The three countries announced the Icebreaker Collaboration Effort, or ICE Pact, in a joint statement during the NATO summit in Washington on Thursday. The trilateral agreement aims to build “best-in-class Arctic and polar icebreakers and other Arctic and polar capabilities in each of our respective countries by sharing expertise, information, and capabilities.”

The pact aims to “leverage shipyards” in all three countries to build the icebreakers by collaborating on information sharing and workforce development while encouraging allies and partners to buy the vessels from those states.

“We are seeing an increasing need for those icebreakers from partners around the world who want to operate in both the Arctic and the Antarctic region and can operate there with greater freedom than before because of the impacts of climate change,” said National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan.

“There are authoritarian nations that are offering icebreakers to the world who want to corner the icebreaker market. We’re determined to have democracies in the lead and producing icebreaker capabilities.”

Sullivan noted that “both Canada and Finland have considerable experience in shipyards and producing icebreakers.”

The U.S. operates two Polar icebreakers, both of which are nearing the end of their usable life.

“The U.S. is currently producing icebreakers for our Coast Guard, but we would like to expand that to include building icebreakers here in the United States – American-made, American-jobs to sell to countries around the world as well,” said Sullivan. “We then will have the industrial base for a capability that has economic and strategic purposes.”

The Coast Guard is already working with Bollinger to build the first Polar Security Cutters.

“As the premiere builder of American-made polar icebreakers, Bollinger Shipyards is proud to support the United States and our NATO allies with our deep expertise and capacity,” said CEO Ben Bordelon. “We have made, and will continue to make, significant, long-term investments in our facilities, infrastructure and workforce.

“Our goal is to create a world-class American-owned shipyard capable of producing the first fleet of American-made polar icebreakers in over half a century, and we’re honored that responsibility lies with Bollinger.”

Bollinger touted the 1,000-worker benchmark as “a substantial reversal of a decade-long trend of declining employment under the Pascagoula facility’s previous owner.”

Competition for employees among shipyards in the Gulf of Mexico is fierce, with employers vying to hire for positions ranging from engineers to welders to a whole host of other positions from a limited workforce pool.

The Biden administration in 2022 released a 10-year Arctic strategy that calls for the procurement of additional icebreakers as a key pillar.

The strategy emphasizes deterring increased Russian and Chinese activity in the region as global warming rapidly melts the polar ice caps, drastically transforming the environment.

Outgoing NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg announced the contract Tuesday at a Chamber of Commerce industry day focused on increasing NATO member countries’ defense manufacturing capabilities to deter future attacks.

“There is no way to provide strong defense without a strong defense industry,” Stoltenberg said.

The Stinger is a portable surface-to-air defense system that can be carried and fired by troops or mounted onto a vehicle and used as short-range defense against aircraft.

The Raytheon-produced system was one of the first weapons the U.S. shipped to Ukraine following Russia’s 2022 invasion. It is now among hundreds of types of systems, and tens of millions of rounds of ammunition, artillery and missiles, that countries have pulled from their stockpiles to help Ukraine. But the rapid push over the past two years exposed that defense firms both in the U.S. and in Europe were not set to produce at the levels needed in a major conventional war.

The NATO summit is also occurring against a backdrop of uncertainty: U.S. political divisions delayed weapons for Ukraine for months and the upcoming presidential election is raising concern that U.S. backing — with weapons and troops — in case of threats against member countries may not always be guaranteed.

Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee, has boasted during campaign speeches that he’d encourage Russia to do as it wished with NATO members that do not meet their commitment to spend 2% of their gross domestic product on defense.

In some cases, defense production lines were stagnant at the time of the 2022 invasion and are only now getting production numbers up. The buildup has been dependent on getting new, longer-term contracts signed to support more capital investment in the needed infrastructure.

“This is not about shifts or a bottleneck. It’s building new factories,” said Morten Brandtzaeg, the chief executive officer of Nammo, a Norway-based ammunition firm.

The war also spurred those NATO members to increase the amount they spend on defense.

Out of 32 NATO members, 23 are expected to meet the 2% commitment this year, up from just six before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. That’s seen as still not enough, as Russia has leveraged the sheer size of its workforce to rapidly replace weapons lost in the war.

