Leaked Attack Plans Lay Bare National Security Divisions

Happy Tuesday! We all fumble with our phones’ various apps occasionally. But have you ever inadvertently included a journalist in a group chat detailing top-secret plans for an imminent U.S. military operation?

Quick Hits: Today’s Top Stories

• The White House confirmed Monday that Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor in chief of The Atlantic, was added to an encrypted group chat in which administration officials detailed secret plans to carry out imminent attacks on the Houthis in Yemen earlier this month. The text thread, which appeared to include Vice President J.D. Vance, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, National Security Adviser Mike Waltz, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, CIA Director John Ratcliffe, and other top officials, began four days before the start of a U.S. military campaign targeting the Iranian-backed terrorist organization. In addition to deliberating on the timing of the airstrikes, the officials shared operational details including U.S. deployments, targets, and attack sequencing. Responding to the leak on Monday, Hegseth claimed: “Nobody was texting war plans.”
• Israeli airstrikes on the Nasser Medical Complex in the southern Gazan city of Khan Younis killed Ismail Barhoum, a top Hamas official, the terrorist group confirmed Monday. Barhoum is the fourth member of Hamas’ political bureau to be killed since the collapse of a U.S.-brokered ceasefire last Tuesday. His death marked a “blow to the functioning of Hamas’s military and governing capabilities,” the Israel Defense Forces said in a statement. Meanwhile, Palestinian Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility for an intercepted rocket attack on Israel from the Gaza Strip Monday night. There were no reports of casualties from the rocket fire.
• President Donald Trump on Monday announced plans to impose 25 percent tariffs on any country that buys oil or gas from Venezuela. In a Truth Social post unveiling the “secondary tariffs,” Trump accused Venezuela of “purposefully and deceitfully” sending criminals to the United States. China, which has already been singled out by the Trump administration’s tariffs regime, is likely to be among the countries targeted by the new measures; in 2023, Beijing purchased 68 percent of all Venezuelan oil exports. The new levies, along with reciprocal tariffs targeting several U.S. trade partners, are set to take effect on April 2.
• U.S. District Judge James E. Boasberg on Monday affirmed his ruling barring President Trump from invoking the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to accelerate deportations of illegal immigrants. In a 37-page opinion, which came ahead of a Monday hearing before an appeals court panel, Boasberg denied a request that he reverse his March 15 order directing the administration to halt its planned removal of hundreds of Venezuelan nationals—deportation flights that went ahead nonetheless. Speaking to Fox News on Sunday, Attorney General Pam Bondi said the Supreme Court “will get involved” in the case and accused Boasberg of judicial overreach.
• President Trump on Monday nominated Susan Monarez, the current acting director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, to lead the agency permanently. The nomination followed the White House’s decision earlier this month to withdraw Dr. David Weldon, a former congressman from Florida and prominent vaccine skeptic, from consideration for the post. Before joining the CDC, Monarez served as the deputy director of the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health, a biomedical research agency. To formally assume the director’s role, she will need to be confirmed by the Senate.
• Mia Love, the first black Republican woman to serve in Congress, died Sunday following a battle with brain cancer. She was 49. Love, a daughter of Haitian immigrants and convert to Mormonism, represented Utah in the House of Representatives from 2015 to 2019. “With grateful hearts filled to overflowing for the profound influence of Mia on our lives, we want you to know that she passed away peacefully today,” her family said in a statement Monday.

What Should U.S. Priorities Overseas Be? 

On Wednesday, Americans got a rare glimpse into how the federal government’s leaders make decisions on matters of war and peace. The problem? They really, really weren’t supposed to get that glimpse. 

In a shocking report, Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor in chief of The Atlantic, detailed how he had been accidentally added to a group chat of top U.S. officials, including Vice President J.D. Vance, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, National Security Adviser Mike Waltz, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio on March 11. Communicating via the encrypted messaging app Signal, the officials discussed highly detailed and classified plans for large-scale U.S. strikes on the Houthis, the Iranian-backed Yemeni terrorist group responsible for ongoing attacks on international vessels in the Red Sea. 

When the military campaign—the largest of President Donald Trump’s second term so far—began four days later, Goldberg knew what to expect. The White House later confirmed the journalist’s account. 

The fallout from the bombshell report is still ongoing, but the deliberations over the strikes hinted at a broader debate unfolding within the administration: whether robust overseas military engagements should be a priority. Recent efforts to reconfigure defense spending, as well as reported proposals to dramatically restructure U.S. command structures, have likewise hinted at divisions over defense policy at a moment of international heightened instability. 

