Calls for resignations after White House security blunder
Following the White House security blunder, there have been calls for those involved in the breach to resign.
A senior administration official told Politico that they are involved in multiple text threads with other administration staffers on what to do with national security adviser Mike Waltz.
“Half of them saying he’s never going to survive or shouldn’t survive,” said the official. “It was reckless not to check who was on the thread. It was reckless to be having that conversation on Signal. You can’t have recklessness as the national security adviser.”
Meanwhile, a person close to the White House told Politco: “Everyone in the White House can agree on one thing: Mike Waltz is a fucking idiot.”
Ken Martin, chair of the Democratic National Committee, called on Pete Hegseth to resign or be fired from his position as defense secretary.
Martin said in a statement late Monday:
Pete Hegseth was unfit to lead the Defense Department even before he risked our national security through his own sloppy handling of sensitive military information. Just like his boss Donald Trump, Hegseth – and everyone else involved – put on a stunning display of recklessness and disregard for our national security.
Hegseth should resign, and if he doesn’t resign, he should be fired. It’s crystal clear that our men and women in uniform deserve better – and that our national security cannot be left in Hegseth’s incompetent and unqualified hands.
However, Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson offered a more forgiving posture.
“I think it would be a terrible mistake for there to be adverse consequences on any of the people that were involved in that call,” Johnson said.
“They were trying to do a good job, the mission was accomplished with precision.”
Key events
The UK’s deputy prime minister Angela Rayner has reacted to the alleged US data breach.
Rayner told BBC Radio 4’s The World at One that she “doesn’t have much more to add” in response to US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth allegedly accusing Europe of “free-loading” off the US.
Rayner said, “I don’t recognise that there is a challenge between the UK and US relations, they are as strong as they’ve always been.”
Rayner added that “people say things in private messaging” and insisted it was “for the vice-president to decide and to clarify what he means by those conversations”.
My colleague Peter Beaumont has noted five things US adversaries could learn from today’s White House leaks.
“Friendly and hostile governments alike will also have learned that what Vance, Hegseth and others say in public – in disparaging Europe, for example – they say in private, too.
“Any notion that the Trump administration’s bark is worse than its bite should be thoroughly disabused by the contempt expressed by Vance for Europe and by the transactional nature of the conversation.”
Read more here …
No 10 rejects claims Britain is a ‘freeloading’ country after White House leaked messages
Andrew Sparrow
Downing Street has rejected suggestions that Britain is a “freeloading” country that expects the US to meet its defence needs.
At the lobby briefing this morning, prime minister Keir Starmer’s spokesperson spoke at length about the contribution the UK makes to joint military operations with the Americans, following the extraordinary leak of messages showing the contempt President Trump’s most senior allies have for Europe’s record on defence.
But the spokesperson also refused to directly criticise the two figures who were most critical, JD Vance, the vice-president, and Pete Hegseth, the defence secretary.
At the lobby briefing this morning, asked if Britain was a pathetic freeloader, the PM’s spokesperson replied:
You can see, from the way in which the UK has worked closely with the US, supplying regional security and defence, our commitment to working with the US on matters of regional security.
You’ll know the UK provided air-to-air refuelling support for recent strikes against Houthi key rebel targets [the raid discussed in the messages inadvertently shared with Godlberg].
We also continue to support the US-led coalition against Daesh with routine combat air patrol over Iraq and Syria.
And we’ll continue to work with the US and other allies to ensure stability and security in the Middle East.
Asked again if Britons were freeloaders, the spokesperson repeated the point about the UK working with the US closely in the Middle East.
Tom Perkins
Elon Musk appears to be laying the groundwork to privatize some space and satellite operations now under the authority of National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa), or steer lucrative contracts toward his SpaceX and Starlink companies, former agency employees say.
They’re sounding the alarm as at least four other federal agencies have reportedly begun pushing new contracts toward Musk’s Starlink satellite internet company. Musk, the world’s richest man, has been tasked by Donald Trump with drastically slashing the federal government workforce and costs.
The situation raises conflict of interest questions for one of Trump’s closest allies who backed him with millions of dollars of funding in the 2024 election. Musk boasts that his so-called “department of government efficiency” (Doge) “slashes spending”, but critics say he’s using his position to steer government funding toward his companies.
