Trump ‘stands strongly behind’ Hegseth, says White House
Donald Trump “stands strongly behind” defense secretary Pete Hegseth, the White House has said, after a Sunday report alleging that he shared sensitive information about planned strikes in Yemen in a private Signal group chat that included his wife and brother.
The White House’s press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters on Monday:
The president absolutely has confidence in secretary Hegseth. I spoke to him about it this morning, and he stands strongly behind him.
Leavitt, speaking to Fox News this morning, said Hegseth is doing a “phenomenal job”, adding:
This is what happens when the entire Pentagon is working against you and working against the monumental change that you are trying to implement.
Key events
Donald Trump posted to Truth Social this morning following the news that Pope Francis died on Friday morning.
Trump wrote:
Rest in Peace Pope Francis! May God Bless him and all who loved him!
Among the last people to see and speak to the pontiff in the hours before his death early on Monday morning was JD Vance.
The pair met on Sunday morning at the Domus Santa Marta guest house where, according to the Vatican, the two men spoke for a few minutes to exchange Easter greetings.
Defense secretary Pete Hegseth suggested that disgruntled former employees who were recently fired were responsible for leaking the information about his use of Signal group chats.
“This is what the media does,” Hegseth said on Monday.
They take anonymous sources, disgruntled former employees and they try to slash and burn people and ruin their reputations.
Hegseth says he and Trump are ‘on the same page all the way’
Defense secretary Pete Hegseth said he has spoken with Donald Trump after reports that he shared sensitive information about a March attack on Yemen in a private Signal group that included his wife and brother.
Hegseth spoke as he arrived at the White House for the annual Easter egg hunt:
I have spoken with the president and we are going to continue fighting. On the same page all the way.
Trump ‘stands strongly behind’ Hegseth, says White House
Donald Trump “stands strongly behind” defense secretary Pete Hegseth, the White House has said, after a Sunday report alleging that he shared sensitive information about planned strikes in Yemen in a private Signal group chat that included his wife and brother.
The White House’s press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters on Monday:
The president absolutely has confidence in secretary Hegseth. I spoke to him about it this morning, and he stands strongly behind him.
Leavitt, speaking to Fox News this morning, said Hegseth is doing a “phenomenal job”, adding:
This is what happens when the entire Pentagon is working against you and working against the monumental change that you are trying to implement.
Top Hegseth aide says Pentagon in ‘total chaos’, warns ‘bigger bombshells’ to come
The Pentagon’s former chief spokesperson, John Ullyot, has written an opinion article detailing a “month of total chaos” at the department of defense and suggesting that the defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, is unlikely to remain in his role.
In the piece published in Politico on Sunday, Ullyot warns that “even bigger bombshell stories” will probably come this week, following the New York Times report that Hegseth shared details about a Houthi strike in another Signal chat that included his wife and brother. He wrote:
It’s been a month of total chaos at the Pentagon. From leaks of sensitive operational plans to mass firings, the dysfunction is now a major distraction for the president – who deserves better from his senior leadership.
Ullyot described the department as being “in disarray under Hegseth’s leadership” and noted the firings of several top Pentagon officials in the last several days.
President Donald Trump has a strong record of holding his officials to account. Given that, it’s hard to see Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth remaining in his position for much longer.
Defense secretary Pete Hegseth did not address the latest report that he shared detailed plans about a military operation against the Houthis in a second Signal group chat.
Instead, Hegseth replied late on Sunday to a post on X from the Democratic party which said it was time for the defense secretary to go.
In response, Hegseth wrote:
Your agenda is illegals, trans & DEI – all of which are no longer allowed [at the department of defense].
Pentagon spokesperson says ‘we will never back down’ over reports of second Signal group war chat
The Pentagon’s chief spokesperson Sean Parnell issued a statement last night following the New York Times report that defense secretary Pete Hegseth shared detailed information about a March attack on Houthis that included his wife, brother and personal lawyer.
“Another day, another old story – back from the dead,” Parnell said in a post on X.
The Trump-hating media continues to be obsessed with destroying anyone committed to President Trump’s agenda. This time, the New York Times — and all other Fake News that repeat their garbage — are enthusiastically taking the grievances of disgruntled former employees as the sole sources for their article.
He went on:
There was no classified information in any Signal chat, no matter how many ways they try to write the story. What is true is that the Office of the Secretary of Defense is continuing to become stronger and more efficient in executing President Trump’s agenda.
We’ve already achieved so much for the American warfighter, and will never back down.
Richard Luscombe
Fears of a new wave of deportations and student visa cancellations are rising at a number of Florida’s most diverse universities after administrators signed agreements recasting campus police as federal immigration agents.
Miami’s Florida International University (FIU) is one of at least 11 state colleges to enroll in the top tier of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) 287(g) program that trains local police departments for “limited” involvement in immigration operations.
The partnerships give campus officers broad new powers to stop, question and detain students about their immigration status, and share information directly with Ice, which students and faculty members believe could escalate the Trump administration’s assault on those studying in the US from abroad.
Nationally, more than 1,400 international students and recent graduates perceived by the government to be pro-Palestinian have had their F-1 or J-1 visas canceled by the homeland security department, according to a tally by Inside Higher Ed, with the Miami New Times reporting dozens in Florida.
Public figures across the world have paid tribute to Pope Francis after his death, including US vice-president JD Vance who met the “obviously very ill” pontiff on Sunday.
Vance met Pope Francis in Rome on Easter Sunday, just hours before the pontiff’s death aged 88.
Months after Francis criticised president Donald Trump’s administration over their plans to deport migrants en masse, Pope Francis offered Vance three chocolate Easter eggs for his three young children in Sunday’s brief meeting.
“I just learned of the passing of Pope Francis,” Vance posted to X.
“My heart goes out to the millions of Christians all over the world who loved him.
“I was happy to see him yesterday, though he was obviously very ill.”
The US supreme court is set on Monday to consider the legality of a provision of the Obamacare law, formally called the Affordable Care Act, that helps ensure that health insurers cover preventive medical care such as cancer screenings at no cost to patients, Reuters reported.
The federal government has appealed a lower court’s determination that the US preventive services taskforce, which under Obamacare has a major hand in choosing what services will be covered, is composed of members who were not validly appointed.
Its 16 members are appointed by the US secretary of health and human services without Senate confirmation. Several Texas Christians and two small businesses sued in federal court in Texas in 2020 to challenge the taskforce’s structure.
It is the latest in a years-long series of challenges to the 2010 law, Democratic former president Barack Obama’s signature legislative achievement, to reach the supreme court.
If the justices uphold the lower court’s ruling, health associations said in a filing, life-saving tests and treatments that have been cost-free would become subject to co-pays and deductibles, deterring many Americans from obtaining them.
The case centers on whether the preventive services taskforce wields power to such an extent that its members must be appointed by the president and confirmed by the US Senate, as required by the US constitution’s Appointments Clause, rather than the current arrangement.
Nina Lakhani
Hundreds of marches, pickets and cleanup events are taking place across the US in the run-up to Earth Day on Tuesday, as environmental and climate groups step up resistance to the Trump administration’s authoritarianism and its “war on the planet”.
A fortnight after the “Hands Off” mobilization brought millions to the streets, national and grassroots organizers are teaming up with pro-democracy groups for “All Out on Earth Day” – a wave of actions to demand the right to live free, healthy lives.
In New York, thousands of people gathered in lower Manhattan on Saturday for the “Hands Off Migrants march” endorsed by dozens of climate and migrant justice groups, calling for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) to get out of New York – and New York to get out of fossil fuels. The two movements converged amid Trump’s crackdown on migrants and embrace of fossil fuels – which will drive further climate collapse and forced migration.
Meanwhile in Milwaukee, a Stop the Cuts march organized by Indivisible and 50501 called out Republican lawmakers backing the unprecedented cuts to healthcare, education, environmental protections and climate funding.
Norway’s prime minister Jonas Gahr Stoere and finance minister Jens Stoltenberg will meet with US president Donald Trump in Washington on Thursday, the prime minister’s office said.
The meeting at the White House will, among other things, cover the security policy situation, Nato and the war in Ukraine as well as trade and business topics, the statement on Monday said.
“Norway and the US cooperate in a number of areas, and the US is an important trading partner for Norway. I look forward to talking about areas where we can cooperate even more closely in the future,” Stoere said.
Pete Hegseth shared Yemen attack details in second Signal chat – report
Hello and welcome to the US politics live blog. I’m Tom Ambrose and I’ll be bringing you the latest news lines over the next few hours.
We start with news that defense secretary Pete Hegseth sent detailed information about military strikes on Yemen in March to a private Signal group chat that he created himself and included his wife, his brother and about a dozen other people, the New York Times reported.
The Guardian has independently confirmed the existence of Hegseth’s own private group chat.
According to unnamed sources familiar with the chat who spoke to the Times, Hegseth sent the private group of his personal associates some of the same information, including the flight schedules for the F/A-18 Hornets that would strike Houthi rebel targets in Yemen, that he also shared with another Signal group of top officials that was created by Mike Waltz, the national security adviser.
The existence of the Signal group chat created by Waltz, in which detailed attack plans were divulged by Hegseth to other Trump administration officials on the private messaging app, was made public last month by Jeffrey Goldberg of the Atlantic, who had been accidentally added to the group by Waltz.
The fact that Hegseth also shared the plans in a second Signal group chat, according to “people familiar with the matter” who spoke to the Times, is likely to add to growing criticism of the former Fox weekend anchor’s ability to manage the Pentagon, a massive organization which operates in matters of life and death around the globe.
According to the Times, the private chat also included two senior advisers to Hegseth – Dan Caldwell and Darin Selnick – who were fired last week after being accused of leaking unauthorized information.
See our full report here:
In other news:
Immigration officials detained a US citizen for nearly 10 days in Arizona, according to court records and press reports. Jose Hermosillo, a 19-year-old New Mexico resident visiting Arizona, was detained by border patrol agents in Nogales, a city along the Mexico border about an hour south of Tucson. Hermosillo’s wrongful arrest and prolonged detention comes amid escalating attacks by the Trump administration on immigrants in the US.
Senator Chris Van Hollen, who travelled to El Salvador last week to meet Kilmar Ábrego García, the man at the center of a wrongful deportation dispute, said on Sunday that his trip was to support Ábrego García’s right to due process because if that was denied then everyone’s constitutional rights were threatened in the US. The White House has claimed Ábrego García was a member of the MS-13 gang though he has not been charged with any gang related crimes and the supreme court has ordered his return to the US be facilitated.
Minnesota senator Amy Klobuchar warned on Sunday that the US is “getting closer and closer to a constitutional crisis”, but the courts, growing Republican disquiet at Trump administration policies, and public protest were holding it off. “I believe as long as these courts hold, and the constituents hold, and the congress starts standing up, our democracy will hold,” Klobuchar told CNN’s State of the Union, adding “but Donald Trump is trying to pull us down into the sewer of a crisis.”
Massachusetts governor Maura Healey said on Sunday that Donald Trump’s attacks on Harvard University and other schools are having detrimental ripple effects, with the shutdown of research labs and cuts to hospitals linked to colleges. During an interview on CBS’s Face the Nation, the Democratic governor said that the effects on Harvard are damaging “American competitiveness”, since a number of researchers are leaving the US for opportunities in other countries. After decades of investment in science and innovation, she said: “intellectual assets are being given away.”
A draft Trump administration executive order reported to be circulating among US diplomats proposes a radical restructuring of the US state department, including drastic reductions to sub-Saharan operations, envoys and bureaus relating to climate, refugees, human rights, democracy and gender equality. The changes, if enacted, would be one of the biggest reorganizations of the department since its founding in 1789, according to Bloomberg, which had seen a copy of the 16-page draft.
