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      Donald Trump is moving fast and breaking things, but that may result in a better US | Simon Jenkins

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      “Move fast and break things” was Mark Zuckerberg’s motto in launching Facebook 20 years ago. It seemed the antithesis of management-school custom and practice. But it worked, to be imitated after a fashion by Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and other digital tycoons with similar success. Donald Trump is now seeing if it works in government.The smart money in Washington was that after the fiasco of Trump’s first term, his second would see a more emollient president, one careful of his reputation. He would reach out, consult, become a peacemaker, in his desperation to become a Nobel president like Barack Obama.How wrong that has proved. Trump is doing what few leaders dare do. He is being a cultural revolutionary, a Mao Zedong, a grandiloquent system smasher. He wants to reorder Washington’s role in the US and the US’s role in the world. He knows that he may have just two years before “the system” – the electoral cycle, the judiciary and state governments – blocks his path. If he truly wants revolution he must break things, and fast.The historian Arthur Schlesinger said the US needed occasional shocks to wipe away the cobwebs, the bureaucracy and the dirt of an ever more cumbersome union. Should it get out of hand and disaster threaten, the constitution was designed to pull the country back from the brink. Thus it rid itself of Richard Nixon, but not before his radicalism towards China achieved the US’s exit from Vietnam. Might this apply to Trump?Already a dose of the so-called new realism has torn through Nato’s cobwebs. Trump simply does not regard Russia as a threat to the US and western Europe. It is merely obsessed, as it has been throughout history, with its frontier states, with the Baltics, Belarus, Ukraine, Georgia and the “stans”, nations that Trump has little interest in defending. Yet ever since the end of the cold war – and during most of it – Nato’s rationale has relied on a thesis, a conventional wisdom, that Russia is set on the conquest of western Europe. If Keir Starmer really thinks, as he appears to, that Russia’s assault on Ukraine threatens Britain, Trump’s message is that Britain should pare down its welfare state and rearm quickly. American taxpayers are not going to be taken for that ride.It was indeed a Republican, Dwight Eisenhower, who warned against exaggerating the Russian threat to sustain Nato, which was already the biggest and richest military establishment the world had ever seen. The defence lobby demanded deterrence to be infinite. Trump has called that bluff. To him the US’s defence is just that: to guard its own borders. So should be Europe’s. It is hardly an outrageous view. No one was screaming for war when Russia invaded Georgia or Ukraine in 2014. It is one thing to disagree with this argument, another to dismiss it as 1939-style appeasement, as western defence lobbyists have done.Meanwhile, on the subject of borders Trump is hardly out on a limb. The US gains about 150,000 Mexican immigrants a year, to join the 11 million already there. Mexico and Canada bombard the US with imports, as does China. To Trump, Americans should pay for their goods what it costs Americans to make them. If they want Chinese cars they can donate 25% of the price to the government as a tariff. As for fentanyl, the way to get countries such as China to stem the flow and the deaths that follow is again with tariffs, massive tariffs. Sometimes in diplomacy only force talks – force backed up with uncertainty.Almost every president comes to Washington promising to cut the bureaucracy. Thus did Warren Harding, Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and George W Bush. The reality is that an activist president breeds bureaucrats. The power of the centre in a democracy attracts more power. Trump knows he has no time for a long fight. It is Musk and the chainsaw or it is nothing. Education is not a federal function but a job for the states. So shut the US Department of Education. Ditto USAID. Also slash the state department. Raid the Treasury. Sure, things will get broken, but it is no worse than doing nothing. That is what cultural revolution means.Trump and his administration’s actions have been in many respects appalling. To renege on Joe Biden’s aid to Ukraine in mid-battle, to call Volodymyr Zelenskyy a dictator, to insult Canada, to threaten Greenland, to stop famine relief to Africa, to propose a Gaza beach resort, to bully lawyers, to leak security meetings, all beggar belief. Trump and his team are like playground thugs in their crudity and rudeness.But this is the sound of things breaking. It illustrates why Washington develops a defensive “swamp”, to guard against inexperienced presidents. As it is, the chance of Trump succeeding in his radicalism is small. You cannot stage much of a revolution in two years.There will be a counter-revolution. Greenland is unlikely to be an American Ukraine. Tariffs will come back down. The Democrats will recover their nerve. Many of Trump’s “broken things” will be patched together. But in among the chaos are challenges to convention that were overdue. Nato could become realistic. A forever war in Ukraine – or wider – could be avoided and Russia readmitted to the community of nations, as China was after Nixon.This is at least possible. More to the point, the US may review its role in the world, a role that has meant a quarter of a century of moral belligerence, with appalling cost and slaughter. It should revert to being what it is, another nation among nations. That may even be the result of someone moving fast and breaking things.

