‘Since intelligence was shut off, we're seeing real gains from the Russians,' warns Fmr. NATO Commander
Former NATO Commander Adm. James Stavridis speaks to Bianna Golodryga about what a post-NATO future could look like for Europe.
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Yahoo
5 hours ago
- Yahoo
Hint on defence spending budget
The Albanese government could boost defence spending if the US asks for more Australian 'capability', a senior minister says. Anthony Albanese has resisted Washington's call to lift the defence budget to 3.5 per cent of GDP despite alarm bells over China's military build-up. The Prime Minister has held firm that Australia would first determine its defence needs and then fund them. But all NATO members bar Spain agreed to increase defence spending to 5 per cent of GDP this week, highlighting Australia as an on outlier in the West. Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke hinted on Sunday that could change. 'We make decisions on behalf of Australia and on behalf of Australia's national interest,' Mr Burke told Sky News. 'We have mature, decent, respectful conversations with the United States. 'But as I say, the conversation doesn't start with the dollars at our end – it starts with the capability. 'It is true … now that the world is a less stable place than it was, that means the conversations you're having now about capability are different to what you would have had.' Pressed on whether a US request for more capability rather than a flat GDP figure would free up the funds, Mr Burke said it might but that the Albanese government would 'look at it from the perspective of if Australia requires more capability'. 'We look at what capability's required, and that so far has meant, over time, we've been spending more money on defence than happened before Labor came to government.' US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth directly called on Australia to set the 3.5 per cent target in a meeting with Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles earlier this month. It ignited a major debate in Canberra and fuelled criticisms that Australia is ill-prepared to defend itself against an increasingly aggressive China. While the Albanese government has committed record cash for the defence budget, much of it will not kick in until after 2029. With Australia itself predicting a major global conflict by 2034 and some analysts warning of a US-China conflict before 2030, critics have argued the money is not flowing fast enough and instead tied up in longer-term projects at the cost of combat-readiness. Mr Albanese's resistance to Washington's call has also fuelled worries he has mismanaged the relationship with the US. Appearing on Sky after Mr Burke, opposition defence spokesman Angus Taylor repeated the Coalition's demand for a 3 per cent target. He said Mr Albanese 'is right' not to base Australia's defence spending on a figure set by another country, but accused the government of not funding the needs set by its landmark defence strategic review. 'It should be based on need, but its own defence strategic review, has laid out where the money needs to be spent and it's not being spent,' Mr Taylor said. 'I mean, this is the point. This government's not even meeting its own goals.' He added that 'recruitment numbers … are way below where they need to be' and that Australia's 'naval surface fleet is not where it needs to be'. 'It's clear that trying to get the balance right between the imperative of AUKUS and other defence spending is not working right now,' Mr Taylor said.
Yahoo
6 hours ago
- Yahoo
Trump Says He Gave Iran Permission to Bomb U.S. Base in Qatar and…Well, Mostly Crickets?
