Hegseth and Co. Are Trying to Steal Other Agencies’ Funds, Dems Say

Democrats on the House Appropriations Committee have accused Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and the Pentagon of trying to steal funds from the National Institute of Health to make up for the record amount of taxpayer money they’ve spent in their war on Iran. 

Ranking Member Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut claimed in a Thursday press release that the Defense Department signed an interagency agreement that could give them access to billions of dollars in funding intended to go towards studies on influenza, malaria, tuberculosis, HIV, and Ebola. 

“This secretive attempt to siphon research funds away from NIH is outrageous. The interagency agreement needs to be terminated immediately,” DeLauro said. “These funds were provided for lifesaving medical research, not as extra money for the Department of Defense.”

The Pentagon is running so low on money that they apparently need to take from the NIH’s cup to buy more ammunition—to shoot down Iranian artillery that costs millions of dollars less than ours. That alone shows how devoted we are to the war machine, and how obtuse this administration’s priorities are.  

“It is no secret that the Department of Defense is facing enormous financial pressure because of President Trump’s war of choice with Iran,” DeLauro continued. “But the Trump administration cannot make American patients, families, and scientists pay the price. Circumventing Congress to divert money intended to help Americans who are exposed to … deadly diseases—and directing those funds to the Department of Defense—is beyond the pale. DoD already has programs, funded by Congress, to research and develop medical countermeasures to chemical, biological, and nuclear threats, and does not need NIH funding to do so. The administration must provide Congress with a full accounting of how this interagency agreement was developed and exactly how much taxpayer money it is trying to transfer to DoD.”

Flock Safety, the company behind the dystopian surveillance systems popping up in U.S. cities, is training law enforcement officers to use its products to surveil “No Kings” protests, 404Media reported Thursday.

In November, Caity Peak, Flock’s director of market management, led a webinar that explained how law enforcement officials could use FlockOS Real-Time Crime Centers to monitor “everything from small parades, to unexpected protests, to unprecedented disasters.” One example she used was tracking demonstrators at an anti-Trump protest.

“Now imagine that you’re an incident commander, and you’re working this No Kings protest. For the sake of the call, we put this in Denver as an example,” Peak said, explaining that an officer could review a response plan while watching live video footage of an event.

“I’ve got the video footage to monitor when things go sideways, I know when the environment is starting to shift. But I also know a lot of other things as well,” she said.

No Kings protests, which have been recurring since the beginning of the second Trump administration, are historically extremely tame, and generally attract older liberals who love America but hate Trump’s policies. The temperate collective action would likely not be far-left enough for any radical anti-fascist. Historically, it’s far more likely that counterprotesters or federal law enforcement would escalate violence at these events.

Still, the milquetoast demonstrations have managed to inspire outrage from Republicans and the Trump administration—marking their attendees as targets for the president’s police state.

Law enforcement officials, including police officers and border patrol, have used Flock’s automated license plate readers to track protesters at No Kings protests in June and October, as well as other demonstrations protected by the First Amendment, according to the Electronic Frontier Foundation. The group found more than 50 instances of law enforcement agencies using the company’s data servers to search for activity related to protests, and specific activist groups.

One of America’s largest newspapers made an elementary-level error in its obituary for Gloria Steinem.

Thousands of readers who learned of the trailblazing feminist’s death via The Washington Post’s social media notifications Thursday were met with an image of former New York Representative Shirley Chisholm—the first Black woman elected to Congress—rather than Steinem.

Steinem was in the photograph, seated beside Chisholm, who was pictured center. However, due to Steinem’s far-left placement in the image, she was cropped out of most of the paper’s social media posts.

The paper corrected the error by using an entirely different image of Steinem, though the original image still exclusively showed Chisholm on Google’s search engine for a few hours.

Steinem died Thursday morning, age 92, according to a statement published to her Instagram account.

She was one of the most famous feminists of the twentieth century, emerging as a leader of the second-wave feminist movement through the 1960s and ’70s. She often served as the face of a movement that—in no small part due to her influence—witnessed the development of Title IX, laws and regulations guarding women’s legal and financial rights, the passage of Roe v. Wade, the first United Nations World Conference on Women, and the national expansion of rape crisis centers, turning what had previously been a private issue into a political debate on equality.

Steinem’s journalism career was similarly profound. She broke into the national writing scene in 1962 with a feature for Esquire on contraceptive use that became a vehicle for Steinem to argue against the contemporary demands placed on women, forcing them to choose between having a career or having children. She went on to use her editorial prowess to advocate for and champion women’s rights.

The Post, meanwhile, has been on a downward spiral since Jeff Bezos decided to play a larger role in its operations in 2023, an enormous change after having mostly left the venerable newspaper to its own devices since purchasing it in 2013.

In 2024, Bezos refused to let the paper endorse a presidential candidate, ushering enormous public backlash and a wave of subscriber cancellations, chipping away at the paper’s business position as well as its reputation. Since then, the Post has bled some of America’s top journalistic talents, who were either forced out by relentless layoffs or the job insecurity they caused, sparking concerns that the paper is “dying.”

Vice President JD Vance thinks Americans should be more grateful that gas prices aren’t higher.

Speaking to the press at the White House Thursday, Vance said that the U.S. was the only country capable of ensuring that world energy markets “continue to stay supplied.” He claimed that if the U.S. left the Persian Gulf, there would be “no guaranteed access to oil and gas” and that the U.S.’s Gulf Arab allies say “that would be the worst thing in the world.”

The alternative, Vance said, was accepting that “the Iranians were going to shoot at ships like crazy people.”

“We’re going to do what we have to do in order to ensure that their efforts don’t lead to a worldwide energy crisis. We’ve been quite successful up to this point. Gas, frankly, could’ve been much, much higher were it not for our efforts,” Vance continued.

In the U.S., gas prices were less than $3 per gallon before the start of the Iran war in February, and since then, the national average is now $4.14. That increase has cost Americans more than $50 billion, according to a Brown University analysis. As of this writing, the most expensive gas in America is in California, where car owners are spending as much as $5.78 per gallon. That has hurt the economy, with Americans spending a lot less money on vacations over the summer. Flights and road trips have also declined, as jet fuel costs have also been affected by the Iran war.

Vance’s comments belie the fact that the Iran war was arbitrarily and unnecessarily started by the Trump administration. There was no threat to the flow of oil and gas or other maritime traffic traversing through the Strait of Hormuz prior to the war. If not for the efforts of President Trump, gas would in fact be much, much, lower.

The Pentagon on Thursday took down recently published clinical guidance for Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s mandatory testosterone screening requirements for troops.

Before Thursday, the Pentagon’s website showed a link for “Clinical Guidance for Health and Human Performance Optimization” that explained Hegseth’s testosterone deficiency screening requirements for male and female service members 30 and older. On Thursday, that link read “PAGE NOT FOUND.”

“The draft (document) published on September ​2, 2026, has been temporarily rescinded to allow for updates,” an anonymous official told Reuters. The reversal leaves the status of the controversial program unknown, as the department offered neither a timeline nor specifics on what was going to be updated.

Hegseth announced the controversial program last month.

“Today, I’m authorizing a new screening program for testosterone deficiency for our service members—ensuring you have the right testosterone levels to operate at your absolute best. Because it’s well-established science that as we age, testosterone levels often, naturally, drop,” he said in July. “Warfighters aged 30 and older are gonna be tested annually as part of their periodic health assessments.... Those under 30 can voluntarily choose to get the test as well.... If treatment is recommended, it’s entirely your choice to receive testosterone replacement therapy.”