April 14, 2026

Congressional Black Caucus to Support Spying Powers Used on BLM Activists

The Congressional Black Caucus will support the clean reauthorization of FISA Section 702, a warrantless surveillance authority that has been used to spy on African Americans.

https://prospect.org/2026/04/13/congressional-black-caucus-support-spying-powers-blm-activists-fisa-702/


Credit: Sue Ogrocki/AP Photo

This week, the Congressional Black Caucus will quietly support an effort to reauthorize surveillance powers that were used to spy on Black Lives Matter activists in 2020, the Prospect has learned. According to multiple congressional sources who spoke on the condition of anonymity, CBC support for the reauthorization of Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) comes after Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-NY), the powerful ranking member of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, successfully lobbied CBC leadership to stand down on reforming the vast intelligence authority.

Section 702 grants U.S. intelligence agencies the authority to collect communications data on foreign intelligence targets abroad. In practice, however, it has allowed those agencies to amass troves of data on American citizens. The National Security Agency (NSA) is one of many FISA authorities with warrantless access to Americans’ communications data, which the agency has been known to purchase from U.S.-based companies. Privacy advocates like the Brennan Center for Justice contend that the intelligence community’s efforts to reduce the number of U.S. person queries completed under Section 702 only reflect known searches, as the FBI has “neither tracked nor audited these queries as required by law.”

According to The New York Times, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) greenlit the 702 program’s annual recertification in a classified ruling last month. The decision permits FISA authorities to collect communications data through March 2027, regardless of whether Congress extends the statute underpinning Section 702, which is set to expire on April 20. But the presiding judge also raised red flags in the ruling, according to the Times, communicating that there are serious problems with the way intelligence agencies use Section 702 tools to collect communications on American citizens. The judge, as part of the reauthorization, ordered changes to the way Section 702 data is filtered to produce intelligence on U.S. citizens.

The Prospect can report that on March 26, staff on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence received notification of this red flag. In the following weeks, HPSCI staff briefed Democrats in both classified and unclassified settings on the necessity of reauthorizing Section 702. But during both briefings, HPSCI staffers failed to alert Democrats about the FISC’s concerns with collection of U.S. citizen data. Despite the bipartisan push from many of his colleagues to reform Section 702 and to restrict spying powers now in the hands of Donald Trump, Rep. Jim Himes (D-CT), the ranking Democrat on the Intelligence Committee, has worked behind the scenes to encourage Democrats to support a clean reauthorization, while repeating the same hawkish talking points about the urgency of a clean reauthorization. In March, Meeks told The Hill that after speaking with Himes, he would support the clean reauthorization of 702.

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April 13, 2026

How the Iran War Threatens the AI Economy: Supply chain disruptions threaten the flow of computer chips, which power AI

models.

https://prospect.org/2026/04/13/how-iran-war-threatens-ai-economy-semiconductors-supply-chain-strait-hormuz/


Credit: PhonlamaiPhoto/iStock

Nearly 50 days into the Iran war, disruptions to the global energy supply chain continue to grow. Though the U.S., Iran, and Israel agreed to a fragile cease-fire on April 7, the Strait of Hormuz remains closed, Iran hopes to continue charging tolls, and the global economy is still a long way from normal.

Fossil fuels, abundant in the Gulf countries, are essential ingredients for countless goods—the helium that powers MRI machines, the fertilizer that boosts crops, and of course the gas that powers cars. Fossil fuels are also critical to the production of semiconductors, the building blocks for all modern technology. A breakdown in production would not only strain supplies of consumer and commercial electronics, but could seriously disrupt the growth of AI computing capacity at a time when firms are funneling hundreds of billions of dollars into data center construction.

