MAGA’s Mad at JD Vance for Group Chat—But Not for the Reason You Think

Vice President JD Vance may have stepped in it with his fellow Republicans by questioning Donald Trump’s plan to strike the Houthis, NBC News reported Sunday.

Earlier this month, Vance, and other senior Trump officials discussed sensitive plans to strike the Houthis in Yemen in a Signal group chat that was widely publicized after Trump’s national security adviser Mike Waltz accidentally added a high-profile reporter. In the chat, Vance alone aired doubts about the plan, warning that the strike was not in alignment with Trump’s America First policies, because it would help Europe more than it would help the U.S.

“I am not sure the president is aware how inconsistent this is with his message on Europe right now,” Vance wrote. “There’s a further risk that we see a moderate to severe spike in oil prices. I am willing to support the consensus of the team and keep these concerns to myself. But there is a strong argument for delaying this a month, doing the messaging work on why this matters, seeing where the economy is, etc.”

When Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth insisted that the strike wasn’t about the Houthis at all but about safeguarding trade and reestablishing deterrence, Vance relented. “If you think we should do it let’s go. I just hate bailing Europe out again,” he wrote.

Hegseth agreed, and White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller responded, “As I heard it, the president was clear: green light, but we soon make clear to Egypt and Europe what we expect in return.”

Vance distinguished himself as the most ideological member of the Signal chat, freely expressing his contempt for Europe and a profound lack of interest in preventing the disruption of trade routes. Vance’s reluctance to help another country was arguably the most MAGA position to take—but some of the more hawkish senior Republicans didn’t like that he didn’t mindlessly submit to Trump’s directive, NBC News reported.

“Capitol Hill Republicans still have their jaws on their floor with how actively the VP worked to try and undo a Trump decision,” one senior Republican official in Washington wrote in a text. “Thank goodness Miller stepped in and put him in his place.”

“It’s one thing to have a healthy interagency debate before a decision is made. It’s another to try and undo a Commander-in-Chief decision once Trump gives the execute order. This is the latter, and it’s very Bolton-esque,” the senior Republican official added, referring to John Bolton, Trump’s former national security adviser who has become an outspoken critic of the president.

Some Republicans even believed that Vance’s question was tantamount to obstruction.

“These are the president’s policies, and for JD Vance to question them like that is ridiculous. He is the commander in chief,” another Republican on Capitol Hill told NBC News. It seems that to many Republicans, the most MAGA thing a person can do is agree with Trump about anything.

On the flip side, others in the Trump administration are reportedly concerned that the strike against the Houthis could lead to messy, drawn-out conflict.

“It’s 2002 all over again,” said one current administration official who spoke with NBC News anonymously because he wasn’t permitted to speak to the press. Already, the Pentagon has begun directing aircraft carriers and resources to the region, indicating that the fight with the Houthis is far from over.

During a trip to Greenland last week, Vance was asked whether he had raised his concerns with Trump and what he meant when he wrote that the president “wasn’t aware that his directions for Yemen were inconsistent with his message for Europe.”

“Well I didn’t quite say that. I think that’s a slight misunderstanding of what I said,” Vance replied, though of course, that was exactly what he had said.

In the end, Vance didn’t answer either question but instead launched into a rant about what he’d learned from “Signalgate.”

“Sometimes we all agree, and sometimes we all disagree. But it’s important that we all have an honest conversation amongst ourselves, and with the president of the United States about what we think is in the best interest of the national security of the United States of America,” said Vance, who had readily shut down his own dissenting opinion.

Vance claimed that he had “always supported the president’s decision to strike the Houthis.”

Banks are predicting a downturn for the American economy.

Goldman Sachs raised its 12-month recession probability from 20 percent to 30 percent on Monday, reported Reuters. The banking giant also downgraded American gross domestic product growth forecast from 2 percent to 1.5 percent, and projected three interest rate cuts by the Federal Reserve.

In a Sunday note to its investors, Goldman speculated that the average U.S. tariff rate will rise 15 percent points over the next year, 5 percent higher than it previously predicted. That’s thanks to Donald Trump’s decision to spark a global trade war.

“Almost the entire [tariff rate] revision reflects a more aggressive assumption for ‘reciprocal’ tariffs,” the brokerage firm wrote in a memo obtained by Reuters.

Trump has driven a wedge in America’s trade and military alliances by suddenly imposing large tariffs on the nation’s longtime partners. On Thursday, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney announced that his country’s cozy relationship with the U.S. had come to an end and that they would wean themselves off American products and services “at speeds we haven’t seen in generations.”

