Also, paper bags might not be as green as you think. Here’s the latest at the end of Monday.
The White House confirmed today that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth had revealed secret war plans in an encrypted chat group that included a journalist, two hours before U.S. troops launched attacks against the Houthi militia in Yemen. It was an extraordinary breach of American national-security intelligence that shocked several Defense Department officials.
The chat included some of the most influential figures in President Trump’s inner circle, among them Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Michael Waltz, the national security adviser. Waltz mistakenly added Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor in chief of The Atlantic, to the group. Goldberg, who was included in the highly sensitive conversation for the two days leading up to the strikes, published an article today about the exchange.
Hegseth described the war plans on the commercial messaging app Signal, rather than the secure government channels that would normally be used for classified and highly sensitive war planning. That in itself could be a violation of the Espionage Act, Pentagon officials said.
In addition, the officials said that revealing operational war plans before planned strikes could also put American troops directly into harm’s way.
Trump denied knowing anything about the chat, but the incident provided a stark reminder of an earlier Washington controversy: Both the president and many of his allies suggested Hillary Clinton should have been imprisoned for using a private email server while she was secretary of state.
