Tag: DOD

Commentary: DOD Must Strengthen Support for Veterans

RealClearWire
Military Veterans

Veterans have positively impacted the success of our nation since its inception. Our nation’s service members make up every aspect of our society and represent every ethnic group at some level. Military service is highly regarded by the vast majority of our nation. For many, it provides a chance to grow, transform and serve something greater than themselves. Countless veterans continue their service to their country as leaders in business, government, and their communities. Their inherent leadership skills coupled with a time-honored ethos make them first-round draft choices for any organization.

Although many veterans find the path to the next chapter of their life a rewarding and exciting time, too many struggle, often because civilian and government organizations have little to no real understanding of military service’s attributes. Some of our nation’s most successful businesses have active recruitment of veterans and veteran resource groups in their companies. This isn’t sentimental – they have benefitted from that investment. Many more could benefit from a more in-depth understanding of what veterans truly offer.

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RussiaGate Hoax Paved Way for Security State’s Domestic Censorship During 2020 Election, Internet Free Speech Expert Says

Peter D'Abrosca
Mike Benz

According to an expert in internet free speech, the RussiaGate hoax perpetrated against former President Donald J. Trump’s 2016 election campaign was the beginning of the security state’s inward focus on domestic censorship online.

Mike Benz, the founder and executive director of the Foundation for Freedom Online (FFO), told Tucker Carlson in an interview last week that since the mid-20th century, there was an unwritten rule that security state apparatuses like the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) were not to be used domestically against the American people, but that the security state knew how powerful its apparatus could be if turned inward.

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Commentary: Out of Office

Admin
Lloyd Austin

Secretary of Defense, Lloyd Austin, has apparently been in the hospital, following complications from a surgery for an unknown ailment. He had the surgery and passed the baton to the Deputy Secretary of Defense, Kathleen Hicks, but did not inform the President, the National Security Advisor, and a bunch of other people who should have been kept in the loop.

Worse, Austin’s deputy was apparently on vacation when she was put in charge. This all matters because the military functions through a chain of command, and the Secretary of Defense is a crucial link in that chain, the interface between the uniformed military and the President.

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Only Three Percent of Soldiers Who Refused COVID Vaccine Rejoin Army

Admin
Vaccine Military

More and more Army soldiers are reenlisting after being discharged for refusing the COVID-19 vaccine, according to information shared exclusively with The Daily Signal.

The increase comes after Congress repealed the Pentagon’s vaccine mandate and conservative lawmakers applied pressure to Defense Department leaders to be more welcoming of 8,400 service members who were “fired” for their refusal to get the COVID-19 shot.

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Biden Is Increasingly Using ‘Wartime’ Powers to Interfere in the Economy

Admin

The Biden administration has increasingly relied on a law intended to shore up national defense in order to enact its economic agenda, boosting green energy initiatives and increasing production of certain goods to address economic issues.

President Joe Biden once again used the Defense Production Act (DPA), a law established in 1950 to give the president authority over domestic industries necessary for the national defense thanks to demands caused by the Korean War, in late November, this time to invest $35 million in domestic manufacturing on medicine components to address shortages, according to a statement from the White House. The use of the DPA is one of many following President Donald Trump’s expansion of the act during the COVID-19 pandemic in order to increase the production of equipment related to national health.

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Pentagon Fails Sixth Consecutive Audit

Admin
Pentagon

On Wednesday, the Department of Defense (DOD) failed its sixth consecutive financial audit, even after Pentagon officials vowed to make improvements from previous years’ performances.

As reported by the Daily Caller, auditors gave a clean audit to just 7 of the DOD’s 29 sub-agencies, essentially no different than the results of the 2022 audit. The DOD currently has assets of $3.8 trillion and liabilities of $4 trillion, which encompasses locations in all 50 states, and 4,500 sites globally.

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Biden Admin Quietly ‘Disposing’ of Trump Border Wall Materials to Be Auctioned Off

Admin

For months, the Biden administration has been “disposing” of portions of the Trump border wall to be auctioned off, a local official at the southern border and the Department of Defense (DOD) told the Daily Caller News Foundation.

