Who literally calls the shots in this White House? Stephen Miller

Who literally calls the shots in this White House? Stephen Miller

Garrett Graff asks: Who holds the power in the Trump administration? The full Signal chat provides some of the most “real” indications of where power lies in the Trump administration and how decision-making happens—and none of it is pretty. The answer is shocking, but perhaps not surprising: Donald Trump isn’t that engaged in the policy of his administration, JD Vance is weak and powerless, and the only one that matters is Stephen Miller. I wrote earlier this week about how fascinating it was…

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‘Trump doesn’t have a Yemen policy.’ The folly of U.S. airstrikes on the Houthis

‘Trump doesn’t have a Yemen policy.’ The folly of U.S. airstrikes on the Houthis

Mohammed Ali Kalfood writes: On his third day back in the White House, President Donald Trump issued an executive order re-designating Houthi rebels in Yemen as a foreign terrorist organization. He ordered the Pentagon to start preparing military plans against the militant group and imposed sanctions on Houthi leaders, along with their main backer, Iran. Then, on March 15, Trump announced a new U.S. bombing campaign against the Houthis in Yemen that has now continued for 10 days. “YOUR TIME…

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Yale expert on fascism joins exodus of academics escaping from authoritarianism

Yale expert on fascism joins exodus of academics escaping from authoritarianism

The Guardian reports: A Yale professor who studies fascism is leaving the US to work at a Canadian university because of the current US political climate, which he worries is putting the US at risk of becoming a “fascist dictatorship”. Jason Stanley, who wrote the 2018 book How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them, has accepted a position at the University of Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy. Stanley told the Daily Nous, a philosophy…

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Double standards: DHS staffer faces serious punishment for accidentally adding reporter to group email

Double standards: DHS staffer faces serious punishment for accidentally adding reporter to group email

NBC News reports: A federal worker accidentally includes a journalist on a detailed message in advance of a government operation. While that sounds like the case of The Atlantic’s editor-in-chief being added to a group Signal chat by Trump’s national security adviser Michael Waltz, in which Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth shared detailed military attack plans in Yemen, it’s not. It’s what happened to a longtime Department of Homeland Security employee who told colleagues she inadvertently sent unclassified details of an…

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Elon Musk’s family history in South Africa reveals ties to apartheid and neo-Nazi movements

Elon Musk’s family history in South Africa reveals ties to apartheid and neo-Nazi movements

  Elon Musk was born in 1971 in Johannesburg, South Africa, and raised in a wealthy family under the country’s racist apartheid laws. Musk’s family history reveals ties to apartheid and neo-Nazi politics. We speak with Chris McGreal, reporter for The Guardian, to understand how Musk’s upbringing shaped his worldview, as well as that of his South African-raised colleague Peter Thiel, a right-wing billionaire who co-founded PayPal alongside Musk. “Musk lived what can only be described as a neocolonial life,”…

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While powerful institutions bow to Trump, The Atlantic just backed him into a corner

While powerful institutions bow to Trump, The Atlantic just backed him into a corner

Jeffrey Goldberg and Shane Harris write: So, about that Signal chat. On Monday, shortly after we published a story about a massive Trump-administration security breach, a reporter asked the secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth, why he had shared plans about a forthcoming attack on Yemen on the Signal messaging app. He answered, “Nobody was texting war plans. And that’s all I have to say about that.” At a Senate hearing yesterday, the director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, and the…

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Private data and passwords of senior security officials including Gabbard, Waltz and Hegseth found online

Private data and passwords of senior security officials including Gabbard, Waltz and Hegseth found online

Der Spiegel reports: Private contact details of the most important security advisers to U.S. President Donald Trump can be found on the internet. DER SPIEGEL reporters were able to find mobile phone numbers, email addresses and even some passwords belonging to the top officials. To do so, the reporters used commercial people search engines along with hacked customer data that has been published on the web. Those affected by the leaks include National Security Adviser Mike Waltz, Director of National…

