The News You Need on Tuesday, April 21st, 2026.
The news you need today from Scott Horton and Charles Kaiser. Elon must answer for AI porn on X, Kash Patel is MIA from the FBI and European fascists and conservatives are ditching Trump.
Elon Musk Subpoenaed in French Porn Query
Le Monde
Scott: When Elon Musk decided that the best way to expand the use and reach of X (formerly Twitter) was to flood social media around the world with artificial intelligence-generated pornography, France was more than one dozen nations that launched a criminal probe focusing specifically on his role in the process.
Several months into the process, French prosecutors say they have specific evidence that Musk’s decision was driven by a specific profit motive and that he was particularly targeting sexually frustrated young men—who have been identified as a prime recruitment zone for fascist political parties that Musk favors.
How will Musk respond? To date his responses have been consistent, and indirect. He mobilizes the U.S. Department of Justice and State Department, each of which acts on his instructions, to put pressure on foreign law enforcement.
Le Monde reports:
The Paris Public Prosecutor’s Office has been investigating numerous alleged abuses involving the social network X and its CEO since January 2025. The billionaire was summoned on Monday for a voluntary interview.
On his X account, Elon Musk posts frantically. In recent days, he has shared his opinions on universal basic income, South African politics, a local election in Nevada, and progressivism. But will he be in Paris on Monday, April 20? He hasn’t said, and it seems unlikely.
Nevertheless, he has been summoned there by the head of the cybercrime unit for a voluntary interview, as part of a preliminary investigation launched in January 2025 against the social network he leads. About ten executives from the American company—including Linda Yaccarino, its CEO until the summer of 2025—have also been summoned.
Initiated following reports filed by a Member of Parliament and an executive at a public cybersecurity agency, the investigation initially focused on two alleged offenses: the possible deliberate manipulation of the algorithm to influence French public debate, and the potential illicit use of users’ sensitive personal data for the purpose of displaying targeted advertising.
America 1, Fascists 0
The Seattle Times
Charles: This is a story about the still-beating heart of democracy in America.
On September 18, 2023, President Joe Biden nominated United States Magistrate Mustafa Kasubhai to serve as a United States District Judge for the District of Oregon.
Republican Senators attacked him as an advocate of diversity, equity, and inclusion and the use of preferred pronouns and honorifics in his courtroom; they suggested he might be a Marxist. After a 14-month-long pitched battle, on November 19, 2024, the Senate invoked cloture by a 51–43 vote and his nomination was confirmed by a 51–44 vote.
Thus Kasubhai became the third Muslim in American history to become a district court judge–all of them honored by a president named Joe Biden, and a Senate controlled by Democrats.
Last Saturday this Muslim jurist granted summary judgement to Democratic attorneys generals from twenty states and the District of Columbia after they had sued HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr and his inspector general to overturn their threat to deny Medicare and Medicaid reimbursements to any health care institution that provides gender-affirming care for American youth.
In a preliminary decision rendered in the same matter last month, Judge Kasubhai said the case was part of a broader effort to undermine democracy: “The notion that ‘I will go forward and issue a declaration and see if we can get away with it’ is not a principle of governance that adheres to the overarching commitment to a democratic republic that requires the rule of law to be regarded and respected and honored as sacred.”
In a blistering new 49-page opinion, Judge Kasubhai condemned the federal government’s “wanton” efforts to limit the care, which did not follow proper administrative procedures.
“Unserious leaders are unsafe,” Kasubhai began. “This case highlights a leader’s unserious regard for the rule of law.”
The judge also denounced how quickly the health department took these actions, instead of giving patients and families time to seek other alternatives.
“Kennedy’s utter failure to promulgate rules in accordance with statutory authority … caused chaos and terror for all the people and institutions of our great nation.”
“This is a resounding win for the rights of youth, their families, and the rule of law when it comes to medical care,” Washington state Attorney General Nick Brown declared. “The court agrees that the administration ignored the law in its rush to deprive transgender youth of the health care they are legally entitled to.”
Gender-affirming care for minors mostly includes puberty blockers, hormone treatment and mental health support, and rarely surgery. Most professional medical associations in the U.S. approve the care for young trans and gender-diverse patients — including the Pediatric Endocrine Society and the American Academy of Pediatrics.
Ukrainian Drone Supremacy Is Clear
Financial Times
Scott: Russia’s war on Ukraine involves a mixture of World War I trench warfare with high tech, but low budget drone technology. In the latter category, the edge has seesawed between Kyiv and Moscow, with the Ukrainians now holding something of an edge while the Kremlin focuses on the abilities of its Iranian and North Korean suppliers.
