Editor’s Note: Washington Week With The Atlantic is a partnership between NewsHour Productions, WETA, and The Atlantic airing every Friday on PBS stations nationwide. Check your local listings, watch full episodes here, or listen to the weekly podcast here.

This week, The Atlantic reported that Trump officials shared military-attack plans in a Signal group chat and inadvertently included The Atlantic’s editor in chief, Jeffrey Goldberg. Panelists on Washington Week With The Atlantic joined him to discuss.

In the Trump administration’s insistence that the information in the “Houthi PC small group”—including the exact times American aircraft were taking off for Yemen—was not classified, “what these officials would have you believe is that all of this could be made public and there would be no consequence,” the Atlantic staff writer Shane Harris said. In reality, he continued, the breach was “replete with security and policy risks.”

“Had that information fallen into the hands of a U.S. adversary that had been in the group, or had [Goldberg] been a less scrupulous journalist and tweeted it, that information would then be known to the Houthis, who would be able to prepare defenses and a counterattack that absolutely would jeopardize the lives of U.S. forces,” Harris continued.

Joining the editor in chief of The Atlantic, Jeffrey Goldberg, to discuss this and more: Peter Baker, the chief White House correspondent for The New York Times; Laura Barrón-López, a White House correspondent at PBS News Hour; Susan Glasser, a staff writer at The New Yorker; and Shane Harris, a staff writer at The Atlantic.

Watch the full episode here.

Democracies in Europe and their detractors in Washington have radically different understandings of why the continent depends on American military protection. Donald Trump and his aides constantly talk as if crafty Europeans have cynically manipulated the United States for decades, making Americans pay for their defense while Germany, France, and the like enjoy their lavish welfare states, early retirements, and carefree lives. “I fully share your loathing of European freeloading,” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told Vice President J. D. Vance in the Trump-administration Signal chat that accidentally included The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg. “It’s PATHETIC,” Hegseth added.

European leaders, meanwhile, believe their countries have been dutifully following America’s direction on geopolitical matters for 80 years. Hundreds of millions of Europeans have completely subordinated their fate to the desires of the United States, which looks after them, protects them, and even thinks for them. Most Europeans now alive have known no other security arrangements. Contemplating the disappearance of NATO, the U.S.-led military alliance, is so unnerving for many in Europe, including many of the continent’s political leaders, that they seem incapable of thinking for themselves.

[Read: Here are the attack plans that Trump’s advisers shared on Signal]

But they need to confront that possibility soon. In practice, NATO may already be doomed. The U.S. commitment to European defense was grounded not in the long-ago NATO treaty, but in a political consensus among Americans that a free and democratic Europe was in their interest. Presidents of both parties defended the continent in the Cold War and then oversaw NATO’s subsequent expansion. This policy was a brilliant success. Freedom and democracy spread across the old Eastern bloc, leading to growing prosperity.

Today, Trump and his movement—which dominates the Republican Party—declare that they despise liberal Europe. In the now-infamous Signal chat, when Vance appeared to endorse a delay in bombing Yemen, he implied that Europe would benefit disproportionately from an American attack on the Houthis. The vice president visited Greenland yesterday as part of an American effort to wrest the island from Denmark, a faithful NATO member.

For reasons that are difficult to comprehend as a matter of geopolitical strategy, Trump is moving the United States closer and closer to Vladimir Putin’s Russia, an economically weak but militarily expansionist state that is committed to ending the period of American global dominance. In part because Ukraine, an emerging democracy, sought integration into a U.S.-led security framework in democratic Europe, Russia has attacked that country’s very existence and called for the Ukrainians to surrender much of their internationally recognized territory. Putin had previously invaded one other neighbor—Georgia—and has threatened many others, including the Baltic States, Poland, and Finland. Russia has also worked hard to promote extremist parties across Europe and to subvert democracy in NATO states such as Hungary and Slovakia.

[Phillips Payson O’Brien: A wider war has already started in Europe]

After decades of protecting Europe against Russia, the U.S. has abruptly lurched away from its past commitments. The Trump administration has deprived Ukraine of weapons and intelligence at crucial moments. Trump is helping Russia try to escape from the harsh economic sanctions that have been placed on its economy since the invasion of Ukraine. At this moment, the U.S. could very well be classified as a noncombatant ally of Russia, much like it was a noncombatant ally of Great Britain before Pearl Harbor. While the U.S. was not yet fighting alongside Britain, President Franklin D. Roosevelt wanted the British to defeat Nazi Germany, so he choreographed support for them even without formally siding with them. Trump is offering Russia similar help against Ukraine.

