In what he called the "most consequential day of deregulation in American history," the head of the Environmental Protection Agency announced a series of actions Wednesday to roll back landmark environmental regulations, including rules on pollution from coal-fired power plants, climate change and electric vehicles. "We are driving a dagger through the heart of climate-change religion and ushering in America's Golden Age, EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin said in an essay in The Wall Street Journal. read more
"For almost 90 years, Social Security has never missed a paycheck " but 60 days into this administration, Social Security is now on the brink," Lee Saunders, president of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, said in a statement. "Acting Commissioner Leland Dudek has proven again that he is in way over his head, compromising the privacy of millions of Americans, shutting down services that senior citizens rely on and planning debilitating layoffs, all in service to Elon Musk's lies."
Donald Trump has suggested he would be happy for the US to become an "associate member" of the Commonwealth, if King Charles were to make the offer. The US president on Friday posted a news story from The Sun that referred to a supposed "secret offer" the British monarch is due to extend during Trump's planned state visit to the UK. He added: "I Love King Charles. Sounds good to me!"
President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Thursday aimed at dismantling the U.S. Department of Education. The Education Department oversees the country's $1.6 trillion federal student loan portfolio, provides funding to low-income students and enforces civil rights across the country. Only Congress can unilaterally eliminate the Education Department. But the Trump administration can starve the agency of resources. read more
A professor CUNY history professor named Angus Johnston posted a pretty good thread over at Bluesky yesterday about the current Constitutional crisis. I think he nails it perfectly. I've pasted his handful of posts together here for readability purposes read more
When you've lost the National Review 2
I Don't Care If It Wasn't Classified
After yesterday's bombshell story of Jeffrey Goldberg being accidentally added to a group chat on military strikes on the Houthi pirates, one of today's big follow-on fights is the question of what information was shared in the Signal chat and whether it was classified. There's a direct dispute between Goldberg, who wrote that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's texts "contained operational details of forthcoming strikes on Yemen, including information about targets, weapons the U.S. would be deploying, and attack sequencing," and Hegseth, who denies this. (Goldberg insists that he has not published these messages out of concern for national security, although nothing would stop him from sharing them with the Senate Intelligence Committee in closed session; the committee would doubtless very much like to see them).
There was a lot of jousting today in an Intelligence Committee hearing, where CIA Director John Ratcliffe and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard (both participants in the chat) told the Senate panel that the chat didn't share classified information. To which my response is: who cares? The classification system is useful in flagging for the casual reader what information shouldn't be shared (and it is also famously promiscuous in its use), but what matters is what information is actually something that should be secret for national security reasons. That's the legal standard under the Espionage Act, and it's the practical standard as well. That was the issue during the Hillary emails debate: a hyper focus on what was and wasn't classified missed the fact that we shouldn't be giving foreign adversaries an opening to spy in real time on the thinking and scheduling of our nation's chief diplomat. That's an intelligence goldmine even if it includes no formally classified information, let alone classified documents. So it is here. The story is, of course, much worse if Goldberg is telling the truth (either he or Hegseth is lying; there's no middle ground). But even if that part of the story isn't true, there is hardly a more sensitive fact that we need to keep secret than that senior American policymakers are discussing a surprise military strike. You carefully guard that discussion, whether or not it includes coordinates, targets, methods, or strike times.
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