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Quotes of the Day:
"Only the brave know how to forgive.... a coward never forgave; it is not in his nature."
– Lourence Sterne
"The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men."
– Plato
"It's the truth I'm after, and the truth never harmed anyone. What harms us is to persist in self deceit and ignorance.:
– Marcus Aurelius.
1. Secret Pentagon memo on China, homeland has Heritage fingerprints
2. As Military Spending Soars, Demand for Spy-Proof Real Estate Booms
3. Trump administration targets US Institute of Peace with mass Friday firings
4. Final Cuts Will Eliminate U.S. Aid Agency in All but Name
5. Hegseth Orders Civilian Workforce Realignment in DOD, Reopens DRP
6. ‘Should I Fire Him?’ Inside Trump’s Deliberations Over the Fate of Michael Waltz
7. Security Breaches Can Be Fixed. People Without Honor Can’t Be Trusted.
8. Hegseth’s younger brother is serving in a key role as liaison and senior adviser inside the Pentagon
9. French companies shocked by US embassy letter demanding they respect Trump's anti-diversity policy
10. The Partnership: The Secret History of the War in Ukraine
11. Ukraine will resist 'with their bare hands' if forced into unjust peace, CIA chief says
12. Is the U.S. Military Ready for Tomorrow’s Wars?
13. Taiwan Dares to Hope Trump Will Back It Against Beijing
14. Defense Secretary Announces U.S. Forces Japan's Upgrade to Joint Force Command
15. Green Beret killed in 2017 firefight in Niger to be awarded Silver Star
16. What to Know About Trump’s Order Taking Aim at the Smithsonian
17. We Are All Living in George Orwell’s World Now
1. Secret Pentagon memo on China, homeland has Heritage fingerprints
Here is the referenced report from Project 2025 by Alexander Velez-Green Here is the referenced report from Project 2025 by Alexander Velez-Green (performing the duties of USD(P)) and Robert Peters.
and Robert Peters.
https://www.heritage.org/sites/default/files/2024-09/SR288_0.pdf
Although referenced it may be worth pursuing Chis Miller's Chapter on DOD from Project 2025 here: https://static.project2025.org/2025_MandateForLeadership_CHAPTER-04.pdf
Secret Pentagon memo on China, homeland has Heritage fingerprints
An internal guidance memo from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth focuses on deterring China’s seizure of Taiwan and shoring up homeland defense. In some instances, the document is nearly a word-for-word facsimile of a report from the conservative think tank behind Project 2025.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2025/03/29/secret-pentagon-memo-hegseth-heritage-foundation-china/?utm
March 29, 2025 at 3:23 p.m. EDTToday at 3:23 p.m. EDT
Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth does a television interview outside the White House on March 21. (Demetrius Freeman/The Washington Post)
By Alex Horton and Hannah Natanson
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has reoriented the U.S. military to prioritize deterring China’s seizure of Taiwan and shoring up homeland defense by “assuming risk” in Europe and other parts of the world, according to a secret internal guidance memo that bears the fingerprints of the conservative Heritage Foundation, including some passages that are nearly word-for-word duplications of text published by the think tank last year.
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The document, known as the Interim National Defense Strategic Guidance and marked “secret/no foreign national” in most passages, was distributed throughout the Defense Department in mid-March and signed by Hegseth. It outlines, in broad and sometimes partisan detail, the execution of President Donald Trump’s vision to prepare for and win a potential war against Beijing and defend the United States from threats in the “near abroad,” including from Greenland and the Panama Canal.
The document — setting out a prioritization framework for senior defense officials and a vision to execute that work — also instructs the military to take a more direct role in countering illegal migration and drug trafficking.
The first Trump administration and the Biden administration characterized China as the greatest threat to the United States and postured the force to prepare for and deter conflict in the Pacific region. But Hegseth’s guidance is extraordinary in its description of the potential invasion of Taiwan as the exclusive animating scenario that must be prioritized over other potential dangers — reorienting the vast U.S. military architecture toward the Indo-Pacific region beyond its homeland defense mission.
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The Pentagon will “assume risk in other theaters” given personnel and resource constraints, and pressure allies in Europe, the Middle East and East Asia to spend more on defense to take on the bulk of the deterrence role against threats from Russia, North Korea and Iran, according to the guidance.
The agency will shift focus to counterterrorism missions against groups with the capability and intent to strike the U.S., the guidance says, signaling that it will deprioritize militants in the Middle East and Africa who are regionally destabilizing but don’t have ambition to launch international attacks.
“China is the Department’s sole pacing threat, and denial of a Chinese fait accompli seizure of Taiwan — while simultaneously defending the U.S. homeland is the Department’s sole pacing scenario,” Hegseth wrote. Its force planning construct — a concept of how the Pentagon will build and resource the armed services to take on perceived threats — will only consider conflict with Beijing when planning contingencies for a major power war, it says, leaving the threat from Moscow largely attended by European allies.
Where the Biden administration’s 2022 National Defense Strategy emphasized alliances in countering Russia’s aggression, calling “mutually-beneficial Alliances and allies … our greatest global strategic advantage,” the Hegseth interim guidance says NATO must take on “far greater” burden sharing because the United States will be reluctant to provide forces with its priorities focused elsewhere.
The Defense Department did not return a request for comment.
The guidance was provided to congressional national security committees, where Republicans and Democrats have described it as confusing, according to a congressional aide who reviewed the document. It calls for withdrawing from presence in most of the world, including the Middle East, but the administration has focused on demonstrating firepower and deterrence against the Houthis in Yemen and pressuring Iran, the aide noted.
“There’s tension between ‘We want American strength and military dominance in the world, and we want to be everywhere, but also nowhere,’” the aide said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive documents. “And that’s inconsistent and going to be difficult for them to design a strategy around.”
The interim guidance is nine pages. Several passages throughout are similar to a longer 2024 report by the Heritage Foundation, some of which are nearly identical, according to The Washington Post’s analysis of both documents. One of the Heritage report’s co-authors, Alexander Velez-Green, is now in an interim role as the Pentagon’s top policy official.
The Heritage report, published in August, recommends that the Pentagon prioritize three core issues: Taiwan invasion deterrence, homeland defense, and increased burden sharing among allies and partners — which the Hegseth guidance mirrors. The congressional aide said it was readily apparent to Capitol Hill staff that the document bore the influence of the conservative think tank.
The Heritage Foundation did not return a request for comment.
Trump as a presidential candidate denied that Heritage’s Project 2025 plan, which set out a far-right transition agenda across the entirety of the federal government, was a blueprint for his second term. But his policies and appointments — including the Pentagon guidance — have made clear that Heritage’s plans have been deeply influential in the first months of his administration.
Senior U.S. military officials have directly tied Heritage’s vision to Hegseth’s guidance.
Maj. Gen. Garrick Harmon, the head of strategy and plans at Africa Command, recommended to staff that they read the Heritage report as part of a discussion of how to align their priorities with the new Pentagon guidance, according to a command staff member who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations. Another official within the command distributed a copy of the Heritage report, the staff member said.
The recommendation did not appear partisan in nature, the staff member said, adding that the similarities suggest the Pentagon’s document was partly inspired by the Heritage report and that the information could be complementary to understanding Hegseth’s guidance.
A photo taken on May 23, 2024, and released by Taiwan's Defense Ministry, shows Chinese military vessels sailing in an unknown location. (AFP/Getty Images)
Africa Command declined to comment on internal discussions but said the staff meets with experts on Africa to inform planning, said Kelly Cahalan, a spokeswoman for the command. “The staff also regularly reads and shares publicly available research and reports,” she said. “As with all prudent military planning, we are continually leveraging the latest research to assess and develop our strategy.”
Hegseth recently visited the Pacific region to emphasize his priorities against China, telling service members in Guam that they are “the tip of the spear” for U.S. military operations.
The new Pentagon guidance for a “denial defense” of Taiwan includes increasing the troop presence through submarines, bombers, unmanned ships, and specialty units from the Army and Marine Corps, as well as a greater focus on bombs that destroy reinforced and subterranean targets. The plan also calls for improving defense of U.S. troop locations in the Indo-Pacific, generating pre-positioned stocks and improving logistics.
While emphasizing support to deter a Chinese attack on Taiwan, the document also calls for “pressuring” Taipei to “significantly increase” its defense spending. Trump and his allies have criticized Taiwan as underinvesting in its own defense, urging the self-ruled democratic island to spend up to 10 percent of its GDP on military readiness — a proportion well above what the U.S. and its allies spend on defense.
Since taking office, he has dodged the question of whether the U.S. would allow Beijing to take the island by force.
Two people familiar with Taiwan’s official discussions said the government in Taipei has struggled to make inroads with the new U.S. administration, amid growing doubts about Washington’s support — concerns that intensified after February’s disastrous Oval Office meeting of Trump, Vice President JD Vance and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
In a message of reassurance to Washington, President Lai Ching-te said last week that Taiwan would boost its defense spending to over 3 percent of its GDP — up from around 2.5 percent — as part of an ongoing overhaul of its military infrastructure. China responded by launching a wave of fighter jets and ships near the island, warning that “those who play with fire will get burned.”
In 2023, U.S. analysts concluded Taiwan’s forces would be unlikely to thwart Chinese military air superiority, according to leaked classified documents.
Hegseth’s guidance synchronizes the Pentagon with some of Trump’s international fixations, describing undetermined threats from the “near abroad.” U.S. forces, he wrote, must be “ready to defend American interests wherever they might be threatened in our hemisphere, from Greenland, to the Panama Canal, to Cape Horn.”
Trump told reporters Friday “we have to have Greenland,” escalating tensions with Denmark, a NATO ally that governs the foreign policy and defense of the island.
The guidance also directs military leaders to ensure access to the Panama Canal and take a more assertive role in border protection, combating drug trafficking and deportations, which are normally carried out by the Department of Homeland Security. Those details were previously reported by CNN and NBC News. It also calls for the expansion of U.S. nuclear forces and homeland missile defense through the still conceptual “Golden Dome” described by Trump.
Hegseth’s guidance acknowledges that the United States is unlikely to provide substantial, if any, support to Europe in the case of Russian military advances, noting that Washington intends to push NATO allies to take primary defense of the region. The United States will support Europe with nuclear deterrence of Russia, and should only count on forces not required for homeland defense or China deterrence missions, the document says.
A significant increase in Europe sharing its defense burden, the document says, “will also ensure NATO can reliably deter or defeat Russian aggression even if deterrence fails and the United States is already engaged in, or must withhold forces to deter, a primary conflict in another region.”
Aaron Schaffer and Cate Cadell contributed to this report.
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By Alex Horton
Alex Horton is a national security reporter for The Washington Post focused on the U.S. military. He served in Iraq as an Army infantryman. Send him secure tips on Signal at alex.horton85follow on X@AlexHortonTX
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2. As Military Spending Soars, Demand for Spy-Proof Real Estate Booms
I was talking to a friend who was working with a contractor who wanted to break into the defense contracting market in the DC area and the first thing they were looking for was a lease for an approved SCIF facility.
The facilities this article is discussing include manufacturing facilities. Which certainly adds another layer of complexity to operating the US defense industrial base.
And then there is the ownership of facilities and whether it is held by foreign nationals or foreign companies.
I wonder how the DOGE wiz kids feel about the security requirements and their impact on efficiency. On the other hand non-government industries surely also have their own security requirements to protect themselves from corporate espionage from competitors (and also foreign governments even if their work is not national security or defense related). That should beg the question and comparison: what are the best practices for securing manufac yutong facilities and businesses and are there commercial security policy and procedures that might be better suited for the national security domain? Are our security requirements for defense and national security related activities archaic and obsolete? (they probably are certainly unwieldy and difficult). Who decides the security requirements and has there ever been a zero based review or are they just a patchwork of layers of security whenever a vulnerability is discovered when something is compromised by the adversary?
As Military Spending Soars, Demand for Spy-Proof Real Estate Booms
Leasing for defense and aerospace start-ups is up as global tensions and conflicts buoy investments in manufacturing.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/28/business/defense-aerospace-commercial-real-estate.html
Vast, a start-up seeking to fabricate, assemble and launch the world’s first commercial space station, leased 165,000 square feet of industrial space that was initially going to be a product distribution warehouse.Credit...Stella Kalinina for The New York Times
By Patrick Sisson
March 28, 2025Looking for a site where workers can weld the panels of a space station together and then shoot bullets at them to see if they can withstand meteoroid hits?
You’re not alone.
Defense and aerospace companies leased 11.3 million square feet in 2024, up from 7.1 million in 2022, said Tom Taylor, who manages the aerospace and defense practice at JLL, a real estate firm.
“We do believe the aerospace and defense industries, in particular, are going to be one of the demand drivers for new industrial space,” Mr. Taylor said.
The leased spaces typically have large open-floor plans for machinery and manufacturing, high ceilings for cranes and special assembly gear, sterile and air-filtered rooms, and lots of power for heavy-duty machines to build — and sometimes blow up — weapons, rockets and drones.
Besides manufacturing space, there’s office space. From the end of 2023 to the end of 2024, roughly 426,786 square feet of office leases came from the defense and aerospace sectors, triple what the legal industry leased, according to data that CBRE, a real estate services firm, shared with The New York Times.
The flurry of real estate activity in the defense sector has been buoyed by global conflicts that have accelerated the production of weapons. The Department of Defense’s budget was $841 billion in the 2024 fiscal year, up from $816 billion in 2023, both record amounts. And while Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth wants to cut 8 percent from defense budgets in each of the next five years, he is putting a priority on spending on drones and autonomous weapon systems. That has opened up opportunities for defense tech start-ups, which can typically move their innovations to the battlefield more quickly than traditional defense contractors can, theoretically saving the government time and money.
In the aerospace sector, which has been commercialized after decades of government dominance, advances in technology have made it more possible for start-ups hoping to be the next SpaceX or Blue Origin to enter the market. A record 274 start-ups in the aerospace and defense sectors raised new funds in 2024, according to PitchBook, which tracks start-up funding.
“It’s cheaper for NASA to outsource what they used to do, so now there are all sorts of different space start-ups trying to get in on this,” said Michael Soto, vice president of research at Savills, a commercial real estate brokerage firm.
The most highly secured spaces, known as sensitive compartmented information facilities, or SCIFs, can cost $1 million or more to construct.
Image
The Haven-1 Primary Structure at Vast’s headquarters in Long Beach, Calif. Leasing for the defense and aerospace industry was up 100 percent across the country in 2024, according to the real estate firm JLL.Credit...Stella Kalinina for The New York Times
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Inside the Haven-1 Primary Structure at Vast headquartersCredit...Stella Kalinina for The New York Times
“There’s a real demand for specialized spaces and secure facilities,” said Gary Horwitz, managing director of the Los Angeles region at JLL. “It’s really expensive infrastructure, and landlords who are investing in these buildings are finding good success filling them.”