The auction house GovPlanet has been selling off the “thick wall tubes” and other wall materials since April, according to listings on its website, and has already sold hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of wall materials. The Pentagon confirmed that the Biden administration is “disposing” of portions of the border wall construction materials in a statement to the DCNF.

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Tennessee U.S. Rep. Mark Green Blasts President Biden for Sending Troops to the Southern Border to Help Move Illegals into Country

Kaitlin Housler

Tennessee U.S. Representative and chairman of the House Committee on Homeland Security Mark Green (R-TN-07) condemned the Biden administration for approving an increase of 1,500 military personnel to “supplement U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) efforts” on the U.S.-Mexico border.

Green accused the Biden administration of “using our troops to facilitate the demise of our homeland security, instead of securing our borders.”

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China Spy Balloon Gathered Intelligence About Military Sites, Despite U.S. Preventive Efforts: Report

Just the News

by Madeleine Hubbard   The Chinese spy balloon that traversed much of the continental United States in early February was reportedly able to gather intelligence from multiple sensitive military sites, despite the Biden administration’s efforts to foil any espionage activity. China guided the balloon to pass over sensitive sites multiple times, even making figure-eight formations at some points, two senior U.S. officials and one former senior administration official told NBC News on Monday. The balloon transmitted the information, which was mostly electronic signals, back to Beijing live, the officials said. The electronic signals likely included base communications or were detected from weapons systems. China could have detected far more intelligence from the sites has the administration not moved potential targets and blocked the balloon’s detection ability, the officials also said. When asked about the report, the Defense Department directed reporters to remarks from February in which senior officials said the balloon’s intelligence-gathering abilities were “limited,” and were similar to what Beijing is likely able to collect through objects such as satellites. The U.S. military shot down the balloon over the Atlantic Ocean on February 4. The debris was fully recovered nearly two weeks later. – – – Madeleine Hubbard joined Just the News as a fast…

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Ohio U.S. Rep. Joyce Proposes End to Head Start Vaccine Requirement

Bradley Vasoli

U.S. Representatives Dave Joyce (R-OH-14) and Mariannette Miller-Meeks (R-IA-1) are seeking an end to the COVID-19-vaccine mandate affecting workers at Head Start facilities. 

The federal Head Start program was founded in 1965 and provides numerous early-learning, wellness and parenting-support services to families with children ages five and younger who receive public assistance or have incomes below the poverty line. The program serves more than 800,000 children nationwide including 33,241 in Ohio and roughly 1,500 in Joyce’s district. 

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Department of Defense Silent After Lawyer Told Judge it Had ‘Adequate Supply’ of Unavailable Pfizer Vaccine

Peter D'Abrosca

The Department of Defense (DOD) declined to comment on whether it had any of Pfizer’s Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved vaccine called Comirnaty, after one of its lawyers told a federal judge the department had Comirnaty on hand. 

“We don’t have anything for you on this,” a DOD spokesman told The Star News Network by email on Wednesday. 

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FDA Won’t Say Why Some Non-Approved Pfizer Vaccines Were Deemed ‘BLA-Compliant’

Peter D'Abrosca

Through Ohio attorneys representing Miami University in a lawsuit against the school over its mandatory COVID-19 vaccine policy, The Ohio Star confirmed that at least none batches of Pfizer’s Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) vaccine were deemed Biologics License Application (BLA) compliant. 

BLA compliance is typically reserved for Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved drugs. That is the licensing procedure for drugs seeking to become FDA approved. 

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EXCLUSIVE: Unaccompanied Migrant Children Also Flew On Commercial Airlines Into Chattanooga: ‘They Had New Cell Phones, Backpacks, and Clothes’

Corinne Murdock

The Tennessee Star discovered that unaccompanied migrant children were flown May 11 on a commercial flight – three days before flights documented by initial breaking news. Previous reports discovered that the unaccompanied migrant children were flown into a private airport on May 14 – Chattanooga’s Wilson Air Center. It is unclear how many other flights carrying migrant children came into Tennessee prior to these documented incidents on May 11 and 14. A source who was on the flight informed The Star that they encountered a man chaperoning 10 to 15 migrant children between the ages of 10 and 14 onto an American Airlines flight. The chaperone was described as a bilingual Hispanic male wearing street clothes, speaking fluent Spanish to the children and English to the source – he’d chatted with our source for around 45 minutes at a ticket counter. The chaperone informed our source that he was “escorting all these young men to Chattanooga for a shelter.” The group of migrant children reportedly had new-looking cell phones, clothes, shoes, and backpacks. The source added that some of the children were playing games or talking in Spanish on their phones.

