COLUMBUS, N.M. (AP) — Orange no-entry signs posted by the U.S. military in English and Spanish dot the New Mexico desert, where a border wall cuts past onion fields and parched ranches with tufts of tall grass growing amidst wiry brush and yucca trees.

The Army has posted thousands of the warnings in New Mexico and western Texas, declaring a “restricted area by authority of the commander.”

It’s part of a major shift that has thrust the military into border enforcement with Mexico like never before.

The move places long stretches of the border under the supervision of nearby military bases, empowering U.S. troops to detain people who enter the country illegally and sidestep a law prohibiting military involvement in civilian law enforcement.

It is done under the authority of the national emergency on the border declared by President Donald Trump on his first day in office.

U.S. authorities say the zones are needed to close gaps in border enforcement and help in the wider fight against human smuggling networks and brutal drug cartels.

The militarization is being challenged in court, and has been criticized by civil rights advocates, humanitarian aid groups and outdoor enthusiasts who object to being blocked from public lands while troops have free rein.

Abbey Carpenter, a leader of a search-and-rescue group for missing migrants, said public access is being denied across sweltering stretches of desert where migrant deaths have surged.

“Maybe there are more deaths, but we don’t know,” she said.

Military expansion

Two militarized zones form a buffer along 230 miles (370 kilometers) of border, from Fort Hancock, Texas, through El Paso and westward across vast New Mexico ranchlands.

The Defense Department added an additional 250-mile (400-kilometer) zone last week in Texas’ Rio Grande Valley and plans another near Yuma, Arizona. Combined, the zones will cover nearly one-third of the U.S. border with Mexico.

They are patrolled by at least 7,600 members of the armed forces, vastly expanding the U.S. government presence on the border.

Reaction to the military buffer has been mixed among residents of New Mexico’s rural Luna County, where a strong culture of individual liberty is tempered by the desire to squelch networks bringing migrants and contraband across the border.

“We as a family have always been very supportive of the mission, and very supportive of border security,” said James Johnson, a fourth-generation farmer overseeing seasonal laborers as they filled giant plastic crates with onions, earning $22 per container.

Military deployments under prior presidents put “eyes and ears” on the border, Johnson said. This version is “trying to give some teeth.”

But some hunters and hikers fear they’re being locked out of a rugged and cherished landscape.

“I don’t want to go down there with my hunting rifle and all of a sudden somebody rolls up on me and says that I’m in a military zone,” said Ray Trejo, a coordinator for the New Mexico Wildlife Federation and a Luna County commissioner. “I don’t know if these folks have been taught to deescalate situations.”

A former public school teacher of English as a second language, Trejo said military trespassing charges seem inhumane in an economy built on immigrant farm labor.

“If the Army, Border Patrol, law enforcement in general are detaining people for reasons of transporting, of human smuggling, I don’t have a problem,” he said. “But people are coming into our country to work, stepping now all of a sudden into a military zone, and they have no idea.”

Nicole Wieman, an Army command spokesperson, said the Army is negotiating possible public access for recreation and hunting, and will honor private rights to grazing and mining.

Increased punishment

More than 1,400 migrants have been charged with trespassing on military territory, facing a possible 18-month prison sentence for a first offense. That’s on top of an illegal entry charge that brings up to six months in custody. After that, most are turned over to U.S. Customs and Border Protection for likely deportation. There have been no apparent arrests of U.S. citizens.

At a federal courthouse in Las Cruces, New Mexico, on the banks of the Upper Rio Grande, migrants in drab county jail jumpsuits and chains filed before a magistrate judge on a recent weekday.

A 29-year-old Guatemalan woman struggled to understand instructions through a Spanish interpreter as she pleaded guilty to illegal entry. A judge set aside military trespassing charges for lack of evidence, but sentenced her to two weeks in jail before being transferred for likely deportation.

“She sells pottery, she’s a very simple woman with a sixth-grade education,” a public defense attorney told the judge. “She told me she’s going back and she’s going to stay there.”

Border crossings

Border Patrol arrests along the southern border this year have dropped to the lowest level in six decades, including a 30% decrease in June from the prior month as attempted crossings dwindle. On June 28, the Border Patrol made only 137 arrests, a stark contrast with late 2023, when arrests topped 10,000 on the busiest days.

The first militarized zones, introduced in April and May, extend west of El Paso past factories and cattle yards to partially encircle the New Mexico border village of Columbus, and its 1,450 residents. It was here that Mexican revolutionary forces led by Pancho Villa crossed into the U.S. in a deadly 1916 raid.

These days, a port of entry at Columbus is where hundreds of children with U.S. citizenship cross daily from a bedroom community in Mexico to board public school buses and attend classes nearby.

Columbus Mayor Philip Skinner, a Republican, says he’s seen the occasional military vehicle but no evidence of disruption in an area where illegal crossings have been rare.

“We’re kind of not tuned in to this national politics,” Skinner said.

Oversight is divided between U.S. Army commands in Fort Bliss, Texas, and Fort Huachuca, Arizona. The militarized zones sidestep the Posse Comitatus Act, an 1878 law that prohibits the military from conducting civilian law enforcement on U.S. soil.

Russell Johnson, a rancher and former Border Patrol agent, said he welcomes the new militarized zone where his ranch borders Mexico on land leased from the Bureau of Land Management.

“We have seen absolutely almost everything imaginable that can happen on the border, and most of it’s bad,” he said, recalling off-road vehicle chases on his ranch and lifeless bodies recovered by Border Patrol.

In late April, he said, five armored military vehicles spent several days at a gap in the border wall, where construction was suspended at the outset of the Biden presidency. But, he said, he hasn’t seen much of the military in recent weeks.

“The only thing that’s really changed is the little extra signage,” he said. “We’re not seeing the military presence out here like we kind of anticipated.”

Court challenges

Federal public defenders have challenged the military’s new oversight of public land in New Mexico, seizing on the arrest of a Mexican man for trespassing through remote terrain to test the legal waters.

They decried the designation of a new military zone without congressional authorization “for the sole purpose of enabling military action on American soil” as “a matter of staggering and unpreceded political significance.” A judge has not ruled on the issue.

In the meantime, court challenges to trespassing charges in the militarized zone have met with a mixture of convictions and acquittals at trial.

Ryan Ellison, the top federal prosecutor in New Mexico, won trespassing convictions in June against two immigrants who entered a militarized zone again after an initial warning.

“There’s not going to be an issue as to whether or not they were on notice,” he told a recent news conference.

American Civil Liberties Union attorney Rebecca Sheff says the federal government is testing a more punitive approach to border enforcement with the new military zones and worries it will be expanded border-wide.

“To the extent the federal government has aspirations to establish a much more hostile military presence along the border, this is a vehicle that they’re pushing on to potentially do so. … And that’s very concerning,” she said.

The House passed President Donald Trump’s sweeping tax, health care, immigration and defense spending law Thursday by a vote of 218-214, securing the first part of the Pentagon’s bank-shot defense budget this year.

Among other provisions in the massive spending package, the bill contains $150 billion for the Defense Department, slated for priorities like shipbuilding, the Golden Dome homeland defense project and refilling America’s stores of precision weapons.

That total includes $113 billion in mandatory funding for the military, which the Pentagon has said pushes its budget close to $1 trillion for the first time. In its long-delayed budget release last week, the Defense Department requested a separate $848 billion in base funding, otherwise a cut when accounting for inflation.

Still, in an unusual arrangement, the Pentagon had been counting on the separate party-line bill passed Thursday for its budget in the coming fiscal year.

Normally, the administration reserves its top priorities for the base defense budget, which, despite frequent delays, is considered must-pass legislation each year. Instead, the Trump administration divided its spending into two bills — accepting the risk that the party-line package might fail and upend the Pentagon’s budget.

Congressional Republicans and Democrats criticized this setup and the lengthy wait to get the Trump administration’s budget request, as Pentagon leaders appeared on Capitol Hill to testify over the last two months.

But by passing the bill Thursday, Congress has inverted the same process it previously urged the administration to maintain.

As the administration approaches fiscal 2026, it will have the $150 billion in extra defense spending already available. But lawmakers and committee staff in Congress widely expect the fiscal year to begin with a continuing resolution, or a temporary funding bill that limits how the government can spend its money.

That would mean the Pentagon has supplemental funding passed without its base budget — like getting a bonus but while on furlough.

In the end, only two House Republicans voted against the measure, after a larger group threatened to tank the bill earlier in the week over concerns about the massive increase to America’s deficit it is forecasted to create.

U.S. military strikes on Iran’s three main nuclear facilities in June likely set that program back by 1-2 years, the Pentagon’s top spokesperson said Wednesday.

“We’re thinking probably closer to two years — like degraded their program by two years,” said Sean Parnell in his first standalone briefing.

Parnell’s assessment comes at a moment of confusion about the effect America’s massive airstrikes had on Iran’s nuclear program.

The administration has repeatedly said that the attacks “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear capabilities, a characterization Parnell himself repeated Wednesday.

But an early Defense Intelligence Agency review — first reported by CNN but later confirmed by the administration — estimated that the attacks had only delayed that program by a matter of months.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth argued that the damage had been more severe in a separate briefing last week. Still, he didn’t offer his own estimated timeline and didn’t dispute that the intelligence review contained the reported findings — only that they were premature.

Parnell didn’t detail Wednesday what new intelligence resulted in his updated assessment.

“We believe that Iran’s nuclear capability has been severely degraded, perhaps even their ambition to build a bomb,” he said.

In late June, the U.S. military attacked Iran’s three main nuclear sites with an enormous number of precision weapons, including more than two dozen Tomahawk cruise missiles and 14 bunker-busting bombs, which weigh 30,000 pounds each.

The strikes compounded damage already done by Israel, which had begun trading strikes with Iran little more than a week before but didn’t have the equipment necessary to threaten the heavily fortified facilities.

“The assessments are ongoing, and every day that goes by the intelligence picture that we have gets clearer,” Parnell said.

He promised to continue updating the press corps as more information becomes available.

CHICAGO — Standing near the gravestone for the relative he never met, Mark Bailey accepted the crisply folded American flag from the Army officer, hugged it to his chest and closed his eyes.

Though the person he called his aunt — born Reba Caroline Bailey — had been estranged, missing for decades and died in 2015 as an unidentified ward of the state, he felt connection and a sense of closure.

“I want to let Reba know we’re part of the circle and part of the family,” he said.

Mark Bailey was among dozens of attendees at an unusual funeral service with military honors this week for an Illinois veteran with memory problems so severe that they died an unnamed person. The ceremony became possible because of an extraordinary cold case investigation that identified the 75-year-old postmortem.

