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‘Genius All Around’: Pentagon Ordering 800 Officers to U.S. Mocked as Agenda Becomes Clear

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Speculation has been swirling after U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth abruptly ordered roughly 800 top officers from around the globe to return to the U.S. next week for a meeting — with no explanation or agenda provided.

“Hegseth’s orders,” The Washington Post reported on Friday in an exclusive, “require anyone in a command position with the rank of one-star general or rear admiral and above, as well as their senior enlisted leaders, to be at Marine Corps University in Quantico, Virginia, on Tuesday.”

Experts have expressed that the national security concerns alone are disturbing — every top officer in all branches of the U.S. Armed Forces — and their support staff — away from their posts and together in one room.

Others expressed concerns that the nation’s top military brass might be asked to take a loyalty pledge — not to the Constitution but to the President or to his ideology. Some suggested it might be to refocus the officers on domestic U.S. issues rather than external threats or enemies.

READ MORE: Shutdown Meltdown: Trump Hits Democrats With ‘Transgender for Everybody’ Charge

Instead, the meeting, according to the Washington Post’s report, will be for all 800 or so generals and admirals to listen to Secretary Hegseth speak about his own beliefs regarding what the U.S. military should be — his “warrior ethos” ideology.

The speech is expected to last less than one hour.

As The Washington Post reported on Thursday, the Defense Department “possesses highly secure videoconferencing technology that enables military officials, regardless of their location, to discuss sensitive matters with the White House, the Pentagon or both.”

The Defense Secretary’s “directive comes in the wake of Hegseth’s firing of numerous senior military officers without cause this year, upending military norms and creating a culture of fear in the Pentagon, the people familiar with the matter said,” the Post also reported on Friday. “The recent firings of top military officers and the unusual nature of the order has stirred widespread concern among military officials that Hegseth may also have [an] additional surprise in store.”

READ MORE: ‘They’ll Be Others’: Trump Says More Indictments — of Democrats — to Come

Hegseth appeared to respond to — or at least acknowledge — concerns the meeting might include a loyalty pledge on Friday, when retired United States Army officer Ben Hodges, who served as commanding general, United States Army Europe, posted to social media remarks that echoed concerns of others:

“July 1935 German generals were called to a surprise assembly in Berlin and informed that their previous oath to the Weimar constitution was void and that they would be required to swear a personal oath to the Führer. Most generals took the new oath to keep their positions,” he wrote.

Secretary Hegseth mocked General Hodges’ remarks:

“Cool story, General,” he wrote.

Hegseth was quickly chastised.

“You are pathetic,” declared Fred Wellman, a graduate of West Point and the Harvard Kennedy School, and a 22-year combat veteran who is now the host of the podcast “On Democracy.”

“Supposed to be leading the largest department of our government with millions of troops and civilians and you are trolling retired generals who served honorably longer and more heroically than you could,” Wellman added. “You’re not even a good squad leader.”

Fred Guttenberg, the well-known anti-gun-violence activist, noted that Hegseth’s remarks were “not a denial.”

Other critics responded to the Post’s reporting.

“Yes, totally worth the cost and time and effort to pull hundreds of people away from their commands to listen to Hegseth and his deep thoughts about being a warrior,” snarked The Atlantic’s Tom Nichols, a retired U.S. Naval War College professor.

“So it’s a juvenile Rah Rah high school football speech, that cost[s] a ton of money, takes leaders out of positions in where they [are] managing crises, and puts a massive target on Quantico,” remarked Marc Polymeropoulos, a retired senior U.S. Intelligence Service officer. “Plus they all gonna get stuck when govt shuts down. Genius all around.”

READ MORE: ‘Ridiculous and Weak’: Trump’s ‘Triple Sabotage’ Mocked as Fox Hypes Escalatorgate

 

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Mike Johnson Brags About House Accomplishments When It Broke Record For Fewest Bills Passed

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Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-LA) took to X to brag about what he and his fellow House Republicans accomplished in 2025, despite Congress passing a record low number of bills.

In 2025, the @HouseGOP  delivered real results and one of the most consequential Republican agendas in history. We passed 441 America FIRST bills, codified 70 of @POTUS‘s Executive Orders, and rolled back dozens of disastrous Biden-era regulations — and we’re just getting started,” Johnson wrote.

The tweet included a short video laying out things House Republicans have done. In addition to the items listed in the tweet, the video gives credit to the GOP for having “secured the southern border,” “cut billions in wasteful government spending,” “protected women’s and girls’ sports,” and “passed bills to lower health care premiums for all Americans.”

READ MORE: Public Turns on GOP as Shutdown Fallout Deepens: Report

While Johnson brags about the accomplishments of the House under his leadership, the House set records for inactivity. The 119th Congress passed fewer than 40 bills this year, which the Washington Post reports as a record for the lowest legislative output in the first year of a presidency. Johnson’s House also set a record for fewest votes cast at 362. 

