Signal Controversy Over Houthi Strikes Deepens
Mike Waltz, Marco Rubio, and Pete Hegseth. Photo by Signal Controversy Over Houthi Strikes
After a Monday full of The Atlantic story, the Trump Administration spent most of Tuesday in media and in front of congress downplaying the accusations that classified details of military strikes in Yemen were conducted on a Signal group chat The Atlantic’s editor in chief Jeffrey Goldberg was mistakenly added to. Trump friendly media and surrogates were openly accusing Goldberg of overblowing what he had not having anything further to disclose.
On Wednesday, The Atlantic published the entire chat. You can read the full Signal chat from The Atlantic here:
As we wrote on Monday, much of the conversation in the “Houthi PC small group” concerned the timing and rationale of attacks on the Houthis, and contained remarks by Trump-administration officials about the alleged shortcomings of America’s European allies. But on the day of the attack—Saturday, March 15—the discussion veered toward the operational.
At 11:44 a.m. eastern time, Hegseth posted in the chat, in all caps, “TEAM UPDATE:”
The text beneath this began, “TIME NOW (1144et): Weather is FAVORABLE. Just CONFIRMED w/CENTCOM we are a GO for mission launch.” Centcom, or Central Command, is the military’s combatant command for the Middle East. The Hegseth text continues:
“1215et: F-18s LAUNCH (1st strike package)”
“1345: ‘Trigger Based’ F-18 1st Strike Window Starts (Target Terrorist is @ his Known Location so SHOULD BE ON TIME – also, Strike Drones Launch (MQ-9s)”Let us pause here for a moment to underscore a point. This Signal message shows that the U.S. secretary of defense texted a group that included a phone number unknown to him—Goldberg’s cellphone—at 11:44 a.m. This was 31 minutes before the first U.S. warplanes launched, and two hours and one minute before the beginning of a period in which a primary target, the Houthi “Target Terrorist,” was expected to be killed by these American aircraft. If this text had been received by someone hostile to American interests—or someone merely indiscreet, and with access to social media—the Houthis would have had time to prepare for what was meant to be a surprise attack on their strongholds. The consequences for American pilots could have been catastrophic.
The Hegseth text then continued:
“1410: More F-18s LAUNCH (2nd strike package)”
“1415: Strike Drones on Target (THIS IS WHEN THE FIRST BOMBS WILL DEFINITELY DROP, pending earlier ‘Trigger Based’ targets)”
“1536 F-18 2nd Strike Starts – also, first sea-based Tomahawks launched.”
“MORE TO FOLLOW (per timeline)”
“We are currently clean on OPSEC”—that is, operational security.
“Godspeed to our Warriors.”
Shortly after, Vice President J. D. Vance texted the group, “I will say a prayer for victory.”At 1:48 p.m., Waltz sent the following text, containing real-time intelligence about conditions at an attack site, apparently in Sanaa: “VP. Building collapsed. Had multiple positive ID. Pete, Kurilla, the IC, amazing job.” Waltz was referring here to Hegseth; General Michael E. Kurilla, the commander of Central Command; and the intelligence community, or IC. The reference to “multiple positive ID” suggests that U.S. intelligence had ascertained the identities of the Houthi target, or targets, using either human or technical assets.
Six minutes later, the vice president, apparently confused by Waltz’s message, wrote, “What?”
At 2 p.m., Waltz responded: “Typing too fast. The first target – their top missile guy – we had positive ID of him walking into his girlfriend’s building and it’s now collapsed.”
Vance responded a minute later: “Excellent.” Thirty-five minutes after that, Ratcliffe, the CIA director, wrote, “A good start,” which Waltz followed with a text containing a fist emoji, an American-flag emoji, and a fire emoji. The Houthi-run Yemeni health ministry reported that at least 53 people were killed in the strikes, a number that has not been independently verified.
More Context:
The Atlantic on Wednesday released more of the group chat among senior Trump administration officials in which they discussed U.S. military plans to strike Houthi targets in Yemen, a day after senior officials said there was nothing classified in the messages.
