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Inside Pete Hegseth’s Rocky First Months at the Pentagon

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Inside Pete Hegseth’s Rocky First Months at the Pentagon

Even before he disclosed secret battle plans for Yemen in a group chat, information that could have endangered American fighter pilots, it had been a rocky two months for Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.

Mr. Hegseth, a former National Guard infantryman and Fox News weekend host, started his job at the Pentagon determined to out-Trump President Trump, Defense Department officials and aides said.

The president is skeptical about the value of NATO and European alliances, so the Pentagon under Mr. Hegseth considered plans in which the United States would give up its command role overseeing NATO troops. After Mr. Trump issued executive orders targeting transgender people, Mr. Hegseth ordered a ban on transgender troops.

Mr. Trump has embraced Elon Musk, the billionaire chief executive of SpaceX and Tesla. The Pentagon planned a sensitive briefing to give Mr. Musk a firsthand look at how the military would fight a war with China, a potentially valuable step for any businessman with interests there.

In all of those endeavors, Mr. Hegseth was pulled back, by congressional Republicans, the courts or even Mr. Trump.

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The president made clear last Friday that he had been caught by surprise by a report in The New York Times on the Pentagon’s briefing for Mr. Musk, who oversees an effort to shrink the government, but also denied that the meeting had been planned.

“I don’t want to show that to anybody, but certainly you wouldn’t show it to a businessman who is helping us so much,” Mr. Trump said.

But Mr. Hegseth’s latest mistake could have led to catastrophic consequences.

On Monday, the editor in chief of The Atlantic magazine, Jeffrey Goldberg, wrote that he had been inadvertently included in an encrypted group chat in which Mr. Hegseth discussed plans for targeting the Houthi militia in Yemen two hours before U.S. troops launched attacks against the group.

The White House confirmed Mr. Goldberg’s account. But Mr. Hegseth later denied that he put war plans in the group chat, which apparently included other senior members of Mr. Trump’s national security team.

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In disclosing the aircraft, targets and timing for hitting Houthi militia sites in Yemen on the commercial messaging app Signal, Mr. Hegseth risked the lives of American war fighters.

Across the military on Monday and Tuesday, current and retired troops and officers expressed dismay and anger in social media posts, secret chat groups and the hallways of the Pentagon.

“My father was killed in action flying night-trail interdiction over the Ho Chi Minh Trail” after a North Vietnamese strike, said the retired Maj. Gen. Paul D. Eaton, who served in the Iraq war. “And now, you have Hegseth. He has released information that could have directly led to the death of an American fighter pilot.”

It was unclear on Tuesday whether anyone involved in the Signal group chat would lose their jobs. Republicans in Congress have been wary of running afoul of Mr. Trump. But Senator Roger Wicker, Republican of Mississippi and the chairman of the Armed Services Committee, indicated on Monday that there would be some kind of investigation.

John R. Bolton, a national security adviser in the first Trump administration, said on social media that he doubted that “anyone will be held to account for events described by The Atlantic unless Donald Trump himself feels the heat.”

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In his article, Mr. Goldberg said he was added to the chat by Michael Waltz, Mr. Trump’s current national security adviser.

On Tuesday, Mr. Trump defended Mr. Waltz. “Michael Waltz has learned a lesson, and he’s a good man,” Mr. Trump said in an interview on NBC.

The president added that Mr. Goldberg’s presence in the group chat had “no impact at all” and that the Houthi attacks were “perfectly successful.”

To be sure, some of Mr. Hegseth’s stumbles have been part of the learning process of a high-profile job leading a department with an $850-billion-a-year budget.

“Secretary Hegseth is trying to figure out where the president’s headed, and to run there ahead of him,” said Kori Schake, a national security expert at the American Enterprise Institute. But, she added, “he’s doing performative activities. He’s not yet demonstrated that he’s running the department.”

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Peter Feaver, a political science professor at Duke University who has studied the military for decades, said the Signal chat disclosure “raises serious questions about how a new accountability standard might apply: How would he handle a situation like this if it involved one of his subordinates?”

On Monday, Mr. Hegseth left for Asia, his first trip abroad since a foray to Europe last month in which he was roundly criticized for going further on Ukraine than his boss had at the time. He posted a video on social media of himself guarded by two female airmen in full combat gear as he boarded the plane at Joint Base Andrews. The show of security was remarkable. Not even the president is guarded that way as he boards Air Force One.

