Dakota Meyer, a Marine who was awarded the Medal of Honor for heroism in the Afghanistan War but later became a sharp critic of the Biden administration over its chaotic withdrawal from that conflict, is reenlisting in the military and will serve in the Marine Reserves.

In a briefing with reporters on Thursday before his reenlistment ceremony, 36-year-old Meyer said he is returning to military service after 15 years out of uniform because he felt he “had more to give.” He’s also close to President Trump’s defense secretary, Pete Hegseth.

But Meyer said he would refrain from politics while in uniform.

“The great part about being in the reserves is I’m still a citizen when I’m not on orders,” he said. “When I’m on orders I’ll comply obviously with whatever the standard is.”

In brief remarks during the ceremony, Hegseth said Meyer’s reenlistment is “not common practice” and the Marine Corps “doesn’t do things like this lightly,” but praised Meyer’s “uncommon valor.” Hegseth said the reenlistment shows “you’re never too old, you’re never too experienced, you’ve never done too much that you can’t continue to contribute.”

Originally from Kentucky, Meyer was awarded the Medal of Honor, the military’s highest honor, by then-President Barack Obama in 2011 for his heroics in Afghanistan when he charged five times in a Humvee into heavy gunfire to rescue comrades under attack by Taliban insurgents.

On Sept. 8, 2009, Meyer was part of a security team supporting a patrol moving into a village in the Ganjgal Valley. Suddenly, the lights in a nearby village went out and gunfire erupted. About 50 Taliban insurgents on mountainsides and in the village had ambushed the patrol.

His actions during the six-hour attack and firefight saved the lives of 36 people, both Americans and Afghans. He killed at least eight Taliban insurgents. Firing from a gun turret on top of a Humvee driven by a fellow Marine, he provided cover for his team, allowing many to escape likely death.

Meyer described the events in a 2011 interview with CBS News’ “60 Minutes,” telling correspondent David Martin, “I didn’t think I was going to die. I knew I was.”

Four American soldiers died in the ambush: 1st Lt. Michael Johnson, 25, from Virginia Beach, Virginia; Staff Sgt. Aaron Kenefick, 30, of Roswell, Georgia; Corpsman James Layton, 22, of Riverbank, California; and Edwin Wayne Johnson Jr., a 31-year-old gunnery sergeant from Columbus, Georgia. A fifth man, Army Sgt. Kenneth W. Westbrook, 41, of Shiprock, New Mexico, died later from his wounds.

After leaving the military, Meyer remained in the spotlight. In 2016 he married former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin’s daughter, Bristol, and they had two children. Years later, in 2019, he told “60 Minutes” about his experience with a new post-traumatic stress disorder treatment.

He’s been outspoken about the jailing of another Marine — Lt. Col. Stuart Scheller — who criticized the Biden administration for the 2021 withdrawal from Afghanistan in social media posts while in uniform, which is a violation of military conduct.

President Donald Trump said the late President Jimmy Carter could die peacefully knowing he wasn’t the worst U.S. president because that title belongs to former President Joe Biden. 

Trump issued the remarks to reporters during a press conference with Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, who visited the White House on behalf of European nations to assist in brokering a trade deal between the U.S. and the European Union.

“Worst administration in the history of our country,” Trump said on Thursday. “Worse than Jimmy Carter. Jimmy Carter died a happy man. You know why? Because he wasn‘t the worst. President Joe Biden was.”

CRITICS PILE ON BIDEN FOLLOWING ABC INTERVIEW, BLAST HIS REFUSAL TO COMMIT TO COGNITIVE TEST: ‘DISQUALIFYING’

President Donald Trump meets with Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni in the Oval Office on April 17, 2025. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

Trump has routinely railed against Biden and the former president’s mental fitness, and the remarks coincide with multiple books detailing Biden’s cognitive function while in office. One White House aide said that staff isolated Biden and allowed his faculties to “atrophy” in the book, “Uncharted: How Trump Beat Biden, Harris, and the Odds in the Wildest Campaign in History.” It was released on April 8. 

A spokesperson for Biden did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Fox News Digital. 

Trump’s comments come days after Biden slammed the Trump administration for creating so much “damage” during the early days of the administration. 

EX-BIDEN AIDE SAYS FORMER PRESIDENT WAS ‘FATIGUED, BEFUDDLED, AND DISENGAGED’ PRIOR TO JUNE DEBATE: BOOK

Former President Joe Biden gives a speech at the Advocates, Counselors, and Representatives for the Disabled conference in Chicago on April 15, 2025.

“Fewer than 100 days, this administration has done so much damage and so much destruction. It’s kind of breathtaking it could happen that soon,” Biden said in his first public speech post-presidency on Tuesday. Biden delivered the speech during a disability advocacy conference in Chicago.

