One of New York state’s grievance committees, disciplinary panels that determines penalties for violations of legal ethics, notified nonprofit groups last week of its finding against Sarcone, Donald Trump’s on-again, off-again U.S. attorney in Albany.

The committee is keeping mum on the exact nature of its findings, and in a letter to a press freedom group last week, it even tried to claim that the foundation could not disclose the very fact that it found “there was sufficient basis for a finding of professional misconduct.”

The letter from the Attorney Grievance Committee for the Appellate Division, Third Department, was dated April 1 and sent via email on May 8. The committee did not immediately respond to a request for comment on when the finding was reached.

The committee’s actions fit in a larger pattern of New York shrouding prosecutorial misconduct investigations in secret. One of the groups that filed a complaint, the Freedom of the Press Foundation, said it was time for the state’s legal ethics cops to stop insisting on silence.

“Sarcone is a high-ranking prosecutor who is at the center of national news as we speak and who the New York Grievance Committee found had engaged in professional misconduct after he retaliated against a news outlet,” said Seth Stern, chief of advocacy at the foundation. “No complainant, but especially a press freedom organization, should be told to keep quiet about something so plainly newsworthy and important to New Yorkers and Americans.”

Sarcone and the Justice Department did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

In an emailed statement, the grievance committee said it was following state laws. Under that law, chief committee attorney Monica Duffy said, “until such time as charges of professional misconduct are sustained against an attorney in a public order of the New York State Supreme Court, Appellate Division, all papers, documents and records concerning this Committee’s investigation and disposition of any grievance complaint concerning the conduct of that attorney are sealed and deemed private and confidential.”

Sarcone had no prosecutorial experience when the Trump administration tapped him to lead the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of New York last year. Since then, he has been involved in a long-running saga over whether he can even run the office.

Sarcone has never been confirmed by the U.S. Senate. After his temporary appointment to the post expired, judges appointed a veteran prosecutor to fill the post. That replacement was fired within hours. Sarcone has continued to oversee the office as state Attorney General Letitia James and Justice Department lawyers argue in court over whether he lawfully holds the office.

The administration has a major incentive to keep the Trump loyalist in charge: The Albany prosecutor’s office has jurisdiction over New York state politicians who have drawn the president’s ire, including James.

In addition to the question of whether he can hold the office, Sarcone has faced criticism for booting the Albany newspaper off his office’s press list after it reported that he had attempted to claim a boarded-up apartment building in the district as his home to satisfy residency requirements.

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That action was a violation of the First Amendment, the Freedom of the Press Foundation argued in the August 11 complaint it filed with the grievance committee, along with Reinvent Albany and the Demand Progress Education Fund. The complaint alleged that Sarcone may have violated at least four of the state’s rules of professional conduct.

In the response to the complaint sent last week, the committee said that “after deliberation, the Committee determined there was a sufficient basis for a finding of professional misconduct and took appropriate action.”

The case was now closed, the committee said. In the letter dated April 1, the committee said that it had reached its conclusion at a “recent” meeting.

What “appropriate action” the committee took is unclear. There are no records of public discipline in Sarcone’s entry on the state attorney directory. The committee has a range of actions it can take short of public discipline, including private letters of reprimand.

Another group that filed a similar complaint against Sarcone, Campaign for Accountability, received a near-identical letter from the grievance committee. In a statement, that group noted that Sarcone remains in charge of the U.S. attorney’s office with a title of first assistant.

“While we’re pleased the New York Attorney Grievance Committee recognized that Mr. Sarcone, who remains First Assistant in the U.S. Attorney’s Office, engaged in professional misconduct, a secret slap on the wrist is insufficient. Mr. Sarcone’s pattern of conduct reflects on his credibility as an officer of the court, so any court in which he appears — along with the public — deserves to know what he was sanctioned for and why,” said Campaign for Accountability’s executive director, Michelle Kuppersmith.

The letters to both complainants including a heading indicating that they were “confidential.” Stern said that attempting to force people who filed complaints to remain silent about the letters they receive in response would be unconstitutional.

One state grievance committee previously tried to clamp down on law professors who shared details about the complaints they had filed against local prosecutors accused of failing to turn over exculpatory evidence or lying in court. The professors sued and won a federal district court ruling in their favor.

The post A Trump U.S. Attorney’s Professional Misconduct Must Be Kept “Private and Confidential” appeared first on The Intercept.

The battle playing out in the state attorney general’s race is one example of many of the crypto sector trying to elect industry-friendly officials. In Nevada, it’s also a story of an eccentric multimillionaire whose money threatens the political ascent of a woman who helped deny his dream.

The spending by crypto entrepreneur Jeffrey Berns is “meaningful money, especially at this early stage in the primary,” said Kenneth Miller, an assistant professor of political science at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. “And we don’t know if this only represents an initial investment and will be followed up by more.”

Spending Big

Berns has donated at least $2.5 million since 2023 to a political action committee controlled by Nevada State Treasurer Zach Conine, who is running for attorney general against state Senate Majority Leader Nicole Cannizzaro.

That is more than twice the $1.2 million that Conine received from individual donors to his personal campaign account over the same period.

After receiving money from Berns, Conine’s PAC in turn donated more than $1.8 million to a newly created campaign outfit called Safe and Strong Nevada PAC, which rolled out a website and video advertisement attacking Cannizzaro.

Both Cannizzaro and Conine are Democrats on the June 9 primary ballot. They have settled on similar campaign themes as fighters who will take on President Donald Trump — a reliable message in an election year with an energized Democratic base.

Neither candidate has made cryptocurrencies a focus of their campaigns. Yet Berns’s donations make him by far the largest donor to Conine’s campaign organizations. Miller, the political science professor, said the scale of Berns’s donations reflected a larger trend.

“All semblance of constraints on political donations have eroded away in the past couple decades, and the amount of money it takes to be impactful in a Nevada primary election is well within reach for a lot of wealthy individuals,” he said. “Campaigns around the country often have one or two super PACs involved that are funded by one or just a handful of people. It is not typical for a campaign to be almost entirely propped up by one wealthy megadonor, but it does happen sometimes.”

A Dream Denied

While Berns did not respond to a request for comment on why he is intervening in the race, he has a tangled history with Cannizzaro. Five years ago, she helped kill his vision of building what his company called a “smart city” near Reno.

Berns was formerly a California plaintiff’s lawyer who won huge settlements taking on the banking industry. He was also an early investor in the Ether token, a leading competitor to bitcoin.

His multiplying fortune allowed him buy waterfront properties in ritzy destinations including Lake Tahoe, where he bought and sold a $47.5 million mansion, and Turks and Caicos, where he recently listed for sale at $35 million a beachfront property that was once featured on the Netflix reality dating show “Too Hot to Handle.”

He also founded a company called Blockchains, which in 2018 purchased 67,000 acres of land in Storey County in northern Nevada near the Tesla “Gigafactory” for the sum of $170 million.

Storey County has flexible development rules, but not flexible enough for Berns. Instead, he and his company wanted to build an entire city running on blockchain that operated independently from the county.

“I want to create a place where we can rethink things. Where we can democratize democracy,” Berns told the BBC.

Berns won the support of a critical backer: then-Nevada Gov. Steve Sisolak, a Democrat who endorsed the idea in his 2021 State of the State address.

Opponents noted that Berns had donated tens of thousands of dollars to Sisolak and smelled an end-run around regular democratic governance. They also raised concerns about more mundane issues such as lost tax revenue and water rights.

The idea would have needed approval from the Nevada Legislature. Berns’s push for legislative approval was damaged by the revelation that he was being sued by his children’s nanny for allegedly trying to force her into a sexual tryst with him and his wife. Berns said the plaintiff was a disgruntled former employee, and he settled the case the next year without admitting wrongdoing, according to the Reno Gazette-Journal.

Despite Sisolak’s support, the smart city idea was ultimately doomed to die the bureaucratic death of a study committee. One of the key players who helped kill the proposal was Cannizzaro, the state’s first female Senate majority leader.

A lobbyist involved in the discussions confirmed that Cannizzaro was instrumental in shelving the idea. In a statement, her campaign also said that she opposed the idea.

“Like nearly all of her legislative colleagues in both parties, Majority Leader Cannizzaro was extremely skeptical of the idea of letting private corporations run their own governments and siphon off millions of taxpayers’ dollars,” said Peter Koltak, a campaign spokesperson. “Ultimately, she informed the Governor’s staff and the bill’s supporters that there wouldn’t be legislative support for the concept.”

Berns was so disappointed by the process that his company pulled out of the study process, prompting its staff to declare that there was no point in exploring the idea further.

Berns Shifts Gears

While Berns vastly expanded his wealth by investing in cryptocurrency, he is not a household name in the industry. Many of the wealthiest crypto companies and venture capital firms have backed a national super PAC called Fairshake that has hundreds of millions to spend on federal elections. Berns has not donated to that effort, federal campaign finance records show.

Instead, he has focused his giving on Nevada, supporting politicians on both sides of the aisle. Berns gave $5,000 to Republican Gov. Joseph Lombardo in 2024 and $250,000 to the Democratic Party of Washoe County in 2022, campaign finance records show. He also gave $5,000 to Cannizzaro in 2020 before the smart city proposal died in the legislature.

Despite the pushback the smart city proposal drew, it has not made him a particularly controversial donor.

“In Las Vegas, not a month goes by without an artist’s rendering of a proposed resort, arena, or other project popping up,” said Miller. “Some of them happen, and many of them don’t. I don’t expect that the smart city proposal left much of an impression on many Nevada voters.”

While neither Conine nor Berns responded to questions about the latter’s donations, Conine has signaled that he is friendly to crypto.

During the smart city debate, Conine promoted the idea of allowing government entities to accept payments in stablecoin. In 2024, he attended an event sponsored by a crypto industry trade group.

Cannizzaro, for her part, does not appear to have staked out any major public positions on the crypto industry. Since the start of 2024, she has raised $2.2 million between her personal campaign account and a PAC she controls. Her campaign said she will not be deterred by Berns’s spending.

“Leader Cannizzaro has always defended Nevada from big corporations and wealthy special interests, and an unaccountable tech billionaire dumping his millions into this race is certainly not going to stop her,” said Koltak, the spokesperson.

The post She Opposed His Plan for a Blockchain City. Now He’s Bankrolling Her Primary Opponent. appeared first on The Intercept.

Wyden said the public needs to know about a secret court opinion that found fault with the Trump administration’s use of data collected by the National Security Agency, prompting Senate Intelligence Committee Chair Tom Cotton, R-Ark., to warn of “consequences” for “distorting highly classified material.”

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The unusually pointed back-and-forth came amid a fight over the reauthorization of a controversial domestic spying program. The barbs exchanged by the senators highlighted how much Wyden has angered colleagues aligned with the NSA who want the spy program to be renewed without changes.

By the end of the day, Congress voted to give the program a 45-day extension to allow further negotiations over its fate.

Wyden had argued for a shorter extension, but he was able to secure a concession. Cotton and the top Democrat on the Intelligence Committee, Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia, agreed to pen a letter to the executive branch asking for the court opinion to be declassified within 15 days.

Wyden says that opinion details serious violations of the program’s guidelines.

“That ruling found serious violations of Americans’ constitutional rights and how the Trump administration has used Section 702,” Wyden said. “Congress should not vote — should not vote — to renew Section 702 when Americans are left in the dark about these troubling abuses,” Wyden said.

Wyden has a long history of trying to pry loose evidence of civil liberties violations by intelligence agencies. Most famously, in 2013, he attempted to force then-Director of National Intelligence James Clapper to acknowledge the existence of a phone record dragnet months before NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden’s disclosures made it public.

