AESA radar near the top. The ships have additional radars and other sensors, as well as an electronic warfare suite.
Each one of the Chungnam class frigates has a 16-cell K-VLS array. Domestically developed K-SAAM surface-to-air missiles and Haeseong I anti-ship cruise missiles (also called the SSM-700L or C-Star), as well as K745A1 Hong Sang Eo (Red Shark) vertically-launched anti-submarine rockets, can be loaded into these cells.
The armament package on these ships also includes a five-inch main gun in a turret at the bow, a pair of triple torpedo tubes, and a Close-in Weapon System II (CIWS II) armed with a seven-barrel 30mm Gatling-type cannon.
The Chungnam class frigates also have a flight deck and hangar for a single helicopter at the stern.
As it stands now, the South Korean Navy has two Chungnam class frigates in service and has plans to acquire four more over the next few years. The lead ship in the class was built by HD Hyundai Heavy Industries, which is also one of the principal designers of the ship. A different shipbuilder, SK Oceanplant, built the second ship in the class, ROKS Gyeoungbuk, and is now working on the third and fourth examples. Hanwha Ocean is reportedly in line to build the last two ships in the class for South Korea. Hyundai and Hanwha have pitched export designs based on the Chungnam class, with both firms notably in the running to supply new frigates to Thailand.
S. Korea shows off shipbuilding prowess by launching 2nd next-gen frigate in 5 months
Hanwha has already been making steady inroads in the shipbuilding industry in the United States, including the acquisition of the Philly Shipyard in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in 2024. Hyundai has reportedly been working to do the same. Just last month, Hanwha publicly announced a new $1.2 billion bid to buy out Australian shipbuilder Austal’s U.S. subsidiary, Austal USA. Austal notably built the Independence class LCSs for the U.S. Navy and continues to supply that service with other vessels. Austal subsequently said it was considering the South Korean offer.
Turkey’s Istanbul class (also known as the Istif class or just I class), developed under the country’s MILGEM national warship program, is not a design that has typically come up in previous discussions about potential foreign-made frigates for the U.S. Navy. It is described as a multi-role frigate with anti-air, anti-surface, and anti-submarine capabilities. The lead ship in this class, TCG Istanbul, entered Turkish Navy service in 2024.
Türkiye’s Modern Naval Power: The I-Class Frigates
At around 371 and a half feet long and with a beam of just over 47 feet, as well as a displacement of some 3,000 tons with a full combat load, the Istanbul class is notably smaller than either the Mogami class or Chungnam class. Like the Mogami, it uses CODAG propulsion. The Turkish design is understood to have leveraged lessons learned from the Project GENESIS program to upgrade the country’s second-hand ex-U.S. Navy Oliver Hazard Perry class frigates, as you can learn more about here.
TCG Istanbul is armed with a 16-cell MiDLAS VLS array, with past reports saying it is primarily configured to fire Hisar short-to-medium-range surface-to-air missiles. However, just in August, it was revealed that the second ship in the class, the future TCG Izmir, which is undergoing sea trials now, has a new 16-cell version of MiDLAS with visibly longer cells. This would allow the ship to fire larger weapons vertically, such as the Siper medium-range surface-to-air missiles, Atmaca anti-ship cruise missiles, and/or Gezgin land-attack cruise missiles. MiDLAS is a scalable VLS design developed in Turkey as an alternative to the U.S.-made Mk 41.
The initial Istanbul class design already had four deck-mounted launchers that can be loaded with up to 16 Atmaca missiles, in total. The frigates also have a 76mm cannon in a turret on the bow, a Gokdeniz CIWS with a twin-barrel 35mm cannon, two 25mm cannon-armed remote weapon stations, and a pair of twin torpedo tubes.
The main sensor on the Istanbul class is a rotating AESA radar mounted on top of the ship’s main integrated mast structure. It has additional radars and other sensors, as well as electronic support measures and electronic countermeasures systems.
The Istanbul class design also features a flight deck and hangar at the stern, sized around the Seahawk helicopter.
As mentioned, the second Istanbul class frigate for the Turkish Navy is now in sea trials, and the country plans to eventually acquire eight of these warships in total. They are being built through several shipyards in Turkey. Last year, Turkey’s TAIS Shipyards also secured a contract to build at least two Istanbul class frigates for Indonesia.
Much remains to be seen about how the U.S. Navy might proceed with the acquisition of new frigates, or any other naval vessels, via foreign shipbuilders. Whether any other relevant, in-production designs are being considered, or could be in the future, is unknown. USNI News‘ report says the current study is scheduled to wrap up in November.
