The former airlifter pilot is the latest casualty in the Trump administration’s replacement of the military’s top officers, according to the Washington Post. “Allvin was informed last week that he would be asked to retire and that the Pentagon under Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth wanted to go in another direction, said a person familiar with the matter, who like some others spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive issue. As a trade-off, the Pentagon would allow Allvin to announce the decision, this person said, adding, “It was certainly not his choice.”

Transparency note: Hegseth’s office did not respond to requests for comment. An Air Force spokesperson declined to comment.

Three more GOP governors are sending their National Guard troops to occupy the nation’s capital. “The announcements by Mississippi, Tennessee and Louisiana brought the number of state troops detailed to the president’s effort to more than 1,100—and the number of states to six,” the Associated Press reported Monday. 

Rewind: Over the weekend, West Virginia’s Republican governor said he would send at least 300 troops while South Carolina said it’s sending 200 troops and Ohio offered up 150 of its National Guard for duty in Washington, D.C. 

The troops have been assisting law enforcement with tasks like trash pickup, “crowd control and patrolling landmarks such as the National Mall and Union Station,” according to AP, which notes, “Their role has been limited thus far, and it remains unclear why additional troops would be needed, though attention-getting optics have long been a part of Trump’s playbook.”

Reminder: In his press conference announcing a takeover of the D.C. police and the Guard deployment, President Trump offered false and exaggerated crime statistics to justify his action—claiming the show of force was necessary to tame Washington’s out-of-control criminal activity, though actual crime in the city is at its lowest point in decades.  

Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves echoed those false claims to justify his troop deployment Monday, alleging like Trump, “Crime is out of control there, and it’s clear something must be done to combat it.”

Louisiana’s Gov. Jeff Landry went a bit further, and said he looked forward to more cities being occupied by National Guard troops. “We cannot allow our cities to be overcome by violence and lawlessness,” he said in a statement on Facebook Monday, and added, “I am proud to support this mission to return safety and sanity to Washington DC and cities all across our country, including right here in Louisiana.”

Commentary: What National Guardsmen in the nation’s capital need to hear. “You have every right to expect a clear mission, an unambiguous chain of command, and appropriate training,” advises Paula Thornhill, a retired U.S. Air Force brigadier general and a professor at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies, writing Monday for Defense One.

Additional reading: “White House sending social media teams with FBI on some arrests in D.C.,” Reuters reported Monday. 

Coverage continues below…

Welcome to this Tuesday edition of The D Brief, a newsletter dedicated to developments affecting the future of U.S. national security, brought to you by Ben Watson with Bradley Peniston. Share your tips and feedback here. And if you’re not already subscribed, you can do that here. On this day in 1953, The CIA and British intelligence helped overthrow the government of Mohammad Mosaddegh in Iran.

Developing: The Navy is planning to cut at least a third of its civilian public affairs force, Defense One’s Meghann Myers reported Monday. The Navy’s chief of information office is now on the clock to deliver a plan that will reduce the service’s civilian public-affairs staff by at least 35 percent, according to a memo signed by Navy Secretary John Phelan earlier this month.  

The move would also centralize hiring for all civilian PAOs and all communications-related contracting to Department of the Navy headquarters. “This initiative is essential to eliminate duplicative roles, concentrate talent on the highest priority functions, focus contracting support where it is most needed and ensure alignment with commitment to mission-driven resource management, cost savings and operational lethality,” Phelan wrote in the memo, which gives the department 45 days from its Aug. 7 signing to submit a plan.

Panning out: The Navy and Marine Corps public affairs reorganization comes just weeks after the Army announced it would rebrand its central Office of the Chief of Public Affairs to the Army Global Communications Office, though cuts to force structure were not part of that announcement. 

And earlier this year, the Army pushed out Brig. Gen. Amanda Azubuike, who had been serving as the chief of public affairs since June 2024. Rather than a uniformed service member, the service will soon have a political appointee helming its communications office: a fundraising consultant for North Carolina Republican campaigns named Rebecca Hodson. 

Slashing Defense Department civilian jobs has been a key feature of the second Trump administration, going back to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s directive in February to reduce their numbers by 5 to 8 percent, alongside a hiring freeze that rescinded existing job offers. That would add up to more than 60,000 of the 770,000 civilians who worked for DOD at the beginning of this year. Continue reading, here. 

