The D Brief: Murky hiring freeze; Trump-tariff turmoil; Cuts for CISA; GOPer slams NSA firing; And a bit more.

Hegseth’s murky hiring freeze has civilians in limbo. A month into a Defense Department hiring freeze meant to shrink the civilian workforce, some employees who had been preparing to move into new positions are still living out of hotel rooms, with their personal belongings long since shipped overseas. While Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has, on paper, allowed exemptions for some jobs, a lack of clarity on the process and a requirement that every approval go through his office has left people waiting weeks for answers.

Asked for comment, Pentagon officials declined to say: how many exemption requests they have received, how many have been granted, what the guidance is for covering the expenses of employees while they wait for a decision, or what employees should do if their exemptions are denied but they have already shipped their belongings and secured housing for a canceled move. Defense One’s Meghann Myers reports, here.

GOP rep slams Trump’s unexplained axing of NSA chief. The president’s abrupt Thursday firing of Air Force Gen. Tim Haugh as commander of U.S. Cyber Command and the National Security Agency “puts us back. It hurts us,” Rep. Don Bacon, R-Neb., said Sunday in an interview on CBS News’s “Face the Nation.”

“Russia and China today are laughing at us because we just fired the absolute best leaders, the most qualified guys that we spent three-and-a-half decades preparing to have this role, and he’s gone,” said Bacon, a member of the House Armed Services Committee who specialized in electronic warfare, intelligence, and reconnaissance during his 29 years as an Air Force officer. Read on, here.

The week’s big conferences: 

• Navy leaders speak today through Wednesday at the Navy League’s Sea-Air-Space Symposium 2025 outside Washington. Stay tuned for Defense One coverage.
• And Space Force leaders are participating in the Space Foundation’s Space Symposium through Thursday in Colorado Springs, Colo.

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Welcome to this Monday edition of The D Brief, a newsletter dedicated to developments affecting the future of U.S. national security, brought to you by Bradley Peniston and Ben Watson. Share your tips and feedback here. And if you’re not already subscribed, you can do that here. On this day in 1978, U.S. President Jimmy Carter cancelled development of a “neutron bomb” purportedly intended to slow or halt a Soviet invasion of Europe. 

Trump 2.0

Global markets are sinking again this morning with the Dow dropping 1,300 points from what CNBC describes as a “Trump tariff market collapse.” 

Latest: “Turmoil in global markets snowballed into one of the worst routs in recent memory after President Trump said he will stay the course with aggressive, economically disruptive tariffs,” the Wall Street Journal reports on its front page. “U.S. stocks lost $6.6 trillion in value during a two-day washout last week after President Trump announced larger tariffs than Wall Street expected and China said it would match the duties on all U.S.-made goods.”

By the way: Trump’s tariffs are “based on [a] massive error,” Axios reported Sunday, citing the work of economists at the conservative American Enterprise Institute think tank in Washington. 

The error “over-inflates the impact [of tariffs] by about a factor of four,” and that has resulted in “rates massively higher than they should have been to achieve the goals the administration sought,” Axios writes. 

Rewind: The precise mechanics of the error were guessed last week on social media by journalist James Surowiecki. AEI’s economists Kevin Corinth and Stan Veuger added a bit to that explanation in their analysis published Friday, which highlights an erroneous reading of import price impacts, apparently mistaking it for retail impacts. 

AEI: “Correcting the Trump Administration’s error would reduce the tariffs assumed to be applied by each country to the United States to about a fourth of their stated level,” Corinth and Veuger write. As a result, “the tariff rate would not exceed 14 percent for any country,” and “For all but a few countries, the tariff would be exactly 10 percent, [which is] the floor imposed by the Trump Administration.”

“Hopefully they will correct their mistake soon,” the economists warn, and advise that “the resulting trade liberalization would provide a much-needed boost to the economy and may yet help us stave off a recession.” Read more, here. 

Developing: CISA to make comprehensive staff cuts in the coming days. The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency is expected to start shrinking its workforce in the coming days, including vast cuts to its industry contracting teams, Nextgov reported Saturday. The nation’s premier cybersecurity agency, which sits in the Department of Homeland Security, has been in the Trump administration’s crosshairs for some time.