Furthermore, what the Navy might want to do could well turn out to be moot. Members of Congress on both sides of the political aisle have been very vocally pushing back on any plans to acquire foreign warships amid concerns about negative impacts on the U.S. shipbuilding industry.
Current U.S. law would already require the Trump administration to issue a national security waiver to pursue foreign-made naval vessels. A draft of the annual defense policy bill, or National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), for the 2027 Fiscal Year now making its way through the Senate would eliminate the ability to issue such a waiver. In June, members of the House Armed Services Committee separately moved to outright block any spending on foreign-built warships in a separate draft NDAA.
The aforementioned Finland Model, as outlined in Trump’s August memo, is clearly intended to try to assuage Congressional concerns. Under the stated plan, foreign shipbuilders would be required to make major investments in U.S. shipbuilding enterprises and hire American workers as part of any future contract, even if an initial tranche of vessels is built overseas.
“The Administration strongly opposes section 1025, which would prohibit the use of funds for procurement of initial battle force ships to be built in a foreign shipyard, especially while, in accordance with the ‘Finland Model’ first employed with the Coast Guard’s medium icebreaker program, long-term investments are being made in an American brown or greenfield shipyard,” the White House’s Office of Management and Budget (OMB) wrote in a statement of Administration Policy in July, specifically in response to provisions in the the House’s NDAA draft. “This prohibition fails to seriously address the challenges posed by current shipbuilding backlogs across six major programs in our ‘prime’ shipyards.”
This latter point here speaks to an already worrisome and still-widening gap between U.S. shipbuilding capacity and that of chief global competitor China. The U.S. government has tried to take steps in recent years to revitalize the American side of the equation, but workforce retention and other factors have continued to present serious hurdles. There are additional concerns now about how the addition of work on the Trump class battleship program will affect America’s naval shipbuilding ecosystem, which the Trump administration has separately pushed back on.
Continuing U.S. shipyard capacity and quality issues raise their own questions about the viability of the Finland Model. The construct inherently limits the U.S. government’s ability to make use of yards overseas and is heavily contingent on the shipbuilding industry in the United States expanding at a rate where it will be able to absorb the additional production demands. With the naval shipbuilding deficit already becoming extremely problematic, buying examples of relevant classes with minimal changes and having them built where production is already established could arguably be the priority, especially in light of the failures of the LCS and Constellation programs.
Ensuring that any U.S.-specific changes to the design are minimal will also be critical for any such plan to be successful. As mentioned, the Constellation class was undone in large part due to a near-constant stream of changes ordered by the Navy, which negated the benefits of choosing a derivative of an in-production design. The service has stressed its intention to avoid any similar pitfalls with its existing FF(X) frigate program, which also has to be factored into the larger domestic shipyard capacity question.
“The President has directed the Navy to aggressively increase domestic shipbuilding capacity, including leveraging the proven shipbuilding skills and industrial expertise of our allies,” Navy Capt. Ron Flanders said in a statement on Tuesday, according to USNI News. “We are actively developing options to fulfill the President’s intent to deliver ships faster while ensuring long-term investment, technology transfer, and workforce expansion within United States shipyards.”
Signs are certainly growing that the Navy is moving closer to kicking off a formal process to acquire foreign-designed warships, which could include Mogami, Chungnam, and/or Istanbul frigates, to help grow its fleets, especially in the face of growing challenges posed by China.
Contact the author: joe@twz.com
The U.S. Secret Service dealt with several drone-related incidents without adjusting its protection policies or documenting why it didn’t, according to a government report released Thursday. That information may have helped illustrate the emerging threat of civilian drone use before one was used in the 2024 assassination attempt on then-candidate Donald Trump in Butler, Pa.
The report from the Government Accountability Office found delays and holes in how the Secret Service updates its policies regarding threats, and arrives after a few turbulent years for the agency charged with the president’s protection.
The would-be assassin in Butler positioned himself on a roof left unsecured, nicking the president’s ear with a bullet. Months later, a man with a rifle got surprisingly close to Trump at his West Palm Beach, Fla., golf course. And in April, an armed man got beyond security barriers at the White House Correspondents’ Assn. dinner, where the president sat.
The report found that between 2015 and 2025 the Secret Service dealt with 83 security incidents and that it updated its protection policies in response to 25 of them. Among the incidents was a drone that made contact with President Obama’s motorcade in 2015 and another flown about 200 feet over a rally for then-presidential candidate Bernie Sanders.