Investigators unearthed the mystery of how the Women’s Army Corps veteran ended up homeless in Chicago with few recollections of their own life, aside from identifying as a man named Seven.

“I never knew I had this family member,” said Mark Bailey’s 19-year-old son Cole, who also drove from central Illinois for the service. “It’s nice to know I have somebody that’s been found and isn’t lost anymore.”

Since the investigation’s conclusion, the numbered cement cylinder that marked the unidentified grave has been replaced with a rectangular plague with a cross that reads: “Reba Caroline Bailey, PFC US Army.”

The cold case

The case of Seven Doe, the name appearing in some official records, came to Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart’s office in 2023. The unidentified body belonged to a person who died of natural causes in an assisted living facility. They were a ward of the state, unable to remember a legal name or family.

The cause of death was heart disease with diabetes and dementia as contributing factors and the body was buried in a section for unclaimed people at Mount Olivet Catholic Cemetery on Chicago’s Far South Side. The medical examiner marked it as the 4,985th case of the year and put the number on the headstone.

In 2023, investigators ran fingerprints taken postmortem and found a 1961 Army record for the veteran, formerly of Danville, about 140 miles (225.31 kilometers) south of Chicago. The search for close living relatives came up short; five siblings and an ex-husband had all died.

The family members they did locate had only heard stories of a relative who had disappeared. After making the identification, detectives ordered a new headstone with the same name on military records. It was quietly installed last year.

Commander Jason Moran, who oversees the sheriff’s missing persons unit, said it was rewarding to make sure the identified veteran got the benefit of a funeral with military honors.

“It’s just a privilege to be able to help families and really close the story,” said Moran, whose work on other high-profile cold cases has gained notoriety.

Seven’s mysterious life

Several generations of the Bailey family have told stories about what happened to their missing relative since leaving the military to get married.

They’ve wondered about the possibility of children or their relative’s gender identity. Some believe that there was a family dispute but the stories about its origins vary from the decision to join the military to sexual orientation.

Family members tried to find their missing relative over the years, including Amanda Ingram, who would have been a great-niece. She maintains a meticulous family tree with Census records and photos.

“It’s amazing how somebody can just disappear like that and not know what happened,” Ingram said this week. “I’m pretty sure we’re never going to know the details.”

On a winter day in the late 1970s, a person wearing a military-style jacket and aviator cap was curled up on the porch of St. Francis Catholic Worker House in Chicago. Residents who stayed there at the time told The Associated Press that the person asked to be called Seven, spoke in the third person and identified as a man.

Seven quickly became the house cook. The meals drew crowds to the neighborhood where several homeless advocacy groups operated, according to former residents’ accounts.

Investigators have tried to explain the memory loss and floated theories about brain damage related to a 1950 car accident that killed Bailey’s mother or to military service. That included stints at Fort Ord in California, a polluted former Army base, and Fort McClellan in Alabama, formerly used for chemical weapons training, and where the federal government has acknowledged potential exposure to toxins.

Neither family, investigators nor residents of the worker house figured out the meaning behind the name Seven.

Ingram, who lives in Alabama, couldn’t make the ceremony this week. But she asked volunteers from an Illinois chapter of Daughters of the American Revolution to attend on her behalf.

“Everybody who comes to visit that cemetery will pass by it and know who she was,” said Ingram, whose detailed family trees include records using Bailey’s birth name.

Honoring a complicated life

Mark Bailey said he and his son wanted to bring something to the service that would honor both parts of their long-lost relative’s life.

They had heard their relative had an affinity for the Cubs and looked for a jersey with the number “7” on it, but settled on a blue team cap. They set it on the headstone.

The service held Tuesday included prayers, a 21-gun salute and a bugler playing taps — a chilling, 24-note salute that is traditionally played at funerals of U.S. military veterans. Attendees included Cook County sheriff’s investigators and Archdiocese of Chicago staff.

“I just wish the rest of them could be identified as well,” Mark Bailey told those attending while pointing to the rows of unidentified graves.

Dart, the Cook County sheriff, said the ceremony left him nearly speechless, saying the Illinois veteran deserved military honors and a flag from the U.S. president “instead of being forgotten and left as an anonymous number somewhere.”

Relatives said they planned to eventually display the flag at the American Legion in Potomac, near where the Bailey family has roots.

Mark Bailey said the acknowledgement of military service was particularly meaningful with so many veterans in the extended family. He hoped the memory would stay with his son Cole, who plans to enlist.

“For him, it’ll be something he’ll have forever,” he said.

The U.S. Navy will control a new national defense area established across 140 miles of the U.S.-Mexico border in Arizona, the Pentagon announced Wednesday.

The new NDA will become an extension of Marine Corps Air Station Yuma and be sited near the Barry M. Goldwater Air Force Range.

The announcement comes just days after the creation of another national defense area in Texas. In these zones, military personnel install barriers and signage, conduct patrols and stop and detain trespassers, who they transfer to the custody of law enforcement.

The Barry M. Goldwater range is a remote bombing range encompassing an uninhabited stretch of the Sonora Desert. It has been used as a training site for decades, but only about 6% contained any military infrastructure previously.

The area has long been a site of illegal narcotics smuggling and human trafficking activity, according to public reports. And erosion from illegal cross-border foot traffic, litter and vehicle traffic has caused significant environmental damage.

“In an effort to determine the full scope of damage that illegal border crossings and deterrence activities are having on the landscape, the USAF began a drag roads monitoring project in 2015 that is still ongoing,” noted a report by Luke Air Force base in 2023.

Meeting minutes of the Barry M. Goldwater Range Executive Council published the same year by the Marine Corps Air Station Yuma described the area as a hotbed of illegal drug trafficking, with 40 kilos of meth seized in the area in December 2022.

Air Force to manage new militarized zone along US-Mexico border

One Border Patrol representative described the area during a council meeting in 2023, noting, “On the Barry M. Goldwater Range-West ... [Border Patrol] are continuing to see multiple breaches of the border wall on Cabeza Prieta between Monuments 180 and 175. As the breaches are cut, they are repaired, but they cannot keep up.”

Additionally, large groups of migrants have had to be rescued from the bombing range after becoming lost in the desert. In 2019, 17 people entering the country illegally, including eight adults and nine youth, were rescued after becoming lost.

The Arizona expansion marks the fourth NDA created on the border so far, with the third recently having been established in South Texas. That national defense area spans 250 miles of the Rio Grande River through Hidalgo and Cameron counties and will be administered as an extension of Joint Base San Antonio.

There are currently an estimated 8,500 troops on the southern border as part of an effort by President Donald Trump and his administration to establish control of narcotics trafficking and illegal border crossings.

Editor’s note: This story was written and reported by Honolulu Civil Beat.

The Honolulu Board of Water Supply is taking the U.S. Navy to court for refusing to cover the local agency’s costs following the 2021 fuel spill at Red Hill, as the agency tries to protect the groundwater that Oʻahu’s nearly 1 million residents rely on from further contamination.

The suit filed in federal court Tuesday puts the agency’s total costs at $1.2 billion to clean up remnants of the spill plus guard the island’s drinking water wells against additional contaminants spreading underground.

The Navy left the Board of Water Supply no choice but to seek those damages in court, Board Chair Nāʻālehu Anthony said in a statement, after “months of futile negotiations.”

Judge awards $680K to Hawaii military families over fuel-tainted water

The November 2021 spill contaminated the military’s own separate water system, too, which draws from the same underground aquifer complex and is used by more than 90,000 people to drink, bathe and clean.

Thousands of those military personnel and their family members were sickened in the days that followed the spill, and the local water agency scrambled to isolate the island’s general water supply. That included shutting down the city’s nearby Hālawa Shaft and ʻAiea and Hālawa wells, which represented about a quarter of Oʻahu’s water supply.

The incident was hardly a surprise. Multiple leaks had occurred at the 20 massive, underground fuel tanks buried at Red Hill in prior decades and Board of Water Supply Manager and Chief Engineer Ernie Lau had publicly urged the Navy for years to refurbish those tanks and better protect against future spills.

In the wake of the 2021 spill, Lau has repeatedly expressed frustration at the Navy’s heavily redacted reports on water testing and what he’s described as its limited transparency.

“This is not an issue that will be solved quickly or cheaply,” Lau said in a statement Tuesday. “Every action must be taken to protect the purity of Oʻahu’s water, and it is only right that the Navy assume financial responsibility for its actions.”

The Navy did not immediately respond to a request for comment Tuesday on the new suit.

Last month, many Red Hill military families expressed disappointment with the limited payouts they were awarded as part of a separate lawsuit against the Navy. At least 76 fuel release incidents have occurred at the Red Hill facility since the late 1940s, that lawsuit stated, potentially leaking more than a million gallons of fuel into the ground.

A military veteran was sentenced Wednesday to life in prison for plotting to attack an FBI office and assassinate law enforcement officers in retaliation for his arrest on charges that he was part of the mob that stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, court records show.

Edward Kelley was one of the first rioters to breach the Capitol. Nearly two years later, Kelley made plans with another man to attack the FBI office in Knoxville, Tennessee, using improvised explosive devices attached to vehicles and drones, according to prosecutors.

Last November, a jury convicted Kelley of conspiring to murder federal employees, solicitation to commit a crime of violence and influencing federal officials by threat.

Kelley, 36, received a pardon from President Donald Trump for his Jan. 6 convictions, but a judge agreed with prosecutors that Trump’s action did not extend to Kelley’s Tennessee case. That makes Kelley, who is from Maryvale, Tennessee, one of only a few Capitol riot defendants remaining in prison after the Republican president’s sweeping act of clemency.

U.S. District Judge Thomas Varlan handed down Kelley’s life sentence during a hearing in Knoxville, according to court records. The judge denied a request for Kelley to be released pending the outcome of an appeal.

Prosecutors had recommended a life sentence for Kelley, saying he was remorseless and incapable of rehabilitation.

“On the contrary, Kelley not only believes the actions for which he was convicted were justified but that his duty as a self-styled ‘patriot’ compelled him to target East Tennessee law enforcement for assassination,” they wrote.

Kelley served in the Marine Corps for eight years. He was deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan before his 2015 discharge from the military.

On Jan. 6, 2021, Kelley was captured on video helping two other rioters throw a Capitol Police officer onto the ground and using a piece of wood to damage a window, according to the FBI. He was the fourth person to enter the Capitol through a broken window, the FBI said.

After a trial without a jury, a federal judge in Washington convicted Kelley last November of 11 counts stemming from the riot. Before Kelley could be sentenced, Trump pardoned him and hundreds of other convicted Capitol rioters.

Kelley argued that his pardon was broad enough to cover his conduct in the Tennessee case, but the judge disagreed. Varlan said Kelley’s crimes in the Tennessee case were separated from Kelley’s conduct on Jan. 6 “by years and miles.” Prosecutors reached the same conclusion.

