“This is the beginning of liberation day in America,” Donald Trump told reporters gathered in the Oval Office now for his remarks on new tariffs on cars made outside the United States. At the start of remarks being streamed live on the White House YouTube channel, the president said that tariffs of 25% will be imposed on all imported cars.The tariffs will apply to finished cars and trucks that are shipped into the United States, including those made by US auto companies whose automobiles that are made overseas.Asked by a reporter if the tariffs could be lifted before the end of his term of office, Trump said that the new 25% rate on foreign-made cars are “permanent, 100%”.The president just signed an executive order to put 25% tariffs on cars imported into the United States which, he says, will take effect on 2 April.Asked by a reporter how he will ensure that a car made largely outside the country is not completed in the US to avoid tariffs, Trump claims that there will be “strong policing” to prevent automakers from dodging tariffs.The president called the current system, in which cars are made in multiple countries, “ridiculous”.“This is the beginning of liberation day in America,” Donald Trump told reporters gathered in the Oval Office now for his remarks on new tariffs on cars made outside the United States. At the start of remarks being streamed live on the White House YouTube channel, the president said that tariffs of 25% will be imposed on all imported cars.The tariffs will apply to finished cars and trucks that are shipped into the United States, including those made by US auto companies whose automobiles that are made overseas.While fears have been raised about the possibility that Steve Witkoff, the president’s envoy to Russia, was vulnerable to hacking because he was in Moscow when he was added to the Signal messaging chat about attacking Yemen (a concern Witkoff dismissed by saying he did not use his personal device on that trip), it has been somewhat overlooked that Mike Waltz, the national security adviser who created the group, was in Saudi Arabia on the day he accidentally invited the journalist Jeffrey Goldberg to connect with him on the messaging app.In his first report on the incident for the Atlantic, Goldberg wrote: “On Tuesday, March 11, I received a connection request on Signal from a user identified as Michael Waltz.”Since Goldberg did not specify the time of day that the invitation was sent, it is not certain where Waltz was when he sent the request, which was almost certainly sent from his nonsecure, personal phone. (It has been previously reported that the open-source Signal app cannot be downloaded on to secure government devices, although recent statements from the CIA director suggest that might no longer be true.)But we do know that Waltz spent much or all of that day in the Saudi city of Jeddah, where he and the secretary of state, Marco Rubio, engaged in talks with senior Ukrainian officials over a plan for a 30-day ceasefire in Ukraine’s war to repel the full-scale Russian invasion that began in 2022.Since Waltz and Rubio spoke to reporters after 9pm local time in Jeddah that night, to announce that Ukraine had accepted the proposal, we know that Waltz was in a Saudi government-secured facility for most of that day, when, presumably, his personal phone would have been vulnerable to hacking by US adversaries, like Russia or China, and even US allies, including Saudi Arabia and Ukraine.It is not clear when Waltz left Saudi Arabia, but he was certainly there for most, if not all, of 11 March. Waltz and Rubio met with the Saudi crown prince, Mohamed bin Salman, in Jeddah on the evening 10 March, and Rubio’s itinerary on the state department’s website indicates that the secretary of state did not leave Saudi Arabia until 12 March, when he flew to Ireland and then to Canada.Senator Tammy Duckworth of Illinois released a statement calling for defense secretary Pete Hegseth’s resignation.“Pete Hegseth is a f*cking liar. This is so clearly classified info he recklessly leaked that could’ve gotten our pilots killed. He needs to resign in disgrace immediately,” reads the statement.“Hegseth and every other official who was included in this group chat must be subject to an independent investigation. If Republicans won’t join us in holding the Trump Administration accountable, then they are complicit in this dangerous and likely criminal breach of our national security.”Secretary of defense Pete Hegseth denied claims that the information he texted other Trump officials in a group chat earlier this month discussed classified war plans.“Nobody’s texting war plans,” he told reporters in Hawaii. “As a matter of fact, they even changed the title to attack plans, because they know it’s not war plans,” he said.Canada’s former spy chief says White House response to Signal leak threatens ‘Five Eyes’ securityCanada’s former spy chief has said the Trump administration’s attempts to downplay the leak of top-secret attack plans is a “very worrying” development, with implications for broader intelligence sharing among US allies.On Wednesday, the Atlantic magazine published new and detailed messages from a group chat, including plans for US bombings, drone launches and targeting information of the assault, including descriptions of weather conditions. Among the recipients of the messages was a prominent journalist, who was inadvertently added to the group.“This is very worrying. Canada needs to think about what this means in practical terms: is the United States prepared to protect our secrets, as we are bound to protect theirs?” said Richard Fadden, the former head of Canada’s intelligence agency. “Every country has experienced leaks, of varying severity. The problem with this one is that it’s being generated at the highest levels of the US government – and they haven’t admitted that it’s a problem.”Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand have for decades shared intelligence in a pact informally known as the Five Eyes. But 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.“When we have intelligence leaks, we admit it, we try to sort out what’s happened and we try to fix it. One doesn’t get the impression today that the US cabinet members will admit there’s a problem,” said Fadden, who also served as national security adviser to Canada’s Conservative prime minister Stephen Harper. “They’re just trying to clean it up from a political perspective. That worries me.”Despite a far more detailed picture of the information leaked to journalist Jeffrey Goldberg, the White House and key figures in the message thread have redoubled efforts to claimed none of the information was classified.Read the full story by The Guardian’s Leyland Cecco:Secretary of state Marco Rubio said the accidental inclusion of the Atlantic’s editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg in the Signal group chat was a “big mistake” but said that that “none of the information on there at any point threatened the operation or the lives of our service members.”Speaking to reporters from Jamaica, Rubio said:
Obviously someone made a mistake, someone made a big mistake and added a journalist. Nothing against journalists but you ain’t supposed to be on that … I contributed to it twice. I identified my point of contact … and then later on, I think 3 hours after the White House’s official announcements have been made, I congratulated the members of the team.
Rubio went on to add:
I’ve been assured by the Pentagon and everyone involved that none of the information that was on there … at any point threatened the operation of the lives of our servicemen and in fact it was a very successful operation … I want everybody to understand why this thing was even set up in the first place and also understand very clearly the mission was successful and at no point was it in danger and that’s coming from the highest ranking officials…
Another Democrat, the Florida representative Maxwell Alejandro Frost, has criticized the contents of the Signal group chat to which the Atlantic’s editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg was accidentally added.Writing on X in response to a screenshot that featured JD Vance’s reply to the US’s bombing in Yemen, Frost said:“Another disgusting part of all this is the proof of a blatant war crime to which the vice president of the United States responded: Excellent.”During a press briefing in Warsaw, Poland, Nato secretary general Mark Rutte was asked if Europeans could still trust the Americans after the Signal leaks.“Absolutely. Can we trust the Americans? Yes, they are our biggest partner, the biggest allies in Nato. They have freed my country together with Poland and Canada after the Second World War. Yes, absolutely. We can trust the Americans.”He was later asked about some of the comments made about “free-loading” Europeans.Rutte said he would not want to offer running commentary as that “would not be appropriate,” but acknowledged two main irritants in the new US administration’s relations with European Nato allies, on fair burden sharing and some caveats in “collective endeavours.”“We are addressing them because we are spending much more and we are working on, as I said, on the lethality of Nato, which is crucial,” he said.Here’s a look at where the day stands:
Democrats are calling on defense secretary Pete Hegseth to resign following the Signal group chat scandal. One Democrat, Illinois’s representative Raja Krishnamoorthi said: “Classified information is classified for a reason. Sec. Hegseth was openly sharing classified materials on an insecure channel that potentially endangered service members. And then he lied about it. He should resign.”
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt confirmed that Elon Musk’s team is investigating how the Atlantic’s editor-in-chief was added to the group chat discussing a military strike in Yemen. “As for your original question about who’s leading, looking into the messaging thread: the national security council, the White House counsel’s office, and also, yes, Elon Musk’s team,” she said during a press briefing.
In rare signs of unrest, top Republican senators are calling for an investigation into the Signal leak scandal and demanding answers from the Trump administration, as they raise concerns it will become a “significant political problem” if not addressed properly. “This is what happens when you don’t really have your act together,” the Alaska Republican senator Lisa Murkowski told the Hill.
The US district court judge James Boasberg, whom the government has argued cannot be trusted with sensitive information in the Alien Enemies Act case, has been assigned to oversee a lawsuit alleging that government officials violated federal record-keeping laws when they used a group chat to discuss a planned military strike in Yemen, Politico reports. “Messages in the Signal chat about official government actions, including, but not limited to, national security deliberations, are federal records and must be preserved in accordance with federal statutes, and agency directives, rules, and regulations,” the plaintiffs argue.
Senator Mark Warner of Virginia, who grilled top security officials during Tuesday’s Senate intelligence committee briefing, appeared on Morning Joe this morning to discuss the recently released text messages published by the Atlantic on Wednesday. “Well it sure answers that the two witnesses I believe lied when they said, ‘Oh, nothing to see here, nothing classified,’” he said.