His sometimes-cryptic statements warning about secret spy programs have been dubbed “the Wyden siren.”

Most recently he has zeroed in on the court opinion. He irritated supporters of the NSA program on Thursday by initially refusing to give his consent for a 45-day extension of the program, until he secured the letter from Intelligence Committee leaders.

While speaking on the floor about why he opposed that extension, he accused Cotton of ducking the court opinion, prompting a pointed response.

“I am ducking nothing. I am pointing out the senator from Oregon’s long-standing practice of distorting highly classified material in public,” Cotton said. “One of these days there are going to be some consequences, and it may be while I’m the chairman of this committee.”

Cotton’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Members of Congress are protected from prosecution for comments they make on the floor under the speech or debate clause of the Constitution.

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Little has been revealed about the court opinion besides a New York Times report earlier this month that it centered on searches of information about Americans in a vast database of communications that gets around laws on domestic spying because the data is collected abroad.

Wyden noted that current law already requires the court opinion to be declassified and released to the public at some point. He wants that process sped up so that it can take place before Congress votes on a long-term extension of the surveillance program.

“Congress must use a short-term extension to openly debate the critical issues in front of the American people. I am disappointed that, instead, it sure feels like the other side of the aisle is covering the abuses up,” he said.

Although the debate that was resolved later in the day hinged on a seemingly mundane issue — whether Congress should have three weeks or 45 days for further negotiations — it exposed hard feelings between the committee colleagues.

Wyden said a three-week extension was “more than reasonable,” given that Congress has had months to work on the issue.

Cotton said a longer extension was necessary because Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., the ranking member of the committee, recently suffered a family tragedy. Warner’s 36-year-old daughter died earlier this month, and he returned to the Senate this week after taking time off. As the highest-ranking Democrat on the Intelligence Committee, Warner will play a key role in the negotiations in extending the law.

“I would suggest that comity also counsels that we give a little bit longer than two weeks to a grieving colleague who just had a terrible family tragedy,” Cotton said.

Warner’s office did not immediately return a request for comment.

Update: April 30, 2026, 5:29 p.m. ET
This story has been updated to include Congress’s extension of FISA after publication.

The post Ron Wyden Is Pissing Off the NSA’s Biggest Backers. Tom Cotton Warns There Will Be “Consequences.” appeared first on The Intercept.

Twenty Republicans who opposed a procedural vote earlier this month flipped their position on Wednesday to allow a vote on a three-year extension of the law that allows government agents to search Americans’ communications without a warrant.

Not all the Republicans voted for the final version of the bill, which passed 235–191, but they were crucial in giving Johnson a hand on an initial procedural vote.

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The final bill drew the support of dozens of Democrats, who backed it despite the polarizing central bank digital currency ban. One of the most prominent backers was Rep. Jim Himes, D-Conn., the ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, who gave a floor speech in support.

Now that it includes a digital currency ban, however, the House version of the law faces dim prospects in the Senate. The upshot of Johnson’s maneuvering may be that the Senate has the final say on surveillance reforms.

Longtime privacy champion Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., told The Intercept that the versions of reauthorization on the table — one a three-year “clean” extension offered by Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., and the other the House version with the digital currency ban — were both “deeply flawed and unacceptable.”

Instead, he is pitching colleagues on requiring a warrant before government agents can search through foreign surveillance databases for the communications of Americans.

“We are spending some time now talking to those who want a bill that shows you can have both security and liberty,” Wyden said, “and they are not mutually exclusive.”

Extending Deadline

The high-stakes deliberations are happening against the backdrop of a looming deadline to renew Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which underpins much of the National Security Agency’s global surveillance apparatus.

The law authorizes much of the most valuable surveillance populating intelligence agency reports. It has also been abused hundreds of thousands of times by officials at the FBI to scour through Americans’ communications.

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Johnson tried and failed to secure an extension of the law with minor tweaks earlier this month. Conservatives joined Democrats in opposing that push, and Congress ultimately wound up passing a short-term extension of the law that expires Friday.

The deadline is manufactured, many reformers say. A secretive intelligence court has already granted the government yearlong orders allowing it to continue scooping up information from private providers.

The Senate was set to hold its own vote on the surveillance bill Tuesday but wound up postponing it. In a floor speech, Wyden chalked the delay up to skepticism from senators about the bill in its current form. He called for discussions about reforms.

The nature of those negotiations remained up in the air Wednesday. Some senators said it was possible that Congress would pass another short-term extension of the law.

On Wednesday afternoon, Sen. Angus King, I-Maine, who caucuses with the Democrats, told The Intercept, “The last thing I heard is that there was going to be another extension to give us more time to figure it out and get the House to decide what they want to do.”

“Dead On Arrival” in Senate

Wyden and other reformers have long pushed for a warrant requirement before government agents can search NSA databases for information on Americans. They say the need for reform is only more urgent now that artificial intelligence has made combing through those databases easier than ever.

They are pushing back against long-held skepticism from members of Congress who contend that requiring agents to get a court order would be too unwieldy in practice.

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In an email to colleagues, for example, Himes, of the House Intelligence Committee, said that he would vote to reauthorize FISA “because it is essential to keeping our country and our constituents safe from terrorists, cartels, spies, state-sponsored hackers, and other national security threats.”

Himes said on the House floor later that the process leading up to the vote on Wednesday was flawed.

“We are where we are, and it is a binary choice. And allowing this authority to expire, which I think we are close to, is not an option,” he said.

Wyden expressed optimism, citing the bipartisan coalition that has so far stymied President Donald Trump’s demand for a clean extension.

“The reality is, we are further along in real reform than we have been since I have been in public service,” he said.

Whatever version of the law the Senate settles on, it likely will not involve a central bank digital currency ban. Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., has already described that idea as “dead on arrival.”

“That’s messing around with a very important national security issue,” King said of the ban.

Johnson Saves Face

Still, the ban gave Johnson a crucial boost in securing House passage of his own version of the FISA law. The ban on government-issued digital currency took aim at a boogeyman of the far right that is nowhere close to becoming reality.

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For years, conservatives have fretted over the idea that the U.S. Federal Reserve could launch a digital currency that could be traded electronically. Currently, there is no way for ordinary Americans to exchange money through electronic means without the help of a private intermediary, such as PayPal or Visa. A central bank digital currency would give people an option to pass money without the for-profit companies involved.

The Federal Reserve never came close to implementing a digital currency under President Joe Biden, however, and one of Trump’s first acts upon taking office was to issue an executive order aimed at banning research into them.

While conservatives have raised concerns that a central bank digital currency could allow the government to surveil Americans’ every transaction, the issue is distinct from the foreign surveillance law that lays out the NSA’s powers.

Before the bill reached the floor, Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Mass., the top Democrat on the House Rules Committee, unsuccessfully attempted to strip out the central bank digital currency ban during a House Rules Committee hearing on Tuesday.

“Republicans are obsessed with random, fringe issues,” McGovern said, “instead of doing literally anything to bring down the cost of living.”

The post Mike Johnson Used Crypto Catnip to Get Freedom Caucus Support for Domestic Spy Law appeared first on The Intercept.

Johnson was stymied this month when he attempted to push through a reauthorization of Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. The roadblock came thanks to opposition from most Democrats, plus 20 hard-right members of the GOP caucus.

Still, four Democrats crossed party lines to vote for a procedural motion to advance the bill, despite instructions from House Democratic leaders to the contrary. Whether those four support Johnson during a vote this week could prove crucial.

The four Democrats are Reps. Josh Gottheimer and Tom Suozzi of New Jersey, Marie Gluesenkamp Perez of Washington, and Jared Golden of Maine, who is not seeking reelection this year. None responded to requests for comment.

One advocate said the outcome of the vote could hinge on their decision.

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“It all comes down to those four and where they are going to land,” said Hajar Hammado, a senior policy adviser at the left-leaning advocacy group Demand Progress, “and if they are going to continue to try to hand Trump and Stephen Miller warrantless surveillance authorities without any sort of checks or reforms that make sure they’re not violating civil liberties.”

Given the skepticism of hard-right Republican lawmakers, Johnson needs every vote he can muster. On Thursday, he put forward a new proposal to extend the law for three years, with additional layers of oversight and auditing.

No Warrant Requirement

The latest proposal does not address reformers’ highest priority: a warrant requirement that would force FBI agents and National Security Agency analysts to get a court order before they search for information on Americans from ostensibly “foreign” communications — material collected abroad as the NSA scoops up emails, text messages, and the like.

Kia Hamadanchy, a senior policy counsel at the American Civil Liberties Union, said Johnson’s latest proposal does little to change existing law. Under Johnson’s proposal, searches would be reviewed after the fact by a privacy officer at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and potentially later by an inspector general.

“This just follows the old pattern of adding layer after layer of oversight,” he said. “The idea that the inspector general of the intelligence community is going to stand up to Trump on any sort of abuses is just not going to happen.”

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York threw cold water on the idea of Democratic leadership formally supporting Johnson during a press conference Thursday before the latest draft was released. He said it would be “extremely difficult” for Democrats to find common ground with Republicans on the issue so long as Kash Patel — who has been embroiled in controversy over allegations about his drinking habits — remains director of the FBI.

Johnson may not need to make major concessions to bring a handful of Democrats over to his side.

A large group of centrists has signaled that they would support a “clean” extension of FISA — without major reforms — if it comes to the House floor. But they have so far followed the advice of Jeffries to oppose a procedural vote to bring the bill to the floor.

On April 17, the smaller group of four Democrats took the additional step of crossing party lines to support Johnson on the procedural vote, which ultimately failed, thanks only to hard-right members of the GOP.

Freedom Caucus Flip?

After that defeat, Johnson secured a short, 10-day extension of the spying law to come up with new legislation. Members of the ultra-conservative House Freedom Caucus hope to use the next vote series to secure their long-standing, and unrelated, goal of banning a central bank digital currency.

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Advocates are warily watching that debate. They worry that the digital currency ban could win over enough right-wing Republicans to hand Johnson a victory — a strategy that only works if the four Democrats continue to play along.

Progressive groups outside Congress are already targeting the four with an aggressive pressure campaign. One group, Fight for the Future, has dubbed them “the Fascist Four.”

Another supporter of existing law, House Intelligence Committee Ranking Member Jim Himes, D-Conn., told Politico on Thursday that he has gotten an earful from constituents who oppose extending it without a warrant requirement.

“I’ve been taking a ton of risk, I’ve been doing a ton of explanations,” Himes said.

Himes said he has been talking to individual Republicans to craft a compromise, but Johnson’s leadership team has not engaged with him.

The post Meet the Four Democrats Who’ll Decide If Trump Gets His Domestic Spying Law appeared first on The Intercept.

Crypto donors are trying to make sure that never happens.

The woman mounting a long-shot challenge to Waters in California’s 43rd Congressional District has drawn more than two-thirds of her donations from the cryptocurrency industry.

Nonprofit executive Myla Rahman, 53, who is running as a younger alternative to the 87-year-old Waters, has taken 69 percent of her campaign contributions from crypto figures.

Rahman’s biggest single donor is Ripple Labs CEO Brad Garlinghouse, a leading voice pushing for looser regulations on crypto who has been active in the debate over pending crypto legislation in Congress.

Garlinghouse’s $6,600 donation last month helped bring Rahman’s total haul to $14,540 since announcing her long-shot campaign in February. The total haul is a pittance compared to what it would take to mount a viable campaign against Waters, a legendary figure who is serving her 18th term in the House. California’s primary election takes place on June 2. (Ripple Labs declined to comment.)

