[guest post by Dana]

It’s certainly true that every sitting president necessarily has their chief of staff and cabinet of advisors tasked with guiding, strategizing, and providing the best direction to the president about any given situation. And then there are advisors who aren’t part of the president’s cabinet nor any part of the administration. These are people that are close to the president and have his ear. In Trump’s case, nutcase Laura Loomer is one such advisor. She has the president’s ear and has some degree of influence over the decisions he makes. And that influence, apparently, includes the hiring and firing of individuals that she determines to have been disloyal to the president:

The White House has fired at least three National Security Council staffers, three sources familiar with the move told CNN.

The firings came after Laura Loomer, the far-right activist who once claimed 9/11 was an inside job, urged President Donald Trump during a Wednesday meeting to get rid of several members of his National Security Council staff, including his principal deputy national security adviser, claiming that they are disloyal. One of the sources said the firings were a direct result of the meeting with Loomer.

About the officials fired:

The three officials fired include Brian Walsh, a director for intelligence and a former top staffer for now-Secretary of State Marco Rubio on the Senate Intelligence Committee; Thomas Boodry, a senior director for legislative affairs who previously served as Waltz’s legislative director in Congress; and David Feith, a senior director overseeing technology and national security who served in the State Department during Trump’s first administration.

Lucky Mike Waltz, he still has his job despite his terrible and unlawful breach of national security (Signalgate). . .all because he loves him some Trump.

—Dana

[guest post by Dana]

If Bill Clinton could challenge the meaning of “is,” then surely it behooves us to challenge the meaning of “liberation,” since it’s being used to rally the American people. yet I’m certainly not seeing it:

President Trump on Wednesday announced a baseline 10 percent tariff on imports from all foreign countries, as well as higher tariff rates for dozens of nations that the White House deemed the “worst offenders” when it came to trade barriers.

The 10 percent tariff will go into effect on Friday. About 60 countries facing a higher reciprocal tariff will see those rates go into effect on April 9 at 12:01 a.m. Trump also announced a 25 percent tariff on all foreign-made automobiles that will take effect at 12:01 a.m. April 3.

. . .

“***This is one of the most important days, in my opinion, in America’s history,” Trump said. “It’s our declaration of economic independence.”

Claiming he could have gone with a higher amount on countries with reciprocal tariffs (China, Vietnam, Taiwan, Japan, India, South Korea, Thailand, Switzerland, Indonesia, Malaysia, Cambodia and the European Union), Trump said he didn’t want to create too much of a hardship. The formula for these countries “will be calculated by combining the rate of tariffs and non-monetary barriers like currency manipulation, then divided in half.”

Re China:

Karoline Leavitt. . .confirms that the 34 percent tariff on China is ON TOP of the previous 20 percent. So that means the rate on China will be *54* percent when these tariffs take effect.

The White House has published an explainer about why Trump believes the tariffs are a good thing for America.

I can’t even. . .

Off the top of his head, read it and weep:

Trump’s reciprocal tariffs:

1) Impose hundreds of billions of dollars in new taxes on Americans without public/congressional input

2) Are based on secret calculations that have little, if any, connection to actual foreign trade barriers

3) Ignore all US tariff/non-tariff barriers, which in some cases are quite high

4) Are justified by a “national emergency” that reflects a total misunderstanding of how trade deficits work

5) Disregard US trade agreement commitments, including ones made by Trump himself

6) Will make us all poorer, and likely do real & lasting harm to the US economy (incl in manufacturing)

7) Embolden our adversaries around the world

Higher taxes, more trade wars, unilateral tax hikes, etc. I ask you, liberate us from what?

P.S. Isn’t is just a bit on the nose that Russia is not on the White House list, while Ukraine is:

FULL LIST: Liberation Day pic.twitter.com/ZBiRuJBCAr

— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) April 2, 2025

(*** – Let’s just bookmark this for later. . .)

-Dana

[guest post by Dana]

This *should* be surprising, and in a normal administration it would be. But normal is not what we currently have:

National security adviser Mike Waltz’s team regularly set up chats on Signal to coordinate official work on issues including Ukraine, China, Gaza, Middle East policy, Africa and Europe, according to four people who have been personally added to Signal chats.

