Trump downplays Signal blunder: ‘there was no classified information’ – live
Trump downplays Signal blunder: ‘there was no classified information’
President Donald Trump kept downplaying national security concerns on Tuesday after top White House officials added a journalist to a Signal chat discussing plans to conduct military strikes in Yemen.
“There was no classified information, as I understand it,” Trump said in a meeting with US ambassadors. “I hear it’s used by a lot of groups. It’s used by the media a lot. It’s used by a lot of the military, and I think, successfully, but sometimes somebody can get on to those things. That’s one of the prices you pay when you’re not sitting in the Situation Room.”
He later called the Atlantic, a magazine with over two million followers on X, “a failed magazine” and its editor-in-chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, who was added to the Signal chat, “a total sleazebag”.
Key events
Robert Tait
US academic groups sue White House over planned deportations of pro-Gaza students
US academic groups have sued the Trump administration in an effort to block the deportation of foreign students and scholars who have been targeted for voicing pro-Palestinian views and criticism of Israel.
The American Association of University Professors (AAUP) and the Middle East Studies Association (Mesa) filed a lawsuit at a US federal court in Boston on Tuesday accusing the administration of fomenting “a climate of repression” on campuses and stifling constitutionally guaranteed free speech rights.
Lawyers acting for the groups warn that the crackdown on pro-Palestinian speech is likely to herald a broad clampdown on dissenting views in higher education and elsewhere.
The suit comes after the high-profile arrest of Mahmoud Khalil, a Syrian-born Palestinian former graduate student of Columbia University in New York, who holds a green card, and Badar Khan Suri, an Indian post-doctoral student at Georgetown University, both of whom are in detention amid government efforts to deport them. Both had been vocal in support of the Palestinians. Lawyers for both men are disputing the legality of the Trump administration’s efforts to deport them.
Another student green card holder, Yunseo Chung, who had also attended protests at Columbia, sued the administration on Monday after immigration officials tried to arrest her. Ice officials told her lawyer that her green card had been revoked. Chung has been in the US since the age of seven.
The academics’ lawsuit filed on Tuesday alleges that Donald Trump and other US officials are pursuing an “ideological-deportation policy” and accuses the administration of deliberately suppressing freedom of expression by construing opinions supporting Palestinians and criticising Israel’s military actions in Gaza as “pro-Hamas”.
The Guardian’s Robert Tait gives us the full story:
Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer is calling for a “full investigation” in the Senate, challenging Republicans to join in probing how national security leaders came to discuss wartime plans on a secure messaging app chat that also included the editor-in-chief of the Atlantic.
However, Senate Majority Leader John Thune told reporters an investigation was “already happening”, with the Trump administration’s intelligence leaders facing tough questioning at a Senate intelligence committee hearing on Tuesday.
Thune added that the Senate armed services committee “may want to have some folks testify and have some of those questions answered as well”.
The top Republican and Democratic senators on the armed services committee have been discussing how to proceed with an investigation.
President Donald Trump called the messaging app Signal “the best technology for the moment”.
Trump said his national security adviser, Mike Waltz, should not apologize after the Atlantic editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg was mistakenly included in the Signal group chat.
“I don’t think he should apologize,” Trump said on Tuesday. “I think he’s doing his best. It’s equipment and technology that’s not perfect, and probably he won’t be using it again.”
Trump downplays Signal blunder: ‘there was no classified information’
President Donald Trump kept downplaying national security concerns on Tuesday after top White House officials added a journalist to a Signal chat discussing plans to conduct military strikes in Yemen.
“There was no classified information, as I understand it,” Trump said in a meeting with US ambassadors. “I hear it’s used by a lot of groups. It’s used by the media a lot. It’s used by a lot of the military, and I think, successfully, but sometimes somebody can get on to those things. That’s one of the prices you pay when you’re not sitting in the Situation Room.”
He later called the Atlantic, a magazine with over two million followers on X, “a failed magazine” and its editor-in-chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, who was added to the Signal chat, “a total sleazebag”.
