Italian PM Giorga Meloni highlight from CPAC.
https://x.com/CitizenFreePres/status/1893870498418766028
Good question: Why does CNN support $7,000/month for illegal aliens but opposes a $5,000 DOGE dividend for Americans?
https://x.com/CrazyVibes_1/status/1893669928000971056
Conservative opposition wins German election and the far right is 2nd with strongest postwar result
BERLIN (AP) — The opposition conservatives led by Friedrich Merz won a lackluster victory in Germany’s election Sunday and Alternative for Germany doubled its support in the strongest showing for a far-right party since World War II, projections showed.
Chancellor Olaf Scholz conceded defeat for his center-left Social Democrats after what he called “a bitter election result.” Projections for ARD and ZDF public television showed his party finishing in third place with its worst postwar result in a national parliamentary election.
Merz said he hopes to put a coalition government together by Easter. But that’s likely to be challenging.
The election took place seven months earlier than planned after Scholz’s unpopular coalition collapsed in November, three years into a term that was increasingly marred by infighting. There was widespread discontent and not much enthusiasm for any of the candidates.
The campaign was dominated by worries about the yearslong stagnation of Europe’s biggest economy and pressure to curb migration — something that caused friction after Merz pushed hard in recent weeks for a tougher approach. It took place against a background of growing uncertainty over the future of Ukraine and Europe’s alliance with the United States.
Germany is the most populous country in the 27-nation European Union and a leading member of NATO. It has been Ukraine’s second-biggest weapons supplier, after the U.S. It will be central to shaping the continent’s response to the challenges of the coming years, including the Trump administration’s confrontational foreign and trade policy.
The projections, based on exit polls and partial counting, put support for Merz’s Union bloc around 28.5% and the anti-immigration Alternative for Germany, or AfD, about 20.5% — roughly double its result from 2021.
They put support for Scholz’s Social Democrats at just over 16%, far lower than in the last election and below their previous post-war low of 20.5% from 2017. The environmentalist Greens, their remaining partners in the outgoing government, were on about 12%.
Out of three smaller parties, one — the hard-left Left Party — strengthened its position, winning up to 9% of the vote after a remarkable comeback. The pro-business Free Democrats, who were the third party in the collapsed government, looked likely to lose their seats in parliament with about 4.5%. The Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance, or BSW, was hovering around the 5% threshold needed to win seats.
Whether Merz will have a majority to form a coalition with Scholz’s Social Democrats or need a second partner too, which would realistically have to be the Greens, will depend on whether the BSW gets into parliament. The conservative leader said that “the most important thing is to reestablish a viable government in Germany as quickly as possible.”
“I am aware of the responsibility,” Merz said. “I am also aware of the scale of the task that now lies ahead of us. I approach it with the utmost respect, and I know that it will not be easy.”
“The world out there isn’t waiting for us, and it isn’t waiting for long-drawn-out coalition talks and negotiations,” he told cheering supporters.
The Greens’ candidate for chancellor, Vice Chancellor Robert Habeck, said that Merz would do well to moderate his tone after a hard-fought campaign.
“We have seen the center is weakened overall, and everyone should look at themselves and ask whether they didn’t contribute to that,” said Habeck. “Now he must see that he acts like a chancellor.”
The Greens were the party that suffered least from participating in Scholz’s unpopular government. The Social Democrats’ general secretary, Matthias Miersch, suggested that their defeat was no surprise — “this election wasn’t lost in the last eight weeks.”
AfD co-leader Tino Chrupalla told cheering supporters that “we have achieved something historic today.”
“We are now the political center and we have left the fringes behind us,” he said. The party’s strongest previous showing was 12.6% in 2017, when it first entered the national parliament.
The party’s candidate for chancellor, Alice Weidel, said it is “open for coalition negotiations” with Merz’s party, and that “otherwise, no change of policy is possible in Germany.” Merz has repeatedly ruled out working with AfD, as have other mainstream parties — and did so again in a televised post-election exchange with Weidel and other leaders.
Weidel suggested AfD wouldn’t have to make many concessions to secure a theoretical coalition, arguing that the Union largely copied its program and deriding its “Pyrrhic victory.”