The publication had initially withheld details of the strike plans, saying the information was sensitive. But at a Senate panel hearing on Tuesday, and in comments to the news media, an array of administration officials said that the information was not classified, attempting to downplay the seriousness of the breach.
The new messages, which include screenshots of the full chat on the encrypted consumer messaging app Signal, make clear that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth included specific details of the timing of the launches from aircraft carriers of the U.S. military jets that were to strike Houthi targets.
Launch times are typically closely guarded to ensure that the targets cannot move into hiding or mount a counterattack at the very moment planes are taking off, when they are potentially vulnerable.
Jeffrey Goldberg, The Atlantic’s editor in chief, had been inadvertently added to the chat and was able to observe all the messages until he left the group after the strikes took place. The Atlantic said its release on Wednesday included all the texts except the name of a C.I.A. officer working as an aide to John Ratcliffe, the agency’s director, at the request of the C.I.A.
Mr. Hegseth did not post all the details of the war plans and did not identify the precise targets the planes were going to hit, other than to say they were going after a “Target Terrorist.” But Mr. Hegseth posted the precise times that various waves of planes would take off, information that is typically highly classified.
The new messages are likely to fuel more pointed questions in the House Intelligence Committee, which is scheduled to question Mr. Ratcliffe and Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, on Wednesday morning. They were two of the officials who were included on the group chat started by Michael Waltz, the national security adviser.
Remember back when we were discussing the Kennedy Assassination classified files? Here was the definition of Secret that I lifted off of Wikipedia:
“Secret material would cause ‘serious damage’ to national security if it were publicly available.”
Pretty straightforward, right?
I mocked the idea that any given file in the papers would, in the current year, cause serious damage to national security and called for the papers to be released pretty much solely on that judgment.
And you know what? I went through a bunch of the papers and, yep. They were all dregs from the Cuban Missile Crisis and a bunch of other Cold War debris and precious little stuff having to do with stuff that would cause any damage at all to national security (and, indeed, it doesn’t strike me that it would have back in the 90s though I could see having an argument over some of the Cuban Missile stuff).
What we have here is stuff like:
The current time.
Stuff that’s going to happen over the next few hours.
Acknowledgment that we have eyes on the ground over there and giving reports to us.
Holy crap! The only thing in there that wouldn’t potentially cause damage to national security is the current time!Report
Those of us below SecDef and DNI level who hold or held clearances would already have been arrested for this.
But her emails!Report
What will we get first, SNL or the real Hillary?Report
It’s not the crime, it’s the cover up.
Obama described this as “political malpractice”. That’s a good description. She managed to constantly look guilty of a cover up for a long time.
https://www.cnn.com/2016/10/28/politics/hillary-clinton-email-timeline/index.htmlReport
There are two sets of mistakes that I’ve seen people argue about:
1. Adding Goldberg to the chat was a mistake.
2. Talking about this stuff on a network that could possibly have Goldberg added to it was a mistake
If you want to argue 1, argue 1! If you want to argue 2, argue 2! But don’t argue 1 with someone who is arguing 2!Report
3. Using a network that hackers can hack.Report
There is no network that hackers cannot hack.
But there are ones that 99% of hackers can trivially get to and ones that 99% of hackers cannot trivially get to and the latter ones also happen to be ones where you cannot possibly add journalists to it by mistake.Report
“the latter ones also happen to be ones where you cannot possibly add journalists to it by mistake.”
Like the ones the government already has for handling communications like this. People are ultimately lazy, and this little escapade is just one of the more egregious demonstrations of that.Report
Which is why very secret things are not discussed over normal networks. Best practice for this kind of conversation is all being in the same room that’s under guard 24/7, or paper documents in locked briefcases carried by brick walls wearing black suits.
