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      Wednesday briefing: Just how bad was the White House accidentally leaking military plans over Signal?

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      Good morning. Look, it could happen to anyone: I well remember, for example, the time I added my mum to a thread with my siblings discussing what to get her for Christmas. On the other hand, I don’t have a secure communications facility in my house for when I need to get something out on the family group chat. Also, we rarely digress from pictures of cute kids to setting out war plans for an imminent set of airstrikes on the Houthis in Yemen.So perhaps the latest Trump administration hullabaloo isn’t that relatable, after all. Two days after the Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg revealed that he had been mystifyingly added to a thread on Signal – an encrypted WhatsApp-like instant messaging app – in which vice-president JD Vance, defence secretary Pete Hegseth, and a host of others chatted about a highly sensitive operation, there are as many questions as answers. How on earth did Goldberg get added in the first place? Why didn’t anybody realise the error? Are White House officials doing this all the time? And how vulnerable are their communications to interception from America’s adversaries?Today’s newsletter explains this absolute dumpster fire of a story, and why it matters. Here are the headlines.Five big stories

      Spring statement | Rachel Reeves will make additional welfare cuts in her spring statement on Wednesday after the Office for Budget Responsibility rejected her estimate of savings from the changes announced last week. The chancellor is expected to announce an additional £500m in benefits cuts to make up part of the £1.6bn shortfall.

      Ukraine | Russia and Ukraine have agreed to “eliminate the use of force” in the Black Sea, though the Kremlin said it was conditional on sanctions relief for its agricultural exports. The warring parties also agreed to implement a previously announced 30-day halt on attacks against energy networks.

      Assisted dying | The introduction of assisted dying in England and Wales is likely to be pushed back by a further two years in a delay that supporters fear could mean the law never comes into force. The delay marks the latest major change to the proposals, which have proven deeply contentious in the Commons and beyond.

      Gaza | Press freedom organisations have condemned the killing of two journalists in Gaza on Monday by the Israeli armed forces. Hossam Shabat, a 23-year-old correspondent for the Al Jazeera Mubasher channel, and Mohammed Mansour, a correspondent for Palestine Today, died in separate targeted airstrikes.

