The D Brief: More WH Signal chats; Trump’s tariffs skip Russia; NSC departures?; Simulating budget choices; And a bit more.

White House’s Signal use widens

National security adviser Mike Waltz set up at least 20 Signal group chats to discuss global hot spots, people on them have told Politico. “Two of the people said they were in or have direct knowledge of at least 20 such chats. All four said they saw instances of sensitive information being discussed.”

As with the infamous Yemen chat, White House officials said the chats were not used to share classified information and that the Signal app can be used for government business if the messages are retained per federal records laws. They did not say how this squared with warnings that Signal messages on a personal phone are vulnerable to foreign interception or with Waltz’s setting the messages to disappear. Read on, here.

House oversight committee Democrats demand documents, investigations.  (Press release, Axios)

Bipartisan natsec advocacy group: “The new revelations reported by Politico—that the National Security Advisor’s staff created and maintained at least 20 Signal group chats for managing sensitive international crises—raise the concerning possibility that our nation’s adversaries may have had line of sight into critical strategies, tactics, and objectives.” Here’s the press release from National Security Leaders for America.

Breaking: “Several members of President Trump’s embattled National Security Council have been fired,” Axios reported Thursday morning, citing two sources familiar with the decision. It’s not yet clear if any of those let go were linked to the Signalgate or related operational security scandals of the Trump administration’s first 60 days. 

“The firings come a day after conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer visited the Oval Office and pressed President Trump to fire members of the NSC,” Barak Ravid and Dave Lawler of Axios write. More, here. 

Around the Defense Department:

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Welcome to this Thursday edition of The D Brief, a newsletter dedicated to developments affecting the future of U.S. national security, brought to you by Bradley Peniston and Ben Watson. Share your tips and feedback here. And if you’re not already subscribed, you can do that here. On this day in 1865, the U.S. military captured the capital of the Confederacy in Richmond, Virginia. The war would end 53 days later. 

Trump’s tariffs

U.S. and global markets plummeted Thursday after President Trump announced his long-teased tariff war on the world, including more than 60 countries around the globe. 

Latest: “Futures on the S&P 500 slumped over 3 percent, as benchmark indexes dropped more than 3 percent in Japan and nearly 2 percent in Hong Kong and South Korea,” the New York Times reports. “The Stoxx Europe 600 was down more than 2 percent and Brent crude, the international oil benchmark, dropped by 3 percent.” The conservative Wall Street Journal framed developments a little differently, writing, “The Dow industrials dropped 1500 points, a shocking number though one that reflects just a moderate decline of 3.5%.” Meanwhile, “Fears that the disruption caused by the tariffs will outweigh the benefits to U.S. manufacturers, led the dollar to decline the most against other major currencies in months,” the Journal’s Caitlin McCabe wrote separately. 

AP’s headline: “Dow drops 1,200 [now 1,500] as US stock market leads a worldwide sell-off following Trump’s tariff shock.”

The White House’s message: “To anyone on Wall Street this morning, I would say trust in President Trump,” Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said. 

One view from across the pond: “Donald Trump has committed the most profound, harmful and unnecessary economic error in the modern era,” the UK’s Economist writes Thursday morning. 

“Almost everything he said—on history, economics and the technicalities of trade—was utterly deluded,” the publication’s editors said, echoing analysis from writer James Surowiecki and later confirmed by the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative. 

By the way: Trump spared Russia from his tariff war. Why? “I think it’s a political decision,” Alexandra Prokopenko, former official at the Russian central bank, said according to the New York Times. “Trump does not want to escalate while his talks with Putin are ongoing,” she speculated. Indeed, Trump’s team lifted sanctions against Russia’s negotiator Kirill Dmitriev, so he could visit with White House officials in Washington today. 

Autocratic tactics? Trump’s “tariffs are a tool to collapse our democracy. A means to compel loyalty from every business that will need to petition Trump for relief,” Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., said Wednesday evening. Considering the economic pain of these tariffs, “Trump has a straight face rationale for releasing them, business by business or industry by industry. As he adjusts or grants relief, it’s a win-win: the economy improves and dissent disappears.”

“Our founders created a President with limited and checked powers,” said Murphy. “They specifically put the power of spending and taxation in the hands of the legislature. Why? Because they watched how kings and despots used spending and taxes to control their subjects.”

“Trump didn’t invent this strategy,” the senator explained. “It’s the playbook for democratically elected leaders who want to stay in power forever.” Murphy goes into greater detail, here. 

A second opinion: “This is Trump saying…I am going to overturn globalization as we’ve known it,” CNN global economic analyst Rana Foroohar said Wednesday, and warned, “I’m hoping it doesn’t push the U.S. and the world into recession.”

Europe

Secretary of State Marco Rubio is in Europe for talks with NATO allies in Belgium. “The United States is as active in NATO as it has ever been,” Rubio told alliance members Thursday, Reuters reported from Brussels. 

His main message: Spend more on defense. “We do want to leave here with an understanding that we are on a pathway, a realistic pathway, to every single one of the members committing and fulfilling a promise to reach up to 5% of spending,” Rubio said. “No one expects that you’re going to be able to do this in one year or two. But the pathway has to be real,” he added. 

Greenland chat in the works? “Rubio is due to sit down with Danish Foreign Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen on the meeting’s sidelines in the first direct U.S.-Danish contact in weeks, although a Danish foreign ministry spokesperson said Greenland would not be on the agenda,” Politico reported Wednesday. 

Related reading: 

Developing: Pentagon chief Hegseth will skip the next Ukraine Defense Contact Group meeting, which would be “the first time the group will meet without a U.S. defense secretary attending,” Defense News reported Wednesday. The next such meeting of Ukraine’s allies is slated for next Friday, and it will be jointly chaired by the UK and Germany. 

“Hegseth won’t join in person and isn’t expected to join virtually either,” and “the Pentagon is unlikely to send any senior representatives,” a defense official said. “For Europeans, the secretary’s absence is the latest sign of the Trump administration’s lower-priority approach to arming Ukraine—a point Hegseth made clear at the last meeting in February,” Defense News writes. More, here. 

This morning on Capitol Hill, the U.S. military’s posture in Europe and Africa are under the microscope at the Senate Armed Services Committee. Army Gen. Chris Cavoli, chief of U.S. European Command and NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander, and Marine Gen. Michael Langley of U.S. Africa Command are testifying together in a hearing that began at 9:30 a.m. ET. Livestream here. 

Reminder: “President Trump may soon remake the entire U.S. combatant command structure, including dismantling AFRICOM and merging it under EUCOM,” Sen. Jack Reed, D-Rhode Island, said in his opening remarks. 

“This would be a deeply mistaken and harmful decision,” he said, and asked the officers to “please provide your assessment of the harm to U.S. vital interests if we reduce our engagement in Europe and Africa and the opportunity that would provide for competitors like Russia and China.”

Lastly in commentary: “We tried ‘fighting China’ with lower budgets. It didn’t go well,” write three analysts for the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. “By month’s end, Congressional leaders expect the Trump administration to release a “skinny budget” containing topline spending amounts for the Defense Department. Though specifics will come later, the choices that shape this fiscal 2026 skinny budget will set policy direction for the next four years.

“Tabletop exercises hosted by the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments offer one big lesson for the fiscal 2026 spending plan.” Read that, here.

Defense One