What We All Learned from L’Affaire Signal

◼ Damage control is not supposed to cause more damage, but that is what President Trump’s team has created with its reaction to the Signal leak story. Even after Jeffrey Goldberg and The Atlantic released screenshots of the full Signal chat on Wednesday morning, the administration denied that any classified information was inappropriately released. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, in particular, poured contempt on the notion that war plans were disclosed, but his assertion that no classified information was disclosed is very hard to square with the fact that he texted his colleagues materials—including the timeline, sequence, and delivery assets of the coming strikes—that were almost certainly developed by and taken from the very CENTCOM planners coordinating the strike operation. As a matter of crisis communications, it would have been better if Trump officials had simply admitted that they made a grievous error and promised to tighten their procedures to ensure that all highly sensitive conversations were conducted in the appropriate venue. The strikes on the Houthi terrorists were, after all, successful, and no American lives were lost in the operation. But the Trump habit of always hitting back at perceived enemies and never admitting mistakes under any circumstances set administration officials up for what was easily predictable: Goldberg’s subsequent revelations proved that the answers of administration officials to the controversy were self-serving, Clintonian, and dishonest. Senator Roger Wicker’s Armed Services Committee, on a bipartisan basis, has rightly requested an inspector general’s inquiry, and now the story will continue.

◼ If you were planning to buy a new car, hope you bought it already. Donald Trump, by the stroke of a pen, has raised taxes on imported cars and car parts by imposing a 25 percent tariff on them, effective April 3. This will also raise the price of domestically produced cars, since they are also manufactured with parts from abroad, and U.S. automakers will face less competitive pressure to keep prices down. To try to deflect the effect on car buyers, Trump says he wants to allow interest on car loans to be tax-deductible if the car purchased was made in the U.S., a promise he also made on the campaign trail. So the president’s plan is to raise taxes, raise prices, and give some of that money back if you buy a car that he likes. It’s Bidenomics with Republican characteristics.

◼ The Trump administration’s task force against antisemitism pulled $400 million in federal grants and contracts from Columbia University because of the school’s failure to comply with federal anti-discrimination laws and protect Jewish students amid anti-Israel demonstrations that followed October 7, 2023. In response, Columbia said it would “work with the federal government to restore Columbia’s federal funding,” and it has since agreed to comply with a list of administration demands. Those demands include banning masks, letting campus police officers arrest students, and appointing a new head of the Center for Palestine Studies and the Department of Middle East, South Asian, and African Studies. This month, the university also issued suspensions, expulsions, and temporary degree revocations for students involved in a takeover of a university building by an anti-Israel group. There are real dangers in federal dictation to universities, but Columbia cannot enjoy an unlimited right to run an activist organization with federal money.

◼ Hundreds of average Palestinians in the Gaza Strip turned out this week for what appears to have been an organic display of open hostility toward Hamas. At great risk to themselves and their families, these Gazans called for an “end to this war,” the release of the remaining hostages, and the overthrow of the terrorist group and its “tyrannical rule.” It’s a rare public outpouring of dissatisfaction with the regime that consigned Gazans to a war that was destined to end in disaster for the population of the Strip. Although there were some reports of “members of the Hamas security forces in civilian clothing breaking up the protest,” the regime’s control has weakened enough that it could not disperse the demonstrators or prevent the outside world from seeing these pregnant expressions of dissent. The global Left, which has spent the last 18 months lavishing praise on anti-Israel protesters, can’t seem to muster a word of support for these brave Palestinians. Never forget how phony is its commitment to “Palestinian liberation.”

◼ Trump issued what’s being described as an executive order to shut down the Department of Education. But the EO is better understood as a memo to Linda McMahon to do what she’s already been busy doing under her authority as secretary of education: reduce bureaucratic bloat and head count where prudent; scrap grants and programs where judicious; and develop a plan to work with Congress to formally and finally close up shop on Jimmy Carter’s 1979 carbuncle. As the Trump administration well knows, legislation is necessary for the major reforms: An act of Congress is required to close the department; legislation is required to clear out the labyrinth of red tape and regulations that are a function of federal law and decades of case law. Like many frustrating school assignments, getting rid of the Department of Education will be a group project.

