#Council on National Security | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

sybaritick · 2 years ago

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Absolutely thrilled to have stumbled across your 1972 security council rp tag. Legitimately exciting to know someone is into such a thing! If it's not too strange / personal to ask, would you be able to elaborate on what that entails and what's appealing about that specific rp for you? I'm curious but I can't quite get my head around it

I love talking about this stuff, so thanks for asking! I'm aware it's very weird but I think the reasoning behind it is surprisingly normal (in terms of how kinks develop).

I've explained this to a few friends on Discord so I will use those screenshots to assist me in this presentation.

so the backdrop to all of this is that I love to play the bad guy. As a small child in play-pretend games I would want to be the villain. I liked to be "it" during tag. As long as it's within the confines of a game/everyone knows we're just playing, I just like to be scary :)

But with this particular kink, I'm pretty sure it comes from some particular affecting experiences I had as a young teenager. I wrote my first Hetalia fanfic when I was 12 and then was very involved in model UN starting at age ~14. (I was really competitive about it and ended up even getting to a national competition once in high school, lol).

as a pretty weird teenage girl (now trans man) lot of my first experiences having crushes, or having someone else have a crush on me, were at model UN events. It let me feel powerful (because I was good at it) and I realized that having others act like I was powerful and threatening (in this ultimately harmless LARP type situation) was really hot to me.

(many such stories...)

I loved playing the US diplomat when I got to because obviously you get to play evil puppetmaster world power so I would lean into that and have fun with it.

The period of history I connected to most in terms of US interventionism was the Nixon era, just because there were so many examples during that period of the US trying to control the rest of the world. I ended up reading some Kissinger biographies (Kissinger by Walter Isaacson and Nixon and Kissinger: Partners in Power by Robert Dallek) when I was 18-19 and it really just cemented my obsession with the incredible harm he was able to cause and just how much of an affect he had on US foreign policy.

I'm particularly interested in economic coercion/the IMF and World Bank as instruments of US hegemony. Actually...

but ofc it's not just the 1970s, I like fantastical modern scenarios too:

(removed my boyfriend's name, sure it's just a first name but do they really wanna be in this post)

so yeah! tl;dr: it's a power thing, I like it in a D/s way. I got some wires crossed in my brain and "I like when people act scared of me [sexual]" became associated with "I like when people act scared of me because they're aware of the rotten machine of US global hegemony that lurks behind my words [sexual apparently]"

#cal txt #personal #politics #1972 nixon national security council rp tag #asks #madamechatterlaine

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phoenixyfriend · 1 year ago

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The Shift in America's Support of Israel as of 3/25/24

Okay, so there have been three specific incidents recently that I'd like to cover for you guys.

Chuck Schumer's speech calling for a new election in Israel, which I have spoken about here and here. (3/14/24)

Congress voting to ban UNRWA funding until 2025, which I've seen a lot of people talking about, but often without an actual understanding of what the situation actually is. (It's bad, but it's not the same type of bad as people think.) (3/24/24)

The US abstaining from a UN Security Council vote, which is effectively voting against Israel when they have thus far been the only ones to use veto power in this manner. (3/25/24)

I'm not going to go into detail about Schumer, since I've already covered it. tldr: it's a very specifically worded speech that does not explicitly threaten Israel, but if you do even the slightest bit of reading between the lines, that is absolutely what is happening.

Also, before I move forward: the US may not be donating to UNRWA for the rest of the fiscal year, but you can. They have direct donation links.

UNRWA funding has been on hold for a while, but this is... complicated. Not morally, because UNRWA does need funding and to defund it is truly unconscionable, but many of the "Biden signed it into law" posts are approaching it with this implied message that UNRWA would have funding if not for Biden signing it.

Except that isn't really how the US government works. Especially this government.

Funding for 2024 was supposed to be passed months ago. We are on the verge of another government shutdown. UNRWA funding is not on the table until the House swings blue. I hate to be the one to say this, but it's... like, it's not something I can change alone. I know you're tired of hearing it, but voting in November is the key to fixing a whole lot of problems.

One of the core duties of Congress is passing budgets. For those budgets to pass, they need to be approved by the House (Republican Majority), the Senate (Democrat Majority), and the President. The reason it has taken five months to pass a yearly budget (the deadline iirc was September or October) is because anything approved by one chamber is shot down by the other.

