By LOLITA C. BALDOR

WASHINGTON (AP) — Five former secretaries of defense are calling on Congress to hold immediate hearings on President Donald Trump’s recent firings of the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and several other senior military leaders, according to a letter obtained by The Associated Press.

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The five men — who represented Republican and Democratic administrations over the past three decades — said the dismissals were alarming, raised “troubling questions about the administration’s desire to politicize the military” and removed legal constraints on the president’s power.

Late last week, Trump fired Air Force Gen. CQ Brown Jr. as chairman of the Joint Chiefs. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth followed that by firing Adm. Lisa Franchetti, chief of naval operations; Gen. Jim Slife, vice chief of the Air Force; and the judge advocates general for the military services.

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth speaks during a meeting with Saudi Defense Minister Prince Khalid bin Salman, Monday, Feb. 24, 2025, at the Pentagon in Washington. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)

Hegseth has defended the firing of Brown, saying that other presidents made changes in military personnel and that Trump deserves to pick his own team. Hegseth said he fired the JAGs because he didn’t think they were “well-suited” to provide recommendations when lawful orders are given.

The letter — signed by William Perry, Leon Panetta, Chuck Hagel, Jim Mattis and Lloyd Austin — said there were no real justifications for the firings because several of the officers had been nominated by Trump for previous positions. And it said they had exemplary careers, including operational and combat experience.

“We, like many Americans — including many troops — are therefore left to conclude that these leaders are being fired for purely partisan reasons,” said the letter, adding that “we’re not asking members of Congress to do us a favor; we’re asking them to do their jobs.”

In the meantime, they said, senators should refuse to confirm any new Pentagon nominations, including retired Lt. Gen. Dan Caine, who Trump has said should be the next joint chiefs chairman.

Trump’s choice of Caine is unusual. Caine, who is widely respected in the military, would have to come back onto active duty but he does not meet the legal requirements for the top post. According to law, a chairman must have served as a combatant commander or service chief. The president can waive those requirements.

Hagel is a Republican and Mattis, an independent, was Trump’s first defense chief. The other three are Democrats. Four of the five served in the military, including two — Mattis and Austin — who were four-star generals.

“The House and Senate should demand that the administration justify each firing and fully explain why it violated Congress’ legislative intent that the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff complete a four-year term in office,” the letter said.

The chairman has a four-year term, and Brown had served a bit less than 17 months.

In recent decades, a number of three-star and four-star officers have been fired, but Pentagon leaders have routinely made clear why they were ousted. Those reasons included disagreements over the conduct of the Iraq or Afghanistan wars, problems with the oversight of America’s nuclear arsenal and public statements critical of the president and other leaders.

By MICHAEL PHILLIS and MATTHEW DALY

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Republican-controlled Congress has voted to repeal a federal fee on oil and gas producers who release high levels of methane, undoing a major piece of former President Joe Biden’s climate policy aimed at controlling the planet-warming “super pollutant.” The fee, which had not gone into effect, was expected to bring in billions of dollars.

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The Senate on Thursday voted along party lines 52-47 to repeal the fee, following a similar House vote on Wednesday. The measure now goes to President Donald Trump, who is expected to sign it.

Methane is a much stronger global warming gas than carbon dioxide, especially in the short term, and is to blame for about one-third of the world’s warming so far. Oil and gas producers are among the biggest U.S. methane emitters and controlling it is critical to address climate change.

Most major oil and gas companies do not release enough methane to trigger the fee, which is $900 per ton, an amount that would increase to $1,500 by 2026. The measure was part of the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, but the Environmental Protection Agency didn’t formally set rules until late last year.

That timing made it vulnerable to the Congressional Review Act, which allows Congress to pass a resolution to undo rules that are finalized towards the end of a president’s term. If those resolutions pass and the president signs them, the rule is terminated and agencies can’t issue a similar one again.

“It’s a sorry testament to the influence of Big Oil on Capitol Hill that one of the top priorities of Congress is a blatant handout to the worst actors in the fossil fuel industry,” said Tyson Slocum, director of Public Citizen’s energy program.