Companies have to make sure they can speak securely with military clients, and they have to make sure the sites aren’t owned by any foreign nationals and don’t have spying risks, said Taylor Wood, a vice chairman at Savills.
“You can’t have line-of-sight issues for picking up sound and videotaping, like mouthing conversations,” Mr. Wood said. “It sounds straight out of a Jason Bourne movie. And they need drone nets on the tops of buildings so someone can’t land or hover one above an office and record conversations.”
Some start-ups share spaces to split the cost. More companies like Nooks, which is based in Washington and is called “the WeWork of SCIFs,” are offering shared and specialized communications facilities.
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A new section of Vast headquarters in Long Beach. The number of funding deals for the aerospace and defense sectors set a record in 2024, according to PitchBook.Credit...Stella Kalinina for The New York Times
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Equipment and facilities at Vast headquartersCredit...Stella Kalinina for The New York Times
Most of the leasing activity is taking place near existing research and military facilities and where there are large pools of talent. In Southern California, 145 aerospace and defense firms lease 13 million square feet, according to JLL, and in Florida, there are 17,000 aerospace-related companies and $5.5 billion in space-related developments in the pipeline.
Many landlords and developers are expanding the spaces they have and scooping up what could be used for research and development or manufacturing. In central California, Vandenberg Space Force Base, a SpaceX launch site, has plans to expand sites on and off the base to provide space for other start-ups. Near Silicon Valley, the University of California, Berkeley, and NASA have joined forces to invest $2 billion into a research campus adjacent to NASA’s Ames Research Center.
In October, the Davis Companies, a Boston-based investor, bought three properties in Atlanta that were leased by Anduril Industries, a defense tech firm that is working with the Pentagon.
The developer AZ Opportunity Fund bought 32 acres to build the Colorado Aerospace Business Center, which broke ground in November. Brady Welsh, principal of the fund, said his firm saw an opportunity to add much-needed supply catering to the region’s defense contractors and start-ups.
The industry has been creative with its spaces. Some companies are cutting down on the square footage they need, with the use of advanced manufacturing technologies like 3-D printing, which minimizes the need for inventory, or moving into warehouses, taking advantage of a market that has had cooling demand.
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An employee works with 3-D printers at Mach Industries. Advanced manufacturing technologies like 3-D printing, which minimizes the need for inventory, can reduce the space companies need.Credit...Stella Kalinina for The New York Times
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By mid-2025, Mach aims to add the capacity to produce thousands of drones a month.Credit...Stella Kalinina for The New York Times
In Huntington Beach, Calif., Mach Industries, which has a contract with the Army, makes weapons in a 150,000-square-foot warehouse. One afternoon last fall, the company’s headquarters were humming along, with 3-D printers spitting out the parts for drones, as speakers blasted Led Zeppelin. By mid-2025, Mach aims to produce thousands of drones a month. Its drones can find targets using artificial intelligence and radio frequency sensing when GPS is severed, an advantage in a war zone racked with electronic jamming.
About 15 miles away, in Long Beach, Calif., Vast, a start-up seeking to fabricate, assemble and launch the world’s first commercial space station, leased 160,000 square feet of industrial space in 2023 that was initially going to be a product distribution warehouse. Inside, where there was a persistent smell of coolant, workers manned lathes and extrusion machines, fashioning parts for the prototype.
In one room, a team of workers welded together aluminum rings to make the Haven-1 space station’s body. The control room to monitor the initial flight is expected to be completed by the end of April. Workers can test equipment on an industrial vibration machine that can simulate the G-force of a rocket launch. Elsewhere, bullets are shot into aluminum panels to make sure the space station can withstand a direct hit from a meteoroid. Coders work on top of modular office pods set up in the middle of the factory floor, an easy solution for desk space.
The growing industries’ promise of high-tech and high-paying jobs has helped push states and cities to offer attractive incentives for start-ups to relocate, including flexible permitting and assistance for permit applications.
In California, the city of El Segundo, which was the home of SpaceX’s first headquarters, offers flexible permitting. The city has 12 aerospace and defense companies occupying 740,000 square feet, according to JLL data, and a new development, Brickworks, is set to open this year and provide an additional 100,000 square feet of space.
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The flurry of real estate activity in the defense sector has been buoyed by geopolitical tensions and conflicts that have accelerated the production of arms and weaponsCredit...Stella Kalinina for The New York Times
In Long Beach, where Vast is based, city government plied its plane-building heritage, in 2021 rezoning 437 acres of industrial and warehouse space that was once used to build Boeing C-17 cargo planes.
Traditionally, cities like Long Beach would see warehouse space become a logistics center supporting a handful of jobs that don’t pay a lot, said Long Beach’s mayor, Rex Richardson. “Or, you can take a million-square-foot building and put in some advanced manufacturing, where a welder can make 45 bucks an hour without a bachelor’s degree,” he added.
3. Trump administration targets US Institute of Peace with mass Friday firings
Another sad Friday with a Friday night massacre.
USIP RIP.
USIP is no more.
Unless the courts or Congress act, the executive branch is going to truly become the first among equals of the three branches of the US government. What will this do to separation of powers and checks and balances which are the foundational principles of our federal democratic republic?
Excerpts:
Asked for comment, White House spokesperson Anna Kelly told CNN, “Taxpayers don’t want to spend $50 million per year on a publicly-funded ‘research institute’ that has failed to deliver peace. President Trump ended the era of forever wars and established peace in his first term, and he is carrying out his mandate to eliminate bloat and save taxpayer dollars.”
Foote pointed to the institute’s work advising the National Security Council about policy issues and a senior military advisers group that discusses peace-building techniques to prevent wars. He also noted the institute’s research on conflict minerals in Africa, its fight against Chinese influence on those critical minerals, its human trafficking studies in Cambodia, and its peace-building work in Papua New Guinea, among other efforts.
There are five carved doves in the foyer at USIP headquarters, Foote said, each bearing the name of a staff member who died in a conflict zone.
“Ginny Bouvier is one of them. Ginny was in the jungles of Colombia – she contracted a disease down there. She died of it. We flew her home, but she passed away at Georgetown Hospital,” he said.
Foote continued, “That’s the kind of work that people of USIP have done. These are not faceless bureaucrats. They’re not people just living on the public dime. They’re not bloat or waste. They are bringing peace to the world and preventing the need for American military intervention and making the world and country safe for American military, American corporations, American citizens.”
Trump administration targets US Institute of Peace with mass Friday firings | CNN Politics
CNN · by Betsy Klein · March 29, 2025
The headquarters of the United States Institute of Peace are seen in Washington DC, on March 18.
Mark Schiefelbein/AP
CNN —
Employees at the United States Institute of Peace received termination letters Friday evening as the Trump administration continues to reimagine the role of the US abroad and dramatically dismantle key parts of the federal government through the Department of Government Efficiency.
A vast majority of the non-profit’s staff received termination notices Friday evening, said a source who was terminated and who requested anonymity to speak freely without jeopardizing their severance package.
“Everyone received a personal letter that outlined that they were terminated as of March 28 and that health care would end March 31,” the source said, noting that employees would be paid for work done through Friday, as well as for any remaining vacation time.
The institute, which was founded during the Reagan administration, “promotes research, policy analysis, education, and training on international peace and conflict resolution in an effort to prevent and resolve violent conflicts, and to promote post-conflict stability,” according to a description on usa.gov. Its official website has been taken down.
President Donald Trump signed an executive order in February taking aim at the Institute of Peace, an effort, the order said, to “dramatically reduce the size of the Federal Government, while increasing its accountability to the American people.”
George Foote, who was counsel to the US Institute of Peace until he was dismissed by DOGE, is now involved in litigation aimed at convincing a judge to recognize that the US government and DOGE’s efforts to dismiss top officials at the organization is illegal.
The suit was filed in DC District Court after DOGE personnel, accompanied by DC police officers, gained access to USIP’s building earlier this month after originally being turned away.
A view of the United States Institute of Peace building headquarters on March 18, 2025 in Washington, DC.
Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images
Related article Judge declines to block DOGE takeover of US Institute of Peace while legal challenge plays out
Foote told CNN in a phone interview on Saturday that all papers in the case will be filed by April 25. From there, the judge can either decide the case or call for a hearing, which would be held the week of April 28.
The source said that while the mass firing, first reported by CBS News, was not entirely unexpected, it was disappointing.
“It’s obviously disappointing and a bit of a contradiction for a president who wants to win the Nobel Peace Prize. Every olive branch was extended to the president and his representatives that we wanted to work with this administration like we worked with seven prior – including his own during his first administration,” the source said.
Trump himself has expressed hope that he be remembered as a “peacemaker.”
“My proudest legacy will be that of a peacemaker and unifier. That’s what I want to be: a peacemaker and a unifier,” he said in his inaugural address.
Unlike the administration’s efforts to slash government agencies such as the US Agency for International Development, the US Institute of Peace is an independent, non-profit organization that receives its $55 million in annual funding through Congress, meaning its staffers are not subject to the protections afforded to federal workers. Between 50 and 75 of its employees worked overseas as of Friday, per Foote.
“Peace is an ongoing process, and there’s no way a $55 million-a-year investment is going to bring peace to the world, but they do an awful lot with that $55 million,” Foote said.
It also has a nearly $80 million endowment, he said. It is unclear what would happen to that endowment funding, as well as the institute’s headquarters in Washington’s Foggy Bottom neighborhood, which is often rented for large-scale parties and weddings.
Asked for comment, White House spokesperson Anna Kelly told CNN, “Taxpayers don’t want to spend $50 million per year on a publicly-funded ‘research institute’ that has failed to deliver peace. President Trump ended the era of forever wars and established peace in his first term, and he is carrying out his mandate to eliminate bloat and save taxpayer dollars.”
Foote pointed to the institute’s work advising the National Security Council about policy issues and a senior military advisers group that discusses peace-building techniques to prevent wars. He also noted the institute’s research on conflict minerals in Africa, its fight against Chinese influence on those critical minerals, its human trafficking studies in Cambodia, and its peace-building work in Papua New Guinea, among other efforts.
There are five carved doves in the foyer at USIP headquarters, Foote said, each bearing the name of a staff member who died in a conflict zone.
“Ginny Bouvier is one of them. Ginny was in the jungles of Colombia – she contracted a disease down there. She died of it. We flew her home, but she passed away at Georgetown Hospital,” he said.
Foote continued, “That’s the kind of work that people of USIP have done. These are not faceless bureaucrats. They’re not people just living on the public dime.
They’re not bloat or waste. They are bringing peace to the world and preventing the need for American military intervention and making the world and country safe for American military, American corporations, American citizens.”
CNN’s Jennifer Hansler contributed to this report.
CNN · by Betsy Klein · March 29, 2025
4. Final Cuts Will Eliminate U.S. Aid Agency in All but Name
And then there were 15.
JFK could not have envisioned this.
Now that said, and with all our gnashing of teeth over this, the question is what will the State Department do to revitalize development and humanitarian capabilities under its leadership. Can the State Department develop a superior capability to employ effective soft power in support of US national security objectives? When you look at this and the destruction of USAGM/VOA. etc and the folding of its capabilities under State, combined with shutting down USIP and USAID, is the administration trying to make State the true soft power counterpart to DOD's hard power. Will the absorption of all these functions by State put State on the comparable level to DOD? And of course to be effective, will State be properly funded and resourced (with personnel) to perform all these functions in support of national security effectively and efficiently? And the $64,000 question is can State do this when it has had all these functions performed by separate agencies that it did not have to manage day to day?
Hopefully when we get to the other side of the great bureaucratic reset we will be better for it.
Final Cuts Will Eliminate U.S. Aid Agency in All but Name
The staff of U.S.A.I.D. will be reduced to some 15 legally required positions. The agency employed about 10,000 people before the Trump administration entered office.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/28/us/politics/usaid-trump-doge-cuts.html
The cuts are in keeping with the administration’s plan to use foreign aid as a tool to further its diplomatic priorities.Credit...Tierney L. Cross for The New York Times
By Karoun DemirjianStephanie NolenMichael Crowley and Elizabeth Dias
The Trump administration on Friday detailed its plans to put the U.S. Agency for International Development, the government’s main agency for distributing foreign aid, fully under the State Department and reduce its staff to some 15 positions.
An email to U.S.A.I.D. employees informing them of the impending layoffs, titled “U.S.A.I.D.’s Final Mission” and sent just after noon, detailed an elimination in all but name that the administration had long signaled was coming. It arrived over protests from lawmakers who argued that efforts to downsize the agency were illegal, and from staff members and unions who sued to stop them.
The agency employed about 10,000 people before the Trump administration began reviewing and canceling foreign aid contracts within days of President Trump’s return to the White House. By Sept. 2, the email said, “the agency’s operations will have been substantially transferred to State or otherwise wound down.”
The cuts are in keeping with the administration’s plan to use foreign aid as a tool to further its diplomatic priorities. This month, recipients of U.S.A.I.D. funds were asked to justify their value to the administration through questionnaires that asked, among other things, whether their programs helped to limit illegal immigration or secure rare earth minerals.
In a statement, Secretary of State Marco Rubio praised the forthcoming cuts.
“We are reorienting our foreign assistance programs to align directly with what is best for the United States and our citizens,” he said, calling U.S.A.I.D. in its previous form “misguided and fiscally irresponsible.”
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He pledged that “essential lifesaving programs” would be among those preserved under the State Department. In plans shared with Congress, however, the administration signaled that the U.S.A.I.D. programs it was ending included one that funded vaccines for children in poor countries, as well as some funding for combating malaria.
The email to employees, which was written by Jeremy Lewin, who is part of the Department of Government Efficiency and was recently named as one of two acting deputy administrators for U.S.A.I.D., said that all nonstatutory employees of the agency would receive separation notices with a final date of July 1 or Sept. 2. But some employees reported receiving different dates on Friday, including one Foreign Service officer who was told they would have to depart their post at the end of May.
Title 5 of the U.S. Code names only 15 specific employees of U.S.A.I.D.: one administrator, one deputy administrator, six assistant administrators, four regional assistant administrators, one chief information officer, one general counsel and one inspector general. At its peak, the agency counted about 10,000 employees on its payroll, including contractors, in the United States and abroad.
Terminated employees will be able to apply to be rehired by the State Department, the email said, through a process that has not yet been established. Overseas personnel, it said, would be offered “safe and fully compensated” return packages to the United States. Employees posted overseas were told they had 72 hours to request their preferred departure date.
