emptywheel Archives - Page 2 of 250

Honesty, Humility, Integrity: Pete Hegseth Fails to Meet Standards He Claims Trans Service Members Lack

March 30, 2025/54 Comments/in emptywheel /by emptywheel

Amid the torrent of scandal and legal fights characterizing Donald Trump’s second term, the United States faces a moral and ethical question about what it means to be honest, humble, to have integrity.

On the one hand, you have over forty (thirty-two, eight, two) plaintiffs, challenging Donald Trump’s ban on their service in the military. They include Commander Emily Shilling, a naval aviator who flew over 60 combat missions before serving as a test pilot and now leading acquisition programs, Lieutenant Colonel Ashley Davis, who serves as an Air Battle Manager flying the E-3 AWACS, Major Minerva Bettis, who serves as an Air Force weapons instructor at Nellis Air Force Base, First Lieutenant Sean Kersch-Hamar, who serves as an Air Force weapons systems officer, Master Sergeant Logan Ireland, who serves as Flight Chief in the Air Force’s Office of Special Investigations, Staff Sergeant Vera Wolf, who serves as an Air Force weapons specialist.

While this is just a selection of the 40 plaintiffs, these happen to be the kinds of people who make strikes like those launched against the Houthis on March 15 happen.

These plaintiffs are being kicked out of the military for no other reason than because they are transgender. To justify kicking out these service members, Donald Trump accused all transgender people of lacking the honesty, humility, and integrity, not to mention the “warrior ethos,” to serve in the armed forces, a claim adopted in DOD’s implementation of Trump’s order.

They are being kicked out by Pete Hegseth.

During his confirmation hearing to be Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth confessed to serial adultery. He confessed to that as a way to dodge questions about drinking before work, spousal abuse, and sexual misconduct. He confessed to serial infidelity but denied the other allegations.

After denying the allegations, Hegseth refused to say whether showing up to work drunk, engaging in spousal abuse, or sexually assaulting a woman would disqualify him from serving as Secretary of Defense.

Pete Hegseth refused to say whether showing up to work drunk, engaging in spousal abuse, or sexually assaulting a woman would prove he lacked the honesty or integrity to work at DOD, much less lead it.

But questions about Hegseth’s fitness did not end with his confirmation hearings.

In his time as Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth has brought his spouse to sensitive international meetings. To be fair, he may simply not know better. Along with serial infidelity, in his confirmation hearing, Hegseth confessed that he had conducted almost no such international negotiations in the past. Maybe he simply doesn’t know that including spouses undermines candor and security?

Hegseth also hired his brother, Phil, who did PR at the non-profit which Hegseth financially ruined, to a senior position at DOD. This at least looks like nepotism, the hiring of someone because of who he is, other than merit. As he has with his spouse, Hegseth has toted his brother along to meetings: to his first big overseas trip, to Gitmo, to the Conor McGregor meeting at the White House.

All that might not have been enough to revisit questions about Hegseth’s honestly, humility, and integrity.

But then, Pete Hegseth — the guy kicking out every trans service member based on a claim they lack honesty, humility, and integrity — shared National Defense Information on an insecure Signal chat that happened to include a journalist. While the compromise of attack information did not, in real time, get anyone killed, between his comments on the chat and those of Vice President JD Vance and National Security Adviser Mike Waltz, the compromise may expose service members — people like Commander Shilling, Lieutenant Colonel Davis, Major Bettis, First Lieutenant Kersch-Hamar, Master Sergeant Ireland, or Staff Sergeant Wolf — to possible legal danger going forward, because they raise questions about the presidential authorization for an operation that knowingly targeted a civilian residence.

Just as troubling, after his reckless actions were exposed, Hegseth has persistently lied about how sensitive the information is.

He has refused to accept responsibility for his own actions.

As the NYT describes, Hegseth’s intransigence has led those flying such missions to question whether the Secretary of Defense is going to get them killed, in part because he lacks the humility to admit that he did something wrong.

On air bases, in aircraft carrier “ready rooms” and in communities near military bases this week, there was consternation. The news that senior officials in the Trump administration discussed plans on Signal, a commercial messaging app, for an impending attack angered and bewildered men and women who have taken to the air on behalf of the United States.

The mistaken inclusion of the editor in chief of The Atlantic in the chat and Mr. Hegseth’s insistence that he did nothing wrong by disclosing the secret plans upend decades of military doctrine about operational security, a dozen Air Force and Navy fighter pilots said.

Worse, they said, is that going forward, they can no longer be certain that the Pentagon is focused on their safety when they strap into cockpits.

“The whole point about aviation safety is that you have to have the humility to understand that you are imperfect, because everybody screws up. Everybody makes mistakes,” said Lt. John Gadzinski, a retired Navy F-14 pilot who flew combat missions from aircraft carriers in the Persian Gulf. “But ultimately, if you can’t admit when you’re wrong, you’re going to kill somebody because your ego is too big.”

And that’s why I keep obsessing about the fact that Hegseth continues to lie about the Signal chat even as DOJ continues to insist that Commander Shilling, Lieutenant Colonel Davis, Major Bettis, First Lieutenant Kersch-Hamar, Master Sergeant Ireland, or Staff Sergeant Wolf lack honesty, integrity, and humility.

Hegseth is relying on such claims even though there’s absolutely no evidence to support it in the case of these 40-some named plaintiffs.

Here’s how Judge Benjamin Settle, a George W. Bush appointee, described it in the third of three orders freezing the trans ban.

Commander Emily “Hawking” Shilling, for example, transitioned within the Navy beginning in the fall of 2021 in reliance on the Austin Policy. She has been a Naval Aviator for 19 years. She has flown more than 60 combat missions, including in Iraq and Afghanistan, and was a Navy test pilot. She has 1750 flight hours in high performance Navy jets—including the F/A-18 Super Hornet—and has earned three air medals. She asserts without contradiction that the Navy already spent $20 million training her. There is no claim and no evidence that she is now, or ever was, a detriment to her unit’s cohesion, or to the military’s lethality or readiness, or that she is mentally or physically unable to continue her service. There is no claim and no evidence that Shilling herself is dishonest or selfish, or that she lacks humility or integrity. Yet absent an injunction, she will be promptly discharged solely because she is transgender.

Settle reached his conclusion via different means that Judge Ana Reyes, whose injunction focused on the clear animus targeting trans service members.

Settle didn’t deny there was animus; he just didn’t rely on it, focusing instead on DOD’s failure to present any evidence to support the stated goals of the trans ban, a ban that goes further even than the Mattis policy approved in Trump’s first term, which permitted trans members already serving, including some of the plaintiffs, to remain. DOJ relied on suppositions made in formulating the Mattis policy during Trump’s first term and ignored the reality of the last seven years — the honorable service of the plaintiffs who’ve served openly — that debunked those suppositions.

But Settle did hold that the stigma of being fired based on these shoddy claims would likely support a due process claim, even if DOD ousts these plaintiffs via an honorable discharge, which the government claims would eliminate any stigma.

The Military Ban and Hegseth Policy’s demeaning language is repeated even here in the government’s response: “The Commander has determined that it is ‘the policy of the United States Government to establish high standards for troop . . . honesty, humility, uniformity, and integrity,’ and that this policy is ‘inconsistent with the . . . constraints on individuals with gender dysphoria.’” Dkt. 76 at 41 (quoting Military Ban). In effect, the government, in line with the Military Ban and Hegseth Policy, posits that, as a class, transgender service members are only in the military as the result of a radical, insane, false gender ideology. See, e.g., Military Excellence and Readiness Fact Sheet (“During the Biden Administration, the Department of Defense allowed gender insanity to pervade our military organizations.”). There is no evidence in the record supporting these assertions.

One discharged from service based on these grounds is plainly stigmatized. The accuracy of the government’s proclamations is obviously contested, and plaintiffs are about to lose their military careers because of them. An honorable discharge does not erase or sanitize the language the government uses to describe the character of separated service members under the Military Ban and Hegseth Policy.

Plaintiffs have demonstrated the Chaudhry elements of a stigma-plus Procedural Due Process claim. They have also demonstrated that the Military Ban violates “bedrock” Due Process fairness principles precluding arbitrary or vindictive measures that upset settled expectations. On the record before the Court, they are likely to succeed on the merits of their Procedural Due Process claim.

There’s been a lot of attention to the arbitrary claims Trump has used to target one after another law firm (even while protecting Jones Day), though in my opinion far too many journalists have treated these grievances as real, ignoring the falsehoods Trump used to manufacture grievance. There has, similarly, been a lot of attention on the protected free speech that the government has used to justify kidnapping Mahmud Khalil, Rumeysa Ozturk, and others.

