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Amid escalating tensions with Venezuela and US military strikes on suspected drug smugglers in the Caribbean, the US admiral who commands military forces in Latin America will step down at the end of this year, the US defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, announced on social media.

Adm Alvin Holsey’s abrupt departure comes less than a year after he took over as head of the US military’s southern command, which oversees operations in Central America, South America and the Caribbean. The posting typically lasts three years.

A source told Reuters that there had been tension between the four-star commander and Hegseth as well as questions about whether he would be fired in the days leading up to the announcement.

The New York Times reports that an unnamed US official said that Holsey “had raised concerns about the mission and the attacks on the alleged drug boats”.

In a statement shared on social media, Hegseth did not disclose the reason for Holsey’s plan “to retire at year’s end”.

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A former U.S. Marine Corps colonel and combat veteran of 24 years resigned in late September, now saying he did so because of President Donald Trump and “concern for our country’s future.”

In an op-ed titled “I resigned from the military because of Trump,” published in The Washington Post on Thursday, Doug Krugman noted that “no commander in chief is perfect,” but said he nevertheless believed that previous presidents took their oaths to the Constitution With Trump, he wrote, he no longer believes that.

The Department of Defense has been in the spotlight during Trump’s second term under the leadership of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. The Trump administration has rebranded the department the “Department of War,” fixated on the physical appearance of military personnel, and ordered National Guard troops to heavily Democratic cities despite the opposition of blue state governors.

During an in-person meeting where hundreds of military leaders were summoned to a Marine Corps base in Quantico, Virginia, Trump outlined his vision for using the military for domestic purposes to fight the “enemy from within.”

Krugman wrote in his op-ed that although it was not clear to him if Trump was referring to real crime or to political dissent, “military force is not the answer.”

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Roughly 46,000 full-time U.S. military members are without pay during the federal government shutdown despite President Donald Trump's push to pay active duty troops.

The impacted service members, known as dual-status technicians, are full-time employees of the National Guard and other military reserve units who under federal law must wear their military uniform to work daily, must maintain part-time military uniform to work daily, must maintain part-time military membership and must meet military standards. According to the fiscal 2025 defense policy bill, the military currently has roughly 46,000 dual-status technician positions distributed across crucial functions like helicopter and plane maintenance, technology support, weapons repair and administrative support for isolated units.

The catch? Dual-status technicians are, technically speaking, civilian employees of the Defense Department despite the inherently military aspects of their jobs. And during the ongoing federal government shutdown, the Pentagon's civilian employees are going without pay, though many of them (including most technicians) must stay on the job due to the vital national security nature of their work.

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Vice President JD Vance threw his full support behind President Donald Trump’s deadly military strike on an alleged Venezuelan drug smuggling boat in the Caribbean this week, saying that he did not even care if people call it a war crime.

“Killing cartel members who poison our fellow citizens is the highest and best use of our military,” Vance wrote Saturday on X.

Political commentator Brian Krassenstein responded to say that “killing the citizens of another nation who are civilians without any due process is called a war crime.” Various experts on international law and the laws of war have also said the strike could be considered a war crime.

“I don’t give a shit what you call it,” the vice president replied.

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An active-duty soldier opened fire at Fort Stewart military base in south-east Georgia on Wednesday, wounding five other soldiers before being taken into custody.

All victims are in stable condition and expected to recover. Three of the soldiers required surgery, and two were transferred to Memorial Health University medical center in Savannah, the top-level trauma center for coastal Georgia.

Brig Gen John Lubas, commander of the third infantry division and Fort Stewart-Hunter army airfield, said at a press conference on Wednesday that the alleged shooter was 28-year-old Sgt Quornelius Radford, who was assigned to Fort Stewart.

“The shooting occurred at the soldier’s place of work,” Lubas said. “It did involve his co-workers. We’re still not certain about the motivations, but again, he’s been interviewed by army investigators, and we believe we’ll gain more information here shortly.”

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Most of defense department’s discretionary spending from 2020 to 2024 went to military contractors.

A new study of defense department spending previewed exclusively to the Guardian shows that most of the Pentagon’s discretionary spending from 2020 to 2024 has gone to outside military contractors, providing a $2.4tn boon in public funds to private firms in what was descrhttps://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jul/08/pentagon-military-spendingibed as a “continuing and massive transfer of wealth from taxpayers to fund war and weapons manufacturing”.

Responsible Statecraft and Costs of War project at Brown University said that the Trump administration’s new Pentagon budget will push annual US military spending past the $1tn mark.

That will deliver a projected windfall of more than half a trillion dollars that will be shared among top arms firms such as Lockheed Martin and Raytheon as well as a growing military tech sector with close allies in the administration such as JD Vance, the report said.

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