Pete Hegseth Meets With Troops on Korea Trip—Except Those With Beards

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth won’t even look at any soldiers with beards during his upcoming South Korean engagement.

An email from the 51st Fighter Wing at Osan Air Base in South Korea formally restricts any “members with shaving waivers” from attending the military chief’s speaking engagement at Camp Humphreys in Pyeongtaek, according to a screenshot shared to an unofficial Air Force Facebook page. The post was made on Sunday, ahead of Hegseth’s visit to South Korea alongside Donald Trump.

The memo underscored that unshaven members are “NOT authorized” to attend the event.

“No Beardos allowed at Osan,” the post captioned the image.

An Air Force official confirmed the memo’s authenticity to Task & Purpose.

Last month, Hegseth ordered hundreds of America’s top military commanders to leave their international posts to attend a mandatory in-person assembly in Quantico, Virginia. The meeting unveiled the hairphobic ex–Fox News host’s latest efforts to de-woke the country’s armed forces—part of which included snipping shaving waivers away entirely.

That policy is expected to disproportionately affect Black service members due to the potentially injurious effects of frequently shaving their faces, given the curl pattern of their hair.

“No more beardos,” Hegseth said, during his September address. “Calling someone to shave, or work hard, is exactly the kind of work force we want.”

“The era of rampant and ridiculous shaving profiles is done,” Hegseth continued, adding that anyone unwilling to comply should look for a “new position or a new profession.”

Hegseth is far from the first commander to redefine the military’s relationship with facial hair. The armed forces have a long and strange history with beards, changing hygiene requirements and regulations every few decades.

But that’s far from Hegseth’s only hyperfixation on physical appearance. In the same address, Hegseth also announced that he would be changing physical standards for combat roles to the “highest male standard only,” a revision that could eject women from their positions.

Hegseth has openly said before that he does not believe women should serve in combat roles. During a November interview on The Shawn Ryan Show, Hegseth said, “I’m straight-up just saying we should not have women in combat roles. It hasn’t made us more effective. Hasn’t made us more lethal. Has made fighting more complicated.”

Immigration and Customs Enforcement leadership is reportedly being replaced in favor of the more aggressive leadership tactics of U.S. Border Patrol—who don’t care about only detaining immigrants with criminal records—as friction grows in the Department of Homeland Security over unsatisfactory deportation rates.

Four senior sources in President Donald Trump’s administration and DHS told Fox News’s national correspondent Bill Melugin Monday night that nationwide staffing shakeups were underway. ICE field office directors are reportedly being removed in Denver, El Paso, New Orleans, Philadelphia, Phoenix, San Diego, as well as Portland and Los Angeles, where massive ICE operations have been ongoing.

Corey Lewandowski, DHS Secretary Kristi Noem’s rather disruptive special government employee, compiled the list of ICE officials to be reassigned.

Despite Trump’s sweeping deportation efforts, his administration is still falling short of White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller’s goal of 3,000 immigration arrests per day. As of late September, ICE was detaining an average of only 1,178 people per day.

This has led to “significant friction” at the DHS, Melugin reported. ICE’s style of more targeted operations, helmed by Tom Homan and Todd Lyons, is now considered too mild for the sweeping ethnic cleansing the Trump administration has planned. Instead, Lewandowski and Noem hope the roaming hordes of Border Patrol officers will weed out scores of noncitizens to deport.

“What did everyone think mass deportations meant? Only the worst? Tom Homan has said it himself, anyone in the U.S. illegally is on the table,” one Border Patrol officer told Melugin.

Not only does Border Patrol care less about pursuing the “worst” undocumented immigrants with criminal rap sheets, but it has an aggressive style that lends itself to Trump’s vision of made-for-television deportation raids.

“President Donald Trump’s top aides have welcomed Border Patrol’s more aggressive tactics to secure arrests, such as rappelling into apartment buildings from Black Hawk helicopters and jumping out of rental trucks in Home Depot parking lots, as they’ve become disappointed with ICE,” one DHS official told NBC News.

“The mentality is CBP does what they’re told, and the administration thinks ICE isn’t getting the job done,” another DHS official told NBC News. “So CBP will do it.”

As has become the standard for her, DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin offered a statement that did not reflect reality at all. “While we have no personnel changes to announce at this time, the Trump administration remains laser-focused on delivering results and removing violent criminal illegal aliens from this country,” she told Fox News.

The Trump administration’s war on Tylenol is having real legal ramifications in Texas.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton sued the acetaminophen brand’s parent company Tuesday, regurgitating Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s talking points about the drug’s alleged ties to autism rates.  