      Simon Jenkins is a Guardian columnist More

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      US wine importers and bars nervously wait for tariff decision: ‘It’s a sad situation’

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      As the threat of exorbitant US tariffs on European alcohol imports looms, a warehouse in the French port city of Le Havre awaits a delivery of more than 1,000 cases of wine from a dozen boutique wineries across the country.Under normal circumstances, Randall Bush, the founder of Loci Wine in Chicago, would have already arranged with his European partners to gather these wines in Le Havre, the last stop before they are loaded into containers and shipped across the Atlantic. But these wines won’t be arriving stateside anytime soon.After the Trump administration threatened on 13 March to impose 200% tariffs on alcoholic products from Europe, many US importers like Bush have halted all outgoing shipments from Europe.The 1,100 cases of his wine, from family-owned producers in his company’s modest European portfolio, have already been paid for. But due to the tariff threat, they will remain stranded at their respective domaines at least until 2 April when the Trump administration is expected to reveal a “reciprocal tariff number” for each of its global trading partners.The newfound uncertainty around tariffs has many restaurant owners, beverage directors, liquor distributors and wine importers on edge in recent weeks. The only certainty among the trade professionals interviewed is that a 200% tariff would be catastrophic for the wine and spirits industry globally. And while most believe the actual number will end up much lower, everyone agrees that even modest tariffs would send shock waves throughout the entire food and beverage ecosystem, weakening distribution channels and further driving up already astronomical prices.“What scares me is how these hypothetical tariffs would affect [the many] European-themed restaurants like French bistros, Italian trattorias and German beer halls,” said Richard Hanauer, wine director and partner with Lettuce Entertain You. The Chicago-based group owns, manages and licenses more than 130 restaurants and 60 brands in a dozen different states and Washington DC. Hanauer predicts that concept-driven eateries that rely on European products would have to source wine and spirits from other regions because “the consumer is not going to accept the markup”.Even though Trump has been known to walk back dubious claims about tariffs before, the wine and spirits industry is taking this recent threat very seriously. Most American importers, such as Loci’s Bush, are adhering to the US Wine Trade Alliance’s (USWTA) guidance issued in mid-March warning its members to cease wine shipments from Europe. Without guarantees that any potential tariffs would come with a notice period or exemptions for wines shipped prior to their announcement, the organization had no choice but to advise its constituents to halt all EU wine shipments.“Once the wine is on the water, we have no power,” said Bush. “We’re billed by our shippers as soon as the wine arrives.”Tariffs are import taxes incurred by the importer and paid as a percentage of the value of the freight at the point of entry upon delivery. Since shipments from Europe can often take up to six to eight weeks to arrive, firms like Loci face the predicament of not knowing how much they will owe to take delivery of their products when they reach US ports.“We’ve had many US importers tell us that even a 50% unplanned tariff could bankrupt their businesses, so we felt we had no choice,” said Benjamin Aneff, president of the USWTA, of the organization’s injunction. “It’s a sad situation. These are mostly small, family-owned businesses.”Europe’s wineries can also ill afford to be dragged into a trade war with the United States. According to the International Trade Center, the US comprises almost 20% of the EU’s total wine exports, accounting for a total of $14.1bn (€13.1bn) of exported beverage, spirit and vinegar products from the EU in 2024.Many independent importers still recall Trump levying $7.5bn of tariffs on exports from the EU during his first presidency, which included 25% duties on Scotch whiskey, Italian cheeses, certain French wines and other goods. These retaliatory measures, which took effect in October 2019, resulted from a years-long trade dispute between the US and the EU over airline subsidies.“We were hit with duties in late 2019. But we negotiated with a lot of our suppliers, so we were able to stave off any significant price increases,” said André Tamers, the founder of De Maison Selections, a fine-wine importer with a large portfolio of French and Spanish wines and spirits. But because the Covid-19 pandemic hit shortly thereafter, Tamers admitted, it was difficult to gauge the impact of the first round of Trump tariffs. The Biden administration eventually rescinded the measures in June 2021.To pre-empt any potentially disastrous news on the tariff front, many restaurants and bars are ramping up inventory purchases to the extent that their budgets allow. “We made some large commitments for rosé season,” said Grant Reynolds, co-founder of Parcelle, which has an online wine shop as well as two bars and a bricks-and-mortar retail outlet in Manhattan. “To whatever we can reasonably afford, we’ve decided to secure those commitments sooner than later so that we can better weather the storm.”The same is true for many cocktail-focused bars around the country, which are looking to shore up supplies of popular spirits that could end up a victim of tariffs, including allocated scotches and rare cognacs.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“If it becomes very apparent that these tariffs are going to go live, we could be looking at dropping close to $100,000 on inventory just to insulate ourselves because it will save us so much money over the next six months,” said Deke Dunne, beverage director of Washington DC’s award-winning cocktail bar Allegory. “It will have to be a game-time decision, though, because the last thing I want to do is to buy up a lot of inventory I don’t need.” Hanauer said that he’s seen some vendors offering wine buyers heavy discounts and incentives to stockpile cases of European products to prepare for the possibility of onerous tariffs.One bar owner feeling a little less panic compared with his industry counterparts is Fred Beebe, co-owner of Post Haste, a sustainability-minded cocktail bar in Philadelphia. Since it opened in 2023, Post Haste eschews imported spirits of any kind; the bar is stocked exclusively with US products from east of the Mississippi River. “We always thought it would be advantageous to have our producers close to us for environmental reasons and to support the local economy,” said Beebe, “but we didn’t necessarily think that it would also benefit from fluctuations in distribution or global economic policy.”Instead of serving popular European liquor brands such as Grey Goose vodka or Hendrick’s gin, the bar highlights local craft distillers such as Maggie’s Farm in Pittsburgh, which produces a domestic rum made from Louisiana sugar cane. After the recent tariff threats, Beebe says, the decision to rely on local products has turned out to be fortuitous. “I feel really bad for anyone who is running an agave-based program, a tequila or mezcal bar,” said Beebe. “They must be worried constantly about whether the price of all of their products are going to go up by 25% to 50%.”On the importing side, there is agreement that this is an inopportune moment for the wine industry to face new headwinds. Wine consumption has steadily declined in the United States in recent years as gen Z and millennial consumers are turning to cannabis, hard seltzers and spirits such as tequila, or simply embracing sobriety in greater numbers.“Unfortunately, the reality is that wine consumption was already down before this compared to what it was five years ago,” said Reynolds. “This obviously doesn’t help that. So, with more tariffs, you would start to see a greater shift of behaviors away from drinking wine.”But despite slumping sales and the impending tariff threats, niche importers like Tamers say they have little choice but to stay the course. “You leave yourself vulnerable, but if you don’t buy wine, then you don’t have any wine to sell. So, it’s a double-edged sword,” he said. “Our customers are still asking for these products, so there’s not much else we can do.”Aneff hopes that commonsense negotiations will lead to both parties divorcing alcohol tariffs from other trade disputes over aluminum, steel and digital services.“I do have some hope for a potential sectoral agreement on wine, and perhaps spirits, which would benefit domestic producers and huge numbers of small businesses on both sides of the Atlantic,” he said. “I can’t think of anything that would bring more joy to people’s glasses than ensuring free trade on wine.” More