“It won’t be able to implement it with left-wing parties,” she said. If Merz ends up forming an alliance with the Social Democrats and Greens, “it will be an unstable government that doesn’t last four years, there will be an interim Chancellor Friedrich Merz and in the coming years we will overtake the Union.”
Merz dismissed the idea that voters wanted a coalition with AfD. “We have fundamentally different views, for example on foreign policy, on security policy, in many other areas, regarding Europe, the euro, NATO,” he said.
“You want the opposite of what we want, so there will be no cooperation,” Merz added.
Scholz decried AfD’s success. He said that “that must never be something that we will accept. I will not accept it and never will.”
More than 59 million people in the nation of 84 million were eligible to elect the 630 members of the lower house of parliament, the Bundestag, who will take their seats under the glass dome of Berlin’s landmark Reichstag building.
https://apnews.com/article/germany-election-merz-scholz-far-right-afd-ebf16ed38e0beaff7fed9a6d29b32a24
ICE will now deport minors; most are lying about their age
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Trump administration is directing immigration agents to track down hundreds of thousands of migrant children who entered the United States without their parents, expanding the president's mass deportation effort, according to an internal memo reviewed by Reuters.
The Immigration and Customs Enforcement memo outlines an unprecedented push to target migrant children who crossed the border illegally as unaccompanied minors. It lays out four phases of implementation, beginning with a planning phase on January 27, though it did not provide a start date for enforcement operations.
More than 600,000 immigrant children have crossed the U.S.-Mexico border without a parent or legal guardian since 2019, according to government data, as the number of migrants caught crossing illegally reached record levels.
Tens of thousands have been ordered deported over the same time frame, including more than 31,000 for missing court hearings, immigration court data show.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security and ICE did not respond to a request for comment about the memo and the Trump administration's plans.
During his first term, Trump introduced a "zero tolerance" policy that led to the separation of migrant children from their parents at the border. The children were sent to children's shelters run by the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR), a government agency housed within the Department of Health and Human Services, while their parents were detained or deported.
The separation of families, including babies from nursing mothers, was met with widespread international outrage. Trump halted the policy in 2018, though up to 1,000 children may still remain separated from parents, according to Lee Gelernt, the lead American Civil Liberties Union attorney in a related legal challenge.
As well as enforcing immigration laws, the memo, headlined the “Unaccompanied Alien Children Joint Initiative Field Implementation,” said the initiative aims to ensure that children are not victims of human trafficking or other forms of exploitation.
The memo said the children would be served a notice to appear in immigration court or deported, if deportation orders were pending against them.
In the memo, ICE said it had collected data from a number of sources on unaccompanied minors and sorted them into three priority groups, "flight risk", "public safety" and "border security."
It directed agents to focus on children deemed “flight risks” - including those ordered deported for missing court hearings and those released to sponsors who are not blood relatives.
The agency uses several databases and government records to track down targets.
DNA TESTS
Under the law, migrants who have exhausted their legal options to stay can be removed, even if they are children. But the U.S. government has limited resources and typically prioritizes arresting adults with criminal records.
Unaccompanied children began arriving in large numbers a decade ago due to violence and economic instability in their home countries - and U.S. immigration policies that enabled them to enter and often remain.
The majority are from Central America and Mexico. Some migrated to join parents already in the United States; many traveled with family members or smugglers.
From ORR custody, children are released to sponsors, usually parents or relatives, as immigration authorities weigh their cases to remain in the country.
Trump's border czar Tom Homan has repeatedly claimed that some 300,000 unaccompanied children went missing during Biden's presidency and were at risk of trafficking and exploitation. Beyond initial follow-up calls, ORR was not obligated to track the whereabouts of the children after they left custody. Many are now adults or living with their parents.
Individual ICE field offices will determine “how to best locate, make contact, and serve immigration documents as appropriate for individual targets, when conducting enforcement actions,” involving unaccompanied children, the memo said.
Because the children often live in households with adults without authorization to be in the United States, their addresses could also help ICE boost its overall arrest numbers.
During his first administration, Trump used data gathered to vet sponsors of unaccompanied children to target them for arrests.
