WSJ What’s News - Trump Administration Denies That Signal Chat Shared Classified Info

Episode Date: March 25, 2025

P.M. Edition for Mar. 25. The White House and top intelligence officials denied that classified information about military strikes in Yemen were shared on a group chat. Plus, Forever 21 is closing its 350 stores, and mall owners are looking forward to it. WSJ real estate reporter Kate King explains why. And for the first time in a decade, no CEOs got $100 million payouts in 2024 so far. Special writer Theo Francis tells us about the rise of the nine-figure payout. Alex Ossola hosts. Listen: What You Can Learn From LinkedIn Influencers to Boost Your Brand Online Sign up for the WSJ's free What's News newsletter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

With the FIZ loyalty program, you get rewarded just for having a mobile plan. You know, for texting and stuff. And if you're not getting rewards like extra data and dollars off with your mobile plan, you're not with FIZ. Switch today. Conditions apply. Details at fiz.ca. The Trump administration denies that a signal chat shared classified details with a journalist. Plus, President Trump has been dismantling the Education Department well before he signed an executive order.

Certainly we've seen hollowing out of other agencies to a much more extreme level than at the Education Department, but they have made some dramatic downsizing and they have challenged legal limits. And why mall owners are looking forward to Forever 21 closing its doors. It's Tuesday, March 25th. I'm Alex Oseloff for The Wall Street Journal. This is the PM edition of What's News, the top headlines and business stories that move the world today.

The White House and two top intelligence officials have denied that classified materials about military strikes in Yemen were shared by officials on a group chat on the non-government service Signal. Democrats have denounced the security breach as reckless and dangerous. Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, and John Ratcliffe, the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, told Congress today that the chat among senior officials over a pending military strike against Houthi militants didn't include classified information. The claim was challenged by several senators who said it wasn't plausible

that the chat could be unclassified. Cash Patel, the Federal Bureau of Investigation Director, declined to say if his agency would investigate whether the Signal Chat violated security procedures. The disclosure that top administration officials had discussions about the military operation over Signal has also put a spotlight on National Security Advisor Mike Walz, who organized the group thread. Earlier today, President Trump signaled his support for his National Security Advisor,

saying Walz has learned a lesson and he's a good man. Meanwhile, President Trump has started getting rid of the Education Department, and he isn't waiting for Congress's help. Our education reporter Matt Barnum says the administration started dismantling the department even before last week, when the president signed an executive order directing Education Secretary Linda McMahon to facilitate the closure of the Federal Department of Education. Matt joins me now with more. So Matt, what exactly is the administration doing?

What's interesting is that Linda McMahon and the Trump administration have already, even before the executive order, been doing what that order said, which is thinning out various parts of the education department. I should say that the administration has said that they're not going to go after the biggest education programs that the most number of people rely on, which includes student loans, money for students with disabilities, money for low income school districts. But they have gone after some smaller programs and they've cut the staff in roughly half. And this was already an agency that was not particularly large.

It was actually the smallest cabinet level agency. So it's been cut in half. And this was already an agency that was not particularly large. It was actually the smallest cabinet level agency. So it's been cut in half. Is there enough support in Congress to abolish the Education Department? It's an uphill battle. I'm not aware of any Democratic Congresspeople in the House or especially the Senate where the 60 vote supermajority would be needed. I'm not aware of any Democrat elected officials who support this. And I am aware of some Republicans who are at least skeptical or seem hesitant on this. And polls suggest that this is not particularly popular with Americans. Trump recently suggested putting what he described as special needs programs, which I took to mean special education programs at the Department of Health and Human Services, and shifting the student loan portfolio

to the Small Business Administration. Now, most legal experts seem to think that that would need an act of Congress. The administration hasn't released details on how they would move these programs or a specific plan to work with Congress to do so. That was WSJ Education reporter Matt Barnum. Thank you, Matt. Thank you. And we're exclusively reporting that the Trump administration is moving to freeze tens of millions of dollars in federal family planning grants while it investigates whether

the money was used for diversity efforts. That's according to people familiar with the matter. The groups that would be subject to the freeze, which include Planned Parenthood affiliates, were set to get about $120 million this year. A spokesman for the Department of Health and Human Services said it was reviewing grant recipients to make sure they comply with President Trump's executive orders. Alexis McGill Johnson, the president and CEO

of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, said the administration wants to shut down Planned Parenthood health centers by any means necessary. The S&P CoreLogic Case Shiller National Home Price Index In economic news, new data out today shows U.S. home prices accelerated at a slower pace in January. The S&P CoreLogic Case Shiller National Home Price Index, which measures home prices across the country, rose 4.1% in the first month of this year.

And the Conference Board's key monthly consumer survey has shown that household sentiment fell in March to its lowest point in 12 years, at levels that often signal a recession. Markets were seemingly unfazed by this latest report of consumer sentiment as U.S. stocks held steady today. The S&P 500 rose about 0.2 percent, the Nasdaq ticked up about half a percent, and the Dow ended the day flat. The Trump administration said today that it had agreed to help Russia boost exports of its grain and fertilizer to global markets.

