National Security News

The Daily Signal provides reports on national and homeland security issues, including military readiness, intelligence operations, border protection, and global conflicts. Featuring news, analysis, and commentary, this section explores how security policy decisions affect America’s national defense and freedom.
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  • opinion

    Our Military Is Weak. That Should Scare You.
    Our government isn’t serious about defending the United States and its interests. In fact, it has fallen woefully short in carrying out this sacred obligation. I know this sounds harsh, but as we’ll see, the government’s own numbers prove the point. That our military is weak is not an indictment of the men and women…
    Dakota Wood
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  • news

    ‘A Huge Blow’: Decline in White Recruits Fueling the Military’s Worst-Ever Recruiting Crisis, Data Shows
    Each U.S. military service saw a notable decline in white recruits over the past five years, according to data obtained by the Daily Caller News Foundation, likely factoring into the military’s crippling recruiting crisis. The Army, Navy, and Air Force missed their recruiting objectives by historically large margins in fiscal year 2023, which ended on…
    Micaela Burrow
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  • news

    ‘Gender-Based Political Violence’: Former Lawmaker Targeted for Calling a Man Who Identifies as a Woman a Man
    Mexican authorities convicted civil society leader and former Mexican Congressman Rodrigo Iván Cortés of “gender-based political violence.” His crime? Criticizing a man who identifies as a transgender woman. Cortés drew fire over posts on Facebook and X, formerly known as Twitter, that referred to a trans-identifying Mexican congressional representative as a “man who self-ascribes as…
    Mary Margaret Olohan
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  • opinion

    Just How Many ‘Extremists’ Have Infiltrated the US Military? The Media Doesn’t Want You to Know
    President Joe Biden loves to warn the country about the threat of white supremacy, and his own administration has launched a soft inqusition into the most patriotic members of society, the men and women who volunteer to put their lives on the line for the rest of us. Nearly three years into the Biden administration,…
    Tyler O’Neil
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  • news

    4 Reasons US Military Isn’t Prepared to Face Worst Enemies
    The U.S. military is at risk of being unable to defend America’s national interests against foes such as China, Russia, and Iran, concludes The Heritage Foundation’s new Index of U.S. Military Strength. “This is the inevitable result of years of prolonged deployments, underfunding, poorly defined priorities, wildly shifting security policies, exceedingly poor discipline in program…
    Fred Lucas
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  • news

    ‘Not Going to Be Messed With’: US Expects Houthi Response to Airstrikes, Pentagon Says
    Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen are likely to retaliate for U.S. and U.K. airstrikes on dozens of targets used by the rebels to launch attacks on commercial shipping and U.S. military vessels, a top Pentagon military officer said Friday. Neither the U.S. nor the Houthis yet know the extent of the damage from Thursday evening’s bombardment, Army Lt….
    Micaela Burrow
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  • opinion

    The Bizarre Case of a Missing Defense Secretary
    These days, it’s not controversial to point out that on the Biden administration’s watch, the world has become far less stable and far more dangerous. The sudden and haphazard U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan in August 2021 surely emboldened our adversaries, given Russia’s invasion of Ukraine six months later. And Russia, despite failing to take Ukraine…
    Victoria Coates
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  • opinion

    House Panel: FBI Singled Out ‘Pro-Life, Pro-Family’ Americans as ‘Potential Domestic Terrorists’
    After 9/11, leftist journalists passionately exposed the New York City Police Department doing surveillance of mosques to try to prevent violent Muslim extremism. By contrast, they largely yawned when it was leaked in February that the FBI’s field office in Richmond, Virginia, discussed surveilling local Catholic churches to root out potential violent extremism from the…
    Tim Graham
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  • news

    New Documentary Tells Story of Space Force Commander Who Spoke Out on CRT, Wokeness in Military
    Production began last week on “Against All Enemies,” a documentary about former Space Force Lt. Col. Matthew Lohmeier, who faced retaliation for exposing claims of “institutional racism” in the military.   In 2021, the Space Force relieved Lohmeier of command of the 11th Space Warning Squadron in Colorado in retaliation for his comments. He said he…
    Fred Lucas
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  • opinion

    Putting the Military Ahead of the Unborn
    A small group of Senate Republicans last week took to the Senate floor to try to break the hold on military promotions placed by Sen. Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala. Those GOP senators included Joni Ernst of Iowa, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, Mitt Romney of Utah, Dan Sullivan of Alaska, and Todd Young of Indiana. They…
    Eric Teetsel
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  • news

