The Dictatorship

House extends surveillance powers until April 30 after late-night revolt sinks GOP plan

Published

3 months ago

April 17, 2026

House extends surveillance powers until April 30 after late-night revolt sinks GOP plan

Apr. 17, 2026, 2:38 AM EDT

WASHINGTON (AP) — The House early Friday approved a short-term renewal until April 30 of a controversial surveillance programused by U.S. spy agencies in a post-midnight vote after Republicans revolted and refused President Donald Trump’s push for a longer extension.

GOP leaders rushed lawmakers back into session to late Thursday with a series of back-to-back votes that collapsed in dramatic failure, before they quickly pushed ahead the stopgap measure as they race to keep the surveillance program running past Monday’s expiration date.

First they unveiled a new plan that would have extended the program for five years, with revisions. Then they tried to salvage a shorter 18-month renewal that Trump had demanded and Speaker Mike Johnson had previously backed. Some 20 Republicans joined most Democrats in blocking its advance.

Shortly after 2 a.m. they quickly agreed to the 10-day extension, which was agreed to on a voice vote without a formal roll call. It next goes to the Senate, which is gaveling for a rare Friday session, as Congress races to keep the surveillance program running.

“We were very close tonight,” said Johnson after the late-night action.

But Democrats blasted the middle-of-the-night voting as amateur hour. “Are you kidding me? Who the hell is running this place?” said Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Mass., during a fiery floor debate.

At the center of the standoff that has stretched throughout the week is Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act,which permits the CIA, National Security Agency, FBI and other agencies to collect and analyze vast amounts of overseas communications without a warrant. In doing so, they can incidentally sweep up communications involving Americans who interact with foreign targets.

U.S. officials say the authority is critical to disrupting terrorist plots, cyber intrusions and foreign espionage.

Surveillance program fight is a debate over privacy and security

Its path to passage has teetered all week in a familiar fight, as lawmakers weigh civil liberties concerns against intelligence officials’ warnings about national security risks.

Opponents of the surveillance tool point to past misuses. FBI officials repeatedly violated their own standards when searching intelligence related to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol and racial justice protests in 2020, according to a 2024 court order.

Trump and his allies had lobbied aggressively all week for a clean renewal of the program, without changes.

A group of Republicans traveled to the White House on Tuesday, and on Wednesday CIA Director John Ratcliffe spoke directly with GOP lawmakers. House Majority Leader Steve Scalise said Thursday there had “been negotiations late into the night with the White House and some of our members.”

“I am asking Republicans to UNIFY, and vote together on the test vote to bring a clean Bill to the floor,” Trump wrote on Truth Social this week. “We need to stick together.”

The result of days of negotiations

Thursday’s proceedings came to a standstill as lawmakers retreated behind closed doors and Johnson reached for an agreement to resolve the standoff.

Shortly before midnight GOP leaders announced a new proposal, a five-year extension, with revisions. The changes were designed to win over skeptics of the surveillance program who have demanded greater oversight to protect Americans’ privacy.

Among the changes are new provisions to ensure that only FBI attorneys can authorize queries on U.S. persons, and to require the Office of the Director of National Intelligence to review such cases, said Rep. Austin Scott, R-Ga., during the debate.

But the final product, a 14-page amendment, did not go far enough for some holdouts in either party.

With Johnson controlling a slim majority, he has little room for dissent. As the Republicans fell short on both efforts before the short extension, a handful of Democrats stepped in to try to help them advance the longer extensions, but most Democrats were opposed.

“We just defeated Johnson’s efforts to sneak through a 5-year FISA authorization tonight,” said Democratic Rep, Ro Khanna of California. “Now, they will have to fight in daylight.”

The Dictatorship

E. Jean Carroll finally gets Trump’s $5 million — plus interest

Published

55 minutes ago

July 14, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

E. Jean Carroll finally gets Trump’s $5 million — plus interest

Christmas. 14, 2026, 11:06 AM EDT

Writer E. Jean Carroll finally has the $5 million — plus interest — that a jury ordered President Donald Trump to pay her in damages in one of her two cases against him, after Trump fought the payout for years.

Court records posted Tuesday show a transfer of $5,625,005.48 to Carroll’s legal team took place the day before.

Carroll received the money more than three years after a jury found that the president was liable for sexually abusing her in a Manhattan department store in 1996, and then for defaming her on social media. Trump has repeatedly appealed the judgment to no avail — including petitioning the Supreme Court multiple times — and last week launched a last-ditch attempt to block her from getting the money.

Last Tuesday, his legal team filed a briefrequesting that the disbursement of the damages be halted, pointing to his pending request for the Supreme Court to reconsider its refusal to hear his appeal.

A federal judge nevertheless ordered Wednesday that Carroll be paid, prompting a swift appeal from Trump and a motion for an emergency administrative stay on the disbursement of the funds.

That request was denied.

“Three years ago, a unanimous nine-person jury found President Trump liable for sexually assaulting and defaming E. Jean Carroll. Today, we are pleased to report that she has received the damages payment the jury awarded her as a result of that verdict,” said Carroll’s lead attorney, Roberta Kaplan.

Clarissa-Jan Lim is a breaking news reporter for MS NOW. She was previously a senior reporter and editor at BuzzFeed News.

Lisa Rubin is MS NOW’s senior legal reporter and a former litigator.

