Looking At This Week With Joyce Vance

(I’d say Josh Johnson called it on Kash Patel last week!)

The Week Ahead

We seem doomed to another week of war news. On Sunday, Trump announced on Truth Social that the U.S. military seized an Iranian-flagged ship that he said tried to run the U.S. blockade in the Strait of Hormuz. Marines boarded the cargo ship Touska after it was disabled. Trump posted that the USS Spruance “gave them fair warning to stop,” but that “The Iranian crew refused to listen, so our Navy ship stopped them right in their tracks by blowing a hole in the engineroom.”

But what’s happening with the president as he conducts his war is now completely out of bounds. This morning, just after 8 a.m., he had a long rambling post on Truth Social that concluded, “if they don’t, the United States is going to knock out every single Power Plant, and every single Bridge, in Iran. NO MORE MR. NICE GUY!”

Notice how Trump speaks in the language of an all-powerful businessman, a CEO without a board to tell him what to do. He is sending “My Representatives” to Pakistan and “if they (Iran) don’t take the DEAL,” he’ll do “what has to be done.” It’s crazy on steroids, and well past the point where even his own party should be giving him a pass. The president of the United States is threatening to bomb civilian targets and devastate a civilian population. War crimes, plain and simple.

All of this from the candidate who, in November of 2024, in the closing days of his campaign for the White House, said that “If Kamala wins, only death and destruction await because she is the candidate of endless wars. I am the candidate of peace.”

Every accusation is a confession. And the Truth Social posts happened after Trump called NATO and our allies “absolutely useless” at a Turning Point USA event Friday night. If you’re exhausted, and honestly, at this point, who isn’t, take a deep breath, plan for a little extra fellowship with friends (more on my plans at the end), and remind yourself that we cannot afford to put our heads in the sand and that the effort to overwhelm us in intentional—that’s how authoritarians do it. It’s a good week to talk with people about what’s going on, to encourage them to stop and think, and then to make sure they’re registered to vote.

The U.S. Ambassador to the U.N., Mike Waltz, was on ABC’s “This Week,” Sunday morning, and he chimed right in with the president. Host John Karl asked if Trump was prepared to go back to “full-on war” and Waltz responded, “all options are on the table. We could take that infrastructure out relatively easily. The Iranian air defenses have been absolutely decimated.”

He continued, without being prompted, “And just to get ahead of a lot of the critics and hand-wringing, throwing out irresponsible terms like ‘war crimes’, attacking, destroying infrastructure that has clearly and historically been used for dual military purposes is not a war crime.”

Then Waltz did it again on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” where volunteering to Kristen Welker, who hadn’t asked about it, that the U.S. could still target civilian infrastructure in Iran if a ceasefire deal wasn’t reached, again claiming that wouldn’t amount to war crimes. “We have a long history of taking down bridges, power plants and other infrastructure that is powering Iran’s military,” Waltz said, as though that somehow made it acceptable. “In the laws of land warfare and the rules of engagement, any type of infrastructure that is co-mingled is absolutely a legitimate target.” He reiterated on CBS, appearing on “Face the Nation,” that because the IRGC is running bridges and power plants, they are “legitimate military targets,” again rejecting the notions that bombing them would be “some type of war crime.”

So bombing civilian targets seems to be top of mind for the president and one of his key spokespeople on these issues, which should concern all of us.

Waltz is a former Army Special Forces Officer, decorated for his bravery. He graduated from Virginia Military Academy, according to his bio from his time in Congress, but he is not a lawyer. Apparently, concerns about launching attacks against civilian populations didn’t stick. Waltz was Trump’s first National Security Advisor this term, but he resigned following Signalgate after serving for just 101 days. (Tonight’s trivia: That’s the second shortest tenure of any NSA. Mike Flynn, who was Trump’s first NSA in 2017, resigned after just 24 days, two Scaramuccis, and was ultimately convicted of lying to the FBI before Trump pardoned him.) Trump nominated Waltz to serve as the U.N. Ambassador the same day he stepped down.

Today, the United States struck yet another vessel in the Caribbean. Three people were killed. The U.S. Southern Command account on Twitter said they were narco-terrorists. These attacks used to be shocking. Now, they barely garner notice. As of the last strike, four days ago, Reuters reported the death toll was “over 170.” Three people were killed in that strike last Wednesday, as well.

Also appearing on the Sunday shows, FBI Director Kash Patel said he would file a defamation case on Monday against The Atlantic, which reported last week, in a story headlined, “The FBI Director Is MIA,” that Patel’s colleagues are “alarmed” by “episodes of excessive drinking and unexplained absences.” Two dozen people interviewed for the story “described Patel’s tenure as a management failure and his personal behavior as a national-security vulnerability.”

Nominees for important government positions, and Director of the FBI is among the highest because of access to national security information, are heavily vetted before they take office. But as with so many other norms in the time of Trump, Patel’s questionable personal choices have continued to come to light since he took office. The report says that Patel is “drinking so heavily that meetings need to be rescheduled and his security detail has trouble waking him up. Among the report’s most chilling revelations, “Current and former officials told me that they have long worried about what would happen in the event of a domestic terrorist attack while Patel is in office, and they said that their apprehension has increased significantly in the weeks since Trump launched his military campaign against Iran. ‘That’s what keeps me up at night,’ one official said.”