The majority of the world’s chips are produced in Asia. Taiwan, home of the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), is a powerhouse, the sole producer of certain high-end chips, and the primary supplier of companies like Apple, Nvidia, and Qualcomm. Other semiconductor fabrication plants are located in South Korea and throughout Southeast Asia. Chips made in Asia are then shipped across the world to power AI systems, video game consoles, weapons systems, smart dishwashers, laptops, and many of the other pieces of technology that are ubiquitous in Americans’ personal and professional lives.

Though semiconductors are produced in East and Southeast Asia, many of the raw materials needed for the intensive, precise manufacturing process come from the Middle East. Chips are produced in dustless clean rooms that are some 10,000 times cleaner than outside air, and the process requires dozens upon dozens of chemical components like bromine, helium, and sulfuric acid.

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April 13, 2026

Trump wanted California Republicans to back Steve Hilton. They didn't listen

https://calmatters.org/politics/2026/04/california-gop-convention-governor/


Republican gubernatorial candidate Steve Hilton speaks during a forum at the California Republican Party convention in the Sheraton San Diego Resort on April 11, 2026. Photo by Adriana Heldiz, CalMatters

Despite President Donald Trump’s putting his thumb on the scale, California Republicans refused to unite behind a single candidate for governor this weekend. The party faithful, many of whom sported ‘Trump 2028’ ball caps and paid more than $1,000 in hotel and flights to gather in sunny San Diego, split their votes relatively evenly between Steve Hilton, a businessman and former Fox News host who received the president’s endorsement, and Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco.

The final tally was 49% for Bianco and 44% for Hilton, both shy of the necessary 60% threshold to earn the party’s endorsement. Hilton, a British-American who is leading all candidates in polling, entered the weekend as a relative party outsider. He called blocking Bianco’s endorsement “a major success” and said he remained “very confident” that he would secure one of the top two spots in California’s June 2 primary. “Chad Bianco came into this convention assuming he’d got the whole thing in the bag,” Hilton said. “I think we made great progress this weekend to make it roughly even.”

The sheriff, who for months courted delegates and party insiders for the endorsement, was adamant that the final tally didn’t accurately reflect how much party support he has. Hilton, one of the race’s top fundraisers, has raised more than $6.6 million so far, exceeding Bianco’s haul by more than $2 million. “This changes nothing about our campaign,” Bianco said after the vote Sunday. Despite failing to garner even a majority of the votes, he also insisted, “I have the supermajority of the support from this room, way more than what that total indicated.”

“Endorsements are silly,” he added, before also acknowledging that an endorsement from the party “would have been nice.” Bianco made headlines last month for seizing hundreds of thousands of ballots cast in the special election for Proposition 50, the Democrats’ plan to redraw congressional districts, which voters approved. CalMatters was one of several news organizations that went to court to unseal the warrants that granted his seizure of ballots.

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April 13, 2026

The Bizarre Connection Between Iran Negotiations and Trump's Crypto Firm

World Liberty Financial has developed close ties to the Pakistani government.

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2026/04/parkistan-iran-trump-witkoff-world-liberty-financial/



In January, Zach Witkoff sat down at a table in Islamabad and signed a deal with Pakistan’s finance minister. Witkoff is the young CEO of Donald Trump’s crypto finance firm, World Liberty Financial, and the arrangement he struck that day would allow WLF’s stablecoin to be used for Pakistan’s cross-border transactions. It was a hugely consequential moment for World Liberty. Despite Trump’s association and the involvement of his sons, this firm hasn’t exactly lit the blockchain world on fire. The value of the company’s token has plummetted from 31 cents to just 8 cents in recent months. World Liberty could use a deal like this—a government vouching for and endorsing the use of its coin. And the deal was being consummated, standing behind Witkoff was General Asim Munir, the top officer in Pakistan’s army.