That’s all justified attention.

But there’s something especially noxious about this manufactured claim — the enthusiasm with which Hegseth has adopted Trump’s slander of all trans people as dishonest and lacking integrity.

When it came to his own alleged conduct, for which there was at least credible (if aggressively contested) evidence, Hegseth refused to concede whether dishonesty would disqualify him. Yet since then, Hegseth has used baseless insinuations about honesty, integrity, and humility to kick out people who’ve served honorably for two decades.

Pete Hegseth is lying about how dangerous his actions were. In doing so, he’s putting his career above those doing the riskiest work.

And all the while he’s slandering others about lacking honesty, integrity, and humility.

Talbott v. Trump docket

Ana Reyes opinion granting preliminary injunction

Shilling v. Trump docket

Benjamin Settle opinion granting preliminary injunction

Ireland v. Hegseth docket

Christine O’Hearn order granting TRO

Share this entry

Fridays with Nicole Sandler

March 28, 2025/29 Comments/in emptywheel /by emptywheel

Listen on Spotify (transcripts available)

Listen on Apple (transcripts available)

Share this entry

Stephen Miller’s Presumed Babysitting of JD Vance’s European Animosity … and DOD’s Potential War Crimes

March 26, 2025/168 Comments/in emptywheel /by emptywheel

Tulsi Gabbard’s testimony at the threat hearings was clear: After falsely claiming that fentanyl was the top threat to the United States, she said the second threat was China. That’s important background to the most interesting comment I’ve seen about the chat.

The Trumpsters on the chat were obsessed with making Europe pay for the operation. But — as Nathalie Tocci noted in this NYT story focused on the Trumpsters’ obsession — the entire conversation ignored the import to China of transit through the Suez Canal.

“It is clear that the trans-Atlantic relationship, as was, is over, and there is, at best, an indifferent disdain,” said Nathalie Tocci, director of Italy’s Institute of International Affairs, who formerly advised a top E.U. official. “And at worst, and closer to that, there is an active attempt to undermine Europe.”

[snip]

He and others, like Anna Sauerbrey, the foreign editor of Die Zeit, noted that the explicit demand for payment, rather than just political and military support, as in Iraq and Afghanistan, was new. And it ignored the fact that “the U.S. depends on global trade,” she said, and that “France, Britain and the Netherlands have deployed ships to the region” for the same purpose. The Americans, she said, “are constantly overlooking European efforts.”

China, for example, gets most of its oil imports through the Bab el-Mandeb Strait and does much of its export trade with Europe through the same sea route. But no one is asking China to pay, Ms. Tocci noted.

In the texts released by Atlantic, there’s actually even more focus on the trade that transits the canal than the original story.

Indeed, it was at the center of debates over whether the strikes should go forward, which decision Tulsi Gabbard claimed had been made long before the chat started, and which debate, in yesterday’s cover story, was hailed as a policy process working.

Eleven minutes after Mike Waltz kicks off the thread with instructions that Joint Staff is sending “a more specific sequence of events in the coming days,” JD Vance piped in to say he thought the strikes were a mistake.

He focused on the fact that (he claimed) just 3% of US trade goes through Bab el-Mandeb, whereas 40% of Europe’s does.

Both Joe Kent (Tulsi’s unconfirmed aide) and John Ratcliffe respond that they could wait; indeed, in an arguably classified text, Ratcliffe says that more time would “be used to identify better starting points for coverage on Houthi leadership.” Kent also offers to provide unclassified details on shipping, perhaps to correct JD’s claim.

Remember, the person most likely to have been the “JG” whom Waltz tried to add to the chat instead of Jeff Goldberg is Jamieson Greer, Trump’s trade representative, who likely would have had the precise details (and also might be sufficiently grown up to point out how stupid this Signal chat was).

Then Pete Hegseth pipes up to second JD’s specific concerns about messaging, including his worry that (ha!) the plans will leak and “we look indecisive.”

Waltz responds to JD’s original point, correcting him about how much US traffic transits Bab el-Mandeb, accounting for the fact that the stuff transiting the canal ends up in trade with the US.

That’s the first 27 minutes of the substantive discussion. Somewhere between 8:32 and 8:42AM, Waltz adds “SM,” believed to be Stephen Miller.

After adding Miller (but without mentioning he added him), Waltz returns to the issue of sea lanes, asserting that unless the US reopens them, they won’t get reopened.

JD suggests that if Hegseth is okay with the strikes, “let’s go.” He suggests Houthi targeting of Saudi oil facilities are one downside risk, not Saudi involvement, which is why the US has often chosen to lead on Houthi strikes.

Then Hegseth agrees that the Europeans are “free-loading It’s PATHETIC,” and says “we are the only ones on the planet (on our side of the ledger) who can” reopen the shipping lanes — which may suggest he believes China could do it too.

As Tocci pointed out to NYT, there’s no discussion of asking China to pay for these strikes. No discussion of how doing so for China helps China build its influence in Europe. No discussion at all in how this might affect China.

These boys purportedly intent on confronting China simply don’t consider the policy decision’s affect on China. JD and Whiskey Pete, at least, are interested primarily in hurting Europe.

Another 46 minutes elapse before SM — added after JD was wailing about the Europeans — comments. He offers an interpretation of what Trump said: a green light on the operation, he opines, but the US would harass Egypt and Europe after the fact to extort a payback.

Eleven minutes later, Hegseth — the guy to whom JD appealed on this issue — agreed with SM’s interpretation of the President’s intent.

That settled it. As I noted, SM’s — presumed to be Stephen Miller, Trump’s top domestic policy advisor — interpretation of the President’s intent is the sole backup in this now public document that the President authorized the strike at all: “As I heard it, the president was clear: green light.”

And the next thing we know, after Waltz resets how long until this PRA/FRA-covered communications will be destroyed illegally — DOD is flattening the apartment of someone’s girlfriend.

Fist-flag-fire!

By March 17, locals in Sanaa were claiming 53 people had been killed in this and ensuing strikes, including five children.

Even ignoring the foreknowledge of a civilian target, that makes the whole thing legally precarious, because everyone on the list is relying on SM’s interpretation of presidential intent. With the foreknowledge, it puts everyone involved in the strike at much greater legal risk because the legality of it, seemingly a target with significant civilian exposure, is so fragile.

But the other thing it does is show SM — again, believed to be Trump’s top domestic policy advisor — serving as the surrogate for Trump, and doing so in a way designed to shut JD up.

Like wormtongue, his mere gloss of the leader’s intent is treated with uncontested authority.

Share this entry

Clean on OpSec: Pete Hegseth Spilled Specific Details of an Attack in Advance

March 26, 2025/117 Comments/in emptywheel /by emptywheel

The Atlantic has published the texts (except for one naming a CIA officer whose name John Ratcliffe insists is not classified) it earlier withheld.

The White House is frantically spinning, claiming these attack plans — the likes of which both Tulsi Gabbard and Ratcliffe claimed not to recall in sworn testimony yesterday — don’t amount to “war plans.”

Karoline Leavitt is even sniping at the Wall Street Journal for its shock that Steve Witkoff was on the Signal chat thread while meeting with Putin at the Kremlin.

A real security scandal is that the Signal chat apparently included Steve Witkoff, Mr. Trump’s envoy to wars in the Middle East and Ukraine. Press reports say Mr. Witkoff was receiving these messages on the commercial app while in Moscow. This is security malpractice. Russian intelligence services must be listening to Mr. Witkoff’s every eyebrow flutter. This adds to the building perception that Mr. Witkoff, the President’s friend from New York, is out of his depth in dealing with world crises.

The meaning of Leavitt’s rebuttal is not remotely clear.

.@SteveWitkoff
was provided a secure line of communication by the U.S. Government, and it was the only phone he had in his possession while in Moscow.

If the Wall Street Journal Editorial Board cared about the truth, they could have reached out to our team for comment before running these lies.

This is classic Fake News from an outlet clearly determined to knock Steve Witkoff, who is a great patriot working effectively on behalf of President Trump to secure world peace.

She’s not denying he had Signal on the device with which he traveled (nor explained what devices he has had on his other international travels).

Update: Witkoff makes it more clear. The personal phone on which he was discussing military operations was at home.

I am incredulous that a good newspaper like the@WSJ would not check with me as to whether I had any personal devices with me on either of my trips to Moscow. If they had, they would have known the truth. Which is, I only had with me a secure phone provided by the government for special circumstances when you travel to regions where you do not want your devices compromised. That is why CBS News reported that Goldberg himself said that he “has not recounted Witkoff making any comments in that group chat until Saturday, after he left Russia and returned to the U.S.”. Guess why? Because I had no access to my personal devices until I returned from my trip. That is the responsible way for me to make these trips and that is how I always conduct myself. Maybe it is time for media outlets like the Journal to acknowledge when some of their people make serious reporting mistakes like this. I would appreciate it if the WSJ and other media outlets check with me the next time they make serious allegations. Thank you.