The email was sent to all U.S.A.I.D. employees — including those who are actively responding to the powerful earthquake that struck Myanmar on Friday. The email landed around midnight local time on the phones of dozens of U.S.A.I.D. employees sheltering in the street in Bangkok, the capital of neighboring Thailand, as tremors continued to shake the city.
Are you a federal worker? We want to hear from you.
The Times would like to hear about your experience as a federal worker under the second Trump administration. We may reach out about your submission, but we will not publish any part of your response without contacting you first.
Shortly after the email went out, employees began receiving formal reduction in force notices. One shared with The New York Times read: “The agency is abolishing your competitive area. You will be released from your competitive level and will not have an assignment right to another position in the competitive area.”
They then received an email encouraging them “to step away and recharge,” given the impact of the day’s announcement, according to a copy shared with The Times.
The layoffs are a far more drastic reduction than the Trump administration had initially envisioned for U.S.A.I.D. In February, senior officials at the agency were told that its work force would be cut to a few hundred employees. But on Friday, even some of the workers who had been deemed essential were given their walking papers.
While the administration notified lawmakers of their intent to pursue the cuts, Congress has not approved the reorganization plan, which Democratic lawmakers have called an illegal closure of the agency.
Members of the House and Senate committees that oversee foreign affairs and associated budgets were informed about the reorganization on Friday by the Trump administration, which said it would be completed by July 1.
In the meantime, several employees are taking issue with the way the termination notices were handed out. Some began circulating a list of “irregularities” on Friday, pointing out clerical errors and objecting that the notices had not been disseminated in accordance with the formal reduction in force process.
To put someone “with zero meaningful government, foreign policy or development experience in charge of this process is insulting to the career staff around the world with decades of experience,” Julianne Weis, who was a senior adviser in the U.S.A.I.D. global health bureau and also received a termination letter on Friday, said of Mr. Lewin. “It’s also dangerous for America’s global standing, national security and foreign policy.”
A request for comment sent to U.S.A.I.D. received an automatic reply directing all inquiries to the State Department’s press office.
Amy Schoenfeld Walker contributed reporting.
Karoun Demirjian is a breaking news reporter for the The Times. More about Karoun Demirjian
Stephanie Nolen is a global health reporter for The Times. More about Stephanie Nolen
Michael Crowley covers the State Department and U.S. foreign policy for The Times. He has reported from nearly three dozen countries and often travels with the secretary of state. More about Michael Crowley
Elizabeth Dias is The Times’s national religion correspondent, covering faith, politics and values. More about Elizabeth Dias
A version of this article appears in print on March 29, 2025, Section A, Page 20 of the New York edition with the headline: New Round of Layoffs Will Virtually Eliminate U.S. Foreign Aid Agency. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe
5. Hegseth Orders Civilian Workforce Realignment in DOD, Reopens DRP
My question is that when there are these massive cuts what happens to the work these civil servants were doing? I think it is a hugely erroneous assumption to say that all those who leave were not doing anything important and were just stealing oxygen while they received a government paycheck. All the work these professionals have been doing will have to be performed by others who are already doing their own work. This is going to result in a lot of really good civil servants also choosing to leave because they know they are going to be saddled with much additional work with no additional compensation (and of course no time).
While the DOGE wiz kids want to make massive personnel cuts to save money, who is looking at all the requirements that need to be eliminated to reduce the additional burdens that are going to be placed on the remaining professionals? And there will have to be a lot of internal agency and unit reorganization to prioritize work on the necessary (and legal and regulatory) requirements in support of the mission requirements.
Hegseth Orders Civilian Workforce Realignment in DOD, Reopens DRP
https://www.defense.gov/News/News-Stories/Article/Article/4138965/hegseth-orders-civilian-workforce-realignment-in-dod-reopens-drp/
March 29, 2025 | By Matthew Olay, DOD News |
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth signed a memorandum yesterday directing the realignment of the Defense Department's civilian workforce.
The memo, "Initiating the Workforce Acceleration and Recapitalization Initiative," — which is addressed to senior Pentagon leadership, combatant commanders, and defense agency and DOD field activity directors — states that DOD will "realign the size of our civilian workforce and strategically restructure it to supercharge our American warfighters consistent with [Hegseth's] interim National Defense Strategy guidance."
The memo states that DOD seeks to reduce duplicative efforts and reject excessive bureaucracy through an honest analysis of the workforce. Additionally, it states automation through technological solutions will be sought out, particularly at the headquarters level.
"The net effect will be a reduction in the number of civilian full-time equivalent positions and increased resources in the areas where we need them most," the memo reads.
It then lists two courses of action to implement Hegseth's intent.
First, Hegseth calls on the undersecretary of defense for personnel and readiness to immediately implement DOD's Deferred Resignation Program and to also offer voluntary early retirement for all eligible DOD civilian employees.
The DRP, first implemented by the Office of Personnel Management Jan. 28, 2025, offered most full-time federal employees — including most of the nearly 900,000 DOD civilians — the limited opportunity to resign with full pay and benefits until Sept. 30, 2025. OPM also offered early retirement for eligible personnel.
With this newly signed memo, the DRP and the early retirement program are being reopened for nearly all DOD civilians, only this time under the authority of the Defense Department rather than OPM.
"Exemptions should be rare," Hegseth said via the memo. "My intent is to maximize participation so that we can minimize the number of involuntary actions that may be required to achieve the strategic objectives."
Second, Hegseth directs senior DOD leadership to provide "a proposed future-state organizational chart" of those leaders' respective departments. A summary of all those charts — which should include functional areas and consolidated management hierarchies with positional titles and counts clearly depicted — is due from USD(P&R) to the defense secretary no later than April 11, 2025.
While the memo does not specify a targeted percentage for layoffs at DOD, it mentions that important changes are required "to put the department on ready footing to deter our enemies and fight for peace."
To accomplish that goal, it states that the intent of the realignment is to "execute a top-to-bottom methodology that results in a force structure that is lean, mean and prepared to win."
6. ‘Should I Fire Him?’ Inside Trump’s Deliberations Over the Fate of Michael Waltz
I am reminded of an old story (somewhat mythical I think but applicable nonetheless). Supposedly when General Marshall heard about a Lieutenant who lost some piece of military equipment that was valued at $100,000. He asked what would happen to the Lieutenant and he was told that he would be relieved of duty and separated. General Marshall asked why would we want to fire him when we just spent $100,000 on training him to never make that mistake again.
Perhaps that is POTUS' thinking here. Why would he want to waste more political capital by firing the NSA when we just trained him never to make the same mistake again.
‘Should I Fire Him?’ Inside Trump’s Deliberations Over the Fate of Michael Waltz
In public, President Trump has defended his national security adviser. But behind the scenes, he has cast around for advice.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/29/us/politics/trump-signal-michael-waltz.html?referringSource=articleShare&smid=nytcore-ios-share&utm
President Trump has been considering whether to fire Michael Waltz, his national security adviser, after it came to light this week that he had created a Signal chat to share sensitive information. Credit...Haiyun Jiang for The New York Times
By Maggie Haberman and Tyler Pager
Maggie Haberman and Tyler Pager are White House correspondents. Maggie Haberman reported from New York and Tyler Pager from Washington.
March 29, 2025
For much of this week, President Trump was consumed by a single question. What should he do about his national security adviser, Michael Waltz?
“Should I fire him?” he asked aides and allies as the fallout continued over the stunning leak of a Signal group chat set up by Mr. Waltz, who had inadvertently added a journalist to the thread about an upcoming military strike in Yemen.
In public, Mr. Trump’s default position has been to defend Mr. Waltz and attack the media. On Tuesday, the day after Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic broke the story about being included in the chat, the president said Mr. Waltz was a “good man” who had nothing to apologize for.
But behind the scenes, Mr. Trump has asked people inside and outside the administration what they thought he should do.
He told allies that he was unhappy with the press coverage but that he did not want to be seen as caving to a media swarm, according to several people briefed on his comments. And he said he was reluctant to fire people in the senior ranks so early in his second term.
But for Mr. Trump, the real problem did not appear to be his national security adviser’s carelessness about discussing military plans on a commercial app, the people said. It was that Mr. Waltz may have had some kind of connection to Mr. Goldberg, a Washington journalist whom Mr. Trump loathes. The president expressed displeasure about how Mr. Waltz had Mr. Goldberg’s number in his phone.
On Wednesday evening, Mr. Trump met with Vice President JD Vance; the White House chief of staff, Susie Wiles; the White House personnel chief, Sergio Gor; his Mideast envoy, Steve Witkoff, and others about whether to stick with Mr. Waltz.
Late Thursday, as the controversy swirled, Mr. Trump summoned Mr. Waltz to the Oval Office. By the next morning, the president signaled to people around him that he was willing to stick with Mr. Waltz, three people with knowledge of the president’s thinking said.
In an interview Saturday with NBC News, Mr. Trump continued to downplay the episode, calling questions around the officials involved a witch hunt.
People close to Mr. Trump say Mr. Waltz has been able to hang on in part because some in the administration still support him, and because Mr. Trump has wanted to avoid comparisons to the chaotic staffing of his first term, which had the highest turnover of top aides of any presidential administration in modern history.
And while Mr. Trump can always change his mind, the episode shows Mr. Trump’s willingness to disregard external pressures in his second term, while also grappling with the limits of the loyalty tests he imposed for staff across the administration.
Even before the Signal leak, Mr. Waltz was on shaky footing, viewed as too hawkish by some of the president’s advisers and too eager to advocate for military action against Iran when the president himself has made clear he prefers to make a deal.
An association with Mr. Goldberg, however hazy, gave Mr. Waltz’s opponents more fuel to feed the skepticism.
Some of Mr. Trump’s closest allies have questioned whether Mr. Waltz, a former George W. Bush administration official, was compatible with the president’s foreign policy. Mr. Waltz had gotten crosswise with Mr. Vance and Ms. Wiles in policy discussions, particularly regarding Iran and their desire to hew to Mr. Trump’s preference, according to several people briefed on the matter.
In a statement, the White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, said Mr. Trump has a team whose members debate each other but know that he is the “ultimate decision maker.” “When he makes a decision, everyone rows in the same direction to execute,” she added.
Weeks ago, a discussion arose among some aides about whether Mr. Waltz was ideologically aligned with the president. Mr. Trump, who has at times been effusive in private about Mr. Waltz, made clear he did not want to start the cycle of dismissals so early in his second administration, according to two people briefed on the conversation. Mr. Trump, who regretted pushing out his first national security adviser, Michael T. Flynn, after less than a month in 2017, believed it would feed a narrative that he engenders chaos.
After the Signal thread leaked, someone shared on X a snippet of a 2016 video of Mr. Waltz, produced by a group primarily funded by the billionaire Koch brothers. Speaking as a military veteran, Mr. Waltz looked directly into the camera as he condemned Mr. Trump as a draft-dodger and said, “Stop Trump now.” That snippet drew attention from Mr. Waltz’s critics.
By contrast, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s job appears to be safe, even though he shared detailed information about strike times for the attack on Houthi militants in Yemen in the Signal thread. MAGA stalwarts like Charlie Kirk have defended him online.
Mr. Hegseth “had nothing to do with this,” the president said on Wednesday.
Mr. Hegseth survived a bruising confirmation process in the Senate after being pushed through with help from Mr. Vance, and he has a solid relationship with Mr. Trump.
Image
Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor in chief of The Atlantic magazine, was added to the Signal chat by Mr. Waltz. The president has expressed displeasure about how Mr. Waltz had Mr. Goldberg’s number in his phone.Credit...Justin T. Gellerson for The New York Times
While Mr. Waltz may keep his job, the controversy has reminded Mr. Trump’s aides that the president’s strategy of crisis management — doubling down and denying, no matter how problematic the facts are — does not seem to work as well for them as it has over the years for Mr. Trump.
When the Atlantic story broke, Mr. Waltz denied meeting, knowing or communicating with Mr. Goldberg. But that claim was quickly called into question by photos that surfaced from a 2021 event at the French Embassy in Washington, where Mr. Goldberg and Mr. Waltz were pictured standing next to one another. Mr. Waltz’s allies dismissed the idea that the photo suggested the two men knew each other.
Mr. Goldberg, in his initial story about the Signal chain, said he had met Mr. Waltz in the past. On Saturday, asked about any relationship with Mr. Waltz and whether he had Mr. Waltz’s number, he said only, “I am not going to comment on my relationship with public figures or sources, one way or the other.”
While Mr. Trump has demanded loyalty from his staff, the reality is that some top officials are longtime Washington hands who have relationships, past experiences and contacts with people whom Mr. Trump despises.
“I would say the principle of getting a bunch of yes men and yes women around him is the guiding principle, a foundation of which is not having, or renouncing, any past that may be proof to the contrary,” said John R. Bolton, who worked as Mr. Trump’s third of four national security advisers and then wrote a revealing book about his time in the White House.
“Anybody who’s been around Washington 10 years, 15 years, has all kinds of backgrounds,” Mr. Bolton said.
In Greenland on Friday, Mr. Vance, who was traveling with Mr. Waltz on a visit to try to apply pressure for the United States to take over the territory, made clear that Mr. Waltz was at fault for adding Mr. Goldberg to the Signal thread.
But Mr. Vance, who was also in the group chat and has defended Mr. Waltz internally in the past, made a point of doing so again. It was a sign that Mr. Trump was ready to move on, for now.
“If you think you’re going to force the president of the United States to fire anybody, you’ve got another thing coming,” he said. “President Trump has said it on Monday, on Tuesday, on Wednesday, on Thursday, and I’m the vice president saying it here on Friday, we are standing behind our entire national security team.”
Maggie Haberman is a White House correspondent, reporting on the second, nonconsecutive term of Donald J. Trump. More about Maggie Haberman
Tyler Pager is a White House correspondent for The Times, covering President Trump and his administration. More about Tyler Pager
See more on: U.S. Politics, Donald Trump, JD Vance, Jeffrey Goldberg, Atlantic Monthly
7. Security Breaches Can Be Fixed. People Without Honor Can’t Be Trusted.
Phil Klay is one our most prolific writers on ethics, specifically in the military.
I am sure this incident will be debated in national security and PME leadership courses in the future.
Opinion
Guest Essay
Security Breaches Can Be Fixed. People Without Honor Can’t Be Trusted.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/28/opinion/signal-group-chat-military.html
March 28, 2025
Michael Waltz, the national security adviser who convened a chat on Signal about an attack on the Houthis. Credit...Jason Andrew for The New York Times
By Phil Klay
Mr. Klay is a novelist and a Marine Corps veteran of the Iraq war.