The presence of a military leader during this financial meeting was odd. But three months later, Munir is connected to another Witkoff family effort: the ongoing negotiations to settle the war in Iran. Munir has been a frequent visitor to the Trump White House and is a chief architect of Pakistani efforts to mediate an end to the Iran war. That means he’s working with Witkoff’s father, Steve Witkoff, the billionaire New York City real estate developer who Donald Trump appointed to be his Mideast envoy. The elder Witkoff will join Vice President JD Vance and presidential son-in-law Jared Kushner at the negotiating table on Saturday, facing off with Iran’s negotiators in talks being brokered by Pakistan.

The Witkoff connection is not a coincidence. It’s another example of how the Trump crew is mixing business—their personal financial business—with US foreign policy. Pakistan’s relationship with the United States has ebbed and flowed over recent decades, and under the Biden administration, it was at a low. But Pakistan has mounted a huge effort to cozy up to Trump. The country nominated him for a Nobel Peace Prize, and the World Liberty Financial deal appears to be part of the overall effort.

Last month, Bloomberg profiled self-described “crypto bro” Bilal Bin Saqib—one of the key architects of both the deal between World Liberty Financial and the Pakistani government and the newly warmed relationship between Islamabad and the Washington. “Because of crypto, doors have opened,” Saqib told Bloomberg. “New conversations have opened, trust has been built. We have gotten an opportunity to rebrand.” Saqib, who is 35, was named an adviser to World Liberty Financial last year, but he left that post to take a series of increasingly high-profile jobs in the Pakistani government working with crypto. His current position is chair of the Pakistan Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority, the country’s crypto regulator. Saqib has maintained his close relationship with World Liberty Financial, posting selfies with Zach Witkoff from a Mar-a-Lago get-together a few weeks before the Iran war kicked off.

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April 13, 2026

Mom, Kids, & Nowhere to Go: Family homelessness is spiking just as the Trump administration rolls back social services.

https://prospect.org/2026/04/13/apr-2026-magazine-mom-kids-nowhere-to-go-family-homelessness/


Credit: Steven Senn/AP Photo

Families are one of the fastest-growing segments of the homeless population, but they are rarely acknowledged in the larger policy conversation about homelessness in the U.S. Instead of living on the street, they’re often out of sight, staying with other family members or living in their cars. People don’t truly notice them the way they see chronically homeless individuals living on the street, people who work with homeless families say. “You often see the chronic street homeless who suffer from mental illness because it is more in your face … [Families] end up doubled up in situations and we just don’t end up counting them as homeless,” said Peter Jacob, executive director of Family Promise Union County in New Jersey.

Unhoused families, like everyone else who is unhoused, are facing renewed financial pressures as social programs and housing support that was already woefully insufficient is stripped down under the Trump administration and wages fail to keep up with the hefty cost of apartments. But they also have to contend with the higher costs of supporting kids, like finding an apartment with more bedrooms or paying for child care. Families who can’t afford child care are often penalized with underemployment and financial instability that also puts them at risk of eviction, workers at groups serving homeless families explained. Jacob said it’s time that policymakers prioritize family homelessness as much as other forms of individual chronic homelessness. During the 2022-2023 school year, public schools identified nearly 1.4 million homeless students, which was a 14 percent rise from the previous school year.

But schools are likely under-identifying the number of kids who are homeless. From 2023 to 2024, families with children had the biggest year-over-year increase in homelessness compared to any other group. Research completed in 2023 from the Eviction Lab at Princeton University, which used Census Bureau data from between 2007 and 2016, found that kids represent 4 out of every 10 people who face eviction each year. More than 10 percent of kids under five who live in rental housing are threatened with eviction annually, and 5.7 percent actually get evicted from their homes. Juan Pablo Garnham, communication and policy engagement manager at Eviction Lab, said that evictions fall disproportionately on Black single mothers and that the data on eviction characteristics tends to be pretty stubborn. “Even though in New York City and Philadelphia we’re seeing positive changes, in general, this data from a few years ago is likely to stay the same,” he said.

