The military members see a double standard
The White House isn’t going to reopen the door on a security breach: Mick Mulroy’s apology to the Atlantic magazine that leaked to a reporter
The White House continues to largely dismiss a highly sensitive discussion by leading national security officials on the open-source encrypted Signal messaging app that leaked to a reporter.
The press secretary at the White House said the media focuses on a ” sensationalized story from the failing Atlantic magazine that is falling apart by the hour.”
Mick Mulroy was a deputy assistant secretary of defense for the Middle East in the first Trump administration. He says if this had been lower-level officials, the repercussions would have been swift.
“I’ve defended spillage cases where people were going to be put out of the military or people were going to be turned out of their job within the military for violations that are just the smallest fraction of what just occurred,” Carroll said.
“Pete Hegseth is a f***ing liar. This is so clearly classified info he recklessly leaked that could’ve gotten our pilots killed,” Duckworth said in a news release Wednesday. “He needs to be kicked out of disgrace immediately.”
“There would be an immediate investigation launched,” Mulroy told NPR’s Here & Now. If they did this, they would be stripped of their access to classified information, and would likely be court-martialed. Everybody in the military knows that. They are making excuses for every reason why they could be able to do it, instead of taking responsibility and owning up to it.
Carroll says, for troops, seeing leadership share attack plans in advance on Signal but so far suffer no consequences is toxic to morale. He says there’s a phrase in the military that says different spanks for different ranks, because the double standard is so common.
Military veterans leak operational details differently than active-duty troops because they can be discharged and prosecuted for much lower-level leaks. The military calls any security breeches like what happened in the Signal group chat “spillage”.
“What typically happens in a spillage as serious as this is they’re immediately fired,” says Kevin Carroll, who served 30 years in the Army, and in the CIA, and at the Department of Homeland Security in the first Trump administration. He says that there is no doubt that an active-duty officer would have been terminated for having participated in the Signal chat.
What the First 100 Days of the Trump Administration have in Common: Signal Chat Fallout, Tariff Tension — and Three More Takeaway Aways from Trump’s Week
Every Friday morning, we’ll be showing you what you have to know about the first 100 days of the Trump administration. Get more updates and analysis in the NPR Politics newsletter.
The week was dominated by a group chat among high-ranking Trump administration officials that a reporter was inadvertently added to. There have been many other headlines. The price of cars may go up as a result of more tariffs. More controversy has arisen over Trump’s deportation efforts. There are questions about the approach to the war by the administration.
Here are five takeaways from the week, followed by a day-by-day look at everything that happened this week on this 67th day of the second Trump presidency:
The Defense Department has warned for years against using the platform for any non-public information and this month issued a Pentagon-wide advisory saying the app has been a target of Russian hackers. The Trump team tried to undermine the reporter, and they argued that this was an appropriate channel to have the conversation.
- Trump officials and their congressional supporters have tried to downplay the situation, but they need to answer more questions.
“Hegseth? How do you bring Hegseth into it? Trump said, responding to a reporter’s question. He had nothing to do with it. Look, look — it’s all a witch hunt.”
This isn’t the end of the story, because a bipartisan group of lawmakers wants an investigation. Mississippi Sen. Roger Wicker, the Republican chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee said the conversation “appears to me to be of such a sensitive nature that, based on my knowledge, I would have wanted it classified.”
He asked for an inspector general’s report to be expedited. Just days after Trump was sworn in, he fired more than a dozen IGs across multiple agencies, including the Defense Department.
Source: Signal chat fallout, tariff tension — and 3 more takeaways from Trump’s week
The Economy of Trump and the Taxes on Foreign-Made Goods: Implications for the Laws of Taxpayers and Immigrants
And this week, it’s 25% tariffs on foreign-made cars and car parts that are likely to lead to higher auto prices. Trump has acknowledged that his tariffs may make things more expensive.
He gambled that the tariffs will increase manufacturing in the U.S. and even out trade imbalances. It’s something the auto worker union is glad to see, applauding Trump for ending what it sees as the “free-trade disaster.” But will people accept higher prices on groceries and cars when they’re already high?
“Now voters are saying, ‘OK, you’ve been elected; we know you’re going to be disruptive; we know you’re going to be that wrecking ball,'” said Kristen Soltis Anderson, a Republican pollster, “‘but where’s the reduced cost of living I was looking for?'”
