Breaking News
Breaking News
from Washington and beyond

Democrats Just Flipped a Massively Pro-Trump District

Democrats scored key victories in Pennsylvania.

A person holds up an American flag outside the Pennsylvania state Capitol
Nathan Morris/NurPhoto/Getty Images

Americans are rallying behind Democrats—even in deep Trump territory.

In a major upset, Democrat James Malone usurped a seat in Pennsylvania’s state Senate in a special election, flipping a district that had voted for Donald Trump by more than 15 points mere months ago. Malone previously served as the mayor of East Petersburg and will succeed Republican Senator Ryan Aument, who resigned from the office in December to serve as a state director for Senator Dave McCormick.

“I’m very excited and really, really happy that all the work we put in has paid off,” Malone told WGAL-TV.

“Everyday voters are not liking what they’re seeing at the federal level; they don’t like the chaos. We want to be sure that we, as Pennsylvania, are standing up for our neighbors and are standing up for our state,” Malone continued. “And brotherly love is Pennsylvania, and that just proved out. Kindness over criticism, right? So that’s what we’re trying to do, and I think that that really is what we’re looking at, moving forward.”

Malone’s victory followed another Democratic win Tuesday in the Keystone State, after Dan Goughnour won a House seat, maintaining a Democratic stronghold in Pennsylvania’s lower chamber.

The wins were roundly celebrated by the larger Democratic Party, which saw its voters excoriate their inaction on a GOP budget resolution that promised whopping Medicaid cuts at the national level last week.

Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez saluted Malone’s strategy, urging the party to refocus on winning critical local elections, “from school board to councils to state legislatures.”

Republicans, meanwhile, felt the sting.

“Damn,” posted Elon Musk, reacting to a screenshot of the election results.

But Malone had a quick reply.

“I’ll take this as a compliment, because Elon Musk knows I’m about to get to work for the everyday people of Pennsylvania, not him and his billionaire friends,” he wrote Wednesday morning.

Team Trump Comes Up With Yet Another Excuse on War Plans Group Chat

Why can’t the Trump team get its story straight on this group chat disaster?

Donald Trump and national security adviser Mike Waltz in the White House
Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images

The Trump administration has finally settled on one story: Someone else within the administration—and not national security adviser Mike Waltz—is to blame for the massive internal fuckup that resulted in Jeffrey Goldberg, The Atlantic’s editor in chief, being added to a Signal group chat in which top defense officials were planning a strike on the Houthis in Yemen.

“So your staffer did not put his contact information.… How did it end up in your phone?” asked Fox’s Laura Ingraham, referring to Goldberg’s contact information and adviser Mike Waltz’s phone.

“Well that’s what we’re trying to figure out,” Waltz replied.

“But that’s a pretty big problem—”

“That’s why we’ve got the best technical minds, right?”

“That’s disturbing.”

“I mean, I’m sure everybody out there has had a contact where it was … said one person and then a different phone number [came up],” Waltz replied.

“But you’ve never talked to him before, so how’s [Goldberg’s] number on your phone?” pressed Ingraham, asking the most obvious question in all this.

“Well if you have somebody else’s contact and then somehow it sucked it in,” Waltz said, seemingly trying to convince even himself.

“Oh, someone sent you that contact….. Was there someone else supposed to be on the chat that wasn’t on the chat?”

“So the person that I thought was on there was never on there.”

“Who was that?”

“Well, look, Laura, I take responsibility, I built the group.”

Trump echoed Waltz’s retelling of events, directly blaming a lower-level staffer.

“What it was, we believe, is somebody that was on the line, with permission—somebody that was with Mike Waltz, worked for Mike Waltz, at a lower level—had, I guess, Goldberg’s number, and called through the app. And somehow this guy ended up on the call,” the president said, who seemed to think this was some kind of conference call.

“It wasn’t classified as I understand it, there was no classified information, there was no problem. And the attack was a tremendous success. So I can only go by what I’ve been told, I wasn’t involved in it.”

