Trump’s Pentagon lashes out at retired general Milley, yanks security detail

Trump’s Pentagon lashes out at retired general Milley, yanks security detail
US President Donald Trump shakes hands with Mark Milley before addressing the troops at Bagram Air Field during a surprise Thanksgiving day visit, on November 28, 2019 in Afghanistan. (AFP/File)
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Updated 30 January 2025
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Trump’s Pentagon lashes out at retired general Milley, yanks security detail

Trump’s Pentagon lashes out at retired general Milley, yanks security detail
  • Milley served as Joint Chiefs chairman under Trump and Biden
  • The retired general has called Trump “fascist to the core“

WASHINGTON: New US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, in one of his first acts in the job since being appointed by President Donald Trump, has revoked the personal security detail and security clearance for retired Army general and former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley.
Milley, who served as the top US military officer during some of Trump’s first presidential term, became a leading critic of him after retiring as a four-star general in 2023 during former President Joe Biden’s administration and has faced death threats. Milley will also face an inquiry by the Pentagon inspector general’s office into his conduct that could lead to him being bumped down in rank.
Among other criticisms, Milley was quoted as calling Trump “fascist to the core” in the book “War” by journalist Bob Woodward published last year.
The moves to punish Milley, which also include removal of his two portraits in the Pentagon, came as the Pentagon mobilizes to support Trump’s immigration crackdown and to conform to his conservative revamp of policies on personnel.
These include executive orders that aim to ban transgender people from the armed forces, elimination of diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives and to reinstate thousands of troops who were kicked out of the military for refusing orders to take COVID-19 vaccines during the pandemic.
Hegseth’s moves may have a chilling effect on the Pentagon top brass, whose jobs call for them to provide unvarnished military advice even when it runs counter to policies they are tasked to execute.
The Pentagon said the decisions on Milley were meant to underscore the importance of the chain of command. Trump, as president, is commander in chief of the US military.
“Undermining the chain of command is corrosive to our national security, and restoring accountability is a priority for the Defense Department under President Trump’s leadership,” said Hegseth’s chief of staff, Joe Kasper.
Democratic lawmakers slammed the move.
“The administration has placed Milley and his family in grave danger, and they have an obligation to immediately restore his federal protection,” Senator Jack Reed, the top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said in a statement.
Some former government officials are given security detail after retirement because of the threats they may face. Trump has taken away security details of other former officials since taking office, including that of his former national security adviser John Bolton as well as former top diplomat Mike Pompeo.
In the aftermath of Trump’s supporters storming the US Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, in a failed attempt to overturn his 2020 election loss to Biden, Milley called China to reassure Beijing of US stability. Trump, in a social media post, described the phone call as “an act so egregious that, in times gone by, the punishment would have been DEATH.”
Some Trump supporters, seeing Milley as disloyal to Trump, had wanted him called back to active duty and tried for treason. Milley received a pardon from Biden on the last day of his presidency on Jan. 20 in a move the outgoing president said was aimed at protecting him and others from political persecution.
Hegseth has said he believes there are too many four-star generals and that nobody is above review.
“We won World War Two with seven four-star generals. Today we have 44 four-star generals,” Hegseth said at his confirmation hearing. “There’s an inverse relationship between the size of staffs and victory on the battlefield.”
Hegseth has also lashed out at Milley in his latest book, including a sentence using an expletive toward him.
Milley’s representatives did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The actions against Milley were first reported by Fox News on Tuesday.
A portrait of Mark Esper, army secretary in Trump’s first administration, was also removed from the Pentagon on Wednesday.
Esper, who was also defense secretary in Trump’s first administration, called him a threat to democracy in the run-up to the 2024 election.
A spokesperson for the US Army Center of Military History said the removed portraits remained Army property and will be stored at the Army Museum Support Center at Fort Belvoir, Virginia.
Milley, as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was Trump’s top military adviser between 2019 and early 2021 and had a dramatic falling out with his boss.
At his retirement ceremony in 2023, Milley took a veiled swipe at Trump, saying US troops take an oath to the Constitution and not a “wannabe dictator.” Trump later that day lashed out at him with a series of insults, calling Milley “slow moving and thinking” and a “moron.” 


Trump could pursue streamlined initial deal on Ukraine minerals, sources say

Trump could pursue streamlined initial deal on Ukraine minerals, sources say
Updated 58 min 35 sec ago
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Trump could pursue streamlined initial deal on Ukraine minerals, sources say

Trump could pursue streamlined initial deal on Ukraine minerals, sources say
  • Zelensky rejected detailed US proposal for minerals deal for lack of security guarantees for Kyiv
  • Trump’s Ukraine envoy Keith Kellogg in Kyiv this week for talks with Zelensky

NEW YORK/WASHINGTON: The Trump administration may seek to strike a simplified minerals deal with Ukraine to get a pact in place quickly and later negotiate detailed terms, such as how much of Ukraine’s vast resources the US would own, two people with knowledge of the matter told Reuters on Wednesday.