      Society | Non-monogamous people are just as happy in their relationships as those with only one partner but are not “significantly” more sexually satisfied, research suggests. The authors of a new study said their findings challenged what they called a prevailing “one-size-fits-all approach to relationships”.
      In depth: How a journalist got a front row seat to US military planningView image in fullscreen“This is going to require some explaining,” Jeffrey Goldberg writes at the beginning of his Atlantic story about how Pete Hegseth ended up messaging him about an imminent attack on Yemen, and he’s absolutely right.In brief: Goldberg was added to a Signal thread by Michael Waltz, Donald Trump’s national security adviser, who presumably confused his contact with someone else’s. Goldberg was allowed to lurk on the thread for several days as senior officials – here’s a rundown of the dramatis personae – discussed the timing of the strike against the Houthis, fulminated against European “free-loading”, and celebrated the operation’s success with fire emojis. Eventually, Goldberg removed himself, and then wrote a story about it. Since then, all hell has broken loose.Here’s what else you need to know about the significant issues raised by this fiasco – and, as a bonus, the best quote from the fallout so far: “Everyone in the White House can agree on one thing: Mike Waltz is a fucking idiot.” (Donald Trump said he was “doing his best”, but the two aren’t mutually exclusive.)What’s the problem with having national security discussions on Signal?The most glaring issue is the lack of adequate security protocols for discussions about US military operations – even if, hilariously, Hegseth sent a message to the group saying “we are currently clean on OPSEC” while Goldberg was still in it.Such conversations are meant to be held in enclosed areas called sensitive compartmented information facilities, or Scifs, which have reinforced physical defences against eavesdropping, tight controls on access, and shields against electronic surveillance. Many senior government officials have Scifs installed at their homes; failing that, they are meant to use secure government-issued devices. Peter Beaumont has more on what America’s adversaries might have learned.To state the most obvious point: if the discussion had been held under such conditions, a journalist would not have been accidentally added. But even if Goldberg hadn’t been included, significant issues would remain.While the messaging app Signal is a more secure way to exchange messages than ordinary texting, it is a rung below official government communication channels. One aspect of the risk is that it is possible to download messages to a desktop, which lacks the layers of security in the app itself. The Pentagon warned its employees against using Signal last week.It is also possible that the participants were using their own devices. In this Politico piece, a former White House official warns: “Their personal phones are all hackable, and it’s highly likely that foreign intelligence services are sitting on their phones watching them type the shit out.”Is it possible the participants broke the law?By holding sensitive national security discussions on a commercially available app, the participants may well have violated the US espionage act. Kevin Carroll, a national security lawyer, told the Washington Post: “I have defended service members accused of violating the Espionage Act through gross negligence for far, far less. If these people were junior uniformed personnel, they would be court-martialed.”Vance, Hegseth and their colleagues may also have been in breach of federal records law – which mandates that messages about official acts be preserved. Many former officials have said that for that reason, they confined their use of platforms like Signal to bland logistical discussions or as a way to direct others to a more secure channel.That is not what happened here – and because Waltz switched on Signal’s “disappearing messages” function, the discussions might have vanished for ever barring Goldberg’s accidental inclusion. Yesterday, CIA director John Ratcliffe, another participant, claimed that the decisions taken in the group were also formally recorded.What did we learn about the Trump administration’s view of Europe?One thing the leak makes absolutely clear: when Vance expresses his disdain for Europe in public, he isn’t putting it on. Part of the discussion about the timing of a strike against the Houthis was focused on the idea that by protecting a trade route used by European shipping, Washington was giving EU countries a free ride.Vance, who expressed his reluctance to conduct the operation immediately, eventually said: “If you think we should do it let’s go. I just hate bailing Europe out again.” In reply, Hegseth agreed: “I fully share your loathing of European free-loading. It’s PATHETIC.”The discussion concluded with a suggestion that “we soon make clear” that Europe should contribute to the cost of the operation.In Brussels yesterday, all of that was greeted with weary dismay. “Horrific to see in black and white,” one European diplomat told the BBC. “But hardly surprising.”Are there any awkward historical precedents which the protagonists have expressed strong opinions about?Funny you should ask! After the story broke, CNN put together a montage that showed just some of the times that those involved in the message thread took a stern line on the notorious row over Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server while in office.“If it was anyone other than Hillary Clinton, they’d be in jail right now,” Hegseth said on Fox News in 2016. Marco Rubio said in the same year that “nobody is above the law – not even Hillary Clinton.” And Ratcliffe said in 2019 that “mishandling classified information is still a violation of the espionage act”.Later, Trump’s consigliere Stephen Miller tweeted that because of Clinton’s “illegal” behaviour, “foreign adversaries could easily hack classified ops & intel in real time from other side of the globe.” With that uncompromising line, the White House must be hoping Stephen Miller never hears what Stephen Miller’s been up to.The administration steered well clear of addressing that aspect of the story. Hillary Clinton didn’t, though: “You have got to be kidding me,” she wrote on X, along with an eyeballs emoji.How have Trump’s supporters fought back?The White House has admitted the thread “appears to be authentic”. Still, that didn’t stop Hegseth turning to a familiar strategy in response: attack the media.“Nobody was texting war plans,” he said, although Goldberg reported that Hegseth himself texted “operational details of forthcoming strikes on Yemen”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionHegseth also sought to discredit Goldberg, among the most eminent journalists in the United States and one with no obvious track record of dishonesty: “You’re talking about a deceitful and highly discredited so-called journalist who’s made a profession of peddling hoaxes.” Later, Trump called him a “total sleazebag”. Waltz, for his part, called him “bottom scum” and suggested he could have got himself added to the group “deliberately” because he “wasn’t on my phone”, a fairly head-scratching claim.All of that aligned closely with the approach taken by presenters on Fox News. Sean Hannity dismissed it as “the state-run legacy media mob” being “obsessed with an accidentally leaked text”.Another Will Cain, found a silver lining: “After years of secrecy and incompetence, if you read the content of these messages, I think you will come away proud that these are the leaders making these decisions in America.”But the idea that there’s nothing to see here doesn’t seem to have landed with everyone. At a hearing before the Senate intelligence committee yesterday, John Ratcliffe and Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence who was also on the thread, faced intense questioning about their roles, and found it tricky to agree on a strategy: immediately after Gabbard refused to confirm her participation in the thread, Ratcliffe confirmed he had done so and said it was permissible.“What you’re saying didn’t make sense,” said Democratic senator Mark Warner. Somewhere in Washington, a Republican was probably sending an eyeroll emoji.What else we’ve been readingView image in fullscreen