The seismic diplomatic shift followed another tariff announcement by the Trump administration, this time imposing a 25 percent hike on auto imports. Carney called the levy—which will take effect on vehicle imports April 3 and vehicle parts in May—a “direct attack” on Canada, but the news also immediately hit America’s Big Three automakers, whose stock dropped multiple percentage points in reaction to the news.

Trump’s tariffs will have an even more significant effect on Europe, which Goldman warned could enter a “technical” recession by the end of the year, with “little” growth—as in, 0.0 percent growth in the third quarter.

“We estimate that our new tariff assumptions will lower euro area real GDP by an additional 0.25 percent compared to our previous baseline, for a total hit to the level of GDP of 0.7 percent compared to a no-tariff counterfactual by end-2026,” Goldman wrote in another note issued Sunday.

Trump, however, seemed completely unconcerned by the looming economic peril. Speaking with reporters aboard Air Force One on Sunday, Trump brushed off concerns about high unemployment and “stagflation,” which is when economic growth stagnates but inflation remains high. Instead, he insisted that “this country is going to be more successful than it ever was.”

“It’s going to boom,” the president said. “We’re gonna have boomtown USA. We’re gonna boom.”

Secretary of State Marco Rubio may have just violated a court order stopping the Trump administration’s fast-tracked deportations.

Rubio announced that a group of alleged gang members had been deported Sunday night.

“Last night, in a successful counter-terrorism operation with our allies in El Salvador, the United States military transferred a group of 17 violent criminals from the Tren de Aragua and MS-13 organizations, including murderers and rapists,” Rubio wrote on X Monday morning. He noted that both TdA and MS-13 were considered foreign terrorist organizations, which implies that they could be subject to removal under the Alien Enemies Act, or AEA.

Rubio thanked the Salvadoran government and President Nayib Bukele for “their unparalleled partnership in making our countries safe against transnational crime and terrorism.”

Multiple judges have rebuked Donald Trump’s use of the AEA and filed injunctions against his administration—and Rubio’s latest deportations may have just violated one.

Last week, U.S. District Court Judge Brian Murphy issued a temporary restraining order requiring the government to provide written notice and an opportunity for detainees to apply for protection before deporting them to a third country.

It seems that with this latest round of deportations, the Trump administration has violated that court order, and continued to fast-track its removal of alleged gang members.

Earlier this month, Trump invoked the AEA, a wartime law that suspends due process. Under the act, the Trump administration swiftly deported 261 Venezuelan nationals to Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo, or CECOT, the prison in El Salvador that is notorious for human rights abuses. The U.S. government claimed that everyone deported was a terrorist.

The deportees were removed without notifying their family members or lawyers, and they were not provided with the opportunity to challenge their deportation or their designation as gang members. In many cases, the government seems to have rounded up immigrants for supposedly suspicious tattoos that ended up having nothing to do with TdA at all.

In another filing last week, Judge James Boasberg wrote that by sending the prisoners to CECOT, the Trump administration had likely violated the Foreign Affairs Reform and Restructuring Act of 1998, which states that “it shall be the policy of the United States not to expel … any person to a country in which there are substantial grounds for believing the person would be in danger of being subjected to torture.” Boasberg wrote that at CECOT, prisoners are reportedly abused, humiliated, and left to rot without their families knowing anything about their whereabouts or well-being.

National security adviser Mike Waltz is grasping at straws to defend the fact that he invited The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg to a Signal group chat about bombing Yemen.

During an interview on Fox News last week, Waltz attempted to explain away the enormous bluster by claiming that the editor’s number had simply been “sucked in” to his phone.

“I’m sure everybody out there has had a contact where you, it was, it said one person, and then a different phone number,” Waltz told the network.

“But you never talked to him before, so how is the number on your phone?” pressed Fox’s Laura Ingraham.

“Well, if you have somebody else’s contact, and then somehow it gets sucked in. It gets sucked in,” Waltz said.

That response—which comes from an individual who is supposed to be the pinnacle of American expertise on national security matters—completely misunderstands how cell phones work. Lest it need explanation, cell phones do not “suck in” phone numbers; instead, numbers are inserted by the people who use the device.

“This isn’t The Matrix,” Goldberg told NBC News Sunday, responding to Waltz’s comments. “Phone numbers don’t just get sucked into other phones. I don’t know what he’s talking about there.

“My phone number was in his phone because my phone number is in his phone,” Goldberg continued. “He’s telling everyone that he’s never met me or spoken to me. That’s simply not true.”

Democratic Representative Sean Casten was a little more blunt, branding Waltz as “full of shit.”

