Jeffries, top House Democrat, calls on Trump to fire Hegseth over Signal breach
In a letter to Donald Trump on Tuesday, Representative Hakeem Jeffries, the leader of the Democratic minority in the House, demanded that the president fire his defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, for disclosing secret war plans for strikes on Yemen to a Signal group that included a journalist.
“Pete Hegseth is the most unqualified Secretary of Defense in American history. His continued presence in the top position of leadership at the Pentagon threatens the nation’s security and puts our brave men and women in uniform throughout the world in danger,” Jeffries wrote.
“The so-called Secretary of Defense recklessly and casually disclosed highly sensitive war plans – including te timing of a pending attack, possible strike targets and the weapons to be used – during an unclassified national security group chat that inexplicably included a reporter”, he added. “His behavior shocks the conscience, risked American lives and likely violated the law”.
“Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth should be fired immediately,” Jeffries concluded.
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Judge bars immigration officials from arresting Columbia student protester Yunseo Chung
A federal judge in Manhattan issued a temporary restraining order on Tuesday barring immigration officials from detaining Yunseo Chung, a Columbia University student and legal permanent resident the Trump administration is trying to deport for taking part in Gaza solidarity protests.
The 21-year-old green card holder, who moved to the United States as a child, filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration on Monday, arguing the government is “attempting to use immigration enforcement as a bludgeon to suppress speech that they dislike”.
The US district judge Naomi Reice Buchwald said in court that the government had not laid out enough facts about its claims against Chung. She then granted the restraining order Chung had requested, which also prohibits the government from moving her outside the jurisdiction of the southern district of New York.
According to an account of the hearing from a reporter, Matthew Russell Lee, a federal prosecutor asked the judge why she had included a provision that Chung not be moved out of the jurisdiction if she is eventually detained. “No trips to Louisiana, as in that other case in this court,” Buchwald replied, in reference to the transfer of Mahmoud Khalil, another Columbia student protester, and green card holder, the government is attempting to deport.
In a statement on Monday, the Department of Homeland Security said she had “engaged in concerning conduct”, including being arrested at a protest.
Chung’s suit said immigration officials moved to deport her after she was identified in news reports as one of several protesters arrested after a sit-in at a library on the nearby Barnard College campus this month.
Days later, officials told her lawyer that her permanent resident status was being revoked. Agents came looking for her at her parents’ home and also executed a search warrant at her Columbia dormitory, according to the suit.
Chung has lived in the US since emigrating from South Korea with her parents at the age seven, according to her lawsuit.
The Columbia junior’s lawsuit cites the administration’s efforts to deport other students who participated in protests against Israel’s military actions in Gaza. They include Khalil and Momodou Taal of Cornell University, who received a notice last week to surrender to immigration authorities after he sued on 15 March to pre-empt deportation efforts.
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Usha Vance will no longer attend dogsled race in Greenland, White House says
Following widespread anger in Greenland over Usha Vance’s plan to attend a dogsled race on the island this week, without an invitation from the organizers, the White House just canceled that public appearance.
Instead, she will now join her husband, JD Vance, on a visit to the US-controlled Pituffik space base in Greenland “to receive a briefing on Arctic security issues and meet with US servicemembers”.
That visit, the White House told reporters, “will take place in lieu of the second lady’s previously announced visit to the Avannaata Qimussersu dogsled race in Sisimiut”.
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JD Vance announces he is going to Greenland this week
Ignoring the uproar in Greenland over the plan for his wife, Usha Vance, to visit the territory this week without an invitation, the US vice-president, JD Vance, just announced in a video message posted on X that he now plans to join her.
“I decided that I didn’t want her to have all that fun by herself, so I’m going to join her,” Vance said. “I’m going to visit some of our guardians in the space force on the north-west coast of Greenland, and also just check out what’s going on with the security there of Greenland.”
News of the vice-president’s arrival is unlikely to placate the concerns expressed this week by both Greenland’s current prime minister and his successor.
“Denmark, which controls Greenland, its not doing its job and its not being a good ally. So you have to ask yourself:‘How are we going to solve that problem, solve our national security?’” Vance told Fox on Sunday.
“If that means that we need to take more territorial interest in Greenland, that is what President Trump is going to do, because he doesn’t care about what the Europeans scream at us, he cares about putting the interests of America’s citizens first,” he said.
Earlier on Tuesday, Rasmus Jarlov, a conservative member of the Danish parliament, reacted with fury to a claim from the senator Tommy Tuberville, also on Fox, that the people of Greenland are “all in” on joining the United States.
“A recent very large poll showed that 85% are against leaving Denmark to become part of the USA. Only 6% supported it. It is almost unanimous. Never has a NO been clearer” Jarlov wrote. “Yet these f….. people just continue to lie and tell the American public that people in Greenland want to be part of the USA. And the American ‘journalists’ let them get away with it.”
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Pentagon warned staffers against using Signal before White House chat leak, NPR reports
The Pentagon recently warned its employees against using Signal, the encrypted messaging app, due to a technical vulnerability, an NPR report reveals.