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Mike Waltz left his Venmo friends list public exposing hundreds of associates

Mike Waltz left his Venmo friends list public exposing hundreds of associates

Wired reports: A Venmo account under the name “Michael Waltz,” carrying a profile photo of the national security adviser and connected to accounts bearing the names of people closely associated with him, was left open to the public until Wednesday afternoon. A WIRED analysis shows that the account revealed the names of hundreds of Waltz’s personal and professional associates, including journalists, military officers, lobbyists, and others—information a foreign intelligence service or other actors could exploit for any number of ends,…

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Trump administration claims it has power to send anyone to a foreign prison — without hearings or evidence

Trump administration claims it has power to send anyone to a foreign prison — without hearings or evidence

HuffPost reports: The Trump administration is building a case in court for its ability to send people in the United States to an overseas detention camp — and then refuse to bring them home even if they’re innocent. In a new court filing Tuesday night, the administration referred to a group of Venezuelan migrants and asylum seekers it moved from the U.S. to an infamous Salvadoran prison — a gay makeup artist and a professional soccer player reportedly among them…

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DOGE staffer, ‘Big Balls’, provided tech support to cybercrime ring, records show

DOGE staffer, ‘Big Balls’, provided tech support to cybercrime ring, records show

Reuters reports: The best-known member of Elon Musk’s U.S. DOGE Service team of technologists once provided support to a cybercrime gang that bragged about trafficking in stolen data and cyberstalking an FBI agent, according to digital records reviewed by Reuters. Edward Coristine is among the most visible members of the DOGE effort that has been given sweeping access to official networks as it attempts to radically downsize the U.S. government. Past reporting had focused on his youth – he is…

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Trade war explodes across world as it did in the 1930s

Trade war explodes across world as it did in the 1930s

The Wall Street Journal reports: Barriers to open trade are rising across the world at a pace unseen in decades, a cascade of protectionism that harks back to the isolationist fervor that swept the globe in the 1930s and worsened the Great Depression. It isn’t just President Trump’s extensive new tariffs, which have set off a barrage of retaliatory measures across Europe, China and Canada targeting hundreds of U.S. goods. Even before Trump retook the White House, many countries were…

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Consumer confidence sinks to 4-year low and it’s no secret why: Trump tariffs and trade wars

Consumer confidence sinks to 4-year low and it’s no secret why: Trump tariffs and trade wars

MarketWatch reports: Consumers and businesses have grown very anxious about President Donald Trump’s trade wars — and they have increasing doubts about the future of the economy if the White House stays on the current path. The latest signal of angst: The long-running survey of consumer confidence fell to a more than four-year low of 92.9 this month, from 100.1 in February, the Conference Board said Tuesday. That’s the fourth decline in a row and the lowest reading since January…

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Trump aides sent texts on Signal as member of the group chat was in Russia which has ties to the Houthis

Trump aides sent texts on Signal as member of the group chat was in Russia which has ties to the Houthis

CBS News reports: President Trump’s Ukraine and Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff was in Moscow, where he met with Russian President Vladimir Putin, when he was included in a group chat with more than a dozen other top administration officials — and inadvertently, one journalist — on the messaging app Signal, a CBS News analysis of open-source flight information and Russian media reporting has revealed. Russia has repeatedly tried to compromise Signal, a popular commercial messaging platform that many were…

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Days after the Signal leak, the Pentagon warned the app was the target of hackers

Days after the Signal leak, the Pentagon warned the app was the target of hackers

NPR reports: Several days after top national security officials accidentally included a reporter in a Signal chat about bombing Houthi sites in Yemen, a Pentagon-wide advisory warned against using the messaging app, even for unclassified information. “A vulnerability has been identified in the Signal Messenger Application,” begins the department-wide email, dated March 18 and obtained by NPR. The memo continues, “Russian professional hacking groups are employing the ‘linked devices’ features to spy on encrypted conversations.” It notes that Google has…

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