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u.s. air force
Air Force Under Trump Will Force Senior Trans Service Members to Retire Without Benefits
"Trans people have served this country with honor," said Rep. Pramila Jayapal. "They deserve dignity—not betrayal."
Aug 07, 2025
The families of transgender service members in the U.S. Air Force could lose hundreds of thousands of dollars in denied retirement benefits due to a memo sent by the military branch this week.
As Reuters reported Thursday, an official at the Air Force informed transgender members with 15-18 years of military service that they would no be eligible for early retirement and would instead be forced to leave the Air Force without retirement benefits. Some transgender troops had previously been told they could retire early.
"After careful consideration of the individual applications, I am disapproving all Temporary Early Retirement Authority (TERA) exception to policy requests in Tabs 1 and 2 for members with 15-18 years of service," wrote Brian Scarlett, the acting assistant secretary of the Air Force for manpower and reserve affairs.
The memo means that many service members whose applications for early retirement had already been approved will have those approvals rescinded.
The decision follows the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling in June that cleared the way for the U.S. Department of Defense to ban openly transgender Americans from serving in the military. President Donald Trump signed an executive order earlier this year to impose such a ban.
"This is just betrayal of a direct commitment made to these service members."
Last week, in a court filing related to transgender service members' lawsuit against the administration, the Department of Justice denied that the plaintiffs are transgender, instead calling them "trans-identifying individuals."
Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth said there would be "no more pronouns" and "no more dudes in dresses" permitted in the military at a press conference in May, and transgender service members have recently reported facing bigotry as they've departed the service.
Military.com reported last month that one 20-year transgender veteran of the Army was told by an instructor of a mandatory pre-retirement course that she and her classmates should cross out the words "pronoun, gender, diversity, and inclusion" from their workbooks.
The incident, she said, was "yet another reminder that it doesn't matter how much they say, 'Thank you for all the effort you put in and that your contributions are valuable'... because at the end of the day, they're having us manually go in and remove our own contributions from all the documentation."
The attempted "removal" of any record of transgender people's service now extends to their retirement benefits, according to the memo sent August 4, with service members who have served for close to two decades being given the option to quit or be forced out, with lump-sum payments instead of benefits.
Shannon Minter of the National Center for LGBTQ Rights told Reuters the memo was "devastating."
"This is just betrayal of a direct commitment made to these service members," said Minter.
Reuters reported that the memo included a question-and-answer section, with one question reading, "How do I tell family we're not getting retirement benefits?"
The Air Force suggested long-serving transgender members tell their loved ones to "focus on the benefits you do retain," such as Department of Veterans Affairs benefits and "experience," and to seek counseling services.
"The Air Force told transgender service members to prepare for early retirement—then changed course and is now forcing them out with no benefits at all," said U.S. Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.). "Trans people have served this country with honor. They deserve dignity—not betrayal. We must speak out and fight back, always."
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'Unprecedented Mass Deployment' of Warplanes Across Atlantic Fuels Fears of US War on Iran
"You don't spin up this kind of skyward muscle just to flex," said one observer.
Jun 16, 2025
Flight-tracking websites showed dozens of Air Force aerial refueling planes departing from military bases in the United States and heading to Europe on Sunday, fueling speculation of direct U.S. involvement in the widening Israeli-Iranian war.
Military-focused news sites reported that around 30 U.S. Air Force KC-135R and KC-46A tankers were identified by flight-tracking software in what The Times of Israel called an "unprecedented mass deployment" to Europe.
According to The Aviationist:
Most of these aircraft landed this morning at Ramstein Air Base in Germany and at Morón Air Base and [Naval Air Station] Rota in Spain, while two landed at Aviano Air Base in Italy and at least one landed at Prestwick International Airport in the U.K. At the time of writing, some tankers are in flight over the Balkans, headed south, possibly towards Souda Bay in Greece or Incirlik in Turkey.
"While tanker movements in this direction are far from abnormal, such a large, near-simultaneous migration of the jets was very peculiar, especially at a time of extreme crisis in the Middle East," The War Zone's Tyler Rogoway wrote Monday. "The exact reason for the mass deployment is unclear, although many of the potential answers would indicate a change, or preparations for a potential change, in the current conflict between Israel and Iran."
Speaking on condition of anonymity, two U.S. officials told Reuters Monday that the tankers are being deployed to provide the administration of President Donald Trump with flexibility to act in the Middle East. Military experts said the deployment could portend expanded U.S. support for Israel's war on Iran or even American strikes against the country.