The desperate panic to deny the gravity of this situation, however, is a real testament to the contempt in which the White House holds the men and women whose lives were put at risk — may still be at risk — because their Defense Secretary is so incompetent he can’t bother with the least little OpSec.

Share this entry

Patronage Is a Lucrative Way to Attack Rule of Law

March 26, 2025/11 Comments/in emptywheel /by emptywheel

Yesterday, Trump issued another Executive Order targeting a law firm, this time Jenner & Block.

His rationale is even thinner than the other manufactured reasons to target law firms. The EO alludes to Jenner’s support for trans people and migrants.

More extensively, it complains that Jenner rehired Andrew Weissmann for a period after he convicted Paul Manafort for being a tax cheat, a money launderer, and a foreign influence peddler.

Jenner was also “thrilled” to re-hire Andrew Weissmann, a prosecutor known for his unethical behavior, including his role in engaging in partisan prosecution as part of Robert Mueller’s entirely unjustified investigation.
Weissmann’s career has been rooted in weaponized government and abuse of power, including devastating tens of thousands of American families who worked for the now defunct Arthur Andersen LLP, only to have his unlawfully aggressive prosecution overturned by the Supreme Court.

The numerous reports of Weissman’s dishonesty, including pursuit of nonexistent crimes, bribery to foreign nationals, and overt demand that the federal government pursue a political agenda against President Trump, is a concerning indictment of Jenner’s values and priorities.

The crimes for which Manafort was actually prosecuted were suspected crimes identified long before Trump started pursuing help from Russia to get elected. Weissmann never succeeded in getting Manafort to tell the truth about his relationship with Konstantin Kilimnik and other alleged Russian agents.

And while Weissmann has been a loud champion for accountability for Trump since January 6, he left Jenner in 2021, before most of his criticism.

Nevertheless, a lot of coverage of the EO (like Devlin Barrett’s here) has dutifully rehearsed Trump’s transparently thin claims as if they are the real reason for the attack.

They can’t be. After all, Jones Day continues to boast about doing the same kind of pro bono work, including supporting migrants, that Trump cites in his Jenner EO.

In 2021, Jones Day expanded our work to serve migrant children, women, and families by opening a new office in the Rio Grande Valley. We call our newest phase of our work—The Border Project 3.0.

Jones Day has provided legal education to over 10,000 migrants, and has managed more than 600 individual cases for women, children, and families. Over 1,100 lawyers from every domestic office and Mexico City have dedicated more than 280,000 hours to these cases.

We continue to provide aid and support to vulnerable migrant populations. When dangerous circumstances in the Middle East and Africa resulted in waves of refugees in Lesvos, Greece, Jones Day deployed lawyers from the region to help ensure that the laws governing humanitarian relief are properly applied, particularly women and children. More than 20 lawyers have dedicated in excess of 2,800 hours to this project.

It continues to celebrate its own diversity initiatives.

And yet Trump has left the Republican Party’s main law firm unscathed.

Which is why I think more focus should be given to this passage from Brad Karp’s cowardly letter explaining why he capitulated when Trump similarly focused on Paul Weiss. It’s not just that Trump’s EOs scare existing law firm clients from working with the targeted firms. It’s that other firms — firms protected from Trump’s wrath — have exploited the EOs to attempt to expand their business and talent.

We were hopeful that the legal industry would rally to our side, even though it had not done so in response to executive orders targeting other firms. We had tried to persuade other firms to come out in public support of Covington and Perkins Coie. And we waited for firms to support us in the wake of the President’s executive order targeting Paul, Weiss. Disappointingly, far from support, we learned that certain other firms were seeking to exploit our vulnerabilities by aggressively soliciting our clients and recruiting our attorneys.

Yes, these EOs are designed to deprive Trump’s most vulnerable targets of good legal representation.

Yes, these EOs are designed to delegitimize efforts to hold corruption like Manafort’s (and by extension, that of anyone in Trump’s loyal orbit or willing to turn on his adversaries) accountable.

But they’re also designed to give affiliated firms patronage, business opportunities dependent on loyalty. That turns these law firms into little more than lobbying firms, little different than Ballard Partners, a Trump-connected lobbying firm that experiences a bonanza every time Trump gets in office (and not coincidentally, that employed Pam Bondi until her confirmation as the lawyer enforcing this patronage). Once law firms have become indistinguishable from lobbying firms — something that was trending anyway — then rule of law is only accessible to those with proper ties.

You’re paying for influence, not for legal acumen.

And in the process firms loaded with legal acumen will rely increasingly on their blind fealty.

Deborah Pearlstein renews the call for law firms to exercise some solidarity in the face of Trump’s persistent attacks. But thus far, the rush for spoils has undermined any such solidarity and adherence to law, not fealty.

Share this entry

Kristi Noem Invokes State Secrets to Cover-Up Her Inability to ID Women as Women

March 25, 2025/63 Comments/in emptywheel /by emptywheel

One of the transphobic right wing’s most annoying taunts is that Democrats can’t decide whether women are women. It is central to the long-running campaign to demonize trans people to claim that birth sex, which transphobes claim is a person’s true and immutable sex, is always immediately apparent.

Yet yesterday, Kristi Noem invoked State Secrets to cover-up the fact that she — and the agencies she runs — were unable to identify women as women. DOJ included Noem’s declaration as part of package invoking State Secrets in the Alien Enemies Act lawsuit yesterday.

The declarations, in general, are ridiculous given filings submitted by ACLU earlier yesterday.

Notice regarding information request
Declaration of SZFR (woman sent and then returned from El Salvador)
Declaration of EEPB (Nicaraguan man sent and then returned from El Salvador)

Both Rubio and Noem’s declarations include language claiming that official acknowledgement of details of the deportation flights — the kinds of details Judge James Boasberg might use to hold them in contempt — is different than, “assumptions, speculation, public investigation, or informal statements.” This, mentioning “informal” reports or statements five times, is from Noem’s declaration:

Disclosure of the information sought in the Court’s Minute Order would cause significant harm to the United States’ national security even assuming some of that information has already entered public sources as a result of assumptions, speculation, public investigation, or informal statements. It is both true and well known that official acknowledgement of a fact may be damaging to national interests in a way that informal suggestions or speculation about that information is not. If the government were to confirm or deny the information sought by this Court’s Minute Order, there would arise a danger that enemies of our national security would be able to stitch together an understanding of the means and methods used to thwart their unlawful and sometimes violent conduct.

[snip]

There is a difference between official acknowledgement and informal reports: Official disclosures or acknowledgements threaten the United States’ national security interests in a way that informal reports or statements do not, because informal statements leave an important element of doubt that provides an essential layer of protection and confidentiality. That protection would be lost if the United States were forced to confirm or deny the accuracy of unofficial disclosures or speculation. [my emphasis]

But the plaintiffs’ declaration notes that after Nayib Bukele posted a propaganda video showing three planes that had brought detainees to El Salvador, with tail numbers visible, both Trump and Rubio effectively ratified by reposting the video.

In addition, public information shows that two planes were still in the air when the Court issued both its oral and written Orders. Most significantly, based on information publicized by U.S. government officials and publicly available flight data, at least two flights took off during the hearing on March 15—one at 5:26pm EDT and the other at 5:45pm EDT—and landed well after this Court’s written Order had been filed. See Pls. Resp. to Defs. Notice (ECF No. 21); see also Joyce Sohyun Lee and Kevin Schaul, Deportation Flights Landed after Judge Said Planes Should Turn Around, Wash. Post (Mar. 16, 2025). 2 And the video released by President Bukele that shows Plaintiff class members being hauled off the planes in El Salvador includes each plane’s tail number.3 That video was then reposted by both President Trump4 and Secretary of State Rubio.5

2 https://www.washingtonpost.com/immigration/2025/03/16/deportation-flights-trump-elsalvador [https://perma.cc/Q6NH-ATY8]

3 https://x.com/nayibbukele/status/1901245427216978290 [https://perma.cc/BM73-547H].

4 https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/114173862724361939 [https://perma.cc/67LY-FREW].

5 https://x.com/SecRubio/status/1901252043517432213 [https://perma.cc/RXH4-XH4R].

The Xitter post from Rubio, using his official Secretary of State Xitter account, specifically says, “Thank you for your assistance and friendship, President Bukele” in response to his claim that 238 members of Tren de Aragua “arrived in our country” effectively ratifying that those planes were the ones used, and that the number Bukele used was the one given to him.