If you’re going to discuss Top Secret things electronically, there’s a protocol for that involving specially set-up devices that absolutely do not use 3rd-party networks to carry the information.Report
3. Sharing this with a group of people who, even excluding Goldberg have no need-to-know was a mistake.
But Hegseth is a child who thinks it makes him look like a badass.Report
This exactly. We live in WWE-land and this a Raw Smackdown move if ever there was one.Report
4. President Trump _isn’t_ in this chat (Or, rather, the chat they should be having over a different, secure communication system), and instead this chat consists of people trying to guess what he wants them to do. This by itself should be a scandal, but ‘This by itself should be a scandal’ is basically the motto of the Trump administration.
5. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, aka, the military leader that exists to advise the executive on military action, isn’t in the chat either.
This attack leveled apartments and killed civilians to attempt to kill someone that the US did not like, a thing which the Chairman of the Joint Chief might have had something to say about the legality of under the laws of war. That’s literally part of his job. Because you’re supposed to use the method of attack that uses the least collateral damage, and he might have been able to suggest another. I am not saying this attack was not legal, I don’t really know enough about it to weigh in, but that sort of question is exactly why you include people in a discussion who understand that question and can weigh in on it legally, and is almost certainly why he was _not_ consulted.
Now, this is theoretically less of a scandal, because he could have hypothetically been looped in elsewhere. We have no idea where the plans came from.
But…we all know he wasn’t. Hegseth literally came out and said the military was going to stop caring about civilian casualties a month ago, it’s why he fired the JAG lawyers.Report
Not to totally rehash other comments I made on open mic but this illustrates the folly of filling up the senior ranks of the administration with people who have never really done anything, at least in terms of leading a big organization. This isn’t to say many companies in the private sector have not found themselves in the position where they found out the dolt that clicked the dumbest fishing scam ever works in the C suite. However you hope that you put enough experienced people together that at least one of them will at some point in their career have heard of security protocol for sensitive communications, and either stop some screw up themselves or at least impress upon others the need to listen to those lower level people with the expertise. While I am sure that Waltz and Hegseth are fully capable of gutting a man in ways a civvy like me could never comprehend, there is in fact a little more to the roles they have found themselves in. And hell, if Vance can write a book, maybe he could also read the back of one sometime, or just the occasional email from the billion or so security personnel I assume he is now immersed in on a daily basis.Report
Ahem. Phishing of course.Report
Don’t let the incompetence, mendacity and bumbling fool you- there is no deeper scheme- these really are idiots. And incredible hypocrites considering that they, to an individual, all screamed holy heck about “teh emailz” a decade ago.Report
If your opponent is going to let you shoot fish in a barrel, then you continue to do so as long as they let you.
HRC let her email situation drag on for a long time. She’d give a self serving explanation one week which explained everything on the table with the strong implication that this was it. Then we’d have more put on the table and she’d repeat the process.
It was like wanting to be merciful about removing your dog’s tail so you’ll take it off an inch at a time.Report
Sure, and likewise, the current actors have put themselves in the same barrel now and, by dint of their past inveigling, all those “her emails” characters are in that same barrel too if their tune has suddenly changed to, for example, a dyspeptic bloodless appeal to political reality and nothing else.Report
There’s been too much of a Schmittian undercurrent for too long for any appeals to principle to come across as anything other than applied Friend/Enemy stuff.
Sometimes you see stuff like “I thought at the time that Lloyd Austin should have resigned! That’s why I think this guy should!”
But… that’s limp, isn’t it?Report
Thoughts are cheap. If they said something like “I said publicly *link* that Lloyd Austin should have resigned; That’s why I think Pete should.” that’s a strong and defensible position and one meriting respect.