Failing to document why the Secret Service decided not to change its policy is the concern, said Nathan Tranquilli, acting director of the Government Accountability Office, adding that the drone incidents were a “compelling example” of that.
“Some of the missing information has been relevant to subsequent attacks,” the report read. It cited the Butler incident, where the culprit flew a drone for 11 minutes over the crowd, which helped him position himself to get a clear shot at Trump.
The Secret Service also failed to update eight of 22 protection policies within a required time frame of four years. A memorandum of understanding between the Secret Service and the Diplomatic Security Service, which designates each agency’s responsibilities for the president’s overseas security, hasn’t been updated since 1991, even though an annual review and update are required. As a consequence, the memorandum doesn’t address newer threats, such as drones.
“When you look at the Secret Service and you look at their mission, really it’s a zero-fail mission, and they’ve got a ton of challenges,” Tranquilli said. “When decisions were being made about where to put time and energy, some of these things fell to the side, and, as a result, there were some delays.”
The report recommended three fixes, including that the Secret Service revise its policy to require that, when a security incident doesn’t warrant a policy update, that the rationale is documented.
A spokesperson for the Secret Service did not immediately respond to a request for comment, but the report stated that the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees the Secret Service, agreed with all recommendations and plans to implement changes.
Bedayn writes for the Associated Press.
By Nicholas Riccardi and Michael Casey
BOSTON — A federal judge in Boston said Thursday the U.S. Postal Service has told her nothing about how it would implement a plan to regulate mail ballots for the midterms as she considers whether to let the plan proceed in the weeks before Election Day.
U.S. District Court Judge Indira Talwani is deciding whether to extend her prohibition on the proposed regulation of mail ballots, an effort undertaken as part of an executive order by President Trump. The hearing in the closely watched case came a day before the first state begins sending mail ballots to voters.
“We are 70 days from the election and I have nothing from the USPS about how this will happen,” Talwani told Michael Velchik, the Justice Department lawyer representing the Postal Service.
Last week, Talwani imposed a 14-day temporary restraining order to keep it from being used. That order expires next week as more states begin sending out mail ballots. Velchik said the administration will most likely go to the Supreme Court by the end of the week to seek permission to resume implementing the plan.
Talwani has been here before. In June, she prohibited the administration from implementing Trump’s order for the November election, ruling the changes came too close to voting for the federal government to embark on such a project.
But the Supreme Court late last month ruled that Talwani’s order was premature because the Postal Service had not yet published regulations governing how it would apply Trump’s order. The agency did so just before the high court ruling came down, prompting Democrats and voting rights groups to swiftly re-file their lawsuits.
They counter that the president has no authority to set election rules, which is a power designated in the Constitution to the states and in some cases Congress.
They won an initial victory with Talwani’s restraining order, which has already been appealed by the administration.
Trump has long opposed mail voting and falsely blamed it for his 2020 election loss to Democrat Joe Biden, even though he often uses that method to cast his own ballot.
Election officials say there’s simply no way they can comply with the Postal Service directives, which could require a complete overhaul of their operations. Before it delivers mail ballots for any state, the Postal Service would have to approve the design of the envelopes that contain them and have the state upload a list of voters receiving them to an online portal.
Some ballots have already gone out. A few municipalities in Wisconsin opted to send mail ballots to voters earlier this week, but Friday marks the full kickoff of voting as North Carolina starts shipping its mail ballots to all voters who requested them.
The administration has contended the changes are relatively minor and legal. But the portal was still not active this week, and most election offices have already printed their envelopes and ballots.
Velchik told Talwani that the federal government is offering states the choice to opt into the system. But the Postal Service has yet to identify a single state that has done so.
A whistleblower report made public this week warns that the postal system’s requirements could lead to millions of mail ballots never being sent. The new rule requires all ballots to be physically brought to post offices before being mailed to voters, but if a single one’s bar code registers an error, the whole batch gets thrown out, even if it contains tens of thousands of legitimate ballots.
Riccardi and Casey write for the Associated Press. Riccardi reported from Denver.
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China’s service sector activity expanded at a faster pace in August 2026, with the RatingDog China General Services PMI rising to 51.4 from July’s 50.4, which had marked the softest growth since September 2024.
The latest reading comfortably beat market
WASHINGTON — Army Secretary Dan Driscoll is stepping down after 18 months on the job, the White House said Monday, in the latest departure of a top military leader during the Trump administration.
No reason was given for the departure of Driscoll, who is a friend of Vice President JD Vance, but tensions with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth have been widely reported. It marks the latest in a series of shakeups of the military leadership, with the Army especially seeing major upheaval.