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      Republican senators call for investigation into Signal leak as intelligence chiefs deny breaking law – US politics live

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      The US supreme court upheld on Wednesday a federal regulation targeting largely untraceable “ghost guns” imposed by Joe Biden’s administration in a crackdown on firearms whose use has proliferated in crimes nationwide.The justices, in a 7-2 ruling authored by conservative justice Neil Gorsuch, overturned a lower court’s decision that the US Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives had exceeded its authority in issuing the 2022 rule targeting parts and kits for ghost guns.Conservative justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas dissented. Gorsuch was joined in the majority by conservative justices John Roberts, Amy Coney Barrett and Brett Kavanaugh as well as the court’s three liberal members.Ghost gun products are typically bought online and may be quickly assembled at home, without the serial numbers ordinarily used to trace guns or background checks on purchasers required for other firearms.Plaintiffs including parts manufacturers, various gun owners and two gun rights groups – the Firearms Policy Coalition and Second Amendment Foundation – sued to block the ATF rule in federal court in Texas.The regulation required manufacturers of firearms kits and parts, such as partly complete frames or receivers, to mark their products with serial numbers, obtain licenses and conduct background checks on purchasers, as already required for other commercially made firearms.The rule clarified that these kits and components are covered by the definition of “firearm” under a 1968 federal law called the Gun Control Act and that commercial manufacturers of such kits must become licensed.The UK does not want to escalate trade wars, finance minister Rachel Reeves said on Thursday after US president Donald Trump announced import tariffs on cars and auto parts. The response came with London locked in talks with Washington over potentially securing a post-Brexit trade deal.“We’re not at the moment in a position where we want to do anything to escalate these trade wars,” Reeves told Sky News, according to Agence France-Presse (AFP).“We are looking to secure a better trading relationship with the United States,” she told the broadcaster, adding that the Labour government was “in extensive talks” with the Trump administration over securing a trade deal.Trump on Wednesday announced steep tariffs on the auto sector, provoking threats of retaliation from trading partners ahead of further promised trade levies next week.“What we’re going to be doing is a 25% tariff on all cars that are not made in the United States,” Trump said, as he signed the order in the Oval Office. The duties take effect at 12.01 am (04.01 GMT) on 3 April and impact foreign-made cars and light trucks. Key automobile parts will also be hit within the month.The UK trade body for the auto sector urged the US and the UK to strike a deal that avoids Trump’s “disappointing” tariffs on foreign-made cars, reports AFP.“The industry urges both sides to come together immediately and strike a deal that works for all,” Mike Hawes, chief executive at the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders, said in a statement late Wednesday.“The UK and US auto industries have a longstanding and productive relationship, with US consumers enjoying vehicles built in Britain by some iconic brands, while thousands of UK motorists buy cars made in America,” Hawes noted.He said that “rather than imposing additional tariffs, we should explore ways in which opportunities for both British and American manufacturers can be created as part of a mutually beneficial relationship, benefiting consumers and creating jobs and growth across the Atlantic.”Speaking at the end of January, Hawes said the Us was “an important market” for UK-produced luxury brands such as Bentley and Rolls-Royce, adding that this allowed for “a greater opportunity to absorb” tariffs.President Donald Trump’s plan to impose a 25% tariff on imported cars and light trucks starting next week is “very bad news” and the only solution for now is for the European Union to raise its own tariffs, French finance minister Eric Lombard said on Thursday.Lombard, who was speaking on France Inter radio, said he hoped be able to discuss soon with his US counterparts in view of lowering those tariffs, adding a trade war would lead “to nothing”, reports Reuters.Trump, who sees tariffs as a tool to raise revenue to offset his promised tax cuts and to revive a long-declining US industrial base, said collections would begin on 3 April.The private data of top security advisers to US President Donald Trump can be accessed online, German news magazine Der Spiegel reported on Wednesday, adding to the fallout from the officials’ use of a Signal group chat to plan airstrikes on Yemen.Mobile phone numbers, email addresses and in some cases passwords used by national security adviser Mike Waltz, defense secretary Pete Hegseth, and director of national intelligence Tulsi Gabbard can be found via commercial data-search services and hacked data dumped online, it reported. It is not clear in all cases how recent the details are.The Trump administration has been facing calls for the resignation of senior officials amid bipartisan criticism after Monday’s embarrassing revelations. The chat group, which included vice-president JD Vance, Hegseth, the secretary of state, Marco Rubio, and others, discussed sensitive plans to carry out strikes on Houthi targets in Yemen via the Signal app, potentially threatening the safety of US servicemen and women taking part in the operation.On Wednesday evening, Trump backed Hegseth, saying “He had nothing to do with this” and calling the scandal a “witch-hunt”.The phone numbers and email addresses – mostly current – were in some cases used for Instagram and LinkedIn profiles, cloud-storage service Dropbox, and apps that track a user’s location.Der Spiegel reported it was “particularly easy” to discover Hegseth’s mobile number and email address, using a commercial provider of contact information. It found that the email address, and in some cases even the password associated with it, could be found in more than 20 data leaks. It reported that it was possible to verify that the email address was used just a few days ago.It said the mobile number led to a WhatsApp account that Hegseth appeared to have only recently deleted.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 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” had been shared in the chat. Republicans are now calling for investigations, as well.According to reporting from the Hill, top Republican senators are calling for various committees to investigate the leak, including the Senate armed services committee and the Senate intelligence committee. The Mississippi senator Roger Wicker, who chairs the armed services committee, told the Hill he would be asking the defense department’s inspector general to investigate the scandal.Messages, released on Wednesday, from the Signal group chat discussing an attack on Yemen revealed details of US bombings, drone launches and other information about the assault, including descriptions of weather conditions and specific weapons.“There is a clear public interest in disclosing the sort of information that Trump advisers included in nonsecure communications channels, especially because senior administration figures are attempting to downplay the significance of the messages that were shared,” the Atlantic wrote.It reproduced numerous messages from the text chat between the Pentagon chief, Pete Hegseth – who said on Tuesday that “nobody was texting war plans” – and top intelligence officials.US intelligence chiefs on Wednesday denied breaking the law or revealing classified information in a group chat where they discussed details of airstrikes on Yemen in the presence of a journalist, despite allegations from Democrats that the leak was reckless and possibly illegal.Democrats used an intelligence committee hearing on Wednesday to demand an explanation of how operational military plans are not classified information.In rare signs of unrest, top Republican senators called 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.More on that in a moment, but first, here are some other developments:

