Pete Hegseth’s New Move Will Make It Harder for Congress to Stop Him

The Department of Defense now requires department staffers to channel all communications with Congress through the Pentagon’s central legislative affairs office.

A October 15 memo, obtained by BreakingDefense, marks a change in policy for the administration, further limiting access to military HQ. The only exception to the rule will be the Pentagon’s inspector general office. All other DOD personnel will be required to coordinate exchanges with members of Congress and state elected officials via the Pentagon’s assistant secretary of defense for legislative affairs.

Using the Trump administration’s unofficial moniker for the department, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Deputy Defense Secretary Steve Feinberg wrote in the co-signed memo that the Department of War “relies on a collaborative and close partnership with Congress to achieve our legislative goals.

“This requires coordination and alignment of Department messaging when engaging with Congress to ensure consistency and support for the Department’s priorities to re-establish deterrence, rebuild our military, and revive the warrior ethos,” the memo reads.

“Unauthorized engagements with Congress by DoW personnel acting in their official capacity, no matter how well-intentioned, may undermine Department-wide priorities critical to achieving our legislative objectives,” they add.

Members of the House Armed Services Committee were less than thrilled by the development.

“Congress decides who Congress will talk to, and the continued efforts of the secretary to wall off the department is not consistent with past tradition, and I frankly don’t think it’ll fly with the members or leaders of the committee,” California Representative George Whitesides told BreakingDefense.

A congressional aide who spoke with the military-focused publication said that the new policy could “potentially backfire” on the Defense Department, especially as Congress chips away at the 2026 National Defense Authorization Act—a process that can sometimes require the Pentagon to supply details “within minutes.”

It’s the latest in a larger Pentagon clampdown on transparency under Hegseth’s helm. Last week, 40 to 50 members of the Pentagon press pool packed up their desks at the department, loudly rejecting a 21-page pledge that, in part, forbids journalists from soliciting any information from government employees without express permission from the Pentagon. Just a handful of journalists remain—roughly 15 out of hundreds of credentialed reporters—representing blogs, freelancers from foreign publications, and One America News.

Graham Platner, an upstart Democratic candidate running to challenge Republican Maine Senator Susan Collins, reportedly acknowledged that his skull-and-crossbones tattoo is a Nazi military symbol.

Jewish Insider reported Tuesday that an acquaintance of Platner’s had heard the former Marine refer to his chest tattoo as “my Totenkopf,” a German term referring to a specific skull and crossbones symbol used by a branch of the Nazi S.S. military that has since been resurrected by white supremacists, according to the Anti-Defamation League.

In a statement to Jewish Insider, Platner said that he “absolutely would not have gone through life having this on my chest if” he knew the tattoo resembled the Nazi symbol, and he was “already planning” to have it removed.

Platner first publicly admitted he had the tattoo on his chest during an appearance on Pod Save America last week, after images of it had surfaced on social media. He claimed he got the tattoo in 2007, while he was “very inebriated” on leave with some fellow Marines in Croatia.

“We chose a terrifying skull and crossbones off the wall because we were Marines and skulls and crossbones are a pretty standard military thing,” Platner said. “And then we all moved on with our lives.”

Platner denied holding antisemitic beliefs. “I am not a secret Nazi. Actually, if you read through my Reddit comments, I think you can pretty much figure out where I stand on Nazism and antisemitism and racism in general,” Platner said.

Online, Platner has a history of making controversial statements, which he claims he made to “get a rise” out of people—but has seemingly made no comments targeting the Jewish people or faith.

Genevieve McDonald, Platner’s former campaign director, who resigned last week, suggested Tuesday that the candidate must have known about the image’s origins.

“Graham has an antisemitic tattoo on his chest. He’s not an idiot, he’s a military history buff,” she wrote in a post on Facebook. “Maybe he didn’t know it when he got it, but he got it years ago and should have had it covered up because he knows damn well what it means.”

McDonald, a former state representative, blamed the “D.C. consultant class” for the public relations disaster that could cost Democrats the Senate election. “The vault is open for the GOP to crush any fucking dreams we had in the general,” she wrote.

