March 29, 2025
Dear Friends,
For nearly a decade, Donald Trump and the Republican Party have engaged in relentless political grandstanding over the proper handling of classified materials. Congressional Republicans have spent years launching high-profile investigations into Hillary Clinton’s private email server and President Biden’s storage of sensitive documents— none of which produced evidence of wrongdoing.
This week, the GOP’s supposed commitment to information security was put to the test when reports surfaced that senior Trump administration officials had shared top-secret war plans in an unsecured group chat with a reporter. But instead of condemning the breach and taking accountability, Trump and his allies simply shrugged it off. Once again, Donald Trump and his team of cronies have shown they cannot be trusted to protect the safety of our servicemembers or the security of our nation.
On Monday, The Atlantic published a shocking report revealing how Trump’s top national security appointees exposed highly classified details about impending airstrikes against Houthi rebels in Yemen. The breach began when National Security Advisor Michael Waltz used the unsecured Signal app to create a group chat for coordinating the strikes — to which he accidentally added a reporter.
Then, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth texted the administration’s precise strike plans to the entire group in a message complete with timestamps, targeting information, and attack methods. “1415: Strike Drones on Target (THIS IS WHEN THE FIRST BOMBS WILL DEFINITELY DROP),” part of his message read. Some officials in the chat were communicating through unsecured channels while they were in Moscow — possibly even at the Kremlin — recklessly exposing our state secrets to our adversaries.
Disclosing classified war plans in a group chat isn’t just amateurish — it’s a catastrophic intelligence breach that puts all our men and women in uniform at risk. If these communications had been intercepted by malicious foreign actors, those adversaries would have known the time, place, and manner of imminent strikes, putting our servicemembers directly in harm’s way. Just as disturbing, some participants in the group chat shared information on active intelligence officers in the field — putting their lives in grave danger.
Any junior officer would be swiftly court-martialed for an offense of this magnitude. If the individuals involved in this fiasco don’t resign out of sheer embarrassment, Donald Trump needs to fire them immediately.
Unsurprisingly, Trump and his administration have refused to take any responsibility for this enormous blunder. Hegseth attempted to downplay the incident, insisting these were merely “attack plans” rather than “war plans” and falsely claiming that his message contained no classified information. Trump’s spokeswoman tried to discredit the reporter included in the group chat, labeling him “a Trump-hater who is well-known for his sensationalist spin.” And Trump himself brushed off the significance of the breach, first blaming “a very innocent staffer” and then describing the event as “not a big deal” — a stunning reaction from the commander in chief.
This was a monumental failure that should, at the very least, cost Michael Waltz and Pete Hegseth their jobs. But this is not just an isolated incident — it’s part of a broader pattern of lawless behavior by Donald Trump and his administration. The airstrikes revealed by this breach, like Elon Musk’s unilateral cuts to essential services, were conducted without any congressional approval. Meanwhile, Trump is deploying masked federal agents into our communities to arrest lawful residents for their political views or even their tattoos — then deporting them to foreign prisons in defiance of court orders. Trump and his cronies view themselves as above the law — but the American people can still hold them to account.
In 1776, John Adams defined a republic as “a government of laws, and not of men.” The intelligence breach revealed this week — and the administration’s flippant response — demonstrate not only the recklessness and incompetence of the men Donald Trump entrusted with our national security, but also their confidence that they will never be held accountable by the law. Every day, Trump and his administration further erode the rule of law principles Adams outlined at our nation’s founding. We are sliding rapidly down the slope to authoritarianism — and we must reclaim our foundational values before we hit bottom.
As always, thank you for reading.
Your friend,
DID YOU KNOW?
My office and I are working to make sure you remain informed with the latest updates, announcements, and recommendations from governments and agencies. With that in mind, here is some information that may be of interest to you:
- In recent months, I’ve been holding town hall events across our district to hear directly from constituents about the issues that matter to them.
- I’m especially eager to hear from my younger constituents about their concerns and their hopes for the future – which is why last week, I met with the junior and senior classes at Mohonasen High School to answer their insightful questions.
- If you’re a teacher or administrator at a school located in New York’s 20th congressional district, I want to hear from you and your students!
- If you’re interested in having me speak to your class, you can submit a request HERE.
