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California lawmakers have introduced AB 2624, a bill that would create special privacy protections for workers at immigration support services organizations. The bill would prohibit publicly posting personal information or images of these workers online with intent to threaten, harass, or incite violence, and includes provisions for content takedown and an address confidentiality program. The bill was authored by Assemblymember Mia Bonta and explicitly cites the "current federal administration's anti-immigration attitude and policies" as justification. On its face, the bill is framed as protection against doxxing and harassment of immigration workers facing threats tied to their work. Critics, however, have labeled it the "Stop Nick Shirley Act," a reference to the investigative journalist whose undercover reporting exposed alleged fraud at taxpayer-funded immigrant service organizations. The timing of the bill aligns with his work, and opponents argue it would make it legally risky to publish footage or identifying information from inside these facilities, even when documenting potential misuse of public funds. The bill ties its prohibitions to intent, specifically threatening or harassing conduct. But it does not include an explicit carve-out for newsgathering or public interest reporting. In a state that already has some of the strongest anti-recording and privacy laws in the country, that absence matters. Without a clear journalism exception, the line between documenting fraud at a taxpayer-funded organization and violating the statute becomes uncomfortably thin. AB 2624 remains in progress and has been amended as recently as April 2026.

Powell and Bessent summoned every major US bank CEO for an emergency meeting. Officially about AI cybersecurity. Might be cover for something else. "If you saw a systemic break coming in the next month, this is exactly the meeting you'd call." - @JOHN ARNOLD

Did you catch Bieber's set at Coachella?

Nigel Farage has fronted a £2 million Bitcoin purchase for Stack BTC's treasury.

As the world becomes more multipolar and sovereigns search for neutral reserve assets with no counterparty risk, the case for Bitcoin gets clearer by the day. "Bitcoin is still an infant relative to gold. But this only paves the pathway." - @JOHN ARNOLD

Texas AG Ken Paxton launches investigation into Lululemon over potential presence of toxic "forever chemicals" (PFAS) in its activewear products.

NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani announces plans for the city’s first government-owned grocery store at La Marqueta in East Harlem, with an expected opening in 2027. The $30 million project is the first of five planned, one in each borough.

"Really bad headlines hit and the thing does nothing or goes up. That's bottom formation." -@JOHN ARNOLD of @TEN31 We discuss: ⚡ Bitcoin held through escalation ⚡ The Hormuz toll story ⚡ That bank meeting wasn't about AI

Trump: Pope Leo XIV "said things that are wrong" about Iran conflict. "You can not have a nuclear Iran. Pope Leo would not be happy with the end result."

Trump: "We can't let a country blackmail or extort the world because that’s what they’re doing, they’re really blackmailing the world. We’re not going to let that happen." "And many ships are heading to our country right now as we speak to load up with the best oil."

Trump: "Iran is doing absolutely no business and we're gonna keep it that way very easily! Don't forget that Navy is gone, their Air Force is gone, their anti-aircraft is gone, their radar is gone, and their leaders are gone. It's a lot."

Trump: "We may stop by Cuba after we’re finished with Iran."

JP Morgan's Michael Cembalest just published a note on Anthropic's new AI model Mythos and the cybersecurity implications are staggering. Mythos scored 100% on Anthropic's cybersecurity benchmark, completely saturating it. When pointed at Firefox, it achieved a 72% zero-day exploitation success rate compared to 1% for the previous model. It found a vulnerability in OpenBSD that went undetected for 27 years. It found flaws in FFmpeg that survived 5 million automated tests. It found exploitable vulnerabilities in the Linux kernel. None of this was by design. The hacking capability is emergent. Anthropic launched Project Glasswing, giving 12 companies including Amazon, Apple, Google, Microsoft, and JP Morgan access to Mythos to find vulnerabilities in their own code before hostile actors build something comparable. Cembalest compared it to the period from 1945 to 1949 when the US was the only country with nuclear weapons. Once multiple states have Mythos-level tools, attribution becomes nearly impossible. The model also exhibited disturbing behaviors during testing: faking its own reasoning to hide what it was doing, granting itself unauthorized permissions and covering its tracks, and in one case exploiting its way onto the internet to email a researcher and then brag about it publicly. For anyone running critical infrastructure on legacy code that hasn't been adversarially audited at this level, the clock is now ticking. The gap between AI-powered offense and traditional defense just widened dramatically.

Trump claims record 34 ships passed through the Strait of Hormuz yesterday, the highest number since Iran closed the waterway.

The US government is posting tips on how to verify your dollars are real. Rub the paper. Check the watermark. Hold it to the light. Or just use better money.

NVIDIA in advanced talks to acquire a major PC-focused company, per SemiAccurate. Deal could reshape PC and server markets. No target named yet.

U.S. announces new Major Defense Cooperation Partnership with Indonesia. Framework focuses on capacity building, professional military education, and operational cooperation.

The SEC just issued staff guidance clarifying that certain self-custodial interfaces used for trading digital asset securities don't require broker-dealer registration, provided they stay within narrow guardrails. The conditions: users must control their own keys, the interface must be purely facilitative (converting user inputs into on-chain commands for the user to sign), no discretionary routing or investment recommendations, fixed or agnostic fees, full disclosures, and proper compliance policies. It's a narrow clarification, not a sweeping overhaul. The guidance applies specifically to interfaces handling crypto asset securities, not bitcoin, which the SEC already treats as a non-security digital commodity. Bitcoin self-custody and peer-to-peer transactions have long been outside the scope of broker-dealer regulation. But the philosophical direction matters. Under Chair Paul Atkins, the SEC is actively affirming that self-custodial, non-intermediated activity belongs outside the broker-dealer framework. That's a meaningful shift in tone from the Gensler era, where enforcement actions cast a wide net over nearly any interface touching digital assets. Atkins has also signaled a broader "innovation exemption" is coming, potentially extending relief to tokenized securities trading through decentralized infrastructure. The limitation is durability. This is staff guidance, not law. A future commission can reverse it. Which is why the CLARITY Act still matters. Congress returned today and the Senate Banking Committee is targeting a markup in the second half of April. The bill needs to clear committee by month's end to stay on track for a floor vote before the August recess.