“Secretary Driscoll has been highly effective in advancing President Trump’s agenda to Make America Strong Again at the Department of the Army by providing outstanding leadership during historic military operations, restoring an emphasis on readiness and lethality, assisting with negotiations between Russia and Ukraine, and more,” White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly said in a statement.
“The United States Army is more powerful than ever thanks to his work alongside the Commander-in-Chief and Secretary of War,” she added.
A U.S. Army official, who was not authorized to comment publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity, said Driscoll spoke with President Trump on the current state of the Army and submitted his resignation. The official did not provide additional details. The Pentagon referred questions to the Army. Driscoll’s resignation was reported earlier Monday by The Wall Street Journal.
Driscoll’s departure follows the ouster of one of his allies from the Army as well as the rollback of a drone program he had championed. Hegseth had suddenly ousted the service’s top uniformed leader, Gen. Randy George, in April, while the Army’s commander in Europe and Africa, Gen. Christopher Donahue, unexpectedly stepped down in June.
Gen. Christopher LaNeve, who has made a meteoric rise under Hegseth, took George’s place as the Army’s acting chief of staff. Under LaNeve, the service is pulling the plug on a drone modernization program. An Army unit based in Europe was building its own drones before LaNeve directed it to end its efforts and return to being a traditional infantry battalion, officials said in August.
Driscoll was a George ally and lamented his departure, along with both Republican and Democratic lawmakers. He told Congress in April that he and his family drove to George’s house following his resignation “and we all gave him a hug.”
“That being said, the civilian leadership, the design of our system, is that they get to pick the leaders that they want,” Driscoll added.
Rep. Steve Womack, an Arkansas Republican who had served in the Army National Guard, said on X that Driscoll is “a transformative leader who brought common sense and discipline to the Department of the Army.”
“I had the pleasure of working with him closely, and appreciated how engaged he was from mentoring cadets at West Point to leading the Army at the Pentagon,” Womack wrote. “The Army is better equipped and prepared to tackle emerging threats because of his leadership that strengthened the force while putting our Soldiers first.”
Rep. Jason Crow, a Colorado Democrat and former Army Ranger, told reporters that he worked well with Driscoll despite their policy differences.
“It was actually nice, I will say, having somebody who was smart, that knew the policy, that wanted to do the work, that had a background in these issues,” Crow said, adding that “it’s unfortunate that somebody like that can’t last in this administration.”
Crow, who serves on the House Armed Services Committee and co-chairs the House Army Caucus, said the “Pentagon right now is, in some cases, rudderless,” with so many senior leaders gone. “So, I’m gravely concerned about it,” he said.
Rhode Island Sen. Jack Reed, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said in a statement that Driscoll “worked to transform the Army for the battlefield of the future, and he engaged with Congress candidly and consistently.”
“Secretary Hegseth is cultivating a culture where dissent is punished and competence is secondary to personal allegiance,” said Reed, a former Army officer, while noting that “hundreds of thousands of soldiers are deployed around the world, many in combat zones.”
Driscoll is an Iraq war veteran, tech investor and former adviser to Vance, whom Driscoll met at Yale Law School. When nominating Driscoll in 2024, Trump called him “a disruptor and change agent.”
As Army secretary, Driscoll was tapped for the unusual role of key negotiator to try to end the war between Russia and Ukraine. He was also a major force behind trying to cut the red tape for military contractors to quickly develop more drones and counter-drone capabilities as warfare rapidly changes around the world.
The Senate confirmed him in February 2025, voting 66-28, following an Armed Services Committee hearing that was largely unconfrontational and focused on how the Army could modernize its systems, improve recruiting and beef up the military industrial base.
Driscoll noted that his father and grandfather served in the Army, and he vowed to be a secretary focused on the needs of soldiers. According to the Army, Driscoll served as an armor officer from August 2007 to March 2011, deploying to Iraq from October 2009 to July 2010.
He also ran unsuccessfully in the Republican primary for a North Carolina congressional seat in 2020, getting about 8% of the vote in a crowded field of candidates.
His departure comes after Hegseth ousted several other generals and admirals, including the head of the Navy.
The Pentagon abruptly announced in April that Navy Secretary John Phelan was leaving the job, becoming the first head of a military service to depart during Trump’s second term.
Finley and Madhani write for the Associated Press.
The U.S. Postal Service is poised to launch a hastily built, error-riddled computer system that could jeopardize the process of mail voting relied upon by one-third of all voters, according to a whistleblower statement released Tuesday by Democratic Sen. Richard Blumenthal.
