The News You Need on Wednesday, April 1st, 2026.
The news you need today from Scott Horton and Charles Kaiser. Israeli extremists, Pete Hegseth: war profiteer and SCOTUS delivers a blow to conversion therapy bans.
Israeli Extremists: Hang The Palestinians
The Guardian
Charles: As the entire civilized world recoils in horror at the daily pogroms carried out by West Bank settlers against Palestinian homeowners and landowners, the immoral Israeli government reacts with the perfect “solution”— a new law that makes death by hanging.
The default punishment for Palestinians in the Israeli-occupied West Bank found guilty of intentionally carrying out deadly attacks deemed acts of terrorism by a military court…Those sentenced to death will be held in a separate facility with no visits except for from authorised personnel, with legal consultations conducted only by video link. Executions will be carried out within 90 days of sentencing. . .The national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, one of the bill’s strongest backers, has repeatedly worn a noose-shaped lapel pin, symbolising executions under the proposal.
Ben-Gvir is an eight-times convicted terrorist who has defended Jews spitting at Christians as “an ancient Jewish custom.”
Wikipedia reports that last year “the governments of the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and Norway announced that they would impose travel bans and freeze Ben-Gvir’s assets alongside Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, accusing them of inciting settler violence against Palestinians in the West Bank. In July 2025, he was also sanctioned by the governments of Slovenia and the Netherlands. In September 2025, the government of Spain sanctioned him. On 7 November 2025, the Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office of Turkey charged Ben-Gvir and 36 other Israeli officials with committing genocide and crimes against humanity in Gaza and issued an arrest warrant for him..
Ben-Gvir first came to public attention in 1995, when he appeared on television brandishing a Cadillac hood ornament that had been stolen from Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin‘s car, and declared: “We got to his car, and we’ll get to him too.” Rabin was assassinated a few weeks later by right-wing extremist Yigal Amir.
This week Ben-Gvir celebrated the new apartheid death-by-hanging law by raising a glass of Champagne.
Two years ago Ben-Gvir figured prominently in one of the greatest pieces ever published in The New York Times Magazine–The Unpunished: How Extremists took over Israel. Read the article for free, care of The Horton-Kaiser Report.
Pete Hegseth, War Profiteer
Financial Times
Scott: Pete Hegseth, the former Fox News weekend anchor who now plays Secretary of War on TV, was not about to let a good inside scoop go unexploited.
A broker for Pete Hegseth, the US defence secretary, attempted to make a big investment in major defence companies in the weeks leading up to the US-Israeli attack on Iran, according to three people familiar with the matter. Hegseth’s broker at Morgan Stanley contacted BlackRock in February about making a multimillion-dollar investment in the asset manager’s Defense Industrials Active ETF, the people said, shortly before the US launched military action against Tehran. The inquiry on behalf of the high-profile potential client was flagged internally at BlackRock, according to the people familiar with the matter. According to BlackRock, the $3.2bn equity fund, which carries the ticker IDEF, pursues “growth opportunities by investing in companies that may benefit from increased government spending on defense and security amid geopolitical fragmentation and economic competition”.
Judge rules Trump order eliminating NPR, PBS funding is unconstitutional
The Washington Post
Charles:
A federal judge in Washington struck down part of President Donald Trump’s executive order targeting funding for NPR and the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) on Tuesday, ruling that it was unconstitutional retaliation that violated their press freedom rights under the First Amendment.The May 1, 2025, executive order, titled “Ending Taxpayer Subsidization of Biased Media,” cut off funding to public media — with Trump calling out what he perceived as left-wing bias in NPR’s and PBS’s news reporting.
“The message is clear,” U.S. District Judge Randolph Moss, a Barack Obama appointee to the federal bench, wrote in an opinion. “NPR and PBS need not apply for any federal benefit because the President disapproves of their ‘left-wing’ coverage of the news,” he wrote, adding that the action amounted to “viewpoint discrimination.”
A great decision, but, sadly, purely symbolic. Last summer Congress rescinded all of the $1.1 billion funding previously appropriated for PBS and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, so the Judge’s decision won’t bring any new funds for two of the greatest legacies of the 1960’s.
Is Orbán Really Putin’s Sock Puppet?
