Tag: U.S. military

Commentary: Thank God for the Principled Senator Tuberville

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These days, Senator Tommy Tuberville of Alabama is an endangered species in official Washington. That’s not because political hacks – in uniform and out – are taking every imaginable cheap shot at him, including that he is “endangering our national security” by holding up the promotions of some 300 officers.

The latest to do so is the American Legion, an organization that once faithfully championed our armed forces’ warriors, both serving and veteran. As its attack on Coach Tuberville demonstrates, however, the Legion has been reduced to just another special interest group pandering to those in power in exchange for favorable treatment.

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The Military Is Quietly Using a Little-Known Program to Enable Child Sex Changes

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The U.S. military is quietly making accommodations for military families with children or dependents seeking gender transition help through a little-known program initially meant to assist families with special needs members.

Through the Exceptional Family Member Program (EFMP), the military has allowed special assignments for servicemembers so their dependents can access gender transition services, and could take additional steps to facilitate transition, according to media reports, Department of Defense (DOD) statements and the policies themselves. Current DOD guidance leaves open the possibility servicemembers with gender dysphoric dependents could be eligible for exceptions to policy under the EFMP, but there is a provision in the House’s draft defense bill that could make it illegal.

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Vivek Ramaswamy Demands Answers After Biden Administration Calls Up 3,000 U.S. Reserve Troops to Europe

Kaitlin Housler

GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy requested more information from the Biden administration regarding its recent announcement of activating 3,000 U.S. troops of the Selected Reserve or Individual Ready Reserve (IRR) in Europe.

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Nearly a Third of Patients on ‘Gender Affirming’ Hormones Stop Taking Them, Military Study Finds

Just the News

Republican-led legislatures and governors seeking to put the brakes on puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones and surgical removal of healthy breasts and genitals for gender-confused minors have a new weapon from the U.S. military.

Nearly a third of “transgender and gender-diverse” patients who received so-called gender-affirming hormones had stopped taking them within four years, according to a study of children and spouses of soldiers who received treatment through the U.S. Military Healthcare System.

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Catholic Leader Rebukes Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman for Navy’s Use of Drag Queen for Recruitment Campaign

Susan Berry, PhD

In a strong rebuke Thursday to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the president of the nation’s prominent Catholic civil rights organization charged that the U.S. Navy is continuing to use “the policies of the far-left, the woke brand of politics,” in its recent drag queen digital campaign supposedly intended as a recruitment strategy.

Bill Donohue of the Catholic League wrote to General Mark Milley, condemning the scandal of the Navy’s acknowledgment the service branch has recruited Yeoman 2nd Class Joshua Kelley, a sailor who “misidentifies,” as Donohue states, as “non-binary,” and who performs as a drag queen, to serve as a “digital ambassador” in a pilot program geared toward attracting young recruits.

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Senator Marsha Blackburn Introduces Bill that Would Reinstate U.S. Service Members Who Were Fired for Refusing COVID-19 Vaccine

Kaitlin Housler

Senator Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) joined 17 of her Republican colleagues this week in introducing a bill requiring the Secretary of Defense to offer reinstatement to service members who were fired over the military’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate.

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Senator Blackburn Applauds Biden’s Repeal of the COVID-19 Vaccine Mandate for Service Members Included in NDAA

Kaitlin Housler

President Joe Biden signed the James M. Inhofe National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for Fiscal Year 2023 into law on Friday, following uncertainty on his stance of the bill.

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Commentary: Veterans Day Is a Chance to Thank Those Who Selflessly Served America

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Friday is Veterans Day. We celebrate Veterans Day on the 11th day of the 11th month of the year, the day the guns fell silent in Europe following the armistice that ended World War I. For some, it’s a day off from school or work, but for the majority of Americans, it means so much more.

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‘Honor Vote Program’ Allows Tennesseans to Dedicate Their Vote to a Veteran or Active-Duty U.S. Military Member

Kaitlin Housler

Tennesseans are able to ceremonially dedicate their vote in the State and Federal general election this November to a veteran or an active-duty member of the U.S. military. The Tennessee Secretary of State’s Honor Vote Program “lets Tennesseans dedicate their vote to those who are serving or have served our country.”

