Vice President JD Vance became the subject of online derision following leaked content from a late-night Signal chat involving some of the country’s top leaders. The text message, sent at 2:26 a.m. on March 25, 2025, asked: “This chat’s kind of dead. Anything going on?” No responses followed.
The text was exposed after the Inspector General of the Defense Department released an 84-page report on December 4, 2025, detailing a significant security breach. The report indicated that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth had used the Signal app to disseminate sensitive U.S. military information about operations in Yemen, contrary to department protocols. He had inadvertently added Jeffrey Goldberg, editor-in-chief of The Atlantic, to the group chat.
The scandal, named “Signalgate,” began on March 11, 2025, when Michael Waltz, the National Security Advisor, initiated a Signal group chat titled “Houthi PC Small Group” to coordinate U.S. military attacks against Houthi forces in Yemen. Goldberg was accidentally added to the group chat on March 13 as Waltz was setting it up, which ultimately included 19 high-ranking officials.
Among the chat’s participants were JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, CIA Director John Ratcliffe, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, Deputy White House Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, and Special Envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff, with others.
On March 15, 2025, at 11:44 p.m. Eastern Time, just before Operation Rough Rider, the largest U.S. military operation in the Middle East during Trump’s presidency, Hegseth shared detailed information about the Yemen strikes in the Signal chat. The Inspector General’s report stated that Hegseth sent “sensitive, nonpublic, operational information,” including specifics about weapon packages, targets, strike times, and the number of manned U.S. aircraft involved. This information, marked “SECRET//NOFORN,” had been supplied by the head of U.S. Central Command and was classified, not meant for foreign nationals.
The breach became public on March 24, 2025, when Goldberg published an article in The Atlantic revealing he had been accidentally included in the high-level group chat and had seen discussions about the military operation in real time. The piece included details about the strikes that Goldberg had observed through the compromised chat, raising immediate questions about national security protocols.
Hours after Goldberg’s explosive article was published, Vance returned to the compromised Signal chat at 2:26 a.m. on March 25 with his now-notorious message. His attempt to lighten the mood or make a joke about the situation was met with silence—according to a screenshot of the chat taken on March 27, his message received no responses.
Instead, other officials in the chat began covering their tracks. According to the partial transcript included in the Inspector General’s report, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent altered the chat settings to make messages disappear after eight hours following Vance’s message. User “MAR” changed their profile name to “MR,” then later to “SR.” CIA Director John Ratcliffe changed his profile to simply “John.” Another user, “S M,” altered their profile name to “SM 76.”
On March 26, two days after his first report, Goldberg and Washington Post journalist Shane Harris published a second article in The Atlantic containing the full transcript of the Signal chat exchanges during the March 15 attack on the Houthis. Only the name of a CIA operative was omitted at the agency’s request. The transcript revealed the specific timing of planned military strikes and real-time reports on their deployment, confirming that sensitive operational details had been discussed on an insecure platform.
An investigation by the Defense Department’s Inspector General, launched on April 3, 2025, following a request from the Senate Committee on Armed Services, concluded that Hegseth had violated departmental policies and endangered American lives. “Using a personal cell phone to conduct official business and send nonpublic DoD information through Signal risks potential compromise of sensitive DoD information, which could cause harm to DoD personnel and mission objectives,” the report stated.
The investigation found that Hegseth overwhelmingly declined to cooperate with the inquiry, refusing to surrender the personal phone he used to discuss war plans over Signal and declining to be interviewed by investigators.
In a written statement submitted to the Inspector General in July 2025, Hegseth defended his actions, asserting that he alone had the authority to determine whether information should be classified or whether classified materials no longer needed protection and could therefore be declassified. He explained that on March 15, 2025, he took broad, non-specific information that he concluded, at his sole discretion, was either not classified or could be safely declassified, and then entered those details into the Signal chat.
The irony of the security breach was not lost on observers, who noted that several members of the compromised chat had previously taken strong public stances on protecting classified information. Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard had stated on March 14, 2025—just one day before Hegseth shared the Yemen strike information: “Any unauthorized release of classified information is a violation of the law and will be treated as such.” CIA Director John Ratcliffe had stated in 2019: “Mishandling classified information is still a violation of the Espionage Act.”
The incident gained widespread attention when the Inspector General’s report was released on December 4, containing the partial transcript that included Vance’s ill-timed 2:26 a.m. message.
The viral spread of Vance’s message overshadowed the more serious security implications of the breach. Critics pointed out that while Vance was making jokes in the compromised chat, other officials were scrambling to obscure their digital footprints and minimize potential damage. The Inspector General’s report noted that crucial messages had been auto-deleted before officials could preserve them for the investigation, suggesting that the disappearing message feature had been enabled early in the chat’s existence or activated by members seeking to cover their tracks.
The scandal also raised questions about whether additional compromised communications might exist. On April 20, 2025, The New York Times reported that Hegseth had initiated another Signal group chat titled “Defense | Team Huddle” that reportedly contained information about the timing of airstrikes. This chat allegedly included Hegseth’s brother, his wife, and about a dozen other people, further expanding the circle of individuals with potential access to sensitive military information.
Adding to the severity of the breach, German magazine Der Spiegel reported on March 26, 2025, that they were able to find private contact details and passwords for members of the group chat, including Gabbard, Hegseth, and Waltz, on the internet. This revelation suggested that the security vulnerabilities extended beyond the Signal chat itself to encompass the personal digital security practices of senior administration officials.
The Inspector General’s report, Vance’s ill-timed message, and the subsequent attempts at cover-up by other officials combined to create a narrative that many critics characterized as evidence of a “deeply unserious” approach to national security. The scandal raised fundamental questions about whether officials who had compromised sensitive military information through careless communication practices could be trusted to protect America’s national security interests going forward.