Donald Trump is reportedly trying to loot the federal government to the tune of $230 million. That’s how much he’s demanding from the Department of Justice in compensation for past federal probes of his misdeeds, according to a Tuesday report in The New York Times.

The Times’ sources say that before he returned to the White House, Trump filed administrative claims, or formal requests for relief from a government agency, which often precede a lawsuit. One 2023 claim seeks damages for investigations into Russian election interference and ties to the Trump 2016 campaign—another, filed in 2024, for the 2022 FBI search of Mar-a-Lago for classified documents.

The president reportedly expects to be paid a settlement but, so far, has not gotten his nine-figure payday.

The potential settlement, being for an administrative claim, would not need to be publicly announced, and would simply need the approval of one of two Trump-friendly officials: Todd Blanche, who is the deputy attorney general and Trump’s former criminal defense attorney, or DOJ civil division chief Stanley Woodward Jr., who has represented many of the president’s aides and allies—from Trump’s co-defendant in the classified documents case to participants in the January 6 Capitol attack.

Compensation in such cases is “typically covered by taxpayers,” the Times reports.

Of the unprecedented situation, Bennett L. Gershman, an ethics professor at Pace Law School, told the Times that “the ethical conflict is just so basic and fundamental, you don’t need a law professor to explain it.”

Trump seemingly acknowledged the abysmal optics of his stickup during a press conference last week: “I have a lawsuit that was doing very well, and when I became president, I said, ‘I’m sort of suing myself. I don’t know. How do you settle the lawsuit?’ I’ll say, ‘Give me X dollars,’ right? And I don’t know what to do with the lawsuit. It’s a great lawsuit, and now I won, it sort of looks bad. I’m suing myself, right? So I don’t know.”

It looks like former CIA Director John Brennan is next up on Trump’s long list of political retribution targets.

As the conservative magazine The Federalist first reported on Tuesday, the House Judiciary Committee on Tuesday referred Brennan to the Justice Department for criminal prosecution on the grounds that he “knowingly made false statements” to Congress about Trump’s collusion with Russia during a hearing in May 2023.

Brennan, who led the CIA during an investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election, has been historically critical of Trump on Russia. Just before his tenure as CIA director ended in 2017, he warned that he didn’t think Trump had “a full appreciation of Russian capabilities, Russia’s intentions and actions that they are undertaking in many parts of the world.”

“Brennan made numerous willfully and intentionally false statements of material fact contradicted by the record established by the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI) and the CIA,” Judiciary Committee Chair Jim Jordan wrote in his letter to the Justice Department on Tuesday.

The committee also added that Brennan “falsely denied that the CIA relied on the discredited Steele dossier in drafting the post-election Intelligence Community Assessment,” “falsely testified when he told the Committee that the CIA opposed including the Steele dossier in the ICA,” and “provided false testimony during a HPSCI hearing in 2017.

“In sum, Brennan’s testimony before the Committee on May 11, 2023, was a brazen attempt to knowingly and willfully testify falsely and fictitiously to material facts. We therefore make this referral for the Department to examine whether any of Brennan’s testimony warrants a charge for the violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1001,” Jordan concludes.

Brennan is on his way to join fellow Trump adversaries such as New York Attorney General Letitia James and former FBI Director James Comey in a spiteful legal battle with the president.

Republicans are still playing the blame game on the subject of political violence—even as a pardoned January 6 rioter attacks one of their colleagues.

House Speaker Mike Johnson brushed off assassination threats against Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries Tuesday, claiming that—despite the wannabe assassin’s conservative politics—the left is still at fault.

When asked directly about the incident during his daily shutdown press conference, Johnson initially said that he was completely unaware of the plot to “eliminate” Jeffries at New York City’s Economic Club Monday.

“Terrible. That’s the first I’ve heard of that. I don’t know anything about it,” Johnson said. “But anybody who threatens to kill any political official, we denounce it, absolutely.”

Christopher Moynihan, a 34-year-old from upstate New York, was arrested Saturday for threatening to kill Jeffries.

