2026-04-16 04:43:49
US senators voted 52-47, largely along party lines, against a war powers resolution on Wednesday afternoon that would have stopped the Trump administration from continuing its illegal military campaign against Iran without congressional approval.
Every Republican except Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul opposed the resolution; all Democrats apart from Sen. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania supported it. Sen. Jim Justice (R-W.Va.) did not vote.
The resolution “directs the President to remove the United States Armed Forces from hostilities within or against Iran, unless explicitly authorized by a declaration of war or a specific authorization for use of military force.” Article 1 of the Constitution grants Congress—not the president—the power to declare war, and the War Powers Act grants Congress the power to halt unauthorized military action by requiring troop withdrawal within 60 to 90 days.
“I’m here to call bullshit on the President of the United States.” Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.), who sponsored the measure, said on the Senate floor just before the vote. “Every moment that Donald Trump leaves our heroes mired in the muck of this illegal war of choice in Iran, he is showing that he cares more about saving his own face than leading our troops.”
Duckworth is a veteran who lost both legs serving in the US Army during the Iraq War. In her remarks on the Senate floor, she said the Trump administration has not offered sufficient justification for launching—and now escalating—the war.
“War is always tragic, but when it’s preventable, when it’s unjustified, it’s not just tragic—it’s a travesty,” Duckworth said.
The Democratic-led measure was widely anticipated to fail. As I wrote shortly before the Senate’s previous war powers vote in March, which ended in a 47-53 vote against—with Sens. Paul and Fetterman being the same lawmakers to cross party lines—even if the resolution passed, it would ultimately require a two-thirds congressional majority to overturn Trump’s inevitable presidential veto.
Many lawmakers thus approached the resolution as a way to drive home their stance on the war. In that light, what we saw Wednesday was not reassuring: four such resolutions have now failed since the start of the current war in February, while more than 2,000 people have been killed in Iran, according to the country’s health ministry—possibly many more, with figures not updated since April 3—and the US military has confirmed 13 combat-related deaths across the region.
2026-04-16 01:10:34
The FBI and federal prosecutors in New York announced Wednesday morning that they have arrested Stefan Pildes, 50, one of the organizers of New York City’s Santacon, an infamous annual public pukefest which claims to be a charitable event. Pildes is accused of diverting money raised by Santacon NYC to a “slush fund,” then using that money for lakefront property renovations, luxury vacations, and concert tickets. All the while, the indictment says, “only a small fraction” of the money raised was actually given to charities.
Santacon, which began its life as a merry little art prank partially inspired by Mother Jones, has since become a powerfully unpopular cultural juggernaut, in which the drunkest denizens of various major American cities dress up in red and urinate upon their local landmarks. In 2023, a Gothamist investigation found that while Santacon NYC, the largest such event in the country, claims to have donated millions to charity, over an eight year period, “less than a fifth” of the money raised by the New York event went to charitable causes. More than a third of the money raised in that time, Gothamist reported, went to “groups or individuals who appear connected to Burning Man.”
“Despite claiming that he did not receive any compensation,” the indictment says donations went to “personal use.”
On their website, Santacon NYC claims to have “made a tremendous difference for dozens of arts & charitable causes!” According to prosecutors in New York’s Southern District, when one attendee asked what she’d receive for buying a ticket to Santacon, “the SantaCon Email responded, in part, ‘your donation goes to charity and it is only a few bucks and that good feeling will warm your heart faster than whiskey and gingerbread.'”
But prosecutors allege proceeds from the Santacon ticket really went to Pildes himself, who the indictment says has been a major Santacon NYC organizer since November 2019. “Instead of donating the millions of dollars he raised,” the indictment reads, Pildes is alleged to have “misappropriated and stole the majority of SantaCon proceeds by diverting them to an entity that Pildes controlled, Creative Opportunities Group, Inc. (‘COG’), that had no public connection to SantaCon.”
Besides the aptly named “Creative Opportunites Group,” prosecutors also allege Pildes “abused his control” over a bank account set up for the nonprofit behind Santacon NYC, which is called Participatory Safety, Inc (PSI). Prosecutors allege that Pildes stole “hundreds of thousands of dollars in other SantaCon proceeds for his own personal use” from the PSI bank account.