Under these circumstances, a key question is whether European leaders can now emotionally break away from the United States. They have outsourced their strategic thinking, and arguably sacrificed their self-respect, for so long that they no longer know how to defend their continent by themselves. As Trump has moved progressively closer and closer to Putin, European leaders continued to think they could build bridges with Trump’s White House and maintain the Atlantic alliance for a few more years.

Extreme optimists might hold out hope that, however dangerous Trump is, he will be in office only for a few years, and NATO’s unity can be restored once he leaves. But how likely is the post-Trump Republican Party to return to an Atlanticist outlook? Comments by Vance, perhaps the likeliest of Trump’s political heirs, suggest that such a reversion is a long way off. And even if the Democrats regain power, they cannot simply undo the damage Trump has caused. Europe needs to start facing the future, not harkening back to a probably lost past.  

A few weeks ago, Germany’s new chancellor, Friedrich Merz, spoke of the need for Europe to be more independent from the United States. French President Emmanuel Macron struck a similar note last year when he discussed sending European forces to Ukraine without American help if need be.

But Europe will need to go beyond rhetoric. Europe has underfunded its own defense for more than 30 years. Military budgets on the continent started collapsing when the Cold War ended. Governments on the continent need to spend more on defense—in some cases twice as much. They must also use their money far more efficiently. European states don’t all need to make their own tanks or other armored personnel carriers. Rationalizing and consolidating production of arms and supplies will be a key long-term survival skill.

[Read: The truth about Trump’s Greenland campaign]

In the short term, Europe must also do everything it can to help Ukraine survive—either by providing the supplies that the country needs to continue fighting or by offering real security guarantees in the event of a truce. The more NATO withers and the closer the U.S. draws to Russia, the more Europe needs a strong, democratic Ukraine to help protect its eastern flank.

Europe’s devotion to the United States has left the continent, in a word, pathetic. It now has an opportunity to rebuild its strategic thinking and capabilities, and to learn again how to protect its own freedom and liberties. As Trump flirts dangerously with authoritarianism, Europe needs to save itself. If it can, Europe might also someday play a role in saving the United States.

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Americans are feeling anxious about the economy. Amid all the questions—is a recession looming? Will President Trump’s tariffs cause a spike in prices?—one not-so-reassuring prospect exists: You can pay for sandwiches in installments.

Last week, the financial-services start-up Klarna announced that it was partnering with the delivery company DoorDash to allow customers to pay off orders in four parts. Deferred-payment services, once used largely to finance major purchases such as couches or Pelotons, have been expanding into the realm of the day-to-day in recent years, as the companies grow (and in Klarna’s case, eye an IPO). On an internet attuned to #recessionindicators, the memes began to flow, as many noted the absurdity of financing, say, a burrito. (Klarna clarified in a blog post that the feature could be used for purchases of at least $35, and a spokesperson told me that the partnership was intended more for purchasing bigger-ticket items such as home goods and electronics than for use on food delivery. DoorDash has emphasized the same.)

Some 14 percent of Americans had used buy-now, pay-later services (known as BNPL), such as Klarna, Affirm, and Afterpay, in the year leading up to fall 2023, one estimate found. The services effectively offer interest-free loans and do not generally require a credit check. In 2019, people bought about $2 billion worth of goods with the apps, and in 2023, it was closer to $34 billion. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau found that the bulk of BNPL transactions in 2022 were for purchases of less than $100. These arrangements, tempting as they are, come with risks: They run parallel to the traditional credit-card system but lack all of the same protections.

Credit cards are required to follow the Truth in Lending Act, which provides consumer protections such as notices on rate increases and the right to dispute charges—and they allow users to build up their credit when they pay off batches of purchases at once. The idea of paying off a single deferred-payment loan may, on its face, seem simpler than opening a credit card. But what often ends up happening with these services, Ed deHaan, a professor at Stanford’s business school, told me, is that users (many of them young people) who are not in the habit of paying off debt take out several of these loans at once. Keeping track of eight or 10 smaller loans with different deadlines can quickly become overwhelming.

