US District Judge James Boasberg ordered US President Donald Trump's administration on Thursday to preserve messages from March 11 until March 15 sent on the Signal app discussing attack plans towards the Houthis in Yemen. 

Boasberg also said the Trump admin must respond by Monday with information on how it is working to preserve the messages. 

Watchdog 'grateful' for Boasberg's order 

American Oversight, a nonprofit watchdog, had asked for the order.   

"We are grateful for the judge's bench ruling to halt any further destruction of these critical records," American Oversight's interim executive director Chioma Chukwu said.

"The public has a right to know how decisions about war and national security are made," Chukwu added, saying "accountability doesn't disappear just because a message was set to auto-delete."

The White House has not yet publicly commented on Boasberg's order, but a Trump administration lawyer said federal agencies are trying to see which records are available so they can be preserved.  

Trump had earlier called for Boasberg to be impeached after he temporarily barred US deportation flights to Venezuela under the 1798 Alien Enemies Act.  

What are the details of the US Signal chat on Yemen?

The messages among top Trump officials, such as Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and National Security Adviser Mike Waltz, had been accidentally shared with Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor-in-chief of the The Atlantic news outlet. Vice President JD Vance was also another prominent official in the chat. 

According to screenshots of the messages, it was Waltz who had invited Goldberg into the Signal chat. Goldberg later published screenshots of the chat in two separate articles in the Atlantic.

In the chat, Hegseth provided the exact timing of when US planes would strike the Houthis, an Iran-backed Shiite militia group in Yemen.

The US, along with Australia, Canada and several other countries, deem the Houthis a terrorist organization, with the Trump administration seeking to denigrate the Houthis capabilities to disrupt shipping route in the Red Sea. 

The accidental sharing of the messages with a journalist has raised concerns in Washington that top security officials are being careless.

The use of the app Signal to discuss military strategy has caused alarm that hostile actors, such as Russia-based hacking groups, could get access to the information and compromise American security, and possibly, American lives.