The White House has claimed over and over that there were no war plans and nothing classified within the Signal chat. The screenshots that Goldberg first published—and the others he posted Tuesday after being called a liar by the administration—directly contradict that.

Trump Team’s Defense Explodes as Journalist Reveals Full Group Chat

Jeffrey Goldberg has released the complete war plans group chat, which Donald Trump’s administration has rushed to deny.

Donald Trump, Mike Waltz, JD Vance, and Pete Hegseth sit in the Oval Office
Andrew Harnik/Getty Images
The Atlantic on Wednesday published the complete messages of the Signal group chat used by senior officials in the Trump administration to discuss its plans to attack the Houthis, after the White House claimed that “no war plans” were discussed and “no classified information” was shared. Obviously, they lied.
Texts from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on March 15 reportedly included information about the timing and location of the missile strikes set to take place in Sanaa later that day.
“TIME NOW (1144et): Weather is FAVORABLE. Just CONFIRMED w/CENTCOM we are a GO for mission launch,” Hegseth wrote in one message.
Then, “1215et: F-18s LAUNCH (1st strike package)” and “1345: ‘Trigger Based’ F-18 1st Strike Window Starts (Target Terrorist is @ his Known Location so SHOULD BE ON TIME—also, Strike Drones Launch (MQ-9s),” he wrote.
Hegseth provided information in a non-secure group chat a full two hours before the strike was intended to take place. According to the director of intelligence’s guidance on classification, “information providing indication or advance warning that the U.S. or its allies are preparing an attack,” is considered top secret.
During a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing Tuesday, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard refused to say whether she had participated in the chat, but insisted that there had been no classified information shared in the chat.
In the group chat, however, Hegseth continued to spill sensitive information in another series of texts, explaining the timing of subsequent attacks, including “WHEN THE FIRST BOMBS WILL DEFINITELY DROP.”
“1410: More F-18s LAUNCH (2nd strike package),” he wrote. “1415: Strike Drones on Target (THIS IS WHEN THE FIRST BOMBS WILL DEFINITELY DROP, pending earlier ‘Trigger Based’ targets).”
“1536 F-18 2nd Strike Starts—also, first sea-based Tomahawks launched,” and “MORE TO FOLLOW (per timeline)” Hegseth wrote.
“We are currently clean on OPSEC”—that is, operational security, the Defense Secretary added, though clearly it wasn’t entirely true. “Godspeed to our Warriors.”
The Signal user identified as Vice President JD Vance responded, “I will say a prayer for victory.”
Mike Waltz, Trump’s national security advisor reportedly responsible for inadvertently adding The Atlantic’s editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg to the conversation, sent a message explaining that some targets had been identified in a building collapse.
“VP. Building collapsed. Had multiple positive ID. Pete, Kurilla, the IC, amazing job,” Waltz wrote, referring to General Michael E. Kurilla, the commander of Central Command.
Vance didn’t quite understand. “What?” he replied.
Shortly after, Waltz followed up. “Typing too fast. The first target—their top missile guy—we had positive ID of him walking into his girlfriend’s building and it’s now collapsed,” he wrote, being horrifyingly cavalier about potential civilian deaths.
A round of congratulatory texts went out, including Waltz’s now infamous “👊🇺🇸🔥”When asked whether the White House objected to the release of the full texts, Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt sent the following statement: “As we have repeatedly stated, there was no classified information transmitted in the group chat. However, as the CIA Director and National Security Advisor have both expressed today, that does not mean we encourage the release of the conversation. This was intended to be a an [sic] internal and private deliberation amongst high-level senior staff and sensitive information was discussed. So for those reason [sic]—yes, we object to the release,” she wrote.
Goldberg had initially published details about the sensitive information discussed in the group chat, leaving out the newly released sections over concerns that if “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.”
This story has been updated.