In other Jan. 6 cases, however, Trump’s Justice Department has argued that the pardons apply to separate convictions. For instance, prosecutors concluded that a Kentucky man’s pardon for storming the Capitol also covered his conviction for illegally possessing guns when FBI agents searched his home for the Jan. 6 investigation.

Kelley has been jailed since December 2022. His lawyer, Mark Brown, said Kelley did not hurt anybody or directly threaten anybody with violence. Brown urged the judge to reject prosecutors’ request to apply a “terrorism enhancement” in calculating his client’s sentence.

“Kelley does not deserve the same sentence as an actual ‘terrorist’ who injured or killed hundreds or thousands of America citizens,” Brown wrote.

Kelley’s co-defendant, Austin Carter, pleaded guilty to a conspiracy charge in January 2024. He is scheduled to be sentenced on Aug. 4.

Kelley created a list of 36 law enforcement officers to target for assassination and shared it with Carter, calling it their first “mission,” according to prosecutors. All the officers were involved in Kelley’s May 2022 arrest on Capitol riot charges and the FBI’s search of his home.

“The proof at trial established that Kelley targeted law enforcement because of their anticipated role in the civil war that Kelley hoped to initiate and because of his animus towards those who participated in his May 2022 arrest and search of his home,” prosecutors wrote.

Kelley, Carter and a third man used an encrypted messaging platform to discuss plans, prosecutors said. Carter testified that he met with Kelley to conduct military-style training in November 2022.

“Carter’s testimony was unequivocal — he had no doubts that, had he and Kelley not been arrested, the law enforcement personnel included on Kelley’s list would have been murdered,” prosecutors wrote.

Kelley’s attorney said the case involved “little to no planning.”

“Discussions did not lead to action,” Brown wrote. ”And while people may not like what Mr. Kelley had to say, he stands behind his position that he has a First Amendment right to free speech.”

Sergeant Major of the Marine Corps Carlos Ruiz learned a lesson the hard way: Never put “Baby” in a corner.

In a now-deleted Instagram post this week, Ruiz can be seen pointing toward a photo of a U.S. soldier with a myriad of medals strewn across his chest and arms.

“Uniform standards have entered the group chat!” Ruiz wrote in the post. “Exhibit A: This is what it looks like when we don’t have a standard. Make sure to check out MCO 1020.34H for all uniform guidance!”

Ruiz blurred out the soldier’s face, but it took users mere seconds to clock that the photo Ruiz was referring to was of Audie Murphy — nicknamed “Baby” — the single-most decorated American combat soldier of WWII and one of the most decorated American service members of all time.

In the photo, Murphy is wearing his awards in the correct order of precedence. The rack holder for medals was not produced until after WWII.

In response to the post, Ruiz faced a sea of roasters on Army and Marine Reddit pages alike.

“Love how he blurred out the face as if it’s not an iconic picture,” one user wrote on r/army.

“Out of all pictures on God’s green earth why would he use that picture[?]” another commented.

Ruiz quickly deleted his post and issued an apology, stating, “Earlier today I posted a picture of a great American hero, Audie Murphy. In poor taste, I linked his uniform to today’s regulations. My sincere apologies, as I meant no disrespect. There is a history linked to that photo and why his decorations are where they are. It shouldn’t have happened and there are no excuses.”

A spokesperson for the Marine Corps told Military Times they backed Ruiz’s apology. The service told Task and Purpose the post was an “unforced error where the message being sent should have used a Marine as an example,” and there was no intent to “disparage a great American soldier.”

For most of recorded history, more men have died from disease in some faraway field than from an enemy bullet.

“Diseases,” writes historian John A. Haymond, “particularly those of the insect-borne or water-specific types, have been responsible for untold millions of deaths in militaries across the millennia. Ironically, armies ravaged by disease have usually carried the seeds of their destruction with them in the form of poor field sanitation habits. After all, a sufficiently provisioned army of 10,000 men could produce about four tons of fecal waste every day.”

On June 11, 1942, disease, and perhaps an increasing desire not to use one’s own hand to wipe one’s nether regions, drove Lt. Cmdr. James Coe of the submarine Skipjack to send an “urgent” message to the powers that be.

Since July 1, 1941, a requisition had been submitted for 150 rolls of toilet paper to replenish the dwindling supply aboard the Skipjack. However, as the boat patrolled the Pacific, no sign of the all-important bathroom item appeared — even as other war materiel came in.

In March 1942, according to the National WWII Museum, Coe took command of the Skipjack and learned of the dire, and no doubt malodorous, situation. To make matters worse, Coe received a canceled invoice for the TP alongside a stamped July 1941 message stating “cancelled-cannot identify.”

In response to this bureaucratic fumble, Coe issued a letter to the supply officer in Mare Island, California. His tongue-in-cheek rejoinder would become the stuff of legends within the Navy.

USS SKIPJACK

June 11, 1942

From: Commanding Officer To: Supply Officer, Navy Yard, Mare Island, California Via: Commander Submarines, Southwest Pacific

Subject: Toilet Paper

Reference: (a) USS HOLLAND (5148) USS Skipjack req. 70-42 of 30 July 1941. (b) SO NYMI Canceled invoice No. 272836

Enclosure: (1) Copy of cancelled Invoice (2) Sample of material requested.

1. This vessel submitted a requisition for 150 rolls of toilet paper on July 30, 1941, to USS HOLLAND. The material was ordered by HOLLAND from the Supply Officer, Navy Yard, Mare Island, for delivery to USS Skipjack.

2. The Supply Officer, Navy Yard, Mare Island, on November 26, 1941, cancelled Mare Island Invoice No. 272836 with the stamped notation “Cancelled---cannot identify.” This cancelled invoice was received by Skipjack on June 10, 1942.

3. During the 11 ¾ months elapsing from the time of ordering the toilet paper and the present date, the Skipjack personnel, despite their best efforts to await delivery of subject material, have been unable to wait on numerous occasions, and the situation is now quite acute, especially during depth charge attack by the “back-stabbers.”

4. Enclosure (2) is a sample of the desired material provided for the information of the Supply Officer, Navy Yard, Mare Island. The Commanding Officer, USS Skipjack cannot help but wonder what is being used in Mare Island in place of this unidentifiable material, once well known to this command.

5. Skipjack personnel during this period have become accustomed to use of “ersatz,” i.e., the vast amount of incoming non-essential paper work, and in so doing feel that the wish of the Bureau of Ships for the reduction of paper work is being complied with, thus effectively killing two birds with one stone.

6. It is believed by this command that the stamped notation “cannot identify” was possible error, and that this is simply a case of shortage of strategic war material, the Skipjack probably being low on the priority list.

7. In order to cooperate in our war effort at a small local sacrifice, the Skipjack desires no further action be taken until the end of the current war, which has created a situation aptly described as “war is hell.”

J.W. Coe

War is hell when you don’t even have one-ply toilet paper but one must commend the eco-conscious Coe and crew for utilizing the “the vast amount of incoming non-essential paper work” to get the job done.

After almost a year going without the precious commodity, Skipjack submariners’ fortunes were about to change. Upon returning to Australia after its patrol, the men were greeted with crates of toilet paper seven feet high, toilet paper streamers decorating the dock and a band wearing toilet paper neckties with toilet paper adorning their trumpets and horns to greet them.

Tragically, after assuming command of the submarine Cisco in January of 1943, Cmdr. Coe was determined “missing in action” after the Cisco failed to return from war patrol in the South China Sea. He was presumed dead on Jan. 8, 1946.

However, his bravery — he was awarded the Navy Cross for his action on the Skipjack — and his particular brand of humor continue to live on.

New bipartisan legislation reintroduced in the Senate this week aims to ensure all combat boots worn by U.S. service members are manufactured entirely in the United States.

The Better Outfitting Our Troops, or BOOTS, Act has united a diverse coalition of lawmakers across the political spectrum in proposing that all U.S. military boots are produced from only American-manufactured components. That includes optional combat boots, which are authorized by commanders as an alternative to the military’s standard-issue boots.

Sponsors of the BOOTS Act include Senators Tammy Duckworth, D-Ill., Susan Collins, R-Maine, and Angus King, I-Maine, as well as Representatives Mike Bost, R-Ill., Nikki Budzinski, D-Ill., and Jared Golden, D-Maine.

Defense Department regulations currently allow for the purchase of boots made in foreign countries, which lawmakers contend are not only cheap in quality but undermine the domestic supply chain and American businesses.

“Mandating that all optional combat boots be American made means not only that our troops wear high-quality footwear, it also means we’re reducing our reliance on foreign supply chains, bolstering our defense industrial base and creating good-paying jobs for small and large manufacturers in communities right here at home,” Duckworth said in a statement.

The bill has called into question the reality of U.S. troops wearing Chinese-manufactured boots at a time when the DOD is prioritizing countering threats from China and investing resources in the Indo-Pacific area.

“Belleville Boots has been crafting top-quality military footwear for our service members since World War I. But like so many American manufacturers, they’re facing unfair competition from a flood of cheap, low-quality imports — often from countries like China,” Budzinski said in a statement. Budzinski represents the town of Belleville, Illinois, where Belleville Boots is based.

“This not only undercuts American jobs, it poses real risks to troop readiness and our national security.”

According to the United States Footwear Manufactures Association, American shoe manufacturers currently produce less than 1% of an average of 2.7 billion shoes sold annually in the country.

“Alarmingly, up to 50 percent of our service members currently wear foreign-made ‘optional’ boots, primarily from China and Vietnam, while on duty,” said Bill McCann, Executive Director USFMA.

The BOOTs Act has been endorsed by an array of American companies and associations, including the USFMA, Belleville Boot Co., Glacial Lakes Rubber and Plastics, Worthen Industry and the American Apparel and Footwear Association, among many others.

“Currently, foreign-made boots undermine military readiness and disadvantage American manufacturers, weakening the U.S. supply chain,” McCann said in an open letter regarding the BOOTS Act. “This commonsense change ensures uniform consistency, reduces confusion for service members, and supports the domestic industrial base as manufacturers rebuild capacity.”

The Green Berets he served with in Afghanistan knew him as a gentle giant with a ready grin. When they learned he’d been gunned down outside of his new home in Houston, Texas, they felt shock and disbelief. Now, two months after Abdul Rahman Waziri’s death, they’re still waiting for justice.

On June 17, the Houston Police Department announced that the case of Waziri’s April 27 killing, allegedly over a parking dispute, would be referred to a grand jury. But they have yet to make an arrest in the case, despite identifying the shooter at the scene and taking his statement.