So now it’s clear: The Trump administration has not kept sensitive details of national security secure. Thanks to reporting by Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic, we have learned that officials at the highest levels, including Vice President JD Vance, discussed military operations via chat on the cellphone app Signal, a medium vulnerable to hostile intelligence services. And they accidentally included Mr. Goldberg in the chat. Which is funny, but also, from an operational security standpoint, not great.
As the Trump administration has responded with a mixture of denials, brush-offs, lies and vitriolic attacks on Mr. Goldberg, I’ve found myself worrying less about the leak and more about the character of the people in charge of our nation’s defense. The breach is serious, but security breaches can be plugged. Men and women who have shown themselves to have no character, though, can never be trusted. Not with national security, not with anything.
Perhaps it seems old-fashioned to talk of character. We’re cynical modern Americans, after all. When idealism feels exhausted and the old order seems insufficient to meet the challenges of the modern world, candid appeals to raw interest, however amoral, can feel like a breath of fresh air. That’s part of Donald Trump’s appeal.
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But there remains constant talk of character in the military — of integrity and accountability. This is not just for moral reasons but also for practical ones: You cannot ask men and women to go to war in a group bound by nothing stronger than self-interest. How could they trust their comrades and their leaders when their lives are on the line?
This is why a military career starts not with training in lethality but with character formation. When I joined the Marine Corps two decades ago, I entered a decidedly archaic, premodern society for which virtue was of paramount importance. At Quantico, Va. — where Mr. Vance traveled on Wednesday to speak with Marines in training — they shaved my head and put me in a uniform, because my individuality was less important than our shared purpose. Before they taught me how to fire a rifle, they taught me about honor, courage and commitment. We weren’t supposed to be hired guns; we were supposed to be the first to fight for right and freedom.
There’s a reason essentially every warrior society throughout history has had a code like this — and it’s not that every society has been enlightened. Soldiers don’t need to be saints. But to be good soldiers, to complete their missions and protect their comrades, they do need a bedrock of integrity.
In that light, the absurdity of the Signal chat takes on a more sinister cast. You don’t need to be a military expert to know that what the administration did is unconscionable any more than you need to be a meteorologist to know that the sky is blue. It requires only a willingness to speak honestly about serious matters.
That task is evidently beyond the ability of the members of our national security team. Instead, they have lied. They have mocked. The national security adviser, Michael Waltz, has called Mr. Goldberg “scum,” even though Mr. Goldberg took more care with sensitive military information than Mr. Waltz did. The head of the F.B.I. has not promised an investigation. Mr. Trump dismissed the affair as a “witch hunt.” They have treated this as a media event to be spun rather than a grievous error to be rectified.
They have behaved, in short, like people without honor. The lives of our service members are in their hands.
Phil Klay, a novelist and a Marine Corps veteran of the Iraq war, is the author, most recently, of the essay collection “Uncertain Ground: Citizenship in an Age of Endless, Invisible War.”
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8. Hegseth’s younger brother is serving in a key role as liaison and senior adviser inside the Pentagon
John and Robert Kennedy? Probably not quite the same. Or is it?
All political appointees want to put their own team in place and should be able to.
Excerpts:
It’s common for the Defense Department and other federal agencies to have liaisons. Each military branch sends liaisons to Capitol Hill. The Pentagon, State Department and others all use interagency liaisons to more closely coordinate and keep tabs on policy.
But it is not common for those senior-level positions to be filled by family members of the Cabinet heads, said Michael Fallings, a managing partner at Tully Rinckey PLLC, which specializes in federal employment law.
Based on Phil Hegseth’s publicly available resume, his past experience includes founding his own podcast production company, Embassy and Third, and working on social media and podcasts at The Hudson Institute.
It’s not the first time Phil Hegseth has worked alongside his older brother. When Pete Hegseth was CEO of Concerned Veterans for America, a nonprofit that fell into financial difficulty during his time there, he paid his brother $108,000 to do media relations for the organization, according to federal tax records.
In a statement, the Department of Homeland Security confirmed Phil Hegseth’s job title and said this “interagency mission is part of Mr. Hegseth’s preview,” presumably meaning “purview.”
Hegseth’s younger brother is serving in a key role as liaison and senior adviser inside the Pentagon
AP · March 28, 2025
WASHINGTON (AP) — Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s younger brother is serving in a key position inside the Pentagon as a Department of Homeland Security liaison and senior adviser, Hegseth’s office confirmed.
The high-profile job has meant meetings with a UFC fighting champion, a trip to Guantanamo Bay and, right now, traveling on the Pentagon’s 747 aircraft as Hegseth makes his first trip as defense secretary to the Indo-Pacific.
Phil Hegseth’s official title is senior adviser to the secretary for the Department of Homeland Security and liaison officer to the Defense Department, spokeswoman Kingsley Wilson said in a statement Thursday.
“Phil Hegseth, one of a number of talented DHS liaisons to DOD, is conducting touch points with U.S. Coast Guard officials on the Secretary’s Indo-Pacific trip,” which includes stops in Hawaii, Guam, the Philippines and Japan, Wilson said in response to a query by The Associated Press.
Border security, the responsibility of DHS, has been highlighted as one of the top priorities for President Donald Trump, and thousands of U.S. troops have been deployed to the border to assist DHS with curbing illegal immigration.
Liaison roles are common
It’s common for the Defense Department and other federal agencies to have liaisons. Each military branch sends liaisons to Capitol Hill. The Pentagon, State Department and others all use interagency liaisons to more closely coordinate and keep tabs on policy.
But it is not common for those senior-level positions to be filled by family members of the Cabinet heads, said Michael Fallings, a managing partner at Tully Rinckey PLLC, which specializes in federal employment law.
Based on Phil Hegseth’s publicly available resume, his past experience includes founding his own podcast production company, Embassy and Third, and working on social media and podcasts at The Hudson Institute.
It’s not the first time Phil Hegseth has worked alongside his older brother. When Pete Hegseth was CEO of Concerned Veterans for America, a nonprofit that fell into financial difficulty during his time there, he paid his brother $108,000 to do media relations for the organization, according to federal tax records.
In a statement, the Department of Homeland Security confirmed Phil Hegseth’s job title and said this “interagency mission is part of Mr. Hegseth’s preview,” presumably meaning “purview.”
DHS said Phil Hegseth, while on the Indo-Pacific trip, has been meeting with representatives from Homeland Security Investigations, the law enforcement arm of the department, “and other DHS components and interagency partners.”
The Pentagon did not respond to a request to interview Phil Hegseth. Neither the Pentagon nor the Department of Homeland Security has responded to queries about his qualifications for the job..
A close ally to the secretary
He has been his brother’s close ally, appearing alongside him throughout his fraught confirmation process in the Senate. In photos, as Pete Hegseth walked the halls of Congress, Phil Hegseth is often right there by his side.
He now has offices just down the hall from him along the Pentagon’s E-Ring, according to a U.S. official familiar with the office location, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters.
Photos posted by the defense secretary’s official Flickr account show Phil Hegseth at the secretary’s table as he met with officials or high-profile guests, including Ultimate Fighting Championship champion Conor McGregor this month.
He traveled to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, with Pete Hegseth in February.
Nepotism laws guide government hiring
A 1967 federal nepotism law prohibits government officials from hiring, promoting or recommending relatives to any civilian position over which they exercise control.
An image of an office organizational chart obtained by The Associated Press shows Phil Hegseth in a small group of officials directly beneath his brother, with Phil Hegseth labeled as a senior adviser to the defense secretary.
Further review of Phil Hegseth’s hiring would be needed to determine if it ran afoul of federal nepotism laws, “but it does not pass the smell test,” Fallings said.
However, if he is wholly employed by DHS, that “would avoid a nepotism violation, unless it can be shown that (Pete) Hegseth was involved in the hiring or had asserted his authority to help hire his brother.”
DHS did not immediately respond to a request for comment on whether it wholly employs Phil Hegseth, whether he is paid and if so at what federal pay level.
There are also some exceptions to the nepotism law for the president’s office. In his first term, Trump appointed his son-in-law Jared Kushner to serve as his senior adviser. When he was president, Bill Clinton named first lady Hillary Clinton to serve on his health care task force.
In the Biden administration, Jake Sullivan served as national security adviser to the president while his brother, Tom Sullivan, was the counselor of the State Department.
AP · March 28, 2025
9. French companies shocked by US embassy letter demanding they respect Trump's anti-diversity policy
Are we going more than a little overboard here? We will probably end up with no local hiring support for services at our missions around the world.
French companies shocked by US embassy letter demanding they respect Trump's anti-diversity policy
The US embassy in Paris sent a letter to a number of French companies demanding that they comply with the Trump administration's 'anti-DEI' policy if they want contracts with the US federal government.
By Arnaud Leparmentier (New York (United States) correspondent)
Published yesterday at 12:15 pm (Paris), updated at 9:41 amhttps://www.lemonde.fr/en/economy/article/2025/03/29/french-companies-shocked-by-letter-from-us-embassy-in-paris-demanding-they-respect-trump-s-anti-diversity-policy_6739640_19.html?utm_source=flipboard&utm_content=topic/world
<img src="https://img.lemde.fr/2025/03/29/0/0/1024/682/664/0/75/0/130424a_sirius-fs-upload-1-qfgg3amdbkam-1743215100825-000-36xh6n3.jpg" alt="French and American flags at Orly airport, ahead of the arrival of US Vice President JD Vance, in Paris, on February 10, 2025." /> French and American flags at Orly airport, ahead of the arrival of US Vice President JD Vance, in Paris, on February 10, 2025. IAN LANGSDON / AFP The letter was signed by Stanislas Parmentier, the general services officer at the US embassy in Paris, according to the US State Department directory. Under normal circumstances, it would have remained under the radar, but this is the age of Donald Trump. Revealed by French financial daily Les Echos on Friday, March 28, the letter instructs the French companies to which it is addressed to respect the rules laid down by the Trump administartion, which ban all affirmative action in favor of diversity and gender parity (DEI, for Diversity Equity Inclusion). "We inform you that Executive Order 14173, ending illegal discrimination and restoring merit-based opportunities, signed by President Trump, applies to all suppliers and service providers for the US government, regardless of their nationality or the country in which they operate," wrote the embassy employee, who asked respondents to sign "within five days (...) a form for compliance with the US anti-discrimination law."
The letter instantly created a stir in Paris, and escalated to senior management and even board levels. The targets of the letter are unclear at this point: Is it restricted to suppliers to the embassy or the State Department? This was what the preamble to the form to be signed suggested, explaining that "all Department of State contractors must certify that they do not operate any programs promoting DEI." This could explain why French telecommunications company Orange, which has no business in the US, received it.
Or was it a warning to all French companies? But, in that case, why were big names operating in the US, such as French multinational manufacturing company Saint-Gobain, not sent the letter, either in France or the US? "This letter was only sent to companies with contractual relations with the federal government. Saint-Gobain is not affected," the company told Le Monde. Axa and Kering did not receive it either, according to our sources.
Affirmative action weaker in France
The tension created by Trump reached such a level that a letter created a panic of the same order as if it had been sent by the US Treasury Secretary or Secretary of State. Probably not entirely wrongly: Trump's desired policy is now being diligently implemented by federal administration officials. The note is probably a preview to future demands that European companies comply with anti-DEI rules if they want to do business with the US government, or even do business at all in the US.
Accusations of abuse of jurisdiction and interference abound. Some are trying to play for time before deciding what to do. And the outrage is for the moment anonymous while several groups have chosen not to sign the certification letter, a senior executive of a large French group told Le Monde.
According to the entourage of French Minister of the Economy Eric Lombard, "this practice reflects the values of the new American government. They are not ours. The minister will remind his counterparts in the American government of this."
In fact, in a country that has historically fought against all separatism and ethnic distinction, unlike the US, affirmative action policies in France have historically been much weaker than in the US and very little based on law, with ethnic counting prohibited and the consideration of origins forbidden within companies. On the other hand, companies with more than 250 employees are legally subject to a minimum quota of 40% women on their board of directors or supervisory board.
Trump's executive order came on the heels of a summer 2023 Supreme Court ruling banning affirmative action in American universities. In his January 21 executive order, the US president wrote that diversity 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."
According to Trump, "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."
Disney targeted
This policy is being pursued across the board. On Friday, the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, which regulates the media, Brendan Carr, posted on X the letter he had sent to Disney boss Bob Iger, to make sure he had thoroughly dismantled his DEI policies, not just in appearance.
"For decades, Disney focused on churning out box office and programming successes. But then something changed. Disney has now been embroiled in rounds of controversy surrounding its DEI policies," wrote Brendan Carr, who questions Disney's former goals of having more than 50% minority actors, directors, writers, or paying its executives based on DEI results. "I want to ensure that Disney and ABC [its TV network] have not been violating the FCC equal employment opportunity regulations by promoting invidious forms of DEI discrimination," Carr warned.
In 2022, the feud between Florida's Republican Governor Ron DeSantis and Disney, who opposed a law dubbed "Don't Say Gay" banning lessons on homosexuality and gender theory from schools and colleges, marked the acme of the culture war in the US. It also marked the beginning of the anti-DEI backlash. It continues unabated today.
Read more Subscribers only Trump's fearsome and effective strategy of intimidation
Arnaud Leparmentier (New York (United States) correspondent)
Translation of an original article published in French on lemonde.fr; the publisher may only be liable for the French version.
10. The Partnership: The Secret History of the War in Ukraine
Please go to the link to view this very long story that cannot be easily cut and pasted into a message.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/03/29/world/europe/us-ukraine-military-war-wiesbaden.html?unlocked_article_code=1.704.ekcK.A1eYiQG20hH6&smid=url-share
All four parts of the long report can be accessed at the link.
The Partnership:
The Secret History of the War in Ukraine
This is the untold story of America’s hidden role in Ukrainian military operations against Russia’s invading armies.
On a spring morning two months after Vladimir Putin’s invading armies marched into Ukraine, a convoy of unmarked cars slid up to a Kyiv street corner and collected two middle-aged men in civilian clothes.
Leaving the city, the convoy — manned by British commandos, out of uniform but heavily armed — traveled 400 miles west to the Polish border. The crossing was seamless, on diplomatic passports. Farther on, they came to the Rzeszów-Jasionka Airport, where an idling C-130 cargo plane waited.
The passengers were top Ukrainian generals. Their destination was Clay Kaserne, the headquarters of U.S. Army Europe and Africa in Wiesbaden, Germany. Their mission was to help forge what would become one of the most closely guarded secrets of the war in Ukraine.