The Dictatorship

Trump downplays importance of failing Iran deal that he previously celebrated

Published

55 minutes ago

July 14, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Trump downplays importance of failing Iran deal that he previously celebrated

To the extent that the United States and Iran had a ceasefire deal in place to end the deadly, destabilizing war, that agreement has unraveled. Donald Trump has declared the ceasefire “over”; both countries have renewed their military strikes; and the American president is positioning the U.S. as a mercenary forcewith plans to charge tolls to pay for guarding the Strait of Hormuz.

As for the deal the Trump administration negotiated with Iran, formally known as a memorandum of understanding, or MOU, conservative host Hugh Hewitt asked the president whether the framework was “built to fall apart.” The Republican responded with an answer he hadn’t shared previously.

“It was built to test. It was a test,” Trump replied. “We didn’t know. It didn’t, look, memorandum of understanding, when you’re dealing with sleazebags, don’t mean much. And they don’t mean much when you’re dealing with honorable people, too, because it’s memorandum of understanding. It doesn’t mean much.”

The president went on to say that Iran “didn’t honor the test,” before suggesting that he had predicted from the outset that officials in Tehran would cause the agreement to collapse through noncompliance. “I said, ‘Watch, I guarantee. Watch.’ And they never, they never followed it.”

The apparent point of the on-air comments wasn’t merely to blame Iran for the unravelling deal, it was also to convey the suggestion that Trump knew all along Iran would cause the framework to collapse.

The trouble is, very recent history proves otherwise.

It was exactly one month ago when the president published a statement to his social media platform, announcing, “The Deal with the Islamic Republic of Iran is now complete. Congratulations to all!” About an hour later, seemingly eager to pat himself on the back, he added“This Great Deal will bring Peace and Security to the whole Region. Many presidents have tried to make Peace with Iran, and all have failed before me. The Leaders of the Region have, for the first time, found a President who can help them achieve real Peace.”

In the days that followed, not only did Trump continue to celebrate his alleged triumph, but the White House invested an enormous amount of time and effort in touting the deal, all while Vice President JD Vance went on a media tour, doing his best to defend the policy on the merits.

There was nothing about this being a “test.” Not a word was uttered about the idea that the deal “doesn’t mean much.”

If the president expects his post hoc rationalization of this failure to persuade anyone, he’s probably going to be disappointed.

Steve Benen is a producer for “The Rachel Maddow Show,” the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He’s also the bestselling author of “Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans’ War on the Recent Past.”

The Dictatorship

GOP’s Ron Johnson shares, then retracts, a conspiratorial ‘rumor’ about Mitch McConnell

Published

55 minutes ago

July 14, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

GOP’s Ron Johnson shares, then retracts, a conspiratorial ‘rumor’ about Mitch McConnell

We’ve known for a month that Republican Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky was hospitalized, but neither he nor anyone on his team has been willing to say why. Over the weekend, McConnell finally took steps to end the speculation, issuing a statement to explain that he’s been recovering from a fall, followed by what he described as “a mild case of pneumonia.”

The statement was accompanied by a photograph of the senator in a hospital bed alongside his wife, former Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao. For good measure, the image showed a newspaper — specifically, Sunday’s Washington Post sports section — in McConnell’s right hand.

It stood to reason that the statement and photo would revive the conversation about why the former Senate majority leader hadn’t disclosed any of these details earlier — the lack of transparency surrounding his personal health has long been a point of concern — but some in conservative politics went furtherfloating assorted conspiracy theories about the authenticity of the image of McConnell and his wife.

The chatter was not limited to the far-right fringe.

Republican Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin appeared Monday on conservative media channel Real America’s Voice, where the senator told host Eric Bolling, in reference to the McConnell image, “I’ve just heard from some other sources that was an older photo. So I really don’t know.” (He did not identify his alleged “sources.”)

The Wisconsin Republican went on to say that he hadn’t spoken directly with McConnell, but that he hoped his colleague has a speedy recovery so he can return to Capitol Hill and help advance Donald Trump’s agenda.

Hours later, when pressed by reporters about his conspiratorial on-air comments, Johnson said, “It was a rumor, don’t — discount it, just discount it. … I just heard it, so assume it’s false.”

The bigger picture matters. Johnson isn’t just some guy; he’s a three-term member of the U.S. Senate who was speaking to a national television audience about an ailing colleague. It’s the opposite of his job to amplify baseless “rumors” and add fuel to fringe conspiracy theories. As the Wisconsin Republican really ought to know, those in his position have a responsibility to avoid conspiratorial nonsense.

What’s more, there’s the GOP senator’s track record to consider. Shortly after Trump grudgingly left the White House after his 2020 defeat, he was effectively banned from most major social media platforms and made few television appearances. Around this time, The New York Times described Johnson as Trump’s successor as the GOP’s “foremost amplifier of conspiracy theories and disinformation.”

In the years that followed, Johnson seemed a little too eager to prove his critics right, peddling bizarre and easily discredited nonsense about Covid-19. And the Jan. 6 attack. And vaccines. And climate change. And the 2020 presidential election. And the 2024 presidential election.

Last year, the Wisconsin Republican reached new depths, becoming the only senator from either party to embrace fringe ideas from the so-called 9/11 truther movement.

With this in mind, his on-air comments about McConnell and what he’s “heard from some other sources” are consistent with what we’ve come to expect from Johnson, though this only makes matters worse for his unfortunate reputation.

Finally, that the senator walked back his own rhetoric seemed like a step in the right direction, though I’m curious about his motivation: Did Johnson urge reporters to “discount” the “rumor” he spread because he recognized it as irresponsible, or was he scrambling to better position himself as the next chairman of the Senate Budget Committee in the wake of Sen. Lindsey Graham’s death?