Top national security officials for President Donald Trumptexted war plans for upcoming military strikes in Yemen to a group chat in a secure messaging app that included Jeffrey Goldberg, editor-in-chief for The Atlantic, the magazine reported in a story published Monday. The National Security Council said the text chain “appears to be authentic.”
The material in the text chain “contained operational details of forthcoming strikes on Iran-backed Houthi-rebels in Yemen, including information about targets, weapons the U.S. would be deploying, and attack sequencing,” Goldberg reported.
It was not immediately clear if the specifics of the military operation were classified, but they often are and at the least are kept secure to protect service members and operational security. Trump told reporters he was not aware of the apparent breach in protocol.
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The endorsement conveyed by Trump’s chief spokesperson came several hours after The Atlantic published a report that Trump’s top advisers, including national security adviser Mike Waltz and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, texted plans for military strikes in Yemen to a group chat in a secure messaging app that included the editor-in-chief of the magazine.
“As President Trump said, the attacks on the Houthis have been highly successful and effective, President Trump continues to have the utmost confidence in his national security team, including National Security Advisor Mike Waltz,” Press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement.
Trump in an exchange with reporters earlier on Monday said he was not aware of the report of the leak and that he was being told “about it for the first time.”
Hakeem Jeffries said there should be a congressional investigation of top Trump administration officials texting war plans for military strikes in Yemen to a group chat that included a journalist.
Jeffries said it was important to understand what happened and to prevent “this type of national security breach from ever happening again.”
“This is reckless, irresponsible and dangerous,” Jeffries said.
He said Americans were promised that Trump would hire only the very best, but “this whole Trump administration is filled with lackeys and incompetent cronies.”
The National Security Council says it is looking into how a journalist’s number was added to the chain in the Signal group chat.
The legal action aims to free the 238 Venezuelans deported by the United States who are being held in a Salvadoran maximum-security prison.
Jaime Ortega, who says he represents 30 of the imprisoned Venezuelans, said they filed the habeas corpus petition with the Supreme Court’s Constitutional Chamber. He said that by extension they requested that it be applied to all Venezuelans detained in El Salvador.
The maneuver essentially compels the government to prove someone’s detention was justified.
The Salvadoran government has been silent about the status of the Venezuelan prisoners since the U.S. government sent them more than a week ago
Colorado officials say a portrait of Trump hanging in the state’s Capitol will be taken down after Trump claimed it was “purposefully distorted.”
House Democrats said in a statement Monday that the oil painting would be taken down at the request of Republican leaders in the Legislature.
“If the GOP wants to spend time and money on which portrait of Trump hangs in the Capitol, then that’s up to them,” the Democrats said.
The portrait was painted during Trump’s first term and unveiled in 2019. Colorado Republicans raised more than $10,000 to commission it.
In a Sunday night post on his Truth Social platform, Trump said he would prefer no picture at all over that one.
The resolution, which follows Trump imposing tariffs on Canada, notes the ties the state has with the bordering nation.
Some Alaska legislators relocating to the capital city of Juneau for session annually must cross the border into Canada — and drives hundreds of miles — due to the unique geography before reentering the U.S.
The resolution states it opposes “restrictive trade measures that would harm the unique relationship between Canada and Alaska or negatively affect our integrated economies.” It also expressed concerns about possible retaliatory steps Canadian governments could take that might disrupt travel across the shared border.
A similar measure is pending in the state Senate.
Trump began the event by acknowledging Greek-American lawmakers and members of his administration. He signed a proclamation that celebrates Tuesday as Greek Independence Day.
“That’s a great thing we’re doing,” Trump said.
He also invited to the stage Kimberly Guilfoyle, his pick to be U.S. ambassador to Greece, saying: “She represents Greek culture very well.”
Immigrant rights advocates asked a federal judge in San Francisco on Monday to postpone a Trump administration decision that hastens the end of temporary legal protections for 600,000 Venezuelans and 500,000 Haitians in the U.S.
About 350,000 Venezuelans authorized to work and live in the U.S. are set to have their Temporary Protected Status expire on April 7 under a decision by Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem.
