In case you haven’t heard, Atlantic editor Jeffrey Goldberg was accidentally added to a Signal chat where some of the highest ranking officials in the U.S. government discussed operational details of an impending military strike. While much of the commentary has focused on the ineptitude of inviting a reporter to a discussion of classified material, I haven’t seem much legacy media discussion of the far more disturbing issue: why the Trump administration uses Signal.

They are using Signal because it can be set up to autodelete messages, which means these communications disappear–in violation of federal law. Not only is it pretty obvious that these participants do this routinely, but, given the behavior the first Trump administration, I’m sure Signal is used widely by Trump administration people. For example, there are some really shady grant reviewer removals coming from NIH. Does anyone really think that these decisions weren’t discussed on Signal? (they’re too stupid to not do this).

Hopefully, Democrats will lead legacy media to this by asking how often Signal is used, and if there are any data retention plans.