the DON JONES INDEX…
	GAINS POSTED in GREEN LOSSES POSTED in RED 6/12/26… 15,624.05 6/5/26… 15,611.46 6/27/13... 15,000.00
(THE DOW JONES INDEX: 6/12... 50,848.75; 6/5... 51,562.25; 6/27/13… 15,000.00)

LESSON for FRIDAY, JUNE 12, 2026 – “PATRIOTS, PARADES AND POLITICS!”

Tuesday was, in addition to election day in six states, the 82^nd anniversary of D-Day, following Memorial Day last week as the path to the 250^th shortens.

This weekend previously celebrated women’s Veterans Day until the President and SecDef/SecWar Hegseck cancelled all mention, owing to the DEI exclusion of advocacy of the rights and accomplishments of minority groups (although women, especially as life expectancies progress) are a majority “minority.

A week from today, African-Americans will celebrate Juneteenth, marking the end of slavery. To date there has been little official comment – perhaps because overt threats or demonstrable actions (like officially repealing the 1964 Voting Rights Act) would lead to protests, perhaps riots, marring the planned “Freedom 250” homages planned for and celebrated by both MAGA Washington officials and ordinary Americans nationwide.

The politicians might be crazy, but not crazy crazy...

So, on to D-Day which according to the Wikipedia accounting (ATTACHMENT ‘A’) was June 6, 1944... on which date thousands of armed American military as well as other allied forces landed on the beaches in Normandy, quickly advanced into France and defeated Hitler less than a year later (with a little help from their frenemies, the Russians).

Americans, at home and abroad, the EU (even Germany, if “somberly”) and more remember June 6^th with memorials, homages and a few small celebrations... the grand American spectacles, of course, remaining for the Fourth.

Bedford, Virginia is home to the National D-Day Memorial, which also celebrated its 25th anniversary on Tuesday – the culmination of a weekend of events with free admission for those currently serving in the United States Military—Air Force, Army, Coast Guard, Marine Corps, Navy, and Space Force, members of the Reserves, National Guard, U.S. Public Health Commissioned Corps, NOAA Commissioned Corps, and up to five family members.” (ATTACHMENT ONE)

There was also a tribute and art exhibition honoring “Peanuts” creator Charles M Schulz on Friday, Saturday and Sunday – the National D-Day Memorial presenting The Life and Art of Charles M. Schulz to the Bower Center for the Arts in Bedford, Virginia. “The traveling exhibition, curated by the Charles M. Schulz Museum and Research Center in Santa Rosa, California, U.S.A.,” the Memorial’s press release explained, exploring Schulz’s personal history “and his role as the sole inspiration and artistic talent behind the most successful comic strip in history."

Other tributes including a bell ringing Saturday evening, a presentation of When We Went In: The D-Day Experience in Light and Sound and tributes to D-Day heroes in nearby Roanoke, following the annual Memorial Day “Honoring the Fallen” ceremony last week. (Yahoo, ATTACHMENT TWO)

Guests shared new information on the lives of First Lieutenant Robert Mathias, Pharmacist's Mate First Class Thomas O'Donnell and Sergeant Robert J. Kemeny, all of whom lost their lives as the Allied Forces stormed the beaches of Normandy.

After a presentation of the colors and a playing of the Star Spangled Banner, the ceremony's guest speaker, Ami Waldron, gave a speech about another important reminder.

Waldron is the President of Mothers of Veteran Suicide, and an average of 22 veterans commit suicide every day, often related to their battles with PTSD.

Waldron lost her son to veteran suicide in November 2022, and she continues to spread the importance of checking in on members of service.

"Let us be the hands that reach out, and let us be the voices that break the silence," Waldron said during her speech. "Let us be the community that refuses to look away and let us be the people who say, 'Not one more, and not without a fight.'"

Waldron's speech touched everyone in attendance.

"Very moving and very emotional, and we knew she would be," April Cheek-Messier, the President and CEO of the National D-Day Memorial Foundation, said. "She has quite a story, and it's so wonderful to see her turn her pain into something that can help so many veterans."

Yahoo also covered D-Day ceremonies out West, combining with the Deseret News to share a memorial by Arthur Cyr (June 4, ATTACHMENT THREE) who dated the tradition of memorial parades back thousands of years. Citing Homer’s classic chronicles of the Trojan War, Cyr wrote that: “From ancient times, parades have been vital to the reintegration of warriors into society. Even the rare man who finds combat invigorating needs help in reintegrating into a peaceful and civilized society.”

On the first anniversary of D-Day, “Generals James Doolittle and George S. Patton Jr., great combat leaders, were honored at a special ceremony in the Los Angeles Coliseum on June 9, 1945, following the surrender of Nazi Germany.

“An estimated one million people attended a victory parade from the airport.”

Cyr also recalled the “crucial” leadership of Supreme Allied Commander General Dwight D. Eisenhower, who “demonstrated great executive ability in supervising the enormous planning and brilliant interpersonal skill that welded and held together the most diverse military alliance in history.”

Describing both the martial valor and the tactics of deception that made D-Day successful, Cyr added that “Eisenhower never lost awareness of the terrible human costs of war, borne primarily by the enlisted ranks. He constantly stressed the fundamentally important role of the combat soldier and regularly visited troops.”

With survivors of the Second World War dwindling downwards to a handful, Fox reviewed a docudrama on the planning, execution and outcome of D-Day in the new film “Pressure”, released last week.

Fox’s David Hookstead (ATTACHMENT FOUR) opined that there has been serious hype surrounding "Pressure" because people “love WWII stories” plus, “add in the fact it's about D-Day, and it's easy to understand why people are incredibly excited.” Hookstead said the film, starring Brendan Fraser and Damian Lewis and directed by Anthony Maras, pulls back the curtain on how the decision-making process unfolded and the role the weather played” which motivated an alternate review by the American Meteorological Society’s Paul H. Cross (ATTACHMENT FIVE) who, as a weatherman, suggested several historical corrections as to the considerations faced by Eisenhower’s staffers, including Colonel Donald Yates, Ike’s meteorologist in planning the attack.

Offering the correction that, “while the movie accurately portrays how the weather made things incredibly difficult for the beach assault troops,” meteorological history cited the risks Eisenhower took (as depicted in Cross’s own documentary, “Forecast Overlord” which can be viewed here.

Sean Potter, who brilliantly moderated an AMS webinar with the film’s director, Anthony Maras, and his meteorological advisors said it best to me. Cross concludes: Pressure is “not a documentary.” And Sean is right. It is a drama. Like many movies, it took a true story and used a lot of poetic license. This does not mean it is a bad movie. On the contrary. It is a very good movie, but we in the atmospheric and oceanic sciences should also know the truth, which is why I wanted to write this.

While researching the documentary, Cross adds that General Yates told him that “General Eisenhower inherently trusted the weather team and the forecasts he was getting from him and Stagg.” And in a 1964 interview, Eisenhower summed it all up:  “I knew it couldn’t fail, except for the weather.”

Back in January, 2025, the VA News issued a somewhat late accounting of the 80^th anniversary of D-Day (ATTACHMENT SIX) commemorated on the Normandy coast where, despite fewer World War II Veterans being “still living, willing and able to travel to France, many came to join world leaders in an extraordinary show of enduring NATO unity.”

VA Public Affairs official Robert Turtil described the 80^th as the anniversary of the “landings that turn the tide of World War II.” Though fewer World War II Veterans are still living, willing and able to travel to France two years later, many came to join world leaders in an extraordinary show of enduring NATO unity.

The 80^th jammed Normandy, clogging roads and filling hotels. “Convoys transported reenactors and history enthusiasts in loaded down WWII-era Allied and Axis armored vehicles, jeeps, trucks and motorcycles bearing license plates with mostly B, NL, D, and UK prefixes. Military ambulances driven by jubilant medical corps-garbed men and women; their sirens screeched incessantly. 1930s vintage cars displaying Free-France and resistance flags, filled with civilians in 40s dress, drove through parking lots packed with privately or club-owned WWII vehicle collections.”

With U.S. flags flying everywhere, “one felt bursting pride in what America has brought to these grateful people twice in the 20th century, with grit and blood, leaving nearly 10,000 countrymen resting in the cemetery nearby and thousands more in American Battlefield Monuments Commission cemeteries across Europe and Africa,” Mr. Turtil wrote.

For the 82^nd, Stars and Striples (ATTACHMENT SEVEN) reported that twenty-nine World War II veterans were on hand Saturday to commemorate the 82nd anniversary of D-Day on Saturday at Normandy American Cemetery in Colleville-sur-Mer, France. (Approximately 160,000 Allied troops — 73,000 of them Americans — landed at Normandy on June 6, 1944. An estimated 4,414 died, including 2,501 Americans.)

“[To] the veterans of World War II who are here with us today, and those who did not come home, thank you — thank you for your courage, tenacity and grit that you showed the world on that day, and the days that followed,” said Gen. Dan (“Raisin’”) Caine, the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff. 

Caine and DefSec/WarSec Pete Hegseth (below) spoke, as did 107-year-old Art Rose, a Navy veteran and engineering officer at Omaha Beach during the D-Day invasion. Rose read a letter he had written to his parents on June 11, 1944 – its conclusion being: “What a country we are. I will always be grateful to my commander for taking me along [to battle]. Don’t worry about me. I am well, whole and happy. Love, Art.”

The Americans were joined by six UK Normandy veterans attended the British memorial ceremony, “the smallest number since its opening in 2021” (MSN, ATTACHMENT EIGHT); (s)peakers urging “active vigilance to defend freedoms won on D-Day, drawing parallels between past battles and current ideological threats”.

An additional 98 names have been inscribed on the British Normandy Memorial above Gold Beach after research identified servicemen who fought in the Normandy campaign but were not previously included.

"The chaps we leave behind – we have no right to go home and forget them. We come here because a lot of them are not known to us; they're just names. But then you go to our wonderful memorial at Ver-sur-Mer, and suddenly there's a name that you know. You knew that chap, you know his face – and it changes everything."

U.S. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth “linked the courage of D-Day soldiers to the need for modern vigilance against threats to freedom, warning that current ideological challenges demand the same unity and resolve. His remarks underscored that the Allied victory in 1944 was not just a military triumph but a foundation for democratic institutions that must be actively protected by each generation.” 

And, with the now-controversial DEI Women’s Veterans’ Day fighting for its life stateside, eight women veterans, first responders and those in law enforcement or with intelligence backgrounds deployed from a single C-47 aircraft into Normandy, France, “for a first-ever, women-only jump on June 2.”

Organized by the nonprofit Fox Force Foundation, a veteran-led organization advancing women’s leadership and resilience, the static-line jump was symbolic of the infiltration by female wartime operatives and resistance fighters behind enemy lines. (Audacity.com – ATTACHMENT NINE)

“We see, remember and honor the women who risked everything for the cause of freedom in World War II,” said Army veteran Toni Lavery, founder and executive director of Fox Force, in a statement. “With this jump we also look to the future as Fox Force participants around the world share the same desire to keep serving. That is one of the many things that brought us together with the VFW.”

President Trump, however, faced “backlash” over D-Day “AI videos AI about himself,” sparking criticism for failing to honour Allied soldiers' sacrifices. (MSN, ATTACHMENT TEN)

With their founding father squirming under probes from Congress about his liaisons with dead ol’ Jeffy Epstein and his “entourage”, the microsofties opined that, “...(o)n the 82nd anniversary of D-Day, President Donald Trump flooded Truth Social with AI-generated videos glorifying himself — from riding a camel to skydiving — without any mention of the soldiers who fought in Normandy. Critics, including Republicans Against Trump, condemned the omission as disrespectful, with political commentators calling it self-absorbed and detached from the day's significance.”

Democrats, of course, complained too – although the force of their fire was directed against Hegseth (see below) – and MSN also remarked upon the Great American State Fair, billed as part of America’s 250th anniversary celebrations, continuing to bleed performers.

The Daily Beast (Jan 7^th, ATTACHMENT ELEVEN) posted what beastly Olivia Ralph called a “stream of bizarre content” to Truth Social, including “an AI-generated music video depicting him riding a lion, skydiving with a red parachute, mingling with adoring crowds, and sharing meals with world leaders.

“He also shared an AI-generated image portraying the future Barack Obama Presidential Library as a giant garbage can surrounded by homeless encampments, a collage mocking Rosie O’Donnell, and an AI rendering of a White House “Drone Port” while attacking a federal judge who temporarily halted construction of his planned White House ballroom.

“One post featured Trump embracing an oversized American flag in front of the Washington Monument. Another showed military helicopters flying overhead with the president gazing into the distance.

“It’s D-Day. Trump’s first post on Truth Social is a bizarre AI video about how much people love Donald Trump,” anti-Trump conservative group Republicans Against Trump wrote on X.

“Not a word about the heroes who stormed the beaches of Normandy.”

As the hours passed without a tribute from the commander-in-chief, critics took notice. After the president spent the day posting AI-generated tributes to himself, the White House quietly issued a written statement commemorating the anniversary and honoring America’s “Greatest Generation.

“It’s almost 5 p.m. on D-Day. The Commander in Chief still hasn’t said a word about it,” Republicans Against Trump posted on X Saturday afternoon.

“Disgraceful.”

Yahoo and the Independent U.K. added more on the President’s tribute, such as it was, Saturday afternoon... including an AI music video set to the song "Trump," created by New York congressional candidate Anthony Constantino, who he recently endorsed. “The video, which aimed to show admiration of Trump from around the world, featured clips of the president riding a lion, sharing a meal with Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum and at the UFC Freedom 250 cage fight at the White House. All the while, a house backing track repeats the line: "Everywhere I go, they love Donald Donald Trump." (ATTACHMENT TWELVE)

But the offensiveness given and taken by POTUS paled in comparison to Hegseth’s D-Day discourse (Transcript from the Dept. of War, ATTACHMENT THIRTEEN).

“Eighty two years ago today, the survival of Western civilization hung in the balance,” the DefSec/WarSec began promisingly. “Dark forces had swept across Europe. Hitler boasted that his Atlantic wall was impenetrable, but our enemy made a fatal miscalculation. They underestimated the unbreakable will of the American fighting man.”

But then the speech went off the rails.

Even the phynancial magazine Forbes (June 6, ATTACHMENT FOURTEEN) as might be expected to support the conservative agenda (if not, perhaps, the populist President and his team) also first reported Hegseth’s warning to future Americans, saying the legacy of those who fought at Normandy “demands far more than quiet reflection, it requires our active vigilance,” but then voyaging into the present... with prejudices...

“Sadly, today different European beaches are stormed by different dangerous ideologies,” Hegseth added.

The defense secretary named Spain, Italy, Greece and Bulgaria as places where “boats and men” were coming ashore.

“When will European capitals do something about that invasion, or is it too late? I pray not, and I believe not,” Hegseth said.

Forbes identified Hegseth’s criticisms of the Euros’ complacency as the “crucial quote” charging that “...(i)n the years since these beaches, much of the West in some places, in some quarters and in some capitals, grew comfortable.” Hegseth said. “We forgot that freedom is not free. We forgot that peace is not wished into being, it is bought with purpose, with honor and with strength.”

Veep Vance chimed in, Forbes continued, blaming the December stabbing of British university student Henry Nowak on “the politics of self-hatred and the mass invasion of migrants, many of whom despise the West and the people who love it.”

And Forbes’ Antonio Pequeño IV added that, despite the complaints, Trump’s accusations have had some effect… the European Unionists advancing significant changes to their immigration policies – seeking to increase deportations and build detention centers outside the European Union known as “return hubs,” according to the Associated Press.

Residents of Langrune-sur-Mer, hosting the 82^nd anniversary celebration said Heg’s "warlike views" were unwelcome in their village and questioned his commitment to "democratic values". (France 24, ATTACHMENT FIFTEEN)

His presence was not missed by some residents of the village hosting the ceremony, Langrune-sur-Mer, who said the US official was not welcome there.

"He has very warlike views and it seems to us that this man does not share our democratic values," Sylvie Lamy Thepaut, a member of the municipal association Langrune en commun, told BFM TV.

A message on the association’s website called for Hegseth’s visit to be cancelled on the grounds that the Pentagon chief “espouses values contrary to democracy, human rights and peace” and had made “numerous anti-European remarks”, “warlike statements” and “American supremacist pronouncements".

Langrune-sur-Mer Mayor Franck Jouy declined to comment on Hegseth's visit, underscoring that the event was a memorial.

“We are here for a commemmoration and I don’t want to make it political,” he told BFMTV. “I’m here to remember the people who came to make sure that France was liberated.”

The conservative News Nation, however, hailed Hegseth’s D-Day speech and expressed hope that it would send a message to Iran.

“We stand by our allies, and we expect our allies to be ready and capable to stand alongside us,” Hegseth said. “The heroes of 1944 did that — and so must we. Peace is secured only through strength, and that strength is built on both sides of the Atlantic through readiness, shared military capabilities and unwavering political will,” the DefSec said. (June 6^th, 9:25 AM CDT time, 8:25 EDT, ATTACHMENT SIXTEEN)

Historian and battle guide Paul Woodadge told NewsNation the ceremonies reflect the continued global unity demonstrated by Allied nations.

“It’s about being part of something that is still active in memory,” Woodadge said. “It reminds people that the battle and the soldiers’ efforts have not been forgotten.”

Woodadge said Hegseth’s remarks also drew implicit comparisons between World War II alliances and current geopolitical tensions, including the conflict with Iran, noting that cooperation among allies has historically involved disagreement as well as unity.

“Disagreement” might have been the mildest of terms for what the leftists at Guardian U.K. Sunday morning (ATTACHMENT SEVENTEEN) called “grotesque stupidity” that “desecrated” the memory of soldiers who fell in Normandy.

GUKster Ashifa Kassam cited English historian, author and talking television head Simon Schama, who described the HegSpeak as a “special kind of loathsomeness: a blend of historical deafness, grotesque stupidity and comically ludicrous self-importance”.

Schama added: “As if the little people’s rage against immigration somehow is superior to the war against the 3rd Reich and entitles this comic book nobody to lecture the actual heroes.”

From Jerusalem, the Israeli human rights lawyer Daniel Seidemann also weighed in. “This is an obscene desecration of the memories of those who stormed the beaches of Normandy, and especially of those who fell,” he wrote.

And Anders Åslund, a Swedish economist and former senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, touted Euro-sovreignty in contrasting the comments with Hegseth’s later remarks on the US standing alongside its allies. “So much nonsense,” he wrote on social media. “‘We stand by our allies!’ No you don’t. You just attacked them. Immigration policies are internal matters.”

Veep Vance. Timester Rebecca Schneid reported (ATTACHMENT EIGHTEEN) had given a “similarly controversial speech” at the Munich Security Conference in February 2025, angering European leaders.  

Vance noted in his speech a car-ramming attack carried out by an Afghan asylum seeker in Germany the day before his speech. 

“How many times must we suffer these appalling setbacks before we change course and take our shared civilization in a new direction?” he asked.

Vance used the same rhetoric again this week as he publicly blamed the United Kingdom’s immigration policy for the death of 18-year-old British student Henry Nowak, who was fatally stabbed last year in Southampton by what GUK called “a British-Sikh.” He argued in a post on X that Nowak’s death was due to the country’s “mass invasion of migrants”.

“Each time a life like his is lost, the proper response—the only response—is righteous anger,” he said.

In the U.K. itself, the BBC (ATTACHMENT NINETEEN) reported that migration has become a major political issue across Europe, as it has become here, with parties supporting hardline immigration policies surging in polls – as opposed to Labor’s PM Keith Starmer and Deputy PM David Lammy counseling caution – Lammy telling the BBC's Laura Kuenssberg that "politicians should be very careful and very cautious" about their language.

"We're in this new online space that can rapidly become toxic," he explained, adding that concerns around Henry Nowak's case had become a "global" issue because of the "viral" footage of his arrest.

BBC (human) bean counters reported that “between April 2025 and March 2026, there were a combined 169,341 sea arrivals to the UK, Greece, Italy, Spain and Cyprus. Crossings to the UK accounted for about 23% of the total.

“Between 1 January and 3 June 2026, a total of 9,142 people crossed the English Channel by small boat to the UK from France. This was down by 38% on the same period the previous year.

What some call the “nationalist and far-right” Moonie-birthed Washington Times (June 6^th, ATTACHMENT TWENTY) noted that Hegseth had not used the word “immigration” in his speech, but “his remarks echoed broader Trump administration criticism of Europe over migration, borders and what U.S. officials have described as censorship of nationalist and far-right voices,” and, in an opinionator by Cheryl K. Chumley (ATTACHMENT TWENTY ONE) cited the American Council of Trustees and Alumni’s contention that a majority of stupid Americans “don’t even know what (D-Day) was all about.

In a survey conducted years ago, ACTA found, “a quarter of American adults don’t know that D-Day occurred during World War II. It also found that more than half of American adults — including 43 percent of college students — don’t know Franklin D. Roosevelt was president at the time of the invasion.”

That was 2014.

“D-Day? What’s That?” Roper Center wrote in that same time frame.

No doubt, America’s knowledge of and respect for the sacrifices of the greatest generation have only grown dimmer, “in large part because of the socialism that’s being force fed youth in the public school systems; in larger part because of the lack of truthful histories that are being taught in K-12; in equally large part because of the vigorous defense of communism and anti-Americanism that college professors around the nation have used as their foundational teaching tools in the last few decades.

“Once, America fought racism,” the Times looked back.

“Now, too many in America are embracing it.

“It won’t be long before D-Day’s heroes are turned into villains.”

After all, they defeated the Germans and their plan for worldwhite supremacy!

If America doesn’t return to a time of teaching the exceptionalism of this nation — the ideal of individualism, the concept of God-given rights and liberties — and simultaneously press forth the darkness of collectivism in all its various forms (Marxism, communism, socialism, progressivism, etc.), “it won’t be long before the foundations of the Constitution are shaken to dust; forever blown to the wind.”

Turning the racist argument over to an anti-honkie whine, the Times now alleges that “antisemites abound in America, 2026. And socialism grows in America, 2026. And freedoms are used by freedom’s enemies to enslave in America, 2026.

“That today’s Democrat Party actually embraces and emboldens the very type of evil America fought a few decades ago speaks volumes about the perilous direction of this nation.

Newsweek (June 6, ATTACHMENT TWENTY TWO) compared the HegSpeech to “current demographic and political shifts on the continent,” some of these being...

· (A) Call to Action: Hegseth questioned the efficacy of current European leadership, asking, “When will European capitals do something about that invasion? Or is it too late?” He followed by stating, “I pray not, and I believe not.”

· The Stewardship of Freedom: Emphasizing that the soldiers buried in Normandy "restored freedom to Europe," Hegseth argued that the responsibility to maintain that liberty now falls on the current generation. He echoed former President Ronald Reagan’s famous maxim that “freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction,” warning that without proactive defense, the achievements of WWII military veterans could prove temporary.

· Transatlantic Commitments: The defense secretary reinforced the importance of military readiness and shared responsibility within the NATO alliance. While reaffirming that the United States stands by its allies, he noted that Washington expects partner nations to be “capable and ready to stand alongside us,” calling for robust military capabilities and "unwavering political will" on both sides of the Atlantic.

· A Solemn Conclusion: Hegseth closed by invoking faith and scripture, citing Psalm 20—“Some trust in chariots and some in horses”—and placing the memory of the fallen “in the hands of Almighty God,” framing remembrance as both a solemn duty and an active contemporary mandate.

The fact checkers at Snopes (yesterday, ATTACHMENT TWENTY THREE) assessed the claim that residents of the French village that hosted a ceremony for the 82nd anniversary of the D-Day landings “said U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth wasn't welcome to attend.”

Snopes’ decision: True.

A residents' association in Langrune-sur-Mer put out a statement on June 2, 2026, asking Hegseth not to attend a D-Day commemoration ceremony in the village on June 6. Hegseth did not attend the ceremony on D-Day but the reason for his absence was unclear.

A statement by the residents said Hegseth embraced values "contrary to democracy, human rights and peace," criticized the symbolism of his tattoos (ATTACHMENT TWENTY FOUR) and argued that his visit to Langrune-sur-Mer should be canceled out of respect for the people "who died on our beaches in the name of democracy."

The Snopesters also weighed in on whether Pete’s ink was inspired by Nazis and ruled that the DefSec’s twelve tattoos (which he called references to his military service, patriotism, and his Christian faith) did not include swastikas, but might indicate adherence to “Christian nationalist views” with historical reference to the Christian crusaders who pushed back the Muslim hordes in the twelfth century." In his 2020 book, “American Crusade”. Hegseth wrote: "American Crusaders will need to muster the same courage against Islamists today." 

The liberal HuffPost opined that the SecDef’s D-Day tribute was anti-migration and anti-Islamic.

Hegseth drew a link between Allied forces’ deployment to take down Nazis during World War II and migrants moving to the continent.

“Today, different European beaches are stormed by different dangerous ideologies,” he said. “Beaches in Spain and Italy and Greece and Bulgaria. Boats and men arrive. When will European capitals do something about that invasion? Or is it too late? I pray not, and I believe not.”

On ABC’s “This Week” Sunday, Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas) characterized the remarks as “inappropriate” and “out of place” at an event meant to honor veterans of the operation, in which 2,500 Americans died.

“I think it should have been about their sacrifice, their service to their country, and what they did to protect the free world at a time of great peril against Nazi Germany,” McCaul said.

English historian Simon Schama was more direct in his denouncement; Huffpost citing his contribution to GUK.

Schama described Hegseth’s comments as a “special kind of loathsomeness: a blend of historical deafness, grotesque stupidity and comically ludicrous self-importance.” (ATTACHMENT TWENTY FIVE)

“As if the little people’s rage against immigration somehow is superior to the war against the 3rd Reich and entitles this comic book nobody to lecture the actual heroes,” Schama said.

More Republicans, including Rep. Don Bacon, Nebraska Republican, wobbly MAGAman and retired Air Force brigadier general, said the focus of the secretary’s address should have been on the troops who fought on the beaches. The congressman added the Trump administration is overly critical of Western Europe.

“You never hear them criticize Russia, and that bothers us. Why are they so weak on Russia, which affects Ukraine’s foreign policy [and] their policy toward the Baltics,” Mr. Bacon said on CBS News’ “Face the Nation.” “It’s not good for our national security. (June 9^th, ATTACHMENT TWENTY SIX)

The question of whather or not Hegseth’s statements, tattoos and execution of His President’s policies were alighed with the Third Reich drew opposition from Robert Reich in Substack (ATTACHMENT TWENTY SEVEN). The firing of so many top brass by Trump and his “war” secretary, Pete Hegseth, can be seen as a way to guarantee the loyalty of other officers to Trump rather than to America.

Reich cites the “anger so many Americans have felt that they and their children haven’t been able to get ahead, no matter how hard they work” as has been channeled by Trump and other neofascists “toward immigrants, gay people, transgender people, Muslims, and Black people.”

“Democrats and progressives should be channeling that anger toward the real culprits — a wealthy elite that’s used their money to gain political power and rig the economy to their benefit and against everyone else,” Reich opined.

Even the Germans commemorated the Normandy landings that quelled their imperial ambitions (DW, ATTACHMENT TWENTY EIGHT) contending that Hegseth accused Western countries of having grown "comfortable" since World War II.

"We forgot that freedom is not free. We forgot that peace is not wished into being," he said.

His remarks also echoed Trump's demand that US allies in NATO increase their military budgets.

"We stand by our allies, and we expect our allies capable and ready to stand alongside us," he said. 

From the American Left, Mother Jones’ woke Alex Nguyen called Hegseth’s D-Day speech “perplexing” (ATTACHMENT TWENTY NINE) and “confusing”... or, then again, “we might be at the stage where our government explicitly aligns us with Nazism. After all, every single refugee we admitted to the US this year was supposedly fleeing anti-white persecution,” and cited his orders to the troops during federal immigration raids in Minnesota and Los Angeles. Salon (ATTACHMENT THIRTY) implied that his “loathsome tirade” may have tweaked the French against America.

Ever since D-Day, Salonista dolly Heather Digby Parton contends, “the people of France and Normandy have shown their gratitude for America’s sacrifice. They gave the U.S. a perpetual concession for the cemetery where most of those fallen Americans are buried. Every year, local people come along and rub beach sand into the marble headstones so the names of those U.S. soldiers can still be read. There are plaques and memorials everywhere; the war and the Nazi occupation still seem present, even to younger generations who have lived among these memories their whole lives.”

Wholesome tributes have been offered by Barack Obama and even Ronald Reagan... love him or don’t... but, Parton declaimed, America, thankfully, “...didn’t send Donald Trump over there to rant about the 2020 election or show the French pictures of his glorious ballroom. Instead, we sent Hegseth, who was at least as bad. Actually, he was worse.”

Or could Veep Vance have been even worse? The day before that embarrassing gaffe, Vice President JD decided to lecture the U.K. on its immigration policies as well, commenting on a now-notorious murder case in England in which the perpetrator was a Sikh man and the victim was white. “Unsurprisingly, Vance hadn’t done his homework: Both men involved in that crime were British by birth.”

Or, after other Salonista Andrew O’Hehir opined upon former Border Patrol generalissimo Greg Bovino’s discourse, in Portugal at a “Remigration Summit: ”... (w)hat fabulous representatives these are of the country that Europe once looked upon with gratitude and respect: clownish, crude and stupid all at once.”

Or, as feminist liberal Wren Woodson at Jezebel marveled, “(i)t takes a truly remarkable level of right-wing brain rot to stand on the literal graves of the men who defeated Hitler.”

Calling D-Day “perhaps the most famous example in modern history of men arriving by boat on European beaches for a morally righteous cause,” Woodson compared the history to the instance in which, of all the places in the world “to warn that people arriving by boat are an existential threat, Hegseth chose the one that would most make him seem like a Nazi-sympathizer.”

Reflections from Geopolitical Futures’ George Friedman (June 8, ATTACHMENT THIRTY TWO) likened Hitler himself to the American desecrators of D-Day in his advocacy of Yankee isolationism as a sign of weakness. Japan, too, joined the Germans in the annals of “stupid geopolitical moves.”

Admitting that “we periodically engage in the luxury of internal discord and even rage,” Friedman asked the world to think of Normandy – the history, not the disgrace: “when evaluating the nature of America.”

In London, Christian Science Monitor columnist Ned Temko assessed Hegseth’s message and determined that the shared democratic values between the United States and Europe that were once the bedrock of transatlantic cooperation “are in tatters.”

On this year’s anniversary of the D-Day landings that turned the tide against Nazi Germany in World War II, Temko wrote that the Trump administration offered a full-throated endorsement of Europe’s far-right political parties.

He rebuked European governments for failing to crack down on immigration from the Middle East and Africa – an “invasion,” as Mr. Hegseth put it, that he likened to the Allies’ D-Day thrust against the Nazis. (ATTACHMENT THIRTY THREE)

Temko further cited a new opinion poll this week, conducted across 15 European countries, which found that an average of only 11% of respondents considered the U.S. to be an ally. That was down from around 25% in late 2024, and 16% late last year.

Half of those surveyed did view Washington as a “necessary partner.” But most said that they were no longer confident America would come to their countries’ defense if they were under attack.

The British, among others, see little prospect the American administration will step back from their public support for anti-immigration populist parties in Britain or elsewhere in Europe as the “troubles” re-ignited in Belfast... not out of Christian religious disputes, but after an attempted beheading by an asylum seeker from Sudan and a “British man of Punjabi descent” killed a local teenager.

While Trump officials were trampling upon the American honor at Normandy, American military officials, under orders from Trump and Hegseth cancelled the annual Bipartisan Women’s Caucus’ 28th annual wreath-laying ceremony to honor women in the service and veterans – packing on misogyny to its agenda of racism and far-right nationalism. (Yahoo, June 10^th – ATTACHMENT THIRTY FOUR)

A spokesperson for the “Democratic half of the caucus” said that White House and Department of Defense policies that bar participation in diversity, equity and inclusion or identity-related celebrations were to blame "in compliance" with a January 2025 Executive Order on eliminating diversity, equity and inclusion programs and policies across the military and Department of Defense-issued guidance that directs the services to not use official resources to "host celebrations or events related to cultural awareness months."

The contributions of women veterans are a part of American history, “and we should be expanding opportunities to recognize that service, not restricting it," said Rep. Emilia Sykes (D-Ohio). "It comes just days before Women's Veterans Recognition Day, which is actually tomorrow, a day specifically set aside to recognize the contributions of women who have served our country. Instead of preparing to celebrate these women, we are here explaining why a ceremony dedicated to honoring them was effectively canceled."

An Air Force spokeswoman, Ann Stefanek, confirmed to the Military Times that “(t)he Department of the Air Force declined participation in compliance with Executive Orders … and DoW guidance.” (June 11^th, ATTACHMENT THIRTY FIVE)

Rep. Chrissy Houlahan, D-Penn., a former Air Force officer, noted that her grandparents were buried in Arlington National Cemetery, which made the cancellation of the wreath-laying “so painful.”

“I keep coming back to a simple question for President Trump and for Secretary Hegseth and my Republican colleagues,” she said. “Which is, when did saying thank you to women who served their country become a controversial statement?

“Women have answered ... every call this nation has asked of them,” Houlahan continued. “They have flown combat missions, they have commanded troops, they’ve cared for the wounded, they’ve gathered intelligence and they’ve deployed into harm’s way alongside their fellow service members. They didn’t ask for special treatment, they earned our respect. And honoring their service should never be viewed as a political statement.”

Women Veterans Day is celebrated annually on June 12 to commemorate the signing of the Women's Armed Services Integration Act on June 12, 1948. This landmark legislation, signed by (“dumocratic”) President Harry S. Truman, allowed women to serve as permanent, regular members of the U.S. Armed Forces.

Political posturing in France and Washington failed to quell local celebrations of D-Day and the World War II heroes.

World War II veteran J. Keith Lancaster, who served in the Army Air Corp and survived being shot down twice in combat, received a hero’s welcome home in Hawkinsville, GA after visiting Normandy for the 82nd anniversary of D-Day. (WMAZ, June 10, ATTACHMENT THIRTY SIX)

“I got kisses, I got handshakes. They were five deep for a quarter of a mile just to shake hands," Lancaster said.

Lancaster describes the trip as an unforgettable experience, but says it was also a somber reminder of the price of freedom.

"You see 9,000 graves, one after the other, and there's three cemeteries there, adding up to over 13,000. What would those boys have done? And they were all boys. And you wonder how they would have affected the life that we live," Lancaster said.

Lancaster, who is turning 101 later this month, said that the surprise was an unforgettable end to an unforgettable trip.

"It was awesome," Lancaster said. "It was the eighty-second celebration, but it actually felt just like the first one."

The Wikipedia description of Normandy’s 82^nd also described the landing, after months of planning, as awesome, but also took note of the weather... as in coverage of “Pressure” (Attachments four and five, above) which was “not ideal”.

“Operation Overlord was the name assigned to the establishment of a large-scale lodgement on the continent. The first phase, the amphibious invasion and establishment of a secure foothold, was codenamed Operation Neptune.^[26] To gain the air superiority needed to ensure a successful invasion, the Allies undertook a bombing campaign (codenamed Operation Pointblank) that targeted German aircraft production, fuel supplies, and airfields.^[26] Elaborate deceptions, codenamed Operation Bodyguard, were undertaken in the months leading up to the invasion to prevent the Germans from learning the timing and location of the invasion.”

Wiki described preparations, the allied and German forces arrayed, the assault and the aftermath.

We’ve also updated last week’s primary election notices (USA Today, June 10, ATTACHMENT “B”) confirming the victory of Graham Platner in Maine and defeats of shoot-from-the-lip reality star Spencer Pratt and billionaire Tom Steyer in California and horned RINO Nancy Mace in South Carolina.

Platner bested Gov. Janet Mills, who suspended her Senate campaign on April 30, and will face Incumbent Sen. Susan Collins who ran for the Republican nomination unopposed. Maine also features a race to succeed Rep. Jared Golden, a moderate Democrat, in a district President Donald Trump has carried three times.

In South Carolina, Sen. Lindsey Graham survived a field of five primary challengers, led by hardline conservative Mark Lynch, to take the Republican ballot line in pursuit of his fifth term in the upper chamber. He will face Democratic nominee Dr. Annie Andrews in November. 

