Europeans are spending less time at work, and governments would like them to get back to the grindstone. That is the thrust of measures German, Dutch and British ministers have been examining to persuade part-timers to take on more hours, and full-timers to embrace overtime.
But the evidence suggests it will be an uphill battle — and that authorities worrying about a shrinking workforce would do better to help people who might otherwise not want a job at all to work a little.
Rising prosperity is the main reason the working week has shortened over time, as higher productivity and wages have allowed people to afford more leisure. In Germany, for example, it has roughly halved between 1870 and 2000. Across the OECD, people are working about 50 fewer hours each year on average than in 2010, at 1,752.
Average hours have fallen more in recent years because the mix of people in employment has changed, with more young people studying, more mothers working, older people phasing their retirement and flexible service sector jobs replacing roles in the long-hours manufacturing industry.
The latest post-pandemic drop in European working hours is more of a puzzle. The European Central Bank estimated that at the end of 2023, Eurozone employees were on average working five hours less per quarter than before 2020 — equivalent to the loss of 2mn full-time workers.
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There has been a similar shift in the UK, where average weekly hours are 20 minutes shorter than in 2019 at the end of 2022. The Office for National Statistics says this was driven by lower full-time hours among prime-age men and was equivalent to having 310,000 fewer people in employment.
The trend appears to be a European one — there has been no such recent change seen in the US, which simply laid people off during the pandemic rather than putting them on furlough.
One explanation is that employers have been “hoarding” labour — keeping staff on in slack periods while cutting hours, because they are worried they will not be able to hire easily when demand picks up. The ECB thinks this has been a factor, along with a rise in sick leave and rapid growth in public sector jobs.
But Megan Greene, a BoE policymaker, said earlier this month that while there was some evidence of labour hoarding, it was also “plausible that . . . workers may just want a better work-life balance”.
Researchers at the IMF who examined the puzzle reached a similar conclusion. They said the post-Covid drop in working hours was in fact an extension of the long-term trend seen over the past 20 years, which reflected workers’ preferences — with young people and fathers of young children driving the decline. The biggest change was in countries where incomes were catching up with richer neighbours.
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Some economists, however, believe the experience of lockdowns has made people more willing to trade pay for a less pressured lifestyle, and more able to walk away from jobs with antisocial hours.
“A lot of people started to pay more attention to their health,” said one Frankfurt-based economist, noting that Germany, with one of the sharpest drops in working hours, suffered from high rates of depression and other mental health conditions, along with the UK.
Spain has traditionally been at the other extreme. It has some of the longest working hours in Europe — combined with a long lunch break that means many employees cannot clock off till late in the evening, with family life, leisure and sleep patterns all suffering as a result.
But even here, habits are changing. Ignacio de la Torre, chief economist at Madrid-based investment bank Arcano Partners, thinks Spanish bars and restaurants have struggled to fill vacancies since the pandemic because former waiters have begun training for better jobs.
In many countries, unions have made shorter hours a focus of collective bargaining, and some employers are experimenting with offering four-day weeks — or more flexible working patterns — as a way of attracting staff.
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The shift in habits is a challenge for European policymakers. Since productivity growth has been weak, they fear that shorter hours will exacerbate labour shortages, fuel inflationary pressures, hold back growth and make it harder to fund welfare systems.
Unless productivity growth improves, de la Torre argues, the only way to boost economic growth is to bring more people into the workforce, embrace immigration or work longer. It is unrealistic to earn the same while working less: the outcome would be “a lower salary at the end of the month”.
But Anna Ginès i Fabrellas, director of the Labor Studies Institute at the Esade law school, cites evidence that young people are willing to accept this trade-off, valuing free time “when they assess the quality of a job”.
Some policymakers think shorter hours and greater wellbeing should be the goal. Spain’s minister of labour, Yolanda Díaz, caused uproar earlier this year by suggesting restaurants should no longer open into the small hours, and the governing coalition has pledged gradual cuts to the legal maximum working week.
The IMF’s researchers made a more pragmatic argument.
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Governments can and should do more to help people who want longer hours, they said, including supporting retraining, job-hunting and childcare, as well as promoting flexible work and removing perverse incentives in tax and benefit systems.
This will have only a small effect, the IMF estimates. Some policies will simply “reshuffle hours” between mothers and fathers. But in general, most people will want to work slightly less provided their living standards advance. That means there’s a limit to what policymakers can do.
