The Trump administration’s new Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) claims it’s out to cut wasteful government spending. A
new video by the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft asks: why not start with the Pentagon?
“The Pentagon is the largest government bureaucracy. It employs nearly 3 million people, has an annual budget of $850 billion — and has never once passed the audit,” says Ben Freeman, director of the Quincy Institute’s Democratizing Foreign Policy program.
Indeed, the Pentagon is infamous for wasteful projects. “At the very top is the F-35: it's the most expensive weapons program in world history. Ultimately, it's going to cost taxpayers around $1.5 trillion — and for what? It doesn't work, it’s overpriced and overdue,” explains Freeman.
And what about all that under-used and even unused space the Pentagon owns, in particular, its military bases in the U.S.?
They are ripe for cutting.
Also deserving of scrutiny are Washington's many weapons contractors, which receive about half the Pentagon’s annual budget— over $400 billion annually — through extensive congressional lobbying, and an infamous
revolving door between leaders in the weapons industry and government alike.
“We've heard too many stories about waste, fraud and abuse in Pentagon contracting. They're overcharging for spare parts, toilet seats, hammers, you name it,” Freeman says. “Taxpayers are paying too much for the things our troops need. We know there's wasteful spending at the Pentagon and we're not really doing anything about it. That costs American taxpayers money, and that makes all of us less safe.”
To learn more about how DOGE could cut the Pentagon’s wasteful spending, watch the video:
When Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu lands in Buenos Aires this September, he’ll test more than Argentina’s hospitality — he’ll force a reckoning with the President Javier Milei’s gamble: Is Argentina’s fervent alignment with Israel a strategic masterstroke or a geopolitical liability?
This alignment stems from Milei’s ideologically Manichean worldview, framing global conflicts as a battle between absolute good (Israel/West) and evil (Iran/leftists). Determined to be on the "right side of history," he has visited Israel twice since taking office, including a trip in June 2025 just days before Israel's strike on Iran.
Moreover, Milei’s devotion to Israel borders on the mystical — a Catholic who studies Kabbalah and offers tearful prayers at the Western Wall with rabbis, treating Zionism as both political ideology and personal spiritual awakening.
It remains to be seen whether such devotion will deliver Argentina tangible returns beside Israel’s rhetorical nods, such as the foreign minister Gideon Saar’s repurposing of Milei’s slogan “Viva la libertad, carajo” (Long Live Freedom, Damn It) for the airstrike on Tehran's Evin prison which killed 79 people.
Meanwhile, Netanyahu’s planned visit has sparked growing concerns among political observers and security experts in Argentina about possible repercussions.
For one, Netanyahu's visit would immediately test Argentina's commitment to international law, as the arrest warrant issued by the International Criminal Court (ICC) against him last November obligates Buenos Aires — a Rome Statute signatory — to arrest him on arrival. Milei's likely refusal would confirm critics' claims that his alliance with Israel trumps international obligations. The irony is particularly sharp given Argentina's exemplary prosecution of its own officials for crimes against humanity during the 1976-1983 military dictatorship.
Second, Milei’s invitation for Netanyahu to visit Argentina, even as he faces the ICC indictment and Israel growing international isolation over its war in Gaza, marks a radical break from Argentina's tradition of maintaining neutrality in the Israel-Palestine conflict. In his 18 months in office, Milei has so far announced plans to move Argentina's embassy to West Jerusalem by 2026, and Argentina’s vote at the UN General Assembly against a resolution demanding an immediate ceasefire in Gaza (joined by only 11 other nations) risked alienating many of the 149 countries that supported it, including traditional partners in the Arab world, Latin America (including Argentina’s biggest neighbor and trading partner, Brazil), the Global South more generally, and some key European countries.
Argentine security analysts warn these moves could make the country a target for retaliation by Iran or its allies. A recent detailed report on the June’s 12-day war between Israel and Iran submitted by Iran’s mission to the UN, listed Argentina among nations that supported the Israeli/U.S. attacks. Critics fear that Milei may have compounded the risks of retaliation by explicitly declaring Iran an “enemy” of Argentina. That stance is shared by many Argentines who regard Iran’s support for Hamas as amounting to complicity in the latter’s October 7, 2023, attack on Israel in which 21 Argentines were killed or taken hostage.
Critics don’t fear direct Iranian retaliation so much as action by Tehran’s allies, such as Lebanese Hezbollah, or domestic groups opposed to Milei's Israel policy.
Argentina's traumatic history lends credence to these concerns: the 1992 Israeli embassy bombing and the 1994 AMIA Jewish community center attack, in which 85 people were killed, were linked to Iran and Hezbollah. Despite the conclusion by Israel’s own Mossad intelligence, that Hezbollah (with no “operational involvement” by Iran) was behind the bombings, no one has ever been convicted for the crimes, and Argentina's own numerous investigations have been plagued by alleged cover-ups, incompetence and political interference.