When he landed in Hawaii several hours later, Mr. Hegseth criticized Mr. Goldberg as a “so-called journalist” and asserted that “nobody was texting war plans, and that’s all I have to say about that.”

Mr. Hegseth’s stumbles started soon after he was sworn in to lead the Pentagon on Jan. 25.

In his debut on the world stage in mid-February, he told NATO and Ukrainian ministers that a return to Ukraine’s pre-2014 borders, before Russia’s first invasion, was “an unrealistic objective” and ruled out NATO membership for Ukraine. A few hours later, Mr. Trump backed him up while announcing a phone call with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia to begin peace negotiations.

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Facing blowback the next day from European allies and President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine, Mr. Hegseth denied that either he or Mr. Trump had sold out Ukraine. “There is no betrayal there,” Mr. Hegseth said.

That was not how even Republican supporters of Mr. Hegseth saw it. “He made a rookie mistake in Brussels,” Mr. Wicker said about the secretary’s comment on Ukraine’s borders.

“I don’t know who wrote the speech — it is the kind of thing Tucker Carlson could have written, and Carlson is a fool,” Mr. Wicker said, referring to the conservative media personality and former Fox News host.

Mr. Hegseth sought to recover later in the week, saying he had simply been trying to “introduce realism into the expectations of our NATO allies.” How much territory Ukraine may cede to Russia would be decided in talks between Mr. Trump and the presidents of the warring countries, he said.

Last week, Mr. Hegseth again got crosswise with Mr. Wicker over reports that the Trump administration was planning to withdraw from NATO’s military command and reduce the number of troops deployed overseas in addition to other changes to the military’s combatant commands.

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Mr. Wicker and Representative Mike Rogers, Republican of Alabama and the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, said in a statement that they were concerned about reports that the Defense Department might be planning changes “absent coordination with the White House and Congress.”

Other signs point to a dysfunctional Pentagon on Mr. Hegseth’s watch.

Last week, the Defense Department removed an online article about the military background of Jackie Robinson, who became the first African American to play in Major League Baseball in 1947, after serving in the Army.

The article — which reappeared after a furor — was one in a series of government web pages on Black figures that have vanished under the Trump administration’s efforts to purge government websites of references to diversity and inclusion.

In response to questions about the article, John Ullyot, a Pentagon spokesman, said in a statement that “D.E.I. is dead at the Defense Department,” referring to diversity, equity and inclusion efforts. He added that he was pleased with the department’s “rapid compliance” with a directive ordering that diversity-related content be removed from all platforms.

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Mr. Ullyot was removed from his position shortly afterward.

Sean Parnell, the chief Pentagon spokesman, said in a video that the screening of Defense Department content for “D.E.I. content” was “an incredibly important undertaking,” but he acknowledged mistakes were made.

The Pentagon leadership under Mr. Trump expressed its disdain for the military’s decades-long efforts to diversify its ranks. Last month, Mr. Hegseth said that the “single dumbest phrase in military history is ‘our diversity is our strength.’”

Mr. Hegseth also came under sharp critique from the federal judge handling a lawsuit against his efforts to ban transgender troops. “The military ban is soaked in animus and dripping with pretext,” Judge Ana C. Reyes of U.S. District Court in Washington wrote in a scathing ruling last week.

“Its language is unabashedly demeaning, its policy stigmatizes transgender persons as inherently unfit and its conclusions bear no relation to fact,” she wrote in her decision temporarily blocking the ban. “Seriously? These were not off-the-cuff remarks at a cocktail party.”

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Greg Jaffe contributed reporting.

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Mamdani ripped for claiming victory over capitalism after NYC’s multi-billion dollar taxpayer funded bailout

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Mamdani ripped for claiming victory over capitalism after NYC’s multi-billion dollar taxpayer funded bailout

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New York City’s mayor is again under fire after spewing outlandish claims that his socialist policies are to credit for a balanced budget in the Big Apple, just after the city received a multi-billion dollar bailout from the state.

