Trump News

The fallout from the explosive scandal of high-ranking military and intelligence officials in the Trump administration leaking highly classified war plans to a reporter in an unsecured Signal group chat continues to spread — but President Donald Trump is firmly standing behind National Security Adviser Mike Waltz, saying that he "learned his lesson."

But Trump seems more keen to defend Waltz than he does Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, according to onlookers.

Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AK) opened a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing Tuesday by praising Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and National Security Adviser Mike Waltz despite their role in sharing secret war plans with a journalist from The Atlantic.

Although Cotton didn't mention the controversy surrounding secret war plans sent to journalist Jeffrey Goldberg, he singled out two of the men who organized the chat where the plans were shared outside of secure government systems.

President Donald Trump seems unconcerned about his National Security Adviser's participation in an unsecured group Signal chat that saw highly classified military offensive strategies from Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth leaked to a reporter — but commenters on social media aren't buying his reaction.

In conversation with NBC News' Garrett Haake, Trump said that "Michael Waltz has learned a lesson, and he's a good man," that this incident was the only "glitch" in two months, and that the attack in question was successful despite the leak.

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt was trashed online after claiming that no "war plans" were discussed when a journalist for The Atlantic was included in a secret war-planning chat about recent strikes on Yemen.

"Jeffrey Goldberg is well-known for his sensationalist spin," Leavitt wrote Tuesday on X after Goldberg's report in the magazine, which describes war planning he was privy to on a Signal chat with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, National Security Adviser Mike Waltz, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and others.

Bradley Bartell, aTrump supporter whose wife has been detained by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement, is telling Newsweek that he might leave the country if she gets deported back to her native country of Peru.

Bartell, who has said that he does not regret his vote for Trump despite the dire impact it's had on his own family, revealed to Newsweek that "I've been seriously considering moving to Peru if they deport her, nothing is for certain yet, but it is in the back of my mind."

President Donald Trump and his right-hand tech billionaire adviser Elon Musk demanded all remote and hybrid federal workers return to in-person office work or accept a "deferred resignation" buyout. But those forced back into the office are finding offices that aren't ready for this level of staffing, reported USA Today — to the point that the Trump administration is forcing many employees to provide their own hygiene products.

At least, that's the reality many workers are seeing at a Defense Department office at a Midwest Army base.

Republicans in the House and Senate are still struggling to piece together the details of the "big, beautiful bill" President Donald Trump wants on tax cuts, energy, and border security — but are making little progress and starting to fret that the economy might crash before they can get anything done, The Washington Post reported on Tuesday.

The fundamental issues they want to tackle are large and fraught, reported Jacob Bogage: "Major portions of Trump’s 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act are set to expire at the end of 2025. That law cut rates for virtually all taxpayers, though it concentrated the most benefits among wealthy individuals and corporations. ... Trump also has called for massive new spending for national security and to deport undocumented immigrants. He has repeatedly called for a 'golden dome' continental missile defense system that experts say could cost trillions of dollars."

MSNBC's Joe Scarborough put pressure on Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) to hold Donald Trump officials accountable for a stunning security breach at the highest levels of government.

The Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg revealed that he was added to a group chat by National Security Adviser Mike Waltz in which Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth disclosed top-secret war plans two hours before U.S. troops conducted a bombing raid in Yemen. The "Morning Joe" host lambasted the administration for incompetence.

In Donald Trump’s apparent war against America’s legal system, there is one big gun that could unleash a powerful fight back, a law professor argued Tuesday.

And it’s doing nothing but sitting quietly on the sidelines.

A CNN panel on Tuesday examined how President Donald Trump and his administration have created an atmosphere of fear and paranoia throughout the federal workforce.

In particular, host Audie Cornish pointed to new reporting about how federal employees no longer communicate with one another candidly through their work computers — and instead rely on encrypted messaging apps.

MSNBC's Jonathan Lemire reported that President Donald Trump is taking a wait-and-see approach to the explosive report about his national security team conducting war plans over a group chat that included a reporter.

National security adviser Michael Waltz added The Atlantic's editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg to an encrypted group chat, apparently by mistake, on the Signal app in which Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth shared top-secret plans for attacks against the Houthi militia in Yemen, which happened two hours later.

Politico's Playbook reports that knives are out for Trump national security adviser Mike Waltz after he accidentally invited Atlantic editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg to join a Signal channel that featured discussions of top-secret military operations.

Playbook starts out by noting that the scandal is "damaging" to the Trump administration given that is exposes "rank incompetence."

MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow kicked off her Monday evening show by highlighting the growing wave of protests unfolding across the country — a development she identified as “qualitatively different than what we had previously seen.”

And that includes at Tesla showrooms, which Maddow flagged as coming despite the Trump administration vowing to drop the hammer on protesters of the Elon Musk-owned electric car company.