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Today’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” Hearing Highlights

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Gates: “I fully support the president’s decision” to repeal “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” (But read the fine print…)

Senate Armed Services Committee Chair Carl Levin held a hearing this afternoon on repealing “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” There are few new headlines, but here’s my overall perspective, with some key quotes and exchanges. Bottom line: Republicans tried to turn the purpose of the hearing into a “whether we should repeal DADT,” and the Democrats conducted the hearing as an effort to assist and understand the military’s route to repealing DADT — how and when.

Sadly, all three sides — the GOP, the Dems, and the military — are approaching this wrong. There was too much call for delay and stalling.

Both witnesses testifying at today’s hearing, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates (remember, appointed by Bush) and Admiral Mike Mullin fully support repeal.
As I reported last night, Gates trotted out that he will have the military conduct a year-long study to determine all the perils and pitfalls of repealing DADT. He called for a “working group” to study the effects of repealing DADT on “unit cohesion,” saying they will “reach out to outside experts.” Not one single senator actively challenged the need for yet one more study on DADT repeal.

This “study” is a stalling tactic. I support making sure policy changes are rolled out effectively, but, as General McCaffrey said earlier today, “This is not going to be a problem unless we have an individual debate, topic by topic.”

Gates did mention that this is the first time the military itself is doing a study on DADT repeal, saying also, “We would feel it very important we be given enough time for that implementation — at least a year.” So, one year to study, then one year (at least!) to implement. Meanwhile, hundreds more LGBTQ soldiers will be subject to discharge, even though Gates said the military will ease up on that process.

In his opening statement, Gates proclaimed, “We have received our orders from the Commander in Chief and we are moving accordingly.” Admiral Mullin stated, “Allowing gays and lesbians to serve openly would be the right thing to do. For me it comes down to integrity… Our members can and would accommodate such a change.”

Senator John McCain was perhaps the most active opponent of repealing DADT during the hearing, railing against Secretary Gates, stating, “I’m deeply disappointed in your statement Secretary Gates … it’s one that is clearly biased. Then, to both Gates and Mullins, McCain, clearly posturing for a fight, lectured, “I’m happy to say we still have a Congress despite your plan to repeal [DADT] by fiat.”

(John Aravoisis points out McCain’s hypocrisy and inability to accept views he doesn’t agree with. McCain in 2006: “…the day that the leadership of the military comes to me and says, Senator, we ought to change the policy, then I think we ought to consider seriously changing it because those leaders in the military are the ones we give the responsibility to.”)

But perhaps the most offensive comments came from Senator Saxby Chambliss (R-GA) who equated a law banning gays serving in the military — at all — to military regulations banning “alcohol, adultery, body art, and fraternization.” He went on to say, “The presence in the armed forces of homosexuals poses an unacceptable risk to standards of good order and discipline.”

(One must therefore assume our armed services are a disaster. Or, Senator Chambliss is extraordinarily ill-informed.)

Fortunately, Senator Claire McCaskill (D-MI) indirectly set Chambliss straight. Stating to Admiral Mullin that we “welcome the service of gays and lesbians in our armed forces,” that they are serving “with distinction,” she asked how the Pentagon’s study will be sure to include their voices. The Admiral, recognizing that any service member who is outed is subject to discharge, and therefore, participating in the study could end their career, was, well, a bit shaken.

Senator Susan Collns (R-ME) asked leading questions which seemed to place her in favor of repeal. She asked Mullins if, as our forces are working directly with NATO forces, whcih have openly LGBTQ members, have there been any incidents that had “any impact on combat effectiveness?” The answer: “No.”

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Trump Declares War on ‘Woke Leftist Ideologues’ as He Moves to Reshape Entire US Military

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President Donald Trump has made clear he intends to remake the culture of the entire U.S. Military, starting at the very beginning.

“Our Service Academies have been infiltrated by Woke Leftist Ideologues over the last four years. I have ordered the immediate dismissal of the Board of Visitors for the Army, Air Force, Navy, and Coast Guard,” the Commander-in-Chief announced Monday afternoon.  The Boards ensure accountability and civilian oversight at institutions like West Point. “We will have the strongest Military in History, and that begins by appointing new individuals to these Boards. We must make the Military Academies GREAT AGAIN!”

“Trump campaigned on a promise to purge the U.S. military of officers he deemed ‘woke’ and has used the start of his second term to try and rid the Pentagon of diversity initiatives by executive order,” Politico reported. “The purge has begun to extend to the nation’s service academies, where Republican lawmakers have long complained that so-called ‘woke’ literature is seeping into the curriculum. The Washington Post reported on Friday that the U.S. Defense Department had begun restricting access to some books in its school systems. The service academies themselves had already begun disbanding student clubs focused on diversity in response to Trump’s executive orders, with West Point getting rid of a dozen such organizations last week, including the Asian-Pacific Forum Club and the National Society of Black Engineers Club.”

It is unclear if the President can fire members of the Boards of Visitors, who are appointed by the President to serve a term of three years.

READ MORE: The 27 Words the NSA Is Scrubbing From Its Websites: Report

As President Trump’s newly sworn-in national security cabinet members get to work in their new roles, they are making clear their priorities will be his: getting rid of “woke.”