Since taking office on January 20, Trump has taken steps to tighten vetting of sponsors.
These include requiring sponsors and adult household members to submit fingerprints for background checks, according to guidance issued last week.
The Trump administration has also expanded its access to ORR's database of children and their sponsors, two sources familiar with the matter said.
Mellissa Harper, a former ICE official who now heads ORR, told a staff meeting on Thursday that the agency plans to use DNA tests to establish familial relationships, one of the sources said. It was unclear whether DNA tests would be used only on cases that raised a red flag, or on a routine basis.
Harper said at the meeting that ICE was pursuing 247,000 tips related to fraud, trafficking and smuggling of unaccompanied minors and referring cases to the FBI for further investigation, the person said.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/exclusive-trump-administration-directs-ice-130545717.html
Mayor of California city proposes ordinance to ban transgender women from women's bathrooms
The mayor of a California city has proposed an ordinance that would ban transgender women from using bathrooms that comport with their gender identity, marking the latest effort to restrict transgender rights.
Mayor Greg Meister of Porterville — a city of about 60,000 at the base of the Sierra Nevada mountain range in Tulare County — put forward the proposal at a City Council meeting Wednesday, saying his goal is to protect biological girls and women.
The Protect Women's Safe Spaces ordinance would ban transgender women from accessing restrooms and locker rooms that comport with their gender identity. The ordinance also seeks to remove transgender women and girls from women's sports, Meister said at the council meeting.
"Gender dysphoria does not overrule women's rights," Meister said in an interview with The Times. "Women have fought for equality, and it's not fair that a biological man can jeopardize their rights."
The local ordinance is part of a growing effort at various levels of government — from local school boards to the federal government under President Trump — to ban access for transgender women to women's facilities.
"This is part of a coordinated attack on transgender people," said Amanda Goad, director of the LGBTQ, Gender and Reproductive Justice Project at the ACLU of Southern California. "This is part of a broader project to exert more state control over people's bodies and lives."
Meister agreed that his ordinance was part of a national trend and not based on local issues.
He said that no one, including women's rights groups, approached him about the ordinance, which he came up with on his own. He also said there had been no instances in Porterville of transgender women using their preferred restrooms. He said he did not know if any transgender people live in Porterville and that he had no trans friends.
Despite the fact that the issue has not come up in Porterville, Meister said he wanted to confront it before it became an issue.
The City Council voted unanimously Wednesday, 5 to 0, to send Meister's motion to the city attorney and city manager for review. The language could still change and the city will follow California law, Meister said.
"They’re going to look at the language, look at what’s plausible and legal from their standpoint and then to bring it back to council to make a decision on. I'm sure it’ll get chopped up," he said.
Goad said there could be many legal issues with the ban, including constitutional matters under the equal protection clause as well as possible violations of California law.
"It’s very likely it would be challenged if it were actually enacted," Goad said.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/mayor-california-city-proposes-ordinance-211506226.html
Yosemite staffers pull stunt with US flag in distress
A group of frustrated Yosemite National Park staffers hoping to draw attention to the federal government’s sweeping workforce cuts hung an upside-down American flag Saturday thousands of feet off the ground on the side of El Capitan.
The 3,000-foot granite cliff looms above Yosemite Valley, and thousands of eyes were on it Saturday evening for the dramatic stunt: It’s the last weekend of the annual firefall spectacle, which brings scores of onlookers to Yosemite.
Dozens, if not hundreds, of large telephoto cameras set up by visitors Saturday in a viewing area on the valley floor were trained high on El Capitan to capture the ephemeral moments when the day’s last light illuminates Horsetail Fall as if it were a cascade of lava pouring over the cliff.
The upside-down flag — traditionally a symbol of distress or a national threat — was strung near the falls and clearly visible.
“We’re bringing attention to what’s happening to the parks, which are every American’s properties,” Gavin Carpenter, a maintenance mechanic with Yosemite and disabled military veteran who supplied the flag and helped hang it Saturday, told the Chronicle. “It’s super important we take care of them, and we’re losing people here, and it’s not sustainable if we want to keep the parks open.”
