Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle has resigned, just a day after her House testimony on the assassination attempt against former President Donald Trump, CNBC reports.
Cheatle was facing bipartisan calls for her resignation.
Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle has resigned, just a day after her House testimony on the assassination attempt against former President Donald Trump, CNBC reports.
Cheatle was facing bipartisan calls for her resignation.
“As the Secret Service fields a barrage of investigations on the Trump shooting, it is also set to face the release of a report on another bruising episode: its response to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol,” Politico reports.
“Massachusetts Air National Guardsman Jack Teixeira, who in March pleaded guilty in a civilian court to willfully retaining and leaking classified intelligence, is now facing charges in military court, the Air Force announced,” CNN reports.
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“A group of Republican senators followed Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle through the Fiserv Forum at the Republican National Convention on Wednesday evening, shouting questions at her about the agency’s failure to prevent the shooting at former president Donald Trump’s rally,” the Washington Post reports.
“Her public dressing-down by a group of U.S. senators at the GOP convention reflected the deep breach between top Republican officials and the agency, which is charged with the protection of the country’s leaders.”
Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) called for Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle to resign and announced plans for a bipartisan task force to probe the shooting of Donald Trump, Axios reports.
“As world leaders gathered this week in Washington to celebrate 75 years of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, President Biden praised the protection offered by the alliance,” the Washington Post reports.
“However, not all of the United States is protected by that shield. The state of Hawaii, home to more than 1.4 million people and various U.S. military bases, is excluded from NATO provisions. With the military alliance finding itself increasingly entwined in security threats from China and other Asian nations, some lawmakers are now calling for that exclusion to be reevaluated.”
“Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, agreed to plead guilty on Monday to a single felony count of illegally obtaining and disclosing national security material in exchange for his release from a British prison, ending his long and bitter standoff with the United States,” the New York Times reports.
“He is expected to be sentenced to about five years, the equivalent of the time he has already served in Britain.”
Los Angeles Times: “The U.S. is facing security threats in a presidential election year coming from Islamic militants, far-right extremists, leftist radicals and an array of zealots disgruntled over the nation’s culture wars and our polarized society.”
“Alarmed by repeated warnings from top FBI and military officials, a former acting CIA director and a legendary foreign policy thinker write bluntly in Foreign Affairs: ‘The United States faces a serious threat of a terrorist attack in the months ahead,’” Axios reports.
“Michael Morell and Graham Allison write that there are striking echoes of the run-up to 9/11 — including warnings about Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda by then-CIA director George Tenet.”
“House Republicans banded together on Friday to narrowly pass an $895 billion defense policy bill that would restrict access to abortion and transgender medical care in the military and eliminate all positions and offices of diversity, equity and inclusion across the Pentagon,” the New York Times reports.
“The 217-to-199 vote, largely along party lines, reflected a dramatic shift in support for the annual National Defense Authorization Act, normally an overwhelmingly popular bill, since it emerged from a House committee last month with broad bipartisan support. Democrats turned against the bill in droves after Republicans insisted for the second year in a row on loading it with conservative policy dictates.”
USA Today: “U.S. soldiers were almost nine times more likely to die by suicide than by enemy fire, according to a Pentagon study for the five-year period ending in 2019.”
“A senior Biden administration official warned on Friday that “absent a change” in nuclear strategy by China and Russia, the United States may be forced to expand its nuclear arsenal, after decades of cutting back through now largely abandoned arms control agreements,” the New York Times reports.
Sen. Roger Wicker (R-MS), the top Republican on the Armed Services Committee, is pushing an aggressive plan to build up the Pentagon budget, a blueprint he says is the “generational investment” needed to keep pace with worldwide threats, Politico reports.
Wall Street Journal: “Intelligence disclosures about Russia’s interest in antisatellite weapons and satellite launches from China have energized U.S. efforts to defend its interests hundreds and even thousands of miles above the Earth’s surface.”
“Defense companies are developing systems ranging from satellites that can chase other satellites in orbit to protecting ground stations that can beam signals to space. Those protections are critical as mobile navigation services and some television and internet services rely on equipment in orbit. Commercial startups are working on technologies, including orbital capsules, sensors and satellite structures, that could have military applications.”
“Pentagon officials are also doing something unusual: talking more publicly about the weapons that hostile nations might use in space to engage in warfare.”
“The Biden administration was close to transferring 11 detainees out of the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to a country in the Middle East in October 2023, but abruptly halted the move amid concerns about political optics after Hamas’ attack on Israel,“ NBC News reports.
“More than seven months later, the administration has not set a new date for the transfer, the officials said, and the detainees remain at Guantanamo with no clarity on when, or if, it will happen.”
“The Pentagon is rushing to expand its capacity to wage war in space, convinced that rapid advances by China and Russia in space-based operations pose a growing threat to U.S. troops and other military assets on the ground and American satellites in orbit,” the New York Times reports.
“Details of the push by the Pentagon remain highly classified. But Defense Department officials have increasingly acknowledged that the initiative reflects a major shift in military operations as space increasingly becomes a battleground.”
“No longer will the United States simply rely on military satellites to communicate, navigate and track and target terrestrial threats, tools that for decades have given the Pentagon a major advantage in conflicts.”
“The US military has finally acknowledged that it mistakenly killed a civilian man in an airstrike in Syria nearly a year ago after misidentifying him as a senior al Qaeda leader,” CNN reports.
“The ability of the United States to intercept and store Americans’ text messages, calls, and emails in pursuit of foreign intelligence was not only extended but enhanced over the weekend in ways likely to remain enigmatic to the public for years to come,” Wired reports.
“On Saturday, President Joe Biden signed a controversial bill extending the life of a warrantless US surveillance program for two years, bringing an end to a months-long fight in Congress over an authority that U.S. intelligence agencies acknowledge has been widely abused in the past.”
“At the urging of the agencies and with the help of powerful bipartisan allies on Capitol Hill, the program has also been extended to cover a wide range of new businesses, including US data centers.”
Taegan Goddard is the founder of Political Wire, one of the earliest and most influential political web sites. He also runs Political Job Hunt, Electoral Vote Map and the Political Dictionary.
Goddard spent more than a decade as managing director and chief operating officer of a prominent investment firm in New York City. Previously, he was a policy adviser to a U.S. Senator and Governor.
Goddard is also co-author of You Won - Now What? (Scribner, 1998), a political management book hailed by prominent journalists and politicians from both parties. In addition, Goddard's essays on politics and public policy have appeared in dozens of newspapers across the country.
Goddard earned degrees from Vassar College and Harvard University. He lives in New York with his wife and three sons.
Goddard is the owner of Goddard Media LLC.
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