On average, deHaan has found, people using BNPL services are more likely to overdraft their bank account than nonusers (suggesting they are spending beyond their means). And another study found that using the services causes spending to rise by $60 a week. Many regular users of the services are those who have already racked up credit-card debt, and turn to deferred payments as a last resort. As Mac Schwerin wrote in The Atlantic in 2023, “What companies like Klarna once characterized as paradigm-busting behavior—young people rejecting stodgy banks in favor of more freeing forms of finance—now looks like the crest of yet another credit cycle, a familiar note in the motif of American consumption.” Klarna told me that it has “a number of safeguards to ensure responsible lending and consumer protection,” and in a follow-up statement noted that it welcomes “proportionate” rules, arguing that “the CFPB’s previous attempts at this were a step in the right direction but they ultimately failed to recognise what BNPL is.”

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has only just started to scrutinize the young BNPL sector. Last May, the agency announced that deferred-payment programs would be treated like credit cards in some key ways: Borrowers would be able to dispute charges and be more easily able to get refunds, among other protections (some but not all aspects of the Truth in Lending Act applied). Rather than issuing new regulations for the BNPL sector, the CFPB ruled that the spirit of existing credit-card laws covered the newer industry—a bold move, deHaan argued when we talked earlier this week, and one that was challenged in court. On Wednesday, a court filing suggested that the CFPB would revoke the rule. (The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau did not immediately respond to a request for comment.)

Although the big BNPL lenders such as Klarna have signaled that they are open to some regulation, the U.S. lags behind Europe in its regulations on the services. The major players face public pressure to operate scrupulously, deHaan noted. The bigger risk to consumers may now come from the smaller, less popular loan companies that can crop up and take advantage of reduced scrutiny.

The deferred-payments sector seems, on paper, like just the kind of issue the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau was set up to handle: The agency, which was formed after the 2008 financial crisis, has the mandate to monitor new financial products that may confuse consumers. But in recent months, the agency has been gutted. In February, the entire 1,700-person workforce was sent home (Elon Musk posted “CFPB RIP” on X), and the agency was ordered to pause rule making. A judge is set to decide soon whether firings of probationary workers are legal; in the meantime, some workers have been brought back. And earlier today, another judge issued an injunction to temporarily stop the Trump administration from dismantling the agency, saying that the court “can and must act” to preserve it.

The judge’s ruling brings the agency back from the brink for now. The BNPL industry is one that, in another political era, the CFPB may have been eager to address. And if the agency survives, it still could. But the chaos—and the fact that the administration has attacked it—may ultimately render it less equipped to protect the public.

Related:

The “Buy now, pay later” bubble is about to burst. Why is there financing for everything now? (From 2020)

Here are three new stories from The Atlantic:

The double standard at the center of the Signal debacle David Frum: Why Sheinbaum can surrender to Trump The truth about Trump’s Greenland campaign

Today’s News

More than 150 people were killed, and more than 730 were injured, after a 7.7-magnitude earthquake struck Myanmar. Buildings collapsed in Thailand from the quake, killing at least 10 people in Bangkok. During Vice President J. D. Vance’s Greenland visit, he said that the country’s people would be better off under America’s security umbrella than Denmark’s. The Justice Department filed an emergency appeal to the Supreme Court, seeking approval for President Donald Trump to deport people under the Alien Enemies Act.

Dispatches

Atlantic Intelligence: Damon Beres interviews Ian Bogost about the AI-generated Studio Ghibli images that have taken the internet by storm. The Books Briefing: We surveyed more than 400 writers, readers, and editors to assemble a rich array of works. Here is the best American poetry of the 21st century (so far).

Explore all of our newsletters here.

Evening Read

Warrick Page / Max

The Pitt Has Revolutionized the Medical Drama

By David Sims

Medical dramas are like the old aphorism about pizza and sex: Even when they’re bad, they’re still pretty good. Since the glory days of ER faded in the late ’90s, there have been plenty of TV series of varying quality set in hospitals … I had been longing for something more meat-and-potatoes—and then along came The Pitt, Max’s hit new show starring ER’s Noah Wyle. The first season is still airing, yet it’s already without question the finest example of the genre in more than a generation.

Read the full article.

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Stephanie Bai contributed to this newsletter.

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