Perhaps the government is prepping a claim that these are “informal” statements. But Donald Trump has fired people by tweet, over and over, and nominated a good number of cabinet members by tweet, including Noem herself.

Trump’s tweets have official effect. To claim Trump’s tweet didn’t ratify Bukele’s post is nonsense.

Rubio and Noem’s focus on the danger of official confirmation is about refusing to provide Boasberg details showing that DHS had not done adequate vetting of the detainees to sustain the claim they really were members of Tren de Aragua. Again, this is from Noem’s declaration:

In addition to flight operations, the number of TdA members on a given removal flight is also information that, if disclosed, would expose ICE’s means and methods, thus threatening significant harm to the national security of the United States. Revealing and/or confirming the number of TdA members involved would reveal key details about how the United States conducts these sorts of operations and would allow other aliens (members of TdA and otherwise) to draw inferences about how the Government prioritizes and uses its resources in immigration enforcement and counterterrorism operations.

[snip]

When the United [sic] seeks to remove individuals to a foreign country, the United States must negotiate the details of that removal with the foreign country. This requires nonpublic, sensitive, and high stakes negotiation with the foreign State, particularly where, as here, the aliens being removed have been deemed enemy aliens and members of a foreign terrorist organization. Those negotiations cover sensitive issues, including representations regarding the bases on which the individuals are being removed from the United States, which can impact the foreign State’s willingness to accept the removed aliens and the procedures it will employ in doing so.

[snip]

Similarly, if sensitive information covered by a compelled disclosure — for example, the number and nature of aliens removed to the foreign State — were to come to light — the receiving foreign State’s government could face internal or international pressure making that foreign State and other foreign States less likely to work cooperatively in the future with the United States on matters affecting its national security.

Moreover, if a disclosure were to in any way undercut or, in the eyes of a foreign State (fairly or not) cast doubt on representations made by the United States during sensitive negotiations, that could likewise make that foreign State and other foreign States less likely to work cooperatively with the United States on matters affecting its national security.

Noem is not entirely making shit up (nor is she lying, elsewhere in her declaration, that confirmation that the flights landed in Honduras could cause problems).

Bukele said he was given 238 members of TdA. It was key to his propaganda campaign. If Boasberg now finds that’s false, it might well embarrass Bukele (though he’s pretty immune from embarrassment).

The problem for Noem and Rubio, is ACLU already presented two sworn declarations asserting that the Trump Administration’s public representations were false. EEPB, for example, described being told that El Salvador would not accept him, a Nicaraguan, because it would cause “conflict.”

I overheard a Salvadoran official tell an ICE officer that the Salvadoran government would not detain someone from another Central American country because of the conflict it would cause. I also heard him say that they would not receive the females because the prison was not for females and females were not mentioned in the agreement. I then saw the ICE officer call someone, and after the call, I overheard him saying we had to be sent back.

They included a guy whose accent undoubtedly makes it clear he’s not Venezuelan, but claimed he was a Venezuelan anyway.

More alarming still, Venezuelan woman SZFR — who, like other women on one of the planes, had not yet been formally deported and so by definition should only have been on one of the planes alleged to carry TdA members — described guards on the plane acknowledging that they knew an order prohibited the departure of the plane. She also described that guards were trying to force the male detainees on the plane to sign forms admitting they were TdA members.

10. When we got on the plane there were already over 50 men on the plane. I could see other migrants walking to the plane but we took off before any additional people boarded.

11. Within a couple of minutes of take off I heard two US government officials talking and they said “there is an order saying we can’t take off but we already have.”

12. I asked where we were going and we were told that we were going to Venezuela.

13. Several other people on the plane told me they were in immigration proceedings and awaiting court hearings in immigration court.

14. We were not allowed to open our window shades.

15. We landed somewhere for refueling. We were there for many hours. We were arm and leg shackled the whole time.

16. We took off again and landed fairly quickly. I was then told we were in El Salvador.

17. While on the plane the government officials were asking the men to sign a document and they didn’t want to. The government officials were pushing them to sign the documents and threatening them. I heard them discussing the documents and they were about the men admitting they were members of TdA.

18. After we landed but were still on the plane a woman opened the shade. An officer rushed to shut the shade and pushed her down by her shoulders to try and stop her from looking out. The person that pushed her down had HOU-02 on his sleeve.

19. I saw out the window for a minute and I saw men in military uniforms and another plane. I saw men being led off the plane. Since I’ve been back in the U.S. I have seen news coverage and the plane I saw looks like the one I’ve seen on TV with migrants from the U.S. being delivered to El Salvador.

20. All the men got off the plane. The remaining women asked what happens to us? I was told that the President of El Salvador would not accept women. I was also told that we were going back to detention in the U.S. [my emphasis]

But the most important part with respect to Noem’s sworn statement that she can’t reveal details about who was on the plane is that the agreement with Bukele said he would not accept women.

And yet Kristi Noem’s DHS sent women — around nine of them — anyway.

There’s a lot that Noem is trying to cover up with her State Secrets declaration, starting with how incompetent her DHS is.

But one of the key details she’s trying to cover up is that a committed transphobe like Noem couldn’t even properly identify the sex of the detainees she was sending to El Salvador.

Share this entry

Seven Reasons Trump’s Entire National Security Team Should Resign in Disgrace

March 25, 2025/133 Comments/in emptywheel /by emptywheel

The White House, with the help of Politico, is trying to make National Security Adviser Mike Waltz the fall guy for adding Atlantic editor Jeff Goldberg to the Signal thread on which they planned war strikes against Yemen.

Nothing is decided yet, and White House officials cautioned that President Donald Trump would ultimately make the decision over the next day or two as he watches coverage of the embarrassing episode.

A senior administration official told POLITICO on Monday afternoon that they are involved in multiple text threads with other administration staffers on what to do with Waltz, following the bombshell report that the top aide inadvertently included Atlantic editor in chief Jeffrey Goldberg in a private chat discussing a military strike on Houthis.

“Half of them saying he’s never going to survive or shouldn’t survive,” said the official, who like others was granted anonymity to discuss internal deliberation. And two high-level White House aides have floated the idea that Waltz should resign in order to prevent the president from being put in a “bad position.”

“It was reckless not to check who was on the thread. It was reckless to be having that conversation on Signal. You can’t have recklessness as the national security adviser,” the official said.

Mind you, the knives have been out for Waltz already, and the notion that he was in touch with a Neocon journalist like Goldberg would only help those already trying to oust Waltz make the case that he’s not on Trump’s America First agenda.

And Politico doesn’t mention whether its sources were also on the Signal thread, and whether their discussions about making Waltz take the fall were done on Signal.

It is a transparent attempt to make a major breach — potentially a crime — into something else, the forgivable error of adding the wrong person to a chat thread.

This cover story, that this is just a reckless mistake about adding the wrong person to a Signal thread, also happens to be the line Trump’s closest allies in the Senate and the few Fox News hosts Trump hasn’t already hired into his Administration are parroting on TV.

1. Waltz set up a Signal chat to make war plans without verifying the ID of those included

To be sure, it was pretty boneheaded that Waltz didn’t better verify the people he was first adding to Signal and then putting on a “principles [sic] group” to plan war strikes.

On Tuesday, March 11, I received a connection request on Signal from a user identified as Michael Waltz. Signal is an open-source encrypted messaging service popular with journalists and others who seek more privacy than other text-messaging services are capable of delivering. I assumed that the Michael Waltz in question was President Donald Trump’s national security adviser. I did not assume, however, that the request was from the actual Michael Waltz. I have met him in the past, and though I didn’t find it particularly strange that he might be reaching out to me, I did think it somewhat unusual, given the Trump administration’s contentious relationship with journalists—and Trump’s periodic fixation on me specifically. It immediately crossed my mind that someone could be masquerading as Waltz in order to somehow entrap me.

[snip]

Two days later—Thursday—at 4:28 p.m., I received a notice that I was to be included in a Signal chat group. It was called the “Houthi PC small group.”

A message to the group, from “Michael Waltz,” read as follows: “Team – establishing a principles [sic] group for coordination on Houthis, particularly for over the next 72 hours. My deputy Alex Wong is pulling together a tiger team at deputies/agency Chief of Staff level following up from the meeting in the Sit Room this morning for action items and will be sending that out later this evening.”

Note, at about the time Waltz made this list, 11:28 PM Moscow time, list member Steve Witkoff was meeting with Putin, after having been left waiting for hours.

So yeah, Trump’s National Security Adviser exercised little diligence about how he set up a list to carry on highly classified conversations involving people’s cell phones, including cell phones that might be in Russia.