The report comes one day after the Atlantic published a story detailing how top national security officials, including the US vice-president and US defense secretary, had accidentally added a journalist to a Signal group chat, which revealed plans for military strikes in Yemen.
The Atlantic’s revelations sparked widespread outrage at the security lapse and sent ripples of shock at the breach through diplomatic circles across the world. However, Trump administration officials have tried to play down the sensitivity of the information exposed to the journalist.
But according to a Pentagon “OPSEC special bulletin” seen by NPR reporters and sent on 18 March, Russian hacking groups may exploit the vulnerability in Signal to spy on encrypted organizations, potentially targeting “persons of interest”.
Signal uses end-to-end encryption for its messaging and calls. It is also an “open source” application, meaning the app’s code is open to independent review for any vulnerabilities. The app is typically used as a secure method to communicate.
The Pentagon-wide memo said “third party messaging apps” like Signal are permitted to be used to share unclassified information, but they are not allowed to be used to send “non-public” unclassified information.
In a statement to NPR, a spokesperson for Signal said they were “not aware of any vulnerabilities or supposed ones that we haven’t addressed publicly”.
Read the full story by José Olivares:
US academic groups sue White House over planned deportations of pro-Gaza students
US academic groups have sued the Trump administration in an effort to block the deportation of foreign students and scholars who have been targeted for voicing pro-Palestinian views and criticism of Israel.
The American Association of University Professors (AAUP) and the Middle East Studies Association (Mesa) filed a lawsuit at a US federal court in Boston on Tuesday accusing the administration of fomenting “a climate of repression” on campuses and stifling constitutionally guaranteed free speech rights.
Lawyers acting for the groups warn that the crackdown on pro-Palestinian speech is likely to herald a broad clampdown on dissenting views in higher education and elsewhere.
The suit comes after the high-profile arrest of Mahmoud Khalil, a Syrian-born Palestinian former graduate student of Columbia University in New York, who holds a green card, and Badar Khan Suri, an Indian post-doctoral student at Georgetown University, both of whom are in detention amid government efforts to deport them. Both had been vocal in support of the Palestinians. Lawyers for both men are disputing the legality of the Trump administration’s efforts to deport them.
Another student green card holder, Yunseo Chung, who had also attended protests at Columbia, sued the administration on Monday after immigration officials tried to arrest her. Ice officials told her lawyer that her green card had been revoked. Chung has been in the US since the age of seven.
The academics’ lawsuit filed on Tuesday alleges that Donald Trump and other US officials are pursuing an “ideological-deportation policy” and accuses the administration of deliberately suppressing freedom of expression by construing opinions supporting Palestinians and criticising Israel’s military actions in Gaza as “pro-Hamas”.
The Guardian’s Robert Tait gives us the full story:
Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer is calling for a “full investigation” in the Senate, challenging Republicans to join in probing how national security leaders came to discuss wartime plans on a secure messaging app chat that also included the editor-in-chief of the Atlantic.
However, Senate Majority Leader John Thune told reporters an investigation was “already happening”, with the Trump administration’s intelligence leaders facing tough questioning at a Senate intelligence committee hearing on Tuesday.
Thune added that the Senate armed services committee “may want to have some folks testify and have some of those questions answered as well”.
The top Republican and Democratic senators on the armed services committee have been discussing how to proceed with an investigation.
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President Donald Trump called the messaging app Signal “the best technology for the moment”.
Trump said his national security adviser, Mike Waltz, should not apologize after the Atlantic editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg was mistakenly included in the Signal group chat.
“I don’t think he should apologize,” Trump said on Tuesday. “I think he’s doing his best. It’s equipment and technology that’s not perfect, and probably he won’t be using it again.”
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Trump downplays Signal blunder: 'there was no classified information'
President Donald Trump kept downplaying national security concerns on Tuesday after top White House officials added a journalist to a Signal chat discussing plans to conduct military strikes in Yemen.
“There was no classified information, as I understand it,” Trump said in a meeting with US ambassadors. “I hear it’s used by a lot of groups. It’s used by the media a lot. It’s used by a lot of the military, and I think, successfully, but sometimes somebody can get on to those things. That’s one of the prices you pay when you’re not sitting in the Situation Room.”
He later called the Atlantic, a magazine with over two million followers on X, “a failed magazine” and its editor-in-chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, who was added to the Signal chat, “a total sleazebag”.
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President Donald Trump signed an executive order targeting law firm Jenner and Block for previously employing former Special Counsel Robert Mueller prosecutor Andrew Weissmann.
“We’ve taken action against a number of law firms that have participated either in the weaponization of government, the weaponization of the legal system for political ends, or have otherwise engaged in illegal or inappropriate activities,” said White House Staff Secretary Will Scharf.
“The law firm of Jenner & Block is one of these law firms,” Scharf said, as he handed the order to Trump in the Oval Office.
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Trump signs pardon for Devon Archer
Away from the Signal leak, Donald Trump was meeting with ambassadors when he interrupted the meeting to sign a flurry of executive orders.
The first was a pardon for Devon Archer – a former business partner of Hunter Biden who was convicted for his role in defrauding the corporate arm of a Native American tribe.
