Thomas Strock

BREAKING: Here is what some active-duty Marines are calling Pete Hegseth’s Pentagon — and it doesn’t make him look good. Pete Hegseth wanted to be called the "Secretary of War," instead of Secretary of Defense. Now, his own troops have a different title in mind. Rep. Seth Moulton — a Marine combat veteran who actually served in Iraq, unlike the Fox News host currently running the Pentagon — dropped a bombshell this week that should stop every American cold: "I know active-duty Marines who now refer to Pete Hegseth's department as the Department of War Crimes." These aren’t former officials, nor political opponents. These are active-duty Marines, the people Hegseth commands. These are the people who have watched him operate up close. They are calling their own department the Department of War Crimes — and according to Moulton, they're doing it because of what they've been ordered to do. The nickname is a savage mashup of Hegseth's own self-aggrandizing rebrand of the Department of Defense as the "Department of War" — because nothing says serious military leadership like cosplay branding — and the growing mountain of evidence that his tenure has been defined by actions that legal experts are calling war crimes. The list is staggering: Airstrikes in Yemen that allegedly hit residential buildings, killing at least 224 civilians. Strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities of questionable legality under both domestic and international law. An alleged no-survivors attack order issued against vessels in the Caribbean. A lightning invasion of Venezuela launched without congressional authorization. And now Trump's announced intention to target Iranian civilian energy infrastructure — the same playbook, Moulton noted pointedly, that the United States spent years condemning Vladimir Putin for using in Ukraine. "It's meant to hurt civilians," Moulton said. "This is the same stuff we criticized Vladimir Putin for doing in Ukraine." Over a thousand civilians have been killed in the Iran war. More than a hundred of them were children, killed when a missile — believed to be American — struck a school. Hegseth's spokesperson responded to questions about war crimes by quoting the man himself: "They target civilians. We do not, and I can tell you this administration and this Pentagon focuses on that very, very closely." A school full of children would beg to differ. If they could. And "Department of War Crimes" isn't even the only nickname Hegseth has earned in the building. Pentagon staffers have also taken to calling him "Dumb McNamara" — a reference to Vietnam-era Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, who sent tens of thousands of Americans to die in a war he privately knew was unwinnable. The comparison is not a compliment. McNamara, for all his catastrophic failures, was at least regarded as intellectually serious. Hegseth, the Fox & Friends Weekend host who needed a Vice Presidential tiebreaker to get confirmed, is regarded as having McNamara's appetite for escalation without the analytical credentials. Same body count. Fewer brain cells. This is the man running America's military. This is the man who has fired over a dozen decorated generals and replaced them with loyalists and personal aides. This is the man whose troops — the ones actually carrying out his orders — have given his department a name that should haunt every single person who confirmed him. Please like and share this post if you believe "Department of War Crimes" should never be how America's military is described accurately — and certainly not by its own Marines.

Speaker Julie Menin’s preliminary budget proposal would result in slashing billions of dollars from agency budgets, which would force the City to cut services. Double counting previously identified savings, overestimating revenues, and exaggerating debt service savings does nothing to close a deficit. This $6 billion proposal asks Albany for just one action – class size mandate relief. It refuses to address the deeper structural imbalance between the City and the State, or to increase taxes on the wealthiest New Yorkers and most profitable corporations. It effectively ensures this structural deficit will continue indefinitely. Any proposal that claims we can close this gap without significant new revenue is unrealistic.

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