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department of defense
Taking Axe to 'Human Needs Budget', Trump and Musk Nowhere to Be Found at 'Slash the Pentagon' Event
"While the so-called Department of Government Efficiency has been on a rampage to root out 'waste, fraud, and abuse,' they've been ignoring the biggest money pit in the entire federal government," said Rep. Summer Lee.
Feb 12, 2025
As billionaire Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency makes its way through federal agencies with the aim of cutting spending that goes toward protecting workers' rights, providing disaster assistance and healthcare in the Global South, and defending Americans from corporate greed, Democratic lawmakers are demanding to know why Republicans are pushing to increase the already bloated Pentagon budget.
"While American families struggle with skyrocketing healthcare costs and grocery bills, Republicans are gearing up to fork over another $150 billion to the military-industrial complex," said Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) at a press conference titled "Slash the Pentagon" with government watchdog Public Citizen on Tuesday.
The event was held as the Senate Budget Committee prepared to begin a markup Wednesday of Senate Republicans' budget blueprint that was recently released, which could add $150 billion to the Department of Defense (DOD) budget.
The spending would be focused on improving "military readiness," expanding the U.S. Navy, building an air and missile defense system the Trump administration has called the "Iron Dome for America," and investing in nuclear defenses.
The senator said adding to the Pentagon's budget—which already stands at nearly $900 billion—won't make Americans safer, because "the doomsday that Americans fear in the 21st century isn't being vaporized by a nuclear bomb."
"It's the doomsday diagnosis of cancer, it's medical debt, it's housing payments or loan payments, it's grocery bills and heating bills," said Markey. "Let's finally put the people before the Pentagon."
As progressive organizers have noted in recent weeks, despite the fact that President Donald Trump campaigned as a populist—and won the support of a majority of working-class voters while high earners swung toward former Vice President Kamala Harris in the November election—the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has spent the early days of Trump's second term seizing data and pushing for the shutdown of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the Department of Education, attempting to take control of a major payment systemat the Department of the Treasury, and looking to cut spending at the Department of Labor.
Meanwhile, the Pentagon—which has failed seven consecutive audits, unable to account for its spending even as it swallows up 14% of the federal budget—has barely registered as a target of DOGE.
"While the so-called Department of Government Efficiency has been on a rampage to root out 'waste, fraud, and abuse,' they've been ignoring the biggest money pit in the entire federal government: the Department of Defense," said Rep. Summer Lee (D-Pa.). "The people want a more efficient government, quality healthcare, housing costs that don't skyrocket, and affordable eggs and groceries—not a bloated military budget that doesn't make us any safer. Maybe DOGE should take a look at that."
Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) added that DOGE's actions so far will leave students with disabilities without resources and threaten senior citizens who rely on Social Security.
"We don't have clean drinking water in our country, but we always have the money for war," said Tlaib. "I'm sick of it. If our government has endless money to bomb people, they have money for clean air and water, guaranteeing healthcare as a human right, and making sure no child goes hungry. Our elected officials are choosing to spend money on endless war instead of the American people."
Trump and Musk have begun answering some questions from the press about whether DOGE will address DOD spending, with the president saying Sunday that DOGE will likely find "hundreds of billions of dollars of fraud and abuse."
Musk has criticized the Pentagon's $12 billion F-35 program as "obsolete," and some lawmakers have drawn attention to exorbitant spending at the department on luxury meals, toilet seats, and soap dispensers.
But Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Tuesday expressed hope that spending cuts would focus on climate programs, saying the Pentagon "is not in the business of climate change, solving the global thermostat. We're in the business of deterring and winning wars."
The DOD is the "single largest institutional producer of greenhouse gases in the world," as the Costs of War project at Brown University said in a 2019 report, and Trump's former defense secretary, Jim Mattis, acknowledged that the DOD must "pay attention to potential adverse impacts" of the climate crisis, related to national security.
On Tuesday, Musk was also questioned about DOGE's priorities at the Pentagon, with a reporter asking whether he has a conflict of interest in examining the DOD's spending, given his role of CEO at SpaceX, an aerospace company that receives about $22 billion in defense contracts from the department.
Musk shrugged off the concern, telling the reporter that he isn't personally "the one filing the contract, it's the people at SpaceX," and adding that defense contracts received by his company are "by far the best value for money for the taxpayer."