The supreme court refused to hear Archer’s appeal against his conviction in January 2024. On Tuesday, the president signed a pardon for Archer, saying: “I think he was treated very unfairly … He was a victim of a crime so we’re going to undo that.”
The Republican Senate majority leader John Thune said on Tuesday he expected the Senate armed services committee would look into Trump administration officials’ use of Signal, after a journalist said he had been included in a secret group discussion of highly sensitive war plans on the messaging app.
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Republicans so far keep rallying around the group of senior Trump officials being criticized for discussing operational details for bombing Yemen in a group chat.
Texas senator Ted Cruz told the BBC that Americans should feel “very encouraged” by the substance of the discussion in the Signal group.
While admitting the security breach – where a journalist was inadvertently added to the group – was a mistake, Cruz told the BBC: “What the entire text thread is about is President Trump directed his national security team take out the terrorists and open up the shipping lanes. That’s terrific.”
Cruz was echoing the official White House line of defense. A statement released on Tuesday afternoon said: “Democrats and their media allies have seemingly forgotten that President Donald J Trump and his national security team successfully killed terrorists who have targeted US troops and disrupted the most consequential shipping routes in the world.”
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Trump campaign chief sues Daily Beast over defamation claims
A top campaign manager for Donald Trump’s victorious 2024 presidential bid has filed a defamation lawsuit against the Daily Beast, alleging the news outlet fabricated claims about his campaign compensation and deliberately damaged his professional reputation.
Chis LaCivita’s lawsuit, filed on Monday in the US district court for the eastern district of Virginia, centers on a series of articles published in October 2024 claiming that he received up to $22m from the campaign and associated political action committees.
The case also forms part of a larger, dizzying pattern of legal confrontations between Trump as well as those in his orbit and media organizations, following similar high-profile defamation suits against major news networks. Over the years, Trump and his allies have increasingly used litigation as a tool to challenge journalistic reporting they view as hostile or inaccurate.
According to the court filing, the Daily Beast published multiple articles in 2024 suggesting LaCivita had “raked in” huge payments, including a piece by the investigative journalist Michael Isikoff that was titled Trump In Cash Crisis – As Campaign Chief’s $22m Pay Revealed.
LaCivita alleges the reporting created a “false impression that he was personally profiting excessively” and prioritizing personal gain over campaign success – which they argue has harmed his personal reputation. The lawsuit – which does not name Isikoff as a defendant – claims the multimillion-dollar figure represents gross campaign advertising expenditures, not personal income.
After initial correction demands from LaCivita’s legal team, the Daily Beast modified its reporting, reducing the claimed compensation to $19.2m and clarifying that funds went to LaCivita’s consulting firm. However, the lawsuit argues these changes did not adequately address the fundamental misrepresentation.
Read the full story by The Guardian’s Joseph Gedeon here:
Earlier today, Democratic lawmaker Rashida Tlaib described Mahmoud Khalil, the former Columbia University student who was detained by US immigration authorities earlier this month, as a “political prisoner”.
Speaking alongside several other progressive Democrats, Tlaib said: “In the United States of America, no matter your immigration status, no matter who you are, you have constitutional rights in our country.”
Tlaib said that Khalil’s detention was illegal and a “direct assault” on due process, freedom of speech, and the right to protest in the US, warning that the Trump administration could begin targeting his other opponents. “This is a moment that should alarm all of us. If we do not stand up for Mahmoud’s freedom today, the lawless Trump administration will come for us all.”
The White House released a statement calling out Democrats and their “media allies” for allegedly forgetting the results of the attack on Yemen.
“This is a coordinated effort to distract from the successful actions taken by President Trump and his administration to make America’s enemies pay and keep Americans safe”, reads the statement.
Trump nominates Republican once accused of mishandling taxpayer funds as HHS watchdog
President Donald Trump has nominated a Republican attorney who was once accused of mishandling taxpayer funds and has a history of launching investigations against abortion clinics to lead the Department of Health and Human Services’ office of inspector general, the Associated Press reports.
If confirmed by the Senate, Thomas March Bell will oversee fraud, waste and abuse audits of the Medicare and Medicaid programs, which spend more than $1tn annually.
Bell currently serves as general counsel for House Republicans and has worked for GOP politicians and congressional offices for decades.
The president’s nomination is a brazenly political one for a job that has long been viewed as non-partisan and focuses largely on accounting for and ferreting out fraud in some of the nation’s biggest spending programs.
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President Trump’s Ukraine and Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff was in Moscow when he was included in a group chat with more than a dozen other top administration officials on the messaging app Signal, including a journalist who leaked the conversation.
Witkoff was in Moscow meeting Russian president Vladimir Putin, but it was not clear if he had his phone with him. Witkoff flew out of Moscow on 14 March, according to Russian media.
Bart Groothuis, a former head of Dutch cyber security, said western government officials would not take mobile phones with them to Moscow or Beijing, but use “burner phones” or secure means of communication to make calls.
“Taking your own phone means giving them a free lunch when it comes to intelligence collection from the Russian side,” he said.