“Among other things,” the indictment adds, “Pildes spent SantaCon proceeds on extensive renovations to a lakefront property in New Jersey, luxury vacations in Hawaii, Las Vegas, and Vail, extravagant meals, and a luxury vehicle. Pildes did so despite claiming that he did not receive any compensation from SantaCon or PSI.” In March 2023, prosectuors say, Pildes emailed a potential Santacon venue, claiming that aside from fees for “ticket processing and production,” all ticket proceeds would go to PSI, “our not-for-profit partner that distributes to the charities we have listed on our charities page. No producer receives income from this event, this is a charity event.”
Chris Hackett, an early Santacon organizer in Brooklyn, says that he and Pildes recently encountered each other at the premiere of a recent documentary about the event, released by filmmaker Seth Porges last year. “I don’t know him but he knows me,” Hackett says. When Pildes suggested the two take a photo together, Hackett recalls telling him, “I don’t know you. I don’t like you. Fuck off now.”
Pildes is charged with one count of wire fraud; if convicted, he faces a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison. Neither Santacon NYC nor Pildes has yet publicly commented on the arrest or the underlying allegations, and it is unclear if the accused has retained legal representation.
Santa himself could also not be reached for comment.
2026-04-16 00:22:48
A version of the below article first appeared in David Corn’s newsletter, Our Land. The newsletter comes out twice a week (most of the time) and provides behind-the-scenes stories and articles about politics, media, and culture. Subscribing costs just $5 a month—but you can sign up for a free 30-day trial.
Tucker Carlson sometimes speaks plainly. Sometimes he speaks in code. When he broke with Donald Trump over the Iran war last week, he did both.
The day after Easter, during a monologue on his internet show, Carlson assailed Trump for defiling “the holiest day in Christian life” with a rabid social media post that threatened to bomb power plants and bridges—civilian targets—if Tehran did not open “the Fuckin’ Strait” and that mocked Islam. An outraged Carlson expressed many of the obvious criticisms. He proclaimed that Trump had “shattered” a “uniquely joyful and peaceful moment for Christians” and that Trump’s “vile” vow to conduct “a war crime” was “unacceptable…under moral law.”
He accused Trump of receiving a thrill by threatening such violence. He called the post “evil” and declared, “No decent person mocks other people’s religion… No president should mock Islam… This is a mockery of Christianity.” He also slammed Christian leaders, most notably evangelist Paula White, the director of the White House Faith Office, for daring to compare Trump to Jesus. “Did Jesus command the disciples to go out and kill people?” he sharply asked.
This was a harsh critique that people on the right and left, Democrats, Republicans, and independents, and folks of all faiths or none could share. Here was Carlson as a Christian peacenik anti-interventionist.
But there was something else going on in that 44-minute-long rant. Carlson opened with the fact that during his second inauguration, Trump did not place his hand on the Bible when he swore his oath to defend the Constitution. “That should have been maybe a clue that we need to pause and think about, what is this?” Carlson remarked. He suggested that Trump “didn’t put his hand on the Bible because he affirmatively rejects what’s inside that book, and what’s inside that book are limits on human behavior.” Trump, he said, was not accepting a basic premise of the Old and New Testament: “You are not God, and you cannot assume his powers.”
Hmmm, who might recoil at the Bible, who might be repulsed by the supposed Word of God? Carlson did not answer that. But when railing against Trump’s social media post as the work of “evil,” he noted, “God creates, and Satan destroys.” It seemed he was associating Trump with Beelzebub. And he wondered aloud where Trump’s threats against Iran and the current stalemate will lead. He answered his own question: “Nuclear weapons… You wipe out a country of 92 million… You could have a global nuclear war… All things being equal, that’s where we’re heading.”
Carlson was casting Trump as a Satan-adjacent, Bible-hating, evil force slouching toward nuclear Armageddon.
And there’s more.
