An Evening Reid: Explaining away the inexplicable

We are being governed by the foolish, the arrogant, and the villainous. And they're doing it via doge, right wing state media and Signal group chats...

Welcome to Magamerica, where the president is a geriatric former reality show star, wanna be Stalin who survives on cheeseburgers and Diet Coke and can barely navigate stairs, his cabinet are a bunch of clowns he likes watching on Fox, and his party are the spineless automatons from 1984 who insist we’ve always been at war with Eastasia (while the opposition party are mainly just quietly, sheepishly waiting on someone to come up with a plan — just something not too vigorous, mean looking or scary...) What could possibly go wrong?

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Excuses, excuses…

The excuses being floated by Trump and his people for the incompetent dim bulbery of TV host-turned-defense secretary Pete Hegseth and his fellow hairbrained cabinet schemers sharing U.S. defense plans to bomb the Houthis on a Signal group chat are mind numbing.

There’s the “what’s even Signal slzzzzrrrr…” gambit, from Trump….

Is Grampy Autocrat ok???

There’s the “there was no classified information on that chat” excuse, posited by MAGA Texas congressman-turned-CIA Director John Ratcliffe and former back bench congresswoman Tulsi “too crazy for the Democratic Party” Gabbard — and not too successfully — in front of a Senate hearing yesterday:

There’s the “I realize I’m in over my head, sheesh!” gambit from Lil’ Marco…

And there’s the “it’s totally my fault, please don’t blame my drunkie friend” gambit from NSA Mike Waltz…

And then there’s TV host Pete, whose fault it totally is and he’s really mad about it

Well today, The Atlantic called these clown’s bluffs and released the transcripts. They are … to put it mildly … unhelpful to the Trump gang’s defense…

Experts have repeatedly told us that use of a Signal chat for such sensitive discussions poses a threat to national security. As a case in point, Goldberg received information on the attacks two hours before the scheduled start of the bombing of Houthi positions. If this information—particularly the exact times American aircraft were taking off for Yemen—had fallen into the wrong hands in that crucial two-hour period, American pilots and other American personnel could have been exposed to even greater danger than they ordinarily would face. The Trump administration is arguing that the military information contained in these texts was not classified—as it typically would be—although the president has not explained how he reached this conclusion.

Yesterday, we asked officials across the Trump administration if they objected to us publishing the full texts. In emails to the Central Intelligence Agency, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the National Security Council, the Department of Defense, and the White House, we wrote, in part: “In light of statements today from multiple administration officials, including before the Senate Intelligence Committee, that the information in the Signal chain about the Houthi strike is not classified, and that it does not contain ‘war plans,’ The Atlantic is considering publishing the entirety of the Signal chain.”

We sent our first request for comment and feedback to national-security officials shortly after noon, and followed up in the evening after most failed to answer.

Late yesterday, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt emailed a response: “As we have repeatedly stated, there was no classified information transmitted in the group chat. However, as the CIA Director and National Security Advisor have both expressed today, that does not mean we encourage the release of the conversation. This was intended to be a an [sic] internal and private deliberation amongst high-level senior staff and sensitive information was discussed. So for those reason [sic] — yes, we object to the release.” (The Leavitt statement did not address which elements of the texts the White House considered sensitive, or how, more than a week after the initial air strikes, their publication could have bearing on national security.)

A CIA spokesperson asked us to withhold the name of John Ratcliffe’s chief of staff, which Ratcliffe had shared in the Signal chain, because CIA intelligence officers are traditionally not publicly identified. Ratcliffe had testified earlier yesterday that the officer is not undercover and said it was “completely appropriate” to share their name in the Signal conversation. We will continue to withhold the name of the officer. Otherwise, the messages are unredacted.

As we wrote on Monday, much of the conversation in the “Houthi PC small group” concerned the timing and rationale of attacks on the Houthis, and contained remarks by Trump-administration officials about the alleged shortcomings of America’s European allies. But on the day of the attack—Saturday, March 15—the discussion veered toward the operational.

At 11:44 a.m. eastern time, Hegseth posted in the chat, in all caps, “TEAM UPDATE:”

The text beneath this began, “TIME NOW (1144et): Weather is FAVORABLE. Just CONFIRMED w/CENTCOM we are a GO for mission launch.” Centcom, or Central Command, is the military’s combatant command for the Middle East. The Hegseth text continues:

• “1215et: F-18s LAUNCH (1st strike package)”

• “1345: ‘Trigger Based’ F-18 1st Strike Window Starts (Target Terrorist is @ his Known Location so SHOULD BE ON TIME – also, Strike Drones Launch (MQ-9s)”

Let us pause here for a moment to underscore a point. This Signal message shows that the U.S. secretary of defense texted a group that included a phone number unknown to him—Goldberg’s cellphone—at 11:44 a.m. This was 31 minutes before the first U.S. warplanes launched, and two hours and one minute before the beginning of a period in which a primary target, the Houthi “Target Terrorist,” was expected to be killed by these American aircraft. If this text had been received by someone hostile to American interests—or someone merely indiscreet, and with access to social media—the Houthis would have had time to prepare for what was meant to be a surprise attack on their strongholds. The consequences for American pilots could have been catastrophic.

