Purges at the Pentagon
4/24/202611 min
April 23, 2026
Pete Hegseth asks Secretary of the Navy John Phelan to resign, Deputy Defense Secretary Stephen Feinberg moves to take over responsibility for shipbuilding and Navy acquisitions, Trump sides with Hegseth who has purged the military of its most senior ranks, The Pentagon cracks down on the independence of the newspaper Stars and Stripes, Republicans are trying to stengthen the power of the President, Republicans turn to budget reconciliation so they don’t have to negotiate with Democrats over funding, More than 100 former NASA astronauts launch a non partisan organization to protect American democracy.
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Transcript preview
First 90 secondsMichael Moss· Host0:00
[upbeat music] Hello, this is Michael Moss. Heather Cox Richardson is unable to read the letter today, so I will be reading it in her place. April twenty-third, twenty twenty-six. Yesterday, Secretary of the Navy John Phelan spent the day talking to lawmakers about the Navy's plans for new ships and about the Pentagon's huge budget request, only to get a call from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth asking him to resign. Phelan is a billionaire businessman who had no previous military experience, but who raised millions of dollars for Trump's twenty twenty-four presidential campaign. Haley Britsky, Zachary Cohen, Kristen Holmes, Natasha Bertrand, and Kaitlan Collins of CNN report that Phelan's close relationship with President Donald J. Trump has irked Hegseth, who saw Phelan's direct communications with the president as an attempt to go around him. And Deputy Defense Secretary Stephen Feinberg, a close ally of Hegseth's, wanted to take over shipbuilding and Navy acquisitions, jobs that normally fall to the Secretary of the Navy. As the title of an article by Drew Fitzgerald, Lara Seligman, and Marcus Weisberger of The Wall Street Journal noted earlier this month, Feinberg is a billionaire thanks