How Trump Can Rescue Military Families Trapped In Woke DOD Schools
Parents have been systematically turned away from the few venues they once had to steer Department of Defense Education Activity schools.Parents have been systematically turned away from the few venues they once had to steer Department of Defense Education Activity schools.'They're real': Obama makes shocking statement about aliens — then tries to walk it back
In a recent interview with Bryan Tyler Cohen, former President Barack Obama was asked about the existence of aliens during a "speed round" of questions, and Obama made a shocking statement.
“They’re real,” Obama told Cohen quickly.
The clip quickly went viral, sparking renewed questions about what the former president knows and what he has previously said about UFOs and extraterrestrial life.
'Statistically, the universe is so vast that the odds are good there’s life out there.'
Obama clarified to Cohen that he has never actually “seen them” himself and dismissed long-running Area 51 conspiracy theories, saying that the government is not actively hiding aliens, unless agents somehow managed to conceal that information from the president of the United States.
But this was not the first time Obama publicly addressed the issue.
In 2021, during an appearance on "The Late Late Show with James Corden," Obama was pressed about UFOs.
“There are some things I just can’t tell you on air,” Obama said.
Though the exchange began lightheartedly, Obama shifted to a more serious tone.
“What is true, and I’m actually being serious here, is that there’s footage and records of objects in the skies that we don’t know exactly what they are,” Obama said. “We can’t explain how they moved, their trajectory. They did not have an easily explainable pattern. And so, you know, I think that people still take seriously trying to investigate and figure out what that is.”
President Donald Trump has also fielded questions about aliens on multiple occasions, including during an interview with podcast host Joe Rogan.
“I interviewed jet pilots that were solid people — perfect, great pilots, great everything. And they said, ‘We saw things, sir, that were very strange, like a round ball, but it wasn’t a comet or a meteor,’” Trump said. “‘It was something, and it was going four times faster than an F-22.’”
“There’s no reason not to think that Mars and all these planets don’t have life,” Trump added.
These previous statements from both presidents are notably similar in tone, acknowledging unexplained aerial phenomena while stopping short of confirming extraterrestrial life, making Obama's comment to Cohen all the more noteworthy.
However, Obama has since attempted to give more context to his declaration that aliens are "real."
RELATED: Pentagon psyop exposed: Military reportedly cooked up tales of alien technology in weapons cover-up
A day after the interview, Obama made a clarifying post on Instagram, saying he was "trying to stick with the spirit of the speed round."
Obama then delivered a gut punch to the community of UFO believers, saying, "Statistically, the universe is so vast that the odds are good there’s life out there. But the distances between solar systems are so great that the chances we’ve been visited by aliens is low, and I saw no evidence during my presidency that extraterrestrials have made contact with us. Really!"
Studies show that the American people remain curious about the UFO phenomenon. A 2025 poll from NewsNation/Decision Desk HQ surveyed 521 Republicans, 559 Democrats, 349 independents, and 18 “other” voters and found that 44% of Americans believe the government is concealing UFO information. Twenty-eight percent disagree, while another 28% remain unsure.
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'Impossible to deal with': Pete Hegseth reveals the real culprit behind defense contractor delays
War Secretary Pete Hegseth has made it his mission to slash through red tape and streamline defense production. But in order to do that, Hegseth says the Pentagon needs to take a look in the mirror.
Blaze News traveled with Hegseth as he visited defense contractors like Anduril and General Dynamics during his "Arsenal of Freedom" tour Monday, hammering the importance of overcoming burdensome production delays. In order to embolden the hardworking men and women who build America's arsenal, Hegseth told Blaze News the Pentagon needs to take the first step.
'There's mazes of requirements.'
"A lot of the hang-up has been us," Hegseth told Blaze News. "So we've got to look at ourselves first. The way we do business — we've been impossible to deal with."
"A bad customer who, year after year, changes our mind about what we want or what we don't want, and then we make little, small technological changes, which makes it more difficult for them to produce what they need to produce on time. So we have to fix our own house first: provide clarity, simplify the system, allow more people to access it, give that steady demand signal."