Still, any opposition funding could serve as a nuisance to Waters, a relative lightweight when it comes to fundraising compared to other top names in Congress. (Neither Waters’s nor Rahman’s campaigns responded to requests for comment.)

Rahman’s second biggest benefactor was Colin McLaren, the head of government relations at the crypto advocacy nonprofit Solana Policy Institute. He chipped in $3,500.

The crypto industry has ample reason to target Waters. While other Democrats have proven more accommodating, Waters has supported tighter oversight from her powerful position in the House Financial Services Committee, which has jurisdiction over the crypto industry.

With Waters potentially assuming the helm of the committee next year, crypto is racing to win passage of a favorable regulatory framework in the form of a bill called the Clarity Act. Despite widespread support among the Republicans, the industry has faced intense pushback from banks and credit unions who worry that passage of the law could lead to a stampede of deposits out of their institutions and into crypto exchanges.

Ripple, which has an estimated valuation of $50 billion, fought a yearslong legal battle with the Securities and Exchange Commission that centered on the issues under debate in Congress right now.

Waters’s most recent campaign filing on April 15 showed that she had a little over $300,000 on hand. Many recent contributions came from the banks and credit unions squaring off against crypto on Capitol Hill.

Despite her stance on crypto regulation, Waters also received a campaign donation from Ripple Labs co-founder and Democratic megadonor Chris Larsen. He gave $3,300 to Waters on March 6, only a few days after Garlinghouse made his donation to Rahman.

Larsen gave one of the crypto industry’s highest-profile contributions to Kamala Harris’s 2024 presidential campaign.

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Rahman’s campaign does not mark crypto’s first quixotic campaign against a prominent congressional industry critic. The crypto industry also funded a Republican challenger in 2024 in an attempt to unseat Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren in deep-blue Massachusetts and a since-suspended primary challenge to Democratic California Rep. Brad Sherman.

In Sherman’s race, the crypto industry made clear its intention to leverage a message of generational change against critics of blockchain currencies.

The post Crypto Critic Maxine Waters’s New Primary Foe Got Over Two-Thirds of Money From Crypto appeared first on The Intercept.

The Democratic votes on the pair of resolutions from Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., were not enough to overcome universal opposition from Republicans.

Still, the votes represented a watershed moment in the party’s relationship with Israel and the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Israel had continued to enjoy strong support from Democratic leaders, despite outrage from the base over the war on Gaza. Sanders said the votes signaled that party leaders are finally taking note.

“This is where the American people are. The polls are very clear: The overwhelming majority of American people do not want to continue to give weapons to Netanyahu and his horrific wars in the Mideast,” he said. “I think the Democrats have caught on to that. It took a little while, but they caught on to that. But Republicans, I think, are standing in opposition to millions of their own supporters.”

Some of the most notable names to vote in favor of blocking military transfers to Israel on Wednesday are potential 2028 presidential contenders.

New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker and Arizona Sens. Mark Kelly and Ruben Gallego were among the Democrats to vote for both the resolutions.

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One resolution targeted the sale of the bulldozers that have been used to demolish neighborhoods in Gaza. Critics say the heavy equipment could accelerate the destruction of Palestinian property in the West Bank, an Israeli-occupied territory that has come under greater threat of annexation under the country’s far-right government.

The bulldozer resolution drew support from 40 members of the Democratic caucus.

Democratic support for the measures came as Americans are increasingly expressing dissatisfaction with Israel in public opinion polls. Hassan El-Tayyab, a policy advocate at the Friends Committee on National Legislation who supported the resolutions, said the votes were a sign that Democrats are starting to take their voters seriously.

“What is happening on the Hill is a lagging indicator of these trends we have seen among Americans,” he said. “These folks are starting to see the writing on the wall, reading these tea leaves, that continually supporting this blank check to Israel is going to cost them electorally.”

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., was among those who voted against it, as did Sens. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn.; Chris Coons, D-Del.; Catherine Cortez Masto, D-Nev.; John Fetterman, D-Pa.; Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y.; and Jacky Rosen, D-Nev.

The other resolution, which failed 36–63, was aimed at blocking the transfer of 1,000-pound bombs, of the type that have been linked to civilian casualties in attacks by Israel on Gaza and Lebanon.

That resolution drew support from fewer Democrats. Sens. Gary Peters of Michigan, Jack Reed of Rhode Island, Mark Warner of Virginia, and Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island joined the others in voting against it.

El-Tayyab said the bulldozer vote seemed to be an easier commitment for some Democrats.

“It was directly tied to annexation efforts by Israel in the West Bank that threatened the two-state solution,” he said.

On the other hand, the massive bombs were viewed by some senators as defensive weapons. “We heard some arguments on the Hill that certain members considered the 1,000-pound bombs defensive in nature, as they were a deterrent that helped prevent attacks,” said El-Tayyab.

The argument, he said, held no water.

Republican Attacks

The breadth of support among Democratic members for the resolutions surprised even of advocates who have sought to cut off the flow of U.S. arms sales to Israel.

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Sanders has fought a long and, at times, lonely fight across administrations to block arms sales to Israel. The first resolution he sponsored, while Democrat Joe Biden was president, drew only minority support within the Democratic caucus.

As the war on Gaza dragged on, however, Democrats’ opinions on Israel soured. The prior high-water mark for one of Sanders’s resolutions was in July 2025, when 27 of the 47-member Senate Democratic caucus, which includes two independents, voted to block the sale of assault rifles to the Israeli police.

If there was any doubt that 2028 contenders are listening, Kelly, the Arizona senator, dispelled it by introducing Sanders’s resolutions on the Senate floor. A longtime supporter of Israel whose political star has risen in the face of personal attacks from President Donald Trump, Kelly said he would always support the country’s right to exist but could not support the arms transfers.

“Our support for our allies must always be about what makes us stronger and safer,” he said. “And we can look at what is happening in the region right now and understand that this is not business as usual. And it is not making us safer. The United States and Israel are fighting a war against Iran without a clear strategy or goal.”

Sen. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., in a joint statement with fellow Democratic California Sen. Alex Padilla, tied the arms sales to the ongoing war with Iran.

“We oppose actions that further deepen the United States in an unauthorized conflict in Iran — one with no clear strategy, no legal authority, and no defined end,” he said.

Senate Republicans blasted the resolutions, accusing Democrats of trying to undermine the war effort. Senate Foreign Relations Chair Jim Risch, R-Idaho, said the resolutions amounted to a helping hand to Iran from Democrats.

“I come to the floor and tell Iran: No one is coming to help you. Not China, not Russia, not North Korea, not Venezuela, not Cuba. Except for the 47 people that sit over here,” Risch said, referring to the Democratic caucus. “They are trying to help you, Iran. We are not going to let that happen. We are not going to abandon our ally, Israel. We are not going to abandon this fight that is taking place. We are going to win this fight, and we have already won it, to a very large extent.”

The arms debate came hours after Senate Democrats voted nearly unanimously, except for Fetterman, in favor of a war powers resolution meant to block Trump’s ongoing war against Iran. Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., was the sole Republican to vote in favor of the resolution.

The final 47–52 tally disappointed advocates who had hoped to draw more GOP support. Still, they remain hopeful that more Republicans will come onboard when Democrats force a vote on other pending Iran war resolutions.

The post The Dam Breaks: Democratic Senators Overwhelmingly Reject Arms Sales to Israel appeared first on The Intercept.

While uniting against President Donald Trump on many fronts, Democrats are split on what to do over the domestic spying power — and the party’s leadership isn’t giving much guidance, according to a congressional notice obtained by The Intercept.

In the notice laying out leadership’s advice on bills up for a vote this week, Democratic Whip Katherine Clark simply explained that the relevant top committee leaders were split. House Intelligence Committee Ranking Member Jim Himes supports a clean reauthorization of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, while Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Jamie Raskin wants further reforms.

Clark gave straight up-or-down recommendations on many other pieces of legislation, but not the spying law.

With leadership silent, progressive activists are trying to step into the void to pressure members. They say Trump’s disregard for the rule of law in his second term means that representatives should only vote for the law with reforms. Government officials have engaged a pattern of abuses at the Justice Department.

Centrists on two key committees, on the other hand, say that modest changes enacted in 2024 went far enough and Congress should give Trump the so-called “clean” reauthorization he has requested.

“They, I don’t think, have a stance on this,” Jake Laperruque, deputy director of the Center for Democracy and Technology’s security and surveillance project, said of the Democratic leadership. “I would hope the gutting of oversight systems and what we have seen at DOJ and politicization there would push them against that — but we don’t know yet.”

With Republicans themselves divided, the margin within the Democratic caucus could prove crucial.

Rather than advising members how to vote, however, Democratic leaders is stepping aside. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., has said that he personally supports reforms but has not signaled that he will pressure his caucus. (Jeffries’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.)

The debate concerns Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which last came up for renewal in April 2024.

The law allows intelligence agencies to hoover up ostensibly “foreign” communications, such as text messages and emails, and then search them for information about Americans. Intelligence agencies conduct thousands of these “backdoor” searches every year.

Safeguards are supposed to ensure that the National Security Agency and FBI are only searching for information on genuine national security threats. Past reviews of the program have regularly found violations, however, including instances where spy agencies searched for information on Black Lives Matter activists and even members of Congress.

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During the last reauthorization, Congress enacted a handful of reforms meant to put tighter rules into place for when intelligence agencies can search through the collected data, and to ensure that there are more after-the-fact audits. Since then, a review by an inspector general found a steep decrease in the number of apparent violations.

Supporters of a “clean” reauthorization say those reforms went far enough. Opponents say they still want Congress to force intelligence agents to go to a court to ask for a warrant.

Grassroots Opposition?

Progressive groups are trying to exert grassroots pressure. They targeted Himes, the centrist supporter of the “clean” renewal, at a town hall in his district last month, asking him to withdraw his support for the spying law.

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Himes, however, has not budged, saying that he is confident that there have been no abuses under Trump. For his part, Himes is lobbying his fellow members: He convinced House Foreign Affairs Committee Ranking Member Gregory Meeks, D-N.Y., to support a clean reauthorization.

On the other side of the debate, Raskin has pointed out that Trump has gutted key oversight bodies, including the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board. Advocates have also pointed more recently to a secret court opinion, reported by the New York Times, which found significant problems with how the government is tracking its searches of information about Americans.

Prior FISA renewal fights have rarely drawn the kind of in-person, grassroots activism on display at the Himes town hall. Advocates said that what has changed this time around are growing concerns about how spy agencies can use artificial intelligence to search through reams of information on foreigners and Americans.

“These models give a lot of leverage to analysts working inside the national security establishment,” Dave Kasten, the head of policy at the AI safety nonprofit Palisade Research, said on a call with reporters on Tuesday, “which certainly can be both a good thing and a bad thing, depending on the uses to which they are put.”

Further fueling those concerns is the fact that federal intelligence agencies increasingly rely on information obtained through commercial data brokers, which the government contends does not require a warrant even when it pertains to U.S. citizens.

Aside from committee leaders, the FISA reauthorization fight has also split some of the powerful Democratic caucuses.

The Congressional Black Caucus is poised to support a “clean” reauthorization, The American Prospect reported Monday. The caucus did not respond to a request for comment.

In contrast, the chairs of the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus, the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, and the Congressional Progressive Caucus released a letter on Tuesday calling for “meaningful” reforms.

In addition to a warrant requirement for “backdoor” searches, progressives are also pushing to limit when and how intelligence agencies can use information obtained from commercial data brokers.

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House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., has pointed to the pending April 20 expiration of Section 702 as the reason that Congress needs to urgently renew the law. Progressives, though, pointed out that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court effectively provided the spy agencies with a yearlong extension of their spying powers, regardless of what Congress does.

