Retired Army Gen. Mark Milley, the former chair of the joint chiefs of staff, is defending the role of women in combat — clashing with the views of Donald Trump’s choice to lead the Pentagon.

Milley, who served as the top U.S. military officer under Trump and President Joe Biden until his retirement in 2023, said at an event Wednesday that women have served in battle throughout history.

And he pointedly recalled the service of an Army nurse who braved minefields to save fellow service members and was killed in action.

“Don’t lecture me about women in combat,” Milley said at a national security innovation event hosted by the Pallas Foundation. “Women have been in combat, and it doesn’t matter if that 7.62 [caliber round] hits you in the chest. No one gives a shit if it’s a woman or a guy to pull that trigger, you’re still dead.”

His remarks come after Pete Hegseth, an Army National Guard veteran and Fox TV host nominated by Trump to be defense secretary, faced public criticism for saying women should not serve in combat.

Milley was elevated to the U.S. military’s top job by Trump in 2019 but has since been sharply critical of him. He described the now president-elect as “fascist to the core” in a book by journalist Bob Woodward.

Trump and Hegseth have been sharply critical of the military and what they call “woke generals.” Milley, who did not specifically mention the nominee during the event, made it clear to the audience that he views the military as a meritocracy.

“If you meet the standards, our military must be, and always should be, a standards-based, merit-based military period, full stop,” he said.

Women have been allowed to serve in frontline combat roles since 2015, when then-U.S. Defense Secretary Ashton Carter ordered the U.S. military to open all jobs to women. Hegseth, who said the inclusion of women in combat units has “made fighting more complicated,” has argued that women can still serve, just not in jobs such as armor, artillery, infantry or in the special operations community.

Milley’s remarks come after the U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin told reporters traveling with him in Laos earlier Wednesday that the military should not take women out of frontline combat roles.

“I think our women add significant value to the United States military and we should never change that,” Austin said, adding that his message to women in uniform was that “ we need you, we have faith in you, we are appreciative of your service, and you add value to the finest and most lethal fighting force on Earth.”

Milley was also pressed on whether the U.S. would continue to be a reliable international partner under Trump. Trump has often questioned the value of longstanding alliances such as NATO. Milley predicted a “retraction” in U.S. military engagement abroad over the long term, but stopped short of saying the U.S. is drifting to isolationism.

“I wouldn’t say we’re going to be isolationists,” Milley said. “I wouldn’t go that far, but there’s a probability that there’ll be some sort of retraction over time — this isn’t going to be instant — over time, of US military forces overseas.”

Milley sidestepped questions about whether reports the incoming administration could create a “warrior board” of retired military officers to review sitting generals and admirals or attempt to court martial officers would have a chilling effect on the force or recruitment.

“I would imagine right now that there’s probably some eyebrows being raised in the Pentagon or out in units. I don’t think they’re obsessed with it, to tell you the truth, because they don’t know what it means,” Milley said. “They don’t know what it consists of. No one has actually laid any of this stuff out.”

Nikki Haley has a blunt assessment of Donald Trump’s choices of Tulsi Gabbard and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for high-profile roles in his administration.

Haley, who was Trump’s most significant Republican primary opponent, argued Wednesday on her radio show against confirming Gabbard as director of national intelligence and Kennedy to lead Health and Human Services.

Haley first went after Gabbard, a former Democratic member of Congress and 2020 presidential candidate who endorsed Trump this year before announcing she was a Republican. The nomination has also raised concerns from some traditional GOP foreign policy thinkers.

“She opposed ending the Iran nuclear deal. She opposed sanctions on Iran. She opposed designating the Iran military as terrorists who say death to America every single day,” Haley said on SiriusXM’s Nikki Haley Live. “She said that Donald Trump turned the U.S. into Saudi Arabia’s prostitute. This is going to be the future head of our national intelligence.”

Haley added that it was “disgusting” that Gabbard, a military veteran, went to Syria in 2017 “for a photo op with Bashar al-Assad” while he was attacking his own people and has expressed skepticism that the dictator was behind chemical attacks on his own people.

Haley said DNI was “not a place for a Russian, Iranian, Syrian, Chinese sympathizer.”

On Kennedy, Haley argued that he is “not a health guy,” despite having spent years raising concerns about the food, medicines and vaccines available to American consumers. He should face “hard questions” from senators, she said.

“He’s a liberal Democrat, environmental attorney trial lawyer who will now be overseeing 25 percent of our federal budget and has no background in healthcare,” Haley said. “So some of you may think RFK is cool, some of you may like that he questions what’s in our food and what’s in our vaccines, but we don’t know, when he is given reins to an agency, what decisions he’s going to make behind the scenes.”

