Up First from NPR - Intel Hearing On Group Chat, Return To Office Mandate, Black Sea Deal

Episode Date: March 26, 2025

President Trump's top intelligence officials face tough questions from lawmakers after a group chat security breach involving secret war plans and a journalist. Federal workers are being called back to the office, but some are finding chaotic conditions, including assignments to storage units. And, the U.S. brokers a deal to allow safe passage through the Black Sea, but Russia demands sanctions relief before it takes effect. Want more comprehensive analysis of the most important news of the day, plus a little fun? Subscribe to the Up First newsletter.Today's episode of Up First was edited by Anna Yukhananov, Brett Neely, Ryland Barton, Arezou Rezvani and Mohamad ElBardicy.It was produced by Ziad Buchh, Nia Dumas and Christopher Thomas.We get engineering support from Neisha Heinis, and our technical director is Carleigh StrangeLearn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Trump's intelligence officials got a grilling on Capitol Hill over sensitive war plans shared in a group chat. It's hard for me to believe that targets and timing and weapons would not have been classified. Will Democrats get the investigation they want? I'm Michelle Martin here with Leila Fadl and this is Up First from NPR News. Federal workers are being ordered back to the office, but when they get there, they're finding there aren't enough chairs, desks or toilet paper.

How did one employee get told to report to work at a storage unit? And the U.S. brokered a deal between Russia and Ukraine to allow safe passage through the Black Sea, but Moscow wants sanctions relief first. There are about five or six conditions. We're looking at all of them. Stay with us. first. This message comes from 48 Hours. Want more 48 hours?

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well-deserved escape with friends, and yeah, some serious music insight. I'm going to keep it real. I have no idea what the story is about. Hear new episodes of All Songs Considered every Tuesday, wherever you get podcasts. The Trump administration is in damage control mode after the revelation this week that top national security officials shared secret war plans in a group chat

that included a journalist. President Trump was asked about it yesterday. We pretty much looked into it. It's pretty simple, to be honest. It's not, it's just something that can happen. CIA Director John Ratcliffe and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard were both part of that group chat and they appeared before Senate lawmakers yesterday for a previously scheduled hearing where they faced tough questions

about how this security breach could have happened. And PR Justice correspondent Ryan Lucas is covering this and he's with us now with more. Good morning, Ryan. Good morning. So Democrats really pushed Gabbard and Ratcliffe on this group chat revelation. Just remind us, what are the security concerns here? Well, there are a couple of issues here.

First off, this group chat reportedly involved sensitive strategy discussions among top US officials, including the vice president. And it also reportedly involved discussions about targeting about weapons and attack sequencing of US military strikes in Yemen before those airstrikes happened. These discussions weren't on a secure US government communication system. They instead were in a group chat set up by national security advisor, Mike Waltz on the signal messaging app, which is commercially available, widely used by all sorts of folks. Our colleague Tom Bowman is reporting that the Pentagon warned actually just last week against using Signal even for unclassified information. The Pentagon said Russian hackers are targeting the app to spy on people of interest.

So that's issue number one. Issue number two here is that a journalist, the editor of the Atlantic, Jeffrey Goldberg, was included in this group chat, and that, of course, is a serious security breach. So what did the director of national intelligence and the CIA director have to say about this yesterday when they appeared before lawmakers? Well, initially, Tulsi Gabbard wouldn't even acknowledge

that she was in the chat. For his part, though, CIA Director John Ratcliffe didn't try to play that game. He said straight out he was part of this chat. But he did say, U.S. officials are permitted to use Signal to communicate and coordinate for government work purposes. He and Gabbard said there was no classified information shared in this chat. The White House has said the same thing, but that line received a lot of skepticism from lawmakers on the panel, and that includes Maine independent

Angus King. If that's the case, please release that whole tech stream so that the public can have a view of what actually transpired on this discussion. It's hard for me to believe that targets and timing and weapons would not have been classified. Now, Ratcliffe and Gabbard both said at one point that the information from an intelligence perspective wasn't classified, but that when it comes to specific military information about the airstrikes, they said the Secretary of Defense has the authority to determine what's classified and what's not on that. So pointing to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth for answers on those questions. Hegseth was

not at this hearing yesterday, but he has said publicly that nobody was texting war plans. So what happens next with this? Well, the same intelligence officials are testifying before House lawmakers today. They'll no doubt face more questions. But stepping back a bit, the top Democrat in the House and Senate are both calling for an investigation. Democrats, of course, don't have a lot of power.