But the standard position has been either they said one thing and it’s now opposite now that it’s their side doing it and why are you even bringing it up? Or it’s “we’ve made a thousand idiotic and nakedly false assertions about your guys and one of them turned out to have some merit to it, how dare you have disregarded that one?!?!? *cough*Biden’s age *cough*Report
I think looking at this as a set of side by side tally marks fails to capture what’s really going on. Clinton’s email server was damaging politically because it played into a larger, cross partisan narrative about her sense of entitlement to power and/or that the normal rules don’t apply. Even Hilary supporters, if they’re being honest, have to admit that this was a problem for her and her political brand. The Lloyd Austin thing was bad but I don’t think it really registers the same way. At this stage it’s a partisan talking point that may still play well on Twitter but in real life no one cares or remembers it.
Bringing it to Trump, this is a real problem for him because one of the narratives that he and his set of uh… unconventional cabinet officials are up against is the perception that they’re idiots. Even if Republicans don’t agree, or think it’s something that can be worked around, understand could go cross partisan and overall is a liability that they can’t let get out of control.Report
The ability for it to be spun as a set of side-by-side tally marks is the problem.
Because it’s sooooo friggin’ easy to do that.
What’s the underlying principle?
I mean, I know how *I* would try to phrase it. Something about a Rawlsian “veil of ignorance” or something like that…
But we ain’t playin’ that game.
We haven’t played that game for a good long while.Report
Eh that may just be a point of disagreement. I would be surprised if more than 3 out of 10 American voters even know who Lloyd Austin is. A solid 8 out of 10 know who Donald Trump is and one of the things they know about him is ‘he isn’t like normal politicians.’ That’s been a boon to him but it’s the kind of thing that can cut both ways.Report
Presidents have been appointing idiots to important cabinet positions for a very long time. That’s not his problem.
His problem is the needlessly doubling down by lying about the info not being classified and the refusal to just take an L, fire Waltz, and move on.
This is an unforced error made far worse by the response which is now a contagion for the entire administration.Report
Yea but that’s kind of what I mean. Biden was apparently in a state of serious cognitive decline. As reluctant as I was to believe that* it’s something I’ve over time been convinced very likely explains a lot of the more baffling turns of his administration.
What’s Trump’s excuse? That they’re just as out of their depth as the administration’s harshest critics have been saying? No possible answer is a good one nor is it the kind of thing that lends itself to keeping score.
*I can take an L, it is what it is.Report
Let’s pretend to negotiate. What’s an acceptable outcome, do you think?
Waltz resigns, Hegseth resigns, Vance takes the Cybersecurity Challenge again?
Will this balance the scales?Report
I’d give Trump a point for maybe not being as dumb as I think he is if he fired Waltz. Remember one of his big lines at the debate with Biden? ‘He never fires anyone!’ Well here you are Donald. Fire somebody.Report
For what it’s worth, I think that firing Waltz is, at a minimum, justified.
He added Goldberg. He’s either stupid or malicious and you should be able to find a replacement that isn’t.Report
Yes, they’re in the same barrel. But it will blow over until they constantly lie about it and/or continue to do this.
For this to be truly damaging we need a way to keep it in the news for months. So we’d need them to pretend it wasn’t a big deal, have more news about it, find they’re still doing it, and then have them pretend it’s not a big deal again.
The bulk of HRC’s damage wasn’t in what she did but how she handled the aftermath.
My impression was that she couldn’t tell the truth about what she’d done because it was something along the lines of “if I engage in criminal activity like selling pardons I need to be able to destroy the emails”. So she was always trying to tell one more self serving lie which would in turn be found out to not be true and kept this in the news for months.
It’s not the crime, it’s the coverup.Report
I mean I lay the blame for HRC’s loss on HRC first and foremost but the GOP did string it out through long drawn out investigations and the hypocrisy is shocking.
I’ll also note that you have this amusing tic vis a vis the Clintons where, when a right wing figure is literally convicted in a court of law or otherwise caught red handed in something you shrug it off and then wax rhapsodic into speculative tea leaf reading about unsubstantiated crimes the Clintons are alleged to have committed to somehow balance it out.
Also, full credit, the idea that Clinton was running a private email server just like Colin Powel did before her so she could sell pardons (so Obama then was selling pardons? Really??) is a new and entertaining one for me.Report
RE: speculative tea leaf reading about unsubstantiated crimes the Clintons are alleged to have committed to somehow
So we’re supposed to pretend she wasn’t caught (legally) selling pardons?
