Hegseth replaces Pentagon civilian protection office with AI, slashing staff from 40 to 9 amid Iran war

Hegseth Replaced Pentagon Civilian Protection Office with AI Ahead of Iran War

Last January, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth fired most of the Pentagon's civilian harm mitigation and response (CHMR) workers and replaced them with artificial intelligence.

According to a report from The Intercept, the Pentagon's Civilian Protection Center of Excellence was reduced from 40 staffers to just nine at the beginning of last year. No new hires have been made since, leaving the center unable to fulfill its mission of protecting civilians from harm in active war zones. Remaining staff say they are not permitted to investigate incidents such as the Minab elementary school bombing, which killed 120 children on the first day of the war in Iran.

CHMR cuts were felt across the Defense Department. AFRICOM, CENTCOM, and SOUTHCOM all saw reductions in civilian casualty prevention infrastructure, signaling what has been evident for years: those casualties are not a moral priority for the United States. CENTCOM's CHMR now has only one person remaining, while cuts to SOUTHCOM's team left them unable to assess the full scope of civilian harm in the January kidnapping of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.

"The Hegseth regime held on to a thread of the program mostly in effort to be able to say they are following the law, but the reality is the Center and its efforts have had little to no influence on or oversight or visibility on operations," former Protection Center Chief of civilian harm assessments Wes Bryant told The Intercept. "As long as they sit in the seat, they are continuing to try to put out good work, but the reality is, most of it is being thrown into the wind, and neither institutionalized nor operationalized."

Instead of human personnel, Hegseth is now relying on a Palantir-created Maven Smart System, which a defense official claimed presents a "better layer of protection" for civilians in areas currently under attack.

"The Department's failure to implement the CHMR [Action Plan] has profound consequences for civilians in conflict zones and makes service members' jobs harder and riskier," Senator Elizabeth Warren and nine other Democrats wrote in a letter to Hegseth earlier this month. "Gutting CHMR programs leads to 'target misidentification [that] harms readiness by wasting Do[D] munitions' and increases the operational risk of 'civilian casualties, damaged coalitions and alliances, loss of legitimacy, increased local resistance, propaganda opportunities for adversaries, prolonged conflicts, and failed strikes.'"

Thousands of Iranians have been killed since the downsizing of CHMR.

Editor's Pick: Trump Is Ready for All-Out War in Iran. There's Just One Catch.

Republican Lawmakers Distance Themselves from Trump's Election Fraud Claims

Republican lawmakers are moving on from Donald Trump's election conspiracy.

The president spent more than 25 minutes last week addressing the public—and his supposed congressional allies—to revive his 2020 election fraud claims. He demanded that Republicans prioritize mail-in ballot bans and voter roll purges, and investigate what he claimed was a nationwide cover-up by the "deep state." Days later, however, the conservative caucus appears to have completely missed the message.

Most GOP candidates are unwilling to revisit Trump's thoroughly debunked election fraud claims, as the issue has failed to galvanize voters, The Washington Post reported Monday.

The day after Trump's address, former Republican National Committee chair Michael Whatley—who is trailing former Democratic Governor Roy Cooper in the race to replace retiring North Carolina Senator Thom Tillis—held a 34-minute campaign event that touched on none of Trump's advertised priorities. Instead, Whatley told local voters that the number one issue this election cycle is "keeping our kids and our communities safe."

Whatley had previously supported Trump's 2020 election fraud claims. But when asked by a Post reporter to expound on Trump's latest speech, Whatley simply mentioned that he is a "big proponent of election integrity."

Top Republicans also seemed disillusioned with the president's fixation. Outgoing Texas Senator John Cornyn lamented to the Post that "we have 109 days until the midterm elections, and I don't understand talking about what happened six years ago in light of these upcoming elections."

The situation for the campaigning caucus is precarious: If they attempt to gain favor with the MAGA movement by publicly supporting the president, they also risk alienating independent voters in their districts who have become increasingly disillusioned with Trump's second term.