      Lorenzo Tondo spoke to witnesses about the brutal assault on Oscar-winning Palestinian director Hamdan Ballal by settlers, who handed him over to the military, bruised and bleeding. The attack on Ballal, who was subsequently detained, “might be their revenge on us for making the movie. It feels like a punishment,” said Basel Adra, another of No Other Land’s directors. Nimo

      The Guardian’s blockbuster invertebrate of the year prize continues with Patrick Barkham singing the praises of the “twerking pollinator with a bum-bag”: it is, of course, the dark-edged bee-fly. Slightly alarmingly, they “use false legs to bumble into a bee burrow and scoff the pollen left for the bee babies”. Archie

      Rashid Khalidi is searing in his response to Columbia University’s “capitulation” with the Trump administration’s sweeping policy changes last week. “Columbia barely merits the name of a university, since its teaching and scholarship on the Middle East, and soon much else, will soon be vetted by a ‘senior vice-provost for inclusive pedagogy’, in reality a senior vice-provost for Israeli propaganda,” he writes. Nimo

      The bleak sight of Conor McGregor visiting the White House on St Patrick’s Day has not gone down well with most people in Ireland, writes Justine McCarthy – but his putative presidential run risks galvanising the country’s “small but vocal minority on the hard right”. Archie

      For those who are mourning the end of Severance (me), Claire Cao has a great antidote: the film Triangle (pictured above) will scratch the “puzzle box” sci-fi plot itch that the Ben Stiller thriller has left. Nimo
      SportView image in fullscreenFootball | Real Madrid are close to completing a deal to sign Trent Alexander-Arnold on a free transfer this summer. The Liverpool right-back has long been a target for the European champions and there is now a widespread expectation that he will join Carlo Ancelotti’s side when his contract expires at the end of the season.Football | David Brooks scored in the sixth minute of injury time to rescue a point for Wales in their World Cup qualifier against North Macedonia. The game had been 0-0 until Bojan Miovski’s goal as normal time expired.Tennis | As Emma Raducanu enjoys her best run of form since her 2021 run to the US Open title, she now comes up against Jessica Pegula in the quarter final of the Miami Open. The match is just reward for her persistence, writes Tumaini Carayol: “to her credit she kept on ­rolling with the punches and showing up.”The front pagesView image in fullscreen“Fears of further tax rises as Reeves promises to ‘secure Britain’s future’” is the splash on the Guardian today, while the Financial Times says “Reeves to leaven grim spring outlook with £2.2bn defence spending boost.” The spring statement is also previewed in the Daily Mail, which has “Don’t shift blame for economy’s woes, voters tell Reeves,” and the Mirror, which runs an interview with Rachel Reeves under the headline “My mission.”“Victims must see ‘sense of justice being served’” is the lead story on the Express, while “Mortal blow to assisted dying Bill” is the focus in the Telegraph. “JD Dunce hates Britain, hates Europe and hates Ukraine…And could be president at any moment,” says the Star, and the Metro: “Trump backs chump.” The Sun covers a row over the pricing of Oasis tickets with the headline “Definitely Shady”.Today in FocusView image in fullscreenThe arrest that plunged Turkey into turmoilProtesters took to streets after President Erdoğan had his rival arrested. What will happen next? Sami Kent and Ruth Michaelson reportCartoon of the day | Rebecca HendinView image in fullscreenThe UpsideA bit of good news to remind you that the world’s not all badView image in fullscreenIn Grenada, the persistent issue of sargassum seaweed, which has long plagued the island’s shores, is being reimagined as an opportunity rather than a burden. While the decaying seaweed causes bad smells and disrupts fishing and tourism, innovative solutions are emerging. The Grenadian government, in collaboration with the EU, is exploring ways to turn sargassum into a valuable resource, including clean energy, bioplastics, and fertiliser.Companies such as Seafields are developing methods to farm the seaweed and harness its potential, which could boost the economy. A bioenergy project is already converting sargassum into biogas and organic fertiliser. “They use diesel to generate electricity [now], which is very expensive for the local population. We are providing a reliable, cost-effective and sustainable alternative,” Benjamin Nestorovic, who works for the Grenada-based bioenergy company SarGas, says, adding that the company plans to expand across the Caribbean.Bored at work?And finally, the Guardian’s puzzles are here to keep you entertained throughout the day. Until tomorrow.