“If you want to fight a war for a long time, you need to have an industry behind you, that has the capacity for a long time,” Brandtzaeg said.

Estonian Defense Minister Hanno Pevkur told the Chamber of Commerce that Russia is now spending an estimated 7% to 9% of its GDP on defense. Estonia is spending more than 3% of its GDP on defense, but needs to do more to refill its stockpiles, Pevkur said.

Polish Defense Minister Władysław Kosiniak-Kamysz, who also serves as a deputy prime minister, said his country will commit at least 4% of its GDP to defense this year.

The war in Ukraine “exposed major weaknesses of Poland, of region and of the world at large,” Kosiniak-Kamysz said.

Since the invasion, the U.S. has provided more than $53.6 billion in weapons and security assistance to Ukraine. This support, at a time when the U.S. also is sending weapons to Israel and Taiwan, has strained the U.S. stockpile. The rest of the NATO members and other international partners have provided about $50 billion altogether in weapons and security assistance, according to the Kiel Institute for the World Economy, an independent research organization based in Germany.

National security adviser Jake Sullivan told Tuesday’s gathering that for the first time ever, the NATO countries will each pledge to make plans to strengthen their own industrial defense capacity. He said this would help the alliance “prioritize production of the most vital defense equipment we would need in the event of a conflict.”

The 32 members have widely varying defense industry sizes and capabilities, so each country’s plan could vary widely, from partnering with industry to partnering with other countries.

___

Cook reported from Brussels.

Airmen and guardians will soon be able to take advantage of the Hypori Halo Workspace Anywhere program that grants access to government apps, email, NIPRNet, sensitive data, and CAC-enabled websites via personal devices, including a phone or tablet, whether they’re in the office or not.

A spokesperson for Hypori did not give an exact date for enrollment, but told C4ISRNET it’s still on track to begin this summer.

“The Air Force and Space Force are actually already using our platform,” said Jared Shepard, CEO and president of Hypori, at the TechNet Cyber conference presented by the Armed Forces Communications & Electronics Association International late last month in Baltimore. “Now, they’re going to scale.”

Capitalizing on the need for integrated communications and the pandemic-fueled remote work environment, the Army, including its Reserve and Guard components, already began transitioning service members toward Halo, which as of June 11 became the only way Army.mil users can access Army 365 services from a personal device. Shepard said at the conference that 50,000 Army enrollees are using the service since that BYOD effort began as a pilot in 2022. Hypori was also awarded a contract by the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency on June 6 to give a third of its workforce remote access to secure networks.

“[BYOD] is a top priority for us, and it is a game changer because when our soldiers and airmen are not at the armory, they have to be connected in a secure way,” said Kenneth McNeill, chief information officer of the National Guard Bureau, in a statement February.

Reservists and part-time members of the services especially have limited access to base networks, so giving them the flexibility to complete work from wherever they are will be a boon to the organization, leaders have said.

“In our dynamic environment, the Department of the Air Force is committed to providing user-friendly enterprise solutions which empower the force to work securely in a wide range of operational contexts,” said Air Force Chief Information Officer Venice Goodwine in a statement in March.

The technology also eliminates the need to carry two devices while ensuring their government and personal data are kept separate to minimize liability. The idea of “no data at rest” means there is no risk of compromise if the enrolled devices are stolen or lost, and it ensures that personal information stored on that device is not accessible by the government.

The technology, which also vets users, is also compliant with White House orders that ban TikTok on government devices due to concerns that the social media platform’s Chinese-based parent company, ByteDance, would get access to sensitive data.

“Industry has a responsibility that if it’s doing work for the Department of Defense, that it protects that data,” Shepard said.

Even a “reasonably modified” version of the Northrop Grumman-made Sentinel will likely cost $140.9 billion, 81% more than the program’s original cost estimate of $77.7 billion, the Pentagon said in a statement. If Sentinel continues on its current path without being modified, the likely cost will be about $160 billion, it said.

And the military expects restructuring the program will delay it by several years.

“There are reasons for this cost growth, but there are also no excuses,” William LaPlante, undersecretary of defense for acquisition and sustainment, said in a conference call with reporters on Monday. “We fully appreciate the magnitude of the costs, but we also understand the risks of not modernizing our nuclear forces and not addressing the very real threats we confront.”

