1. United States
2. Ohio
3. Letter

Happy Spring! As I am certain you are all aware, a major national security breach occurred a few days ago when Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, National Security Advisor, Mike Waltz, and VP, JD Vance, inadvertently added a journalist to their chat in the Signal app discussing war plans in Yemen. As a proud US citizen who has a deep respect for our men and women in uniform, this is deeply concerning to me. First, why are top members of this Republican administration even using a commercial app such as Signal in the first place? It is my understanding that Signal deletes messages after a certain period of time whereas this sort of government communication requires records to be kept for posterity (and eventually to be declassified and to become part of the historical record). If I were a cynical person, I might think that our cabinet members and our VP don’t want those records to be kept, which might lead me to believe that their actions are not entirely above board… Second, it seems incredibly fortuitous that the person accidentally copied on these chats is a journalist with incredible morals and a strong sense of patriotism who did not share the details of these communications but focused instead only on the complete incompetence of the parties involved and the incredible risk this sort of security breach poses? What if the person copied on these messages had been connected with Russia, Iran, ISIS, or any number of other bad actors who would have been only too happy to undermine a US military operation like this one? When Hillary Clinton was accused of using a private email server during her tenure as Secretary of State, the Republican Party went absolutely nuts over the potential consequences, despite the fact that no major security leaks were ever found. In this situation, a critical security breach clearly occurred, and the only reason American soldiers aren’t dead is that the recipient of the information was a patriot with a sense of conscience outweighing his desire to publish a salacious article…. It is my sincere hope that Republicans will hold their own administration to the same standards they applied to Secretary Clinton. If “lock[ing] her up” was indeed the appropriate response for Hillary’s lapse in judgment, then an immediate investigation should be launched in Congress into the complete incompetence and disregard for operational security displayed by Pete Hegseth, Mike Waltz, and others involved in this incident. In fact, President Trump, you may want to ask for the immediate resignation of these cabinet member so you can seek out candidates who can actually competently perform their jobs! As a concerned citizen, the level of incompetence and carelessness displayed here absolutely blows mind! Congress should immediately and thoroughly investigate this situation and hold any responsible parties accountable before American soldiers or private citizens die as a result of the next “oversight”!!!