April 21, 2025, 5:46 PM ET

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Of course Pete Hegseth had other Signal chats.

When Atlantic editor in chief Jeffrey Goldberg revealed last month that top Trump administration officials, including the defense secretary, were using the messaging platform to discuss highly sensitive information, such as specific war plans, the fact that they had added a journalist somewhat overshadowed the chat’s existence.

The casual tone in the messages that Goldberg received, however, implied that circulating classified details in this way was not surprising or unusual to the people involved. Indeed, The New York Times now reports that Hegseth also shared sensitive attack details in a second Signal chat, this one including his brother, a Pentagon employee surely hired on merit alone, something that Hegseth cares deeply about; his personal lawyer, also on the Pentagon payroll; and his current wife, a former Fox News producer.

As the Times dryly noted, “It is not clear why either would need to know about upcoming military strikes aimed at the Houthis in Yemen.” Aides had warned Hegseth not to have sensitive discussions on Signal or on his personal phone, according to the Times’ reporting. At this point, does anyone believe that the two Signal chats we know about are the only Signal chats?

The latest article, like Goldberg’s, raises questions about whether highly classified information is really safe. Members of the military expressed anger after the first leak, noting that breaches could put them in danger, and that if they had handled such material the same way, they would have received serious discipline.

The broader takeaway is about how dysfunctional the Pentagon already is, just three months into the Trump administration. One of the most quietly stunning phrases of the latest scoop could easily escape notice: “according to four people with knowledge of the chat.” The fact that four separate people were willing to speak about this to the Trump-detested New York Times is an indication of dysfunction, just as the constant stream of leaks from within the first Trump White House laid bare the internecine warfare there.

Only last week, three top aides to Hegseth were placed on leave and then fired amid an investigation into other alleged leaks. (The Pentagon has not made clear what, if anything, the men are accused of doing, nor what evidence exists.) Meanwhile, Hegseth’s chief of staff is being reassigned. And yesterday evening, the former Defense Department spokesperson John Ullyot published a column in Politico describing “a month of total chaos at the Pentagon” and “a near collapse inside the Pentagon’s top ranks.”

You don’t have to take Ullyot at face value. (In fact, given that he claims that “President Donald Trump has a strong record of holding his top officials to account,” you probably shouldn’t.) He resigned earlier this month, after being the point man defending the removal of a Pentagon webpage devoted to the pioneering Black baseball player (and Army veteran) Jackie Robinson. Whatever motives, ulterior or not, that Ullyot has, his decision to air his complaints publicly is both an indicator and a likely driver of dysfunction. It also puts the lie to Hegseth’s attempt to write off the controversy as a media creation driven by “anonymous sources.”

Hegseth was always manifestly unqualified for the job of defense secretary. Set aside the serial infidelity, the accusations of alcohol abuse (which he has denied), and the questions about extremist views: Even without these, he had nowhere near the résumé to run the armed forces. Though he is a veteran, Hegseth had not otherwise worked in government, and the organizations he had run were tiny, especially compared with the Department of Defense. He was picked because he looked good on TV, where he’d been a Fox News personality, and was loyal to the president.

Hegseth’s apologists argued that this would be okay. What he needed to do to succeed at the Pentagon, they said, was set broad goals and then leave it to other staffers to implement them. His job was to manage that. (One flaw in that logic was that Hegseth had been accused of mismanagement at two separate nonprofits; Hegseth has denied any accusations.) The rate of turnover at the Pentagon shows that Hegseth is unable to keep the kind of top staff around him necessary to actually run the place.

We’ve become accustomed to Keystone Kops routines at the White House, but seeing them crop up at the Pentagon is disturbing. The country can run with a bumbling White House; can it keep itself safe with an inept Defense Department? (Elsewhere in heavy-handed metaphors, a bag belonging to the secretary of Homeland Security was swiped from a restaurant this weekend.) Trump remains outwardly supportive of Hegseth and said today that the new Signal story was a “waste of time.”

A secretary facing the scandals that Hegseth has might well have been forced out by now in any other administration—though, to be fair, they might also never have been confirmed or even nominated in the first place. The president’s reluctance to get rid of Hegseth apparently stems from his belief that he let the media push him around too much during his first term, and that if he cans any official who’s under fire, he will only encourage and empower the press. This is a dangerous game to play with national security, though. If Trump is unwilling to take a political loss now, what kind of geopolitical loss does he risk later?

Related:

Here are four new stories from The Atlantic:

Today’s News

1. Pope Francis died this morning at the age of 88 after suffering a stroke and heart failure.
2. The ACLU reported to the Supreme Court that the Trump administration was prepared to carry out deportations of Venezuelan migrants against the court’s orders. (The government maintains that the migrants received advance notice of their removals with time to file legal claims.)
3. Nadine Menendez, the wife of former Senator Bob Menendez, was convicted of multiple corruption charges in a federal trial.

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Evening Read

Nemanja Knezevic / Connected Archives

You’ve Probably Already Met Your Next Best Friend

By Faith Hill

If you’re a lonely adult in an American city, please know that people are trying very hard to help you. A few examples: The organization Project Gather hosts food-centered hangouts—potlucks, bake sales, mushroom foraging—across the country. The company Timeleft, operating in more than 300 cities, matches groups of five strangers for dinner every Wednesday. Belong Center offers “Belong Circles,” 90-minute gatherings led by “trained community architects.” Block Party USA seems to, um—advocate for the concept of block parties?

Ventures such as these make up a growing friendship industry, and they claim a lofty goal: Not only do they want to get people off their phone and out of the house; they want nothing less than to cure Americans of alienation.

Read the full article.

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Stephanie Bai contributed to this newsletter.

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