Last month, Kennedy and Donald Trump told Americans that the number one drug prescribed to pregnant patients for pain relief and fever reduction was actually not safe to take, despite an overwhelming lack of evidence to support their claim.

But their comments have now morphed into a serious legal challenge that could have huge ramifications for one of America’s biggest drugmakers. Citing Kennedy’s comments, Paxton argued that Johnson & Johnson failed to adequately warn consumers that Tylenol use during pregnancy posed a “significantly increased risk of autism” and ADHD.

“Big Pharma betrayed America by profiting off of pain and pushing pills regardless of the risks. These corporations lied for decades, knowingly endangering millions to line their pockets,” Paxton said in a statement. “Additionally, seeing that the day of reckoning was coming, Johnson & Johnson attempted to escape responsibility by illegally offloading their liability onto a different company. By holding Big Pharma accountable for poisoning our people, we will help Make America Healthy Again.” 

More than any other over-the-counter drug, doctors have recommended Tylenol for pregnant people due to its wide availability and its well-researched safety. It has been on the market since 1955, and is considered to be the single safest fever reducer and painkiller for pregnant women. Because of this, it’s also one of the few pain medications that expecting parents are allowed to consume, and they do consume it: Studies have found that two-thirds of pregnant women in the U.S. consume Tylenol during their pregnancies. 

The flip side of not taking Tylenol to, say, reduce a fever, is that it puts a developing fetus at risk for serious defects such as spina bifida and anencephaly.

The drug—which is really just acetaminophen—is so safe that governments around the world launched public education campaigns for their own residents in the wake of Kennedy’s announcement, urging pregnant people not to stop consuming the drug over the Trump administration’s unfounded fears.

“The conditions people use acetaminophen to treat during pregnancy are far more dangerous than any theoretical risks and can create severe morbidity and mortality for the pregnant person and the fetus,” Dr. Steven J. Fleischman, president of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, said in a statement in September following the announcement.

Combating autism is the cornerstone of Kennedy’s public health policy. Kennedy is a part of a growing movement of anti-vax parents who refuse to provide their children with the same public health advantages that they received in their youth, mostly in fear of thoroughly debunked conspiracy theories that, at one point, linked autism to the jab. 

The researcher who sparked that myth with a fraudulent paper lost his medical license and eventually rescinded his opinion. Since then, dozens of studies have proven there’s no correlation between autism and vaccines, including one study that surveyed more than 660,000 children over the course of 11 years.

But confusion persists regarding the basic figures. A study published by the Autism Society of Texas found that one in 31 people are estimated to have autism—a disturbingly sharp uptick from figures released in 2006 that found about one in every 110 children were diagnosed with autism by age eight. 

But behind those numbers is a different story, since the definition of autism was broadened in that same time span. Increased research, social destigmatization, and improved mental health screening have also contributed to the inflated numbers.

President Trump took some time to ramble about how much he despises attractive people while he spoke to troops aboard the USS George Washington at the Yokosuka Naval Base in Yokosuka, Japan. 

“It comes from you people, incredible people, good-looking people—too many good-looking people,” Trump said during his speech. “I don’t like good-looking people. I never liked good people, I’ll be honest with you. I’ve never admitted that before.” 

He then appeared to reference the Supreme Court’s ruling overturning affirmative action, claiming that he reinstalled merit in the United States. 

“You know, we won in the Supreme Court, a thing based on merit. You know about that right? Merit. Everything now in our country is based on merit. And that’s why I look at you and I see nothing but merit. It’s great to have a country back where we can go by merit now, we don’t go by anything else, except for talent and work and hard work.” 

These bizarre tangents are all too common for the president. He claims to be doing his famous “weave,” but watching clips like these remind us that this is a 79-year old-former reality TV host who brags about acing dementia and Alzheimer’s exams. 

His disdain for hot people wasn’t the only strange moment of Trump’s address to U.S. troops. He lied that energy and grocery prices are “way down.” They are not. He also told the sailors to “go out and buy a Toyota” and said that former President Joe Biden claimed to be a pilot, which seems to be completely made up. Is it the aviators?  

During a welcoming ceremony in Tokyo Tuesday, Donald Trump appeared to forget where he was going as he walked through a room filled with dignitaries and a military band, at one point even leaving Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi behind.

It’s another example of the president’s ongoing cognitive decline and health issues, which are becoming more apparent with each of his public appearances. On Monday, the president revealed on Air Force One that a visit to Walter Reed Medical Center earlier this month was to get an MRI as part of what he described as a “routine yearly checkup,” despite the fact that his yearly physical exam was six months ago.