Eleven of Yosemite’s full-time staff members, including the park’s sole locksmith, a biologist, an HVAC specialist and others, received a termination email on Feb. 14 — as did thousands of federal lands workers across the country, some of whom have spoken out about the pain and dejection they feel being summarily dismissed from jobs they love. Yosemite staffers typically live in employer-provided housing in the park, so a termination can carry the added burden for many of losing their residence.
“Since these cuts came, a lot of people are really uneasy and worried about what’s going to happen to them,” Carpenter said.
Yosemite visitors offered mixed reactions to the flag Saturday.
“At first, I thought the upside-down flag was for Trump support, but then realized it was to support the national parks, and I was for it,” said Tina Alidio, visiting from Las Vegas.
“If the flag is for national parks, I am all for it,” said Joe Amaral, also from Las Vegas. “We have been to 32 national parks. We think they are short on resources as it is, and now you want to take away more? It isn’t right.”
But Rebecca Harvey of Greeley Hill (Mariposa County) said: “I would rather see nature — no hand of man.”
Separate from the flag demonstration Saturday afternoon, Jackson Fitzsimmons, who said he was a wilderness ranger with Sierra National Forest until he was terminated in the widespread staffing cuts, stood in front of Yosemite’s welcome center to relay a similar message to visitors passing by.
“There are people who, with no warning and no cause, have lost their jobs, are going to have to move, are going to have to struggle to survive with their families,” said Fitzsimmons, who wore a ranger uniform.
The group of six flag demonstrators rigged ropes at the top of El Capitan and rappelled down the cliff face to unfurl the flag, which measures 30 by 50 feet. Carpenter said they would leave it up for a few hours until around the time of the firefall event, then roll it back up and leave — enough time for it to register with viewers in the valley but not so long that it would ruin the photos they came to take of the famous natural spectacle.
Shortly after hanging the banner, the group sent out a statement:
“The purpose of this exercise of free speech is to disrupt without violence and draw attention to the fact that public lands in the United States are under attack,” it reads. “The Department of the Interior issued a series of secretarial orders that position drilling and mining interests as the favored uses of America’s public lands and threaten to scrap existing land protections and conservation measures. Firing 1,000s of staff regardless of position or performance across the nation is the first step in destabilizing the protections in place for these great places.”
The statement continued:
“These losses, while deeply personal and impactful, may also be invisible to visitors and members of the public — we are shining a spotlight on them by putting a distress flag on El Capitan in view of Firefall. Think of it as your public lands on strike.”
It’s uncommon that people use El Capitan to deliver such messages, in part because of the technical know-how required to access the sheer cliff face. But it has happened a couple of times in recent years.
Last summer, a group of demonstrators temporarily hung a banner reading “Stop the genocide” from the cliff in an effort to bring awareness to the Israeli offensive in Gaza.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/distress-flag-hung-high-in-yosemite-to-protest-federal-job-cuts/ar-AA1zAH9e
Inside the Mojave Desert train heists in California; Mexican illegals from Sinaloa cartel
The thieves stealthily board eastbound freight trains, hiding out until they reach lonely stretches of the Mojave Desert or high plains far from towns. They slash an air brake hose, causing the mile-long line of railcars to screech to an emergency stop.
Then, they go shopping.
That’s the modus operandi described by investigators in a string of at least 10 heists targeting BNSF trains in California and Arizona since last March. All but one resulted in the theft of Nike sneakers, their combined value approaching $2 million, according to investigators.
New sneaker releases may have touched off at least some of the recent incidents. In Perrin, Ariz., thieves allegedly cut an air brake hose on a BNSF freight train on Jan. 13 and unloaded 1,985 pairs of unreleased Nikes worth more than $440,000, according to a criminal complaint filed in U.S. District Court in Phoenix. Many were Nigel Sylvester x Air Jordan 4s, which won’t be available to the public until March 14 and are expected to retail at $225 per pair, the complaint states.
Theft crews typically scout high-value merchandise on rail lines that parallel Interstate 40 by boarding slow-moving trains, such as when they are changing tracks and opening containers, said Keith Lewis, vice president of operations at Verisk’s CargoNet and a deputy sheriff in Arizona.