UNRWA's de-funding is tied to Ukraine funding (and a few other things). Biden refusing to sign would not have brought back UNRWA funding. The funding is already on hold. We do not have the votes to bring it back. We just straight up do not have enough seats in the House to make that happen. Biden refusing to sign would have resulted in both UNRWA and Ukraine not having funding, indefinitely. Signing it resulted in one of the two getting funding.

This is not a situation where funding was approved and now cut. This is not a situation where money was already flowing to UNRWA. This is a situation where money wasn't going anywhere, because Congress is a split shitshow.

Think of it like this: Funding is water coming from a spigot. Congress can turn it on or off, and it's currently off. Biden can smack away the hand coming to twist the valve, but he can't touch the valve himself. That's what the presidential veto is. Unfortunately, the spigot is already off, and Biden can't twist it back on when Congress isn't already reaching to do so.

Is this bad? Yes! UNRWA's funding should never have been cut! We should still be very, very upset about this! But I need you to understand that the way the US government works is not a dictatorship. Biden cannot just overrule Congress, especially when we're on the verge of another shutdown.

I do not think it is fair or even really acceptable that UNRWA's funding was viewed as an appropriate point of compromise. I'm just, unfortunately, also aware that this particular legislation is a tug-of-war that was never going to end with funding going to Palestine, not with the current Republican control of the House.

"But Biden sent money to Israel a bunch of times--" Yeah, and he's paying for it in the polls. He's aware that people are pissed at him. That choice is already biting him in the ass.

Biden is not perfect and I am never going to claim he is, but please recognize that the UNRWA funding pull is not a current action. It is a past action that is now being sustained because the House is red. You want to bring back UNRWA funding? Get rid of Marjorie Taylor Green and her entire cohort.

The other reason I'm less than eager to view that UNRWA thing as Biden being pro-Israel is because the US has finally abstained on a UN vote instead of vetoing.

When the US has been the only voice on Israel's side in the Security Council this whole time, abstention is functionally voting against them. We already knew that 13-14 of the other 14 members were going to vote pro-ceasefire. They have been this entire time. The US abstaining is functionally agreeing.

Why did the US not just vote for the ceasefire, then? No idea. Might be a treaty thing. I don't really need to know, because the result is that the UN Security Council has finally passed a measure against Israel, and those things are legally binding, and we know it's a big step because Israel's government is not happy.

When paired with the Schumer speech from a week and a half ago, it indicates a major shift in US foreign policy.

From the Al Jazeera article:

The US had repeatedly blocked Security Council resolutions that put pressure on Israel but has increasingly shown frustration with its ally as civilian casualties mount and the UN warns of impending famine in Gaza. Speaking after the vote, US Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield blamed Hamas for the delay in passing a ceasefire resolution. “We did not agree with everything with the resolution,” which she said was the reason why the US abstained. “Certain key edits were ignored, including our request to add a condemnation of Hamas,” Thomas-Greenfield said. [...] The White House said the final resolution did not have language the US considers essential and its abstention does not represent a shift in policy. But Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said the US failure to veto the resolution is a “clear retreat” from its previous position and would hurt war efforts against Hamas as well as efforts to release Israeli captives held in Gaza.

This action has also resulted in Israel pulling plans for "a high-level delegation" to visit the US for discussions on the invasion of Rafah (which Biden has purportedly been warning against for a while).

“We’re very disappointed that they won’t be coming to Washington, DC, to allow us to have a fulsome conversation with them about viable alternatives to them going in on the ground in Rafah,” [John] Kirby told reporters. [...] Last week, Netanyahu promised to defy US appeals and expand Israel’s military campaign to Rafah even without its ally’s support.

There are other complications and details here, such as that the resolution does not call for a permanent ceasefire, and that US tensions with Russia and China are still somehow playing a role in the negotiations over the ceasefire text, but ultimately...

The US abstaining is a good thing. Schumer's speech is a good thing. They are not enough, but they are good things. They are steps forward.

The pull of funding from UNRWA is not a good thing. It is, in fact, a very, very bad thing. It just also looks a lot like it was unavoidable.

So call your reps, and vote come November. It's a long slog and we all know it, but we can't make change without dedication.

To support my blogging so I can move out of my parents’ house, I do have a ko-fi. Alternately, you can donate to one of the charities I list in this post.