On Thursday, Trump and Meloni said they were confident the U.S. and Europe could hash out a trade deal. Trump unveiled 20% tariffs on European Union goods coming into the U.S. on April 2, but he announced on April 9 the tariffs would remain at 10% for 90 days to allow the U.S. and the EU to strike a deal.

“There will be a trade deal, 100%,” Trump told reporters. “Of course there will be a trade deal, they want to make one very much, and we’re going to make a trade deal. I fully expect it, but it’ll be a fair deal.”

Washington — The Supreme Court on Thursday said that it will hear oral arguments next month over whether the Trump administration can partially enforce an executive order that seeks to end birthright citizenship while proceedings in a challenge to the directive move forward.

The court said in an unsigned order that arguments on the Justice Department’s request for emergency relief will take place during a special sitting on May 15. The administration has asked the Supreme Court to limit the scope of three separate injunctions that blocked implementation of President Trump’s order nationwide. 

If the high court decides to grant the Justice Department’s request, it would prevent the administration from enforcing Mr. Trump’s birthright citizenship order only against the plaintiffs in the ongoing cases: seven individuals, specific members of immigrants’ rights groups and residents of 22 states.

The dispute over the president’s attempt to unwind birthright citizenship is the latest in which the Supreme Court has been asked to intervene, with more requests expected. More than 100 cases that seek to knock down Mr. Trump’s second-term policies have been filed since he returned to the White House in late January, and several have already made their way to the high court.

The president’s executive order on birthright citizenship was one of the first that he signed on his first day back in office and is among several directives that seek to target migrants who are in the U.S. unlawfully. The Trump administration’s immigration policies have led to high-profile clashes with the courts — namely Mr. Trump’s use of the wartime Alien Enemies Act to deport alleged members of a Venezuelan gang and the administration’s mistaken removal of a Maryland man in the U.S. unlawfully to El Salvador.

While the 14th Amendment has for more than a century been understood to guarantee citizenship to all people born in the U.S., Mr. Trump’s order denied birthright citizenship to children born to a mother who is unlawfully present in the U.S. or who is lawfully present on a temporary basis; or whose father is neither a citizen nor lawful permanent resident.

The president’s order directed federal agencies to stop issuing documents recognizing U.S. citizenship to children born after Feb. 19.

More than half-dozen lawsuits challenging the measure were filed in courts throughout the country before it took effect, and three federal district courts in Washington, Maryland and Massachusetts each blocked the government from implementing the birthright citizenship order.

Federal appeals courts in San Francisco, Boston and Richmond, Virginia, then refused requests by the Trump administration to partly block the lower court orders.

The Justice Department filed emergency appeals of the three decisions with the Supreme Court in mid-March and asked it to limit enforcement of the birthright citizenship order to 28 states and individuals who are not involved in the ongoing cases. Then-acting Solicitor General Sarah Harris said that a minimum, the Supreme Court should allow agencies to develop and issue public guidance regarding implementation of Mr. Trump’s executive order while proceedings continue.

Like other requests made to the Supreme Court, Harris took aim at the breadth of the injunctions issued by the district courts, which are nationwide in scope and cover states and individuals who are not involved in the litigation before them.

The president and his allies have attacked judges for issuing nationwide injunctions in the slew of legal challenges to Mr. Trump’s policies, and even called for some to be impeached.

“Universal injunctions have reached epidemic proportions since the start of the current administration,” Harris wrote. “Courts have graduated from universal preliminary injunctions to universal temporary restraining orders, from universal equitable relief to universal monetary remedies, and from governing the whole nation to governing the whole world.”

She argued that nationwide, or universal, injunctions prevent the executive branch from carrying out its work and impede Mr. Trump’s ability to address what he says is a “crisis” at the U.S.-Mexico border.

“The district courts’ universal injunctions threaten to perpetuate those problems by holding out a nationwide incentive for illegal immigration: the prospect of American citizenship for the unlawful migrants’ children and of derivative immigration benefits for the migrants themselves,” Harris wrote.

But the challengers urged the Supreme Court to leave the district court orders untouched.

In a filing with the Supreme Court, officials from 18 states, the District of Columbia and San Francisco called the Trump administration’s request “remarkable,” as it would allow the government to strip hundreds of thousands of American-born children of their citizenship while the legal challenges move forward and render them “deportable on birth and at risk of statelessness. 

The states argued that the Justice Department is seeking to violate binding Supreme Court precedent that recognized that birthright citizenship is guaranteed by the 14th Amendment.

Two immigrants’ rights groups, CASA Inc and the Asylum Seeker Advocacy Project, refuted the suggestion by the government that it needs emergency relief.

“The Executive Branch has been complying with the settled interpretation of the Citizenship Clause for 125 years, and the government has demonstrated no urgent need to change now,”  they wrote in a filing.

The groups also noted that with more than 800,000 members across all 50 states, “nationwide consistency” is important in the context of U.S. citizenship.

“Whether a child is a citizen of our nation should not depend on the state where she is born or the associations her parents have joined,” lawyers for the groups said.