South Carolina Rep. Nancy Mace's bid for governor failed after she lost President Donald Trump's favor by joining House Democrats to compel the release of Justice Department files on convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. The president endorsed Lt. Gov. Pamela Evette. Evette will head to a runoff with Alan Wilson and Mace conceded the race.

	IN the NEWS: JUNE 5th, 2026 to JUNE 11th, 2026
Friday, June 5, 2026 Dow: 50,866.78	It’s National Donut Day. Police delighted. Dentists horrified. Space X IPO is $1.8T but TV-con-mystics say it’s really only worth $800B, slightly less thn Anthropic $900B valuation. Elon Musk, seeking to become the world’s first trillionaire, shrugs of “AI bubble” as Anthropic seeks to quell crirics by calling for a freeze on autonomous AI tech. Autonomic Waymo drives around in circles and blocks fire grucks in Dallas, defying orders to get out of the way. Tensions ease as Iran ends its internet blackout, so Americans now press for release of imprisoned Americans, six in all including journalists and sailors. Families protest slow progress in release given that Israel is bombing prison in Tehran, killing inmates. Confirmation hearings that will remove the “acting” from Acting Aygee Todd Blanche hinges on Congress preceptons of weaponization fund, EpFiles and Comey seashells. President Trump’s next appointment, National Intelligence Dir. Pulte shows his loylty by slashing staff while the President cancels his failing “Freedom 250” rally (poor Vanilla Ice!) and replaces it with a rally and speech by Himself.
Saturday, June 6, 2026 Dow: Closed	It’s the 82^nd anniversary of D-Day (above) and less than a month to America’s 250^th. While mulling Pulte and Blanche, the Senate rassles over ICE funding, White House ballroom as the National Trust for Historic Preservation calls for the demolished East Wing to be restored. President Trump says that National Security after incidents mean the ballroom must be built. Three other “Sixty Minutes” offer tributes to fired Scott Pelley but Leslie Stahl and the rest do not quit in solidarity, claiming they have to “preserve the show’s reputation.” President Trump’s “Freedom 250” celebration may have collapsed, but he and his minions say America is “raining jobs” with 172K new hires in May, double expectations. Stocks, however, fall on Friday due to the prospects of job growth motivating the Fed to raise interest rates, 75% of voters call economy and inflation unfair and troubling. Analysts call the fear of Fed hiking rates due to better economy “paradoxical.”
Sunday, June 7, 2026 Dow: Closed	US Iranian war hits 100^th day as peace treaty collapss. Iran bombs Israel while Defense Minister Itman Ben Guin promiss “Tehran must burn”. In Ukraine, Putin bombs Chernobyl nuke tanks. It’s Talk Show Sunday. Upcoming Maine election on the ABC Round Table as Nat Review’s Ponneru says Platner knew very well what the Nazi tattoo symbolized and RINO Chris Christie says he should be disqualified. Liberal Donna Brazile says he is merely “unconventional” while Susan Glasser says that the Democrats are “ceding the moral high ground”... comparing Platner to Paxton. All, however, agree that Americans will be voting on partisanship, not character. On “Face the Nation”, Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Ca) defends Platner by saying PTSD from his service in Iraq is responsible for his unconventionality but incumbent Susan Collins is really a red raider, not a RINO. Jim Himes (D-Ct) says haters should turn on Paxton. “Sixty Minutes” with Scott Pelley still present brings out TV-conmists and military who say that America is losing the shipbuilding contest to China. Badly. Even tho’ Khanna said violence should not be directed at judges and journalists, targeting of Jurists is up 78%.
Monday, June 8, 2026 Dow: 50,786.01.	Homeless lunatic stabs five in Penn Station hours before President Trump arrives for Knicks/Spurs three. Secret Service then cancels the watch party outside Madison Square Garden, moving fanatic a dozen blocks north to Bryant Park/ Late ballot counting pushes Pratt back into third place in the California primary. Comedians are dejected. The wars roll on. Israel demolishes Iranian oil refineries, Tehran strikes back at Jerusalem (sacred to Moslems as to Jews and Christians). Trump tells Bibi to stop firing drones and missiles because that keeps oil and gas prices rising and his popularity falling, Ukraine seems to be turning the tide as reports trickle in that ordinary Russians are increasingly tired of Putin and his war. Zalenskyy said to “have the cards” but pessimists fear Mad Vlad might use nukes on Kyev. Trump visits MSGarden with Mayor Zorro, but they don’t sit together. Heavy security includes drones, dogs and hundreds of state, local and Federal copes, but there’s no terror except from Wemby as Knicks lose after thirteen straight wins.
Tuesday, June 9, 2026 Dow: 50.872.11	Back at work, POTUS retaliates with “self-defense” Iranian bombings after two crewmen rescued from droned copter in Hormuz. He blocks Somali referees from FIFA but an outside judge blocks his $500,00 visa fee for “special” immigrants. In primaries, midnight returns find Bernie-suppored but woman-skepticus Graham Platner wins in Maine and will tackle RINO Susan Collins. NASA names its Artemis III crew under Commander Randy Bresnik (including Italian astronaut · Luca Parmitano · Frank Rubio · Andre Douglas) They won’t go to Mars, not even the Moon – they’ll just test docking procedures for flight to come. Still, it’s Space. Census Dept. reports that first time homebuyers are proced out of the coasts and moving to Midwest. Homes that cost 220K in Akron, Ohio cost double in NY or Cal. There are jobs too... AI is bringing them to places with cheaper labor due to cheaper rents.
Wednesday, June 10, 2026 Dow: 49,918.78	More primary results trickle in – except for California where thousans of absentee ballots have to be counted by hand. With Gov. Gavin retiring (to maybe run for President in ’28) the finalists are Democrat Xavier Becerra and Republican Steve Hilton (with billionaire Tom Steyer trailing. The L.A. mayoral contenders appear to be incumbent Karen Bass and Nithya Raman as Republican firebrand Pratt pratfalls. President Trump insists that the war has already been won, but Iran refuses to co-operate. They strike US bases and facilities in Jordan, Bahrain and Kuwait. Marco Rubio says t cease fire is over. DefSec Hegseth says :”If we have to negotiate with bombs, we will negotiate with bombs.” Trump, calling Himsel “increasingly impatient” says that Iran has until midnight to surrender of “pay the price” because, citing the Vietnam war, he adds: “we are fighting an evil nation.” Democras and RINOs are appropriately cowed. New inflation data expected late today is expected to be the worst in three years. Oil and gas escalation slowing but the supply chain is rusting as regards food and other commodities – both imported and domestic. Coffee prices are up 20%, but eggs chaper by half. Wage growth up 3.4% compared to 4.2% increase in prices. Inflation plus the Iranian persistence sends the he stock market tumbling.
Thursday, June 11, 2026 Dow: 50,848.75	Midnight arrives – and again, it’s TACO time. Investors, relieved that negoations are back on again... with the President back to saying a deal is just around the corner... send the stock markets back up. Some of the biggest winners include the Cracker Barrel. Poor Billy Gates, grilled by Congress over his former BFF Jeffrey Epstein (with his, uh, “entourage”) now says that after he had a few dabbles and dribbles, Evil Eppy blackmailed Him, after Gates says he only succored the dead ped to get Epstein donations to his healthcare foundation. Poor Bill! Investigator/instigator James Comer (R-Ky) wants Todd Blanche on the griddle next. James Comey still fighting seashell terrorism charges as a mysterious colleague defaces the National Mall with 86-47 threat. FIFA begins its World Cupcake in Mexico City but, in New York, all the hoops hoopla is about the Knicks who rally from 27 points down to beat San Antonio on a last second tip in from new national (well, at least Gotham) hero O. G. Anunoby and take a 3-1 NBA finals lead with game five back in Texas on Saturday. Celebrity Row explodes: Spike and Taylor, even Larry David sneaks a rare smile; Tracey Morgan cries, Timothy Chalamet throws off his clothes. Police too busy with rioting fans outside to arrest or even scold him – Knicks pricks and chicks dance on lightpoles, burn cars and throw eggs at a departing Wemby... hey, they’re cheaper now!
Despite the war, increases in real estate sales and prices as well as the trade balance slightly overmounted a drop in the Dow, in a few debt-related categories and midterm malaise to inch the Don upwards.

THE DON JONES INDEX

CHART of CATEGORIES w/VALUE ADDED to EQUAL BASELINE of 15,000

(REFLECTING… approximately… DOW JONES INDEX of June 27, 2013)

Gains in indices as improved are noted in GREEN. Negative/harmful indices in RED as are their designation. (Note – some of the indices where the total went up created a realm where their value went down... and vice versa.) See a further explanation of categories HERE

ECONOMIC INDICES		(60%)
CATEGORY	VALUE	BASE	RESULTS by PERCENTAGE				SCORE		OUR SOURCES and COMMENTS
INCOME	(24%)	6/17/13 revised 1/1/22	LAST	CHANGE		NEXT	LAST WEEK	THIS WEEK	THE WEEK’S CLOSING STATS...
Wages (hrly. Per cap)	9%	1350 points	5/29/26	+0.32%		6/26	1,898.17	1,904.26	https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/average-hourly-earnings 37.41 37.53 (0.3% v inflation
Median Inc. (yearly)	4%	600	5/29/26	+0.05%		6/12/26	1,131.80	1,132.36	http://www.usdebtclock.org/   52,147 173
Unempl. (BLS – in mi)	4%	600	5/29/26	-2.33%		5/26	542.60	542.60	http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS14000000/  4.3 nc
Official (DC – in mi)	2%	300	5/29/26	+0.054%		6/12/26	214.48	214.36	http://www.usdebtclock.org/    7,395 399
Unofficl. (DC – in mi)	2%	300	5/29/26	+0.076%		6/12/26	260.58	260.38	http://www.usdebtclock.org/    13,150 160
Workforce Participation Number Percent	2%	300	5/29/26	-0.016% -0.02%		6/12/26	295.55	295.49	http://www.usdebtclock.org/    In 162,495 473 Out 105,240 289 Total: 267,735 762 60.69 68
WP % (ycharts)*	1%	150	5/29/26	-0.162%		5/26	149.98	149.98	https://ycharts.com/indicators/labor_force_participation_rate 61.80 nc
OUTGO	(15%)
Total Inflation	7%	1050	5/29/26	+0.5%		6/26	906.30	901.77	http://www.bls.gov/news.release/cpi.nr0.htm     +0.6 .5
Food	2%	300	5/29/26	+0.2%		6/26	257.89	257.37	http://www.bls.gov/news.release/cpi.nr0.htm     +0.5 .2
Gasoline	2%	300	5/29/26	+7.0%		6/26	195.66	181.96	http://www.bls.gov/news.release/cpi.nr0.htm    +5.4 7.0
Medical Costs	2%	300	5/29/26	+0.5%		6/26	268.48	267.14	http://www.bls.gov/news.release/cpi.nr0.htm     +0.6 .5
Shelter	2%	300	5/29/26	+0.3%		6/26	239.10	238.38	http://www.bls.gov/news.release/cpi.nr0.htm     +0.0 .3
WEALTH
Dow Jones Index	2%	300	5/29/26	-1.38%		6/12/26	396.85	391.36	https://www.wsj.com/market-data/quotes/index/ 51,562.25 50,848.76
Home (Sales) (Valuation)	1% 1%	150 150	5/29/26	+3.73% +2.78%		6/12/26	132.15 279.54	137.08 287.30	https://www.nar.realtor/research-and-statistics Sales (M):  4.02 .17 Valuations (K):  417.7 429.3
Millionaires (New Category)	1%	150	5/29/26	+0.049%		6/12/26	137.34	137.41	http://www.usdebtclock.org/    24,261 273
Paupers (New Category)	1%	150	5/29/26	+0.027%		6/12/26	134.90	134.86	http://www.usdebtclock.org/    36,910 920
GOVERNMENT	(10%)
Revenue (trilns.)	2%	300	5/29/26	+0.13%		6/12/26	477.50	478.11	http://www.usdebtclock.org/    5,480 487
Expenditures (tr.)	2%	300	5/29/26	+0.06%		6/12/26	291.08	290.91	http://www.usdebtclock.org/    7,136 139
National Debt tr.)	3%	450	5/29/26	+0.042%		6/12/26	346.24	346.09	http://www.usdebtclock.org/    39,213 239
Aggregate Debt (tr.)	3%	450	5/29/26	+0.08%		6/12/26	368.46	368.16	http://www.usdebtclock.org/    108,164 251
TRADE	(5%)
Foreign Debt (tr.)	2%	300	5/29/26	+0.146%		6/12/26	252.08	251.74	http://www.usdebtclock.org/    9,551 9,564
Exports (in billions)	1%	150	5/29/26	+1.93%		5/26	199.71	203.57	https://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/current/index.html 320.9 327.1
Imports (in billions))	1%	150	5/29/26	-0.47%		5/26	135.33	134.69	https://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/current/index.html 381.2 383.0
Trade Surplus/Deficit (blns.)	1%	150	5/29/26	+7.87%		5/26	234.98	253.48	https://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/current/index.html 60.3 55.9
ACTS of MAN	(12%)
World Affairs	3%	450	5/29/26	-0.1%		6/12/26	469.61	469.14	Pope Leo visits Spain and hangs out with Bad Bunny. Missing American student found dead in Japan. Jared and Ivanka’s Albanian resort sparks local protests. Australians hunt escaped Tasmanian Devils,
War and terrorism	2%	300	5/29/26	-0.2%		6/12/26	283.16	282.59	US/Iran war hits 100^th day as combants alternately cut failed deals and bomb civilians, as do Israelis in Lebanon and Russians in Ukraine (but the tide’s turning; Bad Vlad increasingly mad and bombing nuke storage tanks at Chernobyl). Israeli defense minister Ben Guin says “Tehran must burn.” The Troubles are back in Belfast – but, this time, Prods and Cat’licks are united against Sudanese immigrant who kills local.
Politics	3%	450	5/29/26	-0.1%		6/12/26	452.85	452.40	Voters disgusted with filthy and negative campaign ads. Trump’s protégé Pratt falls out of the running while winning protégé says slow California ballot count facilitates corruption. Our President defies courts poking anxious ‘Pubs over voters’ reaction to his triumphal arch, beautiful golden ballroom and “weaponization” handouts to One Six rioters. Hostile asses sue to block Saturday’s UFC match. As Djonald DeMercher touts new “gold” coin for $12K and bargain Bibles for $60, crypto crook Sam B-F begs him for pardon: entrepreneur-to-entrepreneur.
Economics	3%	450	5/29/26	-0.1%		6/12/26	427.49	427.06	Space X IPO valued at $1.8T by Elon Mush, but 800K by bean counters, slightly less than Anthropic’s $900B. Is AI a bubble? Shrinking jobs and rising debt causing students to drop out of colleges and into trade schools. China proposes to sell EVs in America – will they spy on drivers?
Crime	1%	150	5/29/26	+0.2%		6/12/26	202.95	202.54	FBI warns that gangs and terrorists are recruiting child assassins through video games. Mass murders inc. homeless lunatic (adult) stabbing five in Penn Station just before Trump arrives upstairs for Knicks’ game; 7 shot, 2 killed in Birmingham, over a dozen shot at Toledo music fest,
ACTS of GOD	(6%)
Environment/Weather	3%	450	5/29/26	-0.1%		6/12/26	278.86	278.61	Heavy weather includes floods in Zap, ND, tornadoes in Saginaw; western wildfires return, moving east to Rockies with 100° temps in Raleigh, NC. Drought slicing cattele pop. to worst in 75 yrs, impacting barbecues.
Disasters	3%	450	5/29/26	-0.1%		6/12/26	464.47	464.01	7.8 EQ kills 35 in Philippines with more missing, smaller 6.1 in Cuba kills nobody. Escaped American flag flies onto power lines, causes Connecticut blackout. Searches give up on Lynette Hooker corpse and last two missing miners.
LIFESTYLE/JUSTICE INDEX		(15%)
Science, Tech, Education	4%	600	5/29/26	+0.1%		6/12/26	618.59	619.21	Headed to its own IPO, Anthroic offers to freeze “frontier” AI tech such as autonomous robots. Autonomous Waymo EVs block streets, even a fire truck Apple will toughen parental controls on social media.
Equality (econ/social)	4%	600	5/29/26	+0.1%		6/12/26	671.03	671.70	LA’s SoFi Stadium workers strike on eve of FIFA but settle just before games begin for $40/hr janitors’ wages and promise not to send for ICE to catch and deport them. Next all-male Artemis crew will include an Italian.
Health	4%	600	5/29/26	-0.1%		6/12/26	414.23	413.82	Diabetics cheer insulin inhalers that cut down on needless. Whiny liberals say Medicare cuts will kill the poor and, as FDA dithers, Americans are going to Seoul for skin care while TV docs pivot and tell parents to give eggs and peanuts toinfants to acclimate them to allergies. Retired fireman dies of cancer after Blue Shield refuses coverage. Summer diseases include Lyme (ticks), screw worm; CDC predicts 20,000 Ebola cases. A million fiery Jeeps recalled and Target recalls bacterial cucumber baby wipes,
Freedom and Justice	3%	450	5/29/26		-0.1%	6/12/26	479.68	479.20	“Evil” taxman Banfield convicted of killing wife, patsy and romancing au pair. Race wars escalate in Dallas after jury convicts black track star of killing white rival while Nick Reiner sues to get his share of his murdered parent’s estate. JFK’rrump Center dropping suits against musicians who boycott. McDonald’s replacement of fry guys and gals with robots incites more boycott talks. Outback Steakhouse diner wins fortune for slipping on mashed potatoes.
CULTURAL and MISCELLANEOUS INCIDENTS			(6%)
Cultural incidents	3%	450	5/29/26	+0.2%		6/12/26	592.88	594.07	FIFA opens as fans gasp at ticket prices. Game four thriller satiates Knicks’ fans paying $10K for cheap seats, twice average Manhattan rents even as gentrified-out Gothamites move to Cleveland. Carolina and Vegas in NH finals. Alexander Zverev and Mirra Andreeva win French open. Golden Tempo wins Belmont. “Death of a Salesman” wins 6 Tonys; Songriter’s Hall of Fame inducts the young (Taylor) and the restless (K.I.S.S.) Rassler turned actor The Rock and Heart’s Anne Wilson return to work after cheating death via cancer. Film openings go cartoonly with Toy Story 5, and Paw Patrol. RIP: Actors Herd and Handy (Buffy’s Anthony, “Top Gun’s” James stabbed by girlfriend’ son), NBA’s Stacey King, artist David Hockney.
Miscellaneous incidents	4%	450	5/29/26	nc		6/12/26	553.40	553.40	Good cops include rescuers of lucky ducklings from Washington state storm drain and Deputy Dan Threat hauls woman from burning car in SC. Bad cops accused of framing Karen Read for murder of cop hustand. Mass. fisherman catches and releases great white shark, less kindly shark attacks sailor in Panama City, Fl. Black bear escapes from Japanese factory. Chicago Bears moving to Indiana. “Simpsons” gamers can play Mr. Monopoly v. Mr. Burns games.

The Don Jones Index for the week of June 5^th through June 11^th, 2026 was UP 12.61 points

The Don Jones Index is sponsored by the Coalition for a New Consensus: retired Congressman and Independent Presidential candidate Jack “Catfish” Parnell, Chairman; Brian Doohan, Administrator. The CNC denies, emphatically, allegations that the organization, as well as any of its officers (including former Congressman Parnell, environmentalist/America-Firster Austin Tillerman and cosmetics CEO Rayna Finch) and references to Parnell’s works, “Entropy and Renaissance” and “The Coming Kill-Off” are fictitious or, at best, mere pawns in the web-serial “Black Helicopters” – and promise swift, effective legal action againth parties promulgating this and/or other such slanders.

Comments, complaints, donations (especially SUPERPAC donations) always welcome at feedme@generisis.com or: speak@donjonesindex.com.

ATTACHMENT ONE - FROM WDJI, BEDFORD, VA.

BEDFORD TO COMMEMORATE 82ND ANNIVERSARY OF D-DAY WITH SCHEDULED EVENTS

By WDBJ7 Staff Published: Jun. 5, 2026 at 12:54 PM EDT

BEDFORD, Va. (WDBJ) - The Town of Bedford is commemorating the 82nd anniversary of D-day and is expected to host events for the public; the National D-Day Memorial is also celebrating its 25th anniversary since its opening.

Scheduled events are expected to take place as soon as Friday, June 5, 2026 and will last through the weekend. The events will include:

· The Blue Star Museums Initiative

o National D-day Memorial, 3 Overlord Cir. Bedford, VA 24523

o Occurring now until September 7, 2026

o 10:00 a.m.-5:00 p.m.

o “The National D-Day Memorial joins museums nationwide in the Blue Star Museums initiative, a program that provides free admission to currently-serving U.S. military personnel and their families.”

o The free admission program is available for those currently serving in the United States Military—Air Force, Army, Coast Guard, Marine Corps, Navy, and Space Force, members of the Reserves, National Guard, U.S. Public Health Commissioned Corps, NOAA Commissioned Corps, and up to five family members.”

· The Life and Art of Charles M. Schulz Exhibition

o 305 N. Bridge Street, Bedford, VA 24523

o Friday, June 5, 2026, 1:00 p.m.-6:00 p.m., Saturday, June 6, 11:00 a.m.-5:00 p.m., Sunday, June 7, 12:00 p.m.-5:00 p.m.

o “The National D-Day Memorial is proud to bring The Life and Art of Charles M. Schulz to the Bower Center for the Arts in Bedford, Virginia. The traveling exhibition, curated by the Charles M. Schulz Museum and Research Center in Santa Rosa, California, U.S.A., explores Schulz’s personal history and his role as the sole inspiration and artistic talent behind the most successful comic strip in history."

· Bedford Boys Tribute Center Courthouse Bell Ringing Ceremony

o Bedford County Courthouse 123 E Main Street, Bedford, VA 24523

o Saturday, June 6, 6:15 p.m.-6:45 p.m.

o Free to the general public.

o “This annual public remembrance of the “Bedford Boys” will take place... where the community gathered in 1954 to mark the 10th anniversary of D-Day with the unveiling of a memorial stone."

· When We Went In: The D-Day Experience in Light and Sound

o National D-Day Memorial, 3 Overlord Cir. Bedford, VA 24523

o Friday, June 5, 7:30 p.m.-9:30 p.m., Saturday, June 6, 7:30 p.m.-9:30 p.m.

o Tickets here.

o “Created for the National D-Day Memorial by the Institute for Creativity, Arts, and Technology at Virginia Tech –When We Went In is an immersive nighttime presentation that transforms the Memorial’s grounds into a stunning, multi-media sensory experience."

Click here for more information.

Two World War II D-Day heroes honored in Roanoke

WDBJ7 Archive: National D-Day Memorial Dedication

D-Day Story in Light and Sound returns for the 25th Anniversary of the National D-Day Memorial

ATTACHMENT TWO - FROM YAHOO/WFXR ROANOKE

HUNDREDS GATHER AT D-DAY MEMORIAL FOR ANNUAL “HONORING THE FALLEN” MEMORIAL DAY CEREMONY

Michael Doti Tue, May 26, 2026 at 8:07 AM EDT

Hundreds gather at D-Day Memorial for annual “Honoring the Fallen” Memorial Day ceremony

BEDFORD, Va. (WFXR) – Memorial Day is more than just a federal holiday, a long weekend or a day off from work or school.

It's to pay the respects of the members of service who died while protecting our freedoms.

"I served, but I felt like I should've done more, and the ones that are honored here today gave the ultimate sacrifice," Tony Thurman, who served in the United States Army from 2004 to 2007, said. "This is their day, and we need to all support them."

After a presentation of the colors and a playing of the Star Spangled Banner, the ceremony's guest speaker, Ami Waldron, gave a speech about another important reminder.

Waldron is the President of Mothers of Veteran Suicide, and an average of 22 veterans commit suicide every day, often related to their battles with PTSD.

Waldron lost her son to veteran suicide in November 2022, and she continues to spread the importance of checking in on members of service.

"Let us be the hands that reach out, and let us be the voices that break the silence," Waldron said during her speech. "Let us be the community that refuses to look away and let us be the people who say, 'Not one more, and not without a fight.'"

Waldron's speech touched everyone in attendance.

"Very moving and very emotional, and we knew she would be," April Cheek-Messier, the President and CEO of the National D-Day Memorial Foundation, said. "She has quite a story, and it's so wonderful to see her turn her pain into something that can help so many veterans."

"I feel like it's something we all need to lend a hand and say, 'Hey brother, if you need to talk, I'm here,'" Thurman said.

Following Waldron's speech, other guests shared new information on the lives of First Lieutenant Robert Mathias, Pharmacist's Mate First Class Thomas O'Donnell and Sergeant Robert J. Kemeny. All of whom lost their lives as the Allied Forces stormed the beaches of Normandy.

It's part of the D-Day Memorial Foundation's ongoing efforts to account for every fatality on June 6th, 1944.

"We want to make sure their names are remembered," Cheek-Messier said. "We want to know who were they, who were their families and a little bit about them."

Their names will be added to the necrology wall during the 82nd anniversary of D-Day ceremony.

ATTACHMENT THREE - FROM YAHOO/DESERET NEWS

OPINION: MEMORIAL DAY, D-DAY AND ENDURING LESSONS

By Arthur Cyr

Thu, June 4, 2026 at 12:38 PM EDT

Between Memorial Day, celebrated in late May, and D-Day on June 6 is a good time to reflect on the lessons of war. The Cold War ended in the early 1990s with the literal collapse of the Soviet Union and associated developments.

Yet, that historic victory for the United States and allies has not resulted in a new age of peace. Every U.S. administration since has been involved in armed conflicts.

Memorial Day parades are essential to this holiday. From ancient times, parades have been vital to the reintegration of warriors into society. Even the rare man who finds combat invigorating needs help in reintegrating into a peaceful and civilized society.

Homer, classic chronicler of the Trojan War, is extremely sensitive to this. "The Iliad" focuses on the fighting between Greeks and Trojans; "The Odyssey" describes the very long painful voyage home of Greek leader Odysseus and his men. They struggle to traverse allegorical geography.

Generals James Doolittle and George S. Patton Jr., great combat leaders, were honored at a special ceremony in the Los Angeles Coliseum on June 9, 1945, following the surrender of Nazi Germany.

An estimated one million people attended a victory parade from the airport.

Doolittle early in the war led the first air raid on Tokyo, then commanded the Eighth Air Force in Europe. He introduced Patton, who celebrated the accomplishments of his Third Army in Europe, in particular the 40,000 who lost their lives.

D-Day, June 6, 1944, launched that offensive across Europe.

The leadership of Supreme Allied Commander General Dwight D. Eisenhower was crucial. Ike demonstrated great executive ability in supervising the enormous planning and brilliant interpersonal skill that welded and held together the most diverse military alliance in history.

Remarkably, he was able to establish overall unity of command. This eluded even the American military alone in the Pacific, where Army General Douglas MacArthur pursued one strategic vision, while U.S. Navy admirals implemented a different strategy.

Extensive bombing of transportation routes and supply depots in France was crucial preparation. Such action would bring an estimated minimum of 60,000 civilian casualties and perhaps far more.

Yet Eisenhower was adamant about the absolute need for extensive bombing. Free French General Charles de Gaulle agreed unequivocally. Ike had managed to establish an effective working relationship with the insecure, temperamental French leader.

Doolittle was appointed commander of the Eighth Air Force on Jan. 6, 1944. Destruction of German fighter aircraft became the priority. While this resulted in more losses of bombers, the Luftwaffe was devastated.

On D-Day, few German planes appeared. Doolittle piloted a P-38 fighter to observe firsthand, then reported to Eisenhower

Finally, Eisenhower demonstrated brilliant imagination. During heavy fighting for Sicily in 1943, General George S. Patton Jr. slapped two U.S. soldiers suffering extreme combat stress.

INTENSE CONTROVERSY RESULTED.

Ike moved Patton to England, to reflect in agonizing isolation. Meanwhile, a fictitious army emerged around him. Actors were assigned roles, bogus information generated, phony buildings and vehicles constructed. On D-Day and immediately thereafter, crucial German units remained in reserve because Patton's (nonexistent) forces had not yet moved.

Eisenhower never lost awareness of the terrible human costs of war, borne primarily by the enlisted ranks. He constantly stressed the fundamentally important role of the combat soldier and regularly visited troops.

Consider how today's leaders compare to these, and sincerely honor our veterans.

ATTACHMENT FOUR - FROM FOX

ADRENALINE-PACKED PREVIEW RELEASED FOR UPCOMING D-DAY FILM 'PRESSURE,' FEATURES LOADED CAST

The film explores General Eisenhower and Captain Stagg's decision to launch the most dangerous invasion in history

By David Hookstead  Published May 22, 2026 9:40am EDT

On June 6, 1944, approximately 156,000 Allied troops landed on the beaches of Normandy, France. Nearly half of them were American. The invasion involved more than 7,000 naval vessels and over 11,000 aircraft. It remains the largest amphibious military operation in history. Allied forces suffered more than 10,000 casualties, including 2,501 Americans killed and thousands more from other nations. Their sacrifice helped turn the tide of World War II and led to the defeat of Nazi Germany less than a year later. Today, the invasion is commemorated annually in Normandy, as the number of surviving veterans, now around 100 years old, continues to decline.

A new preview is out for the upcoming D-Day film "Pressure."

Basic info:

· Plot (via IMDB): In the tense 72 hours before D-Day, the fate of the world hangs in the balance. General Dwight D. Eisenhower and Captain James Stagg face an impossible choice—launch the most dangerous invasion in history or risk losing the war altogether.

· Cast: Andrew Scott, Brendan Fraser, Kerry Condon, Chris Messina and Damian Lewis

· Director: Anthony Maras

· Release Date: May 29, 2026

There has been serious hype surrounding "Pressure" for a lot of reasons. First, as I covered Thursday, people love WWII stories. That's simply a fact.

NEW BOOK REVEALS UNTOLD STORY OF GEN. WAINWRIGHT, HIGHEST-RANKING AMERICAN POW OF WORLD WAR II

Add in the fact it's about D-Day, and it's easy to understand why people are incredibly excited.

Second, the cast of "Pressure" is stacked with Brendan Fraser and Damian Lewis leading the way. Now, a new trailer is out, and it looks like it's going to be an outstanding movie.

Most guys know all about the battle of D-Day and the fact it was briefly delayed due to the weather. However, the latter part only gets a fraction of the attention it deserves.

Finding a window to launch the invasion of France to crush the grip of the Nazis was critically important. Now, the curtain will be pulled back on how the decision-making process unfolded and the role the weather played.

It might not sound as exciting as a film focused solely on combat, but from a historical standpoint, it looks like it's going to be amazing.

You can find "Pressure" in theaters starting May 29.

ATTACHMENT FIVE - FROM AMS (AMERICAN METEOROLOGICAL SOCIETY)

“PRESSURE”: A NICE MOVIE, BUT WITH KINKED ISOBARS

June 10, 2026

By Paul H. Gross, CCM, CBM, AMS Fellow

I eagerly anticipated the release of “Pressure” more than most. As a weather historian, I spent three-and-a-half years researching the weather and weather forecast process behind Operation Overlord (the code name for the D-Day invasion) back in the early 1990s. The documentary I wrote and produced to coincide with D-Day’s fiftieth anniversary is considered by many to be the definitive story about history’s most important weather forecast, and was considered so historically significant that it was added to the D-Day archive at the Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library, the British Meteorological Archive, and the Museums of Television and Radio History in New York and Chicago.

So, I approached the movie with trepidation. How historically accurate would it be? At the movie’s beginning, it said “Based upon a true story.” A more appropriate statement would be “Loosely based upon a true story.” First, let’s discuss what the movie got right.

The synoptic set-up was correctly portrayed as it was in early June 1944. In what had become more of a winter-type pattern, incredibly atypical for early June, deep lows were stacked up across the Atlantic. The movie also accurately portrayed the meteorologists hand plotting and analyzing synoptic maps. The viewing public certainly saw a nice visual of what operational meteorology was eighty-two years ago.

However, when it comes to the forecast process set up by the Allies, the movie completely mischaracterizes what actually happened, right from the beginning. First, Pressure implies that Group Captain James Stagg, who headed the weather team, joined the forecast unit just three days before D-Day. This is incorrect: he was part of the Allies’ forecast team for many months before that. Furthermore, Stagg’s appointment to head this vitally important military unit greatly upset the Allies, because he was a civilian! So, the British instantly made him “military” and gave him the title Group Captain. Truly, I can’t make this stuff up!

Next, the movie greatly implies that all of the forecasters were working in a single office.  This is wrong.  The Allies set up three different weather forecast centers: an American office code named “Widewing,” the British Admiralty weather office, and the British Meteorological Office. The meteorologists at these three offices never met in person; they plotted and analyzed their own maps, made their own forecasts, and then discussed their interpretations over the phone at least twice a day on scrambled teleconference calls without seeing each other’s charts. While the movie makes it Group Captain Stagg versus American Colonel Irving Krick, it is more accurate to say that the American weather office forecasts using Krick’s analogue forecast technique differed from their British counterparts. You can imagine how difficult it was to try and work out these differences over the telephone! If only they had Zoom back then.

Next, the movie implies that Stagg was the sole synthesizer of the differing forecasts and the one to communicate a single forecast to General Eisenhower and the Commanders in Chief. What the movie neglects is that there was another weather officer who worked with Stagg: American Colonel Donald Yates. Yates’ presence was vital, because Stagg was NOT a meteorologist (he graduated college with a Master of Arts degree and became a science teacher, then got his PhD in terrestrial magnetism and later worked at the British Met Office). Yates was a meteorologist. He listened to those scrambled teleconference calls with Stagg, worked out the forecast with him, and accompanied him to the Commander in Chief meetings.

Finally, while the movie accurately portrays how the weather made things incredibly difficult for the beach assault troops, it really does not give the whole story. Paratroopers jumping into Normandy in the middle of the night had great difficulty due to the cloud cover. Some were dropped many miles from their intended drop zones. Furthermore, the cloud cover is what compromised some of the aerial assault at dawn on the Normandy coastal defenses. It was this inability to disarm the coast that caused the horrific bloodbath on Omaha Beach.

There is so much more to the D-Day story that also wasn’t told. For example, four weather observers accompanied by radiomen went into Normandy overnight — two by parachute with the paratroopers and two by glider. Furthermore, had General Eisenhower been conservative and postponed the invasion until nearly two weeks later — the next time low tide came at the needed time — the forecast was positive, but a surprise storm hit that was considered the worst to impact the English Channel in fifty years. An invasion launched into that weather would have resulted in failure.

If you’d like to see my twenty-three-minute (the commercials have been edited out) documentary, Forecast Overlord, you can view it here. 

You’ll hear from three of the invasion meteorologists themselves, excerpts from a James Stagg 1976 BBC radio interview, recollections from one of the weather observers who parachuted into Normandy with the overnight paratroopers, and D-Day soldiers, sailors and airmen discussing the weather’s impact on history’s greatest military operation

Sean Potter, who brilliantly moderated an AMS webinar with the film’s director, Anthony Maras, and his meteorological advisors said it best to me: Pressure is “not a documentary.” And Sean is right. It is a drama. Like many movies, it took a true story and used a lot of poetic license. This does not mean it is a bad movie. On the contrary. It is a very good movie, but we in the atmospheric and oceanic sciences should also know the truth, which is why I wanted to write this.

As a postscript, I want to share that I was able to get General Donald Yates (ret.) on the phone while researching my documentary.  Unfortunately, even though I explained that I was a fellow meteorologist working on a historical scientific documentary, he had a great distrust of the media and would not let me interview him or even just record the phone call. It was a short conversation, but he did tell me one thing that I’ll always remember: General Eisenhower inherently trusted the weather team and the forecasts he was getting from him and Stagg. And in a 1964 interview, Eisenhower summed it all up:  “I knew it couldn’t fail, except for the weather.”

