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      It’s war and peace with Donald and Pete – and the worst group chat the world has ever seen | Marina Hyde

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      Once again, we find ourselves having an anguished debate about mobile phones and online safety, in this case asking: should we ban the devices for US national security advisers under the age of 60? Do you know what your national security adviser is doing on his device? Is he using it to stay in touch with other guys in the big-man-osphere to talk about bombing Hooters? Or did he maybe add the editor-in-chief of a leading general interest magazine to a Signal group in the crucial period running up to a highly sensitive US military operation in Yemen, seemingly committing so many alleged crimes that he should have a full-body orange jumpsuit tattooed on him for ever?By now, you will have caught up with the tale of one of the most idiotic breaches of security imaginable – seemingly executed, regrettably, by the actual US national security adviser. Mike Waltz seems to have been aided and abetted in his full-spectrum fatuity by other ultra-senior figures, including the vice-president, JD Vance, and the defence secretary, Pete Hegseth, who shared detailed operational and strategic information in a chat to which Atlantic editor Jeffrey Goldberg had been accidentally invited. Is Hegseth OK? Has he returned to being – how to put this delicately? – someone you probably don’t want to give important tasks to “after lunch”?On another tangent, meanwhile, was there some extremely senior military or government official with either the first name Jeffrey, or the second name Goldberg, whom Waltz actually meant to add? And did that intended Jeffrey or Goldberg wake up the next day, see the Yemen news, and feel a deeply wounded sense of Fomo? “Wait, you guys bombed Yemen without me? I hate you ALL. I demand you put me in the group chat NOW, just so I can immediately flounce off and leave the group chat.”The breach exposes so many things that it is difficult to know where to start. It certainly highlights the almost immeasurably rich lexicon of emojis. You realise that a certain type of guy deploys the same three emojis for taking out a Houthi target as they would if Bryson DeChambeau nailed a slightly tricky putt on the 14th at the West Palm Beach Pro-Am. Punching fist, USA flag, flames emoji. Let’s GO, Bryson!That said, the emojis are obviously the best of it. Less easy to scroll past is the bit where Vance, or his proxy, says: “I just hate bailing out Europe again.” Then Hegseth replies: “I fully share your loathing of European freeloading. It’s PATHETIC.” Mm. Three weeks ago, we had Vance offering a blanket disparagement of European forces as “some random country that hasn’t fought a war in 30 or 40 years”. Now we have this Signal chat – yet another sweet memorial to all the European service personnel who gave their lives in the US Republican party’s endlessly stupid 9/11 wars. We never asked to be reimbursed for that military assistance – very BAD! very Wrong! – and are now repeatedly hearing that it meant nothing to Marine-adjacent shutterbug Vance, who remains the most unbearably loud and rude American at the luxury hotel breakfast. They really should make a darkly satirical TV show about these absurd, degenerate, unpleasant people. Call it The White Potus.Needless to say, the first instinct of the Trump administration has been to insult the journalist, when in less responsible hands than Goldberg’s this could have been catastrophically endangering information for involved US service personnel and intelligence operatives. At time of writing, Hegseth’s sole comment on the bed he and the guys just shat was to attack the man to whom they personally served this scoop, calling Goldberg “a deceitful and highly discredited so-called journalist”. Is he though? Come on, Pete! Given the same information in real time, your boy Joe Rogan would have livestreamed it and you know it. At least Donald Trump would have been up to speed with it that way. “I don’t know anything about it,” was the president’s sleepy verdict yesterday, a day he spent wetting his pants about some oil painting of him hanging somewhere in the Colorado state legislature.As for consequences, do please remember that we are dealing with the biggest hypocrites on the planet. Consider their own thunderous statements on infosec. Here is the chief Pentagon spokesman, Sean Parnell, just last week: “If you have a private that loses a sensitive item, that loses night vision goggles, that loses a weapon, you can bet that that private is going to be held accountable. The same and equal standards must apply to senior military leaders.” Also last week, here is Trump’s director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard: “Any unauthorised release of classified information is a violation of the law and will be treated as such.” Was Tulsi on the Signal chat? Course she was! If you still want more, here’s Hegseth mining the seemingly endless potential of Hillary Clinton’s careless use of a private server for classified information back when he was a Fox News host: “If it was anyone other than Hillary Clinton, they would be in jail right now.” “When I’m president of the United States, neither she nor any of these other people are going to be above the law,” was the previous verdict of one Marco Rubio, last seen on the Houthi chat appearing in the role of secretary of state of the United States.We’ll have to wait and see if these clowns will hold themselves to their own very high standards. In the meantime, please enjoy European diplomats declaring that as far as the relationship between the continent and the US goes, this is “the writing on the wall”. If only it HAD been written on a wall – that would actually have been more secure and secretive. Come to that, it would genuinely have been more secure and secretive to hire a skywriting plane. Great job, guys! Punching fist, USA flag, flames emoji, etc.

      Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist More

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      Stunning Signal leak reveals depths of Trump administration’s loathing of Europe

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      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.”Vance was contending that once again the United States is doing what Europe should be. It is consistent with his past arguments that the US is overpaying for European security and the derision he displayed toward European allies (almost certainly the UK and France) when he described them as “some random country that hasn’t fought a war in 30 or 40 years”. (Both fought in Afghanistan and the UK fought alongside the US in Iraq).It was during this policy discussion, Goldberg wrote, that he was convinced that he was reading remarks by the real Vance, as well as defense secretary Pete Hegseth, national security advisor Michael Waltz, and senior Trump advisor Stephen Miller.Then Vance went a step further. He tacitly admitted a difference between his foreign policy and Trump’s saying that the strike would undermine the president’s Europe policy – one that has been led by Vance in his divisive speech at the Munich Security Conference where he accused European leaders of running from their own electorates and of his Eurosceptic comments on Fox News.“I am not sure the president is aware how inconsistent this is with his message on Europe right now,” Vance wrote. “There’s a further risk that we see a moderate to severe spike in oil prices. I am willing to support the consensus of the team and keep these concerns to myself. But there is a strong argument for delaying this a month, doing the messaging work on why this matters, seeing where the economy is, etc.”Those designated on the call also reflect the vice-president’s growing clout in foreign policymaking circles. Vance named Andy Baker, his national security advisor who helped lead the transition team at the Pentagon, as his representative. Hegseth named Dan Caldwell, a leading proponent of “restraint” in the exercise of US foreign power abroad to protect Europe and counter rivals like Russia, indicating the Vance team’s presence at high levels of the Pentagon as well.At heart, the disagreement indicated that Vance’s views of foreign policy are not quite aligned with Trump. Trump broadly sees the world as transactional and optimists in Europe have claimed he could force a positive outcome by forcing those nations to spend more on defense budgets. But Vance appears far more confrontational and principled in his antipathy toward the transatlantic alliance, and has attacked European leaders for backing values that he says are not aligned with the US.That makes Vance even more of a concern for Europe. Kaja Kallas, the European foreign policy chief, accused Vance of “trying to pick a fight” with European allies. Another European diplomat said: “He is very dangerous for Europe … maybe the most [dangerous] in the administration.” Another said he was “obsessed” with driving a wedge between Europe and the US.Back on the chat some sought – carefully – to talk Vance down. Hegseth said the strike would promote “core” American values including freedom of navigation and pre-establish deterrence. But he said the strikes could wait, if desired. Waltz, a foreign policy traditionalist, said: “It will have to be the United States that reopens these shipping lanes.” But he agreed that the administration sought to “compile the cost associated and levy them on the Europeans”.“If you think we should do it let’s go. I just hate bailing Europe out again,” Vance replied. Hegseth agreed that “I fully share your loathing of European free-loading. It’s PATHETIC.” But, he added, “we are the only ones on the planet (on our side of the ledger) who can do this.”Miller, the Trump confidant, effectively ended the conversation by saying that the president had been clear. “Green light, but we soon make clear to Egypt and Europe what we expect in return.”Broadly, the administration’s policies on Europe are coming into focus. And there are few stepping up to voice backing for Nato or for Europe writ large. On a podcast interview this weekend, the senior Trump envoy Steve Witkoff mused about the potential for the Gulf economies to replace those of Europe. “It could be much bigger than Europe. Europe is dysfunctional today,” he said.Tucker Carlson, the host and another Trump confidant, agreed. “It would be good for the world because Europe is dying,” he said. More