“If what he says is true, then he is choosing to discuss classified information on a platform where—in his own telling—he has no control over who is listening in,” Casten tweeted Sunday afternoon, reposting a clip of Goldberg’s interview. “Either he’s a liar or a traitor. Pick one.”

Waltz was the singular admin for a group chat created earlier this month on the retail app Signal in which over a dozen senior Trump administration officials discussed seemingly classified information regarding an imminent attack on Yemen. To make matters worse, Waltz blindly added Goldberg, who reported on the exchange last week. Donald Trump has continued to back Waltz publicly, but in private, the president was reportedly “mad” and “suspicious” that Waltz had Greenberg’s contact in his phone to begin with.

Former intelligence officials have warned that America’s adversaries “undoubtedly” already have the chat records, largely thanks to the Trump administration’s special envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff’s physical presence in Russia when he was added to the chat.

In an interview with MeidasTouch Tuesday, former national security adviser Susan Rice said that Witkoff’s use of Signal while in Russia basically hand-delivered news of the attack to the Kremlin hours before it took place.

“Russians have whatever Witkoff was doing or saying on his personal cell phone,” Rice told the podcast.

The Signal fiasco also angered U.S. military pilots, who claimed that such a careless leak had blatantly put the lives of service members at risk. Dozens of interviewed Navy and Air Force pilots told The New York Times that the Trump administration’s operational security blunder had not only upended decades of military doctrine but had also shattered pilots’ trust that the Pentagon would prioritize their safety.

“The whole point about aviation safety is that you have to have the humility to understand that you are imperfect, because everybody screws up. Everybody makes mistakes,” Lieutenant John Gadzinski, a retired Navy F-14 pilot who flew combat missions from aircraft carriers in the Persian Gulf, told the Times. “But ultimately, if you can’t admit when you’re wrong, you’re going to kill somebody because your ego is too big.”

President Trump continues to pivot endlessly on tariffs, badly destabilizing the very market he claims he’s trying to balance.

“On the tariffs that you’re planning … you’re expected to hit something like 10 to 15 countries, is that right?” a reporter asked Trump on Sunday, referring to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent’s description of the countries with the largest trade deficits with the U.S. as the “Dirty 15.”

“I don’t know who told you 10 or 15 countries,” Trump replied.

“Well we heard that.”

“But you didn’t hear it from me.”

“How many countries will be in that initial chunk?” the reporter pressed.

“You start with all countries, so let’s see what happens,” Trump said, dramatically expanding his threat.

“There are many countries.… If you look at the history, and you look at what’s happened to us.… Go to Asia, and you take a look at every single country in Asia, what they’ve done to the United States in trade,” Trump continued vaguely. “I wouldn’t say anybody has treated us fair, or nicely.”

Trump plans to drop these reciprocal tariffs on Wednesday, which he is framing as “Liberation Day.” But this spiteful trade war will only hurt American consumers and manufacturers already dealing with inflation, potentially leading the country into a recession. But Trump has already admitted he doesn’t care.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement has revealed that the prerequisites for deporting Venezuelan migrants to Nayib Bukele’s Salvadoran mega-prison are extremely arbitrary. 

Documents obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union on Sunday showed that the tattoos ICE is using to identify these men as Tren de Aragua gang members are images like the Jordan “Jumpman” logo, a crown, a train, and a clock, among other things. 

“All it takes to be sent to rot in prison in El Salvador is 1) having a tattoo an ICE officer says is a ‘gang tattoo’ and 2) displaying ‘logos,’ ‘symbols,’ or clothes an ICE officer says are gang signs,” American Immigration Council senior fellow Aaron Reichlin-Melnick wrote on X. “In order for ICE to declare someone an ‘Alien Enemy,’ ICE must first determine they are a Venezuelan over age 14, and then second find 8 points on a scoring guide they made up… This checklist is shocking. A person can be declared an ‘Alien Enemy’ based ONLY on communications with someone ICE says is a member, and nothing more.”

These flimsy requirements have already led to multiple innocent men being detained and deported. Frengel Reyes Mota, who was awaiting an asylum appointment and had no criminal record in Venezuela or the U.S., was snatched up over multiple administrative errors in his file. And last Tuesday Tom Homan, Trump’s border czar, openly bragged that ICE had been picking up multiple innocent migrants in their raids, calling them “collateral arrests.”

These phony deportations have become a defining action of the early days of the second Trump administration, reinforcing the contempt and disregard that they hold for the basic tenets of our legal system, such as due process. 

Elon Musk couldn’t help but complain about the immense personal cost of being the shadow president during a rally Sunday ahead of Wisconsin’s Supreme Court election.

“The radical left are saying somehow we’re stealing Social Security—like, first of all, like [stammers] I don’t need the money, OK?” he said.

Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency has recently arrived at the Social Security Administration, where Musk claims they are seeking to root out alleged fraud. But what Musk claims is waste is more often not, and DOGE’s plans to rewrite the agency’s code could take months and risk collapsing the system on which millions of Americans rely. In any case, Musk was far more worried about his own money.

“In fact, it’s costing me a lot to be in this job,” Musk said. “You had Tim Walz dancing onstage showing a chart on Tesla stock, which is a really awful thing for him to do.”

On his tour of Republican districts, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz had trotted out Tesla’s tanking stock, saying that watching Musk’s value plummet gave him “a little boost” during the day.

Musk seems to have taken Walz’s jab as fighting words, and claimed that people were trying to put “massive pressure” on him and Tesla, in an attempt to get him to stop DOGE. The billionaire bureaucrat added that it was a “big deal” that his Tesla stock “went roughly in half.”

“So, not only is it—I’m not getting paid, I’m definitely not stealing money and would never get away with it, but the value of my Tesla stock is in half! So this is a very expensive job, is what I’m saying,” Musk said.

Musk had previously whined about Walz’s Tesla teasing Thursday night, during an exclusive interview on Fox News, calling the vice presidential former candidate “a big jerk.”

“He was overjoyed,” Musk said. “What an evil thing to do. What a creep, what a jerk. Who derives joy from that?”

Walz responded to Musk’s moaning in a post on X Sunday.

“Elon, I’ll make you a deal. I’ll stop making fun of your stock when you take your hands off social security,” Walz said.

Musk seems increasingly concerned with painting his critics as evil and unsympathetic to his plight as DOGE czar—but wasn’t his problem that everyone was too sensitive these days? Does he actually expect sympathy as he runs around waving a chainsaw and laughing about cutting essential services and putting thousands of people out of work? Who derives joy from that?

The rally Sunday was Musk’s latest attempt to interfere with Wisconsin’s Supreme Court election. The billionaire bureaucrat has already poured millions of dollars behind the conservative candidate, hoping to establish a conservative majority on the court set to decide questions about abortion, voting rights, congressional maps, and his own lawsuit about opening Tesla dealerships in the state. Musk did a so-called million-dollar giveaway at the rally to spokespeople for his petition against activist judges.

Donald Trump is “not joking” about running for a third term.

In a Sunday morning phone call with NBC News’s Kristin Welker, the president insisted that he was very serious about potentially circumventing the Constitution in order to lead the country for another four years after his second term ends.

“I know you’re joking about this, but I’ve been talking to a lot of your allies. They say they’re very serious,” Welker said, referring to Trump’s former chief strategist Steve Bannon. “He says he’s really seriously looking at potential plans that would allow you to serve a third term.”

Trump replied that he could seek another term on the basis of his popularity alone, claiming to have the “highest poll numbers of any Republican for the last 100 years,” though that’s blatantly untrue.

Welker then pressed if Trump had been presented with the possibility of staying in office, since he wasn’t ruling it out.

“Well, there are plans. There are—not plans,” Trump said. “There are, there are methods which you could do it, as you know.”

Welker said that one method she had heard discussed among Trump allies would be for Vice President JD Vance to run at the top of the ticket in 2028 with Trump as his number two, before passing the torch to Trump once they’d won.

“Well, that’s one. But there are others too. There are others,” Trump said.

“There are others? Can you tell me another?” Welker pressed.

“No,” Trump replied.

“OK. So, but, but, sir, I’m hearing—you don’t sound like you’re joking. I’ve heard you joke about this a number of times,” Welker said.

“No, no I’m not joking. I’m not joking,” the president said, adding that it’s “far too early” for him to discuss such a move.

But while speaking to reporters on Air Force One over the weekend, Trump again raised the idea that “people” were prompting him to run again.

“I have had more people ask me to have a third term, which in a way is a fourth term because the other election—the 2020 election—was totally rigged,” Trump said. “I just don’t want the credit for the second because Biden was so bad, did such a bad job, and I think that’s one of the reasons that I’m popular.… I think we’ve had the best almost hundred days of any president.”

The seemingly far-fetched and unconstitutional idea would require the consent of most of the country—if Trump attempted to formally run for president again.

As outlined in Article 5 of the Constitution, any such change requires at least two-thirds of the Senate and the House to agree on the modification, with that change then requiring ratification by a minimum of three-quarters of states in the nation.

A second approach to repealing the term-limiting amendment could be via a Constitutional Convention, though two-thirds of states would need to support the motion to have one at all, and any proposed changes to an amendment would still require ratification by three-fourths of the states.