Soltis Anderson said while Trump’s overall approval ratings are higher than where he was in his first term, his economic approval has slipped. The Consumer Confidence Index dropped this week to a 12-year low. That is quite the risky position for a president, especially one who promised to bring prices down on Day 1. Given that Trump is barred from running again and if prices do go up, it could be something felt by the GOP in next year’s midterm elections.
Americans give Trump high marks on immigration. His administration is trying to push the limits with its arguments. This week, the administration refused to give a judge more details on its timeline on deportation flights of Venezuelans the administration says are members of the Tren de Aragua gang.
An appeals panel, 2-1, sided with Boasberg and denied the administration’s push to restart deportations under the Alien Enemies Act, noting that the administration hasn’t given those targeted the chance to prove they’re not part of the gang before sending them to a country they’re not even from where they’re imprisoned for an indefinite period of time. The Trump administration said it will be appealing to the Supreme Court.
A doctoral student at Tufts University was taken into custody off the street by plain-clothesed officers with face coverings and whisked away to a detention facility in Louisiana. The student was in the U.S. on a valid visa. But that visa has since been revoked.
The Secretary of State said that the case of the Columbia University student was not about free speech. This is about people that don’t have a right to be in the United States. … There is no way that one can have a student visa. No one has the right to a green card.
Source: Signal chat fallout, tariff tension — and 3 more takeaways from Trump’s week
Do you think that Israel’s military operations in Gaza have antisemitism? Or is Israel really interested in what it says about the American public opinion?
More Americans’ sympathies lie with Israelis than Palestinians, but it’s at the lowest level in at least a quarter century since Gallup data is available on the question and, for the first time, below 50%. More Republicans sympathize with Israelis, more Democrats sympathize with Palestinians. Democrats’ support went up as the war went on. Independents narrowly side with Israelis.
So Trump may feel he has public opinion on his side to continue with these kinds of expulsions and may try to make the debate about: 1. this not being about the war in Gaza at all, but 2. about ending anti-semitism on campuses. The question is: Is there room in the United States for a debate about what defines antisemitism and whether anyone has the right to criticize the government of Israel’s conduct of the war? If you’re a foreign student, the administration is not going to make the point that way.
American Oversight’s attorneys wrote in their court filing that the defendants’ use of a non-classified commercial application for planning a military operation leads to the presumption that they must have used Signal to conduct other official government business.
“I’m glad we could figure out a solution,” the judge later said. He instructed the government to provide him with an update Monday. If the steps taken by defendants are satisfactory to the court, the order will end on April 10.
The Senate intelligence committee was told on Tuesday that Hegseth was in charge of determining whether the information was classified.
The Trump-U.S. strike against Yemen’s Houthis over a text message chat had been confiscated by a federal judge
Attorneys from American Oversight argue that the public is entitled to access government records even if they’re on the private phones of officials.
They wrote “this is nothing less than a systematic effort to evade the rules for record retention in the federal government.” “There is no legitimate reason for this behavior, which deprives the public and Congress of an ability to see the actions of government.”
On the chat, Hegseth provided the exact timings of warplane launches and when bombs would drop before the attacks against Yemen’s Houthis began earlier this month. Hegseth laid out when a “strike window” would open, where a “target terrorist” was located and when weapons and aircraft would be used.
WASHINGTON — A federal judge on Thursday ordered the Trump administration to preserve records of a text message chat in which senior national security officials discussed sensitive details of plans for a U.S. military strike against Yemen’s Houthis.
The judge stopped the administration from destroying the messages that were sent over the app.
American Oversight requested the order. A government attorney said the administration already was taking steps to collect and save the messages.
Boasberg, who was nominated by Democratic President Barack Obama, noted during Thursday’s hearing that his order shouldn’t harm the government since the agencies already were working to preserve the Signal messages.
Boasberg, chief judge of the district court in Washington, has been at odds with the administration over a separate case involving flights deporting Venezuelan immigrants to El Salvador under an 18th century wartime law. He temporarily blocked the flights and ordered at least two planes carrying immigrants to turn around, but that didn’t happen. The judge has vowed to determine whether the administration ignored his turnaround order.