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      Donald Trump is seeking to erase the United States as we know it | Laurence H Tribe

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      Less than seven weeks into Donald Trump’s second term as president, his administration has set off a new wave of handwringing over what has by now become a familiar question: has the US entered a constitutional crisis?Triggering the latest iteration of that worry, the government hastily deported more than 200 Venezuelan immigrants to a notorious prison in El Salvador, without hearings or evidence and thus without anything even resembling due process of law, pursuant to the US president’s proclamation “signed in the dark on Friday evening” that they constituted an invasion by a foreign state.Trump invoked a 1798 statute last used to intern Japanese Americans during the second world war, buttressed by powers he claimed were inherent in the presidency. Chief judge James E Boasberg of the US district court for the District of Columbia rushed to convene a hearing on the legality of the challenged action as two deportation flights departed from Texas, followed quickly by a third. Moments after the judge ordered them to return so he could rule on a motion barring the deportation, El Salvador’s president, Nayib Bukele, tweeted: “Oopsie … Too late”, with a laughing emoji, even as the court considered whether its order had been defied.The branch of government best able to uncover and safeguard both our noblest traditions and the simple truth in moments such as these – the judiciary – has been hobbled and vilified by Trump and his allies, making wildly irresponsible calls for impeachment that put dangerous targets on the backs of judges who rule in ways they dislike. Even mild-mannered chief justice John Roberts had to cry “foul”. The administration’s cavalier attitude toward courts that fail to do its bidding, exemplified by calls for Boasberg’s removal, seemed to confirm concerns about a looming crisis.But searching for evidence of a “constitutional crisis” in the rapidly escalating clashes of the executive branch with the judicial branch misses the larger cataclysm taking place across the US. This president, abetted by the supine acquiescence of the Republican Congress and licensed by a US supreme court partly of his own making, is not just temporarily deconstructing the institutions that comprise our democracy. He and his circle are making a bid to reshape the US altogether by systematically erasing and distorting the historical underpinnings of our 235-year-old experiment in self-government under law.What we are currently living through is nothing less than a reorganized forgetting of the building blocks of our republic and the history of our struggles, distorting what it means to be American. The body politic is being hollowed out by a rapidly metastasizing virus attacking the underpinnings of our entire constitutional system. Make no mistake. This is how dictatorship grows.Symptomatic of that reshaping is the peculiar emergence, in a duet staged by the president together with the world’s richest man and Trump’s main benefactor, of a co-presidency without precedent in our republic and without even a hint of the irony in such shared power being propagated by ideologues whose mantra has long been the need for a “unitary presidency”.As staffers of the newly minted so-called “department of government efficiency” (Doge) raided congressionally created independent federal agencies and foundations without warning and slashed entire programs without thought, the Trump administration stuttered when asked by the courts to explain who was in charge of the “department” that no Congress had created – and how the leader of that enterprise had somehow acquired the power of the purse that the constitution clearly delegated only to Congress.More than just stonewalling courts and refusing to provide basic information on government activities, the Trump administration has waged war on history itself. Having first debilitated our capacity to act, it is now coming after our capacity to think. The same day Boasberg directed the administration to explain why it had seemingly failed to comply with his order, Doge staffers marched into the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS), the agency responsible for funding many needy public museums, libraries and historic repositories across the country.Like Julius Caesar besieging and burning the Library of Alexandria, the Doge officials descended upon the IMLS to begin the process of gutting the public institutions dedicated to preserving and making widely available the shared memory of our past. It was none other than Benjamin Franklin whose conception of public libraries