🏢Pentagon Christian Prayer Service Sparks Dozens of Complaints from Service Members, Contractors

Defense Department says events are voluntary and morale-boosting, but critics warn of perceived coercion, career pressure, and constitutional concerns.

A Christian prayer and worship service scheduled for Feb. 17 in the Pentagon Auditorium is drawing mounting scrutiny after dozens of active-duty service members and defense contractors voiced concerns over invitations distributed through official Department of Defense channels.

The email, circulated to personnel stationed at or with access to the Pentagon, invited recipients to attend a 12 p.m. “Christian prayer and worship service” labeled “SECWAR’S PRAYER SERVICE.” The message included a cross above the service title and encouraged recipients to forward the invitation widely within their organizations.

According to the Pentagon, the service is voluntary and open to all eligible personnel, with livestream access available via the Defense Visual Information Distribution Service (DVIDS).

California Cracks Down on Veteran ‘Claim Shark’ Firms, Escalating National Battle Over VA Benefits Industry

Gov. Gavin Newsom signs law barring unaccredited companies from charging veterans for disability claim assistance, intensifying a state-by-state showdown with multimillion-dollar consulting firms.

In a move reverberating across the veterans’ advocacy and defense policy community, Gavin Newsom has signed sweeping legislation aimed at eliminating so-called “claim shark” companies operating in California’s vast veteran population.

The new law prohibits unaccredited private firms from charging veterans fees to assist with Department of Veterans Affairs disability claims — a practice critics argue exploits service members navigating one of the federal government’s most complex benefits systems.

The legislation effectively forces unaccredited claims consulting firms to overhaul their business models or cease operations in the state by year’s end.

🔷Trump Confirms U.S. Helicopter Pilots Wounded in High-Risk Maduro Raid, Highlighting Operational Costs of “Absolute Resolve”

President’s public acknowledgment underscores dangers U.S. forces faced during January operation to capture Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro amid broader regional security tensions

President Donald Trump on Friday publicly acknowledged that American helicopter pilots were wounded during Operation Absolute Resolve, the unprecedented U.S. military operation that resulted in the capture of Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro and his wife from a fortified Caracas compound on Jan. 3.

Addressing troops at Fort Bragg, N.C., Trump said the pilots suffered significant leg injuries when their aircraft encountered hostile fire and defensive positions during the raid, a revelation that adds another layer of scrutiny to the risks American forces faced in executing such a bold mission.

“Those helicopter pilots were hit pretty bad in the legs,” Trump said, underscoring the perilous nature of the operation that involved more than 200 personnel and 150 aircraft across multiple U.S. military branches.

During his remarks, Trump framed the operation as a demonstration of U.S. military prowess and resolve, asserting that American forces remain unmatched globally.

Risk and Reward: Operational Costs

The U.S. mission – a highly coordinated air and ground effort that featured rotary-wing and fixed-wing aircraft alongside special operations units – has been called one of the most audacious deployments in recent U.S. history. Senior commanders have described the mission’s success as a testament to the Joint Force’s planning and execution.

🏛️ Massie Breaks With Bondi: GOP Lawmaker Says He’s Lost Confidence in Attorney General After Epstein Files Clash

Combative House Judiciary hearing over redactions, prosecutorial decisions, and the Epstein Files Transparency Act intensifies scrutiny of DOJ leadership

A public rift between Attorney General Pam Bondi and Rep. Thomas Massie burst into view this weekend, underscoring mounting tensions inside the Republican Party over the Justice Department’s handling of the Jeffrey Epstein files.

Massie, a Kentucky Republican known for his independent streak, said Sunday he no longer has confidence in Bondi following a combative House Judiciary Committee hearing in which lawmakers pressed her over redactions and prosecutorial decisions tied to the late financier Jeffrey Epstein.

“I don’t think Pam Bondi has confidence in Pam Bondi,” Massie said during an appearance on ABC’s This Week. “She wasn’t confident enough to engage in anything but name-calling in a hearing. And so no, I don’t have confidence in her.”

The exchange signals an unusual intraparty fissure, as Republicans clash publicly over transparency, accountability, and the legal boundaries of executive authority.

The Indictment That Wasn’t: What Jeanine Pirro’s Grand Jury Failures Reveal About Power, Politics, and the Justice Department

In federal practice, prosecutors are trained never to lose at the starting line.

An indictment is not a conviction. It is not even a trial. It is a formal accusation backed by probable cause — a standard intentionally set low so that contested facts can be tested before a jury. When a federal grand jury refuses to return an indictment, it is not simply declining to proceed. It is signaling doubt at the most preliminary stage.

That is why recent grand jury refusals involving the office led by U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro are so consequential.

This is not about a single case. It is about a pattern. And patterns, in federal law enforcement, are rarely accidental.

Grand Jury Rebuke: Jeanine Pirro’s Failed Indictments Raise New Questions About DOJ Strategy Under Trump

As high-profile cases against Democratic officials collapse, legal experts warn of mounting institutional strain inside the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Washington, D.C.