Screen grab of Patel “celebrating” with the U.S. Men’s Hockey team after their Olympic victory.

This morning, Fox host Maria Bartiromo asked Patel, “So you’re gonna sue them?” “Absolutely,” he responded. “It’s coming tomorrow.” He added that it would be for defamation.

I’m looking forward to discovery. Especially the part where Patel is deposed, under oath. Expect the lawsuit, which he probably has to file to look tough for the audience of one, to be dismissed before it gets that far. Patel would face questioning about his drinking and other misconduct while in office. And he would be exposed to penalties of perjury.

The Atlantic’s report concludes with this story: “Patel has publicly proclaimed that the FBI needs to demonstrate that it is ‘fierce,’ and officials I spoke with said that he is fixated on that image in private as well.” So what is he doing about that? Apparently, Patel “recently expressed frustration with the look of FBI merchandise, complaining that it isn’t intimidating enough.” The Atlantic explains that “Officials have grown accustomed to such behavior, and they have learned to roll their eyes at it. But they said that the absurdity masks real concerns about what Patel’s leadership has meant for an institution that the country relies on for national security and the safety of its citizens. ‘Part of me is glad he’s wasting his time on bullshit, because it’s less dangerous for rule of law, for the American public,’ one official told me, ‘but it also means we don’t have a real functioning FBI director.’”

It’s likely that Patel has little support inside of the building, and that could mean this is just one of many stories that get launched in an effort to ease him out before it’s too late. When the “that” in “That’s what keeps me up at night,” is the Director of the FBI, not a foreign terrorist or criminal threat, then it’s highly likely the career folks, and maybe even some of the politicos, want a “real functioning FBI director” in place.

I started out by saying we’re entering this week already exhausted and it’s important to keep taking care of ourselves. My plan this week involves spending time in person with my #SistersInLaw cohosts Kimberly Atkins Stohr, Barb McQuade, and Jill Will-Banks, when we do the podcast live in Denver on April 23rd. If you’re in Denver, I hope I’ll see you there! If you’re in Atlanta, we’ll be live there on May 3. There is nothing as important as being with the people that we love right now.

We’re in this together,

Joyce

Inadvertent Compliance

with the surveillance state.

How Citizen Surveillance Ate San Francisco

When a homeless man attacked a former city official, footage of the onslaught became a rallying cry. Then came another video, and another—and the story turned inside out.

Just when the people of San Francisco thought they’d seen every video—the sidewalk drug runners, the Louis Vuitton mob heisters, the men selling stolen laptops, the smash-and-grabbers snatching a camera from a Prius in traffic, the porch pirates porch pirates porch pirates into infinity, all indexed in the “Lawless San Francisco” section of the great internet video store—yes, just then: Stig Strombeck took out his cell phone camera on April 5 and hit Record.

It was around 7 pm, and Strombeck was on his way to his second job. He’d parked on Lombard Street. Not the famously crooked section up over the hill, but the wide gauntlet that jets toward the Golden Gate Bridge through the Marina district: the preppy hood of woo girls and boat guys and early-career Gavin Newsom and largely law-and-order Democrats. (“Everyone likes to shit on San Francisco, and San Franciscans like to shit on the Marina,” one resident told me. “It’s a victimless crime.”) But lately, even in the Marina, there was no escaping the rest of the city’s problems. The previous November, in a manicured playground just two blocks from where Strombeck was walking, a father said his 10-month-old baby had ingested fentanyl and had to be revived by Narcan—a San Francisco nadir that, to the presumable relief of civic boosters, hasn’t surfaced on film.

On the Lombard sidewalk, Strombeck pulled headphones from his ears and trained his camera on a disturbing scene playing out in the lot of a Shell gas station. Here’s the video: A bear of a middle-aged guy, 5’11”, 230 pounds, faces a rakish, apparently homeless man in his twenties who is wielding a 3-foot-long pole. The older bear of a guy holds his arms up like a boxer as the younger one jockeys with the pole, falls backward off a curb, then lithely spins back to his feet. The older guy blots his eyes and yells, “You’re going to jail, motherfucker.” The younger one, who wears a bright red stocking cap, whacks the bear of a guy across his face, sending him careening to the side. A male voice off camera says “Dude!”—the unmistakable Greek chorus of Wtf, this is insane. The younger guy looks toward the camera. The video stops.

⚠️ WARNING: GRAPHIC CONTENT
The following videos contain graphic content, which some readers may find disturbing.

(see it, embedded on the page, linked in the title above; there are also several .gifs at various points throughout this. I can’t grab ’em, plus it’s easier to just read on the page)

Strombeck stowed his phone, but the action kept spilling into other frames. A daycare’s security cam showed the red-capped figure maniacally chasing the now bloodied man down the Lombard sidewalk before bashing him again. A neighbor pointed his camera down from his third-floor window as the younger guy strode below with the pole in one hand and what looks like the older man’s baseball cap in the other, pumping his arm, looking amped. Another video of the attacker that appears to be shot from a passing vehicle was uploaded to the crime-alert app Citizen, which pinged a software engineer sitting on his couch a few blocks away, who ventured over and filmed the crimson drips and Rorschach splotches of blood leading down the sidewalk. (Strombeck would later testify that by the end of the attack, the big guy was covered in “the most blood I’ve ever seen.”)