The 2015 death of prosecutor Alberto Nisman, just hours before he intended to formally charge then-President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner with shielding Iranian suspects in the AMIA bombing, remains a major source of speculation and controversy in Argentina. While the official cause of his death was suicide, one court ruled in 2018 that he was murdered, although the judge in the case failed to establish who was the perpetrator or what was the motive.
A visit by Netanyahu risks reviving these deep emotional wounds and still-unresolved controversies. Argentina’s Jewish community (the largest in Latin America) is divided on the subject. Jorge Knoblovits, head of the Delegation of Argentine Jewish Associations (DAIA), dismissed concerns that closer ties with Israel could lead to new attacks on Argentine soil. "The whole world is exposed to terrorism. It has struck under all types of governments, left and right," he said.
In contrast, Pablo Gorodneff of the Jewish group Llamamiento Argentino Judío, noted that a key principle of foreign policy is "don't get involved in conflicts that aren't yours," adding that Milei "in some ways sincerely... believes this fabricated narrative, which I find quite dangerous." He is backed by Héctor Shalom, director of the Anna Frank Center Argentina, who warned that if extremists seek "to strike Jews," Argentina's history of impunity for the two major attacks – emblematic of its vulnerability – makes it a prime target.
Moreover, security vulnerabilities intersect with potential economic risks, diplomatic backlash and reputational costs. Alienating Arab and Muslim-majority markets could damage Argentina's critical commodities and agricultural exports.
It could also limit the potential for new partnerships with the Persian Gulf states: in late 2024, the National Congress hosted a meeting with representatives of Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Kuwait to discuss prospects for investments of their sovereign wealth funds in Argentina. Milei’s predecessor government negotiated an inventive formula with Qatar to secure a $775 million loan to help Buenos Aires repay its debt to the International Monetary Fund.
On the diplomatic front, Netanyahu’s visit to Buenos Aires also risks undermining Argentina’s appeals to international law as the basis for its claims against Britain in a long-running dispute over the Malvinas (Falklands) islands. The two countries fought a brief but deadly war over the islands in 1982. While most countries of the Global South supported Argentina’s claims precisely on the basis of international law, Milei’s vocal support for Israel in its current war in Gaza capped by a Netanyahu visit will not be well received by those same capitals.
Milei's Israel infatuation appears driven more by his personal convictions than a prudent national interest calculus. While it may curry favor in Washington, the security and diplomatic risks are tangible. Netanyahu's potential visit will reveal whether this policy delivers strategic benefits or exposes Argentina to dangerous consequences for years to come.
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Top photo credit: Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) (Shutterstock/Philip Yabut)
This week, Republican Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor-Greene became the first in her party to call the Gaza crisis a “genocide.”
“It’s the most truthful and easiest thing to say that Oct. 7 in Israel was horrific and all hostages must be returned, but so is the genocide, humanitarian crisis, and starvation happening in Gaza,” the Georgia Congresswoman said on X Monday evening.
That language is newsworthy. Her stance, even more so.
As the bloodshed and chaos continues in Gaza — as does U.S. aid to Israel — the Republican Party has been primarily split into two camps. The first represents the majority of GOP lawmakers who contend that Israel’s government and military maintain the right to retaliate, virtually unconditionally, after the October 7, 2023, terrorist attack by Hamas. It also supports continued and unfettered U.S. diplomatic support and military aid for that effort.
The other camp, much smaller in number in Congress but I believe is becoming more influential online and outside Washington, particularly among conservatives under 30, also condemns the Hamas attack in which 1,195 people were killed in Israel, including 736 Israeli civilians and 79 foreign nationals. But it also questions whether Israel’s government has gone too far, creating a humanitarian crisis that looks more like collective punishment of the entire Gaza population.
Voices in this camp reacted fiercely to the bombing of Gaza’s only Catholic church on July 17, killing three and wounding several others, including the priest. They also question if the U.S. should continue to fund Israeli’s war which has already caused more than 60,000 deaths, mostly civilians, including more than 18,000 children, and has destroyed or damaged 70% of civilian structures including homes, hospitals, schools and shelters.
Rep. Greene or “MTG,” has served as the tip of the spear in defining MAGA. Brash and controversial, she has been the embodiment of President Donald Trump’s movement on Capitol Hill and has had the president’s back at almost every turn.
Except, seemingly, where she perceives Trump might stray from MAGA principles. In June, Greene initially supported but then turned against the heavily Trump-promoted “Big Beautiful” spending bill. Earlier this month, she also opposed the president’s decision to continue sending aid and weapons to Ukraine.
