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House Speaker Mike Johnson defended the Trump administration’s handling of national security officials’ inadvertent release of detailed military strike plans to a reporter, saying he did not believe anyone needed to be fired for the incident.

“They acknowledged there was an error and they’re correcting it. I don’t think someone should have lost their job over that because an errant number found their way onto a dialogue,” Johnson said.

Asked about national security adviser Michael Waltz, Johnson firmly stood by his former House colleague.

“The president said he has total confidence in him, and we do as well,” Johnson said.

He did not say if there would be any congressional investigations, though senior members of his conference have told CNN they do not expect any to take place from the Hill.

Asked whether information about weapons systems that was leaked in a sensitive group chat involving senior members of the Trump administration should have been classified, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard suggested the secretary of defense would be more equipped to answer the question.

Gabbard was responding to a question from Independent Sen. Angus King during a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing. King said he didn’t intend to discuss the chat that was the subject of a story in The Atlantic on Monday but decided to push Gabbard after she said it contained no classified information.

The Atlantic reported that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth included sensitive military information in the group chat.

“Senator, I can attest to the fact that there were no classified or intelligence equities that were included in that chat group at any time,” Gabbard told the committee, prompting King to ask: “So the attack sequencing and timing and weapons and targets you don’t consider to, should have been classified?”

Gabbard responded: “I defer to the secretary of defense and the National Security Council on that question.”

King encouraged Gabbard to release the entire text stream, parts of which The Atlantic withheld because of the sensitivity of some of the messages, “so that the public can have a view of what actually transpired” in the conversation.

“It’s hard for me to believe that targets and timing and weapons would not have been classified,” King told America’s chief intelligence officer.

Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard defended the omission of Canada in the Annual Threat Assessment as a source of illicit fentanyl, saying that Mexico is the most extreme threat related to fentanyl.

“The focus in my opening and the ATA was really to focus on the most extreme threats in that area. And our assessment is that the most extreme threat related to fentanyl continues to come from and through Mexico,” Gabbard said when questioned on the omission of Canada as a source of illicit fentanyl in the assessment.

Gabbard’s testimony was given during the Senate Intelligence Committee’s annual hearing on worldwide threats.

Democratic Sen. Martin Heinrich of New Mexico pushed back, saying during the hearing, “the president has stated that the fentanyl coming through Canada is massive and actually said it was an unusual and extraordinary threat, and that was the language that was used to justify putting tariffs on Canada. I’m just trying to reconcile those two issues. Is it an unusual and extraordinary threat or is it a minor threat that doesn’t even merit mention in the annual threat assessment?”

“Senator, I don’t have the numbers related to Canada in front of me at this time. I’d like to get back to you on the specifics of that answer,” Gabbard said, dodging the question.

“It’s less than 1% of the fentanyl that we, that we are able to interdict. But if you have different information, I would very much welcome that,” Heinrich ended.

Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly, a former Navy pilot, called the Signal group chat used by Trump officials to discuss war plans “the dumbest thing I’ve seen in the handling of classified information,” and noted he is deeply concerned about how widespread the use of Signal for classified information may be in the Trump administration.

“That’s what needs to be part of the investigation is how routine is this … you’re talking about the highest levels of government with the, with the exception of the president of the United States, it’s his whole national security team,” said Kelly.

“This was probably, over the last 60 days, a regular practice. And who else knows what is out there, what has been shared and with what individuals? Maybe there’s some random person somewhere that also got added to a Signal chain,” the Arizona senator added.

Kelly called for an investigation.

“Folks need to be held accountable for this level of incompetence,” he said.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune said there were “errors in judgment” that led to top Trump administration national security officials sending war plans in a Signal group chat that inadvertently included a reporter.

Asked by CNN if the incident reflected a lack of qualifications and judgment that was raised by critics before confirming the Cabinet members to their roles, the Republican senator from South Dakota did not directly answer.

“You can’t say anything but this was a mistake and obviously people have to own up to it,” he said, noting that several of the officials involved are appearing before the Senate Intelligence Committee Tuesday. “They’ll hopefully be in a better position to answer those questions.”

Asked if he is concerned personally about the lack of judgment by the officials, Thune said: “I think the White House has acknowledged mistakes were made. I think … they’ll have to figure out now how to ensure that something like this never happens again. But you know, clearly there were errors in judgment.”

