After initially claiming ignorance of a bombshell national security breach, President Donald Trump is now dismissing the allegedly potentially criminal use of an unsecured messaging app—and the possible sharing of classified information—by 18 top defense officials, calling it a “non-issue.” He’s also voicing support for his National Security Advisor, Mike Waltz, who is at the center of the growing scandal.

“Michael Waltz has learned a lesson, and he’s a good man,” the Commander-in-Chief told NBC News Senior White House Correspondent Garrett Haake, who reports that the President told him he still has confidence in Waltz.

Trump opted to describe what some national security and legal experts have said is a possibly criminal act that could include all 18 of his top officials, including his Secretary of State, Attorney General, Secretary of Defense, Director of National Intelligence, and White House Chief of Staff, as a mere “glitch.”

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“I asked the President if he were frustrated that the story has gotten so much attention,” Haake reported. “He said no, calling it ‘the only glitch in two months, and it turned out not to be a serious one.'”

On Monday, The Atlantic’s editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg revealed in a bombshell report that he had been inadvertently invited to the group chat, during which the planned bombings in Yemen were deliberated, debated, and mapped out.

The President also attempted to move the focus away from the use of the open-source commercial messaging app Signal, which reportedly would likely have had to be on non-government phones, to the mission’s success.

“The President told me he believes the story is essentially a non-issue, and that Goldberg’s presence on the chat had ‘no impact at all.’ The attacks, he continued, were ‘perfectly successful,'” Haake added.

“When asked what he was told about how Goldberg came to be added to the Signal chat, Trump said, ‘It was one of Michael’s people on the phone. A staffer had his number on there,'” Haake and Megan Lebowitz reported at NBC News.

Waltz, whose account reportedly had sent the Signal invitation Goldberg, reportedly will not resign and will not be fired, Fox News reported earlier on Tuesday.

“A source close to the president told Fox News that Waltz’s job is safe and that he is not on the chopping block,” the right wing website reported. “Fox News is told Waltz has no plans to resign and is sticking to his schedule Tuesday. He will be talking to his Russian counterpart about a Black Sea ceasefire deal and has plans to speak to Trump as usual later Tuesday.”

READ MORE: Arkansas Senator Files Bill to Abolish State Library, Give Education Department Control

U.S. Senator Chris Coons (D-DE), according to Deadline, on Monday wrote: “Every single one of the government officials on this text chain have now committed a crime – even if accidentally – that would normally involve a jail sentence. We can’t trust anyone in this dangerous administration to keep Americans safe.”

But on Monday evening, Politico had reported that Waltz’s future was “in doubt.”

“Nothing is decided yet, and White House officials cautioned that President Donald Trump would ultimately make the decision over the next day or two as he watches coverage of the embarrassing episode,” Politico reported.

White House staffers were reportedly on multiple text threads discussing what should happen to Waltz.

“Half of them saying he’s never going to survive or shouldn’t survive,” said one official.

“A person close to the White House was even more blunt: ‘Everyone in the White House can agree on one thing: Mike Waltz is a f—— idiot.'”

U.S. Rep. Don Bacon, a Republican of Nebraska, told CNN: “This is a gross error, and it’s intentional. They intentionally put highly classified information on an unclassified device. I would have lost my security clearance in the Air Force for this and for a lot less.”

Watch the video below or at this link.

GOP Rep. Don Bacon on Trump team’s Yemen group chat: “I will guarantee you, 99.99% with confidence, Russia and China are monitoring those two phones. So I just think it’s a security violation, and there’s no doubt that Russia and China saw this stuff within hours of the attacks… pic.twitter.com/UFnGPsLd51

— Manu Raju (@mkraju) March 25, 2025

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Image via Reuters

The right-wing war on knowledge continues as an Arkansas state senator filed a bill Thursday to abolish the State Library as well as the library board.

Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-Jonesboro), along with State Rep. Wayne Long (R-Bradford), filed Senate Bill 536 on Thursday. The bill would not just remove all references to the State Library from existing laws, but also put the state’s other libraries under the control of the Arkansas Department of Education.

