NOVEMBER 17, 2025 – While the federal government was closed for all of October and the first week of November, service members kept working, and the defense of the nation never stopped.
Despite the 43-day shutdown, service members didn’t miss a paycheck.
“President [Donald J.] Trump kept his promise to take care of the troops,” said Pentagon Press Secretary Kingsley Wilson during the War Department’s Weekly Sitrep video. “Our department ensured our brave warfighters received a paycheck.”
In the U.S. Southern Command’s area of responsibility, the U.S. military was hard at work keeping dangerous illegal drugs from entering the country, Wilson said.
“At the direction of President Trump, the department has taken the fight directly to the narco-terrorists that are bringing drugs to our shores to poison the American people,” she said. “This week, the Gerald R. Ford Carrier Strike Group entered the Southcom area of responsibility from European waters to help with the ongoing campaign against the narco-terrorists in the region.”
Over the last two months, Wilson said, the department conducted multiple strikes on vessels smuggling illicit narcotics, ensuring the drugs they carried never entered the United States.
On Nov. 9, for instance, two lethal kinetic strikes were conducted on two vessels operated by designated terrorist organizations.
“These vessels were known by our intelligence to be associated with illicit narcotics smuggling, were carrying narcotics and were transiting along a known narco-trafficking transit route in the Eastern Pacific,” Secretary of War Pete Hegseth said in a social media post. “Under President Trump, we are protecting the homeland and killing these cartel terrorists who wish to harm our country and its people.”
In late October, Hegseth toured multiple countries in the Indo-Pacific region to meet with his defense minister counterparts, Wilson said.
“At the annual [Association of Southeast Asian Nations] Defense Ministers’ Meeting in Malaysia, Secretary Hegseth held numerous bilateral meetings with defense ministers from China, Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand, Cambodia, Australia, and signed a 10-year defense framework with India,” she said.
Hegseth said the security agreement with India advances the U.S.-India defense partnership, which serves as a cornerstone for both regional stability and deterrence.
“We’re enhancing our coordination, info sharing and tech cooperation,” he said. “Our defense ties have never been stronger.”
Also in October, the secretary traveled to the NATO defense ministers’ meeting in Brussels, where he met with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte and other defense ministers, Wilson said.
Prior to the meeting, Hegseth commended NATO leaders for stepping up defense efforts.
“If there’s anything we’ve learned under President Trump, it’s the active application of peace through strength,” Hegseth said. “You get peace when you are strong, not when you use strong words or wag your finger. You get it when you have strong and real capabilities that adversaries respect. And I believe that’s what NATO is doing.”
Finally, during the more than 43-day government shutdown, both the U.S. Navy and the U.S. Marine Corps celebrated their 250th anniversaries, Wilson said.
“Aboard the USS George Washington, President Trump, and our Marines and sailors reflected on the two and a half centuries of strength, tenacity and unwavering courage by the greatest fighting force in the world,” Wilson said. “Our military is the first in war, the first in peace and the first in spirit and the first in freedom. Happy birthday to the United States Navy and the United States Marine Corps.”
By C. Todd Lopez, Pentagon News