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    Trump downplays Signal blunder: ‘there was no classified information’ – live

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    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”.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.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”.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.”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 studentsUS 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.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.”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”.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.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.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.”Trump campaign chief sues Daily Beast over defamation claimsA 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.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.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 secretsThe 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: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”. More

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      US war plans leak shows Five Eyes allies must ‘look out for ourselves’, says Mark Carney

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      Canada’s prime minister, Mark Carney, has said the inadvertent leak of classified military plans by senior US officials means that allied nations must increasingly “look out for ourselves” as trust frays with a once-close ally.Speaking a day after it was revealed that a journalist was accidentally included in a group chat discussing airstrikes against Yemeni rebels, Carney said the intelligence blunder was a “serious, serious issue and all lessons must be taken”. He said it would be critical to see “how people react to those mistakes and how they tighten them up”.Canada is one of the members of the Five Eyes intelligence sharing network, alongside Australia, New Zealand and the UK and the leak of classified information is likely to put further strain on the group as it weighs how seriously the current American administration takes the handling of top secret information.The revelations came as Canada grapples with a rapidly deteriorating relationship with the United States, its largest trading partner and closest military ally.“My responsibility is to plan for the worst, is to think about the most difficult evolution of the new threat environment, what it means for Canada and how do we best protect Canada,” Carney said during a campaign stop on Tuesday. The prime minister called a snap election on Sunday.“Part of that response is to be more and more Canadian in our defence capabilities, more and more Canadian in our decisions … We have to look out for ourselves.”Asked about the incident on Tuesday, the UK’s 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.”A spokesperson for Prime Minister Keir Starmer spoke at length at a briefing about the contribution the UK makes to joint military operations with the Americans. However, the spokesperson refused to directly criticise the two figures who were most critical of Europe’s record on defence, JD Vance, the vice-president, and Pete Hegseth, the defence secretary. The spokesperson also insisted that the UK remains happy to share intelligence with the US despite the leak.The government of New Zealand declined to comment on the matter. When asked by the Guardian if the security breach had raised concerns about the sharing of sensitive intel with Trump’s administration, the offices for New Zealand’s prime minister, Christopher Luxon, and the minister for defence, Judith Collins, said the situation was “a matter for the US administration”.Behind closed doors, senior government officials would likely be discussing the risks of sharing intelligence with the US, amid what could be viewed as a lowering of protocol standards, but the breach would not be a dealbreaker, said Andrew Little, whose ministerial roles covered security, intelligence and defence under New Zealand’s last Labour government.“Our relationship transcends individual administrations and individual political leaders. There will be things that – like everybody – members of this government, will be looking askance at. But I think it’s about managing the relationship in the long run,” Little said.So far, New Zealand has been managing its US relationship responsibly, Little said, but it was now “a relationship that requires constant vigilance”.Robert Patman, a professor at the University of Otago in Dunedin who specialises in international relations, called the security breach “extraordinary” and “cavalier”. “It does confirm what many of us felt, that Mr Trump has picked people according to loyalty, rather than competence, and this was almost a perfect storm waiting to happen,” Patman said.But the wider issue for New Zealand and other Five Eyes countries was knowing how to respond to the Trump administration’s “radical departure” from the rules-based order, which included making territorial claims against liberal democracies and siding with Russian president Vladimir Putin over negotiations in Ukraine.“We should be friendly towards the Trump administration where our interests converge, but this administration is doing things which are fundamentally a challenge to [New Zealand’s] national interests.”In Australia, the department of foreign affairs and trade said: “This incident is a matter for the United States. Australia and the United States engage regularly on implementation of mutually recognised standards for the protection of classified material.”Ben Doherty contributed additional reporting More

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      Trump signs executive order that will upend US voter registration processes

