The Conversation -- March 28, 2025

Marie: I am a watcher. I sit quietly at my desk and chronicle the fall of the country in which I have lived for 80 years. One of these days, federal thugs or their compliant deputies may come and take away my computer, so that I can no longer share my chronicles. Perhaps the thugs will arrest me and jail me. I did not anticipate that this was the way my life would end.

The casualness with which [Trump] dealt with information has clearly become the culture of this new team.... I think it bespeaks a breathtaking lack of understanding of the reality of the risks posed by very capable adversaries and competitors.... -- Sue Gordon, top intel official in Trump 1.0 ~~~

~~~ Julian Barnes of the New York Times: Donald “Trump has long had, at best, a cavalier attitude about the handling of classified material.... By Wednesday afternoon, Mr. Trump conceded that he 'didn’t know' if the information disclosed [in a Signal group chat in which top officials discussed impending military strikes] was classified or not. Still, he seemed far more concerned about how the editor [of the Atlantic] had been added to the chat than about whether Americans had been put at risk. And that, former officials say, goes to a disrespect of government, its rules and safeguards, that has trickled down from the president to his key aides.... Mr. Trump has chosen people for his new administration who do not have decades of experience in government, or knowledge of its rules and why they exist.... And, one former official said, inexperienced people, even if they are smart, make mistakes.”

Alan Feuer of the New York Times: “A federal judge in Washington on Thursday ordered several Trump administration officials who participated in a Signal group chat ... to preserve all of the messages they exchanged on the app in the days leading up to strikes. The decision by the judge, James E. Boasberg, came in response to a lawsuit filed this week by a nonprofit watchdog group American Oversight, which has accused ... [Donald] Trump’s national security team of violating federal records laws by using Signal — an encrypted commercial platform — to chat about the highly sensitive attack on Houthi rebels in Yemen. The order by Judge Boasberg ... applied to top administration officials, including Mr. Trump’s national security adviser, Michael Waltz; Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth; Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence; Secretary of State Marco Rubio; and Vice President JD Vance.... The judge’s order was an early sign that at least some of the usual channels of accountability are still operating after the most senior administration officials engaged in an extraordinary breach of operational security and Mr. Trump’s attorney general, Pam Bondi, signaled that the Justice Department is not likely to investigate the matter. Ms. Bondi, appearing ... on Fox News on Thursday night..., said that Judge Boasberg needed to be removed from the Signal case and other Trump administration matters, along with other jurists.” Politico's report is here.

What Happens When Drunk Pete Has to Manage a Crisis? Jack Detsch, et al., of Politico: “Even for a Pentagon chief who has copied Trump’s pugilistic style...[, Pete] Hegseth’s growing pile of mistakes are getting noticed, according to four officials and two people in touch with the administration. 'The problem is this is another example of inexperience,' said a person close to the White House.... 'What happens when Hegseth needs to manage a real crisis?'... The [Signal] episode ... follows other prominent stumbles, including a walk back of his February remarks about Ukraine war negotiations in Brussels and an ill-fated effort to send thousands of detained migrants to Guantanamo Bay. Now dozens of Democratic lawmakers are calling for Hegseth’s resignation. Grassroots campaigns have sprouted up on progressive websites to investigate the Pentagon boss. And Senate Armed Services Committee leaders have launched a bipartisan probe into the episode. 'Intentionally putting classified info on an unclassified application is the real crime,' Rep. Dan Bacon, a Nebraska Republican and retired Air Force brigadier general, wrote in an X post.” ~~~

~~~ Robert Farley in LG&$ republishes part of a CNN story along the same lines as Politico's. Farley also republishes some of his own opinions about Drunk Pete.

Julia Ainsley of NBC News: “... a longtime Department of Homeland Security employee ... told colleagues she inadvertently sent unclassified details of an upcoming Immigration and Customs Enforcement operation to a [conservative] journalist in late January.... But unlike [Michael] Waltz and [Pete] Hegseth, who both remain in their jobs, the career DHS employee was put on administrative leave and told late last week that the agency intends to revoke her security clearance, the officials said. The Trump administration, meanwhile, has largely rallied around Waltz and Hegseth, with Trump on Wednesday calling it 'all a witch hunt.'”

Jonathan Chait of the Atlantic on why Trump & the Screw-ups are so busy inventing implausible reasons for Jeff Goldberg's inclusion in the Signal chat group: “Discussing a secret military strike on an unsecure channel, and mistakenly inviting a journalist into the chat, is a shocking breach of operations security. But in the world of Trump, the far more shocking breach is that the person invited into the chat was the reporter who first revealed that Trump had referred to dead American soldiers as suckers and losers.... The independent press must be treated as completely illegitimate. As Will Chamberlain, a conservative lawyer, posted, 'Under no circumstances should the Trump administration fire anyone based on anything published in the pages of The Atlantic.'” Thanks to laura h. for this gift link.

Noah Shachtman in a New York Times op-ed: “It’s never been easier to steal secrets from the United States government. Can you even call it stealing when it’s this simple?... In its first two months, the Trump administration has made move after move that exposes the government to penetration by foreign intelligence services. It’s not just the group chat about forthcoming military strikes.... The administration short-circuited the process for conducting background checks on top officials, turned tens of thousands of people with access to government secrets into disgruntled ex-employees and announced it was lowering its guard against covert foreign influence operations. It installed one of Elon Musk’s satellite internet terminals on the roof of the White House, seemingly to bypass security controls, and gave access to some of the government’s more sensitive systems to a teenager with a history of aiding a cybercrime ring, who goes by the nickname Big Balls.... Around 1,000 F.B.I. agents have been diverted from their regular duties to scrub the case files of Jeffrey Epstein.... The Justice Department stopped its investigations into the possible compromise of New York City’s Mayor Eric Adams by foreign governments. A seven-agency effort to counter Russian sabotage and cyberattacks has been put on hold. Personnel from the bureau’s counterterrorism division have been newly asked to pursue those who vandalize Teslas....” ~~~

Hillary Clinton in a New York Times op-ed: “Mr. Trump and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth (of group chat fame) are apparently more focused on performative fights over wokeness than preparing for real fights with America’s adversaries. Does anyone really think deleting tributes to the Tuskegee Airmen makes us more safe?... Instead of working with Congress to modernize the military’s budget to reflect changing threats, the president is firing top generals without credible justification.... I am particularly alarmed by the administration’s plan to close embassies and consulates, fire diplomats and destroy the U.S. Agency for International Development.... Diplomacy is cost-effective, especially compared with military action.... And I haven’t even gotten to the damage Mr. Trump is doing by cozying up to dictators like Russia’s Vladimir Putin, blowing up our alliances — force multipliers that extend our reach and share our burdens — and trashing our moral influence by undermining the rule of law at home.”

Tyler Pager of the New York Times: Donald “Trump instructed a broad swath of government agencies on Thursday to end collective bargaining with federal unions, a major escalation in his effort to assert more control over the federal work force. Mr. Trump framed the order as critical to protect national security. But it targets agencies across the government, including the Departments of Defense, Veterans Affairs, State, Treasury and Energy, most of the Justice Department, and parts of the Departments of Commerce, Homeland Security, and Health and Human Services. The American Federation of Government Employees, the largest federal workers union, estimated that the order would strip labor protections from hundreds of thousands of civil servants, and said it was preparing legal action.... The American Federation of Government Employees said Mr. Trump’s order was illegal. After Mr. Trump signed the order, the affected agencies filed a lawsuit on Thursday in Texas against the unions representing federal employees, seeking to rescind their collective bargaining agreements.” ~~~

     ~~~ In today's Comments, RAS points to a rather glaring contradiction: "Wouldn't declaring all the different government departments' employees vital to national security undermine Fat Hitler's moves to fire the thousands of people at those very agencies? But that is using logic which doesn't work on this administration."

Chris Cameron of the New York Times: Donald “Trump moved on Thursday to punish the law firm WilmerHale, where Robert S. Mueller III worked before and after he served as special counsel in the Trump-Russia investigation, expanding his widespread campaign of retribution. In an executive order, Mr. Trump hit the elite firm with many of the same penalties that he had applied to its competitors who had taken on cases or causes he did not like. He directed the cancellation of all government contracts with WilmerHale, and the suspension of any security clearances of its employees. The order also barred WilmerHale employees from federal buildings, banned them from communicating with government employees and prevented them from being hired at government agencies.... The order said Mr. Trump was in part punishing WilmerHale for the firm’s connections to Mr. Mueller, who led an inquiry that the order described as 'one of the most partisan investigations in American history.' In fact, Mr. Mueller was appointed as special counsel by Mr. Trump’s own deputy attorney general amid concerns about Mr. Trump’s desire to shut down the F.B.I. investigation of his campaign after he took office.” ~~~

~~~ Another White-shoe Law Firm Steps in It. Michael Schmidt, et al., of the New York Times: “The elite law firm Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom has had discussions with ... [Donald] Trump’s advisers about a deal to avert the type of executive order that the White House has been imposing on many of its competitors.... The talks represent an extraordinary turn in Mr. Trump’s campaign against law firms and the legal system more broadly, marking what appears to be the first time that a major firm has tried to cut a deal with the president before he could issue an executive order.... The Skadden discussions are also the latest example of how large law firms, afraid of a protracted battle with Mr. Trump, are eager to strike deals.” ~~~

~~~ BUT. Kyle Cheney & Daniel Barnes of Politico: “A law firm targeted by ... Donald Trump sued Friday to bar enforcement of his executive order that seeks to shut them out of government business and strip key lawyers of their security clearances. Jenner & Block’s lawsuit contends Trump’s order is an unconstitutional threat to the firm and the legal system itself, seeking to 'punish citizens and lawyers based on the clients they represent, the positions they advocate, the opinions they voice, and the people with whom they associate.'... Trump targeted Jenner & Block in an executive order earlier this week, focusing on the role that a former member of the firm — Andrew Weissmann — played in the investigation of Trump’s links to Russia during the 2016 presidential campaign.”