NEW: Hegseth tells me the real reason why there are massive production delays in the defense industry: “A lot of the hang up has been us.”
“The way we do business, we’ve been impossible to deal with.” @theblaze pic.twitter.com/hv87VWMHw6
— Rebeka Zeljko (@rebekazeljko) February 9, 2026
Whether it's building warships or acquiring the latest technologies for autonomous underwater vehicles, Hegseth acknowledged how often these projects often fall far behind schedule and go way over budget. In an attempt to combat this, Hegseth noted several DOW deals with defense companies like Raytheon, Boeing, and Lockheed Martin that facilitate investment because "they know we're going to be buying in the future."
"That's groundbreaking stuff. Our department's never done that. ... That's just good business. We haven't operated ... that way before."
RELATED: Putting God back in 'degraded' US Chaplain Corps: Hegseth axes pagan codes and New Age guides
Over 2,000 workers at General Dynamics cheer “USA” in anticipation of Sec. Hegseth’s arrival. @theblaze
“We build the apex predator.” pic.twitter.com/63v2vvuFHq
— Rebeka Zeljko (@rebekazeljko) February 9, 2026
Like all other government agencies, Hegseth also pointed to bureaucracy and regulations as major hindrances for these defense companies.
"There's mazes of requirements that this department has traditionally put on different systems and platforms that are impossible to navigate, and by the time you navigate them, you're five years behind the actual technology," Hegseth told Blaze News.
"We're going to companies and saying tell us what you can do based on the parameters of what kind of capabilities we're looking for. ... Let's tailor it accordingly."
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Revitalizing America’s Defense Industrial Base Takes Center Stage In Hegseth’s Address To Shipbuilders
'We've been clear: the era of rewarding delays and cost overruns is over,' said War Secretary Pete Hegseth.Troops who refused COVID shot to receive retroactive honor to 'right the wrongs of the past': Hegseth
President Trump's secretary of war is making it a point to set the record straight for those servicemen and -women who adhered to their convictions and refused the Biden COVID shots.
In a memorandum dated December 6, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth ordered Pentagon leadership to identify service members wrongfully discharged because of their refusal to take the jab and give them their due.
Sean Parnell said that nearly 8,700 service members were 'involuntarily separated' from the military because of their refusal to take the jab.
Specifically, many service members were given a general discharge rather than a fully honorable discharge.
"It is unconscionable that thousands of former Service members who held true to their personal and religious convictions were not just separated, but separated with General (Under Honorable Conditions), rather than Honorable, discharge characterizations," Hegseth wrote.
RELATED: Activist judges overruled: Trump judges greenlight Hegseth’s ban on military 'dudes in dresses'
Chief Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said that nearly 8,700 service members were "involuntarily separated" from the military because of their refusal to take the jab.
Of those, Parnell continued, "more than 3,000 received less than honorable discharge characterizations."
"The department is committed to ensuring that everyone who should have received a fully honorable discharge receives one and continues to right wrongs and restore confidence in and honor to our fighting force,” Parnell said.
In his first week back in office, Trump signed an executive order to reinstate service members who left or were removed from duty on account of the "unfair, overbroad, and unnecessary" COVID vaccine mandates. Hegseth then began implementing that directive in February.
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Hegseth Orders Review Of Discharge Characterizations For Troops Booted Over Biden’s Covid Shot Mandate
Secretary of War Pete Hegseth signed a memorandum ordering a reevaluation of discharge characterizations for service members removed from service for foregoing the Biden-era Covid shot mandate, the Pentagon revealed Tuesday. Signed on Dec. 6, the new directive instructs the War Department to undertake a “proactive review of personnel records, to identify individuals who were […]Congress strips merit from the military and shackles the president in one bill
The Trump administration recently released an extremely promising National Security Strategy — but the same cannot be said about the proposed National Defense Authorization Act for the 2026 fiscal year.