SpaceX was handed a new $38.85 million contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) on Monday.
Meanwhile, said Public Citizen co-president Robert Weissman, as Republicans head toward the budget reconciliation process, "money for the Pentagon will come directly cutting spending on human needs. The money that will go to Lockheed Martin or Palantir will come directly from Medicaid and food stamps and other programs for the poor and vulnerable."
"But with the plundering of the human needs budget made plain," he said, "the American people are not going to stand for—and will defeat—the Republicans' Pentagon boondoggle proposal."
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Will Pete Hegseth’s Nomination Bring Us Closer to Mutually Assured Destruction?
Hegseth seems to represent the attitude that security is about being the toughest guy out there, security is about winning, and the pursuit of “peace” is for wimps.
Jan 18, 2025
Uh oh, nukes coming in. Should we retaliate?
This strikes me as the stupidest question a human being could ask—and, just possibly, also the last. Our enemy of the moment is loosing hell on us (if warning signals are accurate), so let’s do the same back at them. If we kill more of them than they kill of us, we win! Yes, human life—all life—will likely be destroyed in a nuclear war, but that’s just the way things work. That’s not our concern.
Among the global superpowers, this scenario remains etched into the meaning of self-defense: the ability to retaliate, no matter the consequences of doing so. The marketing slogan, of course, is “deterrence.” As long as the bad guys understand that we have the capability to retaliate, they won’t start a nuclear war. Hence, staying safe as a nation means maintaining our ability to create Armageddon.
It’s certainly the human paradox of the era. Are we stuck with it?
I fear the era of “greatness” the American right is yearning for goes back at least to the Middle Ages, which is to say, far enough back in time so that actual reality is subsumed by legend.
Well, that’s the question I’m asking right now. It’s the question most of humanity is struggling with in one way or another, although not, of course, at the highest levels of power, where wars remain a global certainty and the threat of nuclear war is humanity’s . . . uh, salvation. Apparently.
And thus, as The New York Times explains, “With Russia at war, China escalating regional disputes and nations like North Korea and Iran expanding their nuclear programs, the United States is set to spend an estimated $1.7 trillion over 30 years to revamp its own arsenal.”
“The spending spree, which the government began planning in 2010, is underway in at least 23 states—nearly 50 if you include subcontractors. It follows a decades-long freeze on designing, building or testing new nuclear weapons. Along with the subs, the military is paying for a new fleet of bomber jets, land-based missiles, and thermonuclear warheads. Tally all that spending, and the bill comes to almost $57 billion a year, or $108,000 per minute for three decades.”
And, oh yeah, the U.S. Department of Defense, according to theBulletin of the Atomic Scientists, currently maintains approximately 3,700 nuclear warheads, most of which “are not deployed but rather stored for potential upload onto missiles and aircraft as necessary. We estimate that approximately 1,770 warheads are currently deployed...“
And by the way, the Bulletin currently has its Doomsday Clock set at 90 seconds to midnight. That is to say, the world is trembling at the very edge of MADness, a.k.a., mutually assured destruction. Is there no way beyond this insanity? Shouldn’t addressing this, along with the expanding planetary climate crisis, be the number one priority not simply of ordinary citizens like you and me, but of the politically powerful? As a starting point, how do we create the context for global nuclear disarmament?
Into the midst of this madness comes—at the behest of President-elect Donald Trump—Pete Hegseth, his nominee for secretary of defense... the Fox News Channel host, the guy who has said he wants to give the department its old name back: the Department of War. Maybe the Senate will approve his controversial nomination, maybe it won’t. But the fact that he’s the one currently under consideration illustrates the limited consciousness of those at the peak of American power: Security is about being the toughest guy out there. Security is about winning. And the pursuit of “peace” is for wimps.
Hegseth seems to represent the essence of that attitude—a white Christian nationalist who draws his MAGA certainties from the old days, when the world was neatly divided into two parts, good and evil, and defeating evil was the work of manly men and pretty much all that mattered.