In a rare cross-chamber letter on Monday, Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., urged representatives to wait before reauthorizing the program.

“[T]here are multiple issues related to Section 702 that the American people and many Members of Congress have been left in the dark about,” he said, “including a FISA Court opinion from last month that found major compliance problems. These matters should be declassified and openly debated before Section 702 is reauthorized.”

The post Dem Leaders Aren’t Even Bothering to Rally Caucus Against Trump Domestic Spying Powers appeared first on The Intercept.

Members of a resolutions committee meeting in New Orleans rejected one symbolic resolution that would have condemned AIPAC’s role in party primaries and tabled a pair of resolutions that called for conditioning military aid to Israel.

Polls show that Democratic Party members are increasingly skeptical of Israel and supportive of Palestinians — a shift that hasn’t been reflected in the party’s official position.

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Instead, party leaders rejected the AIPAC resolution and referred the hot-button issue of arms transfers to Israel to a task force created by DNC Chair Ken Martin, which has yet to produce concrete results since it was created in August.

Allison Minnerly, the DNC member from Florida who sponsored the AIPAC resolution, said the votes exposed serious shortcomings on the part of leadership.

“It says that the Democratic Party just isn’t willing to have a hard conversation, isn’t willing to stand up, and just misses the mark when voters need it the most,” she said. “It is an embarrassing display of cowardice.”

The DNC member chairing the meeting, Ron Harris, said the arms transfers resolutions would be better handled by the task force, whose work he defended.

“Just for the record, this isn’t one of those things where you kick it down the line, and a committee where things go to die. These are people working really hard over a very thorny issue, and taking the time that it takes,” he said.

The proposals before the DNC committee on Thursday once again put party leaders in the hot spot after an earlier resolution from Minnerly last August called for a ban on arms sales to Israel.

Minnerly’s latest resolution highlighted the millions of dollars AIPAC spent to influence recent Democratic primaries in Illinois before reaffirming the party’s commitment to “reducing the role of corporate money and large-scale outside spending in Democratic primaries and general elections.”

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AIPAC in recent years has dumped tens of millions of dollars into Democratic primaries via a super PAC called the United Democracy Fund. It has taken an increasingly aggressive stance against anyone who questions U.S. support for Israel — including one pro-Israel congressional candidate who said he was open to conditioning military aid on respect for human rights.

The group’s heavy-handed role in recent Illinois campaigns drew fire from Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker and Evanston Mayor Daniel Biss, who blasted AIPAC when he won the Democratic Party primary for the 9th Congressional District.

In response to the growing backlash, AIPAC’s supporters have called its critics “antisemitic,” a charge echoed during the Thursday meeting when one member said that to single out AIPAC would be to “pick on the Jews.”

Separately, another resolution called for pausing weapons transfers to Israeli military units accused of human rights violations and recognizing Palestinian statehood, and a third called for conditioning military aid to Israel in compliance with international law in light of the U.S.–Israeli war on Iran.

Those resolutions were referred to the task force.

The post DNC Shoots Down Resolutions Calling Out AIPAC and Limiting Arms to Israel appeared first on The Intercept.

“We believe democracy cannot be delivered through missiles, and freedom cannot emerge from destruction and more death of innocent lives,” they said in the previously unreported letter.

The signers included Rep. Yassamin Ansari of Arizona, the first Iranian American Democrat elected to Congress.

Women have been at the forefront of demonstrations against the Iranian government in recent years, including the “Woman, Life, Freedom” protests of 2022 that were met with a deadly crackdown. The international protest movement was set off by the Iranian government’s killing of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini for allegedly failing to wear the mandatory headscarf properly.

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The Iranian government’s suppression of that protest and another anti-government protest wave earlier this year have been cited as justification for the war that Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu launched in February.

“Remember the great women march,” Trump said at an April 6 press conference at the Pentagon, going on to describe government snipers suppressing protests by shooting demonstrators. In a speech justifying last June’s Israeli-led war against Iran, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu invoked the Women, Life, Freedom movement by name in Farsi.

The Iranian American women who signed the letter, however, said that the war is only encouraging further crackdowns.

“The Iranian people must not become casualties of geopolitical rivalry or instruments of foreign agendas,” the signatories wrote. “We refuse the false choice between repression at home and devastation from abroad. Both deny Iranians the right to determine their own future.”

Trump has given mixed signals as to whether he hopes to pursue regime change in the conflict.

The Iranian diaspora is deeply divided over the war, but a recent poll suggests Iranian Americans may be turning against it.

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Despite the polarized exile politics, many groups responded with horror to Trump’s threat that a “whole civilization will die tonight” if Iran does not reopen the Strait of Hormuz. He has also threatened to destroy civilian infrastructure such as bridges and power plants, which would be a war crime; the U.S. and Israel have already launched scores of attacks targeting civilian sites across the country.

Ansari, the letter’s most prominent signer, said Monday that she plans to file articles of impeachment against Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth for “repeated war crimes,” including the bombing of a school that killed scores of young girls.

“As the daughter of Iranian immigrants who fled the brutal Islamic Republic, and the first Iranian-American Democrat elected to Congress, I stand in strong opposition to this illegal war,” Ansari said in a statement. “Iranians deserve freedom and democracy. That cannot be delivered through bombs and destruction of civilian infrastructure. Iran’s future must be determined by Iranians alone — free from war and authoritarian rule.”

The 14 signers of the letter included women serving as city councilmembers, state legislators, and Democratic Party delegates.

The post Iranian Women Elected to Office in U.S. Reject Trump’s Iran War appeared first on The Intercept.

Nearly two-thirds of Iranian Americans now oppose the war after opinions were near evenly divided at the start of the conflict, according to a Zogby Analytics survey.

The nearly 17 percentage point leap comes as the prospects that the Iranian regime will collapse seem to have dimmed, the conflict’s endgame becomes increasingly murky, and steady bombings have swelled the number of civilians killed.

Jamal Abdi, president of the nonprofit group that commissioned the poll, the National Iranian American Council, said the survey results show that the diaspora’s feelings on the war are more complicated — and more negative — than pundits have suggested.

“This is a war that is supposedly being fought in our name,” Abdi said. “There’s a lot of wish-casting and projection and voices from the diaspora claiming that there is this mandate from our community, and it’s not based on data or facts or reality. It’s based on a campaign for regime change no matter what the cost is. It’s dangerous for our community to be used like this.”

NIAC has long been one of the major voices in the diaspora expressing skepticism about war with Iran. In days leading up to the February 28 strikes that started the war, however, figures such as Reza Pahlavi, the son of the country’s former shah, were given prominent platforms to argue for regime change.

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NIAC’s March 24 to 27 poll, which has a margin of error of plus or minus 4.4 percentage points, is the second that the group has commissioned from Zogby Analytics. An earlier survey was conducted from February 27 to March 5, a period that coincided with the final hours of U.S.–Iranian negotiations and the beginning of the conflict.

The survey results suggest that Iranian Americans are now more opposed to the war than Americans as a whole, after being more supportive at its start.

Iranian Americans are a sliver of the U.S. population, about 0.2 percent, making polling of the group more difficult than the general population. Abdi said that Zogby drew from a “significant list of contacts” in the Iranian American community to conduct the survey.

One prominent Iranian American, Ahmad Batebi — an exiled dissident who thanked President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu after the war began but has spoken out against targeting civilian infrastructure — questioned the poll results.

“My view is that the reported decline in support should be interpreted cautiously,” Batebi said in an email, “not only because opinion may indeed be shifting in real time, but because the more basic question is whether this polling instrument can credibly be treated as representative of the broader Iranian-American community in the first place.”

In the earlier survey, Iranian Americans showed nearly a 50-50 split in their position on going to war with Iran.

Iranian Americans now believe by a wide margin that President Donald Trump should end the conflict, according to the more recent numbers. 70 percent of respondents said that it was time to end the war. Only a quarter believed it should continue.

Trump is scheduled to give an address on the war Wednesday night, with officials giving mixed signals as to whether he will wrap up the conflict or expand it with a ground invasion.

The recent Zogby poll also captured an increasingly pessimistic view of the war’s likely outcome. Many Iranian Americans celebrated on social media when Khamanei’s death in an Israeli airstrike was confirmed on March 1.

Hard-liners have held onto power in Iran since then, however, leading to a dimming view of the future among the diaspora. Nearly 60 percent of Iranian Americans believe ordinary Iranians will be worse off a year from now and more than half believe the Islamic Republic will remain in power.

“There was probably some initial exuberance in that first week,” Abdi said, “and that has trailed off as we have seen civilian casualties and a shuffling of chairs in the regime but not any signal that the regime itself was going anywhere.”

The post Iranian Americans Have Turned Against the War, New Poll Finds appeared first on The Intercept.

The measure, sponsored by a young DNC member from Florida, could put party leaders on the spot about the pro-Israel lobbying group’s outsized role in Democratic primaries.

A lobbying behemoth that for decades courted lawmakers on both sides of the aisle, AIPAC has become an increasingly toxic brand in the Democratic Party.

In recent years, Israeli leaders and their backers in Washington have become more closely aligned with Republican politicians. At the same time, however, AIPAC’s super PAC has focused tens of millions in spending on Democratic primary races.

Allison Minnerly, the committee member sponsoring the resolution, said it is time for the party to formally distance itself from the group.

“At a time when Democratic voters might really not have felt represented or seen when it came to Gaza or seeing their party support Palestinian rights or stand against military conflict, this could be one step toward bringing those voters back into the party,” she said.

Neither AIPAC nor the DNC immediately responded to requests for comment.

Minnerly’s resolution follows on the heels of another measure she sponsored last August calling for an arms embargo on Israel. That resolution was defeated, but not before it sparked a high-profile debate on the party’s relationship with Israel.

Democrats have soured on Israel while becoming more sympathetic toward Palestinians, surveys show.

That has not stopped AIPAC, through a super PAC called the United Democracy Project and other campaign arms, from plowing cash into Democratic primaries to elect pro-Israel candidates. Most recently it spent at least $22 million on Democratic primaries in Illinois, where its preferred candidates won two of four contested races.

“Given the recent primaries in Illinois, but also what we’ve seen across the country, I think it’s important that we specify that AIPAC as a growing force in our primaries needs to be specifically addressed when we talk about dark money,” Minnerly said.

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Minnerly’s resolution notes that AIPAC has expended massive amounts on political campaigns, then adds that “corporate money PACs have concentrated spending in primary races to oppose candidates who have advocated for Palestinian human rights, ceasefire efforts, or changes to U.S. foreign policy, raising concerns about the role of large outside spending in shaping Democratic Party positions.”

It later adds, “Democratic elections should reflect grassroots participation and the will of voters, rather than the disproportionate influence of wealthy donors or special interests.”

While the resolution’s is couched as a condemnation of dark money spending, it could nevertheless open a tense debate over AIPAC’s role in the primaries that some party leaders would rather avoid.

Ahead of the debate over the Israel arms embargo resolution last year, Minnerly was pressured to withdraw her proposal. DNC Chair Ken Martin put forward a competing resolution.

The ultimate product of that debate was the creation of a working group that has yet to produce any public findings. Critics have derided the group as a stalling mechanism.

This time around, Minnerly fears that the timing of the DNC resolution committee meeting could curtail debate of the measure. Her measure is set for discussion on the morning of April 9, as many DNC members will still be arriving for the meeting in New Orleans.

As high-ranking Democrats distance themselves from AIPAC, the group is hiring a new director of political operations and trying to defend itself against the critiques.