She’s now come out swinging against Israel’s war in Gaza and U.S. support for it.
“I can unequivocally say that what happened to innocent people in Israel on Oct 7th was horrific,” Greene posted on X on July 27. "Just as I can unequivocally say that what has been happening to innocent people and children in Gaza is horrific.”
“This war and humanitarian crisis must end!” she added.
"AOC, the darling of the progressive left, the one that claims to be against all the wars and wants to lead...did not vote for my amendment. She would not do it and she got called out hard.” (Progressive Democratic Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib did vote with Greene in support of this legislation, as did her colleague Rep. Ilhan Omar). Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky, the only other Republican on the Hill who has been as vocal a critic of Israel in Gaza as Greene, also voted with her. He was the only Republican to do so.
Harshly criticizing AOC, whether the Congresswoman is essentially right or wrong, is a typical thing for MAGA to do. But what Greene did next was even more interesting.
Florida Republican Rep. Randy Fine may be the most extreme version of that camp of Republicans who believe Israel can do no wrong. He actually encouraged Palestinian children to "starve away" in an X post.
On Monday, Greene took to X to express how she felt about Fine (it was the same post in which she called out "genocide"). “I can only imagine how Florida’s 6th district feels now that their Representative, that they were told to vote for, openly calls for starving innocent people and children."
On Thursday, MTG, who is an evangelical Christian, continued her appeal to American Christians in particular:
Yesterday I spoke to a Christian pastor from Gaza. There are children starving.
And Christians have been killed and injured, as well as many innocent people.
If you are an American Christian, this should be absolutely unacceptable to you.
Just as we said that Hamas killing and kidnapping innocent people on Oct 7th is absolutely unacceptable.
Are innocent Israeli lives more valuable than innocent Palestinian and Christian lives? And why should America continue funding this?
The secular government of nuclear armed Israel has proven that they are beyond capable of dealing with their enemies and are capable of and are in the process of systematically cleansing them from the land.
Most Americans that I know don’t hate Israel and we are not antisemitic at all.
We are beyond fed up with being told that we have to fix the world’s problems, pay for the world’s problems, and fight all the world’s wars while Americans are struggling to survive even though they work everyday.
This line in the sand on Gaza that Greene continues to draw is important in terms of not only what MAGA and the Trump coalition are, but what they become. The president as of late has seemed to favor the foreign policy preferences of extreme pro-Israel hawks, like South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham and talk host Mark Levin, over those of Tucker Carlson or Steve Bannon, both of whom have become highly critical of Israel.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says there is no starvation in Gaza. Greene says otherwise. Late Tuesday, Trump agreed, telling reporters that anyone could tell that there was “real starvation” in Gaza “unless they're pretty cold-hearted or, worse than that, nuts,” and promised aid on that front.
You can feel any way you like about Greene, who Trump once called (if negatively) the “Queen of MAGA.” But her full-throated posts about the carnage in Gaza and her being the first to call what is happening “a genocide," may be a significant watershed moment, allowing the MAGA faithful to see what is happening in a new light, and maybe, just maybe, Donald Trump might, too.
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Top photo credit: President Donald Trump signs two executive orders in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, DC on Thursday, January 30, 2025. The first order formally commissioned Christopher Rocheleau as deputy administrator of the FAA. The second ordered an immediate assessment of aviation safety. Photo by Bonnie Cash/Pool/Sipa USA
It’s a time for choosing in the Russia-Ukraine war.
President Donald Trump’s decision to considerably shorten his 50-day deadline for Russia to agree to an unconditional ceasefire with Ukraine reflects his mounting frustration with what has proven to be a difficult peace process.
The President acknowledged on Monday this move is unlikely to shift Russia's position. “If you know what the answer is going to be, why wait?” he said.
As the White House ponders next steps, it’s worth reflecting on the geopolitical moment President Trump finds himself in. It was only eight months ago that any talk of a viable diplomatic settlement was traduced by the previous administration as a naive, shortsighted capitulation to autocracy.
The Trump administration deserves no shortage of credit for lifting the three-year blockade on dialogue with Russia, a grave mistake by Western leaders that has exacerbated the diplomatic logjam Ukraine is now in.
Direct high-level channels between Russia and the U.S. were restored almost immediately upon Trump’s assumption of the presidency. Months of dialogue between Trump and his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, as well as the relentless diplomatic efforts of special envoy Steve Witkoff, have de-escalated bilateral U.S.-Russia tensions and generated a clearer, even if ungenerous, picture of Russia’s framework for a peace settlement.