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      Donald Trump has signed a far-reaching executive order that promises to fundamentally disrupt American voter registration processes, introducing measures so restrictive they could in effect disenfranchise millions of citizens if enacted.Described by Will Scharf, the White House staff secretary, on Tuesday as “the farthest reaching executive action taken” in the nation’s history, the order represents the latest in a long list of assaults against immigration, but also on current voting systems.The sweeping order amends the federal voter registration form to require proof of citizenship in order to vote. It demands documentary proof for citizenship such as a passport to be eligible to vote in federal elections, empowers federal agencies to cut funding to states deemed non-compliant and instructs the Department of Justice to prosecute what the White House paints as “election crimes”.The measure also seeks to block states from accepting mail-in ballots after election day, regardless of when they are mailed in.Many of the provisions in the order are likely to be quickly challenged and are legally suspect. The US constitution explicitly gives states and Congress the authority to set the rules for election and does not authorize the president to do so.“The short answer is that this executive order, like all too many that we’ve seen before, is lawless and asserts all sorts of executive authority that he most assuredly does not have,” said Danielle Lang, a voting rights lawyer at the non-profit Campaign Legal Center.Republicans have long sought to add a citizenship to the federal form and been stymied by the courts. In a 7-2 decision in 2013, for example, the US supreme court said that Arizona could not require proof of citizenship to vote in federal elections. The power to set the requirements on the federal form is left to the bipartisan Election Assistance Commission. Courts have also blocked efforts to short-circuit efforts to add the question.The order tracks with a controversial bill in Congress Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (Save) Act, which would require Americans to prove citizenship in person – a requirement that could immediately eliminate mail-in and online voter registration already across 42 states, as well as DC and Guam.All metrics point to these actions making it harder, not easier, for Americans to vote. According to the state department in 2023, fewer than half of all Americans had a valid passport, and nearly 69 million women who have changed their names would struggle to produce matching documentation, according to a Center for American Progress analysis.Kansas had a law requiring proof of citizenship in effect between 2013 and 2016. It wound up putting the registrations of 30,000 people in jeopardy – the vast majority of whom were eligible to vote.The Center for Democracy and Civic Engagement reported in 2024 that roughly 21 million voting-age Americans, about 9% of the population, do not have a current, valid ID.Despite Trump’s claims of widespread election fraud, federal law already prohibits non-citizens from voting, with penalties including up to five years in prison. Current election systems already use multiple federal databases to verify voter eligibility, including citizenship data from the Department of Homeland Security.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionA day after the 2024 elections, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (Cisa) director, Jen Easterly – the agency in charge of overseeing election security in the United States – said: “Our election infrastructure has never been more secure and the election community never better prepared to deliver safe, secure, free and fair elections for the American people.“Importantly, we have no evidence of any malicious activity that had a material impact on the security or integrity of our election infrastructure,” Easterly added.Still, Trump framed the order as a critical step in “straightening out our election”, claiming the country is “sick” from what he termed “fake elections.” He added that “there are other steps that we will be taking as the next in the coming weeks” when it comes to the electoral process.This action continues Trump’s long-term efforts to reshape democratic participation, a throwback to his 2020 memo to exclude non-citizens from census population counts that would be used to shape congressional districts. The rhetoric and subsequent follow through represents a potentially transformative – and deeply controversial – approach to voter eligibility that could redefine access to the ballot box.“Perhaps some people think I shouldn’t be complaining because we won in a landslide, but we got to straighten out our election,” Trump said as he signed Tuesday’s order. More

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      Danish PM accuses US of ‘unacceptable pressure’ over planned Greenland visit