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U.S. Military Educational Summit Pushed Gender Ideology Using a ‘Genderbread Person,’ Report Finds

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The U.S. Department of Defense Education Activity (DODEA) hosted an “Equity and Access” summit in 2021 that featured presentations on gender ideology and anti-racism, according to a report by the Claremont Institute.

The “Equity and Access” summit trained military school educators on curriculum and practices which featured teaching gender identity using a “genderbread person,” according to the report by the Claremont Institute. The DODEA oversees more than 160 K-12 schools on military bases throughout the world and is responsible for educating roughly 69,000 students.

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Inspector General: Denying Religious Exemptions to Service Members Who Refuse COVID-19 Vaccines Violates Federal Law

The Center Square

A Department of Defense Office of Inspector General report has found that officials in the U.S. military who issued widespread denials of religious exemption requests by service members who refused to take the COVID-19 shots violated federal law.

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U.S. Military Running Low on Ammo After Arming Ukraine

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Pentagon officials are concerned that U.S. ammunition stocks donated to Ukraine have severely depleted U.S. stocks, weakening U.S. readiness in the event of a conflict, The Wall Street Journal reported Monday.

The Biden administration has drawn much of the over $13 billion in weapons systems and accompanying ammunition the U.S. has provided to Ukraine from existing arsenals, according to the WSJ. While the Department of Defense has declined to disclose the number of ammunition rounds in storage at the beginning of 2022, before the war in Ukraine began, it has taken few steps to replenish depleting stocks, sparking worries that the U.S. may not have the ammunition it needs for its own protection.

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Report: U.S. Military to Prep for War If Pelosi Goes to Taiwan

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The U.S. military is readying for possible conflict in the Pacific ahead of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s possible trip to Taiwan in August, according to The Associated Press.

The Pentagon will escalate troop movements and security measures in the Pacific if Pelosi follows through with her planned Taiwan visit. China likely would not attack Pelosi’s plane directly, officials familiar with the matter told the AP, but senior officials worry that her presence could inflame existing tensions between the U.S. and China over Taiwan.

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Commentary: Adam Schiff Is Hiding Something

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Jeffrey Rosen had a secret on January 6, 2021.

The then-acting attorney general—Rosen was appointed on December 24, 2020 to replace departing Attorney General William Barr—had assembled a team of elite and highly skilled government agents at Quantico, a nexus point between the FBI and U.S. military, the weekend before Congress met to certify the results of the 2020 presidential election. At the same time he was rejecting President Donald Trump’s last-minute appeals to investigate election fraud, Rosen was managing a hush-hush operation in advance of planned rallies and protests in Washington on January 6.

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Report: The U.S. Military Is Almost Completely Dependent on China for Key Mineral Used in Ammunition

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The U.S. military depends almost completely on China for a mineral essential to the production of ammunition and other defense products, Defense News reported Wednesday.

The House Armed Services Committee released draft legislation on Wednesday which would require a briefing on the antimony supply by October and a five-year outlook on supply chain vulnerabilities, Defense News reported. The U.S. has no domestic mine for the mineral antimony, which is reportedly used in the production of night vision goggles, armor-piercing bullets, explosives and nuclear weapons.

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Commentary: Onshoring Semiconductor Capacity Is Crucial to National Security

RealClearWire
semiconductor

When you think about national security, you probably don’t immediately think about semiconductors. These tiny chips are the “brains” enabling all the computational capabilities and data storage that we take for granted today. Chips power virtually every sector of the economy – including data centers, automotive, healthcare, banking, and agriculture. As a consequence of their widespread use, semiconductors have grown to become a $555 billion global industry, and are the world’s fourth most traded product. Semiconductor manufacturing and advanced packaging have been cited frequently as one of the main critical supply chain priorities for the nation.

A steady source of uninterrupted, trusted chips is necessary for the security of the nation – supporting the readiness of the U.S. military and protecting critical infrastructure like the electric grid. The problem is that most chips are fabricated outside of the U.S., in the vulnerable region of Southeast Asia – hence the security issues. Around three quarters of global chip production capacity comes from Southeast Asia.

