☕️ STATES AND SECRETS ☙ Tuesday, March 25, 2025 ☙ C&C NEWS 🦠

Leaked texts spark media frenzy—bumbling or brilliant?; CIA secrets expose decades of democratic subversion; DOJ drops a bombshell in escalating showdown with Judge Boasberg; more.

Good morning, C&C, it’s Tuesday! Your roundup includes: massive media firestorm over leaked texts shows Administration bumbling and stumbling— or does it?; ugly CIA truths continue dribbling out, evidencing a grotesque pattern of subversion of democracy it will be hard to lie their way out of this time; and the executive-judicial constitutional showdown inched closer last night with DOJ bombshell dropped on Judge Boasberg’s docket.

🌍 WORLD NEWS AND COMMENTARY 🌍

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Beware reply-all. The Wall Street Journal ran the latest and greatest mis-texting story under the headline, “Top Trump Officials Debated War Plans on Unclassified Chat Shared With Journalist.” But The Hill most captured the media’s tremulous excitement, breathlessly running dozens of articles on the story; its entire homepage was one “war chats” headline after another. Apparently it is the most important story in the world. Finally! A scandal they can use to sink the Trump Administration!

With that kind of wall-to-wall coverage, you would think something dangerous, damaging, or at least saucy was accidentally disclosed. So far though— nope. All of the Hill’s dozen over-excited stories have the same scraps of information.

On March 11th, the Atlantic’s executive editor, Jeffrey Goldberg, was ‘accidentally’ added to a group Signal chat including most of Trump’s national security cabinet and Vice President Vance (but not President Trump). Golberg’s invitation to join —which the media immediately assumed was a mistake— apparently came from Mike Walz, Trump’s national security advisor.

Goldberg, of course, accepted the unsolicited invitation. He never announced his presence. He didn’t exit the chat after realizing he’d walked into the wrong digital dressing room. Instead, he became a peeper. He quietly huddled under some discarded Cats costumes in the corner, proving he is an unethical hyena instead of leaving any scrap of doubt.

Peeping-Goldberg claimed to have read real-time operational details of last week’s strike on the Houthis. Goldberg insisted he refrained from reporting the military details out of his praiseworthy concerns over US troops. But his restraint was probably also motivated by concerns over his own pimply backside, since if he had leaked them, Goldberg would have been arrested before he could finish saying, “Elon Musk is a Naz…”

Nor did Goldberg’s high principles extend to other parts of the group’s private discussion that Goldberg deemed unclassified. Yesterday, the Atlantic’s top editor reported that JD Vance, in particular, said he was disgusted the US was even bothering to attack the Houthis, since most of the trade affected by Houthi mad-missiles and dynamite-laden drone ships is European trade. Let the free-loading Europeans fight the Houthis themselves, was JD’s rather pointedly delivered theme.

“I just hate bailing Europe out again,” Vance complained at one point. SecDef Pete Hegseth agreed with JD’s sentiment and went further, calling the Europeans “PATHETIC” (in all caps). “If the US successfully restores freedom of navigation at great cost, there needs to be some further economic gain extracted in return,” unidentified user SM chimed in.

In other words, make the Europeans pay for it somehow.

Like clockwork, corporate media and Democrats descended into sheer hysteria, attempting to seize the classified breach and use it as a political drone to take down the entire Trump national security team. In his story in the Atlantic, Goldberg opined that, from his elite perspective, using Signal to discuss military strikes “may have violated several provisions of the Espionage Act, which governs the handling of national defense information.” He forgot how much Biden’s team used Signal. Furious Senator Elizabeth “Firewater” Warren (D-Mass.) called it “blatantly illegal and dangerous beyond belief.” She sneered, “Our national security is in the hands of complete amateurs.”

And so on, ad infinitum. They’re madder than Houthi militants.

🚀 Yesterday, confronted by reporters, Trump denied he’d even heard about the story. Later, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said the President “continues to have the utmost confidence in his national security team, including National Security Advisor Mike Waltz.”

in a statement confirming the text messages were authentic, National Security Council spokesman Brian Hughes said, “The thread is a demonstration of the deep and thoughtful policy coordination between senior officials. The continuing success of the Houthi operation demonstrates that there were no threats to our servicemembers or our national security.”

Other Trump allies, like House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) and Gordon Sondland, Trump’s EU ambassador during the first term, defended the inadvertent disclosures. “The media will turn this into a story of incompetence or inexperience, which it is not. In the past, Signal has been as secure as many of the so-called top-secret encrypted systems, so I would not criticize its use,” Sonland told the WSJ.

“Whether this will be enough to quell the storm,” the Hill wondered darkly, “remains to be seen.” In other words, not if we can help it.

🚀 It is far from clear the messages disclosed anything damaging to Trump. The Hill could only find two things about the chats to complain about. “Substantively” — meaning the only important bit — “the texts published by Goldberg are remarkable because of how they show Vance’s unease with some elements of Trump’s approach, and the Trump group’s general distaste for what they see as Europe’s lackadaisical reliance on the U.S.,” the Hill reported.

