‘Signal Gate’: Journalist Accidentally Added to Trump Officials Group Chat Discussing Airstrikes
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Chart of the week: The world’s population growth since 1400 is heavily concentrated in the last 100 years.
Canadians are reducing their trips to the U.S. according to recent travel data. OAG, an airline data provider, said flight bookings for the upcoming months of April - September for travelers from Canada to the U.S. are currently down 70% compared to this time last year. In addition, the number of Canadians returning from trips to the U.S. was down 13% in the month of February for air travel and 23% for car travel (compared to February 2024). Amid the tariff wars with the U.S., Canadian leaders have encouraged their citizens to buy goods made in Canada and take domestic trips instead of going to the U.S.
More: Canada is the top source of foreign visitors to the U.S. each year.
25% tariff on automobiles: President Trump signed a “permanent” 25% tariff on imported cars from all countries, effective April 3. The order will also tariff imported auto parts, which many U.S. manufacturers rely on. Trump said the U.S. can expect to raise $100B in tax revenue from the move and argued it will “spur growth” and increase manufacturing jobs in the U.S. Others argue it will significantly raise car prices.
More: Nearly half of cars (i.e., Honda, Mazda, Subaru, Volkswagen) bought in the U.S. are imported. The biggest foreign suppliers of cars in 2024 were Mexico, Japan, South Korea, Canada, and Germany.
A small child slipped through the White House fence before being intercepted by the U.S. Secret Service. One video shows an armed agent carrying the toddler across the lawn before passing him to another agent and eventually back to his family “without incident.” There was no threat to security.
23andMe, the DNA analysis company, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy this week. Once a raging success, the company did not recover from a massive 2023 data breach that exposed the identities of 7M users (about half of their client base). 23andMe is now planning to sell under a court-supervised sale process. Past users are scrambling to delete their data from the service, which could be passed on to the new buyer, depending on their state's data privacy laws.
Pope Francis made his first appearance at the papal window in St. Peter’s Square since his recent health scare, which had Catholics around the world praying. New reports state that on Feb. 28, Francis had such a severe breathing episode that doctors briefly deliberated suspending treatment to “let him go,” before pursuing an aggressive treatment that saved his life. His schedule has been drastically reduced since the double pneumonia treatment.
Gazans protest Hamas: In a rare occurrence, hundreds of Palestinians gathered in northern Gaza this week in protest of Hamas. It was reportedly the largest such demonstration since the war began and came just a few weeks after the ceasefire with Israel broke down. Video footage shows the crowd chanting “Hamas out.”
The CEOs of NPR and PBS, Katherine Maher and Paula Kerger, testified before a House committee this week (video) amid renewed calls by Republicans to end government funding for the public broadcasters. The organizations receive millions of dollars from taxpayers annually and have increasingly been accused of being biased and progressive in their content production and reporting.
More: See exchanges between Maher and Rep. Brandon Gill (video) and Rep. Jim Jordan (video).
‘Signal Gate’: Journalist Accidentally Added to Trump Officials Group Chat Discussing Airstrikes
What happened?
The editor-in-chief of the Atlantic magazine, Jeffrey Goldberg, was mistakenly included in a group chat with top Trump administration officials in which they discussed upcoming airstrikes against the Houthi rebels (the airstrikes took place on March 15).
Members of the chat included Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, Vice President JD Vance, and 15 other senior officials. The chat took place on Signal, a commercial messaging app known for its encryption.
Context on the Houthis: The Houthis are a militant group based in Yemen that receives funding and sophisticated weaponry from Iran. The Houthis have been attacking commercial vessels around the Suez Canal, disrupting global shipping trade.
Screenshots of the chat group
How was Goldberg added to the chat?
The group chat was created by National Security Advisor Mike Waltz, who took full responsibility for the incident in an interview with Ingraham Angle on Fox News. He called the mistake “embarrassing” and said a technical team would “get to the bottom” of how Goldberg was added, saying, “I don’t text him, he wasn’t on my phone.”
When pressed by Ingraham, Waltz said, “Have you ever had somebody’s contact that shows their name and then you have somebody else’s number…so of course I didn’t see this loser in the group. It looked like someone else. Now whether he did it deliberately or whether it happened in some other technical means is something we’re trying to figure out.”
One hypothesis is that Waltz intended to include the U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer, who shares the same initials (JG) as Jeffrey Goldberg.
A journalist found Mike Waltz’s public Venmo account, which had a number of journalists among his contacts.
The Atlantic publishes the story
After being added, Goldberg stayed in the chat for nearly a week without anyone noticing or asking questions. He eventually voluntarily left the chat and broke the story on Monday, March 24. The White House confirmed the chat’s authenticity and tried to address the fallout of the situation this week.