Michael Sacks, a Democratic megadonor who helped bankroll two secretive dark-money groups affiliated with AIPAC in the Illinois primaries, alleged that the group’s critics are trying to “chase” Jewish people out of the party in a Chicago Tribune op-ed on Tuesday.

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“Let’s be clear: The campaign against AIPAC is not a policy discussion,” he wrote. “It’s a thinly disguised effort to make support for Israel politically toxic in the Democratic Party, to chase Jews and their allies out of our big tent coalition.”

AIPAC shared the op-ed on social media.

Jim Zogby, the president of the Arab American Institute, said the criticisms of AIPAC and its dark-money affiliates were about the group’s “hardball” tactics.

“Having been a witness to AIPAC handling of campaigns going back to the 1970s and ’80s,” he said, “it takes a certain degree of chutzpah to play victim, when in fact what they have done is victimize candidates and incumbents who didn’t fall in line behind their positions.”

The post DNC Resolution to Reject AIPAC Funding Puts Democratic Leaders in the Hot Seat appeared first on The Intercept.

Johnson decided to delay a vote on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act that had been scheduled for this week, Politico reported Friday. The move gives critics of the law more time to push for reforms, including a requirement that federal agents get a warrant before searching for information on Americans.

If the bill ultimately advances to the House floor, however, some top Democrats — including the ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, Rep. Jim Himes of Connecticut — are already lobbying colleagues to vote for Trump’s request. Others, including members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, are pushing back.

The internal debate among both Democrats and Republicans is a rerun of a clash two years ago over FISA — only this time, Trump’s reelection and the war on Iran have raised the stakes. The spying law expires next month.

With Republicans split, advocates say Democrats have a rare chance to push through added safeguards.

If they want to.

Figures from the Democratic establishment have often been ambivalent or openly hostile to reforming the law, one of the most controversial pieces of post-9/11 legislation and a focus of Edward Snowden’s disclosures.

“Evidence of Misuse”?

Johnson initially seemed poised to push through a vote on the law this week — but reports emerged last Friday that he had delayed the vote until the middle of April. That delay came in the face of skepticism about extending FISA without reforms from hard-liners in Johnson’s own party, such House Freedom Caucus Chair Andy Harris, R-Md.

Section 702 of FISA allows employees of the FBI and other agencies to search for information on U.S. citizens and residents among spy data that is collected abroad.

Congress has passed a series of partial reforms intended to curb widespread abuses of the law by the FBI. During fiery debate over the law in 2024, Johnson managed to narrowly get the bill through the House by agreeing to a two-year extension.

He also teamed up with then-President Joe Biden to pressure members to defeat by a single vote reformers’ most highly sought-after amendment, a provision that would have forced federal agents to go to a judge before searching for information about Americans.

The vote this year is shaping up to be as much of a nail-biter, and it appears that Johnson may need Democrats to lend an assist. Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., says that he will vote against extending the law without reforms, which means that Johnson can only afford to lose one other GOP member.

Himes, who is leading the push to get Democrats to pass a “clean” renewal of Section 702, said in a letter to his party colleagues last week that he understood why they might have concerns about the Trump administration having access to that powerful spying tool. Still, he urged them to vote for reauthorization if the bill makes it to a final floor vote.

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“If I saw any evidence that Trump administration officials were directing the intelligence community to use Section 702 for illegal or improper purposes, such as to persecute, surveil, or harass Americans,” he said, “I would urge a ‘no’ vote on reauthorization, even though I recognize the program’s unparalleled national security value. I have not seen evidence of misuse, despite being on the lookout for any hint of it.”

One House staffer who asked for anonymity to speak freely said they were surprised that Himes has not pushed for concessions from Johnson — on FISA or other legislation — in exchange for Democratic support.

That support could be especially crucial if Johnson struggles to pass a procedural vehicle, known as a rule, to get the bill onto the House floor for a final vote.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., said during a press conference last Thursday that his entire caucus would oppose proceeding to a vote under a rule, which is standard practice for the opposition party in the House.

Jeffries left open the possibility, however, that Democrats could freely cross party lines to support bringing the bill to the floor under a suspension of the rules, which would require support from a two-thirds majority of House members.

“Jim Himes is emerging as arguably the most important actor in this fight,” said Sean Vitka, executive director of the left-leaning group Demand Progress, which supports further reforms to FISA. “The most significant question at the moment is: Will he be able to marshal enough Democrats to go with his play? And that ultimately is a question of whether or not members of Congress think people are looking.”

“Times Have Changed”

On the opposite side of the debate from Himes, House Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Jamie Raskin, D-Md., sent a letter to Democrats Thursday urging them to oppose a “clean” reauthorization of the surveillance bill.

Under pressure from the Biden administration and to the disappointment of privacy advocates, Raskin voted in favor of the legislation two years ago. He said in his letter this week that “times have changed.”

“The safeguards put in place in 2024 have been badly eroded by the Trump Administration,” he wrote. “The ‘clean’ extension favored by President Trump and Stephen Miller leaves the Trump Administration in charge of policing its own abuses of this authority — and what could go wrong with that?”

Raskin did not directly condition support for the bill on adding a warrant requirement, the longtime holy grail of privacy advocates.

In a letter Thursday, more than 90 civil rights and progressive groups including the American Civil Liberties Union, Demand Progress, and Indivisible called on Congress to require the government to obtain a warrant before searching for communications about Americans.

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They also highlighted a relatively new issue: the data-broker loophole. Under current law, intelligence and law enforcement agencies have been able to skirt civil liberties protections by buying information from data brokers that could include location data, search histories, and transaction records of Americans.

FBI Director Kash Patel testified during a Senate hearing Wednesday that the agency was gleaning “valuable intelligence” from such data.

Advocates hope that in addition to a warrant requirement, Democrats could use their leverage in the surveillance bill debate to close the data-broker loophole.

Dems in Disarray

Some Democrats who helped doom a warrant requirement last time have yet to signal how they will vote this time around.

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Rep. Dan Goldman, D-N.Y., gave a passionate defense of the domestic spying bill on the House floor in 2024. His primary opponent, former New York City Comptroller Brad Lander, has already attacked him over the issue.

Patel and CIA Director John Ratcliffe gave a closed briefing to House members about the law on Wednesday. Speaking to The Intercept after that meeting, Goldman said he was still deciding whether to support a clean reauthorization.

“From my perspective, I’m going to need more data and information and need to have some way of verifying the information that they are providing, because I have no faith that this administration is doing anything by the law,” Goldman said.

Another Democrat who voted against a warrant requirement in 2024 and now faces a primary challenge from the left, Rep. Steve Cohen, D-Tenn., said he also has yet to decide.

“There are threats to the country, and then there are threats for the country from this administration,” Cohen said. “It’s kind of a balancing act.”

“Fake” Deadline

Advocates pushing for added reforms would have to guide them through both the House and Senate before the April 20 expiration of the current law.

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The ongoing conflict with Iran is adding to the pressure, with Trump’s supporters arguing that it makes passage of a “clean” reauthorization more important.

One supporter of a warrant requirement, House Judiciary Committee Chair Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, said this week that he now supports a clean reauthorization.

“We have been at this for 10 years,” Jordan told reporters Wednesday. “There has been huge improvement based on the reforms we have done over the last decade, and this is a temporary extension, a short-term extension at the time we have this military operation going on in Iran.”

Reform advocates, however, have argued that the pending deadline is not as pressing as it seems. If the law expires next month, intelligence agencies may still be able to force tech companies to hand over communications under existing authorizations from a special surveillance court that do not expire for months.

“We have time to get this right,” Raskin said in his letter. “Opposing ‘clean’ reauthorization does not mean Section 702 suddenly turns off in April. FISA explicitly allows existing certifications to continue past a sunset. The government is in court right now making sure that Section 702 surveillance extends well into next year, no matter what.”

The post Democrats Might Save Mike Johnson’s Push to Give Trump Domestic Spying Power appeared first on The Intercept.

Biss’s victory came amid mixed results for outside spending groups representing pro-Israel, artificial intelligence, and cryptocurrency interests — with crypto regulation supporter and state Rep. La Shawn Ford winning in the 7th Congressional District while the American Israel Public Affairs Committee’s favored candidates, Cook County Commissioner Donna Miller and former Rep. Melissa Bean, won in the 2nd and 8th. In the closely watched Senate race, Lt. Gov. Juliana Stratton received AIPAC’s congratulations for her win over Reps. Raja Krishnamoorthi and Robin Kelly.

With five open House seats and one open Senate seat heavily favored for Democrats, the Illinois primaries presented a test for the future of the party — and became a top target for outside groups that poured more than $50 million into races throughout the state. The infusion of outside cash included more than $35 million in spending from groups linked to the AIPAC and the cryptocurrency and AI industries. 

Dozens of super PACs in Illinois sought to influence the competitive Democratic primaries, often while concealing both their donors and broader intentions. In the 9th District, AIPAC used groups with uncontroversial titles like “Elect Chicago Women” and “Chicago Progressive Partnership” to boost its pick, Fine, and pit progressive candidates against one another. The spending appeared to come up short Tuesday night, when Fine finished in third.

The groups’ competing ads at times inflamed and at times distracted from voter concerns over civil liberties, the economy, bipartisan fealty to corporations and wealthy donors, and now the unfolding war in Iran.

The Illinois primaries presented a test for AIPAC in particular, which with its affiliated groups spent more than $22 million in races in and around deep-blue Chicago while obscuring the pro-Israel lobby’s involvement amid growing criticism. In several races, AIPAC donors have funneled money to candidates where it did not officially endorse, including in the U.S. Senate race, The Intercept reported. 

The crypto industry spent more than $13 million in Illinois races through the super PAC Fairshake, including close to $10 million against Lt. Gov. Juliana Stratton in the Senate race and more than $3 million in two races attacking candidates who have voted for consumer protection regulations on cryptocurrency. The AI industry poured in another $2.5 million into two House races.

Detailed results from the Senate race and the 2nd, 7th, 8th, and 9th districts are below.

Senate: After Laying Low, AIPAC Congratulates Stratton

Lt. Gov. Juliana Stratton defeated Reps. Raja Krishnamoorthi and Robin Kelly in the highly anticipated Democratic primary to replace retiring Sen. Dick Durbin. The often bitter race was defined by debates over dark money, establishment endorsements, and race and identity. 

Stratton won just shy of 40 percent of the vote in the crowded 10-way race. While AIPAC publicly stayed out of the contest, suggesting that the group had become politically toxic with Democratic primary voters, reporting from The Intercept found that at least 27 AIPAC donors gave to Stratton’s campaign.

On Tuesday night, AIPAC publicly congratulated Stratton for her primary win over Kelly, writing on X that Kelly’s “most recent actions have undermined the U.S.-Israel alliance,” and that the group looks “forward to continuing our long-standing partnership” with Stratton.

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AIPAC Is Staying Out of Illinois Senate Race — But Its Donors Back Juliana Stratton

Neither Stratton nor Krishnamoorthi have called Israel’s actions in Gaza a genocide or said they would push to condition aid to Israel, as Kelly repeatedly pointed out in her attempts to carve out a lane to their left. 

Stratton’s victory does represent an early defeat for the crypto industry, which spent millions against her candidacy. The industry’s main PAC, Fairshake, spent nearly $10 million against Stratton, in a move that likely favored Krishnamoorthi. The Illinois congressman is known as a top fundraiser, with a massive $30 million war chest. 

In addition to concerns over the influence of money in politics, the race was also plagued by questions over the role of establishment endorsements. Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker endorsed Stratton, his longtime running mate, and donated $5 million to Stratton’s super PAC, spurring controversy about the perception of establishment Democrats throwing around their political weight. 