The following day, a Marina local named Joan wrote on Nextdoor that she was the mother of Don Carmignani, the man who’d been bludgeoned by the pole: “I want to thank all the neighbors that videoed what was happening & got involved to stop it. If they were not there my son would be dead!” Don was in the hospital, she wrote, with a skull fracture and a broken jaw. City politicians tweeted prayers and a call for more cops. Local news identified Carmignani as a former city fire commissioner, a lifelong San Franciscan and father of two. The assailant: 24-year-old Garret Doty, a recent arrival from Louisiana.

Reports said the attack kicked off when Carmignani asked some homeless people to move away from his elderly parents’ door, which they were blocking. In one TV newscast, a reporter mentions an allegation, from one of Doty’s companions, that Carmignani used “bear spray” during the altercation. The segment then cuts to a close-up interview of Doty’s homeless friend—a striking, red-bearded man named Nate Roye, speaking from under a filthy shearling hood—saying that Doty attacked because Carmignani had been “disrespectful.”

“Is that enough to beat him up?” the journalist asks, incredulously.

“Yeah, sometimes,” Roye replies, with a decisive nod.

San Franciscans know the larger drama that this episode advances, and you probably do too: Tech’s glittering citadel, fallen, with the footage to show it. Within some 40 hours of the Marina attack, in another swank part of the city, a widely admired tech executive named Bob Lee, the former CTO of Square and a founder of Cash App, had staggered past surveillance cameras while bleeding from several stab wounds and later died at the hospital. The two maulings—a beaten fire commissioner, a slain tech executive—upcycled to the national news, putting San Francisco under the national surveillance to which it’s become accustomed, with particularly lip-licking schadenfreude on the right. Here again was Newsom’s and Nancy Pelosi’s doom-looping dystopia, where remote-working techies and fleeing billionaires have ceded the city to IRL Grand Theft Auto.

Carmignani, his family, his attorney, and some witnesses provided images that flickered through the reports and social media: Strombeck’s video from the gas station. A laundromat’s street cam view of Doty grabbing the metal bar out of a trash bin and taking a practice swing. The daycare cam. In the neighborhood itself, the vigorous uptake of these images inspired a kind of hope. Marina residents—forever wary of being pegged as pearl-clutching Karens—thought they finally had their irrefutable proof of how clearly things had gotten out of hand. “Somebody got beat up. It was on camera multiple, multiple places,” one told me. “Like, the best evidence!”

But within days, the clarity crumbled. In the case of tech executive Bob Lee, police arrested not a person off the street but a tech entrepreneur whose sister had been hanging out with Lee. And in private, within the police department, the Carmignani attack was veering off narrative too. A police sergeant, sorting through the symphony of surveillance clips that captured the face-off, played the bodycam footage from a cop who had been interviewing Carmignani’s girlfriend after the attack. The officer asks whether she’d been inside when Carmignani went out to “confront” the guy. She says yes. Then from the ambulance, Carmignani interrupts her, barking a command through his broken jaw, seeming to thicken the plot:

“Don’t say nothing to nobody. Don’t say nothing to any cop, no one.”

In San Francisco there’s always another video. New York and London are known for being blanketed with government-run CCTV coverage, but surveillance here is different: It is as privatized as it is pervasive, a culture of Hitchcock’s Rear Window, at scale.

In the city where Nextdoor’s offices sit right in the gritty Tenderloin, sharing Ring cam footage of porch thieves is a bonding exercise between neighbors who’ve never met. All over town, local nonprofits oversee neighborhood-wide networks of cameras funded in part by donations from crypto entrepreneur Chris Larsen. (“That’s the winning formula,” Larsen told The New York Times in 2020. “Pure coverage.”) Platoons of Waymo self-driving cars circulate the streets like Pac-Man ghosts, gathering up videofeeds that cops snag for evidence. You can watch a resident’s live cam to see who’s on the corner of Hyde and Ellis, right now.

True-crime video has become San Francisco’s civic language, the common vocabulary of local TV news broadcasts, the acid punch line to a million social media posts. The feeds intensified during the pandemic, when commuterless streets erupted with synthetic opioid use and property crime. Since then, the city has found itself hobbled through successive breakdowns—a police shortage, a 34 percent office vacancy rate, a federal injunction severely limiting the city from clearing homeless camps. No one seems to be solving San Francisco’s problems, the feeling goes, so by God, people are going to film the dysfunction and post the footage.

A guy who goes by the handle JJ Smith is probably the most vivid personification of this drive. A longtime resident of the Tenderloin whose brother died of a fentanyl overdose in 2022, Smith—not his real name—films unhoused people as he tries to cajole them into considering treatment. Then he posts the footage on X, where he has about 19,000 followers.