The Sentinel is intended to replace the Air Force’s half-century old Minuteman III nuclear missile, which is nearing the end of its life. In January, the Air Force announced Sentinel’s future costs were projected to run over budget severely enough to trigger a review process known as a critical Nunn-McCurdy breach.

Such a review can sometimes lead to a program being canceled. LaPlante said Monday he decided to proceed with Sentinel after concluding it met several criteria, including that it is essential to national security and there were no cheaper alternatives that would meet the military’s operational requirements.

Big changes are coming for Sentinel, however. LaPlante rescinded the program’s Milestone B approval, which in September 2020 authorized the program to move into its engineering and manufacturing development phase. He also ordered the Air Force to restructure the program to address the root causes of the cost overruns and make sure it has the right management structure to keep its future price down.

The per-unit total cost for Sentinel was originally $118 million in 2020, when its cost, schedule and performance goals were set. When the Nunn-McCurdy breach was announced in January, those per-unit costs had grown at least 37% to about $162 million.

Hunter said the per-unit cost for the revised Sentinel program — which include components in addition to its missiles — is estimated to be about $214 million. He said the estimates from the Pentagon’s Cost Assessment and Program Evaluation, or CAPE, office came with a 50% confidence level, meaning the costs could end up higher or lower.

Andrew Hunter, the Air Force’s assistant secretary for acquisition, technology and logistics, said he agreed with LaPlante’s decision and pledged to draw up a plan for restructuring Sentinel over the next few months and get to a new Milestone B approval. The entire process for revising the program and getting the Pentagon to approve its new plan, cost and schedule will likely take 18 to 24 months, Hunter said.

Command and launch

LaPlante and Hunter said most of the projected overruns are coming from Sentinel’s command and launch segment, which will include its missile silos and accompanying launch control centers where airmen operate the ICBMs. Revamping that segment will be a major part of the Air Force’s cost control effort, they said, as well as improving its systems engineering and changing how its contract is structured.

LaPlante said changes will include a “scaling back” of the launch facilities to make them smaller, simpler and more cost-effective. Paring down the launch facilities will also shorten the timeline needed to transition from the existing Minuteman III system and the new Sentinel facilities, he said.

Hunter said the new Sentinel facilities will need more communications infrastructure beyond the 7,500 miles of copper cabling now in use for the Minuteman silos and launch centers. The Air Force’s planned modifications to Sentinel include more affordable ways to do that work, he said.

In a statement, Northrop Grumman said it “is making important progress on this highly complex weapon system,” and continuing to achieve milestones to mature its design and reduce risk to prepare for production and deployment in the future.

Northrop said those milestones include designing and developing Sentinel’s facilities, support equipment and missile, and tests of components such as its nose cone and three booster stages.

“We continue to perform and meet our commitments under the EMD contract as we move toward delivery of this essential national security capability,” Northrop Grumman said.

LaPlante said that in “hindsight,” the department didn’t originally have enough information on how complicated Sentinel’s ground-based systems would be to accurately estimate its costs. In the nearly four years since, the Pentagon has much better information on hand, he said.

The Air Force also set up a committee chaired by its most senior leaders to oversee its nuclear enterprise, including its bombers, ICBMs and command-and-control, Hunter said. And the department dedicated a program executive officer to be in charge of ICBMs, set up a Nuclear Systems Center, and is changing the leadership of the Air Force Nuclear Weapons Center from a two-star general to a three-star general, he said.

Hunter said the Air Force will “do what it takes to sustain Minuteman III to meet these warfighter requirements in the interim.”

Gen. Jim Slife, the Air Force’s vice chief of staff, said Sentinel’s cost growth is not expected to kick in during the next five years, and the hardest choices on what to cut won’t be made until after the program’s new baseline is set.

“It is a decision for down the road, to decide what trade offs we’re going to need to make,” Slife said.

The raid took place June 25 and involved multiple facilities of the Orlando-based Cole Engineering Services, that company confirmed. Cole Engineering is located in the same office park housing the Army’s Program Executive Office for Simulation, Training and Instrumentation, or PEO STRI. Officials would not confirm whether the office was involved in the raid, or if other companies and entities were also a part of it.