#united states #israel #gaza #palestine #call your reps #voting #un security council #united nations #joe biden #congress #chuck schumer #unrwa #current events #phoenix politics #politics

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sayruq · 1 year ago

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The U.S. will use its veto power against a Palestinian bid to be recognized as a member state of the United Nations during a vote at the Security Council expected to take place Thursday evening. Vedant Patel, principal deputy spokesperson for the State Department, described as premature an effort by the Palestinian Authority (PA) to gain member status at the U.N. He said there was not unanimity among the Security Council’s 15 members that the Palestinian Authority had met the criteria for membership, with unresolved questions over the governance of the Gaza Strip, where Israel is in a war to defeat and eliminate the controlling power, Hamas. “And for that reason, the United States is voting no on this proposed Security Council resolution,” Patel said.

Earlier it was revealed that the United States was secretly pressuring other members of the Security Council to shoot down a Palestinian state membership so the US wouldn't have to use its veto as that would lead to a wave of local and international criticism for Joe Biden.

#yemen #jerusalem #tel aviv #current events #palestine #free palestine #gaza #free gaza #news on gaza #palestine news #news update #war news #war on gaza #palestinian state #two state solution #united nations #security council #joe biden

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historyforfuture · 4 months ago

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Copied🚨

This is the aftermath of Israel massacring worshippers praying peacefully at a mosque in Gaza during Ramadan. Israel will claim there were "terrorists" in the mosque and that these people are simply "collateral damage".

Just imagine if Hamas detonated a bomb at the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem, killing scores of Jewish worshippers, and justified it on the basis that Ben Gvir was there, a convicted terrorist.

The video would be going viral, would be breaking news on every channel and would be carried by every major international media organisation. Every world leader would be clamouring to condemn it and send Israel condolences and support. Western powers would be mobilising their military in a show of support for Israel. World landmarks would be lit up in the colours of the Israeli flag. Major sports events would be marked by a minutes silence. It would be called a pogrom, a holocaust. And finally, Israel would use it as a pretext for a campaign of revenge and retaliation, insisting on its "right of self defence".

But... alas... this is Palestine and the people in this video are Palestinian. So none of this has happened.

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dreaminginthedeepsouth · 4 months ago

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LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

March 26, 2025

Heather Cox Richardson

Mar 27, 2025

Monday’s astounding story that the most senior members of President Donald Trump’s administration planned military strikes on Yemen over an unsecure commercial messaging app, on which they had included national security reporter and editor in chief of The Atlantic Jeffrey Goldberg, has escalated over the past two days.

On Monday, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth looked directly at a reporter’s camera and said: “Nobody was texting war plans.” Throughout the day Tuesday, the administration doubled down on this assertion, apparently convinced that Goldberg would not release the information they knew he had. They tried to spin the story by attacking Goldberg, suggesting he had somehow hacked into the conversation, although the app itself tracked that National Security Advisor Michael Waltz had added him.

Various administration figures, including Trump, insisted that the chat contained nothing classified. At a scheduled hearing yesterday before the Senate Intelligence Committee on worldwide threats, during which senators took the opportunity to dig into the Signal scandal, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard said: “There was no classified material that was shared in that Signal group.” Director of the Central Intelligence Agency John Ratcliffe agreed: “My communications, to be clear, in the Signal message group were entirely permissible and lawful and did not include classified information.” In the afternoon, Trump told reporters: “The attack was totally successful. It was, I guess, from what I understand, took place during. And it wasn’t classified information. So this was not classified.”

After Gabbard said she would defer to the secretary of defense and the National Security Council about what information should have been classified, Senator Angus King (I-ME) seemed taken aback. “You’re the head of the intelligence community. You’re supposed to know about classifications,” he pointed out. He continued, “So your testimony very clearly today is that nothing was in that set of texts that were classified.... If that’s the case, please release that whole text stream so that the public can have a view of what actually transpired on this discussion. It’s hard for me to believe that targets and timing and weapons would not have been classified.”

Meanwhile, reporters were also digging into the story. James LaPorta of CBS News reported that an internal bulletin from the National Security Agency warned staff in February 2025 not to use Signal for sensitive information, citing concerns that the app was vulnerable to Russian hackers. A former White House official told Maggie Miller and Dana Nickel of Politico, “Their personal phones are all hackable, and it’s highly likely that foreign intelligence services are sitting on their phones watching them type the sh*t out."

Tuesday night, American Oversight, a nonprofit organization focusing on government transparency, filed a lawsuit against Hegseth, Gabbard, Ratcliffe, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, Secretary of State Marco Rubio—all of whom were also on the Signal chain—and the National Archives for violating the Federal Records Act, and suggested the administration has made other attempts to get around the law. It notes that the law requires the preservation of federal records.

