I doubt our military is on alert, it's honestly more likely that they'd welcome the US soldiers. And even if they were we literally can't afford confrontation with the US, last I checked we only have ammunition for a few hours of direct confrontation in a war.

Shit's bleak.

Honestly, just stick to what you like. I've been using Linux for years now and didn't really distrohop. I started with Manjaro, shortly after went to Solus, after a long time then went Nobara and now I'm on Bazzite for more than year, but it was mostly because of issues I found along the way until I got to the one where I basically have none right now.

It's cool to do if you're into trying it or if you want to try other DEs, but it would probably be best to test it on a virtual machine or on your browser.

But I do think atomic distros are generally better and should be more recommended.

you can click on the book looking button at the top left to set it to auto-hide the sidebar, there's also mods you can install in the settings that might change it