They're in the minority. Republicans control both houses of Congress. Some GOP senators have expressed concern about this security breach and how this all went down. That includes the Senate Majority Leader John Thune. He told reporters yesterday that they need to figure out what happened. So there may be more to come on this. So let me just mention here that Catherine Maher, who's the CEO of NPR, chairs the board of the Nonprofit Signal Foundation. And that is NPR's Ryan Lucas Ryan. Thank you. Thank you.

NPR's Ryan Lucas Ryan, thank you. Thank you. Earlier this month a Department of Agriculture employee who works remotely was told they'd soon have to start reporting to an office. The employee was given a list of possible locations, including one described as a storage unit. NPR Shen Shannon Bond spoke to that worker and other federal employees who have been ordered back to the office and who say they are dealing with challenging conditions. And she's with us now. Good morning, Shannon. Good morning, Michelle.

So Shannon, a storage unit? What's going on there? Yeah, this USDA worker was pretty confused by this. So they actually drove to the address on this list. Sure enough, it was a storage facility. And when the worker asked the owner of the facility why it might be showing up on a list of federal office spaces, they said the owner laughed and said, yes, you know, the

federal government does rent a unit here. It's used to store a boat. Now, to be clear, this employee doesn't expect to actually be working out of the storage unit. Like other federal employees I spoke with, they didn't want us to use their name because they fear retaliation from the Trump administration for speaking out. I reached out to the USDA, they told me they are identifying issues and addressing them quickly.

But Michelle, this is just one example of the kind of confusion, even absurdity, some federal workers are encountering around this order back into offices. What are some of the other stories that you've heard? Yeah, my colleague Jenna McLaughlin and I talked to employees at a dozen agencies who are being ordered back into the office

to comply with President Trump's executive order terminating all remote work. And what they told us is in many cases, these offices just are not equipped for an influx of people. So they're running out of toilet paper and soap in the bathrooms. There aren't enough desks or computer monitors

Internet connections and Wi-Fi service can be slow or unavailable You know, I even spoke to people at the FDA who went back to the main office in Maryland last week They're nervous to drink the water in the building because last year testing found legionella bacteria in some FDA buildings that causes legionnaires disease Now the agency notified employees coming back that it is safe to drink the water, but some say because they haven't made new testing results available, they just don't wanna risk it.

The FDA told me it's keeping employees up to date on their working conditions. Can you give us a sense of how many people were teleworking or working remotely at least part of the time until now? Well, about 10% of federal employees were fully remote according to a federal government report last year. That's around 288,000 people and many more had the ability to work from home sometimes. And of course, Michelle, teleworking increased a lot during the pandemic, but actually

many federal agencies had been encouraging telework going back decades as a way of saving on costs around like, you know, real estate, utilities, office space. The Office of Personnel Management found telework saved taxpayers more than $230 million in 2023. And the government was encouraging telework during the first Trump administration as well. You know, many of the employees that I spoke with said this is not about they don't want to go back into the office that that it's inconvenient, or that they're being lazy. They say that for them remote work has enabled them to be more efficient, to be more productive, and that getting rid of it feels like an indirect way of pressuring them to quit. And they say it just doesn't

make a lot of sense bringing people back into offices that can't accommodate them. It's actually going to cost the government money. It seems like some of these goals are at cross purposes. So that is NPR's Shannon Bond. Shannon, thank you. Thanks so much. After three days of negotiations in Saudi Arabia, the White House announced new progress toward its goal of a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine.

