The D Brief: Accountability watch; Golden Dome options; WH pursues Ukraine’s minerals; EU suggests stockpiling food; And a bit more.

The judge’s order came in response to a lawsuit filed this week by the government accountability group American Oversight, which claimed that Hegseth, Trump’s National Security Advisor Mike Waltz, CIA Director John Ratcliffe, and others on an unsecured group chat may have violated the Federal Records Act by setting their Signal messages to delete after seven days in one instance, and after four weeks in a related instance. Their group chat discussing impending U.S. military action in Yemen was revealed this week by Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic, who was apparently added to the group accidentally by Waltz without the knowledge of others in the group.

American Oversight: “The public has a right to know how decisions about war and national security are made—and accountability doesn’t disappear just because a message was set to auto-delete,” the group’s interim executive director Chioma Chukwu said in a statement Thursday.  

Why it matters: “The judge’s order was an early sign that at least some of the usual channels of accountability are still operating after the most senior administration officials engaged in an extraordinary breach of operational security and Mr. Trump’s attorney general, Pam Bondi, signaled that the Justice Department is not likely to investigate the matter,” the New York Times reported after the judge’s order. 

Big-picture consideration: “The existence of the group chat, and the inadvertent disclosure of messages to a journalist, has sparked a brewing controversy over the Trump administration's treatment of sensitive military and intelligence information,” Reuters reports. 

Those concerns are exacerbated by Trump’s resistance to holding anyone accountable for the breach. “Incidents like this make my job significantly harder,” a Department of Defense operations security, or OPSEC, official told The Atlantic. “When senior leadership disregards OPSEC and security protocols without consequences, it undermines the work we do to enforce these standards.” 

That includes Hegseth, noted in the past for his insistence that “accountability is coming” to the Pentagon. “When the secretary of Defense won’t hold himself to the same standard as the colonels, captains and corporals down the chain of command, that’s a problem. Troop morale shoots straight down,” ML Cavanaugh, co-founder of West Point’s Modern War Institute, writes in the Los Angeles Times.

Related:

• “Concerns about Hegseth’s judgment come roaring back after group chat scandal,” CNN wrote on Thursday, citing “interviews with multiple current and former national security officials this week, including career military and civilian officials.”
• “Trump allies are starting to notice Hegseth's growing pile of mistakes,” wrote Politico on Thursday. “The problem is this is another example of inexperience,” said a person close to the White House, who like others, was granted anonymity to discuss a politically sensitive issue. “What happens when Hegseth needs to manage a real crisis?” 

Meanwhile, the White House has instructed DOGE employees to preserve their own Signal records. A one-page policy statement dated March 25 reminds Elon Musk’s team that federal law requires them “to preserve all work-related communications and records, regardless of format,” Politico reported Thursday.

Yemen update: Despite the damage to the Houthi group’s weapons and infrastructure inflicted by the strikes that began on March 15, the Wall Street Journal says, “The Iran-backed militia—which controls a swath of Yemen—continues to get off near-daily missile attacks on Israel. Most commercial ship traffic is still being redirected to the long way around southern Africa and away from the Red Sea and the Suez Canal, underscoring the stakes for U.S. credibility as a guarantor of freedom of navigation on the high seas.” Read on, here.

Welcome to this Friday edition of The D Brief, a newsletter dedicated to developments affecting the future of U.S. national security, brought to you by Ben Watson and Bradley Peniston. Share your tips and feedback here. And if you’re not already subscribed, you can do that here. On this day in 1979, the Three Mile Island nuclear meltdown occurred near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.

Update: Trump to get Golden Dome options next week, a defense source tells Defense One’s Patrick Tucker. The commander in chief will be briefe on three options for his ambitious, futuristic missile shield, said a defense official who added that DOD might need a new office to build it. Read on, here.

Europe

The White House is pushing Ukraine to sign an even more expansive mineral-rights deal than the one Trump floated in mid-February, the Financial Times reported Thursday—along with the 55-page draft (PDF). Ukraine’s president rejected Trump’s initial plan, though both countries’ representatives agreed to continue talks on mineral rights in their joint statement on March 11. 

What’s inside: “The new proposal stipulates that the U.S. is given first rights to purchase resources extracted…and that it recoup all the money it has given Ukraine since 2022, in addition to a 4% annual interest rate, before Ukraine begins to gain access to the fund's profits,” Reuters reports. “The terms put forward by Washington go well beyond the deal discussed” in February, the wire service writes, concurring with FT. 

Also: This latest pitch “gives Ukraine no future security guarantees but requires it to contribute to a joint investment fund all income from the use of natural resources managed by state and private enterprises across Ukrainian territory,” Reuters reports. 

What’s different: “Now, demands that Kyiv had previously succeeded in removing—that Washington retains control of the fund and that Ukraine repays past U.S. aid—have resurfaced in the latest proposal,” the New York Times reports. “The security guarantees also disappeared.” 

• View a map of approximate locations for select Ukrainian minerals, via the UK’s Sky News, here. 

Bloomberg’s topline read: “The US is pushing to control all major future infrastructure and mineral investments in Ukraine, potentially gaining a veto over any role for Kyiv’s other allies and undermining its bid for European Union membership.”

And here’s the UK Telegraph’s headline treatment: “Revealed: Trump’s plan to force Ukraine to restore Putin’s gas empire // America holds gun to Zelensky’s head with unprecedented reparation demands.”

Trump’s NSC: “The mineral deal offers Ukraine the opportunity to form an enduring economic relationship with the United States that is the basis for long term security and peace,” National Security Council spokesperson James Hewitt said in a statement. 

Ukrainian President Volodymir Zelenskyy said the new draft will require “detailed study” before Kyiv signs, but he added Thursday, “We don’t want to send any signals that could lead the U.S. to stop aid to Ukraine.”

Said one Ukrainian lawmaker on Thursday: “There is zero chance that it will be approved as it is now.” Said another: “The goal is to continue negotiations and find a compromise.” The Times has a bit more.

Additional reading: 

• “Trump reverses termination of program tracking mass child abductions in Ukraine,” the Washington Post reported Thursday evening; 
• “Europeans told to stockpile 72 hours worth of food,” Newsweek reported Thursday; 
• “Why American Soldiers Are in Lithuania,” The Atlantic reported in an explainer Thursday after the possible deaths of four U.S. troops during a training mission this week in eastern Europe. 

Etc.

Lastly this week: Trump’s tariff war and talk of making Canada its “51st state” have cost the U.S. its closest ally. “The old relationship we had with the United States based on deepening integration of our economies and tight security and military cooperation is over,” new Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said Thursday in Ottawa. 

Canadians must now “fundamentally reimagine our economy,” Carney told reporters after a cabinet meeting. 

Behind the scenes: “Carney suspended several campaign events scheduled for Thursday to meet with members of his cabinet to discuss how the government would respond to Trump’s executive action imposing a 25% tariff on all vehicles imported to the U.S.,” the Wall Street Journal reports. “The latest tariffs are set to take effect on April 3, a day after the president has said he will announce a broader round of trade actions.”

• ICYMI, here’s the Journal’s Monday headline: “Trade War Explodes Across World at Pace Not Seen in Decades” (gift link).

Reminder: Carney’s predecessor Justin Trudeau warned in an outgoing message three weeks ago, “What [Trump] wants is to see a total collapse of the Canadian economy, because that'll make it easier to annex us.”

“I reject any attempts to weaken Canada, to wear us down, to break us so that America can own us. That will never happen,” Carney said Thursday. What’s next: The prime minister is set to discuss trade with Trump sometime later Friday. Ottawa’s CBC news has more. ]]>