Trump's USA

American defense
Trump wants to strengthen defense – proposes 14,000 billion

Donald Trump is proposing that the US defense budget be increased by 50 percent, Bloomberg reports. The president wants to see the equivalent of 14,000 billion kronor spent on defense. The current figure is 9,400 billion.

3,300 billion of the total amount proposed in the budget is justified by the costs of the war in Iran.

According to the White House, the increase will be financed, among other things, by cutting other expenses by ten percent.

If the budget is approved by Congress, it would be the largest increase since World War II. The proposal comes at a time when many Americans say they are against the US war in Iran, the news agency writes.

The President's Team
Analysis: No one is safe in Trump's inner circle

Outgoing US Attorney General Pam Bondi was unfailingly loyal to Donald Trump, but could not live up to the president's perhaps unreasonably high demands, according to analyses in several newspapers.

For the CBC, Mike Crawley writes that Bondi willingly transformed the formally neutral Justice Department into a weapon to target Trump's enemies, but that Trump was not satisfied with so few indictments leading to convictions.

In Politiken, Jacob Fuglsang writes that Trump's previous hesitation about firing high-ranking employees now seems to have been blown away with the dismissal of Pam Bondi and Kristi Noem.

"Therefore, a new form of political coldness is spreading at the top of the administration: No one is safe in their seat anymore."

Pictures of Noem's Husband in Tights and Balloon Breasts Risk Blackmail

Bryon Noem, the husband of former US Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, has reportedly been taking photos of himself wearing women's clothing and with balloons under his shirt to resemble breasts for at least a year, the Daily Mail reports according to Expressen.

The pictures are said to have been sent to models, who Noem in some cases paid to receive sexual messages. They were said to have been taken while Kristi Noem was a minister under Donald Trump.

The pictures risk constituting a security threat if they are used for blackmail, according to former CIA agent Marc Polymeropoulos.

- If a media organization can find out about this, you can say with great certainty that a hostile intelligence service also knows about it, he tells the British newspaper.

Noem had to leave her job earlier this year, partly after harsh criticism of her handling of ICE operations in the US.

Pete Hegseth fires US Army chief

US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has asked Army Chief of Staff Randy George to resign and retire immediately, the Pentagon said, according to the AP.

A source told CBS News that Hegseth wants a replacement who better implements his own and Trump's vision for the army.

- We are grateful for his service, but it is time for a change of leadership in the army, says a senior source within the Defense Department.

Randy George was nominated by Joe Biden and confirmed by the Senate in 2023. His four-year term was due to expire next year.