      The private data of top security advisers to US President Donald Trump can be accessed online, German news magazine Der Spiegel reported, adding to the fallout from the Signal group chat scandal.

      Trump announced plans to impose sweeping 25% tariffs on cars from overseas on Wednesday, days before the president is expected to announce wide-ranging levies on other goods from around the world. Canadian prime minister Mark Carney called the move a “direct attack” on Canadian workers.

      The US supreme court upheld a federal regulation targeting largely untraceable “ghost guns” imposed by Joe Biden’s administration in a crackdown on firearms whose use has proliferated in crimes nationwide.

      The heads of National Public Radio and the Public Broadcasting Service testified in a heated congressional subcommittee hearing, helmed by conservative Marjorie Taylor Greene, amid a renewed Republican effort to defund US public media.

      Republican House speaker Mike Johnson suggested potentially defunding, restructuring or eliminating US federal courts as a means of pushing back against judicial decisions that have challenged Donald Trump’s policies.

      The Trump administration has paused the processing of certain green card applications as the US government continues to implement a hardline immigration agenda.

      Rumeysa Ozturk, a doctoral student in Boston detained on Tuesday by federal immigration agents in response to her pro-Palestinian activism, was on Wednesday evening being detained at the South Louisiana Ice processing center, according to the government’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) detainee locator page. More

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      Let’s put it in language the Signal leakers will understand: what a bunch of pathetic sleazebags | Emma Brockes