“In January, our administration inherited a $12 billion budget deficit — a fiscal crisis greater than the Great Recession,” Mayor Zohran Mamdani said in a Tuesday post on X announcing that the debt had been cleared.

“We balanced the budget by taxing the rich and making government more efficient,” Mamdani continued. “We did not balance this budget on the backs of working people, and we never will.”

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani speaks during a primary-night watch party for NYC Congressional candidate Claire Valdez at 99 Scott Studio on June 23, 2026 in the East Williamsburg neighborhood of the Brooklyn borough in New York City. (Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images)

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MAMDANI ALLOCATES $500K FOR REPARATIONS TALKS AS NYC FACES $5.4B DEFICIT

But the real reason the budget it balanced is because the city was handed $1.5 billion by the state of New York in January — funded by working class taxpayers across the state — as part of a multi-year plan to bail out the fiscally-challenged city. In late May, the city received another $4 billion.

Of the combined $8 billion provided to the city’s bailout fund under former Mayor Eric Adams’ tenure and now Mamdani’s mayorship, $5 billion was directly earmarked for the city to address fiscal measures. This includes allowing city government to defer pension contributions to close the budgetary gap.

Mamdani’s claims about socialist policies producing results — and his failure to mention the massive bailouts provided by taxpayer dollars — did not fly on social media.

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul holds media availability press conference and makes an announcement on abortion rights at the office on 633 3rd Avenue. (Lev Radin/Pacific Press/LightRocket via Getty Images)

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MAMDANI ALLOCATES $500K FOR REPARATIONS TALKS AS NYC FACES $5.4B DEFICIT

“This is a lie,” independent journalist Nick Shirley said in a reply to the mayor.

“You balanced the budget by borrowing billions from the NY state government which pushed back pension payments, so you literally took money from ‘the backs of hardworking people.’ Don’t get it twisted,” he added.

Commentator and journalist Nick Sortor also flamed the mayor over the loan and his classification of the bailout.

“Are you saying New Yorkers can ‘balance their budgets’ by taking out massive credit card loans?” he asked sarcastically.

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Independent journalist Nick Shirley sat down for an interview with Riley Gaines as part of the launch of Outkick’s “The Riley Gaines Show.” (OutKick)

BROADCAST NETWORKS TOUT MAMDANI’S VICTORIES, PROCLAIM SOCIALISM IS ‘RESONATING’

“Mamdani balanced the budget by taking money from Albany, who in turn taxed Rochester and Buffalo” another social media user said. “That’s who is paying for all of Mamdani’s free crap.”

In a press conference earlier in the day, Mamdani claimed victory over capitalism.

“Throughout this process I have been reminded of the words of the Austrian economist Friedrich Hayek: ‘if socialists understood economics, they wouldn’t be socialists.’”

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A man sleeps on the E train, one of the subway lines most utilized by homeless New Yorkers for shelter, in Queens, New York, on Monday, April 7, 2025. (Victor J. Blue for The Washington Post/Getty Images)

After the Republican National Convention (RNC) posted that clip, Mamdani also faced ridicule for that.

“It always looks good at first until the chickens come home to roost,” one person replied.

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“He’ll soon ‘deliver’ bread lines instead,” said another.

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Mamdani’s office did not return Fox News Digital’s request for comment.

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Commentary: The sad inevitability of Justice Alito’s birthright citizenship dissent

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Commentary: The sad inevitability of Justice Alito’s birthright citizenship dissent

In 1913, Antonino Alati left southern Italy to find a better life in a land where many people regarded him as little better than scum.

He joined millions of his fellow countrymen in the United States, where the press vilified Italians as poor, swarthy, violent Catholics who had too many babies, refused to assimilate and could never possibly be considered “white.”

Politicians were already working to shut the door on them. A congressional report released two years before Alati’s arrival cited southern Italians as evidence that “the new immigration as a class is far less intelligent than the old.” They came to the U.S., the report asserted, “with the intention of profiting, in a pecuniary way, by the superior advantages of the new world and then returning to the old country.”

Alati wouldn’t let bigotry win. He soon sent for his wife and children, including his infant son Salvatore. Alati turned to Alito, Salvatore became Samuel. A generation later, the family had a Supreme Court justice in Samuel A. Alito Jr. — the second Italian American, after Antonin Scalia, to sit on the highest court in the land.