In other words, the whole thing amounts to a slam on Europe. It also included a classic, Trumpian internal conflict —catnip to corporate media— appearing to show a crack of daylight between Trump and Vance.

I realize that some will hear my next comment as a tortured effort to cover for a Trump Team blunder, by labeling things that look bad as actually being “4-D chess.” But to me, so far, the story has all the hallmarks of a classic Trump rope-a-dope, his trademarked strategic chaos. There’s the patented Trumpian appearance of minor conflict — a controlled fire — necessary to garner widespread media coverage, and packed with on-brand details helpfully advancing Trump’s agenda of pushing back against the pesky Europeans.

To wit: Europe needs to carry its own weight.

Vance gave away the game when he texted, “I am not sure the president is aware how inconsistent this is with his message on Europe right now.” He practically scripted the media’s narrative for them. JD’s ‘disclosure’ didn’t highlight any inconsistency. It resolved the apparent inconsistency between the Houthi strike and Trump’s America First policy.

The story actually reassures the base. And it does so thanks to breathless, wall-to-wall media coverage that Trump’s team could never have achieved had they merely issued a policy statement.

Maybe the most significant message was found in what was missing. The texts included no mention of the inflammatory issue of Israel. Rather, the texts appear to confirm Israel had nothing to do with it — a claim that half the Republican base would have disbelieved had it appeared in a dry position brief or in clumsy public comments.

This way, a hostile journalist convincingly and elegantly explained, indirectly, that the US was not doing Israel’s bidding, without Trump having to awkwardly deny it— a political unforced error that would have infuriated the Israelis.

As for any ‘security scandal,’ after the media’s and Democrats’ diehard defense of Hillary’s private email server, how can they now complain about this, without looking like the big fat hypocrites they are? Once again, the corporate media complex is forced to take the low ground and defend a creepy, rodent-like journalist who arguably violated ethical standards, possibly committed a crime by reporting on a private chat he was obviously never intended to be part of, and published … what? A bunch of dudes grumbling about European freeloading? That’s the “scandal”?

To me, it seems the relevant question is, as ever, cui bono? Not the Democrats.

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Independent journalist Mike Benz continues his stellar reporting on the emerging JFK-CIA document drops. In an interview on Mario Nawfal’s new Twitter-only show ‘69X Minutes,’ Benz described how the JFK documents reveal the CIA’s plan for using mass illegal immigration to influence American foreign policy, in ways the CIA preferred over voter preferences.

CLIP 1: Benz on CIA’s mass illegal immigration plan (1:42).

The plan, originally designed for fighting the Fidel Castro regime in Cuba, worked like this. The CIA would help illegally relocate disaffected Cubans into one geographic area (e.g., South Florida). The illegals would then vote for Congressmen who advocated for changes in US policy the CIA wanted related to the migrants’ home country.

In other words, if the CIA couldn’t get Congress to do what it wanted, because voters wouldn’t go along, then the CIA would just import new voters and reshape Congress to conform to CIA’s policy preferences. The fact that the Democrat party apparently cooperated with this illegal plan was a symptom of the anti-democratic disease rather than the covert cause.

We can debate the wisdom of such a policy during the Cold War, when we were fighting a two ideologies enter, one ideology leaves cage-match with global communism. But it seems we are now paying the price, having manufactured a secretive Frankenstein’s monster that is still using the same illegal techniques long after the end of that 50-years-gone conflict. One widely cited example cited is Minnesota representative Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), who came from Somalia, and now leads the Somalese caucus in Congress.

Is Ilhan Omar the product of the CIA’s dirty tricks squad? It would explain a lot.

If Benz’s reporting is right, we’re ogling the declassified receipts for generational-scale CIA social engineering, far beyond the pale of any congressional oversight or democratic consent. It’s not just that the CIA influences policy — it’s that they apparently rewired the electorate and, as we’ll see next, the education system to manufacture the Agency’s desired political outcomes over time.

🔥 In a second clip, Benz described how the documents show aggressive CIA penetration of domestic groups like Teachers’ Unions (1:36). Benz said the documents showed that in 1960, the CIA —supposedly a foreign intelligence gathering agency— had already created a dizzying array of shell companies and front groups aimed at influencing teachers’ unions in the United States.

Benz reported that the documents show as far back as 60 years ago, the senior leadership of all the largest teachers’ unions in the country were all CIA assets.

Why would they do it? Simple. It’s a long game. They’d do it for the same reason they were importing illegals: to modify future voters to be more compliant with CIA objectives.

Benz said the captured unions somehow, mysteriously, became “the largest teachers unions in the United States today.” Why would anyone believe the CIA, having achieved control of the largest teachers’ unions, would ever give it up voluntarily?

If unelected intelligence operatives can build new voting blocs and steer cultural institutions, then it’s fair to ask whether Congress has ever fully represented the will of the people. Was it all just a carefully sculpted electoral charade influenced by waves of CIA demographic and ideological engineering?

