Washington was rocked Monday by a truly extraordinary story.

The editor-in-chief of The Atlantic, Jeffrey Goldberg, recounted how he had — apparently inadvertently — been added to a group chat featuring some of the most senior members of the United States government.

Even more dramatically, the purpose of the chat, on the messaging app Signal, was to discuss a then-imminent U.S. attack on Houthi targets in Yemen earlier this month.

Goldberg said that, through the texts, he had known specifics about the attacks about two hours before they took place on March 15. Goldberg wrote that Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth sent detailed plans to everyone on the chat.

Goldberg did not publish the specifics of that element of the chat. But he said of Hegseth’s messages: “The information contained in them, if they had been read by an adversary of the United States, could conceivably have been used to harm American military and intelligence personnel, particularly in the broader Middle East.”

Here are five big takeaways from the explosive story.

Yes, the chat is real — and bizarre

The entire episode that Goldberg describes is bizarre — and troubling from the point of view of those who would take the handling of sensitive information seriously.

Goldberg wrote that the chain of events began on March 11 when he got an unsolicited Signal invite from someone named Michael Waltz. Trump’s national security adviser is Mike Waltz, a former Florida congressman.

Goldberg was then added to the group chat about Yemen two days later. The group appears to have included virtually everyone at the highest reaches of defense and national security in the Trump administration except the president himself.

Waltz, Vice President Vance, Hegseth, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Treasury Department Secretary Scott Bessent, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and CIA Director John Ratcliffe all appear to have been among the participants. So too, apparently,........

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