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◼ Traditionally, an early sign of a wave election is that one side recruits stars while the other sees incumbents stream to the exits and high-profile recruits sit out a cycle. If that rule still holds, the early signs are grim for Senate Democrats in 2026. Three incumbents in potential battleground states have announced their retirements: Jeanne Shaheen in New Hampshire, Gary Peters in Michigan, and Tina Smith in Minnesota. Shaheen, at 78, could have run for another term; the other two are in their sixties. In a good Republican year, all three seats could be pickups. Pete Buttigieg, after relocating to Michigan, has announced that he is not running for the Senate, preferring to run for president rather than risk another statewide loss in addition to his landslide defeat in the Indiana state treasurer race. On the GOP side, only 84-year-old Mitch McConnell has announced his retirement, while stars Brian Kemp in Georgia and Chris Sununu in New Hampshire seem to be inching more toward a run. Yet celebration is premature. We don’t yet know who the nominees will be — or what the national political environment will look like.

◼ Elon Musk has attracted from left-wing activists an ire that now rivals their hatred for Trump. Over the past weeks there have been a string of attacks on Tesla throughout the country. The attacks have ranged in severity, from petty vandalism, such as keying parked Teslas, to assailants using Molotov cocktails to set Teslas on fire at dealers and repair shops and to destroy charging stations. Appropriately, Attorney General Pam Bondi described what is happening as a “wave of domestic terrorism” in the sense that the perpetrators are resorting to violence to achieve a political or ideological goal; they want to convince people not to buy Teslas and to do enough damage to Musk’s company that it drives him out of public life. It is worth noting that Molotov cocktails, while crude, have been held to be “destructive devices” under federal law and come under the category of incendiary devices that are staples of terrorism prosecutions — and their use is punished accordingly. The incidents are another example of left-wing activists romanticizing violence, as was the case with the 2020 George Floyd riots and the lionization of Luigi Mangione.

◼ According to reporting by Melinda Henneberger in the Kansas City Star, in 2023 the Equity Clinic in Illinois botched an abortion on a woman who had been pregnant for roughly 22 weeks. In the two days following the procedure, the woman experienced excruciating pain and contacted Dr. Keith Reisinger-Kindle at the clinic. He instructed her to take Tylenol and a laxative. The woman went to the hospital, where a CAT scan revealed that the spine of the baby remained. A surgical team then found that half of the child’s body had been left inside the woman. The woman has since filed a lawsuit against Reisinger-Kindle and the clinic, which states that “pieces of the fetal skull” were found in her intestines during the emergency surgery. Weeks after the incident, the Chicago Tribune ran a puff piece about Reisinger-Kindle’s “compassion and care.” The gory details of what that means in practice will be the subject of the legal proceeding.

◼ The 30th United Nations Conference of the Parties (COP) on climate change will take place in November in the Brazilian state of Pará. To prepare for the incoming cosmopolitan traffic — and do its part to save the natural world and its wonders, such as the Amazon rainforest — the host is laying a massive strip of asphalt across the Amazon rainforest. Laugh all you like. This four-lane highway might be the only concrete outcome of COP30.

◼ The most remarkable feature of Oleg Gordievsky’s remarkable life was that, until his peaceful death this month, it lasted for eighty-six years. The perspective he gained as a KGB agent in Denmark on the Moscow-led invasion of Czechoslovakia fed his growing disillusionment with the Soviet regime. Eventually recruited by Britain’s MI6 in 1974, he grew exponentially in importance after his transfer to London. The most consequential intelligence he delivered (there was a lot of it) was warning of the Kremlin’s acute early-’80s paranoia about a sneak attack, which the U.S. was able to soothe. He is also thought to have been one of the first to indicate that this Gorbachev fellow was someone to watch. In 1985, Gordievsky was suddenly summoned back to Moscow. He had fallen under suspicion, either directly or indirectly due to information supplied by the American traitor Aldrich Ames. The suspicion was enough to merit tough interrogation but not arrest. He triggered a pre-arranged escape plan, making it to Finland in the trunk of a car. Once in England, he revealed more secrets, and, after the USSR’s fall, became a pundit of sorts. He was awarded a high British honor, the CMG, as was James Bond. R.I.P.

◼ John “Paddy” Hemingway joined the Royal Air Force when still a teenager. At 21, in 1940, he fought the German Luftwaffe as a fighter pilot. The Battle of Britain, as the three-month action in the skies above England became known, secured that island from the threat of invasion. He lived through the war, despite being shot down four times. A winner of the Distinguished Flying Cross, Group Captain Hemingway was the last surviving pilot of the Battle of Britain. “Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few,” Churchill said of the men who fought this battle, men like Paddy Hemingway. He has died at 105. R.I.P.