But Stratton’s most controversial endorsement of the cycle was an alleged posthumous endorsement from the late Rev. Jesse Jackson, whose family later said he did not come to a decision about the race before his death.

The fight for support from Black voters was already a highly contentious issue within the primary, with concerns that Kelly and Stratton, who are both Black, would split the Black electorate in Illinois. Kelly took offense to those comments, arguing at a recent campaign event that “no one talks” about spoilers “when two white men are running.” 

Illinois has not sent a Republican to the Senate since the 1990s, and Stratton is expected to easily win her general election in November. 

2nd District: AIPAC Beats AI PAC

Cook County Commissioner Donna Miller fended off a comeback attempt from former Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. in a race that pitted AIPAC against the artificial intelligence industry.

Miller was backed heavily by a PAC affiliated with the pro-Israel group, while Jackson drew support from an AI PAC funded by tech leaders.

Jackson had the star power of his civil rights activist father’s name but was tarnished by a federal fraud conviction for misusing campaign funds over a decade ago during his previous stint as a U.S. representative.

AIPAC’s role in the race made headlines in February, when retiring U.S. Rep. Jan Schakowsky, vacating her 9th Congressional District seat, withdrew her endorsement of Miller over the group’s support for her.

Meanwhile, the progressive standardbearer in the race — state Sen. Robert Peters — was trailing far behind on Tuesday night, despite endorsements from Sens. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren.

Peters made the involvement of outside groups ranging from AIPAC to cryptocurrency to artificial intelligence PACs a theme of his campaign, blasting his opponents for relying on their support.

7th District: AIPAC and Crypto Lose Despite Heavy Spending

State Rep. La Shawn Ford beat Chicago City Treasurer Melissa Conyears-Ervin the primary to succeed retiring longtime Rep. Danny Davis Tuesday night, despite the nearly $5 million AIPAC spent to boost her and nearly $2.5 million a crypto PAC spent against him.

Conyears-Ervin conceded early in the night, before the Associated Press called the race for Ford.

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Ford was the target of heavy spending from the cryptocurrency industry PAC Fairshake because of his support for state-level consumer protections. Ford told The Intercept earlier this month that the money spent against him underlined the need for campaign finance reform.

“We are a grassroots campaign that is struggling to get our message out and make sure that people know that our experience and our platform is out there,” he said. “We don’t have a budget to counter lies.”

The crowded race made polling difficult, and the heavily Democratic nature of the district, which stretches from Chicago’s Loop and South Side to leafy suburbs to the west, meant that several candidates were competing for the progressive lane.

AIPAC donors backed former real estate mogul Jason Friedman early in the race, but the pro-Israel group’s campaign arm later spent nearly $60,000 opposing him and $4.8 million boosting Conyears-Ervin, according to a tally by political consultant Frank Calabrese.

Ford and Conyears-Ervin both brought ethical baggage to the race: He successfully fought off a raft of federal bank fraud charges more than a decade ago, pleading to a single misdemeanor count, while she was forced to pay a $30,000 fine to settle two ethics cases, including one involving the firing of two whistleblowers who warned her not to use city resources to organize prayer events on Facebook, according to WTTW Chicago.

Anthony Driver, executive director of the Service Employees International Union Illinois State Council, drew heavy spending support from his union and an endorsement from the Congressional Progressive Caucus. He finished well behind the leading candidates.

8th District: Former Blue Dog Beats Would-Be Squad Member

Former U.S. Rep. Melissa Bean took a big step closer to a comeback Tuesday night by defeating Junaid Ahmed, a progressive backed by the group Justice Democrats.

Bean, a previous member of the moderate Blue Dog Coalition, drew a big assist from more than $4 million in spending from AIPAC-affiliated PACs, as well as spending from crypto and AI PACs.

Both candidates were vying to replace Krishnamoorthi.

9th District: Anti-AIPAC Candidates in Top Slots

Evanston Mayor Daniel Biss prevailed in a crowded Democratic primary race largely defined by outside spending from groups associated with AIPAC, which spent millions targeting Biss and Palestinian American activist and journalist Kat Abughazaleh, who came in second. 

Biss, a former math professor who stressed his anti-war bonafides on the campaign trail, sought to define himself as the tested progressive favorite while Abughazaleh’s campaign gained steam.

Initially, AIPAC-affiliated groups focused their attacks on Biss, who is Jewish, because of his support for conditions on aid to Israel. The AIPAC-affiliated group Elect Chicago Women spent nearly $1.5 million to oppose Biss and over $4 million to boost state Sen. Laura Fine, who came in third. But as the race heated up, Abughazaleh, who drew a harder line on Israel, surged forward in the polls and became their central target. 

In his victory speech Tuesday night, Biss said he had been pressured to move away from what he called a nuanced view on Israel and Palestine. He also took a direct swipe at AIPAC.

“This district understands nuance and wants someone who accepts the reality of competing, even contradictory-sounding priorities and values and realities,” Biss said. “Now, that point of view is not the point of view of AIPAC. AIPAC spent an unbelievable amount of money — over $7 million — to try to buy this seat, to support the idea that we can’t accept nuance.”

The district is deep blue, and Biss is expected to handily win his general election. He becomes the Democratic nominee on the heels of a scandal that broke in the final hours of the race, after his former student, Megan Wachspress, went public about a past relationship with Biss on Monday in a Bluesky post. 

“If he’s going to get a national profile on the strength of a younger woman’s campaign,” wrote Wachspress, who is now a lecturer at Stanford Law School, referring to Abughazaleh, “I’m going to come out and say it: during his short-lived tenure as a math professor, Biss had an inappropriate romantic relationship with one of his undergraduate students. I was that student.” 

Biss acknowledged the relationship on Tuesday, calling it “ill-advised.”

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Though Abughazaleh earned key progressive endorsements, including from the group Justice Democrats and Reps. Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib, Biss pulled Schakowsky’s support, as well as that of the Congressional Progressive Caucus and Sen. Elizabeth Warren.

The Chicago Progressive Partnership, another AIPAC-affiliated group, spent roughly $1.2 million in the latter half of the race to counter Abughazaleh. The former journalist also faced alleged “dark money” spending from the PAC Democracy Unmuted, which she claimed was paying influencers $1,500 to push negative rhetoric about her on social media. 

AIPAC also spent money boosting Bushra Amiwala, a progressive Muslim activist, who was seen as a potential spoiler for Abughazaleh. When the race was called, Amiwala was in sixth place and had received just over 5 percent of the vote — a share larger than the difference between Biss, at just shy of 30 percent, and Abughazaleh, slightly under 26.

AIPAC, for its part, put a positive spin on the results Tuesday night.

“While disappointed that Laura Fine did not prevail, voters rejected two anti-Israel candidates in this race,” the group posted on X. “We were especially proud to help defeat Abughazaleh.”

In his victory speech, Biss said he would fight for self-determination and justice for everyone in the Middle East and beyond. “AIPAC found out the hard way: The 9th District is not for sale,” he said in his closing remarks.

Biss also thanked J Street, which was founded as a liberal counterweight to AIPAC, for wading into the race to back him. J Street’s President, Jeremy Ben-Ami, said in a statement that the group had bundled more than $200,000 for Biss’s campaign while an affiliated super PAC spent $150,000.

“AIPAC and its affiliates poured more than $7 million into a Democratic primary to stamp out opposition to Netanyahu’s policies — using shell PACs to obscure their involvement — and the voters rejected that effort,” Ben-Ami said. “Tonight’s results should send a clear message to candidates across the country: you do not have to fear AIPAC’s spending or intimidation.”

This developing story has been updated.

The post Illinois Results: Daniel Biss Beats Kat Abughazaleh in Blow to Left and AIPAC Alike appeared first on The Intercept.

In at least two Illinois congressional primaries, candidates vying for the progressive vote are being accused by a crypto political action committee of corruption. Fairshake PAC is trying to smear one candidate backed by Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., as a corporate tool and another candidate who successfully fought a federal indictment as a tax cheat.

The industry has thrown at least $3.3 million into negative attacks on the campaigns in the 2nd and 7th Congressional Districts thus far, according to an analysis from a Chicago political consultant. That spending represents only a fraction of the PAC’s war chest for the remainder of the primary season.

“Ironically, we’re in a very anti-corruption moment, and you know that is true because one of the most corrupt actors in the country is trying to appropriate an anti-corruption argument,” said Jeff Hauser of the Revolving Door Project, a crypto industry critic. “The threat is that the cynical deployment of an anti-corruption politics undermines the potential for success of a genuine anti-corruption politics.”

Fairshake declined to comment.

In both races, crypto industry interests are attacking Democratic candidates — state Sen. Robert Peters and state Rep. La Shawn K. Ford — who voted for consumer protection regulations on cryptocurrency in the Illinois statehouse last year.

That legislation, supported by Democratic Gov. JB Pritzker, forces crypto companies to register with the state and comply with local rules if they want to serve Illinois residents. Crypto companies have long opposed state-level regulations, preferring a single set of looser regulations at the federal level.

As the congressional elections heated up this year, the crypto industry began delivering payback.

Mailers targeting Peters, for instance, accuse him of being a “corporate pawn” and “bankrolled by special interests,” based on campaign contributions he has received.

Peters has responded by noting that he is endorsed by national progressives including Sanders and Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D- Mass., who are fierce foes of corporate interests.

Commenting on the Fairshake mailer, Peters said that it was “paid for by Trump’s top donors, to make sure they buy a lapdog in this congressional seat who will let them avoid all regulation. Nasty work.”

Two of Peters’s top opponents, Jesse Jackson Jr. and Donna Miller, have received A ratings from Stand With Crypto, an industry group, based on their promises to pass industry-friendly legislation. (Their campaigns did not respond to requests for comment.)

Ford, the state representative, has been the target of $2.5 million in attack ads from Fairshake, according to a tally by Chicago political consultant Frank Calabrese.

One TV attack ad highlighted the 17-count bank fraud indictment that federal prosecutors brought against Ford in 2012 — without noting that the case fizzled away and Ford ultimately pleaded guilty to only a misdemeanor tax charge.

Local media have called the ad misleading, a claim that Ford echoed in an interview with The Intercept.

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“I think that it’s slander. It’s the reason why we have to have campaign finance reform to get dark money out of races,” he said. “They are misleading voters. Even though they know that, they are advertising that I was convicted of 17 counts of bank fraud and tax fraud, they know that the Department of Justice dropped those charges, and yet they mislead voters.”

Ford’s campaign has sent Fairshake, the crypto PAC, a cease-and-desist letter.

One of Ford’s top opponents in the race to replace outgoing Rep. Danny Davis, City Treasurer Melissa Conyears-Ervin, received an A rating from Stand With Crypto. (Her campaign did not respond to a request for comment.)

Ford noted that industry figures including Brian Armstrong, the CEO of Coinbase, a crypto exchange that is one of Fairshake’s major funders, have worked closely with President Donald Trump to win favorable regulations.

Coinbase donated $1 million to Trump’s inaugural fund in December 2024 and has given further donations to Trump’s White House ballroom project.

“It’s funny, because they are cronies with Donald Trump and they want to say that I’m not fit to go to Congress,” Ford said. “Yet Donald Trump was actually convicted on 34 counts, and they support him for president.”

The post Crypto Spends Big in Illinois House Races to Say Consumer Rights Supporters Are Corrupt appeared first on The Intercept.

The widely watched trial could serve as a bellwether as President Donald Trump’s administration seeks to crack down on left-wing groups — and the convictions could encourage prosecutors to bring more such charges. A top FBI official said in December that the agency is now treating “antifa” as a major domestic terror threat.