In remarks from the Senate floor Tuesday, Thune touted President Donald Trump’s handling of US security at home and abroad, without noting the Signal group chat.

The Republican leader said “our nation is more secure” because of Trump’s efforts to secure the southern border, as well as a “similarly assertive” approach to protecting US interests in the Middle East.

Meanwhile Republican Sen. Ron Johnson downplayed the chat as a “a mistake that’s been corrected right now,” though he acknowledged “it’s obviously not a good thing.” Johnson also said he doesn’t believe national security adviser Mike Waltz should step down.

This report has been updated with remarks from Johnson.

FBI Director Kash Patel declined to say on Tuesday whether the bureau will launch an investigation if national security information was improperly leaked by Cabinet members in a Signal chat that included a journalist.

In a back and forth with Democratic Sen. Mark Warner, leaders of the intelligence community downplayed Monday’s revelation that that top members of President Donald Trump’s Cabinet sent detailed operational plans and other likely highly classified information about US military strikes on Yemen to a group — to which a reporter was inadvertently added — on the encrypted messaging app Signal.

While Tulsi Gabbard, the Director of National Intelligence, and John Ratcliffe, the director of the CIA, both denied the assertion that classified information was shared in the chat, Warner pushed Patel to say whether the FBI would criminally investigate what happened.

“Director Patel, has the FBI launched any investigation of this?” Warner asked.

Patel responded, “I was just briefed about it late last night, this morning. I don’t have an update.” Warner asked for an update “by the end of the day.”

Some context: Under normal circumstances, the FBI and Justice Department would launch an investigation into whether classified information was shared without authorization — a criminal offense. But the leaders on the Signal chat have original classification authority, meaning that they can downgrade classification level at any point and say that there was no legal violation.

Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Tom Cotton highlighted cartels as a primary threat facing the country, as the new Annual Threat Assessment lists foreign illicit drug actors as threats in America.

“For the first time, the Annual Threat Assessment lists foreign illicit drug actors as the very first threat to our country. As the report highlights, Mexican based cartels using precursors produced in China, continue to smuggle fentanyl and synthetic opioids into the United States,” the Arkansas Republican said Tuesday during the Worldwide Threat Assessment hearing.

He continued, “Last year alone, these deadly drugs tragically killed more than 52,000 Americans, more than the number killed in attacks by foreign terrorists or foreign nations. Given these threats, we have to ask, are our intelligence agencies well postured against these threats? I’m afraid the answer is no, at least not yet.”

Cotton said intelligence agencies have gotten “more politicized, more bureaucratic, and more focused on promulgating opinions rather than gathering facts” in recent years.

In a pair of statements following technical meetings in Saudi Arabia, the White House says Ukraine and Russia have agreed to “ensure safe navigation, eliminate the use of force, and prevent the use of commercial vessels for military purposes in the Black Sea.”

The White House released separate statements listing the outcomes of meetings between US and Russian officials, and US and Ukrainian officials, that took place earlier this week in Riyadh.

Both statements list the Black Sea agreement as a top outcome.

In a readout of the Russia meeting, the White House says the US would “help restore Russia’s access to the world market for agricultural and fertilizer exports, lower maritime insurance costs, and enhance access to ports and payment systems for such transactions.”

With Ukraine, the US “agreed that the United States remains committed to helping achieve the exchange of prisoners of war, the release of civilian detainees, and the return of forcibly transferred Ukrainian children.”

Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard declined to say whether she was involved in the leaked group chat discussing sensitive plans to strike Houthi targets in Yemen, citing ongoing reviews into it.

“Senator, I don’t want to get into this,” Gabbard responded when questioned by Senate Intelligence Committee Vice Chair Sen. Mark Warner about whether she was involved in the conversation. She said she didn’t want to discuss the matter while it was under review by the National Security Council.

Warner said that “American lives could have been lost” because of the disclosure.

CIA Director John Ratcliffe, meanwhile, admitted he was involved in the chat. But he said that his part of the conversation was “entirely permissible and lawful and did not include classified information.”

