Trump authorizes ICE to target schools and churches
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(WASHINGTON) — Federal immigration authorities will be permitted to target schools and churches after President Donald Trump revoked a directive barring arrests in “sensitive” areas.
The Department of Homeland Security announced Tuesday it would roll back the policy to “thwart law enforcement in or near so-called sensitive areas.”
First enacted in 2011, the directive prohibited Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Patrol officers from arresting suspected undocumented immigrants in a variety of locations.
Schools and houses of worship were deemed off-limits, as were hospitals, funerals, weddings and public demonstrations.
In a statement touting the move Tuesday, a spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security said law enforcement would use “common sense” in making arrests.
“This action empowers the brave men and women in CBP and ICE to enforce our immigration laws and catch criminal aliens — including murders and rapists — who have illegally come into our country,” the spokesperson said.
“Criminals will no longer be able to hide in America’s schools and churches to avoid arrest,” the statement continued. “The Trump Administration will not tie the hands of our brave law enforcement, and instead trusts them to use common sense.”
National Security Advisor Mike Waltz and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth/ Andrew Harnik/Getty Images
(WASHINGTON) — The Trump administration is under scrutiny after The Atlantic editor Jeffrey Goldberg said he was inadvertently added to a Signal group chat that included top national security officials, including Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, in which the officials discussed plans for a U.S. attack on Houthis in Yemen.
Goldberg revealed the mishap in a piece for the magazine on Monday and told ABC News that he was apparently added to the chat by National Security Adviser Mike Waltz.
Goldberg provided two screenshots in the magazine piece and did not provide details or quotes, only a description of the operational part of the Signal message chain.
Both the Trump administration and top officials involved have repeatedly denied that war plans or classified information were discussed, as Goldberg reported.
Below is a timeline spanning from the creation of the group chat to what has happened since.
March 11
In an interview with “ABC News Live” Monday evening, Goldberg told Linsey Davis he received a message request on the Signal app from White House national security adviser Mike Waltz, or someone “who’s purporting to be Mike Waltz” on March 11.
He said the invitation was “not an unusual thing in Washington.”
“I’m a journalist, I’ve met him in the past, so I accept it,” he told ABC News.
Goldberg said he accepted the request, with nothing occurring until several days later, when he was added to a “group of seemingly very high national security officials of the United States” including Vice President JD Vance, with Waltz apparently creating this chat.
“Mike Waltz puts this group together and says it’s a planning group for essentially upcoming action in Yemen,” Goldberg said.
Goldberg told ABC News he initially thought it was a hoax since it would be “completely absurd to me that the national security leadership of the United States would be meeting on a messaging app to discuss forthcoming military action, and that then they would also invite the editor of The Atlantic magazine to that conversation.”
March 14
Goldberg told ABC News a “long conversation” occurred between the group chat members on March 14, discussing “whether or not they should or shouldn’t take action in Yemen.”
The messages went back and forth with “a lot of resentment directed at European allies of the United States, which obviously enhanced the credibility of this chain,” Goldberg said.
He told ABC News at this point the members of the chat sounded like people he knew within the administration, but still was not sure whether or not it was a hoax.
March 15
Goldberg told ABC News he continued to track the incoming messages from the group chat, to see “who was trying to entrap me or trick me.” Then on March 15, he said it became “overwhelmingly clear” it was a legitimate group chat, he told ABC News.
At 11:44 a.m., he said he received a text in the chain from someone claiming to be Hegseth, or “somebody identified as Pete,” providing what Goldberg characterized as a war plan. The message included a “sequencing of events related to an upcoming attack on Yemen” and promised results by 1:45 p.m. Eastern time.
Goldberg told ABC News he was in his car and waiting with his phone to “see if this was a real thing.”
“Sure enough, around 1:50 [p.m.] Eastern time, I see that Yemen is under attack,” he said.
When the attacks seemed to be “going well,” Goldberg told ABC News that members of the chat began sending congratulatory messages along with fist, fire and American flag emojis.
“That was the day I realized this is possibly unbelievably the leaders of the United States discussing this on my messaging app,” Goldberg told ABC News. “My reaction was, I think I’ve discovered a massive security breach in the United States national security system.”
Goldberg told ABC News he removed himself from the group chat once the operation was completed.
“I watched this Yemen operation go from beginning to apparent end, and that was enough for me to learn that there’s something wrong in the system here that would allow this information to come so dangerously close to the open wild,” Goldberg said.
March 16
Waltz appeared on ABC’s “This Week” the day after the strikes on Yemen and said the U.S. airstrikes “took out” multiple leaders of the Iranian-backed Houthis, which he said differed from the Biden administration’s launches against the group.
“These were not kind of pinprick, back and forth — what ultimately proved to be feckless attacks,” Waltz said. “This was an overwhelming response that actually targeted Houthi leaders and took them out. And the difference here is, one, going after the Houthi leadership, and two, holding Iran responsible.”
March 24
Goldberg published a story in The Atlantic revealing the mishap, in a piece titled “The Trump Administration Accidentally Texted Me Its War Plans.”
Shortly after the story’s publication on Monday afternoon, White House National Security Council spokesman Brian Hughes shared with ABC News the statement he provided to The Atlantic confirming the authenticity of the Signal group chat.
“At this time, the message thread that was reported appears to be authentic, and we are reviewing how an inadvertent number was added to the chain. The thread is a demonstration of the deep and thoughtful policy coordination between senior officials. The ongoing success of the Houthi operation demonstrates that there were no threats to our servicemembers or our national security,” Hughes said in a statement.
Speaking to reporters Monday, Hegseth denied he sent war plans in the chat.
“I’ve heard how it was characterized. Nobody was texting war plans, and that’s all I have to say about that,” Hegseth told reporters in Honolulu while on a layover on his trip to Asia.
Hegseth called Goldberg a “deceitful and highly discredited, so-called journalist who’s made a profession of peddling hoaxes time and time again.”
“This is the guy that pedals in garbage. This is what he does,” Hegseth said about Goldberg.
During an event at the White House on Monday, President Donald Trump was asked about Goldberg’s article. “I don’t know anything about it. I’m not a big fan of The Atlantic,” he said.
Top Democrats including House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries voiced outrage at the administration after this mishap.
“It is yet another unprecedented example that our nation is increasingly more dangerous because of the elevation of reckless and mediocre individuals, including the Secretary of Defense,” Jeffries said in a statement on Monday.
Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who faced scrutiny over her alleged use of a private email server while at the State Department, shared her reaction to the Signal group chat on X: “You have got to be kidding me.”
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer also criticized this apparent breach of military intelligence, urging Senate Republicans to work with Democrats in a “full investigation” to look into how this incident occurred.
“If you were up in arms over unsecure emails years ago, you should certainly be outraged by this amateurish behavior,” Schumer said on the Senate floor, referencing the scandal over Clinton’s emails.
March 25
On Tuesday morning, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said Goldberg is “well-known for his sensationalist spin” and emphasized that “no ‘war plans’ were discussed.”
“As the National Security Council stated, the White House is looking into how Goldberg’s number was inadvertently added to the thread. Thanks to the strong and decisive leadership of President Trump, and everyone in the group, the Houthi strikes were successful and effective. Terrorists were killed and that’s what matters most to President Trump,” Leavitt shared on X.
Trump told NBC News he remains confident in Waltz even after the use of an unsecured group chat.
“Michael Waltz has learned a lesson, and he’s a good man,” Trump told NBC correspondent Garrett Haake.
Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and CIA Director John Ratcliffe were grilled by Democratic Sen. Mark Warner on Tuesday regarding the mishap. Both officials said while testifying before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence there was no classified information on the chain.
Ratcliffe said he believed the “national security adviser intended this to be as it should have been, a mechanism for coordinating between senior level officials, but not a substitute for using high side or classified communications for anything that would be classified.”
Speaker Mike Johnson continued to downplay the mishap but admitted the breach was a “serious” mistake on Tuesday.
“Look, they have acknowledged that there is an error, and they are correcting it. And I would’ve asked the same thing of the Biden administration,” Johnson said during a news conference Tuesday morning.
During a White House meeting with ambassadors on Tuesday afternoon, Trump said this incident is “just something that can happen” and that there was “no classified information” in the group chat.
He added that Signal is “not a perfect technology.”
“Sometimes somebody can get onto those things,” Trump said. “That’s one of the prices you pay when you’re not sitting in the Situation Room with no phones on, which is always the best, frankly.”
Waltz said the White House’s tech and legal teams are looking into the mishap.
“No one in your national security team would ever put anyone in danger,” Waltz said.
He also claimed to have never met Goldberg.
“We are looking into him, reviewing how the heck he got into this room,” Waltz said.
A spokesperson for The Atlantic released a statement on Tuesday night following the comments from Trump and his aides.
“Attempts to disparage and discredit The Atlantic, our editor and our reporting follow an obvious playbook by elected officials and other in power who are hostile to journalists and the First Amendment rights of all Americans,” the magazine said.
The statement went on to say that “any responsible national security expert would consider the information contained in this Signal chat to be of the greatest sensitivity, and would agree that this information should never be shared on non-government messaging apps.”
March 26
Schumer and other top Senate Democrats on national security committees wrote a letter to Trump seeking more information about the mishap, requesting a “complete and unredacted” transcript of the Signal group chat for the appropriate committees to review in a secure setting.
“We write to you with extreme alarm about the astonishingly poor judgment shown by your Cabinet and national security advisors,” the Senators wrote, according to a copy of the letter obtained by ABC News. “You have long advocated for accountability and transparency in the government, particularly as it relates to the handling of classified information, national security and the safety of American servicemembers. As such, it is imperative that you address this breach with the seriousness and diligence that it demands.”
The Atlantic on Wednesday published a new article detailing purported information about recent American strikes in Yemen it says was accidentally shared in the Signal group chat.
Shortly after the article was published, Leavitt said in a post on X “these were NOT ‘war plans.'”
“This entire story was another hoax written by a Trump-hater who is well-known for his sensationalist spin,” Leavitt said.
ABC News’ Fritz Farrow, Anne Flaherty, Luis Martinez, Isabella Murray, Allison Pecorin, Lauren Peller, Michelle Stoddart, Selina Wang and Kelsey Walsh contributed to this report.
(WASHINGTON) — A federal judge appears poised to block the Trump administration if the Department of Defense attempts to place limitations on or ban transgender service members.
U.S. District Judge Ana Reyes is still hearing arguments Tuesday in the case but signaled deep skepticism with the claim that transgender service members lessen the military’s lethality or readiness.
“You and I both agree that the greatest fighting force that world history has ever seen is not going to be impacted in any way by less than 1% of the soldiers using a different pronoun than others might want to call them. Would you agree with that?” Judge Reyes asked during a hearing this morning.
“No, Your Honor, I’m not. I can’t agree with that,” a lawyer for the Department of Justice responded.
At issue is Trump’s Jan. 27 executive order that directed the DOD to update its guidance “regarding trans-identifying medical standards for military service and to rescind guidance inconsistent with military readiness.” While the Department of Defense has not issued final guidance on transgender service members, the order led to a pause in gender affirming care for service members and is expected to lead to a significant curtailment of transgender service members based on “readiness and lethality.”
With the DOD policy expected to be finalized over the coming week, Reyes said she would hold off on issuing an order but had largely made up her mind about the legality of the order, at one point remarking that “smarter people on the D.C. Circuit would have to tell me I’m wrong” about the policy. She added that the central premise of the executive order — that only two genders exist — is “not biologically correct.”
Reyes also raised concerns about the wording of the executive order, which she criticized for being intentionally imprecise and a pretext for a ban on transgender soldiers.
“If we had President Trump here right now, and I said to him, ‘Is this a transgender ban?’ What do you think he would say?” Reyes asked.
“I have no idea, Your Honor,” said DOJ attorney Jason Lynch.
“I do. He would say, ‘Of course it is.’ Because he calls it a transgender ban, because all the language in it is indicative,” Reyes said.
The judge — who began the hearing by noting that every service member regardless of their gender ideology “deserves our gratitude” — also spent a portion of the hearing questioning Lynch about the group of transgender soldiers who filed the lawsuit.
“If you were in a foxhole, you wouldn’t care about these individuals’ gender ideology, right? You would just be happy that someone with that experience and that bravery and that honorable service to the country was sitting right next to you. Right?” Reyes asked.
“Don’t want to testify as a witness, Your Honor, or offer my personal views of hypothetical,” Lynch responded before conceding, “If I were in a foxhole, I doubt that the gender identity would be a primary concern.”
Reyes also pushed the lawyer for the Department of Justice — who she later commended for arguing his case well — to admit that the transgender soldiers made the country “safer.”
“Are they honorable, truthful, and disciplined?” Reyes asked. “As far as I know, among them, they have over 60 years of military service.”
“That’s correct,” Lynch said.
“And you would agree that together, the plaintiffs have made America safer?” Reyes asked.
(WASHINGTON) — Less than an hour after President Donald Trump finished his joint address to Congress on Tuesday, lawyers cited his words as evidence in a lawsuit challenging Elon Musk’s role in the administration’s drastic cuts to federal spending, workers and services.
Lawyers representing a group of nonprofits and unions that are challenging the legality of the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, included an excerpt from the speech in their filing Tuesday with the U.S. District Court for Washington, D.C., to argue that more information is “urgently needed to ascertain the nature” of the budget-slashing group.
The White House has represented that DOGE is run by acting administrator Amy Gleason, rather than by Musk. However, during his address before a joint session of Congress Tuesday, Trump clearly identified Musk as the person running DOGE, seemingly contradicting his own administration.
“To further combat inflation, we will not only be reducing the cost of energy, but will be ending the flagrant waste of taxpayer dollars. And to that end, I have created the brand new Department of Government Efficiency, DOGE. Perhaps you’ve heard of it. Perhaps. Which is headed by Elon Musk, who is in the gallery tonight,” Trump said during his address, with Musk himself present and watching the speech.
Musk was seen accepting the praise and thanking the president.
The Tuesday-night filing was submitted in a case challenging the legality of DOGE by arguing it had not complied with the terms of the Federal Advisory Committee Act, which governs how the government runs advisory commissions.
As DOGE’s influence grows throughout the federal government, its exact nature and its relationship with Musk remains vague. The Trump administration insists that Musk is merely a senior advisor to the president and that DOGE should be exempt from the Freedom of Information Act.
In a separate filing Wednesday morning, the plaintiffs’ attorneys asked a federal judge to fast-track their case this week by expediting discovery – the process by which the parties in a legal matter exchange evidence.
“The factual background of this case is in a constant state of flux, all due to the Government’s inconsistent positions regarding the nature of the work Elon Musk performs,” they wrote in the filing.
Lawyers representing DOGE oppose the request to fast-track the case, according to the plaintiff’s attorneys.
While Trump’s remarks during his address before Congress on Tuesday are unlikely to dramatically change the trajectory of the court case, the filing demonstrates the growing and complicated entanglement between the president’s claims, the arguments made by Department of Justice lawyers in court, and the nearly one hundred lawsuits challenging the Trump administration.