Homelessness appeared to fall in the final year of the Biden administration, based on samples of the January 2025 homeless count. But while the Trump economy is not cratering, it has been stagnant, particularly at the lower end of the income scale. The economy added very few jobs last year, electricity prices are out of control, and GDP growth in the first half of the year was driven almost entirely by data centers and information technology. In the longer run, homelessness remains historically high, as Americans have been watching the dream of even a modest life slip away in recent years. The median age of a first-time homebuyer rose to 40, an all-time high since the National Association of Realtors began its annual survey. Nearly half of the 42.5 million renter households spent more than 30 percent of their income on housing costs in 2023. And the growth in health care spending from 2023 to 2024 has outpaced the growth rate of the 2010s. The cost of child care is more expensive than rent for many families.

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April 13, 2026

Re-enacting the Crusades

Pete Hegseth’s Christianity—tribal, with plenty of enemies who deserve the sword—is central to the MAGA worldview.

https://prospect.org/2026/04/13/reenacting-the-crusades-pete-hegseth-maga-trump-evangelical-christianity/


Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth speaks to senior military leaders at Marine Corps Base Quantico, September 30, 2025, in Quantico, Virginia. Credit: Andrew Harnik/Pool via AP

MAGA is nothing if not tribal. It has two deities—Donald Trump and a parochial and xenophobic Christian God—and views everyone outside those faiths as enemies to be dissed, degraded, or destroyed.

Evangelical Christians have long been more tribal than Christian in any theological sense, which for decades has predisposed them to flock to Republicans who not only attacked their political opponents but effectively consigned them to Hell. They remain the largest constituency in the MAGAverse, as no one previously had railed against those they saw as pagans and heretics as vociferously and violently as Trump. Even as the polls show increasing public rejection of Trump and his war in Iran, the MAGA faithful have stuck with him and all his dubious enterprises. An Economist/YouGov poll from March had Trump with an overall approval rating of 35 percent, but among self-described MAGA Republicans, it was still a stratospheric 82 percent. This despite the fact that by ordering his face be placed on coins and on banners draped from government buildings, he has become the first literally idolatrous president in our history. That the MAGA faithful are idol worshippers is daily demonstrable.

This has not required the MAGA faithful to abandon their tribal form of Christianity, of course, and in recent weeks, both the vice president and several cabinet members have conflated state policy with the tribal version of Christianity. Speaking last week in Budapest on behalf of the re-election campaign of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán (which was soundly defeated on Sunday), JD Vance noted that Trump’s America and Orbán’s Hungary were united by their common allegiance to “Christian civilization and Christian values.” He implored listeners to vote for Orbán as the way to “stand for freedom, truth, and the God of our fathers.” That Trump-Orbán bond was sealed by their respective wall-building projects on their borders, and their determination to keep immigrants—non-Christians and Muslims in particular—from coming to their lands.

Trump’s defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, was already a militant evangelical Protestant before Trump plucked him from Fox News to run the Pentagon. He’d enrolled his children in a Classical Christian Education school, where science was subordinated to scripture. He’s held sectarian evangelical services within the Pentagon, and has made repeatedly clear that U.S. armed forces fight not just for America against its enemies but for Christianity against its enemies—secularists, adherents of other faiths (Muslims particularly)—for which reason God (the Christian God, of course; there is no other) is on their side. Vowing “no quarter” would be given to the “barbaric savages” of the Iranian regime, Hegseth called on the American people to pray “every day, on bended knee … in the name of Jesus Christ,” for victory. (Somehow, I doubt war hawk Steven Miller did that.)

Hegseth’s fusion of state policy with tribal Christianity was echoed on Easter when another Trump cabinet member, Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins, emailed the roughly 100,000 USDA employees, not to wish them a happy Easter, but to share some Christian news: “Today we celebrate the greatest story ever told, the foundation of our faith, and the abiding hope of all mankind,” she began. “From the foot of the Cross on Good Friday to the stone rolled away from the now empty tomb, sin has been destroyed. Jesus has been raised from the dead. And God has granted each of us victory and new life. And where there is life—risen life—there is hope.”