A more realistic goal, the IMF reckons, is to raise the total number of hours worked across the economy, not least through better parental leave policies that could bring more people into work in the first place. Recent trends in the EU are promising: participation in the workforce has risen since 2020.
This feels like the better approach. If employers offer better part-time and flexible roles, people who might otherwise stay outside the labour force entirely might at least work a little — and be happier for it. That would be more productive for governments than pushing against the tide.
Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.
Pirelli’s board is pressing China’s Sinochem, its largest investor, to cut its stake over fears that the Trump administration’s hawkish position on Beijing ownership of American assets will thwart the Italian tyremaker’s US expansion.
At a board meeting on Wednesday, Pirelli’s management will demand the Chinese investor immediately cut its 37 per cent stake to less than Italian shareholder Camfin’s 26.4 per cent holding, according to several people with knowledge of the plans.
The move demonstrates the drastic steps being taken by companies as they adapt to the policies of US President Donald Trump’s administration.
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Korean car group Hyundai on Monday was the latest international business to announce large investments in the US, unveiling a $21bn package that Trump said was evidence that his trade policies “very strongly work” as he seeks to boost domestic manufacturing.
One of the options Pirelli proposed is for Sinochem to reduce its stake below 25 per cent through a share buyback with some stock being resold on the market immediately, people with knowledge of the plans said.
It is unclear whether Sinochem, which will be represented at the meeting by its president Jiao Jian — also Pirelli’s chair — will agree to the proposal. The parties failed to reach an agreement in preparatory talks ahead of the board meeting, the people added.
Pirelli declined to comment. Sinochem could not immediately be reached for comment.
Pirelli owns a factory in the US state of Georgia but produces most of its tyres for the North American market in Mexico and South America. In response to Trump’s trade policies and the looming threat of tariffs on imported cars, it has sought to expand its operations in the US, where it makes a quarter of its global revenues.
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But the tyremaker has met resistance in recent conversations in the US about its expansion plans, according to people with knowledge of the matter. The company believed that this stemmed from the fact its largest shareholder was a Chinese state-owned company, the people added.
Pirelli, which supplies the tyres used by Formula 1 cars, also owns proprietary technology that can link information picked up by tyre sensors to vehicles’ driving commands. The technology is in high demand in the US but Pirelli also fears it will be cut out of a potentially lucrative market because of Sinochem’s stake in the group, according to the people.
The US in January finalised a ban on Chinese automated driving systems as well as hardware and software that interact with cars, such as Bluetooth, WiFi and satellite.
State-owned ChemChina, which later merged with Sinochem, first bought a majority stake in Pirelli in a $7.7bn deal in 2015. Under the initial deal, the Chinese investor agreed it would not interfere with the Italian group’s day-to-day management, strategy or appointments.
This week’s showdown comes less than two years after Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s government imposed limitations on state-owned Sinochem’s shareholder rights in Pirelli.
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The rare state intervention, under Italy’s “golden power” foreign investment screening mechanism, followed repeated clashes between Pirelli’s Italian management, including its former chief executive Marco Tronchetti Provera, and Sinochem as Beijing sought to tighten its grip over one of Italy’s historic industrial groups.
Sinochem’s attempts to exert control at a time of heightened geopolitical tensions led to disputes with Pirelli’s management. The disagreements culminated with Sinochem’s attempt in 2023 to revise a shareholder pact and strip Camfin — where Tronchetti Provera is the controlling shareholder — of the indefinite right to appoint Pirelli’s chief executive.
Good morning. Look, it could happen to anyone: I well remember, for example, the time I added my mum to a thread with my siblings discussing what to get her for Christmas. On the other hand, I don’t have a secure communications facility in my house for when I need to get something out on the family group chat. Also, we rarely digress from pictures of cute kids to setting out war plans for an imminent set of airstrikes on the Houthis in Yemen.
So perhaps the latest Trump administration hullabaloo isn’t that relatable, after all. Two days after the Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg revealed that he had been mystifyingly added to a thread on Signal – an encrypted WhatsApp-like instant messaging app – in which vice-president JD Vance, defence secretary Pete Hegseth, and a host of others chatted about a highly sensitive operation, there are as many questions as answers. How on earth did Goldberg get added in the first place? Why didn’t anybody realise the error? Are White House officials doing this all the time? And how vulnerable are their communications to interception from America’s adversaries?
Today’s newsletter explains this absolute dumpster fire of a story, and why it matters. Here are the headlines.