In happier cases, he’ll document when people check into a program and come out clean on the other side. But much of Smith’s footage is far grimmer: coroners rolling sheet-draped corpses out of residential hotels; a cold open on a woman’s face as she OD’s on a sidewalk. Smith explains that he’s just given the woman Narcan, pulling you into morbid suspense combined with an awful feeling of Are we really supposed to be seeing this? Other times, Smith dispenses a tough love that edges into trolling, like the time he snatched away a coat draped over a woman’s head so he could scold her for smoking drugs next to a park where his kids play.

People shrug off statistics, Smith says, but “when you’re actually seeing it, it really gets to you.” Supporters credit him with recording a humanitarian crisis. Critics tweet at him, even chide him on camera: He’s exploiting people who have no privacy with footage they haven’t consented to. (Hey, he says, it’s a public sidewalk.)

Some of the discomfort with Smith, who says he knows many of the people he films, stems from the simple fact that, by now, he’s part of a social media bandwagon. Even presidential hopeful Ron DeSantis once stopped by the Tenderloin to shoot a video. Today, Smith is joined by other accounts like FriscoLive415 and Tenderloin Tube—a cadre that lives somewhere on the border between citizen journalists and dystopic paparazzi. Consider the live birth video. Last spring, a Twitter account that typically posts store-looting vids showed something else: an infant, just born and naked, on a Tenderloin sidewalk, its dazed mother trying to pick the baby up. The event is morally excruciating, but so is its existence here, on X, overlaid with the account’s watermark as the video travels the internet to 1.5 million views, churned into headlines like “Caught on Video: Homeless Woman Gives Birth in Broad Daylight on Tenderloin District Sidewalk.”

(snip-a bit more on the page. Of course, there are twists!)

Masters Of War

https://www.youtube.com/post/UgkxcRbDnMs-OZRd4YLOay14vzCBEdbb1V7B

Israel Stacking Up War Crimes In Lebanon

Watch The Democratic Party Completely Fracture Over Israel

Open Windows & Clay Jones

Trump’s DOJ is trying to throw out Jan. 6 convictions

This seditious president is using the Dept. of Justice to rewrite history and keep his Sturmabteilung available

Ann Telnaes

Jeanine Pirro, U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia and Trump toady signed motions to vacate convictions of Jan. 6 rioters including Stewart Rhodes, founder of Oath Keepers and Proud Boys leaders Ethan Nordean and Joseph Biggs.

Dr. MAGA

Dr. Fucknut will see you now

Clay Jones

As you will recall, Donald Trump attacked the pope, and then he posted an AI-generated image of himself as Jesus Christ healing the sick.

The New York Times described it: The image had showed Mr. Trump dressed in white and red robes, with the president’s hands emitting shining lights. His right hand was touching the forehead of a man lying on a bed in a hospital gown, evoking religious art that depicts Jesus healing the sick.

In the image posted on Sunday, the man in the bed is surrounded by figures looking up at Mr. Trump, including a medical worker with a stethoscope, a praying woman and a man in a camouflage uniform. The background of the image includes the Statue of Liberty, a building resembling the Lincoln Memorial, fighter jets, eagles, fireworks and a billowing American flag. (snip-MORE, and it’s Hot!)

An Action Alert

of sorts.

Note three: Jeanine Pirro just launched her latest bad idea. She has set up a tip line for people to call about crimes Eric Swalwell might have committed. Ok cool. We hope people use it. We also hope they let her know about the rapist piece of shit she works for. The number is 202-252-0809. (snip)

An Abundance Of News

I was especially interested in the Justice Clarence Thomas comments, which I read, then became disinterested for reasons you’ll get if you read them. Lots of news of the day here.

Hegseth to Reporters: Whose Side Are You On?

INSIDE: Sonia Sotomayor … John Eastman … Bitcoin Jesus

David Kurtz

Compares Press to the Pharisees

A thin-skinned and prickly Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth went off on journalists in his press conference this morning, resorting to the classic “attack the messenger” defense to a unpopular war going poorly.

It’s not the first time Hegseth has succumbed to blaming a lack of patriotism among reporters for unfavorable headlines and critical reporting on a Middle East conflict ignited by the Trump administration. But today’s screed was striking for how it mixed the old worn-out reflexive questioning of the loyalty of reporters with biblical references that reflect Hegseth’s personal Christian nationalism:

https://embed.bsky.app/embed/did:plc:aunpu65mdrhwfie7ynymlzeh/app.bsky.feed.post/3mjmgjwfiwr2h?id=46073155471352445

“Sometimes it’s hard to figure out what side some of you are actually on,” Hegseth said. “It’s incredibly unpatriotic.”

In the decades since the Vietnam War, the Pentagon had haltingly moved away from the defensive crouch it often took in the face of criticism toward a more transparent and self-reflective public response to bad news. It was not always consistent and the backsliding was dramatic during periods of sustained setbacks, like in Iraq during the aughts, but the general trajectory was away from the kind of knee-jerk circle-the-wagons approach that Hegseth rolled out this morning.

Questioning the loyalty of journalists — or any regime critics — harkens to earlier dark eras of America history and to authoritarian regimes worldwide. But Hegseth’s diatribe came with a strong Christian twist, as he compared journalists to the Pharisees who rejected Jesus in the Bible:

“The Pharisees, the so-called and self-appointed elites of their time, they were there to witness, to write everything down, to record, but their hearts were hardened, even though they witnessed a literal miracle, it didn’t matter,” Hegseth said.

