Tag Archives: Military

The U.S. military has been given 30 days to determine how to identify and remove transgender service members from its ranks, following a new directive from the Pentagon. The order expands on President Donald Trump’s earlier ban on transgender individuals serving in the military and has already sparked legal challenges. …

Ashley Murray, Iowa Capital Dispatch President Joe Biden will pardon U.S. military veterans who were discharged or convicted under military law for consensual same-sex relations, the administration announced Wednesday. The White House could not provide an exact number of veterans who will be pardoned, but the administration estimates thousands were …

Ashley Murray, Pennsylvania Capital-Star Republican U.S. House lawmakers, led by Rep. Glenn Grothman of Wisconsin, conducted a hearing Thursday to examine the possibility that “wokeness” hurts U.S. military readiness and effectiveness. The winding, over two-hour hearing by a subpanel of the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability broached topics including, …

Jennifer Shutt, Missouri Independent Members of the U.S. military would no longer be required to get the COVID-19 vaccine under a proposal Congress could pass as soon as this week. The provision eliminating the vaccine mandate is tucked into the massive National Defense Authorization Act, the annual defense policy bill that Congress …

An estimated 80,000 female, active duty service members are stationed in states where their access to abortion has been restricted by state laws enacted since the overturn of Roe v. Wade in June. To give back some of that access, the Pentagon has decided to provide leave and reimburse travel …

Dwight Stirling, The Conversation Less than a month after the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the U.S. Capitol, Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin took the extraordinary step of pausing all operations for 24 hours to “address extremism in the ranks.” Pentagon officials had been shaken by service members’ prominent role …

by Jennifer Shutt, Idaho Capital Sun Democrats in Congress are pushing to increase access to abortion for members of the military, concerned the U.S. Supreme Court decision ending the constitutional right will harm troops.  The U.S. House’s annual funding bill for the Defense Department would require the Pentagon to provide …

by Jennifer Shutt, Iowa Capital Dispatch April 28, 2022 WASHINGTON — The U.S. House voted overwhelmingly Thursday to use the framework of a World War II-era program to allow the federal government to lend and lease military equipment to Ukraine as it resists Russian troops. The legislation, called the Ukraine …

A spokesperson for the Pentagon announced on Monday that the U.S. military would be issuing updated guidance to require all service members to get the COVID-19 vaccine. “We’re going to move forward making that vaccine mandatory,” Pentagon Press Secretary John Kirby said. “We’re preparing the guidance to the force right …

“We are ending America’s longest war,” President Biden said on Thursday as he announced the US military mission in Afghanistan would end on August 31. “The U.S. did what we went to do in Afghanistan,” Biden said in a press conference in the White House’s East Room. He cited killing …

A second member of the right-wing terrorist organization, Oath Keepers, will cooperate with federal prosecutors and testify against other organization members. Mark Grods, a 54-year-old who admitted he brought firearms to D.C. and was part of the tactical “stack” formation that advanced toward the Capitol that day, made a deal …

On Tuesday, Attorney General Merrick Garland announced a National Strategy for Countering Domestic Terrorism. The National Strategy is designed to coordinate and provide a principled path for the federal government’s efforts to counter the heightened domestic terrorism threat, using all available tools. It is the culmination of an effort undertaken at …

On Friday, Vice President Kamala Harris became the first woman to give a commencement speech at the United States Naval Academy. “The global pandemic — you see, of course — has accelerated what was happening before, and it has accelerated our world into a new era. It has forever impacted …

An active-duty Marine, Major Christopher Warnagiris, has been charged with assaulting police officers at the Jan 6 Capitol riots. Warnagiris, who is stationed at Marine Corps Base Quantico, was arrested this week in Virginia and charged with crimes related to the breach of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, which disrupted a joint session of the U.S. Congress in …

Former acting Secretary of Defense Chris Miller told the House Oversight Committee that he limited deployment of National Guard Troops at the Capitol on Jan 6 because of the “media hysteria” over the possibility of a military coup. “My concerns regarding the appropriate and limited use of the military in …