Noem has also announced the end of TPS for 500,000 Haitians on Aug. 3 and another 250,000 Venezuelans on Sept. 10.
TPS, as the 1990s law is known, provides work authorization and rights to live in the United States in 18-month increments if the Homeland Security secretary deems conditions in their home countries are unsafe for return.
Lawyers for the National TPS Alliance said in court Wednesday that Noem had no authority to cancel lawful protections extended by the previous secretary. They also said Noem was motivated in part by racism.
Government attorneys for Noem said Congress gave the secretary clear authority to make determinations related to the TPS program and that it was not subject to judicial review.
“This is one of the most stunning breaches of military intelligence I have read about in a very, very long time,” Schumer, the Senate Democratic Leader, said in a floor speech Monday afternoon.
He called on Republicans, who hold majority power in the Senate, to join him in launching a congressional investigation into the security breach.
Earlier Monday, The Atlantic reported that top national security officials for Trump had texted each other war plans for military strikes in Yemen on a secure messaging app and included a journalist in the chat.
A panel of appeals court judges appeared divided Monday on a Trump administration push to lift an order blocking the deportation of Venezuelan migrants to El Salvador under an 18th-century wartime law — a case that has become a flashpoint amid escalating tension with the federal courts.
Circuit Court Judge Patricia Millett said Nazis detained in the U.S. during World World II received better legal treatment than Venezuelan immigrants who were deported to El Salvador this month under the statute.
“We certainly dispute the Nazi analogy,” Justice Department attorney Drew Ensign responded during a hearing of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.
Millett is one of three appellate judges who will decide whether to lift a March 15 order temporarily prohibiting deportations under the Alien Enemies Act of 1798.
A second judge appeared open to the administration’s argument that the migrants should be challenging their detention in Texas rather than the nation’s capital. The third judge on the panel didn’t ask any questions.
▶ Read more about the hearing over recent deportations under the Alien Enemies Act
Elizabeth Tsurkov, a Russian-Israeli researcher, disappeared in Baghdad, the Iraqi capital, in March 2023 while doing research for her doctorate at Princeton University.
No group has claimed responsibility for the kidnapping. But Israel believes she is being held by Kataib Hezbollah, an Iran-backed Iraqi militia that it says also has ties to the Iraqi government.
Relatives of Tsurkov, including her sister Emma and brother David, gathered with allies outside the Iraqi embassy on Monday to demand that their sister be released and brought home.
Emma Tsurkov said she hoped her small rally would not become a “routine event” and that any return visit to Washington would be a “thank you tour” for everyone who helped to bring her sister home.
She also called on Secretary of State Marco Rubio to designate Iraq as a state sponsor of terrorism.
President Donald Trump will nominate Dr. Susan Monarez, the CDC’s acting director, to the job, a White House official confirmed on Monday.
Trump abruptly withdrew the nomination of his first pick earlier this month.
Monarez has been serving as the CDC’s acting director since January. She came from an outside federal government agency, the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health.
The White House withdrew the nomination of David Weldon, a former Florida congressman, to lead the CDC. Weldon told the media his nomination was withdrawn because “there were not enough votes to get me confirmed.”
Weldon was closely aligned with Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the U.S. health secretary who for years has been one of the nation’s leading anti-vaccine activists.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio will travel this week to three Caribbean nations for talks on ending illegal immigration, fighting crime and restoring stability to Haiti.
The State Department says Rubio will visit Jamaica, Guyana and Suriname beginning on Wednesday, in what will be his second overseas trip to Latin America and the Caribbean since taking office.
In Kingston, Rubio plans to meet Jamaican officials along with the leaders of Barbados, Trinidad and Tobago and Haiti.
He will then visit Georgetown and Paramaribo for talks with Guyanese and Surinamese officials before returning home.
— “If true, this story represents one of the most egregious failures of operational security and common sense I have ever seen,” said Sen. Jack Reed of Rhode Island, the top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, in a statement. He said American lives are “on the line. The carelessness shown by President Trump’s cabinet is stunning and dangerous. I will be seeking answers from the Administration immediately.”