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      in US Politics

      Mike Waltz claims ‘full responsibility’ for Signal chat group leaked to journalist

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      Donald Trump’s national security adviser, Michael Waltz, said on Tuesday he takes “full responsibility” for the group chat of senior administration officials that inadvertently included a journalist and leaked highly sensitive information about planned airstrikes in Yemen.Waltz’s comments came one day after Jeffrey Goldberg, editor in chief of the Atlantic, revealed that he was added to a group on Signal, a private messaging app, that included vice-president JD Vance, defense secretary Pete Hegseth, secretary of state Marco Rubio and other high-profile figures discussing “operational details” of planned attacks on the Houthis in Yemen.Goldberg’s account in the Atlantic suggested Waltz had mistakenly invited him to the chat. The prominent journalist remained in the group undetected as the president’s cabinet members discussed policy and coordinated a wave of bombings, an extraordinary breach that critics said put national security at risk.When pressed by Fox News’s Laura Ingraham, Waltz accepted responsibility for making the Signal group, though he continued to deflect blame, insulted Goldberg and said he couldn’t explain how the mistake had occurred.“It’s embarrassing, yes. We’re going to get to the bottom of it,” Waltz said, adding that he was consulting with Elon Musk: “We’ve got the best technical minds looking at how this happened.” When Ingraham asked “what staffer is responsible” for adding Goldberg to the Signal group, Waltz responded: “A staffer wasn’t responsible. I take full responsibility. I built the group. My job is to make sure everything is coordinated.”When the Fox host asked how Goldberg’s number ended up in the group, Waltz responded: “Have you ever had somebody’s contact that shows their name and then you have somebody else’s number there? … Of course I didn’t see this loser in the group. It looked like someone else. Whether he did it deliberately or it happened in some other technical mean is something we’re trying to figure out.”Waltz did not offer any evidence for how Goldberg could have “deliberately” ended up in the group.Earlier in the interview, he said he didn’t know Goldberg or text with him, calling him the “bottom scum of journalists” while criticizing the media for focusing on the controversy.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionAlthough Waltz claimed a staffer was not responsible, Trump appeared to make contradictory remarks in a Newsmax interview, saying: “We believe … somebody that was on the line, with permission, somebody that … worked with Mike Waltz at a lower level, had Goldberg’s number or call through the app, and somehow this guy ended up on the call.” It’s unclear what exactly the president was suggesting, since Goldberg was added to a text chat, not a phone call.Trump previously defended Waltz, saying he was a “good man” who “learned a lesson”, and also downplayed the incident, saying the leak was “the only glitch in two months, and it turned out not to be a serious one”.The episode has sparked widespread backlash and ridicule. Mark Warner, vice-chair of the Senate intelligence committee, said on Tuesday the incident was “one more example of the kind of sloppy, careless, incompetent behavior, particularly towards classified information”.On Monday, the minority leader, Chuck Schumer, called it “one of the most stunning breaches of military intelligence I have read about in a very, very long time”, and Delaware senator Chris Coons said every official in the group had “committed a crime – even if accidentally”.Goldberg’s story suggested Waltz’s coordination of a “national-security-related action over Signal, may have violated several provisions of the Espionage Act”, noting that Signal was not approved by the US for sharing classified information. 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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      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

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      in Elections

      Trump’s Team Calls Europe ‘Pathetic’ in Leaked Signal Group Chat Messages

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      Trump administration officials haven’t kept their disdain for Europe quiet. But the contempt seems to be even louder behind closed doors.Europeans reacted with a mix of exasperation and anger to the publication of parts of a discussion between top-ranking Trump administration officials, carried out on the messaging app Signal. The discussion, about a planned strike on Yemen, was replete with comments that painted Europeans as geopolitical parasites, and was revealed on Monday in The Atlantic, whose editor was inadvertently included in the conversation.“I just hate bailing out the Europeans again,” wrote Vice President JD Vance, asserting that the strikes would benefit Europe far more than the United States.“I fully share your loathing of European freeloading,” Pete Hegseth, the secretary of defense, later replied. “It’s PATHETIC.”The exchange seemed to show real feelings and judgments — that the Europeans are mooching and that any American military action, no matter how clearly in American interests as well, should be somehow paid for by other beneficiaries.A member of the chat identified as “SM,” and believed to be Stephen Miller, a top aide to President Trump, suggested that both Egypt and “Europe” should compensate the United States for the operation. “If Europe doesn’t remunerate, then what? If the US successfully restores freedom of navigation at great cost there needs to be some further economic gain extracted in return,” SM wrote.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Jon Stewart on GOP’s obsession with free speech: ‘It’s such blatant hypocrisy’