The House and Senate’s compromise NDAA appears to be in tension with the goals of the administration’s strategy. While the National Security Strategy prioritizes a hemispheric defense of the American homeland, the NDAA locks decision-makers into maintaining unnecessary overseas troop levels. Despite President Trump’s stated strategic aims, Congress seems intent on safeguarding the national security priorities and infrastructure of previous eras.
The NDAA represents the ‘deep state,’ a combination of entrenched interests, committees, lobbies, and bureaucracies that value continuity over strategy and reform.
Restricting the drawdown of troops stationed overseas, increasingly murky foreign entrenchment through legally binding efforts to sell arms, and dubious clauses requiring congressional approval at every turn, all serve to bind the commander in chief’s hands. All of this reeks of a shadowy order desperately trying to maintain the status quo at the expense of the will of the people who elected Donald Trump in 2024.
This cannot stand.
Section 1249 of the NDAA states that U.S. forces in Europe cannot fall below 76,000 for more than 45 days without presidential certifications to Congress. This is supposed to ensure that troop reductions present no threat to NATO partners or U.S. national security. (Absurdly, the bill requires the U.S. to consult with every NATO ally and even “relevant non-NATO partners.”) But stripping the president of essential discretion through ludicrous legislative roadblocks categorically subverts his authority under the Constitution.
Section 1255 states that troop levels cannot dip below 28,500 in the Korean Peninsula, nor can wartime operational control be transferred without an identical trial by fire of congressional approvals and national-security certifications.
Shifting our military focus to our own backyard was a stated goal of the National Security Strategy. If this vision is to be implemented, Congress cannot serve as a bureaucratic middleman that hinders deployment flexibility through pedantic checklists.
Americans need to understand that the NDAA would obstruct the execution of President Trump’s agenda. As written, it functions as a deliberate statutory barrier to presidential decision-making. This denotes a redistribution of war powers from the elected executive to a sprawling and unaccountable institutional structure.
The NDAA represents what Americans call the “deep state,” a combination of entrenched interests, committees, lobbies, and bureaucracies that value continuity over strategy and reform.
This continuity becomes clear when you look at what the House and Senate didn’t include in the compromise NDAA. The Senate’s original bill contained a provision barring the use of DEI in service-academy admissions — a measure that would have required merit-only standards and prevented racial profiling. Congress stripped that section out. The final bill includes a few weak gestures toward limiting DEI, but none of them meet President Trump’s goal of a military that rejects race and sex as factors altogether.
RELATED: Mexico has cartel armies. Blue America has cartel politics.
As written, the NDAA gives a future Democratic president the opportunity to reintroduce woke indoctrination in the military with the stroke of a pen. And laws favoring DEI at our nation’s most vital institutions could resurface on a whim, using typical “diversity is our strength” platitudes.
Despite its name, the NDAA functions less like a defense bill and more like the legal backbone of America’s global posture. Whatever promises the National Security Strategy makes, they cannot be realized so long as the current NDAA pulls in the opposite direction. Strategy should shape institutions — not the other way around.
In Washington jargon, the NDAA is treated as “must-pass” legislation. That label has no legal or constitutional basis. And even if it must pass, no one claims it must be signed.
The National Security Strategy reflects the will of voters; the NDAA reflects bureaucratic inertia. That is why the Trump administration cannot, in good conscience, approve this bill. Our escape from stagnation, mediocrity, and endless foreign entanglements depends on rejecting it — and time is running out.
Editor’s note: A version of this article was published originally at the American Mind.
Activist judges overruled: Trump judges greenlight Hegseth’s ban on military 'dudes in dresses'
U.S. District Judge Ana Reyes — a foreign-born, Biden-appointed, lesbian judge who previously worked as a lawyer to fight the first Trump administration's immigration policy — decided in March to indefinitely block the enforcement of the second Trump administration's ban on transvestites in the military, suggesting it likely violated their constitutional rights.
Reyes, formerly of the Feminist Majority Foundation, suggested in her March 18 ruling that the "Military Ban is soaked in animus" and that it was her responsibility as a judge to keep the executive branch at heel, despite acknowledging the "pernicious" nature of judicial overreach.
On Tuesday, a three-judge panel on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit handed the administration a big win: a 2-1 decision staying Reyes' order and greenlighting enforcement of the ban.
