I’ve been out most of the day and am just now catching up to the fallout from SignalGate. The best thing I’ve read so far is by Josh Marshall, SignalGate Is Bad; But OPSEC Isn’t Even the Worst Part Of It. Here’s just a bit of it.

Especially in the national security domain, many things the government does have to remain secret. Sometimes those things remain secret for years or decades. But they’re not secrets from the U.S. government. The U.S. government owns all those communications, all those facts of its own history. Using a Signal app like this is hiding what’s happening from the government itself. And that is almost certainly not an unintended byproduct but the very reason for the use. These are disappearing communications. They won’t be in the National Archives. Future administrations won’t know what happened. There also won’t be any records to determine whether crimes were committed.

This all goes to the fundamental point Trump has never been able to accept: that the U.S. government is the property of the American people and it persists over time with individual officeholders merely temporary occupants charged with administering an entity they don’t own or possess.

Think this is hyperbole? Remember that when Trump held his notorious meeting with Vladimir Putin in Helsinki in 2019 he confiscated his translator’s notes and ordered him not to divulge anything that had been discussed. Remember that Trump got impeached over an extortion plot recorded in the government record of his phone call with President Zelensky. An intelligence analyst discovered what had happened and decided he needed to report the conduct. These aren’t hypotheticals. They’ve already happened. And he’s even been caught. Which is probably one reason there’s so much use of Signal.

This is clearly routine in the Trump administration. How many of President Trump’s conversations with foreign leaders are happening on these apps? It’s the obvious place for bribes, various kinds of criminal conduct, asking foreign governments to do dirty jobs, maybe against American citizens, that Trump doesn’t dare try himself.

Do read the whole thing. See also Marcy Wheeler, Seven Reasons Trump’s Entire National Security Team Should Resign in Disgrace. And see Marina Hyde at The Guardian, It’s war and peace with Donald and Pete – and the worst group chat the world has ever seen. I think this story is going to be with us for a few days.

In other news, today Trump signed an executive order calling for changes to how U.S. elections are administered. Since the Constitution leaves the administration of elections to the states, I suspect many lawyers are already at work at the legal challenges. Says Democracy Docket, “Tuesday’s executive order is an extension of those efforts by attempting to make it more difficult for Americans to register to vote, to vastly increase federal supervision over state registration rolls and to punish states that do not comply with the order.”

Even more terrifying, apparently House Speaker Mike Johnson is considering “eliminating” federal courts that are causing particular trouble for Trump’s agenda.

More tomorrow.