Republicans’ Defense of War Plans Group Chat Gets Even More Pathetic

Republicans are scrambling to defend the Trump administration on its group chat fiasco—and it’s getting more embarrassing by the minute.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth
JIM WATSON/AFP/Getty Images
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth

Republicans are struggling to defend the Signal group chat set up by Trump administration officials to discuss airstrikes against targets in Yemen. The chat, as the entire world now knows, mistakenly included the editor in chief of The Atlantic after a personal invite from Trump’s national security adviser, Mike Waltz.

The chat may have violated the law and certainly went against Department of Defense regulations, including a warning one week ago about security vulnerabilities within the Signal app that were being targeted by Russian hacking groups. But that hasn’t stopped leading Republicans in Congress from trying to put a positive spin on the colossal mistake.

Senator Ted Cruz said that the substance of the group’s discussion should have Americans feeling “very encouraged.”

“What the entire text thread is about is President Trump directed his national security team to take out the terrorists and open up the shipping lanes. That’s terrific,” Cruz told journalists on Tuesday.

Senator Josh Hawley also tried to put a positive spin on the fiasco. “It’s the president’s advisers discussing among themselves options they might recommend to the president,” Hawley told Fox News’s Laura Ingraham, “and nobody can deny the success of what the president is doing here.

“And this is what the leftist media is reduced to. They can’t argue with the policies, which the American people support. They can’t argue with this new demonstration of American strength that is keeping Americans safe at home and abroad, and so now we’re griping about who’s on a text message and who’s not. I mean, come on,” Hawley added.

Speaker of the House Mike Johnson tried to push the same message.

“What you did see, though, I think, was top-level officials doing their job, doing it well and executing on a plan with precision,” Johnson said Monday night. “That mission was a success. No one was jeopardized because of it. We’re grateful for that.”

Representative Dan Crenshaw told Fox Business that “it’s a mistake and we gotta move on.”

“If Secretary Hegseth says there was no classified information, I’ll take him at his word,” Crenshaw said to Maria Bartiromo Tuesday morning.

None of these Republicans addressed the fact that government officials were having a serious national security discussion on a private messaging app that could easily be used to evade mandated record keeping. This could be one of many chat groups where government business is being discussed, but only happened to see the light of day due to a journalist being added by accident. Will anyone involved be held accountable?

Trump Has Bizarre Defense for Advisers Making Group Chat on Signal

Donald Trump was asked whether he approved of his top advisers using the messaging platform to discuss war plans.

Donald Trump speaks during a meeting at the White House
Shawn Thew/EPA/Bloomberg/Getty Images

Donald Trump still doesn’t seem to know what Signal is, more than 24 hours after his administration was revealed to have discussed sensitive war details about bombing another country on the private app.

“So are you saying you’re OK with the continued use of Signal by administration officials?” asked a reporter at a White House press conference Tuesday afternoon.

“No, that’s not what I said,” Trump said. “I said we’ll look into it, but everybody else seems to be using it. It seems to be the number one–used device or app, whatever you want to call it.”

The president then continued to argue that there may be future circumstances under which the administration may be “forced” to use Signal, even though it’s an unofficial channel for information that was easily infiltrated by a journalist who, in Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s words, is “deceitful and highly discredited.”

“I don’t think it’s something we’re looking forward to use again, we may be forced to use it. We may be in a situation where you need speed as opposed to gross safety, and we may be forced to use it,” Trump added.

The president did not elaborate on what “gross safety” meant, but it’s unclear how his Cabinet’s reliance on Signal would be more efficient than the traditional and secure channels used by prior administrations.

Trump administration officials accidentally added The Atlantic’s editor in chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, to a Signal chat regarding sensitive details of a plan to bomb Houthis in Yemen earlier this month. Some of that information, shared by Hegseth in the chat, included a detailed operation plan, potential targets, weapons used, attack sequences, and timing of the airstrikes. The existence of the group chat was verified by a spokesperson for the National Security Council, Brian Hughes.