Ben Hoffman, a retired master sergeant who met Waziri in Afghanistan, where he was part of the National Mine Reduction Group, a unit of contractors who protected Green Berets from hidden explosives, called Waziri “a striking figure and one of the kindest guys I’ve ever met.”

“It made me really mad that this guy, who fought for years to keep me and my buddies safe in the special operations community, to come to the United States and die in general was bad enough,” Hoffman told Military Times. “But then in the way that it seems like it happened, and the lack of reaction there seems to have been from the authorities, it absolutely blows my mind. Like, how does this happen? How is America less safe than Logar province, Afghanistan?”

Hoffman described Waziri as over six feet tall and a muscular 225 pounds, but said he wasn’t a brawler and didn’t throw his weight around. Rather, he said, Waziri was humble, and always focused on accomplishing his mission.

“I felt like … [Waziri] and I were basically cut from the same cloth, like we were built to fight, but hated fighting because we wanted peace so much,” Hoffman said.

Led by another Army veteran, Thomas Kasza, about two dozen former Green Berets who’d served with Afghans in the NMRG signed a letter to the Harris County District Attorney’s office in May, demanding justice and answers.

“Had Abdul Rahman worn an American flag on his shoulder, the public would never tolerate this breathtaking degree of opacity,” they wrote. “This is not a request for special treatment. This is a request for treatment commensurate with the service he rendered to our country.”

According to the Houston Police Department, the shooting took place about 9:15 p.m. on April 27. Waziri, 31, was found lying next to a white Toyota Camry, having been shot multiple times, and pronounced dead at Ben Taub General Hospital. A 31-year-old man who lived at the same apartment complex approached police and identified himself as the shooter. Police took his statement and took custody of his gun, but released the man after consulting with the Harris County DA.

Reached for comment, a Houston Police Department official said the police investigation had concluded and referred all questions to the DA’s office. Damali Keith, a spokeswoman for the Harris County DA, said the case remains under investigation and said there’s no real timeline for a grand jury decision.

Surveillance video first reported by NBC News shows Waziri’s Camry pulling into a parking area and putting on its blinkers. A black Kia sedan then pulls in, and an altercation ensues, largely obscured by a parking structure. The end of the video shows the alleged shooter calmly walking away.

Omar Khawaja, a lawyer for Waziri’s family who uncovered the surveillance video, also found a witness who then lived at the same apartment complex and provided police with a fuller accounting of what happened. The witness, he said, described Waziri walking to a mailbox to check his mail, and then returning to his car, where a confrontation ensues. The alleged shooter kicked Waziri’s car, Khawaja said, and a physical altercation ensued. Then the man returned to his vehicle, according to the witness account, retrieved a gun, and returned to shoot Waziri with it.

“We were also told that Mr. Waziri essentially begged for his life,” Khawaja said. “He said, ‘Don’t shoot me.’”

Khawaja cited Texas’ laws protecting shootings allegedly in self-defense as a possible reason the killer was not arrested. But he also said the police decision to release the man, allowing him to roam free in the apartment complex, had a “major chilling effect” on witnesses.

Waziri’s wife and two young children, meanwhile, have moved to Tampa to be near family, said his brother, Abdullah Khan.

Khan, who helped U.S. troops as a translator in Afghanistan, said he came to the U.S. on a special immigration visa in 2020, a year before Waziri was able to leave Afghanistan amid the departure of American troops. Waziri, he said, had earned a commercial driver’s license to work as a truck driver and had established a home for his children, ages 4 and 9 months, and a community around fellow Afghan immigrants in Texas.

“We came here, and we were … feeling [more] safe here than Afghanistan — it’s always something every day,” he said. “We got out, and America was safe for us, but unfortunately, America is also not safe.”

Shireen Connor, a social worker who has helped to support resettlement of Afghan allies in the U.S. and been in close contact with Waziri’s family since the shooting, said she believes recent action in the case, including the decision to refer the case to a grand jury, was a direct result of the pressure applied by veterans and the news attention it had received. But still, she worries that the killer — who appears to still be free and who law enforcement has not confirmed even remains within their jurisdiction — will face no consequences in Waziri’s killing.

“I can’t even consider what’s happened to date a miscarriage of justice,” she said, “because no justice has been applied.”

The Senate passed a massive party-line spending package Tuesday, including a one-time surge in defense spending the Pentagon is counting on for its upcoming fiscal year 2026 budget.

By a vote of 51-50 — with Vice President JD Vance breaking the tie — the chamber advanced the vast tax, health care and border security bill President Donald Trump has championed as key to his legislative agenda.

That 940-page “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” also features $150 billion in funding for the military, which would go toward shipbuilding, the Golden Dome homeland missile defense project, munitions and other key priorities.

The bill next goes back to the House for final consideration. Trump has set a deadline of July 4 to pass the spending package out of that chamber, though some lawmakers in the House have already said they’re unlikely to approve the bill before the end of the week.

The Pentagon has argued this package should be counted as part of the DOD’s overall defense budget plan for the coming year, and defense officials moved spending priorities usually reserved for its base spending plan into the one-time package.

In its delayed spending request last week, the Defense Department issued an $848 million base budget request, which is a cut when accounting for inflation. That said, the Pentagon is counting on $113 billion in immediate funding from the supplemental spending bill in Congress, bringing the total for military spending closer to $960 billion.

Still, many top Republicans and Democrats in Congress have argued that the unusual arrangement will cause unnecessary confusion for the Pentagon and the defense industry responsible for major weapons programs.

In a briefing to describe the funding request, senior defense and military officials countered this argument, saying the immediate surge in funding may reassure some of these companies, which are accustomed to Congress starting the fiscal year on temporary spending plans known as continuing resolutions.

One official, who like others spoke on the condition of anonymity, said the administration would likely keep military funding close to $1 trillion for next year as well, though it hasn’t yet decided on an appropriate baseline.

If not, the Defense Department will face extremely difficult choices when deciding how to factor the priorities included in the one-time spending package back into its yearly budget.

Airborne soldiers are inherently vulnerable when they enter battle, dangling from a parachute or sitting in a glider or a helicopter. With that in mind, they undergo exceptional combat training, aimed at making up for things from the moment they’ve landed and regained control of their fate.

Even by their own formidable standards, there are occasions when they outdo themselves.

Such is the case of Pvt. John Towle who, faced with a company-size enemy force with armor support, took initiatives worthy of an officer and comported himself like a one-man anti-tank unit.

Enlisting in the U.S. Army in March of 1943, the Ohio native underwent rigorous training with the newly created airborne units and assigned to Company C, 504th Parachute Infantry Regiment 82nd Airborne Division.

It didn’t take long for Towle to add experience to his intense training foundation as the 82nd Division made its way through brutal campaigns in North Africa, Italy and France. During that time, he became C Company’s rocket launcher specialist, excelling in the use of the M1A1 2.36-inch “Bazooka.”

On Sept. 17, 1944, the 504th PIR took part in the ambitious multi-target offensive to liberate the Netherlands, dubbed Operation Market Garden. Results of this, the largest airborne operation of the war thus far, varied considerably, with the British and Polish attempts on Arnhem falling painfully short.

The 82nd Airborne, by comparison, was one of the successes, with its troopers fighting their way across the Waal River and securing Nijmegen’s bridges by Sept. 20.

As of Sept. 21, the 504th PIR was holding the western sector of the Nijmegen bridgehead when word spread of a German counterattack approaching the Dutch hamlet of Oosterhout.

Towle, occupying the leftmost foxhole, evaluated his situation, took up his M1A1 and ran 200 yards forward through small arms fire until he reached an exposed dike roadbed. There he confronted about 100 German soldiers backed up by two Panzerkampfwagen Mark IV tanks and a half-track.

“With full knowledge of the disastrous consequences resulting not only to his company but to the entire bridgehead by an enemy breakthrough,” reads his Medal of Honor citation, Coolly fired, reloaded and re-fired his rockets, striking both of the enemy tanks.

The Germans were already familiar with anti-tank rockets and had developed a counter to the threat in the form of steel screens on both sides of the hull, causing the shaped charges to explode prematurely without penetrating the armor. Both tanks suffered minor damage and their crews discretely pulled back from the field.

Undeterred and advancing further, Towle came upon a house that nine Germans had commandeered as a strongpoint. He fired one explosive round and killed all the occupants.

Withdrawing to replenish with more rockets, Towle then rushed forward 125 yards to another exposed position and dropped to one knee to engage the half-track — only to be mortally wounded by a mortar round.

Dead at age 19, he had single-handedly stopped a German counterattack in its tracks. “By his heroic tenacity, at the price of his life, Pvt. Towle saved the lives of many of his comrades and was directly instrumental in breaking up the enemy counterattack,” according to his citation. Nijmegen remained in Allied hands for the duration, a worthy victory within an overall defeat.

On March 25, 1945, the Towle family arrived at Fort Knox, Kentucky to receive Towle’s Medal of Honor from the base’s commander, Maj. Gen. Charles L. Scott.

In 1949, Towle’s remains were finally returned to his hometown of Cleveland and buried in Calvary Cemetery on Jan. 23. The ceremony was presided over by the 82nd Airborne’s famed Maj. Gen. James “Jumpin’ Jim” Gavin.

Built in time to participate in the 1945 Battle of Okinawa, the 8,500-ton Greenville Victory ship, Appleton Victory, was rechristened USNS Private John R. Towle (T-AK-240) in 1947 and as such, served both the Army and Navy and supplied expeditions in the Arctic and Antarctic oceans until finally scrapped in 1984.

His name also lives on in the Towle Fitness Center at Fort Bragg, a street near Nijmegen named in his honor in 2019 and a local monument erected to his memory in 2024.

A moving company had finished packing some of a U.S. Navy senior chief’s household goods June 18, and workers were set to return to finish the packing job for his permanent change-of-station move.

Instead, the following day — on the Juneteenth holiday — the company called to tell him HomeSafe Alliance had canceled the move, leaving him in the lurch, caught up briefly in U.S. Transportation Command’s problems with its household goods contract.

The HomeSafe contract was terminated late on June 18 due to HomeSafe’s “demonstrated inability to fulfill their obligations and deliver high-quality moves to service members,” Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said in an announcement about the contract termination.

It’s currently unclear how many service members are in the same grey area as the Navy senior chief in the midst of the busiest moving time of the year.

But a new Defense Department Permanent Change of Station Task Force is “fully engaged in overseeing the process to ensure the DOD fully meets the needs of our PCSing population,” especially given the high volume of moves during peak season, said Army Col. Junel R. Jeffrey, spokesperson for the task force.

The group was formed by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to address immediate PCS needs, and to come up with long-term solutions.

Officials aren’t experiencing any significant issues with capacity of commercial companies to move service members, nor do they forecast any significant issues, Jeffrey said.

HomeSafe had said June 20 that they would complete moves already in progress.