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      The Maga-fication of American political discourse, which started, arguably, with Donald Trump mocking a disabled reporter in 2015, peaked this week with news of Pete Hegseth referring to European countries in the leaked Signal chat as “PATHETIC”, and enjoyed a detour last Tuesday when Tim Walz, the governor of Minnesota and former running mate of Kamala Harris, appeared at a town hall in Wisconsin and called Elon Musk “a dipshit”. (This is not the first time he has referred to Musk this way. Right before the election last year, Walz told a crowd: “Look, Elon’s on that stage, jumping around, skipping like a dipshit.”)Parking for a moment the perfection of the phrase “skipping like a dipshit” to capture Musk’s very particular style of movement and speech, the range of what can and can’t be said in politics has clearly, radically changed. When you look back on the phrase that caused Hillary Clinton so much trouble in 2016 – “basket of deplorables” – it sounds like a quote from an 18th-century novel. “Take that, sir! You and your basket of deplorables!” Now we have Trump referring to Jeffrey Goldberg, the Atlantic editor mistakenly added to the Signal chat, as a “sleazebag”, and Hegseth, the US defense secretary, telling JD Vance that he fully shares the vice-president’s “loathing of European free-loading”. We are millimetres away from someone shouting “asshole” across the floor of the Senate.The Signal chat, obviously, wasn’t supposed to be public, and responding to the leak this week has put the White House in a delicious bind – or rather, a bind that we might have enjoyed as delicious had it not underscored just how petrifyingly stupid Trump’s team really is. On Wednesday, Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, had simultaneously to dismiss further revelations from the Atlantic designed to expose the White House lie that none of the information discussed was classified, while slamming the magazine for leaking “sensitive information”. Well, Karoline, which is it?The new information shared by the Atlantic on Wednesday was, to use government-approved language, freaking MIND-BLOWING. Two hours before the Yemeni bombing raid, Hegseth, Vance and national security adviser Mike Waltz went into extraordinary detail as to the exact timing, nature and target of the bombings. “1345: ‘Trigger Based’ F-18 1st Strike Window Starts (Target Terrorist is @ his Known Location so SHOULD BE ON TIME – also, Strike Drones Launch (MQ-9s),” wrote Hegseth, followed by a stream of similar details. After the release of the information on Wednesday, retired military brass lined up in the US to tell cable news channels: “There is no question this is classified.”And while it remained deeply unfortunate for the Trump administration that, of all the people they might have mistakenly cc-ed into the group, it happened to be a serious journalist like Jeffrey Goldberg, given the frat boy tenor of the exchange, it could also have been a lot worse. We should, surely, be grateful that Mike Waltz, the national security adviser who organised the group on Signal, didn’t do that thing – look, we’ve all done it – where you inadvertently send a bitchy message about someone to the person in question, or in this case a message outlining a plan to drop a bomb on their head to the Houthi rebel commander target. Or as Waltz described him, in the style of a man shooting the breeze at the water cooler, “their top missile guy”. One assumes the only reason that guy wasn’t in the chat, too, is that he hadn’t gotten around to signing up for Signal.It’s not the rudeness, of course, it’s the flippancy that terrifies. The tone of the messages flying between the most powerful people in the world via an unsecure messaging app and on subjects of vital national security was that of someone idly texting with one hand while throwing and catching a hacky sack in the other. At one point, per Wednesday’s new trove, Mike Waltz wrote “typing too fast” and it must have taken every shred of collective will power in the group for no one to reply, “Sausage fingers!”Waltz, by the way, is the figure who has come closest to saying sorry for the mess, remarking on Fox News on Tuesday that he took “full responsibility” for the error. But then he ruined the vanishingly rare moment of appearing to be the only adult in the room by referring to Goldberg – a hero without whom none of us would know any of this had happened – as “scum”. And, sadly, back we went to square one.

      Emma Brockes is a Guardian columnist More

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      Trump announces 25% tariffs on all cars not made in US amid scrutiny over Signal leak – live

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      “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

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      Newly shared Signal messages show Trump advisers discussed Yemen attack plans

