Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton asked a damning question of Donald Trump’s administration on X (formerly Twitter) on Monday in response to its ongoing attacks on diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives.

Clinton hit back at a news report that the National Park Service had removed and reduced references to revered abolitionist Harriet Tubman from a page on its website detailing her Underground Railroad network that assisted the enslaved to freedom. (Following backlash, the page has since been restored to its original state).

The former first lady shared a screenshot of CNN’s story about the online alterations, which were first reported by The Washington Post.

“What’s next from this administration, fan videos of Jefferson Davis?” asked Clinton, sarcastically referring to how Trump’s White House could celebrate the Confederate president.

Clinton’s remark came as the Trump administration continues to roll back DEI initiatives across federal agencies. Online, the Pentagon has purged (and then restored some) pages detailing the military service of women, people of color and the LGBTQ community. The Trump White House has dubbed DEI programs as “illegal and immoral discrimination.”

Hillary Clinton on Friday called the Trump administration’s approach to governing both dumb and dangerous in an essay excoriating the Signal chat scandal and the Elon Musk-led mission to slash the federal workforce, and concluding that Trump would make the US “feeble and friendless”.

The former secretary of state and Democratic presidential candidate wrote an op-ed for the New York Times that has been given the headline: “How much dumber will this get?” and opens: “It’s not the hypocrisy that bothers me; it’s the stupidity.”

Clinton starts with the Signal chat group scandal, when Donald Trump’s national security adviser, Mike Waltz, mistakenly added a top US journalist to a small group of government leaders on the encrypted but unclassified app and then the defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, proceeded to discuss intricate details of a forthcoming airstrike on Houthi militants in Yemen and report back to the group on the deadly results.

The US vice-president, JD Vance, was included, who took another swipe at European reliance on US military security, and so was the director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard. Hegseth relayed times that US fighter jets would take off and his updates on death and destruction on the ground elicited triumphant comments and emojis from some others in the group.

Clinton wrote: “Top Trump administration officials put our troops in jeopardy by sharing military plans on a commercial messaging app and unwittingly invited a journalist into the chat. That’s dangerous. And it’s just dumb.”

She went on: “This is the latest in a string of self-inflicted wounds by the new administration that are squandering America’s strength and threatening our national security.”

Clinton sharply criticized the slashing of the federal workforce that has been under way since the first days of the new administration, overseen by the top Trump adviser and tech billionaire Elon Musk, although she did not mention the mogul by name or comment on the growing oligarchy that is alarming many outside the White House.

Clinton especially criticized the dismantling of the US Agency for International Development – a so-called soft power program introduced by John F Kennedy as president to help spread American influence around the world through human rights work, in contrast to military and diplomatic power alone.

“In a dangerous and complex world, it’s not enough to be strong. You must also be smart. As secretary of state during the Obama administration, I argued for smart power, integrating the hard power of our military with the soft power of our diplomacy, development assistance, economic might and cultural influence,” she wrote.

“None of those tools can do the job alone. Together, they make America a superpower. The Trump approach is dumb power. Instead of a strong America using all our strengths to lead the world and confront our adversaries, Mr Trump’s America will be increasingly blind and blundering, feeble and friendless.”

She slammed “swagger” over competence and wisdom in Trump and Hegseth’s attacks on diversity policies in the military and called the administration’s overall approach reckless.

Clinton concluded that the administration appeared not to know its way, was putting the US in danger and mused that perhaps Trump “is in way over his head”.

“If there’s a grand strategy at work here, I don’t know what it is … He’s gambling with the national security of the United States. If this continues, a group chat foul will be the least of our concerns, and all the fist and flag emojis in the world won’t save us,” she said.

Hillary Clinton on Friday excoriated President Donald Trump and his administration for their handling of the embarrassing leak of U.S. military attack plans to a journalist who was accidentally added to a Signal app text thread with other top officials this month.

“It’s not the hypocrisy that bothers me; it’s the stupidity,” Clinton wrote in a New York Times opinion piece.

“We’re all shocked — shocked! — that President Trump and his team don’t actually care about protecting classified information or federal record retention laws,” the former secretary of state wrote.

“But we knew that already.”

“What’s much worse is that top Trump administration officials put our troops in jeopardy by sharing military plans on a commercial messaging app and unwittingly invited a journalist into the chat,” Clinton wrote.

“That’s dangerous. And it’s just dumb.”

Clinton, who Trump defeated in the 2016 presidential election, said the Signal scandal is “the latest in a string of self-inflicted wounds by the new administration that are squandering America’s strength and threatening our national security.”

The Democrat noted the Trump administration’s firing of federal workers who protect nuclear weapons, shutting down efforts to fight pandemics, and what she called “performative fights over wokeness” by Trump and his defense secretary, Pete Hegseth.

White House spokesman Harrison Field, in a statement to CNBC when asked about Clinton’s essay, said, “Those who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones.”

 

 

Trump and his Republican allies — including people on the Signal chat thread — for years have castigated Clinton for her use of a private email server to conduct official business as secretary of state under then-President Barack Obama.