The arrangement comes as the White House announced a U.S. broker deal between Russia and Ukraine to eliminate the use of force in the Black Sea. The Kremlin said that its compliance with the Black Sea agreement was conditional on the lifting of sanctions on major Russian banks involved in the food and fertilizer trade. Ukraine signaled that it wasn't on board with the weakening of sanctions. Coming up, why fewer CEOs are getting payouts that break the $100 million mark that's after the break.

The new boss at Starbucks came pretty close. So did the leaders of Apple and GE. But so far, no CEOs have been involved in the food and fertilizer trade. Ukraine signaled that it wasn't on board with the weakening of sanctions. The new boss at Starbucks came pretty close. So did the leaders of Apple and GE. But so far, no CEO has scored a $100 million pay package for 2024. If that holds, it'll be the first time in a decade that no CEO broke nine figures.

And yet the average CEO pay was higher last year than the year before. Teo Francis covers executive compensation for the Wall Street Journal. Teo, how did we arrive at this $100 million mark? In recent years, we'd seen the proliferation of these things that some people call moonshot or swing for the fences pay packages. So you might see, you know, $100 million or in some cases $200 million, $250 million. In Elon Musk's case, originally $2.3 billion worth of stock in the mix. And if the company and the executive reach certain milestones, then that pay kind of

gets unlocked as it were. That really started picking up steam after Elon Musk's 2018 pay package, which got a lot of attention at the time. And you saw packages that kind of emulated that. What we've seen, though, more recently is a real decline in the number of those kinds of packages. So what are boards and executives thinking this year will bring in terms of CEO payouts? You see a lot of different responses.

But one of the common ones is that some boards say, you know, our executives are not responsible for setting tax rates. They're not responsible for trade conditions. They're not responsible for economic conditions generally. And so in many cases, boards remove certain kinds of effects from the calculations of performance that lead to executive pay. At this point, that's really hard for boards to do. They're looking at and trying to set 2025 pay now. This is kind of the season in which they do it. And I've heard that some boards are trying to figure out whether and how to actually remove those components. The back and forth up and down of the trade war right now, it's really hard to plan in those circumstances. We've heard that from

executives talking about running their companies. It's also hard to plan pay targets and performance targets for compensation in that kind of environment. That was WSJ special writer, Teo Francis. Thank you, Teo. Thank you. Fast fashion retailer Forever 21 has declared bankruptcy this month, and it's closing all of its 350 or so U.S. stores. One group that's looking forward to that? Mall owners. Real estate reporter Kate King joins us now.

Kate, why are mall owners excited about Forever 21 stores closing? Forever 21 was going out of business for several years. And so it wasn't generating a lot of tenant sales, which mall owners use to boost rent. And mall owners are just really looking forward, in many cases, to Forever 21 exiting their malls so they can release this space to higher performing tenants. This implies to me that malls are actually doing well now, which I find surprising given I feel like all I've been hearing for the past few years is like, malls are dead,

malls are dead, so they're not dead. Well, a lot of people are surprised to hear that malls are still kicking and in some cases thriving. It's not all malls. We always knew that the very top luxury, what we call trophy malls, would survive and make a lot of money for their owners. But what we found over the past year or so is that more than just these

really high-end luxury malls are doing pretty well. The top mall owners in this country are reporting that their malls are pretty close to full. But of course, there are many malls across the country that are not doing well and probably won't exist for much longer. To answer your question, malls aren't back to the same level of foot traffic they saw before the pandemic, but the malls that are doing well in terms of occupancy, leasing, rent growth, they are doing quite well right now. I'm curious what's driving this. A really big reason that the top malls are doing so well

right now is because no one is building malls. There's no extra supply coming onto the scene to steal foot traffic and shopper interest from existing properties. And at the same time, most mall owners are reporting and most retail owners are reporting that consumer spending remains quite strong and resilient, despite all these economic headwinds we're hearing about.

That was WSJ Real Estate Reporter Kate King. Thank you, Kate. Thank you. And finally, TikTok and Instagram aren't the only platforms where aspiring influencers can find a following. What about LinkedIn? The research firm eMarketer expects there to be about 23 million Gen Z monthly users on the site this year. And they're not just on there looking for jobs. They want to talk about it. The platform is seeing more punchy personal videos on how to make it in the professional

world. But as Wall Street Journal reporter Anne-Marie Alcantara told our Your Money Briefing podcast, even non-influencers can benefit from posting insights on LinkedIn. The job market is what it is right now. It's a little bit difficult for many people. And so in building a personal brand, you still have your regular resume on LinkedIn. But now you also have all these posts that show, you know what you're talking about, maybe you're engaging with people in the comments, having a back and forth, it just sort of gives you an extra cushion to show I'm good at my job and I'm also good at talking about it and teaching people and hopefully executing a good plan

for you in the new job that you may want to have. You can hear more about what you can learn from LinkedIn Influencers to boost your brand online in our Your Money Briefing podcast. We'll leave a link in the show notes. And that's what's news for this Tuesday afternoon. Today's show is produced by Pierre Bienneme and Anthony Bansi with supervising producer Michael Kosmitis. I'm Alex Osola for The Wall Street Journal.

We'll be back with a new show tomorrow morning. Thanks for listening.