One U.S. servicemember and three defense contractors perished after a surveillance plane crashed in the Philippines on Thursday. “The aircraft was providing intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance support at the request of our Philippine allies” near the Philippine Province of Maguindanao del Sur, officials at Indo-Pacific Command announced shortly afterward.
“We can confirm no survivors of the crash,” the officials said, and noted there were just those four personnel on board. “The names of the crew are being withheld pending next of kin notification,” Indo-PACOM said. U.S. Naval Institute News reports the service member was a Marine.
The aircraft was a contracted Beechcraft twin-engine Super King Air 350 “owned by the American defense contractor Metrea,” USNI reports. “Metrea has enacted its emergency response plan and is working closely with all relevant government authorities to establish the cause of the accident,” the company said in a statement.
By the way: A civilian plane carrying 10 people went missing in Alaska while traveling through bad weather on Thursday. If the plane did indeed crash, it would be “the third deadly aviation disaster in the U.S. over a span of just two weeks,” which would be a marked contrast “with 2023, which was the safest year in aviation with zero fatal crashes,” according to Bloomberg. Read more at Alaska Public Media.
From the region: “Australia makes $500 mln AUKUS payment ahead of US defence secretary meeting,” Reuters reported Friday.
Happening now: Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth is hosting a “town hall” discussion for Department of Defense employees in the Pentagon. The event began at 10 a.m. EST, and is livestreaming (or available in re-runs) on DVIDS, here.
Update: The feed cut out as soon as Hegseth began taking questions. “That was predetermined,” a Defense Department spokesman told Stephen Losey.
New: Hegseth’s Navy just paused its sexual-assault prevention-and-response training, Defense One’s Audrey Decker reported Thursday. That means annual sexual assault prevention training for Navy troops and civilians, as well as the effort to train people in commands to become SAPR advocates—the people who listen to victims and guides them through Navy programs for treatment and legal guidance—was halted this week with no timeline for resuming.
Service officials declined to comment directly on the pause in SAPR training, but insisted they’re “working to fully execute and implement all directives outlined in the Executive Orders issued by the President, ensuring that they are carried out with utmost professionalism, efficiency, and in alignment with national security objectives,” a service spokesperson said.
Background: The DOD’s SAPR program was established in 2005 at the direction of Congress and then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. The program office later established training and certification programs for Sexual Assault Response Coordinators (SARC) and SAPR victims advocates. More, here.
Related reading: “Trump’s orders end cultural observances in DODEA schools, spur review of clubs and books,” Stars and Stripes reported Thursday from Germany.
See also: “West Point shuts down clubs for women and students of color in response to Trump’s DEI policies,” via AP, reporting Wednesday.
Commentary: Trump must keep arming Ukraine if he wants a good peace deal to stop Russia’s ongoing invasion of its democratic neighbor, argue Mark Montgomery and John Hardie of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, based in Washington. The goal, they write, would be “to convince Putin that fighting on won’t get him anywhere.”
Welcome to this Friday edition of The D Brief, a newsletter dedicated to developments affecting the future of U.S. national security, brought to you by Ben Watson with Frank Konkel. Share your tips and feedback here. And if you’re not already subscribed, you can do that here. On this day in 2013, Mississippi finally certified the Constitution’s Thirteenth Amendment, submitted in 1865, making it the last state to formally abolish slavery.
Trump 2.0
Trump-Musk’s “deferred resignation” deadline for Feds was blocked until Monday. A federal judge in Boston ordered the Trump administration to cease all activities aimed at implementing Trump and Elon Musk’s controversial “deferred resignation” program until next week, Erich Wagner of Government Executive reported Thursday.
Despite the court maneuverings, confusion continues to permeate discussion of the program. For example, the National Treasury Employees Union said Thursday that Internal Revenue Service workers, who were previously offered the same deferred resignation program as much of the rest of the federal workforce, will in fact need to work until May 15, even if they accept the deal.
Recent background: On Tuesday, the American Federation of Government Employees, AFSCME and the National Association of Government Employees sued the Office of Personnel Management in an effort to halt the program, which offered most federal workers the chance to quit this month while retaining their pay and benefits until the end of September, provided they agree to resign by midnight Thursday.
The unions argued that the program violates the Anti-Deficiency Act by pledging federal payments past the current March 14 government funding deadline and its ever-changing provisions and legal justifications violate the Administrative Procedures Act, Wagner reports.
For the record: “O’Toole did not express an opinion on the legality of the program, which is being challenged by several labor unions, and said he would weigh arguments next week,” the Associated Press reports.