The effort is part of the implementation of President Trump’s executive order limiting mail voting and has been temporarily halted by a federal judge. The ruling is being appealed by the administration and the directive may ultimately end up back before the U.S. Supreme Court.
The disclosure from the unidentified whistleblower contends that the Postal Service has been scrambling to try to build a complex system that would normally take a year or more in only three months, sometimes in defiance of the judge’s orders halting work. The goal is to have it ready for use in the midterm elections.
The disclosure contends that, due to the new procedures, a single scanning error in a batch of tens of thousands of ballot envelopes could prevent any from reaching voters. It details a system that election officials have already warned could not be implemented before the first mail ballots begin going out Friday in North Carolina.
“The Postal Service has designed a system to disenfranchise millions of Americans,” Blumenthal told reporters in advance of releasing the whistleblower information. “This administration seems hell-bent on changing the framework on casting ballots in this country clearly for political reasons.”
Trump’s executive order, signed in March, directed U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services and the commissioner of the Social Security Administration to develop state citizenship lists and then required the Postal Service to send mail ballots only to voters who are on such a list. Ballot envelopes would have to comply with new Postal Service rules and include bar codes.
The online portal that is the subject of the whistleblower complaint is intended for states to deliver their lists of verified voters to the Postal Service.
The Postal Service did not comment on Monday night. The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment Tuesday. The White House has called the mail voting provisions “commonsense measures” necessary to combat fraud.
Trump has long opposed voting by mail, even though he has repeatedly used the method to cast his own ballot. He falsely blamed mail voting for his 2020 election loss and has spent years spreading conspiracy theories about it. A report by the Brookings Institution published in 2025 found that mail voting fraud occurred in only about four cases out of every 10 million mail ballots cast.
Since returning to office, Trump has said Republicans should be “taking over” vote counting in Democratic areas and launched a sweeping attempt to reinvestigate the 2020 election, despite a mountain of evidence that he lost fairly to Democrat Joe Biden.
Until Trump came out against mail voting in 2020, the system was used equally by both parties. Since then, it has become more common among Democratic voters. More than 29% of all voters in 2024 cast their ballots through the mail.
After Trump issued his executive order, Democrats and civil rights groups sued and eventually won a ruling from U.S. District Court Judge Indira Talwani in Boston barring implementation of the system before the November midterms. But without ruling on the legality of Trump’s order, the Supreme Court’s conservative majority last week found that was premature and overruled Talwani, momentarily clearing the way for its implementation.
On the night of Aug. 21, the Postal Service released a final rule outlining how it would implement the order.
It said it would only send mail ballots for states that got approval for the design of their envelopes and submitted a list of voters receiving them through the still-not-active online portal. That rule gave plaintiffs a chance to sue again, and Talwani on Thursday night issued a 14-day restraining order against implementation of the measure.
The letter from Blumenthal and an accompanying summary of the whistleblower’s statements says the Postal Service began work on the portal on June 15 and stopped on June 25 after Talwani’s initial order. Then on July 29, the Postal Service restarted the work. That was when the administration appealed the judge’s order to the Supreme Court. The high court did not strike Talwani’s injunction down until Aug. 24.
Talwani last week found the Postal Service violated her order by continuing to work on the final rule, but she imposed no sanctions on the government. On Monday, she issued a ruling refusing to lift the restraining order that also said the Postal Service could continue work on its portal, as long as it wasn’t forcing states to use it.
In its summary of the whistleblower’s statement, the group Whistleblower Aid says the hurried construction of the portal, with a goal of being active on Tuesday, meant it did not undergo full testing.
“The apparently sloppy and rushed manner in which the Federal Ballot Mail Portal and supporting IT systems are being built poses significant risk,” the group wrote. “Potentially millions of American voters may not receive their mail-in ballot this election cycle in a timely manner, or at all.”
The statement also says the Postal Service is implementing a “zero percent” rule in which any errors in any mail ballots sent out by an election office could lead to all of them being discarded — even if it’s simply one problem amid tens of thousands of legitimate ballots.
The rule requires ballots to be handled in a physical post office by an election official. Those will then be scanned to ensure they match the voter database. During three layers of checks, a single apparent error could cause the whole batch to be rejected, the statement says.
Blumenthal said he has “a very strong hope and some faith that our system of justice will strike down this unconstitutional and unconscionable rule.” But, he added, if it somehow goes into effect for the midterms, he would not advise voting by mail.
Riccardi writes for the Associated Press. AP writer Lindsay Whitehurst contributed to this story.