Headline Roundup • March 26th, 2025
Atlantic Publishes Details of 'War Plans' Signal Chats
Summary from the AllSides News Team
The Atlantic (Left bias) published detailed operational plans for US military strikes in Yemen, which were shared in a Signal chat group that mistakenly included the publication's editor-in-chief, Jeffrey Goldberg.
The Details: The details were released after Trump administration officials denied sharing classified information in the chat. The plans, shared by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, included a timeline for strikes on Houthi targets, specifying when the strikes would take place and which forces would be used. Hegseth assured in the chat that operational security was maintained, stating, "We are currently clean on OPSEC."
For Context: The chat group, which was intended for top Trump administration officials, included National Security Adviser Michael Waltz, Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, CIA Director John Ratcliffe, and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, among others. The Atlantic initially reported the presence of Goldberg in the Signal chat group on Monday, revealing that the group was discussing pending military strikes. The magazine had withheld some contents of the thread in its initial report due to national security concerns. However, the full texts were published following President Donald Trump and other group chat members' claims that none of the messages were classified.
How The Media Covered It: Media coverage was similar across the spectrum. While voices on the left emphasized the specificity of the plans and lack of security by sending them over Signal, White House Press Secretary Karoline Levitt maintained that they were not "war plans." Some voices on the right, however, did condemn Hegseth for the chats and some on the left noted Goldberg's history of anti-Trump bias.
Revised by the AllSides staff (of humans) after a first draft from our custom AI. Learn more. Support our mission. Suggest an improvement to this summary.
Featured Coverage of this Story
The Atlantic editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg said on Wednesday the White House is playing “some sort of weird semantic game” by focusing on his use of “attack plans” instead of “war plans” in his second bombshell report about the Signal group chat in which top Trump officials discussed plans to strike Houthi rebels — apparently without realizing Goldberg was in the chat.
The top editor on Wednesday published follow-up reporting, headlined, “Here Are the Attack Plans That Trump’s Advisers Shared on Signal.” The story followed an initial article, headlined, “The Trump Administration Accidentally Texted Me Its...
The Atlantic magazine on Wednesday published text messages from top Trump administration officials laying out minute-by-minute operational details and exact weapons to be used in strikes against the Houthis in Yemen earlier this month– after the White House tried to deny classified details were shared in the bombshell Signal chat snafu.
The mag’s top editor, Jeffrey Goldberg, published additional snippets of the “Houthi PC small group channel” that revealed specifics of the March 15 strike.
Andrew Harnik / Getty
So, about that Signal chat.
On Monday, shortly after we published a story about a massive Trump-administration security breach, a reporter asked the secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth, why he had shared plans about a forthcoming attack on Yemen on the Signal messaging app. He answered, “Nobody was texting war plans. And that’s all I have to say about that.”
At a Senate hearing yesterday, the director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, and the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, John Ratcliffe, were both asked about the Signal chat, to which Jeffrey...