Noaa could offer the biggest prizes yet for Musk, presenting the opportunity for SpaceX to have a commanding financial advantage in a commercial US space market expected to grow to a value of nearly $2tn in value over the next decade. Already Doge likely has access to competitors’ confidential business information at Noaa, former employees at the agency say.
Jennifer Rankin
A former head of Dutch cybersecurity has expressed his surprise at Donald Trump’s top team’s use of Signal for classified communications that revealed “visceral anti-European messaging”.
Bart Groothuis, an MEP for the Dutch liberal VVD party, who used to run the cybersecurity bureau at the Dutch ministry of defence, said he was “a bit surprised” at the US government’s use of a commercial app for highly classified conversations.
“This is not the security posture I am used to when it comes to the Americans,” he told the Guardian, adding he was struck by the “visceral anti-European messaging from both Vice President Vance and others”.
Groothuis, who is also vice-chair of the European parliament’s Iranian relations committee, also expressed bafflement at the suggestion that the US had no interest in containing the Houthis, an Iranian-backed proxy group, which has carried out attacks on commercial ships in the Red Sea.
In the exchanges, US vice-president JD Vance said only 3% of US trade goes through the Suez canal, compared with 40% of European trade, arguing that the US was doing what Europe should do. “I just hate bailing Europe out again,” Vance said.
Groothuis said “what they fail to understand” is that the Houthis were an Iranian proxy and their containment was about “putting maximum pressure” on the Iranian regime and its nuclear ambitions.
“So it is also in the American interest and the direct American interest to keep a lid on the proxies of Iran,” he said. “Did it ever occur to them that it is in the direct interest of the US itself?”
Peter Beaumont
The leak of top US officials’ deliberations over planning for this month’s strikes on the Houthis in Yemen – revealed by a journalist who was accidentally invited to a chat group on the Signal messaging app – will be highly useful for hostile intelligence agencies.
Read more on what the security blunder means for the Trump administration:
The UK still has “high confidence” that its operational security measures “remain intact”, despite revelations of a major US security breach.
Asked about the incident on Tuesday, 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.”
Calls for resignations after White House security blunder
Following the White House security blunder, there have been calls for those involved in the breach to resign.
A senior administration official told Politico that they are involved in multiple text threads with other administration staffers on what to do with national security adviser Mike Waltz.
“Half of them saying he’s never going to survive or shouldn’t survive,” said the official. “It was reckless not to check who was on the thread. It was reckless to be having that conversation on Signal. You can’t have recklessness as the national security adviser.”
Meanwhile, a person close to the White House told Politco: “Everyone in the White House can agree on one thing: Mike Waltz is a fucking idiot.”
Ken Martin, chair of the Democratic National Committee, called on Pete Hegseth to resign or be fired from his position as defense secretary.
Martin said in a statement late Monday:
Pete Hegseth was unfit to lead the Defense Department even before he risked our national security through his own sloppy handling of sensitive military information. Just like his boss Donald Trump, Hegseth – and everyone else involved – put on a stunning display of recklessness and disregard for our national security.
Hegseth should resign, and if he doesn’t resign, he should be fired. It’s crystal clear that our men and women in uniform deserve better – and that our national security cannot be left in Hegseth’s incompetent and unqualified hands.
However, Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson offered a more forgiving posture.
“I think it would be a terrible mistake for there to be adverse consequences on any of the people that were involved in that call,” Johnson said.
“They were trying to do a good job, the mission was accomplished with precision.”
While Signal is regarded as a secure encrypted chat service, its weakness is that phones on which it is installed can themselves be vulnerable.
Among those aghast at the breach was the Democratic representative Pat Ryan, an army veteran who sits on the House armed services committee who described it using the second world war-era epithet “Fubar” – meaning “fucked up beyond all recognition”.
“If House Republicans won’t hold a hearing on how this happened IMMEDIATELY, I’ll do it my damn self.”
Shane Harris, a longtime national security reporter – formerly of the Washington Post and now with the Atlantic – wrote on BlueSky: “In 25 years of covering national security, I’ve never seen a story like this.”