Trump’s announcement on the firings came just one day after U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth declared he had “met with the leadership” of each service academy last week.

“My message was simple: stick to leadership, standards, excellence, war fighting, and readiness. These are MILITARY ACADEMIES, not civilian universities. I was impressed by the changes already underway and look forward to visiting each institution. Social Justice and DEI are OUT; History, Engineering, and War Studies are IN. We must restore the warrior ethos to the @deptofdefense — and it starts with our future leaders.”

Secretary Hegseth, who officially took office on January 25, was criticized for his remarks after the mid-air collision between a commercial airplane and an Army helicopter that took place near Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport and claimed all 67 lives.

The next day, Secretary Hegseth tried to blame “DEI” — diversity, equity, and inclusion — for the crash, following President Trump’s lead.

Now, Hegseth is again engaging in “culture war” attacks, this time attacking transgender service members, another attempt to purge “woke” from the Trump administration.

In a memo on Monday titled, “Prioritizing Military Excellence and Readiness,” (the exact same title as a Trump executive order,) the Defense Secretary announced a “pause” for all medical treatments of transgender service members, and a pause on accepting any new transgender service members into the U.S. Military.

Also on Monday, U.S. Secretary of Veterans Affairs Doug Collins posted a statement in line with Republicans’ recent attacks on the news site Politico.

“Ran across a $178,000 contract VA had with Politico and we promptly canceled it. That money can be better spent on Veterans health care!” Secretary Collins wrote.

READ MORE: ‘Stomach Turning’: Trump Defends His J6 Pardons as ‘Great for Humanity’

Longtime veterans’ activist and political commentator Paul Rieckhoff blasted Collins, and issued a warning.

“This is the first action item he [Collins] posts about as VA Sec. The very first. Not suicide, not healthcare improvements, not even bureaucratic changes. He’s taking action against Politico. The Trump administration messaging machine is synched up. And growing this week to include [the] VA. Look for attacks on DEI, trans people and the press any minute now. The culture war at VA under Collins will run in direct parallel with Hegseth at DoD. And it’s all just getting started.”

Rieckhoff has been sounding the alarm bells about Trump’s apparent takeover of the military.

“He’s daring the world to stop him, just like he has his entire life, and they’re not stopping him,” Rieckhoff said Friday night about Trump in a panel discussion on MSNBC.

He also talked about Trump’s “radical extreme agenda of taking over the government and snatching the levers of power,” and warned: “we should be really watching when he says, ‘I’m going for the military.'”

“He went with Hegseth first, he’s going for the Pentagon first because when you break into a house and take it over, you go for the gun closet first,” Rieckhoff remarked. “He knows the military is the most powerful, he knows it’s the most influential. It’s the biggest biggest employer. It’s got the biggest budget, and it’s got the guns, so that’s where he’s going first and he’s leading his entire strategy with and at the Pentagon.”

Before the 2024 election, the liberal political action committee VoteVets, posted video (below) showing how Trump, using the Project 2025 playbook, could take over the U.S. Military and turn it “into his own MAGA military.”

Almost all the suggestions have begun to be implemented.

Watch that video below or at this link.

READ MORE: ‘People Are Really Angry’: Fury Over Musk and DOGE Triggers Spike in Calls to Congress

 

Image via Reuters

 

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The 27 Words the NSA Is Scrubbing From Its Websites: Report

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The National Security Agency (NSA), a largely clandestine global intelligence-gathering and counterintelligence organization that “prevents and eradicates threats to U.S. national security systems,” is reportedly undergoing a massive “purge” on its public and private websites and internal network, eliminating any site that contains any of a list of 27 words — despite possibly including mission-related work. The operation is an effort to comply with President Donald Trump’s order to eliminate any so-called “DEI” programs or language.

Trump has called DEI — diversity, equity, and inclusion — “illegal,” and in his January 21 executive order alleged that DEI “policies not only violate the text and spirit of our longstanding Federal civil-rights laws, they also undermine our national unity, as they deny, discredit, and undermine the traditional American values of hard work, excellence, and individual achievement in favor of an unlawful, corrosive, and pernicious identity-based spoils system. Hardworking Americans who deserve a shot at the American Dream should not be stigmatized, demeaned, or shut out of opportunities because of their race or sex.”

According to Popular Information, on Monday the NSA, which is under the U.S. Department of Defense, “is planning a ‘Big Delete’ of websites and internal network content that contain any of 27 banned words, including ‘privilege,’ ‘bias,’ and ‘inclusion.’ The ‘Big Delete,’ according to an NSA source and internal correspondence reviewed by Popular Information, is creating unintended consequences.

READ MORE: ‘Stomach Turning’: Trump Defends His J6 Pardons as ‘Great for Humanity’

Popular Information’s Judd Legum and Rebecca Crosby report that “the dragnet is taking down ‘mission-related’ work. According to the NSA source, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to speak to the media, the process is ‘very chaotic,’ but is plowing ahead anyway.”

