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Did Pentagon Chief Austin’s Secret Hospitalization Break the Rules? 

US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin attends a welcome ceremony before an annual security meeting with South Korean Defense Minister Shin Won-sik at the Defense Ministry in Seoul, South Korea on November 13, 2023. (Reuters)
US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin attends a welcome ceremony before an annual security meeting with South Korean Defense Minister Shin Won-sik at the Defense Ministry in Seoul, South Korea on November 13, 2023. (Reuters)
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Did Pentagon Chief Austin’s Secret Hospitalization Break the Rules? 

US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin attends a welcome ceremony before an annual security meeting with South Korean Defense Minister Shin Won-sik at the Defense Ministry in Seoul, South Korea on November 13, 2023. (Reuters)
US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin attends a welcome ceremony before an annual security meeting with South Korean Defense Minister Shin Won-sik at the Defense Ministry in Seoul, South Korea on November 13, 2023. (Reuters)

US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin may have violated the law by failing to report his recent hospitalization to his boss, but likely only faces a reprimand from US President Joe Biden, despite some calls for his resignation, two legal experts said on Monday.

WHAT DID AUSTIN DO?

Austin, 70, was admitted on New Year's Day to an Intensive Care Unit at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center for what the Pentagon has said were "complications following a recent elective medical procedure," a fact the Defense Department kept under wraps for five days.

Austin sits just below Biden atop the chain of command of the US military, but his staff did not inform the White House of his condition for three days, and even his own top deputy was kept in the dark.

PUBLIC, PRIVATE PROTOCOL

His handling of the situation appeared to be a stark breach of protocol for high-ranking cabinet officials, who typically inform the public of planned medical absences ahead of time and identify who will be filling in for them.

Austin's duties require him to be available at a moment's notice to respond to any national security crisis. He said on Saturday that he "could have done a better job" and took "full responsibility" for the secrecy over his hospitalization.

White House officials have said Biden still has "complete confidence" in Austin, who remains in the hospital but has returned to his regular duties.

WHAT RULES MIGHT HE HAVE BROKEN?

Legal experts said Austin may have violated a US law on "reporting of vacancies" that requires executive agencies to report top-level absences and the names of anyone serving in an acting capacity to both houses of Congress. The law is largely procedural and does not spell out any penalties for lapses.

Legal experts said that Austin appears to have clearly violated the rule but will likely face only a reprimand and a warning from Biden. Any top deputies or staff responsible could face similar consequences.

Austin may have also violated internal US Department of Defense protocols, and officials say they are conducting a full review of the incident to determine how future lapses could be prevented.

WHEN DID HE TALK TO BIDEN?

Austin spoke to Biden, National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan and Secretary of State Antony Blinken on the morning of Jan. 1 before he went to the hospital, the White House said. The "secure conference call" was about the Middle East. Biden was in St. Croix on vacation at the time.

There was then no contact with the White House or National Security Council until Jan. 4, the White House said. Biden and Austin next spoke on Jan. 6, the White House said.

White House officials said Biden continued to be briefed on national security issues by other officials during Austin's hospitalization, and the president received his daily national security briefing prepared by the intelligence community. The daily briefing includes input from the Defense Department but is not produced by them.

WHAT DOES CONGRESS SAY?

Congressional leaders are calling for an inquiry.

Lawmakers from both parties said they were deeply concerned that the president did not know his top civilian commander was hospitalized for three days at a time when wars are being fought in Gaza and Ukraine.

US Senator Roger Wicker, the highest-ranking Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said on Saturday that the situation was "unacceptable" and demanded a "full accounting of the facts immediately."

Former President Donald Trump, who is Biden's likely Republican challenger in the 2024 election, said on Sunday night that Austin should be fired for his "improper professional conduct and dereliction of duty."

Democratic Senator Jack Reed, the chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said: "This lack of disclosure must never happen again."

PENTAGON REVIEW

Asked if the general counsel's office at the Defense Department believed Austin violated laws, chief Pentagon spokesperson Air Force Major General Patrick Ryder told reporters: "We are considering the impact of any statutory reporting requirements and will provide updates as appropriate."

He later added that the reporting requirements being examined would not just involve Congress. "It's to Congress, the White House or anyone else," he said.

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As the UN Turns 80, Its Crucial Humanitarian Aid Work Faces a Clouded Future

Students in an English class at a primary school run by URWA for Palestinian refugees at the Mar Elias refugee camp in Beirut, Lebanon, Monday, June 2, 2025. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar)
Students in an English class at a primary school run by URWA for Palestinian refugees at the Mar Elias refugee camp in Beirut, Lebanon, Monday, June 2, 2025. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar)
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As the UN Turns 80, Its Crucial Humanitarian Aid Work Faces a Clouded Future

Students in an English class at a primary school run by URWA for Palestinian refugees at the Mar Elias refugee camp in Beirut, Lebanon, Monday, June 2, 2025. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar)
Students in an English class at a primary school run by URWA for Palestinian refugees at the Mar Elias refugee camp in Beirut, Lebanon, Monday, June 2, 2025. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar)

At a refugee camp in northern Kenya, Aujene Cimanimpaye waits as a hot lunch of lentils and sorghum is ladled out for her and her nine children — all born while she has received United Nations assistance since fleeing her violence-wracked home in Congo in 2007.

“We cannot go back home because people are still being killed,” the 41-year-old said at the Kakuma camp, where the UN World Food Program and UN refugee agency help support more than 300,000 refugees, The Associated Press said.

Her family moved from Nakivale Refugee Settlement in neighboring Uganda three years ago to Kenya, now home to more than a million refugees from dozens of conflict-hit east African countries.