Lewis said the thieves are sometimes tipped off to valuable shipments by confederates working at warehouses or trucking companies. Other times they simply look for containers with high-security locks, which they cut with reciprocating saws or bolt cutters, a Homeland Security Investigations special agent said in affidavits filed in federal court.
Once the desired loot is found, the thieves alert “follow vehicles,” which track the train. The stolen goods are tossed off the train after it comes to a halt — either for a scheduled stop or because an air hose has been cut or control wires inside signal boxes have been sabotaged, said the federal agent, Brynna Cooke.
The cargo is then loaded into box trucks, or hidden in nearby brush until they arrive — provided the surveillance crews that are following the train don’t detect law enforcement, Cooke said. These tactics are often employed by transnational criminal groups that consist primarily of Mexican citizens from Sinaloa, she said.
There were at least 65,000 railroad cargo thefts last year, a 40% increase from 2023, according to industry estimates compiled by the Assn. of American Railroads. The thefts — which are typically classified as burglaries because they don't involve directly confronting victims, as with robberies — are believed to have cost the nation's largest rail companies more than $100 million, according to the trade group.
Those figures may be an undercount, because railroads don't publicize all thefts, Lewis said. Details typically emerge publicly only when arrests are made and criminal complaints are filed.
"Why would I want to put my own dirty laundry on the street?" Lewis said. “If I show a theft trend going along a rail line, everybody’s going to know the railroad has a problem.”
BNSF said in a statement that its internal police force shares information with local law enforcement and prosecutors as appropriate.
The company said its crews are instructed not to confront thieves, but to report the incidents instead. But the crews rarely encounter them, it said, because the trains are so long and the thieves take care to evade detection.
In Lewis’ experience, the thefts tend to ebb and flow, often tied to the release of a desirable new product. In December, investigators saw a rash of thefts in which smart vacuum cleaners were stolen from train containers, Lewis said.
In the Jan. 13 heist, stolen cases of Nikes hurled from the train were later picked up by trucks, the federal complaint states. County and state law enforcement officers were able to catch up with the vehicles with the help of tracking devices that were inside some of the boxes. Eleven people were arrested and charged with possessing or receiving goods stolen from interstate shipment. Nine were found to be Mexican citizens in the U.S. illegally, prosecutors said. Three were charged with illegal reentry after removal and six with improper entry. Five defendants have pleaded not guilty; six have yet to enter pleas, according to a court docket.
In another case, a BNSF train came to an emergency stop near Hackberry, Ariz., on Nov. 20 after it started losing air, according to a complaint filed in the Phoenix federal court. Sheriff's deputies in Mohave County stopped a white panel van seen leaving the area and found about 180 pairs of then-unreleased Air Jordan 11 Retro Legend Blue sneakers valued at $41,400, the complaint states. The driver pleaded not guilty to possessing or receiving goods stolen from interstate shipment.
And in yet another BNSF train burglary near Yampai, Ariz., on Dec. 6, investigators recovered about $48,000 worth of then-unreleased Nike Dunk Low Midnight Navy sneakers, according to a complaint filed in the Phoenix federal court charging four people with possessing or receiving goods stolen from interstate shipment. Three have pleaded not guilty, with one set for a change of plea hearing to plead guilty, and one has yet to enter a plea, according to the case docket.
Investigators also recovered a combined total of $346,200 worth of then-unreleased Nike Air Jordans following two BNSF train burglaries in April and June, according to documents filed in Phoenix federal court.
Two other cases in which BNSF freight trains were burglarized near Kingman and Seligman, Ariz., last year resulted in the theft of $612,000 worth of Nikes and eight arrests, according to federal criminal complaints. In the Kingman case, five defendants have pleaded not guilty to charges of possessing or receiving goods stolen from interstate shipment, according to the case docket. Details involving the Seligman case have been filed under seal.
The stolen merchandise is usually transported to California to be sold or offered for sale online via third-party Amazon and EBay resellers, Cooke said in affidavits filed with several of those cases.
Both Amazon and EBay said in statements that they have zero tolerance for criminal activity on their platforms, and that they work with law enforcement to support prosecutions against people who sell stolen goods.
