Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Michigan) has flamed Democrats for misplaced priorities as they rage over the Trump administration’s leak of sensitive information on the U.S.’s bombing of Yemen earlier this month — but not over the strikes themselves, which reportedly killed dozens of civilians.
“More heat for using a group chat than for the bombing itself,” Tlaib said in a post on social media on Monday.
Tlaib’s post was in response to congressional Democrats and some Republicans demanding accountability after The Atlantic’s editor in chief Jeffrey Goldberg revealed in an article on Monday that he had been seemingly inadvertently looped in on sensitive war plans on the private messaging app Signal.
In the article, Goldberg discusses how he was included in a group chat with top U.S. officials, including Vice President J.D. Vance, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, National Security Adviser Mike Waltz, and others. In the chat entitled “Houthi PC small group,” which convened days before the March 15 and 16 U.S. strikes on Yemen, the officials discussed the impending strikes.
Some lawmakers are calling for investigations into the leak, while others are calling for officials responsible to resign. “This is an outrageous national security breach and heads should roll,” said House Armed Services Committee member Rep. Chris Deluzio (D-Pennsylvania) to Axios. “We need a full investigation and hearing into this on the House Armed Services Committee, ASAP.”
However, as Tlaib pointed out, when the strikes happened — killing at least 53 people across Yemen, including over 30 civilians — they went largely ignored by lawmakers. Children were among those killed by the strikes, which Houthi officials said were a war crime.
To Tlaib’s point, the U.S. once again struck Yemen, one of the poorest countries in the world, on Tuesday. For the second time in as many weeks, the U.S. targeted the Al-Rasool Al-Azam Oncology Hospital, destroying the newly built cancer facility.
At least two people were killed by the renewed strikes, with 13 people injured. The administration has not made clear the goal of the strikes, but the effects on Yemen’s civilian population have been catastrophic: The U.S.’s years-long war on the country has helped create “one of the worst humanitarian crises in the world,” as human rights groups say, manufacturing a horrific famine affecting tens of millions of people.
And yet, the focus of the vast majority of news media on Monday and Tuesday was on the potential laws and norms broken by the leak of the war plans.
Politicians and former government officials have said that it is not just dangerous for such sensitive chats to take place on an app that could be breached by foreign officials, but also for officials to handle classified information so negligently. (Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and CIA Director John Ratcliffe have denied that there was classified information shared in the chat, even though other top Republicans have acknowledged the officials’ mistake.)
The war itself, however, is unconstitutional, as Tlaib and other progressive lawmakers have previously said. Under both Presidents Joe Biden and Donald Trump, the U.S. has been bombing Yemen for over a year, effectively carrying out a war without authorization from Congress. Congressional authorization is required for military action like the airstrikes on Yemen.
Tlaib raised this issue when the Trump administration originally bombed Yemen earlier this month.
“Our country is addicted to wars,” she said. “There’s always money for bombs, but none to end homelessness in our country. Meanwhile, innocent lives in Yemen will suffer and a generation of children will live with the tragic consequences. Congress should decide to go to war, not the president.”
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