Trump administration claims details of mass deportations are state secrets
The Trump administration invoked the “state secrets” privilege to avoid providing more information to a federal judge regarding this month’s highly contentious immigrant expulsions to El Salvador under the Alien Enemies Act.
The administration’s invocation of the privilege is a further escalation in Donald Trump’s immigration-related battle against the federal judiciary.
According to a court filing submitted by justice department officials on Monday evening, “no further information will be provided” to the federal court in Washington DC based on the state secrets privilege. The filing said the case deals with Trump’s complete and absolute authority to remove “designated terrorists participating in a state-sponsored invasion of, and predatory incursion into, the United States”.
In response to the Trump administration’s invocation, the federal judge in the case said that if the administration would like to provide more information about the Alien Enemies Act operation, they should do so by 31 March.
Trump invoked the Alien Enemies Act on 15 March to expel Venezuelan immigrants in the US. That day, 238 Venezuelans and 23 Salvadoran men were placed on planes and sent to El Salvador, where they were then quickly detained in a massive “terrorism” prison run by the Salvadorian government. For over a week, a federal judge has attempted to compel the Trump administration to release information about the operation.
The Trump administration has said all of the Venezuelans expelled are members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua, and has repeatedly claimed, without evidence, that the gang “infiltrated” the US at the direction of the Venezuelan government. An intelligence document contradicts the Trump administration’s allegations. News reports, identifying some of the Venezuelans expelled to El Salvador, have published evidence and claims from family members that they are innocent and not members of the gang.
After the expulsion of the immigrants, federal judge James E Boasberg temporarily blocked the invocation of the Alien Enemies Act for further renditions. In a later court order, Boasberg doubled down on the block, instructing the federal government to conduct individualized hearings for immigrants set to be expelled via the act, to see if it even applies to them at all.
Read the full story by the Guardian’s José Olivares here:
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During an interview with the Bulwark, the Atlantic editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg weighed in on whether he’ll release more Signal texts after he was included in a group chat with the US vice president and other White House officials discussing upcoming military strikes in Yemen.
“My colleagues and I and the people who are giving us advice on this have some interesting conversations to have about this”, Goldberg said. “But just because they’re irresponsible with material, doesn’t mean that I’m going to be irresponsible with this material”.
BREAKING: Atlantic Editor @JeffreyGoldberg weighs releasing Trump war planning texts.
— The Bulwark (@BulwarkOnline) March 25, 2025
Watch his conversation with @Timodc from today's Bulwark Podcast: https://t.co/cZLFdmJ1k6
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Hillary Clinton reacts to military plans leak: ‘You have got to be kidding me’
Hillary Clinton – the former US secretary of state who lost the 2016 presidential election to Donald Trump amid a scandal over her use of a private server for classified emails – reacted to Monday’s news of a leak of highly sensitive military plans at the White House by saying: “You have got to be kidding me.”
Clinton punctuated her reaction on the X platform with an eyes emoji and a link to an Atlantic article that revealed how Trump officials inadvertently broadcast plans of US airstrikes on Houthi rebels through a Signal group chat with a journalist reading along.
Trump and his supporters criticized her ruthlessly for her classified emails and private server use before and after he defeated her in the presidential election nine years earlier, even calling for her to be imprisoned.
Among them were some of the participants in the group chat reported on by the Atlantic: the secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth; the secretary of state, Marco Rubio; the Central Intelligence Agency director, John Ratcliffe; and the national security adviser, Mike Waltz.
“If it was anyone other than Hillary Clinton, they would be in jail right now,” ex-Fox News host Hegseth said on his former network in 2016, as CNN showed in a montage which went viral Monday night.
That same year, Rubio remarked on Fox: “Nobody is above the law – not even Hillary Clinton, even though she thinks she is.”
In 2019, Ratcliffe told Fox: “Mishandling classified information is still a violation of the Espionage Act.”
And in a 2023 CNN appearance, Waltz complained about the lack of prosecution over “the Clinton emails”.
Read the full story by the Guardian’s Ramon Antonio Vargas here:
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Republican representative Don Bacon of Nebraska said that there’s “no doubt” that Russia and China were monitoring the US officials’ devices used for a war plan text chat.
“I will guarantee you, 99.99% with confidence, Russia and China are monitoring those two phones,” Bacon said in an interview with CNN. “So I just think it’s a security violation, and there’s no doubt that Russia and China saw this stuff within hours of the actual attacks on Yemen or the Houthis.”
Bacon has also said he would defer to the White House on whether defense secretary Pete Hegseth or national security adviser Michael Waltz should face repercussions over war plans that were texted in a group chat that included Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor-in-chief of the Atlantic magazine.
“But I think we should be critical,” he said.
“The fact that classified information was put on an unclassified system, I think the secretary of defense needs to answer for that,” Bacon added.
Democrats call for investigations and possible resignations after Signal blunder
The Senate briefing on national security threats has ended.
Democrats called for further investigations and possible resignations a day after top national security officials texted military plans to a group chat that included Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor-in-chief of the Atlantic magazine.