This follows Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s rejection of a detailed US proposal last week that would have seen Washington receiving 50 percent of Ukraine’s critical minerals, which include graphite, uranium, titanium and lithium, the latter a key component in electric car batteries.

That episode made clear that reaching a full deal will take time, the sources said.

But US President Donald Trump wants a pact with Ukraine in place before potentially authorizing more US military support for Kyiv or moving ahead with a bid to broker formal peace talks between Ukraine and Russia to end the three-year-old war, which was triggered by Moscow’s invasion of its neighbor.

Trump’s Ukraine envoy Keith Kellogg is in Kyiv this week to discuss the parameters of a revised pact and what Ukraine needs in return for signing.

Zelensky said he would meet with Kellogg on Thursday “and it is crucial for us that this meeting — and overall cooperation with America — be constructive.”

When asked if US officials would continue to pursue a deal, a Trump adviser, speaking on condition of anonymity, said about Zelensky: “Absolutely, we need to get this guy back to reality.”

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The push for a deal continues despite a widening rift between Trump and Zelensky. Trump denounced his Ukrainian counterpart as “a dictator without elections” on Wednesday after Zelensky said Trump was trapped in a Russian disinformation bubble, a response to the US president suggesting Ukraine started the war.

 

The United States has provided tens of billions of dollars in military aid to Ukraine in the past three years , and Trump has said US investment in Ukrainian minerals could ensure “that we’re going to in some form get this money back.” He is pushing for Kyiv to grant the US mineral concessions worth $500 billion in recognition of Washington’s aid.
The sources said it is important to Trump that he can signal publicly to the American people that the US is recouping the aid.

Less ‘rapacious’
It’s unclear the extent to which the original US proposal was framed as compensation for past weapons shipments or for future installments. But Zelensky said it focused too heavily on US interests and lacked security guarantees for Kyiv. “I can’t sell our country,” he told reporters Wednesday.

A third source familiar with the matter said Ukraine is willing to make a deal with the Trump administration. Another source also said Kyiv was ready to make a deal but that it must not look as “rapacious” as the arrangement the US first proposed.

Details of the US discussions about a potential mineral deal, including who inside the administration helped draft the original proposal, are unknown.

The revised approach is just one of several being discussed at the White House on how to clinch a deal with Kyiv in the coming weeks, an unusually quick timeline for a complex sector where deals usually involve private companies and state entities, not governments.

Trump on Wednesday repeated his frustration that most US aid was grants while Europe, he said, primarily made loans. “While the United States gets nothing back, so they get their money back,” he said.

He also criticized Zelensky’s rejection of the 50-50 split, characterizing it as breaching an accord without any evidence Kyiv had actually agreed to it. “And we had a deal based on rare earth and things, but they broke that deal… they broke it two days ago,” Trump said.

‘Tried, tested’ Chinese tool
A revised, simplified approach would help the United States sidestep numerous legal and logistical hurdles and give it time to negotiate the details of the development, including revenue sharing, at a later date.
“The US has not historically used natural resource-for-aid swaps, but it’s a tried and tested tool in China’s minerals playbook,” said Gracelin Baskaran, director of the critical minerals security program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
Ukraine was keenly interested in building a deeper economic and security relationship with the United States and finding a way to recognize the significant US investment already made in Ukraine’s future, said Tyson Barker, former US deputy special envoy for Ukraine’s economic recovery.
“The Ukrainians are more than willing to give extra advantages to the United States, in the form of privileged concessional access to critical mineral resources, in recognition of the billions of dollars that American taxpayers have put into Ukraine,” he said. “This is something that the Ukrainians have been strategizing about for some time.”
Barker said some similar terms would need to be offered to other countries that contributed heavily to Ukraine during the war, including Canada, Britain, Japan and the EU. But Russia also covets Ukraine’s natural resources and its forces, which have already seized a fifth of Ukraine including reserves of rare earths, are now little more than 4 miles from a giant lithium deposit. Ukraine and the United States need to discuss the fate of mineral deposits in areas captured by Russia, Zelensky has said, questioning if minerals in those areas would be given to Russian President Vladimir Putin and his partners Iran, North Korea and China.