Paul Shumaker, a veteran Republican strategist and longtime political adviser to Tillis, told the Post that the "clear and simple" explanation for the difference in messaging is that voters are focused elsewhere.

"If candidates are not talking about the economy, if candidates are not talking about affordability, if they're not talking about how they're going to make people's lives at home cheaper and less expensive, then they're not talking about the issues that voters care about," Shumaker said.

Matthew Bartlett, a Republican strategist who served in the State Department during Trump's first term, said many GOP candidates seem relieved that Trump's prime time speech has failed to make major waves.

"If the president makes outrageous claims about an election and no one is listening, did it even happen?" Bartlett asked rhetorically when describing the Republican response to the Post.

Democrats have criticized the address for laying the groundwork for potential challenges to the upcoming midterm elections. They have good cause to believe so: Last week, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin announced that the government already plans to take action against state election officials who refuse to bend to the White House's demands. In a press conference, Mullin pledged that state officials who decide not to scrub their voter registration lists could be fined or even jailed for their disobedience.

Mullin does not have the authority to make such a threat, however. The Department of Homeland Security lacks the necessary authority to either withhold federal grants or force states to purge voter rolls. Only Congress has the power to do that.

Read about Trump's speech: Trump's Favorite News Show Totally Ignores His Election Fraud Speech

Trump's Height Questioned After World Cup Appearance

Donald Trump's presence loomed large over FIFA's World Cup Finals on Sunday—but footage from the event has sparked speculation that the president's actual stature may be smaller than he claims.

For years, Trump has claimed to be six feet, three inches tall. His past two annual physical reports, published in April 2025 and April 2026, confirmed this, asserting that the president is 75 inches tall—equal to six feet, three inches.

But a video shared Sunday on social media by the White House showed Rodrigo Hernández Cascante, the six-foot-three captain of Spain's national football team known as Rodri, towering over Trump. If both men are supposedly the same height, why does Trump appear so much shorter?

Considering soccer cleats only add about an inch maximum of height, it seems unlikely Rodri's footwear is responsible for the difference. In the video, Trump appears much closer in height to FIFA president Gianni Infantino, who is reportedly only five feet, 11 inches tall.

The debate about Trump's height has been going on for decades. In 1999, Trump told Maureen Dowd of The New York Times that his seemingly diminutive stature was merely a trick of the camera. "I photograph short. I'm six foot three," he said.

As recently as last month, the president appeared much shorter than Republican Senator John Thune, who is widely reported to be six feet, four inches tall. In response to those photographs, The Daily Beast's Joanna Coles suggested that Trump was actually getting shorter. "He's shrinking into the giant shrimp that Steve Bannon said that he was," Coles said. "I think that Donald Trump is literally shrinking as we see him."

It's certainly not impossible. It's a scientific fact that people can get shorter as they age, and last month, Trump officially became an octogenarian. Still, the president clearly feels the need to lie about his height, when Americans can see for themselves that the president just doesn't measure up.

Read more about Trump's time at the World Cup: Spain Humiliates Trump After He Refuses to Get Out of Victory Photos

Case Against Olympic Canoeist Accused of Damaging Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool Faces Collapse

The Trump administration's case against the former Olympic canoeist accused of damaging the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool is about to fall apart.

Following the draining of the Reflecting Pool last week, David Hearn filed a motion to dismiss the federal indictment against him. In his motion, Hearn argued that the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Columbia failed to preserve the physical evidence against him: the lining of the pool that he is accused of damaging.

Hearn's attorneys said in their motion that they had made a written request for federal prosecutors to preserve the evidence, but the pool has repeatedly been drained more than once since his arrest, and large sections of the liner are missing.

The case against Hearn has always been weak, considering that other people have noticed sections of the pool's paint and lining, applied on President Trump's orders, coming apart and peeling. Hearn is accused of "forcefully and violently" tearing two square feet of the pool's newly added blue paint.

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