Asserting that nuclear war is the plan, he insisted, “There are a million signs, but the most obvious is the dumbest neocons in Trump’s orbit are saying it out loud.” He maintained that these unnamed neocons are “messengers” peddling “the policies of others.” He didn’t identify the others, but it could be Israel or Satan. Or maybe both. (Historically, prominent neoconservatives have been pro-Israel hawks and Jewish.)
Carlson did refer to one of these diabolical neocons by name: Fox News host Mark Levin, a fervent fan of the Iran war and a cheerleader for Benjamin Netanyahu’s regime. He noted that Trump has called on his followers to watch Levin, and he explained that it’s useful to do so because Levin’s show “has been a place where the future is revealed,” though the show is “probably” not written by Levin himself. That is, Levin is fronting for someone or something, and Trump is in league with this cabal.
On an Easter weekend episode of Levin’s show, Carlson pointed out, Levin reviewed the tremendous casualties of the biggest battles of World War II—the Battle of the Bulge, 80,000 to 90,000; Okinawa, more than 50,000—and told his viewers these numbers convinced President Harry Truman that it would be best to drop the newly invented atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki rather than mount a massive invasion of Japan.
Carlson claimed that this observation from Levin was “an argument for [using] nuclear weapons” against Iran and that Levin was test-driving this idea for Trump. Doing so at Easter time, Carlson huffed, was giving “the finger to Christianity.” Levin did not directly call for using nuclear weapons in Iran. But Carlson proclaimed his comments delivered a clear message: This is the plan.
To recap: a nefarious band of neocons in league with the Bible-hating Trump are pushing for an “insane” nuclear war.
And there’s even more.
“Could there be a spiritual component to what we’re watching?” Carlson asked his viewers. He suggested the Iran war was more than a geostrategic blunder. He referred to it as “a very stealthy yet incredibly effective attack…on belief in Jesus,” part of a “sustained effort to exterminate…the Christian faith.” He even said that Trump himself might see “this in bigger terms…as the fulfillment of something or the elevation to some higher office beyond president of the United States. That’s entirely possible.” Pointing to evangelical supporters of Trump, he asked, “Who are these people encouraging the president of the US to see himself as a millennialist figure…as part of the End Times story.”
Carlson has always been a cagey fellow. He didn’t explicitly say that Trump was the anti-Christ and in cahoots with evildoers, such as neocons and Israel, to destroy Christianity. But that’s how I read the tea leaves he’s dishing. It’s not that difficult to connect his dots to see—aha!—Trump is a leading figure in the grandest conspiracy theory: the Devil scheming to use nuclear weapons to annihilate the true faith.
Carlson has a long history of embracing and peddling conspiracy theories. He has claimed the Democrats are trying to replace white Americans with immigrants; the January 6 riot was a false flag operation; the Biden administration developed secret plans to round up and imprison conservatives; the United States maintained secret bioweapons labs in Ukraine (a false assertion the Kremlin pushed); and the US government was somehow involved in the 9/11 attacks.
His latest tale is the hugest conspiracy theory of all. Trump is not merely screwing up bigly in the Middle East. He is a key player—if not the key player—in the titanic clash between God and Satan. No doubt, for Carlson, Trump’s subsequent social media post, in which he said a “whole civilization will die tonight” was further proof of the mighty spiritual warfare underway.
Naturally, Trump could not not respond to Carlson. In a long post on Thursday, he called Carlson and Megyn Kelly, Candace Owens, and Alex Jones—former Trump stans who have dumped Mr. MAGA over the war—“losers” with “Low IQs” and “NUT JOBS” and “TROUBLEMAKERS” who lost their television shows and “will say anything necessary for some ‘free’ and cheap publicity.” He excommunicated them: “They’re not ‘MAGA.’”
Reacting to Trump’s retort, Carlson’s email newsletter suggested that the president was being blackmailed by “anti-Christian” Israel or that “something far more morbid” was afoot. But now Carlson leaned away from the anti-Christ notion and observed that Trump was “under a level of pressure that most people cannot fathom, with rabid Israel Firsters viciously harassing him… Their shameless pursuit is steadfast enough to make even a man like Donald Trump go mad.” His newsletter noted, “Rather than engaging in petty name-calling, we want to give the president some grace.”
