The viral story of Trump’s team texting war plans to a journalist, briefly explained

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Welcome to The Logoff: Today Joshua Keating and I are focusing on top Trump administration officials accidentally messaging a journalist with their plans for bombing Yemen. It’s a bizarre story — and one with longstanding implications for our European allies’ ability to trust us with sensitive information.

Wait, what? The Atlantic revealed today that a top Trump official accidentally added Jeffrey Goldberg, the magazine’s editor-in-chief, to a group chat on the encrypted messaging app Signal earlier this month. With Goldberg reading, Vice President JD Vance, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, policy adviser Stephen Miller, and others discussed a potential attack on military targets in Yemen, where a group called the Houthis has been disrupting global trade by attacking passing ships.

Then, days later, Goldberg says, Hegseth messaged the group with extraordinarily sensitive and detailed information about the planned US strikes, which took place hours after Hegseth’s message.
That sounds made up. How do we know the chat isn’t fake? A spokesperson for the administration confirmed its authenticity.

Just how big of a mistake is this? It’s a major protocol violation to discuss sensitive military operations on a group chat. Such conversations are held in secure facilities where cell phones are typically banned.

Is it illegal? The Atlantic reports that the official who invited Goldberg, national security adviser Michael Waltz, may have violated multiple parts of the Espionage Act. It’s hard to imagine the Trump administration prosecuting him, however.

So what’s the big picture? Arguably, the officials got lucky they added Goldberg, who withheld certain details of the messages in the name of national security. But already wary US allies — concerned about Trump’s friendliness toward Russia and hostility toward NATO — could have even more reason to feel wary about the information they share with this administration.

Today’s news has me thinking about the value of the (non-national security damaging) group chat. I really appreciate how, via a few text threads, I get to stay in daily touch with some of my favorite people — even those who live a long way away. Many of mine really picked up during Covid, so I appreciated this classic (height-of-the-pandemic-era) piece from my colleague Alex Abad-Santos about exactly why these chats are so helpful to our well-being. Thanks so much for reading, and I’ll see you back here tomorrow.