One of the men, Lt. Gen. Mykhaylo Zabrodskyi, remembers being led up a flight of stairs to a walkway overlooking the cavernous main hall of the garrison’s Tony Bass Auditorium. Before the war, it had been a gym, used for all-hands meetings, Army band performances and Cub Scout pinewood derbies. Now General Zabrodskyi peered down on officers from coalition nations, in a warren of makeshift cubicles, organizing the first Western shipments to Ukraine of M777 artillery batteries and 155-millimeter shells.
Then he was ushered into the office of Lt. Gen. Christopher T. Donahue, commander of the 18th Airborne Corps, who proposed a partnership.
Its evolution and inner workings visible to only a small circle of American and allied officials, that partnership of intelligence, strategy, planning and technology would become the secret weapon in what the Biden administration framed as its effort to both rescue Ukraine and protect the threatened post-World War II order.
Today that order — along with Ukraine’s defense of its land — teeters on a knife edge, as President Trump seeks rapprochement with Mr. Putin and vows to bring the war to a close. For the Ukrainians, the auguries are not encouraging. In the great-power contest for security and influence after the Soviet Union’s collapse, a newly independent Ukraine became the nation in the middle, its Westward lean increasingly feared by Moscow. Now, with negotiations beginning, the American president has baselessly blamed the Ukrainians for starting the war, pressured them to forfeit much of their mineral wealth and asked the Ukrainians to agree to a cease-fire without a promise of concrete American security guarantees — a peace with no certainty of continued peace.
Mr. Trump has already begun to wind down elements of the partnership sealed in Wiesbaden that day in the spring of 2022. Yet to trace its history is to better understand how the Ukrainians were able to survive across three long years of war, in the face of a far larger, far more powerful enemy. It is also to see, through a secret keyhole, how the war came to today’s precarious place.
With remarkable transparency, the Pentagon has offered a public inventory of the $66.5 billion array of weaponry supplied to Ukraine — including, at last count, more than a half-billion rounds of small-arms ammunition and grenades, 10,000 Javelin antiarmor weapons, 3,000 Stinger antiaircraft systems, 272 howitzers, 76 tanks, 40 High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems, 20 Mi-17 helicopters and three Patriot air defense batteries.
But a New York Times investigation reveals that America was woven into the war far more intimately and broadly than previously understood. At critical moments, the partnership was the backbone of Ukrainian military operations that, by U.S. counts, have killed or wounded more than 700,000 Russian soldiers. (Ukraine has put its casualty toll at 435,000.) Side by side in Wiesbaden’s mission command center, American and Ukrainian officers planned Kyiv’s counteroffensives. A vast American intelligence-collection effort both guided big-picture battle strategy and funneled precise targeting information down to Ukrainian soldiers in the field.
One European intelligence chief recalled being taken aback to learn how deeply enmeshed his N.A.T.O. counterparts had become in Ukrainian operations. “They are part of the kill chain now,” he said.
The partnership’s guiding idea was that this close cooperation might allow the Ukrainians to accomplish the unlikeliest of feats — to deliver the invading Russians a crushing blow. And in strike after successful strike in the first chapters of the war — enabled by Ukrainian bravery and dexterity but also Russian incompetence — that underdog ambition increasingly seemed within reach.
Continued reading the remaining four parts at this link: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/03/29/world/europe/us-ukraine-military-war-wiesbaden.html?unlocked_article_code=1.704.ekcK.A1eYiQG20hH6&smid=url-share
11. Ukraine will resist 'with their bare hands' if forced into unjust peace, CIA chief says
Ukraine will resist 'with their bare hands' if forced into unjust peace, CIA chief says
kyivindependent.com · by Tim Zadorozhnyy · March 26, 2025
Ukrainian forces will fight even with "their bare hands" if they do not receive conditions acceptable for lasting peace, CIA Director John Ratcliffe said during a U.S. Senate hearing on March 25.
"I want to say that with regard to the Ukrainian resistance, the Ukrainian people and the Ukrainian military have been underestimated for a period of several years now," Ratcliffe said.
"From my reflections in observing, from an intelligence standpoint, I'm convinced that they will fight with their bare hands if they have to, if they don't have terms that are acceptable to an enduring peace."
The statement comes amid U.S. President Donald Trump's ongoing efforts to broker a ceasefire and a broader peace agreement between Russia and Ukraine.
Ratcliffe said that Trump is seeking to end the war under conditions that will ensure a lasting peace. He added that the CIA has taken steps to support Trump's diplomatic efforts.
We asked Ukrainian soldiers if they’d fight Russia ‘with their bare hands’
CIA Director John Ratcliffe on March 25 gave a rousing assessment of Ukraine’s desire to achieve an acceptable and lasting peace, insisting its people and armed forces would fight Russia with “their bare hands” if they had to. “I want to say that with regard to the Ukrainian resistance, the
The Kyiv IndependentChris York
In a deal brokered by the U.S., Moscow and Kyiv have agreed to a ban on strikes targeting energy infrastructure in both Ukraine and Russia. In addition, the belligerent parties agreed to "eliminate the use of force" and prevent commercial vessels from being used for military purposes in the Black Sea.
The U.S. and Ukraine initially backed a broader 30-day ceasefire during talks in Jeddah on March 11, which included halting ground operations.
Russian President Vladimir Putin rejected Washington's broad proposal during a call with Trump on March 18, demanding conditions that would weaken Ukraine's defense, including a suspension of foreign military aid.
Ukraine expects the partial ceasefire covering the Black Sea and energy infrastructure strikes to take effect on March 25, President Volodymyr Zelensky said.
In turn, Russia declared on March 25 that the Black Sea ceasefire would only take effect after Western sanctions on Russian food producers and exporters are lifted.
12. Is the U.S. Military Ready for Tomorrow’s Wars?
Excerpts:
The Cipher Brief: What are you going to be looking for over the next 12 months, in terms of milestones and achievements?
Emeneker: We are focused on the gaps that our end users have. If we are called to go into combat tomorrow as a nation, we’re going to have people die because they don’t have what they need. And so we remain focused on providing them options. Not perfect options, not world-beating options, but options that will allow them to train for, prepare, survive and prevail in combat. That doesn’t mean perfect, but it means now. That is something that we focus on all the time.
We are a demand-driven organization. We respond to emerging demand, problem sets, capability gaps from our end user partners. That means we’re not picking. But are we aware of what’s going on? Yes. Do we closely follow developments in the uncrewed systems, the electronic warfare, the counter-UAS space? Absolutely. And it’s fair to say we’re going to continue to focus efforts in those three areas.
The specifics, you’ll see change. To use last year’s Blue UAS list refresh as an example, we conducted a full competitive refresh of all the platforms on the list. End users had been very clear that they needed first-person view or kamikaze drone options, they needed micro- or nano-drone options, and they wanted some group three platforms that had longer time on station or more cargo capacity. We’re in the process of adding all of those options to the Blue List. We’ve also focused on modularity and on bundling, providing options for different radios, sensors, software packages, cameras for folks to pick and choose from in response to their unique needs.
What we don’t want to do is say, we know what’s best and we’re giving you what you want and that’s all you get. We want to be a demand-driven organization.
Much in the same respect, if you go to the grocery store, you pick what you want off the shelf. And then if you don’t pick it, the grocery store is going to put something new on the shelf in a couple of months to give you a different option. That’s the mindset we take. We’re not going to get everything right. But we want to be a responsive organization that responds to emerging and evolving needs at the speed they do. And from where I sit, there’s just so much to do because we owe more to the frontline soldier. We need to prepare them and equip them for combat, and we aren’t doing that today.
Is the U.S. Military Ready for Tomorrow’s Wars?
A Defense Innovation Unit manager worries that the U.S. has been slow to get troops what they need
EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEWA soldier of a LUAS (Lethal Unmanned Aircraft System) platoon of the U.S. Army 3rd Brigade, 10th Mountain Division, carries a Anduril Ghost-X helicopter surveillance drone during the Combined Resolve 25-1 military exercises at the Hohenfels Training Area in Bavaria on February 3, 2025 near Hohenfels, Germany (Photo by Sean Gallup/Getty Images)
https://www.thecipherbrief.com/is-the-u-s-military-ready-for-tomorrows-wars?utm
Posted: March 28th, 2025
By The Cipher Brief
EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW — One of the most profound impacts of the war in Ukraine has less to do with the frontlines and diplomatic negotiations, and more to do with Ukraine’s staggering pace of innovation. Global policymakers, military commanders, and defense industry professionals have remarked on the rate and quality of the country’s weapons production and innovation — particularly when it comes to drones.
It’s a classic case of the axiom that necessity is the mother of invention; when Russia launched its full-scale invasion, Ukraine was badly outgunned on the drone front by Russia, which received large volumes of Iranian-made Shahed drones. But Ukraine has since built up a domestic drone industry that is now the envy of Europe, and closely watched from all over the world.
For their part, American military strategists are concerned that U.S. innovation isn’t where it should be, given that these autonomous weapons are likely to feature prominently in the wars of the future, as much or more than the huge — and hugely expensive — weapons systems that have been staples of the U.S. defense industry. Experts have noted that China far outpaces the U.S. in the production of drone weapons and components, and some have worried about the slow pace of approvals and procurement in the American system.
“The military is a very risk-averse organization, and justifiably so — when the military fails, the nation fails,” Air Force Colonel Maximilian Bremer, Chief of the Advanced Program Division at the U.S. Air Mobility Command, told The Cipher Brief. “There has to be a certain amount of risk aversion, but there is a big difference between acute risk aversion and chronic risk aversion.”
Kelly Grieco, a senior fellow with the Stimson Center, echoed the point. “We need to acknowledge that we are facing adversaries that are adaptive and creative,” Grieco told The Cipher Brief. “American ingenuity has always been one of our core strengths.”
Leveraging that ingenuity is at the core of the work of the Defense Innovation Unit (DIU), a Defense Department group which is tasked — as its website puts it — with “accelerating the adoption of commercial technology at speed and scale,” to boost the pace and quality of U.S. innovation in the military sector. DIU’s flagship drone program is known as Blue UAS, which vets and approves commercially available small unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) for the military.
This week The Cipher Brief spoke with Trent Emeneker, the project manager for Blue UAS. He acknowledged the challenges his unit and the military face in acquiring the drone capabilities at the rate and scale needed for the U.S. military to stay competitive.
“Within DoD today, if we were to exhaust our platforms at the same rate Ukraine does, the entire DoD inventory goes away in less than four days,” Emeneker said. “And we don’t have a production capacity to rebuild that.”
Emeneker spoke with Cipher Brief COO Brad Christian. Their conversation has been edited for length and clarity. You can watch the full interview on our YouTube channel.
Trent Emeneker
Trent Emeneker is the Blue UAS Lead at the Defense Innovation Unit in the Department of Defense.
The Cipher Brief: Could we start with a general, high-level view of what DIU is focused on in this area?
Emeneker: DIU is not focused on anything in particular. We are here to respond to emerging capability gaps that the warfighter has. We go out to commercial partners or industry, find technology that can – if not solve — at least help mitigate or address those issues and bring them to bear within DoD on a commercial time frame measured in months, rather than a traditional program or record approach, which is measured in a decade.
The uncrewed system space in general — that’s ground, maritime and surface drones, and counter-electronic warfare — is a huge point of emphasis for DIU today. And that is because across DoD, end users are very clear about the capability gaps they have. They don’t have ways to address what they know would be a need in a conflict with a peer. So that’s what we’re trying to do and what we’re trying to go for.
I am the Blue UAS project manager. Blue UAS is a third entry point into DoD for uncrewed systems. Normally in DoD, you can enter via a program of record, or an exception to policy, which is a very paperwork-intensive, tedious process with a lot of restrictions. Blue UAS was created about five years ago to go to the commercial market, and verify and validate that components were in accordance with the law. There’s various pieces of legislation to cover that, but essentially when we say in compliance with the law, we mean certain components can’t come from China, Russia, North Korea, Iran, or a couple other countries. In this space, China makes 90-plus % of the global market, not just in drones but the key components as well.
Then we do a cybersecurity analysis, which allows us to generate a piece of paper called an Authority to Operate (ATO). That ATO is what allows for use of our UAS platforms by operators across all of DoD without doing any other paperwork. If they have the funds, they can go buy the platform or capability that they need if it’s on the Blue List. It’s legal, it’s fast. From start to finish, if there is an emerging need that a DOD end user comes to us and says, Hey, we have a problem and we already have the capability, or Hey, here’s the specific thing we need, in 45 days or less, we can do that process — verify, validate, and add it to the Blue List — which then allows them to go out legally purchase it. It shortens, often by three orders of magnitude, the time frame required for traditional response.
We’re not the deciders. We choose things from the commercial market, but it’s done by evaluators from across DoD.
The Cipher Brief: Can you provide perspective on the diversity of platforms that are currently in use across the military?
Emeneker: From where we sit, uncrewed systems have changed the way wars are fought, period. There are fundamental changes in the way wars are fought at the tactical edge.
Within DoD, we do not have platforms at mass, at quality, or at producibility scales that would be needed in a true peer conflict. In Ukraine today, it’s a conservative estimate to say they are expending more than 150,000 UAS platforms a month. It will be somewhere north of 2 million this year, if the war continues. Within DoD today, if we were to exhaust our platforms at the same rate Ukraine does, the entire DoD inventory goes away in less than four days. And we don’t have a production capacity to rebuild that. Four days in a conflict against a near peer, and that’s it.
A trusted colleague of mine recently visited a company in Ukraine that has the capacity to make more than 4,000 drones every day, dependent on supply chains. In this fiscal year, the entire DOD plans to buy less than 4,000 drones. The math just doesn’t add up. We are not preparing for the contested future that we have to. And the unfortunate truth is if we’re called to go into combat, that 19-year-old kid on the front line is going to pay the price in blood. So that’s what drives DIU, the team working on things from our end. We have to do better. That 19-year-old kid deserves the best.
To date, powers allocating money and budgets within services have not made it a priority. We hear lip service paid to this. We don’t see action. I can tell you that folks on the front lines know what they need. They are very clear about it. They’re not getting it. I hear that on a daily basis.
The Cipher Brief: Is it just a mindset problem? Is it just that simple?
Emeneker: I wish I could say it’s a simple problem. We can separate it into three key things. Number one, there’s policy. Policy is set by Congress. We know there are interested people in Congress. But today, there are still some things that haven’t been addressed. DJI, the dominant Chinese giant in this industry, controls somewhere north of 80% of the global UAS market. Chinese supply chain manufacturers in this space, 90-plus %. And depending where you look, it’s approaching 100% for certain key things. So there’s the policy piece.
The hardware piece is that things are made in China. I am never going to undersell American ingenuity, capitalism, and the way we can respond, because we can. But to build a factory, to work out the bugs in production, to hire and train a workforce, we can’t do that overnight. It takes time. And what our commercial partners tell us repeatedly is, if we give them firm demand over a period of years, then they can unlock the capital needed to invest. But they can’t do it without that, because otherwise they’re going to go out of business.