Trump has repeatedly pitched the idea that he could stay in office after 2028.

The MAGA leader would be 82 years old in 2028—the same age that President Joe Biden was when he left office—and that’s unlikely to play well with an American public that is increasingly tired of being led by the elderly.

Still, that hasn’t kept conservatives from trying to keep Trump in power. Republican lawmakers have already started to pave the way for the unconstitutional takeover. In January, Representative Andy Ogles filed a joint resolution to amend the Constitution’s Twenty-Second Amendment so that the executive branch leader could serve “for up to but no more than three terms.”

Donald Trump has successfully bullied yet another big law firm into doing his bidding—but this time, Trump didn’t even have to threaten them.

Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom agreed to a slate of major concessions to Trump Friday, after the president targeted two other majors firms with executive orders in retaliation for their alleged “obvious partisan representations,” use of DEI hiring practices, and affiliation with lawyers who had investigated Trump in the past.  

Trump announced on Truth Social that the firm has offered $100 million worth of pro bono services and agreed to “not engage in illegal DEI discrimination and preferences.” 

Skadden, Arps’s decision to preemptively fold to Trump follows two lawsuits from WilmerHale and Jenner & Block earlier Friday challenging the Trump administration over a pair of retaliatory executive orders threatening to suspend the firms’ security clearances, end their federal contracts, and bar federal employees from engaging with firm members.

Trump hadn’t actually issued an executive order targeting Skadden, Arps, but last week, Elon Musk mentioned it in a post on X, saying the firm needed to “stop” litigation against conservative filmmaker Dinesh D’Souza. 

According to Trump, the firm said it would “not deny representation to clients, such as members of politically disenfranchised groups,” including in pro bono work, due to the “personal political views of individual lawyers.” The firm also agreed to fund no fewer than five fellows to projects related to “Assisting Veterans; ensuring fairness in our Justice System; combatting Antisemitism, and other similar types of projects.” 

In a statement shared by Trump, Skadden, Arps executive partner Jeremy London said that his firm had “engaged proactively” with the Trump administration. 

A statement from Skadden, Arps ironically “declared the Firm’s strong commitment to ending the Weaponization of the Justice System and the Legal Profession.” It seems clear that Trump’s blatant attempts to bully law firms for defending clients and causes he dislikes or employing lawyers he’s deemed as enemies is definitionally the weaponization of the justice system and legal profession. 

An open letter to the legal community, organized by Delaware Attorney General Kathleen Jennings and signed by 21 state attorneys general, urged firms to “refuse to bow to illegal and unconstitutional threats of retribution for having the temerity to represent clients and cases opposing the administration.” 

“Lawyers are not spectators to the Constitution; we are its agents. We cannot allow the President to scare law firms and lawyers into silence,” the letter, which was released Friday, read. 

Last week, Skadden, Arps associate Rachel Cohen submitted a conditional resignation in a scathing letter urging her firm to stand against Trump’s attempts to intimidate major law firms. Her letter came after another firm, Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison, caved to the administration and offered $40 million in free legal services, revoked their own DEI practices, and sold one of their own lawyers down the river, simply because he’d once investigated Trump for alleged financial crimes. The Trump administration rescinded its order against the firm, and in light of the huge pro bono commitment from Skadden, Arps, it appears Paul, Weiss made away like bandits. 

Another law firm, Perkins Coie, which was targeted for representing Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign, challenged a similar order earlier this month and was granted a temporary injunction against the Trump administration’s threat to revoke clearances and access. 

A federal judge in Massachusetts has temporarily blocked the Trump administration from deporting people to third countries.

U.S. District Court Judge Brian Murphy issued a temporary restraining order Friday requiring the government to provide written notice and an opportunity for detainees to apply for protection before deporting them to a third country.

The ruling is a clear rebuke of the Trump administration’s deal with El Salvador, the recent deportation of Venezuelans to the megaprison there, as well as previous cases where the government has deported immigrants to countries where they had no connection, with no advance notice or ability to raise a legal challenge.

Assuming the administration abides by the ruling, it should at least slow down the mass deportations, which are now beginning to target legal immigrants who have had their visas revoked. The government has also swept up hosts of immigrants and sent them to El Savador for flimsy reasons, claiming that having tattoos reflected gang affiliation.

In one case, a paperwork error led to a Venezuelan national being deported to El Salvador, and in another, a tattoo of a soccer ball was enough to justify a deportation. For now, cases like these will at least be slowed pending a legal appeal, and MAGA officials like Kristi Noem won’t be using El Salvador as a propaganda backdrop again, at least for the near future. Is a more definitive, permanent rebuke of the Trump administration’s legally questionable immigration policy coming?