Trump earlier this month announced that he won’t be asking Haley, his former U.N. ambassador, to serve in his second administration.

Civil service protections can’t stop large-scale firings of federal workers, the leaders of President-elect Donald Trump’s effort to downsize the government wrote Wednesday in an op-ed.

Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, the co-leaders of Trump’s planned effort to cut federal rules and workers, authored a Wall Street Journal op-ed offering the most comprehensive plan sketched out so far for the new Trump endeavor.

They plan to serve as “outside volunteers” and will work with the Trump transition team to “identify and hire a lean team of small-government crusaders,” they wrote. The new team will work “in the new administration” closely with the White House Office of Management and Budget, the authors wrote.

Musk and Ramaswamy said they’ll advise the effort, which they’ve dubbed the “Department of Government Efficiency,” to pursue three major types of reforms: regulatory cuts, administrative reductions and cost-savings.

The team will work with legal experts inside government agencies and “aided by advanced technology” to identify rules that exceed the authority Congress granted agencies. Their team will then present their list of rules to Trump, “who can, by executive action, immediately pause the enforcement of those regulations and initiate the process for review and rescission,” they wrote.

‘Mass head-count reductions’

A big reduction in regulations “provides sound industrial logic for mass head-count reductions across the federal bureaucracy,” Musk and Ramaswamy wrote. Their operation intends to identify “the minimum number of employees required at an agency” for it to perform its legal and constitutional duties.

“The number of federal employees to cut should be at least proportionate to the number of federal regulations that are nullified: Not only are fewer employees required to enforce fewer regulations, but the agency would produce fewer regulations once its scope of authority is properly limited,” they wrote.

Employees whose jobs are cut “deserve to be treated with respect,” Musk and Ramaswamy wrote, and their goal would be to help support their “transition into the private sector.”

Trump can use existing laws “to give them incentives for early retirement and to make voluntary severance payments to facilitate a graceful exit,” they said.

The Trump advisers said that despite conventional wisdom, civil service protections can’t stop Trump or his appointees from firing federal workers, as long as the firings are “reductions in force” that don’t target specific workers.

Ramaswamy suggested recently that it would be possible to randomly fire workers based on their Social Security numbers. On Trump’s first day in office, he could fire workers whose numbers end in an even digit, Ramaswamy said, adding that the idea was a “thought experiment,” but would avoid lawsuits alleging discrimination.

As president, Trump would have the authority to implement rules “that would curtail administrative overgrowth, from large-scale firings to relocation of federal agencies out of the Washington area,” Musk and Ramaswamy wrote.

They said they would welcome “a wave of voluntary terminations” of federal employees who don’t want to work from the office five days a week. “If federal employees don’t want to show up, American taxpayers shouldn’t pay them for the Covid-era privilege of staying home,” they wrote.

Critics are assailing Trump’s plan to shred the federal government and target federal workers. But Musk and Ramaswamy say they welcome the fight.

“We are prepared for the onslaught from entrenched interests in Washington. We expect to prevail,” they wrote.

An employer group is sounding the alarm about the possibility that President-elect Donald Trump will nominate Rep. Lori Chavez-DeRemer for Labor secretary, zeroing in on the Oregon Republican’s support for legislation that has been a top priority for unions.

“The PRO Act would deprive employees of their right to a secret ballot and their privacy in union representation elections,” Kristen Swearingen, president of the Coalition for a Democratic Workplace, said in a statement.

“It would also impose overly broad liability for ‘joint employment,’ limiting opportunities for small businesses and entrepreneurs, and create rigid standards for independent contractors, undermining workers’ ability to work independently.”

Chavez-DeRemer emerged as a possible pick to head the Labor Department after she was backed by Teamsters President Sean O’Brien and some of her fellow GOP lawmakers, POLITICO reported Tuesday.

She was one of the only Republicans to back the PRO Act and was endorsed by some of her state’s major unions in her recent reelection bid, which she narrowly lost to Democratic state Rep. Janelle Bynum.

If President-elect Donald Trump were to tap her for Labor secretary, it would be a stark departure from the employer-friendly labor officials who worked for his first administration.

In addition to the PRO Act, Chavez-DeRemer also co-sponsored legislation that made it easier for public safety workers to collectively bargain.

The House Ethics Committee on Wednesday did not agree to release the long-anticipated report into Matt Gaetz.

“There was not an agreement by the committee to release the report,” Chair Michael Guest (R-Miss.) told reporters after the meeting ended. Other members declined to comment.