President Donald Trump signed an executive order targeting law firm Jenner and Block for previously employing former Special Counsel Robert Mueller prosecutor Andrew Weissmann.
“We’ve taken action against a number of law firms that have participated either in the weaponization of government, the weaponization of the legal system for political ends, or have otherwise engaged in illegal or inappropriate activities,” said White House Staff Secretary Will Scharf.
“The law firm of Jenner & Block is one of these law firms,” Scharf said, as he handed the order to Trump in the Oval Office.
Trump signs pardon for Devon Archer
Fran Lawther
Away from the Signal leak, Donald Trump was meeting with ambassadors when he interrupted the meeting to sign a flurry of executive orders.
The first was a pardon for Devon Archer – a former business partner of Hunter Biden who was convicted for his role in defrauding the corporate arm of a Native American tribe.
The supreme court refused to hear Archer’s appeal against his conviction in January 2024. On Tuesday, the president signed a pardon for Archer, saying: “I think he was treated very unfairly … He was a victim of a crime so we’re going to undo that.”
The Republican Senate majority leader John Thune said on Tuesday he expected the Senate armed services committee would look into Trump administration officials’ use of Signal, after a journalist said he had been included in a secret group discussion of highly sensitive war plans on the messaging app.
Fran Lawther
Republicans so far keep rallying around the group of senior Trump officials being criticized for discussing operational details for bombing Yemen in a group chat.
Texas senator Ted Cruz told the BBC that Americans should feel “very encouraged” by the substance of the discussion in the Signal group.
While admitting the security breach – where a journalist was inadvertently added to the group – was a mistake, Cruz told the BBC: “What the entire text thread is about is President Trump directed his national security team take out the terrorists and open up the shipping lanes. That’s terrific.”
Cruz was echoing the official White House line of defense. A statement released on Tuesday afternoon said: “Democrats and their media allies have seemingly forgotten that President Donald J Trump and his national security team successfully killed terrorists who have targeted US troops and disrupted the most consequential shipping routes in the world.”
Joseph Gedeon
Trump campaign chief sues Daily Beast over defamation claims
A top campaign manager for Donald Trump’s victorious 2024 presidential bid has filed a defamation lawsuit against the Daily Beast, alleging the news outlet fabricated claims about his campaign compensation and deliberately damaged his professional reputation.
Chis LaCivita’s lawsuit, filed on Monday in the US district court for the eastern district of Virginia, centers on a series of articles published in October 2024 claiming that he received up to $22m from the campaign and associated political action committees.
The case also forms part of a larger, dizzying pattern of legal confrontations between Trump as well as those in his orbit and media organizations, following similar high-profile defamation suits against major news networks. Over the years, Trump and his allies have increasingly used litigation as a tool to challenge journalistic reporting they view as hostile or inaccurate.
According to the court filing, the Daily Beast published multiple articles in 2024 suggesting LaCivita had “raked in” huge payments, including a piece by the investigative journalist Michael Isikoff that was titled Trump In Cash Crisis – As Campaign Chief’s $22m Pay Revealed.
LaCivita alleges the reporting created a “false impression that he was personally profiting excessively” and prioritizing personal gain over campaign success – which they argue has harmed his personal reputation. The lawsuit – which does not name Isikoff as a defendant – claims the multimillion-dollar figure represents gross campaign advertising expenditures, not personal income.
After initial correction demands from LaCivita’s legal team, the Daily Beast modified its reporting, reducing the claimed compensation to $19.2m and clarifying that funds went to LaCivita’s consulting firm. However, the lawsuit argues these changes did not adequately address the fundamental misrepresentation.
Read the full story by The Guardian’s Joseph Gedeon here:
Faisal Ali
Earlier today, Democratic lawmaker Rashida Tlaib described Mahmoud Khalil, the former Columbia University student who was detained by US immigration authorities earlier this month, as a “political prisoner”.
Speaking alongside several other progressive Democrats, Tlaib said: “In the United States of America, no matter your immigration status, no matter who you are, you have constitutional rights in our country.”