President Donald Trump’s border czar Tom Homan told CNN on Tuesday that he hopes the Internal Revenue Service will begin sharing data on potential undocumented migrants in the country with US Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

“I hope so,” Homan answered when pressed if he expects IRS to start sharing names and addresses of people it suspects of living in the country illegally. “I think it’s to protect American citizens, their Social Security benefits, protect their identity from being stolen. That’s one way we can do it,” he said from the White House.

“Illegal aliens use American Social Security numbers,” Homan claimed.

As CNN reported over the weekend, the IRS is nearing the final stages of an agreement with the Department of Homeland Security to assist in locating migrants believed to be in the US unlawfully, as Trump maintains his tough stance on deportations.

Some more context: Critics of illegal immigration have long argued that undocumented immigrants who pay taxes are able to do so because they’re using stolen Social Security numbers. But millions of federal tax dollars are paid every year by people who don’t have Social Security numbers at all.

CNN’s Catherine Shoichet contributed reporting to this post.

The revelation that a journalist was mistakenly added to a group chat with several senior Trump administration officials discussing highly sensitive plans to strike Yemen is “just mind boggling,” Democratic Sen. Mark Warner said during a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing Tuesday, noting that any ordinary military or intelligence officer would have lost their job over the disclosure.

“Yesterday, we stunningly learned that senior members of this administration, and according to reports, two of our witnesses here today, were members of a group chat that discussed highly sensitive and likely classified information that supposedly even included weapons packages, targets and timing, and included the name of an active CIA agent,” Warner, the committee’s vice chair, said to open the hearing.

Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and CIA Director John Ratcliffe, who were both in the group chat that mistakenly also included The Atlantic editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg, are being questioned at the hearing.

“Putting aside for a moment that classified information should never be discussed over an unclassified system. It’s also just mind boggling to me that all these senior folks were on this line and nobody bothered even check,” Warner added. “Security Hygiene 101, who are all the names? Who are they? Well, it apparently included a journalist.”

Warner went on to commend Goldberg for his prudence in not reporting the entirety of the sensitive chat. “And no matter how much the Secretary of Defense or others want to disparage him, this journalist had at least the ethics to not report I think everything he heard.”

European lawmakers and leaders are reacting to the Signal chat leak as President Donald Trump and his administration are facing mounting questions amid the national security breach fallout.

Here’s what they are saying:

• UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s official spokesperson told journalists on Tuesday that Britain retained confidence it could securely share intelligence with the US. But he sought to make clear that Britain’s government has “very strict rules and arrangements” for secure communications. “For any classified information, that has to be communicated across appropriate security systems,” he said.
• UK Liberal Democrat leader Ed Davey posted on X: “JD Vance and his mates clearly aren’t fit to run a group chat, let alone the world’s strongest military force. It has to make our security services nervous about the intelligence we’re sharing with them.”
• Austrian President Alexander Van der Bellen, speaking with his Albanian counterpart in Vienna Tuesday, said: “The American situation is one more reason as to why we have to contemplate that we need a strong, confident Europe which takes its own path and secures the peace in Europe strategically by itself.”
• Guy Verhofstadt, former Belgian prime minister and member of the European Parliament, posted on X: “Another wake up call for a real European defense … when will EU leaders act?”

Today’s Senate Intelligence Committee hearing into “World Wide Threats” is underway.

Tulsi Gabbard, director of National Intelligence, and Kash Patel, director of the FBI, are among those appearing before the panel.

The Trump administration officials are expected to be grilled over the use of a messaging app to discuss a sensitive military strike after a journalist was reportedly accidentally added to a group chat with top Cabinet members.

President Donald Trump on Tuesday told NBC News that he still has confidence in national security adviser Mike Waltz.

“Michael Waltz has learned a lesson, and he’s a good man,” Trump said during a phone interview with NBC’s Garrett Haake.

When asked if he was frustrated that The Atlantic story has gotten so much attention, Trump said no, calling it “the only glitch in two months, and turned out not to be a serious one,” Haake wrote on X.

Trump’s comments to NBC are his first significant response since The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg revealed that he was accidentally included in a Signal group chat where discussions about military strikes in Yemen took place.

Trump, in the NBC interview, claimed said it was a staffer who added Jeffrey Goldberg to the Signal group chat, even though Goldberg has said that Waltz added him.

In a post on X responding to the NBC report, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt echoed Trump’s answers, writing, “Stories claiming otherwise are driven by anonymous sources who clearly do not speak to the President, and written by reporters who are thirsty for a ‘scoop.’”