A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM's Morning Memo. Sign up for the email version. When political scientist Seth Masket shared this story on Bluesky yesterday, I couldn't believe it was real. The right-wing Washington Times reported that at a press conference at the NATO Summit in the Netherlands on Wednesday, Trump revealed that he had given Iran permission to bomb the U.S.'s Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar in retaliation for the American bombing of their nuclear sites. 'They said, 'We're going to shoot them. Is one o'clock OK?' I said it's fine,' Trump said. 'And everybody was emptied off the base so they couldn't get hurt, except for the gunners.' I poked around for other major coverage of this extraordinary admission, and landed only on a transcript of the press conference. And yes, amid a characteristically meandering monologue, Trump actually said that he let a foreign adversary bomb an American military installation. But this story has pretty much come and gone with virtually no attention and certainly none of the outrage commensurate with what Trump said. Let's consider what Trump's verbal diarrhea here could mean. Suppose he is (for once) telling the truth. Wouldn't that represent the most shocking dereliction of duty one could imagine for the commander-in-chief? (A high crime or misdemeanor, perhaps?) Is he saying he let Iran get its retaliation out of its system with what he called 'a very weak response' to bring an end to hostilities? Perhaps Trump simply was rambling incoherently as he basked in his new 'daddy' glow at NATO. What would have happened if a Democratic president, particularly one named Joe Biden, had said he let a foreign adversary fire on an American military installation? As you consider that hypothetical, keep in mind that House Republicans are currently spending their precious oversight time investigating the former president's mental acuity. Trump loyalists are taking up his charge to attack any journalist who reported on intelligence contradicting Trump's claim to have 'obliterated' Iran's nuclear sites in last weekend's strikes. The tenor of this authoritarian campaign is that reporters are not permitted to contradict the president. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth came out swinging against his former Fox News colleague, national security correspondent Jennifer Griffin, in an early morning press conference yesterday. In response to a question from Griffin about whether the Pentagon was certain that Tehran had not moved highly enriched uranium from the Fordow site prior to the American strike, Hegseth lashed out, 'Jennifer, you've been about the worst, the one who misrepresents the most intentionally what the president says.' Later in the day, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt went after CNN's Natasha Bertrand, after Trump had demanded she be 'thrown out like a dog.' Leavitt claimed Bertrand is 'being used to push a fake narrative to try to undermine the President of the United States and more importantly the brave fighter pilots who conducted one of the most successful operations in United States history.' CNN issued a statement standing by Bertrand's reporting. Meanwhile Senate Democrats remain unconvinced of Trump's obliteration claims following a classified intelligence briefing yesterday. Trump ally Lindsey Graham (R-SC), who also attended the briefing, struggled to save face for the president, telling reporters afterwards, 'The real question is, have we obliterated their desire to have a nuclear weapon.' Graham went on to tread lightly around Trump's feelings. 'I don't want people to think that the site wasn't severely damaged or obliterated,' he said. 'It was. But having said that, I don't want people to think the problem is over, because it's not.' Following a pattern of dangerous social media attacks on perceived political enemies, some Senate Republicans have begun to assail Elizabeth MacDonough, the nonpartisan Senate Parliamentarian who has struck numerous provisions out of the GOP's One Big Beautiful Bill. NBC reports: 'The WOKE Senate Parliamentarian, who was appointed by Harry Reid and advised Al Gore, just STRUCK DOWN a provision BANNING illegals from stealing Medicaid from American citizens,' Sen. Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala., wrote on X. 'This is a perfect example of why Americans hate THE SWAMP.' 'THE SENATE PARLIAMENTARIAN SHOULD BE FIRED ASAP,' he said. MacDonough was appointed by then-Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., in 2012, and is well-respected by leaders on both sides of the aisle. But Sen. Roger Marshall, R-Kansas, also said MacDonough needs to go and called for term limits for parliamentarians. 'She's been here since 2012; she has a lot of power,' Marshall told reporters. 'I don't think anyone should stay here that long and have power where she doesn't answer to anybody.' While other Senate Republicans seem less eager for such a fight, their failure to firmly and publicly tamp down these inflammatory statements in the current climate is disheartening, to say the least. At Mother Jones, Mark Follman reports on the dangers of Trump's dismantling of the Center for Prevention Programs and Partnerships (CP3), a Department of Homeland Security initiative tasked with developing evidence-based community programs to prevent political violence and terrorism. The administration has diverted resources from this and other programs to fund Trump's brutal deportation agenda. 