The Trump administration—which recently concluded that Iran is not seeking nuclear weapons—insists that Israel is acting "unilaterally" against its enemy in an effort to prevent it from developing nukes.
However, Trump said Sunday that "it's possible" that U.S. forces could enter the fight. Iran has accused the United States of complicity in Israel's bombing—which Iran says has killed more than 200 people, 90% of whom are civilians—and warned Washington of potential dire consequences if it boosts involvement in the war.
Asked about possible U.S. intervention in the war, Trump told reporters during the Group of Seven (G7) summit in Alberta, Canada on Monday, "I don't want to talk about that."
"We're not involved in it. It's possible we could get involved. But we are not at this moment involved," the president added.
As Reuters noted:
The United States already has a sizable force in the Middle East, with nearly 40,000 troops in the region, including air defense systems, fighter aircraft, and warships that can help bring down missiles.
Last month, the Pentagon replaced B-2 bombers with another type of bomber at a base in the Indo-Pacific that is seen as being an ideal location to operate in the Middle East. The B-52 bombers can carry large bunker-busting munitions, which experts say can be used against Iran's nuclear facilities.
Iran has responded to Israel's bombardment with waves of apparently indiscriminate missile attacks against Israeli cites, killing at least 24 Israeli civilians including women and children and Palestinian citizens of Israel and wounding hundreds of others.
Iranian state media—which was bombed by Israeli forces Monday with reported fatalities—claimed late in the day that Tehran is "preparing for largest and most intense missile attack in history on Israeli soil," even as Iran's government reportedly signaled its willingness to negotiate an end to hostilities if the U.S. guarantees it will not attack.
However, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu subsequently told ABC News that Israel would continue bombing Iran, dismissing Tehran's reported overture as a ruse meant to "lie, cheat, and string the U.S. along."
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Air Force Dodges PFAS Water Cleanup in Arizona, Citing Supreme Court Chevron Ruling
"The floodgate begins to open," said one observer. "The U.S. Air Force refuses to clean up their toxic chemical contamination citing the termination of the Chevron doctrine by the corrupt Supreme Court."
Aug 12, 2024
The United States Air Force has so far refused to comply with an Environmental Protection Agency order to develop a cleanup plan for drinking water in Tucson, Arizona, citing the U.S. Supreme Court's June ruling that overturned the Chevron doctrine, The Guardian reported Monday.
Air Force bases contributed to the contamination of the drinking water with toxic per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), often known as "forever chemicals" because they accumulate in the body, breaking down only very slowly. The compounds, which were introduced by chemical companies in the mid-20th century, are associated with a wide range of serious health conditions, including cancer.
In late May, the EPA ordered the Air Force and the Arizona Air National Guard to clean up the PFAS contamination of groundwater at a 10-square-mile site in Tucson, giving them 60 days to develop a plan.
In late June, the Supreme Court eliminated the Chevron doctrine, also called Chevron deference, which gave federal agencies latitude to interpret laws and establish regulations, and required judges to generally defer to their expert judgment. The landmark ruling, brought by the court's right-wing majority, cut away at the executive branch's ability to regulate pollution.
Progressive advocates warned that it would lead to corporate-backed legal challenges to environmental and health rules. As it turned out, corporations were not the only organizations ready to take advantage of the ruling. On July 18, the Air Force's lawyers wrote to the EPA arguing that the May order should be withdrawn due to the elimination of the Chevron doctrine; Arizona Public Media service AZPM reported that the Air Force formally requested that the order be dropped.
The Air Force's challenge is a unique one in that it pits one arm of the U.S. executive branch against another, and won't go to the courts, but both scientists and legal experts warned that it could be a sign of the hard-nosed approach that polluters could take following the Chevron ruling that favors them.
"The floodgate begins to open," Chris Nagano, a former scientist at the Center for Biological Diversity and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, wrote on social media in response to The Guardian's article. "The U.S. Air Force refuses to clean up their toxic chemical contamination citing the termination of the Chevron doctrine by the corrupt Supreme Court. I thought the Air Force was supposed to protect the American People?"
Deborah Ann Sivas, an environmental law expert at Stanford Law School, told The Guardian that the new ruling shouldn't affect the EPA's order and the Air Force seemed to be seeking to expand its scope to block regulatory action.
"It's very odd," she said. "It feels almost like an intimidation tactic, but it will be interesting to see if others take this approach and it bleeds over."
Legal experts say that, despite the Air Force's claim, the Supreme Court's recent ruling pertaining to Chevron shouldn't affect the EPA's enforcement actions, such as the May order—it should only affect the agency's rule-making process, The Guardian reported.