Yet in the same issue, the newsletter promoted a video from conspiracy-monger Alex Jones in which he insisted that Trump has “totally changed” and was “being led around by the nose by Netanyahu and by Mark Levin and others.” Jones prayed that God would “free him from the demonic influences that he’s under”—more satanic skullduggery. He called for Trump to be removed from office.
I’m a bit confused. First, Carlson tells us Trump is an agent of satanic destruction that is aimed at the extermination of Christianity, suggesting he might be the anti-Christ. But then he characterizes Trump as being driven mad due to the pressure applied on him by “anti-Christian” Israelis. At the same time, he also promotes the claim that Trump is possessed by demons, which might make him the anti-Christ or might not. (Earlier this month, Carlson did an interview with a priest who conducts exorcisms, and they discussed the widespread demonic possessions of politicians. During that show, Carlson attributed his firing at Fox News to the work of demons.) In any case, we’re in woo-woo land. And after Trump posted a meme that depicted Trump as Jesus, a new issue of Carlson’s newsletter said Trump was “lost” and asked people to pray for him.
When Carlson addressed the 2024 Republican presidential convention as a Trump champion, he declared that Trump had survived the assassination attempt at a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, due to “divine intervention.” So less than two years ago, Trump was saved by God. Now, according to Carlson, Trump is possibly trying to extinguish God and Christianity. That’s some turnabout.
Carlson has jumped from one extreme to another. Trump critics may welcome his assault on Trump. But as he so often does, he’s playing a dangerous game, demonizing (literally!) his foes, as he situates himself as a true defender of the Christian faith. Where will this take him and the slice of MAGA that feeds on the paranoia and conspiracism he pitches? God only knows.
2026-04-16 00:05:13
President Donald Trump shared what appears to be an AI-generated image of Jesus hugging him on social media on Wednesday morning, just days after he was widely condemned for sharing a picture depicting himself as a Christ-like figure.
He wrote in the post: “The Radical Left Lunatics might not like this, but I think it is quite nice!!! President DJT.” The image comes from an account on X named “Irish for Trump” with the handle @Dkelly4congress, in reference to a Republican who unsuccessfully ran for the US House in 2024. The account also appears to be associated with the dive bar Croke Park in Boston, Massachusetts.
Since posting his earlier image on Monday, which was part of his bizarre remarks against Pope Leo XIV over the US-Israeli war in Iran, Trump told reporters that he believed the post actually portrayed him “as a doctor” and “had to do with [the humanitarian nonprofit] Red Cross.” The post was deleted later on Monday following backlash, with many of his own supporters voicing criticisms.
But Trump appears to have doubled down on Wednesday, and JD Vance has backed the president.
“He took [the Monday post] down because he recognized that a lot of people weren’t understanding his humor,” Vance told Fox News’ Bret Baier on Monday. “I think the president of the United States likes to mix it up on social media.”
Vance also criticized the pope, saying in the same interview that the Vatican should stick to “matters of morality” and “what’s going on in the Catholic Church” and “let the president of the United States stick to dictating American public policy.”
On Tuesday, Vance said the pope should “be careful” when talking about theology, asserting it was wrong for Leo to say Jesus “is never on the side of those who once wielded the sword and today drop bombs.”
Sure JD, the pope definitely doesn’t know about theology.
As my colleague Kiera Butler wrote last week, the Trump administration’s war in Iran, as well as the absurd justifications of the military effort, is tearing apart his solid coalition of Catholic and evangelical Protestants. According to an Ipsos and Reuters survey released on Tuesday, only 55 percent of Republicans said they believed the war was worth the costs.
2026-04-15 19:30:00
In March, a man who needed legal representation reached out to Maria Aguila’s law office in Jacksonville, Florida, asking to meet with an attorney. The only problem was that she had never heard of this attorney, and she is a solo practitioner who focuses on immigration and family law. Aguila was in court at the time, but the man left his alleged attorney’s website and phone number. When Aguila called, someone answered and hung up. And the website, she soon discovered, listed her law firm’s name and address. It even included her employer identification number. She warned her clients in a Facebook post in English and Spanish: “Someone is IMPERSONATING MY LAW FIRM,” Aguila wrote. “PLEASE DO NOT CALL THIS BUSINESS AND PAY ANY MONEY.”