ATTACHMENT SIX - FROM VA NEWS

80TH ANNIVERSARY OF D-DAY LANDINGS COMMEMORATED IN NORMANDY

By Robert Turtil VA Public Affairs January 24, 2025

June 6, 2024 was the 80th anniversary of the D-Day landings that turned the tide of World War II. It was commemorated on France’s Normandy coast during the first two weeks of June 2024 with events remembering, celebrating and honoring the thousands of American and Allied service members whose enormous sacrifices liberated Europe. It is said that during these anniversary days, “All Eyes Turn to Normandy.” Though fewer World War II Veterans are still living, willing and able to travel to France, many came to join world leaders in an extraordinary show of enduring NATO unity.

The array of international observances and locally arranged events included memorial and monument ceremonies, picnics, dances, Veteran meet-and-greets, concerts, parades of American marching bands, book and merchandise fairs, fireworks, marathons and seminars. With WWII military encampments, demonstrations, air shows and ceremonial flyovers, the numerous commemorations drew thousands of visitors, truckloads of international press and celebrity guests. 

Lodging was scarce. Roads closed with and without notice. Life in the normally peaceful villages along the coast was turned upside down for weeks, even more than had been for any of the big 5-year anniversaries like the 75^th, the 70th and earlier. 

Heavy traffic, unusual for the often-narrow French roads, kicked up dust for days. Convoys transported reenactors and history enthusiasts in loaded down WWII-era Allied and Axis armored vehicles, jeeps, trucks and motorcycles bearing license plates with mostly B, NL, D, and UK prefixes. Military ambulances driven by jubilant medical corps-garbed men and women; their sirens screeched incessantly. 1930s vintage cars displaying Free-France and resistance flags, filled with civilians in 40s dress, drove through parking lots packed with privately or club-owned WWII vehicle collections. 

Evidence of worn out, 80+ year old WWII surplus shouldered and, often, blocked roadways with breakdowns of historic (French) proportions. Rubber-necking passengers giggled, “Mind the Halftrack, Honey,” then gasped at the sight of a ditched WWII Kenworth 6-ton wrecker, its hood propped open while distraught, uniformed U.S. GI reenactors scrambled about chatting… in Dutch. Though catastrophically disabled, the truck’s olive drab paint and military markings were more perfect than the day it shipped from Detroit in the 1940’s. 

Lorries carrying Sherman tanks, half-tracks and other armored vehicles slowed the highways. Vintage military vehicles filled with passengers dressed in American WWII uniforms but, curiously, were not American; they looked uncomfortable and out of place as they bounced dutifully along on thin seat padding, sans seatbelts, grasping officer’s caps and whatever else they could, with stylish scarves and headphones betraying their identities. Passing the long convoys of smoky exhaust and brake-lights, one could imagine racing up the highway to Berlin in spring 1945. 

American Veterans, their families and tourists came in on buses. So many buses, so many sights. Service members from the States and American bases in Europe, and allied service members from around the globe, took part in many of the ceremonies, adding a sense of military strength, pomp and alliance to the sandy, sunbaked proceedings. The long evenings found many troops relaxing at outdoor cafes enjoying a comparatively wonderful deployment.

D-Day 80th anniversary events included a ceremony commemorating the sacrifices of Native American soldiers during WWII, held at the Charles Shay Indian Memorial on Omaha Beach in the village of Saint Laurent-sur-Mer, France. Along with a wreath laying, there was a Native blessing ceremony, a Native prayer and a water ceremony held on Omaha Beach, where 19-year-old Charles Shay came ashore as a combat medic on June 6, 1944. The memorial plaque reads, “About 175 American Indians invaded Omaha Beach. Some were medics, others fought as seamen, scouts, snipers, radio operators, machine gun, artillery gunners, combat engineers, or observers.

A member of the Penobscot Indian nation 19-year-old private Shay, also known as ‘Little Muskrat’ was a combat medic from Indian Island, Maine. Soon after dawn he came ashore near here as a member of an assault platoon. Repeatedly plunging into the treacherous sea, he carried critically wounded comrades to safety, under heavy fire . For his unselfish heroism on this beach, he was awarded the Silver Star and he continued to save the wounded until the war ended”.

With the history of their homeland, Normands are used to this kind of invasion. Many residents are ardently pro-American and fly U.S. flags year-round. Welcoming back returning American heroes and friends, hundreds more U.S. flags are flying over these weeks in appreciation for service and sacrifice. French schoolchildren are taught their history, and residents have reached out to Americans who lost family members on their beach. Many locals routinely come to place flowers at the nearby Normandy-American Cemetery on Memorial Day and other U.S. holidays.

The sky droned with C-47s/DC-3s filled with tourists and journalists, flying respectfully over the beaches, villages and cemeteries. A lone P-51 Mustang and then a Spitfire, a formation of Piper Cubs, were all here to honor the anniversary. Huge NATO C-130s streamed past sites throughout June 6 week, rehearsing for the flyovers with which nearly every major ceremony began, or ended. Helicopters constantly buzzed the area, and folks residing on Omaha Beach would run out to wave if they thought any might be Marine One. On the horizon, a few miles off Omaha Beach, lies anchored a French helicopter assault ship stationed for security and to provide a landing exhibit of NATO capabilities. 

The French police saturated the countryside and manned every intersection. English was a language they demonstrably despised practicing with Americans behind the wheel whose Airbnb was, “just beyond that varee sign, s_’i_l_ _v_o_u_s_ _p_l_a_ît_?” Patience was required. Delays were enigmatic and endless. But the days were long and the weather was stunning, while everyone was similarly drawn to this time and place of courage, sacrifice and liberation. 

With U.S. flags flying everywhere, one felt bursting pride in what America has brought to these grateful people twice in the 20th century, with grit and blood, leaving nearly 10,000 countrymen resting in the cemetery nearby and thousands more in American Battlefield Monuments Commission cemeteries across Europe and Africa. 

The small Old Glory displayed in the corner of our windshield drew salutes from reenactors and other celebrants we passed. It was easy to feel Europe’s gratitude for the freedom that America fights for and defends again and again, as well as the friendship of America’s oldest ally that week. We hated to leave. 

ATTACHMENT SEVEN - FROM STARS AND STRIPES

WWII VETERANS COMMEMORATE 82ND ANNIVERSARY OF D-DAY IN NORMANDY

STARS AND STRIPES • June 6, 2026

World War II veterans attend(ed) the Normandy American Cemetery and Memorial ceremony in Colleville-sur-Mer, France, June 6, 2026, commemorating the 82nd anniversary of D-Day.

The ceremony honored the service members who participated in the Allied invasion of Normandy during World War II.

Twenty-nine World War II veterans were on hand Saturday to commemorate the 82nd anniversary of D-Day on Saturday at Normandy American Cemetery in Colleville-sur-Mer, France. Approximately 160,000 Allied troops — 73,000 of them Americans — landed at Normandy on June 6, 1944. An estimated 4,414 died, including 2,501 Americans.

“[To] the veterans of World War II who are here with us today, and those who did not come home, thank you — thank you for your courage, tenacity and grit that you showed the world on that day, and the days that followed,” said Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff.  World War II veterans attend a D-Day commemoration ceremony at Normandy American Cemetery in Colleville-sur-Mer, France, June 6, 2026.

Caine and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth were among the speakers. Also on hand was 107-year-old Art Rose, a Navy veteran and engineering officer at Omaha Beach during the D-Day invasion. Rose read a letter he had written to his parents on June 11, 1944.

Rose expressed his fear of the unknown before the invasion, the letter ended with a positive message. Reading from the letter, Rose said: “What a country we are. I will always be grateful to my commander for taking me along [to battle]. Don’t worry about me. I am well, whole and happy. Love, Art.”

at: https://www.stripes.com/history/2026-06-06/d-day-ceremony-france-hegseth-21890444.html
Source - Stars and Stripes

ATTACHMENT EIGHT - FROM MSN

D-DAY’S 82ND ANNIVERSARY MARKED WITH TRIBUTES, NEW MEMORIAL NAMES

Honoring the fallen: Ninety-eight names have been added to the British Normandy Memorial to recognize troops previously unlisted due to inaccurate records or later-confirmed campaign deaths.

Veterans’ presence dwindles: Only six UK Normandy veterans attended the British memorial ceremony, the smallest number since its opening in 2021.

Modern reflections: Speakers urged active vigilance to defend freedoms won on D-Day, drawing parallels between past battles and current ideological threats.

Ceremonies span Normandy and beyondBritish Normandy Memorial adds 98 names

Veterans’ reflections on duty and legacy

Calls to defend democratic freedoms today

CEREMONIES SPAN NORMANDY AND BEYOND

Commemorations for the 82nd anniversary of D-Day took place across Normandy, including at the Normandy American Cemetery, Bayeux War Cemetery, and the British Normandy Memorial. Events featured veterans, military personnel, and dignitaries, with ceremonies honoring the Allied forces who landed in 1944 to liberate Nazi-occupied France. French schoolchildren, pipers, and descendants of wartime leaders joined in symbolic walks across historic beaches to mark H-Hour. 

"The chaps we leave behind – we have no right to go home and forget them. We come here because a lot of them are not known to us; they're just names. But then you go to our wonderful memorial at Ver-sur-Mer, and suddenly there's a name that you know. You knew that chap, you know his face – and it changes everything."

BRITISH NORMANDY MEMORIAL ADDS 98 NAMES

An additional 98 names have been inscribed on the British Normandy Memorial above Gold Beach after research identified servicemen who fought in the Normandy campaign but were not previously included. Some had been left off due to inaccurate wartime records, while others died of wounds in Britain after the landings and were not originally counted. Families and researchers provided evidence to ensure these individuals are now formally honored. BBC

VETERANS’ REFLECTIONS ON DUTY AND LEGACY

Surviving veterans like Ken Hay, 100, described attending commemorations as a duty to remember fallen comrades, emphasizing the personal connections behind the engraved names. At U.S. ceremonies, 107-year-old Art Rose read a wartime letter to his parents, blending fear, gratitude, and resolve. Many veterans stressed the importance of sharing their experiences with younger generations to keep history alive. 

CALLS TO DEFEND DEMOCRATIC FREEDOMS TODAY

U.S. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth linked the courage of D-Day soldiers to the need for modern vigilance against threats to freedom, warning that current ideological challenges demand the same unity and resolve. His remarks underscored that the Allied victory in 1944 was not just a military triumph but a foundation for democratic institutions that must be actively protected by each generation. Real Clear Politics

ATTACHMENT NINE - FROM AUDACY.COM

ALL-WOMEN JUMP INTO NORMANDY HONORS WWII

By Julia LeDoux May 27, 2026

Eight women veterans, first responders and those in law enforcement or with intelligence backgrounds will deploy from a single C-47 aircraft into Normandy, France, for a first-ever, women-only jump on June 2.

The “chalk” commemorates D-Day and recognizes the often-overlooked role of women in the World War II resistance movement.

Organized by the nonprofit Fox Force Foundation, a veteran-led organization advancing women’s leadership and resilience, the static-line jump is symbolic of the infiltration by female wartime operatives and resistance fighters behind enemy lines.

“We see, remember and honor the women who risked everything for the cause of freedom in World War II,” said Army veteran Toni Lavery, founder and executive director of Fox Force, in a statement. “With this jump we also look to the future as Fox Force participants around the world share the same desire to keep serving. That is one of the many things that brought us together with the VFW.”

Veterans of Foreign Wars launched its Still Serving campaign in 2020 to highlight how America’s veterans continue to serve in their local communities after transitioning from the military. Carol Whitmore, the VFW’s first woman commander-in-chief, will be parachuting for the first time, in tandem with Accelerated Freefall (AFF) and Tandem Instructor, Daina Tubbs, on June 3, also into Normandy and in commemoration of D-Day and the bravery of that war’s female resistance fighters.

“I am honored and grateful to be alongside these women warriors to commemorate the heroes who came before us and inspired the next generations,” said Whitmore. “The VFW is proud to support Fox Force not only as title sponsor of its historic commemorative parachute jump into Normandy but in recognition of how the missions of our two organizations are aligned. Fox Force and VFW both are invested in supporting and advancing women veterans everywhere.”

For many of the women, including Whitmore, the chalks will be their first jump but, they’re used to firsts.

ATTACHMENT TEN – FROM MSN

TRUMP FACES BACKLASH OVER AI POSTS ON D-DAY ANNIVERSARY

Presidential omission: Trump marked D-Day with AI videos about himself, sparking criticism for failing to honour Allied soldiers' sacrifices.

Immigration remarks: US Defence Secretary Hegseth used a D-Day ceremony to warn of a 'mass invasion' in Europe, echoing Trump administration rhetoric.

Event controversy: Multiple artists withdrew from Trump's America 250 concert, citing misrepresentation and political associations.

On the 82nd anniversary of D-Day, President Donald Trump flooded Truth Social with AI-generated videos glorifying himself — from riding a camel to skydiving — without any mention of the soldiers who fought in Normandy. Critics, including Republicans Against Trump, condemned the omission as disrespectful, with political commentators calling it self-absorbed and detached from the day's significance. The posts also included attacks on political opponents and unrelated imagery, further fuelling accusations of misplaced priorities. 

Hegseth's immigration remarks stir diplomatic unease

At a Normandy ceremony honouring D-Day veterans, US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth warned that 'different European beaches are stormed by different dangerous ideologies,' referring to migrant arrivals. His comments echoed the Trump administration’s hardline stance on immigration and came amid UK condemnation of US Vice President JD Vance’s similar rhetoric linking a British teenager’s murder to migration. Downing Street urged respecting the victim’s family wishes and avoiding divisive political exploitation of the tragedy. 

"'Sadly, today, different European beaches are stormed by different dangerous ideologies. beaches in Spain, Italy, Greece and Bulgaria, boats and men arrive. When will European capitals do something about that invasion? Is it too late? I pray not.'"

Artists exit 250th anniversary event amid political overtones

Trump’s planned Great American State Fair, billed as part of America’s 250th anniversary celebrations, has seen an exodus of artists after learning of its political associations. Performers such as Martina McBride, Bret Michaels, Young MC, the Commodores, and Morris Day withdrew, citing misrepresentation and divisiveness. The event is part of competing visions for the semiquincentennial, with grassroots groups organising alternative, more inclusive commemorations challenging what they see as a whitewashed narrative from the administration. 

D-Day's enduring legacy

The 82nd anniversary of D-Day was marked in France with ceremonies attended by international leaders and the few surviving veterans. Commemorations recalled the nearly 160,000 Allied troops who landed in Normandy on June 6, 1944, in the largest seaborne invasion in history, which became a turning point in World War II. The White House issued a statement paying tribute to the 'Greatest Generation' and reaffirming commitment to the freedoms secured on that day. 

ATTACHMENT ELEVEN – FROM THE DAILY BEAST

TRUMP, 79, HONORS D-DAY HEROES BY PRAISING HIMSELF

The president spent the World War II anniversary sharing AI-generated images and videos of himself.

By Olivia Ralph Updated Jun. 7 2026 9:19AM EDT Published Jun. 7 2026 1:17AM EDT 

President Donald Trump marked the 82nd anniversary of D-Day by flooding social media with AI-generated images and videos celebrating himself.

The soon-to-be-80-year-old president spent Saturday posting a stream of bizarre content to Truth Social, including an AI-generated music video depicting him riding a lion, skydiving with a red parachute, mingling with adoring crowds, and sharing meals with world leaders.

He also shared an AI-generated image portraying the future Barack Obama Presidential Library as a giant garbage can surrounded by homeless encampments, a collage mocking Rosie O’Donnell, and an AI rendering of a White House “Drone Port” while attacking a federal judge who temporarily halted construction of his planned White House ballroom.

One post featured Trump embracing an oversized American flag in front of the Washington Monument. Another showed military helicopters flying overhead with the president gazing into the distance.

But amid the flood of content, there was one conspicuous omission—any acknowledgment of D-Day.

June 6 marked the 82nd anniversary of the Allied invasion of Normandy, the pivotal World War II operation that involved more than 156,000 Allied troops landing on the beaches of Nazi-occupied France.

More than 4,000 Allied soldiers were killed during the operation, which ultimately helped turn the tide of the war in Europe.

AS THE HOURS PASSED WITHOUT A TRIBUTE FROM THE COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF, CRITICS TOOK NOTICE

“It’s D-Day. Trump’s first post on Truth Social is a bizarre AI video about how much people love Donald Trump,” anti-Trump conservative group Republicans Against Trump wrote on X.

“Not a word about the heroes who stormed the beaches of Normandy.”

As the hours passed without a tribute from the commander-in-chief, critics took notice. While the president spent the day posting AI-generated tributes to himself, the White House quietly issued a written statement commemorating the anniversary and honoring America’s “Greatest Generation.”

The Daily Beast reached out to the White House for comment.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth traveled to France for a D-Day commemoration, though he used the solemn anniversary to lecture America’s European allies in a culture-war broadside, accusing them of complacency and comparing migration across the continent to an “invasion.”

“Beaches in Spain, in Italy, in Greece, and Bulgaria. Boats and men arrive,” Hegseth said.

“When will European capitals do something about that invasion? Or is it too late?”

Trump has marked D-Day in previous years. He shared an image commemorating last year’s anniversary, while in 2024 he shared a video in which he spoke to four veterans of the Normandy landings.

However, this year his Truth Social feed was dominated by AI-generated images, videos, and attacks on his political opponents.

By the day’s end, there was still no tribute from the president.

“It’s almost 5 p.m. on D-Day. The Commander in Chief still hasn’t said a word about it,” Republicans Against Trump wrote on X.

“Disgraceful.”

ATTACHMENT TWELVE – FROM YAHOO/IUK

TRUMP MARKS D-DAY WITH AI VIDEO OF HIM RIDING A LION AND PHOTO PORTRAYING OBAMA LIBRARY AS TRASH CAN

By Ariana Baio Updated Sat, June 6, 2026 at 5:35 p.m. EDT

President Donald Trump marked the 82nd anniversary of D-Day, when the Allied powers stormed the beaches of Normandy during World War II, by sharing artificial intelligence-generated content that took aim at a range of his perceived opponents.

Saturday morning, the president shared an AI music video set to the song "Trump," created by New York congressional candidate Anthony Constantino, who he recently endorsed. The video, which aimed to show admiration of Trump from around the world, featured clips of the president riding a lion, sharing a meal with Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum and at the UFC Freedom 250 cage fight at the White House. All the while, a house backing track repeats the line: "Everywhere I go, they love Donald Donald Trump."

It was the only post on Trump's Truth Social account for several hours on June 6 until he bragged about the new Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool and then shared an AI-generated image of the Obama Presidential Library deteriorating, surrounded by homeless encampments and with a large pile of garbage on top of the structure.

"The Barack Hussein Obama Library, in 10 years, when fully matured!" Trump wrote.

But the U.S. president did not post anything on Truth Social marking the anniversary of D-Day, and continued in the afternoon to mock what appeared to be Rosie O'Donnell and accused Judge Richard Leon, who temporarily halted above ground construction of the White House ballroom, of "putting our Country in danger."

Other world leaders, such as Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer, acknowledged the day on social media.

Trump has acknowledged D-Day in previous years. In 2024, he posted a video of himself virtually chatting with D-Day heroes in addition to a statement acknowledging soldiers who died. In 2023, he posted a video montage of D-Day, paid for by his re-election campaign.

Members of the Trump administration and federal departments also marked D-Day with social media posts remembering those who fought in the battle. Even the White House official X page posted in remembrance of those who gave their lives on June 6, 1944.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who attended a D-Day commemoration in France over the weekend, spoke about the anniversary but also tied it to the current administration's fraught relationship with Europe's approach to immigration.

PRESIDENT TRUMP SHARED AN AI-GENERATED POST DEPICTING THE OBAMA PRESIDENTIAL LIBRARY AS DETERIORATED AND COVERED IN GARBAGE ON D-DAY

"Sadly, today, different European beaches are stormed by different, dangerous ideologies," Hegseth said Saturday. "Beaches in Spain, Italy, Greece and Bulgaria, boats and men arrive."

"When will European capitals do something about that invasion? Or is it too late?" he added. "I pray not, and I believe not."

The defense secretary's comments mirror statements Trump has made in the past, criticizing European leaders for not taking a more hardline approach to immigration.

In his second term, the president has been more critical of U.S. allies, particularly part of NATO, for relying too heavily on the U.S. for military support. He's accused NATO allies of not supporting the US, particularly for his war with Iran.

ATTACHMENT THIRTEEN – FROM US DEPT. OF WAR

TRANSCRIPT OF REMARKS BY SECRETARY OF WAR PETE HEGSETH AT THE 82ND ANNIVERSARY OF THE D-DAY LANDINGS AT NORMANDY AMERICAN CEMETERY (AS DELIVERED) JUNE 6, 2026

June 9, 2026

Well, Minister, Ambassador Kushner, Mr. Rose, Chairman Kane, distinguished guests, and most importantly, our veterans. Thank you for being here to commemorate the 82nd anniversary, 82 years young of D-Day. God bless you all.

It is a profound privilege to be with you today on these hallowed grounds. This is not merely a resting place. It is a monument to the unyielding spirit of the American warrior. A testament to the supreme sacrifices our warriors made to liberate an entire continent from the grip of tyranny. We remain ever grateful to the French government, our ally for 250 years for dedicating this land to our fallen.

For every American who visits, it is uniquely stirring to see the stars and stripes proudly flying here in eternal vigil over the thousands of crosses and stars, As a former superintendent of this cemetery once said, looking over the graves, "there they are still serving their country."

Eighty two years ago today, the survival of Western civilization hung in the balance. Dark forces had swept across Europe. Hitler boasted that his Atlantic wall was impenetrable, but our enemy made a fatal miscalculation. They underestimated the unbreakable will of the American fighting man. The task was daunting, a frontal assault across the churning English Channel directly into beaches and cliffs fortified with iron, concrete, and heavy artillery. An impossible mission, a suicidal mission, the mission of free men. Freedom’s only hope, no turning back.

Alongside the brave forces of Great Britain, Canada, France, Norway, Poland, and our other capable and steadfast allies, the United States military spearheaded a great crusade to shatter the Nazi war machine and liberate a continent. Our troops carried with them the inspiring words of General Eisenhower, but more importantly, they carried the hopes and the prayers of a free world. They embarked into the dark, choppy waters, knowing that many would not return home.

As the ambassador said, ordinary men, extraordinary courage. Like American patriots throughout our history, from Lexington to Gettysburg, they relied on one another, trusting their brothers and their cause. Before dawn, American paratroopers and gliders plunged into the abyss, lit only by enemy tracer fire. Chaotic drops, and fierce resistance, they adapted, they rallied, and they fought. A triumph of American ingenuity and initiative over the rigid mechanized thinking of the enemy. We retain that advantage still today. Sergeant William Ashbrook of the 101st Airborne, the Screaming Eagles looked out of his plane to the site below, saying there were so many boats in the channel, he said that it seemed as if you could step out of the plane and walk to France on top of them. Speed and scale, scale only the American war machine could produce, and we are producing again today. May we learn from this past.

Later that Tuesday morning, the greatest amphibious assault in human history was unleashed. Our American warriors set out to take Omaha and Utah beaches. They rode in Higgins boats, a master stroke of American engineering, manufactured by the blue-collar grit of 20,000 workers in New Orleans. The ramps of those boats dropped, and our men threw themselves, hurled themselves into the waves and onto the blood-stained sand. The courage, the sheer courage that it took to charge into that hailstorm of machine gun fire and artillery, almost unfathomable.

I tell my kids who join us today, and they can barely relate, it barely computes. Who could? Our forefathers did what those men did here. We ask ourselves, could we, and may we always ask. The first waves of soldiers took devastating casualties, thousands of our absolute best cut down. But the American war fighter never quit. Fueled by an unwavering love of country and the men beside them, they pushed forward. They chose to face death rather than surrender or quit, and as they fought inch by bloody inch, the Atlantic wall crumbled. They were indeed the greatest generation. Farm boys from the heartland and city dwellers from the coast, teachers and shopkeepers. The Americans buried here are our very best. Full stop.

War reveals the true character of a nation and her men. The courage of the men who stormed these beaches is the courage that defines the United States of America. May it always. May we earn it. And remember what they did here. The souls here earned it, and we are blessed to have a number of such warriors in our presence again today. They are a living embodiment of the warrior ethos we today revive at the Department of War.

To the veterans here today who served in France and around the globe, gentlemen, we love you. We owe you a debt of gratitude we can never repay. A grateful nation honors your service and your historic bravery. June 6, 1944 turned the tide of history. Extraordinary Americans, allied courage, meticulous planning, the blood of our heroes, the Axis powers were doomed. The world saved. Without Operation Overlord, we would not have the free world we know today. Together with our allies, America saved Western civilization.

This day, an annual reminder of the heavy cost of freedom, but also a reminder as we look out at those crosses of what it takes. And we ask ourselves again, do we have it? Today, as we face an increasingly complex threat environment, we apply the lessons from 82 years ago learned on these beaches. Strong allies, each fully committed to doing their part, win wars. The men buried here fought in a war fighting alliance, where every partner brought its full measure of industry, courage, and sacrifice. Not empty slogans, not lavish summits, not communiqués. Real allies doing real things, taking real losses for a shared cause worth fighting and dying for. Each nation pulled its weight, each nation bled. America will lead, and we must. But capable allies must be right there with us, shoulder to shoulder in the breach when it matters.

In the years since these beaches, much of the West, in some places, in some quarters, and in some capitals grew comfortable. We forgot that freedom is not free. We forgot that peace is not wished into being, it is bought with purpose, with honor, and with strength. The men who landed on these beaches knew this. The question we ask ourselves is, do we? It's past time we remember what they knew. Their legacy demands far more than quiet reflection. It requires our active vigilance.

Sadly, today different European beaches are stormed by different dangerous ideologies. Beaches in Spain, in Italy, in Greece, and Bulgaria, boats and men arrive. When will European capitals do something about that invasion? Or is it too late? I pray not, and I believe not. The men who fought and died here restored freedom to Europe. That freedom must be maintained by this generation of leaders and war fighters, or what they fought for was merely temporary. As our great President Ronald Reagan once said, freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. You don't pass it to the next generation in the bloodstream. It must be defended by each and every generation. We stand by our allies, and we expect our allies capable and ready to stand alongside us. The heroes of 1944 did that, and may we.

Peace is secured only through strength, and its strength on both sides of the Atlantic, fortified by readiness, shared military capabilities, and an unwavering political will. Our world is safer and more prosperous when the United States of America and our allies are strong, free, and unapologetic in defense of our Western tradition of freedom.

That is June 6. That is 1944. That is D-Day. So let us here resolve the formidable alliance forged in the crucible of World War II will remain ready, will rebuild, and will recommit. And in doing that we truly commemorate the men of D-Day. And we place them, all of them, in the hands of Almighty God. In fact, from my devotions just this very morning, Psalm 20 verse seven, some trust in chariots and some in horses, but we, but we trust in the name of the Lord our God. May the Lord our God bless our warriors. May the Lord our God bless the enduring 250-year friendship between our two great republics, and may the Lord our God forever bless the United States of America. Thank you.

ATTACHMENT FOURTEEN – FROM FORBES

PETE HEGSETH ATTACKS EUROPE’S IMMIGRATION POLICIES IN D-DAY ANNIVERSARY SPEECH

By Antonio Pequeño IV, Jun 06, 2026, 12:09pm EDT Jun 06, 2026, 12:23pm EDT

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth compared the 1944 Normandy landings to immigration in Europe, saying at a D-Day anniversary speech in France on Saturday that the continent was being “stormed by different dangerous ideologies.”

Hegseth said the legacy of those who fought at Normandy “demands far more than quiet reflection, it requires our active vigilance.”

“Sadly, today different European beaches are stormed by different dangerous ideologies,” Hegseth added.

The defense secretary named Spain, Italy, Greece and Bulgaria as places where “boats and men” were coming ashore.

“When will European capitals do something about that invasion, or is it too late? I pray not, and I believe not,” Hegseth said.

Crucial Quote

“In the years since these beaches, much of the West in some places, in some quarters and in some capitals, grew comfortable.” Hegseth said. “We forgot that freedom is not free. We forgot that peace is not wished into being, it is bought with purpose, with honor and with strength.”

Tangent

The Trump administration has framed Europe’s immigration policies as a threat to Western society, with President Donald Trump himself telling European leaders last year their “countries are going to hell.” Vice President JD Vance has followed Trump’s suit, recently blaming the December stabbing of British university student Henry Nowak on “the politics of self-hatred and the mass invasion of migrants, many of whom despise the West and the people who love it.” Vickrum Digwa, the man who stabbed Nowak, was sentenced to life in prison. British Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s office said Nowak’s family “said they do not want his death to be used to create further division, hatred or tension. We should be respecting their wishes.”

Key Background

Hegseth’s remarks come days after the European Union advanced significant changes to its immigration policies that seek to increase deportations and build detention centers outside the European Union known as “return hubs,” according to the Associated Press. Dutch lawmaker Malik Azmani said there was an “urgent need” for the new immigration policies, claiming only 28% of rejected asylum seekers return home, with most remaining in the European Union, the AP reported.

Further Reading

EU strikes migration deal for more deportations and detention centers abroad

ATTACHMENT FIFTEEN – FROM FRANCE 24

RESIDENTS OF FRENCH VILLAGE SAY US DEFENSE CHIEF HEGSETH NOT WELCOME FOR D-DAY VISIT

US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Saturday marked the 82nd anniversary of the World War II D-Day landings with a visit to Normandy, but did not attend the international ceremony hosted in Langrune-sur-Mer. Residents said his "warlike views" were unwelcome in their village and questioned his commitment to "democratic values".

US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Saturday travelled to Normandy to commemorate the 82nd anniversary of the World War II D-Day landings.

But after making a speech at the American military cemetery in Colleville-sur-Mer, he conspicuously skipped afternoon’s main international ceremony marking the anniversary of the Allied landings, which helped herald the end of World War II.

His presence was not missed by some residents of the village hosting the ceremony, Langrune-sur-Mer, who said the US official was not welcome there.

"He has very warlike views and it seems to us that this man does not share our democratic values," Sylvie Lamy Thepaut, a member of the municipal association Langrune en commun, told BFM TV.

A message on the association’s website called for Hegseth’s visit to be cancelled on the grounds that the Pentagon chief “espouses values contrary to democracy, human rights and peace” and had made “numerous anti-European remarks”, “warlike statements” and “American supremacist pronouncements".

“The honor of Langrune, that of France, and the memory of the young Allied soldiers – American, British, Canadian – who died on our beaches in the name of democracy would dictate canceling this individual’s visit,” the statement concluded.

Langrune-sur-Mer Mayor Franck Jouy declined to comment on Hegseth's visit, underscoring that the event was a memorial.

“We are here for a commemmoration and I don’t want to make it political,” he told BFMTV. “I’m here to remember the people who came to make sure that France was liberated.”

Attendees of Saturday’s ceremony in Langrune-sur-Mer included veterans from the United States and British Defence Minister John Healey, who hailed the "resilience" of the UK during the war and US allies as "this great people, friends of liberty".

French Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu paid tribute to the "3,000 men, barely 20 years old", who died on D-Day, offering "the breath of their youth and the sacrifice of their lives".

In his earlier speech at the American military cemetery, Hegseth utilised dehumanising anti-immigrant rhetoric, urging Europe to counter what he termed an "invasion" of its coastline by migrants.

Echoing the rhetoric of the US administration, he also called on European countries to do more to contribute to their own defence. European defence spending has been on the rise. 

Hegseth blasts ‘invasion’ of migrants on Europe’s beaches in D-Day speech in France

In an apparent reference to European defence initiatives, Lecornu said the continent had to meet "the challenge of our generation" to build "our autonomy, our capacity to defend ourselves" to face threats that are "getting closer, intensifying and multiplying".

The Normandy landings on June 6, 1944, were the largest amphibious operation in history.

An armada of 6,939 ships and 132,700 British, Canadian, American, Belgian, Norwegian and Polish troops stormed 80 kilometres (50 miles) of beaches in northern France.

The operation contributed decisively to the Allied victory over Nazi Germany, which was also being squeezed by USSR forces to the east.

ATTACHMENT SIXTEEN – FROM NEWS NATION

HEGSETH MARKS D-DAY ANNIVERSARY, STRESSES STRENGTH OF ALLIANCES

Jordan Perkins Updated: Jun 6, 2026 / 09:25 AM CDT

(NewsNation) — Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth joined world leaders in Normandy, France, to mark the 82nd anniversary of D-Day.

In his remarks, Hegseth drew parallels between June 6, 1944, and the present day, emphasizing the importance of alliances and shared sacrifice.

“We stand by our allies, and we expect our allies to be ready and capable to stand alongside us,” Hegseth said. “The heroes of 1944 did that — and so must we. Peace is secured only through strength, and that strength is built on both sides of the Atlantic through readiness, shared military capabilities and unwavering political will.”

A group of surviving World War II veterans also traveled to France to commemorate the anniversary.

House GOP moves to codify Hegseth’s ‘Department of War’ name change 

On June 6, 1944, nearly 160,000 Allied troops landed in Normandy, including about 73,000 Americans. British, Canadian and French forces were also part of the operation. The invasion involved roughly 11,000 aircraft, 7,000 ships and thousands of vehicles.

Historian and battle guide Paul Woodadge told NewsNation the ceremonies reflect the continued global unity demonstrated by Allied nations.

“It’s about being part of something that is still active in memory,” Woodadge said. “It reminds people that the battle and the soldiers’ efforts have not been forgotten.”

Woodadge said Hegseth’s remarks also drew implicit comparisons between World War II alliances and current geopolitical tensions, including the conflict with Iran, noting that cooperation among allies has historically involved disagreement as well as unity.

ATTACHMENT SEVENTEEN – FROM GUK

PETE HEGSETH’S D-DAY SPEECH ON IMMIGRATION CONDEMNED AS ‘GROTESQUE STUPIDITY’

Historians and campaigners accuse US defence secretary of desecrating memory of soldiers who fell in Normandy

By Ashifa Kassam Sun 7 Jun 2026 08.22 EDT

The US defence secretary, Pete Hegseth, has been accused by historians and rights campaigners of “grotesque stupidity” and desecrating the memory of the soldiers who stormed the beaches of Normandy after he sought to link immigration to the D-day anniversary, saying Europe was facing a different “invasion” of its shores.

Speaking in north-west France on Saturday to mark the 82nd anniversary of the D-day landings, Hegseth seized on the moment marking the wartime liberation of Europe to reiterate the US administration’s longstanding attack on European immigration policies.

“Sadly, today, different European beaches are stormed by different, dangerous ideologies,” Hegseth told those gathered at the American military cemetery in Colleville-sur-Mer.

“Beaches in Spain, Italy, Greece and Bulgaria, boats and men arrive. When will European capitals do something about that invasion, or is it too late? I pray not, and I believe not,” he said.

“The men who fought and died here restored freedom to Europe,” added Hegseth, a former Fox News host. “That freedom must be maintained by this generation of leaders and war fighters, or what they fought for was merely temporary.”

The remarks were swiftly condemned on social media. The English historian, author and television presenter Simon Schama described them as a “special kind of loathsomeness: a blend of historical deafness, grotesque stupidity and comically ludicrous self-importance”.

Schama added: “As if the little people’s rage against immigration somehow is superior to the war against the 3rd Reich and entitles this comic book nobody to lecture the actual heroes.”

From Jerusalem, the Israeli human rights lawyer Daniel Seidemann also weighed in. “This is an obscene desecration of the memories of those who stormed the beaches of Normandy, and especially of those who fell,” he wrote.

Anders Åslund, a Swedish economist and former senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, contrasted the comments with Hegseth’s later remarks on the US standing alongside its allies. “So much nonsense,” he wrote on social media. “‘We stand by our allies!’ No you don’t. You just attacked them. Immigration policies are internal matters.”

Åslund said Hegseth’s comments were particularly “clueless” given his recent decision to skip a key Nato meeting and Donald Trump’s vows to cut the number of troops in Europe. “Doesn’t Hegseth know that the most unreliable ‘ally’ by far is the US?” he said.

Hegseth’s outsized focus on EU migration echoes comments made by other American officials, including Trump, who have consistently sought to criticise the impact of migration on the continent, despite the US having a higher proportion of foreign-born residents than the EU.

Hours before Hegseth’s speech, the US vice-president, JD Vance, also waded into the matter with a social media post that blamed immigration for the killing of Henry Nowak, an 18-year-old British student stabbed in the UK. Nowak’s killer, a British-born Sikh, was convicted of murder and jailed for life with a minimum of 21 years.

