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Group chat blame shifts to Pete Hegseth

3 13
27.03.2025

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It’s Thursday. HAPPY OPENING DAY! ⚾🌭 First pitch for both of my teams (the Red Sox and the Nationals) is at 4:05 p.m., so if your office has quietly cleared out, you know why. Or if this is you, cheers! 🍻 Here’s a list of the games today.

 

In today's issue:

  • Group chat blame shifts to Pete Hegseth
  • Hegseth’s poorly timed foreign trip
  • Tufts student detained by plainclothes agents
  • HHS eliminates 20k positions
  • Toddler slips through White House fence

 

Do you ever feel like everyone’s looking at you?:

The focus of the group chat snafu that has consumed Washington this week has shifted to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s mishandling of sensitive military intelligence on an unsecure app.

Obviously, Mike Waltz messed up: He somehow mistakenly added a journalist — a journalist who has sparred with the Trump team for years! — to a private group chat, in which he asked the top members of President Trump’s national security team for their best points of contact and chatted about political strategy. Waltz said it was "embarrassing," and he took full responsibility for it.

But it was Hegseth who escalated this: He chimed in with sensitive military intelligence for an attack *before* it happened. While the White House claims this information is not classified — and most intel experts find that hard to believe — the use of the texting app Signal added major national security ramifications.

But, so far, he still has his job.

It’s not just Democrats who are seeing red: Republican lawmakers have been critical of Hegseth’s handling of military intelligence. The Hill’s Alexander Bolton has been chatting with Republicans, and while they........

© The Hill