Five big stories
Spring statement | Rachel Reeves will make additional welfare cuts in her spring statement on Wednesday after the Office for Budget Responsibility rejected her estimate of savings from the changes announced last week. The chancellor is expected to announce an additional £500m in benefits cuts to make up part of the £1.6bn shortfall.
Ukraine | Russia and Ukraine have agreed to “eliminate the use of force” in the Black Sea, though the Kremlin said it was conditional on sanctions relief for its agricultural exports. The warring parties also agreed to implement a previously announced 30-day halt on attacks against energy networks.
Assisted dying | The introduction of assisted dying in England and Wales is likely to be pushed back by a further two years in a delay that supporters fear could mean the law never comes into force. The delay marks the latest major change to the proposals, which have proven deeply contentious in the Commons and beyond.
Gaza | Press freedom organisations have condemned the killing of two journalists in Gaza on Monday by the Israeli armed forces. Hossam Shabat, a 23-year-old correspondent for the Al Jazeera Mubasher channel, and Mohammed Mansour, a correspondent for Palestine Today, died in separate targeted airstrikes.
Society | Non-monogamous people are just as happy in their relationships as those with only one partner but are not “significantly” more sexually satisfied, research suggests. The authors of a new study said their findings challenged what they called a prevailing “one-size-fits-all approach to relationships”.
In depth: How a journalist got a front row seat to US military planning
Donald Trump speaks to the press alongside JD Vance, Pete Hegseth and Mike Waltz days before the Houthi strike. Photograph: Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images
“This is going to require some explaining,” Jeffrey Goldberg writes at the beginning of his Atlantic story about how Pete Hegseth ended up messaging him about an imminent attack on Yemen, and he’s absolutely right.
In brief: Goldberg was added to a Signal thread by Michael Waltz, Donald Trump’s national security adviser, who presumably confused his contact with someone else’s. Goldberg was allowed to lurk on the thread for several days as senior officials – here’s a rundown of the dramatis personae – discussed the timing of the strike against the Houthis, fulminated against European “free-loading”, and celebrated the operation’s success with fire emojis. Eventually, Goldberg removed himself, and then wrote a story about it. Since then, all hell has broken loose.
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Here’s what else you need to know about the significant issues raised by this fiasco – and, as a bonus, the best quote from the fallout so far: “Everyone in the White House can agree on one thing: Mike Waltz is a fucking idiot.” (Donald Trump said he was “doing his best”, but the two aren’t mutually exclusive.)
What’s the problem with having national security discussions on Signal?
The most glaring issue is the lack of adequate security protocols for discussions about US military operations – even if, hilariously, Hegseth sent a message to the group saying “we are currently clean on OPSEC” while Goldberg was still in it.
Such conversations are meant to be held in enclosed areas called sensitive compartmented information facilities, or Scifs, which have reinforced physical defences against eavesdropping, tight controls on access, and shields against electronic surveillance. Many senior government officials have Scifs installed at their homes; failing that, they are meant to use secure government-issued devices. Peter Beaumont has more on what America’s adversaries might have learned.
To state the most obvious point: if the discussion had been held under such conditions, a journalist would not have been accidentally added. But even if Goldberg hadn’t been included, significant issues would remain.
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While the messaging app Signal is a more secure way to exchange messages than ordinary texting, it is a rung below official government communication channels. One aspect of the risk is that it is possible to download messages to a desktop, which lacks the layers of security in the app itself. The Pentagon warned its employees against using Signal last week.
It is also possible that the participants were using their own devices. In this Politico piece, a former White House official warns: “Their personal phones are all hackable, and it’s highly likely that foreign intelligence services are sitting on their phones watching them type the shit out.”
Is it possible the participants broke the law?
By holding sensitive national security discussions on a commercially available app, the participants may well have violated the US espionage act. Kevin Carroll, a national security lawyer, told the Washington Post: “I have defended service members accused of violating the Espionage Act through gross negligence for far, far less. If these people were junior uniformed personnel, they would be court-martialed.”
Vance, Hegseth and their colleagues may also have been in breach of federal records law – which mandates that messages about official acts be preserved. Many former officials have said that for that reason, they confined their use of platforms like Signal to bland logistical discussions or as a way to direct others to a more secure channel.
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That is not what happened here – and because Waltz switched on Signal’s “disappearing messages” function, the discussions might have vanished for ever barring Goldberg’s accidental inclusion. Yesterday, CIA director John Ratcliffe, another participant, claimed that the decisions taken in the group were also formally recorded.
What did we learn about the Trump administration’s view of Europe?
