White House voices support for Hegseth as a new Signal chat revelation stirs fresh Pentagon turmoil

WASHINGTON (AP) — The White House expressed support Monday for Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth following media reports that he shared sensitive military details in another Signal messaging chat, this time with his wife and brother.

Neither the White House nor Hegseth denied that he had shared such information in a second chat, instead focusing their responses on what they called the disgruntled workers whom they blamed for leaking to the media and insisting that no classified information had been disclosed.

“It’s just fake news. They just bring up stories,” President Donald Trump told reporters. "I guess it sounds like disgruntled employees. You know, he was put there to get rid of a lot of bad people, and that’s what he’s doing. So you don’t always have friends when you do that,” Trump said.

The administration's posture was meant to hold the line against Democratic demands for Hegseth’s firing at a time when the Pentagon is engulfed in turmoil, including the departures of several senior aides and an internal investigation over information leaks.

The White House also tried to deflect attention from the national security implications of the latest Signal revelation by framing it as the outgrowth of an institutional power struggle between Hegseth and the career workforce. But some of the recently departed officials the administration appeared to dismiss as disgruntled were part of Hegseth’s initial inner circle, brought in when he took the job.

“This is what happens when the entire Pentagon is working against you and working against the monumental change that you are trying to implement,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in remarks amplified by a Pentagon social media account.

The latest news added to questions about the judgment of the embattled Pentagon chief, coming on top of last month’s disclosure of his participation in a Signal chat with top Trump administration leaders in which details about the military airstrike against Yemen’s Houthi militants were shared.

“Pete Hegseth must be fired,” Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer said.

The New York Times reported Sunday that the information shared in a Signal messaging chat with Hegseth's wife, brother and others was similar to what was communicated in the already disclosed chain with Trump administration officials.

A person familiar with the contents and those who received the messages, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters, confirmed the second chat to The Associated Press. The person said it included 13 people and was dubbed “Defense ' Team Huddle.”

White House officials first learned of the second Signal chat from news reports Sunday, according to an official familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal conversations.

Hegseth, talking to reporters while attending the White House Easter Egg Roll, didn't address the substance of the allegations or the national security implications they raised but assailed the media.

“They take anonymous sources from disgruntled former employees and then they try to slash and burn people and ruin their reputations," Hegseth said. "Not going to work with me. Because we’re changing the Defense Department, putting the Pentagon back in the hands of warfighters. And anonymous smears from disgruntled former employees on old news doesn’t matter.”

Republican Sen. Tom Cotton, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, struck a similar tone, writing on Sunday night on X: “Secretary Hegseth is busy implementing President Trump’s America First agenda, while these leakers are trying to undermine them both. Shameful.”

The Trump administration has struggled in its public explanations about senior officials' use of Signal, a commercially available app not authorized to be used to communicate sensitive or classified national defense information.

The first chat, set up by national security adviser Mike Waltz, included a number of Cabinet members and came to light because Jeffrey Goldberg, editor-in-chief of The Atlantic, was added to the group.

Officials have repeatedly insisted that the information shared on Signal was not classified, though the contents of that chat, which The Atlantic published, shows that Hegseth listed weapons systems and a timeline for the attack on the Iran-backed Houthis last month.

Multiple current and former military officials say launch times and munitions drop times are classified information and putting those details on an unsecured channel could have put those pilots at risk.

The Trump administration has faced criticism for failing to take action so far against top national security officials who discussed plans for the strike in Signal, and the latest report fueled additional calls for Hegseth's ouster.

“The details keep coming out. We keep learning how Pete Hegseth put lives at risk. But Trump is still too weak to fire him,” Schumer posted Sunday on X.

The New York Times reported that the group in the second chat included Hegseth’s wife, Jennifer, who is a former Fox News producer, and his brother Phil Hegseth, who was hired at the Pentagon as a Department of Homeland Security liaison and senior adviser.

The Times said the second chat had the same warplane launch times that the first chat included.