In her 26 years of practicing law, Aguila had never found herself in such a circumstance. “You put your blood, sweat, and tears into your business to help clients because it means something to you—I’m the daughter of immigrants,” Aguila, whose parents are from the Philippines, told me. “Here’s someone just taking your identity and your information and robbing people.” She filed a complaint with the Florida Bar. The scammer’s website is still online as of the publication of this story.
In the last year, the country’s most prominent legal organizations—such as the American Bar Association and the American Immigration Lawyers Association— have warned that scams targeting immigrants and attorneys have increased to an alarming level. Certainly, these kinds of grifts are not new in the legal world, which for years has dealt with bad actors practicing law without a license. But representatives from several legal groups and private attorneys told me that today’s scams are more sophisticated and harder to detect thanks to the proliferation of AI and social media. “Criminals have identified this as an opportunity,” said Charity Anastasio, Practice and Ethics Counsel at AILA.
Scammers have also taken advantage of the desperate positions many immigrants find themselves in today as the Trump administration ramps up detention and deportation efforts. This population is much less likely to feel comfortable reporting a crime when ICE and law enforcement are working together more than ever. “This fear and desperation make it very ripe for individuals to be taken advantage of in this way,” said Adonia Simpson, the policy and pro bono deputy director at the American Bar Association Commission on Immigration, which has documented more than a dozen reports of fraud since last summer. But given most victims’ reluctance to contact law enforcement, the true scope of these scams is unknown. “The damage that this could be causing in the long run could be very significant,” Simpson added. “We really have no idea how pervasive this is. We’re just seeing the tip of the iceberg.”
“The damage that this could be causing in the long run could be very significant. We really have no idea how pervasive this is. We’re just seeing the tip of the iceberg.”
Scammers’ tactics vary widely but appear to have a number of strategies in common. They advertise themselves on Facebook as law firms and communicate with victims through WhatsApp. Often, they adopt the name of a reputable law office, such as Aguila’s firm, or even individual attorneys. The American Bar Association, for example, recently discovered that several fraudsters had created documents using the organization’s old logo after they received calls from victims looking to speak with attorneys who claimed to work at the organization. Other scammers have posed as staff for the nonprofit Catholic Charities USA, which became so concerned about the pervasiveness of the problem that the organization issued an alert on its website to prospective clients.
The scams also usually involve the creation of a website with photos of supposed attorneys and smiling clients posing with documents like Social Security cards—but as several lawyers I spoke to pointed out, many of them appear to be created with AI. Victims are told to submit payment for legal services via Zelle and other cash transfer apps. Once the payment is received, the phony lawyers stop responding to their victims, several attorneys told me. “You see people spending thousands and thousands of dollars for services that are not rendered,” Simpson said.
Other schemes are more elaborate. In one New York case, scammers used Facebook to contact victims, fabricated documents using symbols from the federal government, and even organized sham court hearings via videoconference with fraudsters impersonating judges. Screenshots of one such hearing show a man dressed in a suit sitting behind a laptop, an American flag to his right, and a seal that reads, “United States Court of Appeals” behind him. Another image shows another person wearing a US Customs and Border Protection jacket, with the emblem of the US Citizenship and Immigration Services behind him. At least 150 people needing legal help between March 2023 and November 2025 paid more than $100,000 to the phony lawyers. Victims’ funds were laundered into bank accounts overseas, though defendants kept some of the cash for personal expenses like DoorDash food orders, court records state.
In February, the US Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York indicted five people from Colombia accused of running the operation. A trial date has not been set; they each face up to 20 years in prison. “The criminal conduct charged in the indictment is no ordinary fraud,” attorneys wrote in court filings. “The defendants undermined the rule of law and the integrity of our immigration system.”