“They were only there to explain away the goodness in pursuit of their agenda. As the passage ends, the Pharisees went out and immediately held counsel against him, how to destroy him,” he continued.

“I sat there in church and I thought, our press are just like these Pharisees, not all of you, not all of you, but the legacy Trump-hating press, your politically motivated animus for President Trump nearly completely blinds you from the brilliance of our American warriors,” he added.

Hegseth — callow, reactive, driven by a warped theology of nationalism, and poorly grounded in history — personally represents a dramatic break from decades of training, education, and refining of a professional officers corps. In 15 months in office, Hegseth has done more to politicize the military than any secretary of defense in at least the last half century.

Third Boat Strike in Three Days

The accelerated pace of unlawful strikes against alleged drug-smuggling boats continued in the eastern Pacific, with the third such strike in the last three days. Three people were killed in the 51st strike of the U.S. campaign, bringing the death toll to at least 177 people.

What Trump Foreign Policy Looks Like

USA Today: Pentagon ramps up planning for possible military ops in Cuba
WSJ: Pentagon Approaches Automakers, Manufacturers to Boost Weapons Production
WaPo: Trump administration pushes nations to sign ‘trade over aid’ declaration

SCOTUS Watch

Justice Sonia Sotomayor apologized privately to Justice Brett Kavanaugh and followed up with a public apology released by the Supreme Court for remarks last week that, without naming him, attributed his defense of what have become known as “Kavanaugh stops” to his posh upbringing.
In a public appearance at Yale Law School, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson blasted the Roberts Court’s handling of its emergency docket.
In unusually pointed remarks carried live by CSPAN, Justice Clarence Thomas launched a broadside at progressivism.

Jan. 6 Never Ends

Trump lawyer and coup plotter John Eastman was officially disbarred in California after the state Supreme Court declined to take up his appeal.
Trump I White House chief of staff Mark Meadows is seeking reimbursement from the Trump DOJ of his legal fees incurred as a witness in both of Special Counsel Jack Smith’s investigations.

Must Read

Heather Cox Richardson draws a straight line from Lincoln’s assassination to Jan. 6 and the events of this week.

Do as We Say Not as We Do

NBC News: “Anti-abortion advocates met with Justice Department officials Wednesday, just hours after the Trump administration fired prosecutors it accused of coordinating too closely with abortion-rights advocacy groups during the Biden administration.”

Election-Year Islamophobia

When all else fails and their election prospects look dire, Republicans fall back on various forms of racist appeals to solidify their base and wrong-foot Democrats. This year, top Texas Republicans have landed on Islamophobia as the racist appeal of choice. TPM’s Josh Kovensky reports on the ground from Grapevine, Texas, where he talks to right-wing activists who are back again to warning about Sharia law and portraying Muslims as an external threat to “real” Americans.

Too often, gullible national media outlets treat these racist effusions like an organic upwelling of nativism, rather than a calculated election year strategy. TPM, I’m proud to say, has never been suckered in.

Thread of the Day

The Corruption: Bitcoin Jesus Edition

ProPublica offers a casebook study in the erosion of white-collar crime prosecutions under Trump II that includes the intervention of DOJ political appointees and the retention of a former Trump criminal defense attorney to outright kill one of the largest-ever cryptocurrency tax fraud cases.

Creepy Text of the Day

“Hearing u/r in town. Wishing you would let me know. I could have made some excuses to get out and show u around. Please keep this private.”—Richard Chavez, father of Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer, in a text to a young female staff member working for his daughter

Hot tips? Juicy scuttlebutt? Keen insights? Let me know. For sensitive information, use the encrypted methods here. (snip)

Surprise inspection catches shocking state of ICE immigrant prison

The Everything Briefing

There’s gotta be something each of us wants to know, and likely are things we need to know but may not be covered by traditional or partisan news outlets. It’s long, of course.

April 15, 2026

Congressional Resignations, the Pope, and Negotiations

Jacob Redman

Good morning, everyone!

Be sure to check out my Notes page, where I will keep you up to date with the day’s historical snapshots and notable quotes.

(embedded post on the page; reformatted by WP below:)

Jacob Redman

In the 1980s, President Ronald Reagan and Pope John Paul II formed what TIME magazine described as a “Holy Alliance” to support Poland’s fledgling democracy movement that led to the eventual toppling of the Eastern European country’s communist government.

Today, a bronze statue of the two men stands in Gdańsk, Poland, to commemorate their efforts against totalitarianism.59310

Today, we will look at yesterday’s congressional resignations, President Donald Trump’s criticism of Pope Leo, and other news spanning each continent.

Let’s get to it.

United States

-Both Democratic Congressman Eric Swalwell and Republican Congressman Tony Gonzalez resigned from the House of Representatives yesterday amid a slew of ethical and legal controversies related to sexual misconduct.

The House Clerk read their respective resignation letters on the floor, which were met by bipartisan applause.

View it here: https://youtu.be/d7ZRrw1cb-U?si=N4Hy8Cd-KlhUyOA4

Their departures leave the lower chamber with 216 Republicans and 213 Democrats.

-California Governor Gavin Newsom issued a proclamation yesterday setting the date for a special election to fill the remainder of Swalwell’s term for August 18.

-House Democrats introduced a bill that would establish a commission to assess whether President Donald Trump should be removed from office.

-Wholesale inflation rose to 4% in March, a four-year high, according to new data released yesterday.

The uptick was fueled by a 15.7% rise in gasoline prices, accounting for half of the increase due to the war in the Middle East.

Meanwhile, the average U.S. gas price stood at $4.11 yesterday, according to AAA.

-Senate Majority Leader John Thune said yesterday that Republicans “would be prepared to confirm” a nominee to the Supreme Court in the event of a retirement ahead of the midterm elections.

For weeks, rumors in Washington have circulated around whether Justice Samuel Alito could retire in the next several weeks.

The 76-year-old conservative has been on the Court since 2006 and is the second-oldest on the high court, behind Clarence Thomas.

-The Senate Banking Committee is expected to hold a confirmation hearing next Tuesday on Trump’s nominee to lead the Federal Reserve.

-Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said yesterday that Trump is readying an executive order that would mandate U.S. banks to collect citizenship information.

-The Department of Justice filed a lawsuit against Connecticut and the city of New Haven over its sanctuary policies.

-The Republican National Committee (RNC) ended February with $109 million, seven times as much as its Democratic counterpart.

-Democratic Senate candidate Roy Cooper raised more than $13.8 million in the first quarter of the year.

-Trump said that he was “not a big fan” of Riley Gaines after the conservative activist criticized his posting of an AI-generated image depicting himself as Jesus.

-Streamer Hasan Piker called the Republican Party the “biggest domestic terrorist” group in the country on Pod Save America.

The comment comes as Democrats wrestle with whether to welcome or distance themselves from the content creator ahead of this year’s elections.

-Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear, a prospective 2028 Democratic presidential candidate, will be honored by the LGBTQ+ Victory Fund in Washington this weekend.

-Former President Joe Biden’s official portrait was unveiled yesterday at Syracuse University.

Biden returning to SU for portrait unveiling

View the full ceremony here.

-On this day in 1865, President Abraham Lincoln died one day after being shot by John Wilkes Booth.

In 1945, three days after his death, President Franklin Roosevelt was buried in the Rose Garden of his estate in Hyde Park, New York.

In 1947, Jackie Robinson became the first African American to play in Major League Baseball.

Todd Blanche says Americans should be ‘happy’ Trump is deeply involved in DOJ – NBC

Gallego: ‘I deeply regret’ Swalwell relationship, ‘I was wrong’ – The Hill

New Swalwell accuser speaks out after he resigns from Congress – NBC

House Republicans threaten Democratic fundraising firm ActBlue CEO with contempt of Congress in fraud probe – CBS

Trump urges GOP unity to push forward key spy powers vote – Politico

Massachusetts court hears arguments in lawsuit alleging Meta designed apps to be addictive to kids – AP

Suspect in attack at Sam Altman’s house aimed to kill OpenAI CEO, warned of humanity’s extinction from AI – CNBC

Africa

-Authorities in Nigeria apprehended a 33-member gang allegedly responsible for abducting 38 people at a church in the country’s central Kwara state in November.

The arrest is part of the central government’s crackdown on criminal groups.

-Libya’s eastern- and western-based administrations participated in military exercises hosted by the United States for the first time on Tuesday.

Since the ouster of Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi in 2011, the North African country has been rocked by civil conflict and divided government authority, with competing geographic factions vying for territorial control since 2014.

-On this day in 1958, the First Conference of Independent African States was held in Accra, Ghana, bringing together the leaders of the eight independent African nations at the time to coordinate their opposition to colonialism and foster continental unity.

At the gathering, the leaders designated April 15 as “African Freedom Day.”

In 1963, the Organization of African Unity moved the date to May 25.

The First Pan-African Conference - Black History Month 2026

In 2023, civil war broke out in Sudan after the country’s army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) descended into a battle for control of the capital, Khartoum.

Since then, the country has been gripped by widespread death and disease.

According to some estimates, there have been at least 150,000 deaths since the war broke out, with some 14 million more people having been displaced.

According to the United Nations, an estimated 19 million people, or about 41% of the population, are facing “high levels of acute food insecurity.”

NEW MAP | Overview of territorial control in Sudan conflict ...

Pope Leo XIV in Algeria walks in footsteps of his spiritual father, St. Augustine – AP

Botswana, Oman sign energy and mining deals to deepen economic ties – Africa News

Zambia forgoes $200 million in revenue with fuel tax suspension – Reuters

South Africa returns looted human remains and sacred carving to Zimbabwe – Africa News

African startup funding surges to $705M in first quarter – Semafor

Americas and the Caribbean

-Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney suspended the fuel tax amid heightened prices due to the situation in the Middle East.

The move is Carney’s first act since his Liberal Party secured a majority in parliament following two Toronto by-election victories on Monday.

With the victories, the Liberals now hold 174 seats in the 343-seat House of Commons.

Carney held a press conference in Ottawa yesterday following the victory.

View it here: https://www.youtube.com/live/7zPo9AGbIrE?si=8pWwRzeY22MuphU-

-Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva called for the extradition of former spy chief Alexandre Ramagem after he was apprehended in the United States.