Then there’s software. How do you integrate software capabilities to unlock the potential and ease of use and operability by that end user to solve the problems they have on the battlefield? We know electronic warfare is pervasive. We know that there’s counter-UAS capabilities. If you’ve been there, you get wet, cold, tired, it’s night, things get hard. From where I sit, we have to give the right software to take that cognitive load off the operator to allow them to do what they need to do. It’s as simple as maybe an algorithm that helps stabilize the platform when it’s flying, or it can detect and classify a thermal signature so that the operator doesn’t have to see it and recognize it when it’s 3 in the morning, and you’re tired because you haven’t slept. There’s a lot of ways that software comes into play.
One of the other key things that we know from Ukraine is we’ve seen technological generations roughly every three months since that war started. To react that fast, we have to embed commercial partners and industry directly with our operational end users and allow them to iterate at that speed. We can do it. We have industry partners. We know they can do it.
The Cipher Brief: We have traveled to Ukraine a number of times over the last few years. And we had the pleasure of meeting a number of units and folks that are involved in the domestic drone industry there, which has staggering numbers of production. You mentioned DJI [in China] and the success that they’ve had on the commercial market. I don’t see a concurrent interest in establishing commercial success with our drone industry. Is that a problem?
Emeneker: You’re absolutely right. DJI makes an excellent product. They incorporate user feedback, a thriving developer ecosystem. They’re just easy, simple, and effective. And they’re cheap. So if you were to compare as best you can, apples to apples, Chinese versus U.S. allies and partners, the cost for that U.S. option versus the Chinese option on the commercial market is 4 to 5 times higher, and it’s probably going to get you something that’s not as good. It’s not as intuitive. It’s harder to work.
This goes back to policy. As long as DJI is the dominant player in the U.S. and the drone industry, we’re not going to develop that ecosystem internally. There’s just no way you can overcome that. DoD sales in this space represent less than 1% of the total general market sales in the United States on a yearly basis. The math doesn’t add up. We see encouraging signs. There’s legislation that’s been proposed. But from a national security perspective, we do view dependence on Chinese components as a vital threat.
The Cipher Brief: We’ve talked a lot about Ukraine, but we can’t forget that there’s other parts of the world. There’s been a lot written recently about the U.S. effort to iterate and evolve unmanned systems for the Indo-Pacific region, which are going to require a different approach than Ukraine. Are you involved at all in that?
Emeneker: We are aware of the needs around the world, because combatant commands and services tell us. A recent project that we announced publicly is Artemis, intended for long-range, one-way attack platforms. We have two shorter-range platforms that we selected companies for prototyping, but also two longer-range, as in a thousand-plus kilometers. If you draw a circle on the map in the Indo-Pacific, that becomes operationally relevant.
I am a firm advocate of the fact that the way we fight wars has changed, and in the uncrewed space, mass, affordable, attritable autonomy is what we have to have. So you can’t pay $500,000 for a platform. You can pay maybe $50,000 but not $500,000. So we focused on two companies that we’re partnered with, U.S. firms partnered with Ukrainian hardware manufacturers. We think we’ve chosen a sweet spot of capabilities that can apply in EUCOM, in CENTCOM, and also in INDOPACOM because of their affordability, ease of launch, the fact that they carry the payloads that could be wanted, and they’re simple and intuitive and can be dispersed. We think that also answers a need.
That doesn’t mean we’re right. It doesn’t mean we’re going to succeed. We’re probably going to fail on some of those companies that we selected. That’s the nature of choosing and partnering with commercial firms. But we’re going to iterate and we think we’ve made some good choices.
The Cipher Brief: What are you going to be looking for over the next 12 months, in terms of milestones and achievements?
Emeneker: We are focused on the gaps that our end users have. If we are called to go into combat tomorrow as a nation, we’re going to have people die because they don’t have what they need. And so we remain focused on providing them options. Not perfect options, not world-beating options, but options that will allow them to train for, prepare, survive and prevail in combat. That doesn’t mean perfect, but it means now. That is something that we focus on all the time.
We are a demand-driven organization. We respond to emerging demand, problem sets, capability gaps from our end user partners. That means we’re not picking. But are we aware of what’s going on? Yes. Do we closely follow developments in the uncrewed systems, the electronic warfare, the counter-UAS space? Absolutely. And it’s fair to say we’re going to continue to focus efforts in those three areas.
The specifics, you’ll see change. To use last year’s Blue UAS list refresh as an example, we conducted a full competitive refresh of all the platforms on the list. End users had been very clear that they needed first-person view or kamikaze drone options, they needed micro- or nano-drone options, and they wanted some group three platforms that had longer time on station or more cargo capacity. We’re in the process of adding all of those options to the Blue List. We’ve also focused on modularity and on bundling, providing options for different radios, sensors, software packages, cameras for folks to pick and choose from in response to their unique needs.
What we don’t want to do is say, we know what’s best and we’re giving you what you want and that’s all you get. We want to be a demand-driven organization.
Much in the same respect, if you go to the grocery store, you pick what you want off the shelf. And then if you don’t pick it, the grocery store is going to put something new on the shelf in a couple of months to give you a different option. That’s the mindset we take. We’re not going to get everything right. But we want to be a responsive organization that responds to emerging and evolving needs at the speed they do. And from where I sit, there’s just so much to do because we owe more to the frontline soldier. We need to prepare them and equip them for combat, and we aren’t doing that today.
Read more expert-driven national security insights, perspective and analysis in The Cipher Brief
13. Taiwan Dares to Hope Trump Will Back It Against Beijing
The best way to ensure support is to demonstrate that Taiwan and its people want to defend themselves more than the US or anyone else wants to defend them. If they are hoping to be rescued they are unlikely to be rescued (especially if they verbalize that hope). What they need to say is we are committed to our freedom at all costs and we will do whatever it takes to be able to fight for that freedom. And then actions need to back up those words. Not only investment in conventional defense but also investment in a whole of society resilience and resistance that is committed to defense and if defense fails and PLA occupation occurs, they will resist such occupation with the whole of society.
Taiwan Dares to Hope Trump Will Back It Against Beijing
White House push to confront China has reassured officials in Taipei, who watched Trump’s shift on Ukraine with alarm
https://www.wsj.com/world/asia/trump-taiwan-support-china-8041630d?st=2nGSx6&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink
By Jonathan Cheng
Follow in Taipei, Joyu Wang
Follow in Tainan, Taiwan, and Alexander Ward
Follow in Washington
March 29, 2025 10:11 pm ET
A Taiwan navy ship during a drill in Kaohsiung, Taiwan, in January. Photo: ritchie b tongo/Shutterstock
The Trump administration is bolstering hopes in Taiwan for increased support for the island, after months of uncertainty about whether President Trump’s “America First” agenda could deprive it of a key backer.
In recent days, the U.S. made its first move to cut off Chinese access to high-end technology and hardened its wording in a pair of public statements on Taiwan in ways that are certain to rankle Beijing. Alaska’s governor visited Taiwan earlier this month to advance plans to sell its natural gas to energy-starved Taiwan, while last month, the Trump administration quietly released $870 million in previously frozen military aid for Taiwan and sailed two naval ships through the Taiwan Strait.
All the while, American military trainers have discreetly sustained their pace of activity with Taiwanese troops, while political contacts between the U.S. and Taiwan have picked up, with officials from the White House’s National Security Council, the State Department and the Pentagon offering reassurances to their counterparts in Taipei.
The Pentagon earlier this month circulated an interim internal guidance document calling for more robust deterrence of China to defend Taiwan against an invasion, though the interim recommendations don’t appear to have been implemented, according to a U.S. official familiar with the document. The Washington Post reported earlier on the circulation of the internal guidance memo.
On Friday, Alex Po, Taiwan’s deputy defense minister, attended a ceremony in South Carolina marking the handover of part of a $8 billion purchase of F-16V jet fighters to the island, in a rare—if low-key—visit to the U.S. by a senior Taiwanese official.
TSMC Chief Executive C.C. Wei visited the White House earlier this month. Photo: Samuel Corum/Press Pool
The upshot: After weeks in which Trump’s pullback of support for Ukraine awakened fears of U.S. abandonment of Taiwan, officials in Taipei are increasingly confident that they have Trump’s backing as Beijing steps up its efforts to subdue the island.
The atmosphere around U.S.-Taiwan relations has improved markedly in recent weeks, a senior Taiwanese official said this week. “There is no reason for complacency,” he added, but “there’s a good environment that makes it easier for future cooperation.”
Taiwanese officials remain cautious, aware that any shift from the Trump administration could be upended by further remarks from the president.
“The president has said that he will keep our enemies guessing. While the previous administration failed to deter multiple conflicts, the Trump administration will again achieve peace through strength,” National Security Council spokesman James Hewitt said.
Worries about Trump’s support for Taiwan, a separately governed democratic island that Beijing claims as its own territory, jumped after Trump’s shift on Ukraine, which like Taiwan has relied heavily on U.S. military support in facing off against a much larger adversarial neighbor.
Over the past year, Trump has emphasized Taiwan’s proximity to the Chinese mainland and its distance from the U.S. while saying Taiwan didn’t spend enough on its defense and “stole” the U.S. semiconductor industry. Billionaire adviser Elon Musk, meanwhile, boasts extensivebusiness ties in China and has said Taiwan’s relationship to Beijing is akin to the one between Hawaii and Washington.
In the opening weeks of the new administration, Trump offered only hints of his thinking on China and Taiwan as he turned his focus to Europe and the Middle East.
Signs of a tilt toward Taiwan came after Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. Chief Executive C.C. Wei appeared in the White House with Trump earlier this month to announce a $100 billion investment in the U.S.
In the weeks after the TSMC announcement, Trump has softened his tone on Taiwan, mostly excluding the island from the list of trading partners that he blames for ripping off the U.S. and singing TSMC’s praises. Though Trump has since repeated his complaint of Taiwan stealing the U.S. chip business, he added: “I don’t blame them. I give them credit.”
In mid-March, the U.S. backed a Group of Seven statement that conspicuously dropped support for Beijing’s preferred language on Taiwan, while the State Department edited its website to remove the phrase “we do not support Taiwan independence” from a page on U.S.-Taiwan relations.
Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te has pledged to boost military spending to 3% of GDP by the end of the year. Photo: Ann Wang/Reuters
On the defense front, Taiwan has moved quickly to shore up its military spending. In meetings with U.S. counterparts, Taiwanese officials have touted the 80% boost in military spending over the past eight years—though its defense budget of roughly 2.5% of gross domestic product remains far lower than the 10% level that Trump and his nominee for a top Pentagon job, Elbridge Colby, have floated.
Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te this month pledged to boost military spending to 3% of GDP by the end of the year, and Taiwanese officials have reassured their American counterparts that that level should be seen as a floor, not a ceiling.
Taiwanese officials also used a civil-defense drill Thursday in the southern city of Tainan—the first presidentially directed exercise in Taiwan’s modern history explicitly aimed at crafting a comprehensive societal response to a Chinese attack—to emphasize their commitment to boosting war preparations.
The drills, observed by the U.S.’s top diplomat in Taiwan, sent a message to the Trump administration that Taiwan will shoulder responsibility for its own security, said Lin Fei-fan, deputy head of Taiwan’s National Security Council. “President Lai believes peace will only be maintained through strength,” he said.
To be sure, fears remain in some quarters of a “grand bargain” between Washington and Beijing that could involve a pledge of noninterference from the U.S. on Taiwan issues.
During his confirmation hearing this month, Colby, the Trump administration nominee to serve as the Pentagon’s policy director, described Taiwan as “very important” to the U.S., but added: “It is not an existential interest.”
Colby, who was introduced by Vice President JD Vance, a personal endorsement from Trump’s top deputy, further suggested that Taiwan spend 10% of its GDP on defense—four times the current proportion.
“The Trump administration cares more about what they can take from Taiwan,” said one Taiwanese official, referring to China and pointing to earlier tariff threats by Trump aimed in part at TSMC’s market dominance.
“Besides some minor changes in wording of its statements on some official websites that has no meaningful positive effect on the diplomatic relationship, do you see any friendlier gesture toward Taiwan?” the official continued, saying that military ties between the U.S. and Taiwan remain strong.
The crux of the issue is whether Ukraine serves as a template for Taiwan, or whether Trump is looking to limit support for Ukraine to shift more attention and firepower to Taiwan. Some in Taiwan who worry about a Chinese attack have sought to closely link the island’s plight with that of Ukraine, turning frequently to a slogan: “Ukraine today, Taiwan tomorrow.”
Taiwanese officials used a civil-defense drill in Tainan on Thursday to emphasize their commitment to boosting war preparations. Photo: Ritchie B. Tongo/Shutterstock
Pro-Beijing commentators have also taken up the mantra, though with a different edge, arguing that Trump’s perceived abandonment of Ukraine offers a preview of the fate that awaits Taiwan. Taiwanese security officials said they have observed a rise in Beijing-backed commentary portraying Taiwan as a disposable pawn of the U.S.
Instead, Trump officials are increasingly talking about Taiwan as a beneficiary of any drawback of U.S. support for Ukraine, describing any curtailment of spending on Ukraine as funds that can be deployed to arming and training Taiwan.
“What the Trump administration will do is deliver, is to truly prioritize and shift to this region of the world in a way that is unprecedented,” U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Friday in the Philippines, a U.S. ally that like Taiwan has seen tensions with China soar in recent years.
“We believe that the status of Taiwan should not be changed by force or by extortion or compelled in any way,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in a radio interview this month, reaffirming longstanding U.S. policy. “That’s been the policy of President Trump, and that will continue to be his policy.”
The TSMC deal in particular answered one of the loudest criticisms from Trump, helping put U.S.-Taiwan relations on a positive track, said William Chung, who studies relations between the U.S., China and Taiwan at the Institute for National Defense and Security Research, a Taiwanese military-backed think tank.
“Taiwan is a key strategic outpost for the U.S. in its efforts to counter China. But at the same time, Taiwan could also become a strategic burden that the U.S. is willing to abandon when it wants to engage with China,” Chung said. “Taiwan’s importance to the U.S. depends on the state of U.S.-China relations. When relations between the U.S. and China worsen, the U.S. is more likely to get involved in Taiwan Strait security issues—and vice versa.”
Write to Jonathan Cheng at Jonathan.Cheng@wsj.com, Joyu Wang at joyu.wang@wsj.com and Alexander Ward at alex.ward@wsj.com
14. Defense Secretary Announces U.S. Forces Japan's Upgrade to Joint Force Command
I thought DOGE wanted to eliminate this capability.