Gaetz abruptly resigned from Congress last week, hours after President-elect Donald Trump tapped him to be attorney general. The Florida firebrand told GOP leadership the abrupt resignation was meant to allow them to fill his seat more quickly, but several Republicans theorized it was actually to avoid the coming release of the Ethics Committee report. Typically, once a member resigns they are no longer considered under the panel’s jurisdiction, though the Ethics Committee has released reports on former members at least twice before.

The investigation centered on multiple allegations against Gaetz, including that he had sex with a minor. He has denied any wrongdoing.

The panel was under intense pressure heading into the vote. While multiple GOP senators said they would like to see the report as they consider Gaetz’s nomination, Speaker Mike Johnson told reporters last week that he would strongly urge the committee to not release the report. He softened that stance slightly this week, saying he wasn’t trying to — and couldn’t — dictate the committee’s decision.

Democrats have widely called for the report to be released. Many have speculated that the report could be leaked to the media, or a lawmaker could attempt to read it into the congressional record, which would give access to the public.

But any lawmaker who disclosed the report could face immediate consequences, like censure or expulsion.

While Gaetz allies in the House, and some of his critics, have said they don’t believe the report should be released, that’s not a universal position among Republicans. Many have called for the report to be published or at least shared with the Senate as the chamber considers his attorney general nomination. Multiple GOP senators have said they want to see the report, as nearly a dozen have sidestepped questions about whether they would vote to confirm him.

Illinois Democrat Sean Casten is trying to force a vote on the House floor about releasing the House Ethics Committee’s report on Matt Gaetz, who is President-elect Donald Trump’s pick to lead the Justice Department.

If the House Ethics Committee does not vote to release the Gaetz report Wednesday, Casten plans to introduce a privileged resolution forcing a vote of the full House to require the panel to release the investigation into alleged misconduct by the Florida Republican, who left office last week.

“The allegations against Matt Gaetz are serious. They are credible. The House Ethics Committee has spent years conducting a thorough investigation to get to the bottom of it,” Casten said in a statement. “This information must be made available for the Senate to provide its constitutionally required advice and consent.”

The privileged nature of the resolution means that it can bypass committee consideration and speed to the floor without the blessing of leadership. The House would have to act within two days.

Casten’s office said there is precedent for this move. Back in 1996, Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.) introduced a privileged resolution to force the Ethics panel to release its report on alleged misconduct by then-Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.). The House voted then to kill Lewis’ move on the floor, and the committee was not forced to release its preliminary report.

The former Justice Department official who authored the post-9/11 “torture memos” cautioned that President-elect Donald Trump’s nomination of former Rep. Matt Gaetz to serve as attorney general “would plunge the DOJ into a political and legal quagmire” — and that a recess appointment could even be “unconstitutional.”

“Gaetz would serve the returning president better by withdrawing,” wrote John Yoo, who has served in all three branches of government, in an op-ed published Wednesday and co-written with the legal scholar Robert J. Delahunty.

Yoo served as deputy assistant attorney general in the Office of Legal Counsel of the Department of Justice under President George W. Bush and penned the legal memos that justified torture methods like waterboarding for prisoners detained outside the U.S.

Gaetz, a Trump loyalist with few allies in Congress and a trail of ethics probes, will face a difficult Senate confirmation for the country’s top law enforcement role. The House Ethics Committee is meeting today amid pressure to release its report into him, which Democratic senators and at least one Republican have signaled an interest in seeing before the confirmation.

But Trump has made clear he wants to be able to go around the Senate to appoint his Cabinet officials through a process called recess appointment, which would allow Trump, when he becomes president, to name his nominees to their roles when the Senate is out of session.

That could be unconstitutional, Yoo and Delahunty argued, under the rationale of a 2014 Supreme Court case. “Such an attempt would probably be far more damaging to the administration than merely letting the Senate reject Gaetz ’s nomination,” they wrote.

In announcing his Commerce secretary pick Tuesday, President-elect Donald Trump also suggested he wants to dramatically reorder how trade policy is made in Washington.

Congress will likely have something to say about that.

Trump tapped Howard Lutnick for the role, saying in a statement that his transition co-chair and Wall Street billionaire will “lead his tariff and trade agenda” and will have “direct responsibility for the Office of the United States Trade Representative.”

But as numerous trade policy experts immediately pointed out, the move could set off a battle with Congress over who controls trade policy in the next Trump administration.

“I think keeping the independence of USTR is very important, but also it is an offshoot of congressional authority,” said Rep. Richard Neal (D-Mass.) the top ranking Democrat on the House Ways and Means Committee. USTR “was constructed by Congress. The only way it can be deconstructed is by Congress.”