Ramagem fled Brazil after he was convicted of his role in plotting a coup with now-former President Jair Bolsonaro following his 2022 election defeat.

Bolsonaro is currently serving a 27-year prison term.

-A younger generation of Castro family members are assuming leadership positions in Cuba, according to The Wall Street Journal.

-On this day in 1959, Fidel Castro visited the United States, just four months after successfully leading a revolution that toppled Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista.

Mexico’s Sheinbaum pushes back on Trump over migrant deaths and Cuba – AP

Peru faces a presidential runoff as election count drags on after ballot delays – AP

Brazil’s Lula, 80, livestreams workouts before election against rival half his age – The Guardian

Argentina Inflation Picked Up More Than Expected on Energy Shock – Bloomberg

President Herzog to award Argentina’s Javier Milei with Presidential Medal of Honor – The Jerusalem Post

Asia/Indo-Pacific

-North Korea carried out another test of its strategic cruise and anti-warship missiles on Sunday as relations between Pyongyang and South Korea continue to deteriorate.

-Five countries in the Indo-Pacific will participate in U.S.-led military exercises in the region starting next week.

The drills, which will run from April 20 to May 8, come as U.S. allies in the region worry that Washington’s strategic focus has shifted from Asia to the Middle East amid its conflict with Iran.

Australia, Canada, France, the Philippines, and New Zealand will contribute forces to the multilateral effort.

-Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. did a few rounds of jumping jacks in a bid to dispel rumors of his failing health.

-The United Nations said that around 250 people are missing after a boat carrying Rohingya refugees and Bangladeshi nationals capsized in the Andaman Sea due to heavy winds.

-On this day in 1998, Pol Pot died in his sleep.

During his four-year rule over Cambodia, his Khmer Rouge regime carried out a genocide against the Cambodian people, killing an estimated 1.5 to 3 million people, accounting for nearly one-quarter of the Southeast Asian nation’s population.

China’s Xi warns against ‘world’s retrogression to the law of the jungle’ in meeting with Spain’s PM – AP

Asia markets mostly higher amid hopes of a U.S.-Iran deal; China exports miss estimates – CNBC

Founder of China’s Evergrande pleads guilty to fraud – BBC

‘Extremely Dangerous’ Super Typhoon Barrels Toward Northern Mariana Islands – The New York Times

Prince Harry and Meghan arrive in Australia to a muted welcome – Reuters

Europe

-Days after President Trump criticized Pope Leo for his opposition to Washington’s war against Iran, the Vatican issued a statement warning the advanced democracies risked sliding into “majoritarian tyranny,” a seemingly veiled shot at Trump’s populist movement.

-In an interview with an Italian newspaper, Trump said that he was “shocked” by Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s opposition to his decision to launch a military operation against Iran, representing a break between the conservative allies.

In response to Meloni calling his attacks on the Pope “unacceptable,” Trump said, “It’s her who’s unacceptable.”

-Trump called on the United Kingdom to drill oil from the North Sea to offset surging global energy prices.

-The Irish government survived a no-confidence vote amid nationwide protests over the rising cost of fuel.

-U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth will once again skip a virtual meeting of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group today. Instead, the Pentagon’s policy chief, Elbridge Colby, will attend in his place.

Ukraine Defense Contact Group: Secretary of Defense Austin and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Milley Press Avail - U.S. Mission to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization — **A meeting of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group in June 2022.**

The grouping of over 50 defense chiefs seeks to coordinate military assistance to Ukraine as it wards off invading Russian forces.

The forum was established in April 2022 just after Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Since assuming office, the Trump administration has delegated its leadership role in the body.

-French President Emmanuel Macron said he would seek a coordinated approach to ban minors from using social media across the 27-member European Union.

-On this day in 1452, Leonardo da Vinci was born in Italy.

In 1912, the RMS Titanic sank in the North Atlantic.

Ukraine agrees defense deal with Germany to help in fight against Russia – AP

Zelenskyy pitches new joint security system to European allies – Euronews

Spain approves plan to give around 500,000 undocumented migrants legal status – BBC

Afghan migrants in Poland fear forced deportations as asylum applications remain suspended – AP

UK finds attack on Taylor Swift-themed class ‘preventable’ – DW

Middle East

-U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio hosted officials from Israel and Lebanon in Washington yesterday for ceasefire negotiations.

View their opening statements here: https://youtu.be/EbyHClXJ5jw?si=WVgGfovpzYAF7XdV

Shortly after the U.S. and Israel launched a joint military operation against Iran on February 28, the Israeli military began striking Hezbollah targets in southern Lebanon, ending a teetering ceasefire agreement.

According to estimates, the fighting has killed around 2,000 people and displaced over one million people in Lebanon.

Meanwhile, President Trump said yesterday that talks with Iran could resume as early as this week.

Last weekend, Vice President JD Vance led a U.S. delegation for talks with Iranian officials in Pakistan. After those talks broke down, Trump said that he would impose a blockade on the Strait of Hormuz in a bid to get Iran to agree to a long-term agreement to settle the war and to place limits on its nuclear program.

Vance appeared on Fox News on Monday to discuss the talks.

