Pete Hegseth Moves to Replace Military’s Lawyers for Chilling Reason

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth is taking aim at the military’s legal system, specifically the judge advocate general’s corps, in order to relax the rules of war. 

The Guardian reports that Hegseth is nominating new judge advocate generals, or JAGs, to replace the ones he fired last month, which will kick off an overhaul of the system. Hegseth has chosen his personal lawyer, former Navy Officer Tim Parlatore, to oversee the effort. Parlatore defended President Trump in his classified documents trial and former Navy Seal Eddie Gallagher on war crimes charges, and will continue to run his private practice at the same time.   

The overhaul will consist of retraining military lawyers so that their legal advice to commanders will allow for more aggressive tactics and more leniency on charging soldiers with battlefield crimes. Parlatore has reportedly said that JAG officers get too involved in decision-making and don’t exercise discretion in their prosecutions. 

Parlatore and Hegseth view JAGs as too restrictive on rules of engagement, and don’t like the interpretation of law that soldiers need to identify a target having a weapon before opening fire. Hegseth has also stressed the need to bring back a “warrior ethos” because he thinks the military has gone soft. 

Hegseth referred to military lawyers as “jagoffs” in his book The War on Warriors, saying that restrictions on the laws of armed conflict were too high for soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan, which aided the enemy. While a Fox News host in Trump’s first term, Hegseth successfully appealed to Trump to pardon U.S. soldiers accused of committing war crimes, including Gallagher. 

Hegseth’s actions are ominous and disturbing, especially considering that he thinks very little of the Geneva Conventions on human rights. The fact that he faces his own sexual assault allegations also casts a shadow on his planned legal overhaul, as prosecuting sexual abuse in the military has long been a major problem. It seems that he thinks that there is no problem with U.S. soldiers committing war crimes, as long as America is “tough.”

Donald Trump transformed the White House into a car dealership to save Elon Musk’s floundering Tesla stock—to keep him from defaulting on his massive loans. 

Trump took a shot at being a shady car salesman Tuesday during a press event for Tesla at the White House. The president posed for photos behind the wheel of a Tesla he apparently can’t drive with a grinning Musk, remarked with astonishment that “everything’s computer” in the futuristic vehicles, and even read from what appeared to be a sales pitch sheet listing prices for different Tesla models.  

Trump’s desperate show of fealty toward the bouncing billionaire came after Tesla stock plummeted 15 percent Monday, drying up the very last drops of Musk’s postelection gains and costing him a whopping $29 billion. 

But it seems Trump’s rather unpresidential measures to boost Tesla’s floundering stock could serve a greater purpose: keeping the not-so liquid Musk from defaulting on his loans. 

The Washington Post reported in April 2022 that Musk had already used more than half of his more than 170 million Tesla shares as collateral to acquire loans, and planned to do so again to borrow more money to buy Twitter, now X. 

Musk acquired X for $44 billion in October 2022, borrowing roughly $13 billion from several banks, including Morgan Stanley, Barclays, and Bank of America. Musk’s loans had been “hung” on those banks’ balance sheets for nearly two years, longer than some unsold deals from the 2008 financial crisis. 

Reuters reported last month that interest in acquiring Musk’s debt increased after Trump secured the White House and Musk emerged as his number two. At the time, only $1.3 billion remained on the banks’ sheets. 

In a 2024 SEC filing, Musk was listed as holding a whopping 238,441,261 shares of Tesla stock that were “pledged as collateral to secure certain personal indebtedness.” At the time, he held ​715,022,706 shares in total, according to the filing, meaning that roughly one third of Musk’s shares were serving as collateral for his loans. 

It’s unclear exactly how much of Musk’s shares are held in collateral now. Musk currently owns 410 million shares of Tesla stock, a roughly 12.8 percent stake in the company, according to Investopedia. The value of those shares, including those held as collateral, appears to be dropping every day he plays pretend as the unelected bureaucrat leading the Department of Government Efficiency. 

Here’s where Musk’s problem emerges: If the stock price goes low enough, the banks Musk borrowed from could force him to sell his shares. 

Tesla warned that this could happen in its annual filing in 2022, according to The Washington Post. That, in turn, could make things even more dire for the car company. 

“If Elon Musk were forced to sell shares of our common stock that he has pledged to secure certain personal loan obligations, such sales could cause our stock price to decline,” Tesla wrote.

“We are not a party to these loans,” the company added. 