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      Mette Frederiksen, the Danish prime minister, has accused the US of putting “unacceptable pressure” on Greenland – which she has vowed to resist – before an unsolicited visit to the Arctic island by members of the Trump administration.Later, just hours after her comments, the White House sprang a fresh surprise, as the US vice-president, JD Vance, announced he would join his wife on a trip to the territory this week.“There was so much excitement around Usha’s visit to Greenland this Friday that I decided that I didn’t want her to have all that fun by herself, and so I’m going to join her,” Vance said in a video on X.“Speaking for President Trump, we want to reinvigorate the security of the people of Greenland because we think it’s important to protecting the security of the entire world.”Even before Vance’s announcement, Frederiksen told Danish channel TV 2: “I have to say that it is unacceptable pressure being placed on Greenland and Denmark in this situation. And it is pressure that we will resist.”The Danish leader also dismissed the idea of the trip being a private visit, saying: “You cannot make a private visit with official representatives from another country.”Trump’s threats to acquire Greenland, she said, should be taken seriously. “President Trump is serious … He wants Greenland. Therefore, it cannot be seen independently of anything else,” she told Danmarks Radio (DR).She said: “It is clearly not a visit that is about what Greenland needs or what Greenland wants from a visit. Therefore, no matter how we twist it, it is a completely unacceptable pressure on Greenland, the Greenlandic politicians and the Greenlandic population, but it is also on Denmark and thus the kingdom.”Copenhagen, Greenland’s former colonial ruler, retains control of security and foreign policy in the autonomous territory, which is still part of the kingdom of Denmark. Trump has repeatedly stated his desire for the US to gain control over the island, which he has said is crucial for American security.Greenland’s prime minister, Múte Bourup Egede, has accused Washington of “foreign interference” in relation to the planned visit, amid political uncertainty in the territory as coalition talks continue less than a fortnight after a general election.The US president responded by saying the delegation had been invited by “officials” on the Greenlandic side. “People from Greenland are asking us to go there,” he told reporters on Monday.The Nuuk government, however, disputed that. “For the record, the Greenlandic government has not issued any invitations for visits, either official or private,” it said in a statement. “The current government is acting as an interim government pending the formation of a new coalition, and we have kindly requested all countries to respect this process.”Also due to participate in the visit from Thursday to Saturday are the White House national security adviser, Mike Waltz, now embroiled in an embarrassing security leak, and the energy secretary, Chris Wright.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe territory is led by a caretaker government as the Greenlandic Democrats continue with coalition talks following an election earlier this month. On Monday, Greenland’s most US and Trump-friendly party, Naleraq, left negotiations over their belief that Greenland should rapidly declare independence.Kuno Fencker, a member of parliament for Naleraq, which came second to the Democrats in the election, said the party had been “thrown out” of coalition talks, in part because of the upcoming US visit.“It has an effect because many of the members think that we, especially me, are selling the country to the US,” he said, adding that it was not in his authority to do so.Accusing the Danish media of “fear-mongering” over the US and Trump, he said: “Divide and rule is being used extremely towards Greenland and fear-mongering about the United States. And especially Donald Trump is framed as the big villain, big bad wolf, here.”The White House has said Waltz and Wright will visit the US space force base in Pituffik, in the north of Greenland, for briefings from US personnel, and they are expected to join Vance to visit historical sites and attend a dog-sled race.The White House National Security Council has said the delegation aimed to “learn about Greenland, its culture, history and people”. More

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      USC enacts hiring freeze and makes cuts over Trump threats to funding

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      The University of Southern California announced an immediate hiring freeze for all staff positions, “with very few critical exceptions” in a letter to faculty and staff on Tuesday.The letter, from USC’s president, Carol Folt, and provost, Andrew Guzman, said the hiring freeze was one of nine steps to cut the school’s operating budget amid deep uncertainty about federal funding – given sweeping cuts to scientific research, the reorganization of student loans, and an education department investigation accusing the university of failing to protect Jewish students during protests over Israel’s destruction of Gaza following the Hamas attacks on 7 October 2023.“Like other major research institutions, USC relies on significant amounts of federal funding to carry out our mission,” the university administrators wrote. “In fiscal year 2024, for example, we received approximately $1.35 billion in federal funding, including roughly $650 million in student financial aid and $569 million for federally funded research. The health system also receives Medicare, Medicaid, and Medi-Cal payments – a significant portion of its revenues – and the futures of those funds are similarly uncertain.”The other measures include: permanent budget reductions for administrative units and schools, a review of procurement contracts, a review of capital projects “to determine which may be deferred or paused”, a curtailment of faculty hiring, new restriction on discretionary spending and expenses for travel and conferences, an effort to streamline operations, a halt on merit-based pay increases, and an end to extended winter recess introduced during the Covid-19 pandemic.Two weeks ago, USC was one of 60 schools notified by the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights of “potential enforcement actions if they do not fulfill their obligations under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act to protect Jewish students on campus”.The newly announced budget cuts follow a university statement in November of last year that informed staff that “rising costs require … budgetary adjustments”. In 2024, that statement said: “USC’s audited financial statement shows a deficit of $158 million.”“Over the past six years, our deficit has ranged from $586 million during legal cost repayments and COVID, to a modest positive level of $36 million in 2023,” USC administrators wrote in November.“Similar deficits are being reported at many peer institutions due to rising costs that outpace revenues across all of higher education,” they added. More

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      Pentagon warned staffers against using Signal before White House chat leak