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      The Atlantic magazine has published fresh messages from a group chat among top US officials in which they discuss specific operational details of plans to bomb Yemen, spurring leading Democrats to accuse Trump administration officials of lying to Congress by claiming the messages did not contain classified information.The initial revelations by the magazine and its editor, Jeffrey Goldberg, who was accidentally added to the chat on the messaging app Signal, have sparked a huge outcry in the US.The Trump administration has faced withering attacks over the disastrous leak of sensitive information, including in a House intelligence committee hearing on Wednesday featuring two participants in the chat: the US director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, and the CIA director, John Ratcliffe.However, the magazine did not initially include specific details of the attack, saying it did not want to jeopardise national security. But as numerous Trump administration officials have claimed that none of the information shared was classified – despite the apparent inclusion of operational details of the US strike on Yemen’s Houthi militia, which has been attacking shipping in the Red Sea – the Atlantic said in a new article on Wednesday it was now releasing that information.It reproduced numerous messages from the text chat between the Pentagon chief, Pete Hegseth – who said on Tuesday that “nobody was texting war plans” – and top intelligence officials.They included details of US bombings, drone launches and targeting information of the assault, including descriptions of weather conditions.They also mention specific weapons to be used, timings for attacks and references to a “target terrorist”, presumably a Houthi militant. There is further discussion of confirmation that a target had been killed, and the use of several emojis.“There is a clear public interest in disclosing the sort of information that Trump advisers included in nonsecure communications channels, especially because senior administration figures are attempting to downplay the significance of the messages that were shared,” the magazine said.“If this text had been received by someone hostile to American interests – or someone merely indiscreet, and with access to social media – the Houthis would have had time to prepare for what was meant to be a surprise attack on their strongholds.“The consequences for American pilots could have been catastrophic.”Trump administration officials have repeatedly claimed that the messages contained no classified information. On Tuesday, after the first article was published, Gabbard and Ratcliffe said the leak contained no classified information.The Atlantic also quoted an email response from the White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt – after the magazine contacted the Trump administration to say it was considering publishing the entirety of the email chain – in which she said the chat did not include classified information but also that the White House did not want the messages released.“As we have repeatedly stated, there was no classified information transmitted in the group chat,” Leavitt wrote. “However, as the CIA Director and National Security Advisor have both expressed today, that does not mean we encourage the release of the conversation.”Donald Trump, when asked on Tuesday about the leak, also said: “It wasn’t classified information,” while adding that the leak was “the only glitch in two months”.After the latest messages were published, Leavitt claimed on X that “these were NOT ‘war plans’. This entire story was another hoax written by a Trump-hater who is well-known for his sensationalist spin.”Waltz, too, wrote on social media: “No locations. No sources & methods. NO WAR PLANS,”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionLater , at the White House press briefing Leavitt said Elon Musk’s government team was investigating how the incident occurred. “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 told reporters.“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 Signal, on which senior Trump administration officials accidentally shared military plans in a group containing a journalist, was an approved app. Leavitt said it was loaded on to government phones at the Pentagon, Department of State and Central Intelligence Agency.But Democrats used the intelligence committee hearing on Wednesday to demand an explanation of how operational military plans are not classified information.The Illinois Democrat Raja Krishnamoorthi had an aide hold up the messages in which Hegseth shared exact details of the strikes.“This is classified information. It’s a weapon system as well as sequence of strikes, as well as details about the operations,” Krishnamoorthi said. “This text message is clearly classified information. Secretary Hegseth has disclosed military plans as well as classified information. He needs to resign immediately.”The committee’s top Democrat, Jim Himes, asked Gabbard why she had told senators the day before that no details of timing, targets or weapons had been shared.“My answer yesterday was based on my recollection, or the lack thereof, on the details that were posted there,” Gabbard replied.“What was shared today reflects the fact that I was not directly involved with that part of the Signal chat and replied at the end, reflecting the effects, the very brief effects that the national security adviser had shared.”Ratcliffe, meanwhile, said: “I used an appropriate channel to communicate sensitive information. It was permissible to do so. I didn’t transfer any classified information.”Last week, NPR reported that the Pentagon warned its staff specifically against the use of Signal because of its security vulnerabilities. In a Pentagon “OPSEC special bulletin” sent on 18 March, it warned that Russian hacking groups could aim to exploit the vulnerability.Questions have also been raised about whether some of the participants in the Signal chat might have been using their personal phones.Steve Witkoff, Trump’s special envoy to the Middle East, who was in Moscow at the time to discuss Ukraine with Vladimir Putin, wrote on X that while in Russia “I only had with me a secure phone provided by the government” but then explained that the reason he did not make any comments in the chat until after returning to the US was “because I had no access to my personal devices until I returned from my trip”.The messages in the Signal chat were set to be automatically deleted in under four weeks. The Federal Records Act typically mandates that government communication records are kept for two years.The Atlantic said it did not generally publish information about military operations if it could possibly harm US personnel but that accusations from the Trump administration that it was “lying” caused it to believe that “people should see the texts in order to reach their own conclusions”.“There is a clear public interest in disclosing the sort of information that Trump advisers included in nonsecure communications channels, especially because senior administration figures are attempting to downplay the significance of the messages that were shared,” the magazine wrote. More

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      Trump wants a Nobel peace prize. Here’s how he can earn one | Ken Roth