The group of migrant children and their chaperone reportedly boarded the plane first and went to the back of the plane. They flew from Dallas Fort Worth Airport to Chattanooga Metropolitan Airport, also known as Lovell Field on American Airlines flight number 3901. They arrived around 1 a.m. EDT on May 12.

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Trump’s DOD Delivers Another Big Blow to Bezos, Gives $10 Billion Cloud Project to Microsoft Instead of Amazon

Admin

The Pentagon reaffirmed its decision Friday to give a $10 billion cloud computing project to Microsoft instead of Amazon, marking the second time in one year that the Trump administration bypassed the online giant’s attempt to secure the program.

The Trump administration’s decision comes amid a legal battle Amazon Web Services initiated in 2019 after the Department of Defense (DOD) selected Microsoft in 2019 for the $10 billion Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure cloud computing contract, media reports show. Amazon previously stated that President Donald Trump’s dislike of CEO Jeff Bezos contributed to the move.

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Rep. Green Questions Security of Military Program That Recruits Non-Citizens For Vital Defense Work

Jason M. Reynolds

U.S. Rep. Mark Green (R-TN-07) is questioning the security of a program that helps the military recruit foreign citizens for vital jobs.

Green said he sent a letter to National Security Subcommittee Chairman Stephen Lynch (D-MA-08) calling for a hearing to examine vulnerabilities in the Department of Defense’s MAVNI (Military Accessions Vital to the National Interest) program.

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Ohio Legislators Push for New Missile Defense Site to be Located in Ohio

Andrew Shirley

A group of Ohio Legislators in an open letter Thursday called on Acting U.S. Secretary of Defense Patrick Shanahan to select Ohio as the location for a new missile defense site and complex. The Continental United States Interceptor Site (CIS) is the only ground-based segment of the total U.S. defense system. It is currently run by the Department of Defense; Missile Defense Agency and is a major component of the “Ground-based Midcourse Defense (GMD)” segment, which is part of the overall Ballistic Missile Defense System. This system is responsible for protecting the nation from missile attacks, potentially launched by countries like “Iran and North Korea.” The overall missile defense system of the United States consists of three major segments: the Boost Defense Segment (BDS), the Midcourse Defense Segment (MDS), and the Terminal Defense Segment (TDS). Each focuses on different phases of a potential missile attack on the continent. BDS focuses on the detection and interception of a missile at the earliest possible moments, long before it reaches the apex of its launch trajectory. MDS focuses on the interception of a missile at the midpoint of its trajectory. TDS is last line defense for stopping a missile attack; when the missile is past the midpoint…

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Congress Members Call for Investigation Into Pentagon’s Handling of Controversial $10 Billion Cloud Contract

Admin

by Andrew Kerr   Two members of the House Appropriations Committee requested an investigation Monday into the Pentagon’s handling of its $10 billion winner-take-all cloud computing contract following widespread criticism that the deal has been rigged from the start to favor Amazon. Amazon Web Services is the only cloud computing platform that meets all the specifications of the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (JEDI) program, which stands to be one of the largest stand-alone technology contracts the federal government’s ever awarded at up to $10 billion over 10 years. The Department of Defense is expected to select a winner for the contract in April. The Daily Caller News Foundation reported in August that a former senior adviser to Secretary of Defense James Mattis, Sally Donnelly, had once consulted for Amazon Web Services through a firm she owned. Donnelly did not recuse herself from involvement in crafting the contract, despite receiving payments from the sale of her Amazon-linked firm, which she sold just prior to entering the Pentagon. “It has come to our attention through media reports that individuals who held, or hold, high ranking positions in the Department have access to the specific contractor,” Reps. Steve Womack of Arkansas and Tom…

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