Good morning.
The US Department of Justice arrested 21-year-old Jack Teixeira as a suspect in the recent leaks of Pentagon intelligence online, the US attorney general announced yesterday, and he is due to appear in court on Friday.
Teixeira was detained at his home by FBI agents. The arrest was made “in connection with an investigation into an alleged unauthorised removal, retention and transmission of classified national defence information”, Merrick Garland said.
Helicopter news footage showed a young man with shorn dark hair, an olive-green T-shirt and red shorts being made to walk backwards towards a team of FBI agents, who were pointing their rifles at him, in the town of North Dighton, Massachusetts.
The Pentagon spokesperson, Patrick Ryder, said the leak of classified information was a “deliberate, criminal act”. He added that the Pentagon had taken measures to review distribution lists and make sure individuals who received information had a need to know.
How was he found? The investigative website Bellingcat and the New York Times publicly identified Teixeira minutes before federal officials confirmed he was a subject of interest in the investigation. They reported tracking profiles on other more obscure sites linked to Teixeira.
How much did he leak? The Guardian has seen about 50 of the documents. But there are signs that many more were first posted on the Thug Shaker Central online group. The New York Times said it had seen about 300 of the documents, only a fraction of which have so far been reported, indicating the national security damage could be worse than has so far been acknowledged.
‘The biggest news here in years’: suspect’s home town voices shock
The small agricultural town of Dighton, Massachusetts, seems an unlikely place to have any impact on Ukrainian battlefield tactics or spread diplomatic fallout halfway around the globe.
But it was from here, an hour south of Boston, that Teixeira is suspected of posting intelligence documents meant for the highest levels of the Pentagon to a Discord gamers chatgroup called Thug Shaker Central. Late yesterday, roads to the home Teixeira shared with his mother, Dawn, a floral business owner, were still blocked off after his arrest.
Many in Dighton expressed surprise that their single-stoplight town known for cucumbers and squash had been invaded by federal agents in pursuit of a low-level member of the 102nd intelligence wing of the air national guard, based on Cape Cod.
“It’s like God’s country out here,” said farmer Cam Levesque, 26, standing beside a pickup truck at the gas station. “We shoot guns, ride dirt bikes. Nobody says anything so long as you’re respectful about it. Everyone does what they want to do.”
“It’s the biggest news here in years,” said heating engineer Kevin Swist, 52. “It’s a small town and we like to keep it that way – smooth sailing.”
What was Teixeira’s job at the Pentagon? He was a “cyber transport systems specialist”, essentially an IT specialist responsible for military communications networks, including their cabling and hubs. A defence official has told the Associated Press that in that role Teixeira would have had a higher level of security clearance, because he would have also been tasked with ensuring protection for the networks.
What has the Pentagon said about the access he had to such highly classified documents? The Pentagon spokesperson, Patrick Ryder, said it was the nature of the military to trust its very young service members with high-level duties. “We entrust our members with a lot of responsibility at a very early age. Think about a young combat platoon sergeant, and the responsibility and trust that we put into those individuals to lead troops into combat.”
What else do we know? Here’s a rundown of everything we know so far about the Pentagon leak investigation.
Trans people, students and teachers are besieged by DeSantis’s crusade. But he’s not done yet
No public school teacher or college professor in Florida has been more outspoken in his criticism of Governor Ron DeSantis than Don Falls. In the spring of 2022, the 62-year-old social studies high school teacher became the lead plaintiff in a lawsuit against the governor to block enforcement of the recently approved Stop Woke (Wrongs Against Our Kids and Employees) Act.
The DeSantis-backed legislation banned the supposed teaching of critical race theory – a scholarly examination of how social conceptions of race influence laws, political movements and history – in the Sunshine state’s public schools and universities. When Falls heard that a Jacksonville law firm was drafting litigation to stop the new law from taking effect, the grandfather of five decided to raise his head above the proverbial parapet.
“One thing I’ve taught my students is that there are certain fundamental values associated with a democracy, and if they’re going to work, you’ve got to stand up for them,” recalled Falls, who has taught for 38 years. “I couldn’t have taught that to my students and then, when the ball was in my court, pass it on to somebody else.”
With rumors he is close to launching his presidential bid, DeSantis is highlighting his crusade to “reform” public education in Florida and restrict the rights and freedoms of the state’s transgender population as centerpieces of a nationwide agenda for what he calls “America’s revival”.