One thing the leak makes absolutely clear: when Vance expresses his disdain for Europe in public, he isn’t putting it on. Part of the discussion about the timing of a strike against the Houthis was focused on the idea that by protecting a trade route used by European shipping, Washington was giving EU countries a free ride.
Vance, who expressed his reluctance to conduct the operation immediately, eventually said: “If you think we should do it let’s go. I just hate bailing Europe out again.” In reply, Hegseth agreed: “I fully share your loathing of European free-loading. It’s PATHETIC.”
The discussion concluded with a suggestion that “we soon make clear” that Europe should contribute to the cost of the operation.
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In Brussels yesterday, all of that was greeted with weary dismay. “Horrific to see in black and white,” one European diplomat told the BBC. “But hardly surprising.”
Are there any awkward historical precedents which the protagonists have expressed strong opinions about?
Funny you should ask! After the story broke, CNN put together a montage that showed just some of the times that those involved in the message thread took a stern line on the notorious row over Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server while in office.
“If it was anyone other than Hillary Clinton, they’d be in jail right now,” Hegseth said on Fox News in 2016. Marco Rubio said in the same year that “nobody is above the law – not even Hillary Clinton.” And Ratcliffe said in 2019 that “mishandling classified information is still a violation of the espionage act”.
Later, Trump’s consigliere Stephen Miller tweeted that because of Clinton’s “illegal” behaviour, “foreign adversaries could easily hack classified ops & intel in real time from other side of the globe.” With that uncompromising line, the White House must be hoping Stephen Miller never hears what Stephen Miller’s been up to.
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The administration steered well clear of addressing that aspect of the story. Hillary Clinton didn’t, though: “You have got to be kidding me,” she wrote on X, along with an eyeballs emoji.
How have Trump’s supporters fought back?
The White House has admitted the thread “appears to be authentic”. Still, that didn’t stop Hegseth turning to a familiar strategy in response: attack the media.
“Nobody was texting war plans,” he said, although Goldberg reported that Hegseth himself texted “operational details of forthcoming strikes on Yemen”.
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Hegseth also sought to discredit Goldberg, among the most eminent journalists in the United States and one with no obvious track record of dishonesty: “You’re talking about a deceitful and highly discredited so-called journalist who’s made a profession of peddling hoaxes.” Later, Trump called him a “total sleazebag”. Waltz, for his part, called him “bottom scum” and suggested he could have got himself added to the group “deliberately” because he “wasn’t on my phone”, a fairly head-scratching claim.
All of that aligned closely with the approach taken by presenters on Fox News. Sean Hannity dismissed it as “the state-run legacy media mob” being “obsessed with an accidentally leaked text”.
Another Will Cain, found a silver lining: “After years of secrecy and incompetence, if you read the content of these messages, I think you will come away proud that these are the leaders making these decisions in America.”
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But the idea that there’s nothing to see here doesn’t seem to have landed with everyone. At a hearing before the Senate intelligence committee yesterday, John Ratcliffe and Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence who was also on the thread, faced intense questioning about their roles, and found it tricky to agree on a strategy: immediately after Gabbard refused to confirm her participation in the thread, Ratcliffe confirmed he had done so and said it was permissible.
“What you’re saying didn’t make sense,” said Democratic senator Mark Warner. Somewhere in Washington, a Republican was probably sending an eyeroll emoji.
What else we’ve been reading
Hamdan Ballal is released from Israeli custody on Tuesday 25 March. Photograph: Léo Corrêa/AP
Lorenzo Tondo spoke to witnesses about the brutal assault on Oscar-winning Palestinian director Hamdan Ballal by settlers, who handed him over to the military, bruised and bleeding. The attack on Ballal, who was subsequently detained, “might be their revenge on us for making the movie. It feels like a punishment,” said Basel Adra, another of No Other Land’s directors. Nimo
The Guardian’s blockbuster invertebrate of the year prize continues with Patrick Barkham singing the praises of the “twerking pollinator with a bum-bag”: it is, of course, the dark-edged bee-fly. Slightly alarmingly, they “use false legs to bumble into a bee burrow and scoff the pollen left for the bee babies”. Archie
Rashid Khalidi is searing in his response to Columbia University’s “capitulation” with the Trump administration’s sweeping policy changes last week. “Columbia barely merits the name of a university, since its teaching and scholarship on the Middle East, and soon much else, will soon be vetted by a ‘senior vice-provost for inclusive pedagogy’, in reality a senior vice-provost for Israeli propaganda,” he writes. Nimo
The bleak sight of Conor McGregor visiting the White House on St Patrick’s Day has not gone down well with most people in Ireland, writes Justine McCarthy – but his putative presidential run risks galvanising the country’s “small but vocal minority on the hard right”. Archie
For those who are mourning the end of Severance (me), Claire Cao has a great antidote: the film Triangle (pictured above) will scratch the “puzzle box” sci-fi plot itch that the Ben Stiller thriller has left. Nimo
Sport
Trent Alexander-Arnold. Photograph: Richard Martin-Roberts/CameraSport/Getty Images
Football | Real Madrid are close to completing a deal to sign Trent Alexander-Arnold on a free transfer this summer. The Liverpool right-back has long been a target for the European champions and there is now a widespread expectation that he will join Carlo Ancelotti’s side when his contract expires at the end of the season.
