
As top Trump aides sent texts on Signal, flight data show a member of the group chat was in Russia
CBSN
President Trump's Ukraine and Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff was in Moscow, where he met with Russian President Vladimir Putin, when he was included in a group chat with more than a dozen other top administration officials — and inadvertently, one journalist — on the messaging app Signal, a CBS News analysis of open-source flight information and Russian media reporting has revealed.
Russia has repeatedly tried to compromise Signal, a popular commercial messaging platform that many were shocked to learn senior Trump administration officials had used to discuss sensitive military planning.
Witkoff arrived in Moscow shortly after noon local time on March 13, according to data from the flight tracking website FlightRadar24, and Russian state media broadcast video of his motorcade leaving Vnukovo International Airport shortly after. About 12 hours later, he was added to the "Houthi PC small group" chat on Signal, along with other top Trump administration officials, to discuss an imminent military operation against the Houthis in Yemen, according to The Atlantic magazine editor Jeffrey Goldberg, who was included on the chat for reasons that remain unclear.

The entire staff of the federal government's Office of Infectious Disease and HIV/AIDS Policy is expected to be laid off, multiple federal health officials told CBS News Friday. The moves are part of a broader restructuring plan ordered by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. that involves cutting 20,000 HHS positions.

Pabrade, Lithuania — Lithuania's president said Friday that he hoped for "a miracle" as he visited the site of a rescue operation to recover four missing U.S. Army soldiers from their submerged vehicle. The four soldiers, assigned to the Army's 1st Brigade, 3rd Infantry Division, went missing early Tuesday morning during a maintenance mission to recover another U.S. Army vehicle in the Pabrade training area, near Lithuania's border with Belarus, during a scheduled training missing, the Army has said.