But the New York case is a rare example of an immigration scam that resulted in arrests. Most seemingly operate without consequences, in part because the Internet offers anonymity to criminals who could be based anywhere. In Aguila’s case, an IT specialist found that the website using her office’s address was registered in Turkey, she told me.
Law enforcement agencies, from state to federal, are also siloed from one another, which makes it difficult to crack down on larger scam operations. A recent case in Kenner, Louisiana, illustrates how complicated investigating these cases can be. Police there arrested a 25-year-old man in February on charges that he impersonated a lawyer and scammed a Honduran woman seeking to secure legal status for her two children. Police say the man, David Ardila-Garcia, promoted a fake law firm on Facebook with the name “Immigration Attorney Services.” For 11 months, he met with the Louisiana mother on FaceTime and asked her to send him several payments totaling more than $6,000. When her case wasn’t moving forward, she contacted Kenner police and provided detectives with the phone number tied to the Zelle account where she sent payments. A query of a law enforcement database revealed the number belonged to Ardila-Garcia, who lived in Fort Myers, Florida. He was arrested on a warrant there and extradited to Louisiana.
Kenner Police Chief Keith Conley told me he believes there are more victims. Banking records obtained by detectives show that Ardila-Garcia deposited about $250,000 into a Colombian bank. But Conley said his agency struggled to persuade federal and Florida authorities to help them secure a search warrant for Ardila-Garcia’s laptop. “That would have been a treasure trove of information as far as other victims,” Conley said.
The impacts on victims are endless. Beyond losing thousands of dollars that could have gone toward legitimate legal assistance, immigrants could also be missing court deadlines and hearings in their cases at a time when the system is increasingly hostile to them. “You could be simply deported in an environment like this,” Anastasio, from AILA, said. “You don’t have any money left over to pay anybody because you just gave it to a criminal.” In the New York federal case, one victim was ordered deported by a judge, though the ruling was later reversed after the scam came to light.
In the end, these scams also create enormous challenges for immigration attorneys. Many who spoke to Anastasio at AILA describe feeling shame that their identity was used to harm people, she told me. Anastasio advises them to file complaints with the police and their respective bar associations in case they’re ever accused of wrongdoing. “It hurts the rule of law. It hurts our standing as a system of justice,” she told me. “That’s under enough attack now already. We really don’t need this added criminal element.”
Last week, someone seeking legal help called Aguila’s office in Jacksonville. A TikTok video advertising immigration services in Spanish had surfaced, this one listing her phone number. Aguila couldn’t believe her identity had wound up as part of another scam. “I’m trying to get my work done for my clients, and then I’m constantly having to be worried about people calling me, thinking I’m offering this assistance when I’m not,” she told me over the phone on Tuesday. “I don’t even know what to do anymore. It seems out of control.”
2026-04-15 18:00:00
Earlier this year, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists announced that it was moving the hands of the Doomsday Clock to 85 seconds before midnight, a symbolic hour signifying global catastrophe. The hands have been moved 27 times since the clock’s creation in 1947, and they’re now the closest they’ve pointed to worldwide destruction. The threats of nuclear war, climate change, artificial intelligence, and disinformation all played into the decision. It’s meant as a wake-up call to the world.
One of the experts who helped make that decision is University of Chicago physics professor Daniel Holz, chair of the Bulletin’s Science and Security Board. And even though the clock evokes a potentially terrifying future, Holz takes a more optimistic approach to the entire endeavor.
Subscribe to Mother Jones podcasts on Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast app.“Really, the Doomsday Clock is a symbol of hope,” Holz says. “The whole point of this clock is to, yes, to alarm people, to inform people, but also to demonstrate we can turn back the hands of the clock. And we’ve done it in the past, and we can hope to do it in the future. And we must.”
On this week’s More To The Story, Holz sits down with host Al Letson to talk about the Doomsday Clock’s history, why we’re closer to global destruction than ever before, and what we can do to reverse course.
This is an update of an episode that first aired in July 2025.
Find More To The Story on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeartRadio, Pandora, or your favorite podcast app, and don’t forget to subscribe.
