The Defense Department says it’s cutting 5,400 probationary workers starting next week and will put a hiring freeze in place.

Two percent is a start, as President Trump has said, but it’s not enough, nor is 3%, nor is 4% — more like 5%,” the defense secretary said in a speech in Brussels.

As part of the Trump administration's wide-ranging overhaul of the US Pentagon, between 5-8% of probationary civilian workers will be fired.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Pentagon did not push same "globalist agendas" as USAID but welcomed DOGE "partnership" to find billions in waste.

Pete Hegseth, the new US Secretary of Defense, has stated that his previous remarks about Ukraine's NATO membership being unrealistic did not mean that Ukraine could not join the Alliance in the future.

Trump fired the Kennedy Center’s leadership upon his return to the Oval Office and put MAGA loyalist Richard Grenell in charge of the famed institution. In the week that followed the decision ticket sales halved, Kennedy Center staff members told The Washington Post anonymously for fear of reprisals.

In 2023, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, the U.S. government spent $916 billion on "defense," which was more than the

US National Security Advisor Mike Waltz said there are no discussions about Ukraine's accession to NATO at the moment. He emphasized that he is waiting for Europe to step up its efforts, according to CNN White House correspondent Alaina Trinh.

After Thursday’s NATO ministerial gathering, Hegseth travels to Poland for what the Pentagon said will be talks with leaders about “bilateral defense cooperation, continued deterrence efforts ...

Any unilateral termination of the North Atlantic Treaty by Donald Trump would likely end up in the U.S. Supreme Court, and would litigate the president’s power to reshape international world order.