2. The entire national security team participated in a potential violation of the Espionage Act

But the effort to claim this is just a mistake in the creation of the Signal list is an attempt to downplay that Trump’s CIA Director, John Ratcliffe, sent the identity of a currently serving intelligence officer and later sent what appears to be sources and methods on Signal, and then his Secretary of Defense, Whiskey Pete Hegseth, sent operational details of the imminent strikes on Yemen on Signal, and then Waltz himself sent out what sound like the immediate results of the operation, also on Signal.

All those men, who loudly condemned Hillary Clinton or Joe Biden for their unintentional mishandling of classified information, who demanded that DOJ prosecute such lapses, sent information on an insecure chat that happened to include a journalist.

18 USC 793(f) makes it a crime to so negligently mishandle National Defense Information that someone not authorized to receive it does receive it.

(f) Whoever, being entrusted with or having lawful possession or control of any document, writing, code book, signal book, sketch, photograph, photographic negative, blueprint, plan, map, model, instrument, appliance, note, or information, relating to the national defense, (1) through gross negligence permits the same to be removed from its proper place of custody or delivered to anyone in violation of his trust, or to be lost, stolen, abstracted, or destroyed, or (2) having knowledge that the same has been illegally removed from its proper place of custody or delivered to anyone in violation of its trust, or lost, or stolen, abstracted, or destroyed, and fails to make prompt report of such loss, theft, abstraction, or destruction to his superior officer—

Shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both.

And yet Trump’s entire national security team — not only his National Security Adviser and his CIA Director and his Secretary of Defense, but also his Chief of Staff, his Secretary of State, his Vice President, his Director of National Intelligence, and others — did nothing as the entire team shared information about an upcoming and recently completed military attack, on Signal.

The entire gang was in on it.

3. [Trump claims] his entire national security team may have committed a crime and also an embarrassing story was about to break but no one told him

When Trump was first asked about the story, he played dumb, claiming he didn’t know anything about it.

I don’t know anything about it. I’m not a big fan of The Atlantic. To me it’s a magazine that’s going out of business. But I know nothing about it. You’re saying that they had what?

Sure, this is almost certainly a lie. Goldberg says he told the White House about it at 9AM yesterday morning.

But now that Trump has told the lie, he has also claimed that after his entire national security team learned that a journalist may have witnessed them engage in behavior that might violate the Espionage Act, none of them told him — not JD Vance, not Mike Waltz, not Susie Wiles, not the NSC spox who gave on the record confirmation that the thread was authentic — none of them alerted Trump to the breach. Trump would further have you believe that none of them told him — not JD Vance, not Mike Waltz, not Susie Wiles, not the NSC spox who gave on the record confirmation that the thread was authentic — that an incredibly damaging story was about to drop.

If that were true it would mean Trump could trust no one to keep him informed of the most basic things. It would mean his entire national security team fucked up and kept it a secret from him.

4. DOD attacked a foreign country based on Stephen Miller’s feels of Trump’s intent

One weird line in the Atlantic story describes how Stephen Miller (Trump’s domestic policy advisor, not formally on his foreign policy team) interpreted Trump’s views from a prior meeting in the Situation Room, and Miller’s interpretation was all it took to affirm Trump’s intent to launch strikes on Yemen.

At this point, the previously silent “S M” joined the conversation. “As I heard it, the president was clear: green light, but we soon make clear to Egypt and Europe what we expect in return. We also need to figure out how to enforce such a requirement. EG, if Europe doesn’t remunerate, then what? If the US successfully restores freedom of navigation at great cost there needs to be some further economic gain extracted in return.”

That message from “S M”—presumably President Trump’s confidant Stephen Miller, the deputy White House chief of staff, or someone playing Stephen Miller—effectively shut down the conversation. The last text of the day came from “Pete Hegseth,” who wrote at 9:46 a.m., “Agree.”

This entire operation was — is, still — being authorized solely on Presidential authority.

But the Presidential authority, the thing that gives it some cover of law, amounts to Stephen Miller’s feels about the President’s intent.

That’s a pretty flimsy basis on which to launch military strikes.

5. Hegseth lied when caught

All this broke as Pete Hegseth was flying to Hawaii, his first trip to Asia as Defense Secretary (if he makes it that far).

When asked about sending war plans on a thread that included a journalist, Hegseth lied, claiming no one had been texting war plans. (In a truly spectacular touch, Hegseth put the video of himself lying up on his “DOD Rapid Response” Xitter account, after which it promptly got fact-checked.

I get that these underqualified right wing white men never take personal accountability for their actions.

But this undermines whatever leadership credibility Hegseth otherwise might have had.

The military requires accountability from its leaders.

Hegseth refused to take any.

6. Waltz set the threads to autodelete, likely deliberately defying the Presidential Records Act

According to Goldberg, Mike Waltz set the text threads to auto-delete.

There was another potential problem: Waltz set some of the messages in the Signal group to disappear after one week, and some after four. That raises questions about whether the officials may have violated federal records law: Text messages about official acts are considered records that should be preserved.

Not only would deleting this thread without creating a record violate the Presidential and Federal Records Acts, but that’s probably why they were sending war plans on Signal.

That is, the most likely reason why Trump’s entire national security team was using an insecure platform to plan war strikes was to ensure there were no embarrassing records for posterity, a violation of the law.

7. The entire national security team may have committed a crime in plain sight but Pam Bondi and Kash Patel won’t investigate

Pam Bondi was admittedly busy yesterday making multiple TV appearances in which she scolded Jasmine Crockett for opposing Elon Musk’s efforts to dismantle the government.

In none of them did she say she was opening an investigation into whether Mike Waltz or any of the other people on the list violated the Espionage Act or any other laws.

Who are we kidding? There’s no way Bondi or Kash Patel will investigate this (though they too criticized Biden and Hillary about classified information).

And that, in and of itself, is reason why Bondi and Patel should resign in disgrace. Because even in the face of a humiliating security breach, they’ll do nothing to hold Trump’s people accountable.

Update: I watched the Threats hearing at which Tulsi and John Ratcliffe testified. Both seem to be claiming that nothing they posted was classified, but they defer to DOD regarding whether anything Whiskey Pete shared was classified. Clearly Whiskey Pete has retroactively declassified material to cover up his possible crime.

Of note, Ratcliffe did not know (and seemed surprised) that Steve Witkoff was in Russia during the period of the list. And Tulsi admitted she had been overseas during the period as well; she did a trip to the Pacific, including stops in Hawaii, Japan, Thailand, India and France.

Finally, Tulsi freely agreed to have her own use of Signal (and other encrypted apps) audited to make sure she’s not doing anything impermissible; Ratcliffe was cagier, and said only he’d do so if NSC agreed.

Share this entry

Talking about Chuck Schumer Will No More Save Democracy than Chuck Schumer Will

March 24, 2025/17 Comments/in emptywheel /by emptywheel

The State of the Union was 20 days ago. Since that day, Democrats have spent much of their time talking about other Democrats, talking about how Democrats are responding to the assault on the country, rather than talking about the assault itself and the people responsible.

In my opinion, focusing on Chuck Schumer — however justified your opinion about his fecklessness — is every bit as feckless as Chuck Schumer’s response to this crisis.

What has happened since the Continuing Resolution

There are a slew of reasons I think focusing on Chuck Schumer distracts from the matter at hand. One is that his view that the Continuing Resolution was less bad than a shutdown seems to have been a defensible good faith view (though that doesn’t excuse his head fake about it). It’s certainly possible that Democrats would have messaged effectively during a shutdown and used it to waken Americans of the risk Trump’s attacks on government pose (though as I said at the time, no one had laid the ground work for effective messaging, which makes me question how effective they might have been). But keeping the government open has allowed other positive developments.

Not shutting down the government at least temporarily affirmed the import of employment law. Last week, 25,000 government workers were reinstated pursuant to the efforts of two people whose lawsuits delayed their own firing long enough to issue judgments deeming the firings targeting probationary workers illegal, and then two judges (one, two) who ruled the firings to be unlawful (Trump has appealed the California one of these decisions to SCOTUS). Their reinstatement not only gave people paychecks until such time as Trump fires them properly — paychecks they would not have had under a shutdown — but it affirmed the import of following employment law.

Not shutting down affirmed the import of Congressional funding. On March 18, Radio Free Europe used the Continuing Resolution to substantiate its appropriations-related challenge to the shutdown.

28. On March 15, 2025, President Donald J. Trump signed into law Congress’s FullYear Continuing Appropriations and Extensions Act, 2025 (“Third Continuing Resolution”), which, like the previous continuing resolutions, appropriated “[s]uch amounts as may be necessary, at the level specified . . . under the authority and conditions provided in applicable appropriations Act for fiscal year 2024” until September 30, 2025. See H.R. 1968, 119th Cong. § 1101(a) (2025).