On Sunday, the UK justice secretary and deputy prime minister, David Lammy, said he had had an “agreeable” conversation in which he had sought to set the record straight with Vance. “This has got nothing to do with mass migration. This young man was a Brit,” Lammy told Sky News. “Let’s be clear about that. And I said: ‘Look, Mr Vice-president, you’re wrong about this.’”

In the days before Hegseth’s visit to France, the plans had stirred up controversy, with one residents’ association calling for the trip to be cancelled. “This individual promotes values that go against democracy, human rights and peace,” the Langrune en Commun association, which advocates for environmentalism and solidarity among the village’s residents, said in a press release last week.

Speaking to the broadcaster BFMTV, one member of the association cautioned against acting as though everything was normal. “What’s happening with the Trump administration isn’t business as usual. The fact that Pete Hegseth is challenging all the international organisations that emerged from the second world war isn’t business as usual,” said Chantal Richard.

“The words must be spoken, he must be called out for who he is, for the values he represents: colonial, warmongering, racist, far-right values,” she added. “Silence seems to us to be the worst thing we can do on these issues.”

ATTACHMENT EIGHTEEN – FROM TIME

HEGSETH USES D-DAY ANNIVERSARY SPEECH TO ATTACK EUROPEAN IMMIGRATION POLICIES

By Rebecca Schneid Jun 6, 2026 12:52 PM ET

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth used a speech marking the anniversary of the D-Day landings in France on Saturday to attack European immigration policies. 

“Sadly, today, different European beaches are stormed by different dangerous ideologies. Beaches in Spain, in Italy, in Greece, and Bulgaria, boats and men arrive,” Hegseth said at the Normandy American Cemetery in Colleville-sur-Mer in northwestern France.

“When will European capitals do something about that invasion, or is it too late?” Hegseth asked. 

The defense secretary was speaking at an event commemorating the 82nd anniversary of Allied forces storming the beaches of Normandy on June 6, 1944. Operation Overlord eventually led to the recapture of France from the Nazis and the surrender of the Nazi regime some 11 months later. 

Why Poland Has Been Left ‘Dazed and Confused’ by the Trump Administration

The Trump Administration has been extremely critical of what it has characterized as lax European immigration policies since President Donald Trump entered his second term, claiming they could lead to the continent’s ruin.

The Administration’s national security strategy, released in December, called Europe “weak” and “decaying” and said that its governments' policies on immigration and free speech have left it at risk of “the prospect of civilizational erasure”. It also said that many NATO countries will soon “become majority non-European.”

Vice President J.D. Vance gave a similarly controversial speech at the Munich Security Conference in February 2025, which angered European leaders.  

“Of all the pressing challenges that the nations represented here face, I believe there is nothing more urgent than mass migration,” he said. 

Vance noted in his speech a car-ramming attack carried out by an Afghan asylum seeker in Germany the day before his speech. 

 “How many times must we suffer these appalling setbacks before we change course and take our shared civilization in a new direction?” he asked.

Vance used the same rhetoric again this week as he publicly blamed the United Kingdom’s immigration policy for the death of 18-year-old British student Henry Nowak, who was fatally stabbed last year in Southampton. He argued in a post on X that Nowak’s death was due to the country’s “mass invasion of migrants”.

“Each time a life like his is lost, the proper response—the only response—is righteous anger,” he said.

The man convicted of killing Nowak was not a migrant, but a British-Sikh.

Soon after Vance’s comments, a spokesperson for Prime Minister Keir Starmer condemned people “trying to interfere in our democracy and seeking to stir up division on our streets,” without naming Vance. 

“The Nowak family are grieving after Henry’s horrific murder. They have said they do not want his death to be used to create further division, hatred or tension,” the statement said. “We should be respecting their wishes.”

ATTACHMENT NINETEEN – FROM BBC

HEGSETH ATTACKS EUROPE OVER MIGRATION WITH BEACH 'INVASION' D-DAY SPEECH

By Grace Eliza Goodwin

US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth has criticised European nations over migration for allowing what he described as an "invasion" on their shores, during a D-Day anniversary speech in France.

Hegseth was speaking in Normandy 82 years after allied forces stormed French beaches to liberate Nazi-occupied Europe in 1944.

"Sadly, today, different European beaches are stormed by different dangerous ideologies," Hegseth said. "Beaches in Spain, in Italy, in Greece and Bulgaria. Boats and men arrive. When will European capitals do something about that invasion?"

Migration has become a major political issue across Europe, with parties supporting hardline immigration policies surging in polls.

The Trump administration sees an immigration crackdown as a key part of its domestic policy agenda, requesting billions more in funding for enforcement agencies.

Hegseth's comments mark a further criticism of European migration policy by senior members of the Trump administration.

On Friday, US Vice-President JD Vance blamed the death of the 18-year-old British student Henry Nowak, who was fatally stabbed last year in Southampton by Vickrum Digwa, on the "mass invasion of migrants" and said the "only response" was "righteous anger".

Downing Street responded by criticising "people trying to interfere in our democracy," adding that the Nowak family had "said they do not want his death to be used to create further division".

And Deputy Prime Minister David Lammy told the BBC's Laura Kuenssberg that "politicians should be very careful and very cautious" about their language.

"We're in this new online space that can rapidly become toxic," he explained, adding that concerns around Henry Nowak's case had become a "global" issue because of the "viral" footage of his arrest.

The Crown Prosecution Service has confirmed that Digwa was born British.

Speaking in France, Hegseth said that in the years since D-Day some European capitals have grown too "comfortable" with their hard-fought freedoms, forgetting that "freedom is not free".

"The men who fought and died here restored freedom to Europe," Hegseth said. "That freedom must be maintained by this generation of leaders and war fighters or what they fought for was merely temporary."

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D-Day was the largest seaborne military operation ever attempted and involved the simultaneous landing of tens of thousands of troops from the UK, US and Canada on five separate beaches in Normandy in northern France.

US President Donald Trump has also criticised European immigration policy, telling the UN last year that European countries were "going to hell" due to "uncontrolled migration".

In response, UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer said the president's remarks were "not right", while accepting the "challenge" of tackling illegal migration, particularly from people crossing the English Channel in small boats.

Sea arrivals into mainland Europe peaked in 2015, when the UN said more than a million people crossed the Mediterranean - a number fuelled in part by a wave of refugees fleeing Syria's civil war and conflict in Afghanistan.

Between April 2025 and March 2026, there were a combined 169,341 sea arrivals to the UK, Greece, Italy, Spain and Cyprus. Crossings to the UK accounted for about 23% of the total.

Between 1 January and 3 June 2026, a total of 9,142 people crossed the English Channel by small boat to the UK from France. This was down by 38% on the same period the previous year.

In December, the Trump administration unveiled its new National Security Strategy, which asserted that if current trends continue Europe would be "unrecognisable in 20 years or less" and its economic issues are "eclipsed by the real and more stark prospect of civilisational erasure".

Domestically, the Trump administration has made anti-immigration policy a key tenet of its agenda, with agents from the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE) making thousands of arrests since January 2025.

ATTACHMENT TWENTY – FROM THE WASHINGTON TIMES

HEGSETH INVOKES IMMIGRATION AND ‘INVASION’ IN D-DAY SPEECH IN FRANCE

U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth salutes during a ceremony at the US cemetery to commemorate the 82nd anniversary of the D-Day, in Colleville-sur-Mer, Normandy, France, Saturday, June 6, 2026.

By Associated Press - Saturday, June 6, 2026

PARIS — U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth used a D-Day anniversary speech on Saturday to appear to link immigration by sea to the wartime liberation of Europe, warning that the freedom won by Allied troops could prove temporary if leaders failed to defend it.

Hegseth, speaking at the Normandy American Cemetery in Colleville-sur-Mer in northwestern France during commemorations for the 82nd anniversary of the June 6, 1944, landings, said that today, “different European beaches are stormed by different dangerous ideologies.”

“Beaches in Spain and Italy and Greece and Bulgaria. Boats and men arrive,” he said.

“When will European capitals do something about that invasion? Or is it too late?” he added. “I pray not, and I believe not.”

Hegseth did not use the word immigration, but his remarks echoed broader Trump administration criticism of Europe over migration, borders and what U.S. officials have described as censorship of nationalist and far-right voices.

On Saturday, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s office condemned U.S. Vice President J.D. Vance for blaming immigration for the killing of Henry Nowak, an 18-year-old British student stabbed to death in Southampton, even though both Nowak and his killer were British.

In December, the Trump administration’s national security strategy warned that Europe faced the “prospect of civilizational erasure” and could become “unrecognizable” within 20 years.

ATTACHMENT TWENTY ONE – FROM THE WASHINGTON TIMES

D-DAY DAWNS AND HOPEFULLY, AMERICANS DON’T YAWN

By Cheryl K. Chumley - The Washington Times - Saturday, June 6, 2026

OPINION:

June 6, 2026: It’s the 82nd anniversary of D-Day in Normandy — the largest amphibious invasion in recorded history, when five divisions stormed the beaches of Normandy, France, and 73,000 U.S. troops joined tens of thousands of allied forces to fight one of the world’s biggest evils. It was a pivotal point in the war.

And a majority of Americans don’t even know what it was all about, according to the American Council of Trustees and Alumni.

In a survey conducted years ago, ACTA found, “a quarter of American adults don’t know that D-Day occurred during World War II. It also found that more than half of American adults — including 43 percent of college students — don’t know Franklin D. Roosevelt was president at the time of the invasion.”

That was 2014.

“D-Day? What’s That?” Roper Center wrote in that same time frame.

No doubt, America’s knowledge of and respect for the sacrifices of the greatest generation have only grown dimmer, in large part because of the socialism that’s being force fed youth in the public school systems; in larger part because of the lack of truthful histories that are being taught in K-12; in equally large part because of the vigorous defense of communism and anti-Americanism that college professors around the nation have used as their foundational teaching tools in the last few decades.

Once, America fought racism.

Now, too many in America are embracing it.

It won’t be long before D-Day’s heroes are turned into villains.

If America doesn’t return to a time of teaching the exceptionalism of this nation — the ideal of individualism, the concept of God-given rights and liberties — and simultaneously press forth the darkness of collectivism in all its various forms (Marxism, communism, socialism, progressivism, etc.), it won’t be long before the foundations of the Constitution are shaken to dust; forever blown to the wind.

From the Dwight D. Eisenhower library: “The invasion force included 7,000 ships and landing craft manned by over 195,000 naval personnel from eight allied countries. Almost 133,000 troops from the United States, the British Commonwealth and their allies, landed on D-Day. Casualties from these countries during the landing numbered 10,300. By June 30, over 850,000 men, 148,000 vehicles, and 570,000 tons of supplies had landed on the Normandy shores. Fighting by the brave soldiers, sailors and airmen of the allied forces west front, and Russian forces on the eastern front, led to the defeat of German Nazi forces.”

It led to the defeat of sheer, unadulterated evil.

And thousands and thousands and thousands died fighting against this sheer evil.

And antisemites abound in America, 2026. And socialism grows in America, 2026. And freedoms are used by freedom’s enemies to enslave in America, 2026.

That today’s Democrat Party actually embraces and emboldens the very type of evil America fought a few decades ago speaks volumes about the perilous direction of this nation.

• Cheryl Chumley can be reached at cchumley@washingtontimes.com or on Twitter, @ckchumley. Listen to her podcast “Bold and Blunt” by clicking HERE. And never miss her column; subscribe to her newsletter and podcast by clicking HERE. Her latest book, “God-Given Or Bust: Defeating Marxism and Saving America With Biblical Truths,” is available by clicking HERE.

ATTACHMENT TWENTY TWO – FROM NEWSWEEK

HEGSETH USES D-DAY EVENT TO WARN OF ‘INVASION’ BY ‘DANGEROUS IDEOLOGIES’

By Hollie Silverman Jun 06, 2026 at 12:45 PM EDT updated Jun 06, 2026 at 01:14 PM EDT

At a ceremony marking the 82nd anniversary of the D-Day landings, Department of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth invoked the legacy of the Allied troops who stormed the beaches of Normandy to issue a sharp warning regarding what he characterized as a modern-day “invasion” of “dangerous ideologies” in Europe. Speaking Saturday in Normandy, France, the defense secretary urged Western leaders to act decisively and called for renewed strength across the transatlantic alliance.

"Sadly, today different European beaches are stormed by different dangerous ideologies. Beaches in Spain and Italy and Greece and Bulgaria," Hegseth stated. "Boats and men arrive. When will European capitals do something about that invasion?"

Hegseth did not explicitly elaborate on the specific ideologies he was referencing. Newsweek reached out via email on Saturday seeking further clarification on his remarks.

The address underscores how the legacy of World War II—and the shared sacrifice embodied by the Normandy landings—continues to be leveraged in contemporary debates surrounding national identity, migration, and security. Hegseth’s remarks come at a time when Europe faces persistent migration pressures, shifting political dynamics, and broader geopolitical tensions, including the Iran war, highlighting competing visions for safeguarding democratic values.

Key Takeaways from Hegseth’s Address

Hegseth’s speech centered heavily on contrasting the historic 1944 liberation of Europe with current demographic and political shifts on the continent.

· The Call to Action: Hegseth questioned the efficacy of current European leadership, asking, “When will European capitals do something about that invasion? Or is it too late?” He followed by stating, “I pray not, and I believe not.”

· The Stewardship of Freedom: Emphasizing that the soldiers buried in Normandy "restored freedom to Europe," Hegseth argued that the responsibility to maintain that liberty now falls on the current generation. He echoed former President Ronald Reagan’s famous maxim that “freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction,” warning that without proactive defense, the achievements of WWII military veterans could prove temporary.

· Transatlantic Commitments: The defense secretary reinforced the importance of military readiness and shared responsibility within the NATO alliance. While reaffirming that the United States stands by its allies, he noted that Washington expects partner nations to be “capable and ready to stand alongside us,” calling for robust military capabilities and "unwavering political will" on both sides of the Atlantic.

· A Solemn Conclusion: Hegseth closed by invoking faith and scripture, citing Psalm 20—“Some trust in chariots and some in horses”—and placing the memory of the fallen “in the hands of Almighty God,” framing remembrance as both a solemn duty and an active contemporary mandate.

ALIGNMENT WITH TRUMP ADMINISTRATION POLICY

Though Hegseth did not explicitly use the word "immigration" during his address, the speech reflects the Trump administration's current National Security Strategy, issued late last year, which explicitly warned that European nations face the "prospect of civilizational erasure" in part if migration pressures remain unaddressed. Furthermore, Hegseth’s demands for enhanced European military readiness echo the administration's strict "burden-sharing" approach to transatlantic partnerships, emphasizing that the U.S. expects allies to actively fund and secure their own defense rather than relying entirely on American subsidies.

Last year, Vice President JD Vance delivered a speech at the Munich Security Conference and told European leaders that there is "nothing more urgent than mass migration."

He said that one in five people living in Germany had moved there from abroad, a similar figure to the U.S. He blamed migration for the attack in Munich that happened a day prior where a man plowed his car into a group of demonstrators, injuring at least 36. The suspect was a 24-year-old asylum-seeker from Afghanistan who was arrested at the scene.

"It's a terrible story but it's one we've heard too many times. How many times must we suffer these appalling setbacks before we change course and take our shared civilization in a new direction?"

He added: "No voter on this continent went to the ballot box to open the floodgates to millions of unvetted immigrants. But you know what they did for? In England they voted for Brexit... and more and more, they are voting for political leaders who promise to put an end to out of control migration."

Which Boats Was Hegseth Referring To?

Though Hegseth did not name specific groups, his reference to "boats and men" arriving on the shores of Spain, Italy, and Greece aligns with long-standing maritime migration routes across the Mediterranean and Atlantic.

In recent years, the central and western Mediterranean routes have remained highly active and perilous pathways for migrants and asylum seekers departing from North and West Africa. Smugglers frequently utilize overcrowded, unseaworthy vessels to exploit political instability and varying enforcement levels across the region.

Region/Country	Recent Migration Data and Key Incident Context
Spain (Mainland & Canary Islands)	United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees data indicates that over 4,600 migrants arrived on Spanish shores in early 2026, with prominent countries of origin including Gambia, Senegal, and Mali. Local outlets reported instances such as a February landing in San Pedro del Pinatar where over 100 individuals, including 17 minors, received Red Cross assistance.
Greece & The Aegean	While traditionally a destination for crossings from Turkey, Greece has seen a rise in longer, riskier transits from North Africa. In December 2025, the Greek Coast Guard rescued over 500 individuals from a single vessel off the coast of Gavdos; the passengers included nationals from Bangladesh, Egypt, and Pakistan.
Italy	Geographically situated as a primary destination for central Mediterranean crossings, Italy routinely navigates fluctuating arrival numbers shaped by evolving naval enforcement policies and bilateral agreements with North African departure states.

What Is D-Day?

D-Day refers to June 6, 1944, the opening day of Operation Overlord, the massive Allied amphibious invasion of Nazi-occupied France during World War II.

Consisting of tens of thousands of troops from the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, and other Allied nations, it remains the largest amphibious military operation in history. The successful landings on the beaches of Normandy established a critical Western Front, breaking Nazi Germany's strategic hold on the continent and setting the stage for the liberation of Western Europe and the eventual Allied victory in 1945.

ATTACHMENT TWENTY THREE – FROM SNOPES

DID RESIDENTS OF FRENCH VILLAGE ASK HEGSETH TO SKIP D-DAY CEREMONY?

It's unclear why the defense secretary didn't attend the ceremony in Langrune-sur-Mer.

By Laerke Christensen Published June 8, 2026

Claim:

Residents of a French village that hosted a ceremony for the 82nd anniversary of the D-Day landings said U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth wasn't welcome to attend.

Rating:

True

Context

A residents' association in Langrune-sur-Mer put out a statement on June 2, 2026, asking Hegseth not to attend a D-Day commemoration ceremony in the village on June 6. Hegseth did not attend the ceremony on D-Day but the reason for his absence was unclear.

In June 2026, as France held events marking the 82nd anniversary of D-Day, a claim (archived) circulated online that residents in a village that hosted a commemorative ceremony said U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth wasn't welcome to attend.

One Facebook user who spread the claim about the reason for Hegseth's absence at a ceremony in Langrune-sur-Mer wrote: 

BREAKING: French Villagers just called Pete Hegseth "persona non grata" and demanded he stay home from D-Day ceremonies

Pete Hegseth made the trip to Normandy, France for the D-Day anniversary — but residents of Langrune-sur-Mer made clear he was not welcome. Locals and civic groups in the small coastal town publicly declared him unwanted before he even landed, releasing a pointed statement demanding his visit be canceled outright.

The claim circulated on X (archived), Instagram (archived), Threads (archived), Reddit (archived) and Bluesky (archived), as well. Snopes readers also contacted us about the claim.

It was true that Langrune en Commun, a residents' association in Langrune-sur-Mer, issued a statement (archived) on June 2 asking Hegseth to cancel a visit to the village for a planned D-Day ceremony on June 6.

The statement said Hegseth embraced values "contrary to democracy, human rights and peace," criticized the symbolism of his tattoos (Attachment Twenty Four below) and argued that his visit to Langrune-sur-Mer should be canceled out of respect for the people "who died on our beaches in the name of democracy."

BMF TV, a French news channel, reported that Hegseth was "persona non grata" in Normandy due to the statement, a phrase meaning unacceptable or unwelcome that some social media users when sharing the claim.

Hegseth spoke at the Normandy American Cemetery in Colleville-sur-Mer on June 6 but France 24 reported he did not attend the international commemorative ceremony in Langrune-sur-Mer later that day.

It was unclear why Hegseth did not attend the ceremony in Langrune-sur-Mer. Snopes contacted the village mayor, the Pentagon and the French D-Day Commemoration Committee that arranged the ceremony to ask who invited Hegseth and why he decided not to attend and await replies to our queries.

Langrune-sur-Mer Mayor Franck Jouy declined to comment on Hegseth's planned visit to BMF TV.

Because Hegseth did appear at the Normandy American Cemetery on June 6, we found no evidence French authorities turned his plane around or outright banned him from attending D-Day ceremonies in the country, as some readers wrote in asking about.

While speaking in Colleville-sur-Mer, Hegseth appeared to suggest the flow of migrants into European countries threatened the victory over Nazi Germany that Allied forces eventually helped secure through the D-Day landings and Operation Overlord. Speaking of the beach landings on June 6, 1944, Hegseth said (at 1:20:20):

Sadly, today, different European beaches are stormed by different dangerous ideologies. Beaches in Spain and Italy and Greece and Bulgaria. Boats and men arrive. When will European capitals do something about that invasion? Or is it too late?

Hegseth's comments appeared to echo a Trump administration national-security strategy from November 2025 that warned that Europe faced the "prospect of civilizational erasure" due to its nations' migration and free-speech policies (Page 25).

The D-Day landings on June 6, 1944, were the largest amphibious invasion in the history of warfare. More than 5,000 ships and 150,000 Allied soldiers landed on five beaches in Normandy to begin Operation Overlord and liberate Nazi-occupied Western Europe. The operation eventually led to the fall of Adolf Hitler's Third Reich.

Snopes has previously investigated a series of rumors about D-Day.

DeepL.com provided translations from French into English.

ATTACHMENT TWENTY FOUR – ALSO FROM SNOPES

WHAT TO KNOW ABOUT MEANING OF HEGSETH'S TATTOOS

Rumors about Hegseth's tattoos have consistently circulated online since Donald Trump nominated him as defense secretary.

By Jack Izzo

Published Oct. 5, 2025 Updated Oct. 9, 2025

Since U.S. President Donald Trump initially nominated Pete Hegseth as defense secretary, social media posts have claimed Hegseth wears white supremacist, Christian nationalist or Nazi tattoos.

§ Hegseth has about 12 tattoos on his right arm and chest, all of which are references to his military service and patriotism, and to his Christian faith.

§ None of the tattoos is a swastika, despite online claims to the contrary. 

§ While some have theorized that one of Hegseth's tattoos contains a covert reference to a neo-Nazi symbol, that theory is questionable at best. It's important to note that neo-Nazis often rely on plausible deniability to hide their symbolism. With that caveat, there is no clear evidence that any of Hegseth's tattoos represent a sympathy for or commitment to white supremacist or Nazi views. 

§ However, at least three of Hegseth's Christian-based tattoos do use symbols that are currently associated with — but don't necessarily indicate adherence to — Christian nationalist views (details below)

As soon as then-U.S. President-elect Donald Trump announced he would nominate Pete Hegseth, an Army veteran and Fox News host, as secretary of defense, rumors circulated online about Hegseth's tattoos. Posts across social media platforms variously claimed that Hegseth wears tattoos consisting of white nationalist, Christian nationalist and/or Nazi symbols. 

In a podcast appearance hosted by former Navy SEAL Shawn Ryan, Hegseth said that during President Joe Biden's 2021 inauguration, he had been removed from the event's security detail because of one of his tattoos. According to the Department of Defense, 12 National Guardsmen were removed from inauguration security as a precaution due to reports of "questionable behavior," including but not limited to extremism. If Hegseth is to be believed, he was one of those 12.

By examining Hegseth's social media accounts, Snopes was able to identify almost all of his tattoos, which could be classified into two different categories: tattoos representing Hegseth's military service and patriotism, and tattoos representing his Christian faith.

We should note we reached out to both Hegseth and Fox News for comment and will update this story if we hear back.

THE PATRIOTIC TATTOOS

Hegseth's tattoos referencing his military service and patriotism did not have any direct connection to neo-Nazis, Christian nationalism or white supremacist ideology. This group of tattoos included:

· The words "We The People" from the U.S. Constitution

· The year 1775 in Roman numerals (MDCCLXXV)

· A ring of stars around his elbow (possibly a reference to the Betsy Ross flag)

· A pair of crossed muskets (which normally represents military service)

· Benjamin Franklin's "Join, or Die" political cartoon from 1754

· The patch of the 187th Infantry Regiment, of which Hegseth was a member

· A stylized red shape that appears to be a torii gate, commonly found at the entrances to Shinto shrines in Japan. The symbol is used by the 187th Infantry Regiment, nicknamed the "Rakkasans." One theory claims that one of Hegseth's tattoos, a stylized American flag with its bottom stripe replaced by an AR-15 assault rifle, is secretly a neo-Nazi tattoo. This theory claims that the stars in the American flag are laid out in a pattern that creates the number "88." That number is used by neo-Nazis to represent "Heil Hitler," because the eighth letter of the alphabet is "H." Since this theory is solely based on an assumption about Hegseth's intent, Snopes can neither confirm nor disprove it.

The flag tattoo contains 13 stars, and their layout resembles the so-called Hopkinson flag, an early American flag purportedly designed by Francis Hopkinson, a signer of the Declaration of Independence. While the Hopkinson flag generally features six-pointed stars, no original designs of Hopkinson's flag survive, and reconstructions of the flag variously feature five-pointed, six-pointed and eight-pointed stars in the same layout. 

But there's another plausible explanation for what's going on, too — Hegseth's tattoo contains 13 stars because 50 stars wouldn't look as good. The U.S. Olympic Team's logo uses 13 stars on its flag, in the same layout, for that reason.

THE CHRISTIAN TATTOOS

Hegseth has five different tattoos referencing his Christian faith, and this is the group containing symbols many identified as problematic. None of these tattoos have direct connections to Nazi or white supremacist ideologies, though at least two have at least tangential links to Christian nationalism, while a third has been labeled "anti-Muslim" by at least one Islamic organization.

First and simplest are the Greek letters chi (X) and rho (P) in a circle on Hegseth's upper arm. Chi and rho are the first two letters in the Greek spelling of Jesus Christ's name, and the paired symbols have been used since Roman times to represent Christianity. 

Next, Hegseth has a sword contained within a cross tattooed on the inside of his forearm. This is a reference to the Bible passage Matthew 10:34, which reads: "Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword." Along the blade of the sword in Hegseth's tattoo, Hebrew letters spell "Yeshua," or Jesus. Matthew 10 is a chapter in which Jesus Christ tells his disciples to spread the word of God, noting later on in that verse that "whoever does not take up their cross and follow me is not worthy of me."

Two tattoos frequently cited as problematic both connect to the Crusades, when European armies invaded the "Near East" with the goal of conquering Jerusalem from the Muslims and placing it under Catholic control. Christian nationalists and other far-right movements have long glorified the Crusades. In a 2023 paper about the history of one particular Crusade song, medieval historian and musician Kate Arnold wrote the following:

The crusades and medievalist tropes in general have a history of being appropriated in the promotion of right-wing, nationalist and racist agendas, from the beginnings of medieval studies and the parallel rise of 'Romantic nationalism' in the nineteenth century, through twentieth-century Fascist and Nazi constructions of the medieval past as a kind of ethnically 'pure' golden age, to modern-day white supremacists in the USA styling themselves 'alt-knights'.

On his right pectoral, Hegseth has a large symbol called the "Jerusalem Cross," which consists of one large Greek cross and four small Greek crosses, one in each quadrant. (It is not, as some online claimed, a swastika.) The symbol has long been associated with the Crusades, based on sources dating back to the 1300s (the last Crusader Kingdom came to an end in 1291). 

On his bicep, Hegseth has the words "Deus Vult," Latin for "God wills it." That phrase was a rallying cry of the First Crusade, and may have even been used by Pope Urban II in 1095 when he ordered the First Crusade to begin. During the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riots, at least one flag flown read "Deus Vult".

Finally, placed right below the "Deus Vult" tattoo, Hegseth appears to have the Arabic word "kafir" tattooed. Kafir can be translated as "infidel" or "nonbeliever."

This tattoo appeared in a photo of Hegseth posted to the official Secretary of Defense X account on March 25, 2025, and was immediately criticized by some as being anti-Muslim. For instance, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) released a statement on March 27 calling the tattoo "a sign of both anti-Muslim hostility and personal insecurity."

This is not to say that any of these tattoos prove Hegseth is a Christian nationalist. However, the claim surfaced for a reason — Hegseth has at least two tattoos directly referencing the Crusades, an event that many Christian nationalists glorify, and one tattoo that is hard to interpret as anything other than anti-Muslim.

According to a December 2024 article about Hegseth in The New Yorker, he has reportedly made blatant anti-Muslim comments in the past. An internal report on Hegseth's behavior while he was president of the nonprofit organization Concerned Veterans for America claimed he repeatedly chanted "Kill All Muslims!" while at a bar in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio, in the early hours of May 29, 2015. (A lawyer for Hegseth called the claim "outlandish" and said it came from a "petty and jealous disgruntled former associate.")

In Hegseth's 2020 book "American Crusade," he directly referenced the Crusades when discussing the difference between "peaceful Muslims" and "Islamist Muslims," according to the progressive research group Media Matters.

"Just like the Christian crusaders who pushed back the Muslim hordes in the twelfth century," Hegseth wrote, "American Crusaders will need to muster the same courage against Islamists today." 

ATTACHMENT TWENTY FIVE – FROM HUFFPOST

HEGSETH SLAMMED FOR SLIPPING ANTI-MIGRATION MESSAGE INTO D-DAY TRIBUTE

The defense secretary claimed European beaches were being "stormed by different dangerous ideologies."

By Kelby Vera Jun 8, 2026, 01:25 AM EDT

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is facing backlash for using a speech commemorating D-Day to criticize migration in Europe.

While in France to mark the 82nd anniversary of the Normandy landings on Saturday, Hegseth drew a link between Allied forces’ deployment to take down Nazis during World War II and migrants moving to the continent.

“Today, different European beaches are stormed by different dangerous ideologies,” he said. “Beaches in Spain and Italy and Greece and Bulgaria. Boats and men arrive. When will European capitals do something about that invasion? Or is it too late? I pray not, and I believe not.”

On ABC’s “This Week” Sunday, Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas) characterized the remarks as “inappropriate” and “out of place” at an event meant to honor veterans of the operation, in which 2,500 Americans died.

“I think it should have been about their sacrifice, their service to their country, and what they did to protect the free world at a time of great peril against Nazi Germany,” McCaul said. “That should’ve been the message. It always has been in the past. And quite frankly, I thought it was inappropriate.”

English historian Simon Schama was more direct in his denouncement, per The Guardian. He described Hegseth’s comments as a “special kind of loathsomeness: a blend of historical deafness, grotesque stupidity and comically ludicrous self-importance.”

“As if the little people’s rage against immigration somehow is superior to the war against the 3rd Reich and entitles this comic book nobody to lecture the actual heroes,” Schama said.

Even before the remarks, some residents of Colleville-sur-Mer, France, wanted Hegseth to know he was not welcome. The local association, Langrune en commun, called for his appearance to be canceled and knocked him for his “warlike statements,” “anti-European remarks” and “American supremacist pronouncements,” according to France24.

ATTACHMENT TWENTY SIX – FROM THE WASHINGTON TIMES

SOME EUROPEANS, REP. BACON NOT HAPPY WITH HEGSETH’S RECENT D-DAY TRIP

By Mike Glenn - The Washington Times - Tuesday, June 9, 2026

What to know

· Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth visited France for D-Day anniversary ceremonies.

· His visit faced criticism from the civic group Langrune en Commun.

· Hegseth spoke at the Normandy American Cemetery honoring fallen soldiers.

· Hegseth linked current migrant flows to threats against European stability.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s recent visit to France to commemorate the 82nd anniversary of the June 6, 1944, D-Day landings drew criticism from some quarters days before he even arrived in the country.

Langrune en Commun, a civic group based in the French coastal village of Langrune-sur-Mer, made headlines when it demanded that Mr. Hegseth not attend a major international ceremony it was hosting. The village is located on Sword Beach, one of the primary D-Day landing locations.

“This individual [Mr. Hegseth] carries values contrary to democracy, human rights and peace. This is evidenced by his numerous anti-European remarks … warlike statements … and U.S. supremacist views,” Langrune en Commun said June 2 in a statement. “The honor of Langrune, that of France, and the memory of the young Allies: Americans, British, Canadians — who died on our beaches in the name of democracy — demand that the visit of this individual be canceled.”

It wasn’t clear why Mr. Hegseth did not attend the ceremony at Langrune-sur-Mer. He did speak at a ceremony at the Normandy American Cemetery in Colleville-sur-Mer, where he honored the American soldiers who landed on the beaches and the allies who fought alongside them to defeat the Nazis.

“The men buried here fought in a war-fighting alliance, where every partner brought its full measure of industry, courage and sacrifice — not empty slogans, not lavish summits, not communiques — [but] real allies doing real things, taking real losses, for a shared cause worth fighting and dying for,” Mr. Hegseth said.

He appeared to suggest that the flow of migrants into European countries today also poses a threat to safety and stability.

“Sadly today, different European beaches are stormed by different dangerous ideologies. In Spain, in Italy, Greece and Bulgaria, boats and men arrive,” Mr. Hegseth said. “When will European capitals do something about that invasion, or is it too late? I pray not, and I believe not.”

Although President Trump’s MAGA base mostly cheered Mr. Hegseth’s remarks, Rep. Don Bacon, Nebraska Republican and retired Air Force brigadier general, said the focus of the secretary’s address should have been on the troops who fought on the beaches. The congressman said the Trump administration is overly critical of Western Europe.

We have to work together to counter Russia, to counter China and to help us in the Middle East.”

ATTACHMENT TWENTY SEVEN – FROM SUBSTACK

MY PARENTS AND D-DAY

by Robert Reich

Friends,

Today is the 82nd anniversary of D-Day — the Allied invasion of Normandy on June 6, 1944. It’s referred to as “D-Day” after the military term for a day when a secret combat attack or operation is planned.

It was the largest seaborne invasion in history. It began the Western Allied effort to liberate western Europe from Nazi Germany.

Over 2,500 American soldiers, sailors, and airmen were killed during the initial amphibious assaults and airborne operations. All told, there were 4,414 confirmed Allied deaths on the first day of the invasion, which also included troops from the United Kingdom and Canada.

At the time of the invasion, my father was 30 years old, in a tank battalion readying to go to Europe. My mother was 25, working in a factory producing gas masks for the war. Some of their friends participated in the invasion. A few were paratroopers. Others were pilots. Others were soldiers.

As a small boy, I remember trying to talk with my father and my mother about D-Day. I wanted stories. The little I’d heard about it made it seem romantic and exciting. But they were reluctant to talk about it. They answered my questions in short sentences. Their voices were hurried. It was as if I was trying to open a door they’d rather keep closed. They had lost friends, relatives. D-Day, and the war it helped end, had left deep scars.

Eventually they and their generation were called America’s “greatest generation” for their valor and sacrifice. They had fought fascism and won.

Now, 82 years later, we have homegrown fascism. An entire political party seems to have given up on democracy. They’re supporting an egomaniacal “strong man” who cares only about enlarging his own (and his family’s) wealth and power.

His regime is marked by a degree of corruption, cruelty, and criminality never before witnessed in America’s national government.

The firing of so many top brass by Trump and his “war” secretary, Pete Hegseth, can be seen as a way to guarantee the loyalty of other officers to Trump rather than to America. Trump’s proposal to increase the U.S. military budget by nearly 50 percent can be understood as a bribe to officers. He wants them to side with him, if and when he tries to stay in power indefinitely.

He has already tried to turn much of America into a police state.

Public support for him is waning, and the federal courts have fought back. But it is startling and saddening how far Trump and his regime have gotten.

What happened to the bravery and dedication of the greatest generation? What became of the sacrifices my parents and their peers made so that this nation could be free?

How and why did so many Americans succumb to neofascism?

I think it has to do with the anger so many Americans have felt that they and their children haven’t been able to get ahead, no matter how hard they work. Trump and other neofascists have channeled that anger toward immigrants, gay people, transgender people, Muslims, and Black people.

Democrats and progressives should be channeling that anger toward the real culprits — a wealthy elite that’s used their money to gain political power and rig the economy to their benefit and against everyone else.

Another reason so many have succumbed to Trumpian neofascism is the passage of time. Eighty-two years is long enough for a nation to forget, especially a nation whose collective memory is short to begin with. Very few living Americans remember the terror and heroism of our fight against Nazi fascism. The greatest generation has mostly died off.

But we must not forget. Fascism is being born again, in America and in Europe. This time it’s masquerading as white Christian nationalism, but it’s as dangerous as ever.

