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Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth denied that he had shared "war plans" after accidentally texting secret military information to a reporter ahead of a strike on Yemen.

During a rant on an airport tarmac Wednesday, Hegseth suggested he had been acquitted of wrongdoing after The Atlantic described his text messages as "attack plans" instead of "war plans."

"Nobody's texting war plans!" the defense secretary exclaimed to reporters. "I noticed this morning out came something that doesn't look like war plans. And as a matter of fact, they even changed the title to attack plans because they know it's not war plans."

"There's no units, no locations, no routes, no flight paths, no sources, no methods, no classified information," he insisted. "My job, as it said atop of that, everybody's seen it now, team update is to provide updates in real time, general updates in real time, keep everybody informed. That's what I did! That's my job!"

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"And with President Trump's leadership, our enemies are on notice."

As Hegseth walked away, he continued to get peppered with questions.

"Mr. Secretary, how do you square what you said with what your messages show?" a reporter yelled. "Mr. Secretary, did you share classified information? Mr. Secretary, did you declassify that information before you put it into action?"

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CNN's Kaitlan Collins clashed with White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt on Wednesday during a press briefing when Leavitt denied Collins a chance to ask a followup question.

Earlier this week, a bombshell report in The Atlantic alleged that Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth shared secret war plans in a Signal chat while inadvertently revealing them to a reporter who had been errantly added to the group.

The administration responded by denying any classified information was transmitted through the chats and The Atlantic responded Tuesday by publishing messages showing that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth revealed the precise times that American missiles were scheduled to strike at Houthi rebel groups inside Yemen.

Collins asked Leavitt if she stood by the administration's claims that there had been no classified information in the messages given what she now knows.

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Leavitt complained she'd been "asked and answered the same question" several times and noted that the president "feels the same today as he did yesterday."

Collins asked for a follow-up and spoke while Leavitt called on someone else.

"I'm not taking your follow-up," snapped Leavitt.

"I have a follow-up on something you just said, Karoline," said Collins.

"Kaitlin, I'm not taking your follow-up. Philip, go ahead," Leavitt said

After the briefing, host Boris Sanchez noted that the White House might be trying to do counter-programming to get people off of talking about the Signal scandal by announcing possible auto tariffs. The Dow Jones immediately began falling, Sanchez said.

"We're being told by our reporters that markets started trending downward. Yes, it appears that the White House is trying to counterprogram this story. And I want to go to CNN's Kaitlan Collins, who's in the room now. Caitlin, I found it interesting, first, that she rejected your question and said that she had already answered it, even though she didn't directly address the substance of what you were asking. And then that she rejected your follow-up, which is atypical."

Collins reported that Republicans on Capitol Hill see the White House as trying to twist itself into knots trying to say that the Signal chat contents weren't classified when it is overwhelmingly likely that they were given that they revealed the precise timing of military strikes.

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During a House Oversight subcommittee meeting Wednesday, Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-TX) unleashed on DOGE chairwoman Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) for supporting the Trump administration's desire to cut federally-funded media outlets National Public Radio and the Public Broadcasting System.

"Greene and other GOP members grilled the heads of NPR and PBS on allegations of perceived bias to determine whether to continue federal funding," according to The Daily Beast.

"It should not be surprising that the president is doing everything possible to make it more difficult for the media to hold him accountable, and for the public to be informed about his reckless and illegal behavior — yet here we are," Crockett began before asking the media leaders about how stripping their funding would hurt the public at large.

Witnesses included NPR CEO Katherine Maher, PBS CEO Paula Kerger, Heritage Foundation senior fellow Michael Gonzalez, and Alaska Public Radio president Ed Ulman.

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"Isn't it true that without these stations' broadcasts, Americans in rural communities would lack access to lifesaving information and public safety alerts?" Crockett asked Ulman, who answered in the affirmative.

Crockett continued, "In your opinion would eliminating funding for stations in rural America like WNGH, Channel 18, in the chairwoman's district would hurt Americans?"

"It would hurt Americans, yes," Ulman answered.

Crockett then launched into Greene, with whom she has a contentious working relationship.

"In fact, Georgia Public Broadcasting serves as the official distributor of evacuation route during state evacuations, and the chairwoman is here advocating to strip their funding. Look, the DOGE agenda isn't about efficiency; it's about breeding corruption at the expense of the safety of the American people, particularly rural and remote parts of the country. They don't care about public safety. They don't care about emergency management. They don't care about free speech, all of which are harming the American people."

Crockett continued, "To be clear, free speech is not about whatever it is y'all want somebody to say. And the idea that you want to shut down everybody that is not Fox News is bull----. We need to stop playing because that's what y'all are doing in here. You don't you want to hear the opinions of anybody else."

Crockett went on to read the First Amendment as Greene repeatedly banged the gavel and announced "the gentlelady's time has expired."