The monumental slipup was a horrific omen for U.S. national security, whose weakest link is apparently a crew of Cabinet members who can’t accomplish the basic due diligence of double-checking who they’re adding to a group chat hosted by a private company.

Trump officials repeatedly denied that they had disclosed confidential information in the immediate wake of the scandal. But National Intelligence Director Tulsi Gabbard and CIA Director John Ratcliffe began to fold during a Senate hearing Tuesday, with Gabbard claiming that she could not answer questions about the chat because of its sensitive nature, while Ratcliffe conceded that the conversation should have been conducted through “classified channels.”

Mike Johnson Has Terrifying Threat for Courts That Rule Against Trump

The House speaker has a plan to make sure Donald Trump always wins.

House Speaker Mike Johnson stands at a podium during a press conference
Nathan Posner/Anadolu/Getty Images

House Speaker Mike Johnson threatened Tuesday to outright eliminate district courts where judges rule against Donald Trump.

During a press conference, Johnson discussed how Congress was “working through” a “natural tension” between the branches of government, as courts across the nation have issued injunctions blocking a series of the Trump administration’s questionable actions.

Most recently, Trump and several members of his administration have attacked U.S. District Judge James Boasberg, who on Monday refused to lift his injunction blocking the administration’s expedited deportations under the Alien Enemies Act. 

Johnson issued a sinister warning that courts that stood against the president could see themselves wiped off the map. 

“We do have authority over the federal courts, as you know. We can, we can eliminate an entire district court. We have power of funding over the courts, and all these other things,” Johnson said. “But, um, desperate times call for desperate measures, and Congress is going to act.”

Johnson later clarified that he was making a point about the “broad authority” of Congress over the “creation, maintenance and the governance” of the courts. Congress eliminated two federal courts as recently as 1982, erecting two others. 

Johnson’s threat is both extreme and unlikely. Passing legislation defunding the courts now would require amazing cooperation among the Republicans’ narrow majority in the House—as well as total unanimity among Senate Republicans, who would need to convince seven Democrats to join them.  

Johnson also said that the Republican-led House Judiciary Committee was looking at alternative legislative moves, including his “favorite,” a bill from Representative Darrell Issa to “limit the scope of federal injunctions.” 

The bill would restrict the ability of federal judges to “abuse the system,” as Johnson put it, by preventing them from imposing nationwide injunctions—though that’s not quite abusing the system so much as using checks and balances the way they were designed. 

Earlier this month, an amendment was added to the bill that would allow broad orders brought by multiple states to stand in some instances, if they were heard and approved by a three-judge district court panel.

Trump Team Claims it Made Billions Off a Gold Card That Doesn’t Exist

Howard Lutnick bragged about selling U.S. residency.

Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick stands in the White House
Roberto Schmidt/AFP/Getty Images

The Trump administration is claiming that it’s made billions off its visa “gold card” program—even though the pay-to-play immigration alternative doesn’t exist yet.

Despite centering his campaign and presidency around deporting immigrants—documented or not—and limiting admission into the country, last month, Donald Trump pitched giving rich foreigners a new pathway to citizenship. The initiative, which the president has suggested calling the “Trump card,” would replace the EB-5 visa program.

Speaking with the All In podcast last week, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick claimed that the administration had made $5 billion by selling the EB-5 visa replacement for $5 million a pop.

“Yesterday I sold a thousand,” Lutnick said, saying that the program would launch in a couple of weeks and that Elon Musk was currently working on software to handle applications for the pricy legal papers.

Lutnick explained that American billionaire hedge fund manager John Paulson was the brains behind the visa replacement, sharing the details of the “gold card” with Trump over the phone. Since the card does not actually exist yet, Lutnick’s claim (if true) means that people are willing to pay Trump $5 million a pop for little more than a promise.

But Lutnick’s blank explanation for the gold card came with a casual, dual warning for green card recipients.

“If you have a green card, which used to be a green card now a go-card, you’re a permanent resident of America. You can be a citizen, but you don’t have to be, and none of them are going to choose to be,” Lutnick said, completely fabricating the last point.

