HIT THE GROUND RUNNING

Michigan’s newest U.S. Senator Elissa Slotkin is wasting no time in her new position, posting in mid-March to X (formerly Twitter) straight ahead criticism of the botched handling of classified information by Trump administration officials on a public communication channel – advance battle plan information about the country’s attack on the Houthis in Yemen. The military plans were shared on the encrypted but unsecured social media channel Signal and the group included National Security Advisor Mike Waltz and Pete Hegseth, Defense Secretary, not to mention the inadvertent inclusion of The Atlantic editor Jeffrey Goldberg. Said Democrat Slotkin: “I’ve worked at the White House for both Democrat and Republican Presidents and I’ve never seen this kind of mishandling of classified info. It’s sloppy at best and puts the military involved in these sensitive operations at risk.” Slotkin, a one-time graduate (1994) of Cranbrook Schools in Bloomfield Hills, speaks with more than a modicum of knowledge, having served as a former CIA analyst with three tours alongside the military in Iraq, plus national security roles under two Presidents, along with service as an acting Assistant Secretary of Defense at the Pentagon. Oh yeah, then there’s her current committee assignments of Armed Services and the Homeland Security and Government Affairs panel. A voice of experience.