Marc Rich’s wife gave a million or so dollars to HRC’s campaign when she badly needed it. Bill gave Marc a pardon.
People as far to the Left as Jimmy Carter have pointed out that there was no reason for the pardon other than the money. And there was no reason for the money other than the pardon.
This didn’t rise to the level of “provably illegal in court” which is apparently her personal ethical standard.
That’s why the Clintons were constantly being investigated and also why we constantly found we didn’t have enough evidence for a criminal conviction.Report
First, your timeline is completely backwards since the pardons under Bill Clinton came a decade and change before the private server so unless HRC was time travelling the one couldn’t have been in the service of the other.
Second, I simply am pointing out how you keep descending into talking about speculative or perceived Clinton crimes in response to genuine, convicted and materially factual right wing crimes.
I don’t need to claim the Clintons are pure as the driven snow to observe that their the vast majority of their alleged crimes exist, overwhelmingly, as a matter of right wing spin and imagination and that is not, remotely, equivalent to crimes by their right wing counterparts that have been tried in court, convicted and sentenced.Report
Always worth remembering that no Clinton has held office for 12 years or run for any office in nearly 10. Love them or hate them one can fairly ask what the statute of limitations is on the Clintons. 2030? 2040? Whenever they’re both dead?Report
Both dead.
Dumbya, bless his heart, seems to have disappeared.
They wheeled out both Clintons to campaign for Kamala.Report
North: in response to genuine, convicted and materially factual right wing crimes.
I was responding to your comparison, “teh emailz” and then I was responding to your claims that the pardons were “unsubstantiated”.
North: the vast majority of their alleged crimes exist, overwhelmingly, as a matter of right wing spin…
I already agreed that what she did wasn’t a crime if your line is “provable in court”.
That doesn’t change that She/They were the most openly corrupt politician(s) of their generation, to the tune of Billions of dollars.
Adding a reporter to a group chat (or even having the chat), hits the radar as shear incompetence. That’s a problem, I’m not defending it.
I’m not sure it’s useful to call it “illegal” when we’ve already made the decision that we’re going to tolerate open corruption.Report
It is illegal in that unit anyone else in government holding a clearance would be arrested, tried, convicted and sentenced for doing what they did. It’s also a civil violation of the records act.Report
And the court case has started: https://www.axios.com/2025/03/27/judge-hearing-signal-case-trumpReport
As it should, though only on the civil side so far.Report
The Clintons certainly been portrayed as corrupt and I don’t deny the Clintons behaved in a manner that didn’t weaken those allegations. But being proven in court is, ya know, kind of a big thing. Especially when you throw around the billions number which, let’s be clear, requires you loop in the foundation which was regularly audited and found to be above board. So, you’re saying the allegations about the Clintons make then the most “openly corrupt politicians of their generation” even above politicians actually found guilty of corruption or politicians legally banned from operating, say, charitable foundations or educational institutions? Like our current President? Most corrupt in their generation? Please.
But, on the other hand, the Clintons are happily done and gone from the political scene with no successors or new candidates so I don’t
see much juice left in wrangling over them. But the Signal chats’ very existence is assuredly wildly illegal (because it’s so insecure) even before we get into the fact that the nimrods invited in a journalist by accident. And it’s much more wildly illegal than Clintons server was found to be.Report
North: …billions … requires you loop in the foundation which was regularly audited and found to be above board.
No, it was found to be “legal”, as in, “we can’t prove anything illegal in court”.
The Husband of the Secretary is State is accepting Billions of dollars from states She deals with professionally. This money is used to promote her political agenda and influence.
The entities that were giving the money don’t normally do this. These entities entirely stopped giving money the moment she lost power.
All of this was “legal”, meaning with marital communications being privileged we have to trust there’s no connection. Much like kindergarteners accept that Santa exists.