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      Donald Trump’s instinctive deference to the Israeli government is at odds with his self-image as an expert dealmaker. Much as it may seem laughable that the president wants the Nobel peace prize, his quest may be the best chance we have for securing any US government regard for the rights and lives of Palestinians in Gaza.Trump currently seems to endorse the strategy of the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, of trying to pummel Hamas into accepting defeat. To force Hamas to release its remaining hostages and to disband its diminished military force, Netanyahu has resumed Israel’s strategy of starving and bombing Palestinian civilians. In less than a week, about 600 Palestinians have already been killed.The second phase of the ceasefire was supposed to have led to the release of Hamas’s last hostages in return for the freeing of Palestinian prisoners held by Israel, the complete withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza, and a permanent end to the fighting. Instead, the Israeli government has unilaterally changed the terms. It wants the hostages released and Hamas dismantled without committing to end the war. Hamas has rejected that one-sided ultimatum, evidently worried that Netanyahu would then resume attacking Palestinian civilians unimpeded.This is not an idle fear. The point of the renewed attacks may not be simply to wrest concessions from Hamas. The vast majority of the hostages freed so far have been released after negotiations rather than by military action, and most families of the hostages, prioritizing survival of their loved ones, want a negotiated solution.Rather, Israel’s aim may be to advance the project of expelling Palestinian civilians from Gaza, the longtime dream of the Israeli far right. Already the defense minister, Israel Katz, is threatening to seize and annex parts of Gaza, and Netanyahu is reportedly planning a new and larger ground invasion. Now that Trump has endorsed the forced permanent deportation of 2 million Palestinians from Gaza – a massive war crime and crime against humanity – Netanyahu may feel he has a green light to pursue that callous strategy.Tellingly, the far-right Israeli politician Itamar Ben-Gvir has rejoined Netanyahu’s governing coalition as police minister now that the temporary ceasefire, which he opposed, has ended. Head of the pro-settler, nationalist-religious Jewish Power party, Ben-Gvir has long been unabashed about his desire to “solve” the conflict in Gaza by getting rid of the Palestinians. And we should recognize that Gaza would most likely be just a prelude to the occupied West Bank.In these circumstances, a deal with Hamas seems unlikely. Why would Hamas capitulate if that would permanently separate the Palestinian people from their homeland?Netanyahu and Trump may calculate that overwhelming military force, if applied with sufficient brutality, would force Hamas’s hand. That has long been the Israeli strategy. Trump has even resumed delivery of the enormous 2,000lb bombs that Joe Biden had suspended because Israel was using them to indiscriminately decimate entire Palestinian neighborhoods.The international criminal court prosecutor has already hinted that this indiscriminate bombardment may be the next focus of his war-crime charges. Trump himself would be at risk of being charged for aiding and abetting these atrocities – an eventuality that would not lead to his immediate jailing but would severely limit his ability to travel to the 125 governments that as members of the ICC would have an obligation to arrest him. (Trump might ask Vladimir Putin about how it felt not to be able to attend the August 2023 Brics summit in South Africa for fear of arrest.)Hamas has so far shown no inclination to succumb to this war-crime strategy, and the surrounding Arab states have rejected becoming a party to another Nakba, the catastrophic forced displacement of Palestinians in 1948. The big question is whether Trump comes to recognize that a deal, not forced surrender, is the most likely way out of the current horrors in Gaza that he had vowed to end.For now, Trump’s deference to Israel seems firm, but one should never take anything for granted with Trump. If there is any constant to his rule, it is that his self-interest overcomes concern for others.That’s where the Nobel prize comes in. If Trump wants to be known as the master of the deal, it won’t be by underwriting more Israeli war crimes.Trump alone has the capacity to force Netanyahu to adopt a different approach. Despite Israel’s dependence on US military assistance, Netanyahu got away with ignoring Biden’s entreaties to curb the starvation and slaughter of Palestinian civilians because the Israeli leader knew that the Republican party had his back. But Trump has become the Republican party. If he pressures Israel, Netanyahu has nowhere to the right to turn.That is how Trump played a decisive role in securing the temporary ceasefire that began shortly before his 20 January inauguration. He could do the same thing now to force Netanyahu toward a more productive, less inhumane path.What might that look like? The best option remains a two-state solution – an Israeli and Palestinian state living in peace side-by-side. The main alternatives would be rejected by Israel (recognition of the “one-state reality” with equal rights for all) or most everyone else (the apartheid of endless occupation).The Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, has said that he will not normalize relations with Israel, which Trump craves, without a Palestinian state. Both the Saudis and the Emiratis have also insisted on a state as a condition for financing the rebuilding of Gaza.But wouldn’t a Nobel peace prize for Trump be preposterous? No more so than the one granted, however controversially, to Henry Kissinger. He had directed or approved war crimes or mass atrocities in Vietnam, Cambodia, East Timor, Bangladesh and Chile, but the Nobel committee honored him nonetheless for concluding a peace deal with Vietnam and withdrawing US forces. A Trump pivot away from Netanyahu’s endless war would be no more surprising than Kissinger’s about-face.Admittedly, it would be foolhardy to bet on Trump becoming an advocate for a Palestinian state, but it is worth recognizing that his personal ambitions could lead him in that direction. It speaks to the topsy-turvy world of Trump that the Palestinians’ best hope in the face of an Israeli government that respects no legal bounds is to play up what it would take for Trump to secure his coveted Nobel. We must persuade Trump to do the right thing for the wrong reason.

      Kenneth Roth, the former executive director of Human Rights Watch (1993-2022), is a visiting professor at Princeton’s School of Public and International Affairs. His book, Righting Wrongs, was recently published by Knopf and Allen Lane More

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      What the accidentally leaked war group chat reveals about the Trump administration | Moira Donegan