“They have the right to be an American, as long as they’re good people, and they’re vetted,” he said. “We can always take it away if they’re evil or mean or bad or something.”

Some green card holders, including Columbia graduate student Mahmoud Khalil, have already been forcibly detained and had their green cards canceled by the Department of Homeland Security after they dared to protest the actions of the U.S. government. Others, like 21-year-old Yunseo Chung, are still evading ICE’s deportation efforts despite being legal permanent residents.

“The idea is, if I was not American, and I lived in any other country, I would buy six—one for me, one for my wife, one for my four kids—because God forbid something happens, I want to be able to go to America and I want to have the right to go to the airport to go to America,” Lutnick said of the gold card, plainly restricting the terms that used to be available to all refugees seeking shelter in the U.S. to just the ultrawealthy denizens of the world. “I don’t want to hear that I can’t come here when there’s a horrible war, a horrible whatever.”

Critics of Trump’s “gold card” program have claimed that the new visa is yet another sign that Trump is willing to sell American democracy to the “highest bidder” and would allow America’s longtime adversaries—including Russian oligarchs—to effectively buy their way into the country.

Trump Takes His Anti-DEI War to Planned Parenthood

Donald Trump is plotting a massive freeze on funding to Planned Parenthood.

A woman sits in a doctor’s office at Planned Parenthood.
Joe Raedle/Getty Images

The Trump administration plans to freeze millions of dollars in grants to family planning organizations in order to investigate whether the money went to diversity initiatives.

The Wall Street Journal reports that $120 million in funds set to go to organizations like Planned Parenthood this year is on hold, citing unnamed sources. Pregnancy testing, providing contraception, treating sexually transmitted infections, and infertility evaluation and counseling are among the services threatened by the freeze.

The Department of Health and Human Services is reviewing recipients of the grants to comply with President Trump’s executive orders prohibiting the funding of anything related to diversity, equity, and inclusion, a spokesperson for the agency said. The funds are distributed under HHS’s Title X program, and $120 million amounts to about half of the funds available to the program for this year.

Under the program, about four million people receive free or reduced services at a network of about 4,000 clinics. Planned Parenthood clinics in about a dozen states would have received $20 million under the program. HHS could fully rescind those grants or redistribute them.

“The Trump-Vance-Musk administration wants to shut down Planned Parenthood health centers by any means necessary, and they’ll end people’s access to birth control, cancer screenings, STI testing and treatment, and more to do it,” Alexis McGill Johnson, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, told the Journal.

Conservatives have long fought to defund Planned Parenthood due to its abortion advocacy, despite no federal funds being used for the health procedure given that federal law already prohibits taxpayer funds from going to abortions. Vice President JD Vance said during the 2024 presidential campaign that Trump would halt funding for the organization if elected, and it looks like this is an early attempt to begin that process.

Tulsi Gabbard Torched for Claiming No Classified Intel Shared in Chat

Senators Mark Kelly and Angus King grilled Gabbard over what exactly was sent in the war plans group chat.

Tulsi Gabbard walks out of a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing
Kent Nishimura/Bloomberg/Getty Images

The Trump administration’s deny, deny, deny tactic to brush off its Signal chat scandal about airstriking another country is starting to make its own officials look wildly uninformed.

Members of Trump’s Cabinet accidentally added The Atlantic’s editor in chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, to a Signal chat regarding sensitive details of a plan to bomb Houthis in Yemen earlier this month.

And during a prescheduled Senate hearing Tuesday to discuss national security threats, National Intelligence Director Tulsi Gabbard’s repeated efforts to shirk the classified label only made the intelligence leader appear increasingly uninformed or blind to the core principles of her job.

Senator Angus King torched Gabbard for conducting such sensitive business on an unofficial channel via a private company, strongly disagreeing with the national intelligence leader’s definition of classified information.