There’s now a new medal for the Pentagon’s border guards on migrant watch along the country’s wall with Mexico, according to a Defense Department memo dated last Wednesday. It’s called the Mexican Border Defense Medal, and soldiers will need to have worked within 100 miles of the border for at least 30 days, beginning the first day of Trump’s second term, to qualify. What sequence must it follow on the dress uniform? Read the bottom third of the memo to find out. 

New podcast episode: The Pentagon’s Golden Dome clampdown. Six months into President Trump's return to the White House, here's what we know about the Pentagon's ambitious and controversial missile defense program, featuring Defense One’s Patrick Tucker, who attended the recent missile defense symposium in Huntsville, Ala. Listen on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. 

Trump’s Ukraine meeting

Seven European leaders gathered at the White House to seek commitments about the war in Ukraine, three days after Trump hosted Putin in Alaska. In a Monday meeting that “often had a dreamlike quality — with made-for-TV moments and unexpected interludes,” the New York Times wrote this morning, the Europeans “won a potentially vital, if vague, expression of support from Mr. Trump for postwar security guarantees for Ukraine and sidestepped a discussion of territorial concessions, according to Chancellor Friedrich Merz of Germany. Still, they all but acquiesced to Mr. Trump’s abandonment of a cease-fire between Russia and Ukraine as a condition for further talks.”

Give it another week to 10 days to work out the next details, Ukraine’s Zelenskyy said Monday after the meeting with Trump. “Security guarantees will probably be 'unpacked' by our partners, and more and more details will emerge. All of this will somehow be formalised on paper within the next week to 10 days,” Zelenskyy said.

However, “The question of territories is something we will leave between me and Putin,” he added. Reuters has a bit more.

Report: Zelenskyy offered to buy $100 billion in U.S. arms in exchange for security guarantees. according to the Financial Times, writing off a document seen by the newspaper and citing “four people familiar with the matter.” The proffered deal also includes a $50 billion deal to produce drones with Ukrainian companies. Read on, here.

Bottom line, maybe: “Europe’s leaders essentially where they were before Mr. Trump’s meeting with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia in Alaska last week: subject to the president’s faith that he can conjure a deal with the Russian leader to end the grinding war,” the New York Times reported Monday. See also another Times piece that lists five takeaways, including Trump’s insistence that the U.S. will send no peacekeeping troops to the wartorn country.

Tom Nichols’s take: “Perhaps the Europeans did the best they could, stiffening Trump’s spine a bit after whatever browbeating he took in Alaska. But in the end, all of Trump’s showmanship has resulted in no substantive progress. Putin’s war continues. That said, Alaska is still part of the United States, America is still in NATO, and Kyiv remains free—and in this second Trump presidency, perhaps that counts as a good-enough day.” Read that at The Atlantic.

And lastly: The high cost of Trump’s election lies. On Monday, right-wing channel Newsmax agreed to pay $67 million to Dominion Voting Systems for spreading lies that their voting technology had been rigged so Trump would lose the 2020 presidential election. When you add that to the $787 million Fox News agreed to pay for the same lies, we’re looking at a bill of over $850 million that Trump’s lies cost just these two businesses. 

But Trump is still insisting he can’t lose an election without his opponents cheating. He used the complaint again Monday on social media, writing a lengthy diatribe vowing “to lead a movement to get rid of” mail-in ballots and voting machines in order to “bring HONESTY to the 2026 Midterm Elections.” Trump wrote the post three days after Russia’s Vladimir Putin allegedly told him in Alaska, “Your election was rigged because you have mail-in voting,” Trump said in an interview with Sean Hannity. 

The problem: “the U.S. Constitution is very clear that no president has the power to dictate election rules,” because “The framers were determined to prevent that power from falling into the hands of a potential dictator and so gave it to the states and Congress,” Boston College’s Heather Cox Richardson observed Monday after Trump’s screed on social media. 

One significant concern for the months ahead: Trump and his team appears to be “preparing to reject any election results that they don’t like,” Richardson warns, citing his declining mental faculties in front of European leaders Monday, a slowing economy, and growing discontent with his job performance. 

Additional reading: 

• “Trump raises end to mail-in ballots after claiming Putin questioned their security,” Axios reported Monday; the New York Times has more, reporting Saturday, here; 
• See also, “The GOP spent millions supporting mail ballots. Now Trump’s attacking them again,” Politico reported Monday;
• And “No, President Trump Can't Ban Mail in Ballots or Voting Machines, as His Truth Social Post Suggests He Might Try to Do,” Election Law Blog explained Monday.