Senator Michael Bennet of Colorado told CIA director John Ratcliffe that the leak was an “embarrassment” and asked whether it was “just a normal day at the CIA”.
Senators will reconvene in closed setting at 12.40pm ET, where lawmakers are expected to discuss the Signal leak in greater detail.
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Signal president defends app's security after White House blunder
The president of Signal defended the messaging app’s security after top Trump administration officials mistakenly included a journalist in an encrypted chatroom they used to discuss a looming US attack on Yemen’s Houthis, Reuters reports.
Signal’s Meredith Whittaker did not directly address the blunder, which Democratic lawmakers have said was a breach of US national security. But she described the app as the “gold standard in private comms” in a post on X, which outlined Signal’s security advantages over Meta’s WhatsApp messaging app.
“We’re open source, nonprofit, and we develop and apply (end-to-end encryption) and privacy-preserving tech across our system to protect metadata and message contents,” she said.
I wouldn’t say that Will and I are battling but I do disagree. Because there are big differences between Signal and WhatsApp.
— Meredith Whittaker (@mer__edith) March 25, 2025
Signal is the gold standard in private comms. We’re open source, nonprofit, and we develop and apply e2ee and privacy preserving tech across our system… https://t.co/ZU60z2vVHy
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Democratic senator Mark Kelly of Arizona pressed Gabbard and Ratcliffe on whether the information on the Signal chat was classified or not.
“Decisional strike deliberations should be conducted through classified channels,” Ratcliffe said, answering Kelly’s question as to whether or not launching a strike on another country counts as classified information.
Tulsi Gabbard avoids questions about Signal group chat
Director of national intelligence Tulsi Gabbard dodged questions about her involvement in the Signal group chat to which an Atlantic journalist was added.
“Senator, I don’t want to get into this,” Gabbard said when Senator Mark Warner asked if she had participated in the chat.
She has repeatedly said there was no classified information in the conversation.
Meanwhile, FBI director Kash Patel declined to say whether the bureau would investigate claims that cabinet members improperly leaked national security information in the chat.
“I was just briefed about it late last night, this morning. I don’t have an update,” said Patel.
Warner asked for an update “by the end of the day”.
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Senator Angus King pressed director of national intelligence Tulsi Gabbard on why climate change was not included as a national security threat in the report.
“We recognize environmental changes and their potential impact on operations, but our focus remains on the direct threats to people’s health, wellbeing, and security,” Gabbard said.
King rebutted by saying that climate change exacerbates mass migration, famine, displacement and political violence.
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Democratic Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon said Michael Waltz, the national security adviser, and Pete Hegseth, the secretary of defense, should resign amid Monday’s leak.
Wyden called the Signal chat “obviously reckless, obviously dangerous, both the mishandling of classified information and the deliberate destruction of federal records or potential crimes that ought to be investigated immediately”.
“I’m of the view that there ought to be resignation, starting with the national security adviser and the secretary of defense, Director Radcliffe and Director Gabbard,” Wyden said.
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CIA director says he was briefed he could use Signal for work and that it was used by Biden administration
Democratic senator Mark Warner grilled Tulsi Gabbard, director of national intelligence and CIA director John Ratcliffe about the chat that discussed war plans for upcoming military strikes in Yemen.
Gabbard claims that “there was no classified material” in the Signal chat.
Ratcliffe said that, when he was confirmed as CIA director, he was briefed by agency officials about “the use of Signal as a permissible work use” and “a practice that preceded the current administration to the Biden administration”.
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Tulsi Gabbard, director of national intelligence, delivered the intelligence community’s annual threat assessment, listing China’s military, Mexico’s drug trade and Russia’s nuclear weapons among some of the most alarming threats to the country’s national security.
Before FBI director Kash Patel began his remarks, a protester yelled “Stop funding Israel!”
The committee’s Republican chair, Tom Cotton, called the protester a “lunatic”.
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Security blunder shows 'sloppy, careless, incompetent' handling of classified information, says top Democrat
Democratic senator Mark Warner went on to describe the leaking of the Yemen war plans in a Signal group chat as part of a pattern of actions taken by the second Trump administration that weakens US national security.
“I can just say this. If this was the case of a military officer or an intelligence officer and they had this kind of behavior, they would be fired, as I think this is one more example of the kind of sloppy, careless, incompetent behavior, particularly towards classified information, that this is not a one-off or a first-time error,” said Warner, the Senate intelligence committee’s vice-chairman.
He outlined a litany of grievances against the Trump administration, from its cancellation of foreign aid to its firing of probationary federal employees.
“No, the Signal fiasco is not a one-off. It is, unfortunately, a pattern we’re seeing too often repeated. I fear that we feel the erosion of trust, from our workplace, from our companies, and from our allies and partners, [which] can’t be put back in the bottle overnight. Make no mistake, these actions make America less safe,” he said.
The committee’s Republican chair, Tom Cotton, largely confined his opening remarks to warning of the threats posed from traditional enemies such as Iran and China, while implying that the intelligence community had lost its focus under Joe Biden.
