Trump’s First Defense Secretary Was a “Mad Dog.” Will His Second Be a Lapdog?
Deputy defense secretary Patrick Shanahan prays before the start of a Cabinet meeting in August at the White House.Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images Looking for news you can trust?Subscribe to our free newsletters. Donald Trump’s bizarre, rambling performance during a Cabinet meeting last week received attention for all the obvious reasons, from his historically inaccurate interlude about…
Pentagon Chief of Staff Kevin Sweeney Resigns
Digital Vision/Getty Images Looking for news you can trust?Subscribe to our free newsletters. Another day, another resignation. This time it’s the Pentagon chief of staff, Rear Adm. Kevin Sweeney, who resigned on Saturday, offering a brief statement that made no mention of the president nor provided a reason for his departure. “After two years in…
Amazon’s Bid on a $10 Billion Pentagon Contract Is Riddled With Conflicts of Interest
Amazon could score a $10 billion Pentagon contract.Ken Lambert/ Seattle Times via Zuma Looking for news you can trust?Subscribe to our free newsletters. After a drawn-out battle over a $10 billion contract, the cloud-computing company Oracle filed a lawsuit earlier this month alleging that the Pentagon rigged a major contracting process in favor of Amazon. Earlier this…
Trump Said ISIS Has Been Defeated in Syria. That’s News to His National Security Team.
Leon Neal/Getty Images Looking for news you can trust?Subscribe to our free newsletters. Donald Trump’s baffling decision to withdraw US forces from Syria provided critics and allies with another reason to doubt promises made by the president’s national security team—as Trump’s claim that ISIS has been “defeated” was quickly contradicted by his own aides. In September,…
Disgraced Trump Fundraiser Tried to Use GOP Contacts to Score “Billions” in Africa
Mother Jones illustration; Billy Bennight/UPPA/ZUMA, Getty Looking for news you can trust?Subscribe to our free newsletters. In late 2016, as Donald Trump was readying to move into the White House, Elliott Broidy, then one of the Republican Party’s top fundraisers, was working on a deal to gain control of what a business partner called “billions…
After Russia Attacked Ukrainian Ships, These Twitter Accounts Joined the Battle
A patrol boat on duty in the Kerch Strait Sergei Malgavko/TASS/ZUMA Press Looking for news you can trust?Subscribe to our free newsletters. In late November, after Russian vessels opened fire and seized three Ukranian ships near the Crimean peninsula, researchers said internet trolls with a history of sharing Russian propaganda targeted at Western audiences shifted their focus…