(Just The News)—Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth pinpointed climate change programs as a potential place for the Department of Government Efficiency to cut Department of Defense spending while traveling in Germany this week.
Hegseth ultimately hopes the U.S. will increase its defense budget as he claims the Biden administration “underinvested” in the American military, but things like DOD climate change programs are ripe for cuts, according to the secretary.
“The Defense Department is not in the business of climate change, solving the global thermostat. We’re in the business of deterring and winning wars,” Hegseth told reporters Tuesday. “Things like that, we want to look for and find efficiencies.”
President Joe Biden ramped up efforts across the federal government to combat climate change. He and his administration repeatedly framed climate change as, among other things, a military priority, considering it a threat to national security.
“The Department continues to respond to climate change in two ways: adaptation to enhance resilience and mitigation to reduce greenhouse gas emissions,” wrote former Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin In the department’s 2024-2027 Climate Adaptation Plan.
The military’s mitigation goals outlined in the plan include net-zero installations and leveraging technologies that reduce energy use.
Enhancing resilience includes using renewable energy and “installing microgrids to ensure power is available at all times,” Deputy Chief Sustainability Officer Rachel Ross said in 2024. In 2023, the president’s proposed defense budget included $3.7 billion for “installation resiliency and adaptation” and $1.5 billion for research and development, operational energy and contingency preparedness.
Independent Journalism Is Dying
Ever since President Trump’s miraculous victory, we’ve heard an incessant drumbeat about how legacy media is dying. This is true. The people have awakened to the reality that they’re being lied to by the self-proclaimed “Arbiters of Truth” for the sake of political expediency, corporate self-protection, and globalist ambitions.
But even as independent journalism rises to fill the void left by legacy media, there is still a huge challenge. Those at the top of independent media like Joe Rogan, Dan Bongino, and Tucker Carlson are thriving and rightly so. They have earned their audience and the financial rewards that come from it. They’ve taken risks and worked hard to get to where they are.
For “the rest of us,” legacy media and their proxies are making it exceptionally difficult to survive, let alone thrive. They still have a stranglehold over the “fact checkers” who have a dramatic impact on readership and viewership. YouTube, Facebook, and Google still stifle us. The freer speech platforms like Rumble and 𝕏 can only reward so many of their popular content creators. For independent journalists on the outside looking in, our only recourse is to rely on affiliates and sponsors.
But even as it seems nearly impossible to make a living, there are blessings that should not be disregarded. By highlighting strong sponsors who share our America First worldview, we have been able to make lifelong connections and even a bit of revenue to help us along. This is why we enjoy symbiotic relationships with companies like MyPillow, Jase Medical, and Promised Grounds. We help them with our recommendations and they reward us with money when our audience buys from them.
The same can be said about our preparedness sponsor, Prepper All-Naturals. Their long-term storage beef has a 25-year shelf life and is made with one ingredient: All-American Beef.
Even our faith-driven precious metals sponsor helps us tremendously while also helping Americans protect their life’s savings. We are blessed to work with them.
Independent media is the future. In many ways, that future is already here. While the phrase, “the more the merrier,” does not apply to this business because there are still some bad actors in the independent media field, there are many great ones that do not get nearly enough attention. We hope to change that one content creator at a time.
Thank you and God Bless,
JD Rucker