When asked about the Navy senior chief’s situation, HomeSafe officials clarified what happened: When the HomeSafe contract was terminated June 18, “we were instructed, through the termination notice, to complete shipments that had already been picked up by that date,” said HomeSafe spokeswoman Meagan Perez.

The movers hadn’t finishing packing or loading the sailor’s household goods, so the instruction to complete shipments didn’t apply to his situation.

Information was not available on the number of HomeSafe shipments that are in flux. Jeffrey noted that HomeSafe moves under the military’s Global Household Goods Contract represented fewer than 15% of the U.S. domestic moves in 2025, and the new system wasn’t used for overseas moves.

The senior chief, who asked to remain anonymous, said the Navy personal property office on his base was helpful and pulled his shipment into the legacy system on June 20. The office was able to restart the move, and movers were back at his house by June 24 to finish the packing, he said.

The sailor did exactly the right thing by immediately contacting his local transportation office, Jeffrey said.

The legacy system is handling all moves now that the HomeSafe contract has been terminated.

“We are closely monitoring commercial capacity indicators across the U.S., and where appropriate, enabling our [moving companies in the legacy system] to increase capacity,” Jeffrey said.

She added that the task force has worked with the Defense Travel Management Office and the military services to adjust the reimbursement rates for service members who choose to move themselves — partially or fully — to ensure those who manage their own moves are compensated fairly.

The task force has also stood up an operations center for direct communication between the group and the military services and the personal property shipping offices to make sure problems are elevated immediately to the task force “in real-time for assistance,” she said.

The group is tasked with submitting recommendations to Hegseth for longer-term PCS solutions no later than Sept. 5.

In 2021, U.S. Transportation Command awarded HomeSafe the Global Household Goods Contract, worth a potential of $17.9 billion over nine years, to implement a new process for moving service members’ and their families’ household goods.

The contract was aimed at fixing long-standing problems with missed pickup and delivery dates, broken and lost items and claims. However, amid the contract’s rocky rollout this year, families reported delays in getting their household goods picked up and delivered, as HomeSafe experienced difficulties getting movers to participate.

U.S. Transportation Command, which had been gradually ramping up the volume of moves with HomeSafe since April 2024, had expected to move all domestic shipments under the new contract by this year’s peak moving season. It scrapped that plan earlier this year as problems began to mount with HomeSafe’s ability to provide enough capacity to pack, load, truck and unload service members’ belongings.

Editors Note: This article first appeared on The War Horse, an award-winning nonprofit news organization educating the public on military service. Subscribe to their newsletter.

The email came last fall while James Harter was on vacation with his husband in Quebec City, Canada. He was checking his computer in their RV when he read the no-nonsense subject line: Certificate of Pardon.

He had no idea just how uncommon that email was — but in the moment, none of that mattered.

“The feelings were basically overjoyed relief,” he told The War Horse. “Just the sense of, maybe I could put what happened to me in my past.”

Nearly 40 years ago, Harter was court-martialed for having consensual sex with another man in his unit. He was convicted under the former Uniform Code of Military Justice Article 125, which forbade sodomy, defined as “unnatural carnal copulation,” and sentenced to a bad conduct discharge from the Army plus six months in two military correctional facilities: one in Germany and one in Kansas. He spent most of his time in isolation, on suicide watch.

“I just couldn’t understand how I’d gotten to this point,” he said, “where I was in prison with murderers because I had sex with someone.”

Last year, however, he finally got a chance at redemption when President Biden issued a proclamation to grant a full and unconditional pardon to veterans with court-martial convictions under former Article 125. Harter applied right away.

Receiving the pardon on that early fall day, Harter said, “restored a lot of pride.”

Only now does he understand just how unique he is to have received an Article 125 pardon.

More people have walked on the moon.

Documents obtained by The War Horse through Freedom of Information Act requests show that of the tens of thousands of veterans who were separated from the military due to their sexuality over decades, only 21 ended up applying for a pardon — and only four, including Harter, have received one.

The numbers sharply contrast the White House’s estimate that “thousands” of veterans could be eligible when Biden announced a year ago that he was “righting an historic wrong.” So much has changed since then.

Both Biden and President Trump have faced intense criticism for handing out controversial pardons.

Diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives have been erased under the Trump administration’s zeal to refocus the military on lethality. Thousands of transgender service members are being discharged and banned from serving. And the Pentagon is considering renaming ships that include the USNS Harvey Milk, named for the slain gay rights activist and veteran who was discharged over his sexuality.

While The War Horse had previously reported on the low number of pardon applications for LGBTQ+ veterans, records disclosed last month by the Office of the U.S. Pardon Attorney are the first to reveal just how few have been granted: two from the Navy, one from the Air Force, and one from the Army.

The records provided no other details and don’t explain why other applicants were denied. Harter is the only one of the pardoned veterans who has come forward to share his story.

“I never expected to be pardoned,” he said. “But I don’t think it [his court-martial] should have ever happened to start with, so I felt like there was some redemption there.”

A paltry promise?

After the initial excitement over Biden’s Article 125 pardon announcement, it soon became clear to LGBTQ+ veteran advocates that many waiting for relief would be left out.

The pardon’s wording meant that it only applied to veterans who were court-martialed for violations of Article 125, or consensual sodomy, said Dana Montalto, associate director of the Veterans Legal Clinic at the Legal Services Center of Harvard Law School.

“But there were so many other ways that [lesbian, gay, and bisexual] service members were separated or their behaviors criminalized when they were in service, and the pardon didn’t reach those,” Montalto said.

“I think it is a step in the right direction for our federal government to be making amends, but it certainly was not a solution to the problem,” she said.

LGBTQ+ veterans were often outed by fellow service members or caught up in military witch hunts.

Inside the Military's LGBTQ Witch Hunts

“Additional charges were often weaponized against service members, whether they were true or not,” said Cathy Marcello, deputy director at the Modern Military Association of America, an organization of LGBTQ+ service members. “Circumstances might look very bad on paper, but might not reflect what actually is historically accurate to this person’s conviction.”

LGBTQ+ veterans were also regularly charged with Article 134 (indecent conduct or adultery), Article 92 (failure to obey a direct order), and other transgressions. Any of these additional offenses would make a veteran ineligible for Biden’s pardon.

Last year, The War Horse submitted a Freedom of Information Act request for Defense Department memos or reports to understand why the White House suggested thousands of veterans would benefit from Biden’s pardon. The agency denied the request, however, saying the documents were part of the decision-making process and therefore protected.

In May, The War Horse once again tried to contact the Office of the Pardon Attorney and the Department of Justice for comment on this issue, and received no response.

Advocates say there is another major reason for the low numbers: The burden is entirely on the veteran to apply for clemency and prove that they qualify. Unlike some mass pardons, Biden’s action requires that each veteran fill out a form, which could be daunting or bring up painful emotions.

Peter Perkowski, the legal director at Minority Veterans of America, said the administration could have made the process easier.

“They could have put the onus on the Defense Department to review all the [Article] 125 convictions and change them if it’s appropriate,” he said, “or they could have sent letters out to people at their last known address.” Ultimately, he said, “There were a lot of things they could have done. They did none of it.”

Different treatment for Covid vaccine refusers

Earlier this year, President Trump issued an executive order granting reinstatement eligibility, plus back pay, for more than 8,700 service members discharged solely for refusing a Covid-19 vaccine. In contrast to the LGBTQ+ veterans, the Department of Defense stipulated that all eligible former service members discharged over Covid-19 vaccines should be contacted by mail, email (if possible), and phone and invited to apply for reinstatement. And in May, the president pardoned a former Army officer who was court-martialed for refusing to obey Covid safety rules.

A White House spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment from The War Horse.

Perkowski can’t help but feel there is some bigotry at play. “There has been such a swift restorative justice action from the government to purportedly fix the mistakes the Defense Department made with Covid-related discharges,” he said. “Even though ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ was repealed 15 years ago, that has never happened for this community.”

And pardons don’t automatically change a veteran’s discharge status, said Christie Bhageloe, director of Statewide Veterans Project at Florida Legal Services. Even if a veteran gets pardoned, they still have to apply for a discharge upgrade to be eligible for VA and other benefits. The pardon — and a recent class action lawsuit win — may help, but it isn’t a guarantee. And unlike with the Covid-19 executive order, there are no retroactive benefits.

“Even if everything goes well and you get a pardon and a full discharge upgrade to honorable, it doesn’t bring back your military career,” Bhageloe said.

“It doesn’t fix the fact that you were a volunteer for the military during an all-volunteer force, and we essentially discarded them.”

The United Kingdom and Canada faced similar reckonings with the treatment of their gay and lesbian military members. But unlike the United States, both countries have made formal, public apologies and started funds for monetary reparations to pay LGBTQ+ service members who lost benefits after being kicked out of the military.

Pardons as a political tool

Over the past year, both Biden and Trump were busy wielding their clemency powers, from Biden granting his son, Hunter, a pardon, to Trump clearing political allies and contributors, including tax evaders and Jan. 6 protesters.

“I think the difference is my pardon was done for a crime that no longer exists,” Harter said. “For crimes that still exist there should be some other extenuating circumstance that justifies a pardon. Not just a political favor.”

Eligible veterans are still able to apply for the Article 125 pardon on the Office of the Pardon Attorney’s website. A Department of Justice spokesman failed to provide The War Horse with an update on the pardon numbers since the office responded May 1 to our original request.

Advocates say Trump’s decision to ban transgender troops from the military may make more LGBTQ+ veterans hesitant to apply for a pardon.

“Over time, more people might apply,” Montalto said, “but I would imagine some people who might have considered applying no longer wish to do so.”

For others, it doesn’t matter who the president is, said Perkowski — the loss of trust is irreparable. “They do not trust the government, regardless of who is in charge, to do the right thing for them,” he said.

Even after Harter left the military, his conviction followed him. He had to explain it during every employment background check, and he believes the experience escalated his downward spiral into drug and alcohol addiction. Plus, he lost access to all VA health care benefits and education benefits that he was getting through his service and had to finish working his way through college on his own.

He feels disconnected from other veterans, despite having served for eight years in the late 1980s — two as a tank crewman, and six as a field artillery repair specialist — and earning an Army Commendation Medal.

Though he’s now been sober for 35 years and recently retired from his job as a travel nurse, “These charges have haunted me,” he said.

His journey to clear his name is still not complete.

Even though Harter now has his pardon, he still had to separately apply to get his bad conduct discharge changed to an honorable discharge.

He was told the process could take up to 18 months. Five months after he sent in his application, he’s still waiting. The pardon may help his cause, advocates said, but there is no guarantee that his discharge will be upgraded.

