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Native American communities that had long wanted the removal of military honors for the soldiers involved in the 1890 Wounded Knee Massacre had their hopes dashed by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, in his effort to root out what he calls a “woke culture” in the armed forces.

“The era of politically correct, overly sensitive, ‘don’t-hurt-anyone’s-feelings’ leadership ends right now at every level,” Hegseth said Tuesday to hundreds of military officials at a ceremony. The defense secretary announced new directives for troops that include “gender-neutral” or “male-level” standards for physical fitness and painted a picture of a military that has been hamstrung by “woke” policies.

Hegseth had announced last week in a video on social media that Wounded Knee soldiers will keep their Medals of Honor, part of a wider Trump administration move that Indigenous leaders and historians on Tuesday called part of a culture war against racial and ethnic minorities and women’s rights.

In 1890, an estimated 250 men, women and children were killed by U.S. soldiers on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, many as they fled the violence and well after orders to cease fire. Some estimates put the number of dead over 300, more than half women and children.

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A top Air Force commander, , announced his retirement Tuesday for “personal and family reasons.”

“After much reflection and with a full heart, Barb and I have made a difficult decision to request retirement from the United States Air Force for personal and family reasons,” Bussiere, the head of Air Force Global Strike Command, said in a post on Facebook.

“While I’m stepping away from active duty, my commitment to service remains. I look forward to finding new ways to support our Air Force, our national defense and the incredible people who make it all possible,” wrote Bussiere, who was nominated by the Trump administration to be the Air Force’s vice chief of staff over the summer.

Bussiere has served as Air Force Global Strike Command commander since December 2022. 

He was nominated by the administration to be the next Air Force vice chief of staff in July, but Aviation Week reported in early September that Bussiere’s nomination was withdrawn.

The former Air Force vice chief of staff, Gen. James Slife, was fired in February. 

Bussiere’s retirement came hours after Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth held an extraordinary gathering of top military officials in Quantico, Va., where he announced he was raising fitness standards and overhauling the military’s internal complaint and investigation process.

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FBI Director Kash Patel announced he is ending the bureau's partnership with the Anti-Defamation League, saying he disliked former FBI Director James Comey's approving comments about the Jewish advocacy group.

"James Comey wrote 'love letters' to the ADL and embedded FBI agents with them," Patel alleged in the Oct. 1 post on X. He accused the organization of spying on Americans, without providing specific details.

The Anti-Defamation League, which describes itself as the "leading anti-hate organization in the world" with a mission to stop the defamation of Jewish people and secure justice for all, said in a statement that it has "deep respect for the Federal Bureau of Investigation and law enforcement officers at all levels across the country."

"In light of an unprecedented surge of antisemitism, we remain more committed than ever to our core purpose to protect the Jewish people," the league said.

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A group of 152 American medical professionals who volunteered in Gaza over the past nearly two years called on President Donald Trump on Wednesday to end US support for Israel’s attacks on the enclave, citing firsthand experience working in its hospitals during the war.

In a letter to Trump, they said Washington should immediately end its military, economic and diplomatic support for the “ongoing destruction” in Gaza and back an international arms embargo on all warring parties, describing the move as “the right thing to do” and saying it is required under US and international law.

“Today we beg you to hear the cries of Gaza’s children that our consciences will not let us forget. We cannot fathom why our government continues arming Israel while its armed forces kill children en masse,” they said.

The group said the scale of violence against Gaza’s civilians is “unlike anything any of us has ever seen.”

The health workers said they routinely treated severely injured children in Gaza, including cases of burns, dismemberment, gunshot wounds and other trauma, adding they even witnessed these injuries in fetuses whose mothers were killed by “American-made bombs dropped on them by Israeli forces.”

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Italy’s foreign minister has said he still doesn’t know the whereabouts of two Italian parliamentarians reportedly aboard the Global Sumud Flotilla.

Antonio Tajani, who is also deputy prime minister, was quoted by Italy’s Rai News as saying it also wasn’t yet known if they had been taken off the flotilla and on to Israeli vessels.

Tajani said on Rai1’s Porta e Porta program:

The foreign ministry’s crisis unit has been following the flotilla every day, day after day. We’ve always spoken with the spokespeople, not with the parliamentarians, who work on their own.
We still don’t know where they are, we don’t know if they’ve already disembarked from the Flotilla ships to board Israeli vessels.

We’ll know everything by late morning.

Australian filmmaker Juliet Lamont – onboard the flotilla to Gaza – says the group is about 50 nautical miles from the shores of the territory.

On social media, Lamont described a military boat coming up close to the boat she’s on, Wahoo, which she says tried to manoeuvre them towards Egypt. Wahoo managed to “out manoeuvre” the military boat, she said.

In a following video, Lamont says there are still around 30 boats in the flotilla on course to Gaza, with about 30 military vessels surrounding and kettling the flotilla.

A lot of our comrades on the flotilla have been intercepted and boarded by zodiacs [boats], we’re still in formation ... We’re feeling really positive, we’re feeling really steadfast in our resolve to get the much needed aid there, [and] that we are on the right side of history.

We are feeling like we’re going to get there, when the sun rises we will be with the people of Gaza.

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The EU has transferred €4bn to Ukraine using revenue generated from frozen Russian assets, the country’s finance ministry revealed on Wednesday.

It comes as European leaders discuss the possibility of transferring up to €140bn in the same manner this week.

Moscow has warned it considers the procedure “theft” of its sovereign assets and will seek the prosecution of countries and individuals involved.

Leaders including Macron have expressed support for the initiative, but have stressed it must take place in accordance with international law.

“We need a more structural solution for military support,” the European Commission’s president, Ursula von der Leyen, said on Tuesday. “This is why I have put forward the idea of a reparations loan that is based on the immobilized Russian assets.”

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Retired US supreme court justice Anthony Kennedy fears “democracy is not guaranteed to survive” as “partisanship is becoming much more prevalent and more bitter” in the legal opinions coming from his former institution, he tells NPR in an upcoming interview.

Strikingly, for the interview set to publish in October, NPR’s Nina Totenberg said she asked Kennedy whether he was still sure the supreme court’s major decisions would remain intact – as he told a small group of journalists that he was when he retired in 2018 during Donald Trump’s first presidency.

NPR reported that Kennedy “demurred”, seven years after that prediction – and three years after the federal abortion rights once granted by the Roe v Wade ruling were eliminated by a supreme court with a conservative supermajority anchored by three Trump appointments.

“We live in an era where reasoned, thoughtful, rational, respectful discourse has been replaced by antagonistic, confrontational conversation,” Kennedy, who was appointed to the supreme court during Ronald Reagan’s presidency, remarked.

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Donald Trump and Pete Hegseth probably hoped their speeches on Tuesday before every top U.S. general and admiral would really rally the troops to new heights.

But at least one retired military leader wasn’t so gung-ho about the comments made by the president and the secretary of defense during the gathering, calling them “insulting” and “offensive.”

During the meeting, Hegseth announced his plans for a revamped military that would “remove the social justice, politically correct and toxic ideological garbage that had infected our department.”

He also declared there would be no more fat soldiers.

After he spoke, retired Lt. Gen. Mark Hertling appeared on MSNBC to rip Hegseth’s new plans and his attacks against the military’s DEI programs.

TVNL Comment:  No more fat soldiers?  How about fat presidents?

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