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U.S. to Send 3,000 Additional Troops to Europe Amid Tension at Ukraine Border

The Center Square

President Joe Biden plans to send another 3,000 troops to Europe amid continued tensions between Russia and Ukraine.

Biden is sending about 2,000 troops from Fort Bragg, North Carolina, to Poland and Germany this week. The president is also moving about 1,000 soldiers based in Germany to Romania, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing administration officials.

“They are trained and equipped for a variety of missions during this period of elevated risk,” a senior defense official told the Wall Street Journal.

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Ohio Senate Candidate JD Vance Slams Biden for ‘Destroying’ Marines with Vaccine Mandate

Cooper Moran

U.S. Senate candidate JD Vance slammed President Joe Biden for hurting the U.S. Marines with a vaccine mandate for members of the military.

Vance, who served as a Marine during the Iraq War, has remained an outspoken critic of “wokeness” within the U.S. military.

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Commentary: The Poison Fruits of Identity Politics in the Military

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For many years, the U.S. military has been among the most trusted of American institutions, certainly the most trusted part of the U.S. government. It has maintained that status despite its failure to achieve success in the post-9/11 wars. Americans seem to have accepted the argument that this failure has more to do with the political constraints placed on the military than on the military’s doctrine, planning, and execution. They have continued to accept the military’s self-image as a profession rather than a self-interested bureaucracy, and have supported its professional ethos understood as duty, honor, and sacrifice.    

But attitudes toward the military seem to be changing. According to a recent survey conducted by the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and Institute, the number of Americans who express a great deal of confidence and trust in the military has dropped from 70 percent to 45 percent in just the past three years, including an 11 percent drop since February.

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Commentary: Veterans Day Is a Chance to Thank Those Who Selflessly Served America

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Thursday is Veterans Day. We celebrate Veterans Day on the 11th day of the 11th month of the year, the day the guns fell silent in Europe following the armistice that ended World War I. For some, it’s a day off from school or work, but for the majority of Americans, it means so much more.

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Botched Drone Strikes Will Continue Without a Ground Presence In Afghanistan, Former Defense Official Says

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Mistakes like the ones that led to the deaths of 10 civilians by a U.S. drone strike in Afghanistan will continue without a ground presence, experts told the Daily Caller News Foundation.

“Now that we don’t have an on-the-ground presence, it’s going to be harder to target people and know they’re the right people,” Mick Mulroy, former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense (DASD) for the Middle East and veteran of Afghanistan, told the DCNF.

Mulroy said the diminished U.S. human intelligence network in the country would severely impact the ability of the military to monitor terrorism. “We had an intelligence service. We had bases all over the country. We had the ability to move about, to meet with people. Now, we don’t have any of that,” he said.

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Biden’s Job Approval Rating Falls to 43 Percent, Lowest in Presidency, Gallup

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President Biden’s job-approval rating has fallen six percentage points, to 43%, since August. The number is the lowest of his roughly eight-month presidency, and now for the first time, a majority, 53%, disapproves of his performance, according to a Gallup poll released Wednesday.

The poll was conducted from Sept. 1 to 17, after the U.S. military left Afghanistan in late August. The military’s departure after 20 years in the country included the chaotic evacuation of 120,000 people that was overshadowed by a suicide bomber killing 13 U.S. service members.

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U.S. Military Admits Killing 10 Civilians, Targeting Wrong Vehicle in Kabul Drone Strike, Reports

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AU.S. military investigation into a deadly drone strike last month in Kabul found the attack killed 10 civilians and that the targeted driver and vehicle were likely not a threat associated with the ISIS-K terror group, according to several news reports Friday.

The Pentagon had previously said at least one ISIS-K facilitator and three civilians were killed in what Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. Mark Milley had previously called a “righteous strike” on the compound on Aug 29, according to CNN.

The investigation released Friday found everybody killed in the residential compound were civilians, following weeks of speculation about a possible failed drone strike.

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Commentary: Biden Gave Up More Than Bagram

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Joe Biden

Earlier this week, as covered in a previous column in the American Spectator, the Democrat National Committee bragged about the “achievement” of this alleged president in his “best-run evacuation” of Kabul. Chief among the DNC’s arguments for such ludicrous praise was the lack of American casualties.