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      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”.The Atlantic’s story, in which the editor-in-chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, describes the Signal back-and-forth between senior Trump administration officials, led to widespread ridicule online, pointing to top officials’ lack of candor when discussing military strikes, and the original mistake in adding the journalist to the sensitive chat. The chat included top-level officials within the Trump administration, including the vice-president, JD Vance, the defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, the CIA director, John Ratcliffe, and others.Goldberg did not release the entirety of the messages in the article. During an appearance on a liberal podcast on Tuesday, Goldberg said he refused to release the full thread, despite the Trump administration saying no classified information was shared. Trump dismissed the security leak as a “glitch”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionDemocratic politicians have strongly criticized the intelligence officials for their behavior. On Tuesday, during a Senate intelligence committee hearing, Democratic senators pressed the director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, CIA head Ratcliffe and the FBI director, Kash Patel, on the Signal chat leak.Goldberg received information regarding a forthcoming series of airstrikes on Houthi-controlled areas on 15 March, hours before the strikes took place. The Iran-backed Houthis said at least 31 people were killed as a result of the strikes.The US has been striking Houthi areas since November 2023, when, in retaliation for the US-backed Israeli attacks on Gaza, the Houthis began to target commercial and military vessels in the Red Sea. More

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      We call on Columbia to stand up to authoritarianism | Open letter

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      To the Columbia University administration,As journalists who were trained by Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism, and who are steeped in America’s long traditions of free speech and academic freedom, we write to you to express our horror at the events of the past week.The Trump administration has sent immigration enforcers into university-owned student housing and university public spaces at Columbia, has arrested and sought to deport Mahmoud Khalil – not for having committed any documented crimes, but for the thoughts that he has expressed; and has forced another student, Ranjani Srivasan, to flee to Canada after her visa was revoked, also apparently for thought crimes.It has sought to financially cripple the university by withholding $400m in federal funds. And it has demanded the university shut down or restructure departments it deems to be politically problematic, and that it alter its criteria for who to admit to incoming student cohorts.We come from diverse political backgrounds and worldviews; some of us were deeply alienated by last year’s campus protests around the war in Gaza, others of us were sympathetic to the students. Regardless of our political views, however, we firmly believe that the federal government should have no role in policing Columbia’s academic structures, in shaping course requirements and personnel choices made by the university, in dictating admissions strategies, and in terrorizing students for expressing political views that the first amendment clearly protects.Yet, astoundingly, all of these changes are now being accepted by Columbia University in the vain hope of deterring a predatory government from cutting off federal funds and decimating the university’s science research facilities. The university higher-ups have sold out students and faculty alike in their efforts to access federal dollars.We recognize that the fault here lies primarily with the Trump administration, which is stampeding away from democratic norms and, by the day, reinventing the US as an autocracy in the image of Orbán’s Hungary and Putin’s Russia. We recognize, too, that universities such as Columbia are caught between a rock and hard place, damned if they cooperate with the Maga agenda and damned if they don’t.In such a dismal situation, courageously standing up for moral principles and academic codes would have been the honorable – and ultimately more effective – path to take. As Churchill famously said after England and France’s capitulation to Nazi demands at the Munich conference in which Czechoslovakia was dismembered: “You had a choice between dishonor and war; you chose dishonor and you shall have war.”Trump’s administration preys on weakness, and it is employing an extraordinarily effective divide and conquer strategy. We are seeing this in its assault on individual law firms, such as Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison, which this week cried uncle and arranged a meeting with Trump, in which it agreed to do $40m of pro bono work for clients and issues of his choice in exchange for not having their security clearances revoked.That will, of course, only empower Trump and the justice department to ask more of the capitulating attorneys and also to go after additional law firms, seeking the same result – indeed, on Friday night, Trump released a memo directing the Department of Justice to do just that. We are seeing it with major media outlets – take, for example, ABC’s extraordinary decision to donate millions of dollars to the Trump presidential library to make an inconvenient Trump lawsuit disappear; or CBS’s decision to give the Trump team access to the transcripts of its pre-election interview with Kamala Harris. Again, that will only empower Trump to demand further concessions from those companies in how they report on his Administration as well as to seek to kneecap the independence of other media outlets.And, of course, we are seeing it in the escalating war against academia. Columbia’s capitulation won’t end the nightmare that American research universities are facing, rather it will make it worse. For if an institution of the stature, and with the vast endowment resources, of an Ivy League school such as Columbia can be publicly humiliated and made to grovel for Federal crumbs, then every other academic institution in the country is rendered weaker and more open to political attack.Given this reality, we urge Columbia’s administrators to rethink their strategy in dealing with Trump’s authoritarian administration. We urge university administrators around the country to respond collectively rather than allowing themselves to be picked off one by one. And we urge Columbia alumni, of all political persuasions, to join with us in recognizing the enormous stakes in play here, and in demanding that this wonderful academic institution stand up for the values and the beliefs that have held steady since its founding more than 270 years ago. We urge alumni to call their political representatives to protest the assault on academic freedom, to contact Columbia University’s leadership to express their displeasure, and, if necessary, to withhold their donations to Columbia until such time as the university stiffens its spine in its dealings with the Trump administration.This is, we believe, one of the greatest crises facing academia in US history, and also one of the greatest assaults on free speech. How universities such as Columbia respond will determine whether universities remain independent or whether, ultimately, they end up simply serving as extensions of an increasingly authoritarian state.Sasha Abramsky
      Jason Ziedenberg
      Marissa Ventura
      Marion Davis
      Martha Irvine
      Anna Allen
      Gil Griffin
      Megan Williams
      Tony Fong, Science editor
      Victoria Pesce Elliott
      Holly Bass
      Stuart Davis
      Chuck Tanowitz
      Jennifer Cohen Oko
      Carolyn Juris
      Victoria Colliver
      John Nichols
      Chris Lombardi
      Alice Sparberg Alexiou
      Elizabeth Kadetsky
      Dina Hampton
      Aaron Naparstek
      Kevin Heldman
      Jerome Weeks
      Betsy Rosen
      Lizzy Stark
      Jay Ross
      Professor Sam Freedman
      Timothy Cahill More

