Reuters World News - Group chat blunder, the Black Sea and stagflation

Episode Date: March 25, 2025

Top Trump cabinet members inadvertently included a journalist in a Signal group chat about Houthi strike plans in Yemen. It’s Kyiv’s turn at the negotiating table in Saudi Arabia but what would a ceasefire in the Black Sea mean for Ukraine and Russia. Plus, the risk of stagflation. Sign up for the Reuters Econ World newsletter here. Listen to the Reuters Econ World podcast here. Find the Recommended Read here. Visit the Thomson Reuters Privacy Statement for information on our privacy and data protection practices. You may also visit megaphone.fm/adchoices to opt out of targeted advertising. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today, Trump officials mistakenly included a journalist in a group chat about plans to bomb Yemen. It's Ukraine's turn at the negotiating table as talks in Saudi Arabia enter a second day. Take stagnant growth and add elevated inflation, and you get stagflation, a dreaded combo. It's Tuesday, March 25th. This is Reuters World News, bringing you everything you need to know from the front lines in 10 minutes every weekday. I'm Carmel Crimmons in Dublin. And I'm Sharon Reisch Garson in New Jersey. Now, we've all accidentally ced the wrong person on an email or text,

but it's a whole other thing to do so when you're detailing highly sensitive military secrets. Top officials in the Trump administration mistakenly included a journalist in a national security team group chat on Signal. The group chat included Defense Secretary Pete Hegsa, vice president J.D. Vance, and National Security Advisor Mike Walz, Among others, discussing plans for airstrikes in Yemen. The Atlantic Magazine's editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg says he was inadvertently invited to the chat where Hegseth posted operational details hours before the strikes.

In response to Reuters for comment, White House Press Secretary Caroline Levitt says that Trump continues to have the, quote, utmost confidence in his national security team, including national security advisor, Mike Walz. Some lawmakers called the use of the signal group illegal and have demanded an investigation. Our foreign policy editor, Don Durfey, has the details about the communications. It's all pretty amazing. This chat all came a few days before the U.S. launched major strikes across Yemen. So in this discussion, Hakesh revealed details about the weapons that were going to be used, the targets that they planned to hit, the sequence of the attacks.

all highly classified stuff. And beyond that, there was a really fascinating discussion about the rationale for this. So J.D. Vance was one of the people who was in on this conversation. And he was raising the question whether it made sense to be, quote, bailing out the Europeans here, with the implication that the major beneficiaries from an operation that protected Red Sea shipping would be Europe, because a lot of the trade that goes through the Red Sea is Europe-related. And of course, the United States would be bearing the cost. What happens next?

Are there potential repercussions for the national security officials involved in the lapse? It's not clear that any laws were broken here, but it is highly unusual for the nation's top intelligence and national security officials to be using an open source encrypted app like signal. And the reaction on the Hill has been pretty brutal, honestly. You had Elizabeth Warren, the senator, is calling. this lapse blatantly illegal and dangerous. Senator Chris Coons asserted that every one of the officials had committed a crime. We'll see. There's likely to be some sort of repercussions for this.

A U.S. appeals court judge says that the Nazis were given more rights to contest their removal from the U.S. during World War II than Venezuelan migrants deported by the Trump administration. The White House was asking the court to halt a two-week ban. on the use of the 1798 Alien Enemies Act to justify deporting alleged gang members without final removal orders from immigration judges. She's a very nice woman, and she loves the concept of Greenland.

Trump is not budging. Greenland's going to be something that maybe is in our future. Doubling down on his suggestion that the U.S. should take over the Arctic Island. His comments come ahead of a U.S. delegation visit, led by U.S. vans, the wife of a U. the Vice President J. D. Vance. Greenland's outgoing Prime Minister, Mute Egg Day, calls the plans

a provocation and says his caretaker government won't meet them. The U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments in a case that could determine the fate of majority black congressional districts in Louisiana. Louisiana officials and civil rights groups want to keep an electoral map that raised the number of predominantly black voting districts. But that map was redrawn to protect conservative levels. legislators, including House Speaker Mike Johnson and the number two House Republican Steve Scalise. The unknowns around Trump's trade policy and its impact on the economy are having an effect, even before they land. Some economists are now on the lookout for something called stagflation,

a dreaded combo of rising unemployment and climbing inflation. Our Fed reporter Howard Schneider has been looking into it. A couple weeks ago, a few of the Federal Reserve officials started saying, you know, we've had it pretty easy until now. Inflation's been falling and there's been no real price to pay on unemployment and no real perceived risks of slowed growth. Lately, however, they've been thinking about the effective tariffs, the sort of exhaustion of some consumers and been thinking that directionally at least they could be heading to a position where the, the economy weakens, unemployment rises, but the inflation rate gets jacked up by tariffs. So they didn't use the word stagflation, which is where you get sort of high unemployment and high inflation at the same time. Those two things, they're kind of inversely related

or have been in the past, high inflation and high unemployment. They shouldn't coexist at the same time. Some of the Fed officials said, you know, we may be coming to a point where there's tension between our two mandates. They're supposed to keep unemployment low and inflation low. So when they see tension between the two, that's kind of, by definition, a little bit stagflationing. The term is most commonly associated with the 1970s when oil supplies shocked the market alongside high unemployment. We're not at that level, right? That's correct. The Chicago Fed President and Austin Goolsby said it's more the direction of travel that is causing this word to come up. Even though the levels right now are nothing comparable to the 1970s, if things are moving in that

direction, it becomes tough for them to figure out. It's day two of the Riyadh talks, and the Ukrainian and U.S. delegations are meeting. It follows on from Monday's U.S.-Russia talks on a Black Sea ceasefire proposal. Washington is hoping that that will pave the way for broad order peace negotiations. A White House source says there's been progress. For the view from Keeve, we're joined by our Ukraine Bureau chief, Christian Lowe. Christian, what will be discussed today between Ukraine and the US? It's kind of a moving target. So the indications from the United States are that the focus of the discussions is a truce in the Black Sea on maritime attacks. However, we're not entirely sure that that's still what the focus of the talks is.

It's been going on for kind of the last 48 hours, and it seems to be evolving. Donald Trump said last night, there are other things on the table. He talked about demarcation of territory. He talked about a deal on rare earths, and he talked about power stations. So to be frank, we're not sure. I think they seem to be jumping from one topic to another. I think what we can conclude, already is that if the ultimate objective is to get a full ceasefire to end this conflict, we're in the foothills of that, the low foothills, because it doesn't seem like the discussions are about that yet. It's about subsidiary issues, smaller issues, like mineral deals, like partial ceasefires are very limited in their scope. How important is a ceasefire on the Black Sea?

The importance depends on who you are. If you're Ukraine, then actually, as things stand now, they're able to export grain via the Black Sea, which is the key thing for Ukraine, and levels of exports going by that route are pretty much at pre-war levels. They've got them back up. If you're Russia, then there is something to be gained by a ceasefire because Ukraine has successfully squeezed the Black Sea Fleet, the Russian Black Sea Fleet. They've been pushed towards the eastern side of the Black Sea. So a truce in Black Sea would allow them to start moving around again, which I think would be

welcome from the Kremlin point of view. And for today's recommended read to Havana and the end of the American dream for Cubans. Trump is closing off President Biden's parole program that allowed migrants with a sponsor to temporarily reside and work in the U.S.

A link to the story is in the pod description. For more on any of the stories from today, check out Reuters.com or the Reuters app. Don't forget to follow us on your favorite podcast player. We'll be back tomorrow with our daily headline show.