View it here: https://youtu.be/3uY2tEY0qms?si=0jJXFgjDKPRUN-g7

It is believed that Iran has planted mines in the strategic waterway, and Tehran has threatened to attack ports belonging to Arab Gulf states if its ports are attacked.

Prior to the recent war in the region, the Strait served as a conduit for 20% of the world’s daily oil consumption.

-Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s public approval rating has continued to slide following the country’s war with Iran.

The 76-year-old, who has dominated politics in Israel for the better part of the past two decades, is expected to seek another term in office in parliamentary elections due by late October.

Last week, a long-running public corruption trial against Netanyahu restarted after pausing due to the war.

-On this day in 1993, President Bill Clinton hosted Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in the Oval Office to discuss the Middle East peace process.

Later that year, Clinton would host Rabin, along with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, at the White House for the signing of the Oslo Accords, establishing a framework for the eventual settlement of the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians.

In 1995, Rabin was assassinated as he departed a peace rally in Tel Aviv by an Israeli radical angry over Rabin’s peace overtures to the Palestinians.

Speaking at Rabin’s funeral service in Jerusalem, Clinton said, “Your Prime Minister was a martyr for peace, but he was a victim of hate. Surely we must learn from his martyrdom that if people cannot let go of the hatred of their enemies, they risk sowing the seeds of hatred among themselves.”

Middle East War Will Slow Global Economic Growth, I.M.F. Warns – The New York Times

Saudi Arabia Is Pressing U.S. to Drop Its Naval Blockade – The Wall Street Journal

Zelenskyy says Ukrainian forces shot down Shahed drones in Middle Eastern countries during Iran war – AP

Israeli police stop about 70 Palestinians hiding in a garbage truck trying to enter Israel – Washington Post

Turkey Calls for Middle East Security Pact in Wake of Iran War – Bloomberg

That’s all for today. See you tomorrow.

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🐏🐑🐏<- for counting. That little sleep can cause big problems, although the amount of sleep needed varies a lot. Take…

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This seditious president is using the Dept. of Justice to rewrite history and keep his Sturmabteilung available

Dr. Fucknut will see you now

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INSIDE: Sonia Sotomayor … John Eastman … Bitcoin Jesus

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Congressional Resignations, the Pope, and Negotiations

Other Links:

Todd Blanche says Americans should be ‘happy’ Trump is deeply involved in DOJ – NBC

Gallego: ‘I deeply regret’ Swalwell relationship, ‘I was wrong’ – The Hill

New Swalwell accuser speaks out after he resigns from Congress – NBC

House Republicans threaten Democratic fundraising firm ActBlue CEO with contempt of Congress in fraud probe – CBS

Trump urges GOP unity to push forward key spy powers vote – Politico

Massachusetts court hears arguments in lawsuit alleging Meta designed apps to be addictive to kids – AP

Suspect in attack at Sam Altman’s house aimed to kill OpenAI CEO, warned of humanity’s extinction from AI – CNBC

Other Links:

Pope Leo XIV in Algeria walks in footsteps of his spiritual father, St. Augustine – AP

Botswana, Oman sign energy and mining deals to deepen economic ties – Africa News

Zambia forgoes $200 million in revenue with fuel tax suspension – Reuters

South Africa returns looted human remains and sacred carving to Zimbabwe – Africa News

African startup funding surges to $705M in first quarter – Semafor

Other Links:

Mexico’s Sheinbaum pushes back on Trump over migrant deaths and Cuba – AP

Peru faces a presidential runoff as election count drags on after ballot delays – AP

Brazil’s Lula, 80, livestreams workouts before election against rival half his age – The Guardian

Argentina Inflation Picked Up More Than Expected on Energy Shock – Bloomberg

President Herzog to award Argentina’s Javier Milei with Presidential Medal of Honor – The Jerusalem Post

Other Links:

China’s Xi warns against ‘world’s retrogression to the law of the jungle’ in meeting with Spain’s PM – AP

Asia markets mostly higher amid hopes of a U.S.-Iran deal; China exports miss estimates – CNBC

Founder of China’s Evergrande pleads guilty to fraud – BBC

‘Extremely Dangerous’ Super Typhoon Barrels Toward Northern Mariana Islands – The New York Times

Prince Harry and Meghan arrive in Australia to a muted welcome – Reuters

Other Links:

Ukraine agrees defense deal with Germany to help in fight against Russia – AP

Zelenskyy pitches new joint security system to European allies – Euronews

Spain approves plan to give around 500,000 undocumented migrants legal status – BBC

Afghan migrants in Poland fear forced deportations as asylum applications remain suspended – AP

UK finds attack on Taylor Swift-themed class ‘preventable’ – DW

Other Links:

Middle East War Will Slow Global Economic Growth, I.M.F. Warns – The New York Times

Saudi Arabia Is Pressing U.S. to Drop Its Naval Blockade – The Wall Street Journal

Zelenskyy says Ukrainian forces shot down Shahed drones in Middle Eastern countries during Iran war – AP

Israeli police stop about 70 Palestinians hiding in a garbage truck trying to enter Israel – Washington Post

Turkey Calls for Middle East Security Pact in Wake of Iran War – Bloomberg

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