Poor Elise. Annie Karni & Maggie Haberman of the New York Times: Donald “Trump on Thursday said he had asked Representative Elise Stefanik, Republican of New York, to stay in Congress rather than serve as ambassador to the United Nations, amid concern about the minuscule voting margin that Republicans hold in the House. 'There are others that can do a good job at the United Nations,' Mr. Trump wrote on his website, Truth Social, where he said it was critical for Republicans to hold onto every House seat they have. 'Therefore, Elise will stay in Congress, rejoin the House Leadership Team, and continue to fight for our amazing American People.'... It underscored the precarious position that House Republicans are in with such a narrow majority that they can afford few defections.... It also highlighted concerns among Mr. Trump and leading members of his party about their ability to win what should be safe Republican seats in districts like Ms. Stefanik’s solidly red region of upstate New York. Ms. Stefanik ... has spent the past week on Instagram posting a nostalgic retrospective of her time in Congress as she prepared for her tenure there to end. And she participated in a farewell tour across her district.” Politico's story is here. ~~~

     ~~~ Hans Nichols of Axios: "... [Donald] Trump's dramatic rug pull of Rep. Elise Stefanik's (R-N.Y.) UN ambassador nomination has given House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) a new series of headaches.... Johnson has to reassure GOP lawmakers after their president said he's nervous about a Trump +20 district. He also must reintegrate Stefanik ... into a leadership lineup that's full. Stefanik was crushed and scrambled to reverse Trump's decision before he announced it on Truth Social, according to people familiar with the matter. But for Trump, the margins were too close for comfort.... In explaining his decision, Trump undercut the NRCC line that there was no risk of the GOP losing any special elections this year.... Stefanik's congressional staff has mostly resigned. She surrendered her slot on the House Intelligence Committee and had one foot out of Washington." ~~~

     ~~~ MB: I for one feel so-o-o-o sorry for Poor Elise, who, as Chris Hayes pointed out last night, thought she was moving on up to the East Side, to a dee-luxe apartment in the sky. ~~~

     ~~~ Josh Marshall of TPM on "The Sorrows of Young Elise": "It’s a good reminder that though we should never take joy from the suffering of others, there are some occasions when it’s okay." MB: Oh, crap; the post is firewalled, so I can't read any more. Still, it's good to know that Josh shares my concern für Elise.

Petula Dvorak of the Washington Post: “... Donald Trump issued an executive order Thursday evening promising to eliminate 'divisive narratives' from the Smithsonian Institution’s museums and restore 'monuments, memorials, statues, markers' that have been removed over the past five years. The 'Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History' order directs Vice President JD Vance to eliminate what he finds 'improper' from the Smithsonian Institution, including its museums, education and research centers, and the National Zoo. The White House fact sheet describing the order said it will focus on removing 'anti-American ideology.' The institution, the official keeper of the American story, has operated independently as a public-private partnership created by an act of Congress in 1846.... Federal money makes up 62 percent of the institution’s annual budget.... The order is an unprecedented act to edit an institution that has been expanding over many decades to include a wider, richer and more diverse telling of the nation’s history.... And it takes specific aim at one of the newest editions to the Smithsonian’s portfolio of 21 museums — the National Museum of African American History and Culture, which opened in 2016 under the leadership of historian Lonnie G. Bunch III, who the became the Smithsonian’s 14th and first African American secretary in 2019.” The AP's report is here. ~~~

     ~~~ Marie: I must admit, I cannot think of a job for which JayDee is more qualified than rooting DEI out of the zoo. Cheryl Rofer in LG&$ already has found one project for him: gay penguins!

Emily Czachor of CBS News: "A student at the University of Alabama has been detained by immigration authorities, in the latest example of ... [Donald] Trump's crackdown on noncitizens in college communities. Alireza Doroudi, a doctoral student originally from Iran who studies mechanical engineering, was taken into custody early Tuesday and detained, according to the university and its student newspaper, The Crimson White. U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement agents arrested Doroudi at around 5 a.m. that morning at his home, the paper reported. A search of the online detention log on ICE's website Thursday confirmed an Iranian national with Doroudi's name was in the agency's custody. The log did not provide the location of the detention facility holding him. Why Doroudi was detained is not clear." ~~~

~~~ Zack Beauchamp of Vox: Federal agents grabbed, arrested and jailed Tufts University grad student Rumeysa Ozturk Tuesday. “The Trump administration claims she has engaged in 'pro-Hamas' activity, but they have provided no evidence of material support for Palestinian militants (or any other terrorist group). The closest thing anyone has found is a 2024 op-ed in the Tufts student newspaper, in which Ozturk and her coauthors criticize Israel’s war in Gaza but do not express anything that even approximates support for Hamas.... That Ozturk was punished purely for her political speech ... received more support during a Thursday afternoon press conference, when Secretary of State Marco Rubio said that his agency revoked Ozturk’s visa because she was part of a pro-Palestinian movement that caused 'a ruckus' on campus.... This is a clarifying moment for American democracy. Unmarked and unidentified law enforcement abduct[ed] a lawful migrant, seemingly in retaliation for First Amendment-protected speech....” ~~~

     ~~~ Marie: Little Marco has made an awesomely rapid transformation from ordinary GOP jerk to dangerous, sadistic thug. And it's amazing how little reward there is for his metamorphosis: I'll admit that Secretary of State is a fancier title than Senator, but secretary of state to Trump is a very temporary job. Given Florida's politics, Marco probably could have kept his senatorial post for a long time.

Marie: Yesterday I linked a Washington Post story on Kristi Noem's field trip to El Salvador's notorious CECOT prison, where Noem's Department (HHS) had secretly flown people under cover of darkness and likely in violation of a judge's order. The Post reporters cover Noem's performance at CECOT, but Jonathan Last of the Bulwark does a better job. I urge you to read Last's essay. Here's a bit of it:

"Liberal regimes have standards for the treatment of prisoners. These standards are codified under the Geneva Conventions, which the United States has signed and ratified. Among the standards dictated by the Geneva Conventions is this: Prisoners may not be publicly exploited for purposes of propaganda. Another standard of liberal governments is that people who present themselves through legal pathways as refugees fleeing oppression are vetted and provided due process, not disappeared into foreign gulags. And yet here we are. A high-ranking American official visits a prison on foreign soil which we are using to warehouse enemies of her regime. She appears in a fitted long-sleeve tee and active-wear slacks. There is a ballcap on her head and a pound of makeup smeared across her plasticized face. A gold Rolex Daytona — worth more than some of these men will make in their entire lives — sits proudly on her dainty wrist. Every piece of this visual is carefully engineered.... [Behind her, prisoners] have clearly been posed by the jailers, forced to hold position so that they can be useful props for the American woman so that she can manufacture propaganda for her regime.... We are now the bad guys." Thanks to RAS for the lead. (Also linked yesterday.) ~~~

     ~~~ “Real Housewives of Gitmo.” Monica Hesse of the Washington Post: “... you cannot help but wonder what was rattling around in Kristi Noem’s head on Wednesday’s visit to a prison in El Salvador, as she considered her sartorial options and landed on Real Housewives of Guantánamo. Her visit was encapsulated in a video produced and published on Noem’s own X feed. Meticulous blowout? Check. Impeccable makeup and jewelry, including a watch that online sleuths have speculated is a $60,000 Rolex? Check. Formfitting T-shirt, skinny drawstring pants, combat boots and a baseball hat with an ICE logo — yaaas, Madam Homeland Security.... Noem wanted it known that the 'tools in our tool kit' include a hellhole that might terrify every immigrant, but should definitely shame every American.” ~~~

~~~ Josh Kovensky of TPM: “The Trump administration commenced orchestrating the removals long before Trump invoked the Alien Enemies Act, and did so in a way that seems to have been designed to evade judicial oversight.... Not only did the government deprive those removed of their right to a hearing before an impartial judge, TPM’s reporting shows that federal officials went to extraordinary lengths to conceal weeks of preparations for the removals.... The judge who ordered a halt to the removals remarked on the issue at a hearing last week, observing that ICE had to have had 'advance notice of this proclamation because it’s impossible that this could have happened in a few hours.'” Thanks to RAS for the lead. (Also linked yesterday.)

Stephanie Saul of the New York Times: “The Department of Justice said on Thursday that it would investigate whether several California universities were complying with the Supreme Court’s 2023 decision banning the consideration of race in admissions. The checks, which the Justice Department described as 'compliance review investigations,' would target Stanford University and three schools in the University of California system — Berkeley, Los Angeles, and Irvine — according to an announcement released by Attorney General Pam Bondi.” ~~~

~~~ Another Case of Anticipatory Obedience. Nicholas Confessore of the New York Times: “The University of Michigan will eliminate its central diversity, equity and inclusion program, the school announced on Thursday, seeking to overhaul an ambitious and expensive initiative that it had long cast as a model for American higher education. Michigan — one of the most prestigious public universities in the country — had for years steadily expanded its D.E.I. efforts even as conservative lawmakers and activists in other states successfully campaigned to defund or ban such programs. But on Thursday, amid intensifying pressure on colleges from the Trump administration, Michigan said it would discontinue its diversity 'strategic plan,' known as D.E.I. 2.0, and effectively dismantle the large administrative bureaucracy constructed to drive it through the university’s colleges and professional schools.” MB: Hey, kids, PROTEST! ~~~

~~~ And Another. Ellen Barry of the New York Times: “The American Psychological Association, which sets standards for professional training in mental health, has voted to suspend its requirement that postgraduate programs show a commitment to diversity in recruitment and hiring. The decision comes as accrediting bodies throughout higher education scramble to respond to the executive order signed by ... [Donald] Trump attacking diversity, equity and inclusion policies. It pauses a drive to broaden the profession of psychology, which is disproportionately white and female, at a time of rising distress among young Americans. The A.P.A. is the chief accrediting body for professional training in psychology, and the only one recognized by the U.S. Department of Education.” MB: That's okay, because only White men are smart enough to be doctors and figure out what's wrong in the heads of women and ethnic minorities. ~~~

~~~ Columbia Locks the Gates. Anna Kodé of the New York Times: “Columbia’s gates are at the center of a heated conflict over public versus private space. To enter [the university campus], students have to show security guards university-issued ID cards, cutting off public access to a portion of 116th Street known as College Walk. What was once a widely enjoyed pedestrian haven is now a hulking barricade.... Some Columbia students and nearby residents are suing the school, arguing that a 1953 agreement between the university and the city makes College Walk a public, not private, space. Neighbors, many of whom are seniors, say that the closure has limited their activities in their own community, and students are concerned that their education is now occurring in a vacuum.” ~~~

~~~ Brain Drain. Ryan Quinn of Inside Higher Ed: “Jason Stanley, Jacob Urowsky Professor of Philosophy at Yale and author of multiple books — including How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them — said he finally accepted Toronto’s long-standing offer for a position on Friday after seeing Columbia University 'completely collapse and give in to an authoritarian regime.'... 'What I worry about is that Yale and other Ivy League institutions do not understand what they face,' Stanley said.... Also leaving Yale for [U. Toronto's] Munk School is Timothy Snyder, author of books including The Road to Unfreedom: Russia, Europe, America, and Marci Shore, author of The Ukrainian Night: An Intimate History of Revolution and other works. Snyder and Shore are married.” Via Paul Campos.

Trump Threatened U.S. Automakers. Daniel Hampton of the Raw Story: "Trump held a call with CEOs from some of America's top vehicle companies earlier this month and 'issued a warning,' the Wall Street Journal reported Thursday: 'They better not raise car prices because of tariffs.'... The tariffs will apply to imported cars, SUVs, minivans, cargo vans, and light trucks, as well as key automobile parts such as engines, transmissions, powertrain parts, and electrical components." ~~~

     ~~~ Marie: About those imported "key automobile parts": obviously, the parts go into vehicles manufactured in the U.S. And now those "key parts" will cost U.S. automakers &  U.S.-based assemby plants 25% more. Automakers and assemblers will pass the higher costs on to consumers; i.e., they will raise their prices.

Emily Davies & Jeff Stein of the Washington Post: “Federal officials are preparing for agencies to cut between 8 and 50 percent of their employees as part of a Trump administration push to shrink the federal government.... The details are compiled from plans that ... Donald Trump ordered agencies to submit.... It indicates that broad staff cuts are likely to have a significant impact on the scope of the government’s work. For example, the document lists the Department of Housing and Urban Development as cutting half of its roughly 8,300-person staff, while the Interior Department would shed nearly 1 in 4 of the workers it had when Trump took office and the IRS would cut nearly 1 in 3. A White House official said the document wasn’t up-to-date.”

Cut HHS Staff → Bigger Tax Breaks for Rich Americans. Lauren Weber, et al., of the Washington Post: “The Department of Health and Human Services is cutting nearly a quarter of its workforce and consolidating several of its departments, Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced Thursday, a sweeping reduction of the agency that protects Americans’ health, oversees Medicare and Medicaid and ensures the safety of the nation’s food and drugs. The moves will save the department about $1.8 billion annually, the agency said in a news release, by reducing staff from 82,000 to 62,000. Half of those 20,000 employees took buyouts and early retirement, while 10,000 will lose their jobs.” (Also linked yesterday.) 

The Worst, Most Dishonorable Chickens of All. Maya Miller of the New York Times: “Republicans who control Congress have made little official effort to challenge or scrutinize the actions of President Trump and Elon Musk as they move forward with a swift and aggressive bid to slash government, trampling on the legislative branch’s spending authority in the process. But when it comes to cuts that affect their districts and states, some have stepped up their attempts to push back privately, even as they publicly cheer the broader drive to overhaul what they call a 'bloated' bureaucracy.... Because Republican lawmakers have largely ceded their power to the executive branch, effectively giving up their institutional ability to rein in the president, they are instead relying on individual relationships to insulate themselves and their constituents from the adverse impact of his actions. That, in turn, has exposed a partisan imbalance. Republicans — who have been invited to meet privately with Mr. Musk, have received his cellphone number and maintain close relationships within the administration — can more easily influence which government employees and programs are spared from Mr. Trump’s ax.” MB: Kind of a reverse earmarks system, I guess. ~~~

     ~~~ Marie: A reminder that, sure, the entire Trump/Musk administration is a horrifying oppressive organization, but those guys could not get away with it for long without the cooperation of their Congressional co-conspirators.

The Conversation -- March 27, 2025

Marie: Earlier today, I linked a Washington Post story on Kristi Noem's field trip to El Salvador's notorious CECOT prison, where Noem's Department (HHS) had secretly flown people under cover of darkness and likely in violation of a judge's order. The Post reporters cover Noem's performance at CECOT, but Jonathan Last of the Bulwark does a better job. I urge you to read Last's essay. Here's a bit of it:

"Liberal regimes have standards for the treatment of prisoners. These standards are codified under the Geneva Conventions, which the United States has signed and ratified. Among the standards dictated by the Geneva Conventions is this: Prisoners may not be publicly exploited for purposes of propaganda. Another standard of liberal governments is that people who present themselves through legal pathways as refugees fleeing oppression are vetted and provided due process, not disappeared into foreign gulags. And yet here we are. A high-ranking American official visits a prison on foreign soil which we are using to warehouse enemies of her regime. She appears in a fitted long-sleeve tee and active-wear slacks. There is a ballcap on her head and a pound of makeup smeared across her plasticized face. A gold Rolex Daytona — worth more than some of these men will make in their entire lives — sits proudly on her dainty wrist. Every piece of this visual is carefully engineered.... [Behind her, prisoners] have clearly been posed by the jailers, forced to hold position so that they can be useful props for the American woman so that she can manufacture propaganda for her regime.... We are now the bad guys." Thanks to RAS for the lead. ~~~

~~~ Josh Kovensky of TPM: “The Trump administration commenced orchestrating the removals long before Trump invoked the Alien Enemies Act, and did so in a way that seems to have been designed to evade judicial oversight.... Not only did the government deprive those removed of their right to a hearing before an impartial judge, TPM’s reporting shows that federal officials went to extraordinary lengths to conceal weeks of preparations for the removals.... The judge who ordered a halt to the removals remarked on the issue at a hearing last week, observing that ICE had to have had 'advance notice of this proclamation because it’s impossible that this could have happened in a few hours.'” Thanks to RAS for the lead.

Cut HHS Staff → Bigger Tax Breaks for Rich Americans. Lauren Weber, et al., of the Washington Post: “The Department of Health and Human Services is cutting nearly a quarter of its workforce and consolidating several of its departments, Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced Thursday, a sweeping reduction of the agency that protects Americans’ health, oversees Medicare and Medicaid and ensures the safety of the nation’s food and drugs. The moves will save the department about $1.8 billion annually, the agency said in a news release, by reducing staff from 82,000 to 62,000. Half of those 20,000 employees took buyouts and early retirement, while 10,000 will lose their jobs.”

     ~~~ Three cheers for that American reporter who put MTG in her place. Way to ask a follow-up question. Finally!

~~~~~~~~~~

Houthis and the Blowhards

Jeff Goldberg & Shane Harris of the Atlantic Hit Send: “... statements by Hegseth, Gabbard, Ratcliffe, and Trump — combined with the assertions made by numerous administration officials that we are lying about the content of the Signal texts — have led us 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.... A CIA spokesperson asked us to withhold the name of John Ratcliffe’s chief of staff, which Ratcliffe had shared in the Signal chain, because CIA intelligence officers are traditionally not publicly identified. Ratcliffe had testified earlier yesterday that the officer is not undercover and said it was 'completely appropriate' to share their name in the Signal conversation. We will continue to withhold the name of the officer. Otherwise, the messages are unredacted.” Thanks to laura h. for this gift link. (Also linked yesterday.) ~~~

     ~~~ Marie: It doesn't take a national security expert to look at Drunk Pete's "What, When, Where, Who and How" message and realize that had this message been read in real time by, say, Iran, that U.S. military personnel and equipment would have been severely compromised and that the "Target Terrorist" would have moved out of harm's way. It seems ludicrous to claim that running this thread over a non-secure commercial app is no big deal.

Marie: Take a look at this photo. You probably remember it. ~~~

Now think about how this compares to the Signal chat Drunk Pete and the gang had re: the March 15 attack on Houthi targets during which, according to local reports, killed 53 people, including women & children. Two things in particular strike me: (1) The group met in a secure facility. According to Pete Souza, the White House photographer who took the now-famous photo, the top security brass were gathered in a tiny conference room within the Situations Room complex during the raid on Osama bin Laden's compound in Turkey. (2) The POTUS was in the room.

If you read Jeff Goldberg's first story (gift link) on the Houthi attack, then you know that the participants did NOT include the POTUS* in the chat group, even though they were, on the 15th, having a real-time discussion of the attack. Further, you also know that the chat participants were not even certain of what Trump wanted the DOD to do. They read in Stephen Miller -- perhaps he's the Trump Interpreter -- and he wrote, “As I heard it, the president was clear: green light....” That is, none of them dared even go to Trump to ask him to clarify his order, much less to discuss the ramifications with him. This is not the way you expect Cabinet members to interact (or not) with a normal POTUS. Bottom line: instead of being in a secure facility with the POTUS to discuss and follow the attack, these bozos were guessing what to do on a publicly-available app that malign actors might have been listening in on, too. ~~~

~~~ Patrick Beuth, et al., of Der Spiegel (English translation): "Private contact details of the most important security advisers to U.S. President Donald Trump can be found on the internet. Der Spiegel reporters were able to find mobile phone numbers, email addresses and even some passwords belonging to the top officials. To do so, the reporters used commercial people search engines along with hacked customer data that has been published on the web. Those affected by the leaks include National Security Adviser Mike Waltz, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth. Most of these numbers and email addresses are apparently still in use, with some of them linked to profiles on social media platforms like Instagram and LinkedIn.... There are also WhatsApp profiles for the respective phone numbers and even Signal accounts in some cases.

"As such, the reporting has revealed an additional grave, previously unknown security breach at the highest levels in Washington. Hostile intelligence services could use this publicly available data to hack the communications of those affected by installing spyware on their devices. It is thus conceivable that foreign agents were privy to the Signal chat group in which Gabbard, Waltz and Hegseth discussed a military strike." Thanks to RAS for the link. That's right. It doesn't take someone with the expertise of, say, Elon's "awesome" cyberstalker friend & DOGE software guy BigBalls, to secretly join Waltz's chat thread. ~~~

~~~ And This. Mike Bedigan of the Independent: “Donald Trump’s National Security Adviser Michael Waltz ... left sensitive information public on his personal Venmo account, according to a report. Waltz — along with other high-ranking officials including White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles — opened his account to the public with a list of 'friends' and other details that could potentially be exploited by foreign intelligence services, Wired reported. The Venmo account was clearly listed under the name 'Michael Waltz' and bore a photo of Waltz with a list of the names of people known to be associated with him.... Last July Wired also reported that Vance had left his Venmo account public, revealing a contacts list including members of the infamous right-wing Project 2025, government officials, former Yale contemporaries, and far-right media figures.” ~~~

     ~~~ Marie: One would assume that the Trump administration (well, any administration) would vet the digital presence -- devices, social media, apps, email contacts, etc. -- of at least top officials and staff who handle sensitive material. Obviously not. So there are certainly many staff whose digital footprints are vulnerable to security breaches.

Karoun Demirjian of the New York Times: “In the days since the editor in chief of The Atlantic revealed he had been inadvertently included in a group chat of top U.S. officials planning a military strike on Houthi militants in Yemen, senior members of the Trump administration have offered a series of shifting, sometimes contradictory and often implausible explanations for how the episode occurred — and why, they say, it just wasn’t that big a deal. Taken together, the statements for the most part sidestep or seek to divert attention from the fundamental fact of what happened: Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth used Signal, an unclassified commercial app, to share sensitive details about an imminent attack in an extraordinary breach of national security.... 

[Here's Donald Trump's take:] “[Mr.] Trump told reporters on Wednesday that the fervor over the Atlantic’s article was 'all a witch hunt.'... 'I think Signal could be defective, to be honest with you,' he said, after complaining that 'Joe Biden should have done this attack on Yemen.'... [Mr. Biden's] administration led allied nations in several attacks on Houthi sites in Yemen in 2024. Mr. Trump has insisted that no classified information was shared among the members of the group, including the editor of The Atlantic, Jeffrey Goldberg — and that it wasn’t uncommon for members of the government to use Signal for official business. But he has also spent a lot more energy disparaging Mr. Goldberg and The Atlantic than defending his national security officials. 'I happen to know the guy is a total sleazebag,' Mr. Trump said of Mr. Goldberg on Tuesday, speaking to reporters from the Cabinet Room.... 'The Atlantic is a failed magazine, does very, very poorly. Nobody gives a damn about it.'...

The White House has insisted that the information shared on Signal was not a 'war plan,' as the headline on the initial story called it, but an 'attack plan.' National security experts say this is very likely a distinction without a difference.” This is a fair summary of the semantic contortions the chatroom participants have executed in lieu of owning up to their dangerous, incompetent culpability. The link, therefore, is a gift link. ~~~

~~~ Ben Blanchet of the Huffington Post: “... Donald Trump on Wednesday downplayed Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s role in sharing highly sensitive matters of national security to a group chat that included The Atlantic’s editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg. 'Hegseth is doing a great job, he had nothing to do with this,' Trump told reporters in the Oval Office, despite screenshots showing the defense secretary sharing plans for U.S. strikes in Yemen with the Signal chat earlier this month. Trump continued, 'Hegseth? How do you bring Hegseth into it? He had nothing to do with it. Look, look — it’s all a witch hunt.'” Here's Politico's story: "I always thought it was Mike."

     ~~~ Marie: I suppose for the most part Trump's denials and deflections are standard operating prevarication from a world-class liar who cares less about national security secrets than any U.S. president in history (see Trump, Stolen Classified Documents Criminal Case). But if you've caught any clips of his making excuses for the Signalgate 18, it also appears that he does not know what's going on -- that chat threads and encrypted apps and government-approved methods, etc. are just too much for him. So it's all Joe Biden's fault.

Here's JayDee at Quantico yesterday, suited up for an encounter with reporters wanting to know about that group chat. (He did not respond when a reporter shouted a question at him.) ~~~

Julian Barnes & Robert Jimison of the New York Times: “Members of ... [Donald] Trump’s cabinet insisted at a House committee hearing on Wednesday that there was nothing wrong with using a consumer messaging app to discuss U.S. military plans to strike Houthi targets in Yemen.... Democrats ... appeared in lock step as they confronted one of the most notable blunders Trump administration officials have made since taking office. In question after question, the members of the Democratic caucus hammered away at the issue of the chat group.... The hearing became contentious at many moments. An exchange between Representative Jimmy Gomez, Democrat of California, and [CIA Director John] Ratcliffe briefly devolved into a shouting match as Mr. Gomez asked witnesses whether 'Pete Hegseth had been drinking before he leaked classified information.'... Some of the most effective questioning came from Representative Jason Crow, a Colorado Democrat who is a combat veteran.... With an aide holding up posters behind him, Mr. Crow described the Houthis’ advanced air-defense systems and then said it was outrageous that the administration was not accepting responsibility for the leak. 'It is a leadership failure, and that’s why Secretary Hegseth, who undoubtedly transmitted classified sensitive operational information via this chain, must resign immediately,' he said.”

Disclosure would compromise the operation and put lives at risk. Next to nuclear and covert operations, this information is the most protected. -- Mick Mulroy, Pentagon official in the first Trump administration, on Hegseth's posting of launch times "likely taken from a document outlining the real time battle sequence"

There was no classified information as I understand it. -- Donald Trump, Tuesday

That’s what I’ve heard. I don’t know. I’m not sure, you have to ask the various people involved. -- Donald Trump, Wednesday when asked if classified material was discussed in the chat ~~~

~~~ Marie: Devlin Barrett of the New York Times backs up what I wrote in the Comments yesterday when I speculated about how Team Signalgate was skirting responsibility for discussing classified information on an unsecure chat app: “To many of the people who worked in the classified world of military and intelligence operations, you don’t need a fancy red folder or special government markings to know the plans for an upcoming attack are highly classified. Senior administration officials, however, are staking their reputations on the often bureaucratic nature of classified information.... Administration officials have noted that it is up to the Defense Department to decide which details of its own work are classified. And since the head of that department, Mr. Hegseth, has declared the information not classified, it therefore is not, they have contended. Going back to at least the Reagan administration, however, the government has considered information about 'military plans, weapons or operations' to be classified.” ~~~

Here's Chris Hayes overview of the story as of last night: ~~~

~~~ Hayes goes over how screwed-up the "colossal failure" was: ~~~

Garrett Graff breaks down the revelations from the debacle into five scandals: "1) A massive leak of sensitive information.... 2) Perjury to Congress.... 3) A clear (and clearly criminal) violation of the Federal Records Act.... 4) A government IT scandal.... 5) Some light war crimes." Graff's explanations of each scandal he's defined are interesting. For instance, "This IT and cybersecurity scandal, by the way, is consistent with an administration that’s playing too fast and too loose with serious IT questions and secure communications systems: Just last week came word that Elon Musk has installed Starlink across the White House complex, which for anyone who understands the security of networks in a place like the White House, is just insanity." Graff goes on to observe that the Goldberg story revealed that "Donald Trump isn’t that engaged in the policy of his administration, JD Vance is weak and powerless, and the only one that matters is Stephen Miller.... Miller — who, mind you, is not a national security official who would be normally involved in a military strike overseas — is the one who shuts down the debate over whether the action moves ahead: Miller, in fact, is only added to the group after people aren’t sure of the president’s wishes.... JD Vance is powerless."

Jose Olivares of the Guardian & Agencies: “... 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 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.”

Ana Swanson, et al., of the New York Times: Donald “Trump said on Wednesday that he would impose a 25 percent tariff on cars and car parts that were imported into the United States, a move that is likely to raise prices for American consumers and throw supply chains into disarray as the president seeks to bolster U.S. manufacturing. The tariffs will go into effect on April 3 and apply both to finished cars and trucks that are shipped into the United States and to imported parts that are assembled into cars at American auto plants. Those tariffs will hit foreign brands as well as American ones, like Ford Motor and General Motors, which build some of their vehicles in Canada or Mexico. Nearly half of all vehicles sold in the United States are imported, as well as nearly 60 percent of the parts in vehicles assembled in the United States. That means the tariffs could push up car prices significantly when inflation has already made cars and trucks more expensive for American consumers.

“During remarks at the White House, Mr. Trump said the tariffs would encourage auto companies and their suppliers to set up shop in the United States.... But the auto industry is global and has been built up around trade agreements that allow factories in different countries to specialize in certain parts or types of cars, with the expectation that they would face little to no tariffs. That has been particularly true for North America, where national auto sectors have been stitched together by trade agreements since the 1960s.” The CBS News story is here. ~~~

~~~ Joe Stanley-Smith & Francesca Micheletti of Politico: “European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen responded quickly to a decision by ... Donald Trump to slap a 25 percent tariff on auto imports. The tariffs, which Trump said will take effect April 3, are a heavy blow for the European car industry and represent the largest escalation yet in Trump’s multi-fronted trade war, which is expected to have severe global economic consequences. 'I deeply regret the US decision to impose tariffs on European automotive exports,' von der Leyen said in a statement released late Wednesday evening. 'Tariffs are taxes — bad for businesses [and] worse for consumers equally in the US and the European Union.'... While von der Leyen's language was guarded, she left little doubt that the EU is prepared to retaliate.... 'As a major trading power and a strong community of 27 Member States, we will jointly protect our workers, businesses and consumers across our European Union.'”

⭐Cut Health Research Funding → Bigger Tax Breaks for Rich Americans. Carl Zimmer & Apoorva Mandavilli of the New York Times: “The Trump administration has canceled funding for dozens of studies seeking new vaccines and treatments for Covid-19 and other pathogens that may cause future pandemics. The government’s rationale is that the Covid pandemic has ended, which 'provides cause to terminate Covid-related grant funds,' according to an internal N.I.H. document viewed by The New York Times. But the research was not just about Covid. Nine of the terminated awards funded centers conducting research on antiviral drugs to combat so-called priority pathogens that could give rise to entirely new pandemics.... Describing all the research as Covid-related is 'a complete inaccuracy and simply a way to defund infectious disease research,' the official said. Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the health secretary, has said that the N.I.H. is too focused on infectious diseases, the official noted. The funding halts were first reported by Science and Nature. The cancellations stunned scientists who had depended on the government’s support.” ~~~

     ~~~ Marie: I don't know why we need all that research stuff with the white lab coats and the fancy microscopes and all when we can just ask RFKJ for his remedies for every present and future pathogen.

⭐Cut Healthcare Funding → Bigger Tax Breaks for Rich Americans. Apoorva Mandavilli, et al., of the New York Times: “The Department of Health and Human Services has abruptly canceled more than $12 billion in federal grants to states that were being used for tracking infectious diseases, mental health services, addiction treatment and other urgent health issues. The cuts are likely to further hamstring state health departments, which are already underfunded and struggling with competing demands from chronic diseases, resurgent infections like syphilis and emerging threats like bird flu.... For some, the effect was immediate. In Lubbock, Texas, public health officials have received orders to stop work supported by three grants that helped fund the response to the widening measles outbreak there.... On Tuesday, some state health departments were preparing to lay off dozens of epidemiologists and data scientists.” The NBC News story is here.

⭐Let a Million Children Die → Bigger Tax Breaks for Rich Americans. Adam Taylor & Emmanuel Martinez of the Washington Post: “The United States is planning to terminate more than $1 billion in funding for Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, an international organization that offers lifesaving vaccinations for millions of people each year in some of the world’s poorest countries, according to information in a document the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) sent to Congress this week. The surprise cuts to Gavi 'would have a disastrous impact on global health security, potentially resulting in the deaths of more than 1 million children over five years and endangering lives everywhere from dangerous disease outbreaks,' said Sania Nishtar, a Pakistani doctor and chief executive of the organization. The halt in funding was set out in a lengthy spreadsheet detailing cuts to USAID. Gavi said it was not given any warning about the termination of its U.S. funding, which it said came as the organization was negotiating with the White House and Congress.... As of last year, the U.S. was the third-largest funder of Gavi, behind Britain and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, according to calculations by KFF.”

David French of the New York Times: “The MAGA movement is attacking the American judiciary. The evidence is everywhere.... The second Trump term is substantially different from Trump’s first term in a key respect — the people around him have developed actual legal theories and policy ideas to buttress, direct and channel Trump’s impulses.... These ... make Trump’s second term far more dangerous to the Constitution than his first.... As [Stephen] Miller put it in a press briefing last month, 'The whole will of democracy is imbued into the elected president.' He is the only elected official who represents the whole of the American people, and he embodies the people’s general will.... As a result, Miller argued, he is the best expression of American popular will, and Article II of the Constitution ... gives the president the power to hire staff to 'impose that democratic will onto the government.'... According to this reasoning, the executive branch is the most democratic branch of government and the most powerful.... The Trumpist argument is dangerous precisely because it is partly right. Like many Trumpist critiques of the status quo, there are grounds for complaint, but their proposed cure is worse than the disease.... Trumpists are hoping to replace a flawed system with a broken system.”

Richard Hasen, in an NBC News opinion piece: "By design, presidents have no power over the conduct of federal elections.... Donald Trump’s recent executive order on election administration aims to flip that, trying to take power from both an independent bipartisan federal agency and from the states, in an affront to principles of federalism. This dangerous power grab signals further democratic backsliding"

Stacy Cowley of the New York Times: “Under ... [Donald] Trump, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has dropped nearly a dozen enforcement cases brought during the Biden administration, ending lawsuits against banks and lenders for a variety of financial practices that the watchdog agency no longer considers illegal. But on Wednesday, the bureau went a step further: It is seeking to give back $105,000 that a mortgage lender paid to settle racial discrimination claims last fall. In an especially strange twist, the case — against Townstone Financial, a small Chicago-based lender — was brought during Mr. Trump’s first term by Kathleen Kraninger, the director he appointed to run the consumer bureau. Russell Vought, who became the agency’s acting director last month, said it had'used radical “equity” arguments to tag Townstone as racist with zero evidence, and spent years persecuting and extorting them.'”

Brianna Sacks, et al., of the Washington Post: “Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi L. Noem and other Trump administration officials expressed support in meetings this week for dramatically diminishing the role of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, with the aim of all but eliminating the embattled agency’s role in disaster recovery by Oct. 1.... The closed-door push to abolish or substantially cut FEMA’s authorities ... comes barely two months ahead of the start of the Atlantic hurricane season.... FEMA’s existence and functions are written into laws, so it’s unclear how the administration could halt them without congressional approval, said [Rep. Jared] Moskowitz [D-Florida], formerly Florida’s emergency management director.... Moskowitz and Rep. Byron Donalds (R-Florida) this week introduced a bill to establish FEMA as an independent, Cabinet-level agency that is no longer part of DHS. The goal, Moskowitz said, is to free the agency from a sprawling bureaucracy and help it move with more agility.”

Mary Beth Sheridan & Maria Sacchetti of the Washington Post: “Kristi L. Noem, the U.S. homeland security secretary, threatened Wednesday to send more immigrants from the United States to a notorious maximum-security prison in El Salvador that has become a black hole for Venezuelans spirited out of the United States with no judicial hearing.... Noem [visited El Salvador’s Terrorism Confinement Center, or CECOT, and] met Wednesday evening with Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele 'to strengthen bilateral cooperation on security and migration,' according to a post on X from the U.S. Embassy there. She also signed an agreement to improve information-sharing on fugitives.”

The footage of Rumeysa Ozturk’s arrest — a student here legally — is disturbing. Based on what we now know, it is alarming that the federal administration chose to ambush and detain her, apparently targeting a law-abiding individual because of her political views. This isn’t public safety, it’s intimidation that will, and should, be closely scrutinized in court. -- Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Campbell ~~~

~~~ Jenna Russell, et al., of the New York Times: “An international student in a graduate program at Tufts University was taken into federal custody on Tuesday outside an off-campus apartment building.... The student, Rumeysa Ozturk, a Turkish citizen, had a valid student visa as a doctoral student at Tufts, according to a statement from her lawyer, Mahsa Khanbabai. Ms. Ozturk, who is Muslim..., was detained by agents from the Department of Homeland Security near her apartment in Somerville, Mass., Ms. Khanbabai said. 'We are unaware of her whereabouts and have not been able to contact her,' the lawyer said. 'No charges have been filed against Rumeysa to date that we are aware of.'... Records from Immigration and Customs Enforcement showed that a person with Ms. Ozturk’s name was being held in a Louisiana detention center on Wednesday.

“Late on Tuesday, Judge Indira Talwani of the Federal District Court in Massachusetts had ordered the government not to move Ms. Ozturk out of the state without advance written notice to the court. It was not immediately clear on Wednesday whether the government had provided written notice.... Ms. Ozturk was listed as one of several authors of an opinion essay published last March in the Tufts student newspaper. The essay criticized university leaders for their response to demands that Tufts 'acknowledge the Palestinian genocide' and divest itself from companies with ties to Israel.” ~~~

     ~~~ Marie: The CBS News story is here. The NYT article includes a one-minute video of masked ICE agents grabbing a frightened Ozturk as she was walking along a sidewalk. The CBS News story includes a WBZ Boston report that contains in-color footage of Ozturk's arrest as well as a report and video footage of the demonstration for Ozturk that took place Wednesday. ~~~

     ~~~ Molly Farrar of Boston.com: “Thousands rallied in Somerville[, Massachusetts,] Wednesday after a Tufts University graduate student, native to Turkey and outspoken about Palestinian rights, was arrested by federal immigration agents Tuesday night. Rumeysa Ozturk, a Fulbright Scholar pursuing her PhD at the university’s Child Study and Human Development department, was detained by ICE agents outside an off-campus apartment building in Somerville. Her lawyer said she was 'maintaining valid F-1 status' while at Tufts.”

Alan Feuer & Charlie Savage of the New York Times: “A federal appeals court in Washington on Wednesday kept in place, for now, a block on the Trump administration’s use of a rarely invoked wartime statute to summarily deport Venezuelan migrants accused of being members of a violent street gang. By a 2-to-1 vote, a panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit said the Venezuelan migrants were likely to succeed in their claims that the government cannot use the wartime law, the Alien Enemies Act, to summarily transfer them to a prison in El Salvador without a hearing. 'The government’s removal scheme denies plaintiffs even a gossamer thread of due process, even though the government acknowledges their right to judicial review of their removability,' Judge Patricia A. Millett wrote.” The linked decision is via the court, so not firewalled. Politico's report is here.

Lisa Rein & Hannah Natanson of the Washington Post: “The Social Security Administration on Wednesday abruptly backed off planned cuts to phone services for disabled and some elderly Americans applying for benefits amid an uproar from advocates. The originally proposed changes — scheduled to take effect Monday but now delayed to April 14 — would have directed all people filing claims to first verify their identity online or in person, removing a phone option in place for years. Advocates said the shift would make it impossible for many disabled and elderly people with limited mobility or computer skills to apply. Now, those applying for Medicare, disability benefits and supplemental income help can continue to file claims and authenticate their identity by phone, according to a news release the agency issued late Wednesday. However, others filing for retirement or survivor benefits — or requesting direct deposit for their checks — will still be bound by rules announced by the agency earlier this month: These transactions require online or in-person identity verification except in rare situations, such as when someone is terminally ill.”

Danielle Douglas-Gabriel of the Washington Post: “The Education Department on Wednesday reopened applications for some of its most affordable student loan repayment plans but offered no timeline for processing them, a move that could create a massive backlog. The department had shut down an application for all income-driven repayment plans in February after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit expanded an injunction blocking President Joe Biden’s Saving on a Valuable Education program, commonly known as Save.... The Trump administration said shutting down the application was necessary to comply with the court order.... The order, however, did not direct the department to bar borrowers from accessing the two plans or Income-Based Repayment (IBR), which Congress created under a separate statute.”

Abbie VanSickle of the New York Times: “The Supreme Court on Wednesday upheld federal restrictions aimed at curtailing access to kits that can be easily assembled into homemade, nearly untraceable firearms. In a 7-to-2 decision, written by Justice Neil M. Gorsuch, one of the court’s conservatives, the justices left in place requirements enacted during the Biden administration as part of a broader effort to combat gun violence by placing restrictions on so-called ghost guns. The ruling in favor of gun regulations is a departure for the court, which has shown itself to be skeptical both of administrative agency power and of gun regulations. Two conservative justices — Samuel A. Alito Jr. and Clarence Thomas — each filed dissents. The Biden administration enacted rules in 2022 tightening access to the weapons kits, after law enforcement agencies reported that ghost guns were exploding in popularity and being used to commit serious crimes.” (Also linked yesterday.) 

~~~~~~~~~~

Pennsylvania. Marie: Yesterday, I linked a story about a Pennsylvania special election for a state senate seat, which Democratic James Malone won, even though the district has been thoroughly Republican for decades. Maybe one of the reasons Malone won was that Republicans in the district have annoyed voters by making it quite difficult to vote. Contributor Jeanne votes in the district and she wrote yesterday that Republicans "took out our only drop box for ballots [and moved them] down at the governmental center.... When we go in, there are five or six cops in attendance and a security doorway, wands, and a treadmill for our purses and belts. So, so 'insecure' said the professional liars. Other elections, we have had to park and go in, paying for parking, but this time there were temporary signs saying four spots were for ballot drop-off. Naturally, only my ballot can be in my hand, and husband's must be in his hand."

The Conversation -- March 26, 2025

Abbie VanSickle of the New York Times: “The Supreme Court on Wednesday upheld federal restrictions aimed at curtailing access to kits that can be easily assembled into homemade, nearly untraceable firearms. In a 7-to-2 decision, written by Justice Neil M. Gorsuch, one of the court’s conservatives, the justices left in place requirements enacted during the Biden administration as part of a broader effort to combat gun violence by placing restrictions on so-called ghost guns. The ruling in favor of gun regulations is a departure for the court, which has shown itself to be skeptical both of administrative agency power and of gun regulations. Two conservative justices — Samuel A. Alito Jr. and Clarence Thomas — each filed dissents. The Biden administration enacted rules in 2022 tightening access to the weapons kits, after law enforcement agencies reported that ghost guns were exploding in popularity and being used to commit serious crimes.”

RAS & Nick Anderson seem a bit flummoxed about the rationale behind what constitutes a "state secret": ~~~

Trump Logic#signalscandal #trump pic.twitter.com/2GMN6qog5m

— Nick Anderson/Political Cartoonist (@Nick_Anderson_) March 25, 2025

Jeff Goldberg & Shane Harris of the Atlantic Hit Send: “... statements by Hegseth, Gabbard, Ratcliffe, and Trump — combined with the assertions made by numerous administration officials that we are lying about the content of the Signal texts — have led us 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.... A CIA spokesperson asked us to withhold the name of John Ratcliffe’s chief of staff, which Ratcliffe had shared in the Signal chain, because CIA intelligence officers are traditionally not publicly identified. Ratcliffe had testified earlier yesterday that the officer is not undercover and said it was 'completely appropriate' to share their name in the Signal conversation. We will continue to withhold the name of the officer. Otherwise, the messages are unredacted.” Thanks to laura h. for this gift link. ~~~

     ~~~ Marie: It doesn't take a national security expert to look at Drunk Pete's "What, When, Where, Who and How" message and realize that had this message been read in real time by, say, Iran, that U.S. military personnel and equipment would have been severely compromised and that the "Target Terrorist" would have moved out of harm's way. It seems ludicrous to claim that running this thread over a non-secure commercial app is no big deal.

~~~~~~~~~~

The New York Times annotates excerpts from the Signal group chat re: plans for U.S. strikes on Houthi targets in Yemen.

Tyler Pager & David Sanger of the New York Times: Donald “Trump characterized an extraordinary security breach as a minor transgression on Tuesday, insisting that top administration officials had not shared any classified information as they discussed secret military plans in a group chat that included the editor in chief of The Atlantic magazine.... Mr. Trump also stood by his national security adviser, Michael Waltz, who had inadvertently added the journalist Jeffrey Goldberg to the chat on the Signal app, which included Vice President JD Vance and others. In the chat, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth shared information on timing, targets and weapons systems to be used in an attack on Houthi militants in Yemen, according to Mr. Goldberg. 'I think it was very unfair the way they attacked Michael,' the president said of Mr. Waltz. Former national security officials said they were skeptical that the information shared by Mr. Hegseth ahead of the March 15 strike was not classified, given the life-or-death nature of the operation.” ~~~

~~~ Trump Blames Unnamed Staffer for Goldberg Read-in. Garrett Haake & Megan Lebowitz of NBC News: “... Donald Trump stood by his national security adviser, Mike Waltz, after The Atlantic’s editor-in-chief was accidentally added to a private, high-level chat on the messaging app Signal where military plans were being discussed. 'Michael Waltz has learned a lesson, and he’s a good man,' Trump said Tuesday in a phone interview with NBC News. When asked what he was told about how Goldberg came to be added to the Signal chat, Trump said, 'It was one of Michael’s people on the phone. A staffer had his number on there.' Trump said Goldberg’s presence in the chat had 'no impact at all' on the military operation.... The situation, Trump said, was 'the only glitch in two months, and it turned out not to be a serious one.'” (Also linked yesterday.) ~~~

     ~~~ Marie: Say, Garrett, why didn't you follow up and ask Trump why his top aides violated standard protocol for discussing non-public information? He can't blame an anonymous staffer for that. ~~~

~~~ Sam Levin of Guardian: “... Mike Waltz said he took full responsibility for a stunning leak of military plans in a Signal chat, while Trump intervened to defend him, saying it was 'the only glitch in two months'. 'I take full responsibility. I built the group. My job is to make sure everything is coordinated,' Waltz said in an interview with Fox News, in which he conceded: 'it’s embarrassing'.... When pressed by Fox News’s Laura Ingraham, Waltz accepted responsibility for making the Signal group, though he continued to deflect blame, insulted [Atlantic editor Jeffrey] Goldberg and said he couldn’t explain how the mistake had occurred.... Waltz said ... that he was consulting with Elon Musk: 'We’ve got the best technical minds looking at how this happened.'... [Waltz] 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. Although Waltz claimed a staffer was not responsible, Trump ... [said] in a Newsmax interview...: '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.'” ~~~

     ~~~ Marie: Thank god Elon is on the case.

Zolan Kanno-Youngs of the New York Times: “Vice President JD Vance’s team sought to immediately contain the fallout over a report ... that the [Signal] conversation displayed a hint of his dissent with his boss.... In the Signal chat..., Mr. Vance told the other officials that he thought the timing of the Yemen operation was a 'mistake...,' and he seemed to question if Mr. Trump understood the potential consequences of the action.... William Martin, a spokesman for Vance said [Monday]..., 'The vice president’s first priority is always making sure that the president’s advisers are adequately briefing him on the substance of their internal deliberations.... Vice President Vance unequivocally supports this administration’s foreign policy. The president and the vice president have had subsequent conversations about this matter and are in complete agreement.'” ~~~

     ~~~ Marie: A lot of good JayDee's clean-up effort did. The boss banished him to the Arctic Circle anyway. (Story linked below.)

Marita Vlachou of the Huffington Post: “Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor-in-chief of The Atlantic..., blasted Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s claim that 'nobody was texting war plans.'... 'That’s a lie,” [Goldberg] told CNN’s 'The Source.' 'He was texting war plans. He was texting attack plans.'”

A Short History of Drunk Pete Screw-ups. Helene Cooper & Eric Schmitt of the New York Times: “Even before he disclosed secret battle plans for Yemen in a group chat, information that could have endangered American fighter pilots, it had been a rocky two months for Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.... Mr. Hegseth’s stumbles started soon after he was sworn in to lead the Pentagon on Jan. 25. In his debut on the world stage in mid-February, he told NATO and Ukrainian ministers that a return to Ukraine’s pre-2014 borders, before Russia’s first invasion, was 'an unrealistic objective' and ruled out NATO membership for Ukraine.... 'He made a rookie mistake in Brussels,' [Sen. Roger] Wicker [R-Miss.] said.... The Pentagon under Mr. Hegseth considered plans in which the United States would give up its command role overseeing NATO troops.... Mr. Hegseth ordered a ban on transgender troops.... “The military ban is soaked in animus and dripping with pretext,” Judge Ana C. Reyes of U.S. District Court in Washington wrote in a scathing ruling last week.... The Pentagon planned a sensitive briefing to give [Elon] Musk a firsthand look at how the military would fight a war with China, a potentially valuable step for any businessman with interests there. In all of those endeavors, Mr. Hegseth was pulled back, by congressional Republicans, the courts or even Mr. Trump.... Across the military on Monday and Tuesday, current and retired troops and officers expressed dismay and anger in social media posts, secret chat groups and the hallways of the Pentagon.” ~~~

~~~ Missy Ryan & Dan Lamothe of the Washington Post: “... the incident — in which Hegseth detailed not only the weapons U.S. forces intended to use when attacking Yemen but the planned targets and timing as well, according to Goldberg’s account in the Atlantic — is an uncomfortable one for the Pentagon chief as he and his deputies vow to take a hard line on unauthorized disclosures of national security information. Trump did not mention Hegseth in his remarks at the White House.”

See Patrick's comment yesterday on just how vulnerable are the phones of our Signal-ing leaders and their appy-happy aides. Then check out the story RAS linked next: ~~~

~~~ Joanne Stocker & Emmet Lyons of CBS News: Donald "Trump's Ukraine and Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff was in Moscow, where he met with Russian President Vladimir Putin, when he was included in a group chat with more than a dozen other top administration officials — and inadvertently, one journalist — on the messaging app Signal, a CBS News analysis of open-source flight information and Russian media reporting has revealed. Russia has repeatedly tried to compromise Signal, a popular commercial messaging platform that many were shocked to learn senior Trump administration officials had used to discuss sensitive military planning." (Also linked yesterday.) ~~~

~~~ Oh, And This. Quil Lawrence & Tom Bowman of NPR: "Several days after top national security officials accidentally included a reporter in a Signal chat about bombing Houthi sites in Yemen, a Pentagon-wide advisory warned against using the messaging app, even for unclassified information. 'A vulnerability has been identified in the Signal messenger application,' begins the department-wide email, dated March 18.... 'Russian professional hacking groups are employing the "linked devices" features to spy on encrypted conversations.' It notes that Google has identified Russian hacking groups who are 'targeting Signal Messenger to spy on persons of interest.' Moreover there was a memo in 2023 obtained by NPR warning of using Signal for using any non-public official information.... The 2023 DoD memo prohibited use of mobile applications for even 'controlled unclassified information,' which is many degrees less important than information about on-going military operations.... A Signal spokesman said the Pentagon memo is not about the messaging app's level of security, but rather that users of the service should be aware of so-called 'phishing attacks.'" (Also linked yesterday.) ~~~

     ~~~ And Now This. James LaPorta of CBS News: "The National Security Agency sent out an operational security special bulletin to its employees in February 2025 warning them of vulnerabilities in using the encrypted messaging application Signal, according to internal NSA documents obtained by CBS News.... The NSA is an arm of the Defense Department.... 'A vulnerability has been identified in the Signal Messenger Application. The use of Signal by common targets of surveillance and espionage activity has made the application a high value target to intercept sensitive information,' the internal bulletin begins.... The bulletin warned of Russian professional hacking groups employing phishing scams to gain access to encrypted conversations, bypassing the end-to-end encryption the application uses. The bulletin also underscored to NSA employees that third-party messaging applications such as Signal and Whatsapp are permitted for certain 'unclassified accountability/recall exercises' but not for communicating more sensitive information." ~~~

     ~~~ Marie: One would certainly think that Drunk Pete would have been copied on the NSA memo and that he should have (a) heeded it (which he did not), and (b) issued a general alert to DOD employees as well as other federal employees who handled sensitive and classified matters.

Of all of the dangerous, stupid errors committed by Signalgate participants, Dana Milbank of the Washington Post is most upset by their use of emojis: “The vice president, the secretary of state, the defense secretary, the national security adviser, the head of national intelligence and others were deciding whether or not to launch a military strike — the most consequential exercise of power a government has — and they were texting each other emojis like a bunch of teenagers? These, alas, are the people in charge of keeping us safe.” But -- since emojis seem to be terms these aged teens understand, Milbank helps them out by explaining what they did wrong with the aid of emojis. MB: This is a gift link, because it's the only way I can express Milbank's objections.

Heather Cox Richardson: “As national security specialist Tom Nichols noted: 'If the President is telling the truth and no one’s briefed him about this yet, that’s another story in itself. In any other administration, [the chief of staff] would have been in the Oval [Office] within nanoseconds of learning about something like this.' Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is evidently going to try to bully his way out of this disaster. When asked about it, he began to yell at a reporter that Goldberg is a 'deceitful and highly discredited so-called journalist who’s made a profession of pddling hoaxes time and time again.' Hegseth looked directly at the camera and said: 'Nobody was texting war plans.' But Goldberg has receipts.... Zachary B. Wolf of CNN noted that 'Trump intentionally hired amateurs for top jobs. This is their most dramatic blunder.'... Foreign policy scholar Timothy Snyder posted: 'These guys inherited one of the most functional state apparatus in the history of the world and they are inhabiting it like a crack house.'” (Also linked yesterday.)

Abigail Hauslohner & Warren Strobel of the Washington Post: “Democrats hammered the United States’ top intelligence officials Tuesday morning as they delivered the annual global threat assessment to Congress — a day after a bombshell report that the vice president, defense secretary, national security adviser and other top Cabinet members used a commercial messaging app to discuss secret war plans for Yemen and inadvertently included a journalist in the group chat. At least two of the officials who appeared before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence — Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and CIA Director John Ratcliffe — were among those who participated in the group chat over the Signal messaging app.... 'This is one more example of the kind of sloppy, careless, incompetent behavior, particularly toward classified information,' exhibited by the Trump administration, [Sen. Mark] Warner [(Va.) -- the top Democrat on the select intelligence committee --] said, adding, 'This is not a one-off.' Gabbard on Tuesday at first declined to say whether she was involved in the group chat. Later, she and Ratcliffe insisted that no classified information was shared in the chat — a claim that triggered an incredulous backlash from the committee’s liberals.” ~~~ Summary of Gabbard's and Ratcliffe's testimony: “Homina-homina, lie-la-la-lie-lie-lie.” The NPR story is here. (Also linked yesterday.) ~~~

~~~ Rebecca Beitsch of the Hill: “Sen. Mark Warner (Va.), the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, criticized the Trump administration for using a Signal group to discuss plans for carrying out bombing in Yemen, calling on officials to resign and saying others would have been fired for the same actions. Warner said national security adviser Mike Waltz and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth did not 'conduct hygiene 101' in failing to realize there was a journalist on the group chat.... 'When the stakes are this high, incompetence is not an option. Pete Hegseth should resign. Mike Waltz should resign,' he wrote [on X].”

Michael Gold of the New York Times: “Several Democrats in Congress called on Tuesday for the resignations of Pete Hegseth, the secretary of defense, and Michael Waltz, the national security adviser, over their involvement in a Signal group chat discussing U.S. strikes in Yemen.... Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon..., during the same [Intelligence Committee] hearing [in which Mark Warner and other Democrat senators criticized the breach of security]..., [said,] 'I am of the view that there ought to be resignations, starting with the national security adviser and the secretary of defense.'... In a letter to ... [Donald] Trump on Tuesday, House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries became the highest-ranking Democrat to demand the defense secretary be terminated, saying he was 'unqualified' and a national security risk.... While some Republican lawmakers have called for an investigation, most have shied away from criticizing the Trump administration and have refrained from calling on any officials to step down.”

Brandi Buchman of the Huffington Post: “A public watchdog group sued Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and a slew of other Trump administration officials Tuesday.... The lawsuit, brought by the watchdog group American Oversight..., requests that a federal judge formally declare that Hegseth and other officials on the chat violated their duty to uphold laws around the preservation of official communications. Those laws are outlined in the Federal Records Act and, according to lawyers for American Oversight, if agency heads refuse to recover or protect their communications, the national archivist should ask the attorney general to step in.... As American Oversight lawyers pointed out in their lawsuit Tuesday, [Marco] Rubio [-- who participated in the Signal chat --] is also the acting archivist of the United States and, as such, 'is aware of the violations' that allegedly occurred.”

Erica Green of the New York Times: Donald “Trump signed an executive order on Tuesday that will require proof of U.S. citizenship on election forms, in an aggressive push to catch and combat voter fraud, which is exceedingly rare but constantly cited by Mr. Trump as a reason he lost the 2020 election. The order calls for the Election Assistance Commission to require people to show government-issued proof of U.S. citizenship to register to vote in federal elections, and directs state or local officials to record and verify the information. It also seeks to require states to count ballots by Election Day.... Like many of Mr. Trump’s orders, this one is likely to face legal challenges for executive overreach. Rick Hasen..., director of the Safeguarding Democracy Project at the University of California, Los Angeles, School of Law, said that Mr. Trump had no authority to dictate how states ran their elections, such as requiring them to count their ballots by Election Day. Mr. Hasen added that Mr. Trump’s exertion of power over the commission — which was created by legislation passed in Congress — would need to be tested in court, since what he is ordering them to do is 'either contrary to law or at best disputed.'” The AP's story is here. ~~~

     ~~~ Say, here's a fun fact Green didn't mention: ~~~

     ~~~ Jessica Huseman, et al., of Vote Beat: “The executive order envisions a new role for federal agencies in scrutinizing the voter rolls.... It allows the Department of Government Efficiency..., led by billionaire Trump backer Elon Musk, and the Department of Homeland Security to view publicly available voter files and other unspecified 'available records' to ensure the rolls are being cleaned to federal standards.” ~~~

     ~~~ Patrick Marley of the Washington Post: “The U.S. Constitution designates the power to regulate the 'time, place and manner' of elections to the states, with the proviso that Congress can step in and override those laws. It gives no specific power to the president to do so. Election experts said that Trump was claiming power he does not have and that lawsuits over the measure were all but guaranteed.” ~~~

     ~~~ Marie: Marley does mention how Trump's order allows DOGE to sift through voter rolls. Plus this: “The order allows voters to use passports or certain driver’s licenses to prove citizenship, but not birth certificates.” As far as I know, my birth certificate is the only proof of citizenship I currently have. (I've misplaced my expired passport and I don't have a REAL-ID driver's license.) So Trump's order, if activated, probably would deprive me -- and millions of others -- of the right to vote we have enjoyed for many years.

Devlin Barrett of the New York Times: Donald “Trump initiated a fresh attack on lawyers on Tuesday, singling out a firm where a former prosecutor who investigated him once worked as the White House pursues vengeance against the profession he blames for his legal troubles. An executive order from Mr. Trump focused on Jenner & Block, a prominent white-shoe firm that once employed Andrew Weissmann, a longtime deputy to Robert S. Mueller III, who as a special counsel investigated Mr. Trump in his first term over possible links to Russia. The order underscored the extent to which the president, who faced four criminal indictments after he left office in 2021, now aims to exact a steep price from anyone associated with past investigations of him.... At the White House on Tuesday, Mr. Trump called Mr. Weissmann a 'bad guy' and said he would also declassify additional documents from the Russia investigation, known as Crossfire Hurricane, that began in 2016.... The executive order signed Tuesday declares that many big law firms 'take actions that threaten public safety and national security, limit constitutional freedoms, degrade the quality of American elections, or undermine bedrock American principles.' The order also criticizes firms for doing pro bono work, or representing clients who are indigent or have limited financial resources to afford lawyers, charging that such work is often for what he called 'destructive causes.'” Politico's story is here. ~~~

     ~~~ Marie: Yes, it's really “destructive” that some lawyers defend poor people. ~~~

~~~ Michael Birnbaum of the Washington Post: “... Donald Trump’s crackdown on lawyers is having a chilling effect on his opponents’ ability to defend themselves or challenge his actions in court, according to people who say they are struggling to find legal representation as a result of his challenges. Biden-era officials said they’re having trouble finding lawyers willing to defend them. The volunteers and small nonprofits forming the ground troops of the legal resistance to Trump administration actions say that the well-resourced law firms that once would have backed them are now steering clear. The result is an extraordinary threat to fundamental constitutional rights of due process and legal representation, they said — and a far weaker effort to challenge Trump’s actions in court than during his first term. Legal scholars say no previous U.S. administration has taken such concerted action against the legal establishment, with Trump’s predecessors in both parties typically respecting the constitutionally enshrined tenet that everyone deserves effective representation in court and that lawyers cannot be targeted simply for the cases and clients they take on....

“Trump on Friday ordered Attorney General Pam Bondi to expand the campaign by sanctioning lawyers who 'engage in frivolous, unreasonable, and vexatious litigation' against his administration. Legal scholars say there is little precedent in modern U.S. history for Trump’s actions. But the president is following a playbook from other countries whose leaders have sought to undermine democratic systems and the rule of law, including Russia, Turkey and Hungary.” (Also linked yesterday.) ~~~

     ~~~ Marie: Shame on the lawyers. Every large law firm -- left, right and apolitical -- should be standing up against Trump and for individuals and organizations who oppose him. This would not be remarkable heroism; it would saving democratic ideals and preserving the rule of law for everyone, including their own sorry businesses.

Luke Broadwater & Ken Vogel of the New York Times: Donald “Trump signed a full and unconditional pardon on Tuesday for Devon Archer, a former business partner of Hunter Biden whose congressional testimony two years ago helped fuel House Republicans’ investigation into the Biden family. Mr. Archer had been convicted in a fraud case, and was sentenced in 2022 to a year and a day in prison. The pardon erases the conviction and also tens of millions of dollars in forfeitures and restitution that Mr. Archer had been ordered to pay. Mr. Archer was pardoned before he served any of his prison sentence. Mr. Archer ... accused the Bidens of abusing 'soft power' through business deals in which then-President Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s son Hunter made millions of dollars.... The pardon is the latest example of Mr. Trump’s aggressive use of his clemency power to reward allies or highlight his own grievances about what he sees as the political weaponization of the justice system.”

Jeffrey Gettleman, et al., of the New York Times: “Vice President JD Vance announced on Tuesday that he was headed to ... [Greenland] later this week, taking over a controversial visit that officials in Greenland have made very clear they don’t want at all.... Some political analysts in Denmark said that the decision to send Mr. Vance was an 'escalation.'... Originally, the Trump administration said that Usha Vance, the second lady, and Michael Waltz, the national security adviser, would make the trip to Greenland, a semiautonomous territory of Denmark that ... [Donald] Trump wants for the United States. Officials from Denmark and Greenland immediately branded the move 'aggressive' and part of the president’s plan to get the island, as he recently put it, 'one way or the other.' The White House then issued a statement on Tuesday afternoon changing up the visit.

“The new itinerary is for Mr. and Ms. Vance to visit Pituffik Space Base, an American military installation high above the Arctic Circle, 'to receive a briefing on Arctic security issues and meet with U.S. service members.'... Greenland officials have emphasized that they never invited the Americans in the first place but they have little control over who visits the American base. Initially, the plan was for Ms. Vance and one of her sons to watch a dog sled race, a cherished Greenland tradition, in Sisimiut, one of Greenland’s bigger towns.” While she claimed she received “multiple invitations” to watch the race, the organizers said they had not invited the Vances. Usha Vance will not be attending the race. It's not clear whether or not Waltz, who is in the doghouse over Signalgate, will travel to Greenland with the Vances.

Akhilleus has found a cap popular in Greenland. Here's a related Huffington Post story: ~~~

Joe Lawlor of the Portland Press Herald, republished by Yahoo! News: "The acting commissioner of the Social Security Administration admitted this week that he specifically targeted Maine after watching Gov. Janet Mills clash with ... Donald Trump during an event at the White House. 'I was ticked at the governor of Maine for not being real cordial to the president,' Lee Dudek told the New York Times. Dudek directed the agency to cancel a decades-old program that allows parents to register their newborns for a social security number while at hospitals. The mandate only applied to Maine and required new parents to show up at a Social Security office in person to register their newborns. The change was rescinded one day later after an outcry from Maine and criticism from the state's congressional delegation.... Rep. Chellie Pingree, D-1st District said the targeting of Maine by Dudek is 'infuriating and absurd.'"

Lisa Rein of the Washington Post: “Frank Bisignano..., Donald Trump’s nominee to run the Social Security Administration, testified under oath at his confirmation hearing Tuesday that he has had no contact with the Elon Musk cost-cutting team that is directing a major downsizing of the agency. But Sen. Ron Wyden (Oregon), the top Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, said the claim is 'not true,' citing an account the senator said he received from a senior Social Security official who recently left the agency. The former official — whose detailed statement was shared with The Washington Post — described 'numerous contacts Mr. Bisignano made with the agency since his nomination,' including 'frequent' conversations with senior executives. The nominee 'personally appointed' Michael Russo, the chief information officer leading Musk’s U.S. DOGE Service team at Social Security, and the two speak frequently about agency operations, the former executive said. The Post confirmed the former official’s account with two people.... [One] said she was told by acting commissioner Leland Dudek that the nominee and Russo 'spoke multiple times a day' about Social Security operations.”

