Who is Mike Waltz, the national security adviser who added journalist to Signal group chat?
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(WASHINGTON) — President Donald Trump said he is confident in his national security adviser, Mike Waltz — a day after a report detailed how he inadvertently added a journalist to a Signal group chat discussing Yemen war plans.
Trump told NBC News on Tuesday that Waltz “has learned a lesson and is a good man.”
The president brushed off concerns about the group chat on the messaging app, which reportedly included operational details about war plans in Yemen — and mistakenly included The Atlantic editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg, according to a report from Goldberg published Monday.
Trump told NBC News that Goldberg’s presence in the chat had “no impact at all” and called the whole ordeal “the only glitch” his administration has faced since Inauguration Day.
Goldberg said he received a Signal invitation from Waltz, who was a member of the group chat. Goldberg said the group chat also appeared to include Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, among others.
White House National Security Council spokesman Brian Hughes told ABC News on Monday that the group chat “appears to be authentic.”
Trump tapped Waltz, a former Florida congressman, to be his national security adviser in November, calling him “a nationally recognized leader in national security” and an “expert on the threats posed by China, Russia, Iran, and global terrorism.”
Waltz is a China hawk and was the first Green Beret elected to Congress. During the presidential campaign, Waltz proved to be a key surrogate for Trump, criticizing the Biden-Harris foreign policy record.
Elected to the House in 2018, Waltz sat on the Intelligence, Armed Services and Foreign Affairs committees. He also serves on the House China Task Force with 13 other Republicans.
Before running for elected office, Waltz served in various national security policy roles in the George W. Bush administration in the Pentagon and White House. He retired as a colonel after serving 27 years in the Army and the National Guard.
ABC News’ Rachel Scott, Benjamin Siegel, Katherine Faulders and John Santucci contributed to this report.
(WASHINGTON) — Democratic Sen. John Fetterman has accepted President-elect Donald Trump’s invitation to visit him at his Mar-a-Lago club in Florida, the senator said in a statement provided to ABC News.
“President Trump invited me to meet, and I accepted. I’m the Senator for all Pennsylvanians — not just Democrats in Pennsylvania,” Fetterman said in the statement. “I’ve been clear that no one is my gatekeeper. I will meet with an have conversations with anyone if it helps me deliver for Pennsylvania and the nation.”
Fetterman, once branded as a progressive, has increasingly signaled he’s willing to act more independently.
He was one of the first Democrats in the Senate to meet with Pete Hegseth, Trump’s pick to lead the Department of Defense, and he’s expressed willingness to back some of Trump’s other Cabinet nominees.
He also broke away from the progressive wing of his party last year by becoming an outspoken advocate for Israel, at one point traveling there to meet with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
As Senate Majority Leader John Thune has made clear he won’t back changes to the Senate rules requiring 60 votes to pass most legislation, Trump will need Democratic allies in the Senate.
This could mark an early effort by Trump to court Fetterman.
In an interview last month with ABC News’ “This Week” co-anchor Jonathan Karl, Fetterman said he hopes Trump is successful in his second term and that he’s not “rooting against him.”
“If you’re rooting against the president, you are rooting against the nation,” Fetterman said. “So country first. I know that’s become maybe like a cliche, but it happens to be true.”
Fetterman told Karl his Democratic colleagues need to “chill out” over everything Trump does.
“I’ve been warning people, like, ‘You got to chill out,’ you know? Like the constant, you know, freakout, it’s not helpful,” Fetterman said. “Pack a lunch, pace yourself, because he hasn’t even taken office yet.”
Fetterman was elected to the Senate in 2022, beating Trump-backed Dr. Mehmet Oz, who Trump has picked to lead the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
He suffered a stroke during the campaign and was treated for depression the following year.
Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency has sparked concerns within the intelligence community after it posted information about an agency that oversees U.S. intelligence satellites to its newly launched government website.
The DOGE website, updated earlier this week to include information about the federal workforce across agencies, contained details about the headcount and budget for the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), an intelligence agency responsible for designing and maintaining U.S. intelligence satellites, according to a review by ABC News.
Multiple intelligence community sources told ABC News that this likely represents a significant breach.
John Cohen, an ABC News contributor and former acting undersecretary for intelligence and analysis at the Department of Homeland Security, said that anytime any details about U.S. citizens working for one of the intel agencies is released, it puts their safety in jeopardy.
A former CIA official who served on classification review boards called the incident a “significant” breach, “particularly if it involves the budget and personnel of the NRO,” adding that “it could be even more significant if it involves declassifying sensitive information under executive authority.”
Mick Mulroy, an ABC News national security and defense analyst and a former CIA officer, said “I do not know whether classified information has been publicly disclosed but there are several reasons that the size, budget, and of course names of those in the intelligence community should not be publicly disclosed.”
“Our adversaries want to collect as much information as they can to determine what we are doing, how we are doing, the extent of our investment in intelligence collection and of course the identity of those involved so the can be targeted for intelligence purposes,” Mulroy said.
HuffPost was first to report the information on DOGE’s website.
Following the publication of this report, a Trump administration official told ABC News, “DOGE is sharing OPM data from under the Biden administration. The headcount for this agency has been publicly available on OPM’s website. This is the same intelligence community that wrote in a letter that Hunter Biden’s laptop was Russian disinformation. Their lack of credibility is not up for debate.”
The bottom of the DOGE.GOV page states, “Workforce data excludes Military, Postal Service, White House, intelligence agencies, and others.”
(WASHINGTON) — With online access to pornography and other sexually explicit content easier than ever before, the U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday will take a fresh look at government efforts to impose new safeguards for children by requiring adult websites to conduct electronic age verification.
The case, brought by an adult entertainment industry trade group and several content creators, challenges a 2023 Texas law that says sites containing more than one-third of “sexual material harmful to minors” must verify that a user is at least 18 years old or face civil penalties up to $10,000 per day.
The law, HB 1181, mandates that adult sites implement a system to check a user’s digital identification or government-issued ID using a “commercially reasonable method.” They are not allowed to retain personal information, but the law offers no other requirements for data security and privacy.
Content platforms like Pornhub, one of the most popular websites in the world, have chosen to stop operating in Texas rather than comply with the law. They argue it violates the First Amendment and unfairly targets the porn industry since search engines and social media apps are exempt.
The case, Free Speech Coalition v. Paxton, pits a growing nationwide effort to strengthen protections for minors online against long-standing constitutional protections for sexual material that have helped bolster the rise of a booming multi-billion dollar business.
“More people watch porn and view porn each year than vote and read the newspaper,” said Lisa Blatt, a veteran Supreme Court litigator with Williams & Connolly LLP. A 2016 study in the Journal of Sexual Medicine found that up to 70% of men and 40% of women have consumed pornography within the past year in the U.S.
American teenagers have reported similar levels of exposure to pornography in a number of studies conducted over the past three years. Public health experts say young people who view sexually explicit content are more likely to start having sex earlier, engage in unsafe sex, and have multiple partners.
Texas is among nineteen states that have recently enacted age-verification requirements for adult content online, according to the Age Verification Providers Association.
The state has said that online age verification should be no more controversial or unconstitutional than the common practice of verifying a customer’s age before the purchase of an adult magazine at a newsstand or purchasing liquor at a bar.
Supreme Court precedent has set a high bar for laws that infringe on individual free speech rights even if they are meant to advance another compelling public interest, such as protecting kids.
Twenty years ago in a remarkably similar case — Ashcroft v. ACLU — the court struck down federal legislation that would have required age verification to view sexually explicit material. The decision instead put the onus on parents and technology companies to utilize less burdensome content-filtering software.
Supporters of the Texas law say those tools have proven ineffective and that evolving technology has changed the constitutional calculus for whether asking porn producers to act as gatekeepers violates the First Amendment.
“It’s time to think again about what is a mechanism that can achieve a legitimate objective of states protecting children from what is increasingly violent and misogynistic pornography online,” said Iain Corby, executive director of the Age Verification Providers Association, an international trade group made up of technology companies. “It’s possible to prove your age entirely on your own cell phone, so no personal data need ever leave the palm of your hand.”
An rapidly evolving industry of third-party age verification services and apps, Corby said, has made the process quick, secure, and free — a far cry from more cumbersome options of two decades ago.
“Because no one disputes that Texas can prevent kids from accessing hardcore pornography, this case is about means, not ends,” the state told the Court in its legal briefing. “And the means Texas has chosen is appropriate.”
Civil liberties groups argue that the constitutionality question remains clear cut.
“The government cannot make it illegal to publish certain sexual content online without verifying the age of users first, and yet that’s exactly what states are now doing,” said Vera Eidelman, an ACLU attorney who focuses on free speech litigation.
Eidelman argues that the Texas law robs adults who want to legally view sexually-explicit material the right to anonymity, and potentially puts their private information at risk of abuse.
“It’s really different to show your ID in person than it is to have to offer up personal identifying information online, creating potential targets for data breaches, hackers potentially creating much more of a record of what you are looking at,” Eidelman said.
She also claims that the Texas law could ensnare a much wider range of websites than those selling pornography, such as those hosting sexual health education resources or R-rated content.
“Young people certainly deserve our protection, but whenever the government is passing a law in the name of protecting kids, I think there are serious questions to be asked about whether what it’s really doing is saying the [content] is bad for everyone,” said Eidelman. “That’s exactly what the First Amendment exists to protect against.”
The court is expected to deliver a decision in the case by the end of June.