A memo announcing the 27 banned words “acknowledges that the list includes many terms that are used by the NSA in contexts that have nothing to do with DEI. For example, the term ‘privilege is used by the NSA in the context of ‘privilege escalation.’ In the intelligence world, privilege escalation refers to ‘techniques that adversaries use to gain higher-level permissions on a system or network.'”

Efforts to comply with Trump’s anti-DEI orders are not limited to the NSA.

“Since Trump took office, thousands of web pages across various federal agencies have been altered or removed entirely. Federal agencies have taken down or edited resources about HIV, contraceptives, LGBTQ+ health, abortion, and climate change. Some web pages have later come back online ‘without clarity on what had been changed or removed.” Popular Information also reported.

“An analysis by the Washington Post of 8,000 federal web pages ‘found 662 examples of deletions and additions’ since Trump took office. The analysis found that words like diversity, equity, and inclusion were removed at least 231 times from the websites of federal agencies, including the Department of Labor, the Department of Education, the Department of Health and Human Services, and the Department of Transportation.”

READ MORE: ‘People Are Really Angry’: Fury Over Musk and DOGE Triggers Spike in Calls to Congress

A quick search of the NSA’s public website for the word “transgender” came up with only one hit, a page titled, “50 Years of Pride: Celebrating NSA’s Committment {sic] to Promoting Respect, Individuality, Diversity, and Equality.” That link led to an error page that stated: “The page you are looking for might have been moved, renamed, or may be temporarily unavailable.”

But a search for pages with the words “Diversity,” “Privilege,” and “Pronouns” resulted in numerous positive hits.

Legum posted the list of 27 banned words to social media. They include, Anti-Racism, Racism, Allyship, Bias, DEI, Diversity, Confirmation Bias, Equity, Feminism, Gender, Gender Identity Inclusion, Inclusive, and All-Inclusive, among others.

READ MORE: ‘Bring Him Back’: JD Vance Wants Musk to Rehire 25 Year Old DOGE ‘Kid’ After Racist Posts

Image via Reuters

 

 

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‘Stomach Turning’: Trump Defends His J6 Pardons as ‘Great for Humanity’

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President Donald Trump aboard Air Force One on Sunday announced that the nearly 1600 people he pardoned after they had been convicted of January 6-related crimes did not assault anyone but had been assaulted by the U.S. government, and his granting those pardons on his first day back in office was “a great thing for humanity.”

Trump was sitting next to a large map of what he announced is now the “Gulf of America,” and had signed an executive order requiring that new designation as the plane flew over what has, for hundreds of years, been called the Gulf of Mexico. Some observers have noted that Trump is also attempting to reshape the narrative of the January 6 insurrection and attack on the U.S. Capitol by claiming that those convicted of crimes were actually victims.

Reminded by a reporter that he had planned to honor first responders at the Super Bowl, President Trump was asked why he would pardon people who had assaulted first responders.

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“I pardoned people that were assaulted themselves. They were assaulted by our government,” Trump insisted, despite countless hours of footage of people he pardoned attacking the U.S. Capitol, and some of them attacking law enforcement officers.

“I pardoned J6 people who were assaulted by our government. That’s who assaulted — and they were treated unfairly, there’s never been a group of people in this country outside of maybe one instance that I can think of, but I won’t get into it, that were treated more horribly than the people of J6,” Trump insisted.

“I didn’t assault, they didn’t assault. They were assaulted, and what I did was a great thing for humanity.”

Just days after Trump handed down the pardons, The New York Times reported that even some of his close allies “opposed granting clemency to those rioters found guilty of violent crimes, especially the more than 600 who were convicted of assaulting or resisting police officers. Of those defendants, nearly 175 used a dangerous or deadly weapon, prosecutors say.”

On January 20, via a presidential proclamation, Trump announced he was commuting the sentences of 14 of some of the worst January 6 offenders, and granting “a full, complete and unconditional pardon to all other individuals convicted of offenses related to events that occurred at or near the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021.”

READ MORE: ‘Bring Him Back’: JD Vance Wants Musk to Rehire 25 Year Old DOGE ‘Kid’ After Racist Posts

Former U.S. Attorney Joyce Vance, a senior fellow at the Brennan Center for Justice, called the pardons “an attempt to rewrite history and erase an attack on the Constitution and the country.”

Critics are blasting President Trump’s remarks on Sunday, including his claim the people he pardoned had been assaulted by “our government.”

“This administration & the GOP are completely rewriting the events of January 6. The president is doing it here. They pretend all the evidence, footage, confessions, & documents just don’t exist, that we didn’t see it happen. It’s an authoritarian move, & it should terrify us all,” observed T. Kenny Fountain, an associate professor whose bio says he researches extremism, conspiracy theories, pseudoscience, and disinformation.

Noted political scientist and professor of politics Larry Sabato called Trump’s remarks “Absolutely stomach-turning.”

Journalist Jim Acosta wrote simply, “Disgraceful.”

Award-winning investigative reporter Phil Williams posted video from January 6 and wrote, “These people were all pardoned.”

Watch the video above or at this link.

READ MORE: Trump Inherits Biden’s ‘Astonishing’ Jobs Legacy, But Prices Are Now Climbing on His Watch

 

Image via Reuters

 

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