    EXCLUSIVE: ‘He Sees All White People as Racist’: Military Assessment Criticizes Air Force Colonel’s Leadership
    FIRST ON THE DAILY SIGNAL—Col. Ben Jonsson, an Air Force officer who accused his fellow “white colonels” of being “blind to institutional racism,” is the subject of blistering criticism from subordinates at MacDill Air Force Base, where he served as commander from 2020 to 2022.  Jonsson is among the more than 300 military officers awaiting…
    Robert B. Bluey
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  • news

    Former Green Beret Says Military Punished Him for Opposing Vaccine Mandate
    John Frankman formerly served as a captain in the U.S. Army as a Green Beret. But after a years-long struggle to stand up for his religious beliefs in a battle against the military’s vaccine mandate, Frankman made the choice to voluntarily separate from the Army in July. Now he’s sharing his story. In an interview…
    Mary Margaret Olohan
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  • news

    LAWSUIT: Air Force Punished Reservist Who Condemned Woke Military ‘Enforcement Tactics’
    A new lawsuit is accusing the Department of the Air Force and the U.S. Space Force of punishing a reservist for speaking out against the "enforcement tactics" of those he says are quashing courage and truth within the military. Space Force reservist Jace Yarbrough delivered remarks in uniform in early 2021 at the retirement ceremony…
    Mary Margaret Olohan
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  • opinion

    At West Point, Racism Becomes More Important Than Military Readiness
    Students for Fair Admissions, the same group that recently won a lawsuit against Harvard and the University of North Carolina challenging their illegal, racially discriminatory admissions policies, has filed a similar suit against the U.S. Military Academy.  Shockingly, the admissions policy at West Point, one of our premier military academies, is even more blatantly racist…
    Hans von Spakovsky
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  • news

    Paying Iranian Terrorists Billions in Ransom Is Nothing to Brag About, Mr. President
    The going rate for an American hostage these days is around $1.3 billion. That’s what the Biden administration paid out this week for five Americans in a prisoner swap with the Islamic Republic of Iran. And with little overhead, it’s mostly profit for the mullahs. But don’t let the term “prisoner swap” insinuate that there…
    David Harsanyi
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  • news

    Tuberville Wanted a Vote on Military Nominees. Here Are the Results for the Joint Chiefs Chairman.
    Only 11 of 49 Republican senators voted against President Joe Biden’s nominee for chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, after many conservatives raised concerns about critical race theory and other woke ideas and policies invading the military.  The Senate confirmed Air Force Gen. Charles “C.Q.” Brown Jr. to the nation’s top military position Wednesday…
    Fred Lucas
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  • opinion

    Pentagon Reverses Gender-Neutral Pronoun Policy for Awards After Heritage Takes It to Task
    A rare thing happened Tuesday in Washington, D.C. Sanity prevailed. On Sept. 19, very quietly, the Pentagon reversed its asinine gender-neutral pronoun rule for certain award citations that my colleague Dakota Wood and I exposed on Sept. 1. Without any fanfare—no doubt in an attempt to put this entire sordid affair behind it—the Pentagon simply…
    Cully Stimson
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  • news

    ‘Ministry of Truth’: Conservatives Warn About Washington State’s ‘Domestic Terrorism’ Effort
    Washington's Democratic attorney general released a report late last year urging the state to crack down on domestic terrorism and enlisting an analyst at an organization notorious for putting conservative groups on a "hate map" alongside chapters of the Ku Klux Klan, a map that has inspired at least one act of terrorism. The attorney…
    Tyler O’Neil
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  • opinion

    Pentagon’s ‘Clarification’ on Gender Pronouns? When You’re in a Hole, Quit Digging
    Earlier this week, after we exposed the Pentagon’s woke gender-pronoun policy for the top joint military awards and the ensuing political firestorm it caused, the Pentagon issued a “clarification.” But here’s the problem: The clarification only confirms our worst fears and raises other related questions. This issue isn’t going away anytime soon. On Sept. 1,…
    Cully Stimson | Dakota Wood
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  • opinion

    Defense Expert: America’s Ability to Defend Itself Declining as Result of Several Bad Choices
    The United States military’s ability to defend this nation and her interests is declining by choice, and that is creating unacceptable risk, according to national defense expert Robert Greenway. That decline is not only because of a reduction in military spending and the aging out of equipment that’s not being replaced quickly enough, it’s also…
    Lucy Gilbert | Sara Garstka
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