Football | David Brooks scored in the sixth minute of injury time to rescue a point for Wales in their World Cup qualifier against North Macedonia. The game had been 0-0 until Bojan Miovski’s goal as normal time expired.
Tennis | As Emma Raducanu enjoys her best run of form since her 2021 run to the US Open title, she now comes up against Jessica Pegula in the quarter final of the Miami Open. The match is just reward for her persistence, writes Tumaini Carayol: “to her credit she kept on rolling with the punches and showing up.”
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The front pages
Guardian front page 26 March, 2025 Photograph: Guardian
“Fears of further tax rises as Reeves promises to ‘secure Britain’s future’” is the splash on the Guardian today, while the Financial Times says “Reeves to leaven grim spring outlook with £2.2bn defence spending boost.” The spring statement is also previewed in the DailyMail, which has “Don’t shift blame for economy’s woes, voters tell Reeves,” and the Mirror, which runs an interview with Rachel Reeves under the headline “My mission.”
“Victims must see ‘sense of justice being served’” is the lead story on the Express, while “Mortal blow to assisted dying Bill” is the focus in the Telegraph. “JD Dunce hates Britain, hates Europe and hates Ukraine…And could be president at any moment,” says the Star, and the Metro: “Trump backs chump.” The Sun covers a row over the pricing of Oasis tickets with the headline “Definitely Shady”.
Today in Focus
A protester wearing a whirling dervish costume performs in front of Turkish riot police barricades as he tries to march to Taksim Square in Istanbul, Turkey, 23 March 2025. Photograph: Erdem Şahin/EPA
The arrest that plunged Turkey into turmoil
Protesters took to streets after President Erdoğan had his rival arrested. What will happen next? Sami Kent and Ruth Michaelson report
Cartoon of the day | Rebecca Hendin
Cartoon of the day Illustration: Rebecca Hendin/The Guardian
The Upside
A bit of good news to remind you that the world’s not all bad
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Mark Nedd, a fisher, on Soubise’s beach. He has been coping with the effects of the sargassum seaweed since he was a teenager. Photograph: Haron Forteau/The Guardian
In Grenada, the persistent issue of sargassum seaweed, which has long plagued the island’s shores, is being reimagined as an opportunity rather than a burden. While the decaying seaweed causes bad smells and disrupts fishing and tourism, innovative solutions are emerging. The Grenadian government, in collaboration with the EU, is exploring ways to turn sargassum into a valuable resource, including clean energy, bioplastics, and fertiliser.
Companies such as Seafields are developing methods to farm the seaweed and harness its potential, which could boost the economy. A bioenergy project is already converting sargassum into biogas and organic fertiliser. “They use diesel to generate electricity 1742975300, which is very expensive for the local population. We are providing a reliable, cost-effective and sustainable alternative,” Benjamin Nestorovic, who works for the Grenada-based bioenergy company SarGas, says, adding that the company plans to expand across the Caribbean.
Bored at work?
And finally, the Guardian’s puzzles are here to keep you entertained throughout the day. Until tomorrow.
Despite President Trump’s insistence on Tuesday morning that his national security adviser, Michael Waltz, “has learned a lesson” after inadvertently including the editor of The Atlantic in a cabinet-level chat session on Signal, speculation continues to build about Mr. Waltz’s job security.
Mr. Trump vigorously defended Mr. Waltz in front of television cameras during an event a few hours later, saying he should not have to apologize for the breach.
“That man is a very good man, right there, that you criticized,” Mr. Trump said, pointing to Mr. Waltz after a reporter asked if the president would order practices to be changed. “So he’s a very good man, and he will continue to do a good job. In addition to him, we had very good people in that meeting, and those people have done a very, very effective job.”