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House and Senate Republicans are still "nowhere near" agreement on how to craft the sweeping budget bill to pass President Donald Trump's agenda, reported Politico — and the Senate leaders are considering "big changes" to what the House already passed, yet another complication in a process already full of hurdles.

"GOP senators made clear Tuesday they intend to revamp the House-approved framework for the sweeping domestic policy bill — most crucially, by likely tweaking the amount of spending cuts congressional committees would need to achieve to finance the package of tax cuts, border security enhancements and energy provisions," said the report.

“[House Republicans] said they needed time to do one big, beautiful bill,” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), who chairs the Senate Budget Committee, told reporters. “They had a chance; the product is woefully inadequate.”

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House Republicans' budget framework eyes Medicaid and food aid cuts as a major source of offsets for the spending — but all of this doesn't even include Trump's campaign promises to eliminate taxes on tips, overtime pay, and Social Security benefits.

All of this comes after weeks of dissent and disagreement between Republicans in the House and Senate over whether it even made sense to do this as one bill or two.

It also comes as Republicans scramble to pass the bill in anticipation of Trump's tariffs, which continue to divide the party, causing significant negative impacts on the economy — and as they debate over whether or not they should, or even can, include the critical reprieve from the debt ceiling later this year before it forces the United States into an artificial default.

A top national security adviser for President Donald Trump took to Fox News on Tuesday to float a baseless conspiracy theory that a reporter inadvertently invited into a Signal group chat where officials mulled over war plans may have used nefarious means to smear the president.

President Donald Trump defended Mike Waltz as a "very good man" earlier Tuesday and said he does not need to apologize for the incident. Trump acknowledged his top officials made a mistake by using Signal to discuss war plans but downplayed its significance and insisted the information shared was not classified. He also suggested that Waltz would likely avoid using such platforms in the future.

Waltz and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth have faced a mountain of criticism for using the app, and the reporter said he was invited into the group by mistake by Waltz. Waltz said Tuesday night he takes "full responsibility" for organizing the group chat to discuss airstrikes on Houthi militants in Yemen.

"I take full responsibility. I built the — I built the group," Waltz told Fox News host Laura Ingraham. "My job is to make sure everything's coordinated."

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But Waltz also floated a baseless theory — that the Atlantic journalist in question, Editor in Chief Jeffrey Goldberg, may have somehow gotten himself on the messaging chain in a scheme to denigrate Trump.

"The president expressed complete confidence in you today and his entire Cabinet," said Ingraham. "But how did a Trump-hating editor of The Atlantic end up on your Signal chat?"

"You know, Laura, I'm not a conspiracy theorist," Waltz began, before suggesting a conspiracy theory. "But of all the people out there, somehow this guy who has lied about the president, who has lied to Gold Star families, lied to their attorneys, and gone to Russia hoax, gone to just all kinds of lengths to lie and smear the president of the United States. And he's the one that somehow gets on someone's contact and then gets sucked into this group."

Goldberg has said he's met Waltz, but the Trump adviser denied the two have ever met, telling Ingraham: "No idea."

"Wouldn't know him if I bumped into him, if I saw him in a police lineup. I do now. I knew him by reputation about lying — for lying about the president over and over and over again. I can tell you for certain — certainly wasn't reaching out and talking to him at all. Why would I?"

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Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-ND) strongly condemned the Trump administration officials who openly discussed top secret war plans in a free messaging app that included journalist Jeffrey Goldberg.

“It’s not okay,” Cramer said Tuesday. “And any member of Congress, particularly ones that are on important committees or sensitive committees like armed services or intelligence or foreign relations, knows that it's not okay.”

The senator, a Trump ally, called the mishap embarrassing.

“I don’t know if a head will roll or has to roll yet, but this has got to be the last time something this big and dumb happens,” Cramer told reporters.

In a break with President Donald Trump and other top administration officials caught up in the Signal group chat controversy, Cramer insisted in a CNN interview on Tuesday that the error should be immediately acknowledged as “a mistake.” He also commended Golberg, The Atlantic’s editor-in-chief, for “holding back” in his reporting some of the most sensitive details he was made privy to.

“Whether you apologize or not, admitting that it was a mistake, I think, is the minimum,” Cramer said. “And I don't think it's difficult, quite honestly. I find it strange that that some people find it difficult.”

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The North Dakota Republican added that administration officials acknowledging the error would be a way for them to “regain the moral high ground, and the issue goes away tomorrow.”

"I’m going to reserve my judgment for the, you know, the final blame, if you will, until a further investigation has happened,” Cramer told CNN’s Erin Burnett. “In the meantime, I think the main thing to do is admit that it was a screw up on somebody's part along the way."

Cramer concluded Tuesday that regardless of how Goldberg wound up on the Signal group chat where top-level government officials were freely discussing highly sensitive war plans, the “issue of the day” isn’t that the journalist was on the discussion “as much as the substance of the discussion should never have happened on that platform.”

“And I'm pretty confident it'll never happen again," he said.

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