The incident is likely to further raise concerns over the Trump administration’s trustworthiness with intelligence shared by erstwhile allies – not least as Hegseth boasts at one stage of guaranteeing “100 percent OPSEC – operations security” while a celebrated journalist is reading his message.
The discussions seen by Goldberg include comments from Vance, who appeared unconvinced of the urgency of attacking Yemen, as well as conversations over what price should be expected of Europeans and other countries for the US removing the threat to a key global shipping route.
Security and intelligence commentators in the US described the breach of operational security as unprecedented – both for the use of a commercial chat service and for the inclusion of Goldberg.
The breach was revealed in an article published on Monday by Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor of the Atlantic magazine, who discovered that he had been included in a Signal chat called “Houthi PC Small Group” and realising that 18 other members of the group included Trump cabinet members.
In his account, Goldberg said that he removed sensitive material from his account, including the identity of a senior CIA officer and current operational details.
The report was confirmed by Brian Hughes, a spokesperson for the national security council, who told the magazine: “This appears to be an authentic message chain, and we are reviewing how an inadvertent number was added to the chain.”
Hughes added: “The thread is a demonstration of the deep and thoughtful policy coordination between senior officials. The ongoing success of the Houthi operation demonstrates that there were no threats to troops or national security.”
Andrew Roth
If Europe wasn’t already on notice, the extraordinary leak of deliberations by JD Vance and other top-level Trump administration officials over a strike against the Houthis in Yemen was another sign that it has a target on its back.
The administration officials gave Jeffrey Goldberg of the Atlantic a front-row seat to the planning for the strike against the Houthis – a stunning intelligence leak that has caused anger against Republicans who called for criminal investigations against Hillary Clinton and others for playing fast and loose with sensitive information.
On the face of it, the strike against the Houthis had far more to do with the administration’s policies on protecting maritime trade and containing Iran than its concerns about Europe freeloading on US defense spending and military prowess.
But Vance appears determined to push that angle as a reason to postpone the strike.
“I think we are making a mistake,” wrote Vance, adding that while only 3% of US trade goes through the Suez canal, 40% of European trade does. “There is a real risk that the public doesn’t understand this or why it’s necessary,” he added. “The strongest reason to do this is, as [Trump] said, to send a message.”
Widespread criticism follows White House security blunder
Good morning and welcome to the US politics live blog. My name is Tom Ambrose and I will be bringing you all the latest news lines over the next few hours.
We start with the widespread condemnation after senior members of Donald Trump’s cabinet were involved in a serious security breach while discussing secret military plans for recent US attacks on the Houthi armed group in Yemen.
In an extraordinary blunder, key figures in the Trump administration – including the vice-president, JD Vance, the defence secretary, Pete Hegseth, the secretary of state, Marco Rubio, and the director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard – used the commercial chat app Signal to convene and discuss plans – while also including a prominent journalist in the group.
The news was met with outrage and calls for an investigation in the US, with Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer calling it “one of the most stunning breaches of military intelligence I have read about in a very, very long time”
Signal is not approved by the US government for sharing sensitive information.
“If true, this story represents one of the most egregious failures of operational security and common sense I have ever seen,” said Jack Reed of Rhode Island, the top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, in a statement.
He said American lives are “on the line. The carelessness shown by Trump’s Cabinet is stunning and dangerous. I will be seeking answers from the Administration immediately.”
Jim Himes of Connecticut, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said in a statement that he was “horrified” by the reports.
Himes said if a lower-ranking official “did what is described here, they would likely lose their clearance and be subject to criminal investigation. The American people deserve answers,” which he said he planned to get at Wednesday’s previously scheduled committee hearing.
Some Republicans also expressed concerns. Roger Wicker, the Mississippi Republican who chairs the Senate Armed Services Committee, told reporters on Monday: “We’re very concerned about it and we’ll be looking into it on a bipartisan basis.”
Reed said he would be speaking with Wicker about what the committee will do to “follow up” on the Signal leak. Meanwhile, Senate majority leader John Thune said he wants to learn more about what happened.
“Obviously, we got to run it to the ground, figure out what went on there,” said Thune, a South Dakota Republican.
In other news:
