On Monday, The Atlantic published a story detailing how senior members of President Donald Trump’s cabinet discussed classified military plans on the messaging app Signal, all after the magazine’s editor-in-chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, had been accidentally added to the chain. As a vulnerable platform that our adversaries can gather information from, Signal is not an appropriate platform for top members of President Trump’s administration, including Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, and National Security Advisor Michael Waltz, to discuss war plans, even if they were not sharing classified information. Additional reporting now has revealed that they were, in fact, discussing classified information.

Following this shocking revelation, I was the first member of Congress to call for an investigation into the matter to ensure accountability and to discover whether any classified materials had been compromised. Even after this issue was brought to light, the Trump Administration officials continued to unconscionably lie and mislead the public. As I told Chris Hayes on Tuesday, “this is part of a pattern of careless treatment of people's information and the nation's information and its secrets. And it's going to come back to bite us.”

At Wednesday’s annual Worldwide Threats Assessment hearing before the House Intelligence Committee, I confronted some of the officials from that Signal chat on their exposure of classified military information, as well as their decision to then lie to and mislead the public about it by claiming no sensitive information was shared in an unauthorized, insecure setting. During my question line, I cited Executive Order 13526 and the Department of Defense’s classification manual, both of which clearly define military operations, weapon systems, and strike planning as classified information. Despite repeated assertions by Trump Administration officials—including Secretary Hegseth and President Trump—that no classified information was shared, the text of the Signal chat unequivocally met the threshold for classification through Secretary Hegseth’s sharing of strike timings, fighter and drone deployments, and even known terrorist target details.

The sharing of this information in such an exposed setting by Secretary Hegseth endangered the American pilots flying those planes. In light of these revelations, I repeated my call for a full investigation into potential ongoing security breaches by senior officials and demanded the immediate resignation of Secretary Hegseth.

On Thursday, I joined with Illinois Vets for Change to hold a rally at Daley Plaza demanding that Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth resign his position for endangering American service members and then lying to the American people about it. I was proud to be joined by leaders including Rep. Danny Davis, Alderman Gil Villegas, Illinois Veterans for Change Chair Jesse Rojo, veterans of Illinois’ 46th Ward, and Mykela Collins, whose cousin currently serves aboard the USS Carl Vinson. Our coalition emphasized that public servants—regardless of their position—must be held to the same standard of responsibility as the service members they lead.

When a Secretary of Defense exposes classified strike plans in a war zone, he doesn’t just break protocol; he breaks trust with every American who wears the uniform. The brave men and women serving overseas deserve a Secretary of Defense who honors their sacrifice—not one who plays fast and loose with their lives. Pete Hegseth endangered our troops, and then he lied about it. For the good of the country and American men and women in uniform, he must resign. You can watch the WGN segment on the rally here.

Last week, I participated in a roundtable discussion with local leaders highlighting the importance of protecting the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) from devastating funding cuts. The SNAP program, formerly known as food stamps, has faced increasing threats to its funding levels from President Donald Trump’s administration and Congressional Republicans, who have called for the House Agriculture Committee to cut programs by at least $230 billion through 2034 in their recent budget proposal. The majority of any potential cuts are expected to come at SNAP’s expense, a program on which nearly two million Illinoisans, including more than 950,000 Cook County residents, depend for access to food for themselves and their families.

This issue is personal for me because, when I was a child, the food stamp program helped my family get back on our feet, and food banks, SNAP, and other anti-hunger programs are making that same difference for so many other families today. No one in Illinois or anywhere in our country should have to lie awake at night worrying that their access to food will be taken away to fund tax cuts for the ultra-wealthy. I will continue to fight relentlessly to ensure that the two million Illinoisans who rely on this program to feed themselves and their families are protected.

The best way to stay up to date on these issues beyond our newsletter is through my social media accounts, which I update multiple times each day. You can follow my Twitter (X) here, my Facebook page here, my Instagram here, my Threads here, and my Bluesky here. Thank you for staying engaged in our community.