Tlaib said that Khalil’s detention was illegal and a “direct assault” on due process, freedom of speech, and the right to protest in the US, warning that the Trump administration could begin targeting his other opponents. “This is a moment that should alarm all of us. If we do not stand up for Mahmoud’s freedom today, the lawless Trump administration will come for us all.”
The White House released a statement calling out Democrats and their “media allies” for allegedly forgetting the results of the attack on Yemen.
“This is 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”, reads the statement.
Trump nominates Republican once accused of mishandling taxpayer funds as HHS watchdog
President Donald Trump has nominated a Republican attorney who was once accused of mishandling taxpayer funds and has a history of launching investigations against abortion clinics to lead the Department of Health and Human Services’ office of inspector general, the Associated Press reports.
If confirmed by the Senate, Thomas March Bell will oversee fraud, waste and abuse audits of the Medicare and Medicaid programs, which spend more than $1tn annually.
Bell currently serves as general counsel for House Republicans and has worked for GOP politicians and congressional offices for decades.
The president’s nomination is a brazenly political one for a job that has long been viewed as non-partisan and focuses largely on accounting for and ferreting out fraud in some of the nation’s biggest spending programs.
President Trump’s Ukraine and Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff was in Moscow when he was included in a group chat with more than a dozen other top administration officials on the messaging app Signal, including a journalist who leaked the conversation.
Witkoff was in Moscow meeting Russian president Vladimir Putin, but it was not clear if he had his phone with him. Witkoff flew out of Moscow on 14 March, according to Russian media.
Bart Groothuis, a former head of Dutch cyber security, said western government officials would not take mobile phones with them to Moscow or Beijing, but use “burner phones” or secure means of communication to make calls.
“Taking your own phone means giving them a free lunch when it comes to intelligence collection from the Russian side,” he said.
José Olivares
Trump administration claims details of mass deportations are state secrets
The Trump administration invoked the “state secrets” privilege to avoid providing more information to a federal judge regarding this month’s highly contentious immigrant expulsions to El Salvador under the Alien Enemies Act.
The administration’s invocation of the privilege is a further escalation in Donald Trump’s immigration-related battle against the federal judiciary.
According to a court filing submitted by justice department officials on Monday evening, “no further information will be provided” to the federal court in Washington DC based on the state secrets privilege. The filing said the case deals with Trump’s complete and absolute authority to remove “designated terrorists participating in a state-sponsored invasion of, and predatory incursion into, the United States”.
In response to the Trump administration’s invocation, the federal judge in the case said that if the administration would like to provide more information about the Alien Enemies Act operation, they should do so by 31 March.
Trump invoked the Alien Enemies Act on 15 March to expel Venezuelan immigrants in the US. That day, 238 Venezuelans and 23 Salvadoran men were placed on planes and sent to El Salvador, where they were then quickly detained in a massive “terrorism” prison run by the Salvadorian government. For over a week, a federal judge has attempted to compel the Trump administration to release information about the operation.
The Trump administration has said all of the Venezuelans expelled are members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua, and has repeatedly claimed, without evidence, that the gang “infiltrated” the US at the direction of the Venezuelan government. An intelligence document contradicts the Trump administration’s allegations. News reports, identifying some of the Venezuelans expelled to El Salvador, have published evidence and claims from family members that they are innocent and not members of the gang.
After the expulsion of the immigrants, federal judge James E Boasberg temporarily blocked the invocation of the Alien Enemies Act for further renditions. In a later court order, Boasberg doubled down on the block, instructing the federal government to conduct individualized hearings for immigrants set to be expelled via the act, to see if it even applies to them at all.
Read the full story by the Guardian’s José Olivares here:
During an interview with the Bulwark, the Atlantic editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg weighed in on whether he’ll release more Signal texts after he was included in a group chat with the US vice president and other White House officials discussing upcoming military strikes in Yemen.
“My colleagues and I and the people who are giving us advice on this have some interesting conversations to have about this”, Goldberg said. “But just because they’re irresponsible with material, doesn’t mean that I’m going to be irresponsible with this material”.
