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GOP Congressman Slams Pentagon: “Out of Step and At Odds with Congress”

by in Daily Edition | September 21, 2025 2 min read

Hegseth

Secretary Pete Hegseth (DoD photo by U.S. Navy Petty Officer 1st Class Alexander Kubitza) U.S. Secretary of Defense, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

The influential X account “War Monitor” reported yesterday: “Pentagon informs European diplomats the US will partially halt military assistance to Baltic nations and NATO states bordering Russia. Big mistake.”

U.S. Congressman Dan Bacon (R-NE) responded by writing: “in response, the House voted by voice unanimously to INCREASE Baltic Security Initiative spending. The Pentagon is out of step and at odds with Congress on this. The Undersecretary for Policy has a 1930s world view. The only people happy with him is Putin and his team.”

Bacon also criticized the Pentagon for demanding journalists to pledge they won’t gather any information — even unclassified — that hasn’t been expressly authorized for release, and will revoke the press credentials of those who do not obey.

Bacon wrote: “This is so dumb that I have a hard time believing it is true. We don’t want a bunch of Pravda newspapers only touting the Government’s official position. A free press makes our country better. This sounds like more amateur hour.”

Yet in a move showing how challenging it is to be a full-time administration critic, Bacon also congratulated Mike Waltz, Trump’s new U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, who in May left his position as National Security Advisor after he mistakenly included The Atlantic‘s Jeffrey Goldberg in a Signal chat where cabinet members including Vice President JD Vance, State Secretary Marco Rubio, and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth discussed a military strike on Houthi targets in Yemen.