The court documents show that the thefts have continued even with the arrest last June of a man authorities have described as a ringleader. Felipe Arturo Avalos-Mejia, known as Pollo, allegedly used scouts to help him select which trains to target, supplied vehicles for and paid burglary crews and facilitated the sale of stolen merchandise, according to a complaint filed in the Phoenix federal court.
Investigators said he lived in Los Angeles, operated out of both Los Angeles and Phoenix and is believed to have been involved in BNSF train thefts for more than 11 years.
On June 20, California local law enforcement agencies and Homeland Security agents executed search warrants at 11 residences and 16 storage units related to the ongoing train burglaries, arresting 43 suspects and recovering from the storage units about $3 million worth of merchandise believed to have been stolen from BNSF trains, according to the complaint. More merchandise — including numerous boxes of stolen Nike shoes — were allegedly recovered from the home of a woman who said she had a romantic relationship with Avalos-Mejia, the complaint states.
Avalos-Mejia initially evaded authorities, court documents state. Investigators said they recovered from the location where he fled 74 cases of stolen Nikes, 108 packs of socks and 35 pairs of shoes worth about $94,659, as well as 10 stolen vehicles believed to have been used in prior BNSF train burglaries.
Avalos-Mejia was taken into custody June 21 at a restaurant in Huntington Park along with another man, who was carrying a Louis Vuitton bag with $120,000 in cash and a detailed ledger listing Nike and other merchandise burglarized from BNSF trains alongside dollar amounts detailing its worth, according to the complaint.
Avalos-Mejia has pleaded not guilty to possessing or receiving goods stolen from interstate shipment, and his trial is scheduled to get underway in June, the case docket states. His lawyers couldn't be reached for comment.
Local law enforcement authorities are also involved in train theft investigations. San Bernardino County sheriff’s deputies are looking into possible connections between recent burglaries in Arizona and two heists in the desert ghost town of Amboy, in which $436,000 worth of Nike merchandise was stolen from BNSF trains.
In the first, on Jan. 10, BNSF police asked San Bernardino County sheriff’s deputies for help responding to the burglary, the Sheriff’s Department said in a news release.
On their way to the train line, deputies saw an unmarked box truck driving through Wonder Valley, an unincorporated community outside Twentynine Palms. They conducted a traffic stop and found $18,000 worth of Nike shoes that had been stolen from the train, according to a criminal complaint.
Deputies arrested the occupants of the box truck — Jose Villalobos-Infante, 45, of Phoenix, and Oscar Sosa, 28, of Apple Valley, who were allegedly headed to Los Angeles with the stolen merchandise, according to the complaint.
Villalobos-Infante and Sosa have pleaded not guilty to charges of second-degree burglary, conspiracy and grand theft that were filed in San Bernardino County Superior Court.
Five days later, BNSF police again contacted the Sheriff’s Department to ask for help responding to a freight train that was being burglarized by multiple people in Amboy, according to a news release from the Sheriff’s Department.
As deputies traveled to the scene, they tried to stop an unmarked white van driving in Wonder Valley, but it sped off, sparking a pursuit, the release states. The van got stuck on a sand berm and its two occupants ran off, investigators said. Deputies, with the help of a Sheriff’s Department helicopter, caught up with and arrested two boys, 16 and 17. Their identities were not released because they are minors, and the San Bernardino County district attorney's office didn't respond to requests for comment on whether charges were filed against the two teens.
The same night, deputies saw another vehicle they believed to be related to the crime and broadcast its information over the dispatch system. California Highway Patrol later stopped the vehicle in Landers, but its driver fled on foot and remains at large, the Sheriff's Department said.
Investigators recovered 218 cases of Nike products worth $418,000, the Sheriff’s Department said.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/inside-mojave-desert-train-heists-110057385.html
Hegseth Fires Military’s Top JAG Lawyers in Pursuit of ‘Warrior Ethos’
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s decision to fire the top lawyers for the Army, Navy and Air Force represents an opening salvo in his push to remake the military into a force that is more aggressive on the battlefield and potentially less hindered by the laws of armed conflict.