Stay tuned: U.S. District Judge George A. O’Toole Jr. set oral arguments for Monday afternoon.
New: One of Elon Musk’s DOGE staffers resigned when confronted with his racist online posts discovered by Katherine Long of the Wall Street Journal, reporting Thursday. His name is Marko Elez, and Long writes that he’s “a 25-year-old who is part of a cadre of Elon Musk lieutenants deployed by the Department of Government Efficiency to scrutinize federal spending.”
Developing: Oversight Democrats formalized their concerns that Musk’s team of DOGE developers may have gained unauthorized access “to protected government networks and sensitive data at the Department of the Treasury, the General Services Administration (GSA), the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID),” Rep. Gerald Connolly, Rep. Shontel Brown, and Rep. Yassamin Ansari warned in a letter to several inspectors general on Thursday.
The lawmakers have five requests for the IGs regarding DOGE’s apparent network takeovers, including a list of specific networks they’ve accessed, the duration of their access, which “security protocols were followed in granting this access” so that Americans’ personal data was not “compromised,” and what legal authority permits this access. Read the rest (PDF), here.
Developing: Trump’s effort to redefine who gets to be an American was rebuffed by a court Thursday when U.S. District Judge John Coughenour indefinitely blocked the president’s executive order seeking to alter birthright citizenship as written in the 14th Amendment. The judge, presiding in Seattle, described Trump’s ambition as “clearly unconstitutional.”
“It has become ever more apparent that, to our president, the rule of law is but an impediment to his policy goals,” Coughenour wrote, and emphasized his view that so far in Trump’s second term, “The rule of law is, according to him, something to navigate around or simply ignore, whether that be for political or personal gain…in this courtroom and under my watch, the rule of law is a bright beacon which I intend to follow,” he said.
Judge Coughenour: “There are moments in the world’s history when people look back and ask, ‘Where were the lawyers, where were the judges?’ In these moments, the rule of law becomes especially vulnerable. I refuse to let that beacon go dark today,” he vowed at the Thursday hearing.
His advice: “The Constitution is not something with which the government may play policy games. If the government wants to change the exceptional American grant of birthright citizenship, it needs to amend the Constitution itself,” said Coughenour. “That’s how our Constitution works, and that’s how the rule of law works. Because the president’s order attempts to circumscribe this process, it is clearly unconstitutional,” he said. Read more at the Washington State Standard.
Next up: Trump’s Justice Department under AG Bondi promised to appeal the ruling.
Additional reading:
- “All the ways Elon Musk is breaking the law, explained by a law professor,” via Vox, reporting Thursday;
- “FEC commissioner says Trump has moved to fire her,” Axios reported Thursday evening;
- “Senate confirms Project 2025 architect Russell Vought to lead OMB,” AP reported Thursday from Capitol Hill;
- “C.I.A. Sent an Unclassified Email With Names of Some Employees to Trump Administration,” the New York Times reported Wednesday;
- “Trump’s Justice Department shutters specialized FBI team combating foreign election interference threats,” CNN reported Thursday;
- “Bondi Diminishes Justice Department White Collar Enforcement,” Bloomberg reported Wednesday;
- “Trump Digs In on Gaza Takeover and Palestinian Resettlement,” the Times reported Thursday from Jerusalem;
- And Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin “Netanyahu gifted Trump a golden pager during their meeting in Washington,” CNN reported Thursday as well. Why a pager? This very likely has something to do with it.
Industry
New: Google has discarded its self-imposed ban on using AI in weapons, a step that simultaneously drew praise and criticism, marked a new entrant in a hot field, and underscored how the Pentagon—not any single company—must act as the primary regulator on how the U.S. military uses AI in combat, Defense One’s Patrick Tucker reported Thursday.
The move is a long-overdue correction to an overcorrection, one person familiar with the company’s decision-making process told Defense One. That “overcorrection” was Google’s 2018 decision not to renew its contract to work on the Air Force’s Maven project. At the time, Maven was the Pentagon’s flagship AI effort: a tool that vastly reduced the time needed to find useful intelligence in hours and hours of drone-video footage.
However, Google was less than perfectly transparent about its involvement in the Maven project, particularly with its workforce, which, in part, led to an employee revolt in the form of mass resignations and protests. The company soon dropped the contract—but at the cost of competing for other important Pentagon IT contracts.
Second opinion: Google’s original ban was “probably was overly zealous to begin with,” said Syracuse University professor Johannes Himmelreich, who researches the ethics of artificial intelligence and political philosophy and co-edits the Oxford Handbook of AI Governance. Continue reading, here.
Additional reading:
