Vice President JD Vance, on the couch from left, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and national security adviser Michael Waltz during President Donald Trump’s visit with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte in the Oval Office at the White House in Washington on March 13, 2025. (NATO)
WASHINGTON — Lawmakers, including top Democrats on Senate and House Armed Services committees, demanded answers Monday after Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and other top Trump administration officials discussed war plans in a texting conversation that included a journalist.
The chat over the Signal encrypted messaging service was used to share plans for recent U.S. airstrikes against Houthi rebels in Yemen. Among the participants were Hegseth, Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and national security adviser Mike Waltz, a former congressman who served as a Green Beret.
The editor-in-chief of The Atlantic magazine, Jeffrey Goldberg, was inadvertently added to the Signal chat and published details from the discussion in a report Monday.
The material in the text chain “contained operational details of forthcoming strikes on Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen, including information about targets, weapons the U.S. would be deploying, and attack sequencing,” Goldberg wrote.
News of the information leak generated a swift rebuke from Democrats on Capitol Hill, with Sen. Jack Reed of Rhode Island calling it “one of the most egregious failures of operational security and common sense I have ever seen.”
“Military operations need to be handled with utmost discretion, using approved, secure lines of communication, because American lives are on the line,” said Reed, the top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee. “The carelessness shown by President [Donald] Trump’s Cabinet is stunning and dangerous.”
He said he will be seeking answers from the administration “immediately.”
Rep. Pat Ryan, D-N.Y., an Army veteran who sits on the House Armed Services Committee, said, “If House Republicans won’t hold a hearing on how this happened IMMEDIATELY, I’ll do it my damn self.”
“Only one word for this: FUBAR,” he wrote on X, using a military acronym that stands for “[fouled] up beyond all recognition.”
Sen. Ruben Gallego, D-Ariz., a Marine veteran, called the episode “amateur hour” and said if he “handled classified and sensitive information in this way when I was in the Marines … oh boy … .”
It is not uncommon for government officials to use Signal for organizational matters but not for confidential discussions of military operations, according to Goldberg. The app is not classified and can be hacked.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said the Signal chat likely included classified U.S. intelligence that could have gotten people killed and severely harmed the military if it fell into the wrong hands.
“Every single senator — Republican and Democrat and Independent — must demand accountability,” he said in a floor speech. “If a government employee shared sensitive military plans like this, they’d be investigated and face very harsh consequences.”
Schumer singled out Hegseth for criticism, saying Democrats had warned that confirming him would be dangerous. Hegseth was confirmed by one of the narrowest Senate margins of any defense secretary in modern history.
Hegseth posted “precise information about weapons packages, targets, and timing” in the Signal chat, Goldberg wrote. Hegseth also assured participants that “we are currently clean on OPSEC,” meaning operations security, even though a journalist was included in the conversation, and it was taking place on a commercial messaging platform.
Hegseth’s office last week announced a crackdown on leaks of sensitive information to the media and said it plans to use polygraphs potentially in investigations of “recent unauthorized disclosures of national security information.”
Rep. Adam Smith of Washington, the top Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, released a video Monday saying it was time to start “seriously worrying about the competency of Donald Trump’s national security team.”
“As I and many others have warned, when you start hiring people based solely on sycophancy and loyalty to Donald Trump, instead of their talent and their ability to do the job, then bad things are going to happen,” he said. “We need competent government — the Trump administration is not giving that to us.”
House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., told reporters the administration is addressing the information leak and will make certain it does not happen again.
“What you did see though, I think, was top-level officials doing their job, doing it well, and executing on a plan with precision,” he said. “That mission was a success. No one was jeopardized because of it.”
The Republican chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Roger Wicker of Mississippi, expressed more concern. He said there likely will be classified briefings about the episode soon.
“It appears that mistakes were made, no question,” he told reporters. “We are going to look into this and see what the facts are... you can be sure the committee, House and Senate will be looking into this.”