Today it all got worse.

It turned out that administration officials’ conviction that Goldberg wouldn’t publicly release receipts was wrong. This morning, Goldberg and Shane Harris, who had worked together on the initial story, wrote: “The statements by Hegseth, Gabbard, Ratcliffe, and Trump—combined with the assertions made by numerous administration officials that we are lying about the content of the Signal texts—have led us to believe that people should see the texts in order to reach their own conclusions. There is a clear public interest in disclosing the sort of information that Trump advisers included in nonsecure communications channels, especially because senior administration figures are attempting to downplay the significance of the messages that were shared.”

The Atlantic published screenshots of the message chat.

The screenshots make clear that administration officials insisting that there was nothing classified on the chat were lying. Hegseth uploaded the precise details of the attack before it happened, leaving American military personnel vulnerable. The evidence is damning.

The fury of Senator Tammy Duckworth (D-IL), an Army pilot who was nearly killed in Iraq, was palpable. “Pete Hegseth is a f*cking liar,” she wrote. “This is so clearly classified info he recklessly leaked that could’ve gotten our pilots killed. He needs to resign in disgrace immediately.” Legal analyst Barb McQuade pointed out that it didn't even matter if the information was classified: it is “a crime to remove national defense information from its proper place through gross negligence…. Signal chat is not a proper place.”

The screenshots also raise a number of other issues. They made it clear that administration officials have been using Signal for other conversations: Waltz at one point typed: “As we stated in the first PC….” Using a nongovernment system is likely an attempt to get around the laws that require the preservation of public records. The screenshots also show that Signal was set to erase the messages on the chat after 4 weeks.

The messages reveal that President Trump was not part of the discussion of whether to make the airstrikes, a deeply troubling revelation that raises the question of who is in charge at the White House. As the conversation about whether to attack took place, Vice President J.D. Vance wrote about Trump’s reasoning that attacking the Houthis in Yemen would “send a message”: “I am not sure the president is aware how inconsistent this is with his message on Europe right now.” Later, he texted to Hegseth: “if you think we should do it let’s go. I just hate bailing Europe out again. Let’s just make sure our messaging is tight here. And if there are things we can do upfront to minimize risk to Saudi oil facilities we should do it.”

Hegseth responded: “VP: I fully share your loathing of European free-loading. It’s PATHETIC. But Mike is correct, we are the only ones on the planet (on our side of the ledger) who can do this. Nobody else even close. Question is timing. I feel like now is as good a time as any, given POTUS directive to reopen shipping lanes. I think we should go; but POTUS still retains 24 hours of decision space.”

The decision to make the strikes then appears to have been made by deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, who ended the discussion simply by invoking the president: “As I heard it,” he wrote, “the president was clear: green light, but we soon make it clear to Egypt and Europe what we expect in return. We also need to figure out how to enforce such a requirement.” If Europe doesn’t cover the cost of the attack, “then what? If the US successfully restores freedom of navigation at great cost there needs to be some further economic gain extracted in return.”

“Agree,” Hegseth messaged, and the attack was on.

Also missing from the group message was the person who is currently acting as the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Christopher Grady. In February, Trump fired the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, U.S. Air Force General Charles Q. Brown Jr., who took on the position in 2023 having served more than 3,000 hours as a fighter pilot, including 130 hours in combat, and commanded the Pacific Air Forces, which provides air power for U.S. interests in the Asia-Pacific region; the U.S. Air Forces Central Command, responsible for protecting U.S. security interests in Africa through the Persian Gulf; the 31st Fighter Wing, covering the southern region of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO); the 8th Fighter Wing, covering southeast Asia; U.S. Air Force Weapons School for advanced training in weapons and tactics for officers; and 78th Fighter Squadron.

Hegseth publicly suggested that Brown had been appointed because he is Black. “Was it because of his skin color? Or his skill? We’ll never know, but always doubt,” Hegseth wrote. With Trump’s controversial replacement for Brown still unconfirmed, Admiral Grady, who was appointed by President Joe Biden, is fulfilling the role of the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. But he was not in the chat. The Pentagon's highest-ranking officer would normally be included in planning a military operation.

Also in the chat, participants made embarrassing attacks on our allies and celebrated civilian deaths in Yemen in the quest to kill a targeted combatant.