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April 13, 2026

Eric Swalwell and the Death of Accountability

His sexual misconduct was an open secret. So why was he still seen as a rising star in the party?

https://prospect.org/2026/04/12/eric-swalwell-death-of-accountability-sexual-misconduct/


California gubernatorial candidate Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA) appears at a town hall meeting in Sacramento, California, April 7, 2026. Credit: Rich Pedroncelli/AP Photo

At a Democratic Club meeting in West Los Angeles on Saturday, Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA) was asked the question that every mildly engaged Democrat in the state is asking each other right now: What is your position on the Eric Swalwell situation? Since Friday afternoon, when the San Francisco Chronicle detonated a long-rumored bombshell by reporting a credible sexual assault charge, and CNN followed on with accounts from four different women (with more weighing in by the hour), everyone tangentially associated with California politics has had to take a side, and they all are taking the opportunity to throw Swalwell overboard.


All 21 members of Congress who had endorsed Swalwell had revoked that within 24 hours; the House Democratic leadership advised him to end his gubernatorial race; the head of the state Democratic Party did the same in a bit of an oblique way (“My call for all—repeat, all—candidates for Governor to ‘honestly assess the viability of their candidacy and campaign’ still stands. In fact, that call is more important now than ever before”); the California Labor Federation, which had ridiculously endorsed four candidates for governor including Swalwell, dropped him from their roster, and two big union endorsers (the California Teachers Association and SEIU California, the latter of which had just started a super PAC for him with a $2 million investment) suspended their activities; two fundraisers in L.A. scheduled for Sunday were canceled; you can no longer donate to him on ActBlue or his campaign website; and even Swalwell’s senior staffers—including staffers for his current gubernatorial campaign—have said in an open letter that people should stand with the victims, and that they are only staying in their jobs to fulfill obligations to the congressmember’s constituents.

Waters did not diverge from the general trend. She noted that Swalwell was gaining momentum in the dicey California governor’s race, but that now “he’s got to go.” She also said that Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi, who has personally asked Swalwell to drop out, had more stature to do so, because she “had been supporting him and raising money for him.” This is untrue; Pelosi never formally endorsed in the governor’s race and never fundraised for Swalwell, though he asked. The question that many have been asking is why the stampede away from Swalwell is happening so quickly, and there are a few different answers. First, in the wake of the Cesar Chavez revelations, there is absolutely no room to excuse away sexual assault, and the reporting is credible, thorough, and believable, enough to trigger an investigation by the Manhattan district attorney, because one of the assaults described in the reporting allegedly took place in New York.



Second, California Democrats have been nervous about the large field of Democrats in the governor’s race anyway. This fear lessened after President Trump endorsed Fox News commentator Steve Hilton, which will likely pull him away from Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco and give a Democrat a chance to reach the top-two runoff in the June 2 primary. In other words, as California Democrats looked for a leader to get them out of this largely self-created mess of a primary, they found one in Donald Trump. But Swalwell imploding also winnows the field considerably and will make a Hilton-vs.-Democrat general election more likely. But there’s a third reason that Democrats are heading for the exits rapidly, and it’s one they won’t like to talk about. The truth, which will be available for all to see before long, is that Swalwell’s conduct with interns, young staff, and female fans was an open secret for a long time, and yet the party, if not Pelosi in this case specifically, had been supporting him and raising money for him. That speaks to a larger problem.



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April 13, 2026

Trump, 79, Posts Himself as Christ After Bonkers Pope Attack

https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-79-posts-himself-as-christ-after-bonkers-pope-attack/

https://archive.ph/vYfQE



President Donald Trump followed a bizarre rant against Pope Leo XIV with an AI-generated image depicting himself as Jesus Christ.