Hegseth’s Signal use is under investigation by the Defense Department's acting inspector general at the request of the bipartisan leadership of the Senate Armed Services Committee. The senior Democratic member, Jack Reed of Rhode Island, urged the watchdog Sunday to look into the reported second chat as well.

The Pentagon has confronted a wave of turbulence stretching beyond Signal. Defense officials have faced scrutiny over a seemingly haphazard and disjointed campaign to purge online content that promoted women and minorities, in some cases scrambling to restore posts after their removals came to light.

Over the past week, five officials in Hegseth’s inner circle have departed.

Last week Dan Caldwell, a Hegseth aide; Colin Carroll, chief of staff to Deputy Defense Secretary Stephen Feinberg; and Darin Selnick, Hegseth’s deputy chief of staff; were escorted out of the Pentagon as the department hunts down leaks of inside information.

While those three initially had been placed on leave pending the investigation, a joint statement shared by Caldwell on X on Saturday said they “still have not been told what exactly we were investigated for, if there is still an active investigation, or if there was even a real investigation of ‘leaks’ to begin with."

Another close Hegseth aide, chief of staff Joe Kasper, also was leaving, according to two officials. They didn’t say why.

Caldwell and Selnick had worked with the defense secretary during his time leading the nonprofit Concerned Veterans for America. Kasper was the one who sent a March memo saying the Pentagon was investigating what it called leaks of national security information and that Defense Department personnel could face polygraphs.

Former Pentagon spokesman John Ullyot announced he was resigning last week, unrelated to the leaks. The Pentagon said, however, that Ullyot was asked to resign.

And on Monday, three U.S. officials said another staff member, Sean Parnell, was shifting temporarily from his job as Hegseth’s chief spokesman and instead will spend more time in Hegseth’s front office.

The officials all spoke on the condition of anonymity to provide details of personnel moves.

Associated Press writers Chris Megerian and Zeke Miller contributed to this report.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth looks at his phone on the South Lawn of the White House before President Donald Trump and first lady Melania Trump participate in the White House Easter Egg Roll Monday, April 21, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth speaks on the South Lawn of the White House before President Donald Trump and first lady Melania Trump participate in the White House Easter Egg Roll Monday, April 21, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth speaks on the South Lawn of the White House before President Donald Trump and first lady Melania Trump participate in the White House Easter Egg Roll Monday, April 21, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth speaks on the South Lawn of the White House before President Donald Trump and first lady Melania Trump participate in the White House Easter Egg Roll Monday, April 21, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth speaks on the South Lawn of the White House before President Donald Trump and first lady Melania Trump participate in the White House Easter Egg Roll Monday, April 21, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth arrives on the South Lawn of the White House before President Donald Trump and first lady Melania Trump participate in the White House Easter Egg Roll Monday, April 21, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

The nation's public broadcasting system — decades-long home to Big Bird, Ken Burns documentaries and “All Things Considered" — faces the biggest crisis in its nearly 60-year history with President Donald Trump's order to slash federal subsidies.

A court fight seems inevitable, with the heads of PBS, NPR and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting all suggesting Friday that Trump's order is illegal.

“We will vigorously defend our right to provide essential news, information and life-saving services to the American public,” said Katherine Maher, NPR's president and CEO. “We will challenge this executive order using all means available.” Her counterpart at PBS, Paula Kerger, said Trump's order was blatantly unlawful.

The public broadcasting system dates back to the late 1960s, devised as an educational and public service-oriented alternative to commercial broadcasters available at the time. In his order, Trump said the system has become politically biased and time has passed it by.

“Today the media landscape is filled with abundant, diverse and innovative news options,” the president said in his order, issued just before midnight Thursday. “Government funding of news media in this environment is not only outdated and unnecessary, but corrosive to the appearance of journalistic independence.”

Trump's order concentrates on news, and between PBS' “NewsHour” and a robust reporting corps at NPR, that's an important part of their operations. But public broadcasting also has entertainment programming, educational children's shows and Burns' historical documentaries.

PBS and NPR get about a half-billion dollars a year in public funding funneled through the private Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Roughly 70% of that goes directly to the 330 local PBS outlets and 246 NPR stations.