— Rep. Jim Himes of Connecticut, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said in a statement he was “horrified” by the reports. Himes said if a lower-ranking official “did what is described here, they would likely lose their clearance and be subject to criminal investigation. The American people deserve answers,” which he said he planned to get at Wednesday’s previously scheduled committee hearing.
— Sen. Tammy Duckworth, an Iraq War veteran, said on social media that Pete Hegseth, “the most unqualified Secretary of Defense in history, is demonstrating his incompetence by literally leaking classified war plans in the group chat.”Duckworth said, “Hegseth and Trump are making our country less safe.”
U.S. District Judge Christine O’Hearn after a hearing Monday says the pair have shown their separation would cause lasting damage to their careers and reputations.
The ruling follows a similar one last week that blocked enforcement of Trump’s executive order banning transgender people from the military.
O’Hearn found Master Sgt. Logan Ireland and Staff Sgt. Nicholas Bear Bade are likely to prevail on equal protection grounds by showing they have been singled out due to their sex and the administration cannot justify the differential treatment.
“The loss of military service under the stigma of a policy that targets gender identity is not merely a loss of employment; it is a profound disruption of personal dignity, medical continuity, and public service,” O’Hearn, who was appointed by President Joe Biden, wrote in an order granting a 14-day restraining order.
Both men have been put on administrative leave — Ireland from a training program at Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst in New Jersey, and Bade from a deployment in Kuwait, the order said.
During a meeting of his Cabinet on Monday, Trump repeated his assertions the U.S. could come to control Greenland, saying, “I think Greenland’s going to be something that maybe is in our future.”
He called U.S. control of the island that is part of the Kingdom of Denmark important for national security.
Trump also suggested that Secretary of State Marco Rubio could be going soon to Greenland, and that people there were asking U.S. officials to go, including “some officials.”
Trump was asked about The Atlantic story by reporters as he met with House Speaker Mike Johnson and Louisiana’s Gov. Jeff Landry at the White House.
The president said he knew “nothing” about it.
“I don’t know anything about it. I’m not a big fan of the Atlantic. To me, it’s a magazine that’s going out of business. It’s not much of a magazine but I know nothing about it,” Trump said.
Trump then asked a reporter for more information about the general details of the story, and after being told the chat involved discussion of the strikes on the Houthis, he said, “Well, it couldn’t have been very effective because the attack was very effective. I can tell you that.”
Top national security officials for President Donald Trump, including his defense secretary, texted war plans for upcoming military strikes in Yemen to a group chat in a secure messaging app that included the editor-in-chief for The Atlantic, the magazine reported in a story posted online Monday.
The National Security Council said the text chain “appears to be authentic.”
The material in the text chain “contained operational details of forthcoming strikes on Iran-backed Houthi-rebels in Yemen, including information about targets, weapons the U.S. would be deploying, and attack sequencing,” editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg reported.
President Donald Trump is holding a White House event with elected leaders from Louisiana to promote a $5.8 billion steel production facility coming to the state.
Automaker Hyundai is pursuing the project.
The president says his threat of tariffs is leading companies to move production into the country.
“Cars are coming into this country at levels never seen before. Get ready,” he says.
Ukrainian and Russian officials are taking part in the indirect talks in Saudi Arabia, and Trump said he believes both sides ultimately want the conflict settled.
Trump last week floated the idea of the U.S. taking control of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in southern Ukraine. The six-reactor plant was seized by Russia early in the war. He spotlighted the idea once again on Monday during an exchange with reporters at the White House.
“Some people are saying the United States should own the power plant — work it that way because we have the expertise” to get the plant operating, Trump said. “Something like that would be fine with me.”
The Iranian ambassador to the United Nations, in a letter to the U.N. Security Council, referred to “baseless accusations” and threats by senior U.S. administration officials and Trump against Iran while trying to justify what he said were unlawful attacks against Yemen.
Ambassador Amir Saeid Iravani warned that “any act of aggression will have severe consequences, for which the United States will bear full responsibility.”
He said Iran will “resolutely defend its sovereignty, territorial integrity and national interests under international law against any hostile action.”
The U.S. has launched a series of airstrikes against strongholds of Yemen’s Iranian-backed Houthi rebels who have disrupted international maritime trade by targeting ships in the Red Sea.