A previous version of the bill, SB184, would have also shuttered the Arkansas Educational Television Commission, which oversees the state’s PBS stations, according to the Arkansas Advocate.

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The Arkansas State Library is not just a regular library. In addition to providing information to state agencies and lawmakers, it also distributes funding to the other libraries around the state. Under SB536, the Department of Education would take on all its responsibilities. The State Library is officially a part of the Department of Education already, but it operates as an independent organization.

While the proposal may sound like a shuffling-around of duties, the main thrust of the bill is to allow more direct control over the Arkansas library system by controlling the purse strings. The bill would keep libraries from distributing “age-inappropriate materials” to those under 17 years old and sex education materials from those under 12. Libraries would also have to set up a system where those in the community could request that certain items be banned for minors, according to KARK-TV. Those that don’t meet these restrictions will have state funding pulled.

Earlier legislation filed by Sullivan and passed into law includes Act 242, which ended the requirement for library directors to have a master’s degree in library science, the Advocate reported.  Sullivan, however, was unsuccessful with a proposed amendment to another bill that would strip funding from libraries affiliated with the American Library Association—meaning most, if not all of them. That amendment was rejected this week over concerns the language in it was too broad, according to the Advocate.

The ALA has been a target of right-wing politicians and activists upset with its free speech stance and fights against censorship. Sullivan in particular has objected to a provision in the ALA’s Library Bill of Rights protecting library access for all ages, the Advocate reported. He also called for the state’s chapter of the ALA to be defunded—despite the fact that it receives no state funding.

Image via Shutterstock

This week, President Donald Trump ordered the release of all the government’s files on the assassination of John F. Kennedy. The recently released JFK files are largely unredacted and reveal information about the CIA’s participation in assassination attempts on leaders from around the world.

National Security Archive senior analyst Peter Kornbluh discussed the contents of the JFK files on Friday’s episode of Democracy Now! with Amy Goodman. Kornbluh described some of the now-publicly available information, saying that not only does it reveal information on how the CIA attempted to assassinate Cuba leader Fidel Castro, but how the agency was involved in the May 1961 assassination of Dominican Republic dictator Rafael Trujillo.

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“It’s quite detailed. It names the names of all the CIA officers involved, including their code names that they used in their discussions with coup plotters and the assassination team in the Dominican Republic. It names all the names of the coup plotters, as well, that the CIA was working with. The name of the actual covert operation, which was called EMDEED, and the actual assassination plot, which was called EMSLEW,” Kornbluh said.

“And, you know, you get to learn not only how the CIA works with foreigners to assassinate a head of state… but you also learn how the CIA goes about investigating its own wrongdoing of the past, the files that it keeps, how they are reviewed, what they yield,” he added.

The JFK files also revealed that in 1961, nearly half of all political officers working in U.S. embassies were CIA agents posing as diplomats. He said the files showed that out of the 5,600 U.S. diplomats at the time, 3,700 were undercover agents. While it’s not a surprise that the CIA had operatives stationed around the world—and that embassies provide a perfect cover—it was previously unknown to the extent that this was the case.

Kornbluh also says that the files reveal how the CIA used the recently dismantled USAID as cover—though he makes clear that USAID also did good work in addition to helping the CIA.

“It’s easy to look back on the older history of USAID when it was first started as a tool of the Cold War. The Cold War has been over for a long time now. So, closing it down now is simply a crime against humanity, frankly, in my opinion, because so many people will die and suffer and become ill and impoverished by this cruel act of simply closing the doors of the USAID programs,” he said.

Information on the CIA’s covert activities in the early ’60s isn’t the only surprise information the JFK files had. The files also included the full personal information—including Social Security numbers—of former congressional staffers, according to ABC News.

Though Trump said Friday that those who were doxxed were “people long gone,” ABC News reports that at least two—Joseph diGenova, 80, and Christopher Pyle, 86—are still alive.

Over 60,000 pages of documents have been released; while many were public in some form already, many of the redactions have been removed. Those interested in seeing the files for themselves can find them at the National Archives website.

Public Domain Image by Walt Cisco, Dallas Morning News via Wikimedia Commons.