Donald Trump’s White House told D.O.G.E employees on Monday to stop using Signal’s auto-delete and start keeping every message that’s even slightly related to government work.

The new rule hit the same day The Atlantic revealed Pete Hegseth, Trump’s defense secretary, shared U.S. military plans over Signal just hours before those plans were carried out in Yemen. The chat also included national security adviser Mike Waltz and, by accident, journalist Jeffrey Goldberg, who exposed the exchange.

The White House’s new records retention policy orders all D.O.G.E staff to keep Signal messages and any government-related texts or emails sent on personal phones. It tells them to screenshot, forward, and transfer anything work-related to official government devices.

The policy says, “If you happen to receive work-related messages on your personal device—whether via text, Signal, a personal email address, or otherwise—make sure to capture and transmit those messages to your work device.”

Waltz adds a journalist to Signal chat with secret military plan

Goldberg published the messages on Monday. He got access to the chat because Waltz, who created it to coordinate an attack on the Houthis in Yemen, added him by mistake. Two hours later, that same attack went live.

Trump’s administration then scrambled to roll out a new policy across D.O.G.E, short for Department of Government Efficiency, a White House-based group stacked with loyalists and run by Elon Musk. The directive doesn’t just apply to Signal—it covers any channel used to conduct White House business.

The lawsuit that exposed this new policy was filed by American Oversight in February. That lawsuit accused D.O.G.E staff of breaking recordkeeping laws by using apps like Signal with disappearing messages. The new rule appeared in court filings this week as part of the defense against those allegations.

U.S. District Judge James Boasberg is handling the case and will hold a hearing on Thursday. American Oversight also filed a second lawsuit after The Atlantic report came out, arguing that Waltz using auto-delete violated the Presidential Records Act.

That law requires the White House to preserve records in all formats. The Justice Department responded in court and said D.O.G.E follows the law and told the court, “[D.O.G.E] systematically complies with its Presidential Records Act obligations and regularly instructs its employees to preserve presidential records in all forms, including as recently as two days ago.”

The one-page Signal policy isn’t signed, but the language is blunt. It tells D.O.G.E staff that the easiest way to avoid issues is to “use work devices for all work-related activities.” The order went out across Musk’s agency the same day Goldberg published the leaked messages.

Trump fumes at Waltz, defends Hegseth after Signal fallout

By Thursday, Trump had already pulled Elise Stefanik’s nomination to be ambassador to the United Nations. He blamed Waltz for the Signal mess. Two Republican officials said Trump is furious Waltz invited a reporter into a private group chat, even by accident.

One of them said, “Trump’s frustration is twofold.” He’s mad about the Signal leak and also angry that Waltz’s exit from Congress triggered a special election in Florida that should’ve been an easy win for Republicans but now looks competitive.

The White House said Trump would join two tele-town halls Thursday night for Randy Fine, the GOP candidate running in Waltz’s old district, and another Republican running in a second Florida special election. Trump reportedly didn’t want another election on top of that one, which is why Stefanik’s nomination got pulled. Confirming her would’ve triggered another vacancy in a razor-thin House majority.

Trump still gave Waltz some public cover. When asked about the leak, he said, “Mike Waltz, I guess he said he claimed responsibility,” then quickly pivoted to the strike. “The attacks were unbelievably successful, and that’s ultimately what you should be talking about.” But his mood behind the scenes was sour, and pressure to remove Waltz grew fast.

Despite Waltz taking the heat for the Signal screw-up, all eyes turned to Pete Hegseth. He was the one dropping sensitive military details in the chat. Some of the same messages ended up in The Atlantic’s screenshots. Trump tried to clear him completely, saying, “Hegseth is doing a great job. He had nothing to do with this. Hegseth? How do you bring Hegseth into it? He had nothing to do.”

Hegseth went in front of the press and said, “There’s no units, no locations, no routes, no flight paths, no sources, no methods, no classified information.” The administration stood by that. The talking point stayed the same. But critics in Congress weren’t buying it.

Congress asks for investigation into Signal leak and D.O.G.E policies

On Thursday, Senator Roger Wicker, chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee, and Senator Jack Reed, the top Democrat on the panel, wrote to the Pentagon’s inspector general. They asked for a full investigation into whether any rules were broken when Hegseth sent those messages. “The information as published recently appears to me to be of such a sensitive nature that, based on my knowledge, I would have wanted it classified,” Wicker told reporters Wednesday.

The request for an investigation adds to the legal pressure already hitting D.O.G.E, which has long claimed it doesn’t have to follow normal agency rules because it sits inside the White House. But a federal judge already ruled that D.O.G.E can’t hide behind that argument anymore. The court said it must respond to public records requests like other government offices.

That’s a big problem for Musk’s group, which is now being forced to disclose more of its communications, staff assignments, and decisions. With lawsuits stacking up and the Goldberg messages already out, the new Signal rule looks more like damage control than strategy.

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters on Wednesday that Trump “continues to have confidence in his national security team.” But inside the party, that team is under fire. A group of MAGA loyalists rushed to back Hegseth, including Steve Bannon, who told reporters, “We dare the media and these radical Democrats to come after Pete Hegseth. We have his back.”

Not every Republican agrees. One House Republican with national security experience told NBC News on Thursday that Hegseth should resign. They said that if Lloyd Austin, the defense secretary under Joe Biden, had done the same thing, “we would have already drawn up, you know, impeachment and asked for his resignation.”

The damage isn’t just legal. It’s political. With Florida’s special elections now under national attention and the Republican majority in the House already thin, every scandal hits harder. And with Signal messages from top Trump officials getting exposed in real time, the pressure on D.O.G.E to keep their chats clean is only going up.

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