Drug trafficker tunnel found between Spanish enclave, Morocco: police

Drug trafficker tunnel found between Spanish enclave, Morocco: police
Updated 20 February 2025
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Drug trafficker tunnel found between Spanish enclave, Morocco: police

Drug trafficker tunnel found between Spanish enclave, Morocco: police

MADRID: Spanish police said Wednesday they had discovered a tunnel running from Moroccan territory to the Spanish enclave of Ceuta as part of an operation targeting suspected trafficking of hashish.
The police stated the underground gallery, several dozen meters long and 12 meters deep, was uncovered during a search of a warehouse in an industrial zone of Ceuta, a small territory located on Morocco’s northern Mediterranean coast opposite mainland Spain.
“It is a narrow construction, reinforced with wood which could have been used to transport drugs between Morocco and Spain,” said a statement from the Civil Guard police force.
Spanish media reported the tunnel as measuring at least 50 meters long, running just inside Moroccan territory.
It could, however, prove even longer, with authorities yet to determine where it ends.
The discovery came during an operation targeting a number of criminal gangs accused of smuggling hashish into Spain in lorries.
The police said the crackdown, dubbed Operation Hades, has led to the arrest of 14 people over the past three weeks, including two policemen, and the discovery of 6,000 kilos of the drug.
 


Trump administration tells Pentagon to slash budget

Trump administration tells Pentagon to slash budget
Updated 20 February 2025
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Trump administration tells Pentagon to slash budget

Trump administration tells Pentagon to slash budget

WASHINGTON: The Trump administration has ordered senior US military leaders to plan for expansive cuts that could slash the defense budget by eight percent annually, or some $290 billion within the next five years, US media reported Wednesday.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told the Pentagon to develop the deep reductions, The Washington Post reported, citing a memo.

The Pentagon’s budget for 2025 is some $850 billion. Lawmakers across the political spectrum agree that the massive spending is needed to deter threats, especially from China and Russia.

The cuts, if implemented in full, would reduce that figure by tens of billions each year to some $560 billion by the end of the five years.

The report did not give details of where the cuts would be made in the world’s biggest military, but an earlier Post report said that junior civilian workers, not uniformed personnel, were being targeted.

The news — which comes after Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency reportedly visited the Pentagon last week — was likely to be met with stiff resistance from both the military and Congress.

Trump on Wednesday signaled support for a House of Representatives bill that would increase the defense budget by $100 billion — a move at odds with the Hegseth-directed cuts.

The planned reductions also run counter to calls by Trump and Hegseth for NATO members to increase their military spending to five percent of GDP a year.

The United States currently spends around 3.4 percent of its GDP on defense, and the five percent threshold would be even farther out of reach if the Pentagon’s budget is reduced.

The stock prices of major US defense contractors were hit by the news, with Lockheed Martin dropping briefly before recovering, Northrop Grumann falling nearly two percent and Palantir closing down more than 10 percent.

Hegseth’s memo said the proposed cuts must be drawn up by February 24, and include 17 categories that Trump wants exempted, including operations at the US border with Mexico and modernization of nuclear weapons and missile defense.

It also calls for funding for regional headquarters such as Indo-Pacific Command and Space Command.

But other major centers such as European Command, which has led the way on US strategy throughout the war in Ukraine, and also Africa Command and Central Command — which oversees operations in the Middle East — were absent from the list, the Post reported.

The Defense Department “must act urgently to revive the warrior ethos, rebuild our military, and reestablish deterrence,” Hegseth wrote in the memo, dated Tuesday, according to the Post.

“Our budget will resource the fighting force we need, cease unnecessary defense spending, reject excessive bureaucracy, and drive actionable reform including progress on the audit,” he reportedly continued.

US President Donald Trump has vowed to slash government spending and end US support for Ukraine in its war against Russian invasion.


Republican lawmaker seeks US judge’s impeachment over ruling against Trump

Republican lawmaker seeks US judge’s impeachment over ruling against Trump
Updated 20 February 2025
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Republican lawmaker seeks US judge’s impeachment over ruling against Trump

Republican lawmaker seeks US judge’s impeachment over ruling against Trump
  • Republicans have a 53-47 majority in the Senate, meaning some Democrats would need to vote for impeachment in order to remove the judge from the bench