The press flacks at the DNC, every one of whom would be fired if that organization had the slightest honor (its chairman, the failed U.S. Senate candidate Jaime Harrison, should similarly resign in disgrace before the weekend), were merely parroting statements the alleged president made about the absence of dead Americans at the time.

Every single credible person with either operational military experience or a knowledge of Afghanistan was warning that casualties were already inevitable by that point. Even the alleged president, in a fit of congratulatory onanism, qualified the alleged safety of the “best-run evacuation” with the proverbial knock on wood.

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Air Force Academy Forces Students to Watch Pro-BLM Video

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The newest class of cadets at the United States Air Force Academy, as part of their education, are being forced to watch a video that is supportive of the far-left domestic terrorist organization Black Lives Matter, Fox News reports.

The video in question portrays a fictional situation where a mixed-race student named Jose, who has a Nigerian mother and a Mexican father, is pressured into attending a Black Lives Matter rally on his campus by two of his friends. A third friend tries to convince him to not go, instead suggesting that “all lives matter” is a better slogan, since “black lives matter” would suggest to Jose that his mother’s life matters more than his father’s.

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Pentagon Does Not Deny That U.S. Military Is Buying Fuel from the Taliban to Evacuate People from Afghanistan

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William Taylor

Army Maj. Gen. Hank Taylor and Pentagon Spokesman John Kirby dodged a reporter’s question about whether the US military is buying aviation fuel from the Taliban as evacuation efforts continue at Hamid Karzai International Airport (HKIA) in Kabul.

During a briefing at the Pentagon Thursday, Kirby also revealed that of the 2,000 people evacuated over the last 24 hours, only 300 of them were Americans.

“How are you fueling your planes… are you now in a position that you have to buy fuel from the Taliban?” asked Fox News national security correspondent Jennifer Griffin during a briefing at the Pentagon.

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Rep. Buddy Carter Introduces Bill to Ban Critical Race Theory in the Military

Cooper Moran

Congressman Buddy Carter introduced a bill on Wednesday that would prohibit Critical Race Theory (CRT) teachings in the military and require a detailed report about CRT’s total usage. 

Carter’s legislation, the Military Education and Values Act, would require the Department of Defense to ban the usage of any teaching methodology that promotes or causes a racial divide or lack of equality and reinstate all service members on the core tenets of the United States military.

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Joe Biden Claims 6,000 Military Members Dead From COVID, but the Real Number Is Seven

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Democratic 2020 presidential candidate Joe Biden said Wednesday that more than 6,000 military members have died from coronavirus, Department of Defense (DOD) statistics show the real number is just seven deaths.

While speaking in Michigan on Wednesday, Biden significantly overstated both the number of COVID infections in the military, as well as the number of COVID deaths.

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Trump Administration Seeks to Enforce Trans Soldier Ban in Supreme Court

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by Kevin Daley   In an unusual move, the Department of Justice asked the Supreme Court to let President Donald Trump’s administration enforce its ban on transgender military personnel while it litigates legal challenges to the policy in lower courts. Thursday’s application is the latest in a series of aggressive…

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Boeing Cancels Controversial Satellite Order Funded by China

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by Hanna Bogorowski   Boeing decided to cancel an order for a satellite that uses sensitive technology used by the U.S. military and was reportedly being funded by a state-owned Chinese financial firm. A Wall Street Journal investigation revealed Tuesday the troubling web of financial transactions that skirted around U.S.…

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Family Action Council of Tennessee Praises Trump’s Decision To Ban Transgenders From Military

Wendy Wilson

  The conservative Family Action Council of Tennessee (FACT) praised President Trump on Wednesday for saying that transgenders would not be allowed in the military, a reversal of a policy set in motion by former President Obama, who lifted a previous ban. David Fowler, president of FACT, said in a…

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Southern Baptist Ethics And Religious Liberty Commission Speaks Out Against Military Transgender Policy

Wendy Wilson

  Southern Baptist leaders object to the U.S. Army’s new mandatory transgender sensitivity training, reports Baptist Press. The training follows last year’s repeal of a ban on transgender men and women serving openly in the armed forces. Former President Obama’s defense secretary set a deadline of July 1 for fully implementing the…

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