Attempts to defend themselves from the scandal only dug administration officials in deeper. On Monday night, independent journalist Olga Lautman, who studies Russia, noted that Trump’s Russia and Ukraine specialist Steve Witkoff had actually been in Russia when Waltz added him to the chat, underscoring the chat’s vulnerability to hackers. By Tuesday, multiple outlets, including the Wall Street Journal, picked up Lautman’s story.

Witkoff fought back against the Wall Street Journal story with a long social media post about how he had traveled to Moscow with a secure government phone and now it was not until he got home that he had “access to my personal devices” to participate in the Signal conversation, thus apparently confirming that he was discussing classified information with the nation’s top officials on an unsecure personal device.

Tonight, news of other ways in which the administration is compromised surfaced. The German newspaper Der Spiegel revealed that the contact information for a number of the same officials who were on the Signal chat is available online, as well as email addresses and some passwords for their private accounts, making it easy for hackers to get into their personal devices. Those compromised included National Security Advisor Waltz, Director of National Intelligence Gabbard, and Secretary of Defense Hegseth. Wired reported that Waltz, White House chief of staff Susie Wiles, and Walker Barrett of the National Security Council, who was also on the Signal messaging chain, had left their Venmo accounts public, demonstrating what national security experts described as reckless behavior.

In the New York Times tonight, foreign affairs journalist Noah Shachtman looked not just at the Signal scandal but also at the administration’s lowering of U.S. guard against foreign influence operations, installation of billionaire Elon Musk’s satellite internet terminals at the White House, and diversion of personnel from national security to Trump’s pet projects, and advised hostile nations to “savor this moment. It’s never been easier to steal secrets from the United States government. Can you even call it stealing when it’s this simple? The Trump administration has unlocked the vault doors, fired half of the security guards and asked the rest to roll pennies. Walk right in. Take what you want. This is the golden age.”

Trump today did not seem on top of the story when he told reporters: “I think it’s a witch hunt. I wasn’t involved with it, I wasn’t there, but I can tell you the result is unbelievable.” When asked if he still believed there was no classified information shared, he answered: “Well, that’s what I’ve heard. I don’t know, I’m not sure. You’ll have to ask the various people involved. I really don’t know.” He said the breach was Waltz’s fault—“it had nothing to do with anyone else”—and when reporters asked about the future of Defense Secretary Hegseth, who uploaded the attack plans into the unsecure system, he answered: “Hegseth is doing a great job, he had nothing to do with this…. How do you bring Hegseth into it? He had nothing to do with it. Look, look, it’s all a witch hunt. I don’t know that Signal works. I think Signal could be defective, to be honest with you….”

The administration appears to be trying to create a distraction from the damning story. Yesterday evening, Trump signed an executive order that would, if it could be enforced, dramatically change U.S. elections and take the vote away from tens of millions of Americans. But, as Marc Elias of Democracy Docket put it, the order is “confused, rhetorical and—in places—nonsensical. It asserts facts that are not true and claims authority he does not possess. It is not meant to be taken seriously or literally. Rather, it is the empty threat of a weak man desperate to appear strong.”

After today’s revelations, Trump announced new 25% tariffs on imported cars and car parts including those from Canada and Mexico, despite a deal worked out earlier this month that items covered under the U.S.-Mexico-Canada agreement Trump signed in his first term would not face a new tariff levy. The 25% tariff is a major change that will raise prices across the board and hit the automotive sector in which more than a million Americans work. Upon the news, the stock market fell again.

And yet, despite the attempts to bury the Signal story, the scandal seems, if anything, to be growing. House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) wrote a public letter to Trump yesterday calling for him to fire Hegseth, accurately referring to him as “the most unqualified Secretary of Defense in American history.” Jeffries wrote: “His behavior shocks the conscience, risked American lives and likely violated the law.” “[H]ey Sen[ator Joni] Ernst and Sen[ator Thom] Tillis,” Jen Rubin of The Contrarian wrote tonight, “proud of your votes for Hegseth? This is on [you] too as much as Hegseth. You knew he was not remotely qualified.”

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

#Heather Cox Richardson #Letters From an American #the Signal Story #tariffs #National Security #Hegseth #clown cabinet #security council #Jeffrey Goldberg #Matt Davies

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saywhat-politics · 3 months ago

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President Donald Trump fired at least three National Security Council officials this week after far-right activist Laura Loomer met with the president and expressed dissatisfaction with some officials on his national security team, three people familiar with the matter told NBC News.