On average, PBS says 15% of its stations' budgets come from public funding. But there are wide variations; stations in larger markets usually get more money through philanthropy and fund drives, while smaller stations depend much more on the government.

Besides Trump's order, Congress has been considering future funding levels for the public broadcasters, and the Federal Communications Commission is questioning public broadcasting efforts at corporate underwriting, said Josh Shepperd, author of the 2023 book “Shadow of the New Deal: The Victory of Public Broadcasting.”

“It's a three-pronged effort that is frankly very smart in its institutional understanding,” Shepperd said. “They're not just going after programs that they don't like. They're going after the operations and the infrastructure that makes it possible to even air the programming.”

Trump's order instructs the CPB and other government agencies to “cease Federal funding” for PBS and National Public Radio and further requires that they work to root out indirect sources of public financing. Separate from the CPB grant, for example, PBS gets a grant from the U.S. Department of Education for programming that helps build the reading, math and science skills for children age 2 to 8, particularly in poor areas.

The administration's plan might not threaten your favorite program — Burns gets plenty of corporate and philanthropic support — but it may impact local programming and potential growth, Shepperd said.

Congressional Republicans aired some of their grievances about public broadcasting to Kerger and Maher at a public hearing in March. Such complaints have been common over the years, but the broadcasters have avoided funding cuts, in large part because members of Congress don't want to be seen as responsible if a station in their district shuts down. Who wants to be the public official who killed “Sesame Street”?

Also, public pressure from constituents is minimized because most Republicans don't watch PBS or listen to NPR, said Tim Graham, director of media analysis at the conservative Media Research Center. “I have this morning habit of listening to NPR on my commute,” Graham said. “I yell at the radio.”

For years, Graham's group has issued reports with examples of what it says is bias against conservatives. For example, during an 18-month period that ended last November, his researchers counted 162 examples of PBS journalists or contributors making reference labeling some politicians “far right” or some variation, with only six called “far left.”

He said he's not trying to shut down these stations, but resists them receiving public money.

“Let the people who listen to it do the funding,” Graham said.

At a board meeting Friday, CPB president and CEO Pat Harrison said her agency has taken bias concerns seriously. It has increased investments in fact-based local journalism, and provided a grant to NPR to make changes in its newsroom to address issues of bias.

The court fight over public broadcasting has already begun. The president earlier this week said he was firing three of the five remaining CPB board members — threatening its ability to do any work — and was immediately sued by the CPB to stop it.

The executive order is also the latest move by Trump and his administration to utilize federal powers to control or hamstring institutions whose actions or viewpoints he disagrees with — particularly those related to media.

Since taking office in January for a second term, Trump has ousted leaders, placed staff on administrative leave and cut off hundreds of millions of dollars in funding to artists, libraries, museums, theaters and others, through takeovers of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities. Trump has also pushed to withhold federal research and education funds from universities and punish law firms unless they agree to eliminate diversity programs and other measures he has found objectionable.

The move against PBS and NPR comes as Trump's administration works to dismantle the U.S. Agency for Global Media, including Voice of America and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, which were designed to model independent news gathering globally in societies that restrict the press.

Those efforts have faced pushback from federal courts, which have ruled in some cases that the Trump administration may have overstepped its authority in holding back funds appropriated to the outlets by Congress.

AP Congressional Correspondent Lisa Mascaro contributed to this report. David Bauder writes about media for the AP. Follow him at http://x.com/dbauder and https://bsky.app/profile/dbauder.bsky.social

President Donald Trump holds up a signed executive order establishing the Religious Liberty Commission, during a National Day of Prayer event in the Rose Garden of the White House, Thursday, May 1, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

FILE - The headquarters for National Public Radio (NPR) is seen in Washington, April 15, 2013. AP Photo/Charles Dharapak, File)

FILE - Paula Kerger, President and CEO at PBS, speaks at the executive session during the PBS Winter 2020 TCA Press Tour at The Langham Huntington, Pasadena, Jan. 10, 2020, in Pasadena, Calif. (Photo by Willy Sanjuan/Invision/AP, File)