The order called for the Air Force and the Arizona Air National Guard to establish a filtration system designed specifically to remove PFAS, the estimated cost of which would be $25 million, or 0.1% of the Air Force's annual budget, the newspaper reported.
The affected 10-square-mile site is beneath Tucson International Airport, Air Force Plant #44, and the Morris Air National Guard base. It's been known to be extraordinarily polluted since long before the presence of PFAS was found—in fact, it was designated a Superfund site in the 1980s due to the presence of contaminants from solvents and degreasers.
Since 2016, samples from the site's groundwater have shown extraordinarily high levels of PFAS—as much as 53,000 parts per trillion, when the allowable legal limit for drinking water is between just 4 and 10 ppt, depending on the type of PFAS. However, a series of measures, including filtration, water diversion, and the closing of wells, have been taken so that such contaminated water is not in the local drinking supply.
There was a close call in 2021 in which contaminated water nearly breached the Tucson water supply, the EPA's order says, and though the city's water is currently safe, the issue remains concerning for locals, USA Today reported in June. It's also creates added costs.
"When we have an area where the water quality is impacted and we're not able to serve that to customers, that is an added cost. It really diminishes the resource that we have available," Natalie DeRoock, a spokesperson for Tucson Water, the local utility, told USA Today. DeRoock said that while Tucson pumps in some water from the Colorado River, it depends largely on groundwater, a finite resource.
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After Setting Himself on Fire, US Airman Aaron Bushnell Dies Declaring 'Free Palestine'
"Many of us like to ask ourselves, 'What would I do if I was alive during slavery? Or the Jim Crow South? Or apartheid? What would I do if my country was committing genocide?' The answer is, you're doing it."
Feb 26, 2024
"My name is Aaron Bushnell, I am an active-duty member of the United States Air Force, and I will no longer be complicit in genocide. I'm about to engage in an extreme act of protest, but compared to what people have been experiencing in Palestine at the hands of their colonizers, it's not extreme at all."
That's how the 25-year-old from San Antonio introduced himself—and bade farewell—to the world in a livestream video of his Sunday afternoon walk to the Israeli Embassy in Washington, D.C. Arriving outside the front gate, Bushnell set down his phone, took eight paces, turned to face the camera, doused himself in an unknown accelerant, donned his service cap, and set himself alight. He repeatedly screamed "Free Palestine" as he burned.
Uniformed Secret Service officers arrived on the scene even before Bushnell was able to ignite the fire. They repeatedly ordered him to "get on the ground."
"Get on the ground, you fucker," someone—presumably an officer—can be heard saying in the video as Bushnell screams and writhes in agony. He managed one final, garbled, yet unmistakable "free Palestine" as his body was engulfed in flames.
Note: The following video contains blurred graphic images that some readers may find disturbing.
Nearly two-and-a-half minutes into the video, an officer in a white shirt rushes in with an extinguisher while an officer points his pistol at Bushnell's burning body.
"I don't need guns," implored the man in the white shirt, "I need fire extinguishers."
NPR reported Bushnell was rushed to a hospital in critical condition. He died Sunday evening.
Bushnell left a final message on social media early Sunday morning.
"Many of us like to ask ourselves, 'What would I do if I was alive during slavery? Or the Jim Crow South? Or apartheid? What would I do if my country was committing genocide?'" he wrote in his first Facebook post in nearly six years. "The answer is, you're doing it. Right now."
Some observers criticized U.S. corporate media outlets for publishing articles with headlines omitting the words "Gaza," "Palestine," or "genocide."
Others took aim at reports attributing Bushnell's act to mental health issues.
"They will try to spin-doctor it as mental health issues, but he was rational and clear about his political reasoning, which resonates with [the] majority of the world," Syracuse University professor Farhana Sultana said on social media. "May his sacrifice not be in vain. Indeed. it was legitimate moral outrage and courage against the holocaust and barbarity in Palestine with U.S. full participation. May his sacrifice not be in vain, may his last words on this earth ring true. #FreePalestine."
CounterPunch editor Joshua Frank wrote: "Please, stop saying Aaron Bushnell was mentally ill. The real mental illness is witnessing a genocide taking place and not doing a thing to stop it."
More than 100,000 Palestinians—mostly women and children—have been killed or wounded by Israeli bombs and bullets since the October 7 attacks on Israel. Around 90% of Gaza's 2.3 million people have been forcibly displaced, and at least hundreds of thousands of Gazans are on the brink of starvation.