“Given these threats, we have to ask, are our intelligence agencies well postured against these threats? I’m afraid the answer is no, at least not yet. As the world became more dangerous in recent years, our intelligence agencies got more politicized, more bureaucratic, and more focused on promulgating opinions rather than gathering facts. As a result of these misplaced priorities, we’ve been caught off guard and left in the dark too often,” Cotton said.
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News that the Atlantic’s top editor was added to a group chat where US national security officials discussed their plans to bomb Yemen is looming over the Senate intelligence committee’s annual hearing into global threats facing the United States.
Among the guests at the hearing are two reported members of the group chat, director of national intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and John Ratcliffe, the CIA director. As the hearing began, Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the committee, condemned the leak.
“Yesterday, we stunningly learned that senior members of this administration, and according to reports, two of our witnesses here today, were members of a group chat that discussed highly sensitive, likely classified information that supposedly even included weapons packages, targets and timing, and included the name of an active CIA agent,” Warner said.
“Putting aside for a moment that classified information should never be discussed over an unclassified system, it’s also just mind-boggling to me, all these senior folks were on this line, and nobody bothered to even check security hygiene 101.”
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Warner called Monday’s leak “one more example of the kind of sloppy, careless, incompetent behavior, particularly towards classified information”. He also called it a “pattern of an amazing cavalier attitude towards classified information”.
“The erosion of trust from our workplace, from our companies, and from our allies and partners can’t be put back in the bottle overnight,” he added.
Democratic senate intelligence chair condemns reckless use of Signal to discuss sensitive information
Democratic senator Mark Warner, vice-chair of the Senate intelligence committee, began his remarks by condemning the reckless use of a messaging app to discuss a sensitive military strike in Yemen.
“Putting aside for a moment that classified information should never be discussed over an unclassified system,” he said, “it’s also just mind-boggling to me that all these senior folks were on this line and nobody bothered to even check security hygiene 101. Who are all the names? Who are they? Well, it apparently included a journalist.”
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Gabbard and Patel at Senate intelligence committee after Signal blunder
The Senate intelligence committee has started its “World Wide Threats” hearing.
The hearing comes a day after the controversial leak of deliberations by JD Vance and other top-level Trump administration officials over a strike against the Houthis in Yemen via a messaging app.
Tulsi Gabbard, director of national intelligence, and Kash Patel, director of the FBI, are appearing before the panel.
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Trump dismisses group chat security leak as a ’glitch’
US President Donald Trump has commented on the group chat security leak, dismissing it as a leak to NBC News.
Trump told NBC News in a phone call that it was “the only glitch in two months, and it turned out not to be a serious one”, adding his national security adviser Michael Waltz had “learned a lesson”.
It is unlikely this will placate critics of the president who see this leak as a serious breach of national security.
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Yesterday, Donald Trump said he was unaware of the alleged US data breach, but he did share a joke his close ally Elon Musk made on X in a post on his Truth Social platform.
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The UK’s deputy prime minister Angela Rayner has reacted to the alleged US data breach.
Rayner told BBC Radio 4’s The World at One that she “doesn’t have much more to add” in response to US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth allegedly accusing Europe of “free-loading” off the US.
Rayner said, “I don’t recognise that there is a challenge between the UK and US relations, they are as strong as they’ve always been.”
Rayner added that “people say things in private messaging” and insisted it was “for the vice-president to decide and to clarify what he means by those conversations”.
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My colleague Peter Beaumont has noted five things US adversaries could learn from today’s White House leaks.
“Friendly and hostile governments alike will also have learned that what Vance, Hegseth and others say in public – in disparaging Europe, for example – they say in private, too.
“Any notion that the Trump administration’s bark is worse than its bite should be thoroughly disabused by the contempt expressed by Vance for Europe and by the transactional nature of the conversation.”
Read more here …
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No 10 rejects claims Britain is a 'freeloading' country after White House leaked messages
Downing Street has rejected suggestions that Britain is a “freeloading” country that expects the US to meet its defence needs.
At the lobby briefing this morning, prime minister Keir Starmer’s spokesperson spoke at length about the contribution the UK makes to joint military operations with the Americans, following the extraordinary leak of messages showing the contempt President Trump’s most senior allies have for Europe’s record on defence.
But the spokesperson also refused to directly criticise the two figures who were most critical, JD Vance, the vice-president, and Pete Hegseth, the defence secretary.
At the lobby briefing this morning, asked if Britain was a pathetic freeloader, the PM’s spokesperson replied:
You can see, from the way in which the UK has worked closely with the US, supplying regional security and defence, our commitment to working with the US on matters of regional security.
You’ll know the UK provided air-to-air refuelling support for recent strikes against Houthi key rebel targets [the raid discussed in the messages inadvertently shared with Godlberg].
We also continue to support the US-led coalition against Daesh with routine combat air patrol over Iraq and Syria.
And we’ll continue to work with the US and other allies to ensure stability and security in the Middle East.
Asked again if Britons were freeloaders, the spokesperson repeated the point about the UK working with the US closely in the Middle East.