The Associated Press provides a brief snapshot into the Hegseth soul: “Hegseth complains in his latest book that ‘woke’ generals and the leaders of the elite service academies have left the military dangerously weak and ‘effeminate’ by promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion. He says rank and file soldiers are undermined by ‘feckless civilian leaders and foolish brass,’ adding that ‘the next commander in chief will need to clean house...’”
“Hegseth’s writing,” the AP story continues, “is contemptuous of the policies, laws, and treaties that constrain warfighters on the battlefield, from restrictive rules of engagement to the Geneva Conventions, which he suggests are outdated against enemies who don’t abide by them.”
“He has little patience for the moral questions surrounding war. Of the Americans who dropped nuclear bombs on Japan to end World War II, he writes, ‘They won. Who cares?’”
His focus, he has said, is making the military more lethal, and to that end, his body is plastered with moralistic tattoos, including a crusader’s cross on his chest and the Latin phrase “Deus Vult” on his bicep, which, according to the Daily Beast, means “God Wills It.” The term dates back to the Christian crusaders of the Middle Ages and “is now associated with right-wing extremism.”
Wow, the Crusades—and nuclear-armed crusaders! How could America, how could the world, be any safer than this?
As I say, the Hegseth nomination may not get approved, but the nomination itself is wearing a MAGA hat. I fear the era of “greatness” the American right is yearning for goes back at least to the Middle Ages, which is to say, far enough back in time so that actual reality is subsumed by legend: valiant good charging forward, conquering groveling evil. Those were definitely the good old days.
But my point here is not simply to denigrate Trump, Hegseth, and the MAGA right. The centrist Dems are equally committed to war, including that multi-trillion-dollar investment in nuclear weapons upgrade. Not to mention genocide in Palestine and a world committed to going MAD.
We can do better. We have no choice.
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3 Reasons the Senate Should Reject Pete Hegseth for Secretary of Defense
I will protest the nomination of Fox News commentator and Trump’s buddy Pete Hegseth to lead the DOD over sexual assault allegations, his views on women in the military, and his history of financial mismanagement.
Jan 14, 2025
On January 14 at 9:30 am, the Fox News commentator and Army National Guard Major Pete Hegseth is scheduled to be questioned by the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee in a confirmation hearing on President-elect Donald Trump's nomination for him to be Secretary of Defense.
I, along with many other women and men military veterans, will be at the hearing to strongly protest Hegseth's nomination and demand that the committee refuse to send the nomination forward for a vote of the entire Senate.
I am an unlikely protester. I served 29 years in the U.S. Army and Army Reserves. I retired as a colonel. I was also a U.S. diplomat for 16 years and was on the team that reopened the U.S. Embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan in December 2001. I resigned from the U.S. government in March 2003 in opposition to the U.S. war on Iraq.
Sexual Assault Allegations
I will protest lackluster Army National Guard Major Pete Hegseth's nomination on several points, but my primary concern is his physical and psychological violence toward women.
I am 78 years old. I joined the Army in 1967 when less than 1% of U.S. military forces were women. Now, 17.5% of U.S. military forces are women.
Sexual assault in the military is rampant, and Hegseth has a history of sexual violence toward women. He secretly paid a financial settlement to a woman who had accused him of raping her in 2017.
Even Hegseth's mother, Penelope Hegseth, in 2018, during Hegseth's divorce proceedings from his second wife, strongly criticized his treatment of women. In an email obtained by The New York Times, Hegseth's mother wrote:
As a woman and your mother I feel I must speak out... You are an abuser of women—that is the ugly truth and I have no respect for any man that belittles, lies, cheats, sleeps around, and uses women for his own power and ego. You are that man (and have been for years) and as your mother it pains me and embarrasses me to say that, but it is the sad, sad truth. [...] It's time for a someone (I wish it was a strong man) to stand up to your abusive behavior and call it out, especially against women. [...] On behalf of all the women (and I know it's many) you have abused in some way, I say... get some help and take an honest look at yourself.
The Associated Press reported that "Tim Palatore, Hegseth's attorney, has revealed that the woman who made the allegations was paid an undisclosed sum in 2023 as part of a confidential settlement to head off the threat of what he described as a baseless lawsuit."
A 22-page police report was released in response to a public records request and offers the first detailed account of what the woman alleged to have transpired—one that is at odds with Hegseth's version of events. The report cited police interviews with the alleged victim, a nurse who treated her, a hotel staffer, another woman at the event, and Hegseth.