The U.S. government backs Israel with nearly $4 billion in annual military aid and diplomatic support including three vetoes of United Nations Security Council cease-fire resolutions. The Biden administration is seeking an additional $14.3 billion in armed assistance for Israel, and has twice sidestepped Congress to fast-track emergency military aid.
Last month, The Intercept reported that documents obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request suggested that the Biden administration deployed a U.S. Air Force team to Israel to assist the Israel Defense Forces with targeting intelligence.
Bushnell's death is the second reported U.S. self-immolation since the start of the Gaza genocide. On December 1, a woman—whose identity and outcome remain unknown—carrying a Palestinian flag was hospitalized in critical condition after setting herself alight outside the Israeli consulate in Atlanta.
Police called it an "act of extreme political protest." Israeli Consul-General Anat Sultan-Dadon called it an act of "hate and incitement toward Israel."
People have set themselves on fire as an act of political protest for many centuries. Following the examples of Vietnamese Buddhist monks and nuns who self-immolated in 1963 to protest persecution by the U.S.-backed Ngô Đình Diệm dictatorship, at least half a dozen Americans burned themselves to death to protest the Vietnam War. Americans also self-immolated over the 1991 and 2003 invasions of Iraq, the climate emergency, alleged corruption at the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, and other reasons.
In December 2010, the self-immolation of Tunisian street vendor Mohamed Bouazizi was a major catalyst for the Arab Spring uprising that swept across North Africa and the Middle East.
The late Vietnamese Buddhist monk, peace activist, and author Thích Nhất Hạnh explained in a letter to the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. that the monks and nuns who self-immolated were not committing suicide. Rather, their self-sacrifices were aimed "at moving the hearts of the oppressors, and at calling the attention of the world to the suffering endured."
"It is done," he explained, "to wake us up."
The 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline—which offers 24/7, free, and confidential support—can be reached by calling or texting 988, or through chat at 988lifeline.org.
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'Really Scary Stuff': US Drone Crashes During Encounter With Russian Fighter Jet
"As long as the U.S. and Russia both have nukes—not to mention regular signaling/threats of use—relatively minor incidents like this can easily escalate," asserted one disarament expert.
Mar 14, 2023
Fears of an escalation between nuclear superpowers Russia and the United States mounted Tuesday after a U.S. Air Force Reaper drone went down in international waters in the Black Sea during an encounter with a Russian fighter jet, with both sides giving varying accounts of the incident.
According to U.S. European Command (EUCOM):
Two Russian Su-27 aircraft conducted an unsafe and unprofessional intercept with a U.S. Air Force intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance unmanned MQ-9 aircraft that was operating within international airspace over the Black Sea today. At approximately 7:03 am (CET), one of the Russian Su-27 aircraft struck the propeller of the MQ-9, causing U.S. forces to have to bring the MQ-9 down in international waters. Several times before the collision, the Su-27s dumped fuel on and flew in front of the MQ-9 in a reckless, environmentally unsound, and unprofessional manner. This incident demonstrates a lack of competence in addition to being unsafe and unprofessional.
"This incident follows a pattern of dangerous actions by Russian pilots while interacting with U.S. and allied aircraft over international airspace, including over the Black Sea," EUCOM added. "These aggressive actions by Russian aircrew are dangerous and could lead to miscalculation and unintended escalation. "
U.S. Air Force Gen. James B. Hecker said in a statement that "U.S. and allied aircraft will continue to operate in international airspace and we call on the Russians to conduct themselves professionally and safely."
The Russian Ministry of Defense issued a statement on the incident claiming that the U.S. drone had its transponders turned off and denying that Russian aircraft came into contact with the MQ-9. The ministry said the U.S. aircraft "violated the boundaries" of an area demarcated by Moscow "for the purpose of conducting a special military operation"—an invasion—in Ukraine, and that the drone "went into uncontrolled flight with a loss of altitude and collided with the water surface" as "a result of sharp maneuvering."
An unnamed U.S. Air Force official told The War Zone that American officials do not believe the Russians deliberately tried to bring down the drone, but that the alleged collision "seems to be simple incompetence."
War Zone reporters Howard Altman and Joseph Trevithick wrote that "today's incident does, of course, come amid long-standing concerns about the potential for the conflict in Ukraine to spill out more broadly in the region."
"Russian officials, including President Vladimir Putin, routinely issue nebulous threats to retaliate against the United States, other members of NATO, and other countries over military aid and other support for Ukraine," the pair added. "How either side will react to the loss of the MQ-9 remains to be seen."
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