Leaked Military Chat, Europe Prepares to Mobilize Military, New German Government Hits Roadblock

Oops—that classified text was meant for someone else: America’s national security advisor accidentally invited the editor in chief of the left-leaning Atlantic to a chat on the messaging app Signal. The chat, which included JD Vance, Pete Hegseth, Marco Rubio and others, discussed highly sensitive information regarding the U.S.’s recent strikes against Yemen’s Houthis. The editor, Jeffrey Goldberg, thought the chat was fake until bombs started dropping in Yemen. The leak was embarrassingly careless and could cost Mike Waltz his job as NSA.

[BRIEF]

More important is the content of the chat. It shows that senior members of the Trump administration sincerely considered letting the Houthis continue their attacks against Red Sea shipping because they didn’t heavily impact America. Vice President Vance posted: “If you think we should [bomb the Houthis] let’s go. I just hate bailing Europe out again.” Secretary of Defense Hegseth responded: “VP: I fully share your loathing of European free-loading. It’s PATHETIC. But Mike is correct, we are the only ones on the planet (on our side of the ledger) who can do this.”

The Houthis are a jihadist terrorist group that is trying to help exterminate Israel and attack the West at large. But geographically they are far from America. These messages imply that enough senior U.S. officials do not want America to be the leader of the free world anymore. As Richard Palmer wrote in our new Trumpet issue, this kind of messaging will only add to the urgency of the tectonic political and military shifts occurring in Europe. Case in point:

Europe prepares to mobilize its military: The EU defense commissioner wants to invest over $75 billion into military equipment and mobilization upgrades, he said in a Euronews interview published today. These kinds of eye-popping headlines are coming out almost daily.

Meanwhile, Germany’s new government is hitting a roadblock: The coalition partners presented the results of their first round of negotiations. They are abysmal for the winning party, the Christian Democrats (CDU). Friedrich Merz ruled out forming a minority government, and also ruled out creating a coalition with the AfD. Thus he left himself at the mercy of the Social Democrats (SPD)—the ruling party that got trounced in the election—and they are being unmercifully demanding. Despite losing the election, it looks like they are insisting on still getting most of what they want in government.

The SPD has pushed a progressive agenda that clashes with the CDU’s more conservative platform, particularly on migration, fiscal policy and social welfare. Various reports suggest the SPD has demanded concessions like a right to stay for some deportable migrants, continued benefits for Ukrainian refugees, and a €15 minimum wage. After its historic election loss, the party faces internal pressure to reassert its identity and avoid being seen as capitulating to Merz’s right-leaning CDU. But this hard-line approach risks prolonging talks, guaranteeing a deeply divided coalition government, and further delegitimizing democracy in Germany, since the losing party is setting the agenda.

It also means the CDU is plummeting in the polls, while the Alternative für Deutschland party is rising:

Far-right party support surges: As Germans watch their incoming chancellor forming a coalition with a party most voters didn’t support and breaking his promises of lowering the debt, support for the AfD is soaring, Josué Michels reports in this morning’s feature story.

“This vision for a new Holy Roman Empire lacks a Charlemagne”: This is Jonathan Turley’s chilling conclusion after speaking at the recent World Forum in Berlin where global leaders advocated for a “New World Order With European Values.” They were discussing a shift in values away from American and toward European ideals, but what Turley saw was how this vision threatens free speech globally. He highlights the Forum’s focus on expanding transnational systems, such as the European Union, while simultaneously contracting free speech rights, a trend he finds alarming given Europe’s increasing speech regulations and criminal prosecutions for “toxic ideologies.”

The Forum identified populism and free speech as major threats, with speakers denouncing figures like Donald Trump and praising billionaires like Bill Gates and George Soros for supporting “open societies” and global governance. This is Orwellian doublespeak, given the EU’s unelected bureaucratic structure and its willingness to trample over speech protections to silence dissent.

Turley’s article is an insightful analysis of the authoritarian direction Europe is traveling, one whose end point is revealed in biblical prophecy.

America’s next-generation fighter jet: As Europe supercharges its military expenditure, President Trump announced construction of the new F-47 stealth fighter jet, which is intended to replace the F-22 Raptor within the next four years, Jacob Boren reports. Prophecy reveals who will win this arms race in the end.

Meanwhile, in Asia:

New Asian alliance forming: Foreign ministers from China, Japan and South Korea met on Saturday for the first time in two years. U.S. isolationism could be turning long-standing allies Japan and South Korea toward China, Ezekiel Malone reports. This is straight out of our booklet Russia and China in Prophecy. And, for its part:

China is war-gaming a blockade on Taiwan: Last week, Chinese ships, planes and drones entered the airspace and waters surrounding Taiwan to engage in large-scale drills of blockading the island. These war drills could shift to actual war at any time.

Shouldn’t judges be impeached? District court judges are blocking President Trump’s initiatives such as mass deportation plans and federal spending cuts. Their lawfare is slipping beyond reason, as Stephen Flurry recently covered in “A Nation of 700 Presidents.” Trump is trying to defend himself by calling for a judge to be impeached. Leftists accuse him of inciting violence and undermining the Constitution. If that’s a call to violence, then Democrats are serial killers.

RealClearPolitics’ Justin Evan Smith argues that impeaching judges is actually an important constitutional mechanism to address judicial overreach. America’s Founding Fathers designed impeachment as a check on all branches, including the judiciary, Miele asserts—not just for criminal acts like bribery or treason but also for what he calls usurpations of authority. He argues that Congress should revive impeachment to curb judges who legislate from the bench, framing it as a defense of democracy.

Lies scientists told: Finally, for a look at how elites use deception as a weapon, read Matt Ridley’s “How Scientists Misled the World About COVID’s Origins” at Spiked Online. Ridley was on the science and technology committee of the House of Lords and acted and voted based on bad information supplied to him.

High-profile officials like Anthony Fauci and Jeremy Farrar publicly dismissed the lab-leak theory as a conspiracy, asserted overwhelming evidence for natural origin of the virus, denied their involvement with gain-of-function research, misrepresented the Wuhan lab’s capabilities and safety, and misled the public about the scientific consensus. As they advocated and ramrodded heavy-handed government COVID interventions, they routinely presented speculative or unproven conclusions as fact and suppressed legitimate inquiry into the lab-leak hypothesis and other questions. Ridley concludes:

Several months later, I discovered that I had been lied to: deliberately, maliciously, consequentially. Yes, I am angry about that. So should you be.

This is, as the Apostle Paul termed it, “science falsely so called” (1 Timothy 6:20).