democratized knowledge and made it accessible to ordinary people. What used to be the private province of the few became the public province of the many.The attack on the IMLS is only the latest episode of the Trump presidency’s attempt to privatize information while replacing authentic history with a version more to its liking. As internet archivists race to back up the nation’s files and records, Trump administration officials have been systematically purging government websites in real time of the tools, concepts and language we need to act as informed citizens. In response to secretary of defense Pete Hegseth’s order to remove “diversity” content from the department’s platforms, the Pentagon took down pages about the Holocaust, September 11, cancer awareness and suicide prevention. So too, the Department of Agriculture deleted entire datasets and resources that farmers relied on to identify ways of coping with heat waves, droughts, floods and wildfires. Websites belonging to the Small Business Administration and Arlington National Cemetery scrubbed their platforms of photographs and references to women, LGBTQ+ individuals and people of color, including facts about American heroes such as Jackie Robinson or Gen Colin Powell.Taken together, these events of the past few weeks reveal an alarmingly rapid collapse of what gives the United States constitution life and meaning. Its words may remain unchanged, but its role in our lives is crumbling before our eyes. Looking for a decisive explosion or a moment of crisis – what physicists call a singularity – in the chaotic onrush of presidential provocations is a fool’s errand, one calculated to disarm the resistance without which we will surely be doomed.The seeds of our ongoing disintegration long precede Trump’s rise to power. They were planted decades ago by strategic politicians who dressed rightwing ideologies in conservative garments, permitting the darkest angels of our nature to take hold and to reach a climax in fake claims of a stolen election that led to an insurrection in our country’s capital, followed first by the Senate’s abdication of its duty in Trump’s second impeachment trial (on the bogus ground that the trial had begun too late to give the Senate jurisdiction) and next by the US supreme court’s gifting of Trump – and every future president – with a nearly absolute immunity transforming the office from one restrained by law to a source of virtually limitless power.Rarely noted is how this frightening power to ignore federal criminal law has been conferred not only on the president but on his legions of loyal lieutenants, from public officials to private militias. Because the constitution itself gives presidents an unbridled power to pardon others – a power Trump reveled in employing to free from prison the violent insurrectionists that he had himself helped unleash – we now live under a system in which any president can license his trusted followers to commit crimes to consolidate his power and wealth, making clear that a pardon awaits them should they face federal prosecution. The upshot is that privateers in league with the president can safely ignore federal laws criminalizing corrupt evasion of rules designed to protect public health and safety while they casually usurp powers the constitution gave to Congress, moving so fast and breaking so much that not even genuinely independent federal courts can keep pace with the mayhem.In his iconic poem The Hollow Men, TS Eliot a century ago famously wrote: “This is the way the world ends / This is the way the world ends / … /Not with a bang but a whimper.” Rooted in our past, the anti-democracy virus has reached a fever pitch as it ravages the body politic and revises all traces of our history. It’s a virus we must fight with all the energy we can muster if we don’t want our system of self-government under law to die – not in a sudden explosion but with a quiet whimper.The tragedy is that too many politicians and organizations are caving in without a fight, leading others to follow suit. With each surrender, Trump and his minions not only grow more emboldened but cement their hold on power by cracking down on all who dare oppose them in court, including lawyers who come to the aid of the administration’s enemies.Without more courageous leaders – including Republican officeholders who fear being primaried by candidates backed by limitless wealth – and without more bravery on the part of corporate CEOs whose fortunes can be threatened by Trump, elite lawyers whose business can shrivel if Trump targets them, and ordinary citizens understandably fearing online threats and worse, this darkness will be our destiny as we are reduced to mere memories and then relegated to the vast wasteland of the forgotten.