Four decades later, it’s one last hurdle. Getting his discharge record restored, he said, would “help me return to that sense of pride.”

This War Horse story was edited by Mike Frankel, fact-checked by Jess Rohan, and copy-edited by Mitchell Hansen-Dewar. Hrisanthi Pickett wrote the headlines.

The Pentagon is requesting $848.3 billion for its fiscal year 2026 budget, a cut to core military spending when accounting for inflation.

But while releasing many of the military’s detailed budget materials Thursday, senior military and defense officials argued that their request should factor in a separate party-line spending bill now under debate in Congress.

This one-time bill includes $113 billion in mandatory military spending and would bring the Pentagon’s total to $961 billion — close to the trillion-dollar defense budget President Donald Trump has pledged.

Such supplemental defense bills are normally not counted toward the Pentagon’s base budget, the same way a bonus doesn’t normally figure into an annual salary. This year, though, the Defense Department has chosen to split its spending request into two bills, shifting core weapons programs such as shipbuilding and missile defense into the one-time spending package.

Lawmakers from both parties in Congress criticized Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth for the delayed and unusual budget during multiple days of testimony earlier in June. The secretary has argued that the request shouldn’t be an issue — saying they have “two bills and one budget.”

Members of Congress have said this process has created unnecessary confusion and puts many of the military’s most important weapons programs at risk. The companies that make these systems now won’t know if their funding will continue beyond the coming fiscal year and may be more hesitant to invest their own money.

The senior defense official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, disputed this concern Thursday.

“Reconciliation is actually a stronger demand signal for those companies,” the official said, referring to the spending process, which may arrive earlier than the Pentagon’s core defense budget.

The official wouldn’t project what the Pentagon would request the following year — the $961 billion including the one-time spending package or the $848 billion without. The official also didn’t specify how the Pentagon was preparing for the chance that the one-time bill doesn’t pass, jeopardizing many of the priorities included within.

“We have not yet discussed what that will look like for [fiscal year 2027], but unless the President’s tone changes, I imagine we’ll stick with a trillion dollars for national defense spending,” the official said.

In a highly unusual release, the Pentagon published a tranche of its budget documents without notice Wednesday evening. Given the amount of taxpayer money involved, the process typically involves a public briefing announced in advance.

As of Thursday morning, the Pentagon still hadn’t published the broad overview of its budget and many of the other documents detailing what is going toward the military services.

Hegseth entered office promising to disrupt the military’s bureaucracy, including its spending plans. He’s since launched an effort to redirect $50 billion of the budget each year to higher-priority programs. The officials speaking Thursday said that money was largely found through large cuts to the Pentagon workforce.

Those priorities include Golden Dome — a planned homeland missile defense system — with $25 billion planned for FY26 and the military’s expanding role at the southwest border, with $5 billion also pledged for the operation. Much of the administration’s effort to revitalize America’s lagging shipbuilding industry will also rely on the one-year defense supplemental bill.

The Defense Department also chose to cut major aircraft programs, such as the E-7 Wedgetail, a surveillance plane. Funding for the Navy’s new fighter jet is also majorly reduced, including only $74 million to the program to finish its design.

“We’re waiting for a decision from the secretary of the Navy, secretary of defense and the President. That’s an active conversation right now,” the official said of whether to maintain the program.

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said Thursday his country had delivered a “slap to America’s face” with its strike on a U.S. airbase in Qatar, and warned against any further attacks in his first public comments since a ceasefire was declared with Israel after 12 days of war.

Khamenei spoke in a recorded video broadcast on Iranian state television, his first appearance since June 19. The 86-year-old, a skilled orator known for his forceful addresses to the country’s more than 90 million people, appeared and sounded more tired than he had just a week ago, speaking in a hoarse voice and occasionally stumbling over his words.

The speech, which went on for more than 10 minutes, was filled with warnings and threats directed toward the United States and Israel, the Islamic Republic’s longtime adversaries.

The supreme leader downplayed Sunday’s U.S. strikes on three Iranian nuclear sites using bunker-buster bombs and cruise missiles, saying that U.S. President Donald Trump — who said the attack “completely and fully obliterated Iran’s nuclear program — had “exaggerated” its impact.

“They could not achieve anything significant,” Khamenei said. Missing from his video message was any mention of Iran’s nuclear program and the status of their facilities and centrifuges following extensive U.S. and Israeli strikes.

Hegseth defends Iran strike after initial report doubted its effect

His characterization of Monday’s strike on the U.S. airbase in Qatar contrasted with U.S. accounts of it as a limited attack with no casualties.

UN nuclear watchdog confirms damage to Iran sites

The head of the U.N. nuclear watchdog, International Atomic Energy Agency Director Rafael Grossi, reiterated on Thursday that the damage done by Israeli and U.S. strikes at Iranian nuclear facilities “is very, very, very considerable.”

“I think annihilated is too much, but it suffered enormous damage,” Grossi told French broadcaster RFI.

Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman, Esmail Baghaei, on Wednesday also conceded that “our nuclear installations have been badly damaged, that’s for sure.”

Khamenei has not been seen in public since taking shelter in a secret location after the outbreak of the war on June 13 when Israel attacked Iranian nuclear facilities and targeted top military commanders and scientists.

Following Sunday’s U.S. attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities, Trump was able to help negotiate a ceasefire that came into effect on Tuesday.

Iranian leader warns US against further attacks

Khamenei claimed the U.S. had only intervened in the war because “it felt that if it did not intervene, the Zionist regime would be utterly destroyed.”

“It entered the war to save them, yet it gained nothing,” he said.

He said his country’s attack on the U.S. base in Qatar on Monday was significant, since it shows Iran “has access to important U.S. centers in the region and can act against them whenever it deems necessary.”

“The Islamic Republic was victorious and, in retaliation, delivered a hand slap to America’s face,” he said, adding, “This action can be repeated in the future.”

“Should any aggression occur, the enemy will definitely pay a heavy price,” he said.

Iran remains security threat even after airstrikes, CENTCOM warns

Trump has dismissed the Monday retaliatory attack as a “very weak response,” saying that the U.S. had been warned by Iran in advance and stressing that there had been no casualties.

Since the ceasefire, life has been gradually returning to normal in Iran. On Thursday, Iran partially reopened its airspace, which had been shut down since the war began, and shops in Tehran’s capital began to reopen, with traffic returning to the streets.

With the ceasefire, life slowly returns to normal in Iran

Majid Akhavan, spokesperson for the Ministry of Roads and Urban Development, said Iran had reopened its airspace for the eastern half of the country to domestic and international flights, including those transiting Iranian airspace.

Earlier this week, Tehran said 606 people had been killed in the conflict in Iran, with 5,332 people wounded. The Washington-based Human Rights Activists group released figures Wednesday suggesting Israeli strikes on Iran had killed at least 1,054 and wounded 4,476.

The group, which has provided detailed casualty figures from multiple rounds of unrest in Iran, said 417 of those killed were civilians and 318 were security forces.

At least 28 people were killed in Israel and more than 1,000 wounded, according to officials there. During the 12-day war, Iran fired more than 550 missiles at Israel with a 90% interception rate, according to new statistics released by Israeli authorities on Thursday. Israel, meantime, hit more than 720 Iranian military infrastructure targets and eight nuclear-related sites, Israel said.

Trump has also asserted that American and Iranian officials will talk next week, giving rise to cautious hope for longer-term peace.

Iran has not acknowledged that any such talks would take place, though U.S. Mideast envoy Steve Witkoff has said there has been direct and indirect communication between the countries. A sixth round of U.S.-Iran negotiations was scheduled for earlier this month in Oman but was canceled after Israel attacked Iran on June 13.

Iran has insisted that it will not give up its nuclear program. In a vote underscoring the tough path ahead, its parliament agreed Wednesday to fast-track a proposal that would effectively stop the country’s cooperation with the IAEA, which has monitored the program for years.

Associated Press writer John Leicester in Paris and Natalie Melzer in Nahariya, Israel, contributed to this report.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth argued that the bombing of three nuclear sites in Iran likely caused “severe damage” just days after reports emerged that the military’s intelligence arm assessed Tehran’s program had only been set back months.

In a combative press conference Thursday, Hegseth didn’t deny the findings of that report, instead arguing that its assessments were “preliminary” and “low-confidence.”

“This was an historically successful attack,” Hegseth said.

On Monday, CNN and multiple other outlets reported on an assessment by the Defense Intelligence Agency that the bombing set back Iran’s nuclear program by only months.

The reports noted that any assessments were still early and difficult to judge given that the bulk of each facility is far underground.

Alongside Hegseth, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan Caine gave a technical presentation on the massive ordnance penetrator — the 30,000-pound bomb used to hit the sites — and the ventilation shafts targeted themselves.

“The weapons all guided to their intended targets and to their intended aim points,” he said, also noting they exploded as planned.

Both Hegseth and Caine lauded the technical success of the mission, from the bombers who entered the airspace to the analysts who helped design the weapons. But they wouldn’t comment directly on why the administration was now so confident that Iran’s nuclear program was now “obliterated” despite saying the initial assessment was premature.

Hegseth pointed to external intelligence sources — from the Israeli government to the United Nations — when making his case. He also mentioned a statement from CIA Director John Ratcliffe Wednesday night that argued Iran’s nuclear program was “severely damaged,” relying on “new intelligence from a historically reliable and accurate source/method.”

Hegseth also didn’t directly address questions about whether Iran moved highly enriched uranium, critical to a bomb, before the strikes.

“I’m not aware of any intelligence that I’ve reviewed that says things were not where they were supposed to be,” he said.

President Donald Trump and his Cabinet have attacked the journalists who reported on the initial DIA report. Hegseth opened the Thursday press conference with a similar scolding, criticizing outlets and one reporter by name.

The administration also delayed a classified briefing on Iran before Congress from Tuesday to Friday, over the strong objections from Democratic lawmakers.

“It was obliteration, and you’ll see that,” Trump said of the strikes at this week’s NATO summit in the Netherlands.

Caine on Sunday was more measured, saying at a press conference that the attacks caused “extremely severe damage” and arguing that any battle damage assessments were premature.

The strike itself included more than 125 U.S. aircraft, 75 precision weapons and 14 bunker-busting bombs in a stunning display of U.S. military force. Overall, the operation targeted Iran’s three main nuclear sites: Fordo, Isfahan and Natanz.

On Monday, Iran responded with a relatively limited retaliation on a U.S. base in Qatar. No casualties were initially reported, and nearly all the ballistic missiles fired were intercepted, the Pentagon said.

Iran does not yet have the capability to build a nuclear weapon and claims its enrichment program is solely for civilian purposes.

Israel and Iran, who had been trading attacks for almost two weeks, agreed to a ceasefire as of early this week.