The emerging CIA files story is revealing an altogether different history than anything we thought we knew. It is reframing nearly every political “trend” of the last half-century — not as movements that organically emerged, but rather mechanical outcomes that were carefully planned and stage managed.

The slow-motion CIA disclosures continue. The water surrounding the CIA’s frog keeps getting hotter and hotter. And much more is on the way.

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Yesterday, the Executive Branch opened a new front in its war against activist judges. The New York Times reported the remarkable story under the headline, “Justice Dept. Refuses to Give Judge Flight Data, Citing State Secrets.” The sub-headline added, “The extraordinary move by the Justice Department was an escalation of its conflict with the judge in the case and, by extension, the federal judiciary.” Cadaverous Judge Boasberg was not amused and accidentally wrinkled his robe.

In the quiet hours last night, the Trump Team filed its bombshell “Notice Invoking State Secrets Doctrine” in the now-famous case wherein Judge James Boasberg (District of DC) ordered illegal, border-crossing Venezuelan gang members to be restored to the sunny shores of the United States until he, Judge Boasberg, can decide what the Trump Administration should do with them.

The ACLU shrieked that the Trump Administration didn’t follow his orders, and Boasberg has demanded the DOJ answer his long list of detailed questions about the controversial flights that delivered the gangsters to an El Salvadoran super-max prison. But last night, in what the Times labeled “a patent act of defiance,” the Trump lawyers told the court that it would not answer any more questions about the flights, since those answers would disclose state secrets.

Any further information, the notice said, would “undermine or impede future counterterrorism operations.” The notice also warned that further judicial probing would cause “dangerous and wholly unwarranted” separation-of-powers violations, especially regarding matters the court is not competent to determine, like diplomatic or security operations. In short, they said, “This is a national security matter. The court has enough information already. We’re not going to tell you any more, and you can’t make us.”

🔥 The Supreme Court recognized the State Secrets Privilege in 1953, in a lawsuit filed by widows of engineers who died in a B-29 crash during a test flight. It’s not such a great case, since the documents the Air Force claimed privileged were ultimately released several decades later and didn’t actually contain any national security secrets, but were just embarrassing admissions of negligence. Notwithstanding that, the Supreme Court’s endorsement of the exception stands.

In the case, the Supreme Court ruled that withholding information is appropriate whenever there is a “reasonable danger” of exposing information that should be protected for national security reasons. In a sworn declaration attached to the Notice, Attorney General Pam Bondi said she was satisfied that the Trump administration’s new invocation of the privilege was “adequately supported and warranted.”

In 2006, the Bush administration successfully invoked the privilege to obtain dismissal of a lawsuit over a German citizen, Khaled El-Masri, who was alleged to have been kidnapped and tortured by the CIA. Since then, Bush, Obama, and Trump 1.0 have all successfully used the privilege to suppress testimony and documents related to Guantanamo litigation.

Even more so, during Obama, the same breathless media and progressive pundits clapped like trained seals over Obama’s aggressive use of state secrets to shield black-site operations and drone strike memos.

So despite the Times’ breathless invocations of “defiance,” the government’s position stands on undisturbed Supreme Court precedent and the privilege’s consistent use by nearly every modern Administration, Republicans and Democrats alike.

It’s Judge Boasberg’s move. And he is running out of pieces. He could hold someone in contempt, but that would immediately trigger the long-ballyhooed constitutional showdown. He could try to compel discovery anyway, and Trump’s lawyers would refuse, which would just bog down the case in the swamps of appeal. Or he could back down, issuing a nasty opinion and hoping to score a few points with credulous media.

🔥 In related news yesterday, the DC federal appeals court held a nearly two-hour hearing on the Trump administration’s request to nullify Judge Boasberg’s temporary restraining order. The court of appeals has not yet ruled, but at least two judges on the three-judge panel seemed skeptical of the Administration’s position. “Nazis got better treatment under the Alien Enemies Act,” the lone democrat appointee griped, emotionally invoking Godwin’s Law and jumping the argumentative shark.

My best guess is they’ll issue an order limiting Boasberg’s TRO terms, and let the Trump team decide whether to appeal them to the Supreme Court. Again. The Supreme Court is about to have its hands full of appeals from all these TROs.

To lawyers, this is fascinating new legal stuff— separation-of-powers, executive privilege, state secrets, and high-stakes constitutional brinkmanship. Countless law review articles will be written about it all.

To the country, it is an aggravating chore and a common sense catastrophe.

And President Trump knows it. He continues to occupy the rhetorical high ground: Trump: deporting criminals. Judges: demanding their return. Progressive courts, in pushing so hard to claim the moral high ground against Trump, are only confirming his point: that they’re out of touch, overreaching, and unserious about public safety.

Whatever else it is, it’s not a good look for progressive courts.

Have a terrific Tuesday! Get back here promptly tomorrow morning for more edifying and informative Coffee & Covid, with a new post of all the essential news and commentary you need.

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