Two of the people said they were in or have direct knowledge of at least 20 such chats. All four said they saw instances of sensitive information being discussed.

. . .

“Waltz built the entire NSC communications process on Signal,” said one of the people. All four were granted anonymity because they were not authorized to publicly discuss the private chats.

. . .

“It was commonplace to stand up chats on any given national security topic,” said one of the people involved in the chats, adding that the groups often included Cabinet members and high- level staff.

The report makes clear that Signal is an “approved method of communicating. . .it is one of a host of approved methods for unclassified material with the understanding that a user must preserve the record[.]”

As you know, Trump called Signalgate a “hoax” and a “witch hunt,” and in fact, came out and said that he didn’t know anything about Signal, and suggested if might be a “defective platform”.

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that the Signal threads discussed “brokering peace between Russia and Ukraine, and military operations.

There is also the issue of Waltz and his staff using Gmail for government communications:

A senior Waltz aide used Gmail “for highly technical conversations with colleagues at other government agencies involving sensitive military positions and powerful weapons systems relating to an ongoing conflict,” The Washington Post wrote.

The Post said it reviewed the emails. “While the NSC official used his Gmail account, his interagency colleagues used government-issued accounts, headers from the email correspondence show,” the report said.

Waltz himself “had less sensitive, but potentially exploitable information sent to his Gmail, such as his schedule and other work documents, said officials, who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe what they viewed as problematic handling of information,” the report said. “The officials said Waltz would sometimes copy and paste from his schedule into Signal to coordinate meetings and discussions.”

Eight days ago, Mike Waltz said he took “full responsibility” for Signalgate, as he “built the group”. Does Waltz survive this latest revelation?

Raskin: Would it be problem for it to be standard practice to conduct sensitive foreign policy on a signal chat group… It just came out that Waltz’s team set up 20 signal group chats for crises across the world… I’m sure this will raise the question on whether or not he should… pic.twitter.com/oSNH0FyzgD

— Acyn (@Acyn) April 2, 2025

—Dana

[guest post by Dana]

I really hope that Trump is aware of this because it is clearly not the behavior of a leader who is ready for a ceasefire, let alone ending the war:

President Vladimir Putin has called up 160,000 men aged 18-30, Russia’s highest number of conscripts since 2011, as the country moves to expand the size of its military.

The spring call-up for a year’s nap military service came several months after Putin said Russia should increase the overall size of its military to almost 2.39 million and its number of active servicemen to 1.5 million.

That is a rise of 180,000 over the coming three years.

—Dana

[guest post by Dana]

Heads definitely not rolling, no formal investigation, no one fired, case closed, per White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt:

“As the president has made it very clear, Mike Waltz continues to be an important part of his national security team, and this case has been closed here at the White House, as far as we are concerned. There have been steps made to ensure that something like that can obviously never happen again, and we’re moving forward; and the president and Mike Waltz, and his entire national security team, have been working together very well if you look at how much safer the United States of America is because of the leadership of this team.”

Now we know how seriously this White House takes an egregious breach of security where American troops could have been put at risk.

—Dana

[guest post by Dana]

Exactly why can’t he be brought home?:

The Trump administration conceded in a court filing Monday that it mistakenly deported a Maryland father to El Salvador “because of an administrative error” and argued it could not return him because he’s now in Salvadoran custody.

Background:

The filing stems from a lawsuit over the removal of Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran national who in 2019 was granted protected status by an immigration judge, prohibiting the federal government from sending him to El Salvador.

The filing, first reported by The Atlantic, appears to mark the first time the administration has admitted an error related to its recent deportation flights to El Salvador, which are now at the center of a fraught legal battle.

“On March 15, although ICE was aware of his protection from removal to El Salvador, Abrego Garcia was removed to El Salvador because of an administrative error,” the Trump administration filing states.

Here is some added context from the court filings, which still doesn’t change the fact that an individual with protected status was deported back to the very country he was legally protected from being sent to:

The man is an illegal migrant from El Salvador. In 2019, ICE presented sufficient evidence that he was a member of the MS-13 gang for an immigration judge to deny him bond and order his removal.