      Laurence H Tribe is the Carl M Loeb University professor and professor of constitutional law emeritus at Harvard Law School. Meriting special thanks and acknowledgment is his research assistant, Radhika M Kattula, a third-year law student at Harvard Law School. More

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      Outrage after White House accidentally texts journalist war plans: ‘Huge screw-up’

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      A catastrophic security leak is triggering bipartisan outrage after the Atlantic revealed that senior Trump administration officials accidentally broadcast classified military plans through a Signal group chat with a journalist reading along.On the Senate floor on Monday, the minority leader, Chuck Schumer, called it “one of the most stunning breaches of military intelligence I have read about in a very, very long time” and urged Republicans to seek a “full investigation into how this happened, the damage it created and how we can avoid it in the future”.“Every single one of the government officials on this text chain have now committed a crime – even if accidentally,” the Delaware senator Chris Coons wrote on Twitter/X. “We can’t trust anyone in this dangerous administration to keep Americans safe.”The New York representative Pat Ryan called the incident “Fubar” (an acronym for “fucked up beyond all recognition”) and threatened to launch his own congressional investigation “IMMEDIATELY” if House Republicans fail to act.According to reporting in the Atlantic, the editor in chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, was accidentally invited into a Signal chat group with more than a dozen senior Trump administration officials including Vice-President JD Vance, the secretary of state, Marco Rubio, national security adviser, Mike Waltz, secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth, and others.The reporting exposes not only a historic mishandling of classified information but a potentially illegal communication chain in which sensitive military plans about airstrikes on Houthi rebels in Yemen were casually shared in an encrypted group chat with automatic delete functions.“It has made us look weak to our adversaries,” the California congressman Ro Khanna told the Guardian. “We need to take cybersecurity far more seriously and I look forward to leading on that.”As the top Democrat on the House intelligence committee, Jim Himes has overseen countless classified briefings. But the Signal group chat leak of impending war plans has made him “horrified”.“If true, these actions are a brazen violation of laws and regulations that exist to protect national security, including the safety of Americans serving in harm’s way,’ he said. “These individuals know the calamitous risks of transmitting classified information across unclassified systems, and they also know that if a lower-ranking official under their command did what is described here, they would likely lose their clearance and be subject to criminal investigation.”Senator Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the Senate intelligence committee, posted on social media: “This administration is playing fast and loose with our nation’s most classified info, and it makes all Americans less safe.”The Republican senator John Cornyn described the incident more colloquially, telling reporters it was “a huge screw-up” and suggesting that “the interagency would look at that” to determine how such a significant security lapse occurred.The White House confirmed the leak. The national security council spokesperson, Brian Hughes, told the Guardian: “This appears to be an authentic message chain, and we are reviewing how an inadvertent number was added to the chain.”But the White House attempted to defend the communications, with Hughes describing the messages as an example of “deep and thoughtful policy coordination between senior officials”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“The ongoing success of the Houthi operation demonstrates that there were no threats to troops or national security,” Hughes said.But most lawmakers don’t see it that way. The Rhode Island senator Jack Reed said on X that the incident represented “one of the most egregious failures of operational security and common sense I have ever seen”.The echoes of past document controversies are also coming back to haunt some of the senior officials in the chat, who previously criticized similar security breaches. In 2024, Waltz – the current national security adviser – had said “Biden’s sitting National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan sent Top Secret messages to Hillary Clinton’s private account. And what did DOJ do about it? Not a damn thing.”In 2023, Hegseth had his own critique of the Biden administration handling classified documents “flippantly”, remarking on Fox News that “If at the very top there’s no accountability”, then we have “two tiers of justice”.The bombshell revelation also potentially violated federal record-keeping laws. The Federal Records Act, which mandates preservation of government communications, typically mandates that records are kept for two years, and the Signal messages were scheduled to automatically delete in under four weeks.The New York Republican representative Mike Lawler summed up the bipartisan consensus: “Classified information should not be transmitted on unsecured channels – and certainly not to those without security clearances. Period.” More

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      White House inadvertently texted top-secret Yemen war plans to journalist

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      Senior members of Donald Trump’s cabinet have been 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.Signal is not approved by the US government for sharing sensitive information.Others in the chat included the Trump adviser Stephen Miller; Trump’s chief of staff, Susie Wiles; and the key Trump envoy Steve Witkoff.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.”Donald Trump told reporters at the White House that he was unaware of the incident. “I don’t know anything about it. I’m not a big fan of the Atlantic,” Trump said.The White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, later released a statement saying: “President Trump continues to have the utmost confidence in his national security team, including National Security Advisor Mike Waltz.”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.In the US military, the highest political echelon and intelligence services operate under strict rules for communication of classified material and for the discussion of issues concerning operational security where lives and outcomes could be compromised by disclosure.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.”Goldberg writes that he was initially dubious about whether the messages might be some kind of foreign disinformation operation, but became convinced they were genuine both because of the language and positions presented and because the plan discussed coincided with an actual attack on Yemen.One striking exchange involved Vance and Hegseth making disparaging remarks about Europe.“The account identified as ‘JD Vance’ addressed a message at 8:45 to @Pete Hegseth: ‘if you think we should do it let’s go. I just hate bailing Europe out again,’” Goldberg wrote. (The administration has argued that America’s European allies benefit economically from the US navy’s protection of international shipping lanes.)Goldberg continues: “The user identified as Hegseth responded three minutes later: “VP: I fully share your loathing of European free-loading. It’s PATHETIC. But Mike is correct, we are the only ones on the planet (on our side of the ledger) who can do this.“Nobody else even close. Question is timing. I feel like now is as good a time as any, given POTUS directive to reopen shipping lanes. I think we should go; but POTUS still retains 24 hours of decision space.”In reality, about 20 countries are involved in the mission to protect shipping from Houthi attacks including British warships.As Goldberg became aware of the attack on Yemen taking place, he recorded how he went back to the Signal channel:“‘Michael Waltz’ [US national security adviser] had provided the group an update. Again, I won’t quote from this text, except to note that he described the operation as an ‘amazing job.’’’A few minutes later, [another individual wrote]: “A good start.”Not long after, Waltz responded with three emojis: a fist, an American flag and fire. Others soon joined in, including “MAR”, [Marco Rubio]. He wrote: “Good Job Pete and your team!!” and “Susie Wiles”. She texted: “Kudos to all – most particularly those in theater and CENTCOM! Really great. God bless.” More