During his 2005 confirmation hearings, Alito praised his father as an “extraordinary man who came to the United States as a young child and overcame many difficulties” to ensure a better life for him and his sister. By then, Italian Americans were established as an essential part of this country’s fabric, from music to politics to food.

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It’s the most American of tales — which is why it’s so surprising, yet not, to read Alito’s blistering dissent in the Supreme Court’s 6-3 decision rejecting President Trump’s effort to end birthright citizenship.

If there’s one constant in this country besides death and taxes, it’s how quickly descendants of immigrants, and sometimes immigrants themselves, forget how loathed their ethnic group was and how they proved the haters wrong. Too many become uncharitable to the policies that helped them and the immigrants who followed.

But Alito’s stance against birthright citizenship goes beyond just forgetting his roots. His 39-page opinion describes the supposed impact of undocumented migrants on the U.S., using words — “overran,” “soared,” “exploded,” “massive,” “a stream,” “huge” — that read like the same invective used against Italians in his grandfather and father’s time.

The justice channels anti-Italian conspiracies of the past by casting doubt on the national allegiances of the U.S.-born children of Mexican, Guatemalan and Salvadoran immigrants — the same patriotism test that Italian Americans faced generations ago when xenophobes questioned their Catholicism. Alito claims without evidence that millions of agricultural workers were able to apply for American citizenship after President Reagan’s 1986 amnesty “at least in part because of fraud” — a charge also leveled against Italians who sought to naturalize back in the day.

And so it goes, each passage a jumbled argument dressed up in judicial interpretations largely rejected by his fellow Catholic Supreme Court justices John Roberts, Amy Coney Barrett and Brett Kavanaugh. Coney Barrett signed on to the majority opinion that Roberts wrote, and Kavanaugh concurred.

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Rev. William Barber II speaks during a rally outside the U.S. Supreme Court on April 1 while justices heard oral arguments on birthright citizenship.

(Al Drago / Getty Images)

I know how quickly families forget their own immigrant histories. Yet I look at people like Alito and wonder how they ended up thinking the way they do, because I could never imagine doing the same.

My maternal grandmother was born in Arizona to parents who fled their home country during the Mexican Revolution, becoming an American citizen by birthright. My father, who crossed the border in the trunk of a Chevy, legalized his status in an era when it was far easier to do so.

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Like Alito’s paisanes, my Mexican family was also demonized for supposedly being insufficiently American and posing a threat to national unity. They also sacrificed their own dreams so their children and grandchildren could achieve theirs.

And just like Alito, some members of my family have forgotten our history and support Trump or favor some of his immigration policies, dismissing new arrivals as criminals or lazy. That’s why I will always side with undocumented people and welcome anyone who gives birth in this country with the hope that their newborn finds a better life.

It seems from his dissent that Alito somewhat agrees with me. He posits that millions of Americans who were born in this country to parents without papers “have a strong moral claim to be able to remain in the land where they grew up.” Congress “can and should address their situation,” he writes.

The justice blasts birth tourism, where women from China and other countries travel to the U.S. to have a baby, then return home, benefiting from our generosity and offering nothing in return.

I agree that’s a mockery of what being an American should be and ruins it for people who want to contribute to building a better nation. But Alito throws out the baby with the bathwater by failing to recognize that Trump’s attempt to erase birthright citizenship via executive order is presidential overreach based on bigotry, not rule of law. He’d rather cut up the Constitution to spite something he doesn’t like. Thank God his side lost, yet it’s sad that Trump’s pathetic attempt to define who can be an American went as far as it did.

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Alito concludes by stating that the court’s decision to uphold the 14th Amendment is “a mistake that will seriously affect the country’s future.”

What new immigrants might inflict on this country is the perpetual worry of immigration restrictionists — and yet history keeps proving them wrong. Alito’s family did; so did mine. Only in these United States can the progeny of people once portrayed as parasites and invaders side with those making the same argument about the latest batch of newcomers.

History will see Alito’s vote for what it is: a forsaking of the promise his family once fulfilled, to support the people who never wanted them here in the first place.

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Socialism goes west as DSA-backed challenger ousts longtime Democrat

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Socialism goes west as DSA-backed challenger ousts longtime Democrat

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Rep. Diana DeGette, D-Colo., a 30-year incumbent, lost to a Democratic Socialists of America (DSA)-backed challenger in a high-profile primary on Tuesday evening.