Moynihan was convicted in 2022 for participating in the Capitol riot. Video evidence captured him breaking through fences, entering the Capitol, and rifling through documents in the Senate Gallery. During the riot, Moynihan said, “There’s got to be something in here we can fucking use against these scumbags,” according to court documents. Moynihan was also depicted standing behind the Senate well alongside Jacob Chansley, better known as the QAnon Shaman.

He was sentenced to nearly two years in prison in 2023 but was prematurely released, thanks to a blanket pardon from Donald Trump that freed 1,500 January 6 rioters on his first day back in office.

Moynihan is the first pardoned Capitol rioter to be rearrested over alleged political violence, but he’s not the only January 6er to run afoul of the law since they were granted clemency. In February, former Proud Boys leader Henry “Enrique” Tarrio was arrested by Capitol police after a woman accused him of attacking her. In May, Zachary Alam was arrested for allegedly breaking into a home in Virginia.

However, given the chance to elaborate on his statement about Moynihan’s recent attack, Johnson chose to throw the responsibility back at America’s ideological left.

“I will tell you this, the violence on the left is far more prevalent than the violence on the right,” Johnson said Tuesday. “The assassination culture that’s been advanced now—this is the left, in almost every case that is advancing this, and not the right. Let’s not make this a partisan issue, you don’t want me to go there.

“The rhetoric that you saw on display Saturday, we highlighted yesterday, it plays into this. There are people that get triggered—there are deranged people in society when they hear elected officials participating in a rally that was paid for by [George] Soros and sponsored by Communists, with signs and placards and mantras that were repeated that, ‘We should bring death to fascist politicians.’ They call every Republican a fascist now,” Johnson said, referring to the peaceful No Kings protests that took place across the country this past weekend.

Jeffries said in a statement Tuesday that he is “grateful to state and federal law enforcement for their swift and decisive action to apprehend a dangerous individual who made a credible death threat against me with every intention to carry it out.”

Political violence is a phenomenon that persists in and defies both major parties, failing to fall neatly into a convenient, sellable narrative that can be repackaged for voters or donors. In truth, recent spikes in political violence have harmed both public figures (Charlie Kirk, Melissa Hortman, etc.) and regular Americans alike.

Historically, political violence has been far more common from the right, and 2025 marks the first time there has been a significant spike in violence from left-leaning individuals in more than 30 years, though it still remains at a much lower level than historical levels of violence carried out by right-wing attackers, according to the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

The only common denominator in all recent political violence is wide public access to guns, a detail that sets the United States far apart from the rest of the developed world.

Republican state senators in North Carolina have answered President Donald Trump’s plea to gerrymander the state’s congressional map so the GOP may maintain its tenuous U.S. House majority in 2026.

The state Senate on Tuesday passed a Trump-approved map that—if adopted, as expected, by the state House this week—would oust Democratic U.S. Representative Don Davis, one of North Carolina’s three Black members of Congress, from his seat.

The governor, a Democrat, is barred under state law from vetoing redistricting maps, so the only possible redress would come from the courts, which are likely to hear cases arguing that the new maps disenfranchise Black voters.

North Carolina would be the latest state, joining Texas and Missouri, to do rare, mid-decade redistricting at Trump’s behest, with Republicans in a handful of other red states, including Florida, Louisiana, Indiana, Kansas, and Ohio, possibly gearing up to follow suit.

During debate over the new North Carolina map, GOP lawmakers were not shy about the naked partisanship behind them.

“The motivation behind this redraw is simple and singular: Draw a new map that will bring an additional Republican seat to the North Carolina congressional delegation,” said Republican state Senator Ralph Hise, who helped lead the redistricting effort. “Republicans hold a razor-thin margin in the United States House of Representatives, and if Democrats flip four seats in the upcoming midterm elections, they will take control of the House and torpedo Trump’s agenda.”

If what House Oversight Chair James Comer says is true, then shouldn’t Republican lawmakers be rushing to release the government’s files on Jeffrey Epstein?

During a press conference Tuesday, Comer suggested that there was far more significant evidence linking the alleged sex trafficker to a former president than there was to President Donald Trump.

