The Dictatorship
Trump’s budget seeks money for Kash Patel’s FBI to spy on Americans
Happy Tuesday. Here’s your Tuesday Tech Drop, the past week’s top stories from the intersection of technology and politics.
Trump seeks funds to snoop on liberals
Rep. Mary Gay Scanlon, D-Pa., sounded the alarm on Monday over the Trump administration’s latest budget proposal, particularly its requests for “counterterrorism” funds to be used to target Americans. Scanlon flagged recent reporting from journalist Ken Klippenstein that highlighted the White House’s request for a “joint mission center” that would “proactively” target Americans deemed a terrorist threat due to opinions such as anti-Christian sentiment, “anti-Americanism” and “anti-capitalism.” Those definitions came from a national security memo the Trump administration issued last yearknown as NSPM-7.
The proposed budget references social media platforms as hotspots for the so-called terrorism the administration is “proactively” trying to target.
“We’ve been raising the alarm about Trump’s counterterrorism directive – NSPM-7 – a plan to label Americans as domestic terrorists over opposition to immigration enforcement, beliefs about capitalism, and positions on race, gender, and religion,” Scanlon wrote on X. “Now, the White House wants to use taxpayer dollars to spy on those who oppose its extremist agenda.”
We’ve been raising the alarm about Trump’s counterterrorism directive – NSPM-7 – a plan to label Americans as domestic terrorists over opposition to immigration enforcement, beliefs about capitalism, and positions on race, gender, and religion.
Now, the White House wants to use… https://t.co/HKQIzHZCKI
— Congresswoman Mary Gay Scanlon (@RepMGS) April 7, 2026
DOJ privacy official quits Civil Rights Division
Kilian Kagle, a privacy official with the Civil Rights Division, which oversees voting rights at the Justice Department, resigned last week as the Trump administration works to compel states to hand over sensitive voter information. Kagle did not give a reason for his departure.
Read my blog on Kagle’s resignation here.
Propagandists join Trump’s Easter party
The founders of Tenet Media, a right-wing organization paid by Russian interests to launder pro-Russian talking points to Americans in an illegal scheme, apparently attended the White House Easter celebration on Monday.
The founders of illegal Russian media operation Tenet Media weren’t just allowed back in the country. They’re invited to the White House Easter egg roll! https://t.co/sEoiwMcZmY
— Will Sommer (@willsommer) April 6, 2026
Trump’s wasteful war enriches defense industry
The Pentagon is seeking $4.5 billion dollars to replenish its stockpile of Tomahawk missiles, which Trump has depleted over the course of his deadly and economically destructive war with Iran. During a recent episode of “All In with Chris Hayes,” Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., discussed how Trump’s reckless use of extremely expensive military weapons will likely benefit defense contractors that have agreed to fund the president’s legally dubious new ballroom at the White House.
Read more about the White House’s request at Bloomberg here.
Reporting for the record
A new report in the Gateway Journalism Review highlights how data journalists have helped establish a public record of the devastating effects of Trump’s racist, anti-immigrant crackdown.
Read more at the Gateway Journalism Review here.
TMZ targets vacationing lawmakers
Digital tabloid TMZ has had a field day outing lawmakers who have gone on vacation during the government shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security. One of those lawmakers, Rep. John James, R-Mich., has been facing mockery after he posted an old video of himself at a gun range, apparently in an effort to raise doubts about whether he went to Turks and Caicos during the shutdown.
Feast your eyes on the evidence:
Read more at the Daily Beast here.
After a bunch of conservative lawmakers posted artificial intelligence-generated images that purported to show the colonel who was rescued after his plane was shot down over Iran, the Daily Kos’ Alix Breeden wrote about the crisis of Republicans “getting tricked by AI slop.”
Read the post on Daily Kos here.
Holocaust Memorial pulls links
Blue Light News reported this week on alterations made last year to references to racism on the U.S. National Holocaust Memorial website, removing a page called “Teaching Materials on Nazism and Jim Crow,” which, according to the outlet, “Provided lesson plans and resources about the connections between Americande jureracism and the Nazi regime, including links to sites about ‘African American Soldiers during World War II’ and ‘Afro-Germans during the Holocaust.’” A spokesperson for the museum told Blue Light News, “The Trump administration has not requested any changes to the Museum’s content or programming,” pointing them to other, still-active pages that touch on related topics.
Read the Blue Light News report here.
Ja’han Jones is an MS NOW opinion blogger. He previously wrote The ReidOut Blog.