Free Republic

The Defense Department announced Tuesday that U.S. troops have withdrawn from five military bases and reduced the size of its forces in Afghanistan as part of the agreement reached with the Taliban in February. Pentagon chief spokesman Jonathan Hoffman said in a statement that "U.S. forces in Afghanistan remain in the mid-8,000s and five bases formerly occupied by U.S. forces have been transferred to our Afghan partners." "We maintain the capabilities and authorities necessary to protect ourselves, our Allies and partners, and US national interests," Hoffman said. "We will continue to execute our counterterrorism mission while simultaneously supporting the 38-nation...

Defense Secretary Mark Esper on Friday ordered National Guard troops in Washington, DC, to disarm and wear soft caps instead of helmets, an official told Breitbart News on Friday afternoon. The official said the president told Attorney General Bill Barr that he wanted the National Guard to be armed so that they could protect themselves from rioters and looters coming in to the city, but Esper on his own told the D.C. National Guard leadership to take the weapons of National Guardsmen who were coming in from other states.“He’s not really on board with what the president is trying to do,”...

A teenage boy who had been shot by his grandmother pleaded with a 911 dispatcher to send help as the 75-year-old shot him again, a prosecutor told jurors on Tuesday. Sandra Layne is on trial for the first-degree murder of her grandson Jonathan Hoffman, 17, whom she is accused of shooting dead on May 18 last year at their shared home in suburban Detroit. Hoffman 'thought he was safe... Sandra Layne walks up and shoots him again. This time in the stomach,' Paul Walton, Oakland County's chief assistant prosecutor, said during his opening statement today. Defense attorney Jerome Sabbota countered...

The N.C. State Bar has challenged the dismissal of disciplinary charges against two former Union County prosecutors, saying they committed felonies to win a death penalty conviction. Kenneth Honeycutt and Scott Brewer were charged with lying, cheating and withholding evidence in the 1996 murder trial. Honeycutt, the former district attorney in Union County, has since returned to private practice; Brewer is now a District Court judge in Richmond County. Last week, the bar's Disciplinary Hearing Commission cited a missed deadline in dismissing the case against them. But the bar's lawyers say there is no deadline to bring charges because the...