Considering the horrific history of sexual assault in the military, Hegseth's payoff to someone who has accused him of sexual assault must disqualify Hegseth from confirmation as Secretary of Defense.
With sexual assault in the military a continuing problem for women…and for men, there is no way that a person who has been involved in even allegations of sexual assault should be Secretary of Defense… or president, for that matter, but that's another issue for evangelical Christians, Catholics, and other religious conservatives who voted for Trump to explain to their daughters.
The number of sexual assaults in the U.S. military is likely two to four times higher than government estimates, according to a study from Costs of War Project at Brown University's Watson Institute. "During and beyond the 20 years of the post-9/11 wars, independent data suggest that actual sexual assault prevalence is two to four times higher than DOD estimations—75,569 cases in 2021 and 73,695 cases in 2023," the authors wrote in the report, which was released August 14, 2024.
The Costs of War Project report comes a year after a Pentagon report found that reports of sexual assault at the country's three military academies increased by over 18% between 2021 and 2022, setting a new record.
A 2016 Department of Veterans Affairs study of over 20,000 post-9/11 veterans and service members found that 41.5% of women and 4% of men experienced some form of sexual trauma while serving. One in three women and 1 in 50 men have reported military sexual trauma during VA healthcare screenings.
And finally, if the previous concern about on sexual assault allegations isn't enough to torpedo Hegseth's nomination, his statements on women's role in the military should sink his nomination.
Hegseth's Negative View of the Role of Women in the Military
In a podcast, Hegseth said the military "should not have women in combat roles" and that "men in those positions are more capable." In another podcast he said that female soldiers "shouldn't be in my infantry battalion."
U.S. Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.), a former Army National Guard member and a Purple Heart recipient, said Hegseth was "dangerous, plain and simple." Duckworth was one of the first women in the Army to fly combat missions during Operation Iraqi Freedom. She lost both of her legs and partial use of her right arm in 2004 after a rocket-propelled grenade struck her helicopter. "Where do you think I lost my legs? In a bar fight? I'm pretty sure I was in combat when that happened," she told CNN. "It just shows how out of touch he is with the nature of modern warfare if he thinks that we can keep women behind some sort of imaginary line, which is not the way warfare is today."
Additionally, Sen. Duckworth added: "It's frankly an insult and really troubling that Mr. Trump would nominate someone who has admitted that he's paid off a victim who has claimed rape allegations against him... This is not the kind of person you want to lead the Department of Defense."
If sexual assault issues and his negative view of women's role in the military do not convince the Senate's Armed Services Committee that Hegseth's nomination should not go forward, then the mismanagement of funds of tiny organizations compared to the massive Department of Defense budget should take him out of consideration for the extraordinary position of Secretary of Defense.
Mismanagement of Tiny Organizations Compared to the Massive Department of Defense
In the face of serious allegations of financial mismanagement, sexual impropriety, and personal misconduct while in the organizations, Hegseth was forced to resign from the two nonprofit advocacy groups that he ran, Veterans for Freedom and Concerned Veterans for America.
According to CBS, "Hegseth received a six-figure severance payment and signed a non-disclosure agreement when he exited the organization Concerned Veterans of America" in 2016. "The payment came amid allegations of financial mismanagement, repeated incidents of intoxication and sexual impropriety, as well as dissension among its leaders over Hegseth's foreign policy views," CBS reported.
Prior to joining Concerned Veterans for America, Hegseth faced allegations of financial mismanagement from Vets for Freedom (VFF), where he worked from 2007 to 2010.
"Donors were concerned their money was being wasted and arranged for VFF to be merged with another organization, Military Families United, which took over most of its management," CBS reported further. "Revenue at VFF dwindled to $268,000 by 2010 and by 2011, the organization's revenue was listed as $22,000. Hegseth joined Concerned Veterans for America the following year."
Margaret Hoover, host of the PBS program "Firing Line" and a former adviser to Vets for Freedom, said in an interview on CNN that Hegseth had managed the organization "very poorly." Hoover expressed doubt about his ability to run the sprawling Defense Department when he had struggled with a staff of less than 10 people, and a budget of under $10 million.
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