Elon Musk appears to be laying the groundwork to privatize some space and satellite operations now under the authority of National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa), or steer lucrative contracts toward his SpaceX and Starlink companies, former agency employees say.
They’re sounding the alarm as at least four other federal agencies have reportedly begun pushing new contracts toward Musk’s Starlink satellite internet company. Musk, the world’s richest man, has been tasked by Donald Trump with drastically slashing the federal government workforce and costs.
The situation raises conflict of interest questions for one of Trump’s closest allies who backed him with millions of dollars of funding in the 2024 election. Musk boasts that his so-called “department of government efficiency” (Doge) “slashes spending”, but critics say he’s using his position to steer government funding toward his companies.
Noaa could offer the biggest prizes yet for Musk, presenting the opportunity for SpaceX to have a commanding financial advantage in a commercial US space market expected to grow to a value of nearly $2tn in value over the next decade. Already Doge likely has access to competitors’ confidential business information at Noaa, former employees at the agency say.
A former head of Dutch cybersecurity has expressed his surprise at Donald Trump’s top team’s use of Signal for classified communications that revealed “visceral anti-European messaging”.
Bart Groothuis, an MEP for the Dutch liberal VVD party, who used to run the cybersecurity bureau at the Dutch ministry of defence, said he was “a bit surprised” at the US government’s use of a commercial app for highly classified conversations.
“This is not the security posture I am used to when it comes to the Americans,” he told the Guardian, adding he was struck by the “visceral anti-European messaging from both Vice President Vance and others”.
Groothuis, who is also vice-chair of the European parliament’s Iranian relations committee, also expressed bafflement at the suggestion that the US had no interest in containing the Houthis, an Iranian-backed proxy group, which has carried out attacks on commercial ships in the Red Sea.
In the exchanges, US vice-president JD Vance said only 3% of US trade goes through the Suez canal, compared with 40% of European trade, arguing that the US was doing what Europe should do. “I just hate bailing Europe out again,” Vance said.
Groothuis said “what they fail to understand” is that the Houthis were an Iranian proxy and their containment was about “putting maximum pressure” on the Iranian regime and its nuclear ambitions.
“So it is also in the American interest and the direct American interest to keep a lid on the proxies of Iran,” he said. “Did it ever occur to them that it is in the direct interest of the US itself?”
The leak of top US officials’ deliberations over planning for this month’s strikes on the Houthis in Yemen – revealed by a journalist who was accidentally invited to a chat group on the Signal messaging app – will be highly useful for hostile intelligence agencies.
Read more on what the security blunder means for the Trump administration:
The UK still has “high confidence” that its operational security measures “remain intact”, despite revelations of a major US security breach.
Asked about the incident on Tuesday, armed forces minister Luke Pollard told the Commons Defence Committee that no British service personnel had been put at risk as a result.
He added: “All UK service personnel are covered by our normal approach to operational security, and the committee will understand that I won’t go into the details of how we keep our involvement in any support for military operations in the Red Sea or anywhere else (secure).
“But we’ve got high confidence that the measures that we have got with our allies, including the United States, remain intact.”
Calls for resignations after White House security blunder
Following the White House security blunder, there have been calls for those involved in the breach to resign.
A senior administration official told Politico that they are involved in multiple text threads with other administration staffers on what to do with national security adviser Mike Waltz.
“Half of them saying he’s never going to survive or shouldn’t survive,” said the official. “It was reckless not to check who was on the thread. It was reckless to be having that conversation on Signal. You can’t have recklessness as the national security adviser.”
Meanwhile, a person close to the White House told Politco: “Everyone in the White House can agree on one thing: Mike Waltz is a fucking idiot.”
Ken Martin, chair of the Democratic National Committee, called on Pete Hegseth to resign or be fired from his position as defense secretary.
Martin said in a statement late Monday:
Pete Hegseth was unfit to lead the Defense Department even before he risked our national security through his own sloppy handling of sensitive military information. Just like his boss Donald Trump, Hegseth – and everyone else involved – put on a stunning display of recklessness and disregard for our national security.
Hegseth should resign, and if he doesn’t resign, he should be fired. It’s crystal clear that our men and women in uniform deserve better – and that our national security cannot be left in Hegseth’s incompetent and unqualified hands.
However, Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson offered a more forgiving posture.
“I think it would be a terrible mistake for there to be adverse consequences on any of the people that were involved in that call,” Johnson said.
“They were trying to do a good job, the mission was accomplished with precision.”
Updated
While Signal is regarded as a secure encrypted chat service, its weakness is that phones on which it is installed can themselves be vulnerable.
Among those aghast at the breach was the Democratic representative Pat Ryan, an army veteran who sits on the House armed services committee who described it using the second world war-era epithet “Fubar” – meaning “fucked up beyond all recognition”.
“If House Republicans won’t hold a hearing on how this happened IMMEDIATELY, I’ll do it my damn self.”
Shane Harris, a longtime national security reporter – formerly of the Washington Post and now with the Atlantic – wrote on BlueSky: “In 25 years of covering national security, I’ve never seen a story like this.”