Melat Kiros, a 29-year-old socialist, defeated DeGette in a Democratic primary for a deep-blue House seat anchored in Denver, according to The Associated Press, scoring a major victory for the socialist left on Tuesday evening.

The DSA had been aiming to cast DeGette’s loss as evidence of its growing momentum after a slate of socialist candidates won Democratic primaries in New York City last week.

“Today, the East Coast, next week the Mountain West,” the DSA wrote in a social media post last week.

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Rep. Diana DeGette speaks during a press conference outside the U.S. Capitol building in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 10, 2024. (Samuel Corum/Getty Images)

SOCIALISTS CHEER ‘SHOCKWAVE’ PRIMARY NIGHT AS DSA-BACKED CANDIDATES WIN, ADVANCE ACROSS THE MAP

If elected in November, Kiros, who was born in Ethiopia, will likely join the ranks of the far-left group known as the Squad and become one of a handful of the House chamber’s outspoken socialists. 

The millennial challenger was endorsed by Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., and the anti-incumbent leftist organization Justice Democrats. Controversial socialist streamer Hasan Piker, who has said Hamas is “a thousand times better” than Israel and praised the Chinese Communist Party, also backed Kiros’ insurgent primary run.

DeGette, a member of the Congressional Progressive Caucus who supports abolishing Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), sought to win a 16th House term by flexing her leftist bona fides. She argued her seniority on an influential House committee would allow her to push for Medicare-for-All legislation — a longtime priority of the party’s far-left flank.

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DeGette, who was endorsed by former CPC Chairwoman Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., also spotlighted her experience as an impeachment manager during Trump’s second impeachment trial in 2021.

Though DeGette and Kiros shared few policy disagreements, they diverged sharply over Israel and antisemitism. Kiros also sharply criticized DeGette for accepting corporate PAC contributions.

Kiros, a PhD student and lawyer, was fired from a New York firm in 2023 after publishing an open letter, arguing that pro-Palestinian student protesters calling for the elimination of Israel were not antisemitic and appearing to defend Hamas.

Melat Kiros participated in a League of Women Voters Congressional District 1 candidate forum at Montview Presbyterian Church in Denver on May 28, 2026. (RJ Sangosti/MediaNews Group/The Denver Post)

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She has also described the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks against the Jewish state as the “inevitable consequence of apartheid” and declined to characterize the deadly firebombing of protesters in Boulder last year who were urging the release of hostages held by Hamas in Gaza as antisemitic. 

“I don’t know what was in the heart of the perpetrator,” Kiros told Colorado’s 9News in a recent television interview. “All I know is that he went and attacked innocent people because of what they might have believed.”

A June 2025 bipartisan resolution condemning the attack as part of a “rise in ideologically motivated attacks on Jewish individuals” won every present lawmaker’s support, except for Reps. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., and Thomas Massie, R-Ky., who voted present.

Kiros has also suggested the United States deserved 9/11.

“Inevitable in the sense that we destabilized a lot of the Middle East that forced people to believe that another act of violence was the only response,” Kiros told 9News when asked if she thought the terror attack was “the inevitable consequence of American foreign policy.”

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“And again, just like I said before, our responsibility is to get rid of those conditions that lead to violence in the first place,” Kiros continued.

DeGette argued that Kiros’ embrace of Piker and her comments about antisemitism and 9/11 were disqualifying. 

“I’m shocked and disgusted that Kiros is doubling down on excusing terrorism and the murder of innocent people,” the 30-year incumbent wrote on Facebook earlier this month.

Streamer and creator Hasan Piker speaks at a press conference during day two of Web Summit Vancouver at the Vancouver Convention Centre in Vancouver, Canada, on May 13, 2026. (Sam Barnes/Web Summit via Sportsfile via Getty Images)

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Colorado’s 1st Congressional District is the most liberal seat in the state and voted for former Vice President Kamala Harris by 56 points in 2024.

The primary fight was further scrambled by University of Colorado Regent Wanda James, also running for DeGette’s seat. Though James did not pose the same threat as Kiros, her vote share could ultimately have swayed the contest. 

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