Specifically, Congress passed a law to create the role of USTR and make it a part of the executive office of the president, noted Bill Reinsch, a former senior Commerce official and Scholl Chair in International Business at the D.C. think tank Center for Strategic and International Studies. Reinsch also pointed out that the two congressional committees that oversee USTR and trade policy, House Ways and Means and Senate Finance, “have not taken kindly to efforts to diminish its importance.”

The Commerce Department, which is overseen by the Senate and House Commerce Committees, is responsible for some aspects of trade, including setting national security-based restrictions on exports and punishing unfair trade of specific products. Since Congress established USTR in 1962, lawmakers have expected the office to take the lead on more strategic decisions such as which countries to negotiate trade deals with and broader tariff policy.

The idea of consolidating USTR’s role under the Commerce Department “has been out there for many decades,” said Everett Eissenstat, who served as Trump’s deputy assistant for international economic affairs in his first term. “The statute has never been changed, though, because you have to have Congress change it.”

But Eissenstat added that it will be up to Trump “who actually speaks for the president on trade.”

“You know, you could have one office with statutory authority that is not very powerful,” he continued, “and the other is kind of bestowed with the president’s voice, and they can have a significant impact.”

That’s what happened in Trump’s first term, at least in the first few months. Wilbur Ross, Trump’s first term Commerce secretary, was initially designated as the administration’s lead official on trade. Trump had even said Ross would represent the U.S. in the renegotiation of NAFTA.

That changed after Robert Lighthizer, who served as U.S. trade representative, was confirmed almost four months after Trump took office. The longtime trade attorney and former official soon became the face of Trump’s trade agenda, using his legal expertise to make good on Trump’s promise to hit China with tariffs and renegotiate trade deals.

Senators exiting closed-door meetings with Matt Gaetz on Wednesday had a message: Just get the man to a hearing.

Gaetz, Donald Trump’s pick for attorney general, and Vice President-elect JD Vance (R-Ohio) met with GOP senators on Wednesday to discuss the congressman’s embattled nomination. Swaths of Senate Republicans have not yet committed to supporting Gaetz, and at least two senators — Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) and Susan Collins (R-Maine) — have cast serious doubts on Gaetz getting confirmed to the top position at the Justice Department.

Gaetz faces a litany of allegations, including that he had sex with a minor and paid for sex, though he has denied any wrongdoing. The House Ethics Committee is currently weighing whether to share a report they have been assembling on those accusations for more than a year. The Department of Justice also conducted an investigation, though officials ultimately declined to charge Gaetz.

Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), who attended a meeting with Gaetz Wednesday morning, said they “talked about the need to get a confirmation hearing” and ensuring that Gaetz is “able to respond in public under oath.”

Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah), who was also among the first to meet with Gaetz on Wednesday, described his meeting similarly. He added that Gaetz did most of the talking, while Vance was mostly in listening mode.

“He did spend a number of minutes talking about the unfairness and the lack of truth of the allegations being pursued by the committee, and the fact that the [Department of Justice] did decline to prosecute,” Lee said.

The Utah conservative said he did not ask Gaetz specifically if he’s had sex with a minor, but that it’d be “troubling” if those allegations proved true.

It’s a pitch clearly structured to appeal to the Senate’s procedure-loving members. Multiple Republicans who’ve appeared hesitant to openly support Gaetz have said he at least deserves to move through the process. The meetings on Wednesday appeared to mainly be between Gaetz, Vance and various Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee — the panel that would hold his confirmation hearings.

Judiciary Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) and John Cornyn (R-Texas) also publicly acknowledged having a meeting with Gaetz.

“I fear the process surrounding the Gaetz nomination is turning into an angry mob, and unverified allegations are being treated as if they are true. I have seen this movie before,” Graham said. “I would urge all of my Senate colleagues, particularly Republicans, not to join the lynch mob and give the process a chance to move forward.”

Graham did not respond to follow-up questions on his meeting, repeatedly referring back to his statement. Blackburn, who typically has a blanket rule against impromptu hallway interviews, said it was a “great conversation” with Gaetz and that it was good to see Vance. Cornyn said “the president’s entitled to a fair process” and that he has “no prejudgments.” Cornyn has previously said he wants to see the House Ethics Committee report.

But the Texas Republican acknowledged that the Gaetz confirmation process would be messy, calling it “Kavanaugh on steroids” — a reference to the highly contentious hearings on Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh.

Gaetz is “a smart guy,” Cornyn said. “I’m sure he realizes that.”

Joe Gould contributed to this report.