The House was also shut down for the longest time in history this year—43 days. The shutdown was an attempt to force a vote on a temporary funding bill. In addition to the shutdown, Johnson prematurely took the House into recess this summer in an attempt to avoid a vote on compelling the Department of Justice to release all files on sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. And this month, he again adjourned the House before a plan could be voted on to cover expiring health care tax credits, despite many Republicans pushing for a vote.

Though the 119th Congress broke records for inactivity, so too did the last Congress. The 118th Congress passed fewer than 150 bills across its two-year term, according to Axios. The Speaker of the House for the majority of the Congress was again Johnson, who replaced previous speaker Kevin McCarthy after nine months in the position.

Image via Reuters

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Despite Trump Promising to Cut Drug Prices by ‘1,500%’, 350 Medicines to Become More Expensive

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Despite President Donald Trump repeatedly making the absurd promise of cutting drug prices by “1,500%”—meaning that people would be paid to get their medicines—major drug manufacturers are intending to raise prices on 350 medications.

Medicines expected to see a rise in costs include COVID vaccines and a cancer treatment, according to reporting by Reuters. Last year, about 250 drugs got a price increase. That increase was about 4%, which is the median increase of the new prices this year.

The news comes almost two weeks after the White House announced new agreements meant to give Americans the “most-favored-nation” price. The MFN price is the same as the “lowest prices paid by other developed nations,” the Trump administration said in a statement. However, it appears the lower prices will apply only to the government’s TrumpRx prescription drug marketplace.

READ MORE: Trump Promises to Lower Drug Costs as House GOP Tries to Cut $880B From Medicaid

“Patients will be able to see massive price reductions on numerous products when purchasing directly through TrumpRx as a result of today’s actions,” the White House said.

While at least 350 drugs are going to get a price bump, about nine drugs are expected to get a price cut. Those include the anti-diabetes drug Jardiance, which is expected to have its price slashed by 40%. Jardiance is one of 10 drugs the White House negotiated a lower price for.

Critics of the plan point out that while TrumpRX may see lower prices, it may not hold for all consumers.

“These deals are being announced as transformative when, in fact, they really just nibble around the margins in terms of what is really driving high prices for prescription drugs in the U.S.,” Dr. Benjamin Rome, a health policy researcher at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, told Reuters.

He added that manufacturers appear to be setting two prices: one for direct-to-consumer sales and a negotiated price for insurance companies.

The Centre for Economic Policy Research agrees with Dr. Rome, saying that the main reason behind high drug prices is patent monopolies, according to The Hill.

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Donald Trump Repeats Racist Conspiracy Theory About Ilhan Omar

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Wednesday morning, President Donald Trump repeated a racist conspiracy theory about Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) and called for Somali immigrants to be deported to “perhaps the worst, and most corrupt, country on earth.”

“Much of the Minnesota Fraud, up to 90%, is caused by people that came into our Country, illegally, from Somalia. ‘Congresswoman’ Omar, an ungrateful loser who only complains and never contributes, is one of the many scammers. Did she really marry her brother? Lowlifes like this can only be a liability to our Country’s greatness. Send them back from where they came, Somalia, perhaps the worst, and most corrupt, country on earth. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!!!” Trump wrote on Truth Social.

READ MORE: Third Video Exposes Lauren Boebert Again Falsely Suggesting Ilhan Omar Is a Terrorist

Omar, a frequent Trump critic and progressive Congresswoman, is a Somali refugee and the first Somali American to serve in Congress. She first came to the United States in 1995 as an asylee, and became a citizen at 17 in 2000.

She is also the target of various racist conspiracy theories. Trump refers to one that was going around since 2016, that Omar married her brother in order to obtain U.S. citizenship. The claim has been widely debunked.

This is not the first time Trump has invoked the racist conspiracy theory. In 2019, he made the allegations on national television during a White House press gaggle.

“There’s a lot of talk about the fact that she was married to her brother. I know nothing about it. I hear that she was married to her brother,” Trump said at the time. “I don’t know but I’m sure that somebody would be looking at that.”

Though Omar applied for a marriage license in 2002 to wed Ahmed Hirsi, they did not go through with a civil wedding and the license was never filed. In 2009, after Omar had become a citizen, she wed British national Ahmed Nur Said Elmi, though the couple separated in 2011 with Omar officially filing for divorce in 2017. Omar is, obviously, not related to either Hirsi or Elmi.

The claim first appeared on a Somali-community discussion forum and was picked up by a conservative blog, Powerline, though no evidence beyond the original post was offered.

“For someone like me, who left a war-torn country at the age of 8, who got refugee status to come to America, where in the world am I finding a sibling 15 years, 20 years later to seek to do what people accuse me of?” Omar told the Minneapolis Star Tribune in 2018, according to Snopes.

Trump’s reference to Minnesota fraud is about a video that was released this week by YouTuber Nick Shirley. Shirley’s video alleges widespread fraud in Minnesota’s child care industry. The video has gone viral among right-wing politicians and influencers with over 2 million views, according to CNN.

The video claims that child care centers, primarily those run by Somali immigrants, are not actually providing services. However, CBS News reports that not all of  the locations cited by Shirley had active licenses. Of the active centers, state regulators visited them all and found no recorded evidence of fraud.

Image via Reuters

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