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      Late-night hosts talked conservatives’ hypocrisy over free speech and the Trump administration accidentally texting an Atlantic editor its war plans.Jon StewartJon Stewart was back in old-school Daily Show mode on Monday evening, pointing out the hypocrisy of Republicans in power. But first, he mocked the defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, whose group text on Signal regarding the administration’s plans to bomb Houthi targets in Yemen accidentally included Atlantic editor Jeffrey Goldberg.“Back in my day if you were a journalist who wanted leaked war documents, you had to work the sources, meet them in a dark garage, earn the trust, pound the pavement,” Stewart said. “Now? Just wait for the national security adviser to be distracted by The White Lotus while he’s setting up his Bomb Yemen group chat.”Stewart went on: “There are certain hypocrisies and absurdities that we find in our cultural moment that make for great fodder for humorous dialogue: a facial expression, a nod and a wink. Then there are pronouncements by our elected officials, other actions by our government that are so baldly bullshit, even though you know it will have no effect, and that these powerful creatures have been genetically modified to resist shame or self-reflection of any kind, you just can’t help yourself but to go old-school Daily Show gotcha.”He specifically referred to conservatives’ obsession with “free speech” and the liberal “thought police”, while arguing in the same breath for CNN to be banned from the airwaves, among other proposed cancellations and censorship.“Generally, you’ve gotta search the archives for contradictions on one’s stated principles, dig through policy papers to uncover private actions that are undermined by someone’s public stance, but this is so blatant,” said Stewart. “I can’t wrap around it. It’s not even the hypocrisy, it’s that they so fetishize free speech, this thing that they do not in any way actually practice.”Stewart cited Trump banning the AP from the White House for refusing to rename the Gulf of Mexico to “the Gulf of America”, and the detainment of Columbia student protester Mahmoud Khalil.“These guys don’t give a fuck about free speech,” he said. “They care about their speech. It’s such blatant hypocrisy.”Stephen Colbert“Our nation is a beautiful pastry spread of freedom and opportunity,” said Stephen Colbert on The Late Show. “And yesterday, I got a closeup look at one of the donuts that Trump has been licking” at the Kennedy Center in Washington DC. Colbert and a number of comedians attended in support of Conan O’Brien, who received the Mark Twain prize for American humor.“It was a great night full of life and love and laughs,” he said, but the mood in DC was “still grim”. Last week, Trump held his first official meeting with “all of his hand-picked flunkies” that appointed him to the board of the Kennedy Center, “so he knows that they’re all 100% loyal to him”.During the meeting, which was recorded and leaked to the press, Trump said he wanted to make the Kennedy Center programming “slightly more conservative” and feature more “non-woke musicals”. “Non-woke musicals, also known as any musical you take your dad to,” Colbert joked.Besides rambling on about his love for the musical Cats, Trump also put his name forward as a potential host for the annual Kennedy Center Honors. “Man alive, you could’ve given me a thousand guesses, and that would’ve been all of them,” said Colbert, himself a three-time former host of the ceremony. “I tell you what, sir, I’m willing to trade – you host the Kennedy Center Honors, I’ll be president.”Jimmy KimmelAnd in Los Angeles, Jimmy Kimmel also mocked the administration putting sensitive military information in a group chat with Goldberg. “In other words, our national security is being guarded by a bunch of doofs you wouldn’t trust to throw your cousin a surprise party,” he said. “No one on the chain thought to ask: ‘Who is JG? What are these initials?’ They could’ve been leaking secrets to Jeff Goldblum, for all they knew.”“If Joe Biden’s top military team accidentally texted these plans to a journalist, Laura Ingraham’s erection would be so rock strong, it would break through the wall like the Kool-Aid man,” he added.“This is a crazy mistake by any definition, but you have to remember: Pete Hegseth, our secretary of defense, three months ago was a weekend host on Fox & Friends.” So his former cohost “looked at the bright side” of the story on-air.As Fox’s Will Cain put it: “What you will see is dialogue between vice-president JD Vance, secretary of defense Pete Hegseth and many more, in a very collaborative, open, honest, team-based attempt to come to the right decision after years of secrecy and incompetence. If you read the content of these messages, I think you’ll come away proud that these are the leaders making these decisions in America.”“If you read the content of these messages – the point is we’re not supposed to read the content of these messages!” Kimmel exclaimed. “That is a real beauty of a spin.” More

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      in US Politics

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

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

      Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist More