US: Trump admin downplays Yemen Signal security breach

The leaked United States government group chat revealed that President Donald Trump's administration is making foreign policy decisions based on domestic considerations, according to Eva Maydell, the vice chair of the European Parliament's delegation for relations with the United States.

"I think they're confusing which fight they're fighting and with whom," Maydell told DW. "They need to understand that Europe is not the Democratic Party; we are their strongest and most reliant economic and military partners."

The Republicans may be acting with their domestic base in mind, but the administration's actions inevitably have global consequences, with Maydell highlighting the impact on global trade routes.

"By revealing that your decision whether to attack now or in a month is based primarily on the internal situation in your country, that undermines global trade routes," she explained. "As is the admittance that [the United States] are the only ones capable of conducting such an attack. I wonder what the Middle East was thinking when they read that conversation."

Faced with such unpredictability, Maydell said Europe needs to "asses this partnership and the ally we have before us" because "as much as we very much want this partnership to continue, it's not the same partnership it used to be."

She therefore called for Europe to be "better prepared when it comes to its military capabilities" and added: "We have already started doing so."

US National Security Advisor (NSA) Mike Waltz has claimed "full responsibility" for erroneously adding a journalist to a group messaging chat in which senior Trump administration officials discussed impending military strikes in Yemen.

"I built the group; my job is to make sure everything's coordinated," Waltz told Fox News in his first interview on the security breach, which has led to calls for resignations from furious Democrats. He acknowledged the situation was "embarrassing."

Waltz said he didn't personally know The Atlantic's editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg, adding he wasn't sure how he ended up in the highly sensitive chat.

"This one in particular, I've never met, don't know, never communicated with," Waltz said, adding that White House technical experts were trying to figure out how Goldberg's contact "may have been sucked in."

"We made a mistake," he said. "We're moving forward, and we're going to continue to knock it out of the park for this president."

President Donald Trump has downplayed the lapse which he said "turned out not to be a serious one" and "the only glitch in two months," while expressing his continued support for Waltz.

"Michael Waltz has learned a lesson, and he's a good man," Trump said, shifting the blame to an unnamed aide. "It was one of Michael's people on the phone. A staffer had his number on there."

President Donald Trump on Tuesday signed an executive order to make sweeping changes to US federal elections, including requiring voters to provide documentary proof of citizenship in order to be able to vote.

The order claims previous administrations have failed to "enforce basic and necessary election protections" and calls on states to work with federal agencies to prosecute election-related crimes.

Trump often claims elections are rigged, even before the results are known, and has waged battles against certain voting methods since losing the 2020 election to Democrat Joe Biden, which he falsely blamed on widespread fraud.

In reality, election fraud in the United States is rare and is prosecuted where it does occur.

Voting rights groups have expressed concerns that the requirement could disenfranchise certain demographics.

According to a 2023 report by the Brennan Center for Justice, around 9% of US citizens of voting age, or 21.3 million people, do not have proof of citizenship readily available.

New rules could affect married women in particular, who may encounter problems registering to vote since their birth certificates would list their maiden names.

The Democratic secretary of state for Colorado, Jena Griswold, called the order an "unlawful" weaponization of the federal government and said Trump is "trying to make it harder for voters to fight back at the ballot box."

Democratic representative Joe Morelle of New York, a member of the House committee that oversees elections, said the order "is not just misguided; it is immoral and illegal."

Nevertheless, Republicans have defended the measure as necessary to restore public confidence in elections, with Georgia's Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger hailing a "great first step for election integrity reform nationwide."

Trump's order is likely to face legal challenges, given that the Constitution gives federal states the primary authority to set the "times, places and manner" of elections.

Democratic attorney Marc Elias posted on social media on Tuesday: "This will not stand. We will sue."

Trump took aim at more media outlets Tuesday, saying he wants to cut funding for US public broadcasters PBS and NPR. 

Trump labeled Public Broadcasting Service and National Public Broadcasting, which give airtime in a bipartisan fashion, "very unfair."

PBS and NPR, founded in 1969 and 1970 respectively, are partially funded with taxpayer dollars but raise most of their money from member station dues, corporate and private underwriting and viewer/listener contributions. 

Both PBS and NPR operate independently and have full control of their content and reporting. Both organizations produce cultural and news programming. 

Though PBS is known for educational programs such as "Sesame Street," it gained a wide national audience in 1973, when it broadcast "gavel-to-gavel" coverage of the US Senate's Watergate hearings.

For the past 20 years, PBS has consistently ranked as the most trustworthy news outlet in the US, with respondents saying that only tax dollars spent on the military or the oversight of food and drug safety provide more value.

PBS and NPR are expected to come under review by Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency this week and the leaders of both operations will be on Capitol Hill on Wednesday for a House of Representatives hearing organized by Republican Trump loyalist Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia.

Some of the Trump administration's top national security officials testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee on Tuesday, where they faced questioning from Democratic lawmakers over this week'sintelligence leak during a hearing originally designated for discussion of global threats facing the US.

The hearing came as the White House scoffed at news of the breach, calling it a "coordinated effort to distract from the successful actions taken by President Trump and his administration to make America's enemies pay and keep Americans safe."

Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and CIA Director John Ratcliffe, for instance, attempted to deflect criticism of the use of Signal, an encrypted commercial messaging app, for discussing sensitive subjects related to national security rather than using the secure communications systems available to them.

Both Gabbard and Ratcliffe claimed that no classified material had been discussed — something that would seem to fly in the face of journalist Jeffrey Goldberg's account of the incident.

Independent Maine Senator Angus King told the two, "It's hard for me to believe that targets and timing and weapons would not have been classified." 

Goldberg said Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth had texted very specific tactical information about, "targets, weapons the US would be deploying, and attack sequencing."

Rocky Cole from cybersecurity firm iVerify told Reuters news agency that although Signal has a "stellar reputation," there are limits to its level of security. 

"The risk of discussing highly sensitive national security information on Signal isn't so much that Signal itself is insecure. It's the fact that nation states threat actors have a demonstrated ability to remotely compromise the entire mobile phone itself. If the phone itself isn't secure, all the Signal messages on that device can be read," he said. 

Beyond the vice president and the numerous heads of defense and intelligence agencies, Trump's envoy to Ukraine and the Middle East, Steve Witkoff was also actively engaged in the chat — while he was in Moscow, meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin. 

Republicans on the committee — who for years ranted about then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's treatment of sensitive information and her use of personal servers for communications — gave those testifying before the committee a pass on the incident.

Democratic Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon, for one, said, "I'm of the view that there ought to be resignations." 

US President Donald Trump gave a vote of confidence to National Security Advisor Michael Waltz on Tuesday in the wake of a security breach that has made sizable waves in DC.  

Trump, who appeared to be caught flat-footed Monday when he learned about the incident during a press conference, defended Waltz on Tuesday, blaming a subordinate for inviting Jeffrey Goldberg, editor-in-chief of The Atlantic magazine, to join a group chat in which secret military plans were discussed prior to an attack on Houthi rebels in Yemen. 

Trump downplayed the security lapse as an insignificant "glitch." He then voiced backing for Waltz, saying he "learned a lesson" and calling him "a good man" in a Tuesday morning interview with NBC news. Later Trump told Fox News of Waltz, "He's not getting fired," adding that "nothing important" was discussed in the chat. 

Goldberg meanwhile has been maligned as "peddling garbage" by Hegseth, who claimed "nobody was sending war plans" — a statement that Goldberg called "a lie" — and White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, who claimed without substantiating evidence, that the journalist is, "well-known for his sensationalist spin."

Goldberg said the chat contained not only discussions of military tactics but also political messaging. 

The veracity of the group and its chat — which Goldberg initially suspected of being a ruse or a misinformation campaign designed to trap him into false reporting — was confirmed on Monday by National Security Council spokesman Brian Hughes.    

Democratic Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer called the leak, which Goldberg described as "shockingly reckless," an exhibition of "amateur behavior." 

"This kind of security breach is how people get killed," wrote Schumer on X. "How our enemies take advantage. How our national security falls into danger."

The National Security Council took a rosier view of the situation. In a statement about the incident, the NSC portrayed the thread as, "a demonstration of the deep and thoughtful policy coordination between senior officials. The ongoing success of the Houthi operation demonstrates that there were no threats to our service members or our national security."

This blog will focus on the latest regarding the Trump administration's leak of military strategy towards Yemen to a US journalist via the app Signal.

Our coverage will also cover the latest regarding other aspects of the Trump White House, such as ongoing cuts by the US Department of Government Efficiency led by billionaire Elon Musk.