AND Trump's Former Lawyer Lied Under Oath at HIS Confirmation Hearing. William Rashbaum, et al., of the New York Times: “During his U.S. Senate confirmation hearing to become the No. 2 official at the Justice Department, Todd Blanche suggested that he had no direct knowledge of the decision to abandon a criminal corruption case against the mayor of New York City. But in a draft letter unsealed on Tuesday, the interim U.S. attorney in Manhattan wrote that a top department official, Emil Bove III, had suggested otherwise before ordering her to seek the case’s dismissal. The U.S. attorney, Danielle R. Sassoon, wrote that when she suggested that department officials await Mr. Blanche’s Senate confirmation so he could play a role in the decision, Mr. Bove informed her that Mr. Blanche was 'on the same page,' and that 'there was no need to wait.' The draft was written by Ms. Sassoon earlier this year, as she fought for the case’s survival.... When Senator Peter Welch, a Vermont Democrat, asked Mr. Blanche about whether the decisions in the case had been directed by officials in Washington, Mr. Blanche suggested that he had no direct knowledge. 'I have the same information you have,' he said. 'It appears it was, yes, I don’t know.' Reached for comment on Tuesday, Senator Welch said, 'If this is true, it clearly indicates Blanche “misled” — in plain English, lied — to the committee.'” (Also linked yesterday.)

HHS Secretary Makes Sick Kids Sicker. Teddy Rosenbluth of the New York Times: “Doctors in West Texas are seeing measles patients whose illnesses have been complicated by an alternative therapy endorsed by vaccine skeptics including Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the health secretary. Parents in Gaines County, Texas, the center of a raging measles outbreak, have increasingly turned to supplements and unproven treatments to protect their children, many of whom are unvaccinated, against the virus. One of those supplements is cod liver oil containing vitamin A, which Mr. Kennedy has promoted as a near miraculous cure for measles. Physicians at Covenant Children’s Hospital in Lubbock, Texas, say they’ve now treated a handful of unvaccinated children who were given so much vitamin A that they had signs of liver damage.” ~~~

Lena Sun & Fenit Nirappil of the Washington Post: “A vaccine skeptic who has long promoted false claims about the connection between immunizations and autism has been tapped by the federal government to conduct a critical study of possible links between the two.... The Department of Health and Human Services has hired David Geier to conduct the analysis.... Geier and his father, Mark Geier, have published papers claiming vaccines increase the risk of autism, a theory that has been studied for decades and scientifically debunked. David Geier was disciplined by Maryland regulators more than a decade ago for practicing medicine without a license. He is listed as a data analyst in the HHS employee directory. Public health and autism experts fear that choosing a researcher who has promoted false claims will produce a flawed study with far-reaching consequences.... Donald Trump and HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. have repeatedly linked vaccines to autism. Kennedy has often cited studies by David Geier and his father, a physician, asserting that their research reveals the negative effects of vaccines.” ~~~

     ~~~ Marie: As Rachel Maddow pointed out last night, Geier is the kind of person HHS is hiring even as the department fires hundreds of medical doctors, scientists and other qualified research staff who were working on critical projects at the CDC & NIH. Oh, and some just up and quit: ~~~

     ~~~ Kevin Griffis in a Washington Post op-ed: “Friday was my last day leading communications at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. I left my job because I believe public health policy must always be guided by facts and not fantasy.... Public health communications have slowed to a trickle. The CDC hasn’t held a public briefing, despite multiple disease outbreaks, since ... Donald Trump’s inauguration. Instead of seeking guidance about how to combat the measles outbreak in Texas and New Mexico from the world-leading epidemiologists and virologists he oversees, [Robert] Kennedy [Jr.] is listening to fringe voices who reinforce his personal beliefs.... Meanwhile, in my final weeks at the CDC, I watched as career infectious-disease experts were tasked with spending precious hours searching medical literature in vain for data to support Kennedy’s preferred treatments.”

Amudalat Ajasa of the Washington Post: “According to an internal email, EPA officials knew they had no contractual right to cancel dozens of grants. They did it anyway.... An agency lawyer warned officials they had cited contractual language that did not apply to many of the grants the EPA had ended in recent weeks, advising that terminations could be reversed if recipients challenged them administratively or in court.... In a letter to EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin on Monday, nine Democratic senators on the Environment Committee challenged the grant terminations, pointing out that the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act 'directed EPA to distribute $3 billion to improve environmental protection in communities facing economic hardship.'... 'Any attempt to withhold these funds violates the Impoundment Control Act and Congress’s constitutional Article I spending authority,' the senators said.” (Also linked yesterday.)

Raphael Satter of Reuters: “The best-known member of Elon Musk's U.S. DOGE Service team of technologists once provided support to a cybercrime gang that bragged about trafficking in stolen data and cyberstalking an FBI agent, according to digital records reviewed by Reuters. Edward Coristine is among the most visible members of the DOGE effort that has been given sweeping access to official networks as it attempts to radically downsize the U.S. government. Past reporting, opens new tab had focused on his youth - he is 19 - and his chosen nickname of 'bigballs,' which became a pop culture punchline, opens new tab. Musk has championed the teen on his social media site X, telling his followers, opens new tab last month that 'Big Balls is awesome.'”

Ah, Bible Mike thinks he has figured out a way to get rid of those pesky lawsuits that are stalling Trump's march to perfect authoritarian rule: ~~~

We do have the authority over the federal courts, as you know. We can eliminate an entire district court. We have power of funding over the courts and all these other things.... Desperate times call for desperate measures, and Congress is going to act. -- Speaker Mike Johnson, to reporters Tuesday ~~~

~~~ Scott Wong, et al., of NBC News: “Facing pressure from his right flank to take on judges who have ruled against ... Donald Trump, Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., on Tuesday floated the possibility of Congress eliminating some federal courts. It’s the latest attack from Republicans on the federal judiciary, as courts have blocked a series of actions taken by the Trump administration. In addition to funding threats, Trump and his conservative allies have called for the impeachment of certain federal judges who have ruled against him, most notably U.S. District Judge James Boasberg, who attempted to halt Trump from using the Alien Enemies Act to deport Venezuelan migrants.... Johnson, a former constitutional attorney, later clarified that he was making a point about Congress’ 'broad authority' over the 'creation, maintenance and the governance' of the courts. Article III of the Constitution established the Supreme Court but gave Congress the power to “ordain and establish” lower federal courts.”

Minho Kim of the New York Times: “A federal judge on Tuesday temporarily blocked ... [Donald] Trump’s push to close down Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, a federally funded news organization that was born out of the American efforts to counter Soviet propaganda during the Cold War. The judge, Royce C. Lamberth of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, issued a temporary restraining order, saying that the Trump administration cannot unilaterally shut down RFE/RL, even if the president has ordered the closure. Judge Lamberth said the administration cannot overrule Congress, which gave the news outlet a statutory mandate to promote the freedom of opinion and expression, with 'one sentence of reasoning offering virtually no explanation.' Judge Lamberth was referring to a March 15 letter to RFE/RL from the Trump administration that said the broadcaster was no longer needed as the government’s priorities had shifted. The letter did not elaborate, other than citing Mr. Trump’s directives to shut down federal agencies.” Politico's story is here. ~~~

     ~~~ Marie: Ole Royce was there at the creation. He was already in grade school when Congress created Radio Free Europe in 1950.

Santul Nerkar & Jonah Bromwich of the New York Times: “A federal judge on Tuesday ordered the Trump administration to halt its efforts to arrest and deport a 21-year old Columbia University student who participated in pro-Palestinian demonstrations. The administration began seeking to arrest the student, Yunseo Chung, this month, according to a lawsuit filed by Ms. Chung’s lawyers. The judge, Naomi Buchwald, said during a hearing in Manhattan federal court on Tuesday that 'nothing in the record' indicated that Ms. Chung posed a danger to the community or a 'foreign-policy risk' or had communicated with terrorist organizations. Ms. Chung is a legal permanent resident. She was not a prominent participant in demonstrations on Columbia’s campus; she was arrested along with several other students this month at a protest at Barnard College, the Manhattan university’s sister school. A high school valedictorian who moved to the United States from South Korea when she was 7, she has not been detained by federal agents....”

Max Eddy of the New York Times: “23andMe, maker of popular DNA test kits, announced Sunday that it has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy and is looking for a buyer. Although the company has promised to continue protecting customer data amidst a possible sale..., California attorney general Rob Bonta issued an urgent consumer alert ... [advising] advised 23andMe users to consider deleting their information.... Customers should delete their information before [the company is] sold.... Few guardrails protect genetic data stored by companies like 23andMe.”

~~~~~~~~~~

Pennsylvania. David Nir & Jeff Singer of the Downballot: "Democrats pulled off an astonishing upset in a special election for the Pennsylvania Senate on Tuesday night, as East Petersburg Mayor James Andrew Malone defeated Republican Josh Parsons by a 50-49 margin to flip a district Donald Trump carried by 15 points last year. Those toplines, however, don't tell the complete story of just how ancestrally Republican Pennsylvania's 36th District is. Since taking its present form in Lancaster County 40 years ago, the district has always been held by the GOP, and the county as a whole has gone for a Democrat at the presidential level just once since 1856 (Lyndon Johnson just barely won it in 1964)."

~~~~~~~~~~

Israel/Palestine. Natan Odenheimer, et al., of the New York Times: “The Israeli authorities on Tuesday released a Palestinian director of an Oscar-winning documentary who was detained overnight after what he and witnesses said was an attack by Israeli settlers in the West Bank. The police said that the filmmaker, Hamdan Ballal, one of the directors of the documentary, 'No Other Land,' was questioned along with two other Palestinians on suspicion of hurling stones, property damage and 'endangering regional security.' All three deny the accusations, their lawyer said.... Witnesses said the detention took place as a group of Israeli settlers — some of whom were masked — carried out an assault in the outskirts of Mr. Ballal’s home village of Susya in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.”

Ukraine. Lizzie Johnson & Robyn Dixon of the Washington Post: “Russia and Ukraine agreed Tuesday to expand their initial limited ceasefire on energy infrastructure to include the Black Sea after U.S.-sponsored indirect talks in Saudi Arabia. In separate joint statements from the White House — one between the United States and Russia, another between the U.S. and Ukraine — the two countries agreed to 'ensure safe navigation, eliminate the use of force, and prevent the use of commercial vessels for military purposes' in the Black Sea, as well as to develop measures to implement and monitor the partial ceasefire. The statements did not specify when the limited ceasefire would go into effect.” (Also linked yesterday.)