Cole Engineering CEO Bob Donahue addressed the raid in a companywide email sent last week and shared with Army Times on Monday.

“While it remains early in the process, I want to be clear that we have no reason to believe that the company or any of our employees have been engaged in any kind of wrongdoing,” Donahue wrote. “As I said in my earlier note to you, By Light has always and continues to maintain an intense focus on conducting our business in an ethical and proper fashion.” By Light is the parent company of Cole Engineering, a prominent defense contractor focused on tactical simulation tools.

Donahue added that the company had initiated its own investigation, engaging a “former well-known, long-time Department of Justice senior prosecutor” to conduct it.

“We have launched this review to ensure we have the facts, and our policies and procedures are best practices,” Donahue wrote. “This action also reaffirms By Light’s longstanding commitment to and reputation for outstanding mission performance while conducting ourselves in a manner that is above board and beyond question.”

The company, he said, would continue to cooperate fully with government authorities.

“To put to rest rumors that may have circulated, let me also confirm for you that no one in the company has been arrested or charged,” Donahue said.

Reached for comment, the Army’s Criminal Investigation Division and the Defense Criminal Investigative Service, which falls under the Defense Department Inspector General’s office, provided nearly identical statements.

The entities “executed multiple search warrants in Florida on June 25, 2024,” Army CID spokesman Keith Smith said in a statement. “As the investigation is still in progress, no additional information can be provided at this time.”

Neither the Army nor PEO STRI responded to requests for comment or questions about the raid or whether the program office was involved. According to their website, PEO STRI’s mission is to “rapidly develop, deliver and sustain testing, training and information operations capabilities to enhance readiness across the operational spectrum.”

In 2021, Cole Engineering became the prime contractor for the Army’s new cyber training environment project, securing a contract worth as much as $957.7 million over eight years to complete the work. PEO STRI has already employed the system at events such as the Cyber Flag 2022 training exercise.

Last April, the company landed another $500 million, three-year contract for the Reconfigurable Virtual Collective Trainer system for aviation crew members.

Army CID and DCIS play a role in policing contracting fraud, which can include deceptive practices and overcharging, as well as violations of the Procurement Integrity Act, which prohibits the release of source selection, contracting or proposal information by government employees.

I strongly argue that the administration and Congress must unite to fund the Air Force to ensure the continuity of this vital program. They also need to explore alternative design and acquisition strategies to significantly reduce the cost of NGAD and expedite the delivery of this critical capability.

By way of background, the family of systems known as NGAD — which includes a manned, penetrating, counter-air platform and unmanned collaborative combat aircraft — is the result of extensive Air Force and Department of Defense research, which began in 2014. This research concluded that America’s current air dominance assets would not remain sufficiently competitive against the systems of potential adversaries (especially China) into the 2030s.

Then-acquisition chief Frank Kendall was instrumental in this analysis and program from the start. He even made it the linchpin of one of his seven operational imperatives after becoming secretary of the Air Force. With China confirming that it is working on a sixth-generation fighter system to be completed by 2035, the importance of the NGAD program for the Air Force has become all the more apparent.

Enter the Fiscal Responsibility Act and its caps on defense spending; deficit concerns; and the bow-wave effect of must-pay bills for programs like the B-21 bomber, the Sentinel intercontinental ballistic missile program and rising personnel costs; the Air Force now finds itself on the horns of a dilemma for FY26 and beyond.

There’s not enough money to pay for all of it.

Moreover, the manned portion of NGAD is predicted to be even more expensive than the F-35 fighter, which, if true, does not bode well for America’s ability to eventually procure an adequate number of fighters. If the program encounters significant delays, the U.S. may once again find itself delivering a capability that has not kept pace with where the threat has advanced.

What, then, should we do?

First, I urge Congress and the DOD to provide adequate funds to the Air Force so that all these important programs remain on track.

Second, I urge the Air Force to consider innovative design and acquisition strategies — perhaps along the lines of the “century series” approach that former Air Force acquisition chief Will Roper once spoke of. This approach would involve less-expensive and quicker-to-produce fighters with iterative designs that could change every few years if necessary. Engaging in discussions with industry on such an approach is crucial, as it represents a very different way of doing business and we need to ensure its feasibility.