“Let’s be clear. The Democrats don’t care about transparency or accountability in this matter. The evidence we’ve gathered does not implicate President Trump in any way,” he said. “Public reporting, survivor testimony, and official documents show that Bill Clinton had far closer ties to Epstein.”

But if the files truly exonerate the president and condemn a prominent Democrat, why are Republicans making every effort to avoid the release of the government’s documents?

Democrats are the ones demanding the files be released in full, and Republicans—namely House Speaker Mike Johnson—are the ones blocking it. The speaker has repeatedly refused to swear in Arizona Representative-elect Adelita Grijalva, who is poised to provide the deciding signature on a bipartisan petition for a vote to release the Epstein files in full. Trump’s White House has even stepped in to bully the president’s party into silence. Only a handful of Republicans are currently backing the petition.

In attempting to attack the Democrats, Comer revealed Tuesday just how deluded his own party has become.

Clinton has reportedly been linked to Epstein, having traveled multiple times on Epstein’s plane for humanitarian trips to Africa, according to court documents. The former president also reportedly penned a birthday note to the convicted sex criminal. But unlike Trump, Clinton’s letter made no mention of “enigmas” who never age, and was not written inside the silhouette of a naked woman.

In fact, Comer previously said he had no intention of investigating the president’s note to Epstein. Trump’s word was good enough for him—making clear that the Republican representative is the one who doesn’t care so much about accountability or transparency.

Clinton has denied any knowledge of Epstein’s criminal activities. Trump did, too, but he also admitted that he knew Epstein “stole” 16-year-old Virginia Giuffre, who was recruited by Ghislaine Maxwell while she was working at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club in 2000 to become Epstein’s traveling masseuse. Giuffre alleged that she was sexually exploited by Prince Andrew and Epstein’s other “adult male peers, including royalty, politicians, academicians, businessmen, and/or other professional and personal acquaintances.”

The White House is denying a TMZ report that Trump could commute the sentence of disgraced music producer and domestic abuser Sean “Diddy” Combs as soon as this week. The report comes days after Trump freed serial liar, convicted fraudster, and former New York Representative George Santos.

“There is zero truth to the TMZ report, which we would’ve gladly explained had they reached out before running their fake news,” the White House said in a statement to NBC News. “The President, not anonymous sources, is the final decider on pardons and commutations.”

Still, Trump himself has remained silent on the report, which was based on an anonymous source.

Combs was found guilty on two counts of transportation to engage in prostitution, but was controversially acquitted on heavier charges of racketeering and sex trafficking. He was sentenced to 50 months in prison, fined $500,000, and ordered to remain under five years of supervised release.

Combs’s lawyers have already publicly asked Trump for a pardon, and the president has been fairly vague on how he feels about it.

“He was essentially, I guess sort of half-innocent … I guess [the ruling] wasn’t as good as a victory,” Trump said when asked about a pardon for Combs in an interview with Newsmax in August. “I was very friendly with him, I got along with him great and he seemed like a nice guy. I didn’t know him well. But when I ran for office, he was very hostile…. So I don’t know, it’s more difficult.”

TMZ stands by its reporting.

Diddy would be another addition to the long list of rappers and entertainers Trump has granted clemency to, including Kodak Black, NBA Youngboy, and Lil Wayne, all of whom received either full pardons or commutations.

Thirteen Senate Democrats voted alongside Republicans Tuesday to instate a conservative judge to the Northern District of Alabama.

The Senate voted 66–32 in favor of confirming Harold “Hal” Mooty III as a U.S. district judge. Donald Trump nominated Mooty last month, and his confirmation needed a simple majority in the Senate.

The Democrats that voted in favor include:

• Senators Chris Coons (Delaware)
• Dick Durbin (Illinois)
• John Fetterman (Pennsylvania)
• Maggie Hassan (New Hampshire)
• Martin Heinrich (New Mexico)
• Tim Kaine (Virginia)
• Mark Kelly (Arizona)
• Amy Klobuchar (Minnesota)
• Jack Reed (Rhode Island)
• Adam Schiff (California)
• Jeanne Shaheen (New Hampshire)
• Peter Welch (Vermont)
• Sheldon Whitehouse (Rhode Island)

Maine Senator Angus King, a political independent, also voted to confirm Mooty. Senators Tammy Duckworth and Thom Tillis, a Republican, did not vote.