On the one hand, a group of officials, led chiefly by Waltz and Rubio, are committed to vigorously defending American interests overseas—a longtime role they believe the U.S. relinquished under the leadership of former President Joe Biden. On the other, a Vance-led faction believes that the U.S. has radically overstretched itself in recent decades, advocating for a dialed-back international role. 

Attacking Houthi targets to restore freedom of maritime navigation in the Red Sea, through which 11 percent of global trade moves, might seem like an obvious move for a Republican White House. Ensuring the free flow of trade worldwide has long been a top U.S. priority, and Republicans were uniformly critical of the Biden administration for not doing more to punish the Houthis for their ongoing attacks, which since November 2023 have forced many merchant vessels to avoid the Red Sea and divert around the tip of Africa. 

But as top administration officials moved toward authorizing strikes in Yemen, Vance sounded notes of caution: “I think we are making a mistake.”

“I am not sure the president is aware how inconsistent this is with his message on Europe right now,” the vice president added, in an apparent reference to Trump’s public complaints about Europe’s failure to invest in its own defense. “3 percent of US trade runs through the [Suez Canal]. 40 percent of European trade does. There is a real risk that the public doesn’t understand this or why it’s necessary. … [If] you think we should do it let’s go. I just hate bailing Europe out again.”

Vance’s private frustration at Washington’s European allies echoed his public criticisms. In a speech at the Munich Security Conference last month, he pushed for increased European defense spending. And in the now-infamous Oval Office meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, Vance accused Zelensky of being “ungrateful” for U.S. support. 

But as the group deliberated on when and whether to attack the Houthis, Waltz cited limited European military capabilities in explaining the apparent refusal of several countries to participate. “Whether it’s now or several weeks from now, it will have to be the United States that reopens these shipping lanes,” he said, adding that the U.S. could get Europe to foot the bill in other ways.

Meanwhile, Hegseth struck a middle ground.  “I fully share your loathing of European free-loading. It’s PATHETIC,” he said, before arguing that the U.S. military needed to move forward with the campaign because no other country could. The next day, on March 15, the chat resumed as Hegseth shared what Goldberg described as sensitive operational details about the U.S. deployments, targets, and attack sequencing. Hours later, U.S. fighter jets were in the air.

The now-public back-and-forth between Trump’s top national security officials followed multiple reports last week that the Pentagon is considering a major reorganization of its command structure. The shakeup would include canceling a planned expansion of U.S. Forces Japan, reversing a Biden-era initiative aimed at modernizing command structures and increasing the number of personnel stationed on the island nation. According to draft documents detailing the cuts, the administration believes scrapping the project could save the federal government an estimated $1.1 billion. 

But Trump’s advisers also claim that retreating from Europe will enable the U.S. to focus on China, which they see as the chief threat to U.S. interests. This week, Hegseth is in Asia for a series of high-level meetings beginning in the Philippines, a U.S. ally currently contending with Chinese aggression in the South China Sea. The journey is slated to conclude with a stop in Japan. “These engagements will drive ongoing efforts to strengthen our alliances and partnerships toward our shared vision for a free and open Indo-Pacific,” Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said Friday. 

To some analysts, the White House’s stated desire to stand up to Chinese aggression appears to be in tension with its efforts to limit Washington’s international commitments. “We have two policies that are conflicting,” Mark Cancian, a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told TMD. “One is pivot to Asia, focus on China, but the other one is Trump hates overseas bases and thinks that our allies are cheating us.” It remains to be seen whether Hegseth’s trip to Japan will resolve that dilemma. But Cancian noted that in the event of an American confrontation with China, a U.S. military presence in Japan would be crucial. 

According to a briefing document obtained by CNN, the Pentagon restructuring could also include merging U.S. European Command and U.S. Africa Command, two of the U.S. military’s seven geographic combatant commands, into one. Meanwhile, NBC News reported last week that the Pentagon was deliberating whether to give up the role of NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander Europe (SACEUR). A post held by a U.S. general since the alliance’s inception, SACEUR’s occupation by a non-U.S. official would be a significant symbolic shift away from the traditional alliances that have underlined American foreign policy.

The moves also came as the Department of Government Efficiency—tech CEO Elon Musk’s White House team attempting to slash staff and spending throughout the federal government—turned its attention to the Department of Defense. On Friday, Musk met with Hegseth for a two-hour meeting at the Pentagon to discuss plans to streamline defense spending. 