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      Hegseth suggests judge who blocked trans troops ban abused her power

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      The US defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, joined the mounting criticism of federal judges by Donald Trump and others in his administration on Saturday, mocking the judge who blocked a ban on transgender troops in the US military and suggesting she had exceeded her authority.The US district judge Ana Reyes in Washington ruled that Trump’s 27 January executive order, one of several issued by the Republican president targeting legal rights for transgender Americans, likely violated the US constitution’s guarantee of equal protection under the law.Hegseth in a post on social media mockingly called the judge “Commander Reyes” and suggested she was abusing her power by making decisions about warfare.“Since ‘Judge’ Reyes is now a top military planner, she/they can report to Fort Benning at 0600 to instruct our Army Rangers on how to execute High Value Target Raids,” Hegseth wrote. “After that, Commander Reyes can dispatch to Fort Bragg to train our Green Berets on counterinsurgency warfare.”Reyes was appointed by the Democratic former president Joe Biden. There have been rising tensions between Trump’s administration and members of the federal judiciary who have issued rulings impeding some of Trump’s actions since he returned to office in January, and rising concern about the safety of judges.Trump, his billionaire adviser Elon Musk, the attorney general Pam Bondi and other administration officials have assailed judges in recent weeks. For instance, Trump on Tuesday called for the impeachment of the judge presiding over a legal challenge to deportation flights, calling him a “Radical Left Lunatic” and a “troublemaker and agitator” – prompting the US supreme court chief justice to issue a rare rebuke of the president.Federal courts are hearing more than 100 lawsuits challenging various initiatives by Trump and his administration, with some judges imposing nationwide injunctions to block policies, such as his move to curtail automatic birthright citizenship.Hegseth, a military veteran and former Fox News television host, has made culture war issues such as banning transgender troops and abolishing diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives in the US military a top priority.After Hegseth took over the Pentagon, Trump also relieved the chair of the joint chiefs of staff, General CQ Brown, who is Black, and the Navy’s top admiral, who was the first woman to hold the position. Hegseth had previously questioned whether Brown only got the job because he was Black.While Trump and Hegseth have broad authority to relieve US military officers, their efforts to ban transgender service members have triggered numerous lawsuits.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe military said on 11 February it would no longer allow transgender individuals to join the military and would stop performing or facilitating medical procedures associated with gender transition for service members. Later that month, the military said it would begin expelling transgender members.Plaintiffs in the lawsuit before Reyes argued the order was illegal, pointing to a 2020 US supreme court ruling that found that employment discrimination against transgender people is a form of illegal sex discrimination.Lawyers for the administration have argued in court that the military is entitled to bar people with certain conditions that make them unsuitable for service, also including bipolar disorder and eating disorders. At a 12 March hearing, they told Reyes she should defer to the judgment of the current administration that transgender people are not fit for service. More

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      Trump makes rare admission of Musk’s conflicts of interest after Pentagon visit

