A federal judge on Thursday blocked the Pentagon’s efforts to censure Sen. Mark Kelly and lower his retirement rank in the wake of a video in which the Arizona senator and other Democrats called on service members to reject unlawful orders.
U.S. District Judge Richard Leon, an appointee of former President George W. Bush, noted the military principal that servicemembers enjoy weakened First Amendment protections to preserve discipline in the armed forces, but said that no court had ever extended that doctrine to retired service members.
He said he would not be the first to do so.
“This Court has all it needs to conclude that Defendants have trampled on Senator Kelly’s First Amendment freedoms and threatened the constitutional liberties of millions of military retirees,” the judge wrote.
Leon quoted singer-songwriter Bob Dylan to say, “You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.”
“To say the least, our retired veterans deserve more respect from their Government,” the judge added, “and our Constitution demands they receive it!”
Hegseth wrote on X that the ruling will be “immediately appealed.”
“Sedition is sedition, ‘Captain,'” the Defense secretary said.
Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle are accusing the Department of Justice (DOJ) of spying on them as they reviewed the unredacted Epstein files on DOJ computers, tracking the documents they examined.
Pressure is mounting on Israel to scrap its plans to expand settlements in the West Bank ahead of a meeting between Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House.
The White House has deleted a social media post in which the vice-president, JD Vance, referred to the Armenian genocide, prompting anger from members of the Armenian diaspora as well as opposition politicians across the US.
Newly released evidence has shown that Gregory Bovino, a border patrol chief who was the face of the Trump administration’s mass deportation efforts until last month, praised a federal agent who shot a Chicago woman during an immigration crackdown last year.
Ukrainian forces repelled major Russian assaults in a single day in the Pokrovsk direction (Donetsk region), killing around 90 Russian soldiers.
For 200 days, Abu Ismail Hammad has been digging beneath his home in Gaza City, painstakingly collecting the remains of his wife and unborn child. He has been using a flour sifter to find their bone fragments hidden in the sand.