Apart from the embarrassing mistake that a journalist was unintentionally added to a group chat, a large part of the debate around the entire incident is whether the texts contained classified material. Signal is not a government-approved means for sharing classified information, but can be used for non-classified communications (read more about the use of Signal by government officials).
Goldberg’s story sets off a firestorm
The initial story published on Monday included screenshots of some of the text exchanges, which discussed the rationale and messaging of the airstrikes, but Goldberg said he omitted certain messages because they contained operational details about the strikes.
Over the next 24 hours, officials, including Pete Hegseth, Tulsi Gabbard, and the White House press team, said “sensitive” information was shared but denied the presence of any classified information. During Congressional hearings, CIA Director John Ratcliffe seemed to leave the door open that the information could be deemed classified (video), but denied he had texted the name of an undercover CIA operative, which Goldberg had claimed in his story (clip).
In response, Goldberg published a second piece on Wednesday with the remaining messages, including the ones from Hegseth that he considered should be classified. Hegseth’s texts (see image below) were sent about 30 minutes before the first airstrikes began and contained the times and types of weapons the U.S. would launch.
After the follow-up story was published, Trump administration officials doubled down on their denial that classified information was shared and attacked Goldberg. Hegseth tweeted:
The Atlantic released the so-called “war plans” and those “plans” include: No names. No targets. No locations. No units. No routes. No sources. No methods. And no classified information.
Those are some really shitty war plans.
…We will continue to do our job, while the media does what it does best: peddle hoaxes.
TRENDS: More Than 70% of Public Water Has Fluoride in it, but Some States Want it Banned
“Fluoride is an industrial waste associated with arthritis, bone fractures, bone cancer, IQ loss, neurodevelopmental disorders, and thyroid disease.” - Robert F. Kennedy Jr
What’s going on?
Utah’s Governor, Spencer Cox, will sign a bill prohibiting fluoride from the state’s public drinking systems in May. Utah will become the first state to ban the practice, but likely not the last.
Similar bills are pending in the state legislatures of North Dakota, Tennessee, and Montana, as more individuals and public officials raise concerns about the potential risks the mineral may pose to humans.
Some context
Adding fluoride to water has been a common practice for nearly 100 years in the U.S. Today, more than 72% of Americans receive fluoridated water from public water systems - the most in the world.
In 1962, the United States Public Health Service advised that public water supplies have fluoride levels between 0.7 and 1.2 mg/L to reduce tooth decay. This guidance was revised in 2015 to a fixed level of 0.7 mg/L, in part because individuals today obtain more fluoride from additional sources, like toothpaste.
Here are the top 5 states (map) with the highest percentage of population served with fluoridated water:
Kentucky 99.7%
Minnesota 98.9%
Illinois 98.2%
North Dakota 96.5%
Virginia 95.6%
Not as popular around the world
Fluoridating water is not a common practice around the world. In fact, most European countries have prohibited the practice, including Italy, France, Finland, Germany, Sweden, the Netherlands, Austria, Poland, Hungary, and Switzerland.
Why do we have fluoride in the water?
In 1901, a Colorado Springs dentist, Frederick McKay, noticed his patients had fewer cavities but brown-stained teeth. By 1931, McKay and chemist H.V. Churchill discovered that residents in Colorado Springs had much higher exposure to naturally occurring fluoride in the water. Their research later noted that about 1 ppm of fluoride could help reduce tooth decay and cavity growth.
In 1945, Grand Rapids, Michigan, became the first city to artificially fluoridate its water. After 11 years, tooth decay dropped 60%, convincing the U.S. Public Health Service to back fluoridation in 1950. It exploded—by 1960, over 50 million Americans had it.
The basic argument for fluoride
The right amount of fluoride can help prevent tooth decay. Today, the CDC estimates that it has reduced tooth decay by 25% in children and adults.
Proponents of fluoride say it is a great innovation in public health and serves as a simple and low-cost way to reduce Americans' overall healthcare costs.
The basic argument against fluoride
Many argue that fluoride is a toxic contaminant and is causing more harm than benefits. One recent study released in January 2025 linked increased exposure to fluoride to lower IQ levels in children. Another study found that “for each additional 1 milligram per liter in concentration of fluoride in a mother’s urine, there was a 4.5-point drop in IQ in males.”
Some also argue that fluoride is in so many products today, such as toothpaste and mouthwash, that adding it to the water is not necessary and leads to overexposure.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. wants it banned.
RFK Jr., the Secretary of Health and Human Services, is strongly opposed to fluoride writing on X before being sworn into his role, the following:
“The Trump White House will advise all U.S. water systems to remove fluoride from public water. Fluoride is an industrial waste associated with arthritis, bone fractures, bone cancer, IQ loss, neurodevelopmental disorders, and thyroid disease.”
Here is a clip of RFK Jr. speaking about his stance on fluoride on the Tucker Carlson Show on election night. (video)
It could be that more conservative-leaning states will look to ban it in the coming years.
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