'We're at real risk of normalizing political violence as a part of our democracy,' CP3's former director William Braniff told Follman. '[W]hen these norms are accepted at a societal level and encouraged at a political level, they become entrenched and really difficult to reverse.' The Republican goal of eliminating diversity, equity, and inclusion and 'gender ideology' is aimed squarely at rolling back hard-won civil rights protections for people who aren't white, straight, or cisgender. The Trump administration is carrying out this agenda, in part, through investigations and pressure campaigns against educational institutions, threatening to cut their federal funding. Yesterday, the Office of Civil Rights at the Department of Health and Human Services announced it is investigating the Minnesota Department of Education and the Minnesota State High School League over trans girls playing sports, part of what it says is a 'larger initiative to defend women and restore biological truth to the Federal government.' In another arena, the New York Times reports the Justice Department is pressuring the University of Virginia to fire its president, James Ryan, 'over what the department says is the school's disregard for civil rights law over its diversity practices.' In other words, the Department of Justice, which historically has enforced civil rights laws protecting against race discrimination, is now strong-arming educational institutions it claims have discriminated against white people. The Washington Post reports this morning that staffers from Elon Musk's so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) are setting up shop at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives with a 'goal of revising or eliminating dozens of rules and gun restrictions by July 4.' DOGE might want to run roughshod over it, but there's a legal process for amending or ending federal regulations. You can count on litigation over any such efforts, not to mention public outcry. According to the Associated Press, in a hearing before the Senate Appropriations Committee, Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought committed to restoring funding for foreign aid and public broadcasting if the Senate votes down a House-passed 'rescissions' package to make billions of dollars in DOGE-led cuts permanent. Earlier this week I linked to a piece in Wired, reporting that Edward Coristine, the 19 year-old Department of Government Efficiency staffer also known as Big Balls, no longer worked for the federal government. The New York Times had matched Wired's reporting, and then, yesterday, issued a correction. Coristine, who before joining DOGE had been fired from a job at a data security firm for leaking company information, is now a 'special employee' at the Social Security Administration. Rep. Andy Ogles (R-TN) sent a letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi, asking her to 'denaturalize' and deport New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani, falsely claiming he failed to disclose material support for terrorism prior to becoming a U.S. citizen. The House Homeland Security Committee has launched an investigation into hundreds of religious organizations and even entire denominations, claiming they were 'involved in providing services or support to inadmissible aliens during the Biden-Harris administration's historic border crisis.' Ominously, the letter the committee is sending religious organizations includes questions about their federal government funding through grants or contracts, their provision of services to immigrants, and whether they have ever sued the government.
Yahoo
8 hours ago
- Yahoo
Capability to dictate Australian defence spending
Lifting the federal defence budget will be based on what Australia's military can achieve, rather an arbitrary dollar figure, a senior minister says. Pressure has mounted on the Albanese government to lift defence spending, after NATO allies agreed to boost theirs to five per cent of GDP. While Australia has pledged to increase its spend to 2.3 per cent by 2033/34, the US has called for a rise to 3.5 per cent. But Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke said Australia was already lifting its spending on the military, which would also centre on the ability of the armed forces to protect the country. "We start with the capability, we don't start with the dollars, and that's how we work with every financial decision that the government makes," Mr Burke told Sky News on Sunday. "With those capability decisions, we are already spending more than was spent before we came to office." Despite the push from the US, Mr Burke said Australia's relationship with America was not at risk. "The relationship with the United States is really important," he said. "We have mature, decent, respectful conversations with the United States, but as I say, the conversation doesn't start with the dollars at our end." Opposition defence spokesman Angus Taylor said the instability seen around the world reinforced the need for countries like Australia to spend more on defence. "We are seeing authoritarian regimes across the globe flexing their muscles, and open, democratic societies like ours need to stand up for what we believe in, and need to make sure we achieve peace through deterrence," he told Sky News. "There's a range of things that are very clear that we need to spend on ... and there's a whole series of areas which we're seeing are underfunded right now." Before the federal election, the opposition had pledged to increase the defence budget to three per cent of GDP. However, there was uncertainty about where the extra money would come from. Mr Taylor said the budget for the military should be increased, regardless if there was pressure from the US. "If a government is not in a position to keep its people safe, then it has failed as a government," he said. "This is a disaster for Australians and for Australia, we need to get serious about it, and I'm going to continue to hold the government to account on this, because this is a failure from our government."