Mr. Hegseth, in the Pentagon and during his meetings with troops last week in Europe, has spoken repeatedly about the need to restore a “warrior ethos” to a military that he insists has become soft, social-justice obsessed and more bureaucratic over the past two decades.
His decision to replace the military’s judge advocate generals — typically three-star military officers — offers a sense of how he defines the ethos that he has vowed to instill.
The dismissals came as part of a broader push by Mr. Hegseth and President Trump, who late Friday also fired Gen. Charles Q. Brown, the country’s top military officer, as well as the first woman to lead the Navy and the vice chief of staff of the Air Force.
By comparison, the three fired judge advocate generals, also known as “JAGs,” are far less prominent. Inside the Pentagon and on battlefields around the world, military lawyers aren’t decision makers. Their job is to provide independent legal advice to senior military officers so that they do not run afoul of U.S. law or the laws of armed conflict.
Senior Pentagon officials said that Mr. Hegseth has had no contact with any of the three fired uniform military lawyers since taking office. None of the three — Lt. Gen. Joseph B. Berger III, Air Force Lt. Gen. Charles Plummer and Rear Adm. Lia M. Reynolds — were even named in the Pentagon statement announcing their dismissal from decades of military service.
A senior military official with knowledge of the firings added that the military lawyers had “zero heads up” that they were being removed from office and that the top brass in the Army, Navy and Air Force were also caught unaware.
The unexplained dismissals prompted widespread concern. “In some ways that’s even more chilling than firing the four stars,” Rosa Brooks, a professor at Georgetown Law, wrote on X. “It’s what you do when you’re planning to break the law: you get rid of any lawyers who might try to slow you down.”
The firings do not seem to be related to a single dispute but rather appear tied to Mr. Hegseth’s view of why the U.S. military struggled to achieve any significant victories in Iraq and Afghanistan, where he served in combat, and how he wants the military to operate under his leadership.
In his book, “The War on Warriors,” which was published last year, Mr. Hegseth castigates military lawyers for imposing overly restrictive rules of engagement on frontline troops, which he argues repeatedly allowed the enemy to score battlefield victories.
Mr. Hegseth derisively refers to the lawyers in the book as “jagoffs.” The term led Senator Jack Reed, Democrat of Rhode Island and a West Point graduate, to ask Mr. Hegseth at a confirmation hearing whether he could effectively lead the military after disparaging it.
Mr. Hegseth’s account of this period in his book and his Senate testimony conflict with how battlefield rules of engagement were set during the wars. Senior officers in Iraq and Afghanistan, such as Gen. David H. Petraeus, came to believe that civilian deaths were turning the local population against U.S. forces and feeding the enemy’s ranks. So these officers emphasized protecting civilian life even if it meant that U.S. troops might have to incur greater risk.
Ultimately, the rules belonged to battlefield leaders and not their military lawyers. The axiom — “lawyers advise, and commanders decide” — is a core piece of every military lawyer’s education, current and former JAG officers said.
Mr. Hegseth’s views on the laws of war could also put him in conflict with some of the senior military generals who currently serve under him.
In his book, he expresses repeated frustration with the international laws put in place after World War II to govern armed conflict. “What do you do if your enemy does not honor the Geneva Conventions?” he writes. “We never got an answer. Only more war. More casualties. And no victory.”
To many senior commanders, the “warrior ethos” isn’t just about killing the enemy or winning wars. It also includes concepts such as discipline, honor and respect for the Uniform Code of Military Justice.
“Combat can spin out of control and lethality and fighting can turn quickly into murder when passions run wild,” said retired Lt. Gen. David Barno, who commanded U.S. forces in Afghanistan.
The laws of combat are designed to protect civilians as well as troops from moral injury. Soldiers will have to think about the enemy and civilians they killed “for the rest of their lives,” General Barno said, “and knowing they did it in an authorized way bounded by the laws of our country and armed conflict is incredibly important.”
In Mr. Hegseth’s Senate confirmation testimony, lawmakers sought to pin him down on what he meant when he referred to the “warrior ethos” and whether he believed U.S. forces should follow the Geneva Conventions and the Uniformed Code of Military Justice even when America’s enemies ignore them.