A U.S. Marine is poised to become the top legal officer of the Navy for the first time in over a century, the Defense Department announced Tuesday.

Marine Corps Maj. Gen. David Bligh, who currently serves as the staff judge advocate to the commandant of the Marine Corps, was nominated for appointment as the judge advocate general, or JAG, of the Navy.

Bligh would become only the second Marine to hold the title of judge advocate general for the Navy, following in the footsteps of Col. William Butler Remey, who became the first uniformed chief legal officer of the Navy in 1878.

After Remey, only sailors have filled the position.

Bligh would replace Rear Adm. Lia Reynolds, who is currently serving as the acting JAG of the Navy, according to the service. Vice Adm. Christopher French, the previous Navy JAG, requested to retire in December 2024, having only served in the position for three months.

Lawmakers warn Hegseth against political firings of generals

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth removed the JAGs for the Army and Air Force in February — saying they weren’t “well-suited” to provide recommendations when lawful orders were given — and said he was requesting nominations for the JAGs for the Army, Navy and Air Force. There was already an ongoing effort to seek a replacement for French, according to The Associated Press.

Bligh was commissioned through the Platoon Leaders Course program in 1988 and afterward served as a platoon commander and company commander at the 2nd Assault Amphibian Battalion, Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, according to his service biography.

He went on to complete Naval Justice School and served as a civil law officer, trial counsel and officer-in-charge of legal assistance at Camp Lejeune.

From there, he became the director of the Joint Law Center at Marine Corps Air Station New River, North Carolina, during which he deployed for Operation Iraqi Freedom with Task Force Tarawa.

Bligh also served as the assistant JAG of the Navy for military law.

Amid President Donald Trump’s plans to revert the designations of seven Army installations previously named for Confederate fighters to their old names, albeit new namesakes, comes the Army’s announcement that Fort Lee in Virginia will become the first base to be named after a Buffalo Soldier.

Fort Lee — initially named after the Confederate general Robert E. Lee — was briefly changed to Fort Gregg-Adams under President Joe Biden’s administration in its efforts to remove any connection to the Confederacy from current military bases.

Following the recommendations of a special committee, Fort Lee was renamed Fort Gregg-Adams to honor Lt. Gen. Arthur Gregg and Lt. Col. Charity Adams. Both joined the Army prior to its desegregation, with Gregg rising to become the Deputy Chief of Staff for Logistics for the Army while Adams commanded the 6888th Central Postal Directory during the Second World War.

It was the first Army base in U.S. history to be named for Black Americans.

However, under Trump, the fort will yet again be the home of another milestone. It will be renamed for Pvt. Fitz Lee, a Buffalo soldier who received the Medal of Honor for his actions during the Spanish-American War.

Buffalo Soldiers

While African Americans have fought in U.S. wars since the American Revolution, peacetime Black U.S. Regular Army units were not created until 1866.

Following the Civil War, Congress created six Regular Army regiments of African American soldiers: 9th and 10th cavalry regiments and 38th, 39th, 40th and 41st infantry regiments. Three years later in 1869, the four infantry regiments were consolidated into two units and redesignated as the 24th and 25th infantry regiments.

According to historian Jerry Morelock, “The nickname Buffalo Soldiers originated during the regiments’ initial service in the Frontier Army in campaigns against Native American tribes. Likely, the title was first bestowed upon 10th Cavalry troopers as a term of respect by Cheyenne warriors in early 1867. Eventually, however, the name Buffalo Soldiers was extended to denote all troops in the four African-American cavalry and infantry regiments.”

Pvt. Fitz Lee

Born the same year Congress created standing Black units, Lee, a Virginia native, enlisted in M Troop, 10th Cavalry in 1889. After nearly a decade with the Army, Lee, serving as a private, found himself bound for Cuba after the U.S. declared war on Spain on April 25, 1898.

Lee and 50 other troopers, according to the National Park Service, were assigned to head behind enemy lines to re-enforce and resupply Cuban fighters seeking liberation from Spanish rule in the Caribbean.

On June 30, 1898, Cuban freedom fighters and American soldiers disembarked the steamship Florida, attempting an amphibious landing at Tayabacoa, Cuba. Almost immediately, the landing party found themselves engaged in enemy fire.

Ambushed, the landing group soon retreated, leaving behind at least 16 wounded to become prisoners of war.

After several rescue attempts failed, Lee, Cpl. George H. Wanton, Pvt. Dennis Bell, Sgt. William H. Thompkins and Lt. George P. Ahern stepped forward and volunteered.

Wading ashore, the five soldiers managed to surprise the Spanish, successfully freeing their wounded comrades.

Her Medal of Honor was once revoked. Now her base is being renamed.

All but Ahern were awarded the Medal of Honor for their actions in Tayabacoa, with Lee receiving his while hospitalized at Fort Bliss, Texas. His time in Cuba had left him with severely limited vision, swollen limbs and abdominal pain that caused him to be bedridden for three months, according to NPS.

On July 5, 1899, a few days after receiving the Medal of Honor, Lee was medically discharged from the Army.

Lee and his comrades would be the last Black soldiers to receive the Medal of Honor outright until the Vietnam War. Two Black soldiers were posthumously awarded the nation’s highest medal for valor in 1991 and 2015, respectively, and a review in the 1990s led to the posthumous awarding of the medal to seven Black veterans in 1997.

Following his discharge, Lee moved to Leavenworth, Kansas, living with other retired Buffalo Soldiers who looked after the disabled veteran.

“In constant pain and totally blind,” writes NPS, “Fitz Lee died at the home of a friend in Kansas on Sept. 14, 1899.”

Lee was buried with full military honors at Fort Leavenworth National Cemetery.

A U.S. intelligence report suggests that Iran’s nuclear program has been set back only a few months after U.S. strikes and was not “completely and fully obliterated” as President Donald Trump has said, according to two people familiar with the early assessment.

The report issued by the Defense Intelligence Agency on Monday contradicts statements from Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu about the status of Iran’s nuclear facilities.

According to the people, the report found that while the Sunday strikes at the Fordo, Natanz and Isfahan nuclear sites did significant damage, the facilities were not totally destroyed. The people were not authorized to address the matter publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.

The U.S. has held out hope of restarting negotiations with Iran to convince it to give up its nuclear program entirely, but some experts fear that the U.S. strikes — and the potential of Iran retaining some of its capabilities — could push Tehran toward developing a functioning weapon.

The assessment also suggests that at least some of Iran’s highly enriched uranium, necessary for creating a nuclear weapon, was moved out of multiple sites before the U.S. strikes and survived, and it found that Iran’s centrifuges, which are required to further enrich uranium to weapons-grade levels, are largely intact, according to the people.

At the deeply buried Fordo uranium enrichment plant, where U.S. B-2 stealth bombers dropped several 30,000-pound bunker-buster bombs, the entrance collapsed and infrastructure was damaged, but the underground infrastructure was not destroyed, the assessment found. The people said that intelligence officials had warned of such an outcome in previous assessments ahead of the strike on Fordo.

The White House pushes back

The White House rejected the DIA assessment, calling it “flat-out wrong,” and Trump defended his characterization of the strike’s impact.

“It was obliteration, and you’ll see that,” Trump told reporters while attending the NATO summit in the Netherlands. He said the intelligence was “very inconclusive” and described media outlets as “scum” for reporting on it.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who was also at the NATO summit, said there would be an investigation into how the intelligence assessment leaked and dismissed it as “preliminary” and “low confidence.”

Secretary of State Marco Rubio said “these leakers are professional stabbers.”

The CIA and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence declined to comment on the DIA assessment. ODNI coordinates the work of the nation’s 18 intelligence agencies, including the DIA, which is the intelligence arm of the Defense Department, responsible for producing intelligence on foreign militaries and the capabilities of adversaries.

The Israeli government also has not released any official assessments of the U.S. strikes.

Trump special envoy Steve Witkoff, who said he has read damage assessment reports from U.S. intelligence and other nations, reiterated Tuesday night that the strikes had deprived Iran of the ability to develop a weapon and called it outrageous that the U.S. assessment was shared with reporters.

“It’s treasonous so it ought to be investigated,” Witkoff said on Fox News Channel.

Trump has said in comments and posts on social media in recent days, including Tuesday, that the strike left the sites in Iran “totally destroyed” and that Iran will never rebuild its nuclear facilities.

Netanyahu said in a televised statement on Tuesday that, “For dozens of years I promised you that Iran would not have nuclear weapons and indeed ... we brought to ruin Iran’s nuclear program.” He said the U.S. joining Israel was “historic” and thanked Trump.

The intelligence assessment was first reported by CNN on Tuesday.

Outside experts had suspected Iran had likely already hidden the core components of its nuclear program as it stared down the possibility that American bunker-buster bombs could be used on its nuclear sites.

Bulldozers and trucks visible in satellite imagery taken just days before the strikes have fueled speculation among experts that Iran may have transferred its half-ton stockpile of enriched uranium to an unknown location. And the incomplete destruction of the nuclear sites could still leave the country with the capacity to spin up weapons-grade uranium and develop a bomb.

Iran has maintained that its nuclear program is peaceful, but it has enriched significant quantities of uranium beyond the levels required for any civilian use.

The U.S. and others assessed prior to the U.S. strikes that Iran’s theocratic leadership had not yet ordered the country to pursue an operational nuclear weapon, but the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency has repeatedly warned that Iran has enough enriched uranium to make several nuclear bombs should it choose to do so.

Vice President JD Vance said in a Monday interview on Fox News Channel that even if Iran is still in control of its stockpile of 408.6 kilograms (900.8 pounds) of enriched uranium, which is just short of weapons-grade, the U.S. has cut off Iran’s ability to convert it to a nuclear weapon.

“If they have 60% enriched uranium, but they don’t have the ability to enrich it to 90%, and, further, they don’t have the ability to convert that to a nuclear weapon, that is mission success. That is the obliteration of their nuclear program, which is why the president, I think, rightly is using that term,” Vance said.

Approximately 42 kilograms of 60% enriched uranium is theoretically enough to produce one atomic bomb if enriched further to 90%, according to the U.N. nuclear watchdog.

What experts say

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi informed U.N. nuclear watchdog chief Rafael Grossi on June 13 — the day Israel launched its military campaign against Iran — that Tehran would “adopt special measures to protect our nuclear equipment and materials.”

American satellite imagery and analysis firm Maxar Technologies said its satellites photographed trucks and bulldozers at the Fordo site beginning on June 19, three days before the Americans struck.

Subsequent imagery “revealed that the tunnel entrances into the underground complex had been sealed off with dirt prior to the U.S. airstrikes,” said Stephen Wood, senior director at Maxar. “We believe that some of the trucks seen on 19 June were carrying dirt to be used as part of that operation.”