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      Perhaps one of the greatest lessons of the Donald Trump era, for me, has been in learning the difference between being shocked and being surprised. And indeed it was a bit shocking to learn, via an essay published by the Atlantic’s editor-in-chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, that a high-profile journalist had been included on a chat on the commercial messaging app in which a military strike on the Houthi rebels in Yemen was coordinated – including discussions of the timing of the attack, debates about political messaging, personnel coordination and weapons to be used – seemingly without anyone noticing that he was there.It was shocking that their incompetence was so fortuitous – that the person they included, seemingly accidentally, in their unsecured group chat about war plans was someone so uniquely equipped to broadcast their idiocy to a large audience. But it was in no way surprising that members of the Trump administration are behaving with such recklessness, shortsightedness, indifference to responsibility or peevish sadism. Of course they’re planning overseas bombings in a group chat, I thought when I first read Goldberg’s account. Because we live in an age where the people with the superlative power are those who are least temperamentally suited for it; because the stupidity of this White House outpaces any attempt at parody; and because these guys are exactly as dumb in real life as they look on television.The story goes like this: as part of its backing of Israel’s wars in the Middle East, the Trump administration sought to strike against Houthi rebels, a coalition of Yemeni militants and pirates who have been attacking commercial vessels in the Red Sea in an attempt to pressure the west to stop supporting Israel’s war on Palestinians. Trump authorized a military strike on a scale more lethal and less precise than those that had previously been launched by the Biden administration; according to a Signal user identified as JD Vance, the president wanted to “send a message” and convey strength on the world stage. In the chat, no other strategic rationale for the strike was offered.Such operations are supposed to be planned in secret, so that neither the targets, nor foreign governments, nor members of the media are aware of them ahead of time; the secrecy is what keeps the military personnel who carry out these strikes safe from some threats to their lives, and what allows the US to carry out its objectives unprompted. But the planning is also supposed to be documented, as much federal action is, to comply with records-keeping requirements.The resulting measures can be intense: often, to discuss classified matters, high-ranking federal officials enter safe rooms equipped with anti-surveillance technology, in which they are not allowed to take their phones; at other times, they are only permitted to discuss such matters on specially secured government-issued devices. (Signal, according to Goldberg, is not downloadable on these government devices, meaning that the administration officials in the chat were using their personal phones.) These are measures that have been put in place in order to protect interests that are worth protecting: to guard against foreign intelligence agencies (or, for that matter, magazine editors) learning of America’s plans, to keep Americans safe, to comply with records-keeping laws. Abiding by them is a sign of respect – both for the power of the executive, and for the law.And so that’s not what the Trump administration did. Instead, in order to coordinate the military strike, which was apparently greenlit by Trump in an in-person meeting in the White House situation room, the national security adviser, Michael Waltz, created an enormous national security threat by convening a planning group on a commercial messaging app.Why did the Trump officials use Signal for this, of all things? The reality is that they’re probably using it for a lot; the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, which has become something of a handbook for the Trump regime, recommends using private apps to conduct official business, so as to evade records-keeping laws. Signal is an app that is marketed for its privacy and message-disappearing features: a single member of a chat can mark messages to be deleted, permanently, for all members. (In another seemingly illegal move, Waltz reportedly set the messages in the war-planning group chat to disappear after a matter of weeks.)If the Trump administration’s members are habitually using Signal to conduct official business, the danger is not only that any foreign intelligence agency worth their salt (or any journalist who happens to benefit from their incompetence) could be listening in with relative ease. It’s that the records-keeping apparatus that is meant to preserve such conversations could not reach and document them – meaning that the use of Signal would specifically make such sensitive national security information more accessible to foreign adversaries and less accessible to historians and journalists here in the US.The content of the chats themselves is grim, too, providing an insight into the petty and eager social dynamics within Trump’s inner circle and the administration’s principle-thin commitment to any understanding of policy. Vance pipes up to suggest delaying the strike; he claims to be worried about public opinion on the issue, and complains that an attack on the Houthis would provide economic benefits to Europe, who he wants to punish for some reason. He does not seem to feel he has enough clout to actually oppose the strike, however, undermining his own complaints with caveats that he will defer to others.The defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, chimes in, clearly thinking he’s supposed to be the center of attention, to eagerly but insubstantially support Vance’s points before pivoting to saying he wants to go ahead with the strike anyway. He has the cringing eagerness of a personality hire: he wants to be seen talking, but doesn’t really have much to say.Stephen Miller, Trump’s surrogate in the chat, says, bizarrely, that Europe will be made to compensate America for the strike at some later date, reflecting the Trumpian vision of all politics as an extortion racket to extract money, favors, or – perhaps more to the point – shows of deference. Everyone defers to Miller immediately. It is a group of very stupid people, trying to create post-hoc justifications for something their boss told them to do, not thinking too hard about what they’re actually doing – which is killing people.There is a risk, in talking about the Trump administration’s decision to plan a military strike over a Signal group chat in which they accidentally included a prominent journalist, of making it seem like the only problem with the administration’s actions was in their breach of confidentiality and decorum.But the controversy that erupted about the Signal chat after Goldberg revealed his inclusion on Monday seemed almost to overshadow the strategic folly and moral depravity of the strike itself: a reckless escalation in a volatile region that risked provoking Iran, the Houthi’s backer and a nuclear state, and which took the lives of 53 human beings, including five children. That the strike seems to have been planned in a way that endangered national security and violated several federal laws should not blind us to the fact that the strike itself was stupid.But there is something in the story of the accidentally leaked war secrets group chat that speaks to the essence of the second Trump administration: its cavalier incompetence, its contempt for human life, its fealty to grievance and resentment, indifference to consequence, and jeering, jocular enthusiasm for violence. It shows us something about the Trump administration that we have previously seen only rarely: what they act like when they think they are in private. It’s not a pretty sight.

      Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist More