Nearly 42,000 UK asylum seekers waiting on appeal 3 hours ago Share Save Mark Easton BBC News please log in to view this image Getty Images Migrants depart by boat from France to cross the Channel to the UK on 17 January 2025. Almost 42,000 asylum seekers are waiting for an appeal hearing after the Home Office rejected their initial claims, according to analysis of official figures. The Refugee Council said the number is a five-fold increase in two years and the government risks simply moving the asylum crisis from one part of the system to another, with almost 40,000 migrants still housed in hotels. The Home Office said it had doubled the number of asylum seekers receiving an initial decision on their claim and allocated funding for more sitting court days. A spokesperson said the government remains determined to end the use of asylum hotels over time and cut the "unacceptably high" costs of accommodation. Advertisement The Refugee Council said more asylum seekers' claims are being refused due to legislation introduced by the previous Conservative government, which made it harder to prove genuine refugee status. After the government enacted the Nationality and Borders Act, only four in 10 Afghans were given permission to stay in the second half of last year. Previously, almost all Afghans asking for sanctuary were granted asylum. Many of those rejected are thought likely to be appealing the decision. Currently, Afghans make up the highest nationality accommodated in hotels and those arriving by small boats in the last two years. The chief executive of the Refugee Council, Enver Solomon, has called for better and fairer decision making. "Right first-time decision making will ensure refugees are given safety to go on to contribute to communities across the country and those who don't have a right to stay in the UK are removed with dignity and respect," he said. The charity points out that those in the appeals backlog still require accommodation and warns that, without improvements, the potential cost of hotels could be £1.5bn this year. A government spokesperson said: "The asylum system we inherited was not fit for purpose, which is why we are taking urgent action to restart asylum processing and clear the backlog of cases, which will save the taxpayer an estimated £4 billion over the next two years." It is allocating funding for "thousands more sitting days in the Immigration and Asylum Chamber to streamline asylum claims and improve productivity," the statement added. Statistics from the Ministry of Justice show that at the end of 2024 there were 41,987 asylum appeals in the court's backlog, up from 7,173 at the start of 2023. The Refugee Council's analysis suggests the total number of asylum application appeals lodged last year was a 71% increase on 2023.
Russia's next move? The countries trying to Putin-proof themselves 3 hours ago Share Save please log in to view this image Katya Adler Europe editor•@BBCkatyaadler please log in to view this image BBC "I joined the air force 35 years ago, aged 18, and went straight to Germany, based on a Tornado aircraft," says British Air Commodore Andy Turk, who is now deputy commander of the Nato Airborne Early Warning & Control Force (AWACS). "It was towards the end of the Cold War and we had a nuclear role back then." "After the War, we hoped for a peace dividend, to move on geopolitically, but clearly that's not something Russia wants to do. And now my eldest son is banging on the door to join the air force, wanting to make a difference too... It does feel a little circular." We are chatting at around 30,000 feet above the Baltic Sea, on a Nato surveillance plane equipped with a giant, shiny, mushroom-resembling radar, enabling crew members to scan the region for hundreds of miles around, looking for suspicious Russian activity. Air policing missions like this - and Nato membership more broadly - have long made tiny Baltic nations of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia (which neighbour Russia) feel safe. But US President Donald Trump is changing that, thanks to his affinity with Vladimir Putin, which has been evident since his first term in office. British Air Commodore, Andy Turk on the situation: 'It does feel a little circular' Trump has also been very clear with Europe that, for the first time since World War Two, the continent can no longer take US military support for granted. That leaves the Baltics nervously biting their nails. They spent 40 years swallowed up by the Soviet Union until it broke apart at the end of the Cold War. They are now members of both the EU and Nato, but Putin still openly believes the Baltics belong back in Russia's sphere of influence. And if the Russian president is victorious in Ukraine, might he then turn his attention towards them - particularly if he senses that Trump might not feel moved to intervene on their behalf? 'Russia's economy is being retooled' Ian Bond, deputy director of the Centre for European Reform, thinks that if a long-term ceasefire is eventually agreed in Ukraine, Putin would be unlikely to stop there. "Nobody in their right mind wants to think that a European war is around the corner again. But the reality is an increasing number of European intelligence officials have been telling us that… "Whether this is coming in three years or five years or ten years, what they are saying is the idea that peace in Europe is going to last forever is now a thing of the past." Getty Images Nato Secretary-General Mark Rutte has welcomed Donald Trump's call for other Nato countries to increase their defence spending Advertisement Russia's economy is currently on a war footing. Roughly 40% of its federal budget is being spent on defence and internal security. More and more of the economy is being devoted to producing materials for war. "We can see what the Russian economy is being retooled to do," observes Mr Bond, "and it ain't peace." 'Tricks and tactics' at the Estonia border When you travel to windswept Narva, in northern Estonia, you see why the country feels so exposed. Russia borders Estonia, all the way from north to south. Narva is separated from Russia by a river with the same name. A medieval looking fortress straddles each bank – one flying the Russian flag and the other, the Estonian. In between them is a bridge – one of Europe's last pedestrian crossings still open to Russia. "We are used to their tricks and their tactics," Estonian Border Police Chief Egert Belitsev told me. Advertisement This medieval looking fortress straddles the Estonian side of the Narva River "The Russian threat is nothing new for us." Right now, he says, "there are constant provocations and tensions" on the border. The border police have recorded thermal imaging of buoys in the Narva River that demarcate the border between the two countries being removed by Russian guards under the cover of darkness. "We use aerial devices – drones, helicopters, and aircraft, all of which use a GPS signal – and there is constant GPS jamming going on. So Russia is having huge consequences on how we are able to carry out our tasks." Advertisement please log in to view this image According to Estonian Border Force Director Egert Belitsev, there are often provocations on the border Later on, keeping to the Estonian side, I walked along the snow-covered bridge crossing towards the Russian side and watched the Russian border guard watching me, watching him. We were just meters away from each other. Last year, Estonia furnished the bridge with dragon's teeth – pyramidal anti-tank obstacles of reinforced concrete. I've not heard anyone suggest Russia would send tonnes of tanks over. It doesn't need to. Even a few troops could cause great instability. Some 96% of people in Narva are mother-tongue Russian speakers. Many have dual citizenship. Estonia worries a confident Vladimir Putin might use the big ethnic Russian community in and around Narva as an excuse to invade. It's a playbook he's used before in Georgia as well as Ukraine. In a dramatic indication of the growing anxiety, Estonia, alongside Lithuania and Poland, jointly announced this week that they're asking their respective parliaments to approve a withdrawal from the international anti-personnel mines' treaty which prohibits the use of those mines, signed by 160 countries worldwide. This was to allow them "greater flexibility" in defending their borders, they said. Lithuania had already withdrawn from an international convention banning cluster bombs earlier this month. Advertisement Are non-Nato nations at greater risk? Camille Grand, former Assistant Secretary General for Defence Investment at Nato, thinks that post-Ukraine, Putin would be more likely to target a non-Nato country (such as Moldova) rather than provoke a Nato nation – because of the lower risk of international backlash. Estonia and the other Baltic nations were traditionally more vulnerable than the rest of Nato, as they were geographically isolated from the alliance's members in western Europe, according to Mr Grand. But that has been largely resolved now, since Sweden and Finland joined Nato, following Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine. "The Baltic Sea has become the Nato Sea," he notes. Dr Marion Messmer, a senior research fellow on the International Security Programme at Chatham House, thinks the most likely trigger for a war with Russia would be miscalculation, rather than design. please log in to view this image Kremlin Press Office handout via Getty Images Vladimir Putin may be considering how Nato countries will react in the event of a provocation in the Baltics Advertisement If peace is agreed in Ukraine, Dr Messmer predicts that Russia will probably continue with misinformation campaigns and cyber warfare in Europe, as well as sabotage and espionage in the Baltic Sea. "I think they are likely to continue with any kind of destabilising activity, even if we are to see a peace that's positive for Ukraine." Dr Messmer continues: "One of the risks I see is that essentially an accident could happen in the Baltic Sea that's completely inadvertent, but that's essentially a result of either Russian grey zone activity or Russian brinkmanship where they thought they had control of a situation and it turns out they didn't. That then turns into a confrontation between a Nato member state and Russia that could spiral into something else." But Mr Grand was keen not to totally downplay the risk of Putin targeting the Baltics. How together is Nato? Presumably, the Russian president would first mull how likely Nato allies would be to retaliate. Would the US, or even France, Italy or the UK, risk going to war with nuclear power Russia over Narva, a small part of tiny Estonia, on the eastern fringe of Nato? And suppose we were to see a repeat of what happened in the Donbas in eastern Ukraine in 2014 when Russian paramilitaries engaged in fighting did not identify as Russian soldiers? This allows Putin plausible deniability - and in those circumstances, would Nato wade-in to help Estonia? If they didn't, the advantages for Putin might be tempting. The unity principle of the western military alliance he loathes would be undermined. He'd also destabilise the wider Baltics, probably socially, politically, and economically, as a Russian incursion – however limited – would likely put off foreign investors viewing this as a stable region. Another concern that has been discussed in Estonia is that Donald Trump could end up pulling out, or significantly reducing, the number of troops and military capabilities the US has long stationed in Europe. Advertisement In the Estonian capital Tallinn, government ministers agree with Donald Trump's assertion that Europe has to take more responsibility for Europe Estonian Defence Minister Hanno Pevkur put a brave face on things when I met him in the capital Tallinn: "Regarding (US) presence, we don't know what the decision of the American administration is. "They have said very clearly they will focus more on the Pacific and they've said clearly Europe has to take more responsibility for Europe. We agree on that. "We have to believe in ourselves and to trust our allies, also Americans… I'm quite confident that attacking just even a piece of Estonia, this is the attack against (all of) Nato." "And this is the question then to all the allies, to all 32 members," Pevkur adds. "Are we together or not?" Advertisement Putin-proofing This new and nagging sense of insecurity, or at least unpredictability, in the Baltics and Poland – what Nato calls its "eastern flank", close to Russia – is evident in the kind of legislation being debated and introduced around the region. Poland recently announced that every adult man in the country must be battle ready, with a new military training scheme in place by the end of the year. Prime Minister Donald Tusk has also expressed interest in a French suggestion that it share its nuclear umbrella with European allies, in case the US withdraws its nuclear shield. Getty Images Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk has expressed interest in a suggestion from France that it share its nuclear umbrella with European allies Advertisement Voters living in the Baltics don't need persuading to devote a large proportion of public money to defence. Estonia, for example, is introducing a new law that makes it mandatory for all new office and apartment blocks of a certain size to include bunkers or bomb shelters. . Tallinn also just announced it will spend 5% of GDP on defence from next year. Lithuania aims for 5-6%, it says. Poland will soon spend 4.7% of GDP on defence – it hopes to build the largest army in Europe, eclipsing the UK and France. (To put that in perspective, the US spends roughly 3.7% of GDP on defence. The UK spends 2.3% and aims to raise that to 2.6% by 2027.) These decisions in countries close to Russia may well be linked to a hope they have not yet relinquished, of keeping Trump and his security assurances onside. He repeated this month his previously stated position: "If [Nato countries] don't pay, I'm not going to defend them. No, I'm not going to defend them." As for how much annual spending would be considered "enough" for the Trump administration, Matthew Whitaker, Trump Nominee for U.S. Ambassador to NATO, declared "a minimum defence spending level of 5%, thereby ensuring NATO is the most successful military alliance in history." Estonia's plan B With mixed messages from Washington, Estonia is looking increasingly to European allies for reliable support. The UK plays a big role here. With 900 personnel based in Estonia, it's currently Britain's largest permanent overseas deployment. And the UK has pledged to boost its presence. At their base in Tapa, we found immense, echoey hangars rammed with armoured vehicles. "You'll see the Challenger Main Battle Tanks as we head down to the other end of the hangar," explains Major Alex Humphries, one of the squadron leaders in Estonia on a six-month rotation. "[They are] a really critical part of the capability. This is a really great opportunity for British forces." please log in to view this image Major Alex Humphries says Nato feels exposed on its eastern border Asked if Estonia had approached the UK to ask for a bigger presence, as it was feeling more vulnerable, he told me: "I think Nato at large feels exposed. This is a really important flank for our collective defence, the east. Everybody in the Baltics and in Eastern Europe feels the quite prominent and clear threat that is coming from the Russian Federation. "We don't want this to come to war, but if it does come to war, we're fully integrated; fully prepared to deliver lethal effect against the Russian Federation to protect Estonia." Ultimately, though, unless they come under direct attack, the precise conditions under which UK bilateral forces or Nato troops will take military action comes down to political decisions made in that moment. So Estonia is taking nothing for granted. That's why it is busy stress testing new army bunkers on its border with Russia and investing in drone technology. Though its armed forces wouldn't be powerful enough to repel an attack by Russia alone, Estonia is studying lessons learned from invaded Ukraine – whose fate Estonia really hopes it won't have to share.
In yet another example of the lunacy of Brexit, none of the £125bn fund for EU increased defence spending will be spent with UK firms. Because we left the EU. So where should we go from here? We're caught in the triangle of power between the USA (Oceania), Russia (Eurasia), and China (Eastasia). What Orwell didn't prophecy, though, is a fourth, still demoocratic and still powerful, superstate in the European Union and that, it seems obvious to me, is where we should return. The USA is no longer an ally of the UK - it's an enemy allied with Russia - and there's talk of Canada joining a European defence pact, so shouldn't we be part of that too, rather than remaining Oceania's 'Airstrip One'? I've turned 180 degrees on this, and, from believing that the UK should have no part in the Russia/ Ukraine conflict, I now think that the non-US NATO nations should confront and crush the Russian threat. The new Eurasia should be the democratic buffer between the autocratic US and Chinese superstates.
Just the usual stuff - indiscriminate bombing killing mostly women and children, cutting off supplies of water and electricity. You know, war crimes.
Miraculous they’ve survived this long without water. Hamas are welcome to free the hostages and surrender.
WAR STORIES How George W. Bush Helped Hamas Come to Power In Bush’s naïveté about the magic of elections, he ignored a crucial point about democracy. BY FRED KAPLAN OCT 24, 20233:32 PM A Hamas militant waves his party’s flag as he celebrates the radical Islamist movement’s victory in the general election on Jan. 26, 2006. Mohammed Abed/AFP via Getty Images In a speech during President Biden’s visit to Israel last week, he urged the nation’s military to do all it can to minimize civilian casualties in its war with Hamas. “The vast majority of Palestinians are not Hamas,” he said. “Hamas does not represent the Palestinian people.” How did Hamas come to power in Gaza in the first place? That history is worth revisiting now, two and a half weeks into the war, as it tests whether Biden’s point is true. It was in January 2006 that the Palestinian territories held what turned out to be their last parliamentary elections. Hamas won a bare plurality of votes (44 percent to the more moderate Fatah party’s 41 percent) but, given the electoral system, a strong majority of seats (74 to 45). Neither party was keen on sharing power. Fighting broke out between the two. When a unity government was finally formed in June 2007, Hamas broke the deal, started murdering Fatah members, and, in the end, took total control of the Gaza Strip. Those who weren’t killed fled to the West Bank, and the territories have remained split ever since. The Moral Paradox at the Heart of Severance Is Strange, Tense, and Uncomfortable In other words, Hamas’ absolute rule of Gaza is not what the Palestinians voted for back in 2006. In fact, since the median age of Gazans is 18, half of Hamas’ subjects weren’t even born when the election took place. Since they have known no alternative, have absorbed little information but Hamas propaganda, and have witnessed periodic outbursts of violent conflict with Israel throughout their lives, it is impossible to know what they really think about their rulers. But we need to ask another question: Why did the 2006 elections take place? The explanation lies in the political ideals—or, more correctly, the naïveté—of President George W. Bush. (Much of this comes from the reporting for my 2008 book, Daydream Believers: How a Few Grand Ideas Wrecked American Power.) Bush entered his second term, in January 2005, convinced that his mission was to spread democracy around the world. He assumed that democracy was the natural state of humanity: Once a dictator was toppled and the people could vote for leaders in elections, freedom and liberty would bloom forth. For a moment, it looked like he might be right: The world was witnessing the Orange Revolution in Ukraine, the Cedar Revolution in Lebanon, the first parliamentary elections in post-Saddam Iraq. More pertinent, the Palestinian National Authority held its first election, and Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah party—which had recognized Israel’s right to exist and supported negotiations for a two-state solution—won handily. ADVERTISEMENT Around this time, Israel was withdrawing from the Gaza Strip—not just pulling out troops, but evicting some 8,000 Jewish settlers (most of whom were paid to resettle in the West Bank). Suddenly there was a vacuum of local authority. Bush thought democracy would fill a vacuum, so he urged the Palestinian Authority to hold parliamentary elections. One problem, though: Radical parties—notably Hamas and Islamic Jihad, which had boycotted the 2005 presidential election—decided to compete in the 2006 parliamentary contests. Six weeks before these elections, Dennis Ross was on one of his frequent trips to the Middle East. As the Middle East envoy for Presidents Bill Clinton and George H.W. Bush, Ross had more experience negotiating with Israelis and Palestinians than any American. He was no longer in the U.S. government, but he knew all the relevant players. Ross was leery about holding elections. He thought that if there were elections, militias such as Hamas should be banned from participating; they should have to choose between joining the system and waging violence against it—they shouldn’t be allowed to have it both ways. Members of Fatah, fearful that Hamas might win, approached Ross and asked if he could quietly urge the Israelis to block the election. An odd alignment was taking shape. “What’s wrong with this picture?” Ross asked himself. Fatah and Israel were against holding the elections; Hamas and President Bush were in favor. ADVERTISEMENT Ross communicated all this to Robert Zoellick, a former colleague from Bush Sr.’s days who was now deputy secretary of state. Like Ross, Zoellick worried the election could be disastrous. He urged his boss, Bush Jr.’s secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, to urge Israelis to do some things to improve Fatah’s prospects—for instance, to ease up on border crossings in the Palestinian territories and let Abbas take credit for the gesture. Rice refused, saying that the U.S. shouldn’t put its thumb on the scales. A former hardheaded adherent of realpolitik, Rice had recently adopted Bush’s view of the world: She thought, or at least acted as if, elections were a magic potion for curing political ills and that the U.S., having delivered or blessed them, should sit back and let the historical forces flow naturally. To her (and most American observers’) surprise, Hamas won. It proved to be only the first yank in the unraveling of the Bush-Rice dogma. Civil war broke out between Hamas and Fatah, leading eventually to Fatah’s expulsion from Gaza, Hamas’ total dictatorship there, and a resumption of rocket fire from the enclave into Israel—prompting the Israeli blockade on Gaza’s northern border (which Egypt, whose leaders hated and feared Hamas as well, reinforced with a blockade on the southern border). At the same time, Hezbollah rained missiles down on Israel from southern Lebanon, prompting a war—which could reignite soon. ADVERTISEMENT Bush had been influenced in his optimism about democracy by Natan Sharansky, a charismatic human-rights activist and former Soviet dissident who spent nine years as a political prisoner in the gulag. He was released in 1986, during the heyday of Mikhail Gorbachev’s reforms, and emigrated to Israel, where he became a parliamentarian and a hero to the neoconservative movement in the U.S. FRED KAPLAN How the Horrible Hospital Explosion in Gaza Changed the Trajectory of Biden’s Emergency Israel Trip READ MORE In a speech at the American Enterprise Institute’s World Forum in June 2002, Sharansky said that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was “not a tribal war between Jews and Arabs in the Middle East,” but rather a key battle in “the first world war of the 21st century, waged between the world of terror and the world of democracy.” The West’s key task, he said, was “to expand the world our enemies try to destroy”—i.e., “to export democracy.” Among the avid listeners to the speech was Vice President Dick Cheney. He brought Sharansky into the White House and introduced him to Bush, who came gradually to adopt his views. Leaving aside the merits of Sharansky’s perspective (at the very least, it oversimplified matters), Bush ignored one of his main points. Elections, as Sharansky wrote in his 2004 book The Case for Democracy, “are not a true test of a democracy.” They “are never the beginning of the democratic process. Only when the basic institutions that protect a free society are firmly in place—such as a free press, the rule of law, independent courts, political parties—can free elections be held.” Until then, “elections are just as likely to weaken efforts to build democracy as they are to strengthen them.” ADVERTISEMENT Sharansky made this point to Bush in person in May 2005 after resigning from the Israeli government in protest of its withdrawal from Gaza. Sharansky wrote an open letter to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon denouncing the disengagement as a “tragic mistake” and arguing that “any concessions in the peace process must be linked to democratic reforms within Palestinian society.” please log in to view this image Help! I Just Found Out My Husband Racked Up $100,000 of Credit Card Debt Because He Was “Depressed.” please log in to view this image My House Sitters Did Unspeakable Things While I Was Gone. Now My Husband Is Formulating a Wild Plan With Them. please log in to view this image The 27-Year-Old White House Press Secretary Thought This Would Be a Great Time to Post About Her Wedding. It’s a Doozy. Sharon disagreed (he just wanted to be done with Gaza), and so did Bush, who’d been so persuaded by the first part of Sharansky’s democratic sermon that he ignored this crucial second part. Relations with Hamas were bound to break down in any case. Israel’s occupation of Gaza, which had begun in 1967, could not have been sustained indefinitely. Hamas’ hostility to Israel was a key article of its ideology, its reason for being. There was no space to negotiate any softening. But the election that put Hamas in power was not inevitable; it was premature. Israel and the leaders of the neighboring Sunni Arab nations, who inveighed lavish rhetorical support for the Palestinians but did very little to back it up, could have done more to help build the elements of a civil society and negotiate a peace. But ultimately, they didn’t want to. Elections only tightened the bonds of conflict and lent it a veneer of legitimacy. Hamas’ murderous assault on Oct. 7, the subsequent escalation of violence, and the possibility of a widening war—these are the latest and most bitter fruits of the elections’ legacy. COMMENT Palestine George W. 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Here's HowFedEx| Sponsored Ship Smarter: Save Time & Money on Freight ShippingFedEx| Sponsored If You Want to Know How It’s Going at the White House, Just Look at the 27-Year-Old Press Secretary’s Wedding PhotosSlate Magazine 60 Pembroke Street, Westown, New PlymouthOneRoof| Sponsored MOST POPULAR Netflix’s Most Expensive Movie Ever Is Here, and It’s a Monumental DisasterSlate Magazine Just Spray: This Natural Spray Eases TinnitusRecommended by Doctors: This simple spray naturally eases tinnitus fast!Stop Tinnitus| Sponsored Learn More RECOMMENDED FOR YOU please log in to view this image Trump’s Gaza Fantasy Exposes Israel’s Failure please log in to view this image My Friends With Kids Have Implemented Some New “Rules” for Me. Huh? please log in to view this image The People Who Turned On Democrats Over Gaza Don’t Want Your Blame After Trump’s Rant please log in to view this image The Michael Jackson Documentary That Shook the World Has Vanished please log in to view this image Help! 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don't know if you have access to BBC iPlayer down there, but if you're actually interested in this Israel/Gaza/Palestine conflict, give this a watch... Israel and the Palestinians: The Road to 7th October, Series 1: Episode 1: www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m0028csq via @bbciplayer Both parties are to blame for this ****show, neither side really seem to want peace. There's been several opportunities for deals to be done, going back to Arafat and more, and they get squashed at either a Palestinian level or Israeli hard liner level.
Such a pathetic man. 'The truth is being withheld' is just how he encouraged the riots after the Southport atrocity.
be a bit of pearl clutching about missed flights to france but i cant imagine too many rioting over heathrow
The Trump Administration Accidentally Texted Me Its War Plans U.S. national-security leaders included me in a group chat about upcoming military strikes in Yemen. I didn’t think it could be real. Then the bombs started falling. By Jeffrey Goldberg please log in to view this image Andrew Harnik / Getty The world found out shortly before 2 p.m. eastern time on March 15 that the United States was bombing Houthi targets across Yemen. I, however, knew two hours before the first bombs exploded that the attack might be coming. The reason I knew this is that Pete Hegseth, the secretary of defense, had texted me the war plan at 11:44 a.m. The plan included precise information about weapons packages, targets, and timing. This is going to require some explaining. The story technically begins shortly after the Hamas invasion of southern Israel, in October 2023. The Houthis—an Iran-backed terrorist organization whose motto is “God is great, death to America, death to Israel, curse on the Jews, victory to Islam”—soon launched attacks on Israel and on international shipping, creating havoc for global trade. Throughout 2024, the Biden administration was ineffective in countering these Houthi attacks; the incoming Trump administration promised a tougher response. This is where Pete Hegseth and I come in. On Tuesday, March 11, I received a connection request on Signal from a user identified as Michael Waltz. Signal is an open-source encrypted messaging service popular with journalists and others who seek more privacy than other text-messaging services are capable of delivering. I assumed that the Michael Waltz in question was President Donald Trump’s national security adviser. I did not assume, however, that the request was from the actual Michael Waltz. I have met him in the past, and though I didn’t find it particularly strange that he might be reaching out to me, I did think it somewhat unusual, given the Trump administration’s contentious relationship with journalists—and Trump’s periodic fixation on me specifically. It immediately crossed my mind that someone could be masquerading as Waltz in order to somehow entrap me. It is not at all uncommon these days for nefarious actors to try to induce journalists to share information that could be used against them. I accepted the connection request, hoping that this was the actual national security adviser, and that he wanted to chat about Ukraine, or Iran, or some other important matter. Two days later—Thursday—at 4:28 p.m., I received a notice that I was to be included in a Signal chat group. It was called the “Houthi PC small group.” A message to the group, from “Michael Waltz,” read as follows: “Team – establishing a principles [sic] group for coordination on Houthis, particularly for over the next 72 hours. My deputy Alex Wong is pulling together a tiger team at deputies/agency Chief of Staff level following up from the meeting in the Sit Room this morning for action items and will be sending that out later this evening.” The message continued, “Pls provide the best staff POC from your team for us to coordinate with over the next couple days and over the weekend. Thx.” The term principals committee generally refers to a group of the senior-most national-security officials, including the secretaries of defense, state, and the treasury, as well as the director of the CIA. It should go without saying—but I’ll say it anyway—that I have never been invited to a White House principals-committee meeting, and that, in my many years of reporting on national-security matters, I had never heard of one being convened over a commercial messaging app. One minute later, a person identified only as “MAR”—the secretary of state is Marco Antonio Rubio—wrote, “Mike Needham for State,” apparently designating the current counselor of the State Department as his representative. At that same moment, a Signal user identified as “JD Vance” wrote, “Andy baker for VP.” One minute after that, “TG” (presumably Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, or someone masquerading as her) wrote, “Joe Kent for DNI.” Nine minutes later, “Scott B”—apparently Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, or someone spoofing his identity, wrote, “Dan Katz for Treasury.” At 4:53 p.m., a user called “Pete Hegseth” wrote, “Dan Caldwell for DoD.” And at 6:34 p.m., “Brian” wrote “Brian McCormack for NSC.” One more person responded: “John Ratcliffe” wrote at 5:24 p.m. with the name of a CIA official to be included in the group. I am not publishing that name, because that person is an active intelligence officer. The principals had apparently assembled. In all, 18 individuals were listed as members of this group, including various National Security Council officials; Steve Witkoff, President Trump’s Middle East and Ukraine negotiator; Susie Wiles, the White House chief of staff; and someone identified only as “S M,” which I took to stand for Stephen Miller. I appeared on my own screen only as “JG.” That was the end of the Thursday text chain. After receiving the Waltz text related to the “Houthi PC small group,” I consulted a number of colleagues. We discussed the possibility that these texts were part of a disinformation campaign, initiated by either a foreign intelligence service or, more likely, a media-gadfly organization, the sort of group that attempts to place journalists in embarrassing positions, and sometimes succeeds. I had very strong doubts that this text group was real, because I could not believe that the national-security leadership of the United States would communicate on Signal about imminent war plans. I also could not believe that the national security adviser to the president would be so reckless as to include the editor in chief of The Atlantic in such discussions with senior U.S. officials, up to and including the vice president. The next day, things got even stranger. At 8:05 a.m. on Friday, March 14, “Michael Waltz” texted the group: “Team, you should have a statement of conclusions with taskings per the Presidents guidance this morning in your high side inboxes.” (High side, in government parlance, refers to classified computer and communications systems.) “State and DOD, we developed suggested notification lists for regional Allies and partners. Joint Staff is sending this am a more specific sequence of events in the coming days and we will work w DOD to ensure COS, OVP and POTUS are briefed.” At this point, a fascinating policy discussion commenced. The account labeled “JD Vance” responded at 8:16: “Team, I am out for the day doing an economic event in Michigan. But I think we are making a mistake.” (Vance was indeed in Michigan that day.) The Vance account goes on to state, “3 percent of US trade runs through the suez. 40 percent of European trade does. There is a real risk that the public doesn’t understand this or why it’s necessary. The strongest reason to do this is, as POTUS said, to send a message.” The Vance account then goes on to make a noteworthy statement, considering that the vice president has not deviated publicly from Trump’s position on virtually any issue. “I am not sure the president is aware how inconsistent this is with his message on Europe right now. There’s a further risk that we see a moderate to severe spike in oil prices. I am willing to support the consensus of the team and keep these concerns to myself. But there is a strong argument for delaying this a month, doing the messaging work on why this matters, seeing where the economy is, etc.” A person identified in Signal as “Joe Kent” (Trump’s nominee to run the National Counterterrorism Center is named Joe Kent) wrote at 8:22, “There is nothing time sensitive driving the time line. We’ll have the exact same options in a month.” Then, at 8:26 a.m., a message landed in my Signal app from the user “John Ratcliffe.” The message contained information that might be interpreted as related to actual and current intelligence operations. At 8:27, a message arrived from the “Pete Hegseth” account. “VP: I understand your concerns – and fully support you raising w/ POTUS. Important considerations, most of which are tough to know how they play out (economy, Ukraine peace, Gaza, etc). I think messaging is going to be tough no matter what – nobody knows who the Houthis are – which is why we would need to stay focused on: 1) Biden failed & 2) Iran funded.” The Hegseth message goes on to state, “Waiting a few weeks or a month does not fundamentally change the calculus. 2 immediate risks on waiting: 1) this leaks, and we look indecisive; 2) Israel takes an action first – or Gaza cease fire falls apart – and we don’t get to start this on our own terms. We can manage both. We are prepared to execute, and if I had final go or no go vote, I believe we should. This [is] not about the Houthis. I see it as two things: 1) Restoring Freedom of Navigation, a core national interest; and 2) Reestablish deterrence, which Biden cratered. But, we can easily pause. And if we do, I will do all we can to enforce 100% OPSEC”—operations security. “I welcome other thoughts.” A few minutes later, the “Michael Waltz” account posted a lengthy note about trade figures, and the limited capabilities of European navies. “Whether it’s now or several weeks from now, it will have to be the United States that reopens these shipping lanes. Per the president’s request we are working with DOD and State to determine how to compile the cost associated and levy them on the Europeans.” The account identified as “JD Vance” addressed a message at 8:45 to @pete Hegseth: “if you think we should do it let’s go. I just hate bailing Europe out again.” (The administration has argued that America’s European allies benefit economically from the U.S. Navy’s protection of international shipping lanes.) The user identified as Hegseth responded three minutes later: “VP: I fully share your loathing of European free-loading. It’s PATHETIC. But Mike is correct, we are the only ones on the planet (on our side of the ledger) who can do this. Nobody else even close. Question is timing. I feel like now is as good a time as any, given POTUS directive to reopen shipping lanes. I think we should go; but POTUS still retains 24 hours of decision space.” At this point, the previously silent “S M” joined the conversation. “As I heard it, the president was clear: green light, but we soon make clear to Egypt and Europe what we expect in return. We also need to figure out how to enforce such a requirement. EG, if Europe doesn’t remunerate, then what? If the US successfully restores freedom of navigation at great cost there needs to be some further economic gain extracted in return.” please log in to view this image please log in to view this image A screenshot from the Signal group shows debate over the president’s views ahead of the attack. That message from “S M”—presumably President Trump’s confidant Stephen Miller, the deputy White House chief of staff, or someone playing Stephen Miller—effectively shut down the conversation. The last text of the day came from “Pete Hegseth,” who wrote at 9:46 a.m., “Agree.” After reading this chain, I recognized that this conversation possessed a high degree of verisimilitude. The texts, in their word choice and arguments, sounded as if they were written by the people who purportedly sent them, or by a particularly adept AI text generator. I was still concerned that this could be a disinformation operation, or a simulation of some sort. And I remained mystified that no one in the group seemed to have noticed my presence. But if it was a hoax, the quality of mimicry and the level of foreign-policy insight were impressive. It was the next morning, Saturday, March 15, when this story became truly bizarre. At 11:44 a.m., the account labeled “Pete Hegseth” posted in Signal a “TEAM UPDATE.” I will not quote from this update, or from certain other subsequent texts. The information contained in them, if they had been read by an adversary of the United States, could conceivably have been used to harm American military and intelligence personnel, particularly in the broader Middle East, Central Command’s area of responsibility. What I will say, in order to illustrate the shocking recklessness of this Signal conversation, is that the Hegseth post contained operational details of forthcoming strikes on Yemen, including information about targets, weapons the U.S. would be deploying, and attack sequencing. The only person to reply to the update from Hegseth was the person identified as the vice president. “I will say a prayer for victory,” Vance wrote. (Two other users subsequently added prayer emoji.) According to the lengthy Hegseth text, the first detonations in Yemen would be felt two hours hence, at 1:45 p.m. eastern time. So I waited in my car in a supermarket parking lot. If this Signal chat was real, I reasoned, Houthi targets would soon be bombed. At about 1:55, I checked X and searched Yemen. Explosions were then being heard across Sanaa, the capital city. I went back to the Signal channel. At 1:48, “Michael Waltz” had provided the group an update. Again, I won’t quote from this text, except to note that he described the operation as an “amazing job.” A few minutes later, “John Ratcliffe” wrote, “A good start.” Not long after, Waltz responded with three emoji: a fist, an American flag, and fire. Others soon joined in, including “MAR,” who wrote, “Good Job Pete and your team!!,” and “Susie Wiles,” who texted, “Kudos to all – most particularly those in theater and CENTCOM! Really great. God bless.” “Steve Witkoff” responded with five emoji: two hands-praying, a flexed bicep, and two American flags. “TG” responded, “Great work and effects!” The after-action discussion included assessments of damage done, including the likely death of a specific individual. The Houthi-run Yemeni health ministry reported that at least 53 people were killed in the strikes, a number that has not been independently verified. please log in to view this image A screenshot from the Signal group shows reactions to the strikes. On Sunday, Waltz appeared on ABC’s This Week and contrasted the strikes with the Biden administration’s more hesitant approach. “These were not kind of pinprick, back-and-forth—what ultimately proved to be feckless attacks,” he said. “This was an overwhelming response that actually targeted multiple Houthi leaders and took them out.” The Signal chat group, I concluded, was almost certainly real. Having come to this realization, one that seemed nearly impossible only hours before, I removed myself from the Signal group, understanding that this would trigger an automatic notification to the group’s creator, “Michael Waltz,” that I had left. No one in the chat had seemed to notice that I was there. And I received no subsequent questions about why I left—or, more to the point, who I was. Earlier today, I emailed Waltz and sent him a message on his Signal account. I also wrote to Pete Hegseth, John Ratcliffe, Tulsi Gabbard, and other officials. In an email, I outlined some of my questions: Is the “Houthi PC small group” a genuine Signal thread? Did they know that I was included in this group? Was I (on the off chance) included on purpose? If not, who did they think I was? Did anyone realize who I was when I was added, or when I removed myself from the group? Do senior Trump-administration officials use Signal regularly for sensitive discussions? Do the officials believe that the use of such a channel could endanger American personnel? Brian Hughes, the spokesman for the National Security Council, responded two hours later, confirming the veracity of the Signal group. “This appears to be an authentic message chain, and we are reviewing how an inadvertent number was added to the chain,” Hughes wrote. “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 troops or national security.” William Martin, a spokesperson for Vance, said that despite the impression created by the texts, the vice president is fully aligned with the president. “The Vice President’s first priority is always making sure that the President’s advisers are adequately briefing him on the substance of their internal deliberations,” he said. “Vice President Vance unequivocally supports this administration’s foreign policy. The President and the Vice President have had subsequent conversations about this matter and are in complete agreement.” I have never seen a breach quite like this. It is not uncommon for national-security officials to communicate on Signal. But the app is used primarily for meeting planning and other logistical matters—not for detailed and highly confidential discussions of a pending military action. And, of course, I’ve never heard of an instance in which a journalist has been invited to such a discussion. Conceivably, Waltz, by coordinating a national-security-related action over Signal, may have violated several provisions of the Espionage Act, which governs the handling of “national defense” information, according to several national-security lawyers interviewed by my colleague Shane Harris for this story. Harris asked them to consider a hypothetical scenario in which a senior U.S. official creates a Signal thread for the express purpose of sharing information with Cabinet officials about an active military operation. He did not show them the actual Signal messages or tell them specifically what had occurred. All of these lawyers said that a U.S. official should not establish a Signal thread in the first place. Information about an active operation would presumably fit the law’s definition of “national defense” information. The Signal app is not approved by the government for sharing classified information. The government has its own systems for that purpose. If officials want to discuss military activity, they should go into a specially designed space known as a sensitive compartmented information facility, or SCIF—most Cabinet-level national-security officials have one installed in their home—or communicate only on approved government equipment, the lawyers said. Normally, cellphones are not permitted inside a SCIF, which suggests that as these officials were sharing information about an active military operation, they could have been moving around in public. Had they lost their phones, or had they been stolen, the potential risk to national security would have been severe. Hegseth, Ratcliffe, and other Cabinet-level officials presumably would have the authority to declassify information, and several of the national-security lawyers noted that the hypothetical officials on the Signal chain might claim that they had declassified the information they shared. But this argument rings hollow, they cautioned, because Signal is not an authorized venue for sharing information of such a sensitive nature, regardless of whether it has been stamped “top secret” or not. There was another potential problem: Waltz set some of the messages in the Signal group to disappear after one week, and some after four. That raises questions about whether the officials may have violated federal records law: Text messages about official acts are considered records that should be preserved. “Under the records laws applicable to the White House and federal agencies, all government employees are prohibited from using electronic-messaging applications such as Signal for official business, unless those messages are promptly forwarded or copied to an official government account,” Jason R. Baron, a professor at the University of Maryland and the former director of litigation at the National Archives and Records Administration, told Harris. “Intentional violations of these requirements are a basis for disciplinary action. Additionally, agencies such as the Department of Defense restrict electronic messaging containing classified information to classified government networks and/or networks with government-approved encrypted features,” Baron said. Several former U.S. officials told Harris and me that they had used Signal to share unclassified information and to discuss routine matters, particularly when traveling overseas without access to U.S. government systems. But they knew never to share classified or sensitive information on the app, because their phones could have been hacked by a foreign intelligence service, which would have been able to read the messages on the devices. It is worth noting that Donald Trump, as a candidate for president (and as president), repeatedly and vociferously demanded that Hillary Clinton be imprisoned for using a private email server for official business when she was secretary of state. (It is also worth noting that Trump was indicted in 2023 for mishandling classified documents, but the charges were dropped after his election.) Waltz and the other Cabinet-level officials were already potentially violating government policy and the law simply by texting one another about the operation. But when Waltz added a journalist—presumably by mistake—to his principals committee, he created new security and legal issues. Now the group was transmitting information to someone not authorized to receive it. That is the classic definition of a leak, even if it was unintentional, and even if the recipient of the leak did not actually believe it was a leak until Yemen came under American attack. All along, members of the Signal group were aware of the need for secrecy and operations security. In his text detailing aspects of the forthcoming attack on Houthi targets, Hegseth wrote to the group—which, at the time, included me—“We are currently clean on OPSEC.” Shane Harris contributed reporting.