In the latest, both have tentatively agreed to stop fighting in the Black Sea and allow free commercial shipping through that region to resume. Joining us to fill in the details is NPR's Charles Maines in Moscow. Charles, welcome. Morning, Michelle. So, what does this deal do, at least according to the White House? Well, I think it's important to look at it in a broader context. Trump returned office in January saying he wanted an end to the war in Ukraine.

His efforts to craft a full ceasefire didn't work out, so the White House has really shifted tactics. It's pursuing smaller limited ceasefires that work towards a wider peace. So last week, it was that deal to end attacks on energy infrastructure, at least in theory, hasn't quite held. And now the latest deal involves maritime passage through the Black Sea. Kiev and Moscow both promise to ensure safe passage to commercial vessels. The catch, and it's a big one, is it's not clear when the partial ceasefire would begin

or if conditions to put the deal in place could be met. What would those conditions be? Well, they mostly come from the Russian side. The Kremlin issued a statement in which it made clear the deal would only come into force once the US had lifted all sorts of sanctions-related entanglements to Russian maritime trade that were put in place because of Russia's invasion of its neighbor. Things like plugging Russia's state agricultural bank back into the international payment system, giving access to Russian sea vessels and foreign ports, even just solving problems like getting Russian ships insured to haul cargo around the world.

So, you know, in essence, Moscow is demanding the US resolve all sorts of complaints that had doomed an earlier United Nations broker deal that tried to get Russian and Ukrainian grain and fertilizer out to world markets in the first year of the war. That's when there were real concerns about global food shortages. So, look, if I hear you correctly, we're talking sanctions relief for Russia. And that would be a huge concession, wouldn't it? It is. But even for Trump, speaking yesterday, he sounded somewhat unsure that the US could meet all the Russian demands.

They will be looking at them and we're thinking about all of them right now. There are about five or six conditions. The truth here is that the US can't really remove all these barriers without European allies agreeing to do much the same. And Europe remains far more skeptical of Moscow and supportive of Kiev. Meanwhile, Ukraine, you know, it's objected to what it sees as unilateral sanctions relief for Russia by the US. Perhaps with that in mind, the White House also addressed Ukrainian demands, saying it

would work towards the return of Ukrainian children and prisoners of war held by Russia. That's something that Kiev has been asking Trump to press Moscow on, really ever since he came into office, vowing to end the war. But meanwhile, the fighting does go on in Ukraine. You know, it does. Both Moscow and Kiev have accused one another of violating that energy infrastructure ceasefire, just as both have continued attacks on targets outside of that agreement. And because of all that, there's a lot of skepticism on both sides this latest ceasefire deal will work. In fact, sometimes it feels like the Trump administration is its own best cheerleader in this process, optimistic, whatever the

truth on the ground. Danielle Pletka That is NPR's Charles Maynes in Moscow. Charles, thank you. Charles Maynes in Moscow. Charles, thank you. Thank you. Hi, this is Steve Inskeep. Our team is in China, inside a historic Chinese trading city, where people come from all over the world to buy wholesale goods to import to their countries. The hotel where we're staying is full. This is a very busy time and we're here to find out, among other things, how people are responding to tariffs on goods that go to the United States. Listen for that report on Up First from NPR News.

And that's Up First for Wednesday, March 26th. I'm Michelle Martin. And I'm Laila Faldin. For your next listen, try Consider This from NPR. We here at Up First give you three big stories of the day. Our Consider This colleagues take a different approach. They dive into a single news story and what it means to you. Learn about a big story of the day in less than 15 minutes. Listen now on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts. Today's episode of Up First was edited by Anna Yukhanov, Brett Neely, Rylan Barton, Aruzu Rizvani, and Mohammed El-Bardisi. It was produced by Ziad Boc, Nia Dumas, and Christopher Thomas.

We get engineering support from Nisha Hines and our technical director is Carly Strange. We hope you'll join us again tomorrow. I wasn't just going around with a microphone and talking to people and asking silly questions. I did have meat taped in my head. I'm Jesse Thorne. On Bullseye, Tom Green, the king of Y2K prank comedy, reflects on what we will call his program's unique voice. That was pretty strange now that you mention it. From MaximumFun.org and NPR.

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