Category: Pete Hegseth
HEGSETH BRINGS THE HEAT: Pentagon Moves to Censure Mark Kelly — Rank, Pay Under Review
War Secretary Pete Hegseth says Sen.
‘Reckless and seditious’: Hegseth issues brutal demotion of Democrat senator over ‘illegal orders’ video
The Department of War is ramping up its efforts to punish Democrat Sen. Mark Kelly of Arizona over his involvement in what President Donald Trump and his administration have described as a “seditious” video.
At Secretary of War Pete Hegseth’s direction, the department is set to cut Kelly’s military retirement pay for an alleged “pattern of reckless misconduct,” namely the video of Democrat lawmakers calling for servicemen to disobey “illegal orders” from the president. The DOW also issued a letter of censure to Kelly, which “outlines the totality of Captain (for now) Kelly’s reckless misconduct.”
‘Kelly’s status as a sitting United States Senator does not exempt him from accountability.’
“Six weeks ago, Senator Mark Kelly — and five other members of Congress — released a reckless and seditious video that was clearly intended to undermine good order and military discipline,” Hegseth said in a post on X. “As a retired Navy Captain who is still receiving a military pension, Captain Kelly knows he is still accountable to military justice.”
“And the Department of War — and the American people — expect justice.”
RELATED: ‘Ridiculous charade’: Bill O’Reilly torches Democrat senator over ‘seditious’ political stunt
Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images
Hegseth justified the response by arguing that Kelly’s prominence as a senator does not give him special privileges, citing specific articles Kelly may have violated.
“Captain Kelly’s status as a sitting United States Senator does not exempt him from accountability, and further violations could result in further action,” Hegseth said. “These actions are based on Captain Kelly’s public statements from June through December 2025 in which he characterized lawful military operations as illegal and counseled members of the Armed Forces to refuse lawful orders.”
“This conduct was seditious in nature and violated Articles 133 and 134 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, to which Captain Kelly remains subject as a retired officer receiving pay.”
Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images
Kelly fired back at Hegseth, calling him unqualified and accusing him of targeting lawmakers for simply opposing the administration.
“Over twenty-five years in the U.S. Navy, thirty-nine combat missions, and four missions to space, I risked my life for this country and to defend our Constitution – including the First Amendment rights of every American to speak out,” Kelly said in a post on X. “I never expected that the President of the United States and the Secretary of Defense would attack me for doing exactly that.”
“Pete Hegseth wants to send the message to every single retired servicemember that if they say something he or Donald Trump doesn’t like, they will come after them the same way,” Kelly added. “It’s outrageous and it is wrong. There is nothing more un-American than that.”
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‘We’re going to run it’: Trump reveals Venezuela’s fate following Maduro’s capture
President Donald Trump announced that the United States will be running Venezuela following the capture of President Nicolas Maduro.
American military forces conducted a “large scale strike” in Venezuela where Maduro and his wife were captured and transported on the USS Iwo Jima. Following the operation, Trump announced that the United States is “going to run” Venezuela until a “proper transition can take place” in the government.
‘It was dark, and it was deadly.’
“We can’t take a chance that somebody else takes over Venezuela that doesn’t have the good of the Venezuelan people in mind,” Trump said, flanked by Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and other officials. “We’ve had decades of that. We’re not going to let that happen.”
Trump also said American oil companies are going to “go in” and “fix the badly broken infrastructure.”
RELATED: Maduro captured following ‘large scale strike’ in Venezuela, Trump says
Maduro and his wife were indicted for their “campaign of deadly narco-terrorism against the United States and its citizens.” Both are en route to the Southern District of New York, where they will be tried.
Trump also noted that no American servicemen were killed in the operation and all military equipment was recovered.
RELATED: Trump says US struck drug-linked site in Venezuela: ‘We hit them very hard’
Photo by Jim WATSON / AFP via Getty Images
“All Venezuelan military capacities were rendered powerless as the men and women of our military, working with U.S. law enforcement, successfully captured Maduro in the dead of night,” Trump said.