“Secretary Hegseth put into this group text a detailed operation plan, including targets, the weapons we were going to be using, attack sequences, and timing, and yet you’ve testified that nothing in that chain was classified. Wouldn’t that be classified?” asked King, referring to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. “What if that had been made public that morning, before the attack took place?”

But Gabbard opted to dodge the question.

“Senator, I can attest to the fact there were no classified or intelligence equities that were included in that chat at any time,” Gabbard said.

“So the attack sequencing, and timing, and weapons, and targets, you don’t consider should have been classified?” King pressed.

“I defer to the secretary of defense and the National Security Council,” Gabbard answered.

“Well, you’re the head of the intelligence community,” King scoffed. “You’re supposed to know about classifications.”

King then argued that if the information is not classified, the entire text thread should be released to the American public so that they could draw their own conclusions about the Trump administration’s behavior.

In another heated exchange with Senator Mark Kelly, Gabbard refused to say that details regarding a potential strike on another country would constitute classified information. Instead, CIA Director John Ratcliffe threw Gabbard under the bus, capitulating that a “pre-decisional strike deliberation” should be conducted through “classified channels.”

Continuing to deny that the chat ever took place—or that a journalist that Trump officials have derided as “deceitful and highly discredited” was accidentally sent sensitive details—won’t do the administration any good. A spokesperson for the National Security Council, Brian Hughes, already confirmed to Goldberg that the chat was real.

The monumental slipup was a horrific omen for U.S. national security, whose weakest link is apparently a crew of Cabinet members who can’t accomplish the basic due diligence of double-checking who they’re adding to a group chat hosted by a private company.

CIA Head Has Shocking Answer When Asked if Group Chat Was “Mistake”

John Ratcliffe immediately panicked over his own answer to the question.

CIA Director John Ratcliffe holds up his finger while speaking during a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing
Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images

CIA Director John Ratcliffe flailed Tuesday when asked one simple question about the Trump administration’s major national security scandal.

During a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing, Ratcliffe and other intelligence officials faced tough questions about a Signal chat Cabinet members used to discuss sensitive details of a plan to bomb Houthis in Yemen earlier this month—which accidentally included The Atlantic’s editor in chief, Jeffrey Goldberg.

Unlike the more reticent Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, Ratcliffe dove straight off a sinking ship and readily admitted to participating in the group chat. He insisted that the CIA was permitted to use Signal.

But Ratcliffe crumbled when asked a straightforward question by Senator Jon Ossoff.

“Director Ratcliffe, this was a huge mistake, correct?” the Georgia Democrat asked.

There was a silence before Ratcliffe responded, shaking his head. “No,” he said.

There was another long silence in the chamber as Ratcliffe’s answer started to sink in. It seemed Ratcliffe wanted so badly not to be in trouble that, somehow, including a journalist in sensitive discussions of strike plans wasn’t even a mistake? At once, Ossoff continued, and Ratcliffe attempted to make sense of his unbelievably poor response.

“A national political rep—no, no you hold on,” Ossoff said, over Ratcliffe’s pleas of, “Hold on, let me answer!”

“No, no Director Ratcliffe, I asked a simple yes or no question, and now you hold on,” Ossoff said. “A national political reporter was made privy to sensitive information about imminent military operations against a foreign terrorist organization, and that wasn’t a huge mistake? That wasn’t a huge mistake?”

As Ossoff spoke, Ratcliffe continued to limply defend himself. “You can characterize it how you want,” Ratcliffe said of the “inadvertent mistake of adding a reporter.”

“I think that they characterized it as a mistake,” Ratcliffe finally said, defeated.

“This is an embarrassment. This is utterly unprofessional. There’s been no apology. There has been no recognition of the gravity of this error. And by the way, we will get the full transcript of this chain, and your testimony will be measured carefully against its content,” Ossoff said.

During Thursday’s hearing, Gabbard insisted that there had been no classified information sent in the group chat, though Goldberg reported that there had been information that, if “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.”