House Democrat introducing Houthi PC Small Group Act

Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-N.Y.) is proposed legislation, dubbed the Houthi PC Small Group Act that it would make it illegal for officials to use an outside messaging platform, such as the Signal app, “to discuss classified information.”

Under Torres’s proposal, nicknamed after the group chat that high-level national security officials used on the Signal app to discuss a looming airstrike on Houthi rebels in Yemen, anyone who violates the law would face up to five years in prison and fines up to $250,000, according to Torres’s office.

The name is an acronym for “Homeland Operations and Unilateral Tactics Halting Incursions: Preventing Coordinated Subversion, Military Aggression and Lawless Levies Granting Rogue Operatives Unchecked Power.”

The bill is still being drafted, a Torres spokesperson told The Hill, but the legislation is meant to clarify existing law and increase the punishment for making sensitive information vulnerable virtually. 

It’s unclear what levels of classification the measure would apply to if Congress were to pass the proposal.

President Trump and members of his administration have defended the use of Signal this week after it was revealed that a journalist was accidentally included on the national security thread.

Jeffrey Goldberg, editor-in-chief of The Atlantic, reported Monday that he was added to the Signal text chain where Vice President Vance, national security adviser Mike Waltz, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and others laid out detailed plans for the airstrike in Yemen hours before it took place.

Updated at 10:55 a.m. EDT