Iravani said in the letter that Iran “supports maritime safety and freedom of navigation,” and emphasized that the Houthis “operate independently in their decision-making and actions.”
He urged the Security Council to speak out against the U.S. “blatant provocations.”
But since the U.S. has veto power in the council, there is no chance of that happening.
Officials said Monday that Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem’s prison visit is part of a three-day trip. It starts Wednesday with the visit to the Terrorism Confinement Center in El Salvador, and Noem will also meet with President Nayib Bukele, according to a Homeland Security statement.
The Venezuelans were deported this month after Trump’s invocation of the Alien Enemies Act of 1798. The administration says they are gang members but hasn’t identified who was deported or given evidence of gang affiliation.
Some 250 immigrants from the U.S., who the Trump administration alleges are members of the Venezuelan Tren de Aragua gang, are being held.
Noem will then visit Colombia and Mexico.
Trump and Cabinet officials spent nearly an hour talking about their accomplishments and answering questions from journalists at the White House.
Elon Musk was also there and was wearing a red MAGA-style hat that said, “Trump was right about everything” in all caps.
For the president, these have been opportunities to highlight his administration’s progress on his agenda, such as ramping up deportations and reducing the federal workforce.
They’re also a showcase for Musk’s influence. Near the end of Monday’s meeting, Trump praised the billionaire entrepreneur as “a patriot” who is selflessly serving his country.
“Elon has never asked me for a thing,” he said.
“I’d like to see the Fed lower interest rates. That’s just my opinion,” he said during a Cabinet meeting.
Trump has routinely ignored the tradition of presidents declining to comment on decision-making by the Federal Reserve, which operates independently.
Cars honked as they passed and supporters stood in the rain clapping, cheering and holding signs saying, “Thank you for your service” and “Your work matters.”
Among the supporters was Josie Skinner, a lawyer who worked on programs to support homeless children and ensure equitable services for children in private schools before she was fired from the department herself. She rejected President Donald Trump’s suggestion that the dismissed employees did not work hard.
“All of them could have made a lot of money in the private sector but chose to do this work because we cared about education, we cared about serving our country,” she said.
Trump said at a Cabinet meeting that he expects to finish his overhaul of the federal workforce in two to three months.
His administration has been working to downsize the number of employees through financial incentives and layoffs.
“We’re getting rid of the fat,” Trump said.
The Office of Management and Budget and the Office of Personnel Management are in the process of reviewing agencies’ plans for large-scale reductions in force.
A federal lawsuit filed Monday in Massachusetts says Trump overstepped his authority in directing Education Secretary Linda McMahon to begin closing the department. It also asks a judge to block the Trump administration’s plan to halve the agency’s workforce.
Those actions “are unlawful and harm millions of students, school districts and educators across the nation,” according to the suit. It says only Congress has the power to close the department.
The suit was filed by the American Federation of Teachers, the American Association of University Professors and the Somerville and Easthampton school districts, along with other unions.
Trump’s order said McMahon would “to the maximum extent appropriate and permitted by law” take steps to close the department.
In a Truth Social post, Trump said Venezuela has been “very hostile” to the U.S. and countries purchasing oil from the South American country will be forced to pay the tariff on all their trade to the U.S. starting April 2.
Venezuela will face a “Secondary” tariff because it is the home to the gang Tren de Aragua, he said. The Trump administration is deporting immigrants that it claims are members of the gang who illegally crossed into the United States.
Trump said his social media post would serve as notification of the policy to the Department of Homeland Security and other law enforcement agencies.
Former defense attorney and White House counselor Alina Habba is a New Jersey native who’ll succeed John Giordano as interim U.S. attorney in the state where the president has several golf clubs.
Giordano is being nominated ambassador to Namibia, the president said.
Habba has been a rising star in Trump’s orbit after representing him in various legal matters over the past few years. A partner at a small New Jersey law firm near Trump’s Bedminster golf course, Habba served as a senior adviser for his political action committee, defended him in court in several lawsuits and acted as a spokesperson last year as he volleyed between courtrooms and the campaign trail.