A Republican ally of Donald Trump has moved to impeach a federal judge who blocked a team set up by the president and spearheaded by billionaire Elon Musk from accessing US Treasury Department systems responsible for trillions of dollars in payments. Congressman Derrick Van Orden on Tuesday filed a resolution in the House of Representatives seeking to have US District Judge Paul Engelmayer in Manhattan removed from office following calls by Musk and several conservative lawmakers for judges to be impeached after stymieing key parts of Trump’s agenda.
Van Orden’s resolution accused the judge of judicial misconduct and abuse of power.
In order to be removed from office, the House must pass by a simple majority vote an article of impeachment accusing Engelmayer of a crime and then the Senate must then vote by at least a two-thirds majority to convict the judge. Republicans control both chambers of Congress but do not have a two-thirds majority in the Senate. Engelmayer, an appointee of Democratic former President Barack Obama, drew Musk’s scorn after temporarily blocking Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, from accessing Treasury Department systems in a lawsuit brought by 19 Democratic state attorneys general. That decision and rulings by other judges have prompted Trump, Musk and their conservative allies to sharply criticize judges who have ruled against the Republican president’s policies, fueling concerns about whether his administration will abide by judicial rulings.
Van Orden and Engelmayer did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Judges rarely speak publicly about matters concerning pending litigation.
Trump has put Musk, the world’s wealthiest person, in charge of his efforts to downsize and overhaul the federal government. Musk has called for a “wave of judicial impeachments.” Two conservative lawmakers have announced plans to introduce articles of impeachment against US District Judge John McConnell of Rhode Island, who blocked Trump’s administration from freezing federal funding, as well as Engelmayer.
Van Orden, whose reelection bid last year received Trump’s endorsement, was the first member of Congress to formally do so, accusing Engelmayer in his resolution of committing high crimes and misdemeanors. He is the resolution’s sole sponsor.
Van Orden in his resolution accused Engelmayer of ruling against DOGE and Trump “on purely political grounds, demonstrating clear bias and prejudice against the president and the 74,000,000 Americans who voted for him.”
Marin Levy, a Duke University School of Law professor who studies the federal judiciary, said impeachment under the US Constitution is supposed to be reserved for serious misconduct, not disappointment with court decisions, which can be appealed.
“Articles of impeachment filed against judges who are simply performing their constitutional role represent an attempt to politicize the judiciary and quite frankly to intimidate judges,” Levy said.
Impeachments of federal judges are rare: Only 15 have ever been impeached in US history, and only eight have been convicted by the Senate, most recently in 2010. Such impeachments in modern history have typically related to criminal or bribery offenses.
Republicans have a 53-47 majority in the Senate, meaning some Democrats would need to vote for impeachment in order to remove the judge from the bench. US Chief Justice John Roberts in a year-end report issued on December 31 defending the judiciary’s independence described a threat by an unnamed elected official to impeach a judge over her decisions as a regrettable example of “recent attempts to intimidate judges.”


Canada refugee claims drop as country issues fewer visas

Canada refugee claims drop as country issues fewer visas
Updated 20 February 2025
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Canada refugee claims drop as country issues fewer visas

Canada refugee claims drop as country issues fewer visas
  • About 11,840 people filed refugee claims in Canada in January, down from a high of 19,821 in July, Immigration and Refugee Board data shows
  • Canada is publicly discouraging asylum-seekers and clamping down on the visas it issues

TORONTO: Refugee claims in Canada are dropping from historic highs as the country grants fewer visas and advocates worry legitimate claimants are being left stranded with few good options.
About 11,840 people filed refugee claims in Canada in January, down from a high of 19,821 in July, Immigration and Refugee Board data shows. This was the lowest monthly figure since September 2023.
Canada is publicly discouraging asylum-seekers and clamping down on the visas it issues, aiming to gradually reduce the population and reduce strain on services amid a broader backlash against migrants.
Last year Canada issued about 1.5 million visitor visas, down from about 1.8 million in 2023, according to government data.
The decline was particularly sharp for certain countries that have been significant sources of asylum-seekers, Reuters analysis shows.
The number of visitor visas granted to Bangladeshi citizens dropped to 27,975 from 45,322; Haitians dropped to 5,487 from 8,984; Nigerians, to 51,828 from 79,378. Visitor visas to some countries with high refugee acceptance rates have declined from 2023. Last year Canada granted visitor visas to 330 Afghans, down from 468; 38,075 Iranians, down from 57,127; 2,019 Ugandans, from 6,096; 1,174 Syrians, from 2,716; and 3,199 Kenyans, from 11,464.
The number of pending claims is still at a historic high — 278,457 in January, according to the Immigration and Refugee Board. Canada has no asylum-seeker visas. Anyone who wants to claim refugee status must come as a visitor, student or worker — or sneak into the country, no easy feat for a place surrounded by water and an agreement with the United States to turn back asylum-seekers.
Displaced people can also wait in refugee camps, potentially for years, in hopes they will be selected for resettlement.
Canada is using heightened scrutiny of visa applications from countries with the “highest rates of abuse” with the aim of ensuring visas are used for their intended purpose, Renee LeBlanc Proctor, a spokesperson for Immigration Minister Marc Miller, wrote in an email.
“This work additionally protects the asylum process ... so that it is available for those who need it most.”
At a time of global displacement, advocates argue, Canada’s clampdown leaves desperate people with no good options. “It’s very problematic,” said Diana Gallego, co-executive director at Toronto-based FCJ Refugee Center, which provides services to asylum-seekers.
“If people are fleeing persecution the only way that some of them may find safe haven is having an exit visa because, if not, they are forced to cross borders walking, putting their lives in danger.”
Gallego said the center is seeing fewer people, although she does not know if they are being sent elsewhere.
“It’s like invisible walls.”