It already seemed like Musk was going to have trouble paying back his loans for X. Last year, the social media company reported that its value had plummeted by more than half, to around $19 billion. When the banks formulated a plan to restructure the loan, X didn’t follow through, The Wall Street Journal reported at the time.

Tesla stock was doing slightly better on Wednesday, as a result of an uptick in the wider market caused by a report that inflation had eased slightly in February.

This story has been updated.

Democratic Representative John Larson erupted during a Department of Government Efficiency House Oversight Committee hearing Wednesday, verbalizing the immense frustration felt by much of the country.

“Where’s the independence of the committee?” Larson yelled at House Republicans. “Where’s the legislature? We’re an equal branch of government.”

Musk did not attend the meeting, which infuriated Larson.

“Where’s Elon Musk?” he asked, pointing to Musk’s empty seat. “I’m sure he’s a genius and is a very credible person because of the wealth he’s accumulated. But that does not put him above the law, or the responsibility to come before this committee and this Congress.”

Since Donald Trump took office, Musk’s DOGE has fired thousands of federal workers, gutted the United States Agency for International Development, and cut more than $500 million in funding to the Department of Education.

The billionaire has also attacked Social Security through a number of fraudulent claims, and admitted that the social safety net program is on the chopping block in a recent Fox News interview, despite Trump promising not to touch Social Security.

“If he’s so great, if these plans and all the fraud and abuse that he’s found are so eminent, why isn’t he here explaining it?” Larson demanded of Republicans. “You know why. Because he wants to privatize Social Security.”

The party that claims to ride for free speech is tripping over itself trying to explain why its kidnapping of Mahmoud Khalil isn’t a blatant violation of the First Amendment.

“When you are on campuses—I hear ‘freedom of speech,’ ‘freedom of speech,’ ‘freedom of speech’—can you stand at a movie theater and yell ‘Fire’? Can you slander? Free speech has limitations,” Trump border czar Tom Homan said Wednesday during an appearance with the New York Republican Party.

“When you go on a college campus and you wanna start protesting, and locking down and taking over buildings, and damaging property, and handing out leaflets for Hamas—who is a terrorist organization—coming to this country either on a visa or becoming a resident alien is a great privilege, but there are rules associated with that,” Homan continued. “You might have been able to get away with that stuff in the last administration, but you won’t under this administration.”

Homan’s statement proves yet again that the only free speech that conservatives actually care about is their own. Khalil was arrested for having the courage to speak out and organize against the ongoing genocide of Palestinians at the hands of the Israeli government.

“What say you @JDVance. You just lectured Europe that in DC , ‘there is a new sheriff in town, & under Trump’s leadership we may disagree with your views, but we will fight to defend your right to offer it in the public square agree or disagree,’” Representative Ro Khanna wrote on X. “Did Mr. Homan not get the memo?”

The economy is in turmoil, and the Trump administration says it’s because they just haven’t had enough time to salvage it from Joe Biden.

“When can you not blame it [the economy] on President Biden and when does it fully become President Trump’s responsibility?” a reporter asked White House press secretary Caroline Leavitt Wednesday.

“Well, we’ve only been here 52 days,” Leavitt responded.

A reminder: In just 52 days, Trump has started a global trade war, plummeted the stock market, fired thousands of federal workers, slashed government funding, and sparked fears of a recession. Fifty-six percent of Americans disapprove of the way the president has handled the economy since returning to office, according to a recent CNN poll.

“The president is working hard everyday to bring down the cost of living, which we see is already happening. You see the cost of eggs is going down, the cost of gasoline is going down, because of the massive regulatory efforts of this president,” Leavitt said.

That’s not true. Egg prices are at an all-time high, costing on average $8.42 per dozen. Gas prices are down, but that’s likely due to economic uncertainty from Trump’s tariffs on Canada and Mexico. Even the president himself hasn’t ruled out a recession.

“I hate to predict things like that. There is a period of transition, because what we’re doing is very big. We’re bringing wealth back to America,” Trump said in a Fox News interview Sunday, after he was asked about the possibility of a recession this year. “That’s a big thing. And there are always periods of, it takes a little time. It takes a little time, but I think it should be great for us.”

Leavitt added that all Trump needs to help the economy flourish is for Congress to pass tax cuts for the rich.

After less than two months in office, Trump has already claimed to be the “most consequential President of our time.” If the goal of a president is to disrupt international order and shake the foundations of democracy at the expense of American citizens, that may be true.