White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt blasted sitting members of Congress who participated in a video that she said sends a “dangerous message” to our 1.3 million active duty service members, telling them to defy orders that they deem to be unlawful.
During a White House press briefing on Thursday, Leavitt was asked about President Donald Trump’s comments about the video, calling it “seditious behavior punishable by death” by the six Democrats in the video, Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-MI), Sen. Mark Kelly (D-AZ), Reps. Chris Deluzio (PA-17), Chrissy Houlahan (PA-6), Maggie Goodlander (NH-2), and Jason Crow (CO-6). All who are former members of either the military or the intelligence community, RedState reported.
“Let’s be clear what the president is responding to, because many in this room want to talk about the president’s response, but not what brought the president responding in this way,” Leavitt said. “You have sitting members of the United States Congress who conspired together to orchestrate a video message to members of the United States military, to active duty service members, to members of the national security apparatus, encouraging them to defy the president’s lawful orders.”
“The sanctity of our military rests on the chain of command, and if that chain of command is broken, it can lead to people getting killed, it can lead to chaos, and that’s what these members of Congress… are essentially encouraging,” she added.
The reporter pushed back, claiming that President Trump’s comments were tantamount to encouraging political violence, and Leavitt let her have it.
“Why aren’t you talking about what these members of Congress are doing to encourage and incite violence?… They’re suggesting, Nancy, that the president has given illegal orders, which he has not,” Leavitt said. “Every single order that is given to the U.S. military by this Commander in Chief and through this chain of command, through the Secretary of War, is lawful, and the courts have proven that.”
“This administration has an unparalleled record at the Supreme Court,” she added. “Because we are following the laws. We don’t defy court orders. We do things by the book. And to suggest and encourage that active duty service members defy the chain of command is a very dangerous thing for sitting members of Congress to do. And they should be held accountable. And that’s what the president wants to see.”
Later in the briefing, another reporter wanted to swing back around to the topic, and she called out the utter hypocrisy coming from those in the room who would lose their minds if this were happening the other way around.
“And if this were Republican Members of Congress who were encouraging members of the military and members of our U.S. government to defy orders from the President… this entire room would be up in arms,” Leavitt said. “But instead, it is the other way around, and I think that’s quite telling.”
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Utah unveils plans to bring nuclear hub to Brigham City
Brigham City • Gov. Spencer Cox and other state leaders are looking at a rural corner of northern Utah to become a hub of nuclear energy development in the Intermountain West.
The governor announced plans to build a training center and manufacturing plant in Brigham City Monday. In partnership with Holtec International, an energy engineering firm, and Hi Tech Solutions, a nuclear services firm establishing a new base in Utah, the city in Box Elder County will eventually build the components for a fleet of small modular reactors and ship them to locations throughout the region.
And at least two of the small nuclear reactor power plants will be built somewhere near Brigham City itself, officials said. No small modular reactors are currently operating in the United States, though several projects are in various stages of design and regulatory approval.
“Why Brigham City?” said Mayor DJ Bott at an event announcing the project. “Heck, why not?”
Cox said the partnership aligned with his Operation Gigawatt, an initiative to significantly ramp up power production in the state to meet growing demand.
(Chris Samuels | The Salt Lake Tribune) Brigham City Mayor DJ Bott speaks at an event in Brigham City, Monday, Nov. 17, 2025. Gov. Spencer Cox announced plans to build a training center and nuclear manufacturing plant in Brigham City.
“The benefits of this project will ripple beyond, of course, just Brigham City,” Cox said, “… securing Utah’s role as a leader in nuclear powered generation for generations to come.”
The State of Utah signed a memorandum of understanding with Holtec and Hi Tech in April, according to the Department of Natural Resources.
Under that non-binding agreement, the state said it would support permitting and regulatory coordination with the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The agreement also expressed the state’s intent to collaborate with the companies and “align economic development tools.” It did not commit any funding to the partnership.
The reactors will prioritize safety, state leaders and other officials noted at Monday’sevent. But rapid expansion of the region’s nuclear capacity is also a matter of national security, they said, citing concerns over artificial intelligence and energy competition with China and Russia.
“When I was growing up, we were in a nuclear arms race,” said Senate President Stuart Adams, referring to the Cold War. “Now we’re in an arms race for AI, and the country that controls AI will control the future of the world.”
Specific sites have not yet been selected for the manufacturing plant or small modular reactors, officials said.
“Before you can site a reactor, there’s a ton of work that has to go into it,” said Emy Lesofski, director of the Utah Office of Energy Development, in an interview. “It’s really important that communities want to host these.”
Small modular reactors are well suited to power data centers, officials said, which are rapidly coming online as the use of artificial intelligence grows. The power plants can also bring jobs and benefits that massive data center campuses often lack, Richard Springman, an executive with Holtec International, said in an interview.
“When you put them together,” Springman said, “the economic development package is actually a lot more interesting.”
He expects the manufacturing plant to employ around 300 people and the power plants to employ around 250. Construction of the facilities will support around 3,000 jobs, he said. And the Box Elder County-based small modular reactors could fire up sometime in the early 2030s, he said.
“Working back from the timeline, we need a manufacturing facility by ’27 or ’28, that timeframe,” Springman said.
Training programs for the nuclear facilities, which will be facilitated by Hi Tech Solutions, could take three to five years to get a full workforce up to speed.
The manufacturing facility will not use or store radioactive materials, he added. Instead, nuclear fuels will be shipped to the power plants themselves once built.
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