29. In sum, Congress appropriated approximately $23 million for RFE/RL in the First Continuing Resolution for October 1, 2024, to December 20, 2024. Congress appropriated approximately $41 million to RFE/RL in the Second Continuing Resolution for December 21, 2024, to March 14, 2025. Congress further appropriated approximately $77 million for RFE/RL in the Third Continuing Resolution for March 15, 2025, to September 30, 2025.

Obviously, the legal posture of this, and similar cases, would be different if Trump had not signed a funding bill.

Not shutting down kept Trump on the hook for any collapse of Social Security. After Judge Ellen Lipton Hollander enjoined DOGE from tampering in Social Security, the Acting Commissioner Leland Dudek attempted to pick a fight with the judge, falsely claiming her order would force him to shut down Social Security entirely.

She wrote two letters basically calling him a dumbass, stating that DOGE can access anonymized data and her order only covers the DOGE agenda, not normal operations.

And then the White House told him he was out of line.

Acting Social Security commissioner Leland Dudek threatened Thursday evening to bar Social Security Administration employees from accessing its computer systems in response to a judge’s order blocking the U.S. DOGE Service from accessing sensitive taxpayer data.

Less than 24 hours later — after the judge rejected his argument and the White House intervened — Dudek is saying he was “out of line.”

Dudek initially told news outlets, including in a Friday interview with The Washington Post, that the judge’s decision to bar sensitive data access to “DOGE affiliates” was overly broad and that to comply, he might have to block virtually all SSA employees from accessing the agency’s computer systems. But Judge Ellen Lipton Hollander of the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland, who issued the order, said in a letter that Dudek’s assertions “were inaccurate.

[snip]

In response to Hollander’s letter, Dudek said in a statement emailed to reporters just after 5:30 p.m. that the court clarified its guidance and “therefore, I am not shutting down the agency.”

Dudek, in a follow-up interview Friday afternoon with The Post, thanked Hollander for the clarification, adding, “The president is committed to keeping the Social Security offices open to serve the public.” He then acknowledged that this was an about-face from his stance in an interview with The Post earlier in the day.

“[The White House] called me and let me know it’s important to reaffirm to the public that we’re open for business,” he said. “The White House did remind me that I was out of line and so did the judge. And I appreciate that.”

Social Security has always been deemed essential during shutdowns and it would have been here. But right now, the White House is sensitive enough about Social Security that they’re not even using an expansive injunction as an opportunity to fuck with it.

Meanwhile, for all the complaints about how shitty the Continuing Resolution is — for the cuts it made to Veterans health and education — I’ve seen almost no effort to hold Republicans accountable for it (just three Democrats — Jared Golden, Jean Shaheen, and Angus King voted to pass it). If it’s so bad, why aren’t Democrats hanging it around Republicans necks (aside from the fact that they’re too busy talking about Chuck Schumer, who voted against the bill itself)?

What needs to happen

Many of the discussions about Chuck Schumer make the same mistake he does: they assume the answer to Trump’s attack on democracy lies in winning midterms.

That’s a luxurious thought.

(In a really good JV Last column, he describes, “Winning in 2026 will not be sufficient to stop the authoritarian push; but it is necessary.”)

But it imagines we have more time to reverse Trump’s actions than we likely do, and it falsely assumes that the Democratic Party — rather than a trans-partisan or nonpartisan movement — is the entity that might reverse Trump’s attacks. Even if you could be sure of winning the House, without thinking more broadly you could only freeze things; without a whole lot more political work, for example, you couldn’t impeach and remove Trump.

To be clear, the quickest way to slow or reverse Trump’s actions is to convince Republicans — somewhere between four and nine in the House, and/or four in the Senate — to stall his efforts. That’s actually what Schumer says too, but he’s not talking about ways (much less doing anything obvious) to make that happen. Barring convincing Republicans to do something to protect the Constitution, it’ll require a mass uprising (or strike) to bring about change. Barring convincing a politically active majority of the country to cherish democracy, even ousting Trump would just bring us back to where we were quickly, with some other right winger exploiting the Republican thirst for authoritarianism.

Town halls

And one of the things that are already going on — outraged constituents at town halls — is one of the quickest ways to affect that, as I wrote about here. Even Chuck Grassley resorted to bullshit claims at a rowdy town hall recently. Organizers have even succeeded in using empty-podium town halls to focus on Republican failures, and more Democrats are showing at town halls in other districts.

Protests

I’ve said from the start that Elon Musk’s role in DOGE provides Democrats with an easy villain. That’s true not just because he keeps fucking up.

He, and his showrooms, make really easy targets for protests.

It also provides a way for Trump believers to begin to criticize his actions, as NYT recorded among Trump supporters who attended the NCAA wrestling match to which Trump brought Elon.

“Not a big fan of Elon,” said Blaize Cabell, a 32-year-old wrestling coach from Independence, Iowa, who nonetheless remains a big fan of the president. He said he viewed Mr. Musk’s career as a businessman as a series of failures and buyouts and said that the billionaire was “making a lot of callous cuts,” citing the Department of Agriculture. Earlier this month, the department fired thousands of experts and then scrambled to hire them back.

“I don’t even know what to think of him at this point,” David Berkovich, a 24-year-old wrestler and graduate school student from Brooklyn, said of Mr. Musk. “He’s just there all the time.”

“He’s going a little rampant — I think everyone can agree with that,” said Bobby Coll, a 24-year-old finance broker who lives in Manhattan’s West Village. He was there with his girlfriend, Julia Sirois, who said of Mr. Musk’s role in the administration, “It’s someone putting their hand in a cookie jar they don’t belong in.”

[snip]

“That’s a tough one for me,” Jarrod Scandle, a 44-year-old retired police officer from Shamokin, Pa., said of the president’s Tesla stunt. “I think it’s a little, I’m trying to think of the word —” he said as his voice trailed off. He concluded that he was really more of a Chevy or Ford kind of a guy.

Katy Travis, a 48-year-old wrestling mom from Columbia, Mo., said she thought Mr. Musk’s constant presence “looks ridiculous.” That he is as empowered as he is just makes the president “look weak,” she said, which is about the worst thing that can be said of someone at a Division I wrestling championship.

“It makes him look like he’s kissing ass to get money,” Ms. Travis said of the president.

As I’ve repeatedly noted, the Wisconsin Democratic Party is trying to brand Brad Schimel with Elon’s taint in their Supreme Court race on April 1.

Right wingers are attempting to push back on the protests against Musk by claiming that all protestors are connected to the three people DOJ charged with attacks on dealers. But there’s an easy way to make this backfire. After Pam Bondi tried to intimidate her the other day, Jasmine Crockett did what I think every Trump opponent should: point out that Trump freed a bunch of violent cop assailants.

Even Neera Tanden did this in a recent CNN appearance.

What is missing so far from the pushback on Elon is a successful pushback on his claims that he is finding fraud, a claim that Republicans are using to avoid more directly confronting him. But the problems Elon is causing keep piling up. Catherine Rampell recently catalogued all the ways DOGE is preventing government workers from doing their jobs.

At the IRS, employees spend Mondays queued up at shared computers to submit their DOGE-mandated “five things I did last week” emails. Meanwhile, taxpayer customer service calls go unanswered.

At the Bureau of Land Management, federal surveyors are no longer permitted to buy replacement equipment. So, when a shovel breaks at a field site, they can’t just drive to the nearest town or hardware store. Instead, work stops as employees track down one of the few managers nationwide authorized to file an official procurement form and order new parts.

At the Food and Drug Administration, leadership canceled the agency’s subscription to LexisNexis, an online reference tool that employees need to conduct regulatory research. Some workers might not have noticed this loss yet, however, because the agency’s incompetently planned return-to-office order this week left them too busy hunting for insufficient parking and toilet paper. (Multiple bathrooms have run out of bath tissue, employees report.)

Yesterday WaPo estimated that DOGE attacks on the IRS will create a $500 billion revenue hole at the IRS.

Treasury Department and IRS officials are predicting a decrease of more than 10 percent in tax receipts by the April 15 deadline compared with 2024, said the people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to share nonpublic data. That would amount to more than $500 billion in lost federal revenue; the IRS collected $5.1 trillion last year. For context, the U.S. government spent $825 billion on the Defense Department in fiscal 2024.

Notably, this would have been invisible otherwise (as it was before Joe Biden hired extra IRS agents to track it down). But DOGE’s involvement makes it visible, something that can be hung on Trump.

And WaPo explained why Elon is having such a difficult time finding fraud at SSA. (Remember, I’ve got a list of all the DOGE debunkings here.)