It’s time for us to come together, think outside the box and find new ways to support our military’s needs.

The only thing we can say for sure is that China is ruthlessly advancing its NGAD equivalent and does not appear to be slowing down due to budgetary concerns. Moreover, China is continuing aggressive actions in the South China Sea and has stepped up military drills that simulate a blockade and possible invasion of Taiwan.

The 2030s will be upon us in an instant, so we can’t afford to delay NGAD. Doing so would mean risking loss in a future conflict.

Deborah Lee James is a former secretary of the U.S. Air Force. She serves as chair of the Defense Business Board and is affiliated with several organizations and businesses.

During last week’s debate over the annual defense authorization bill, House lawmakers inserted language in the massive military policy measure to require a new assessment from the Defense Department on “the threat of rifle-toting robot dogs used by China” in potential future conflicts.

The issue has gained public attention in recent weeks after Chinese military officials showed off armed robotic quadrupeds during recent military drills with Cambodia.

In a video released by state-run CCTV on May 25, a 110-pound dog-like robot is shown carrying and firing an automatic rifle. A spokesman for the Chinese military said the robot, which can perform many tasks autonomously, could “serve as a new member in our urban combat operations.”

Drone warfare is not new to the U.S. or foreign militaries, and the American military for years has experimented with robot dogs for use in reconnaissance and unit support roles.

But the idea of a robot version of man’s best friend shooting at American soldiers was enough to prompt House members to demand that the secretary of defense investigate “the threat such use poses to the national security of the United States.”

The amendment was adopted without objection from any members of the chamber. But it will have to survive negotiations with senators on the broader defense measure in coming months before it can become law.

The Senate is expected to hold floor debate and make possible amendments to its draft of the legislation in the next few weeks.

Jennifer Swanson, deputy assistant secretary of the Army for data, engineering and software, said the effort will shed light on how the service’s acquisition and logistics enterprise could take advantage of generative AI tools to make processes like contract writing and data analysis more efficient.

“The pilot’s not just about increasing our productivity, which will be great, but also — what are the other things that we can do and what are the other industry tools that are out there that we might be able to leverage or add on,” Swanson said June 18 at Defense One’s Tech Summit in Arlington, Va.

The Army is the latest Defense Department agency to announce efforts to experiment with generative AI. The Air Force and Space Force last week unveiled their own experimental tool — the Non-classified Internet Protocol Generative Pre-Training Transformer, or NIPRGPT. And in 2023, the Navy rolled out a conversational AI program called Amelia that sailors could use to troubleshoot problems or provide tech support.

Swanson said she’s optimistic about the potential for generative AI, especially for laborious specialties like contract writing and policy where automation could release some strain on the Army’s workforce.

“In the area of contracts and in the area of policy, I think there’s a huge return on investment for us,” she said. “Might [AI] one day be able to write a contract? We hope so. But we’ve got to pilot and test it and make sure everybody’s comfortable with it first.”

The large language model the service will use for the effort is different from systems like ChatGPT, Swanson said, because it is trained on Army data. It will also provide citations that indicate where the data it provides originated, a feature that will help the service fact-check that information.

The pilot is part of a broader effort within the Army to identify both the pitfalls and the opportunities that come with widely adopting AI tools. In March, the service announced a 100-day plan focused on reducing the risk associated with integrating AI algorithms.

As part of that exercise, Swanson said, the Army reviewed its spending on AI research and found that testing and security are the two biggest gaps toward fielding these tools more broadly. The service also identified 32 risks and 66 mitigations it can implement to reduce their impact. Further, it created a generative AI policy that it will apply to the pilot in order to set parameters for the effort. That policy includes a requirement that there be a “human in the loop.”

The generative AI pilot will lead into the next phase of the effort — a 16-month focus on how to use the technology operationally. Findings from that work will inform the Army’s budget for fiscal 2026.

“So the 100 day plan is setting the conditions — where are we at — and then the 500 day plan is really about operationalizing it,” she said.

Florent Groberg, vice president of strategy and optimization at private investment firm AE Industrial partners, said that as the Army moves through these review processes and experiments with AI, it should be transparent with industry about what it wants and then move quickly to leverage the tools companies are developing.