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      The Guardian view on the Signal war plans leak: a US security breach speaks volumes | Editorial

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      It is jaw-dropping that senior Trump administration figures would accidentally leak war plans to a journalist. But the fundamental issue is that 18 high-ranking individuals were happy discussing extremely sensitive material on a private messaging app, highlighting the administration’s extraordinary amateurishness, recklessness and unaccountability.The visceral hostility to Europe spelt out again by the vice-president, JD Vance, was glaring. So was the indifference to the potential civilian cost of the strikes on Houthi targets in Yemen, designed to curb attacks on Red Sea shipping. The Houthi-run health ministry said that 53 people including five children and two women were killed. The response by the national security adviser, Michael Waltz, to the attacks was to post emojis: a fist, an American flag and fire. The lack of contrition for this security breach is also telling. Individually and together, these are far more than a “glitch”, in Donald Trump’s words. They are features of his administration.Mr Waltz appears to have organised the Signal chat and inadvertently added Jeffrey Goldberg, editor in chief of the Atlantic. The magazine says that the secretary of defence, Pete Hegseth, posted details of the timing and sequencing of attacks, specific targets and weapons systems used, though the administration denies that classified information was shared. Other members included Mr Vance; the director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard; the CIA director, John Ratcliffe; Steve Witkoff, special envoy to the Middle East; and “MAR”, the initials of the secretary of state, Marco Rubio.These conversations would normally take place under conditions of high security. While Signal is encrypted, devices could be compromised. Foreign intelligence agencies will be delighted. Legal experts say using Signal may have breached the Espionage Act.The hypocrisy is glaring. Mr Trump’s first presidential campaign – and several members of this Signal group – lambasted Hillary Clinton for using a private email server to receive official messages that included some classified information of a far less sensitive nature, and for the autodeletion of messages. These Signal messages too were set to disappear, though federal records laws mandate the preservation of such data.In many regards, this leak hammers home what US allies already knew, including this administration’s contempt for Europe, which the chat suggests will be expected to pay for the US attacks. The vice-president characterised an operation carried out to safeguard maritime trade and contain Iran as “bailing Europe out again”. Mr Hegseth responded that he “fully share[d] your loathing of European free-loading”. Concerns about information security are familiar territory too. In his first term, the president reportedly shared highly classified information from an ally with Russia’s foreign minister, and after leaving office he faced dozens of charges over the alleged mishandling of classified material, before a judge he had appointed threw out the case against him.The UK and others cannot simply walk away when they are so heavily dependent on and intermeshed with US intelligence capabilities. Their task now is to manage risk and prepare for worse to come. It may be that this breach is not chiefly distinguished by its severity, but by the fact that we have learned about it.Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here. More