The Hegseth text then continued:

• “1410: More F-18s LAUNCH (2nd strike package)”

• “1415: Strike Drones on Target (THIS IS WHEN THE FIRST BOMBS WILL DEFINITELY DROP, pending earlier ‘Trigger Based’ targets)”

• “1536 F-18 2nd Strike Starts – also, first sea-based Tomahawks launched.”

• “MORE TO FOLLOW (per timeline)”

• “We are currently clean on OPSEC”—that is, operational security.

• “Godspeed to our Warriors.”

Shortly after, Vice President J. D. Vance texted the group, “I will say a prayer for victory.”

Is anybody buying this?

Short answer: no one who isn’t maga…

The response from the media has been unusually furtive…

Even Fox isn’t fully playing ball…

And this question just seems inevitable: was Pete drunk?

Also since he has taken responsibility for this fiasco, and apparently also left his Venmo contacts list wide open for anyone to see (and apparently it’s full of journalists) … why is Mike Waltz still employed at taxpayer expense to be the president’s national security adviser? Why are any of these people still being paid by us to supposedly defend national security???

Who is resigning over this fiasco. Anyone???

Votevets: your witness:

I’m just gonna leave this here:

The Age of Baraka

If you’re in New Jersey, please pay attention to the gubernatorial primary. One of the candidates is Ras Baraka, the former mayor of Newark (he succeeded Cory Booker) and the son of famed African-American poet Amiri Baraka. If he wins the primary in June and the general in November, he would be America’s second Black governor, alongside Marylands Wes Moore, and only the seventh Black governor in U.S. history, including the two who served in the South during reconstruction. He’s also ahead in the polls, mainly because unlike the milder mannered moderate Democrats in the race, he’s actually fighting Trump the way he needs to be fought.

“Some people have told us over and over again that nobody is going to know you down south, that white suburban voters are not going to vote for you,” Mayor Baraka told TheGrio. “They were wrong… The timing is right. I think all of this, in my mind, [is] happening for a reason.”

A former school principal turned city council member, Baraka’s name may be familiar outside of the Garden State for a few reasons. He’s a Howard grad and the son of famous poet and activist Amiri Baraka. His conversations with his students were part of the Grammy Award-winning album The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill, and he also succeeded Cory Booker in his race for Mayor of Newark, the city where Baraka was born and raised.

Newark is a predominantly Black city with the largest population in the state. While some news outlets once deemed it the “murder capital” of the United States, Baraka has presided over a city that includes a major reduction in crime and growing business and residential development. While the balance between bringing in new residents and stopping the pushout of gentrification is a delicate one, Baraka says he’s proud of his record and thinks it’s a strong one to run on.

“We invested almost $200 million in Black and brown businesses in the last four years, right here in Newark,” Baraka tells TheGrio. “We recovered from a serious recession. We made millionaires in the city. We put people into housing that they owned. We lowered the cost of broadband. We lowered people’s health care costs.”

… His policy plans for New Jersey include increasing the housing supply, expanding healthcare, universal income, and making voting easier for residents, including teens. He’s pushed back against Trump’s immigration crackdowns in Newark, which have included roundups that detained U.S. citizens and people with a legal right to be in the country. It’s a progressive platform that the mayor says equates to common sense.

Warning signs

Intellectual leaders whose specialty is autocracy, fascism and authoritarianism moving out of the country is a worrying sign…

Trump comes for voting rights

Did you catch this executive order? Here’s how the ACLU summarizes it:

WASHINGTON, D.C. — The American Civil Liberties Union condemns President Donald Trump's executive order signed today, which aims to upend U.S. elections and disenfranchise millions of eligible voters. This directive represents a significant overreach of executive power and poses a direct threat to the fundamental right to vote.

The executive order directs the Election Assistance Commission to change the national mail voter registration form to require documentary proof of citizenship, such as a passport, to register to vote. The order also attempts to force states to enact documentary proof of citizenship requirements and to stop counting absentee and mail-in ballots received after Election Day in accordance with state law by threatening to withhold federal funding.

Not to be outdone, Georgia is getting right in the game, launching the largest voter purge in that state’s history, targeting nearly half a million voters they claim are “inactive.” This is not the first time. Georgia Republicans tried this gambit last year, just as Brian Kemp did prior to facing Stacey Abrams in 2018, which prompted the NAACP to sue.

Prepare for a knock down, drag out fight over the right to vote, ahead of the 2026 election for two reasons:

First, Trump will never stop trying to prove the ego-induced conspiracy theory that the only reason he hasn’t been elected by Putin-like margins is because millions of undocumented immigrants supposedly risked revealing their home addresses and thus risking deportation in three straight elections, by registering to vote.

Second, Republicans didn’t seize power following a literal coup attempt in January 2021 and launch Project 2025 just to let a little thing like voters and elections deprive them of power.

Also, you’re going to have to show me proof that Donald Trump plans to ever leave office (something Bill Maher also used to believe, as recently as 2020 — we’ll see if he still does after the upcoming White House charm offensive organized by former pretend rapper Kid Rock.)

That episode aired September 25, 2020. Four months later was the insurrection.

Stay safe and woke out there!

This post has been updated.