In a statement posted online, a support group for the defendants said, “Everything about this trial from beginning to end has proven what we have said all along: this is a sham trial, built on political persecution and ideological attacks coming from the top.”

The Trump administration celebrated the verdict.

“Antifa is a domestic terrorist organization that has been allowed to flourish in Democrat-led cities — not under President Trump,” said Attorney General Pamela Bondi. “Today’s verdict on terrorism charges will not be the last as the Trump administration systematically dismantles Antifa and finally halts their violence on America’s streets.”

The court case centered on a nighttime July 4, 2025, protest outside ICE’s Prairieland Detention Facility that started with demonstrators shooting fireworks and spray-painting cars in the parking lot.

Signal messages obtained by the government showed that the demonstrators believed that less confrontational protests against ICE — such as one that had occurred earlier in the day at the same facility — were ineffective. Some of the protesters had brought guns, which is legal in Texas. A police officer responding to the scene was shot in the neck by one of the protesters, Benjamin Song, who had brought an AR-15 with a trigger modified for a higher rate of fire.

The defendants said the protest was a peaceful demonstration meant to show solidarity, pointing to the megaphone that one member of the group brought to shout slogans to detainees. Prosecutors pointed to the guns, ballistic vests, and trauma first-aid kits they brought as evidence of malicious intent.

Song was convicted of one count of attempted murder for shooting the officer, but acquitted on two other counts of attempting to shoot at two correctional officers. Song was also found guilty of discharging a firearm during a violent crime. Four other people accused of attempted murder counts were acquitted on those charges. Song faces up to life in prison.

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Wearing All Black at Protests Makes You Guilty of Terrorism, Prosecutors Tell Jury

In a significant victory for the government, jurors convicted eight defendants on material support for terrorism charges for wearing black clothes to the late-night demonstration. That use of “black bloc” clothing was an antifa tactic that assisted in the shooting of the officer, prosecutors said during their closing arguments.

The defendants convicted of providing material support to terrorists were Song, Autumn Hill, Zachary Evetts, Savanna Batten, Megan Morris, Maricela Rueda, Elizabeth Soto, and Ines Soto. They face up to 15 years in prison on that count.

The same defendants were also convicted of riot and two explosives charges related to the fireworks. Hill, Evetts, Morris, and Rueda were acquitted on attempted murder charges that would have carried sentences up to life imprisonment.

Rueda and her husband, Daniel Sanchez Estrada, were convicted of conspiracy to conceal documents. That charge centered on Sanchez’s movement of boxes containing radical pamphlets after her arrest. Sanchez was also convicted of corruptly concealing a document.

The prosecution of the Prairieland defendants represented the federal government’s first use of the material support charge against alleged antifa members accused of domestic terrorism.

The verdict came after 10 days of testimony inside a Fort Worth courtroom packed with family members of the defendants, law enforcement officials, and journalists.

Prosecutors called the wounded police officer and detention center guards to describe what it was like on the receiving end of a barrage of bullets, as well as four cooperating defendants who pleaded guilty before trial.

Another significant witness was a researcher at a right-wing think tank who said the tactics used by the demonstrators that night, including “black bloc” clothing and the encrypted messaging app Signal — the latter of which the witness said he also used — were typical of antifa.

This is a developing story and will be updated.

The post Anti-ICE Protesters Convicted on Terrorism Charges for Wearing All Black appeared first on The Intercept.

A printing press.

That printing press was never presented to jurors. Still, the government has kept it locked away because it hated the pamphlets and zines it published, lawyer Blake Burns said.

Burns represents Elizabeth Soto, one of nine defendants whose fates were in the hands of jurors as deliberations began Thursday. All are accused of roles during or after a late-night noise demonstration outside Prairieland Detention Center, a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility near Dallas that ended with a local police officer wounded by gunfire.

The case has become a bellwether for the Trump administration’s crackdown on dissent from the left. The government charged people involved with the anti-ICE protest with a slew of charges, including attempted murder and terrorism counts that defense attorneys said are being used to criminalize protest.

“They’re here asking you guys to put protesters in prison as terrorists,” Burns, the defense lawyer, told jurors. “That’s not happened before. And you are literally the only people in the world who can stop it.”

During 10 days of testimony in a packed Fort Worth, Texas, courtroom, prosecutors bombarded jurors with images of radical zines printed on the press, anti-government internet memes, drawings of burning cop cars, and a video of an unidentified street brawl between far-left and far-right protesters.

Prosecutors acknowledged those materials were protected by the First Amendment but said they showed the roughly dozen people who assembled outside the ICE facility were steeped in antifa tactics.

Eight of nine defendants on trial this month face material support for terrorism charges for wearing “black bloc” clothes at the protest. Attorney General Pam Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel have hailed the first-ever use of terrorism charges against alleged antifa members.

Defense attorneys argued Wednesday that prosecutors had wildly overcharged a case that should have centered on the alleged shooter, Benjamin Song, instead of the larger group.

Guilt by Zine

Prosecutors presented much of the evidence that might be expected at an attempted murder trial: ballistics and fingerprint experts, eyewitness police officers, and cooperating witnesses.

They also presented lengthy testimony about radical pamphlets and artwork collected from the defendants arrested that night or in raids during the following days.

Despite labeling the defendants “a North Texas antifa cell” in their indictment, prosecutors have acknowledged that they were at most a loose-knit collection of people from the Dallas–Fort Worth’s small leftist scene of anarchists and socialists.

Two of the scene’s fixtures were Elizabeth and Ines Soto, a married couple who operated the printing press and helped run a local reading group called the Emma Goldman Book Club, named for the early 20th-century anarchist revolutionary.

At one point during testimony Tuesday, a prosecutor spent more than half an hour scrolling through a Twitter account allegedly operated by the Sotos. The Twitter feed included a retweet of a December 2016 post with the words “How to handle fash in your hood” that included a shaky video of a street fight between protesters accompanied by the Flatbush Zombies song “Death 2.”

“I crack your fucking skull and use that as a bowl for cereal. I’m so serial. Ted Bundy, give me money, Son of Sam, gun in hand. Jeffrey Dahmer, with two llamas,” the jury heard in the song’s lyrics.

Defense attorneys objected to the introduction of the video as evidence.

“Yes, it is prejudicial,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Shawn Smith told the judge in defense of using the video. “The whole reason we’re putting it into evidence is because it’s prejudicial.”

Though U.S. District Judge Mark Pittman, a Donald Trump appointee, allowed the Twitter feed to be presented in court, prosecutors could not definitively establish whether the Sotos had posted the video or what incident it depicted.

The Sotos, however, have not disputed that they were key members of the reading group. In his closing argument, Smith said the group was a front to recruit new antifa members.

“Emma Goldman Book Club,” Smith said. “It sounds very innocuous. It’s camouflage for what it is.”

“Your Body as Camouflage”

To help jurors interpret the book club’s readings and other materials, prosecutors presented a researcher at a far-right think tank as an expert.

Kyle Shideler of the Center for Security Policy once focused his research on the Muslim Brotherhood. After the 2020 George Floyd protests raged, he wrote a book about “black identity extremists.” In recent years he has focused on another right-wing boogeyman: antifa.

Shideler said Monday that he helped write the definition of “antifa” included in the government’s indictment. He walked that testimony back Tuesday, saying that he only conferred on a draft.

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Prosecutors also had Shideler read Trump’s September 22 executive order purporting to designate antifa as a domestic terrorist organization, in an apparent attempt to suggest that the language was borrowed from the order.

Shideler described what he said were common tactics of antifa, including using the messaging app Signal — which Shideler said he also used — and wearing “black bloc” clothes to obscure identities. The phrase refers to instances where groups of left-wing demonstrators dress in all black to make them less individually identifiable.

The point of that testimony came into focus during the prosecution’s closing arguments. Using Signal and wearing black-bloc clothing were “tactics that assisted in the ambush of a cop,” said Smith.

“Material support. It sounds — I don’t know — nefarious. Complicated. It’s actually very simple,” Smith said.

He said that wearing black clothes at the noise demonstration would be enough to convict the eight defendants accused of material support.

“Providing your body as camouflage for others to do the enumerated acts is providing support,” he said. “It’s impossible to tell who is doing what. That’s the point.”

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The government used Shideler and the antifa talk to try to distract jurors from the defendants’ actual actions on the night of July 4, said MarQuetta Clayton, an attorney for defendant Maricela Rueda. She also warned that the trial served as a larger proving ground for the government’s attempts to criminalize antifa.

“The government’s expert on antifa said his career may be boosted by the outcome of this case,” she said. “This is an experiment for them. But this courtroom is not a laboratory, and Maricela is not a lab rat.”

Charged for Carrying a Box

Rueda’s husband, Daniel Sanchez Estrada, is the only defendant on trial who is not accused of participating in the July 4 protest. Instead, prosecutors have charged him and his wife with conspiring to obstruct justice by moving a box of zines out of Rueda’s house after her arrest.

Free speech advocates say that Estrada’s arrest sets a dangerous precedent that criminalizes the mere possession of anti-government material.

“He is on trial for two things,” said Sanchez’s public defender, Christopher Weinbel. “Carrying a box, and conspiracy to carry a box, of which they try to call evidence.”

Weinbel said the box contained Sanchez’s own possessions, the timeline of his movements disproved the theory that he was acting at the direction of his wife, and that a government agent had also testified that none of the materials were used in the investigation.

Smith, the prosecutor, argued that moving the boxes was part of a larger cover-up in the hours and days after the demonstration.

“What is important to the group is hiding their material,” he said. “This anarchist, insurrectionist, hating-the-government material.”

Song and the Rest

Defense attorneys chose their words carefully when it came to Song, the person accused of shooting an AR-15 rifle at two detention center guards and the Alvarado, Texas, police officer who was hit.

None of the defense lawyers overtly blamed Song for the bloodshed, but several suggested that the government should have distinguished between Song and the rest of the protesters.

“This should have been a three-day attempted murder trial of one person,” Weinbel said.

Prosecutors painted Song as the ringleader that night. Still, they argued that four defendants who are also on trial for attempted murder — Song, Rueda, Autumn Hill, and Megan Morris — could have reasonably foreseen that Song would use violence based on conversations before the demonstration.

The eight defendants who face material support charges gave aid to the attack by wearing black clothes, prosecutors allege. They include the defendants accused of attempted murder along with the Sotos, Savanna Batten, and Zachary Evetts.

Song’s attorney, Phillip Hayes, said during his closing argument that Song was only trying to shoot “suppressive” fire at the ground after police arrived on the scene. Hayes suggested that a ricocheting bullet wounded the officer.

The post Wearing All Black at Protests Makes You Guilty of Terrorism, Prosecutors Tell Jury appeared first on The Intercept.

Kyle Shideler of the Center for Security Policy said under questioning from a defense attorney that he provided language that prosecutors used in the first-ever domestic terrorism case against a purported antifa cell.

The decision to use the language was the government’s, Shideler said.

“I told them what I believed to be an accurate definition of antifa, and they used it,” Shideler said.

The courtroom testimony provided a window into the extraordinarily close cooperation between federal prosecutors and a Washington advocacy group that has regularly argued for government action against left-wing activists.

Shideler himself was the author of a September article titled “How to Dismantle Far-Left Extremist Networks: A Roadmap for the Trump Administration” that called on the Justice Department to take more aggressive action against left-of-center activists. He said he conferred with prosecutors in October, a month before they obtained an indictment in the Texas case.

