jo ellis. she's a service member who has dedicated her life to defending this country. spent 15 years in the virginia army national guard, is a chief warrant officer, a combat gunner, a uh-60 black hawk pilot. joe has deployed to iraq, guatemala and kuwait. she's also a transgender woman who transitioned while in service and coincidentally, once worked as the digital media manager for smerconish.com. now go back to monday. on monday, president trump signed an executive order directing newly confirmed defense secretary pete hegseth to implement a policy to come up with the means to preclude transgender personnel from the u.s. military, arguing that being transgender is not consistent with military ideals. when i read that i invited joe to be a guest on my sirius xm radio program on tuesday, she wrote a moving piece about her experience. we published it on my website, and then on wednesday, she joined me for a national radio interview on sirius xm. it was that night that the tragedy occurred on the potomac, and by thursday night and friday morning, jo ellis was falsely ac

somalia operatives in the jo ellis mountains. he went on to say, quote, our initial assessment is that multiple operatives, operatives were killed in the airstrikes and no civilians were harmed. this action further degrades i.s.i.s .'s ability to plot and conduct terrorist attacks. it went on to discuss that strategy further. now, i do want to be clear as well here, fred, that the president did also attack the biden administration and the former president for what he argued was not doing enough with these similar types of strikes in somalia. but we do know that these types of strikes are actually pretty routine, particularly those targeting somalia. we know that during the biden administration, they carried out several airstrikes and military strikes, both on i.s.i.s., but also al shabab terrorists. during his first term. i also wanted to note that the u.s. has really provided ongoing support to the somali government ever since former president joe biden had approved a pentagon request in 2022 to put more troops in the region to