Hegseth Announces Elon Musk and Newt Gingrich Will Help Lead Military

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced onetime trillionaire Elon Musk, former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, and right-wing entrepreneur Palmer Luckey as the new heads of “Project Meridian”—a massive upcoming study on the “future of warfare.” Hegseth made the announcement at his “State of the Force” address on Wednesday afternoon, describing the trio of Trump loyalists as “the best forecasters of future conflict.” “There are obvious biases and risks to asking ourselves to both ask the questions and answer them. So today we are leveraging a unique source of American advantage—one our adversaries do not have: our innovators, our senior leaders, and our technologists. Big thinkers and doers who will forecast the creative solution to tomorrow’s conflicts,” Hegseth said. “And that’s why today … I’m announcing Project Meridian, an effort led by America’s best minds to study the future of warfare.”Musk, Luckey, and Gingrich will work with private sector leaders, experts, and Pentagon chief technology officer and former Uber vice president Emil Michael to “creatively look to the future and identify the domains that we must conquer.” Hegseth:I’m announcing Project Meridian, an effort led by America’s best minds to study the future of warfare.Project Meridian will be co-led by three of our nation’s best minds: Elon Musk, Palmer Luckey, and Newt Gingrich. pic.twitter.com/rBupINU71r— Open Source Intel (@Osint613) September 30, 2026 Before the Project Meridian announcement, Hegseth introduced the Autonomous Warfare Command, a unit focused on robotic, artificial intelligence and drone warfare—domains in which Musk and Luckey have a particular interest. Hegseth noted that Project Meridian’s findings would be submitted in the next 120 days with a “full public rollout.” He will be meeting with the three “great minds” later Wednesday.We’ll have to wait and see what comes of Project Meridian and the rest of Hegseth’s bizarre, Ted Talk–style speech. What makes Luckey, Musk, and Gingrich so uniquely good for the job? Does he really think other countries don’t have industry leaders and politicians as smart as them? That the collective minds of a dotcom-era billionaire, a Zionist VR entrepreneur, and an old partisan really give the U.S some kind of military edge?“Project Meridian will ruthlessly map the trajectory of wars, domains, and technologies to ensure this War Department, your War Department, dominates the future,” Hegseth promised.Attorney General Todd Blanche is launching an investigation against almost every federal judge in Minnesota.In a press conference Wednesday, Blanche announced that the Department of Justice filed a misconduct complaint in federal court against all but one of the federal district judges in Minnesota, attacking them for speaking to The New York Times for an article published earlier this month about the federal government’s immigration crackdown in the North Star State.“Seven federal judges in the District of Minnesota talked to The New York Times about cases, some of which are ongoing, in a manner that the Department of Justice views as a clear violation of their ethical duties,” Blanche said. “Their conduct has undermined public confidence in an impartial judiciary in Minnesota.”According to the complaint, U.S. District Judge Patrick Schlitz had a 90-minute interview with the publication, and six other federal judges in Minnesota also spoke to the Times. Schlitz, appointed by President George W. Bush, said to the newspaper that the Trump administration’s disregard for court orders during its immigration crackdown in the state “created a grave threat to the rule of law.”“I would say aloud to myself, ‘This just never happens,’” Schlitz said, while declining to discuss active cases.“They weren’t arresting, in my view, people who were dangerous criminals on the street,” Tunheim said to the Times.Blanche attacked the judges’ comments in the article as “blatantly false,” saying that the DOJ has asked the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals to investigate the judges, who should “recuse themselves from every case involving DHS, either criminal or civil in nature, because of the obvious bias they have shown in this article with The New York Times.”That would essentially grind federal court proceedings in Minnesota to a halt, which is probably by design. Trump and Blanche have railed against federal judges who rule against the Trump administration, calling them “activists.” While it is rare for federal judges to speak to the press, it is not illegal, and none of the judges targeted by the DOJ Wednesday mentioned ongoing cases. Schlitz even told the Times that he believes the administration’s violations of his court orders were mostly inadvertent.“My impression was that most, if not all, of the noncompliance was due to incompetence,” Schlitz said, “not due to conscious defiance of orders.” But even that deference wasn’t enough for Trump and Blanche. Donald Trump is planning to hit the campaign trail for 32 days before the midterm elections.That would put the president on the campaign trail for more than 94 percent of the time between now and November 3, effectively placing him at the center of an election cycle in which Republican candidates have increasingly tried to peel away from his influence.The breakneck pace of the schedule has also spurred health concerns for a president who was recently caught out of breath after descending a set of stairs and climbing into his limo.A spate of election-bound, pro-MAGA personalities have already broken from Trump and his agenda in an attempt to curry favor with their local electorates. The growing list includes Florida Representatives Maria Elvira Salazar and Byron Donalds (the latter of whom is running for governor in the Sunshine State), Maine Republican gubernatorial candidate Bobby Charles, and Texas Republican congressional candidate Carlos De La Cruz.Some hopeful office seekers have even stripped their websites and campaign materials of Trump’s name, taking advice that the White House offered in July when staffers explicitly