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Defense lawyers raised questions about Shideler’s professional home, the Center for Security Policy. The nonprofit think tank was founded by Frank Gaffney, a former Defense Department official under President Ronald Reagan who has routinely been described as an Islamophobic conspiracy theorist. Gaffney’s views on Islam are commonly espoused at Center for Security Policy events.

The center itself has been branded a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center, a designation Shideler bristled at in court.

“Yes sir, the Southern Poverty Law Center has mislabeled many people as a hate group,” he said in response to questioning from defense lawyer Phillip Hayes.

The nine defendants on trial this month face years or life sentences in prison for a noise demonstration outside ICE’s Prairieland Detention Center on July 4 of last year.

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After demonstrators used fireworks in a show of solidarity for the detainees held inside the Alvarado, Texas, facility, local police arrived to confront them. One of the responding officers was shot in the neck.

Shideler testified as an expert witness for the government over the objections of defense attorneys, who were overruled by U.S. District Judge Mark Pittman, a Donald Trump appointee.

In lengthy testimony, he provided a recounting of the history of antifascist organizing that ranged from 1930s Germany to 1980s U.K. activism to the present-day United States. Various tactics used by the Prairieland demonstrators to protect their identities — such as Signal chats, “black block” clothing, and a general “security culture” — were all consistent with antifa practices, Shideler said.

Under questioning from prosecutors, Shideler sought to tie the ideas laid out in anarchist zines recovered from the defendants’ possession with their actions outside the detention center.

Several cooperating defendants have testified that they did not consider themselves members of antifa, defense attorneys pointed out during cross-examination.

They also went on the attack over Shideler’s professional qualifications and his conclusions. Shideler acknowledged that he does not use academic social science methods, does not submit his research for peer review, and relies largely on open-source materials whose authenticity is difficult to verify.

Shideler called Signal a “hallmark of antifa” before adding that he uses it himself.

The antifa trial is Shideler’s first time testifying as an expert witness in a trial, he said. One defense lawyer noted that Shideler was invited to testify about antifa before the Senate Judiciary Committee in October and asked whether his courtroom appearance this week would provide a further boost to his career.

“I guess it will depend how it goes,” he said.

His testimony is set to continue Tuesday.

The post Islamophobic Think Tank Helped Write Indictment Against ICE Protesters appeared first on The Intercept.

Nearly all Republicans were joined by Sen. John Fetterman, D-Pa., in blocking a resolution that would have forced Trump to seek congressional approval for further strikes.

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Advocates of the measure and a companion in the House, known as war powers resolutions, acknowledged they were uphill battles given the near-unanimous support for the war among the Republicans who control Congress. They said the votes were still important as a test for lawmakers given Trump’s opposition to seeking congressional approval for the joint Israeli–American war on Iran.

The House of Representatives is set to vote on another measure Thursday that also faces long odds, in part because a small group of pro-Israel Democrats have introduced competing legislation.

The companion resolution to the Senate’s was sponsored by Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., and Thomas Massie, R-Ky. Besides Massie, however, only one other Republican has been identified as a potential yes vote for the resolution.

Several Democrats seem set oppose the resolution despite party leadership’s decision to whip votes on it.

One is Rep. Josh Gottheimer, D-N.J., a staunch supporter of Israel who has offered a resolution of his own that would allow Trump 30 days to continue attacks. Gottheimer said in a statement that his measure would allow Trump to avoid a “potentially precarious withdrawal.”

An advocate backing the Khanna–Massie resolution noted that the 30-day time frame lines up with how long Trump has suggested the conflict might last.

“There is already a vote this week on Khanna–Massie. Any representative that is actually against the war, that’s the vehicle they should be voting for now, and not attempting to give Trump a blank check for 30 days,” Cavan Kharrazian, a senior policy adviser at the progressive group Demand Progress, said Tuesday. “We have already seen in the past four days the death and destruction and escalation with this war. I can’t even imagine what things look like in 30 days.”

Senate Shutout

The war powers resolution in the Senate was the latest attempt to check Trump’s growing appetite for foreign conflict. Relying on the War Powers Act of 1973, the resolution would have forced Trump to seek congressional approval to continue strikes.

As with previous resolutions focused on boat strikes in the Caribbean and Trump’s war on Venezuela, however, it fell short of obtaining the simple majority it needed despite support from Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky.

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Fetterman defected from the rest of the Democratic caucus to oppose the measure; he was also the only Democrat to vote against a war powers resolution to block Trump’s attacks on boats in the Caribbean and one to impose restrictions after last summer’s attacks on Iran.

Paul was the only Republican senator to vote for Wednesday’s war powers bill. Republicans who have expressed skepticism of foreign intervention in the past seemed to learn a lesson from January, when Trump lashed out against GOP senators who defected from the administration on a Venezuela war powers resolution.

Much of the debate on the Senate floor Wednesday centered on whether the conflict will be over relatively soon, as Trump has sometimes suggested. Democrats raised the specter of the conflict spiraling out for years, in the mold of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.

“The only way that you will be able to destroy their capacity to make missiles and drones is to be permanently running jets overhead and constantly bombing the new sites that the hard-line regime sets up. That’s endless war. That’s trillions of dollars,” said Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn.

Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Miss., pushed back against that argument in his floor remarks.

“It’s not an aimless exercise in the Middle East. This is a measured campaign to eliminate the ayatollah’s threat. It may take time to finish. We’re not going to put a time limit on it. That does not make it endless,” he said.

In a show of force meant to convey the gravity of the moment, Democrats packed the chamber during the vote count, while members of the Republican caucus trickled in and left.

“Not at War Right Now”

Even as Wicker sought to downplay the prospect of an endless conflict, Trump and top administration officials were sending mixed messages. Trump has ruled out the idea of seeking congressional approval despite the potential for a long war.

That did not bother House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., who said at a press conference Wednesday that the conflict does not meet the definition of a war that would trigger the Constitution’s requirement for congressional approval.

“We’re not at war right now. We’re four days into a very specific, clear mission, Operation Epic Fury,” he said.

Sen. Raphael Warnock, D-Ga., noted that officials up to Trump himself have used the word “war.”

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“And yet he refused to come before Congress as the Constitution demands and make his case for war. And after yesterday’s briefing, I think I know why,” Warnock said, referring to a Tuesday briefing from Secretary of War Pete Hegseth and others. “It is exceedingly difficult to explain your rationale when it is not clear in your own head — when it changes every day.”

The post House Iran War Powers Resolution Could Lose Support to Competing Bill by Pro-Israel Democrat appeared first on The Intercept.

Soon enough, however, primary elections will give voters their say on that approach.

Starting Tuesday, a series of primaries will serve as referenda on candidates who have either given ambivalent responses to the war or who have drawn past support from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the pro-Israel lobbying flagship that backed Trump’s strikes.

The first big test will come in North Carolina, where Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee-backed incumbent Rep. Valerie Foushee is under attack from challenger Nida Allam over prior ties to AIPAC.

Allam, a Durham County commissioner hoping to topple Foushee in the 4th Congressional District, chose to make the U.S. strikes on Iran the subject of her final pitch to voters in a video ad where she condemned the war.

“I will never take a dime from defense contractors or the pro-Israel lobby,” Allam said. “I have opposed these forever wars my entire career, and I hope to earn your vote to be your proudly uncompromised pro-peace leader in Washington.”

Taking heat from Allam, Foushee says she also opposes the war.

“I will go on record right now: I do not support Trump’s illegal war with Iran and will do everything I can in Congress to support War Powers Resolutions to stop it,” Foushee said on social media Saturday morning, hours after the bombs began dropping.

A super PAC affiliated with AIPAC gave Foushee crucial support during her 2022 race. With the lobbying group’s brand becoming increasingly toxic within the Democratic Party, she has sworn off support from the organization this time around — but a group tied to an AIPAC donor has nonetheless flooded the race with ads on her behalf.

The North Carolina candidates’ stances reflect the overwhelming sentiment of Democratic voters, according to a pair of polls conducted over the weekend. Only 27 percent of Americans and 7 percent of Democrats approve of the attacks, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll that lined up with the results of a Washington Post survey.

Avoiding the Underlying Issue

Democratic leaders in Congress have taken a different tack. Before the strikes, they dragged their feet on forcing a vote on a war powers resolution meant to block launching strikes without congressional approval.

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After the attack, many top Democrats criticized Trump’s decision to launch the war without congressional approval, while being vague on the substantive question of whether it was right to go to war.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., for instance, tied the attacks to the Democratic campaign theme of affordability and blasted Trump for failing to ask Congress for approval.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., has also stopped short of directly criticizing the idea of attacking Iran. In his statement, he invoked the threat of Iran attaining nuclear weapons, cited the public’s fear of “another endless and costly war,” and called on Congress to pass a war powers resolution.

Those positions allow Democratic leaders to focus their criticism on Trump’s violation of the U.S. Constitution, which grants Congress the sole power to declare war, rather than the underlying issue of whether the war is warranted.

Democrats should be doing more than merely criticizing the process leading up to the war, said Hannah Morris, the vice president of government affairs for J Street, a liberal pro-Israel group that is lobbying members of Congress to support a war powers resolution that blocks Trump from launching further attacks without congressional approval.

“Process plus. This is not just about process, this is about a reckless war by choice, and it completely flies in the face of what President Trump ran on,” Morris told the Intercept.

One congressional candidate was blunt in her critique of the response from Democratic leaders.

“As we plunge headlong into another catastrophic war, Sen. Schumer and Rep. Jeffries’ throat clearing and process critique only serves Trump and the war machine. Democrats should speak clearly and with one voice: no war,” said Claire Valdez, a state assembly member who is running in New York’s 7th Congressional District with the blessing of New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani.

Only a few Democratic members of Congress have given their outright support to the war — most notably Sen. John Fetterman, D-Pa.

Even in congressional races where none of the candidates have given the war their blessing, however, there have important distinctions in whether they focus Trump’s wrecking ball approach to the Constitution or the wisdom of the war itself.

In Illinois, a Democratic primary election in the 9th Congressional District on March 17 will give voters a test on whether they want candidates more forthrightly opposed to the conflict.

State Sen. Laura Fine, a top candidate in that race who has drawn the backing of AIPAC donors, supported Israel’s attacks on Iranian nuclear facilities last year. She was one of the candidates centering Trump in her response to the attack over the weekend.

“Donald Trump is leading us into another military conflict to distract from his own failures that puts American lives at risk and threatens to send the Middle East into further chaos,” she said. “He simply cannot be trusted and must be impeached.”

Two candidates vying for the progressive vote, Daniel Biss and Kat Abughazaleh, have both come out against the war. Biss called it “reckless and illegal.” Abughazaleh, a social media influencer, also called out Democrats who were willing to go along with the attacks in a video post.

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“The problem is that many lawmakers on both sides of the aisle love playing into the idea of Iran as a boogeyman, and so they’re willing to bomb them to hell. Especially if it lines their pockets or gets them more donors from the military–industrial complex,” she said.

In Maine, firebrand oyster fisher Graham Platner was far ahead of popular two-term Gov. Janet Mills in a recent primary poll.

Platner, a Marine combat veteran, called an emergency protest over the weekend and called the war “tragic, stupid, ill-conceived.”

In her statement, Mills criticized Trump’s “unilateral” decision to go to war while adding that Iran could not be allowed to develop a nuclear weapon.

“The American people have had enough of forever wars,” Mills said, “that put the lives of American servicemembers and civilians in danger, that do not protect the American people, that hurt our alliances and escalate global tensions.”

The post Democratic Leaders Avoid Criticizing Trump’s Iran War. Now Voters Will Have a Say. appeared first on The Intercept.