Trump’s focus in the last two weeks on deportations, rather than firings, has also taken attention away from all the people fired, which has, in turn, shifted the focus away from the services Trump is taking away. Both need to be the centerpiece of messaging.

Messaging

There are topics that I think would be promising foci of organizing, or more organizing. because they’ll expand the network of organized people beyond traditional Democrats and may be more successful at pressuring Republicans.

There was a March for Science on March 7 — but finding ways to translate what science means into terms accessible to the public; the cancer cures and healthier food and business opportunities are a necessary step to get taxpayers to care about NIH and NSF cuts.

This morning I wondered why we haven’t seen more organizing around Trump’s attack on the Department of Education and sought to find a review of how Kentucky successfully defeated a voucher initiative last year. And I discovered that the group that succeeded in that has reformed to organize around that attack .

I have yet to see a concerted response to Trump’s attack on libraries and museums (though here are some organizing pages). Update: NYT has more.

There have been a few protests from Veterans in DC, at least one in February and another in March. VoteVets are also running ads in five swing districts.

I keep talking about how little farmers have pushed back, though I’ve seen individual pushback at town halls.

Finally, there needs to be an attempt to reclaim antisemitism from the white nationalists using it as a weapon against critics of Israel. There’s been a lot of Jewish pushback on the treatment of Mahmoud Khalil, for example. But not yet a full flipping of the perverse narrative Stephen Miller has adopted to justify shutting down universities.

Leaders are stepping up, all over the country. And rather than joining in those efforts, far too many people (at least some of whom who have a grift that depends on it) have made Chuck Schumer a bigger issue than Trump. Yes, people need to throw more anvils at Elon, and once he catches them, make sure he brings Trump down with him.

But they keep throwing anvils better suited for Elon at themselves.

Share this entry

The Classified Information John Ratcliffe, Pete Hegseth, and Mike Waltz Sent to Journalist Jeffrey Goldberg

March 24, 2025/89 Comments/in emptywheel /by emptywheel

If you’re like me, you’ll keep checking when reading this story about how Mike Waltz added journalist Jeffrey Goldberg to a Signal chat of top Trump officials planning war strikes on Yemen to see if it’s the Onion.

But it’s not.

It’s real.

Mike Waltz really did add a journalist to a chat (including Marco Rubio, who was a big player in the Butter Emails fun) planning war strikes on Yemen.

To make things easier to understand the risk of all this, I wanted to pull out what kinds of highly classified information these people shared with a journalist.

First, CIA Director John Ratcliffe sent the identify of a currently serving intelligence officer.

One more person responded: “John Ratcliffe” wrote at 5:24 p.m. with the name of a CIA official to be included in the group. I am not publishing that name, because that person is an active intelligence officer.

Then, Ratcliffe sent what sound like sources and methods.

Then, at 8:26 a.m., a message landed in my Signal app from the user “John Ratcliffe.” The message contained information that might be interpreted as related to actual and current intelligence operations.

Then, Whiskey Pete Hegseth (who says trans service members are not fit to serve, but thinks he himself is fit to run DOD), sent operational details of the strikes on Yemen about to start.

At 11:44 a.m., the account labeled “Pete Hegseth” posted in Signal a “TEAM UPDATE.” I will not quote from this update, or from certain other subsequent texts. 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, Central Command’s area of responsibility. What I will say, in order to illustrate the shocking recklessness of this Signal conversation, is that the Hegseth post contained operational details of forthcoming strikes on Yemen, including information about targets, weapons the U.S. would be deploying, and attack sequencing.

Finally, Waltz sent what sound like the immediate results of the operation.

I went back to the Signal channel. At 1:48, “Michael Waltz” had provided the group an update. Again, I won’t quote from this text, except to note that he described the operation as an “amazing job.”

Miek Waltz is the one who added Goldberg to the chat. He also set at least some of them to auto delete.

Waltz set some of the messages in the Signal group to disappear after one week, and some after four. That raises questions about whether the officials may have violated federal records law: Text messages about official acts are considered records that should be preserved.

Finally, Goldberg notes that by definition, they could not have had their phones in a SCIF, so all were sharing information outside the security guidelines mandated for this kind of information.

Normally, cellphones are not permitted inside a SCIF, which suggests that as these officials were sharing information about an active military operation, they could have been moving around in public. Had they lost their phones, or had they been stolen, the potential risk to national security would have been severe.

I guess this is what we should expect from an Administration led by a guy who stored nuclear documents in his bathroom.

Not a single one of the people involved in this thread exhibits the least competence for the job.

Share this entry

Todd Blanche Kicks Off His Tenure Chasing Leaks Implicating His Own Conduct

March 23, 2025/92 Comments/in emptywheel /by emptywheel

Around 8AM on Friday, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche announced an investigation of a leak to the NYT pertaining to Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua.

The Justice Department is opening a criminal investigation relating to the selective leak of inaccurate, but nevertheless classified, information from the Intelligence Community relating to Tren de Aragua (TDA). We will not tolerate politically motivated efforts by the Deep State to undercut President Trump’s agenda by leaking false information onto the pages of their allies at the New York Times. The Alien Enemies Proclamation is supported by fact, law, and common sense, which we will establish in court and then expel the TDA terrorists from this country.

While DHS and DOJ and FBI have made less formal announcements about leak investigations, most notably an evolving claim that leaks from the FBI or maybe DHS or who knows whether this is all a lazy excuse had tipped off alleged TdA members of imminent immigration operations, this was notable in its formality (which, admittedly, may stem exclusively from the fact that Blanche not a Xitter addict like Kristi Noem, Pam Bondi, and Kash Patel). The announcement was even more notable given Blanche’s claim that the leak was “inaccurate,” which would seem to undercut any claim it was classified.

This was, formally at least, maybe just the third public announcement that Blanche made as DAG (though he has already made a stink defending his client Donald Trump in court cases), with one of the others inviting people to claim they’ve been victims of DEI discrimination.

It appears, though no one has said explicitly, the investigation is into the leak claiming that the Intelligence Community disagrees with Trump about TdA’s ties to the Venezuelan government.

President Trump’s assertion that a gang is committing crimes in the United States at the direction of Venezuela’s government was critical to his invocation of a wartime law last week to summarily deport people whom officials suspected of belonging to that group.

But American intelligence agencies circulated findings last month that stand starkly at odds with Mr. Trump’s claims, according to officials familiar with the matter. The document, dated Feb. 26, summarized the shared judgment of the nation’s spy agencies that the gang was not controlled by the Venezuelan government.

The disclosure calls into question the credibility of Mr. Trump’s basis for invoking a rarely used wartime law, the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, to transfer a group of Venezuelans to a high-security prison in El Salvador last weekend, with no due process.

The intelligence community assessment concluded that the gang, Tren de Aragua, was not directed by Venezuela’s government or committing crimes in the United States on its orders, according to the officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.

Analysts put that conclusion at a “moderate” confidence level, the officials said, because of a limited volume of available reporting about the gang. Most of the intelligence community, including the C.I.A. and the National Security Agency, agreed with that assessment.

Only one agency, the F.B.I., partly dissented. It maintained the gang has a connection to the administration of Venezuela’s authoritarian president, Nicolás Maduro, based on information the other agencies did not find credible.

The story was published on March 20, before the investigation announcement, but only published in the dead tree NYT after it.

If that’s correct, the investigation that Blanche rushed to formally announce implicates his own behavior.

Blanche’s announcement came the same day that he filed an insolent declaration before Judge James Boasberg, adopting the claim made by a regional ICE official in a declaration submitted one day earlier: The government is considering invoking State Secrets to withhold from Boasberg even the most basic details of deportation flights that brought Venezuelans to El Salvador after he ordered them to turn.

2. On March 20, 2025, the Government submitted a declaration from Robert L. Cerna II, which stated: “I understand that Cabinet Secretaries are currently actively considering whether to invoke the state secrets privilege over the other facts requested by the Court’s order. Doing so is a serious matter that requires careful consideration of national security and foreign relations, and it cannot properly be undertaken in just 24 hours.”

3. I attest to the accuracy of those statements based on personal knowledge of the events described by Mr. Cerna, including my direct involvement in ongoing Cabinet-level discussions regarding invocation of the state-secrets privilege.

DOJ wants to withhold those details even though some details of which were leaked to Fox News Deportation Propagandist Bill Melugin right away, other details of which are readily available on flight tracker websites.

Judge Boasberg’s order demanding such a cabinet-level declaration came before Blanche’s leak investigation announcement.

Which is to say NYT was working on this intelligence assessment story even as DOJ was stonewalling Boasberg about why it deported two or three planeloads of Venezuelans after he ordered DOJ not to.