Neither the president nor White House officials have revealed why he got the MRI, and Trump also talked at length about a very hard “aptitude test” he received at the military hospital, claiming that members of Congress such as Representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Jasmine Crockett wouldn’t have performed well.

Trump said the tests at the time included questions about “tigers, an elephant, a giraffe,” which sounds like he took a test to check for Alzheimer’s, dementia, or other cognitive issues. Such tests being conducted only six months after his yearly physical are a worrying sign, especially considering that Trump has also been spotted with discoloration on his hands and mysterious bruises.

Trump is visiting Japan hoping to shore up Japanese investment in the United States, just after the country elected the right-wing Takaichi as its first female prime minister. But aside from the U.S. economy’s health, the president’s health appears to be cause for concern.

Donald Trump has let thousands of criminals off the hook, so why not himself?

The president is pushing to appeal his criminal conviction in New York in an effort to undo his status as a convicted felon, reported Politico.

In a 96-page legal brief filed to the New York Supreme Court Monday, Trump once again argued that the outcome of the trial should be completely disregarded since the Supreme Court expanded the scope of presidential immunity.

“This case should never have seen the inside of a courtroom, let alone resulted in a conviction,” his attorneys wrote.

Trump was convicted in May 2024 after a high-profile trial found him guilty of issuing hush money payments to porn star Stormy Daniels, but he never faced consequences. He wasn’t scheduled to be sentenced until after the presidential election, the outcome of which effectively undid any chance of holding him accountable.

Instead, Justice Juan Merchan let Trump off in January with “unconditional discharge,” which he wrote at the time had become “the most viable solution” for Trump. As a result, Trump received a future in which he would not be hampered down with fines, court-appointed supervision, or incarceration for breaking the law.

Trump has tried several times to unravel his conviction. He was found guilty on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records. He will remain a felon until an appellate court overturns his case, an act that he and his attorneys have already tried a handful of times to achieve without success.

In the legal brief, Trump’s team argued that the Supreme Court’s decision should have precluded prosecutors from utilizing evidence tied to Trump’s “official acts,” such as testimony about communications between Trump and Hope Hicks, the former White House communications director.

President Donald Trump went on to troops about making old-fashioned battleships.

Speaking on the USS George Washington Monday night at the Yokosuka Naval Base in Japan, Trump went on a bewildering diatribe pushing the use of steam for catapults onboard warships, instead of the electronic or magnetic machinery used to launch planes on the USS Garland R. Ford class of Navy carriers.

“And I love the sight of that beautiful steam pouring off the deck,” Trump said. “With the electric you don’t have that.”

“They spent $993,000,000 dollars on the catapults trying to get them to work. And they had steam which worked so beautifully, and it has for 50 years, right? So, we’re gonna go back. Seriously fellas, I wanna make that change. I’m gonna do an executive order,” Trump said. “They’re trying to make it work, they’re trying so hard, and they have something that’s perfect. So we’re gonna go back on that, and the magnets.”

The USS Gerald R. Ford actually cost roughly $13 billion to make, and while the production of the ship was delayed and experienced cost overruns, it’s not entirely clear why Trump has decided that the magnets on these ships don’t work. Meanwhile, the maintenance on steam catapults is considered labor intensive and costly, compared to newer models.

Trump has previously claimed the Electromagnetic Aircraft Launch System doesn’t work, though there is no evidence that this is true. In January 2024, Trump baselessly claimed that magnets stop working when placed in water, and therefore were a stupid thing to put on a boat.

Trump has said he wants a new “Golden Fleet” of warships. Shipping experts have said Trump’s dream of revamping the U.S. Navy to fit his aesthetic whims will likely cost billions of dollars—others say it is destined to fail.

Online retail giant Amazon plans to slash as many as 30,000 corporate jobs Tuesday, which would be the biggest number of layoffs at the company in three years. 

Reuters reports that the cuts would amount to 10 percent of the company’s close to 350,000 corporate employees, and would be across different departments. The last time Amazon cut this many jobs was 2022, when 27,000 were slashed late in the year. The move follows Amazon CEO Andy Jassy saying in June that AI tools would lead to job cuts. 

It’s not a good indicator for the economy under President Trump. The website Layoffs.fyi, which tracks job cuts, estimates that 98,344 technology employees have been laid off this year from 216 companies.  The site also estimates that 71,981 government employees have been laid off by Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency, out of a total of 182,528 federal employees departing from the jobs. 