“To me, it’s really understanding the framework of what you want to accomplish,” he said during the same panel with Swanson. “Put some boundaries out there and then go do it.”

The Government Accountability Office unveiled its annual report on the Defense Department’s buying practices, covering many of the largest items in the military’s shopping cart, from aircraft carriers to intercontinental ballistic missiles.

GAO studied more than 30 of the most expensive items on order, costing a little more than $1 trillion. The total cost of those fell by about $1.7 billion since the year before, due to changes in inflation and a drop in purchases.

Still, several of these big-ticket items are running above the contracted price. The estimated total may rise, the report warned, plus there are issues with speed.

For the largest weapons programs still awaiting delivery, it’s taking 10 years for the Pentagon to place an order and then receive the system. That’s longer than the average noted last year.

But for programs that have started delivering, the delays are even longer. The average time, the authors found, rose from 8 years to 11 years.

Alongside these major programs, GAO also studied some meant to be smaller and more nimble. These “middle-tier acquisitions,” or MTA, work like a toll road alongside a highway — a quicker route for weapons that the Pentagon needs more urgently.

The trouble is that the speed limit isn’t much faster, the report found.

“Although the MTA pathway was designed for speed, GAO found most MTA programs do not plan to implement leading practices to facilitate that speed,” it said.

These programs are meant to reach the field within five years, according to the Pentagon’s own guidance. However, GAO found some middle-tier programs are still following a “linear” process: five years for prototyping and another five for development.

“While the MTA pathway offers flexibilities to create efficiencies in the acquisition process, the warfighter may continue to wait years — if not more than a decade — for a solution that may ultimately no longer be relevant,” according to the report.

One of the core problems the Pentagon faces as it tries to buy weapons moving forward is purchasing software. Weapons, like technology more broadly, depend more on the lines of code that make them work. To avoid going obsolete, that software must stay up to date.

But the DOD struggles to buy this evergreen technology, and one of the reasons listed in the report is employees. The department doesn’t have enough people who understand software, the report argued. Instead, many of the most software-intense programs in the Pentagon require the expertise of contractors.

“DOD has taken initial steps to establish a cadre of personnel with software expertise, but its efforts are in early stages,” the report said. “While DOD expects to request more funding, as of March 2024, the cadre consisted of one federal employee with limited assistance.”

GAO offered three main recommendations: strategies to make MTA programs move faster, clearer guidance on the Pentagon’s software workforce, and the funding and goals needed for that workforce.

The top deputy for Pentagon acquisition and sustainment, who has since moved to a policy role, partially agreed with the recommendations and said some may be included in the DOD’s next update to its buying practices, expected this month.

Despite the federal charges against Trump for conspiring to overturn the 2020 election, and his recent guilty verdict in an unrelated hush money trial, the Republican former president arrived emboldened as the party’s presumptive nominee. He has successfully purged the GOP of critics, silenced most skeptics and enticed once-critical lawmakers aboard his MAGA-fueled campaign.

A packed room of House Republicans sang “Happy Birthday” to Trump in the private breakfast meeting at GOP campaign headquarters across the street from the Capitol. The lawmakers gave him a baseball and bat from the annual congressional game. Trump bragged that even his telephone rallies for lawmakers could draw bigger crowds than mega-popstar Taylor Swift, who has yet to make any endorsement.

“President Trump brought an extraordinary amount of energy, excitement and enthusiasm this morning,” said House Speaker Mike Johnson, noting high fund-raising tallies since the guilty verdict. “We’re feeling good.”

The Republican speaker had demurred earlier over whether he’s asked Trump to respect the peaceful transfer of presidential power and commit to not doing another Jan. 6. “Of course he respects that, we all do, and we’ve all talked about it, ad nauseum.”

Trump told Johnson Thursday he thinks the speaker is doing a “terrific job,” according to a Republican in the private meeting and granted anonymity to discuss it. He asked Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, the speaker’s chief Republican critic, if she was being “nice” to Johnson, another Republican said.