However, he then filed an asylum claim and obtained a withholding of removal order under the convention against torture. Essentially, he argued that despite his being here illegally and likely being a gang member based on the previous finding, he could be tortured if sent back to El Salvador. Such an order could still allow the government to deport him, but not to his home country, at least not without first contesting the order.

He has been using that order since 2019 to avoid deportation.

Some government attorneys have reportedly been shocked by what happened to Albrego Garcia. There is a separate procedure to follow in the courts if the government wants to deport an individual with protected status.

Government attorneys said that the deportation was an “oversight,” but one done in “good faith.” So I guess that makes it okay. /sarc.

This is a horrible consequence of the administration rushing through these deportations without any oversight necessary accountability.

—Dana

[guest post by Dana]

Let’s go!

First news item

This should have never been terminated in the first place, but it’s good to see that the bipartisan outcry of disapproval had a positive impact on Trump:

The Trump administration reversed its decision to terminate a U.S. initiative that documented alleged Russian war crimes on Thursday following reporting by The Washington Post and other media outlets, according to U.S. officials and congressional aides familiar with the matter.

. . .

The temporary policy reversal, which has not been previously reported, gives the observatory authorization and funding for six additional weeks to complete the transfer of its repository to the European Union’s law enforcement agency, EUROPOL, to assist in the prosecution of crimes inside and outside Ukraine.

This must be reversed in the long term, not just the short term. As a reminder, President Zelensky has said that the return of abducted Ukrainian children must be part of any agreement to stop the war.

I wrote about the funding cut of the program here.

Second news item

Horrible: Russian scientist protests Putin and war in Ukraine,ends up in ICE detention:

A Russian scientist from Harvard Medical School has been detained by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, according to her friends and colleagues.

On Wednesday, Cora Anderson, who works with the Russian scientist Kseniia Petrova, shared the news of Petrova’s detention on Facebook, saying the Russian scientist arrived at Boston Logan international airport on 16 February from a trip to France when she was stopped by US authorities.

According to Anderson, authorities revoked Petrova’s visa and told her that she was to be deported to Russia. In response, Petrova said that she feared political persecution and was instead sent by authorities to a detention facility, Anderson said.

“We had no idea initially what had happened to her since she was unable to send any messages or make any calls upon detention. She was moved to a facility in Vermont at first and then Louisiana where she is now. Where she is now is a jail that has space rented by ICE and is kept in a room with over 80 other female detainees,” Anderson wrote in her Facebook post…

Petrova’s boss, Leon Peshkin, said in an interview on Thursday that the researcher had good reason to fear being returned to Russia because she had publicly protested the Russian invasion of Ukraine in its first days, called for the impeachment of Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, and was arrested. She managed to flee, first to the former Soviet republic of Georgia and then to the United States, to continue her research on genomes.

Third news item

This is great:

Thousands of Palestinians marched between the wreckage of a heavily destroyed town in northern Gaza on Wednesday in the second day of anti-war protests, with many chanting against Hamas in a rare display of public anger against the militant group.

The protests, which centered mainly on Gaza’s north, appeared to be aimed generally against the war, with protesters calling for an end to 17 months of deadly fighting with Israel that has made life in Gaza insufferable.

But protesters also leveled unusually direct and public criticism of Hamas, which has quashed dissent violently in the past in Gaza, a territory it still rules months into the war with Israel.

As one protester said, “we have nothing to lose, we’ve already lost everything.”

Fourth news item

Oh:

The Trump administration asked the Supreme Court on Friday to allow it to invoke the Alien Enemies Act to carry out swift deportations.

The emergency application marks the first time that the high court has been asked to get involved in the high-profile case after U.S. District Judge James Boasberg issued a temporary restraining order (TRO) blocking deportation flights under the rarely invoked statute.

“This case presents fundamental questions about who decides how to conduct sensitive national-security-related operations in this country—the President, through Article II, or the Judiciary, through TROs,” acting Solicitor General Sarah Harris wrote in the application.
“The Constitution supplies a clear answer: the President. The republic cannot afford a different choice,” she continued.