Most importantly, President Trump has conclusively refuted the strategic bankruptcy and political nihilism of the “as long as it takes” mantra that has colored the Western approach to Ukraine under the previous administration. There is now widespread agreement, spearheaded by the White House, that the war must end through substantive diplomacy.
But the administration is now faced with a dilemma that, if left unresolved, threatens to undo the real diplomatic progress that has been made since January. This is a bilateral conflict between Russia and Ukraine, but there is also a level on which it is a confrontation between Russia and the West that is unfolding on Ukrainian soil. Both of these prongs must be addressed as part of any sustainable settlement.
Prioritizing the former and largely ignoring the latter by treating this war as a narrow deconfliction/delimitation problem is a recipe for failure.
To be sure, Trump is fully justified in taking the view that this crisis was compounded and badly mishandled by actors he has nothing to do with, including, as it were, some of the loudest promoters of the false Russiagate narratives that derailed his first term and left a malign imprint on U.S. national security discourse.
Many of these same actors are now urging Trump to abandon the sound judgement behind his pledge to keep America out of endless military entanglements and to instead adopt a lightly repackaged version of the failed Biden-era policies that he rightly denounced.
This crisis was foisted on Trump by forces outside his control, but it is nevertheless his to resolve, and the choices made by the White House in coming weeks will augur fateful results not just for the Ukraine peace process but for the administration’s ability to deliver on its larger foreign policy vision. There cannot be a sustainable reprioritization of U.S. resources away from Europe to the Indo-Pacific while this war roils on, nor if it ends with a volatile Europe teetering on the brink of direct confrontation with Russia.
There is no “walking away” from this, except in the purely tactical sense of leveraging U.S. aid to smooth the way to a viable peace deal. Nor is it technically possible or the slightest bit desirable to revert to the Biden-era malaise of aiding Ukraine from one aid package to the next with no endgame in sight. U.S. security assistance and sanctions can impose costs on Russia in a way that prolongs the conflict, but these tools were never enough to put Ukraine on the winning side of what has been a grinding attrition war against a vastly larger enemy.
It should be recognized as part of any diplomatic point of departure that Russia will never agree to an unconditional 30-day ceasefire. Imposing deadlines in service of this goal, regardless of length, does nothing to assuage the underlying logic that Russia will never surrender its principal source of leverage – namely, its military advantage and escalation dominance over Ukraine – without substantial concessions from Kyiv and the West. There is little the U.S. can offer, in terms of affecting the bilateral military dynamics between Russia and Ukraine, that Russia cannot take by force if the war continues into 2026.
The only way out is through sustained, creative diplomacy that takes into account the full scope of challenges and opportunities in U.S.-Russia relations. The stakes extend well beyond Ukraine; President Trump has a window to not just put an end to the carnage and tragedy wrought by this war, but to do so while advancing American strategic interests in a way not seen since Richard Nixon’s opening to China. But to seize this opportunity, the White House must treat the Ukraine war as the complex, multilayered problem that it is.
The question of Ukraine’s postwar orientation must be at the core of any roadmap to a ceasefire and durable peace. Here, the starting point for negotiations should be guarantees that Ukraine will not join NATO and that no NATO troops will be stationed on Ukrainian soil, in exchange for Moscow’s reaffirmation that it has no objection to Ukraine’s pursuit of European Union membership.
The Trump administration should outline concrete steps to restore U.S.-Russia commercial ties and reintegrate Russia into Western-led financial institutions as part of a package deal premised on Russia’s willingness to soften its territorial claims. The White House should likewise make clear that a negotiated settlement in Ukraine would generate the goodwill and confidence-building mechanisms necessary for constructive dialogue on arms control and NATO’s force posture in Eastern Europe, both questions of acute concern to the Kremlin.
Creative solutions will have to be developed to address Ukraine’s postwar security needs in a way that doesn’t feed into future escalatory spirals between Russia and its neighbors; my proposal for an off-site stockpiles aims to accomplish just that.
In short, the key to a successful negotiating posture on Ukraine is to refocus the talks away from immediate deconfliction to underlying strategic issues that both Moscow and Washington have vested interests in addressing. This can only be accomplished by accepting and consistently acting on the reality that the main sources of American leverage are to be found off the battlefield. No one said this would be easy, but the costs of inaction – both for Ukraine and U.S. global interests – are far higher.
Peace through strength has always meant more than maintaining military readiness, important as that is. The true measure of strength is being able to tap all the tools at your disposal in pursuit of concrete national interests, and nowhere is this sense of hard-nosed pragmatism more urgently required than the Ukraine crisis. President Trump’s instincts as a dealmaker have gotten him this far – now is the time to bring it home.
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