Trump spent about an hour with House Republicans delivering free-wheeling remarks, fielding questions and discussing issues — including Russia and immigration and also tax cuts and other priorities for a potential second term. On one major controversial issue, Trump told lawmakers that abortion rules should be left to the states and said he supported exceptions for rape, incest and to save the life of the mother, lawmakers said.

Senate Republicans welcomed Trump next in the afternoon, as protesters clamored at both locations and police beefed up security.

Many potential priorities for a new White House administration are being formulated by a constellation of outside groups, including Project 2025, laying the groundwork for executive and legislative actions, though Trump has made clear he has his own agenda.

“Anybody who thought that this president was going to be down after the sham trial. it’s only giving him even more energy,” said Rep. Tom Emmer, the GOP whip. “Donald Trump is crushing this election.”

But Trump’s private meetings with House and Senate Republicans so close to the Capitol were infused with the symbolism of his return as the U.S. president who threatened the American tradition of the peaceful transfer of power.

“It’s frustrating,” said former U.S. Capitol Police officer Harry Dunn, who made his own unsuccessful run for Congress as a Maryland Democrat in the aftermath of Jan. 6, the day when police engaged in hand-to-hand fighting to stop Trump supporters who stormed the building in an effort to overturn President Joe Biden’s election.

Dunn spoke of the “irony” of Trump returning to the area and lawmakers now embracing him. “It just shows the lack of backbone they have when they’re truly putting party and person over country,” he said. “And it’s sad.”

Biden was overseas Thursday attending a summit of the Group of Seven leading industrialized nations, but the president’s campaign unveiled a new ad blaming Trump for lighting the “fire” of Jan. 6 and threatening democracy.

Many of those who once stood up to Trump are long gone from office and the Republicans who remain seem increasingly enthusiastic about the possibility of him retaking the White House, and the down-ballot windfall that could mean for their own GOP majorities in Congress.

Thursday was to include an encounter between Trump and Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell, who once blamed Trump for the “disgraceful” attack that he called an “insurrection” but now endorses the party’s presumptive nominee. “Of course I’ll be at the meeting.”

Sen. John Thune, the GOP whip who is vying to replace McConnell as leader, told The Associated Press that he was interested in hearing from Trump about the fall election. “I think there’s an opportunity there to really make this a big win,” he said.

As democracies around the world come under threat from a far-rightward shift, some analysts warn that the U.S. system, once seemingly immune from authoritarian impulses, is at risk of populist and extremist forces like those that Trump inspired to sack the Capitol.

“This is just another example of House Republicans bending the knee to Donald Trump,” said Rep. Pete Aguilar of California, the chairman of the House Democratic caucus.

Making Jan. 6 a cornerstone of his reelection campaign, Trump celebrates those who stormed the Capitol as “warriors” and “patriots,” and he has vowed to pardon any number of the more than 1,300 convicted of crimes for the assault on the seat of U.S. democracy.

Moreover, Trump has vowed to seek retribution by ousting officials at the U.S. Justice Department, which is prosecuting him in a four-count indictment to overturn the election ahead of the Jan. 6 attack and another case over storing classified documents at his Mar-A-Largo home.

Republicans, particularly in the House but increasingly in the Senate, are vigorously following his lead, complaining of an unfair justice system. Alongside Trump, the House and Senate GOP campaign arms scored some of their highest fundraising periods yet after a jury found him guilty in the New York hush money case.

When former GOP Speaker Paul Ryan on Fox News reiterated this week that he wouldn’t be voting for Trump and wished Republicans had another choice for president, he was immediately ostracized by Trump allies.

“Paul Ryan, you’re a piece of garbage,” said Rep. Troy Nehls, R-Texas. “We should kick you out of the party.”

Of the Republicans who voted to impeach Trump over Jan. 6 and convict him on the charge of inciting the insurrection, only a few remain in office.

Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, and Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, were not expected to attend Thursday’s closed-door session with Trump. But Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, had a change of plans and was to join.

Also Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., said he would likely join the Trump meeting at GOP senators’ campaign headquarters, expecting “he’s going to be the next president, so you have to work” together.

Asked if he was concerned about the direction of the Trump Republican Party, Cassidy said: “Let the day’s own troubles be sufficient for the day. You can fill yourself up with anxiety about tomorrow, but will it change a thing? No.”