The best way to remember and honor the men and women who risked everything for us is to fight neofascism — fight for a stronger democracy, fight for the rule of law and social justice, fight against bigotry.

ATTACHMENT TWENTY EIGHT – FROM DW

FRANCE: VETERANS MARK 82ND ANNIVERSARY OF D-DAY IN NORMANDY

By Emmy Sasipornkarn 06/06/2026

The last living World War II veterans have made the journey to France to commemorate the Normandy landings, which mark the beginning of the Allied campaign to liberate Western Europe from Nazi Germany.

https://p.dw.com/p/5Ex2s

Some of the last surviving veterans gathered in France on Saturday to mark the anniversary of D-Day, 82 years since the Allied landing in Nazi-occupied France during World War II.

Veterans will attend the annual Ceremony of Remembrance at the British Normandy Memorial.

Only six have confirmed their attendance this year, marking the smallest number present at the ceremony since the memorial opened in 2021.

Commemorations began with French schoolchildren walking across Juno Beach to mark H-Hour, the time at which British servicemen were deployed. 

The Jedburgh Pipe Band marched across Juno Beach to mark the military operation's 82nd anniversary.

WHAT IS D-DAY?

On June 6, 1944, nearly 160,000 Allied troops, made up of soldiers from the UK, the US, Canada, France and several other countries, landed in Normandy on the coast of northern France.

This date is known as "D-Day" — a military term for the first day of an operation. The "D" simply stands for day.

The Allied forces launched Operation Overlord, which led to the liberation of Western Europe from Nazi control.

On D-Day alone, 4,400 troops died from the combined Allied forces. The exact number of German casualties on the day is not known, but it is estimated that between 4,000 and 9,000 men were killed, wounded or missing. 

HEGSETH WARNS EUROPE FACES 'INVASION' OF DANGEROUS IDEOLOGIES

In a speech at the Normandy American Cemetery in Colleville-sur-Mer, US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth on Saturday linked immigration to the legacy of the D-Day landings.

"Sadly, today, different European beaches are stormed by different, dangerous ideologies. Beaches in Spain, Italy, Greece and Bulgaria, boats and men arrive," Hegseth said.

"When will European capitals do something about that invasion or is it too late? I pray not, and I believe not," he added.

The Pentagon chief's remarks echo criticisms often made by the administration of US President Donald Trump about Europe failing to control immigration. 

Hegseth said that Western countries had grown "comfortable" since World War II.

"We forgot that freedom is not free. We forgot that peace is not wished into being," he said.

His remarks also echoed Trump's demand that US allies in NATO increase their military budgets.

"We stand by our allies, and we expect our allies capable and ready to stand alongside us," he said. 

ATTACHMENT TWENTY NINE – FROM MOTHER JONES

HEGSETH WARNS EUROPE TO DEFEND ITSELF AGAINST A SECOND D-DAY

The Pentagon chief said Europeans were being “stormed” again in a speech that seemed to side with the Germans at Normandy.

By Alex Nguyen, June 6

In a perplexing speech Saturday commemorating the World War II D-Day landings in Normandy, France, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth called for European leaders to combat what he implied was a second, modern D-Day—in which European countries were being “stormed by different dangerous ideologies” accompanied by “boats and men.”

The original D-Day was the Allied invasion to liberate France from Nazi German domination: the defenders were Hitler’s National Socialists and their army, and the “dangerous ideology” was anti-fascism.

At Normandy in 1944, genocidal far-right extremists “defended” a conquered Europe against a multiracial force fighting for democratic ideas. In 2026, Hegseth’s speech suggested, it was happening again: “When will European capitals do something about that invasion?,” he asked.

Hegseth may have been confused—or, then again, we might be at the stage where our government explicitly aligns us with Nazism. After all, every single refugee we admitted to the US this year was supposedly fleeing anti-white persecution.

Commentators online noted Hegseth’s choice of words: 

While the self-proclaimed “Secretary of War” didn’t explicitly mention what those “dangerous ideologies” were, his past remarks and actions make it fairly clear. Last June, Hegseth ordered American troops to provide security during federal immigration raids in Los Angeles. In January, he thanked ICE for its invasion and occupation of Minnesota—“You are SAVING the country”—and followed the post with a graphic on X, listing three ways to avoid ICE: “don’t be here illegally,” “don’t attack I.C.E. officers,” and “obey federal and state laws.”

Since the beginning of Trump’s second term, Hegseth has fired or forcibly retired at least 24 generals and senior commanders without providing any merit-based justification provided; roughly 60 percent have been either Black officers or women of any race.

As my colleague Arianna Coghill wrote in September, for Hegseth, “a military with Black leadership, with women in senior roles, and without obstacles to a diverse officer corps is one in which white men have to take orders from the wrong kind.”

Hegseth, Trump, and JD Vance’s obsession with a more racist Europe is having an impact, with explicitly racist parties in multiple European countries touting their ties to the Trump administration and a white nationalist conference in Portugal recently inviting disgraced former Customs and Border Patrol “commander-at-large” Gregory Bovino to deliver a prominent address; earlier this week, the European Union advanced a plan to increase deportations and build detention centers abroad—which it calls “return hubs”—in a move with unmistakable echoes of Trump administration policies. 

ATTACHMENT THIRTY – FROM SALON

LEAVE IT TO PETE HEGSETH TO RUIN D-DAY

The French are still grateful for America’s 1944 sacrifice. Hegseth’s loathsome tirade may have changed that

By Heather Digby Parton Published June 9, 2026 6:45AM (EDT)

If you’ve ever been to Normandy in early June of any given year, you probably saw something that’s not all that common. Around the anniversary of the D-Day invasion on June 6, the whole place turns into a love-fest for America. Or at least it used to. After what Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth did on his visit this year, I’m not sure that will ever happen again.

I’ve been there during the annual commemorations, and it’s a very moving experience. If you’ve seen movies like “The Longest Day” or Saving Private Ryan,” you have some idea of what it was like, but when you personally come in by boat and sail along the coast near the beaches where the Allied troops landed 82 years ago, it really hits home. It must have felt like a suicide mission but they did it anyway. There were more than 10,000 casualties among the Allied troops who stormed the beaches that day, with about 4,400 killed, 2,500 of them Americans. The best estimates of German casualties are between 4,000 and 9,000 killed or injured.

Ever since, the people of France and Normandy have shown their gratitude for America’s sacrifice. They gave the U.S. a perpetual concession for the cemetery where most of those fallen Americans are buried. Every year, local people come along and rub beach sand into the marble headstones so the names of those U.S. soldiers can still be read. There are plaques and memorials everywhere; the war and the Nazi occupation still seem present, even to younger generations who have lived among these memories their whole lives.

Related

Pete Hegseth’s manly act is backfiring

In normal circumstances, when American dignitaries come to Normandy for the anniversary to pay their respects, it’s a solemn but proud occasion. It was arguably one of the finest moments in American history, a true act of courage and sacrifice for the greater good, at great risk to U.S. troops and the British, Canadian, Polish, Norwegian and Free French allies who fought alongside them. American leaders usually take that moment of deserved honor and gratitude to pay homage to the dead and wax poetic about the values and the ideals for which they died.

Thankfully, America didn’t send Donald Trump to Normandy this year to rant about the 2020 election or show off pictures of his glorious ballroom. Instead, we sent Hegseth, who was at least as bad. Actually, he was worse.

Ronald Reagan gave perhaps the most famous Normandy speech on the 40th anniversary of D-Day in 1984, now remembered as “The Boys of Pointe du Hoc.” Many D-Day veterans were present on that day to hear Reagan say, “These are the boys of Pointe du Hoc. These are the men who took the cliffs. These are the champions who helped free a continent. These are the heroes who helped end a war. Gentlemen, I look at you, and I think of the words of Stephen Spender’s poem: You are men who in your lives fought for life … and left the vivid air signed with your honor.” We need not admire him politically to agree that Reagan was good at that sort of thing.

Barack Obama was equally moving on the 70th anniversary in 2014, saying, “What more powerful manifestation of America’s commitment to human freedom than the sight of wave after wave after wave of young men boarding those boats to liberate people they had never met?”

This year marked the 82nd anniversary, and almost no one who was there in 1944 is still with us. Thankfully, America didn’t send Donald Trump over there to rant about the 2020 election or show the French pictures of his glorious ballroom. Instead, we sent Hegseth, who was at least as bad. Actually, he was worse. I think most of the world knows what Trump is by now, but some may still have believed that he was an anomaly who may still have some sane people around him. If so, Hegseth quickly put that thought to rest.

For reasons known only to himself, Hegseth gave a speech in which he drew a bizarre analogy between the Allied soldiers who stormed the beaches at Normandy to fight the Nazis and the “dangerous ideologies” (meaning those carried by immigrants, we must suppose) that are now storming the “beaches in Spain, Italy, Greece and Bulgaria.” He asked, “When will European capitals do something about that invasion, or is it too late? I pray not, and I believe not.”

Hang on a minute: Who are the good guys and who are the bad guys in this fantasy scenario? And what does any of that have to do with the Allies liberating occupied Europe from the Germans, who are, the last time I checked, also Europeans? Is Hegseth suggesting that the French were wrong to have welcomed the Allied anti-fascist “invasion” of a continent that was, at the time, being “defended” by the Nazis?

Let’s just chalk that part up to bad speechwriting and hope that whichever 20-something MAGA toady was responsible for that tortured analogy will soon dispatched to another job that has nothing to do with history, oratory or nuclear weapons. We understand Hegseth’s intentions perfectly well. Like the rest of the MAGA crowd around Trump in this second term, he’s a xenophobic, racist Christian nationalist. Also like the rest of them, he’s taken it upon himself to lecture berate Europe over its immigration policies in the name of saving “the West.” Using the D-Day anniversary to do it is just chef’s kiss, I’d have to say.

English historian Simon Schama described Hegseth’s words as “a special kind of loathsomeness: a blend of historical deafness, grotesque stupidity and comically ludicrous self-importance.”

Did his speech go over well? It did not. Perhaps the best retort, among many, came from distinguished English historian Simon Schama, who described Hegseth’s words as “a special kind of loathsomeness: a blend of historical deafness, grotesque stupidity and comically ludicrous self-importance. As if the little people’s rage against immigration somehow is superior to the war against the Third Reich and entitles this comic book nobody to lecture the actual heroes.”

As it happens, Hegseth wasn’t alone in offending the entire Western world, which he purports to revere. The day before that embarrassing gaffe, Vice President JD Vance decided to lecture the U.K. on its immigration policies as well, commenting on a now-notorious murder case in England in which the perpetrator was a Sikh man and the victim was white. Unsurprisingly, Vance hadn’t done his homework: Both men involved in that crime were British by birth.

A couple of days later, former Border Patrol generalissimo Greg Bovino, the scourge of Minneapolis who sported that fancy, fashy overcoat and fade haircut, appeared in Portugal at a “Remigration Summit,” where he was the star attraction. As Salon’s Andrew O’Hehir wrote this weekend, “Bovino represents the MAGA soul — perhaps we should say the MAGA Geist — which is not just kinda-fascist but deeply and enthusiastically fascist, not just curious about the legacy of Nazism but achingly, passionately eager to revive it.” He’s not the only one.

What fabulous representatives these are of the country that Europe once looked upon with gratitude and respect: clownish, crude and stupid all at once.

Hegseth told those gathered at the D-Day ceremony that “America will lead — and we must — but capable allies must be right there with us, shoulder to shoulder, in the breach, when it matters,” clearly suggesting he doesn’t think that they’re capable or will show up. That’s some irony, considering that he and the rest of the Trump administration are right now clearly considering abandoning those allies to a Russian threat and bailing out on a war in the Middle East. How fatuously un-self-aware is it to tell people in another country that “peace is not wished into being, it is bought with purpose, with honor and with strength. The men who landed on these beaches knew this; the question we ask ourselves is, do we?” I don’t know about Europe, but clearly the United States of America in 2026 does not.

ATTACHMENT THIRTY ONE – FROM JEZEBEL

PETE HEGSETH MADE A D-DAY ANALOGY AND ENDED UP ON THE NAZI SIDE

It takes a truly remarkable level of right-wing brain rot to stand on the literal graves of the men who defeated Hitler, deploy a xenophobic dog whistle, and accidentally cast the Third Reich as the side that simply needed better border security.

By Wren Woodson  |  June 9, 2026 | 8:15am

Imagine you’re a 90-year-old WWII veteran, back at one of the most sacred beaches in history. You’ve traveled across the Atlantic to stand on the very sands where your teenage friends bled out during the largest seaborne invasion in history to liberate Nazi-occupied Europe. You’re expecting a solemn tribute to courage, sacrifice, and the defeat of fascism.

Instead, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth steps up to the microphone and starts complaining about immigrants.

Speaking in Normandy, France, during ceremonies marking the 82nd anniversary of D-Day, Hegseth warned that Europe faces a new kind of “invasion.”

“Sadly, today, different European beaches are stormed by different dangerous ideologies. Beaches in Spain, in Italy, in Greece and Bulgaria. Boats and men arrive. When will European capitals do something about that invasion?”

It’s hard to overstate how bizarre this analogy is.

D-Day is perhaps the most famous example in modern history of men arriving by boat on European beaches for a morally righteous cause. Thousands of Allied troops crossed the English Channel and stormed Normandy to help defeat Nazi occupation. So when Hegseth invokes D-Day to warn about migrants arriving by boat, is he suggesting those boats should have been stopped? Because by his logic, the people coming ashore in boats are the bad guy “invaders”—the exact role played by the Allied soldiers who liberated Europe.

It takes a truly remarkable level of right-wing brain rot to stand on the literal graves of the men who defeated Hitler, deploy a xenophobic dog whistle, and accidentally cast the Third Reich as the side that simply needed better border security.

Now I want to believe this was a syntactic oversight—Hegseth doesn’t seem like the type who aced English class. But that would require giving him credit for a baseline level of historical ignorance, rather than intentional malice.

After all, Pete Hegseth has long spurred white-supremacist and Christian-nationalist speculation because of his tattoos. He literally has “Deus Vult” (God Wills It)—a historical Crusader battle cry that has been thoroughly co-opted by modern far-right extremists—inked across his bicep. This tattoo got him flagged as an “insider threat” by a fellow guardsman and barred from serving on duty during Joe Biden’s 2021 inauguration.

He also sports a massive Jerusalem Cross on his chest, a symbol heavily romanticized by the “Western civilization is under siege” crowd.

So with this context, his remarks perfectly echo the administration’s broader panic over Europe’s “civilizational erasure,” coming almost a day after Vice President JD Vance unhingedly blamed a tragic UK stabbing on a “mass invasion of migrants” (despite both the victim and the suspect being British).

It seems Hegseth, Vance, and the rest of the Trump administration have settled on a simple message: the West is under siege, and the only way to save it is to embrace the very kind of ethno-nationalism our grandfathers died to defeat.

Which is why there was something uniquely grotesque about hearing that message delivered in Normandy. Of all the places in the world to warn that people arriving by boat are an existential threat, Hegseth chose the one that would most make him seem like a Nazi-sympathizer.

ATTACHMENT THIRTY TWO – FROM GEOPOLITICAL FUTURES

REFLECTING ON D-DAY

By George Friedman June 8, 2026

I am writing this on June 6, 2026, 82 years after Gen. Dwight Eisenhower ordered Operation Overlord. That order – and the operation’s success – guaranteed the defeat of Nazi Germany. It’s possible that Germany could have defended itself from the Russian counterattack in the east, but with U.S. and British forces also attacking in the west, Germany was fated to fall.

Operation Overlord’s success was important, of course, but there was an earlier and even more critical decision that guaranteed Germany’s inevitable defeat: Hitler’s decision to declare war on the United States. Germany might have been able to stop the Soviets and the British, but declaring war on the U.S., just four days after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, ensured Hitler’s downfall.

Like most Europeans and Japanese, Hitler did not understand the United States. Isolationism seemed to them to be an eternal American principle. After World War I, the American reaction against Europe was profound. Hitler interpreted this as weakness. At one point, he met with Charles Lindbergh, who was both a determined isolationist and a Hitler admirer. The meeting reinforced the Fuehrer’s belief that Americans would not go to war or, if they did, would not do so with the requisite determination to win.

Japan made the same mistake. Franklin D. Roosevelt was concerned with Japan’s imperial ambitions, but he knew he could not initiate war. Instead, he blocked the flow of oil, steel and other resources Japan needed but could not produce domestically. That led to the attack on Pearl Harbor, the purpose of which was to force the U.S. to enter negotiations and end the embargo. Instead, the U.S. declared war on Japan.

There was another element to Japan’s calculations. Germany had approached Japan to join in the attack on Russia from the east. Tokyo apparently intimated to Hitler that it would, but only after dealing with the Americans. The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor stunned and enraged the American public, and isolationism dissolved within hours. The idea of negotiating with Japan was seen as treason. But, as promised, Germany declared war on the U.S. days later, incorrect in its belief that Washington would avoid battle at all costs.

Germany’s decision goes down in the annals of stupid geopolitical moves. The U.S. was less interested in entering a simultaneous war in Europe than it was in avenging Pearl Harbor. I am not sure what the U.S. would have done in the long run, but I believe Roosevelt would have had a hard time declaring war on Germany had Germany not declared first.

Its declaration was predicated on the assumption that the U.S. would quickly capitulate to Japan, which would then be free to attack Russia from the east. Whether Japan would have done that is unknown, but what is known is that Germany’s declaration of war on the U.S. ultimately led Hitler to blow his brains out in a cellar in Berlin and to the nuclear attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

The bottom line is that Germany and Japan fundamentally misunderstood anti-war sentiment in the U.S. as a permanent feature. It was a fatal mistake. They also miscalculated how quickly the U.S. could leverage industrial development, which created enormous military power, and failed to understand the unity and collective rage Americans felt when the stakes demanded it.

It’s unclear whether the Soviet Union and the U.K. could have defeated Germany alone. Bringing the Americans into the war made defeat certain. The military brilliance of the Normandy invasion, the solidarity of Britain and the U.S., and the bravery and competence of American soldiers and sailors – not to mention the nature of American culture, dispensing with disagreement when danger appeared – should not be forgotten.

I was born in Europe and brought to the U.S. as an infant but raised in a household of Europeans. On the anniversary of D-Day, I reflect on how profoundly the rest of the world, which I have travelled widely, still misunderstands the nature of the United States. We periodically engage in the luxury of internal discord and even rage. That’s part of our culture. The world should think of Normandy when evaluating the nature of America. I urge my fellow citizens to do the same.

ATTACHMENT THIRTY THREE – FROM THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR

ON THIS D-DAY ANNIVERSARY, THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION BOOSTS EUROPE’S FAR RIGHT

By Ned Temko Columnist June 10, 2026, 4:34 p.m. ET|London

The mood at the remembrance ceremony was somber, on ground hallowed by the bravery of tens of thousands of American and Allied troops who surged onto the narrow stretch of sand, just a few hundred yards away, to finally liberate Europe from Adolf Hitler.

But this year’s commemoration of the June 1944 D-Day landings – at the Normandy American Cemetery, overlooking Omaha Beach in northwest France – played out unlike any before it.

In a departure from speakers’ traditional emphasis on the abiding importance of the shared values of the liberating nations – and of the postwar transatlantic security alliance, NATO – U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth delivered a strikingly different political message.

WHY WE WROTE THIS

The shared democratic values between the United States and Europe that were once the bedrock of transatlantic cooperation are in tatters. On this year’s anniversary of the D-Day landings that turned the tide against Nazi Germany in World War II, the Trump administration offered a full-throated endorsement of Europe’s far-right political parties.

He rebuked European governments for failing to crack down on immigration from the Middle East and Africa – an “invasion,” as Mr. Hegseth put it, that he likened to the Allies’ D-Day thrust against the Nazis.

The timing of his remarks gave them added impact.

They came ahead of NATO’s annual summit early next month, to be hosted by Turkey, and on top of already growing strains within the alliance.

U.S. President Donald Trump has recently revived talk of quitting NATO altogether, angered by the European allies’ unwillingness to join his war against Iran.

The main concern for European partners remains Russia’s war on Ukraine. 

While they’ve been ramping up their defense spending to compensate for Mr. Trump’s reduction of U.S. support for Kyiv, they’re still not in a position to do without America’s lynchpin NATO role.

And even if Mr. Trump stops short of a formal withdrawal, European confidence in America’s support has been inexorably waning.

A new opinion poll this week, conducted across 15 European countries, found an average of only 11% of respondents considered the U.S. to be an ally. That was down from around 25% in late 2024, and 16% late last year.

Half of those surveyed did view Washington as a “necessary partner.” But most said that they were no longer confident America would come to their countries’ defense if they were under attack.

Yet Mr. Hegseth’s speech tapped into an even deeper worry among European leaders about U.S. policy.

It’s not just a concern about a potentially loosened American security commitment and their capability to provide sufficient help to Ukraine on their own.

It’s that the Trump administration no longer feels a political kinship, or a sense of shared values, with America’s post-World War II democratic partners – and that it sees its true allies as the far-right, anti-immigration parties rising in the polls in a number of European countries.

Mr. Hegseth’s speech followed another recent message about European immigration policy from Vice President JD Vance, in response to controversy surrounding videocam footage of the police response to a fatal knife assault on a teenager in Britain.

Though the attacker was a British man of Punjabi descent, Mr. Vance blamed the attack on a failure by “European elites” to oppose a “mass invasion of migrants.”

U.K. officials criticized the vice president’s intervention.

But they see little prospect he will step back from his public support for anti-immigration populist parties in Britain or elsewhere in Europe.

That’s a particular concern for Britain’s Prime Minister Keir Starmer. Not only is he facing a possible leadership challenge from within his own Labour Party. This week, he was also having to defuse public unrest in Northern Ireland over an attempted beheading on Monday in Belfast – not by a locally born man, but by an asylum seeker from Sudan.

On both security and immigration, European leaders still hope they’ll be able to find some common ground with the Trump administration.

Not only are they boosting their own defense spending. They’ve tightened immigration controls over the past few years, and the numbers of migrants arriving in European countries are far lower than their peak levels of a decade ago.

Still, the Trump administration’s views toward Europe have been hardening in recent months.

In its recent national security strategy released last December, the White House warned that many European countries were facing “the stark prospect of civilizational erasure” as a result of the arrival of non-European immigrants.

It said that the U.S. would cultivate “patriotic European political” parties resisting immigration.

A couple of weeks ago, in remarks at a security conference in Asia, Mr. Hegseth accused European allies of having thrown “open their borders and hollowed out their militaries.”

“Europe and NATO have some big decisions to make,” he declared.

The particulars of Mr. Hegseth’s vision for America’s closest allies were left unclear: He told the D-Day audience that this would have to go beyond “empty slogans … lavish summits [or] communiques.”

But the sea change in Washington’s approach to Europe is perhaps best underscored by Mr. Hegseth’s own speech at last year’s D-Day commemoration in France.

Those remarks were much more in keeping with the message from other American political figures’ speeches on the venerated anniversary of the Allied landings.

“Without the sacrifices of American, French, British, and other Allied powers, we would not have the free world,” he said a year ago.

“We remember the losses. We celebrate the victories.

“We rededicate ourselves to the fight for liberty, security, and peace.”

ATTACHMENT THIRTY FOUR – FROM YAHOO

EVENT HONORING SERVICEWOMEN CANCELED AFTER MOST BRANCHES DECLINE TO ATTEND

By Patty Nieberg Wed, June 10, 2026 at 12:19 PM EDT

The Bipartisan Women’s Caucus’ 28th annual wreath-laying ceremony to honor women in the service and veterans was canceled after the Navy, Air Force, and Space Force declined to participate due to Pentagon and White House policies on diversity, equity, and inclusion programs.

An annual event put on by members of Congress to honor fallen servicewomen was canceled this year after the Navy, Air Force and Space Force bowed out, citing Pentagon and White House policies on diversity, equity and inclusion programs, according to the Democratic members of the caucus leading the event.

The Bipartisan Women's Caucus' 28th annual wreath-laying ceremony is typically held at Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia. The Democratic Women's Caucus announced the cancellation on Monday.

A spokesperson with the Democratic half of the caucus told Task & Purpose that the Navy and the Air Force (answering for the Space Force) declined to participate due to White House and Department of Defense policies that bar participation in diversity, equity and inclusion or identity-related celebrations. The spokesperson said that the Army cited scheduling conflicts due to the service's birthday, but it "had never been an issue prohibiting them from participating before."

The spokesperson for the caucus said that the Marine Corps did not respond to the invitation. However, a defense official told Task & Purpose that the Marines had planned to attend the event until it was canceled and that the Corps has "supported it each year as long as anyone can remember, to include 2025."

An Air Force spokesperson confirmed to Task & Purpose that the service declined to participate "in compliance" with a January 2025 Executive Order on eliminating diversity, equity and inclusion programs and policies across the military and Department of Defense-issued guidance that directs the services to not use official resources to "host celebrations or events related to cultural awareness months."

Army officials did not respond to Task & Purpose's requests for comment in time for publication. Navy officials declined to comment and directed questions to the Department of Defense, which referred those questions back to the individual services.

A spokesperson for the Democratic Women's Caucus said that "the branches have historically been supportive of the event."

Instead of the wreath-laying ceremony, members of the Democratic Women's Caucus held a press conference on the Hill Wednesday morning. The vice chair of the caucus, Rep. Emilia Sykes (D-Ohio), said the annual Arlington event is done to honor the service of women veterans, which should not be controversial. 

"Their contributions are a part of American history, and we should be expanding opportunities to recognize that service, not restricting it," Sykes said. "It comes just days before Women's Veterans Recognition Day, which is actually tomorrow, a day specifically set aside to recognize the contributions of women who have served our country. Instead of preparing to celebrate these women, we are here explaining why a ceremony dedicated to honoring them was effectively canceled."

The ceremony was originally scheduled for May 20, but the event was postponed to June 10 due to congressional voting, the Democratic Women's Caucus spokesperson told Task & Purpose.

A spokesperson for Rep. Monica De La Cruz (R-Texas), who co-chairs the bipartisan caucus and represents Republican members, said the congresswoman planned to attend the Arlington event and give remarks until it was canceled.

At the press conference, veterans who currently serve in Congress also made it a point to address the larger politics that women in the services face, referencing news reports of servicewomen being held back in officer promotions, and Pentagon-issued studies designed to look into women's "effectiveness" in combat jobs.

"Today's cancellation is not happening in isolation," Rep. Chrissy Houlahan (D-Penn.), a former Air Force officer, said. "For months we've been watching women's contributions to our military be questioned, be diminished, and be erased. We've seen accomplishments that women leaders have had being removed or demoted. We've seen programs supporting servicewomen dismantled, and we've seen the false suggestion that women who have met every single military standard somehow still do not belong."

UPDATE: 6.10.2026; This article was updated after publication with additional information about the Marine Corps' planned involvement at the wreath-laying ceremony.

ATTACHMENT THIRTY FIVE – FROM MILITARY TIMES

AIR FORCE CITES DEI BAN IN CANCELLATION OF WREATH-LAYING HONORING WOMEN VETS

By Hope Hodge Seck  Jun 11, 2026, 12:38 PM

A 28th annual wreath-laying ceremony honoring women troops at a memorial outside Arlington National Cemetery was canceled earlier this month after organizers got word that multiple military services would not participate, with one citing Pentagon and White House guidance prohibiting “events related to cultural awareness months” and DEI programs.

The cancellation, first reported by Task and Purpose, was announced Wednesday by leaders of the Bipartisan Women’s Caucus in a press conference outside the U.S. Capitol.

Multiple Democratic lawmakers decried the circumstances, saying it was more evidence of attempts by the administration and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to minimize the service of female veterans.

“In plain terms, the very women the ceremony was created to honor were pushed out of it,” Rep. Emilia Sykes, D-Ohio, the caucus co-chair and vice chair of the Democratic Women’s Caucus, said. “Honoring veterans should not be controversial. Recognizing the service and sacrifice of women who wore our nation’s uniform should be one of the easiest things for us to come together around. Yet, because of the decisions made by this administration, we are defending the basic act of honoring women veterans.”

A staffer for the Democratic Women’s Caucus told Military Times that the wreath-laying had been canceled June 10 after officials with the Department of the Air Force said they could not attend due to anti-DEI mandates published in January 2025, immediately after President Donald Trump took office.

An Air Force spokeswoman, Ann Stefanek, confirmed to Military Times via email that “The Department of the Air Force declined participation in compliance with Executive Orders … and DoW guidance.”

Officials with the Army and Navy declined to comment. But military sources with knowledge of planning indicated that the services were not coordinated in their response.

Sources claimed the Navy had been unaware of the event and their invitation to attend, while the Army faced scheduling conflicts related to Army birthday events following a rescheduling of the initial wreath-laying date. The Marine Corps did not respond to a query.

The caucus staff member confirmed the event had been rescheduled to June 10 from an earlier May date due to a conflict with votes. They also acknowledged that the Army had citing scheduling issues, but said Army birthday events had never been a problem in the past.

“The executive order and the DoD guidance, it’s for all the branches, so that’s ultimately why this event couldn’t happen,” the staffer said.

At Wednesday’s press conference, multiple speakers cited other recent moves they cast as diminishing the service of military women.

Sykes cited recent reports of Hegseth’s intervention to block the promotion of three female Navy officers to one-star admiral, leaving no women on the promotions list.

Kayla Williams, an Army veteran and former Department of Veterans Affairs official representing the Vet Voice Foundation, recalled Pentagon-driven directives that resulted in the services pulling down web pages honoring the achievements of women in uniform.

Rep. Chrissy Houlahan, D-Penn., a former Air Force officer, noted that her grandparents were buried in Arlington National Cemetery, which made the cancellation of the wreath-laying “so painful.”

“I keep coming back to a simple question for President Trump and for Secretary Hegseth and my Republican colleagues,” she said. “Which is, when did saying thank you to women who served their country become a controversial statement?

“Women have answered ... every call this nation has asked of them,” Houlahan continued. “They have flown combat missions, they have commanded troops, they’ve cared for the wounded, they’ve gathered intelligence and they’ve deployed into harm’s way alongside their fellow service members. They didn’t ask for special treatment, they earned our respect. And honoring their service should never be viewed as a political statement.”

Women Veterans Day is celebrated annually on June 12 to commemorate the signing of the Women's Armed Services Integration Act on June 12, 1948. This landmark legislation, signed by President Harry S. Truman, allowed women to serve as permanent, regular members of the U.S. Armed Forces.

Key Facts About the Observance

· Official Recognition: It is not a federal holiday, but more than 20 states recognize it as Women Veterans Day or Women Veterans Recognition Day through legislation or gubernatorial proclamations. [1, 2, 3]

· National Hub of Celebration: The Military Women's Memorial located at the gateway of Arlington National Cemetery serves as the epicenter for the celebration, hosting annual programs, exhibits, and ceremonies. [1, 2]

· Local Recognition: Many state capitals, county legislatures, and veterans' organizations across the country host localized ceremonies, panels, and community appreciation events. [1, 2, 3]

ATTACHMENT THIRTY SIX – FROM WMAZ HAWKINSVILLE, GA

'IT WAS AWESOME' | HAWKINSVILLE WORLD WAR II VETERAN GETS HERO'S HOME AFTER VISITING NORMANDY FOR D-DAY

By Olivia Dunne Updated Wed, June 10, 2026 at 11:38 PM EDT

World War II veteran J. Keith Lancaster, who served in the Army Air Corp and survived being shot down twice in combat, received a heroes welcome home in Hawkinsville after visiting Normandy for the 82nd anniversary of D-Day.

On Wednesday, a Hawkinsville World War II veteran received a heroes welcome home.

100-year-old J. Keith Lancaster served in the Army Air Corp on a B-24 bomber, and survived being shot down twice in combat over 33 missions. Lancaster spent the last ten days in France visiting Normandy for the 82nd anniversary of D-Day as part of an all-expenses paid experience through Delta Airlines and the Best Defense Foundation.

The trips have taken World War II veterans back to Normandy for D-Day for the last five years.

"I got kisses, I got handshakes. They were five deep for a quarter of a mile just to shake hands," Lancaster said.

Lancaster describes the trip as an unforgettable experience, but says it was also a somber reminder of the price of freedom.

"You see 9,000 graves, one after the other, and there's three cemeteries there, adding up to over 13,000. What would those boys have done? And they were all boys. And you wonder how they would have affected the life that we live," Lancaster said.

Back home in Central Georgia, local veterans, American Legion Riders, and supporters surprised Lancaster as he came home Wednesday evening. Dozens lined his driveway with American flags, and the Pulaski County Sheriff's Office escorted the veteran through the county to his home.

Among the supporters was Bob Long, the co-founder of Middle Georgia Honor Flight. The organization provides free trips for war veterans to Washington D.C. to visit war monuments. Long says Lancaster took a trip in 2022, and Long helped get him on the flight to Normandy. He says it's more than a trip.

"It enables them to go back, relive some of the memories, and intermingle with some fellow World War II veterans. And bring a better closure," Long said.

Lancaster is turning 101 later this month, and says the surprise was an unforgettable end to an unforgettable trip.

"It was awesome," Lancaster said. "It was the eighty-second celebration, but it actually felt just like the first one."

To learn more or apply for a Middle Georgia Honor Flight, visit their website.

ATTACHMENT “A” – FROM WIKIPEDIA

NORMANDY LANDINGS

(See charts, graphs, pix and maps at website)

The Normandy landings were the landing operations and associated airborne operations on 6 June 1944 of the Allied invasion of Normandy in Operation Overlord during the Second World War. Codenamed Operation Neptune and often referred to as D-Day (after the military term), it is the largest seaborne invasion in history. The operation began the liberation of France and the rest of Western Europe, and laid the foundations for the Allied victory on the Western Front.

Planning for the operation began in 1943. In the months leading up to the invasion, the Allies conducted a substantial military deception, codenamed Operation Bodyguard, to mislead the Germans as to the date and location of the main Allied landings. The weather on the day selected for D-Day was not ideal, and the operation had to be delayed 24 hours; a further postponement would have meant a delay of at least two weeks, as the planners had requirements for the phase of the moon, the tides, and time of day, that meant only a few days each month were deemed suitable. German leader Adolf Hitler placed Field Marshal Erwin Rommel in command of German forces and developing fortifications along the Atlantic Wall in anticipation of an invasion. US president Franklin D. Roosevelt placed Major General Dwight D. Eisenhower in command of Allied forces.

The invasion began shortly after midnight on the morning of 6 June with extensive aerial and naval bombardment as well as an airborne assault—the landing of 24,000 American, British, and Canadian airborne troops. The early morning aerial assault was soon followed by Allied amphibious landings on the coast of France c. 06:30. The target 80-kilometre (50 mi) stretch of the Normandy coast was divided into five sectors: Utah, Omaha, Gold, Juno, and Sword. Strong winds blew the landing craft east of their intended positions, particularly at Utah and Omaha.

The men landed under heavy fire from gun emplacements overlooking the beaches, and the shore was mined and covered with obstacles such as wooden stakes, metal tripods, and barbed wire, making the work of the beach-clearing teams difficult and dangerous. The highest number of casualties was at Omaha, with its high cliffs. At Gold, Juno, and Sword, several fortified towns were cleared in house-to-house fighting, and two major gun emplacements at Gold were disabled using specialised tanks.

The Allies were able to establish beachheads at each of the five landing sites on the first day, but Carentan, Saint-Lô, and Bayeux remained in German hands. Caen, a major objective, was not captured until 21 July. Only two of the beaches (Juno and Gold) were linked on the first day, and all five beachheads were not connected until 12 June. German casualties on D-Day have been estimated at 4,000 to 9,000 men. Allied casualties were at least 10,000, with 4,414 confirmed dead.