The Financial Times reports here on the Ukrainian distance drone attacks:
With Russian attacks growing in intensity and Ukraine facing a shortage of air-defence missiles, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have proven to be a cheap and effective solution.
As of March, they were responsible for 70% of all Russian drones shot down in the Kyiv region, according to Ukraine’s top general, Oleksandr Syrsky. But the first generation of UAVs had limited flight time and relied on radio frequencies, which meant that their operators had to stay close — and potentially become targets themselves. The same companies that rushed last year to develop these interceptors, including Tenebris, have been working on upgrades that use a secure internet connection, allowing operators to control their UAVs hundreds — and potentially thousands — of kilometres away. The Bagnet’s test flight out of Kyiv was observed by three Ukrainian officers on the ground. Two minutes into the flight, the pilot assisting Velma deactivated the safety feature to arm the drone. Soon after, AI-powered software highlighted a Russian drone in a green square and guided the interceptor towards its target until the image cut out.
Closer to the frontline, they use Starlink internet terminals to guide larger quadcopter drones and robots to resupply infantry and evacuate the wounded. But long-distance piloting has not yet been deployed to the small quadcopters operated by soldiers just a few kilometres from the drones they are flying. If deployed en masse, long-distance piloting could alleviate Ukraine’s enduring manpower crisis and save the lives of drone pilots deployed near the frontline who are subsequently targeted by Russian strikes. Conversely, Ukrainian defence minister Mykhailo Fedorov said his country was also in the process of setting up units dedicated to “hunting” Russian drone pilots.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said last month that the number of drone interceptors produced had overtaken the number of pilots. “The situation last summer was critical, we were already producing enough interceptors but we just didn’t have enough crews,” said Lyuba Shipovich, the co-founder of Dignitas, a Ukrainian NGO supporting the use of unmanned vehicles in the military. “Now, you can picture having fewer, very skilled operators located underground somewhere in Kyiv and on the field you’ve got boxes filled with interceptors . . . and based on the path of the Shahed, the operator picks from which box he will launch the drone,” said Shipovich.
Eye on the Milky Way
Have you ever had stars in your eyes?
It appears that the eye on the left does, and moreover, it appears to be gazing at even more stars. The featured 27-frame mosaic was taken in 2019 from Ojas de Salar in the Atacama Desert of Chile.
The eye is actually a small lagoon captured reflecting the dark night sky as the Milky Way Galaxy arched overhead. The seemingly smooth band of the Milky Way is really composed of billions of stars, but decorated with filaments of light-absorbing dust and red-glowing nebulas.
Additionally, both Jupiter (slightly left the galactic arch) and Saturn (slightly to the right) are visible. The lights of small towns dot the unusual vertical horizon. The rocky terrain around the lagoon appears to some more like the surface of Mars than our Earth.
The War in Iran: A Précis
By Mohamad safa:
Charles: The Iranian navy, which has been destroyed eight times, closed the Strait of Hormuz again, because the United States for the seventh time won the war that wasn’t a war, so the United States can open the Strait of Hormuz that was open before the not war.
The not war that started to get the uranium that was completely obliterated, so that the Iranians can’t build the nuclear bomb that they weren’t building for the not war that the United States started.
Then the United States which has nuclear weapons threatening to use nuclear weapons to prevent Iran from having nuclear weapons because having nuclear weapons is dangerous.
If the United States saw what the United States is doing in the United States, the United States would invade the United States to liberate the United States from the tyranny of the United States.
Conservatives Bid Farewell to Trump
Financial Times
Scott: Donald Trump and his White House team have dreamt of building a Fascist International, with Trump as the centerpiece. But with an unexplained war in Iran sending energy costs soaring and a humiliating defeat in Hungary, the Eurofascists are quickly rethinking the costs of a close association with Trump and Vance.
The same is true for traditional European conservatives—who have never seen Trump as one of their own—as the Financial Times reports.
Mainstream European conservatives such as German Chancellor Friedrich Merz are moving, albeit unsteadily, in the direction of a more critical position towards Trump. Nationalists are pivoting away from him faster than the mainstream. France’s Rassemblement National was fast and confident in challenging Trump’s designs on Greenland and Iran. In Berlin, the Alternative for Germany (AfD) leadership campaigned against the Iran war and urged colleagues to scale back their trips to Washington. Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni blocked the use of a Sicilian air base for sorties against Iran and called Trump’s attacks on the pope “unacceptable”.
An electoral logic is driving this. Polls are laying bare European disgust at the US administration. In Denmark’s election last month, even the far-right Danish People’s Party rejected the US president. In Hungary, a nationalist who rejected the country’s subordination to Maga defeated a leader who championed that subordination. As multiple European countries gear up for major votes in the next 18 months, including crucial state elections in Germany and general elections in France, Italy, Poland and Spain, rightists are paying heed. Yet there are also hints of something deeper going on beyond electoral arithmetic.