His answers were often evasive. “An America First national security policy is not going to hand its prerogatives over to international bodies that make decisions about how our men and women make decisions on the battlefield,” Mr. Hegseth replied.
During the president’s first term, Mr. Hegseth appealed to Mr. Trump to issue pardons for U.S. troops accused or convicted of war crimes or murder for their actions in Iraq and Afghanistan. In October 2019, Mr. Trump called Mr. Hegseth to tell him that he was pardoning two soldiers and a Navy SEAL whose causes Mr. Hegseth had championed for months on his Fox television show.
The president ended their conversation with a compliment that Mr. Hegseth wrote that he would “never forget and might put on his tombstone.”
The president called him a warrior, using an expletive for emphasis.
One of the pardoned soldiers was First Lt. Clint Lorance, who was turned in by his own troops after he ordered them to fire on unarmed Afghans over 100 yards away from his platoon, killing them. The soldier then radioed a false report claiming the bodies had been removed and couldn’t be searched for weapons.
The Army convicted Lieutenant Lorance of second-degree murder and other charges and sentenced him to 19 years in prison. To Mr. Hegseth, the pardon Lieutenant Lorance received represented justice. U.S. troops engaged in battle need to be “the most ruthless, the most uncompromising, the most overwhelming lethal” force on the battlefield, Mr. Hegseth wrote last year.
“Our troops will make mistakes,” he continued, “and when they do, they should get the overwhelming benefit of the doubt.”
Senior Army lawyers strongly disagreed with the decision to pardon Lieutenant Lorance, according to Pentagon officials. Among those most upset by the presidential pardon were the troops who served under him and made the difficult decision to accuse him of war crimes and testify at trial.
“I thought of the Army as this altruistic thing,” Lucas Gray who served under Lieutenant Lorance in Afghanistan told The Washington Post. “I thought it was perfect and honorable. It pains me to tell you how stupid and naive I was.”
“The Lorance stuff just broke my faith,” he said, adding: “And once you lose your values and your faith, the Army is just another job you hate.”
https://wol.com/hegseth-fires-militarys-top-jag-lawyers-in-pursuit-of-warrior-ethos/
Connecticut: Killer who ate part of his victim’s brain granted supervised release from psychiatric hospital
MIDDLETOWN, Conn. (AP) — A Connecticut man who was found not guilty by reason of insanity of killing a victim with a hatchet and eating body parts has been granted conditional release from the state’s only maximum-security psychiatric hospital, despite concerns expressed by the victim’s family and state lawmakers.
Tyree Smith was ordered confined to Whiting Forensic Hospital for 60 years in 2013 in connection with the killing of Angel Gonzalez, whose mutilated body was found in a vacant apartment in Bridgeport in January 2012 a month after he was hacked to death. Smith’s cousin had testified that Smith told her he ate part of Gonzalez’s brain and an eyeball while drinking sake.
The state’s Psychiatric Security Review Board granted Smith conditional release from the hospital on Friday after hearing from a psychiatrist, who said Smith’s schizophrenia and alcohol and drug disorders were in full remission as a result of medication and other treatment.
A conditional release means Smith will be placed in a community setting, but under supervision with strict conditions including continuing treatment. Smith already has been staying full-time at a community facility with around-the-clock supervision for the past nine months, with Friday’s decision formally discharging him from the hospital, officials said.
During a hearing before the board ruled, Gonzalez’s sister-in-law, Talitha Frazier, said she was concerned Smith was now hiding his mental illness.
“How do we really know he’s not going to do this again?” she asked.
State Sens. Heather Somers, Paul Cicarella, Henri Martin and Stephen Harding called the decision “outrageous” and “mind-boggling” in a statement Friday afternoon.
“This terrible decision puts public safety in jeopardy and is yet another terrible message to send to CT violent crime victims and their families. This person should never be out,” the Republican lawmakers said.
Smith attended the hearing virtually with his lawyer, but was not shown on video screens because of safety concerns stemming from media coverage, his lawyer said.
https://apnews.com/article/brain-eating-killer-connecticut-tyree-smith-8042f93a478b343de804cd57218f5d65
1/128th Pocahontas had a change of heart when the tables turned.