Whether or not Trump’s DOJ invokes State Secrets Tuesday, there’s plenty of information in the public record — including the NYT story — that would undercut, but also explain, such an invocation.

CBS published a list of the Venezuelans who were deported — the kind of leak that elicited heavy pushback when they involved Gitmo under George Bush, and almost certainly had to come from some kind of internal documentation but was not obviously implicated in Blanche’s investigation announcement.

The plaintiffs filed declarations debunking the government’s claims that the men deported or targeted to be were criminals, much less members of TdA. There was plenty of other reporting on missing family members who seem to have been deported based on soccer tattoos.

NYT and WaPo both have stories suggesting the underlying reason this trade happened: Because El Salvador’s authoritarian President Nayib Bukele is anxious to get MS-13 members who could implicate him in terrorism out of US custody. Here’s WaPo’s (later) story:

Some say Bukele is trying to hide his government’s own involvement with the gangs.

More than two dozen high-ranking Salvadoran gang leaders have been charged with terrorism and other crimes in a Justice Department investigation that has lasted years. Several of them are jailed in the United States. One of the indictments details how senior members of Bukele’s government held secret negotiations with gang leaders after his 2019 election. The gang members wanted financial benefits, control of territory and better jail conditions, the court documents say. In exchange, they agreed to tamp down homicides in public areas and to pressure neighborhoods under their control to support Bukele’s party in midterm elections, according to the 2022 indictment.

Bukele’s government went so far as to free a top MS-13 leader, Elmer Canales Rivera, or “Crook,” from a Salvadoran prison, according to the documents — even though the U.S. government had asked for his extradition. (He was later captured in Mexico and sent to the U.S.)

Last weekend, the Trump administration sent back one of the MS-13 leaders named in the indictments, César Humberto López Larios, alias “Greñas,” along with the 238 Venezuelans and nearly two dozen other Salvadorans allegedly tied to gangs.

Some Salvadoran analysts believe Bukele wants the gang leaders back so they won’t testify about his government’s involvement with them — and potentially put him in legal trouble.

“If these returns [of Salvadoran gang members] continue, it takes away the possibility that the U.S. judicial system will open a case against Bukele for negotiations and agreements with terrorist groups,” said Juan Martínez d’Aubuisson, an anthropologist who has studied the gangs.

The possibility that this effort to outsource detention and torture to Bukele is part of a quid pro quo helping a fellow authoritarian to cover up his own criminal ties is not dissimilar from details about Saudi complicity in 9/11 that the Bush Administration spent years invoking State Secrets to cover up.

And then finally, in plain sight, on Friday Trump disclaimed that he personally had signed the Alien Enemies Act declaration, that someone used an autopen for his signature. If true (I certainly don’t rule out Stephen Miller autosigning half the stuff that comes out under Trump’s name), that would undermine the Article II claims the government is making.

In other words, even as the government claims to be contemplating invoking State Secrets (which would require declarations to Boasberg I’m not sure they’re willing to provide), the following details have come out:

Names and details of the detainees, debunking the claims of TdA affiliation on which Trump based their deportation, making it clear that Trump rushed these deportations to avoid disclosing that TdA isn’t what he says it is
Good reason to question the underlying quid pro quo with Bukele
Trump’s claim that the AEA order was not backed by the Article II authority DOJ has spent a week claiming it is.
The likely subject of the leak investigation: Claims from spooks that any intelligence to support this AEA effort is based on flimsy intelligence

This is the kind of fact set that has the potential to snowball.

Meanwhile, just two months into this Administration, it’s already investigating leaks about purportedly internal spats. Unrelated to Venezuela, there was the NYT leak disclosing Pete Hegseth was about to brief Elon Musk about DOD’s plans for war with China, in response to which Elon called for leak prosecutions.

The chief Pentagon spokesman, Sean Parnell, initially did not respond to a similar email seeking comment about why Mr. Musk was to receive a briefing on the China war plan. Soon after The Times published this article on Thursday evening, Mr. Parnell gave a short statement: “The Defense Department is excited to welcome Elon Musk to the Pentagon on Friday. He was invited by Secretary Hegseth and is just visiting.”

About an hour later, Mr. Parnell posted a message on his X account: “This is 100% Fake News. Just brazenly & maliciously wrong. Elon Musk is a patriot. We are proud to have him at the Pentagon.”

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth also commented on X late on Thursday, saying: “This is NOT a meeting about ‘top secret China war plans.’ It’s an informal meeting about innovation, efficiencies & smarter production. Gonna be great!”

Roughly 30 minutes after that social media post, The Wall Street Journal confirmed that Mr. Musk had been scheduled to be briefed on the war planning for China.

In his own post on social media early Friday, Mr. Musk said he looked forward to “the prosecutions of those at the Pentagon who are leaking maliciously false information to NYT.”

The leak served a very important (and presumably, its intended) purpose: NYT subsequently reported that Trump had not known about the briefing.

Mr. Trump made clear he had been caught by surprise by The Times’s report, saying he called his White House chief of staff and Mr. Hegseth to ask about it; he said they said it was “ridiculous.” But he also said that Mr. Musk — who has extensive business in China — should not be made aware of such sensitive information. It was one of the first specific statements from the president about what he would consider a bridge too far for Mr. Musk, who has expansive potential conflicts of interest created by a portfolio as a part-time government staff member and adviser.

Yet CNN reported that DOD would conduct an investigation, using polygraphs, which the article explicitly suggests is a reference to this leak.

We’re used to these people doing suspect things to cover up Trump’s alleged crimes. But it took just days for Todd Blanche to involve himself personally in all this, even while siccing investigators on those who might debunk the legal claims he’s making in court. And the DOD leak suggests these are not just — as Blanche claimed in his investigation announcement — the Deep State undermining Trump.

These are, in part, people trying to prevent Trump from making bigger fuck-ups than he’s already making.

Update: Corrected date State Secrets declaration is due.

Update: I said the Todd Blanche announcement was 8AM, based off the time listed on the press release. But it was not sent out until hours later, after the status hearing.

Timeline

[docket]

March 14: Trump issues but does not publish AEA proclamation

March 15: Proclamation posted

March 15: Boasberg certifies class, issues TRO

March 15: Emergency hearing

March 15, 7:25: Boasberg order

March 17: NYT Bukele story

March 17: Boasberg orders briefing on post-order deportations by March 18 at noon

March 17, 5PM: Boasberg hearing

March 18: First Cerna declaration

March 18: Boasberg orders March 19 declarations on details of deportation

March 19: Boasberg partially grants request for extension

March 20, 12:11PM: Second Cerna declaration

March 20, 3:49PM: Boasberg orders a cabinet level declaration

March 20: WaPo Bukele story

March 20 (around 6PM?): NYT publishes intelligence assessment story

March 20, 8:18 PM: CBS publishes list of deported Venezuelans

March 21, AM, 8AM: Blanche announces the investigation

March 21, 12:18: Blanche submits a declaration

March 21, 2:30PM: Motion hearing

March 21: Trump disclaims signing AEA declaration

Share this entry

Honesty, Humility, Integrity: Pete Hegseth Fails to Meet Standards He Claims Trans Service Members Lack

Fridays with Nicole Sandler

Stephen Miller’s Presumed Babysitting of JD Vance’s European Animosity … and DOD’s Potential War Crimes

Clean on OpSec: Pete Hegseth Spilled Specific Details of an Attack in Advance

Patronage Is a Lucrative Way to Attack Rule of Law

Kristi Noem Invokes State Secrets to Cover-Up Her Inability to ID Women as Women

Seven Reasons Trump’s Entire National Security Team Should Resign in Disgrace

1. Waltz set up a Signal chat to make war plans without verifying the ID of those included

2. The entire national security team participated in a potential violation of the Espionage Act

3. [Trump claims] his entire national security team may have committed a crime and also an embarrassing story was about to break but no one told him

4. DOD attacked a foreign country based on Stephen Miller’s feels of Trump’s intent

5. Hegseth lied when caught

6. Waltz set the threads to autodelete, likely deliberately defying the Presidential Records Act

7. The entire national security team may have committed a crime in plain sight but Pam Bondi and Kash Patel won’t investigate

Talking about Chuck Schumer Will No More Save Democracy than Chuck Schumer Will

What has happened since the Continuing Resolution

What needs to happen

Town halls

Protests

Messaging

The Classified Information John Ratcliffe, Pete Hegseth, and Mike Waltz Sent to Journalist Jeffrey Goldberg

Todd Blanche Kicks Off His Tenure Chasing Leaks Implicating His Own Conduct

Timeline

Interesting links

Pages