Background

After the German Army invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941, the Soviet leader Joseph Stalin began pressing his new allies for the creation of a second front in western Europe.^[16] In late May 1942, the Soviet Union and the United States made a joint announcement that a "... full understanding was reached with regard to the urgent tasks of creating a second front in Europe in 1942."^[17] However, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill persuaded US President Franklin D. Roosevelt to postpone the promised invasion as, even with US help, the Allies did not have adequate forces for such an activity.^[18]

Instead of an immediate return to France, the western Allies staged offensives in the Mediterranean Theatre of Operations, where British troops were already stationed. By mid-1943, the campaign in North Africa had been won. The Allies then launched the invasion of Sicily in July 1943 and subsequently invaded the Italian mainland in September the same year. By then, Soviet forces were on the offensive and had won a major victory at the Battle of Stalingrad. The decision to undertake a cross-channel invasion within the next year was taken at the Trident Conference in Washington in May 1943.^[19] Initial planning was constrained by the number of available landing craft, most of which were already committed in the Mediterranean and Pacific.^[20] At the Tehran Conference in November 1943, Roosevelt and Churchill promised Stalin that they would open the long-delayed second front in May 1944.^[21]

Meeting of the Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force (SHAEF), 1 February 1944. Front row: Air Chief Marshal Sir Arthur Tedder; General Dwight D. Eisenhower; General Sir Bernard Montgomery. Back row: Lieutenant General Omar Bradley; Admiral Sir Bertram Ramsay; Air Chief Marshal Sir Trafford Leigh-Mallory; Lieutenant General Walter Bedell Smith.

The Allies considered four sites for the landings: Brittany, the Cotentin Peninsula, Normandy, and the Pas-de-Calais. As Brittany and Cotentin are peninsulas, it would have been possible for the Germans to cut off the Allied advance at a relatively narrow isthmus, so these sites were rejected.^[22] With the Pas-de-Calais being the closest point in continental Europe to Britain, the Germans considered it to be the most likely initial landing zone, so it was the most heavily fortified region.^[23] But it offered few opportunities for expansion, as the area is bounded by numerous rivers and canals,^[24] whereas landings on a broad front in Normandy would permit simultaneous threats against the port of Cherbourg, coastal ports further west in Brittany, and an overland attack towards Paris and eventually into Germany. Normandy was hence chosen as the landing site.^[25] The most serious drawback of the Normandy coast—the lack of port facilities—would be overcome through the development of artificial Mulberry harbours.^[26] A series of modified tanks, nicknamed Hobart's Funnies, dealt with specific requirements expected for the Normandy Campaign such as mine clearing, demolishing bunkers, and mobile bridging.^[27]

The Allies planned to launch the invasion on 1 May 1944.^[24] The initial draft of the plan was accepted at the Quebec Conference in August 1943. General Dwight D. Eisenhower was appointed commander of the Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force.^[28] General Bernard Montgomery was named commander of the 21st Army Group, which comprised all land forces involved in the invasion.^[29] On 31 December 1943, Eisenhower and Montgomery first saw the plan, which proposed amphibious landings by three divisions on a 25-mile (40 km) front with two more divisions in support. The two generals insisted that the scale of the initial invasion be expanded to five divisions, with airborne descents by three additional divisions, to allow operations on a wider front (50 miles (80 km)) and to hasten the capture of Cherbourg.^[30][31] The need to acquire or produce extra landing craft for the expanded operation meant that the invasion had to be delayed to June.^[31] American Admiral Ernest King had allocated only 2,493 landing-ships and landing craft of the 31,123 landing ships and landing craft he had available.^[30]

Eventually, thirty-nine Allied divisions would be committed to the Battle of Normandy: twenty-two American, twelve British, three Canadian, one Polish, and one French, totalling over a million troops.^[32] Montgomery showed little interest in subsequent proposals.^[33]

Operations

Operation Overlord was the name assigned to the establishment of a large-scale lodgement on the continent. The first phase, the amphibious invasion and establishment of a secure foothold, was codenamed Operation Neptune.^[26] To gain the air superiority needed to ensure a successful invasion, the Allies undertook a bombing campaign (codenamed Operation Pointblank) that targeted German aircraft production, fuel supplies, and airfields.^[26] Elaborate deceptions, codenamed Operation Bodyguard, were undertaken in the months leading up to the invasion to prevent the Germans from learning the timing and location of the invasion.^[34]

The landings were to be preceded by airborne operations near Caen on the eastern flank to secure the Orne River bridges and north of Carentan on the western flank. The Americans, assigned to land at Utah Beach and Omaha Beach, were to attempt to capture Carentan and Saint-Lô the first day, then cut off the Cotentin Peninsula and eventually capture the port facilities at Cherbourg. The British at Sword and Gold Beaches and the Canadians at Juno Beach would protect the US flank and attempt to establish airfields near Caen on the first day.^[35][36] (A sixth beach, code-named "Band", was considered to the east of the Orne).^[37] A secure lodgement would be established with all invading forces linked together, with an attempt to hold all territory north of the Avranches-Falaise line within the first three weeks.^[35][36] Montgomery envisaged a ninety-day battle, lasting until all Allied forces reached the River Seine.^[38]

Deception plans

See also: D-Day naval deceptions

Shoulder patches (see here) were designed for units of the fictitious First United States Army Group under George Patton.

Under the overall umbrella of Operation Bodyguard, the Allies conducted several subsidiary operations designed to mislead the Germans as to the date and location of the Allied landings.^[39] Operation Fortitude included Fortitude North, a misinformation campaign using fake radio traffic to lead the Germans into expecting an attack on Norway,^[40] and Fortitude South, a major deception involving the creation of a fictitious First United States Army Group under Lieutenant General George S. Patton, supposedly located in Kent and Sussex. Fortitude South was intended to deceive the Germans into believing that the main attack would take place at Calais.^[34][41] Genuine radio messages from 21st Army Group were first routed to Kent via landline and then broadcast, to give the Germans the impression that most of the Allied troops were stationed there.^[42] Patton was stationed in England until 6 July, thus continuing to deceive the Germans into believing a second attack would take place at Calais.^[43]

Many of the German radar stations on the French coast were destroyed in preparation for the landings.^[44] In addition, on the night before the invasion, a small group of Special Air Service operators deployed dummy paratroopers over Le Havre and Isigny. These dummies led the Germans to believe that an additional airborne landing had occurred. On that same night, in Operation Taxable, No. 617 Squadron RAF dropped strips of "window", metal foil that caused a radar return which was mistakenly interpreted by German radar operators as a naval convoy near Le Havre. The illusion was bolstered by a group of small vessels towing barrage balloons. A similar deception was undertaken near Boulogne-sur-Mer in the Pas de Calais area by No. 218 Squadron RAF in Operation Glimmer.^[45][2]

Weather

Main article: Weather forecasting for Operation Overlord

The invasion planners determined a set of conditions involving the phase of the moon, the tides, and the time of day that would be satisfactory on only a few days in each month. A full moon was desirable, as it would provide illumination for aircraft pilots and have the highest tides. The Allies wanted to schedule the landings for shortly before dawn, midway between low and high tide, with the tide coming in. This would improve the visibility of obstacles on the beach while minimising the amount of time the men would be exposed in the open.^[46] Eisenhower had tentatively selected 5 June as the date for the assault. However, on 4 June, conditions were unsuitable for a landing: high winds and heavy seas made it impossible to launch landing craft, and low cloud cover would prevent aircraft from finding their targets.^[47] The weather forecast that reported the storms was sent from a weather station on the western coast of Ireland.^[48]

Group Captain James Stagg of the Royal Air Force (RAF) met Eisenhower on the evening of 4 June. He and his meteorological team predicted that the weather would improve enough for the invasion to proceed on 6 June.^[49] The next available dates with the required tidal conditions (but without the desirable full moon) would be two weeks later, from 18 to 20 June. Postponement of the invasion would have required recalling men and ships already in position to cross the English Channel and would have increased the chance that the invasion plans would be detected.^[50] After much discussion with the other senior commanders, Eisenhower decided that the invasion should go ahead on 6 June.^[51] A major storm battered the Normandy coast from 19 to 22 June, which would have made the beach landings impossible on the later date.^[47]

Allied control of the Atlantic meant German meteorologists had less information than the Allies on incoming weather patterns.^[44] As the Luftwaffe meteorological centre in Paris was predicting two weeks of stormy weather, many Wehrmacht commanders left their posts to attend war games in Rennes, and men in many units were given leave.^[52] Field Marshal Erwin Rommel returned to Germany for his wife's birthday and to petition Hitler for additional Panzer divisions.^[53]

German order of battle

Germany had at its disposal fifty divisions in France and the Low Countries, with another eighteen stationed in Denmark and Norway. Fifteen divisions were in the process of formation in Germany.^[54] Combat losses throughout the war, particularly on the Eastern Front, meant that the Germans no longer had a pool of able young men from which to draw. German soldiers were now on average six years older than their Allied counterparts. Many in the Normandy area were Ostlegionen (eastern legions)—conscripts and volunteers from Russia, Mongolia, and other areas of the Soviet Union. They were provided mainly with unreliable captured equipment and lacked motorised transport.^[55][56] Many German units were under strength.^[57]

In early 1944, the German Western Front (OB West) was significantly weakened by personnel and materiel transfers to the Eastern Front. During the Soviet Dnieper–Carpathian offensive (24 December 1943 – 17 April 1944), the German High Command was forced to transfer the entire II SS Panzer Corps from France, consisting of the 9th and 10th SS Panzer Divisions, as well as the 349th Infantry Division, 507th Heavy Panzer Battalion and the 311th and 322nd StuG Assault Gun Brigades. All told, the German forces stationed in France were deprived of 45,827 troops and 363 tanks, assault guns, and self-propelled anti-tank guns.^[58]

The 1st SS Panzer Division "Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler", 9th, 11th, 19th and 116th Panzer divisions, alongside the 2nd SS Panzer Division "Das Reich", had only arrived in France in March–May 1944 for extensive refit after suffering heavy losses during the Dnieper-Carpathian operation. Seven of the eleven panzer or panzergrenadier divisions stationed in France were not fully operational or only partially mobile in early June 1944.^[59]

German Supreme commander: Adolf Hitler

· Oberbefehlshaber West (Supreme Commander West; OB West): Field Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt

· (Panzer Group West: General Leo Geyr von Schweppenburg)

· Army Group B: Field Marshal Erwin Rommel

· 7th Army: Generaloberst Friedrich Dollmann

· LXXXIV Corps under General der Artillerie Erich Marcks

Cotentin Peninsula

Allied forces attacking Utah Beach faced the following German units stationed on the Cotentin Peninsula:

· 709th Static Infantry Division

· under Generalleutnant Karl-Wilhelm von Schlieben numbered 12,320 men, many of them Ostlegionen (non-German conscripts recruited from Soviet prisoners of war).^[60]

· 729th Grenadier Regiment^[61]

· 739th Grenadier Regiment^[61]

· 919th Grenadier Regiment^[61]

Grandcamps Sector

Americans assaulting Omaha Beach faced the following troops:

· 352nd Infantry Division

· under Generalleutnant Dietrich Kraiss, a full-strength unit of around 12,000 brought in by Rommel on 15 March and reinforced by two additional regiments.^[62]

· 914th Grenadier Regiment^[63]

· 915th Grenadier Regiment (as reserves)^[63]

· 916th Grenadier Regiment^[63]

· 726th Infantry Regiment (from 716th Infantry Division)^[63]

· 352nd Artillery Regiment^[63]

Allied forces at Gold and Juno faced the following elements of the 352nd Infantry Division:

·

· 914th Grenadier Regiment^[64]

· 915th Grenadier Regiment^[64]

· 916th Grenadier Regiment^[64]

· 352nd Artillery Regiment^[64]

Forces around Caen

Allied forces attacking Gold, Juno, and Sword Beaches faced the following German units:

· 716th Static Infantry Division

· under Generalleutnant Wilhelm Richter. At 7,000 troops, the division was significantly understrength.^[65]

· 736th Infantry Regiment^[66]

· 1716th Artillery Regiment^[66]

· 21st Panzer Division, (south of Caen)

· under Generalmajor Edgar Feuchtinger included 146 tanks and 50 assault guns, plus supporting infantry and artillery.^[67]

· 100th Panzer Regiment^[64] (at Falaise under Hermann von Oppeln-Bronikowski; renamed 22nd Panzer Regiment in May 1944 to avoid confusion with 100th Panzer Battalion)^[68]

· 125th Panzergrenadier Regiment^[64](under Hans von Luck from April 1944)^[69]

· 192nd Panzergrenadier Regiment^[64]

· 155th Panzer Artillery Regiment^[64]

Atlantic Wall

Main articles: Atlantic Wall and English Channel

Map of the Atlantic Wall, shown in yellow

 Axis and occupied countries

 Allies and occupied countries

 Neutral countries

Czech hedgehogs deployed on the Atlantic Wall near Calais

Alarmed by the raids on St Nazaire and Dieppe in 1942, Hitler had ordered the construction of fortifications along the Atlantic coast of the European mainland, from Spain to Norway, to protect against an expected Allied invasion. He envisioned 15,000 emplacements manned by 300,000 troops, but shortages, particularly of concrete and manpower, meant that most of the strongpoints were never built.^[70] As it was expected to be the site of the invasion, the Pas de Calais was heavily defended.^[70] In the Normandy area, the best fortifications were concentrated at the port facilities at Cherbourg and Saint-Malo.^[31] Rommel was assigned to oversee the construction of further fortifications along the expected invasion front, which stretched from the Netherlands to Cherbourg,^[70][71] and was given command of the newly re-formed Army Group B, which included the 7th Army, the 15th Army, and the forces guarding the Netherlands. Reserves for this group included the 2nd, 21st, and 116th Panzer divisions.^[72][73]

General Rommel believed that the Normandy coast could be a possible landing point for the invasion, so he ordered the construction of extensive defensive works along that shore. In addition to concrete gun emplacements at strategic points along the coast, he had ordered wooden stakes, metal tripods, mines, and large anti-tank obstacles to be placed on the beaches to delay the approach of landing craft and impede the movement of tanks.^[74] Expecting the Allies to land at high tide so that the infantry would spend less time exposed on the beach, he ordered many of these obstacles to be placed at the high water mark.^[46] Tangles of barbed wire, booby traps, and the removal of ground cover made the approach hazardous for infantry.^[74] On Rommel's order, the number of mines along the coast was tripled.^[31] The Allied air offensive over Germany had crippled the Luftwaffe and established air supremacy over western Europe, so Rommel knew he could not expect effective air support.^[75] The Luftwaffe could muster only 815 aircraft^[76] over Normandy in comparison to the Allies' 9,543.^[77] Rommel arranged for booby-trapped stakes known as Rommelspargel (Rommel's asparagus) to be installed in meadows and fields to deter airborne landings.^[31]

German armaments minister Albert Speer notes in his 1969 autobiography that the German high command, concerned about the susceptibility of the airports and port facilities along the North Sea coast, held a conference on 6–8 June 1944 to discuss reinforcing defences in that area.^[78] Speer wrote:

In Germany itself we scarcely had any troop units at our disposal. If the airports at Hamburg and Bremen could be taken by parachute units and the ports of these cities seized by small forces, invasion armies debarking from ships would, I feared, meet no resistance and would be occupying Berlin and all of Germany within a few days.^[79]

Armoured reserves

Rommel believed that Germany's best chance was to stop the invasion at the shore. He requested that the mobile reserves, especially tanks, be stationed as close to the coast as possible. Rundstedt, Geyr, and other senior commanders objected. They believed that the invasion could not be stopped on the beaches. Geyr argued for a conventional doctrine: keeping the Panzer formations concentrated in a central position around Paris and Rouen and deploying them only when the main Allied beachhead had been identified. He also noted that in the Italian Campaign, the armoured units stationed near the coast had been damaged by naval bombardment. Rommel's opinion was that because of Allied air supremacy, the large-scale movement of tanks would not be possible once the invasion was under way. Hitler made the final decision, which was to leave three Panzer divisions under Geyr's command and give Rommel operational control of three more as reserves. Hitler took personal control of four divisions as strategic reserves, not to be used without his direct orders.^[80][81][82]

Allied order of battle

See also: List of Allied forces in the Normandy campaign

D-day assault routes into Normandy

Commander, SHAEF: General Dwight D. Eisenhower
Commander, 21st Army Group: General Bernard Montgomery^[83]

US zones

Commander, First Army: Lieutenant General Omar Bradley^[83]

The First Army contingent totalled approximately 73,000 men, including 15,600 from the airborne divisions.^[15]

Airborne landing (west of Utah Beach)

· VII Corps, commanded by Major General J. Lawton Collins^[84]

· 82nd Airborne Division: Major General Matthew Ridgway^[84]

· 101st Airborne Division: Major General Maxwell D. Taylor^[84]

Utah Beach

· VII Corps, commanded by Major General J. Lawton Collins

· 4th Infantry Division: Major General Raymond O. Barton^[84]

· 90th Infantry Division: Brigadier General Jay W. MacKelvie^[84]

Omaha Beach

· V Corps, commanded by Major General Leonard T. Gerow, making up 34,250 men^[85]

· 1st Infantry Division: Major General Clarence R. Huebner^[86]

· 29th Infantry Division: Major General Charles H. Gerhardt^[86]

British and Canadian zones

Royal Marine Commandos attached to 3rd Infantry Division move inland from Sword Beach, 6 June 1944. An armoured bridgelayer tank is in the background.

Commander, Second Army: Lieutenant General Sir Miles Dempsey^[83]

Overall, the Second Army contingent consisted of 83,115 men, 61,715 of them British.^[15] The British and Commonwealth air and naval support units included a large number of personnel from Allied nations, including several RAF squadrons manned almost exclusively by overseas air crew. For example, the Australian contribution to the operation included a regular Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) squadron, nine Article XV squadrons, and hundreds of personnel posted to RAF units and RN warships.^[87] The RAF supplied two-thirds of the aircraft involved in the invasion.^[88]

Gold Beach

· XXX Corps (UK), commanded by Lieutenant General Gerard Bucknall^[89]

· 50th (Northumbrian) Infantry Division: Major General Douglas Graham^[89]

· reinforced with

· 56th Infantry Brigade

· 8th Armoured Brigade

· 47th (Royal Marine) Commando

Juno Beach

Main article: Juno Beach order of battle

·  British I Corps, commanded by Lieutenant General John Crocker^[90]

· 3rd Canadian Division: Major General Rod Keller^[90]

Sword Beach

·  British I Corps, commanded by Lieutenant General John Crocker^[91]

· 3rd Infantry Division: Major General Tom Rennie^[91]

· 6th Airborne Division (UK): Major General Richard Gale^[91]

The 79th Armoured Division (Major General Percy Hobart)^[92] provided units of specialist armoured vehicles which were used in support of the landings on all beaches in Second Army's sector.

Coordination with the French Resistance

Members of the French Resistance and the US 82nd Airborne division during the Battle of Normandy in 1944.

Through the London-based État-major des Forces Françaises de l'Intérieur (French Forces of the Interior), the British Special Operations Executive orchestrated a campaign of sabotage to be implemented by the French Resistance. The Allies developed four plans for the Resistance to execute on D-Day and the following days:

· Plan Vert was a 15-day operation to sabotage the rail system.

· Plan Bleu dealt with destroying electrical facilities.

· Plan Tortue was a delaying operation aimed at the enemy forces that would potentially reinforce Axis forces at Normandy.

· Plan Violet dealt with cutting underground telephone and teleprinter cables.^[93]

The resistance was alerted to carry out these tasks by messages personnels transmitted by the BBC's French service from London. Several hundred of these messages, which might be snippets of poetry, quotations from literature, or random sentences, were regularly transmitted, masking the few that were actually significant. In the weeks preceding the landings, lists of messages and their meanings were distributed to resistance groups.^[94] An increase in radio activity on 5 June was correctly interpreted by German intelligence to mean that an invasion was imminent or underway. However, because of the barrage of previous false warnings and misinformation, most units ignored the warning.^[95][96]

A 1965 report from the Counter-insurgency Information Analysis Center details the results of the French Resistance's sabotage efforts: "In the southeast, 52 locomotives were destroyed on 6 June and the railway line cut in more than 500 places. Normandy was isolated as of 7 June."^[97]

Naval activity

Main article: List of Allied warships in the Normandy landings

Naval operations for the invasion were described by historian Correlli Barnett as a "never surpassed masterpiece of planning".^[98] In overall command was British Admiral Sir Bertram Ramsay, who had served as Flag officer at Dover during the Dunkirk evacuation four years earlier. He had also been responsible for the naval planning of the invasion of North Africa in 1942, and one of the two fleets carrying troops for the invasion of Sicily the following year.^[99]

The invasion fleet, which was drawn from eight different navies, comprised 6,939 vessels: 1,213 warships, 4,126 landing craft of various types, 736 ancillary craft, and 864 merchant vessels.^[15] The majority of the fleet was supplied by the UK, which provided 892 warships and 3,261 landing craft.^[88] In total there were 195,700 naval personnel involved; of these 112,824 were from the Royal Navy with another 25,000 from the Merchant Navy; 52,889 were American; and 4,998 sailors from other allied countries.^[15][10] The invasion fleet was split into the Western Naval Task Force (under Admiral Alan G. Kirk) supporting the US sectors and the Eastern Naval Task Force (under Admiral Sir Philip Vian) in the British and Canadian sectors.^[100][99] Available to the fleet were five battleships, 20 cruisers, 65 destroyers, and two monitors.^[101] German ships in the area on D-Day included three torpedo boats, 29 fast attack craft, 36 R boats, and 35 auxiliary minesweepers and patrol boats.^[102] The Germans also had several U-boats available, and all the approaches had been heavily mined.^[46]

Naval losses

At 05:10, German torpedo boats reached the Eastern Task Force and launched fifteen torpedoes, sinking the Norwegian destroyer HNoMS Svenner off Sword Beach but missing the British battleships HMS Warspite and Ramillies. After attacking, the German vessels turned away and fled east into a smoke screen that had been laid by the RAF to shield the fleet from the long-range battery at Le Havre.^[103] Allied losses to mines included the American destroyer USS Corry off Utah and submarine chaser USS PC-1261, a 53-metre (173 ft) patrol craft.^[104]

Bombardment

Bombing of Normandy began around midnight with more than 2,200 British, Canadian, and US bombers attacking targets along the coast and further inland.^[46] The coastal bombing attack was largely ineffective at Omaha, because low cloud cover made the assigned targets difficult to see. Concerned about inflicting casualties on their own troops, many bombers delayed their attacks too long and failed to hit the beach defences.^[105] The Germans had 570 aircraft stationed in Normandy and the Low Countries on D-Day, and another 964 in Germany.^[46]

Minesweepers began clearing channels for the invasion fleet shortly after midnight and finished just after dawn without encountering the enemy.^[106] The Western Task Force included the battleships Arkansas, Nevada, and Texas, plus eight cruisers, twenty-eight destroyers, and one monitor.^[107] The Eastern Task Force included the battleships Ramillies and Warspite and the monitor Roberts, twelve cruisers, and thirty-seven destroyers.^[1] Naval bombardment of areas behind the beach commenced at 05:45, while it was still dark, with the gunners switching to pre-assigned targets on the beach as soon as it was light enough to see, at 05:50.^[108] Since troops were scheduled to land at Utah and Omaha starting at 06:30 (an hour earlier than the British beaches), these areas received only about 40 minutes of naval bombardment before the assault troops began to land on the shore.^[109]

Airborne operations

The success of the amphibious landings depended on the establishment of a secure lodgement from which to expand the beachhead to allow the build-up of a well-supplied force capable of breaking out. The amphibious forces were especially vulnerable to strong enemy counter-attacks before the arrival of sufficient forces in the beachhead could be accomplished. To slow or eliminate the enemy's ability to organise and launch counter-attacks during this critical period, airborne operations were used to seize key objectives such as bridges, road crossings, and terrain features, particularly on the eastern and western flanks of the landing areas. The airborne landings some distance behind the beaches were also intended to ease the egress of the amphibious forces off the beaches, and in some cases to neutralise German coastal defence batteries and more quickly expand the area of the beachhead.^[110][111] Aircraft of the US Eighth Air Force and Ninth Air Force attacked strategic targets such as roads, railroads, and bridges behind the coastal areas to help prevent reinforcements from reaching the German defenders.^[112][113]

The US 82nd and 101st Airborne Divisions were assigned to objectives west of Utah Beach, where they hoped to capture and control the few narrow causeways through terrain that had been intentionally flooded by the Germans. Reports from Allied intelligence in mid-May of the arrival of the German 91st Infantry Division meant the intended drop zones had to be shifted eastward and to the south.^[114] The British 6th Airborne Division, on the eastern flank, was assigned to capture intact the bridges over the Caen Canal and River Orne, destroy five bridges over the Dives 6 miles (9.7 km) to the east, and destroy the Merville Gun Battery overlooking Sword Beach.^[115] Free French paratroopers from the British SAS Brigade were assigned to objectives in Brittany from 5 June until August in Operations Dingson, Samwest, and Cooney.^[116][117]

BBC war correspondent Robert Barr described the scene as paratroopers prepared to board their aircraft:

Their faces were darkened with cocoa; sheathed knives were strapped to their ankles; tommy guns strapped to their waists; bandoliers and hand grenades, coils of rope, pick handles, spades, rubber dinghies hung around them, and a few personal oddments, like the lad who was taking a newspaper to read on the plane ... There was an easy familiar touch about the way they were getting ready, as though they had done it often before. Well, yes, they had kitted up and climbed aboard often just like this—twenty, thirty, forty times some of them, but it had never been quite like this before. This was the first combat jump for every one of them.^[118]

United States

Main article: American airborne landings in Normandy

The US airborne landings began with the arrival of pathfinders at 00:15. Navigation was difficult because of a bank of thick cloud, and as a result, only one of the five paratrooper drop zones was accurately marked with radar signals and Aldis lamps.^[119] Paratroopers of the 82nd and 101st Airborne Divisions, numbering over 13,000 men, were delivered by Douglas C-47 Skytrains of the IX Troop Carrier Command.^[120] To avoid flying over the invasion fleet, the planes arrived from the west over the Cotentin Peninsula and exited over Utah Beach.^[121][119]

Paratroops from 101st Airborne were dropped beginning around 01:30, tasked with controlling the causeways behind Utah Beach and destroying road and rail bridges over the Douve River.^[122] The C-47s could not fly in a tight formation because of thick cloud cover, and many paratroopers were dropped far from their intended landing zones. Many planes came in so low that they were under fire from both flak and machine-gun fire. Some paratroopers were killed on impact when their parachutes did not have time to open, and others drowned in the flooded fields.^[123] Gathering together into fighting units was made difficult by a shortage of radios and by the bocage terrain, with its hedgerows, stone walls, and marshes.^[124][125] Some units did not arrive at their targets until afternoon, by which time several of the causeways had already been cleared by members of the 4th Infantry Division moving up from the beach.^[126]

Troops of the 82nd Airborne began arriving around 02:30, with the primary objective of capturing two bridges over the River Merderet and destroying two bridges over the Douve.^[122] On the east side of the river, 75 per cent of the paratroopers landed in or near their drop zone, and within two hours they captured the important crossroads at Sainte-Mère-Église (the first town liberated in the invasion)^[127] and began working to protect the western flank.^[128] Because of the failure of the pathfinders to accurately mark their drop zone, the two regiments dropped on the west side of the Merderet were extremely scattered, with only four per cent landing in the target area.^[128] Many landed in nearby swamps, with much loss of life.^[129] Paratroopers consolidated into small groups, usually a combination of men of various ranks from different units, and attempted to concentrate on nearby objectives.^[130] They captured but failed to hold the Merderet River bridge at La Fière, and fighting for the crossing continued for several days.^[131]

Reinforcements arrived by glider around 04:00 (Mission Chicago and Mission Detroit), and 21:00 (Mission Keokuk and Mission Elmira), bringing additional troops and heavy equipment. Like the paratroopers, many landed far from their drop zones.^[132] Even those that landed on target experienced difficulty, with heavy cargo such as Jeeps shifting during landing, crashing through the wooden fuselage, and in some cases crushing personnel on board.^[133]

After 24 hours, only 2,500 men of the 101st and 2,000 of the 82nd Airborne were under the control of their divisions, approximately a third of the force dropped. This wide dispersal had the effect of confusing the Germans and fragmenting their response.^[134] The 7th Army received notification of the parachute drops at 01:20, but Rundstedt did not initially believe that a major invasion was underway. The destruction of radar stations along the Normandy coast in the week before the invasion meant that the Germans did not detect the approaching fleet until 02:00.^[135]

British and Canadian

Main articles: Operation Tonga and Operation Mallard

The first Allied action of D-Day was the capture of the Caen canal and Orne river bridges via a glider assault at 00:16 (since renamed Pegasus Bridge and Horsa Bridge). Both bridges were quickly captured intact, with light casualties by the Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry Regiment. They were then reinforced by members of the 5th Parachute Brigade and the 7th (Light Infantry) Parachute Battalion.^[136][137] The five bridges over the Dives were destroyed with minimal difficulty by the 3rd Parachute Brigade.^[138][139] Meanwhile, the pathfinders tasked with setting up radar beacons and lights for further paratroopers (scheduled to begin arriving at 00:50 to clear the landing zone north of Ranville) were blown off course and had to set up the navigation aids too far east. Many paratroopers, also blown too far east, landed far from their intended drop zones; some took hours or even days to be reunited with their units.^[140][141] Major General Richard Gale arrived in the third wave of gliders at 03:30, along with equipment, such as antitank guns and jeeps, and more troops to help secure the area from counter-attacks, which were initially staged only by troops in the immediate vicinity of the landings.^[142] At 02:00, the commander of the German 716th Infantry Division ordered Feuchtinger to move his 21st Panzer Division into position to counter-attack. However, as the division was part of the armoured reserve, Feuchtinger was obliged to seek clearance from OKW before he could commit his formation.^[143] Feuchtinger did not receive orders until nearly 09:00, but in the meantime on his own initiative he put together a battle group (including tanks) to fight the British forces east of the Orne.^[144]

Only 160 men out of the 600 members of the 9th Battalion tasked with eliminating the enemy battery at Merville arrived at the rendezvous point. Lieutenant Colonel Terence Otway, in charge of the operation, decided to proceed regardless, as the emplacement had to be destroyed by 06:00 to prevent it firing on the invasion fleet and the troops arriving on Sword Beach. In the Battle of Merville Gun Battery, Allied forces disabled the guns with plastic explosives at a cost of 75 casualties. The emplacement was found to contain 75 mm guns rather than the expected 150 mm heavy coastal artillery. Otway's remaining force withdrew with the assistance of a few members of the 1st Canadian Parachute Battalion.^[145]

With this action, the last of the D-Day goals of the British 6th Airborne Division was achieved.^[146] They were reinforced at 12:00 by commandos of the 1st Special Service Brigade, who landed on Sword Beach, and by the 6th Airlanding Brigade, who arrived in gliders at 21:00 in Operation Mallard.^[147]

Beach landings

Tanks

Some of the landing craft had been modified to provide close support fire, and self-propelled amphibious Duplex-Drive tanks (DD tanks), specially designed for the Normandy landings, were to land shortly before the infantry to provide covering fire. However, few arrived in advance of the infantry, and at Omaha many sank before reaching the shore.^[148][149] Other specialist tanks landed in the early waves to clear the beach defences.

Utah Beach

Main article: Utah Beach

Utah Beach was in the area defended by two battalions of the 919th Grenadier Regiment.^[150] Members of the 8th Infantry Regiment of the 4th Infantry Division were the first to land, arriving at 06:30. Their landing craft were pushed to the south by strong currents, and they found themselves about 1,800 metres (2,000 yd) from their intended landing zone. This site turned out to be better, as there was only one strongpoint nearby rather than two, and bombers of IX Bomber Command had bombed the defences from lower than their prescribed altitude, inflicting considerable damage. In addition, the strong currents had washed ashore many of the underwater obstacles. The assistant commander of the 4th Infantry Division, Brigadier General Theodore Roosevelt Jr., the first senior officer ashore, made the decision to "start the war from right here," and ordered further landings to be re-routed.^[151][152]

The initial assault battalions were quickly followed by 28 DD tanks and several waves of engineer and demolition teams to remove beach obstacles and clear the area directly behind the beach of obstacles and mines. Gaps were blown in the sea wall to allow quicker access for troops and tanks. Combat teams began to exit the beach at around 09:00, with some infantry wading through the flooded fields rather than travelling on the single road. They skirmished throughout the day with elements of the 919th Grenadier Regiment, who were armed with antitank guns and rifles. The main strongpoint in the area and another 1,200 metres (1,300 yd) to the south were disabled by noon.^[153] The 4th Infantry Division did not meet all of their D-Day objectives at Utah Beach, partly because they had arrived too far to the south, but they landed 21,000 troops at the cost of only 197 casualties.^[154][155]

Pointe du Hoc

Main article: Pointe du Hoc

Pointe du Hoc, a prominent headland situated between Utah and Omaha, was assigned to two hundred men of the 2nd Ranger Battalion, commanded by Lieutenant Colonel James Rudder. Their task was to scale the 30 m (98 ft) cliffs with grappling hooks, ropes, and ladders to destroy the coastal gun battery located at the top. The cliffs were defended by the German 352nd Infantry Division and French collaborators firing from above.^[156] Allied destroyers USS Satterlee and HMS Talybont provided fire support. After scaling the cliffs, the Rangers discovered that the guns had already been withdrawn. They located the weapons, unguarded but ready to use, in an orchard some 550 metres (600 yd) south of the point, and disabled them with explosives.^[156]

The Rangers fended off numerous counter-attacks from the German 914th Grenadier Regiment. The men were isolated, and some were captured. By dawn on 7 June, Rudder had only 90 men able to fight. Relief did not arrive until 8 June, when members of the 743rd Tank Battalion and others arrived.^[157][158] By then, Rudder's men had run out of ammunition and were using captured German weapons. Several men were killed as a result, because the German weapons made a distinctive noise, and the men were mistaken for the enemy.^[159] By the end of the battle, the Rangers casualties were 135 dead and wounded, while German casualties were 50 killed and 40 captured. An unknown number of French collaborators were executed.^[160][161]

Omaha Beach

Main article: Omaha Beach

.

Omaha, the most heavily defended beach, was assigned to the 1st Infantry Division and 29th Infantry Division.^[162] They faced the 352nd Infantry Division rather than the expected single regiment.^[163] Strong currents forced many landing craft east of their intended position or caused them to be delayed.^[164] For fear of hitting the landing craft, US bombers delayed releasing their loads and as a result most of the beach obstacles at Omaha remained undamaged when the men came ashore.^[165] Many of the landing craft ran aground on sandbars, and the men had to wade 50–100m in water up to their necks while under fire to get to the beach.^[149] In spite of the rough seas, DD tanks of two companies of the 741st Tank Battalion were dropped 4,600 metres (5,000 yd) from shore; however, 27 of the 32 flooded and sank, with the loss of 33 crew.^[166] Some tanks, disabled on the beach, continued to provide covering fire until their ammunition ran out or they were swamped by the rising tide.^[4]

Casualties were around 2,000, as the men were subjected to fire from the cliffs above.^[167] Problems clearing the beach of obstructions led to the beachmaster calling a halt to further landings of vehicles at 08:30. A group of destroyers arrived around this time to provide fire support so landings could resume.^[168] Exit from the beach was possible only via five heavily defended gullies, and by late morning barely 600 men had reached the higher ground.^[169] By noon, as the artillery fire took its toll and the Germans started to run out of ammunition, the Americans were able to clear some lanes on the beaches. They also started clearing the gullies of enemy defences so that vehicles could move off the beach.^[169] The tenuous beachhead was expanded over the following days, and the D-Day objectives for Omaha were accomplished by 9 June.^[170]

Gold Beach

Main article: Gold Beach

The first landings on Gold Beach were set for 07:25 because of the differences in the tide between there and the US beaches.^[171] High winds made conditions difficult for the landing craft, and the amphibious DD tanks were released close to shore or directly on the beach instead of further out as planned.^[172] Three of the four guns in a large emplacement at the Longues-sur-Mer battery were disabled by direct hits from the cruisers HMS Ajax and Argonaut at 06:20. The fourth gun resumed firing intermittently in the afternoon, and its garrison surrendered on 7 June.^[173] Aerial attacks had failed to hit the Le Hamel strongpoint, which had its embrasure facing east to provide enfilade fire along the beach and had a thick concrete wall on the seaward side.^[174] Its 75 mm gun continued to do damage until 16:00, when an Armoured Vehicle Royal Engineers (AVRE) tank fired a large demolition charge into its rear entrance.^[175][176] A second casemated emplacement at La Rivière containing an 88 mm gun had been neutralised by a tank at 07:30.^[177]

Meanwhile, infantry began clearing the heavily fortified houses along the shore and advanced on targets further inland.^[178] The No. 47 (Royal Marine) Commando moved toward the small port at Port-en-Bessin and captured it the following day in the Battle of Port-en-Bessin.^[179] Company Sergeant Major Stanley Hollis received the only Victoria Cross awarded on D-Day for his actions including attacking two pillboxes at the Mont Fleury high point.^[180] On the western flank, the 1st Battalion, Royal Hampshire Regiment captured Arromanches (future site of Mulberry "B"), and contact was made on the eastern flank with the Canadian forces at Juno.^[181] Bayeux was not captured the first day because of stiff resistance from the 352nd Infantry Division.^[178] Allied casualties at Gold Beach are estimated at 1,000.^[15]

Juno Beach

Main article: Juno Beach

The landing at Juno Beach was delayed because of choppy seas, and the men arrived ahead of their supporting armour, suffering many casualties while disembarking. Most of the offshore bombardment had missed the German defences.^[182] Several exits from the beach were created, but not without difficulty. At Mike Beach on the western flank, a large crater was filled using an abandoned AVRE tank and several rolls of fascine, which were then covered by a temporary bridge.^[d][183] The beach and nearby streets were clogged with traffic for most of the day, making it difficult to move inland.^[184]

Major German strongpoints with 75 mm guns, machine-gun nests, concrete fortifications, barbed wire, and mines were located at Courseulles-sur-Mer, St Aubin-sur-Mer, and Bernières-sur-Mer.^[185] The towns had to be cleared in house-to-house fighting.^[186] Soldiers on their way to Bény-sur-Mer, 5 kilometres (3 mi) inland, discovered that the road was well covered by machine gun emplacements that had to be outflanked before the advance could proceed.^[187] Elements of the 9th Canadian Infantry Brigade advanced to within sight of the Carpiquet airfield late in the afternoon, but by this time their supporting armour was low on ammunition so the Canadians dug in for the night. The airfield was not captured until a month later as the area became the scene of fierce fighting.^[188] By nightfall, the contiguous Juno and Gold beachheads covered an area 19 kilometres (12 mi) wide and 10 kilometres (7 mi) deep.^[189] Casualties at Juno were 961 men.^[190]

Sword Beach

Main article: Sword Beach

British troops take cover after landing on Sword Beach.