The American Petroleum Institute, the largest lobbying group for the oil and gas industry, applauded the move, calling the fee a “duplicative, punitive tax on American energy production that stifles innovation.”

“Thanks to industry action, methane emissions continue to decline as production increases, and we support building on this progress through smart and effective regulation,” said Amanda Eversole, the executive vice president and chief advocacy officer at API.

Globally, methane concentrations in the atmosphere have been steadily climbing.

Republican Sen. Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia, who chairs the Senate’s Environment and Public Works committee, spoke in favor of repeal on the Senate floor.

“We should be expanding natural gas production, not restricting it. Instead, the natural gas tax will constrain American natural gas production, leading to increased energy prices and providing a boost to the production of natural gas in Russia,” she said.

Repeal of the methane fee is the latest of several pro-oil and gas moves Republicans have taken since the start of Trump’s term. On his first day, he declared a national energy emergency, calling for more oil and gas production, and fewer environmental reviews. Democrats failed to overturn that declaration yesterday. Trump has also lifted a pause on new applications for liquified natural gas export terminals, removed the U.S. from the Paris climate agreement and moved to open up more areas of public lands and waters for oil and gas drilling.

The fee on methane releases was aimed at pushing companies to adopt better practices to curb emissions and make their operations more efficient. Technology exists to prevent leaks and to fix them. The EPA had said the fee was expected to reduce 1.2 million metric tons of methane emissions by 2035 — that’s about the same as removing 8 million cars from the road for a year.

The Biden administration had also implemented methane regulations on existing oil and gas wells, after addressing methane escaping from new wells. The EPA at the time meant for the fee to complement that rule and focus on the worst polluters.

About half of all methane emissions from wells are from just 6% that are smaller producers, according to a recent study.

Phillis reported from St. Louis.

The Associated Press receives support from the Walton Family Foundation for coverage of water and environmental policy. The AP is solely responsible for all content. For all of AP’s environmental coverage, visit https://apnews.com/hub/climate-and-environment

INDIANAPOLIS — As he addressed some of the Vikings’ biggest needs this week at the 2025 NFL Combine, general manager Kwesi Adofo-Mensah acknowledged the importance of being able to generate pressure without having to blitz.

That’s exactly how the Philadelphia throttled the Kansas City on their way to winning the Super Bowl. The Eagles’ interior defensive line was dominant at the point of attack, and it allowed them to make life miserable for the Chiefs without sending a single blitz throughout the entire game.

The best way for the Vikings to try to emulate that model would be to spend significant draft capital on the interior of their defensive line. To say they have rarely done that as of late would be a massive understatement.

The last time the Vikings invested so heavily on the interior of the defensive line came when they selected defensive tackle Sharif Floyd in the first round of the 2013 NFL Draft. You have to go back another decade for the previous time the Vikings selected DT — Kevin Williams in the first round of the 2003 NFL Draft.

It would behoove the Vikings to buck that in a couple of months. They have the No. 24 pick in April 24-26 draft, and if they decide not to trade down, they should consider using it on the best defensive tackle available.

This is widely regarded as deep draft class at defensive tackle. Though it’s a certainty that Michigan defensive tackle Mason Graham will be long gone by the time the Vikings are on the clock, there should be a number of options available.

A potential fit could be somebody like Michigan’s Kenneth Grant, whose 6-foot-4, 330-pound frame could help him make a major impact as a rookie.

“Most guys think I’m just a run stopper,” Grant said. “I’m super athletic and can rush the passer.”

Maybe somebody like Ole Miss’s Walter Nolen, who prides himself on an intensity that allows him to play even bigger than his 6-foot-4, 295-pound frame would suggest.

“I feel like I do everything,” Nolen said. “It’s hard to find someone who looks like me and does the things I do.”

Then there is Oregon’s Derrick Harmon, who has the versatility needed to play multiple positions with a 6-foot-4, 315-pound frame to match. “I’ve got that dog in me,” he said. “A real gritty player who’s trying to get to the ball and make a play.”

