Hegseth Fires Top General After Laura Loomer Targets Him

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has fired Army Lieutenant General Brett Sylvia from the Joint Chiefs of Staff. This makes him at least the twenty-sixth senior military official to be ousted by Hegseth this year.

“The Chairman, the Joint Staff, and the Joint Force extend our deepest gratitude to Lt. Gen. Brett Sylvia and his family for their 32 years of distinguished service to our nation,” a spokesperson for the Joint Chiefs of Staff said in a statement to The Atlantic, which first reported the news. “We wish him and his family the best as they graduate to new opportunities and the next chapters of their lives.”

CBS reported that Sylvia’s firing was related to his allegedly failing three polygraph tests about leaks to the press. But Sylvia has been a target of the far right for some time now, as Islamaphobic content creator and unofficial Trump administration adviser Laura Loomer called for him to be fired over a year ago for his son Gavin’s comments on Charlie Kirk.

“Meet Gavin Sylvia. A ‘He/Him’ who displays his pronouns in his bio. He is currently employed as a data analyst with @fema, a DHS @DHSgov agency. Yesterday, he posted on Instagram, ‘Half mast for the literal racist homophobe misogynist?? bffr’. This was his response to Charlie Kirk being assassinated,” she wrote. “His father is a Major General in the United States Army and currently serves at the Pentagon. He was nominated for a third star by Joe Biden…. These people hate us. They don’t belong near the levers of our National Power…. Please fire Gavin Sylvia … [and] @PeteHegseth should also review the employment of Gavin’s father, MG Brett Sylvia.”

One year later, and her wish has been granted.

While the Pentagon claims Sylvia failed the polygraphs, Hegseth hasn’t really needed much of a reason to fire the 25 other high-ranking military leaders. Being a President Biden appointee, being too “woke,” or simply not jiving with Hegseth’s aggressive leadership style have made other officials targets of Hegseth’s purge.

This firing also comes as the war on Iran—one that the U.S. has been definitely losing for almost a year—appears likely to ramp up after the midterm elections.

A federal judge tore into the Trump administration for attempting to impede California’s elections, accusing the executive branch of operating more like a monarchy than a component of American democracy.

U.S. District Judge David Carter slammed the president and his subordinates Wednesday evening for filing a temporary restraining order that would have forced California to set aside roughly 20,000 ballots over baseless accusations of voter fraud.

“Never before in American history has the federal government, on the eve of an election, sought to coerce a state and local government to abandon their own Constitutional elections procedures and bend to the will of the Executive Branch,” Carter wrote. “In bringing this lawsuit, the Executive would have this Court believe that it reigns as a sole sovereign. But California and its people are sovereign, too.”

The Justice Department had demanded that California election workers not process ballots from thousands of individuals that it posited—without evidence—were “likely” noncitizens. State and local officials shot back that the DOJ list was unreliable. Los Angeles County, for instance, found that many people named on the DOJ list didn’t even have active voter registrations.

Election officials also argued that setting aside ballots before Election Day would be unlawful and possibly impossible, particularly when early voting and mail-in ballots are already being tabulated.

In response, the DOJ warned Californian officials that they could potentially face criminal exposure if they failed to comply with the White House’s demands, according to Democracy Docket.

“These threats must stop,” Carter ordered.

Carter noted that the DOJ has the ability to prosecute individual noncitizens when it actually has evidence they voted illegally, but does not have the authority to assert its election preferences across the country.

“The Executive’s requested relief,” Carter wrote, “would wreak havoc and disrupt the election that is already underway, create a chilling effect on election workers and voters alike, and discount the votes of United States citizens.

“This Court declines to be a party to such process.”

President Donald Trump is officially closing a public golf course in Washington, D.C., after a judge ordered him to stop trying to tear it up.

In a new court filing Wednesday, the National Parks Service announced that the agency had entered into a new lease agreement with the National Links Trust, a nonprofit that operates municipal golf courses, in order to shut down the East Potomac Golf Links for sweeping renovations. The closure will begin on November 15.

The agency also announced that on Friday, it would submit its plans for “a World Class, championship-level golf course that is capable of hosting major events” to the National Capital Planning Committee.

In a post on Truth Social Wednesday night, Trump claimed that the course was “highly dangerous, dilapidated, and absolutely disgusting.” He posted several photographs that showed debris and damage to the course.

“The gaping holes in the driving range’s ‘protective’ netting are highly hazardous,” he wrote. “Golf balls soar through the holes at high speed and hit unexpecting Golfers—including a White House staffer who was, sadly, hit violently in the chest.”

Trump claimed that he would ensure the course remained “affordable to locals” like the courses at Torrey Pines and Bethpage Black. East Potomac’s green fees are currently the same for residents and nonresidents, ranging from $16 to $48.