U.S. District Judge James Boasberg issued his latest ruling only hours before an appeals court is scheduled to hear the case.
Boasberg’s order says the immigrants facing deportation must get an opportunity to challenge their designations as alleged members of the Tren de Aragua gang. He said there is “a strong public interest in preventing the mistaken deportation of people based on categories they have no right to challenge.”
“The public also has a significant stake in the Government’s compliance with the law,” the judge wrote.
Boasberg didn’t immediately decide what form a challenge should take.
On Monday afternoon, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit is scheduled to hear attorneys’ arguments in the case. President Donald Trump’s administration appealed after Boasberg agreed on March 15 to temporarily bar the deportations and ordered planes to return to the U.S.
In an emergency appeal filed Monday, the administration argued the ruling should be put on hold because the judge didn’t have the authority to order some 16,000 probationary employees to be hired back.
The order came from U.S. District Judge William Alsup in San Francisco, who found the firings didn’t follow federal law and required immediate offers of reinstatement be sent.
The agencies include the departments of Veterans Affairs, Agriculture, Defense, Energy, the Interior and the Treasury.
U.S. District Judge Deborah Boardman issued a preliminary injunction Monday morning in a case filed in a Maryland federal court last month by a coalition of labor unions.
The lawsuit, led by the American Federation of Teachers, alleges the Trump administration violated federal privacy laws when it gave Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency access to systems with the personal information of tens of millions of Americans without their consent.
Boardman had previously issued a temporary restraining order. The preliminary injunction offers longer-term relief blocking DOGE access at the Education Department, the Treasury Department and the Office of Personnel Management as the case plays out.
The judge found the Trump administration likely violated privacy laws. She said the government failed to adequately explain why DOGE needed access to “millions of records” to perform their job duties.
She said the administration can still carry out the president’s agenda without receiving unfettered access to a trove of personal data on federal employees and people with student loans and government benefits.
That includes their income and asset information, Social Security numbers, birth dates, home addresses and marital and citizenship status.
The president is convening a meeting with top administration officials on Monday morning, according to the White House.
Elon Musk, who is leading efforts to downsize and overhaul the federal government, will be there.
The last time Musk attended such a meeting, there were reports of clashes between him and Cabinet officials, particularly Secretary of State Marco Rubio. Trump moved swiftly afterward to tamp down questions about disharmony within his administration.
The White House has confirmed White House national security adviser Mike Waltz and Energy Secretary Chris Wright are headed to Greenland in the coming days to visit with U.S. troops at Pituffik Space Base and attend a dogsled race.
The visit comes as Trump has repeatedly raised the idea of the U.S. taking control of the self-governing, mineral-rich territory of NATO ally Denmark.
“The U.S. has a vested security interest in the Arctic region and it should not be a surprise the National Security Advisor and Secretary of Energy are visiting a U.S. Space Base to get first-hand briefings from our service members on the ground,” White House National Security Council spokesman Brian Hughes said in a statement. “We also look forward to experiencing Greenland’s famous hospitality and are confident that this visit presents an opportunity to build on partnerships that respects Greenland’s self determination and advances economic cooperation.”
Waltz and Wright will be joining second lady Usha Vance for the trip. The White House announced Vance’s travel to Greenland on Sunday.
The plant is part of an overall $20 billion investment by Hyundai, the Korean automaker.
“More investments, more jobs, and more money in the pockets of hardworking Americans — all thanks to President Trump’s economic policies,” wrote White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt on social media.
Just after midnight, the president posted a social media message calling for Chief Judge James Boasberg to be disbarred. Trump reposted an article about Boasberg’s attendance at a conference that purportedly featured “anti-Trump speakers.”
The Trump administration has transferred hundreds of Venezuelan immigrants to El Salvador under an 18th-century wartime law that hadn’t been invoked since World War II. Flights already were in the air on March 15 when Boasberg agreed to temporarily bar the deportations and ordered planes to return to the U.S.
The administration appealed the order.
On Monday afternoon, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit is scheduled to hear attorneys’ arguments.
The Government Accountability Office confirmed the review in a letter sent to U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren.