The Bureau of Labor Statistics’ jobs report last month showed unemployment at a four-year high, with only 22,000 jobs added in August (compared to a forecast of 75,000). Thanks to the government shutdown, job and unemployment figures from September aren’t known, but they are likely pretty bad. ADP, which processes payrolls, reported earlier this month that the private sector lost 32,000 jobs in September. 

While the shutdown hides an official tally of how bad employment numbers are in America right now, Amazon’s impending layoffs, and estimates from other sources, indicate that the economy isn’t very strong right now—and the buck stops with the president. 

California will send election observers to counter the “election monitors” that Trump plans on sending to multiple deep blue districts in the state ahead of next week’s special election.

“They’re not going to be allowed to interfere in ways that the law prohibits,” California Attorney General Rob Bonta said Monday. “We cannot be naïve. The Republican Party asked for the U.S. DOJ to come in.”

“[Trump] is laying the groundwork. He is socializing an idea that is very dangerous,” Bonta added, noting that Trump still claims to have won the 2020 presidential election. “All indications, all arrows show that this is a tee up for something more dangerous in the 2026 midterms—and maybe beyond.”

Trump’s Justice Department last week announced it would send federal election monitors to several blue districts in California and New Jersey. In California, the Trump administration is likely well aware of Proposition 50, a ballot measure that would redraw the state’s congressional districts to help Democrats gain more seats in the U.S. House.

Trump’s DOJ monitoring a crucial election in California is a recipe for basic voting rights to be blatantly violated. Governor Gavin Newsom on Friday called it a “deliberate attempt to scare off voters and undermine a fair election.”

“They have no business doing that. They have no basis to do that,” he said in a video posted on X. “We have a statewide election for a statewide constitution. This is about voter intimidation, this is about voter suppression. Period, full stop.”

The Irish have had enough of Donald Trump.

McCormack’s Irish Pub in Richmond, Virginia, made waves earlier this month when its owner, William “Mac” McCormack, released some hot merchandise: a load of “Fuck Trump” black T-shirts, retailing for $11 a pop.

The shirts proudly display the pub’s logo: an antifascist emblem superimposed over a shamrock. A printed phrase circles around the icon, reading: “Fuck ICE, Fuck Nazis, Fuck Trump,” according to McCormack’s Facebook.

But the top did not resonate with those on the ideological right, who consumed the comment section before spilling over to the pub’s review pages on Yelp and Google. Some commenters scorned the pub’s self-advertised ideology as “disgusting,” deriding the shirts as a stunt that would “alienate half of [McCormack’s] clientele.”

One Yelp user, who goes by Marge and lives nearly 3,000 miles away in San Francisco, wrote that the service was “terrible” and the “food is almost as bad.”

“Save your time and money. This place sucks. Not a true Irish Pub,” the account wrote, leaving a one-star review on Saturday. “Liberals who think we care where they stand politically.”

But any regular would know that the shirt—and its message—are nothing unusual for McCormack’s.

“I was just making T-shirts that align with most of my customers, with the pub’s beliefs,” McCormack told RVA Magazine.

The shirt is really nothing new. There’s always been some variation of the shirt, according to its owner. “It used to just say, ‘Fuck Nazis.’ We just clarified who the Nazis were,” McCormack said.

McCormack’s is one of Richmond’s oldest dive bars. The successful institution has since expanded into two whiskey restaurants—McCormack’s Big Whisky Grill and McCormack’s Whisky Grill—but the original establishment has been proud to be punk since the 1990s, according to RVA.

“I’ve never hidden my politics there,” McCormack told the publication. “It’s bigger than just the bar, it’s what you believe. And it’s what I believe one hundred percent.”

Despite the backlash, there’s nothing illegal about voicing dissent against the government. Protesting the government is a protected right under the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, as established by the Founding Fathers. Comparing MAGA politics to Nazi Germany, McCormack told RVA that small-business owners should stick by their principles. “I don’t think we should be silent,” he said.

Voicing his disdain for the current administration has actually turned out to be a positive business decision for McCormack, who told RVA that the shirts have since sold out and that “all three locations have been busier than normal.”

New customers, attracted by the firm political stance, are going out of their way to share a drink at McCormack’s. Some Facebook users said they would travel from as far as New Jersey to grab a pint at the bar if it meant supporting the cause.

McCormack’s advice to other small-business owners: “Don’t be scared to have an opinion.”

“You don’t have to do it like I did,” McCormack told RVA. “You can be more subtle, but if we don’t speak up then we’re just the same as those people in Germany who still live with three generations of regret.”