Fifth news item

Not a problem, apparently. How that is, I just don’t know:

Tech billionaire and White House adviser Elon Musk will head to Wisconsin days before the pivotal state Supreme Court election there, into which he’s sunk millions of dollars on behalf of the conservative candidate and become a central figure in the race.

Musk made the announcement early Friday morning on his social media platform X, where he said he would be giving out a pair of $1 million checks to people who attend his speech, with attendance limited to those who voted in the election.

Sixth news item

Well, well, well:

NBC News report identifies a similar instance in which a career DHS staffer is facing severe punishment for accidentally adding a journalist to an email about ICE raids.

It’s what happened to a longtime Department of Homeland Security employee who told colleagues she inadvertently sent unclassified details of an upcoming Immigration and Customs Enforcement operation to a journalist in late January, according to former ICE chief of staff Jason Houser, one former DHS official and one current DHS official. (The two officials spoke on the condition of anonymity because they do not want to endanger their current or future career opportunities.)

But unlike Waltz and Hegseth, who both remain in their jobs, the career DHS employee was put on administrative leave and told late last week that the agency intends to revoke her security clearance, the officials said.

The Trump administration, meanwhile, has largely rallied around Waltz and Hegseth, with Trump on Wednesday calling it “all a witch hunt.”

One would think that the higher the rank and the more serious the error, the more serious the consequences. At least, one would think.

Seventh news item

Another law firm opts to roll over to the administration:

President Donald Trump said Friday that the large law firm Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom has agreed to provide at least $100 million in pro bono legal services during the Trump administration and to take other steps that align with the president’s concerns about hiring.

The agreement, which Trump called “essentially a settlement,” allows Skadden, Arps to avoid becoming the sixth elite law firm to be targeted by an executive order from Trump imposing various punishments.

Note: Three targeted law firms, WilmerHale, Jenner & Block, and Perkins Coie have sued the Trump administration over the president’s executive orders targeting them.

Have a good weekend.

—Dana

Signal didn’t work well, and government-approved methods of secure communication are obviously out. What other forms of communication can our top government officials use when they want to exchange unnecessary details about imminent bombings? Our old friend, humor writer Roy Rivenburg, explores this topic below. — Patterico

By Roy Rivenburg

Under fire for a security lapse in which a journalist was accidentally added to a government group chat about bombing Yemen, White House officials are now considering other communication methods for top-secret discussions:

Smoke signals. On the plus side, according to Republicans, this method will infuriate climate change activists. But there are drawbacks. It can’t be used at night, and the puffs of smoke could be mistaken for the selection of a new pope.

Radio Shack walkie-talkies. “The technology is so old that nobody will think to intercept it,” says Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard. One caveat: recipients need to be within 300 feet of each other.

Invisible ink. “It’s simple yet brilliant,” says CIA Director John Ratcliffe. “Messages written with lemon juice only appear when the paper is heated on an ironing board or with a candle.” Unfortunately, new tariffs on imported citrus could make the program prohibitively expensive and invite a crackdown from Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency.

Carrier pigeons. Famously used during World Wars I and II, trained birds could once again crisscross the skies, delivering military messages, according to defense officials. However, Democrats say the pigeon flights would need to be coordinated with air traffic controllers and the birds would have to join a pilot labor union.

Ovaltine secret decoder rings. “Why reinvent the wheel when we have a perfectly good encryption system from the 1930s?” asks Secretary of State Marco Rubio. Alas, Ovaltine’s coded messages were sent via radio broadcasts of the “Little Orphan Annie” show. The only outlet for such a show now would be Voice of America, which just had its funding slashed. Oops.

Skywriting. Because aerial messages are quickly erased by the wind, there’s little chance they’ll be intercepted by journalists, officials say. The downside? Chemtrails!

Hillary Clinton’s email server. “This is the ultimate solution,” says Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth. “Democrats can’t criticize it because they insisted Hillary’s use of her personal email was no big deal.” As an extra security precaution, however, President Trump ordered all communications transmitted via the Lock Her Up™ program to be sent in Pig Latin.

Roy Rivenburg is a writer whose citizenship will probably be revoked in the near future.

[guest post by Dana]

This says it all:

Ceasefires and negotiations are a way of telling Russia you are weak. Dictators act only from strength and assume others do the same. If you wanted them to stop and were strong enough to stop them, you would. If you don’t, it’s a green light.

Realize this is not a failure of Trump’s negotiations. This is the actual point of Trump’s negotiations, to protect Russia & Putin and to divide Ukraine into pieces and assets. There is no longer a charitable interpretation. It’s Russia & USA vs Ukraine and Europe.

I’ll keep repeating this because I still see people speaking as though Trump has been tricked by Putin or that he and his incompetent administration are just ignorant. No. Trump & Musk are taking instructions and working to save Putin & Russia and to destroy and loot Ukraine.

There is no US national interest in aligning with war criminal Putin’s nuclear gas station mafia state. If it were about saving money, he could cut off funding. But he’s also trying to lift sanctions on Russia, rehabilitate Putin & threaten Ukraine into not fighting back.

When President Zelensky was asked what he thought the real reason was for the pause in U.S. support, he said:

I think Russia managed to influence some members of the White House team through information. Their signal to the Americans was that the Ukrainians do not want to end the war, and something should be done to force them. Of course, that was disinformation. It’s not true. The Russians don’t want [to end the war], and we see that now, as we’ve always seen it. But this situation arose, most likely, due to a lack of dialogue [between the U.S. and Ukraine.]

Second, I think the Americans wanted to demonstrate to the Russians that they are in the middle. They are not with us. In general, I don’t think the American team was hiding the fact that they want to be mediators rather than standing with one of the sides. We told them, Well, okay, if you’re not on our side, then at least stay in the middle. So if the Russians don’t accept the full ceasefire that you proposed, we want to see additional sanctions. They don’t need to be in place for long, just like the pause in our case wasn’t. But you need to demonstrate that. We are really expecting the American side to take these steps.

Further, Zelensky was asked: It strikes me that, in the peace process so far, as the U.S. has pursued it under Trump, the carrots are reserved for Russia, while the Ukrainians get the stick. Is that how you have felt?

[Laughs] Well, look, if the carrot is poisoned, then thank God. Maybe that’s the sneakiness of this diplomacy… I think that if the American administration would take stronger steps, then Putin would have a better reaction. The Russians would respond more quickly. I think that, as soon as Trump returned to the presidency, the pace of his reactions was very quick and unexpected. His rhetoric, his statements. I think at that moment the Russians got really scared. When he started talking about sanctions, about his other steps. His moves are very unexpected for them. And for them anything unexpected is worrying.

In the long game, the Russians are fairly strong. They have an authoritarian system. Under authoritarianism everything is bureaucratic. It might move slowly, but it moves. But swift actions are another story. That’s why I feel we do not have enough strong, swift actions.

—Dana

[guest post by Dana]

Unsurprising:

FBI Director Kash Patel was not part of a Signal chat in which other Trump administration national security officials discussed detailed attack plans, but that didn’t spare him from being questioned by lawmakers this week about whether the nation’s premier law enforcement agency would investigate.

Patel made no such commitments during the course of two days of Senate and House hearings, declining to comment on the possibility and testifying that he had not personally reviewed the text messages that were inadvertently shared with the editor-in-chief for The Atlantic who was mistakenly included on an unclassified Signal chat.

The Justice Department has broad discretion to open an investigation, though Attorney General Pam Bondi, who introduced Trump at a Justice Department event this month, signaled at an unrelated news conference on Thursday that she was disinclined to do so. She repeated Trump administration talking points that the highly sensitive information in the chat was not classified, though current and former U.S. officials have said the posting of the exact launch times of aircraft and times that bombs would be released before those pilots were even in the air would have been classified.

But you know what is going to be investigated?:

The Justice Department recently announced it will crack down on the rising number of attacks against Tesla, including charging people accused of throwing Molotov cocktails at the automaker’s properties.

“This is domestic terrorism. Those responsible will be pursued, caught, and brought to justice,” FBI Director Kash Patel said Monday.

Attorney General Pam Bondi also described the anti-Tesla acts as “domestic terrorism” last week, after a person dressed in black shot and set fire to several Tesla vehicles at a repair facility in Las Vegas. Tesla sales and stock prices are also facing stiff declines.

While it makes sense to investigate domestic terrorism, if the definition is met, how does it make sense to not investigate the Signal security breach where our national security was put at risk because of the careless actions of senior administration officials knowingly breaking the rules/law.

Q: “In terms of the Signal chat controversy…is the DOJ involved at this point?”

Bondi: “…We're not going to comment any further on that. If you want to talk about classified information, talk about what was at Hillary Clinton's home that she was trying to BleachBit.” pic.twitter.com/ECwOiK4dNn

— The Bulwark (@BulwarkOnline) March 27, 2025

Anyway, Timothy Snyder has a smart piece, wherein he warns of the deeper reasons for administration officials using Signal. And it’s not pretty. I’m quoting liberally here:

But in the Signalgate scandal, we encounter something more chilling: our government is openly compromising our national security, the better to violate our rights. Its position is that it is worth risking the lives of soldiers abroad in order to be able to persecute civilians at home.

. . .

From the content of the group chat, it is clear that Signal (and, again, likely on personal phones) is the default way that Musk-Trump high officials communicate with one another. This group chat explicitly referred to another one. There was a protocol at the beginning of this chat, which seemed familiar to everyone. It involved adding people whose Signal numbers were known, as if this were a standard procedure. No one during the chat wrote anything like: “hey, why are we using Signal?” The reason that no one did so, most likely, is that they all do this every day.

Using Signal enables American authorities to violate the rights of Americans. Signal is attractive not because it is secure with respect to foreign adversaries, which it is not, but because it is secure with respect to American citizens and American judges. The autodelete function, which Mike Waltz was using, violates the law. But what is most essential is the purpose of that law: to protect the rights of Americans from their government. The timed deletion function allows American officials to be confident that their communications will never be recorded and that they can therefore conspire without any chance of their actions being known to citizens at the time or at any later point.

Everyone on that group chat, including the Vice-President, the Director of National Intelligence, the National Security Advisor, and the Secretary of State, knew that what they were doing was against the rules, the guidance, and the law. But they were doing what they were doing, I would suggest, for a reason: precisely because it allowed them or their colleagues to compromise the rights of Americans.

In other words, it was worth risking the lives of American soldiers abroad in order to have the opportunity the violate the rights of American civilians at home. Making soldiers unsafe is apparently a price worth paying to make the rest of us also unsafe.

If Signal is used for the most sensitive national security discussions, it is reasonable to ask whether it is also used in discussions about sensitive matters of domestic policy — for example in the discussions of deportations to the Salvadoran gulag or in plans for targeting other individuals. If this is correct, then consider this: when the government contemplates deporting you, it will be doing so on an app that allows those discussions to be secret, not from foreign adversaries, but from you and from judges.
And that, it would appear, is why Signal is being used — and will be used.

Snyder concludes:

Even as the Musk-Trump people continue to say that we must sacrifice our rights for national security, they are also starting to say that they find it worthwhile to violate national security in order to have the tools that allow them to violate our rights. In Signalgate, we see the shift from the conventional excuse for authoritarian practices to an open embrace of tyranny for its own sake.

P.S. Quite possibly the DoD was ordered to use Signal on government devices:

A high level information security source inside the Department of Defense has informed me that a month ago they were ordered by political appointees to ignore information security regulations and install Signal on government phones for senior leaders.

. . .

On February 18th, Katie Arrington was named the Deputy Chief Information Officer for Cybersecurity and Chief Information Security Officer at the Department of Defense by the Trump Administration. She had served in the previous Administration in a similar role.

According to my source inside the Pentagon, shortly after Arrington’s arrival at DoD she issued a waiver and authorized the various service CIO’s to deploy Signal on government devices.

This means that even as DOD sent a memo out warning against the use of Signal the same organization had authorized, and demanded, it’s use across the DOD. The messaging app is popular because its encrypted but most importantly allows disappearing messages on a schedule. This is a direct violation of the Presidential Records Act that requires preservation of all Executive Branch records.

. . .

All of this informs us that the Trump Administration is using a commercial non-secure disappearing messaging app to communicate to avoid record keeping laws and national security regulations. This means that it is highly likely our enemies are able to monitor the high level communications of our government…in real time.

Remind me how an investigation is *not* warranted?

—Dana