Most of the Republican Party leaped to Mr. Waltz’s defense, seeking to blame the news media for the uproar.
But in interviews, several close allies of the president characterized the national security adviser’s standing as precarious, more so than it already was when The New York Times reported on his uneasy status over a week ago. Those who discussed Trump administration views on Mr. Waltz did so on the condition of anonymity to speak candidly. His fate, they say, rests on Mr. Trump’s caprices, with several competing factors coming into play.
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On the one hand, it is Mr. Trump’s nature to defy a media firestorm rather than try to quell it by offering up a sacrificial lamb. He parted from this tendency at the beginning of his first administration when he fired his national security adviser, Michael T. Flynn, for not divulging his encounters with Russian officials to the F.B.I. According to one adviser from that era, Mr. Trump soon regretted that act of acquiescence.
This time around, according to several people who have spoken to Mr. Trump over the first two months of his term, he wants to avoid firing people because of the narrative of chaos that it will quickly engender. Once he starts firing people, one person familiar with his thinking said, it will be very hard to draw a line if problems arise with other aides down the line. And Mr. Trump has appeared increasingly more concerned with holding his perceived enemies at bay than anything else.
Mr. Waltz also benefits from a much closer relationship to the president than Mr. Flynn had. As a Republican congressman from 2019 until his current appointment, Mr. Waltz had been an unflagging defender throughout Mr. Trump’s political and legal travails. He spent much of last year campaigning for Mr. Trump, often traveling aboard the candidate’s private plane. He aggressively questioned the director of the U.S. Secret Service at a hearing after an assassination attempt on Mr. Trump at a rally near Butler, Pa., and became a defender of Mr. Trump against the agency.
Perhaps more significantly, Mr. Waltz frequently served as a surrogate for the Trump campaign on Fox News, thereby passing the eyeball test for a president-elect who prefers his senior aides to be telegenic.
But Mr. Waltz has now given Mr. Trump reason to second-guess his loyalty, two people familiar with the matter suggested. The detail that Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor of The Atlantic, appeared to be in Mr. Waltz’s list of contacts to begin with — and therefore mistaken for another “JG” to be invited into the Signal group chat — has sent up alarms among the president’s allies, according to people familiar with their thinking.
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In The American Conservative, a founding editor, Scott McConnell, wrote Tuesday, “I don’t see how National Security Adviser Mike Waltz organizing a group chat with The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg goes away without Waltz’s resignation.”
In The Atlantic article, Mr. Goldberg recounted that Mr. Waltz had sent him a connection request on Signal on March 11, adding that he “didn’t find it particularly strange that he might be reaching out to me.” Asked about the Signal fiasco in a news conference with Mr. Trump Tuesday, Mr. Waltz described Mr. Goldberg as someone “I’ve never met, don’t know, never communicated with.” In an interview for this article, Mr. Goldberg said that he had met Mr. Waltz a few years ago at two events but had never interviewed him.
Ironically, it was Mr. Waltz’s familiarity with members of the U.S. foreign policy establishment, including Mr. Goldberg, that provided relief to some quarters after he was named to second Trump administration. A former Green Beret and four-time recipient of the Bronze Star, Mr. Waltz had served in the national security apparatus for the Bush and Obama administrations before working for a defense contracting firm and then running for Congress.
“Mike’s exceptionally well-rounded,” said Peter Bergen, an author and national security analyst who wrote the foreword to one of Mr. Waltz’s books. “I saw it as an inspired choice on Trump’s part.”
Others saw Mr. Waltz as a curious selection. An avowed hawk, he staunchly defended the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan in his 2014 book “Warrior Diplomat.” In a podcast interview in 2021, he warned that withdrawing U.S. troops from the latter, as Mr. Trump had proposed doing, was “the best way to cause another 9/11 to happen.” Mr. Waltz instead advocated a sustained troop presence like the one that has been in Colombia — “a great model” — for over three decades. Such views have caused Mr. Waltz to be branded a “neocon” in right-wing circles.
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Many of those who have heralded Mr. Waltz’s capabilities now find themselves at pains to explain his breach of security protocol. At the news conference on Tuesday, Mr. Trump reiterated that Mr. Waltz was “a very good man” and that attacks on him were “very unfair.” But some of the president’s allies have speculated that this appraisal could change if his national security adviser is increasingly viewed with ridicule.
Those who have known Mr. Trump throughout the years point to a striking constant: While he has a high tolerance for lightning rods, he has a very low one for laughingstocks.