What’s the latest bill he has signed into law? The Republican-dominated Florida legislature yesterday approved a ban on abortions after six weeks of pregnancy, a proposal supported by DeSantis, who later signed the bill into law. “We are proud to support life and family in the state of Florida,” he said in a statement. Florida currently prohibits abortions after 15 weeks.
In other news …
The justice department says it will immediately appeal to the supreme court after an appeals court ruling that the abortion pill mifepristone can remain available in the US but will be subject to significant restrictions.
Since reports broke that Taylor Swift and the actor Joe Alwyn had split after more than six years together, Swifties have been scrying for signs that they should have known or intimations of the pop superstar’s state of mind, noticing she didn’t play Invisible String – a love song to Alywn – at a recent concert.
North Korea claims it has successfully tested a solid-fuel intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) for the first time – a breakthrough that the country’s leader, Kim Jong-un, warned would make its enemies “suffer in endless fear”. The missile flew upwards at a steep angle, reducing the risk of it accidentally striking neighbouring countries.
A former Peruvian presidential candidate, Daniel Urresti, has been sentenced to 12 years in jail for his role in the murder of a journalist in 1988 at the height of the country’s brutal civil conflict. A court ruled Urresti, then a military intelligence officer, took part in the ambush and murder of Hugo Bustíos.
Stat of the day: Texas farm blaze kills 18,000 cows in deadliest barn fire on record in the US
More than 18,000 cows died after an explosion and fire at a family dairy farm in west Texas, marking the deadliest such barn blaze on record in the US. Firefighters rescued one employee from the South Fork Dairy near Dimmitt on Monday as flames raced through a building and into holding pens, according to images and statements from the Castro county sheriff’s office. The cause of the fire was under investigation and it was not immediately possible to contact members of the family who own the farm in one of Texas’s biggest milk production counties. The blaze prompted calls from the Animal Welfare Institute (AWI), among the oldest US animal protection groups, for federal laws to prevent barn fires, which kill hundreds of thousands of farm animals each year.
Don’t miss this: Succession anxiety – bombshell claims about Rupert Murdoch and family
Where the HBO drama Succession ends and the real lives of the Murdoch dynasty begin is a boundary that has become increasingly blurred, not least because rumours about which sibling is feeding lines to the hit show have reportedly sparked genuine family conflict. Rupert Murdoch’s son Lachlan’s alleged belief that his brother James is collaborating with Succession’s producers was among the series of revelations contained in a bombshell article for Vanity Fair. Gabriel Sherman, a journalist who has spent decades writing about the Murdoch business, spoke to several well-placed sources who painted a bleak picture of the super-wealthy family. “I was struck by how sad all the Murdochs seem,” he wrote.
Climate check: ‘I’m all for climate change’ – Axel Springer CEO faces heat over leaked messages
The German chief executive of Europe’s largest media publisher tried to use his flagship tabloid, Bild, to influence the outcome of Germany’s last election and fed the newspaper his personal views attacking climate change activism, Covid measures and the former chancellor Angela Merkel, leaked messages suggest. In one of the messages quoted verbatim in Die Zeit, from 2017, Döpfner says: “I am all for climate change,” seemingly arguing that human civilisation in periods of warm climate was always “more successful” than during cold-climate periods. “We shouldn’t fight climate change but adjust to it,” he adds. The comments are part of a longer message in which Döpfner sums up his foreign policy views as: “Free [the] west, fuck the intolerant Muslims and all the other riff-raff.”
Last Thing: Matthew McConaughey says Woody Harrelson could be his half-brother
Matthew McConaughey says he and his True Detective co-star and close friend Woody Harrelson are considering whether to do a DNA test after realising they could possibly be brothers. Speaking on Kelly Ripa’s Let’s Talk Off Camera podcast, McConaughey revealed the two actors had learned from his mother that she knew Harrelson’s father, possibility intimately, around the time when he was conceived. McConaughey said the two men were still debating whether or not they would take a DNA test to confirm the connection between them. “Look, it’s a little easier for Woody to say: ‘Come on, let’s do [DNA tests],’ because what’s the skin in it for him?” he said. “It’s a little harder for me because he’s asking me to take a chance to go: ‘Wait a minute, you’re trying to tell me my dad may not be my dad after 53 years of believing that?’ I got a little more skin in the game.”