He also warned that he would attempt to hold the judge presiding over the case, U.S. District Judge Ana C. Reyes, “fully responsible for anybody who is hurt, or killed, on this very dangerous, dilapidated, and unsightly Golf Course.”

Earlier this week, Trump loudly announced his plans to ignore and appeal Reyes’s order blocking his planned takeover of the course, calling the decision “time-consuming, unnecessary, expensive, and unconstitutional.” Reyes had extended the order barring the Trump administration and the National Parks Service from cutting down more trees at the golf course while the lawsuit remains active. The order also requires the administration to give 10 days’ notice before making any “irreparable modification” to any “forms or features” on the property.

Long-lost family members are emerging out of the woodwork to defend Dr. Amy Acton from Vivek Ramaswamy’s revolting attacks.

As the days ticked down to the midterm election, Ramaswamy hatched a crackpot plan to damage Acton’s credibility by weaponizing the sexual assault she suffered during her childhood against her. Ramaswamy used Acton’s estranged mother, Donna Arthur, as part of a smear campaign to paint the Ohio Democratic gubernatorial nominee as a liar.

He moved forward with creating the ad spot against the advice of his team, and while ignoring publicly available information demonstrating that Arthur abandoned her children to skip town with a man who was indicted for allegedly raping Acton when she was a young girl.

But new evidence has emerged supporting Acton’s account of the abuse. The 62-year-old biological daughter of Acton’s stepfather and alleged abuser, Cledith “Bud” Arthur, told the Daily Mail Wednesday that she believes Acton’s story. Speaking through tears, the Youngstown, Ohio–based woman said that Arthur had also raped her late sister, Christine, years before he married Acton’s mother.

“Yes, he raped her, and it was more than once,” she told the digital outlet on the condition of anonymity.

“It was a terrible time for our family and it’s very hard to talk about it,” she continued. “My brother won’t say anything at all. It’s a nightmare for us to relive what happened in our family after all these years.”

Criminal records obtained by independent journalist Jacqueline Sweet corroborated the account, revealing that Arthur was indicted for raping Christine in 1973, when she was just 16 years old.

Two years later, Arthur married Acton’s mother and became a part of her household.

Acton has been very public about her broken family and childhood struggles. Over the years, she has discussed the horrific sexual abuse she endured from her stepfather (which she told The Youngstown Vindicator occurred between the ages of nine and 12), and also shared the family’s experiences with homelessness. In a March 2020 profile by the Toledo Blade, Acton said that they spent a winter living in a tent outside Youngstown.

Ramaswamy—a biotech billionaire who attended one of Ohio’s largest private high schools—has for whatever reason interpreted those stories as potential political fodder, and has attempted to utilize them for his own personal gain. But in doing so, he hasn’t just hurt himself and his opponent. He’s also injured the individuals connected to Acton’s painful past.

“Christine was a wonderful person but she was very damaged by it. It affected her. Our whole family was,” Acton’s unnamed stepsister told the Mail. “Seeing it played out in this campaign and on TV has brought a lot of terrible memories back.”

Russian President Vladimir Putin praised SpaceX CEO Elon Musk Wednesday as a “real genius.”

Putin was listening to a presentation from his digital development minister, Maksut Shadayev, who said that Russia was working on its own satellite system like Starlink and had already launched 30 satellites of his own, Reuters reports.

“Just a second, ⁠I want to point out this is just our first step. Elon Musk is a genius, truly a genius,” Putin, who was with a group of African leaders attending a summit in ​Moscow, said. “We are just taking our first steps, but we are proud that we started doing this and began doing it on our own. We are in close contact with our American partners, including Mr. Musk, because it is very important not to interfere with each other in orbit and to maintain certain discipline and order. Both we and our American partners value this.”

Musk’s Starlink network has close to 10,000 satellites, and Ukraine has relied on them in its war with Russia. Earlier this month, SpaceX throttled Ukraine’s Starlink connection, hurting the country’s ability to intercept Russian drones. Musk openly admitted to slowing down Ukraine’s connection on Saturday, saying that Ukraine’s use of Starlink “for offensive drone strikes to kill people has never been allowed, nor should it be.”

“Ukraine military violated Starlink terms of service and used it for offensive drone strikes to kill people. That loophole was closed last week,” Musk posted on X. “Starlink remains critical to the defense of Ukraine, as it is the only system that cannot be jammed or blown up, at least for now. Were Starlink to be turned off, the Ukrainian front line would collapse immediately. This is NOT a threat, it is simply a statement of fact.”

Musk and Putin have been communicating since at least 2021, and Russia sarcastically offered the tech oligarch asylum when he and President Trump were feuding last year. How much is Musk, who holds billions of dollars in federal contracts, sharing with Putin?