The incident is likely to further raise concerns over the Trump administration’s trustworthiness with intelligence shared by erstwhile allies – not least as Hegseth boasts at one stage of guaranteeing “100 percent OPSEC – operations security” while a celebrated journalist is reading his message.
The discussions seen by Goldberg include comments from Vance, who appeared unconvinced of the urgency of attacking Yemen, as well as conversations over what price should be expected of Europeans and other countries for the US removing the threat to a key global shipping route.
Security and intelligence commentators in the US described the breach of operational security as unprecedented – both for the use of a commercial chat service and for the inclusion of Goldberg.
The breach was revealed in an article published on Monday by Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor of the Atlantic magazine, who discovered that he had been included in a Signal chat called “Houthi PC Small Group” and realising that 18 other members of the group included Trump cabinet members.
In his account, Goldberg said that he removed sensitive material from his account, including the identity of a senior CIA officer and current operational details.
The report was confirmed by Brian Hughes, a spokesperson for the national security council, who told the magazine: “This appears to be an authentic message chain, and we are reviewing how an inadvertent number was added to the chain.”
Hughes added: “The thread is a demonstration of the deep and thoughtful policy coordination between senior officials. The ongoing success of the Houthi operation demonstrates that there were no threats to troops or national security.”
If Europe wasn’t already on notice, the extraordinary leak of deliberations by JD Vance and other top-level Trump administration officials over a strike against the Houthis in Yemen was another sign that it has a target on its back.
The administration officials gave Jeffrey Goldberg of the Atlantic a front-row seat to the planning for the strike against the Houthis – a stunning intelligence leak that has caused anger against Republicans who called for criminal investigations against Hillary Clinton and others for playing fast and loose with sensitive information.
On the face of it, the strike against the Houthis had far more to do with the administration’s policies on protecting maritime trade and containing Iran than its concerns about Europe freeloading on US defense spending and military prowess.
But Vance appears determined to push that angle as a reason to postpone the strike.
“I think we are making a mistake,” wrote Vance, adding that while only 3% of US trade goes through the Suez canal, 40% of European trade does. “There is a real risk that the public doesn’t understand this or why it’s necessary,” he added. “The strongest reason to do this is, as [Trump] said, to send a message.”
Widespread criticism follows White House security blunder
Good morning and welcome to the US politics live blog. My name is Tom Ambrose and I will be bringing you all the latest news lines over the next few hours.
We start with the widespread condemnation after senior members of Donald Trump’s cabinet were involved in a serious security breach while discussing secret military plans for recent US attacks on the Houthi armed group in Yemen.
In an extraordinary blunder, key figures in the Trump administration – including the vice-president, JD Vance, the defence secretary, Pete Hegseth, the secretary of state, Marco Rubio, and the director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard – used the commercial chat app Signal to convene and discuss plans – while also including a prominent journalist in the group.
The news was met with outrage and calls for an investigation in the US, with Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer calling it “one of the most stunning breaches of military intelligence I have read about in a very, very long time”
Signal is not approved by the US government for sharing sensitive information.
“If true, this story represents one of the most egregious failures of operational security and common sense I have ever seen,” said Jack Reed of Rhode Island, the top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, in a statement.
He said American lives are “on the line. The carelessness shown by Trump’s Cabinet is stunning and dangerous. I will be seeking answers from the Administration immediately.”
Jim Himes of Connecticut, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said in a statement that he was “horrified” by the reports.
Himes said if a lower-ranking official “did what is described here, they would likely lose their clearance and be subject to criminal investigation. The American people deserve answers,” which he said he planned to get at Wednesday’s previously scheduled committee hearing.
Some Republicans also expressed concerns. Roger Wicker, the Mississippi Republican who chairs the Senate Armed Services Committee, told reporters on Monday: “We’re very concerned about it and we’ll be looking into it on a bipartisan basis.”
Reed said he would be speaking with Wicker about what the committee will do to “follow up” on the Signal leak. Meanwhile, Senate majority leader John Thune said he wants to learn more about what happened.
“Obviously, we got to run it to the ground, figure out what went on there,” said Thune, a South Dakota Republican.
In other news:
An appeals court judge said Monday that Nazis were given more rights to contest their removal from the US during the second world war than Venezuelan migrants deported by the Trump administration.
Foreign workers at US government-backed media outlets being cut by the Trump administration say they face deportation to their home countries, where some risk imprisonment or death at the hands of authoritarian governments.
The US postmaster general, Louis DeJoy, who said earlier this month that he had asked the government team led by Elon Musk for assistance with a number of issues, announced he was resigning immediately.
A Columbia University student who took part in pro-Palestinian protests at the university is suing Donald Trump’s administration for attempting to deport her.
Trump’s administration is seeking sponsors for the White House Easter Egg Roll, in a break with tradition that is likely to draw further scrutiny over his government’s relationship with corporate backers.
Hundreds of firings inside the federal government’s student aid department have sparked concern among workers and student loan advocates, who warn that the student loan system is at risk.
A federal judge has ruled that the US government cannot remove two transgender men from the Air Force, the latest courtroom victory for LGBTQ+ rights advocates challenging Trump’s order banning trans people from military service.