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      Donald Trump said on Friday that plans for possible war with China should not be shared with Elon Musk because of his business interests, a rare admission that the billionaire faces conflicts of interests in his role as a senior adviser to the US president.Trump rejected reports that Musk would be briefed on how the United States would fight a hypothetical war with China, saying: “Elon has businesses in China. And he would be susceptible, perhaps, to that.”The reference to Musk’s businesses – which include Tesla, an electric vehicle manufacturer trying to expand sales and production in China – is an unusual acknowledgment of concerns about Musk balancing his corporate and government responsibilities.Trump had previously brushed off questions about Musk’s potential conflicts of interest, simply saying that he would steer clear when necessary.The president said that Musk visited the Pentagon on Friday morning to discuss reducing costs, which he has been working on through the so-called “department of government efficiency” (Doge).The defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, said Musk was there “to talk about efficiencies, to talk about innovations”.Musk said while leaving the Pentagon that he was ready to do “anything that could be helpful”. He also refused to answer questions as to whether he received a classified briefing on China as part of the visit.As a key adviser to Trump and the head of Doge, Musk has exercised broad powers in the two months since Trump returned to the White House, conducting mass layoffs and slashing budgets across the federal government. But while the Pentagon was also in line to be a target for job cuts, Musk has yet to play any role there, including in defense intelligence and military operations.A senior defense official told reporters on Tuesday that roughly 50,000 to 60,000 civilian jobs would be cut in the defense department.Musk’s involvement in any US plans or dealings with China would raise not only security concerns but questions over a significant conflict of interest, as he has considerable economic interests in China as the owner of Tesla and SpaceX, which also has contracts with the US air force.In the early hours of Friday morning, Musk denied the reports that he would be briefed on war with China, calling it “pure propaganda” and threatening to find those who leaked the information.“I look forward to the prosecutions of those at the Pentagon who are leaking maliciously false information,” he wrote. “They will be found.”Musk repeated his demand for such prosecutions upon arrival at the Department of Defense on the outskirts of Washington DC on Friday morning. He left the Pentagon about 90 minutes after arriving.A Pentagon spokesperson, asked by email to explain the true purpose of Musk’s briefing given administration denials that it would involve putative war plans with China, referred the Guardian to a statement posted on social media by Hegseth.In a Friday meeting at the White House to announce new air force fighter planes, Trump and Hegseth both firmly rejected reports that Musk was shown any Pentagon plans regarding a potential conflict with China during his visit earlier that day.“They made that up because it’s a good story to make up. They’re very dishonest people,” Trump said about the New York Times reporting. “I called up Pete [Hegseth] and I said: ‘Is there any truth to that?’ Absolutely not, he’s there for Doge, not there for China. And if you ever mentioned China, I think he’d walk out of the room.”Hegseth echoed Trump’s notion that the visit was focused on discussing government efficiency initiatives and innovation opportunities, adding that there were “no Chinese war plans”.“We welcomed him today to the Pentagon to talk about [the ‘department of government efficiency’], to talk about efficiencies, to talk about innovations. It was a great informal conversation,” he said.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionHegseth suggested the reporting was deliberately intended to “undermine whatever relationship the Pentagon has with” the Tesla CEO.However, some military experts have still expressed concern about Musk’s level of access to sensitive information.Wesley Clark, retired general and former Nato supreme commander, told CNN in an interview on Friday afternoon that the administration has been “cutting a lot of corners in a lot of areas”.“It’s no problem giving him a general impression, we do this for contractors, but the conflict of interest – I’m more interested in his interests abroad, he talks to Putin, he has business in China, he has other considerations and those can impact things,” Clark said.“I’m more worried about Elon Musk coming into the Pentagon and saying ‘I’m high tech and I have smart people in Silicon Valley and these generals do not know anything’. You have got to be really careful about jumping on the next shiny object.”According to a New York Times report, the meeting was set to take place not in Hegseth’s office, where informal meetings about innovation would normally take place, but in a secure conference room known as “the Tank”, which is typically used for higher-level meetings. Musk was to be briefed on a plan that contains 20 to 30 slides and details how the US military would fight a conflict with China.Officials who spoke anonymously with the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal offered up potential reasons why Musk was receiving the briefing. The Times suggested that Musk, in his Doge capacity, might be looking into trimming the Pentagon’s budget and would need to know what military assets the US would use in a potential conflict with China.One source told the Journal that Musk was receiving the briefing because he asked for one.Though Musk has a “top-secret” clearance within the federal government, lawyers at SpaceX advised him in December not to seek higher levels of security clearances, which would probably be denied due to his foreign ties and personal drug use.The Associated Press contributed reporting More