“It was dark, and it was deadly.”
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Learning From the Past, Leading in the Present
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Schumer and Hegseth’s Second Drug Boat Strike
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Putting God back in ‘degraded’ US Chaplain Corps: Hegseth axes pagan codes and New Age guides
Earlier this week, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth announced that he would be overhauling yet another aspect of the military: the Chaplain Corps.
On Tuesday, Hegseth explained a directive that will effectively overhaul the United States Chaplain Corps, “the spiritual and moral backbone of our nation’s forces” that, for hundreds of years, “ministered” to the “souls” of American servicemen and women, as he explained in the video.
‘In an atmosphere of political correctness and secular humanism, chaplains have been minimized, viewed by many as therapists instead of ministers.’
Hegseth recounted the long history of the Chaplain Corps, which dates back to 1775, when George Washington himself established it. The “weakening” of this important institution has become “a real problem for our nation’s military,” Hegseth said.
“Sadly, as part of the ongoing war on warriors, in recent decades its role has been degraded,” Hegseth said in the video. “In an atmosphere of political correctness and secular humanism, chaplains have been minimized, viewed by many as therapists instead of ministers. Faith and virtue were traded for self-help and self-care.”
Amanda Andrade-Rhoades/For The Washington Post via Getty Images
As evidence of the New Age influence in the military, Hegseth referred to the United States Army’s Spiritual Fitness Guide, which mentions “God” only once and “virtue” not at all, even as 82% of the military identify as “religious.”
Hegseth ordered the elimination of this “unacceptable and unserious” Spiritual Fitness Guide and the simplification of the Faith and Belief Coding System, an “overly complex” classification system of over 200 different beliefs.
The Faith and Belief Code was apparently expanded in March 2017. The expansion went into more detailed distinctions among Protestant denominations, and it included alternate belief systems like “Magick and Spiritualist,” “Wicca,” “Pagan,” “New Age Churches,” “Humanist,” and “Heathen.”
Hegseth promised more changes in the near future, saying that there will be a “top-down cultural shift” in the military that puts “spiritual well-being on the same footing as mental and physical health.”
“We are going to make the Chaplain Corps great again,” he posted on X.
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Troops who refused COVID shot to receive retroactive honor to ‘right the wrongs of the past’: Hegseth
President Trump’s secretary of war is making it a point to set the record straight for those servicemen and -women who adhered to their convictions and refused the Biden COVID shots.
In a memorandum dated December 6, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth ordered Pentagon leadership to identify service members wrongfully discharged because of their refusal to take the jab and give them their due.
Sean Parnell said that nearly 8,700 service members were ‘involuntarily separated’ from the military because of their refusal to take the jab.
Specifically, many service members were given a general discharge rather than a fully honorable discharge.
“It is unconscionable that thousands of former Service members who held true to their personal and religious convictions were not just separated, but separated with General (Under Honorable Conditions), rather than Honorable, discharge characterizations,” Hegseth wrote.
RELATED: Activist judges overruled: Trump judges greenlight Hegseth’s ban on military ‘dudes in dresses’
Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call Inc. via Getty Images
Chief Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said that nearly 8,700 service members were “involuntarily separated” from the military because of their refusal to take the jab.
Of those, Parnell continued, “more than 3,000 received less than honorable discharge characterizations.”
“The department is committed to ensuring that everyone who should have received a fully honorable discharge receives one and continues to right wrongs and restore confidence in and honor to our fighting force,” Parnell said.
In his first week back in office, Trump signed an executive order to reinstate service members who left or were removed from duty on account of the “unfair, overbroad, and unnecessary” COVID vaccine mandates. Hegseth then began implementing that directive in February.
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Trump’s First Year of His Second Term Lacks the Drama of 2017. Good.
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump is a better boss the second time around. You can see it in his staffing….
