WSJ What’s News
Trump Administration Denies That Signal Chat Shared Classified Info
Tue, 25 Mar 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
Chapter 1: What are the allegations against the Trump administration regarding the Signal chat?
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 Osola 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.
Chapter 2: How did the Trump administration respond to the Signal chat allegations?
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 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.
Kash 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 Waltz, who organized the group thread.
Chapter 3: What actions are being taken by the Trump administration regarding the Education Department?
Earlier today, President Trump signaled his support for his National Security Advisor, saying Waltz 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.
Is there enough support in Congress to abolish the Education Department?
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Chapter 4: Is there support in Congress for abolishing the Education Department?
It's an uphill battle. I'm not aware of any Democratic congresspeople in the House or especially the Senate where a 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 about 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. in 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.
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Chapter 5: Why is the Trump administration freezing federal family planning grants?
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. 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 percent 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.-brokered 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 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. Tao Francis covers executive compensation for The Wall Street Journal. Tao, how did we arrive at this $100 million mark?
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Chapter 6: What is the current status of U.S. home prices and consumer sentiment?
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 $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, 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.
Chapter 7: How is the Trump administration involved in the Russia-Ukraine Black Sea agreement?
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, Tao Francis. Thank you, Tao.
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 themselves.
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
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