Pointing to this and claiming “it was above board” takes us to willful ignorance. I fully admit everything that happened was not-provably-illegal-in-court, but that’s not the line that most of the electorate uses to decide if there’s a problem.
So if you’re wondering why Team Red can be expected to back their guy even though the group chat was obviously illegal, a big part of that is we had the Clintons showcase for years just what Washington ethics looks like.
And we also had for that same period of time Team Blue declare in lockstep that this kind of thing should be ignored.Report
Isn’t Team Red supposed to be an improvement over Team Blue?Report
Slade: Isn’t Team Red supposed to be an improvement over Team Blue?
If you mean “throw the rascals out” then the party out of power is always an improvement.
If you mean “has better ethics” then “no”. BSDI.
If you mean “economic policy” then Team Red got rid of their economic sanity wing so still “no”. Also extra negative points for the economic chaos.
If you mean “war in Israel” then I’d say “yes”.
If you mean “war in Ukraine” then I’d say “no”.Report
The convenient thing about all this is it is dependant only on what the right (and you( imagine with no other proof required, and yet- since the foundation was above board which is to say it was confirmed as distributing those billions to the worthy and charitable causes it said it was- then the “corruption” you are claiming consists of the Clintons getting entities to contribute more money to charitable causes than they otherwise would with no nefarious quid pro quos or nefarious benefit to the Clintons ever being demonstrated.
In light of the characters the Right barfed up during and following the Clintons (The pack of pedarests, serial adulterers and dopes that chased the Clintons around, followed by Bush II- arguably the most destructive President to the Republic in modern history; followed by Trump I- easily the actual generationally corrupt one and now Trump II who seems set on giving Bush II a run for his title) that seems downright quaint.
I wouldn’t wish the Clintons back, personally, because it’s definitely true they wrote the book on dancing right up to the line on unseemly self promotion and because Hilldog fished up and lost to Trump which she’ll wear for all of history; but the invective the right heaps on them has always been way more overwrought than the provable facts ever supported.Report
What did you think moving on dot org would look like?
Vibes? Papers? Essays?Report
Jay me lad, you know I love you. You say some of the darndest things but sometimes I have no idea what damn thing you’re saying. (and that may well be on me)Report
MoveOn.org was a website created in the days following the Clinton impeachment.
It tweaked the whole preoccupation with CONSENSUAL sex between Presidents and interns on the part of thrice-divorced Republicans and otherwise mocked the whole pretense to “Family Values”.
The movie “Jennifer’s Body” includes some snappy dialog where one character tells another character to “Move On Dot Org.”
On the day of (or maybe the day after) October 7th, a plucky young Ivy Leaguer tweeted out “What did you think decolonization would look like? Vibes? Papers? Essays? Losers.”
I mashed all of these together in the hopes that it would point out what a post-Family Values Republican Party would look like. It was intended to be a humorous post but also one with bite because it’s also supposed to accurately, if unflatteringly, describe the state of affairs.Report
Ah I appreciate the explanation. I’m sorry, it hurtled so far over my head it didn’t even ruffle my hair.Report
North: consists of the Clintons getting entities to contribute more money to charitable causes
If that’s what they were doing, then why did the money stream only exist while HRC was either Secretary of State or expected to be President?
The money disappeared the moment she lost. These groups didn’t think about “charity” before.
North: no… nefarious benefit to the Clintons ever being demonstrated.
The money was used to give Clinton insiders jobs between political appointments and to create the same sort of influence that a Billionaire gets.
This was not a politician lining their pockets, it was a politician getting the influence of Bill Gates to fund their own interests.
North: …provable facts…
I’ve only put down provable facts. I have admitted it was legal, I’m saying it was also obviously and openly corrupt.
Most people don’t sweat the fine details. When the Clintons repeatedly and openly do this they figure out the system is fixed.