Among those let go were senior officials Brian Walsh, Thomas Boodry and David Feith, the sources said.

Walsh previously served as a top aide to Marco Rubio on the Senate Intelligence Committee. Boodry was formerly a legislative director for national security adviser Michael Waltz when he was in Congress and Feith worked for the State Department during Trump's first term.

Loomer met with Trump in the Oval Office Wednesday afternoon in a meeting attended by Waltz and Vice President JD Vance, two people familiar with the meeting told NBC News.

According to one of these people, Loomer pressed Trump to fire members of his national security staff, and Waltz defended them. It's not clear if Loomer specifically named Walsh, Boodry or Feith. National Security Council spokesman Brian Hughes declined to comment.

One person also said Rep. Scott Perry, R-Pa., a member of the conservative House Freedom Caucus, was present at the meeting.

Loomer confirmed the meeting in a statement to NBC News, calling it “an honor” to share with Trump her research on the staff and said “strong vetting” is needed for the sake of national security.

#donald trump #second term #fired #national security council #laura loomer

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justinspoliticalcorner · 6 months ago

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AAMER MADHANI and ZEKE MILLER at AP:

WASHINGTON (AP) — Incoming senior Trump administration officials have begun questioning career civil servants who work on the White House National Security Council about who they voted for in the 2024 election, their political contributions and whether they have made social media posts that could be considered incriminating by President-elect Donald Trump’s team, according to a U.S. official familiar with the matter. At least some of these nonpolitical employees have begun packing up their belongings since being asked about their loyalty to Trump — after they had earlier been given indications that they would be asked to stay on at the NSC in the new administration, the official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive personnel matters. Trump’s pick for national security adviser, Florida Rep. Mike Waltz, in recent days publicly signaled his intention to get rid of all nonpolitical appointees and career intelligence officials serving on the NSC by Inauguration Day to ensure the council is staffed with those who support Trump’s agenda. A wholesale removal of foreign policy and national security experts from the NSC on Day 1 of the new administration could deprive Trump’s team of considerable expertise and institutional knowledge at a time when the U.S. is grappling with difficult policy challenges in Ukraine, the Mideast and beyond. Such questioning could also make new policy experts brought in to the NSC less likely to speak up about policy differences and concerns. White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan said Monday that he has not been told by Waltz or Trump transition team officials that the incoming team has conducted or planned on conducting such vetting. But Sullivan in recent days has made a robust case for the incoming Trump administration to hold over career government employees assigned to the NSC at least through the early going of the new administration. He called the career appointees “patriots” who have served “without fear or favor for both Democratic and Republican administrations. ”

[...] The NSC staff members being questioned about their loyalty are largely subject matter experts who have been loaned to the White House by federal agencies — the State Department, FBI and CIA, for example — for temporary duty that typically lasts one to two years. If removed from the NSC, they would be returned to their home agencies. Vetting of the civil servants began in the last week, the official said. Some of them have been questioned about their politics by Trump appointees who will serve as directors on the NSC and who had weeks earlier asked them to stick around. There are dozens of civil servants at the directorate level at the NSC who had anticipated remaining at the White House in the new administration. A second U.S. official told the AP that he was informed weeks ago by incoming Trump administration officials that they planned on raising questions with career appointees that work at the White House, including those at the NSC, about their political leanings. The official, who was not authorized to comment publicly, however, had not yet been formally vetted.

[...] Trump, during his first term, was scarred when two career military officers detailed to the NSC became whistleblowers, raising their concerns about Trump’s 2019 call to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in which the president sought an investigation of Biden and his son Hunter. That episode led to Trump’s first impeachment. Alexander Vindman was listening to the call in his role as an NSC official when he became alarmed at what he heard. He approached his twin brother, Eugene, who at the time was serving as an ethics lawyer at the NSC. Both Vindmans reported their concerns to superiors. Alexander Vindman said in a statement Friday that the Trump team’s approach to staffing the NSC “will have a chilling effect on senior policy staff across the government.” He added, “Talented professionals, wary of being dismissed for principled stances or offering objective advice, will either self-censor or forgo service altogether.” The two men were heralded by Democrats as patriots for speaking out and derided by Trump as insubordinate. Eugene Vindman in November was elected as a Democrat to represent Virginia’s 7th Congressional District.

The Trump campaign team is conducting an authoritarian purge of civil servants working at the National Security Council by letting only loyal Trumpists serve on the Council as part of the MAGA cult’s war on expertise.