Leavitt reiterated her Monday statement that the president continues to have “confidence in his national security team, including Mike Waltz.”

This post has been updated with more reporting on Trump’s NBC News interview.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt took to social media today to respond to Monday’s Signal scandal, saying “no war plans were discussed,” after The Atlantic reported that top members of President Donald Trump’s Cabinet sent detailed operational plans and other likely highly classified information.

“Jeffrey Goldberg is well-known for his sensationalist spin,” the press secretary’s X post claimed.

Leavitt continued to lay out rebuttals to the editor in chief of The Atlantic, Jeffrey Goldberg’s story defending the administration’s actions and claiming that proper protocols were followed.

“1. No ‘war plans’ were discussed. 2. No classified material was sent to the thread. 3. The White House Counsel’s Office has provided guidance on a number of different platforms for President Trump’s top officials to communicate as safely and efficiently as possible,” Leavitt added.

“As the National Security Council stated, the White House is looking into how Goldberg’s number was inadvertently added to the thread,” she wrote.

Leavitt’s post continued to spin Monday’s scandal into praises of the “successful” military operation against the Houthis.

On Monday, after it was revealed that top Trump officials discussed the details of a highly sensitive operation to bomb Houthi targets in a group chat that carelessly included Goldberg, Leavitt said that Trump continues to have “the utmost confidence” in his national security adviser Mike Waltz, after he added the journalist to the Signal chat.

Trump administration officials are deliberately remaining defiant in the wake of the damaging story from The Atlantic regarding national security adviser Michael Waltz inadvertently adding a reporter to a Signal chain that shared sensitive information on military plans in Yemen.

The current strategy, three Trump administration officials told CNN, is to downplay the significance of what unfolded and discredit the journalist, Atlantic editor in chief Jeffrey Goldberg, who Waltz added to the group chat.

Much of that strategy has already played out, with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth adamantly denying that the Cabinet and senior White House officials in the group discussed war plans (Goldberg told CNN that’s a lie).

And Elon Musk posted that the “Best place to hide a dead body is Page 2 of the Atlantic Magazine” — which Trump later reposted.

All of this comes as the National Security Council said on the record that the Signal chain appears to be authentic, and Goldberg continues to argue that highly sensitive and specific details regarding war plans were included in the messages.

However, as the White House continues to reel from the implications of the story, multiple Trump administration officials and outside advisers told CNN that discussions over Waltz being fired and labeled the fall guy are premature — though that could change depending on how the fallout evolves over the coming days.

CNN previously reported that while Trump was being briefed on The Atlantic story, the president expressed his disdain for Goldberg, the sources said.

The messages make it clear, in black and white, in case there were any room for doubt: the Trump administration shares a visceral disdain for European reliance on the US.

In sensitive, blow-by-blow exchanges inadvertently shared with a journalist from The Atlantic, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth derided Europe as “PATHETIC” freeloaders.

Vice President JD Vance even suggested pausing a strike on Houthi targets in Yemen, because European economies benefit more from shipping through the Suez Canal than America does. “I just hate bailing out Europe again.”

Eventually, a compromise is reached: the strike would go ahead, but the Europeans would be invoiced.

The messages chime with the jarringly confrontational tone Trump’s team has taken toward Europe, particularly on contributions to NATO and on the war in Ukraine. There were few officials on the continent who still clung to the belief that the rhetoric was tough love, intended to help Europe stand on its own two feet.

But this isn’t just posture: the leak makes clear that Vance, in particular, is vehemently opposed with what he views as European scrounging, but which Europe sees as a mutually beneficial arrangement that allows intelligence, military support and security cooperation to flow both ways.

It will rankle European capitals. Britain and the Netherlands joined the Biden administration in striking Houthi targets last year, and London provided air-to-air refueling for the very strikes discussed in the leaked Signal group chat.

Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s official spokesperson told journalists on Tuesday that Britain retained confidence it could securely share intelligence with the US. But he sought to make clear that Britain’s government has “very strict rules and arrangements” for secure communications. “For any classified information, that has to be communicated across appropriate security systems,” he said.