The image, posted to Truth Social late Sunday night, depicts Trump as Christ, laying his hand on a patient in a hospital bed, seemingly healing him.

https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/116394884725149647



He is surrounded by other figures, including a nurse, a soldier, and a praying woman. Also present in the image is the U.S. flag, several bald eagles, the Statue of Liberty, and the Lincoln Memorial.

The 79-year-old posted the image less than an hour after his attack on the pope, who he condemned as “weak on crime, and terrible for foreign policy.”

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April 12, 2026

Iceage - Under The Sun (AZUMA MAKOTO FLORAL INSTALLATION "CRAZY GARDEN X ICEAGE") 2018 (sublime Danish post punk)

Label: Escho – ESC95
Format: Vinyl, LP, Album, Limited Edition
Country: Denmark
Released: 4 May 2018
Genre: Rock
Style: Post-Punk









https://archive.ph/Axo4n

On their astonishing fourth album, the Danish punk band reach for pop-gothic grandeur with more tenacity and abandon than ever.

Aren’t punks supposed to look at flowers and hate them? Not Iceage, it seems, who performed recently in Tokyo subsumed by flowers of every hue. Electric blue, royal red, magenta, periwinkle. Observing the Danish rock band in this breathtaking setting on Instagram, I imagined a funeral. The botanical barrage was, it turned out, an installation by the artist Makoto Azuma, famous for sending a bonsai into space. Maybe it was just supposed to look pretty. If so, this striking picture compounded beauty, softness, violence, ecstasy—not unlike Iceage’s new music. It felt like a commitment to the idea that we are not what you expect, of performed vulnerability, of embodying a question mark.

Iceage have spent a decade inching towards a twisted glamor: a sullen band fronted by a Draculian poet, constantly experimenting, carrying forth the clangoring drama of post-punk innovators such as Rowland S. Howard in The Birthday Party and These Immortal Souls. Their guiding principles play out in their best songs: With “Ecstasy,” their expressiveness; with “The Lord’s Favorite,” unblinking humor; with “How Many,” romanticism. And even as their strengths converge upon this astonishing odyssey of a fourth album, Iceage remain a moving target still.

On Beyondless, Iceage reach for grandeur with more tenacity and suspending energy than ever. On the opener, “Hurrah,” Elias Rønnenfelt sings of “roaring free-jazz fireworks” as if to introduce the band’s lushest yet palette of sax, trombone, trumpet, piano, and violin, which they play with the pummeling dynamism of contemporary Swans. Beyondless sparkles like a champagne bottle smashed in slow motion. Rønnenfelt’s lyrics—which he says wrote while hidden away, late at night, in a tower—can be Biblical or Shakespearean or they can just coldly stare you in the eye. To think of this heightened style alongside the crude, vicious hardcore of their 2011 debut is inspiring. The whole sound of Beyondless, from pop hooks to hints of cabaret jazz, seems to be fantastically coated with cheap gold paint.

Rønnenfelt, now 26, has always been an actorly frontman—his voice can sound demonic, detached, drunk, sometimes all at once—but now with a more concrete grip on English, he’s fully in character, like Rimbaud born into the Addams family. He compares himself to a rat and talks to God. He sings ridiculous lines about the end of the world and STDs in his mouth. He longs for “arbitrary thrills” on the LP’s druggish “Catch It,” and on the oceanic title track, he is “perfectly lost at sea internally.” Seedy desperation is a recurring theme. Rønnenfelt wields his pen with a new level of rigor and conviction, and he makes phrases like “anesthetic laison” and “derisions of the flesh” and “wretched pantomime” roll off the tongue. When he wallows through a couplet like “As above, so below/These transgressions take me higher,” he narrates his debasement with such command that it clears the air, and charges every crevice of the song, like opera.

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April 12, 2026

The Afghan Whigs - Crazy (1998) from the album '1965'

Label: Columbia – CK 69450, Columbia – 69450
Format: CD, Album
Country: US
Released: 27 Oct 1998
Genre: Rock
Style: Alternative Rock