THE CLOWN CAR: In act of amateurism and incompetence in the Trump administration, 18 top officials that included Vice President JD Vance and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth texted about the recent plans attacking Houthi rebels in Yemen and accidentally included the editor of The Atlantic in the group chat on the unclassified app Signal.

  I didn’t think it could be real,” wrote Jeffrey Goldberg. “Then the bombs started falling.” Goldberg said he was able to follow the conversation for two days leading up to the strikes in Yemen. 

  Goldberg wrote that he was copied on “precise information about weapons packages, targets, and timing.” He did not publish the secret information.

  Use of the unclassified Signal app in this situation may have been a crime.

  President Trump responded not by scolding his top lieutenants for a foolish breach of national security, but by attacking the magazine that was a passive recipient of the information. “I’m not a big fan of The Atlantic,” he said, “to me it’s a magazine that’s going out of business.

  Hegseth called Goldberg “a deceitful and highly discredited so-called ‘journalist,’” then outright lied saying “Nobody was texting war plans.”

ORDERS FROM THE COURT: A federal appeals court heard arguments over the Trump administration’s request to lift a lower court ban on Trump’s use of wartime authority to quickly deport alleged members of a Venezuelan gang.

Appeals court Judge Patricia Millett said told government lawyers, “There were no procedures in place to notify people,” and that, “Nazis got better treatment under the Alien Enemies Act than has happened here.”

  Department of Justice lawyer Drew Ensign replied, “Well, your honor, we certainly dispute the Nazi analogy.”

  At the same time the district court judge in Washington was sticking to his ruling that hundreds of suspected Venezuelan gang members were illegally deported to prison in El Salvador without a hearing in which they could challenge accusations that they are associated with a gang. 

SOCIAL NOTES: Despite claims by Donald Trump and his spending slasher Elon Musk  that there is “immense waste” and  “extreme levels of fraud” within the Social Security Administration, Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency is having trouble finding it, the Washington Post Reports. Trump said during his address to Congress that DOGE was already “identifying shocking levels of incompetence and probable fraud” at the agency.

  Musk’s claims that tens of millions of dead people over 100 years old are receiving benefits turned out to be fiction.

  Less than 1 percent of Social Security’s payments in recent years were determined to be improper, often by mistake, according to the agency’s inspector general. That adds up to about $9 billion a year — a lot of money — but two-thirds of it is clawed back, and only three percent of improper payments were the result of fraud.    

BUT WAIT, THERE’S MORE:

— In an election hat’s been described as a proxy for the popularity of the new Trump administration, the President’s shadow Elon Musk has poured millions of dollars into supporting the conservative candidate Brad Schimel over liberal Susan Crawford for a seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court. Both are county judges.

  The Wisconsin Supreme Court is evenly split conservative-liberal and the winner could tip the balance. Trump has denounced Crawford as a “Radical Left Liberal”  saying, “And if she wins, the Movement to restore our Nation will bypass Wisconsin.” 

  Crawford’s supporters are leaning heavily on the Musk connection to Schimel, pointing out that the conservative has support from the man dismantling the federal government.

— Donald Trump is attempting to cripple the major law firms that have filed lawsuits against his administration. In a memo to Attorney Gen. Pam Bondi he recommend revoking  security clearances or terminating law firms’ federal contracts if she believes their suits against the administration are “unreasonable” or “vexatious,” even though that is a judgement normally left to the courts.

  The memo also says that the federal contracts of the law firms should be reviewed. Trump has already filed ruinous executive orders against three law firms, suspending their security clearances and barring them from some federal buildings, making it near impossible for them to represent clients against the government. 

— As part of President Trump’s immigration crackdown, tourists and visitors from other countries entering the US by air and crossing the border from Mexico and Canada have been detained in recent weeks, held in custody by border authorities, then allowed to fly home on their own dime. Some have been accused of overstaying their visa but others say they were not told the reason for their detention.

  As a result, Canada and some European countries are warning their citizens to strictly follow US entry rules or risk detention as the Trump administration cracks down on immigration enforcement. Denmark, the United Kingdom, Germany, Finland and Canada have revised their guidelines at a time when some travelers from these countries have been detained by immigration officials.

SPORTING NEWS: NCAA women’s basketball is down to their Sweet Sixteen. Southern California guard JuJu Watkins, a first-team All-American and the Big Ten Player of the Year, was carried off the floor with a knee injury last night in the game against Mississippi State.

THE SPIN RACK: The federal government could run out of money by July if Congress does not lift the debt limit, according to an estimate by The Bipartisan Policy Center. — Genetic testing firm 23andMe filed for bankruptcy Sunday and CEO/ co-founder Anne Wojcicki resigned. The company has provided DNA testing to give members health and ancestry insights but failed to make money. — New York City has impounded more than 4,000 cars after cracking down on “ghost” cars with license plates obscured to avoid tolls. The MTA says dodgers have avoided $50 million in tolls.  

BELOW THE FOLD: The portrait of Donald Trump at the Colorado Capital is being taken down because it makes him look puffy and doughy even though he’s puffy and doughy.

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