'We're done with that s**t.'
Citing the Supreme Court's June 6-3 ruling in United States v. Skrmetti, which upheld Tennessee's ban on sex-rejecting genital mutilations and sterilizing puberty blockers for minors, U.S. Circuit Judges Gregory Katsas and Neomi Rao — both appointed by President Donald Trump — ruled that War Secretary Pete Hegseth's ban on trans-identifying military members likely did not violate the U.S. Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause or trigger any form of heightened scrutiny.
"In Skrmetti, the Supreme Court held that a law prohibiting the use of hormones to treat gender dysphoria in minors 'classifies on the basis of medical use' and thus does not discriminate based on either sex or transgender status," Katsas wrote for the majority. "The same reasoning would seem to cover the Hegseth Policy, which classifies based on the medical condition of gender dysphoria."
Even if the policy contained a classification triggering some form of heightened scrutiny, Katsas emphasized that "decades of precedent establish that the judiciary must tread carefully when asked to second-guess considered military judgments of the political branches."
RELATED: 'Not medicine — it's malpractice': Trump HHS buries child sex-change regime with damning report
Katsas noted further that the policy was "likely constitutional because it reflects a considered judgment of military leaders and furthers legitimate military interests," such as cost issues, unit cohesion, and military readiness.
Trump noted in his Jan. 27 executive order titled "Prioritizing Military Excellence and Readiness":
Consistent with the military mission and longstanding DoD policy, expressing a false "gender identity" divergent from an individual’s sex cannot satisfy the rigorous standards necessary for military service. Beyond the hormonal and surgical medical interventions involved, adoption of a gender identity inconsistent with an individual’s sex conflicts with a soldier’s commitment to an honorable, truthful, and disciplined lifestyle, even in one’s personal life.
The Pentagon subsequently released guidance stating that "military service by Service members and applicants for military service who have a current diagnosis or history of, or exhibit symptoms consistent with, gender dysphoria is incompatible with military service," and took steps to begin giving those with gender dysphoria the boot.
Katsas suggested that Reyes' claim that the Pentagon's policy did not advance legitimate interests was more or less baseless — that she:
- "gave no sound reason for overriding the Secretary's considered judgment";
- premised her claim that "medical studies now overwhelmingly conclude that gender dysphoria is highly treatable" on a "declaration from one doctor who simply stated, in one sentence and without citations, that 'gender dysphoria is highly treatable'"; and
- "downplayed evidence of greater mental-health issues faced by transgender individuals."
The court also rejected Reyes' suggestion that the policy is rooted in animus against transvestites, noting that she "looked beyond the Hegseth Policy itself to derive animus from various statements made by the President or other officials" — an approach the Supreme Court has previously rejected.
The dissenting judge on the panel, an appointee of former President Barack Obama, lashed out at her colleagues, claiming in a 27-page dissent — which reads like a work of LGBT activist literature — that the majority's decision "makes it all but inevitable that thousands of qualified servicemembers will lose careers they have built over decades, drawn up short by a policy that would repay their commitment and service to our nation with detriment and derision."
"The majority grants this stay in the face of all evidence to the contrary," continued U.S. Circuit Judge Cornelia Pillard. "We should not accord deference to the military when the Department itself carelessly relied on no more than blatant animus."
According to Pillard, the Pentagon's decision to oust gender-dysphoric individuals from the military was "based on nothing more than negative attitudes about transgender identity."
She also clutched pearls about various comments from elements of the Trump administration, including War Secretary Pete Hegseth's May 6 remarks stating, "No more dudes in dresses; we're done with that s**t."
"Because the Hegseth Policy is openly fueled by animus towards transgender people and defendants have not shown that it is based on military considerations, it fails even the most deferential form of equal protection review," wrote Pillard.
Following the appellate court's ruling, Hegseth shared a cartoon to social media depicting him kicking a bearded man in a dress out of the Department of War. The transvestite depicted in the cartoon is holding a box containing a book titled "DEI Military" and an LGBT flag.
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