The Insider
Scott: Leaked phone calls between Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Hungarian Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó have suddenly become the talk of the town across Europe. What they show: Orbán’s government briefing the Kremlin in real time on EU initiatives of interest to Russia (everything from sanctions, to oligarchs, to intelligence about the Russian shadow fleet—and seeking instructions from the Kremlin about what to do). Is Orbán really Putin’s sock puppet? The question seems to be answered conclusively..
The Hungarian Kim Philby: This call between the two foreign ministers, one of several between 2023 and 2025, highlights the exceeding comity between Szijjártó, who represents an EU and NATO member, and Lavrov, who represents a nation that has invaded and occupied a European country while waging a hybrid war that includes acts of arson and sabotage carried out against countries on NATO’s eastern flank. The calls traffic in sensitive information about the internal deliberations of both Budapest and Brussels, which are doubtless of interest to the Kremlin. They also provide clearcut evidence of how Russia is secretly behind the efforts of Hungary and Slovakia to hinder EU sanctions against Russian individuals or entities.
In his exchanges with Lavrov, Szijjártó comes across as deferential, bordering on obsequious. “If you remove names and show these conversations to any case officer, he will swear that this is a transcript of an intelligence officer working his asset,” one senior European intelligence officer said after reviewing a printout of the conversations.
A Nearly Unanimous Supreme Court Strikes Another Blow for Pseudoscience
The Los Angeles Times
Charles: Even in their gravely diminished versions, every day I am struck by how much great journalism is still delivered by The Los Angeles Times and The Washington Post. David G. Savage of the LA Times does a superb job of describing the latest travesty delivered by the worst Supreme Court since the New Deal.
It is shocking and shameful that Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan joined the 8-1 majority decision to turn back the clock sixty years for Lesbian, Gay and Transgender Americans.
Only the great Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented in a 35-page opinion. She correctly identified the issue as one of regulating medical malpractice:
The 1st Amendment cares about government efforts to suppress ‘speech as speech’ (based on its expressive content), not laws, like [Colorado’s] that restrict speech incidentally, due to the government’s traditional, garden-variety regulation of such speakers’ professional conduct. States have traditionally regulated the provision of medical care through licensing schemes and malpractice regimes without constitutional incident.
Fifty years from now Ketanji Brown Jackson will be as revered for her wisdom as Benjamin Robbins Curtis and John McLean are for being the sole dissenters in the horrendous Dred Scott v. Sandford decision of 1857.
As then Governor Jerry Brown observed when California became the first state to ban conversion therapy in 2012, these “change” therapies “have no basis in science or medicine and they will now be relegated to the dustbin of quackery.”
My great friend Tristan Chirico, a licensed therapist, points out this is the second time in less than a year that the Supreme Court has used its awesome power to damage the mental health of American adolescents. Savage recalled the last one in his great piece in the LA Times.
In June 2025, the court in a 6-3 decision upheld laws in Tennessee and 24 other red states that prohibit “gender affirming” puberty blockers and hormone treatments for minors.
The majority said then it was deferring to the state and their lawmakers who decided to prohibit such medical treatments for minors.
But in the Colorado case, the court majority did not defer to the state’s judgment that conversion therapy was harmful and potentially dangerous.
Editor’s note: This opinion in favor of so-called conversion therapy was delivered on March 31st, which is transgender day of visibility—an additional blow. But in a way this is fitting, because visibility is key to ending so-called conversion practices which thrive hidden away in plain sight, claiming to help queer folks “overcome” their same-sex attraction.
We need to talk about conversion therapy.
Read my in-depth feature on the state of so-called conversion practices in The Revealer.
—Imogen
Kristi and Byron Noem Present Ultimate in Republican Family Values
Daily Mail
Scott: For the last month, Trump insiders have been engaged in warfare through the pages of a right-wing London tabloid, the Daily Mail. Many of the leaks have focused on the resigned and proudly anti-LGBTQ DHS secretary, Kristi Noem. Today’s entry is a doozy: while Kristi served as the highest profile member of Trump’s cabinet, her husband, Byron, 56, was dressing in drag and “paying adult entertainers to talk dirty.” The Daily Mail said it had hundreds of messages between Byron Noem and his adult entertainment interlocutors, and many photos, including the one above.
When Daily Mail reached Bryon by telephone he did not deny having explicit conversations or sharing photos of himself dressed as a woman. It was also put to him that he had made indiscreet comments about his wife and could have endangered national security by exposing her to the threat of blackmail. ‘Yeah, I made no comments like that, that would lead to that,’ Bryon replied. ‘I deny the second part of that.!