And it will heighten concerns on the continent about Vance’s seemingly prominent voice in foreign policy discussions. It was Vance who sparked the stunning argument with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in the Oval Office last month, and whose speech at the Munich Security Conference marked the first salvo in a rapid reshaping of transatlantic relations.

The messages are “another wake up call for a real European Defence,” former Belgian Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt wrote on X. “When will EU leaders act?”

President Donald Trump’s nominee to lead the Social Security Administration, which is reeling from deep staffing cuts and service changes, is scheduled to appear before the Senate Finance Committee on Tuesday.

Frank Bisignano, who is CEO of Fiserv, the world’s largest payments and financial technology company, told CNBC last month that he supports Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency’s anti-fraud measures at the agency.

One of the changes taking place under acting commissioner Leland Dudek is that Social Security will soon start requiring people filing benefit applications who cannot prove their identities online to visit an agency office to complete the claim.

Bisignano will tell the committee that he’s committed to reducing wait times and significantly improving the length of the disability claim process, according to his opening statement, obtained by CNN. “Waiting 20-plus minutes to get an answer will be of yesteryear,” he will say.

Also, he wants to get the agency’s payment error rate below the current 1%.

More than 73 million retirees, people with disabilities and others receive Social Security payments.

Bisignano is expected to face many questions from Democratic senators about the agency’s massive overhaul and DOGE representatives’ access to Americans’ sensitive information.

“These new developments leave us deeply concerned that DOGE and the Trump Administration are setting up the SSA for failure—a failure that could cut off Social Security benefits for millions of Americans—and that will then be used to justify a ‘private sector fix’,” two leading Democratic senators wrote to Bisignano.

Advocates are also raising red flags that the moves will make it harder for Americans to access the agency’s services and, potentially, lead to interruptions in benefits.

It’s one of the most shocking national security indiscretions in years.

The revelation that President Donald Trump’s national security team discussed military strikes in Yemen on an unclassified group chat suggests a cavalier attitude toward America’s secrets and the safety of US forces on a deadly mission.

The group message, revealed Monday in an article by Atlantic editor Jeffrey Goldberg – who was somehow added to the chat by accident – hints at a lax national security process and incompetence as the nation faces a world of threats.

The use of Signal, an encrypted app that is nonetheless carried on phones that are vulnerable to penetration by foreign intelligence services, also suggests contempt for strict laws on the handling of classified material that would land more junior officials in deep trouble.

“This was grossly negligent,” Ryan Goodman, a former Defense Department special counsel, told CNN’s Erin Burnett on Monday. “That is actually the terms of the criminal statute – ‘having gross negligence in mishandling classified information’ … if it is disclosed to somebody who is unauthorized. And on their call was a journalist. That means there was in fact a disclosure.”

The lack of public contrition, let alone resignations, from top officials, reflects a White House that operates in a culture of impunity and has stacked the Justice Department and FBI – which might normally be expected to launch immediate investigations – with ultra-loyalists to the president.

Read Collinson’s full analysis here.

Russia and the United States have not adopted a joint statement following talks in Saudi Arabia, due to the stance of Ukraine, a senior Russian senator told Russian media.

“The fact that they sat for 12 hours and seemed to agree on a joint statement, which however was not adopted due to Ukraine’s position, is also very characteristic and symptomatic,” Vladimir Chizhov said Tuesday in an interview with Russia-24, according to Russia’s Interfax news agency.

Chizhov did not provide further details about how Ukraine’s position was to blame for Russia and the US failing to agree on a joint statement, which had been expected following Monday’s negotiations.

Black Sea discussions: Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Tuesday Russia is in favor of resuming the Black Sea Grain Initiative, with certain conditions, following the talks.

The talks centered on the issue of safe shipping in the Black Sea, Lavrov said in an interview with Russia’s Channel One, according to state media TASS.

The United States must “order” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to respect a new deal, Lavrov also said.

Lavrov stressed that Moscow wants the deal — which ensured the safe passage of ships carrying grain from Ukrainian ports and collapsed in July 2023 — to be revived “in a form more acceptable” to all parties involved, saying he hopes the new deal does “not contain ambiguities.”

He claimed that Russia is concerned about food security in Africa and elsewhere in the Global South. He also added that Russia will not accept being driven out of agricultural markets.

CNN’s Sebastian Shukla contributed reporting.

This post has been updated with more of Lavrov’s comments.