Defense Secretary Announces U.S. Forces Japan's Upgrade to Joint Force Command
https://www.defense.gov/News/News-Stories/Article/Article/4139213/defense-secretary-announces-us-forces-japans-upgrade-to-joint-force-command/
March 30, 2025 | By Matthew Olay, DOD News |
During a joint press conference in Tokyo today, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced that the Defense Department has started phase one of upgrading U.S. Forces Japan to a joint force headquarters.
The department originally announced in 2024 that USFJ would be upgraded from a primarily administrative command to a joint force headquarters, meaning it would have more warfighting and operational responsibilities.
Hegseth said the USFJ upgrade will help improve the command's ability to operate with Japan's Joint Operations Command, which was just established March 24, 2025, and is responsible for commanding branches of the Japan Self-Defense Forces.
"We certainly welcome JJOC's establishment this past week," Hegseth said during his opening remarks.
"It's more urgency [and] it's more cooperation in real time. It also increases our readiness to respond to [any] contingency or crisis, support U.S. operations and help Japan and U.S. forces defend [Japan's] territory," he added.
As part of the USFJ's upgrade, Hegseth said DOD will soon add additional personnel to both Tokyo and USFJ headquarters at Yokota Air Base to conduct activities aimed at strengthening bilateral bonds with the U.S. military's Japanese counterparts, as well as deepening operational cooperation.
Hegseth also said reorganizing USFJ into a warfighting headquarters would necessitate increased staff and the empowerment of USFJ's commander with the authority needed to accomplish new missions.
"America and Japan … we seek peace," Hegseth said.
"But, as my first platoon motto says, 'Those who long for peace must prepare for war.' We must be prepared, [and] we look forward to working closely together [with Japan] as we improve our warfighting capabilities, our lethality and our readiness," he added.
Regarding China's growing threat in the Indo-Pacific region, Hegseth said America is committed to sustaining a ready, robust and credible deterrence throughout the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command area of operations, including across the Taiwan Strait.
Reestablishing deterrence is one of the three core pillars Hegseth listed in his message to the force Jan. 25, 2025, with restoring the warrior ethos and rebuilding the military being the other two.
"Our job at the Defense Department … is to build an alliance so robust that both the reality and the perception of deterrence is real and ongoing so that the Communist Chinese don't take the aggressive action that some have contemplated they will," Hegseth said.
"Japan would be on the front lines of any contingency we might face in the Western Pacific, and we stand together in support of each other."
Hegseth's visit to Japan represents the last stop during a weeklong trip throughout the Indo-Pacific region. Having already traveled to Hawaii, Guam, the Philippines and the island of Iwo Jima, Hegseth spent the week meeting with senior U.S. military and civilian leadership.
He also interacted with troops from all branches of service at multiple stops and participated in a series of international bilateral meetings, with the goal of strengthening U.S. alliances and partnerships, as well as achieving a shared vision for a free and open Indo-Pacific region.
News: Hegseth Commemorates 80th Anniversary of Battle of Iwo Jima
News: Hegseth Says U.S., Philippines Agree on Plan to Reestablish Deterrence in Indo-Pacific
News: Hegseth Brings DOD's Message to Troops on Guam
News: Hegseth Addresses Indo-Pacom Partnerships During First Trip to Region
Video: Hegseth, Japan Defense Minister Speak to Press in Japan
Spotlight: Focus on Indo-Pacific
15. Green Beret killed in 2017 firefight in Niger to be awarded Silver Star
May he rest in peace and his family find comfort.
Green Beret killed in 2017 firefight in Niger to be awarded Silver Star
Stars and Stripes · by Gary Warner · March 29, 2025
Army Staff Sgt. Bryan C. Black will be posthumously awarded the Silver Star on April 8, 2025, for his bravery during an ambush in Niger in 2017. (U.S. Army)
TACOMA, Wash. — Body camera footage from a Green Beret killed in a 2017 ambush in Niger has led the Army for the second time to award the unit’s medical sergeant posthumously for his bravery during the firefight seven years ago.
Staff Sgt. Bryan C. Black of Puyallup, Wash., will be awarded the Silver Star, the nation’s third-highest award for bravery, during a ceremony in his hometown on April 8. He was previously awarded the Bronze Star with a “V” device for valor in 2019.
Black and other Green Berets with Alpha Company, 2nd Battalion, 3rd Special Forces Group were in the West African nation of Niger as part of Operation Juniper Shield, working with Nigerian troops fighting militants of the Islamic State in the Greater Sahara.
Black’s unit of about 11 Special Forces soldiers was patrolling with 30 Nigerian troops on Oct. 4, 2017, through the Tillaberi Region outside the village of Tongo Tongo searching for leaders of the militant group.
The American and Nigerian troops had started the 45-mile hike back to their base in Quallum when they were ambushed by more than 100 militants firing from hidden positions. Raked by machine guns and small arms fire, the Americans fought back.
“Throughout the firefight, Black continually exposed himself to heavy enemy fire to blunt the enemy advance and cover the movement of friendly forces,” the Army said in a statement issued Friday. “Black’s volume of fire in support of his teammates was so high that he ran low on ammunition early in the engagement.”
Rather than fall back to a safer position, Black moved into a concealed position near the heaviest fighting to give suppressing fire to keep the militants from shooting his teammates, according to the Army.
Black saw Sgt. 1st Class Jeremiah Johnson and Staff Sgt. Dustin Wright had been injured in the crossfire. Black moved into the open, drawing fire as he ran to aid the soldiers.
“In doing so, he exposed himself to a [hailstorm] of enemy fire that ultimately resulted in his being mortally wounded,” the Army said. “Black, without regard for his personal safety, had fought courageously against an overwhelming enemy attack for over an hour of savage combat ensuring other members of the team could survive.”
Some of the American and Nigerian soldiers were able to break off from the ambush to safety.
Sgt. La David Johnson, 25, of Miami Gardens, Fla, and Wright, 29 of Santa Claus, Ga., were awarded the Silver Star, the third-highest military award for bravery in combat after the Medal of Honor and the Distinguished Service Cross.
Black, 35, and Jeremiah Johnson, 39, of Springboro, Ohio, received the Bronze Star with a “V” device for valor.
The ambush brought scrutiny on special operations missions in Africa.
Military officials have said mistakes were made in the mission’s planning and approval, and they have blamed tactical confusion and a failure to rehearse the operation as factors contributing to its deadly outcome. However, some family members have criticized the military’s findings and complained to the media about the long wait for answers.
The military’s response to the incident raised further questions after a long investigation resulted in reprimands for mostly junior and mid-grade officers and enlisted personnel. At the same time, only one general officer was punished.
At a 2019 ceremony at Fort Bragg, N.C., the Fayetteville Observer newspaper interviewed Black’s family.
“It is very nice today to see that the Army is recognizing some of the soldiers for some of the things they did,” said Hank Black, Bryan’s father. “It was a long time coming, and we’re pleased to see it take place today.”
Black’s wife, Michelle, told the newspaper: “It’s also the men who return. I mean, they lost their friends. I think them having us, and us having them, that’s important for all of us.”
In 2022, the body camera footage of the fight was recovered from Islamic militants killed in Niger by French troops. The video was sent to the Pentagon and Jeremiah Johnson’s Bronze Star was upgraded to a Silver Star.
Three years later, after reviewing video from Jeremiah Johnson’s body camera, Black’s medal was officially upgraded Feb. 21 from a Bronze Star to a Silver Star.
“It is our honor to recognize Staff Sgt. Bryan Black for his courage on that afternoon and for his service to the nation as a Green Beret,” said Brig. Gen. Kirk Brinker, deputy command of Special Operations Command. “We have a motto, ‘Without fail, without fear, without equal,’ representative of our high standards, unwavering commitment, and exceptional capabilities our people possess. Bryan was all of those things.”
Stars and Stripes reporter Corey Dickstein contributed to this report.
Stars and Stripes · by Gary Warner · March 29, 2025
16. What to Know About Trump’s Order Taking Aim at the Smithsonian
We need professionals to run our museums, not politicians.
I find it difficult to believe that anyone does not think our great museums already show America's greatness.
What to Know About Trump’s Order Taking Aim at the Smithsonian
The president’s order called for curbing the independence of the sprawling network of museums and urging it to promote “American greatness.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/29/arts/design/trump-smithsonian-explainer.html
The Smithsonian, whose headquarters are in a turreted red-sandstone building known as the Castle, operates independently, as a public-private partnership.Credit...Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
By Jennifer Schuessler
March 29, 2025
President Trump issued an executive order this week criticizing the Smithsonian Institution for peddling what he described as a “divisive, race-centered ideology,” and calling to restore it to “its rightful place as a symbol of inspiration and American greatness.”
Here’s what to know about the Smithsonian, a sprawling network of federal museums that has been likened to America’s attic, and about the president’s order.
What is the Smithsonian Institution?
The Smithsonian Institution was established in 1846, with funds bequeathed by James Smithson, a British scientist, for the creation in Washington of “an establishment for the increase and diffusion of knowledge.”
Today, it includes 21 museums, libraries, research centers and the National Zoo, many of them on the National Mall in Washington. They range from behemoths like the National Museum of Natural History and the National Air and Space Museum to small institutions like the Anacostia Community Museum, in the southeast part of the city.
All Smithsonian museum sites except for the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum in New York City are free. Last year, they collectively drew nearly 17 million visitors.
What has President Trump said about the Smithsonian?
In his executive order, Mr. Trump claimed that the Smithsonian had in recent years “come under the influence of a divisive, race-centered ideology,” and that it promotes “narratives that portray American and Western values as inherently harmful and oppressive.”
Mr. Trump directed that Vice President JD Vance work with Congress to prohibit expenditures on exhibitions or programs that “degrade shared American values, divide Americans based on race or promote programs or ideologies inconsistent with federal law.”
How much power does the president have over the Smithsonian?
The Smithsonian, whose headquarters are in a turreted red-sandstone building known as the Castle, operates independently, as a public-private partnership. Since 2019, it has been led by Lonnie G. Bunch III, a historian who was the founding director of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture, which opened in 2016.
The Smithsonian is overseen by a 17-member Board of Regents, a mixture of Republicans and Democrats, drawn from government, business, medicine and academia. While the vice president, along with the chief justice of the United States, is a member of the board by law, the executive branch does not have authority over the institution.
Six members of its board come from Congress: three senators and three members of the House of Representatives. Nine others are private citizens, nominated by the board and appointed to six-year terms by a joint congressional resolution, which the president then signs into law.
Updated March 29, 2025, 11:28 p.m. ETMarch 29, 2025
The president has no direct role in appointing regents. But in the executive order, Mr. Trump called for Mr. Vance to work with the speaker of the House and the Senate majority leader, both Republicans, “to seek the appointment of citizen members to the Smithsonian Board of Regents committed to advancing the policy of this order.”
Who pays for the Smithsonian?
The Smithsonian’s annual budget of just over $1 billion is paid for with a mix of federal money, appropriated by Congress, and private fund-raising. Last September, the institution began a $2.5 billion fund-raising campaign, set to culminate with the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence in July 2026.
The Smithsonian’s budget is set by Congress, not the executive branch. But Mr. Trump has recently sought to gut some programs funded by Congress, which has invited court challenges. He could also call for eliminating spending in future budgets, but Congress would have to approve that step for it to go into effect.
Have politics affected the Smithsonian before?
In 1994, the Smithsonian received strong criticism over a planned exhibition about the Enola Gay, the B-29 bomber that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima in 1945. Some veterans groups and members of Congress assailed it as disrespectful to veterans, by paying what they saw as too much attention to the Japanese victims and to the postwar arms race.
The museum revised the script, but the full exhibition, timed to the 50th anniversary of the bombing, was ultimately canceled. A simpler display, which included the fuselage of the Enola Gay with only a brief text with basic facts and a description of the plane’s restoration, went up later, stirring another round of protest from those who thought it erased the human impact.
Have there been more recent controversies?
In 2023, some Republican Latino members of Congress threatened to withhold funding for the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Latino, a new museum still in the development phase. They cited concerns that an inaugural exhibition in a temporary gallery gave “an erroneous and unbalanced” image of Latinos, portraying them only as victims of oppression.
They later dropped their opposition after meeting with the museum’s director, Jorge Zamanillo, who agreed to make what he described as a “factual correction” in a label about a raft used by people fleeing Cuba that was on display.
New museums have sometimes moved from being controversial to being wildly popular. The decades-long effort to create an African American history museum was initially strongly resisted by some Republicans in Congress. But it ultimately won strong bipartisan support, including from Senator Sam Brownback, Republican of Kansas, who sponsored its founding legislation.
Today, the museum is the third most visited in the Smithsonian network, with 1.6 million visitors in 2024, behind only the National Museum of Natural History (3.9 million) and the Air and Space Museum (1.9 million).
Will more museums be added to the Smithsonian?
Yes. In the pipeline are the Latino museum and the American Women’s History Museum, which were both authorized by Congress in 2020. Neither has been given a site yet, and there is still debate about whether either can be built directly on the National Mall in Washington, given a congressional ban on new construction in its core area.
The Latino museum, like the African American history museum before it, has a temporary gallery in the National Museum of American History, on the Mall. The women’s history museum has begun creating online exhibitions, including a recent one about women’s entrepreneurship and the Equal Credit Opportunity Act of 1974, which banned discrimination in lending. In his executive order, Mr. Trump called on the museum to make sure it does not “recognize men as women in any respect.”
A correction was made on March 29, 2025: An earlier version of this article misstated the number of Smithsonian sites with free admission. One of its 21 sites charges admission; they are not all free.
When we learn of a mistake, we acknowledge it with a correction. If you spot an error, please let us know at nytnews@nytimes.com.Learn more
Jennifer Schuessler is a reporter for the Culture section of The Times who covers intellectual life and the world of ideas. More about Jennifer Schuessler
17. We Are All Living in George Orwell’s World Now
This single sentences explains everything:
In “1984,” the ultimate power is the power to define truth.
As an side I think Tom Rick's book on Orwell and Churchill is an excellent read.
Essay
We Are All Living in George Orwell’s World Now
He is easy to quote, but what would the iconoclastic British socialist really have thought about politics today?
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/29/magazine/trump-george-orwell-1984.html?referringSource=articleShare&smid=nytcore-ios-share&utm
By Matthew Purdy
As Vice President JD Vance dressed down European officials over two days last month for criminalizing far-right speech, his outrage built to the unkindest cut of all. “This is Orwellian,” he trumpeted, “and everyone in Europe and the U.S. must reject this lunacy.”