On Sword Beach, 21 of 25 DD tanks of the first wave were successful in getting safely ashore to provide cover for the infantry, who began disembarking at 07:30.^[191] The beach was heavily mined and peppered with obstacles, making the work of the beach clearing teams difficult and dangerous.^[192] In the windy conditions, the tide came in more quickly than expected, so manoeuvring the armour was difficult. The beach quickly became congested.^[193] Brigadier Simon Fraser, 15th Lord Lovat and his 1st Special Service Brigade arrived in the second wave, piped ashore by Private Bill Millin, Lovat's personal piper.^[194] Members of No. 4 Commando moved through Ouistreham to attack from the rear a German gun battery on the shore. A concrete observation and control tower at this emplacement had to be bypassed and was not captured until several days later.^[195] French forces under Commander Philippe Kieffer (the first French soldiers to arrive in Normandy) attacked and cleared the heavily fortified strongpoint at the casino at Riva Bella, with the aid of one of the DD tanks.^[195]

The 'Morris' strongpoint near Colleville-sur-Orne was captured after about an hour of fighting.^[193] The nearby 'Hillman' strongpoint, headquarters of the 736th Infantry Regiment, was a large complex defensive work that had come through the morning's bombardment essentially undamaged. It was not captured until 20:15.^[196] The 2nd Battalion, King's Shropshire Light Infantry began advancing to Caen on foot, coming within a few kilometres of the town, but had to withdraw due to lack of armour support.^[197] At 16:00, the 21st Panzer Division mounted a counter-attack between Sword and Juno and nearly succeeded in reaching the Channel. It met stiff resistance from the British 3rd Division and was soon recalled to assist in the area between Caen and Bayeux.^[198][199] Estimates of Allied casualties on Sword Beach are as high as 1,000.^[15]

Aftermath

Situation map for 24:00, 6 June 1944

The Normandy landings were the largest seaborne invasion in history, with nearly 5,000 landing and assault craft, 289 escort vessels, and 277 minesweepers participating.^[200] Nearly 160,000 troops crossed the English Channel on D-Day,^[9] with 875,000 men disembarking by the end of June.^[201] Allied casualties on the first day were at least 10,000, with 4,414 confirmed dead^[13] and the Germans had 4,000–9,000 casualties (killed, wounded, missing, or captured).^[15] The Germans never achieved Hitler's stated aim of "throwing the Allies back into the sea" on D-Day or at any time thereafter.^[202]

The Allied invasion plans had demanded a rapid build-up of troops and the establishment of a secure bridgehead, which was achieved with fewer casualties than expected.^[203] The plan had also called for the capture of Carentan, Saint-Lô, Caen, and Bayeux on the first day, with all the beaches (other than Utah) linked with a front line 10 to 16 kilometres (6 to 10 mi) from the beaches; none of these latter objectives were achieved.^[36] At Utah the 4th Division made significant progress inland, making a rendezvous with the airborne troops, and the British and Canadians were between six and ten kilometres (4 and 7 miles) inland.^[203] The five beachheads were not connected until 12 June, by which time the Allies held a front around 97 kilometres (60 mi) long and 24 kilometres (15 mi) deep.^[204] Caen, a major objective, was still in German hands at the end of D-Day and would not be completely captured until 21 July.^[205] The Germans had ordered French civilians other than those deemed essential to the war effort to leave potential combat zones in Normandy.^[206] Civilian casualties on D-Day and D+1 are estimated at 3,000.^[207]

The Allied victory in Normandy stemmed from several factors. German preparations along the Atlantic Wall were only partially finished; shortly before D-Day Rommel reported that construction was only 18 per cent complete in some areas as resources were diverted elsewhere.^[208] The deceptions undertaken in Operation Fortitude were successful, leaving the Germans obliged to defend a huge stretch of coastline.^[209] Rommel was in Berlin^[53] and the forecasted stormy weather meant that some other German commanders and troops were not present in Normandy.^[52] The Allies achieved and maintained air supremacy, which meant that the Germans were unable to make observations of the preparations underway in Britain and were unable to interfere via bomber attacks.^[210] Infrastructure for transport in France was severely disrupted by Allied bombers and the French Resistance, making it difficult for the Germans to bring up reinforcements and supplies.^[211] Some of the opening bombardment was off-target or not concentrated enough to have any impact,^[165] but the specialised armour worked well except on Omaha (where most of it had been lost at sea), providing close artillery support for the troops as they disembarked onto the beaches.^[212] Indecisiveness and an overly complicated command structure on the part of the German high command were also factors in the Allied success.^[213] German forces retreated east across the Seine on 30 August 1944, marking the close of Operation Overlord.^[214]

War memorials and tourism

At Omaha Beach, parts of the Mulberry harbour are still visible, and a few of the beach obstacles remain. A memorial to the US National Guard sits at the location of a former German strongpoint. Pointe du Hoc is little changed from 1944, with the terrain covered with bomb craters and most of the concrete bunkers still in place. The Normandy American Cemetery and Memorial is nearby, in Colleville-sur-Mer.^[215] A museum about the Utah landings is located at Sainte-Marie-du-Mont, and there is one dedicated to the activities of the US airmen at Sainte-Mère-Église. Two German military cemeteries are located nearby.^[216]

Pegasus Bridge, a target of the British 6th Airborne, was the site of some of the earliest action of the Normandy landings. The bridge was replaced in 1994 by one similar in appearance, and the original is housed on the grounds of a nearby museum complex.^[217] Sections of Mulberry Harbour B still sit in the sea at Arromanches, and the well-preserved Longues-sur-Mer battery is nearby.^[218] The Juno Beach Centre, opened in 2003, was funded by the Canadian federal and provincial governments, France, and Canadian veterans.^[219] The British Normandy Memorial above Gold Beach was designed by the architect Liam O'Connor and opened in 2021.^[220]

The Bény-sur-Mer Canadian War Cemetery

The La Cambe German war cemetery, near Bayeux

The Bayeux Commonwealth war cemetery

The Normandy American Cemetery and Memorial, overlooking Omaha Beach

See also

· Commonwealth War Graves Commission – Commonwealth organisation responsible for war graves

· D-Day Daily Telegraph crossword security alarm – Suspected espionage case during WW2

· Exercise Tiger – D-Day rehearsal in 1944

· Martha Gellhorn – American war correspondent (1908–1998), the only woman to land at Normandy on D-Day

Notes

a.  The official British history gives an estimated figure of 156,115 men landed on D-Day. This comprised 57,500 Americans and 75,215 British and Canadians from the sea and 15,500 Americans and 7,900 British from the air.^[9]

b.  Includes guns from 100mm to 210mm, as well as 320mm rocket launchers.^[12]

c.  The original estimate for Allied casualties was 10,000, of which 2,500 were killed. Research under way by the National D-Day Memorial has confirmed 4,414 deaths, of which 2,499 were American and 1,915 were from other nations.^[13]

d.  The tank remained in place until 1972 when it was removed and restored by members of the Royal Engineers.

References

Citations

1. Beevor 2009, p. 82.

2. Beevor 2009, p. 76.

3. Beevor 2009, p. 492.

4. Beevor 2009, p. 99.

5. Ford & Zaloga 2009, p. 25.

6. Garner 2019.

7. Meadows 2016.

8. Ford & Zaloga 2009, p. 342.

9. Ellis, Allen & Warhurst 2004, pp. 521–533.

10. Morison 1962, p. 67.

11. Ford & Zaloga 2009, pp. 60, 63, 118–120.

12. Zaloga & Johnson 2005, p. 29.

13. Whitmarsh 2009, p. 87.

14. Napier 2017, p. 72.

15. Portsmouth Museum Services.

16. Ford & Zaloga 2009, pp. 8–9.

17. Folliard 1942.

18. Ford & Zaloga 2009, p. 10.

19. Ford & Zaloga 2009, pp. 10–11.

20. Wilmot 1997, pp. 177–178, chart p. 180.

21. Churchill 1951, p. 404.

22. Ford & Zaloga 2009, pp. 13–14.

23. Beevor 2009, pp. 33–34.

24. Wilmot 1997, p. 170.

25. Ambrose 1994, pp. 73–74.

26. Ford & Zaloga 2009, p. 14.

27. Wilmot 1997, p. 182.

28. Gilbert 1989, p. 491.

29. Whitmarsh 2009, pp. 12–13.

30. Hastings 2025, pp. 30, 31, 33.

31. Whitmarsh 2009, p. 13.

32. Weinberg 1995, p. 684.

33. Hastings 2025, pp. 30, 31.

34. Beevor 2009, p. 3.

35. Churchill 1951, pp. 592–593.

36. Beevor 2009, Map, inside front cover.

37. Caddick-Adams 2019, p. 136.

38. Weinberg 1995, p. 698.

39. Weinberg 1995, p. 680.

40. Brown 2007, p. 465.

41. Zuehlke 2004, pp. 71–72.

42. Whitmarsh 2009, p. 27.

43. Beevor 2009, p. 282.

44. Whitmarsh 2009, p. 34.

45. Bickers 1994, pp. 19–21.

46. Whitmarsh 2009, p. 31.

47. Whitmarsh 2009, p. 33.

48. Traub 2024.

49. Beevor 2009, p. 21.

50. Wilmot 1997, p. 224.

51. Wilmot 1997, pp. 224–226.

52. Ford & Zaloga 2009, p. 131.

53. Beevor 2009, pp. 42–43.

54. Wilmot 1997, p. 144.

55. Francois 2013, p. 118.

56. Goldstein, Dillon & Wenger 1994, pp. 16–19.

57. Ford & Zaloga 2009, p. 37.

58. Liedtke 2015, pp. 227–228, 235.

59. Liedtke 2015, pp. 224–225.

60. Ford & Zaloga 2009, p. 118.

61. Ford & Zaloga 2009, p. 122.

62. Ford & Zaloga 2009, pp. 60, 63.

63. Ford & Zaloga 2009, p. 63.

64. Ford & Zaloga 2009, p. 275.

65. Ford & Zaloga 2009, p. 60.

66. Ford & Zaloga 2009, p. 206.

67. Whitmarsh 2009, p. 73.

68. Margaritis 2019, pp. 414–418.

69. Margaritis 2019, p. 321.

70. Ford & Zaloga 2009, p. 30.

71. Beevor 2009, p. 33.

72. Goldstein, Dillon & Wenger 1994, p. 12.

73. Whitmarsh 2009, p. 12.

74. Ford & Zaloga 2009, pp. 54–56.

75. Murray 1983, p. 263.

76. Murray 1983, p. 280.

77. Hooton 1999, p. 283.

78. Speer 1971, pp. 483–484.

79. Speer 1971, p. 482.

80. Ford & Zaloga 2009, p. 31.

81. Whitmarsh 2009, p. 15.

82. Wilmot 1997, p. 192.

83. Whitmarsh 2009, Map, p. 12.

84. Ford & Zaloga 2009, p. 125.

85. Whitmarsh 2009, p. 53.

86. Ford & Zaloga 2009, p. 66.

87. Stanley 2004.

88. Holland 2014.

89. Ford & Zaloga 2009, p. 271.

90. Ford & Zaloga 2009, p. 270.

91. Ford & Zaloga 2009, p. 200.

92. Ford & Zaloga 2009, p. 201.

93. Douthit 1988, p. 23.

94. Escott 2010, p. 138.

95. Beevor 2009, p. 43.

96. Wilmot 1997, p. 229.

97. Special Operations Research Office 1965, pp. 51–52.

98. Yung 2006, p. 133.

99. Goldstein, Dillon & Wenger 1994, p. 6.

100. Churchill 1951, p. 594.

101. Whitmarsh 2009, p. 30.

102. Ford & Zaloga 2009, p. 205.

103. Ford & Zaloga 2009, p. 233.

104. Weigley 1981, pp. 136–137.

105. Wilmot 1997, p. 255.

106. Goldstein, Dillon & Wenger 1994, p. 82.

107. Beevor 2009, pp. 81, 117.

108. Ford & Zaloga 2009, p. 69.

109. Whitmarsh 2009, pp. 51–52, 69.

110. Ford & Zaloga 2009, p. 114.

111. Wilmot 1997, p. 175.

112. US Army Air Corps Museum.

113. Sons of Liberty Museum.

114. Ford & Zaloga 2009, pp. 125, 128–129.

115. Wilmot 1997, p. 234.

116. Corta 1952, p. 159.

117. Corta 1997, pp. 65–78.

118. Barr 1944.

119. Ford & Zaloga 2009, p. 133.

120. Ford & Zaloga 2009, p. 134.

121. Beevor 2009, p. 27.

122. Wilmot 1997, p. 243.

123. Beevor 2009, pp. 61–64.

124. Ford & Zaloga 2009, pp. 166–167.

125. Beevor 2009, p. 116.

126. Ford & Zaloga 2009, p. 139.

127. Beevor 2009, p. 67.

128. Wilmot 1997, p. 244.

129. Ford & Zaloga 2009, p. 145.

130. Beevor 2009, p. 69.

131. Ford & Zaloga 2009, pp. 149–150.

132. Ford & Zaloga 2009, p. 151.

133. Beevor 2009, p. 71.

134. Ford & Zaloga 2009, p. 167.

135. Wilmot 1997, p. 246–247.

136. Beevor 2009, pp. 52–53.

137. Wilmot 1997, pp. 238–239.

138. Wilmot 1997, p. 240.

139. Beevor 2009, p. 57.

140. Wilmot 1997, p. 239.

141. Ford & Zaloga 2009, p. 222.

142. Ford & Zaloga 2009, pp. 228, 230.

143. Ford & Zaloga 2009, p. 230.

144. Wilmot 1997, p. 282.

145. Beevor 2009, pp. 56–58.

146. Wilmot 1997, p. 242.

147. Ford & Zaloga 2009, Map, pp. 216–217.

148. Goldstein, Dillon & Wenger 1994, p. 84.

149. Ford & Zaloga 2009, p. 73.

150. Ford & Zaloga 2009, p. 130.

151. Ford & Zaloga 2009, pp. 131, 160–161.

152. Whitmarsh 2009, pp. 50–51.

153. Ford & Zaloga 2009, pp. 158–159, 164.

154. Whitmarsh 2009, p. 51.

155. Ford & Zaloga 2009, p. 165.

156. Beevor 2009, p. 102.

157. Ford & Zaloga 2009, pp. 95–104.

158. Wilmot 1997, p. 263.

159. Beevor 2009, p. 155.

160. Zaloga 2009, p. 50.

161. Beevor 2009, p. 106.

162. Ford & Zaloga 2009, pp. 64–65, 334.

163. Ford & Zaloga 2009, p. 45.

164. Ford & Zaloga 2009, pp. 76–77.

165. Beevor 2009, p. 91.

166. Beevor 2009, p. 90.

167. Ford & Zaloga 2009, pp. 333–334.

168. Ford & Zaloga 2009, pp. 90–91.

169. Ford & Zaloga 2009, pp. 56, 83.

170. Ford & Zaloga 2009, p. 337.

171. Ford & Zaloga 2009, pp. 276–277.

172. Ford & Zaloga 2009, pp. 281–282.

173. Ford & Zaloga 2009, p. 299.

174. Ford & Zaloga 2009, p. 286.

175. Ford & Zaloga 2009, pp. 298–299.

176. Wilmot 1997, p. 272.

177. Ford & Zaloga 2009, p. 292.

178. Whitmarsh 2009, p. 70.

179. Ford & Zaloga 2009, pp. 289–290.

180. Beevor 2009, p. 129.

181. Wilmot 1997, pp. 272–273.

182. Wilmot 1997, pp. 274–275.

183. Ford & Zaloga 2009, pp. 312–313.

184. Wilmot 1997, p. 275.

185. Ford & Zaloga 2009, Map, pp. 314–315.

186. Ford & Zaloga 2009, p. 317.

187. Beevor 2009, pp. 133–135.

188. Beevor 2009, p. 135.

189. Wilmot 1997, p. 276.

190. Beevor 2009, p. 131.

191. Wilmot 1997, p. 277.

192. Ford & Zaloga 2009, pp. 239–240.

193. Beevor 2009, p. 143.

194. Beevor 2009, p. 138.

195. Ford & Zaloga 2009, pp. 244–245.

196. Ford & Zaloga 2009, pp. 248–249.

197. Beevor 2009, pp. 143, 148.

198. Ford & Zaloga 2009, pp. 326–327.

199. Wilmot 1997, p. 283.

200. Beevor 2009, p. 74.

201. Whitmarsh 2009, p. 104.

202. Imperial War Museum.

203. Holland 2014, p. 275.

204. Horn 2010, p. 13.

205. Wilmot 1997, p. 360.

206. Flint 2009, p. 102.

207. Flint 2009, p. 336.

208. Wilmot 1997, p. 290.

209. Ford & Zaloga 2009, p. 343.

210. Wilmot 1997, p. 289.

211. Ford & Zaloga 2009, p. 36.

212. Wilmot 1997, p. 291.

213. Wilmot 1997, p. 292.

214. Stacey 1960, p. 295.

215. Ford & Zaloga 2009, p. 346.

216. Ford & Zaloga 2009, pp. 346–348.

217. Mémorial Pegasus.

218. Ford & Zaloga 2009, p. 352.

219. Zuehlke 2004, pp. 349–350.

220. O'Connor 2021.

Bibliography

· Ambrose, Stephen (1994) [1993]. D-Day June 6, 1944: The Climactic Battle of World War II. New York: Simon & Schuster. ISBN 978-0-671-67334-5.

· Beevor, Antony (2009). D-Day: The Battle for Normandy. New York; Toronto: Viking. ISBN 978-0-670-02119-2.

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· Caddick-Adams, Peter (2019). Sand and Steel: A New History of D-Day. London: Hutchinson. ISBN 978-1-84794-8-281.

· Churchill, Winston (1951) [1948]. Closing the Ring. The Second World War. Vol. V. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. OCLC 396150.

· Corta, Henry (1952). Les bérets rouges [The Red Berets] (in French). Paris: Amicale des anciens parachutistes SAS. OCLC 8226637.

· Corta, Henry (1997). Qui ose gagne [Who dares, wins] (in French). Vincennes, France: Service Historique de l'Armée de Terre. ISBN 978-2-86323-103-6.

· "D-Day and the Battle of Normandy: Your Questions Answered". ddaymuseum.co.uk. Portsmouth Museum Services. Archived from the original on 29 June 2013. Retrieved 18 April 2014.

· Douthit, Howard L. III (1988). The Use and Effectiveness of Sabotage as a Means of Unconventional Warfare – An Historical Perspective from World War I Through Vietnam (PDF) (MSc thesis). Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio: Air Force Institute of Technology. Archived (PDF) from the original on 8 January 2020. Retrieved 8 January 2020.

· Ellis, L.F.; Allen, G.R.G.; Warhurst, A.E. (2004) [1962]. Butler, J.R.M (ed.). Victory in the West, Volume I: The Battle of Normandy. History of the Second World War United Kingdom Military Series. London: Naval & Military Press. ISBN 978-1-84574-058-0.

· Escott, Beryl E. (2010). The Heroines of SOE: Britain's Secret Women in France. Stroud, Gloucestershire: History Press. ISBN 978-0-7524-5661-4.

· Flint, Edward R (2009). The development of British civil affairs and its employment in the British Sector of Allied military operations during the Battle of Normandy, June to August 1944 (PhD thesis). Cranfield, Bedford: Cranfield University; Cranfield Defence and Security School, Department of Applied Science, Security and Resilience, Security and Resilience Group. hdl:1826/4017. OCLC 757064836.

· Folliard, Edward T. (12 June 1942). "Molotov's Visit to White House, Postwar Amity Pledge Revealed". The Washington Post.

· Ford, Ken; Zaloga, Steven J. (2009). Overlord: The D-Day Landings. Oxford; New York: Osprey. ISBN 978-1-84603-424-4.

· Francois, Dominique (13 October 2013). Normandy: From D-Day to the Breakout: June 6 – July 31, 1944. Minneapolis: Voyageur Press. ISBN 978-0-7603-4558-0.

· Garner, Tom (4 June 2019). "D-Day's forgotten Greeks". History of War. Retrieved 15 February 2021.

· Gilbert, Martin (1989). The Second World War: A Complete History. New York: H. Holt. ISBN 978-0-8050-1788-5.

· Goldstein, Donald M.; Dillon, Katherine V.; Wenger, J. Michael (1994). D-Day: The Story and Photographs. McLean, Virginia: Brassey's. ISBN 978-0-02-881057-7.

· Hastings, Max (2025). Sword: D-Day Trial by Battle. London: William Collins. ISBN 978-0-00-869975-8. OCLC 1518361124.

· Holland, James (5 June 2014). "D-Day: Exploding the myths of the Normandy landings". CNN. CNN.

· Hooton, Edward (1999) [1997]. Eagle in Flames: The Fall of the Luftwaffe. London: Arms and Armour. ISBN 978-1-86019-995-0.

· Horn, Bernd (2010). Men of Steel: Canadian Paratroopers in Normandy, 1944. Toronto: Dundurn Press. ISBN 978-1-55488-708-8.

· Liedtke, Gregory (2 January 2015). "Lost in the Mud: The (Nearly) Forgotten Collapse of the German Army in the Western Ukraine, March and April 1944". The Journal of Slavic Military Studies. 28 (1): 215–238. doi:10.1080/13518046.2015.998134. ISSN 1351-8046. S2CID 144324751.

· Margaritis, Peter (2019). Countdown to D-Day: The German Perspective: The German High Command in Occupied France, 1944. Philadelphia; Oxford, UK: Casemate. ISBN 978-1-61200-769-4.

· Meadows, Ian (2016). "South Africans in D-Day". South African Legion. Retrieved 9 April 2023.

· Morison, Samuel Eliot (1962). History of United States Naval Operations in World War II. Vol. 11. The invasion of France and Germany, 1944–1945. Boston: Little, Brown. OCLC 757924260.

· Murray, Williamson (1983). Strategy for Defeat: The Luftwaffe, 1933–45. Washington: Brassey's. ISBN 978-1-57488-125-7.

· Napier, Stephen (2017) [2015]. The Armoured Campaign in Normandy June - August 1944. Stroud: The History Press. ISBN 978-0-7509-7945-0.

· O'Connor, Mary (6 June 2021). "British Normandy Memorial unveiled in France to honour veterans". BBC. Retrieved 6 June 2021.

· "Pegasus Bridge: The Bridge of the Longest Day". memorial-pegasus.org. Mémorial Pegasus D-Day Commemoration Committee. Archived from the original on 7 April 2014. Retrieved 6 September 2019.

· "D-Day, the Invasion of Normandy". Sons of Liberty Museum. Retrieved 4 March 2025.

· A Study of Rear Area Security Measures. Washington: Special Operations Research Office, Counter-insurgency Information Analysis Center, United States Army. 1965.

· Speer, Albert (1971) [1969]. Inside the Third Reich. New York: Avon. ISBN 978-0-380-00071-5.

· Stacey, C.P. (1960). "The Victory Campaign, The Operations in North-West Europe 1944–1945 (PDF). Official History of the Canadian Army in the Second World War. Vol. III. Ottawa: Published by Authority of the Minister of National Defence" (PDF). Government of Canada Publications. Retrieved 31 May 2025.

· Staff (5 June 2014). "D-Day: In the words of the BBC journalists". bbc.com. BBC News. Retrieved 10 June 2014.

· Staff. "The German Response to D-Day". Imperial War Museum. London. Retrieved 4 June 2024.

· Stanley, Peter (6 June 2004). "Australians and D-Day". Anniversary talks. Australian War Memorial. Archived from the original on 26 April 2014. Retrieved 8 January 2020.

· "The U.S. Army Air Forces in the D-Day Invasion". US Army Air Corps Museum. Retrieved 4 March 2025.

· Traub, Alex (2 January 2024). "Maureen Flavin Sweeney Dies at 100; Her Weather Report Delayed D-Day". New York Times. Retrieved 4 January 2024.

· Weigley, Russell F. (1981). Eisenhower's Lieutenants: The Campaign of France and Germany 1944–1945. Vol. I. Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press. ISBN 978-0-253-13333-5.

· Weinberg, Gerhard (1995) [1993]. A World at Arms: A Global History of World War II. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-55879-2.

· Whitmarsh, Andrew (2009). D-Day in Photographs. Stroud: History Press. ISBN 978-0-7524-5095-7.

· Wilmot, Chester (1997) [1952]. The Struggle For Europe. Ware, Hertfordshire: Wordsworth Editions. ISBN 978-1-85326-677-5.

· Yung, Christopher D. (2006). Gators of Neptune: Naval Amphibious Planning for the Normandy Invasion. Annapolis: Naval Institute Press. ISBN 978-1-59114-997-2.

· Zaloga, Steven J; Johnson, Hugh (2005). D-Day Fortifications in Normandy. Fortress 34. Oxford; New York: Osprey. ISBN 978-1-4728-0382-5.

· Zaloga, Steven J. (2009). Rangers Lead the Way: Pointe-du-Hoc, D-Day 1944. Oxford: Osprey. ISBN 978-1-84603-394-0.

· Zuehlke, Mark (2004). Juno Beach: Canada's D-Day Victory: June 6, 1944. Vancouver: Douglas & McIntyre. ISBN 978-1-55365-050-8.

Further reading

· Badsey, Stephen (1990). Normandy 1944: Allied Landings and Breakout. Osprey Campaign Series. Vol. 1. Botley, Oxford: Osprey. ISBN 978-0-85045-921-0.

· Buckley, John (2006). The Normandy Campaign: 1944: Sixty Years On. London; New York: Routledge. ISBN 978-1-134-20303-1.

· Collier, Richard (1992). D-Day: 6 June 1944: The Normandy Landings. London: Cassell. ISBN 978-1-841-88031-0.

· D'Este, Carlo (1983). Decision in Normandy: The Unwritten Story of Montgomery and the Allied Campaign. London: William Collins Sons. ISBN 978-0-00-217056-7.

· Dolski, Michael; Edwards, Sam; Buckley, John, eds. (2014). D-Day in History and Memory: The Normandy Landings in International Remembrance and Commemoration. Denton: University of North Texas Press. ISBN 978-1-57441-548-3.

· Field, Jacob (2014). D-Day in Numbers: The Facts Behind Operation Overlord. London: Michael O'Mara Books. ISBN 978-1-782-43205-0.

· Hastings, Max (1984). Overlord: D-Day and the Battle for Normandy. London: Joseph. ISBN 0-671-46029-3.

· Holderfield, Randal J.; Varhola, Michael J. (2001). The Invasion of Normandy, June 6, 1944. Mason City, Iowa: Savas. ISBN 978-1-882810-45-1.

· Holland, James (2019). Normandy '44: D-Day and the Epic 77-Day Battle for France. New York: Grove Atlantic. ISBN 978-0-8021-4709-7., (in the UK Normandy '44 D-Day and the Battle for France by Bantam Press ISBN 9781787631274 )

· Howarth, David (1959). Dawn of D-Day: These Men Were There, 6 June 1944. London: Collins.

· Keegan, John (1994). Six Armies in Normandy: From D-Day to the Liberation of Paris. New York: Penguin. ISBN 978-0-14-023542-5.

· "Lost and Found in Hong Kong: The Unsung Chinese Heroes at D-Day". The Foreign Correspondents' Club, Hong Kong. 10 October 2024.

· Milton, Giles (2018). D-Day: The Soldiers' Story. London: John Murray. ISBN 978-1473649019.

· Neillands, Robin (2002). The Battle of Normandy, 1944. London: Cassell. ISBN 978-0-304-35837-3.

· Ryan, Cornelius (1959). The Longest Day. New York: Simon & Schuster.

· Stacey, C.P. (1946). Canada's Battle in Normandy: The Canadian Army's Share in the Operations, 6 June – 1 September 1944. Ottawa: King's Printer. OCLC 39263107.

· Trigg, Jonathan (2020). D-Day Through German Eyes: How the Wehrmacht Lost France. Stroud, England: Amberley. ISBN 978-1398-1032-3-8.

· Tute, Warren; Costello, John; Hughes, Terry (1975). D-Day. London: Pan Books. ISBN 978-0-330-24418-3.

· Whitlock, Flint (2004). The Fighting First: The Untold Story of The Big Red One on D-Day. Boulder: Westview Press. ISBN 978-0-8133-4218-4.

· Zetterling, Niklas (2000). Normandy 1944: German Military Organisation, Combat Power and Organizational Effectiveness. Winnipeg: J.J. Fedorowicz Publishing. ISBN 978-0-921991-56-4.

External links

Wikivoyage has a travel guide for D-Day beaches.

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Battle of Normandy landing sites.

· Extended onsite interview of Dwight Eisenhower on his D-Day recollections (YouTube, 1:22:15)

· Admiral Sir Bertram Ramsay (30 October 1947). "The Assault Phase of the Normandy Landings" (PDF). Supplement to The London Gazette. pp. 5109–5124.

· Air Chief Marshal Sir Trafford Leigh-Mallory (2 January 1947). "Air Operations by the Allied Expeditionary Air Force in N.W. Europe From November 15th, 1943 to September 30th, 1944" (PDF). Supplement to the London Gazette. pp. 37–92.

· "Awards bestowed by King George VI" (PDF). Supplement to the London Gazette. 31 August 1944. pp. 4043–4054.

· The Normandy Invasion at the US Army Center of Military History

· Neptune Operations Plan

· Naval details for Overlord at Naval-History.Net

· Allied veterans remember D-Day

· Naval History and Heritage Command

· Complete Broadcast Day: D-Day (June 6, 1944) from CBS Radio News, available at the Internet Archive

· D-Day to D plus 3 (33m19s) on YouTube: US Department of Defense, Department of the Army footage from the US National Archives

· Documents on World War II: D-Day, The Invasion of Normandy at the Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library, Museum and Boyhood Home

· Lt. General Omar Bradley's June 6, 1944 D-Day Maps

· The short film Big Picture: D-Day Convoy to Normandy is available for free viewing and download at the Internet Archive.

· Dropzone Normandy (1944) – US Government film on the paradrop during the Normandy landings

ATTACHMENT “B” – FROM USA TODAY

Graham Platner wins Maine primary, Nancy Mace concedes in SC gov race

By Phillip M. Bailey, Terry Collins, Sarah D. Wire, James Powel, Margie Cullen and Drew Pittock

June 9, 2026 Updated June 10, 2026, 8:34 a.m. ET

Results are rolling in for closely watched primary contests in Maine and South Carolina on Tuesday, June 9. In the day's most high-profile race, Maine Democrat Graham Platner − for whom embarrassing revelations about his personal life (were) threatening to upend his bid to unseat Republican Sen. Susan Collins − has won the Democratic Senate primary.

Platner bested Gov. Janet Mills, who suspended her Senate campaign on April 30, and will face Incumbent Sen. Susan Collins who ran for the Republican nomination unopposed. Maine also features a race to succeed Rep. Jared Golden, a moderate Democrat, in a district President Donald Trump has carried three times.

Platner unscathed, Mace unsuccessful: June 9 election takeaways

In South Carolina, Sen. Lindsey Graham survived a field of five primary challengers, led by hardline conservative Mark Lynch, to take the Republican ballot line in pursuit of his fifth term in the upper chamber. He will face Democratic nominee Dr. Annie Andrews in November. 

South Carolina Rep. Nancy Mace's bid for governor failed after she lost President Donald Trump's favor by joining House Democrats to compel the release of Justice Department files on convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. The president endorsed Lt. Gov. Pamela Evette. Evette will head to a runoff with Alan Wilson, and Mace conceded the race.

There are also statewide contests to watch in the swing state of Nevada and North Dakota, where Trump and the state GOP are at odds over the Peace Garden State's at-large congressional seat.

Ford says 'no más' to Lombardo in victory speech

James Powel

Nevada Attorney General Aaron Ford delivered his victory speech to a crowd of supporters at the headquarters of the powerful Culinary Union just off the Las Vegas Strip. Ford’s general election opening salvo tied Lombardo to Trump and a shaky economy, as he had in the primary campaign.

“Tonight we say: no más. No more failed leadership in Carson City that lets jobs disappear while prices soar. No more health care slashed while families struggle,” Ford said. “No more to a Governor who bends the knee to a President he seeks to please, instead of the people he was sworn to protect.”

He pointed to increasing costs for homeowners in the state and the impact the Trump administration has had on tourism in Nevada. “Because of Lombardo, Nevadans are feeling more pain at the gas pump, at the grocery store, at the businesses that are closing and the sight of opportunities getting further and further out of reach,” Ford said.

He noted that Washoe County Comissioner Alexis Hill had conceded the race and promised to "break bread" with her.

"I am excited for Aaron Ford to move forward in the Nevada governor’s race and beat Joe Lombardo in November," Hill said in a statement provided to USA TODAY. "Democrats have to win this and turn Nevada back to a fully blue state."

Nevada Gov. Lombardo on GOP primary win: 'There is more to do'

Terry Collins

Nevada Gov. Joe Lombardo said his job isn't finished after capturing the Republican nomination for a second time.

The incumbent easily advanced inthe GOP gubernatorial primary Tuesday over challenger Irina Hansen. In his bid for reelection, Lombardo will now face Democratic nominee Nevada Attorney General Aaron Ford.

Lombardo said in a statement provided to KLAS-TV that despite helping the state create nearly 100,000 new jobs, attract more than $6 billion in private investment, become a national leader in job and wage growth, and make housing more affordable, it's still not enough.

"There is more to do," Lombardo said. "Too many families are still feeling the pressure of rising costs, too many students need greater opportunities to succeed, and too many communities are waiting for the next chapter of growth and investment. We cannot afford to slow down now."

Lombardo said he would keep working for every Nevadan, whether they voted for him or not.

"Together, we will build on our progress, finish the job, and make Nevada the best place in America to live, work, and raise a family," Lombardo said.

Maine governor races likely to head to ranked choice voting

Margie Cullen

The Democratic and Republican primaries for Maine governor are both likely to go to a ranked choice voting tabulation as no candidate yet appeared to have a majority as of 11:50 p.m. ET on Tuesday, June 9. 