The European right, from moderates to radicals, is rediscovering a spirit of European autonomy. During his campaign, Magyar asserted that “Hungarian history is not written in Washington”. In a recent speech to Italy’s parliament, Meloni criticised past Italian leaders “satisfied with a pat on the back or an endorsement tweet” from US presidents and insisted: “History is knocking at the door, and Europe must not fail this test.” Jean-Pascal Hohm, the AfD’s youth leader, pointedly wrote after Orbán’s defeat that “the future of European rightwing parties lies in Europe” and that relations with other Europeans “are always more important to us than any special hotline to Moscow, Beijing, or Washington”.
European politicians from the centre-right to the nationalist fringes feel burned by their indulgence of or association with the American president. They are turning to visions of a more distant Europe-US relationship, and thus back to older ideas and political icons. Charles de Gaulle is once more in vogue, and not just on the right.
Meanwhile, among more radical nationalists, the present moment is a chance to reconnect with the ideas of Carl Schmitt, Oswald Spengler and Julius Evola — thinkers who saw the US as a decadent, “plutodemocratic” society contrasting with a supposedly more soulful ethno-Europe. Perhaps this will not amount to much. But the European right’s pivot away from the US is sincere, not just tactical. And the continent’s radical right especially has a record of adapting fast to chaotic world events; they are “crisis entrepreneurs” deft at finding ways of making their politics successively fit the Eurozone crisis, the migration crisis, the pandemic, then Russia’s war in Ukraine.
It is thus plausible to anticipate them adapting to the meltdown of Euro-Trumpism in a similarly nimble way, switching rapidly and without sentimentality to a politics of European independence from the US. That poses a challenge for centrist and progressive parties, which could conceivably find themselves outflanked by the right in their opposition to Trump. The answer is to move fast to craft their own, rival, more confident and emotionally resonant vision of a more autonomous Europe.
The FBI Director is MIA
The Atlantic
Scott: Sarah Fitzpatrick’s exposé on Kash Patel and his drinking problems has already, within 24-hours of publication, drawn a libel suit. But no one who’s been tracking the career of Patel since he emerged as a central figure in the Trump entourage is the least bit surprised by any of it.
This isn’t the first time Patel has sued a reporter for libel. The prior suit languishes in Texas, effectively unpursued… it was filed as a sort of alternative press release. Time will tell with this one. If it becomes active, however, the discovery could be amazing.
Patel, according to multiple current officials, as well as former officials who have stayed close to him, is deeply concerned that his job is in jeopardy. He has good reasons to think so—including some having to do with what witnesses described to me as bouts of excessive drinking. My colleague Ashley Parker and I reported earlier this month that Patel was among the officials expected to be fired after Attorney General Pam Bondi’s ouster, on April 2. “We’re all just waiting for the word” that Patel is officially out of the top job, an FBI official told me this week, and a former official told my colleague Jonathan Lemire that Patel was “rightly paranoid.” Senior members of the Trump administration are already discussing who might replace him, according to an administration official and two people close to the White House who were familiar with the conversations…
Several officials told me that Patel’s drinking has been a recurring source of concern across the government. They said that he is known to drink to the point of obvious intoxication, in many cases at the private club Ned’s in Washington, D.C., while in the presence of White House and other administration staff. He is also known to drink to excess at the Poodle Room, in Las Vegas, where he frequently spends parts of his weekends. Early in his tenure, meetings and briefings had to be rescheduled for later in the day as a result of his alcohol-fueled nights, six current and former officials and others familiar with Patel’s schedule told me.
On multiple occasions in the past year, members of his security detail had difficulty waking Patel because he was seemingly intoxicated, according to information supplied to Justice Department and White House officials. A request for “breaching equipment”—normally used by SWAT and hostage-rescue teams to quickly gain entry into buildings—was made last year because Patel had been unreachable behind locked doors, according to multiple people familiar with the request.
Your Online Moment of Zen
By Joseph Stouter
Oils on Canvas.
Loire Valley #4
Miniature Paradise
Edited by Imogen Sayers.
Your nominations are most welcome, John--particularly Mr. Inness.
Please keep them coming.
I find after reading about matters such as District Judge Kasubhai's struggle to be confirmed (huzzah at his close-call success), Ukraine and its drones, the "not war," and Kash Patel's boozing (is "alleged" required here?), I always need the Online Moment of Zen. I would like to nominate for inclusion someday George Inness (1825-1894), American landscape painter and visionary.