Now, if the Vikings decide to trade down, they should still have options, whether that’s Toledo’s Darius Alexander, South Carolina’s T.J. Sanders or Kentucky’s Deone Walker, among a handful of others.

“It’s a ‘starter’s draft’ is how I would phrase it,” NFL Network draft analyst Daniel Jeremiah said. “Some positions maybe don’t have that super star that we have had in years past. We do have a boatload of starters, particularly the defensive line. A bunch of really, really good players.”

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President Donald Trump is poised to address a joint session of Congress on March 4, the first-year equivalent of the annual State of the Union address. Whatever one thinks of this administration’s policies and many executive orders, the presidency has grown too powerful, and reformers from every political party should work to pare it back.

If America’s Founders had one overriding principle, it is this: Don’t put too much power in one place. As we approach 2026 and America’s semi-quincentennial (quarter millennial), celebrating 250 years since the signing of the Declaration of Independence in 1776, it’s an apt time to realize the center of power has long since moved away from the states and toward Washington, to the detriment of us all. And within Washington, power has increasingly centralized in the president at the expense of Congress and the judiciary.

For his part, Trump has already usurped Congress’s power of the purse to impose trade tariffs, and he has floated the idea of creating a sovereign wealth fund without Congress. He can cite a precedent as recent as President Joe Biden’s attempt to spend $400 billion on student loans without congressional involvement. When courts blocked Biden, he continued the same policy, in smaller chunks.

Before that, President Barack Obama infamously pledged to use his pen and phone when Congress threatened to block his policies. Before that, President George W. Bush started two wars without congressional approval, one more than his father. Going back even further, President Woodrow Wilson jailed political opponents during World War I in violation of court orders.

Trump’s annual speech itself is arguably an indicator of burgeoning presidential power. Thomas Jefferson transmitted his State of the Union addresses to Congress in written form, partly because he felt that appearing in person before Congress looked too much like a king pressuring the legislature. Jefferson’s tradition of respecting congressional independence continued for more than a century until Woodrow Wilson, whose grand views of presidential power mirror Trump’s, began giving in-person speeches annually.

The separation of powers is one of the most essential principles in American government. Yet, there are also political and economic reasons to oppose unilateral presidential policymaking. One is the yo-yo effect. While it is easy to enact sweeping policy changes via executive order, it is just as easy for the next president to overturn them. The result is policy whiplash every time there is a change in power, on issues ranging from environmental policy to labor regulations. This instability discourages investment and slows innovation and growth.

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For example, many of Trump’s first-term executive orders on regulation were overturned by Biden on his first day in office. Now, some of those same orders are back in effect, and the odds are the next Democratic president will overturn them again.

Tariffs provide another example. The Constitution gives all taxing powers to Congress and none to the president. In the 1960s and 1970s, Congress delegated its tariff-making powers to the president for expediency reasons. Trump has used these powers to impose tariffs on hundreds of billions of dollars of goods, often announced on social media with little to no notice and certainly with no congressional input.

Congress hasn’t raised tariffs since the 1930 Smoot-Hawley tariffs that worsened the Great Depression — and for good reason. Trump’s 2018 steel and aluminum tariffs, for example, created 1,000 jobs in those industries but cost 75,000 jobs in steel- and aluminum-using industries ranging from autos to beverages.

Trump’s speech to Congress will inspire and provoke. There should be one thing everyone can agree on: the presidency has grown too powerful.

Congress rightly has sole legislative and spending power, not the president. To restore constitutional government, Congress must either codify Trump’s executive orders in legislation or repeal them outright, on a case-by-case basis. And the courts must stop unconstitutional behavior from Congress and the president while upholding policies that are constitutional.

The state of our union is that America is in good shape. However, our Founding institutions are undergoing another stress test. It is up to Congress, the courts and to each of us to see that it passes.

Ryan Young is a senior economist at the Competitive Enterprise Institute. He wrote this for InsideSources.com.