Republican senator Roger Wicker, chair of the Senate armed services committee, said he and the senator Jack Reed, the committee’s top Democrat, will request an inspector general investigation into the use of Signal by top national security officials to discuss military plans, The Associated Press reports.Wicker is also calling for a classified Senate briefing from a top national security official and verification that the Atlantic published an accurate transcript of the Signal chat.This move is notable given the Trump administration’s defiance that no classified information was posted to the Signal chat.White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt confirmed that Elon Musk’s team is investigating how the Atlantic’s editor-in-chief was added to the group chat discussing a military strike in Yemen.“As for your original question about who’s leading, looking into the messaging thread: the national security council, the White House counsel’s office, and also, yes, Elon Musk’s team,” she said during a press briefing.“Elon Musk has offered to put his technical experts on this to figure out how this number was inadvertently added to the chat again to take responsibility and ensure this can never happen again,” Leavitt added.She also said that the Signal messaging app, where senior Trump administration officials accidentally shared military plans in a group containing a journalist, is an approved app.Leavitt said it is loaded on to government phones at the Pentagon, Department of State and Central Intelligence Agency.Donald Trump will hold a press conference to announce tariffs on the auto industry today at 4pm, according to the White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt.Wednesday’s press conference will be in the Oval Office.National security adviser Michael Waltz said on Fox News that a staffer wasn’t responsible for adding the Atlantic’s editor-in-chief to the group chat and that he “takes full responsibility” for building the group and maintaining coordination.“Have you ever had somebody’s contact that shows their name and then you have somebody else’s number?,” Waltz said.“You have somebody else’s number on someone else’s contact, so of course I didn’t see this loser in the group,” he added, referring to the Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg.The Guardian’s Peter Beaumont offers an analysis of what the latest Signal leak revelations expose:The disclosure by the Atlantic of further devastating messages from the Signal chat group used by the Trump administration’s most senior security officials has nailed the lie that nothing that threatened the safety of US servicemen and women was shared on the group.After the vague and evasive assertions by Trump officials at Monday’s Senate intelligence committee hearing, from the White House, and from the US defence secretary, Pete Hegseth, that no war plans or classified material was shared, readers can make up their own minds.Despite Hegseth’s angry denial, the exchanges in the leaked group chat did contain details of war planning, shared recklessly by him in advance of the attack on 15 March, on a messaging system and perhaps devices which he and others in the chat could not have been certain were secure.Most damning is the fact that Hegseth sent details in advance of the F-18s and other aircraft that would take part in the attack, including the timing of their arrival at targets, and other assets that would be deployed.As Ryan Goodman, a law professor who formerly worked at the Pentagon, put it after the latest release: “The Atlantic has now published the Signal texts with attack plans in response to administration denials. I worked at the Pentagon. If information like this is not classified, nothing is. If Hegseth is claiming he declassified this information, he should be shown the door for having done so.”In attempting to cover up and diminish their culpability for a shocking breach of operational security – including the fact that two participants in the chat were overseas (including one in Moscow at the time) – the Trump administration has made the scandal immeasurably more serious than it was already.At the most simple level, the pilots who flew on those strikes should rightly be furious that the most senior civilian defence official placed them in harm’s way.Read the full analysis here:In rare signs of unrest, top Republican senators are calling for an investigation into the Signal leak scandal and demanding answers from the Trump administration, as they raise concerns it will become a “significant political problem” if not addressed properly.“This is what happens when you don’t really have your act together,” the Alaska Republican senator Lisa Murkowski told the Hill.The Trump administration has been facing criticism from Democrats – and now Republicans – after Monday’s embarrassing revelation that a team of senior national security officials accidentally added a journalist to a private group chat on Signal, an encrypted messaging app. The group, which included the vice-president, JD Vance; the defense secretary, Pete Hegseth; the secretary of state, Marco Rubio; and others, discussed sensitive plans to engage in military strikes on Houthi targets in Yemen.On Wednesday morning the Atlantic posted another tranche of messages that contained details of the attack on Yemen, including descriptions of targets, launch times and even the details of weather during the assault.Senior national security officials testified before the Senate intelligence committee on Tuesday, where the national intelligence director, Tulsi Gabbard, and CIA director, John Ratcliffe, were grilled by lawmakers over the scandal. The national security officials said “no classified material” was shared in the chat. Republicans are now calling for investigations as well.Read the full story by José Olivares here: More