He then hung up.
Kristi Noem was contacted and wouldn’t comment. Kristi and Bryon Noem met in high school, married in 1992, and raised daughters Kassidy, 31, Kennedy, 29, and a son, Booker, 23. Their marriage became the subject of intense speculation when the Daily Mail revealed her alleged years-long affair with close advisor Corey Lewandowski in a 2023 exposé.
Quantum Computing Breakthroughs Mean Cryptocurrency Is a Gonner
Scott: Developments in science can be damned difficult to report. Take this. For weeks, cryptocurrencies have been sliding as the market filled with rumors that important breakthroughs in quantum computing would render the encryption systems essential to the operation of crypto easily penetrable. Yesterday we learned through the publication of a Google research paper just what this was all about. And its ramifications run far beyond Bitcoin. Bloomberg takes a shot at explaining it:
Google researchers warned that future quantum computers may be able to break some of the cryptography protecting Bitcoin and other digital assets with fewer resources than previously thought.
Rubio Launches Psy-Ops Program Targeting US Allies
The Guardian
Scott: Marco Rubio has opened a new front in the war against recalcitrant Europeans who seem to think fascism is a bad thing and who are criticizing Peter Thiel and Elon Musk. The purpose is to disseminate Trump-approved disinformation designed to undermine governments and the confidence of the people in democratic institutions.
The United States has directed every American embassy and consulate across the world to launch coordinated campaigns against foreign propaganda and endorses Elon Musk’s X as an “innovative” tool to help do it.
The cable, signed by the secretary of state, Marco Rubio, on Monday and obtained by The Guardian, also suggests embassies and consulates work alongside the US military’s psychological operations unit to address the problem of rampant disinformation. It lays out a sweeping set of instructions for how embassy staff should push back against what it describes as coordinated foreign efforts to undermine American interests abroad.
It comes as the United States is at war with Iran, whose government has for decades operated one of the world’s most sophisticated and prolific state disinformation apparatuses, and as Russian and Chinese influence operations continue to target American allies across Europe, Asia and Latin America.
Scott Bessent Has a Different Idea of Who Our Friends Are
Treasury’s OFAC Bulletin
Scott: Today Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has issued a truly remarkable series of orders. A special license is issued to Russia to deliver oil to Cuba, apparently because Vladimir Putin is our friend and he can do as he likes. But no one else can ship oil to Cuba. And then we see a lengthy list of Russian oligarchs, each very close to Putin, including several known to be major players in the international narcotics trade. Evidently it was a mistake ever to have sanctioned them, notwithstanding what the FBI thought in its investigations.
Hail Titania!
Scott: Titania’s tortured terrain is a mix of canyons, cliffs, and craters. NASA‘s interplanetary robot spacecraft Voyager 2 passed the largest moon of Uranus in 1986 and took the feature picture. That the trenches of Titania resemble those on another moon of Uranus, Ariel, indicate that Titania underwent some violent surface event possibly related to water freezing and expanding in its distant past. Although Titania is Uranus’s largest moon, it is only about half the radius of Triton - the largest moon of Uranus’s sister planet Neptune, which itself is slightly smaller than Earth’s Moon. Titania, discovered by William Herschel in 1787, is essentially a large dirty iceball that is composed of about half water-ice and half rock. There is recent speculation that radioactive heating melts some underground ice into oceans.’
Your Online Moment of Zen
I Can’t See Myself Leaving You
Charles: This is from Aretha Now, one of the greatest joys of 1968.
And there were many!
As I wrote almost four decades ago, this magnificent LP came from the “black and white combinations that produced so much of the best music of the sixties.” The album “melded the talents of a black vocalist, a Jewish record producer (Jerry Wexler) and black and white songwriters (Sam Cooke, Aretha Franklin, Burt Bacharach, and Hal David) to produce a joyful, soulful, sad, and touching record: a perfect emblem of its time.”
This Zen Moment is dedicated to Sal Matera, Judy Barnett, Hope, Sam, Gwen and Laz Kostmayer, Steve and Nancy Shapiro, Sarah Burke, Janet Jennings, Emily Carvajal. Hendrik Uyttendaele, Joe Stouter, Rod Routhier, Louis Brown, Ann Jensen and Rich Meislin.
Rod was always my dance partner for this one.
Edited by Imogen Sayers.