Author: Reporter

President Joe Biden lambasted Republicans’ emerging trade-off plans to raise the nation’s debt limit only in exchange for spending cuts and other policy concessions on April 19, declaring that GOP lawmakers are threatening a historic default on U.S. obligations “unless I agree to all these wacko notions they have.” His remarks in a union hall speech came as House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, who had for months struggled to unite Republicans around a unified budget proposal, released a sweeping spending-restraint plan to offer to the White House along with lifting the debt limit by $1.5 trillion. But it is far...

Two former Iraq and Afghanistan War-era defense secretaries are recommending that the government consider new ways to ensure that military service is taken into account when courts prosecute former service members. The Veterans Justice Commission, led by onetime Pentagon chiefs Chuck Hagel and Leon Panetta, offered that guidance after reports that a concerning number of veterans have been convicted of crimes since leaving military service. The commission was tasked with examining the extent to which veterans are getting in trouble with the law, whether they are receiving appropriate transitional assistance when they no longer are in the armed services...

The Defense Department should implement a series of gun safety measures to reduce suicides in the force, an independent committee recommended in late January, calling for waiting periods for the purchase of firearms and ammunition by service members on military property. The panel said the department should also raise the minimum age for service members to buy guns and ammunition to 25, and should also require anyone living in military housing to register all privately owned firearms. In addition, the panel said the department should restrict the possession and storage of privately owned firearms in military barracks and dorms....

On Navy ships docked at this vast base, hundreds of sailors in below-deck mazes of windowless passageways perform intense, often monotonous manual labor. It is necessary work before a ship deploys, but hard to adjust to for many already challenged by the stresses plaguing young adults nationwide. Growing mental health distress in the ranks carries such grave implications that the U.S. chief of naval operations, Adm. Michael Gilday, answered “suicides” when asked earlier this year what in the security environment kept him up at night. One recently embraced prevention strategy is to deploy chaplains as regular members of the...

Attorney General Josh Kaul and Walworth County District Attorney Zeke Wiedenfeld announced on April 17 that defrocked former Roman Catholic cardinal Theodore McCarrick, has been charged with one count of Fourth-Degree Sexual Assault for an incident that occurred more than 45 years ago. A criminal complaint filed on April 14 alleges that Theodore McCarrick, who was removed from the priesthood in 2019 after a Vatican investigation found he had sexually molested adults and children, fondled a man in April 1977 while staying at a cabin on Geneva Lake in southeastern Wisconsin. The alleged victim, who is not named, told...