From
left, National Security Adviser Michael Waltz, Vice President J.D.
Vance, and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth listen to a question from a
reporter during a meeting in the Oval Office of the White House on March
13, 2025, in Washington, D.C.
Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Michigan) has flamed Democrats for misplaced
priorities as they rage over the Trump administration’s leak of
sensitive information on the U.S.’s bombing of Yemen earlier this month —
but not over the strikes themselves, which reportedly killed dozens of civilians.
“More heat for using a group chat than for the bombing itself,” Tlaib said in a post on social media on Monday.
Tlaib’s post was in response to congressional Democrats and some Republicans demanding accountability after The Atlantic’s editor in chief Jeffrey Goldberg revealed in an article on Monday that he had been seemingly inadvertently looped in on sensitive war plans on the private messaging app Signal.
In the article, Goldberg discusses how he was included in a group
chat with top U.S. officials, including Vice President J.D. Vance,
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, National
Security Adviser Mike Waltz, and others. In the chat entitled “Houthi
PC small group,” which convened days before the March 15 and 16 U.S.
strikes on Yemen, the officials discussed the impending strikes.
Some lawmakers are calling for investigations into the leak, while
others are calling for officials responsible to resign. “This is an
outrageous national security breach and heads should roll,” said House
Armed Services Committee member Rep. Chris Deluzio (D-Pennsylvania) to Axios. “We need a full investigation and hearing into this on the House Armed Services Committee, ASAP.”
However, as Tlaib pointed out, when the strikes happened — killing at
least 53 people across Yemen, including over 30 civilians — they went
largely ignored by lawmakers. Children were among those killed by the
strikes, which Houthi officials said were a war crime.
To Tlaib’s point, the U.S. once again struck Yemen, one of the
poorest countries in the world, on Tuesday. For the second time in as
many weeks, the U.S. targeted the Al-Rasool Al-Azam Oncology Hospital, destroying the newly built cancer facility.
At least two people were killed by the renewed strikes, with 13 people injured. The administration has not made clear the goal of the strikes, but the effects on Yemen’s civilian population have been catastrophic: The U.S.’s years-long war
on the country has helped create “one of the worst humanitarian crises
in the world,” as human rights groups say, manufacturing a horrific famine affecting tens of millions of people.
And yet, the focus of the vast majority of news media on Monday and
Tuesday was on the potential laws and norms broken by the leak of the
war plans.
Politicians and former government officials have said that it is not just dangerous for
such sensitive chats to take place on an app that could be breached by
foreign officials, but also for officials to handle classified
information so negligently. (Director of National Intelligence Tulsi
Gabbard and CIA Director John Ratcliffe have denied
that there was classified information shared in the chat, even though
other top Republicans have acknowledged the officials’ mistake.)
The war itself, however, is unconstitutional, as Tlaib and other progressive lawmakers have previously said.
Under both Presidents Joe Biden and Donald Trump, the U.S. has been
bombing Yemen for over a year, effectively carrying out a war without
authorization from Congress. Congressional authorization is required for
military action like the airstrikes on Yemen.
Tlaib raised this issue when the Trump administration originally bombed Yemen earlier this month.
“Our country is addicted to wars,” she said. “There’s always money
for bombs, but none to end homelessness in our country. Meanwhile,
innocent lives in Yemen will suffer and a generation of children will
live with the tragic consequences. Congress should decide to go to war,
not the president.”
We’re not backing down in the face of Trump’s threats.
As
Donald Trump is inaugurated a second time, independent media
organizations are faced with urgent mandates: Tell the truth more loudly
than ever before. Do that work even as our standard modes of
distribution (such as social media platforms) are being manipulated and
curtailed by forces of fascist repression and ruthless capitalism. Do
that work even as journalism and journalists face targeted attacks,
including from the government itself. And do that work in community,
never forgetting that we’re not shouting into a faceless void – we’re
reaching out to real people amid a life-threatening political climate.
Our
task is formidable, and it requires us to ground ourselves in our
principles, remind ourselves of our utility, dig in and commit.
As
a dizzying number of corporate news organizations – either through need
or greed – rush to implement new ways to further monetize their
content, and others acquiesce to Trump’s wishes, now is a time for
movement media-makers to double down on community-first models.
At Truthout,
we are reaffirming our commitments on this front: We won’t run ads or
have a paywall because we believe that everyone should have access to
information, and that access should exist without barriers and free of
distractions from craven corporate interests. We recognize the
implications for democracy when information-seekers click a link only to
find the article trapped behind a paywall or buried on a page with
dozens of invasive ads. The laws of capitalism dictate an unending
increase in monetization, and much of the media simply follows those
laws. Truthout and many of our peers are dedicating
ourselves to following other paths – a commitment which feels vital in a
moment when corporations are evermore overtly embedded in government.
Over 80 percent of Truthout‘s
funding comes from small individual donations from our community of
readers, and the remaining 20 percent comes from a handful of social
justice-oriented foundations. Over a third of our total budget is
supported by recurring monthly donors, many of whom give because they
want to help us keep Truthout barrier-free for everyone.
You can help by giving today during our fundraiser. We have 24 hours to add 180 new monthly donors. Whether you can make a small monthly donation or a larger gift, Truthout only works with your support.
This article is licensed under
Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0), and you are free to share and republish under the terms of the license.
On Bluesky? We created a
starter pack to make it easy for you to follow Truthout folks there.