The failure was not subtle. It was decisive.

When a federal grand jury in Washington, D.C., declined to return an indictment sought by U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro against six Democratic lawmakers, the outcome reverberated far beyond the courtroom. A unanimous refusal to indict is rare in high-profile federal prosecutions—and in political cases, even rarer.

The episode has intensified scrutiny of the Justice Department’s posture under President Donald Trump, raising broader questions about prosecutorial discretion, political pressure, and the durability of institutional guardrails.

🛡️ The U.S. Army’s Quiet Rotation in the Philippines Signals a Subtle but Strategic Shift

A small, sustained presence under U.S. Army Pacific formalizes long-running engagement—while keeping tensions with China calibrated

The U.S. Army’s newest deployment to the Philippines is easy to miss—and that, defense analysts say, is precisely the point.

In July 2025, the Army quietly established a rotational presence of roughly 50 personnel in the Southeast Asian nation, operating under U.S. Army Pacific with coordination through Task Force Philippines, the service confirmed this week. While modest in size, the move marks a notable evolution in how the Army engages with one of its oldest treaty allies in the Indo-Pacific.

“This represents a shift from previous years’ iterative engagement cycle to a more sustained rotational presence,” said Col. Isaac Taylor, chief of public affairs for U.S. Army Pacific. The goal, he added, is to enable deeper collaboration with the Philippine Army while focusing on army-to-army partnerships and infrastructure development.

📜 From Handbill to Powerhouse: How the Chicago Defender Shaped the Great Migration and Redefined Black Journalism

Founded in 1905 by Robert Sengstacke Abbott, the Chicago Defender became a national force against racial injustice — and a driving engine behind one of the largest internal migrations in U.S. history.

In the spring of 1905, in a cramped Chicago boardinghouse, Robert Sengstacke Abbott printed 300 copies of a modest four-page paper. He sold subscriptions himself, knocking on doors across the city. What began as a weekly handbill would become one of the most influential newspapers in American history: the Chicago Defender.

More than a publication, the Defender was a movement.

From its first issue, Abbott positioned the paper as a blunt instrument against racial injustice. Beneath its masthead ran an uncompromising declaration: “American Race Justice Must Be Destroyed.” At a time when mainstream newspapers often ignored or minimized violence against Black Americans, the Defender reported boldly on lynchings, sexual violence, economic exploitation, and voter suppression.

By 1915, the once-small weekly had grown to 16,000 in circulation. But its real impact extended far beyond Chicago.

A Catalyst for the Great Migration

Historians widely credit the Defender as a major catalyst behind the Great Migration, the historic movement of more than half a million African Americans from the rural South to Northern cities between 1915 and 1920.

Abbott understood the power of information. He used Black Pullman porters and entertainers to carry the paper across the Mason-Dixon Line, often smuggling bundles into Southern communities where racial terror and segregation defined daily life.

Trump and Musk Amplify Long-Ago Debunked Mail-In Vote Fraud Claim

A social media post cited by Elon Musk to bolster his argument that mail-in voting should be curtailed, and which was subsequently amplified by President Donald Trump, makes the false and long-ago debunked claim that in the 2020 election, “Pennsylvania sent out 1,823,148 mail-in ballots but received back around 2.5 MILLION mail-in ballots.”

As the Pennsylvania Department of State’s final report on the 2020 election shows, there were 2,673,272 mail-in ballot applications approved for the 2020 general election, so that’s how many were sent out. And of those, 2,273,490 votes were cast. (See charts 6.2 and 6.3 in the report.) Another 435,932 absentee ballots were also approved, and 374,659 of them were cast.

“This claim is based on mixing up statistics from the primary and the general election,” Charles Stewart III, director of the MIT Election Data and Science Lab, explained to us via email.

As online Pennsylvania records show, there were roughly 1.8 million absentee and mail-in ballots approved for the primary election in 2020, nearly 1.5 million of which were cast. In other words, the post mixes up the number of mail-in ballots (including absentee ballots) sent for the 2020 primary election and then cites the approximate number of mail-in ballots cast in the 2020 general election.

“These are long-ago debunked claims that will not disappear despite the availability of official data,” Stewart said.

Trump Oversells Recent U.S. Economic Growth

In the second and third quarters of 2025, the U.S. economy grew at its fastest pace in two years. Those growth rates were not “numbers unheard of,” or figures the U.S. “never had” before, as President Donald Trump has claimed.

In addition, economic experts told us that federal data do not support Trump’s claim that there was economic “stagflation” during the Biden administration and “the complete opposite” during Trump’s first year back in office. Inflation was high during much of Joe Biden’s presidency, but economic growth was not stagnant, another key indicator of stagflation, the experts said. 

They also said that Trump’s tariff policies likely hindered economic growth, rather than helped spur it, as the president has suggested. 

Trump made those claims in recent speeches and remarks, as well as in a late January opinion piece for the Wall Street Journal.