With 58% of the vote in according to the Associated Press, former director of the Maine Centers for Disease Control Nirav Shah was narrowly leading the Democratic primary for governor with 26.6%, but former Speaker of the Maine House of Representatives Hannah Pingree, former Maine Senate President Troy Jackson and Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows were all within six points of him.

On the Republican side, Robert Charles, former Assistant U.S. Secretary of State under former President George H.W. Bush, was leading with 38.4% with 46% of the vote in. Businessman Benjamin Midgley and healthcare executive Jonathan Bush, followed with 19.9% and 19.7% respectively. Charles has declared victory but, as he has not yet received over 50% of the vote, he has not yet won.

The Maine Secretary of State's Office will announce whether the races will go to ranked choice tabulation in the next day or two. According to the office, ranked choice voting tabulations are expected to be completed prior to June 19.

Aaron Ford advances to Nevada Governor election as Democratic nominee

James Powel

Nevada Attorney General Aaron Ford has won the Democratic nomination for Nevada's gubernatorial election.

The Associated Press and Decision Desk HQ called the race for him around 11:45 p.m. ET.

Maine's Second Congressional District Democratic primary too close to call

Margie Cullen

In unofficial tallies of first choice votes as of 11:40 p.m. ET, state Sen. Joe Baldacci, D-Bangor, had a slight lead in the Democratic primary race for Maine’s 2nd Congressional District with 31.9% of the vote, according to the Associated Press. 

However, Baldacci, former congressional staffer Jordan Wood and Maine state auditor Matthew Dunlap were all within four points of each other. Social worker Paige Loud was trailing with 9.9%.

With no candidate receiving a majority with 50% of the votes counted, it’s likely the race will proceed to a ranked choice tabulation. According to the Maine Secretary of State’s Office, ranked choice voting tabulations are expected to be completed prior to June 19.

Baldacci and Dunlap are considered to be the more moderate candidates in the race, while Wood is more progressive. In interviews prior to election day, Maine political pundits said that nominating a more moderate candidate might be necessary for Democrats to win the 2nd District, which has voted for President Donald Trump in all of the past three presidential elections, over former Maine Gov. Paul LePage, the Republican nominee. For the past eight years, it has been represented by Rep. Jared Golden, D-Maine, a blue dog Democrat who supports gun rights and often breaks with his party.

But the result is still up in the air. With candidates so close together, ranked choice tabulation has the potential to change the outcome of the race.

Nevada Gov. Joe Lombardo advances to November

James Powel

Nevada Gov. Joe Lombardo has won the Republican nomination and will defend his seat in November.

Decision Desk HQ called the race for the incumbent at 11:13 p.m. ET and The Associated Press followed at 11:35 p.m. ET.

Sen. Graham calls himself 'Trump guy in Senate'

James Powel

Sen. Lindsey Graham said he would be "the Trump guy" in the Senate and disparaged Republican Trump defectors in a speech delivered after he secured the GOP nomination for a potential fifth term.

"What did we prove tonight? That South Carolina is Trump country, not Massie country. We proved tonight that nobody gives a damn what Marjorie Taylor Greene thinks about who to vote for in South Carolina," Graham said.

He added that he would "make sure" that the military has "what they need" for "wars that we can't afford to lose."

In California, Becerra, Hilton advance in crowded governor's race

Terry Collins

Democratic frontrunner Xavier Becerra and his Republican counterpart Steve Hilton nabbed the top two spots in the closely watched, congested primary race for California governor, the Associated Press and NBC News projected.

Becerra and Hilton had been neck-and-neck for the lead in the state’s nonpartisan "jungle" primary on June 2, as the race was finally called a week later on Tuesday, June 9. The top two vote-getters, regardless of party affiliation, advance for a chance to succeed current Gov. Gavin Newsom, who terms out after eight years in office, in January.

They survived a packed field of 61 gubernatorial candidates. The veteran politician Becerra received nearly 28% of the vote, and the political novice and former Fox News contributor Hilton received 25%, according to the AP. Progressive billionaire Democrat Tom Steyer, who spent more than $200 million on his campaign, came in third place with 22.6%.

Becerra could become the state's first elected Latino governor in more than a century, and Hilton could be California's first Republican governor since Arnold Schwarzenegger served in office from 2003 to 2011. Of California's 23 million registered voters, nearly half are Democrats; a quarter of residents identify as Republicans.

Graham Platner appears to reference controversies in victory speech

Margie Cullen

Platner said he would work to earn the trust, faith and support of Mainers that feel “disillusioned” or “disappointed” as he continues his campaign for the U.S. Senate in his victory speech Tuesday.

“If you believe, as I do, that we can change our politics and change our country, then you must also believe that people can change. And the reason I believe that is because I have lived it,” Platner said.

Speaking at the YMCA in Blue Hill, Maine, shortly after winning the Democratic primary for U.S. Senate, Platner seemed to reference the multiple controversies that have hit his campaign, which include his controversial tattoo, commentaries, and recent sexting scandals.

“National pundits, the political establishment, they keep looking for that one story, that one headline, that one moment in my life that they can define the campaign by,” Platner said. “But in trying so hard to understand me, they fail to understand that this is not about me at all. This is a movement about us. About the far too many, working far too hard and struggling far too much at the hands of the ruling class.”

Platner also used the time to thank his parents, wife, volunteers and the people of Maine for his win. He reiterated his oft-repeated campaign promises to fight against corporations and billionaires and to make life affordable for Mainers, and critiqued Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, his general election opponent.

“It is deeply humbling to stand here as your Democratic nominee. It is an honor and I will not let you down,” Platner said. “Until recently I thought that harbor master would be the height of my political career. It now appears that things have changed.”

'A moral emergency': Nancy Mace concedes defeat in South Carolina gubernatorial primary

Drew Pittock

Rep. Nancy Mace, R-South Carolina, has conceded defeat in the South Carolina gubernatorial primary.

In a post on X, Mace said that serving the state "has been the greatest honor of my life," but cited her willingness to push for greater transparency around the Epstein files as the reason for her defeat.

"As a survivor, I chose to stand on principle and stand against the Epstein cover-up. I chose to expose the names hidden in the sexual harassment slush fund. I chose to expose DEI judges. I chose to expose the abusers of children. And apparently, I chose wrong if the goal was winning an election," Mace wrote. "I'm at peace with that. Because when a candidate is OK with corruption and cover-ups - something is broken. That's not a political opinion. That's a moral emergency."

After earning President Donald Trump's endorsement in 2024, Mace lost it this election cycle. Trump went on to endorse Lt. Gov. Pam Evette, who is headed for a runoff against Attorney General Alan Wilson.

Polls close in Nevada

James Powel

The polls in Nevada are closed. They shut at 10 p.m. ET/7 p.m. PT.

Trump-backed candidate wins in North Dakota's split GOP House race

Drew Pittock

A split Republican party in North Dakota has officially gone the way of President Donald Trump, with Rep. Julie Fedorchak projected to win the GOP nomination for an at-large House seat, according to NBC News, Associated Press and Decision Desk HQ.

Fedorchak, who was eyeing a second term and earned Trump’s endorsement, was faced with a rematch against Alex Balazs, a Navy veteran, who only got 4% in a five-candidate election two years ago. This time, however, Balazs had the support of the North Dakota Republican Party, which endorsed him at its convention in March after a rift with all of its statewide incumbents.

According to the multiple projections, Fedorchak is expected to win in a landslide, further demonstrating the grip that Trump continues to have on GOP politics.

Graham Platner wins Democratic primary for U.S. Senate

Margie Cullen

Oyster farmer Graham Platner will win the Democratic primary for U.S. Senate in Maine, Decision Desk HQ and NBC News projects, officially setting the stage for a general election race against Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, that could help determine control over the U.S. Senate.

Platner had been expected to win the primary, holding a wide lead over the field in polls after Maine Gov. Janet Mills dropped out in late April. He prevailed despite a slew of controversies, including recent reports that he had exchanged sexual messages with several women outside his marriage. 

Democrats are hoping that Platner can unseat Collins in their quest to flip the narrowly-Republican controlled Senate.

Trump dropped Nancy Mace. Nancy Mace didn’t drop Trump.

Drew Pittock

Rep. Nancy Mace aligned herself with President Donald Trump until the very last minute. But without his coveted endorsement in the race for South Carolina governor, her bid failed to gain traction.

Trump endorsed Lt. Gov. Pam Evette for the Republican nomination. Mace was convinced it's because she joined Democrats in calling for the full release of the Epstein files.

Even still, she included Trump's 2024 endorsement in her X bio. She also posted a video of her interview with ABC's George Stephanopoulos captioned, "The interview that won Donald Trump $15 million." And a graphic she posted looks similar to those of the president's.

At the end of the day, however, none of it was enough to sway South Carolinians in her favor. Evette will face off against Attorney General Alan Wilson in a runoff election.

Evette, Wilson head to runoff for GOP nominee in South Carolina governor race

Drew Pittock

The Republican nominee for South Carolina governor will be decided in a runoff, according to projections from the Associated Press and Decision Desk HQ, as none of the candidates earned more than 50% of the vote.

Lt. Gov. Pam Evette, who earned the endorsement of President Donald Trump, will face off against Attorney General Alan Wilson.

The two beat out a crowded field that included U.S. Reps. Nancy Mace and Ralph Norman, DOGE SC founder Rom Reddy and State Sen. Josh Kimbrell.

Whoever wins the runoff will head into a November contest against Democratic nominee Jermaine Johnson. South Carolina’s current governor, Henry McMaster, is term limited after serving in the role since 2017, when he took over for Nikki Haley as she assumed the ambassadorship to the United Nations.

Lindsey Graham wins South Carolina's GOP Senate primary

Drew Pittock

Incumbent Sen. Lindsey Graham is projected to win the GOP primary for U.S. Senate, according to Decision Desk HQ and NBC News.

Graham, a four-term senator now eyeing his fifth, has handily won every reelection bid in the past. This year, however, he faced his most viable challenge yet from fellow conservative, Mark Lynch.

Despite Graham being one of President Donald Trump’s closest allies, Lynch questioned some of his America first principles, including his commitment to Israel and the war in Iran, as well as his record on policies close to the Make America Great Again movement, such as immigration and abortion.

Graham is expected to face off against pediatrician, Dr. Annie Andrews, in the November election.

Jermaine Johnson projected to win Democratic nomination for South Carolina governor

Drew Pittock

Jermaine Johnson is projected to be the Democratic nominee for South Carolina’s next governor, according to Decision Desk HQ and NBC News.

Johnson, a former basketball player-turned-state House representative, came out ahead of business owner Billy Webster and Charleston Attorney Mullins McLeod.

Despite "outside pressure" to drop out of the race earlier this year, Johnson remained committed. As Greenville News, part of the USA TODAY Network previously reported, he was prepared to withdraw from the race and had even drafted a statement to release to the media on March 20, but made a last-minute decision to stay in.

"The people of South Carolina have overwhelmingly spoken up, and I went ahead and I tore that statement up," Johnson said in a social media video at the time.

Dr. Annie Andrews nabs Democratic nomination in South Carolina's Senate race

Drew Pittock

Pediatrician Dr. Annie Andrews is projected to win the Democratic nomination for U.S. Senate in South Carolina, according to Decision Desk HQ and NBC News.

Andrews ran against two opponents, Brandon Brown and Kyle Freeman, who were polling at 14% and 5%, respectively, going into Election Day.

Andrews is a pediatrician by trade and credits her two decades in children’s hospitals with laying the foundation for her political aspirations and platform. That includes gun control measures such as universal background checks and banning “weapons of war,” advocating for affordable health care, regulating social media for children and establishing a national digital bill of rights.

She is expected to face off against incumbent four-term Sen. Lindsey Graham in the November election.

Sen. Susan Collins wins Republican nomination for US Senate

Margie Cullen

Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, has won the Republican primary for U.S. Senate, AP and NBC project. She was uncontested.

Republicans are hoping the resilient five-term senator can hold onto her seat in the blue-leaning state to keep the U.S. Senate, which is narrowly controlled by Republicans. Collins is the only Republican senator representing a state won by former Vice President Kamala Harris in 2024.

Paul LePage wins Republican nomination in Maine 2nd Congressional District

Margie Cullen

Former Maine Republican Gov. Paul LePage has won the Republican primary for Maine’s 2nd Congressional District, AP and NBC project. He was uncontested.

LePage is endorsed by President Donald Trump. Republicans are hoping he can flip the seat formerly held by Rep. Jared Golden, D-Maine, in a conservative leaning district.

Khanna doubles down support of Platner in video

Terry Collins

Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna of California doubled down on his support for Maine's U.S. Senate candidate Graham Platner in a made-for-social-media sit-down video, saying they both oppose war and President Donald Trump.

“You know Trump ran, saying he wasn’t going to get in these wars, then he starts this war in Iran,” Khanna said to Platner as they sat on a dock in Maine in a three-minute video posted on X on Tuesday, June 9. "If the Democratic Party is going to exist, it needs to become the anti-war party," Platner responded.

Khanna’s backing comes as Platner seeks to officially become the Democratic nominee against incumbent GOP Sen. Susan Collins, despite his series of scandals surfacing while on the campaign trail.

The video serves as a bit of a testimonial for Platner in an apparent last-minute plea to voters. When Khanna asked, despite the controversies, why should they vote for him, Platner, the political newcomer and oyster farmer, went into his everyman mode.

"If you believe in transformational politics, you need to believe in the ability for people to transform," said Platner as he also talked about his time in the U.S. Marine Corps and suffering from depression after completing three combat tours in Iraq. Platner said what makes him resilient and won't go against his anti-war stance is that "Trump never served in a war," like him.

In addition to Khanna, Platner has received support from many progressives in Congress, including Democratic Sens. Bernie Sanders, I-Vermont, and Elizabeth Warren, D-Massachusetts.

Polls close in Maine

Margie Cullen

As of 8 p.m. ET, polls have officially closed in Maine. Voters were weighing in on oyster farmer Graham Platner, a Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate who has recently faced controversies that could affect the party’s chances of defeating incumbent Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, as well races to replace Rep. Jared Golden, D-Maine, in the conservative-leaning 2nd Congressional District and term-limited Gov. Janet Mills. 

Results are expected to come in throughout the evening, although it’s possible not all of the races are decided tonight due to Maine’s ranked choice voting system.

South Carolina polls close

Drew Pittock

As of 7 p.m. ET, polls have officially closed in South Carolina. Voters look to decide several key races in the state, including the U.S. Senate seat long held by incumbent Sen. Lindsey Graham and who will replace term-limited Gov. Henry McMaster.

Results are expected to trickle in throughout the evening.

Former Evette volunteer charged with assault after altercation

Drew Pittock

A former volunteer with Lt. Gov. Pamela Evette's South Carolina gubernatorial campaign was arrested on assault charges after ripping a megaphone out of the hands of a protester at an event in Greer, roughly 20 miles from the North Carolina border.

Evette held a campaign rally in Greer on June 8, the day before primary election day, Greenville News, part of the USA TODAY Network, previously reported. The event was attended by supporters, volunteers, elected officials and voters, as well as protesters.

According to an incident report from the Greer Police Department, an altercation broke out between an event attendee and a protestor outside the venue. Blake Garrison Kirsch, who was volunteering with the Evette campaign's finance committee, approached the protester and ripped a megaphone from their hands. He voluntarily resigned after the incident, and has since been charged with third-degree assault and battery.

"Our team is deeply disappointed that this occurred," Evette's campaign said in a statement. "We support free speech and do not in any way condone violence. He is not, and has never been, employed by the Evette campaign."

Meanwhile, Evette's gubernatorial challenger, GOP Rep. Nancy Mace, used the incident to question Evette's values. "I have never seen something more disgusting than the behavior last night that was caught on tape," Mace said. "She could have condemned this last night, she did not. She could have condemned this this morning, she did not."

Contributing: Bella Carpentier of Greenville News, USA TODAY Network

What to know about ranked choice voting in Maine

Margie Cullen

Maine’s use of ranked choice voting means that the races for governor and for Maine’s 2nd Congressional District likely won’t be decided tonight, and maybe not for over a week.

Maine is one of only two states in the country, along with Alaska, to use ranked choice voting in some statewide elections.

Ranked-choice voting is a system in which voters can mark candidates as their first, second, third and subsequent choices. If no candidate wins a majority of the vote, the votes are then tabulated in rounds, with the lowest-ranked candidate eliminated in each round and their next choice votes distributed until one candidate receives more than 50% of the vote.

Maine uses this system in all state and federal primaries that have more than two candidates. That means it will be featured in both the Republican and Democratic primaries for governor, the Democratic primary for U.S. Senate and the Democratic primary for Maine’s 2nd Congressional District.

The Democratic and Republican primaries for governor as well as the Democratic primary for Maine’s 2nd Congressional District all feature four or more candidates. With no clear leaders, it’s likely that they all go to ranked-choice voting tabulation. 

If so, it could take days before the final results are in, Amy Fried, University of Maine professor emeritus of political science told USA TODAY, as the Maine Secretary of State’s Office must collect election materials from all applicable towns for public tabulation. The Secretary of State’s office says that ranked choice voting tabulations are expected to be completed before the Juneteenth holiday – over a week after Election Day.

Who is running for governor in South Carolina?

Drew Pittock

It’s primary day in South Carolina and voters have the chance to decide several key races, including who will replace term-limited Gov. Henry McMaster. While a new governor could be crowned tonight, six Republicans and three Democrats are vying for the position, meaning runoffs are likely.

The Republican candidate are Attorney General Alan Wilson, Lt. Gov. Pamela Evette, U.S. Reps. Nancy Mace and Ralph Norman, DOGE SC founder Rom Reddy and State Sen. Josh Kimbrell.

The field is crowded and polling shows the race is tight. Wilson and Evette are currently leading the pack with roughly 19% each, followed by Reddy (14%), Norman (13.5%) and Mace (13%).

Over on the Democrats’ side, business owner Billy Webster is facing off against State Rep. Jermaine Johnson and Charleston Attorney Mullins McLeod. Polling at 33% according to The Citadel, the race is tilted in Johnson’s favor. Webster is currently polling second, with 18%, while McLeod sits at 6%.

Here’s what you should know about each of the candidates.

Contributing: Bella Carpentier of Greenville News, part of the USA TODAY Network

Nevada voters speak at Las Vegas 'Vote Party'

James Powel

Outside of Las Vegas City Hall, classic cars and food trucks lined the breezeway in front of the building while cornhole games sat awaiting players in the early June heat as the city hosted a “Vote Party” to encourage residents to submit their ballots.

A trickle of people ebbed into and out of the building around 1:15 p.m. local time, many with ice cream provided by the event. One group of voters entered clad in Vegas Golden Knights gear as Game 4 of the Stanley Cup Finals is set to take place over on the Strip at T-Mobile Arena.

Voter David Sampson told USA TODAY outside of City Hall that Lombardo's first term as governor made him choose the incumbent in the primary and that he is likely to vote to return the former Clark County Sheriff back to Carson City for a second term in November but he is "not married to any particular candidate."

"I'm a free thinker. I think Lombardo has done good for us so far," Sampson said. "I wasn't sold on him the first time he ran but I think he's proved himself pretty well."

When asked if local or national issues would be more important to him in November, Sampson responded: "I'm going to care about what's going on in our state."

Voter Jacquline Rios was more strident in her support of Lombardo, saying that she likes the "balance" he brings to the state. "If he doesn't agree with some of the legislation (sent to his desk), he'll shut it down," Rios said.

What impact could Maine Gov. Janet Mills play in Senate primary race?

Terry Collins

Although Graham Platner is the leading Democratic candidate in Maine's hotly contested U.S. Senate primary, one candidate whose name remains on the ballot may have an impact.

Maine Gov. Janet Mills, a fellow Democrat who suspended her Senate campaign on April 30 after struggling to gain momentum and facing sharp fundraising challenges, still might get her share of primary votes in defiance of controversies surrounding Platner, including his controversial tattoo, commentaries, and recent sexting scandals.

If Mills captures, say, a surprise 15% to 30% of votes, it would mean a sizable share of Democratic voters purposely backed her despite her status. While Mills suspended her campaign, she did not formally submit a withdrawal to Maine's Secretary of State's office, which guaranteed her name remained on ballots. Any votes Mills receives would be officially counted.

However, Mills is likely to be eliminated early under Maine's ranked-choice voting despite her voters' loyalty. If no candidate secures a 50% majority on the first ballot, the last-place candidate is eliminated and their voters' second choices are reallocated, likely to Platner or challenger David Costello.

Democrats nationally need to pick up at least four seats to win back control of the Senate, and the party sees Maine ripe for the picking come November. But some Maine Democrats are concerned that Platner's controversies could complicate their chances of defeating incumbent GOP Sen. Susan Collins, who's seeking a sixth term in office.

Who's running for senator in South Carolina?

Drew Pittock

It’s primary day in South Carolina and voters have the chance to decide several key races, including who will head to the U.S. Senate election in November. Polls have been open in the Upstate since 7 a.m. local time and will close at 7 p.m.

Four-term Sen. Lindsey Graham is looking to retain the GOP nomination against deacon and businessman Mark Lynch. Over on the Democratic side, pediatrician Dr. Annie Andrews is leading the pack and appears to be a lock for her party’s nomination.

Here’s what you should know about each of the race’s leading candidates.

Lindsey Graham

Undoubtedly the most recognizable name in the race, Graham has served in the Senate since 2003. He’s also a close ally of President Donald Trump and is often photographed golfing alongside him.

Graham has handily won each of his reelection bids in the past, but his support for Israel and the Iran war has created an opening for other conservatives to enter the fray. Still, Graham’s aggregate polling currently sits at 48.7% according to 270 to Win, and he is expected to clinch the GOP nomination with little trouble.

Mark Lynch

Republican Senate hopeful Lynch represents one of the most meaningful challenges to Graham’s tenure in the past 23 years. While Graham is closely aligned with Trump, Lynch, a native of Greenville, has positioned himself as a dyed-in-the-wool, America first hardliner.

The Baptist deacon and local businessman’s platform includes supporting many of Trump's policies, such as ending birthright citizenship and building the wall along the Southern border and ending mail-in voting. However, where Lynch and Graham find themselves most at odds is on the war in Iran and other foreign conflicts, with Lynch backing a more isolationist approach to U.S. foreign policy.

Democrats vie for chance to flip longtime Republican seat in Nevada

James Powel

The Democratic race for Nevada's 2nd Congressional District, where the party sees its best chance to flip the seat, has largely coalesced around entrepreneur Greg Kidd and former state Assemblymember Teresa Benitez-Thompson.

Kidd, who earned 36% of the vote in a non-party-aligned run in 2024, has largely pushed progressive policies despite his wealth being a concern for some. He called Israeli actions in Gaza "a genocide" in an interview with the Nevada Independent and in a forum with Nevada Rural Democrats said that a moratorium on data centers in the state is "not enough."

Benitez-Thompson was formerly Attorney General Aaron Ford's chief of staff and was a majority leader in the State Assembly. She has been endorsed by the powerful Culinary Union Local 226, Teamsters, and the Progressive Leadership Alliance of Nevada Action Fund.

She told the Independent that she would vote for Senate resolutions to block sales of military equipment to Israel that the state's Senators rejected, and pointed to a United Nations report declaring a "genocide" in Gaza. She also supports a moratorium on data centers implemented in Reno, Nevada.

No Democrat has ever won Nevada’s Second Congressional District. Republican Mark Amodei has represented it since 2011 and surprised many after he announced his retirement in February. The district is the state’s largest one geographically and is anchored by the urban centers of Reno, Sparks, Nevada, and Carson City, Nevada.

Trump endorsement shakes up Nevada's 2nd Congressional District Republican field

James Powel and Mark Robison

President Donald Trump waded into the crowded field of Republicans running for Nevada's 2nd Congressional District, where Democrats see a chance to flip the seat, giving David Flippo the coveted endorsement just weeks before the vote.

Flippo, 63, a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel, has styled himself the most MAGA-aligned candidate of the 13 people vying for the purple district in the northern part of the state. In an interview with the Reno Gazette-Journal, part of the USA TODAY Network, Flippo said his top priorities are supporting Trump's agenda, deporting illegal immigrants, and securing elections and voter ID.

The presidential endorsement has largely been a signal for victory in Republican midterm primaries, though Trump suffered a shock defeat in the Iowa Republican gubernatorial primary last week. The seat's current occupant, retiring Rep. Mark Amodei, said on social media that Trump's endorsement of Flippo was a "mistake."

Former Nevada state Sen. James Settelmeyer, the other presumed frontrunner in the race backed by Amodei and Lombardo, said in a statement to the Nevada Independent that he will continue "campaigning hard" through Tuesday.

A Democrat has never won the seat. Amodei has represented it since 2011 and surprised many when he announced his retirement in February.

Graham Platner makes final pitch to voters

Margie Cullen

Embattled oyster farmer Graham Platner spent primary day making his final pitch to Maine voters. On social media, he posted a video of him knocking on some last-minute doors and another urging people to vote alongside Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt. 

In another video, he emphasized the traits that have drawn supporters to him, including his working-class persona and outsider status. 

“It is important that we win this. We need to take back the United States Senate so we can hold Donald Trump accountable,” Platner said. “But we also need to take back the United States Senate with people who are going to represent the working people of this state and of this country.”

Trump, state GOP on opposite sides in North Dakota

Phillip M. Bailey

Among all of the June 9 contests one that is likely to slip past the national headlines is North Dakota's primary election for its at-large House seat where there is a Republican divide.

Rep. Julie Fedorchak, a Trump-endorsed lawmaker seeking a second term, is facing a rematch against Alex Balazs, a Navy veteran, who only got 4% in the five-candidate election two years ago.

But this time around Balazs has the support of the North Dakota Republican Party, which endorsed him at its convention in March after a rift with all of its statewide incumbents. Balazs also posted a video in February pretending to have a phone call with Trump in an attempt to generate more support.

"You're doing a great job," he said during the phone call, which he later acknowledged was a joke to a reporter. "You're the best president we've had in a long time." 

Who are the Republican candidates for governor in Maine?

Margie Cullen

Another Bush is running for office. This time, in Maine.

Jonathan Bush, one of the seven candidates vying for the Republican nomination in Maine’s governor race, is the cousin of former President George W. Bush. However, he’s not leading the field in the polls. That would be former Assistant U.S. Secretary of State Robert Charles, who served under former President George H.W. Bush – Jonathan Bush’s uncle.

A University of New Hampshire Survey Center poll released May 2 found Charles leading the race with 37%, followed by Bush at 18% and businessman Benjamin Midgley at 11%. A SurveyUSA poll from June 5 also found Charles winning after ranked-choice voting tabulation.

Here are all the candidates in the race, which will likely go to ranked-choice voting:

· Healthcare executive Jonathan Bush

· Former Assistant U.S. Secretary of State Robert Charles

· Real estate executive David Jones

· Former Maine Senate Majority Leader Garrett Mason

· University of Maine System Trustee Owen McCarthy

· Businessman Benjamin Midgley

· Former Paris, Maine, Selectman Robert Wessels

Who are the Democratic candidates for governor in Maine?

Margie Cullen

The Democratic primaries for Maine governor are stacked as candidates hope to fill a Democratic-leaning open seat left by term-limited Gov. Janet Mills.

There are some famous names in the race: Former Maine state House speaker Hannah Pingree, the daughter of U.S. Rep. Chellie Pingree, D-Maine, and Angus King, son of Sen. Angus King, I-Maine, are both running in the Democratic primary.

Here are all the candidates:

· Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows

· Former Maine Senate President Troy Jackson

· Energy executive Angus King III

· Former Speaker of the Maine House of Representatives Hannah Pingree

· Former director of the Maine Centers for Disease Control Nirav Shah

The race is close and will likely be decided by Maine’s ranked choice voting system. A University of New Hampshire Survey Center poll released May 27 found Jackson and Shah tied for the lead among first choice votes. A study from Cornell University from June 3 found that Shah takes the lead in ranked choice voting simulations, while a SurveyUSA poll from June 5 found Pingree narrowly winning after ranked choice voting tabulations.

Gov. Joe Lombardo likely to retain Republican nomination in Nevada

James Powel

Nevada Gov. Joe Lombardo appears likely to retain the Republican nomination for the seat and advance to the general election. Though on paper he faces six other candidates, a March poll published by Noble Predictive Insights showed the incumbent garnering 60% of the vote.

But Lombardo faces headwinds from economic uncertainty in the state.

Las Vegas drew about 3.1 million fewer visitors in 2025 compared to 2024, a 7.5% drop, according to data from the Las Vegas Convention Authority. It was the largest drop in visitors outside the pandemic since recordkeeping began in 1970. So far in 2026, January saw a 2.2% decline year over year, but February and March each saw increases of 1.6% and 1.9% over 2025. April, the last month with data, saw a 1.8% drop in visitors year over year.

He will also be tied to an unpopular president and the Republican Party.

Lombardo has tried to "thread the needle" on his relationship with Trump, said Jon Ralston the dean of Nevada political journalism and CEO of the Nevada Independent. The campaign has yet to respond to questions from USA TODAY about the candidate's relationship with Trump.

Ford and Hill spar for Nevada Democratic gubernatorial nomination

James Powel

The race for the Democratic nomination for the Nevada governorship has seen Attorney General Aaron Ford handle a challenge from Washoe County Commissioner Alexis Hill.

Ford's campaign has largely focused on the likely general election matchup with Republican Gov. Joe Lombardo, effectively ignoring Hill. He has attempted to tie Lombardo to Trump, calling economic conditions in the state the "Lombardo-Trump economy." 

Hill is attempting to capitalize on frustration with the Democratic Party, calling Ford a part of the "Reid machine" in a profile by the Independent. "What voters are looking for right now is relationships and authenticity. And the only way you do that is … connecting with people, and that is what I'm doing every day," she told the outlet.

She also made a rare disparagement of the casino industry in the tourism-dependent state in a statement, first obtained by USA TODAY, against the sale of Caesars Entertainment when it was announced in May.

Polling on the primary is scant, though a December poll released by the Hill campaign showed her behind Ford by double digits. Jon Ralston, the dean of Nevada political journalism and CEO of the Independent, told USA TODAY in an interview that Hill garnering a significant share of the vote would be a "warning beacon" for Ford.

"She has no money, and she hasn't been able to do anything," Ralston said. "If she ends up getting 45% of the vote, that might tell you something."

Sen. Lindsey Graham faces possible run-off in South Carolina

Phillip M. Bailey

Tucked away in the South Carolina primary is the possibility that Sen. Lindsey Graham might be forced into a run-off election if the four-term Republican incumbent cannot reach the needed 50% threshold.

Graham easily won the GOP primary six years ago with about 67% of the vote but these days the 70-year-old lawmaker's popularity among rank-and-file conservatives has been dinged.

Every public survey taken in this year's primary contests shows Graham ahead by a massive margin, but there is a noticeable group of undecided voters in every poll. Some attribute that to his support for the U.S.-Israel war against Iran, which has angered portions of the Make America Great Again movement.

"Endless war and endless spending is Lindsey's legacy. Never forget that," Republican Senate candidate Mark Lynch, who is in second in most polls, said in a Monday, June 8, post on X.

On top of Trump's endorsement the senator and his allies have poured in about $18 million, according to Federal Election Commission records. That is an usually large amount given the roughly 20 to 30 percentage point lead Graham holds and it dwarfs the approximately $5 million Lynch has put up of his own money.

Could Graham Platner's controversies hurt his chances in Maine Senate race?

Terry Collins

Perhaps the biggest question facing Maine Senate Democratic candidate Graham Platner on Primary Day is whether he gets enough supporters to overcome his controversial tattoo, commentary, and sexting scandals.

Will voters back the political newcomer, Marine Veteran, and oyster farmer who has already had to answer for a tattoo of a skull and crossbones that resembled a Nazi symbol? What about the 2018 Reddit posts in which Platner asked "Why don’t black people tip?" and said that rural White Americans "actually are" racist and stupid?

Platner, 41, has apologized for his prior social media posts and later revealed he'd gotten a new tattoo to cover the old one.

But now, voters have to contemplate if they will pick Platner, less than a week after reports surfaced he was physically threatening in a past relationship, which he denies, and had exchanged explicit sexual messages with several women early in his marriage.

Despite the controversies, Platner is still likely to be the presumptive Democratic nominee, as he has endorsements from progressive lawmakers, including Sens. Bernie Sanders, I-Vermont, and Democratic Sens. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Brian Schatz of Hawaii, as well as Rep. Ro Khanna of California.

Eventually, Platner hopes his main foe will be incumbent Maine Republican Sen. Susan Collins, who is running for a sixth term in one of the most competitive and closely watched matchups in the country as Democrats want control of the U.S. Senate come November. 

Maine Senate poll shows tight race in November

Sarah D. Wire

A new poll of Maine residents released Tuesday shows a close race for U.S. Senate regardless of whether oyster farmer Graham Platner or Gov. Janet Mills earns the Democratic nomination and challenges incumbent Republican Sen. Susan Collin

The poll conducted by Tavern Research shows Platner leading Collins 51% to 49% and shows Mills would lead Collins 52% to 48%. The results fall within the poll's margin of error of ±2.8%.

In the case of a generic Democrat versus a generic Republican, the margin would be larger with the Democrat leading 55% to 45%.

The poll took place between June 5 and June 8 and queried 1,642 Maine residents online.

Maine voters weigh in on Senate race

Sarah D. Wire

Maine state primary voters at the polls on Tuesday, June 9, weighed in on the U.S. Senate race expected between incumbent Sen. Susan Collins and Democratic candidate Graham Platner, who has recently made national headlines, including for a tattoo resembling a Nazi symbol he has since covered up, controversial Reddit posts and, most recently, sexual text messages sent to women outside of his marriage.

Democratic Maine Gov. Janet Mills suspended her campaign in late April after falling far behind Platner in the polls and in fundraising, but recently reminded voters she's still on the ballot.

Susan Wilder said she voted for Republican Sen. Susan Collins in the past. Still, when she reported to the North Street Fire Station in Kennebunkport to vote, she cast her ballot in the Democratic primary for Platner. “I think he’s progressive, and we need a shakeup in the old system here,” Wilder said. “We need someone new up against the old establishment.”

Fellow voter Bruce Bartley said he voted for Collins to be the Republican nominee. He said he likes how Collins discusses the issues and looks out for seniors. “She’s done right by Mainers for the last several years,” he said.

about what Maine voters are saying about the race in USA TODAY Network paper Seacostonline.

Can Dems hold a red House seat in Maine?

Sarah D. Wire

Democrats have a high-stakes choice to make in a competitive primary race for Maine's 2nd Congressional District.

Whoever emerges from the four person race will try to hold onto Rep. Jared Golden's seat in a rural district that voted for President Donald Trump three times. Golden, a moderate, repeatedly won razor-tight victories.

The Democratic nominee will face former Gov. Paul LePage, a conservative who is uncontested in the Republican primary. The Cook Political Report rates the district "Likely R."

Races to watch for June 9 primaries

Sarah D. Wire

Four states hold elections on Tuesday, June 9, for U.S. House, Senate and governor races, among other local contests. Most eyes are on Maine, where oyster farmer Graham Platner is all but assured to get the Democratic nomination for senate, but here are all the races we are watching.

Maine

Platner is expected to win the bid to face GOP Sen. Susan Collins in November. His top competitor, Maine Gov. Janet Mills, suspended her Senate campaign on April 30, but remains on the ballot. Platner has the support of Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Independent Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, but battles multiple controversies.

Nevada

The race for an open Nevada House seat could be another example of the fight between Trump and the establishment for control of the GOP.

Trump endorsed David Flippo on Friday, May 29, in Nevada’s Second Congressional District race to replace retiring Rep. Mark Amodei. But Amodei responded that Trump "made a mistake" and expressed his support for James Settelmeyer, a former state lawmaker and who leads the state Department of Conservation and Natural Resources.

There are 13 Republicans vying for the nomination and the seat is expected to stay in Republican hands in November.

South Carolina

Sen. Lindsey Graham faces a slew of Republican challengers as he seeks a fifth term. Graham has President Donald Trump's endorsement.

Graham is likely to face Democratic frontrunner, Annie Andrews, a pediatrician looking to flip the reliably red seat.