“Any security professional — military, government or otherwise — would be fired on the spot for this type of conduct and criminally prosecuted for being so reckless with this kind of information,” Hegseth said on Fox News in 2016.

Trump at an October 2016 campaign rally said, “Hillary is the one who sent and received classified information on an insecure server, putting the safety of the American people under threat.”

The Atlantic editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg in an article Monday revealed that he accepted a communications request from a Signal app user identified as Trump’s national security adviser Mike Waltz on March 11, and that he was added two days later to a Signal chat group called “Houthi PC Group.”

The group’s other members were identified as Hegseth, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Vice President JD Vance, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, CIA Director Scott Ratcliff and Director of National Intelligence Tusli Gabbard.

Goldberg wrote that the texts on that thread ended up with Hegseth on March 15 texting plans for a plan that “included precise information about weapons packages, targets, and timing” of attacks on Houthi forces in Yemen, which were launched within hours of Hegseth’s texts.

Goldberg’s article ignited a controversy in Washington, but Trump and White House officials have downplayed the significance of the leak to the journalists, arguing that the information shared with Goldberg was not classified, as some Democrats in Congress have called on Hegseth and Walz to resign or be fired.

 

 

“Our service members and our national security deserve more than Pete Hegseth,” Sen. Mark Kelly, D-Ariz., told NPR. “He is unqualified for this job. And if he doesn’t resign, the president should fire him.”

“This is the kind of thing that gets people killed,” Kelly said. “And there has to be accountability for this.”

Waltz, while a Florida congressman, in June 2023 had tweeted, “How is it Hillary Clinton can delete 33,000 government emails on a private server yet President Trump gets indicted for having documents he could declassify?”

 

 

 

Kamala Harris consults Hillary Clinton as she plots next move

Kamala Harris has reportedly consulted Hilary Clinton over whether she should run for California governor.

The former vice-president is said to have drawn on the expertise of the former secretary of state as she weighs up her options over her next political move.

Speculation has grown in recent months that Ms Harris is planning to mount a bid to replace Gavin Newsom, whose gubernatorial term comes to an end in November next year.

Allies of dsMs Harris said she is leaning towar entering the race for the governorship of her home state in 2026 over a second tilt at the presidency, according to The New York Times.

Ms Harris has told those close to her that she will make a decision about diving into the governor’s race by the end of summer, according to Politico.

In calls with supporters, she has allegedly said she will make the decision in the next few months.

Meanwhile, a source familiar with Ms Harris’ thinking told CBS that she is “seriously considering” a run for governor.

By late Feb, the former Democratic candidate had put together an advisory team of former White House staff, veteran Democratic strategists, policy experts, a speechwriter and a fund-raiser from which to mount a campaign, according to The New York Times.

Behind closed doors, the former Democratic candidate has allegedly been hosting gatherings of donors and speaking on the phone with trusted operatives and advisers.

Mrs Clinton, the former first lady, is the only other Democratic presidential candidate to have been defeated by Mr Trump and is said to be one of a number of confidantes Ms Harris has turned to.

 

Besides Mrs Clinton, she is said to have consulted Joe Biden, the former president, Pete Buttigieg, the former transport secretary, and Reid Hoffman, the LinkedIn founder and billionaire Democratic donor.

Ms Harris is said to be seeking advice on how to win back traditional Democrat voters, how to modernise the party and cutting through in the media – an area where Donald Trump triumphed during last year’s election through a number of appearances on high-profile podcasts.

To do so, she has reportedly met with David Shor, a Democratic pollster who carried out an analysis of the 2024 election, as well as billionaire Chris Larsen and New York Times columnist Ezra Klein.

While she has kept public appearances to a minimum, her team are said to have monitored the exploits of other prominent Democrats, with staff members reaching out to Mike Walz’s aides to find out how her former running mate’s nationwide speaking tour has been received.

Those in her circle have suggested that she would ease to victory in next year’s race if she were to abandon her former presidential ambitions.

 

Katie Porter, a former Democratic representative for California, told The New York Times that Ms Harris launching a bid would have a “near field-clearing effect”.

Terry McAuliffe, the former Democratic National Committee chairman and head of Ms Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign, told the outlet he had encouraged Ms Harris to run for governor and believed that she would.

Mrs Clinton and her husband, Bill, swiftly endorsed Ms Harris’ presidential bid on July 21 last year – the same day that Mr Biden dropped out of the race.

Ms Harris called both former statesmen to ask for their support, according to The New York Times.

However, other than a prime-time speech at the Democratic National Convention in August, Mrs Clinton was entirely absent from the campaign trail until its final week, amid concerns over her political brand.

A person close to the campaign told NBC that having Mrs Clinton on the campaign might not be the most helpful move, since it needed to focus on its core messages of appealing to male voters.

The two women were on opposite sides of the 2008 presidential primary between Barack Obama and Mrs Clinton, but have grown close over the subsequent years.

The pair have shared dinners together at Mrs Clinton’s Washington mansion and discussed high-level decisions, such as whom Ms Harris should pick as her running mate, according to The New York Times.

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