When President Donald Trump searched for his top Cabinet secretaries, a flair for running a smooth governing machine was ...

The answer is—and it’s not going to be a pleasant answer—the answer is that the violence ends if it boils over into a ...

Members of President Donald Trump’s administration have pushed back at Democrats’ attempts to ask them harsh questions during ...

Sen. Elissa Slotkin criticized Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth for not having the “guts and balls” of his predecessor Mark Esper in refusing to send the military to shoot unarmed protest… ...

But top national security officials, such as Mark A. Milley, who served as the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, or Mark Esper, then the defense secretary, pushed back, and Mr. Trump acquiesced.

Esper is the former Army secretary Trump promoted to Defense secretary and then fired in November 2020 after he lost the election.

Trump’s speech at Fort Bragg on June 10 may undo all that work. In his first term, Trump did much to undermine the norms of American civil-military relations.

Would a military officer disobey a lawful but unethical order — unethical in the sense that it violates the officer’s professional code? We may be on the verge of finding out. The Trump administration ...

The moment proved to be a breaking point between Trump and the Pentagon. The president eventually fired Esper, and he has suggested Milley should be executed.

At the time, he was talked out of it by aides, including the defense secretary, Mark T. Esper. In his 2022 book “A Sacred Oath,” Mr. Esper wrote that Mr. Trump had asked why protesters could ...

He ultimately didn't go through with it after opposition from his then-Defense Secretary Mark Esper ... Trump and the chaotic scenes from the weekend will prompt local law enforcement to take a harder ...

But then-Defense Secretary Mark Esper pushed back, saying the law should be invoked “only in the most urgent and dire of situations.” Trump never did invoke the Insurrection Act during his ...