Listen to this article, read by Eric Jason Martin
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A day later, Orwell reappeared — this time wielded against President Trump after his truth-mangling suggestion that Ukraine was somehow responsible for Russia’s invasion. Even a fellow Republican, Representative Don Bacon of Nebraska, couldn’t resist: “Putin started this war,” he posted on X, adding, “I don’t accept George Orwell’s doublethink.”
And as Trump unleashed a torrent of norm-puncturing executive orders — declaring newly forbidden words here, renaming a body of water there, making assertions that seemingly mean their polar opposite — so many references to “1984” have flooded the political conversation that it feels as if nearly half the electorate joined the same book group. After the White House took facts on a loop-de-loop, claiming that officials who revealed details of strike plans in Yemen on a Signal chat had not disclosed classified information, hundreds of people posted the same Orwell quote on social media: “The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.” T-shirts with the same line are available on Etsy for as low as $16. So is one with a fake Orwell quip: “I literally wrote a book to warn you all about this.”
Orwell is the long-dead British writer whom no one will let rest in peace. He remains forever current, thanks to his novels “Animal Farm” and, especially, “1984,” easy-reading teenage favorites — one an animal fable that skewered Stalinist totalitarianism, the other a satire of an all-seeing, all-controlling ruling party epitomized by Big Brother. He was an inveterate democratic socialist, but his writing established him as a champion of fearlessly independent political thought and an enemy of political expression dominated by “euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness,” as he wrote in his 1946 essay “Politics and the English Language.”
Warnings of language as a weapon of manipulation, obfuscation and oppression run through Orwell’s work. It is a reason you could be excused for hearing real-life echoes of scenes from “1984” emanating from Washington. Trump’s airbrushing of the deadly Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol as a “beautiful day” and the pardoning of violent rioters who, he said, had “love in their hearts” recalls one of Orwell’s quotes: “The past is whatever the Party chooses to make it.” The bureaucrat who gleefully bragged that “we’re destroying words — scores of them, hundreds of them, every day” could have been deployed at Pete Hegseth’s Pentagon on the search-and-delete mission for references to race, but in fact worked at Orwell’s Ministry of Truth in “1984.”
And that abrupt switch of Russia from enemy to ally? That also happened in “1984.” In the midst of Hate Week festivities dedicated to vilifying Eurasia, the enemy of Oceania, the novel’s fictional empire, a general announcement was made without explanation: “Oceania was not after all at war with Eurasia. Oceania was at war with Eastasia. Eurasia was an ally.”
In “1984,” hate binds members of the Party, reinforced with Two Minute Hate sessions aimed at the televised mythical figure “Emanuel Goldstein, the Enemy of the People.” In the lexicon of Trump, his many enemies — law enforcement, judges, immigrants, the press — are “scum” and “vermin” and, yes, “enemies of the people.”
Not long ago, it was the political right that was regularly trotting out the tall, gangly socialist. “We are living in Orwell’s 1984. Free-speech no longer exists in America.” That was Donald Trump Jr. posting on Twitter on Jan. 8, 2021, the day his father was kicked off the platform following the Jan. 6 attack. Elon Musk, the multibillionaire who bought Twitter and helped fund Trump’s comeback, last year attacked diversity, equity and inclusion efforts, saying, “Always be wary of any name that sounds like it could come out of a George Orwell book.” That’s the same Elon Musk who now oversees the initiative he calls the Department of Government Efficiency.
Orwell even has a big fan at the conservative Heritage Foundation, the think tank that produced the Project 2025 playbook that many critics are finding, well, Orwellian. “I reread ‘1984’ every few years because it is such a prophetic book,” says Roger Severino, Heritage’s domestic policy vice president, who was an official in the first Trump administration and wrote the health-policy chapter of Project 2025. For him, the warnings of “1984” rang most loudly in the left’s approach to transgender issues and Covid mandates, and the “canceling” of people who did not comply. Conspiracies still rage over restriction on dissenting scientific voices on Covid’s origin in China and over shutting down schools and much of society in response.
Severino called the 2016 Obama Justice Department guidance that schools should treat transgender students according to their “gender identity” an Orwellian rewriting of the scientific fact of two sexes, now codified in Trump’s “restoring biological truth” executive order. Biden-era directives telling government employees to address co-workers with their preferred pronouns meant forcing “people to repeat a lie with their own lips,” he said. It reminded him of the end of “1984,” when the book’s protagonist, Winston Smith, beaten into submission, adopts the lies of the Party. Smith “began to write down the thoughts that came into his head,” Orwell wrote. “FREEDOM IS SLAVERY.” “TWO AND TWO MAKE FIVE.”
So it has come to this. All seem to agree we might be slouching toward “1984,” but not on who is most Orwellian. Orwell was indeed prophetic. Including, it seems, about his own legacy. He once wrote about another English writer whose politics have been wrestled over, Charles Dickens. In a 1939 essay, he lauded Dickens as a writer guided by morality and “always on the side of the underdog.” As if writing about the icon he would become, Orwell noted: “Dickens is one of those writers who are felt to be worth stealing. He has been stolen by Marxists, by Catholics and, above all, by Conservatives.”
This has long been Orwell’s posthumous fate. “He fills a hole for anyone who wants to establish any kind of intellectual pedigree,” says John Rodden, a retired professor who has written extensively on Orwell. It is unlikely Orwell, as a writer of precision, would have approved of being slotted into every hole equally and simultaneously. But perhaps Orwell’s well-turned words have found their moment.
What Would Orwell Think?
Orwell died in 1950 at age 46, three weeks before Senator Joseph McCarthy’s speech declaring that he had a list of Communist sympathizers in the State Department, setting off the witch hunts of the 1950s. Rodden points out that it was the first of many tumultuous events that scrambled political alliances and set off debates about who could claim Orwell’s moral authority. He was anti-Communist, but would he have actually condoned McCarthy? Not being around to declare himself on the Cold War, Richard Nixon, the invasion of Iraq, the internet or the Trump years, Orwell was never pigeonholed in the modern era and instead morphed into his very own, very handy adjective. Really, what can’t be deemed Orwellian?
In his book about Orwell’s novel, “The Ministry of Truth,” the British author Dorian Lynskey writes that “1984” became “shorthand for not just a grim future but also an uncertain present” — which basically covers all eventualities. At one point, the right-wing John Birch Society made 1984 the last four digits of its headquarters’ phone number, while the Black Panthers taught Orwell at their school in Oakland, Lynskey noted.
Image
An undogmatic thinker, Orwell sometimes struggled to publish his work.Credit...Getty Images
Orwell’s applicability across political divisions can be traced partly to the fact that he was an undogmatic thinker, willing to shift his views based on personal experience. The son of a British civil servant in India who himself served as a young man with the Indian Imperial Police in Burma, Orwell soured on colonialism and imperialism. A reporting assignment among the British working class helped turn him toward socialism. Even so, for decades after his death, the political right made claims on Orwell based on another ideological transition, this one sparked by his experience in Spain.
He went to Spain in 1936 to join the leftist campaign defending the Popular Front government against the fascist-backed forces led by Francisco Franco. It was a brutal dress rehearsal of sorts for World War II. For Orwell, the drama was twofold: He was shot in the neck and almost died; then Soviet-backed government forces violently turned on Orwell’s militia, with a vicious campaign of propaganda and imprisonment, accusing them of secretly supporting Franco. Orwell fled Spain and the Communists.
Updated March 29, 2025, 9:02 p.m. ETMarch 29, 2025
That set him apart from his fellow leftists in England. He struggled to find a publisher for his book about Spain, “Homage to Catalonia,” given its dark portrayal of the anti-Franco forces, then in vogue with the British left. He also broke with his pacifist allies on the British left after the 1939 nonaggression pact between the Nazis and the Soviet Union convinced him that England needed to enter the war against fascism. When he wrote “Animal Farm” during World War II, with Moscow aligned with the West against Germany, Orwell again had trouble finding a willing publisher for his dark take on the Russian Revolution.
A statue of Orwell outside the BBC’s headquarters in London is inscribed with his quote “If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.” And he did. He skewered capitalism — he called millionaires “rich swine” — but also took aim at his fellow socialists. His book based on reporting on the working class in England’s coal country contained an analysis of how socialists were out of touch with ordinary workers — a striking echo of a debate in today’s Democratic Party. To many socialists, he wrote, the movement “means a set of reforms which ‘we,’ the clever ones, are going to impose upon ‘them,’ the Lower Orders.”
Then he added, gratuitously, “One sometimes gets the impression that the mere words ‘Socialism’ and ‘Communism’ draw towards them with magnetic force every fruit-juice drinker, nudist, sandal-wearer, sex-maniac, Quaker, ‘Nature Cure’ quack, pacifist and feminist in England.” This chiding of his political compatriots reflected what Lynskey called Orwell’s “liberal heart and conservative temperament,” which has given people on both the left and the right confidence over the decades that he might have evolved in their direction.
Though he never visited the United States, his independent, adaptable views have helped fuel the American version of the parlor game WWOT? — What Would Orwell Think?
In 1969, the writer and intellectual Mary McCarthy speculated about whether Orwell would have stood with her and others opposing the Vietnam War. “I can hear him angrily arguing that to oppose the Americans in Vietnam, whatever their shortcomings, is to be ‘objectively’ pro-totalitarianism.” Given the tumult of the moment two decades after his death, McCarthy concluded her essay on him with an audacious bit of speculation: “If he had lived, he might have been happiest on a desert island, and it was a blessing for him probably that he died.” This from a peacenik? How Orwellian!
‘Such a thing as “the truth” exists’
The first executive order that President Trump signed — just hours after he was sworn in to his second term in office — was titled “Ending the Weaponization of the Federal Government.” “The prior administration and allies throughout the country engaged in an unprecedented, third-world weaponization of prosecutorial power to upend the democratic process,” the order read. “Therefore, this order sets forth a process to ensure accountability for the previous administration’s weaponization of the Federal Government against the American people.” Clearly one American person was front of mind, the president himself.
Trump has made little secret that his four criminal indictments, his 34 felony convictions and jury findings that he sexually abused a woman and defamed her, plus his two impeachments, have earned prosecutors a special place in his hate. Rather than ending weaponization, the order looked more like the beginning of his promised retribution. What followed has been almost daily actions aimed at lawyers, officials or others perceived as being aligned against the president. Security clearances and protections were canceled for those deemed enemies. Law firms were restricted from government work. Career prosecutors and law-enforcement personnel were fired.
On March 14, he angrily vowed revenge when he took the lectern at the Justice Department, which by long tradition and policies has maintained independence from the White House. It is now headed by three lawyers who served on Trump’s criminal and impeachment defense teams. At the event, the attorney general, Pam Bondi, called Trump “the greatest president in the history of our country” and pointedly said the department operates “at the directive of Donald Trump.”
If that is what “Ending the Weaponization of the Federal Government” means, it does resemble the up-is-down doctrines of the mythical Oceania in “1984.” “Even the names of the four Ministries by which we are governed exhibit a sort of impudence in their deliberate reversal of the facts,” he wrote. “The Ministry of Peace concerns itself with war, the Ministry of Truth with lies, the Ministry of Love with torture, the Ministry of Plenty with starvation.” One might imagine the president has on his night stand a dog-eared copy of “1984” alongside Project 2025 and “The Art of the Deal.”
Also on that first day of his second term, Trump signed an order titled “Restoring Freedom of Speech and Ending Federal Censorship.” It began, “The First Amendment to the United States Constitution, an amendment essential to the success of our Republic, enshrines the right of the American people to speak freely in the public square without Government interference.”
That robust defense of free speech lasted unchallenged until the afternoon of Inauguration Day, when new executive orders set off the Great Website Scrubbing, deleting words and expressions that might relate to diversity, equity and inclusion or transgender issues. Eventually hundreds of words were disappearing. (“It’s a beautiful thing, the destruction of words,” Winston Smith’s colleague at the Ministry of Truth gushes.) This was before Trump threatened to cut funding to colleges that allow undefined “illegal protests,” or a Columbia student activist was arrested and threatened with deportation for what the government said was protesting in support of terrorism, or the president barred The Associated Press from the Oval Office for not calling a certain body of water by his chosen name.
Verbal high jinks have spread. At the Pentagon, Hegseth restored Fort Bragg to its original name but insisted it was not meant to honor the Confederate general but rather an obscure World War II infantryman, Pvt. Roland L. Bragg. (A line that comes to mind is not Orwell’s but one often attributed to another fine writer, Abraham Lincoln, who defeated the Confederacy: “You can’t fool all of the people all of the time.”)
The fight for the Orwellian high ground on free speech has become a pitched battle. “We are living in a world where the right truly believes that the ‘woke left’ is rewriting reality through its advocacy of trans rights and critical race theory,” says Laura Beers, a professor of history at American University and author of “Orwell’s Ghosts.” The left, she says, views the Trump administration as “Orwellian dystopia come to life” because “objective realities have increasingly ceased to be relevant, and truth and the law seem to be whatever Trump declares it to be.”
But Beers notes that “there is a huge difference between feeling social pressure to be ‘woke’ and the arm of the state forcibly suppressing speech it doesn’t agree with or punitively defunding institutions with which it disagrees.”
As much as Orwell valued free speech, she says, he valued “true speech” more. Writing during World War II, he noted in an essay called “Looking Back on the Spanish War” that central to German totalitarianism was a denial “that such a thing as ‘the truth’ exists.”
“The implied objective of this line of thought is a nightmare world in which the Leader, or some ruling clique controls not only the future but the past. If the Leader says of such and such an event, ‘it never happened’ — well, it never happened. If he says that two and two are five — well, two and two are five. This prospect frightens me much more than bombs — and after our experiences of the last few years that is not a frivolous statement.”
In “1984,” the ultimate power is the power to define truth. And it remains so. Simple arithmetic has not been altered. But the scientific consensus on climate change has melted away. By decree, there are two sexes and two sexes only. Unfavorable press coverage is “corrupt and illegal.” Jan. 6 rioters have been “ruthlessly prosecuted.”
In Washington, there is a march to expand “executive power” — the power of the president — by edict, by threats, by humiliation and by legal theories yet untested. The man who battled the truth to try to stay in office in 2020 is being talked up by supporters for a Constitution-defying third term. As an enforcer for the Party tells a beaten-down and resigned Winston Smith in “1984”: “We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means; it is an end.”
Read by Eric Jason MartinNarration produced by Emma KehlbeckEngineered by Zak Mouton
De Oppresso Liber,
David Maxwell
Vice President, Center for Asia Pacific Strategy
Senior Fellow, Global Peace Foundation
Editor, Small Wars Journal
Twitter: @davidmaxwell161
Phone: 202-573-8647
email: david.maxwell161@gmail.com
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