It’s the first serious order of business that the upper chamber has conducted since the government shutdown 21 days ago.

Mooty will join a growing faction of federal judges who have symbolically pledged their allegiance to Trump. During a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing in September, Mooty made his ideological stances known by refusing to provide a direct answer as to who won the 2020 election.

“Our system of government determines who won an election to the office of president of the United States by who is certified as the winner based on the Electoral College vote,” Mooty said at the time, when pressed on the issue. “This process resulted in Joe Biden serving as the forty-sixth president of the United States.”

He similarly skirted answering questions pertaining to the Capitol riots on January 6, repeatedly claiming that it “would not be appropriate” to answer such inquiries as a judicial nominee.” However, his response wavered on the perspective of January 6 in the national recollection.

“I denounce any and all acts of violence against law enforcement and government officials; however, the characterization of the events of January 6 is subject to ongoing political debate,” Mooty said.

Mooty’s queried understanding of the Twenty-Second Amendment—and its power limiting a president to just two terms—was similarly concerning.

“As written, the Twenty-Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution currently limits any president to two terms in office,” Mooty said in September.

Three more roll-call votes are scheduled for Tuesday, including motions to invoke cloture on the appointment of Anne-Leigh Gaylord Moe to be U.S. district judge for the Middle District of Florida and William W. Mercer to be U.S. district judge for the District of Montana.

If cloture is invoked, the Senate will proceed to a vote to confirm Gaylord Moe at 5:30 p.m. E.T., according to Senate Republican cloakroom staff.

President Donald Trump is facing backlash from American ranching groups after he said Sunday that the United States may “buy some beef from Argentina” in order to “bring our beef prices down.”

Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins confirmed Tuesday that Trump is “in discussions with Argentina”—with more details to come—though she claimed that not “very much” beef would be imported, in part due to a “foot-and-mouth disease issue” facing Argentina.

Or perhaps she made the addendum because of the outrage the Trump administration has been facing.

Trump’s proposal to take in Argentine beef has stoked fears about depressed domestic beef prices among cattle ranchers and industry groups. And it’s salt in a fresh wound, as farmers are already displeased with the administration’s multibillion-dollar lifeline to Argentina under Trump ally President Javier Milei—a move that benefited a major agricultural competitor as American farmers suffer under Trump’s trade policies.

Farm Action, an agricultural watchdog group, called the plan “a betrayal of the American rancher,” lamenting that, “after crashing the soybean market and gifting Argentina our largest export buyer, [Trump is] now poised to do the same to the cattle market.”

The National Farmers Union similarly observed that Trump “recently bailed out Argentina with $40 billion in U.S. taxpayer-backed aid, and Argentina’s response was to strike new deals selling soybeans to China—deals that hurt American crop farmers. The last thing we need is to reward them by importing more of their beef.”

“Increasing imports under current rules ultimately benefits foreign suppliers and multinational packers, while putting U.S. ranchers on the losing end and depriving American consumers of honest transparency at the meat counter,” said the U.S. Cattlemen’s Association in a statement, which went on to warn that Trump’s approach “weakens our industry’s foundation and undermines rural America.”

The American Farm Bureau Federation urged Trump “to carefully consider the damage importing more beef and cattle from other countries will have as cattle farmers decide whether to invest in rebuilding America’s herds.”

“This plan only creates chaos at a critical time of the year for American cattle producers, while doing nothing to lower grocery store prices,” said the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, which called on Trump “to let the market work, rather than intervening in ways that do nothing but harm rural America.”

When asked by a reporter on Sunday to address U.S. farmers who feel they are being stiffed, Trump grew testy and condescending. “Argentina is fighting for its life, young lady,” he told the journalist. “You don’t know anything about it.” Having aggrieved major ag groups, the president will need a more convincing answer.