Trump administration faces group chat fallout: from political desk

Welcome to the online edition of From The Politics Desk, an evening newsletter that provides the latest reports and analysis from the NBC News Politics team’s White House, Capitol Hill and Campaign Trail.

Happy Monday! I hope your brackets will remain the same from this weekend onwards. (If you choose your favorite, it is probably in good condition.)

Today’s edition dives into fallout through journalists who appear to have been accidentally added to group chats among Trump administration officials about US plans to attack the Hoosis in Yemen. Furthermore, with the shutdown fight behind them, Sahil Kapoor will clarify the key hurdles that Congressional Republicans must make clear about passing a massive bill to enact the President’s policy agenda.

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– Adam Walner

The Trump administration is reviewing how its national security team sent war plans to magazine editors

The White House said it is reviewing how people who are believed to be members of President Donald Trump’s administration were mistakenly added to the text of the group that discussed plans to launch the Hauty extremists in Yemen, Kelly O’Donnell and Daniel Arkin Report.

“At this point, the reported message threads appear to be authentic and we are reviewing how careless numbers have been added to the chain,” the National Security Council said in a statement to NBC News.

The statement came in response to an article published Monday by Atlantic Jeffrey Goldberg, a veteran national security and foreign affairs journalist. Goldberg reported that it was added to a group chat called “Houthi PC Small Group” on March 13th. It is an encrypted messaging service that is widely believed to be more secure than other commercial text messages.

Goldberg reported that he received a series of messages about signals that appear to come from Vice President J.D. Vance, Secretary of Defense, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, national security adviser Michael Waltz, and other prominent officials in the Trump administration.

Goldberg reported leaving the signal group after personally concluded that it was “almost certainly real.”

How Trump responded: Trump claimed he didn’t know about the issue and told a reporter in the oval office, “You’re the first time you’re telling me about it.”

How Democrats respond: Democrats quickly criticised the Trump administration for quick criticism.

D-Del, a member of the Foreign Relations Committee. Senator Chris Cooons of the United States said:

Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer, DN.Y., called for a “full investigation into how this happened, the damage it produced, and whether it could be avoided in the future.” D-Ariz. Senator Reuben Gallego of blew up the episode as “amateur hour.”

And Hillary Clinton, who sparked intense criticism from Republicans for using private email servers, tweeted a screenshot of an Atlantic article with a simple message saying, “You have to be teasing me.”

How Republicans are responding: Republicans have so far been stunned by their reaction. At least one GOP member in Congress has cheated Trump’s national security team.

“The classified information should not be sent to unsecured channels. It is not certain for those without security clearance, including reporters,” RN.Y. “To ensure this doesn’t happen again, safeguards must be put in place.”

R-La. House Speaker Mike Johnson said the administration was “addressing” the situation, admitting that it was “a mistake,” adding that he hoped the White House would “tighten and make sure it doesn’t happen again.”

Read more →

Other things you need to know from today’s President Trump

Trump gathered Cabinet secretaries for his third known meeting with Elon Musk and praised leaders in their department for their cost-cutting measures, even if they recognized these as “unpopular.” The judge who leads to the alien enemy lawsuits has denied the government’s demands to lift a hold of deportation under rarely used wartime laws despite Trump’s repeated attacks on him and his orders. Manufacturer Hyundai has opened a steel factory in Louisiana. This week, Mrs Ushavance traveled to Greenland, along with energy secretary Chris Wright and national security adviser Mike Waltz, called on Trump to take over Danish territory. The attorney general sanctions a law firm that file “frivolous” lawsuits. In a post about the Truth Society, Trump blasted out a portrait of himself hanging from the Colorado State Capitol and asked the state governor to remove it.

Four hurdles Republicans face as they shift their focus to the bill to pass Trump’s agenda

By Sahil Kapur

Congress has returned after a week-long break as Republicans plan to shift their focus to party and party bills and pass President Donald Trump’s multi-billion dollar agenda after dumping another government funding deadline.

Speaker Mike Johnson set the target to pass through the House in April before the Easter break. And the bill goes to the Senate.

Here are four hurdles they face.

Medicaid cuts: A recent analysis from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office found it mathematically impossible for House Republicans to achieve their budget goals without cutting Medicare or Medicaid.

Pursuing hundreds of millions of dollars of Medicaid cuts will put Swing District Republicans in a politically unstable position. But giving up those cuts would anger the hard-line conservatives who voted for budget blueprints to start the process, as they were promised a sudden spending cut.

Asterisk of $4.6 trillion? According to the CBO, extending Trump’s expiration tax cuts in 2017 would cost $4.6 trillion over a decade. And that was before he worked on other Trump pursuits, such as tax termination on tips and overtime pay.

To resolve the issue, Republicans are considering extensive accounting changes to hide the impact on the deficit, known as the “current policy baseline,” rather than the “current legal baseline.” Democrats are preparing to fight Congress, the internal judge who oversees the settlement process.

House Religious Dividends: The two rooms adopted a conflicting budget resolution before Trump took sides with the House version. On Monday, House GOP leaders called on the Senate to adopt House measures. But Republican senators are waiting to see if the House can deliver on the actual bill. Despite the majority of the thin-papered home, the senators don’t feel like the House will decide the outcome.

Debt Limitations: The exact date Congress will need to act to raise the debt cap this year is still unknown. The House budget plan called for an increase of $4 trillion in its debt cap, but it would need to pass a settlement bill to make it official. This means they must either send laws to Trump’s desk before the deadline or risk economic disasters.

Read more from Sahil→

For now, it’s all from the political desk. Today’s newsletter was compiled by Adam Wollner and Bridget Bowman.

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