Some experts say those trucks could also have been used to move out Iran’s enriched uranium stockpile.

“It is plausible that Iran moved the material enriched to 60% out of Fordo and loaded it on a truck,” said Eric Brewer, a former U.S. intelligence analyst and now deputy vice president at the Nuclear Threat Initiative.

Iran could also have moved other equipment, including centrifuges, he said, noting that while enriched uranium, which is stored in fortified canisters, is relatively easy to transport, delicate centrifuges are more challenging to move without inflicting damage.

Apart from its enriched uranium stockpile, over the past four years Iran has produced the centrifuges key to enrichment without oversight from the U.N. nuclear watchdog.

Iran also announced on June 12 that it has built and will activate a third nuclear enrichment facility. IAEA chief Grossi said the facility was located in Isfahan, a place where Iran has several other nuclear sites.

After being bombarded by both the Israelis and the Americans, it is unclear if, or how quickly, Isfahan’s facilities, including tunnels, could become operational.

But given all of the equipment and material likely still under Iran’s control, this offers Tehran “a pretty solid foundation for a reconstituted covert program and for getting a bomb,” Brewer said.

Kelsey Davenport, director for nonproliferation policy at the Arms Control Association, a nonpartisan policy center, said that “if Iran had already diverted its centrifuges,” it can “build a covert enrichment facility with a small footprint and inject the 60% gas into those centrifuges and quickly enrich to weapons grade levels.”

But Brewer also underlined that if Iran launched a covert nuclear program, it would do so at a disadvantage, having lost to Israeli and American strikes vital equipment and personnel that are crucial for turning the enriched uranium into a functional nuclear weapon.

Liechtenstein reported from Vienna and McNeil reported from Brussels. Associated Press writers Eric Tucker, David Klepper, Ellen Knickmeyer and Aamer Madhani in Washington and John Leicester in Paris contributed to this report.

The Associated Press receives support for nuclear security coverage from the Carnegie Corporation of New York and Outrider Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

The U.S. Navy’s newest America-class amphibious assault ship arrived at its new homeport in Sasebo, Japan, on Monday as part of a regularly scheduled rotation of forces aimed at bolstering security in the Indo-Pacific region, the Navy announced.

The Tripoli forward deployed from Naval Base San Diego, California, on May 19, and will operate as part of U.S. 7th Fleet. It will replace the first-in-class amphibious assault ship America, which originally docked in Sasebo on Dec. 6, 2019, as the latter makes its way back to Naval Base San Diego.

“The Tripoli is ready to defend U.S. interests abroad and strengthen our long-standing partnership with Japan,” said Capt. Eddie Park, commanding officer of the Tripoli. “I am extremely proud to lead this hard-working and motivated team of Sailors and Marines overseas to support security, stability and prosperity in this vital region.”

Navy amphibious assault ships — unlike aircraft carriers, which operate as mobile airbases and deploy fighter jets and bombers over long distances — are designed to fortify expeditionary operations ashore, assisting in the deployment of ground forces and their equipment.

Marine Corps eyes future stability of Indo-Pacific with Balikatan 2025

The U.S. has continued to express a vested interest in providing security to the Indo-Pacific region, with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth casting the area as the “priority theater” for U.S. military operations.

China’s military continues to ramp up its naval presence in the South and East China Seas, deploying a large number of naval and coast guard vessels to the region in May, according to multiple reports.

The Tripoli, commissioned July 15, 2020, was named after the U.S. Marine Corps’ victory against Tripoli at the Battle of Derna during the First Barbary War in 1805. It is the Navy’s second America-class amphibious assault ship.

Tripoli’s maiden voyage began in May 2022, when it deployed to the Western Pacific and operated a record number of F-35B Lightning II joint strike fighter jets in order to exercise the Marine Corps’ “lightning carrier” concept for the first time ever on an amphibious assault ship. The “lightning carrier” test — which featured 20 F-35B Lightning II jets — gauged the smaller ship’s ability to accomplish missions reminiscent of its larger aircraft carrier counterparts.

NORFOLK, Va. — The United States’ most advanced aircraft carrier left its base in Virginia on Tuesday for a regularly scheduled deployment that could position it near Israel after the U.S. inserted itself in Israel’s war to destroy Iran’s nuclear program.

The U.S. was already planning to deploy the carrier Gerald R. Ford when American warplanes bombed three Iranian sites early Sunday to support Israel’s goals. Iran retaliated with a limited missile attack on a U.S. military base in Qatar on Monday.

U.S. President Donald Trump said a ceasefire between Iran and Israel was still “in effect” on Tuesday, although he expressed deep frustration that both sides had violated the truce he brokered on Monday.

The fluid and potentially dangerous situation was on the minds of many families who cheered on the Ford as it slowly steamed away from its pier in Norfolk, with tugboats hugging the carrier’s hull and sailors lining the sprawling deck in their white dress uniforms.

“I’m nervous,” said Lindsey Young, whose 32-year-old husband, Michael Young, is an aviation maintenance officer. “Especially with everything going on in the world. And three kids, by myself, too.”

Young held the couple’s 10-month old baby, while her 8-year-old and 10-year-old stood nearby clasping small American flags. When her husband was away on his last deployment, Young said she had a severe allergic reaction, her car tire popped and the dog got hit by a car.

“He was safe — everything at home went wrong,” Young said with a laugh before adding that this deployment feels different “with Iran and everything going on right now.”

The Ford will sail for the European theater of command, which includes waters off Israel’s Mediterranean coast. The presence of the aircraft carrier and its accompanying warships gives Trump the option of a third carrier group in the Middle East if needed.

Rear Adm. Paul Lanzilotta, who commands the carrier strike group, told reporters they’re initially going to the European theater of operations but said, “we’re mobile and maneuverable.”

“Within one day, we can move this whole strike group 700-plus miles,” he said.

The Ford was previously sent to the Eastern Mediterranean to be within striking distance of Israel after Hamas’ Oct. 7 attacks in 2023. The carrier stayed in the Eastern Mediterranean while its accompanying warships sailed into the Red Sea, where they repeatedly intercepted ballistic missiles fired at Israel and attack drones fired at the ships from Houthi-controlled Yemen.

From November 2023 until January 2025, the Iranian-backed Houthis waged persistent missile and drone attacks against commercial and military ships in the region in what the group’s leadership described as an effort to end Israel’s war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

U.S. Navy sailors saw incoming Houthi-launched missiles seconds before they were destroyed by their ship’s defensive systems. Pentagon officials talked last year about how to care for the sailors when they returned home, including counseling and treatment for possible post-traumatic stress.

The Houthi rebels had paused attacks on U.S. vessels in the Red Sea in May under a deal with the U.S., but recently said they would resume such attacks if the Trump administration joined Israel’s military campaign against Iran.

Lanzilotta said they’re “100% prepared” for any such attacks, while the Navy has been constantly updating its training with new information.

“I’m not going to get into the details of our tactics, techniques and the procedures,” he said. “But we absolutely did evolve our training for all of the threats that you might see.”

The Ford is the first in the Navy’s new class of advanced aircraft carriers, which are designed to carry a wider variety of planes and operate with several hundred fewer sailors. Nearly 4,500 sailors departed Tuesday in a strike group that includes guided-missile destroyers and several squadrons of fighter jets.

“I am not worried about our sailors — they’re extremely resilient,” the admiral said, adding that recent world events have bolstered personnel with a sense of even more purpose while reinforcing “why what we do is so important.”

Young, the Navy spouse and mother of three, said she knows her husband “is making a difference too. I know he’s his kids’ hero too.”

President Donald Trump on Tuesday blasted both Israel and Iran for what he said were violations of ceasefire terms that had been agreed upon hours earlier.

Speaking to reporters on the South Lawn of the White House, Trump claimed “[Iran] violated [the ceasefire] but Israel violated it, too. ... I’m not happy with Israel.”

“We basically have two countries that have been fighting so long and so hard that they don’t know what the f--- they’re doing,” the president added.

The Iran-Israel ceasefire, scheduled to go into effect Tuesday morning, followed 12 days of hostilities between the two long-time enemies that ignited concerns of a larger, regional war.

Israel accused Iran on Tuesday of violating terms of the ceasefire with a missile launch into Israeli airspace, an attack Iran’s state media denied. Iran then accused Israel of three waves of attacks.

Officials from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said the Israeli strikes, which reportedly targeted an Iranian radar, were scaled back after an appeal from the White House.

“Following President Trump’s conversation with Prime Minister Netanyahu, Israel refrained from additional attacks,” Netanyahu’s office said.

Trump said Tuesday that despite the exchange of salvos, the ceasefire is in effect.

“ISRAEL is not going to attack Iran,” the president wrote on Truth Social. “All planes will turn around and head home, while doing a friendly ‘Plane Wave’ to Iran.”

President Trump first announced terms for the ceasefire Monday following Tehran’s limited retaliatory missile strike on the U.S. Al-Udeid Air Base in Qatar.

Iran reportedly warned the U.S. about the strike, which came in response to the U.S. bombing of the regime’s nuclear sites in Fordo, Natanz and Isfahan — as part of Operation Midnight Hammer. The Iranian strikes resulted in no casualties, according to reports.

President Trump took to Truth Social to call Iran’s attack on Al-Udeid a “very weak response” and said “they’ve gotten it all out of their system.”

Al-Udeid is home to the Air Force’s Combined Air Operations Center and the 379th Air Expeditionary Wing.

Trump’s comments Tuesday morning came as he prepared to board Marine One and depart for the June 24-25 NATO Summit at The Hague.

BEERSHEBA, Israel (AP) — Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said that Iran had “completely violated” the ceasefire between Israel and Iran by launching missiles after the ceasefire came into effect. Katz said he instructed the Israeli military to resume targeting Iranian paramilitary and government targets.

Israel said it had identified missiles launched from Iran into its airspace less than three hours after the ceasefire went into effect, after both Israel and Iran accepted President Donald Trump’s plan to end the 12-day war roiling the Middle East.

Explosions boomed and sirens sounded across northern Israel midmorning on Tuesday, after both Israel and Iran on Tuesday had initially accepted a ceasefire plan.

According to Israel’s emergency services, there were no injuries in the missiles launched towards Israel after the ceasefire started.

Overnight, just before the ceasefire started, Israel launched more than 100 munitions targeting dozens of sites in Tehran, including missile launchers.

The ceasefire agreement came after Tehran launched a retaliatory limited missile attack on a U.S. military base in Qatar on Monday and after it launched an onslaught of missiles targeting Israel that killed at least four people early Tuesday morning. Israel launched a blitz of airstrikes targeting sites across Iran before dawn.

Though Israel said it had intercepted the midmorning barrage of missiles, it showed how dangerous the situation remained.