encouraged midterm-bound Republicans to split from Trump and his sinking reputation.Top issues weighing down Trump’s popularity include the seemingly endless Iran war, the rising cost of living, an economy and supply chain thrown out of whack by the president’s reckless tariffs, the cost of health care, and the encroachment of AI and the industry’s data centers into American communities—a hot topic that Trump has unequivocally backed.A Reuters/Ipsos poll published late last month suggested that the president’s influence is waning: Just 13 percent of Americans strongly approve of the president—compared to a 2025 YouGov poll that found 23 percent of people felt the same way this time last year. Republican attitudes towards Trump have also changed, according to the Reuters/Ipsos poll. Just 35 percent of surveyed conservatives said they “strongly approved” of Trump’s job during his second term. In the same poll, 41 percent of registered voters said that they would vote for a Democratic candidate if the presidential election were conducted today.But Trump refused to acknowledge the party’s divergence. Speaking with reporters at the White House on Tuesday, Trump insisted that “they all want me to go.” “I’m one person,” Trump said. “They all want me to ​go campaign.”The Trump administration is trying to deport a Hasidic Jew for protesting against Israel. The New York Times reports that Yehonatan Ovadia, a religious teacher in Rockland County, New York, had his visa revoked by the federal government for participating in an October 2023 protest against Israel’s actions in Gaza where an Israeli flag disappeared from a local town hall. Ovadia belongs to Satmar, an anti-Zionist religious sect that believes a Jewish state cannot be established before the arrival of the messiah. Shortly after the protest, he and another member of the sect were charged with hate crimes before pleading guilty to a lesser charge of disorderly conduct and paying a fine in early 2024. In August, the federal government revoked his religious worker visa and Immigration and Customs Enforcement detained him at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn. Ovaida, an Israeli citizen who has been in the U.S. since 2022, said he took part in the protest but didn’t tear down the flag. His lawyers sued the government later that month, arguing that the government was punishing him for religious and political expression and conflating that with antisemitism.“He’s against the Israeli government and the existence of the state of Israel for religious reasons, but to claim that he’s an antisemite is the peak of absurdity,” said Eric Lee, one of his attorneys.“We demonstrated for Gaza, for the liberation of Gaza, for the rights of the Palestinians and to show to the world that the Jews, real Judaism, want to have peace,” Ovadia told the Times in a telephone interview.“It is a privilege to be granted a visa or green card to live in the United States of America,” the Department of Homeland Security said in a statement. “The Trump administration acted well within its statutory and constitutional authority, as it does with any alien who advocates for violence, glorifies and supports terrorists, harasses Jews and steals property.”The White House has targeted noncitizen pro-Palestinian activists for deportation, including students and permanent residents, ever since President Trump signed an executive order directing the Department of Homeland Security to go after them for antisemitic activities. When Ovaida applied for an extension to his religious worker visa in 2025, the government demanded court documents and police records, and then stripped him of his legal status. Ovaida’s lawyers plan to request his release at a bond hearing Wednesday. If the government gets its way, Ovaida could end up being deported to the country he was protesting against.Thanks to a 1980s anti–drug trafficking program, cities across the U.S. are being forced to turn over their license plate reader data to the Trump administration.404 Media reports that the federal government is using the High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area program to collect data from Flock, Axon, and other cameras used by local police, so that it can be used for a national surveillance program. The plan is to centralize the data on the government’s servers and make it available to other law enforcement agencies. Data collected by HIDTA can also be shared with the National License Plate Reader Program run by the Drug Enforcement Agency. The program allows the federal government to get around local and state restrictions against Flock and similar license plate reader companies without oversight. 404 Media learned about the plans through public records and court documents.The HIDTA program is part of the White House’s Office of National Drug Control Policy, which was just recognized by the Trump administration for “managing an automated license plate reader platform that brings together all levels of law enforcement.”In many states, local police departments can’t even set up license plate cameras without agreeing to send their data to the federal government, 404 Media reports. In Georgia, for example, cities have to sign a memorandum of understanding promising to send their data to the HIDTA program.Flock cameras are experiencing a backlash from the American public over their warrant-free surveillance and collection of data. They’ve been abused by local police to spy on people unrelated to law enforcement investigations, and have inspired protests at municipal meetings. And they collect far more than license plates: One hacked camera revealed the camera catalogs people, bicycles, small details such as bumper stickers, and, in one case, an American flag patch on a motorcyclist’s bag.This latest news shows that the Trump administration could be doing anything it wants with the vast amount of data that these cameras collect, skirting the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution. A centralized database such as the HIDTA could be misused by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the FBI, or any number of unscrupulous Trump administration officials.