A few kilometers (miles) away at the Kalobeyei Refugee Settlement, fellow Congolese refugee Bahati Musaba, a mother of five, said that since 2016, “UN agencies have supported my children’s education — we get food and water and even medicine,” as well as cash support from WFP to buy food and other basics.

This year, those cash transfers — and many other UN aid activities — have stopped, threatening to upend or jeopardize millions of lives.

As the UN marks its 80th anniversary this month, its humanitarian agencies are facing one of the greatest crises in their history: The biggest funder — the United States — under the Trump administration and other Western donors have slashed international aid spending. Some want to use the money to build up national defense.

Some UN agencies are increasingly pointing fingers at one another as they battle over a shrinking pool of funding, said a diplomat from a top donor country who spoke on condition of anonymity to comment freely about the funding crisis faced by some UN agencies.

Such pressures, humanitarian groups say, diminish the pivotal role of the UN and its partners in efforts to save millions of lives — by providing tents, food and water to people fleeing unrest in places like Myanmar, Sudan, Syria and Venezuela, or helping stamp out smallpox decades ago.

“It’s the most abrupt upheaval of humanitarian work in the UN in my 40 years as a humanitarian worker, by far,” said Jan Egeland, a former UN humanitarian aid chief who now heads the Norwegian Refugee Council. “And it will make the gap between exploding needs and contributions to aid work even bigger.”

‘Brutal’ cuts to humanitarian aid programs UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has asked the heads of UN agencies to find ways to cut 20% of their staffs, and his office in New York has floated sweeping ideas about reform that could vastly reshape the way the United Nations doles out aid.

Humanitarian workers often face dangers and go where many others don’t — to slums to collect data on emerging viruses or drought-stricken areas to deliver water.

The UN says 2024 was the deadliest year for humanitarian personnel on record, mainly due to the war in Gaza. In February, it suspended aid operations in the stronghold of Yemen’s Houthi group, who have detained dozens of UN and other aid workers.

Proponents say UN aid operations have helped millions around the world affected by poverty, illness, conflict, hunger and other troubles.

Critics insist many operations have become bloated, replete with bureaucratic perks and a lack of accountability, and are too distant from in-the-field needs. They say postcolonial Western donations have fostered dependency and corruption, which stifles the ability of countries to develop on their own, while often UN-backed aid programs that should be time-specific instead linger for many years with no end in sight.

In the case of the Nobel Peace Prize-winning WFP and the UN’s refugee and migration agencies, the US has represented at least 40% of their total budgets, and Trump administration cuts to roughly $60 billion in US foreign assistance have hit hard. Each UN agency has been cutting thousands of jobs and revising aid spending.

“It's too brutal what has happened,” said Egeland, alluding to cuts that have jolted the global aid community. “However, it has forced us to make priorities ... what I hope is that we will be able to shift more of our resources to the front lines of humanity and have less people sitting in offices talking about the problem.”

With the UN Security Council's divisions over wars in Ukraine and the Middle East hindering its ability to prevent or end conflict in recent years, humanitarian efforts to vaccinate children against polio or shelter and feed refugees have been a bright spot of UN activity. That's dimming now.

Not just funding cuts cloud the future of UN humanitarian work

Aside from the cuts and dangers faced by humanitarian workers, political conflict has at times overshadowed or impeded their work.

UNRWA, the aid agency for Palestinian refugees, has delivered an array of services to millions — food, education, jobs and much more — in Lebanon, Syria and Jordan as well as in the West Bank and Gaza since its founding in 1948.

Israel claims the agency's schools fan antisemitic and anti-Israel sentiment, which the agency denies. Israel says Hamas siphons off UN aid in Gaza to profit from it, while UN officials insist most aid gets delivered directly to the needy.

“UNRWA is like one of the foundations of your home. If you remove it, everything falls apart,” said Issa Haj Hassan, 38, after a checkup at a small clinic at the Mar Elias Palestinian refugee camp in Beirut.

UNRWA covers his diabetes and blood pressure medication, as well as his wife’s heart medicine. The United States, Israel's top ally, has stopped contributing to UNRWA; it once provided a third of its funding. Earlier this year, Israel banned the aid group, which has strived to continue its work nonetheless.

Ibtisam Salem, a single mother of five in her 50s who shares a small one-room apartment in Beirut with relatives who sleep on the floor, said: “If it wasn’t for UNRWA we would die of starvation. ... They helped build my home, and they give me health care. My children went to their schools.”

Especially when it comes to food and hunger, needs worldwide are growing even as funding to address them shrinks.

“This year, we have estimated around 343 million acutely food insecure people,” said Carl Skau, WFP deputy executive director. “It’s a threefold increase if we compare four years ago. And this year, our funding is dropping 40%. So obviously that’s an equation that doesn’t come together easily.”

Billing itself as the world's largest humanitarian organization, WFP has announced plans to cut about a quarter of its 22,000 staff.

The aid landscape is shifting

One question is how the United Nations remains relevant as an aid provider when global cooperation is on the outs, and national self-interest and self-defense are on the upswing.

The United Nations is not alone: Many of its aid partners are feeling the pinch. Groups like GAVI, which tries to ensure fair distribution of vaccines around the world, and the Global Fund, which spends billions each year to help battle HIV, tuberculosis and malaria, have been hit by Trump administration cuts to the US Agency for International Development.

Some private-sector, government-backed groups also are cropping up, including the divisive Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, which has been providing some food to Palestinians. But violence has erupted as crowds try to reach the distribution sites.

The future of UN aid, experts say, will rest where it belongs — with the world body's 193 member countries.

“We need to take that debate back into our countries, into our capitals, because it is there that you either empower the UN to act and succeed — or you paralyze it,” said Achim Steiner, administrator of the UN Development Program.