In many ways Trump is the result of the Clintons. If Blue is fine with HRC selling pardons and collecting Billions from Russia and the Saudis then that’s the ethical standard.Report
I agree it was legal and I even agree it wasn’t a great look which is kind of the Clintons in a nutshell. I just think you’re projecting and exaggerating most of the alleged nefariousness of it. What it boils down to is that the Clintons caused billions of dollars to flow to charitable causes that otherwise wouldn’t have. No one has been able to demonstrate any actual corrupt acts, any corrupt exchanges -the right just spins it up in their imagination; asserts it’s true and then, jaw droppingly, try to one up on it when in power. It worked so well against the Clintons because they’d always been very skeevy but we’ve watched them throw it at every left wing political figure since: Biden; Bernie and, idiotically, even at Barrak fishin Obama (who is virtually the exact opposite of the Clintons both for good- he’s squeaky clean, and for ill- he’s always seemed to disdain retail politicking).
And that’s where I bridle at the whole mess of it. You don’t get to blame W’s trillion-dollar war adventures or the way supporting his massive deficit spending obliterated libertarianism and neoconservatism in the hearts of the masses on Bill Clintons antics in the 90’s. The neocons and the libertarians let W discredit them themselves. You don’t get to blame Trump hollowing the GOP out and wearing it like a skin suit while being a convicted fraudster and nakedly (and legally convicted) being corrupt on Hillary Clintons behavior as Sec of state*. The GOP and conservatives sold their souls on that on their own.
And you sure as fish don’t get to blame the things Trump is doing now on the fishin’ Clintons- they’ve been off the scene for almost a decade now. Economic Sanity? The Clintons epitomized it and dragged the left along. Ethics? The Clintons committed appearances of impropriety but the right has convicted and unabashed corruption. And the Clintons never provoked constitutional crises and the GOP under Trump is churning it out on the weekly.
*Though anyone and everyone is entitled to blame her for losing to him. God(ess) damn it Hill, you. Had. One. Job.Report
I assume they have multiple threads along the lines of the below:
https://www.imightbewrong.org/p/the-trump-administration-also-textedReport
Hah I was going to post that this morning but then got distracted by work.Report
Oh no heheh.Report
Brilliant!Report
I also feel the fact that Hegseth fired a bunch of military leaders because they might _hypothetically_ be incompetent because they were women and minorities and might possibly have gotten the job that way is relevant. And how he repeatedly emphasized that, from now, it was all about competence, pure competence, not any sort of affirmative action.
You know what Air Force Gen. CQ Brown Jr. did not do? Discuss upcoming military operations on unsecured channel.
If we’re talking about _competence_.Report
These aren’t very bright guys and things got out of hand remains evergreenReport
There has been a lawsuit filed over this over and claims it violated Federal record keeping laws (Which it objectively does).
It was randomly assigned to Judge Boasberg. You know, the judge that the Trump administration is trying to insist it is a state secret when an airplane took off and landed, despite it being a commercially chartered flight that Trump administration literally took pictures of and announced the landing of.
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/03/26/signal-lawsuit-trump-judge-boasberg-00250606Report
Judge Boasberg has appeared fair to me in the handling of the Alien Enemies Act case. I realize Venezuelan gang members are not particularly popular people and I’m amenable to the idea of deporting very bad hombres.
The ask is that the government do this legally, that the government comply with orders of the court in good faith.
That this case should go before a judge who has now experienced the government offering facile, bad-faith interpretations of the law and his own orders in a transparent attempt to evade compliance with the law? Yeah, I think that’s a good thing.
Don’t pee on the court’s leg and tell the judge that it’s raining. That’s what FRCP 11 is for.Report
It sure didn’t take long for this administration to become the Deep State, did it?Report
It’s the deepest state, far deeper than president Biden’s. No one has ever had a deeper state, not in the history of our country.Report
Tremendously deep. Many people have said.Report
Not a substantive contribution, I just couldn’t resist:
https://youtu.be/fl86G6L5PnU?si=3yPUP37DE5T0X0ulReport