The meeting was apparently a significant departure from the original itinerary, which the New York Times reported last week was set to include a briefing on classified military plans for a hypothetical war with China (claims Trump denied). But Musk’s presence at the Pentagon may signal the White House’s desire to find savings in the U.S.’s $850 billion defense budget—or at least to move money around. In February, Hegseth directed the department to find ways to cut 8 percent of its budget for each of the next five years to reallocate those funds to other priorities. 

“I think you’re going to be hard-pressed to find fraud and abuse,” Jerry McGinn, a former U.S. Army officer, defense industry executive, and current executive director of George Mason University’s Greg and Camille Baroni Center for Government Contracting, told TMD. “It’s really less about fat, and more about just reprioritization,” he added, noting for example the Pentagon’s potential plans to scale back funding for a new generation of nuclear submarines.

But some Republicans in Congress aren’t happy with the administration’s impulses toward retrenchment and cost-cutting on defense. In a joint statement Wednesday, the respective Republican chairs of the Senate and House Armed Services Committees—Sen. Roger Wicker and Rep. Mike Rogers—urged the Trump administration against sweeping changes to the military structure. “We are very concerned about reports that claim DoD is considering unilateral changes on major strategic issues, including significant reductions to U.S. forces stationed abroad, absent coordination with the White House and Congress,” they wrote.

Could the backlash signal an emerging rift between Congressional Republicans and the White House, who were previously in lockstep? It’s likely too soon to tell, although a scheduled Senate Intelligence Committee hearing today with FBI Director Kash Patel, CIA Director John Ratcliffe, and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, a prominent critic of American overseas intervention, might shed some light on the question.

But Congress’ confidence that Trump’s national security officials are up to the task of leading amid a period of global instability may have taken a hit with Monday’s report of leaked war plans. “It appears that mistakes were made, no question,” Wicker told CNN of The Atlantic report. “You can be sure the [Armed Services Committee], House and Senate will be looking into this.”

Rep. Don Bacon, a Republican from Nebraska, was even more blunt: “Putting out classified information like that endangers our forces, and I can’t believe that they were knowingly putting that kind of classified information on unclassified systems. It’s just wrong.”

Today’s Must-Read

Toeing the Company Line

Worth Your Time

• Writing for the Deseret News less than two weeks before her death on Sunday, former Rep. Mia Love offered a moving tribute to the American dream. “The America I know isn’t just my story and it isn’t just your story. It is our story. It is a story of endless possibilities, human struggle, standing up and striving for more. Our story has been told for well over 200 years, punctuated by small steps and giant leaps; from a woman on a bus to a man with a dream; from the bravery of the greatest generation to the explorers, entrepreneurs, reformers and innovators of today. This is our story. This is the America we know — because we built it — together,” she wrote. “As my season of life begins to draw to a close, I still passionately believe that we can revive the American story we know and love. I am convinced that our citizens must remember the principles of our story so that our children, and those seeking freedom around the world, will know where to look to find a place for their story. We must fight to keep the America we know as that shining city on a hill — truly the last best hope on earth. Like Benjamin Franklin and countless patriots down through the ages, I believe the American experiment is not a setting sun but a rising sun.”
• Could the Trump administration’s cuts to research grants threaten U.S. security? In the Washington Post, Republican Sen. Todd Young and former deputy National Security Adviser Matt Pottinger argued that robust investment in research and development is crucial if the U.S. hopes to compete with its global adversaries. “As President Donald Trump pledges to win the artificial intelligence race, send Americans to Mars and sustain U.S. military dominance, we would do well to remember a key reason the United States achieved its technological edge in the first place: federal investment in ambitious research and development. The U.S. is racing against its adversaries to lead not only in artificial intelligence but also biotech, quantum computing, robotics and other technologies that will be pivotal for U.S. prosperity and security,” they wrote. “Our policymakers should lock arms with the science-and-technology dreamers and doers across the country — from Silicon Valley to the Silicon Prairie — and recognize that basic research isn’t a federal handout to help sustain academia. Instead, it is a vital ingredient in our innovation future, economic and geopolitical competitiveness, and national security.”

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Axios: Trump’s Colorado Capitol Portrait Will Be Removed After President’s Outcry

Colorado House Democrats issued a statement Monday saying the painting, on display since 2019, will come down at the request of Republican leaders.

“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 statement reads.

…

Russian leader Vladimir Putin sent Trump a “personal gift” during a meeting with administration special envoy Steve Witkoff last week, the Kremlin said Monday after it emerged he gave him a portrait.

Witkoff had earlier described the painting of the president by a “leading Russian artist” as “beautiful” during an interview with Tucker Carlson.

In the Zeitgeist

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Let Us Know

How do you think the accidental leak of military plans to a journalist should be handled?