Reduction-in-force notices and additional offers for staff to take a deferred resignation are expected this week. Those RIFs are considered official agency layoffs, and offer federal workers additional recourse following large-scale terminations. According to one source, there are no plans on the administration’s part to provide funding to the private sector to help fill gaps left behind by the reduction of government workers within the agency. 

Why it matters: CISA is tasked with defending over a dozen critical infrastructure sectors defined by the U.S. government, which include transportation networks, nuclear reactors, election systems and government facilities. More, here. 

The Trump administration sent a threatening email to multiple Ukrainians living legally in the U.S. last week. In the message sent Thursday, U.S. officials warned the Ukrainians their protective status had been revoked and they had seven days to leave the U.S. or the “federal government will find you.” 

Reuters reported the email on Friday; later that day, the Department of Homeland Security acknowledged the messages were sent in error. 

Background: “Reuters reported last month that the Trump administration was planning to revoke temporary legal status for some 240,000 Ukrainians who fled the conflict with Russia,” the wire service writes. “Such a move would be a reversal of the welcome Ukrainians received under President Joe Biden's administration.” More, here. 

Ukrainian President Volodymir Zelenskyy met with Britain and France’s military chiefs Saturday in Kyiv. Ukraine is set to meet with NATO and other allies Friday in Germany for the latest iteration of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group, which was launched by the Pentagon under President Biden. Trump’s Pentagon chief, Pete Hegseth, attended last month’s group meeting; but neither he nor anyone else from the U.S. is expected to attend on Friday, Defense News reported last week. The Associated Press has more from Kyiv, here. 

Related reading: “Poland Prepares for Direct War with Russia,” Janusz Bugajski of the Jamestown Foundation think tank warned in an analysis piece published Friday. 

Another thing: After anti-Trump protests erupted in numerous U.S. cities over the weekend, the Kremlin’s Ukraine invasion negotiator suggested that America’s “deep state” must have been involved. He shared his conspiratorial thoughts in a social media post shortly after meeting with Trump administration officials in Washington. (Hat tip to the Wall Street Journal’s Yaroslav Trofimov.)

Additional reading: “Judge says deportation of Maryland man to an El Salvador prison was ‘wholly lawless’,” AP reported Sunday. U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis ordered (PDF) the Trump administration to bring Abrego Garcia back to the United States no later than 11:59 p.m. this evening.

Etc.

Lastly: Six in 10 Americans say Trump’s desire to seize Greenland and annex Canada is a “bad idea.” That’s according to new polling from the Wall Street Journal, which extended recent recorded trends that show “Divisions between the two political parties over American foreign policy have grown into a chasm over the past six years. 

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the country’s Democrat-Republican divide hinges largely on support for European allies. The Journal’s survey of 1,500 registered voters shows “83% of Democrats supported continuing U.S. financial aid to Ukraine for its defense against Russia, while 79% of Republicans opposed it.” The larger picture is similarly close, but more are in favor of aid to Kyiv instead of against: “Among all voters in the new survey, 49% supported continuing aid to Ukraine, with 44% opposed.” 

Also: Support for foreign aid is nearly as polarized, with “92% of Republicans supporting cuts and 85% of Democrats opposing them.”

And Trump’s talk of seizing territory from other nations? Just one in four approve. “Some 62% of voters said that Trump’s constant musing about expanding U.S. territory to include Greenland and Canada represented a bad idea,” the Journal’s data shows, while “Only 25% said controlling those two places was a good idea and would boost national security and the American economy.” 

And notably, among Republicans 51% said they’re in favor of Trump taking land from other countries to add to U.S. territory while 28% said they’re opposed, which is “a far narrower majority than Republican voters offered for most of the president’s other policy proposals,” the Journal writes. More, here. 

ICYMI: State Secretary Marco Rubio spoke to his Danish counterpart Lars Løkke Rasmussen on Thursday. The two men’s portrayals of that meeting seemingly couldn’t have been more different, as Vera Bergengruen of the Wall Street Journal noticed and shared on social media. 

The view from Denmark (emphasis added): “Honest and direct meeting with [Rubio] yesterday. I made it crystal clear that claims and statements about annexing Greenland are not only unacceptable and disrespectful. They amount to a violation of international law,” Rasmussen wrote on social media. 

Rubio’s readout: “Met with Danish Foreign Minister Rasmussen in Brussels today to talk about the defense priorities shared by our two nations. We discussed the importance of increasing burden sharing within NATO and addressing threats to the Alliance.” ]]>