The Massachusetts Democrat, whose office provided the letter to The Associated Press, had requested a review of how many workers were fired, how many were rehired under judicial orders this month and how each agency’s functions were impacted by the workforce cuts.
Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency has fired thousands of workers across the federal government.
Federal judges this month ordered the Trump administration to rehire probationary workers for now. The White House had defended the president’s power to hire and fire employees.
As congressional lawmakers scramble to respond to President Donald Trump’s slashing of the federal government, one group is already taking a front and center role: military veterans.
From layoffs at the Department of Veterans Affairs to a Pentagon purge of archives that documented diversity in the military, veterans have been acutely affected by Trump’s actions. And with the Republican president determined to continue slashing the federal government, the burden will only grow on veterans, who make up roughly 30% of the federal workforce and often tap government benefits they earned with their military service.
“At a moment of crisis for all of our veterans, the VA’s system of health care and benefits has been disastrously and disgracefully put on the chopping block by the Trump administration,” said Sen. Richard Blumenthal, the top Democrat on the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee, at a news conference last week.
▶ Read more about how veterans are responding to the government’s plans
The president and the Governor of Louisiana are planning to deliver remarks in the Roosevelt Room this afternoon, according to the White House. Later, Trump will participate in a Greek Independence Day Celebration.
During the first Trump administration, the biggest concern for many journalists was labels. Would they, or their news outlet, be called “fake news” or an “enemy of the people” by a president and his supporters?
They now face a more assertive Trump. In two months, a blitz of action by the nation’s new administration — Trump, chapter two — has journalists on their heels.
Lawsuits. A newly aggressive Federal Communications Commission. An effort to control the press corps that covers the president, prompting legal action by The Associated Press. A gutted Voice of America. Public data stripped from websites. And attacks, amplified anew.
“It’s very clear what’s happening. The Trump administration is on a campaign to do everything it can to diminish and obstruct journalism in the United States,” said Bill Grueskin, a journalism professor at Columbia University.
“It’s really nothing like we saw in 2017,” he said. “Not that there weren’t efforts to discredit the press, and not that there weren’t things that the press did to discredit themselves.”
▶ Read more about how the media is being impacted by the Trump administration
Danish police have sent extra personnel and sniffer dogs to Greenland as the mineral-rich island steps up security measures ahead of a planned visit this week by U.S. second lady Usha Vance, which has stirred new concerns about the Trump administration’s interest in the autonomous Danish territory.
Greenland’s prime minister lamented a “mess” caused by the visit from Vance, who reportedly will be accompanied by Trump’s national security adviser.
The visit — in which Vance plans to learn more about Greenland’s cultural heritage and see a national dogsled race — comes against the backdrop of U.S. President Donald Trump ’s ambition for the United States to seize control of Greenland.
▶ Read more about the second lady’s trip to Greenland
Here are some of the headlines from the weekend
As President Donald Trump and billionaire Elon Musk work to overhaul the federal government, they’re forcing out thousands of workers with insider knowledge and connections who now need a job.
For Russia, China and other adversaries, the upheaval in Washington as Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency guts government agencies presents an unprecedented opportunity to recruit informants, national security and intelligence experts say.
Every former federal worker with knowledge of or access to sensitive information or systems could be a target. When thousands of them leave their jobs at the same time, that creates a lot of targets, as well as a counterespionage challenge for the United States.
“This information is highly valuable, and it shouldn’t be surprising that Russia and China and other organizations — criminal syndicates for instance — would be aggressively recruiting government employees,” said Theresa Payton, a former White House chief information officer under President George W. Bush, who now runs her own cybersecurity firm.
▶ Read more about the growing fears of espionage in the federal government
Protesters hold signs during a "Fight Like Hell" rally, part of a national series of rallies held to protest the Trump administration's plans to privatize or restructure the U.S. Postal Service, Sunday, March 23, 2025, in Las Vegas. (Steve Marcus/Las Vegas Sun via AP)
Elon Musk, left, shakes hands with President Donald Trump at the finals for the NCAA wrestling championship, Saturday, March 22, 2025, in Philadelphia. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)
FILE - Demonstrators rally in support of federal workers outside of the Department of Health and Human Services, Feb. 14, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein, File)
