From the beginning of my time in Washington — even before many revelations of government abuses under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) were disclosed — I have consistently warned of vast government surveillance powers being used against Americans, without a warrant, and outside the protections of the Constitution. Section 702 of FISA is intended for use against hostile foreign countries and terrorists, to protect the American people from threats overseas, which I support. But to use that authority to spy on innocent Americans — to rummage through their texts, calls, and emails here in the United States without a warrant merely because intelligence agencies incidentally sweep them up? This is often referred to as a backdoor search, and the practice is blatantly unconstitutional and incompatible with the Fourth Amendment. I introduced the Fourth Amendment Restoration and Protection Act for this exact reason. This legislation will end secret warrantless backdoor searches and finally bring FISA in line with our Constitution. As Congress is poised to consider another extension to FISA, I will once again demand these urgent reforms. In the midst of this debate over FISA, it’s important to recall that Washington, D.C. has repeatedly dismissed my warnings about FISA. It isn’t happening, I was told. There were unconcerned assurances from the then-Obama administration and from within Congress that the secret oversight of our intelligence agencies was working; that there was no mass surveillance of Americans; and that to even consider changing the status quo would somehow jeopardize national security. We now know that none of these assurances were true — that there was mass surveillance that included Americans, and there was, in fact, bulk collection of Americans’ communications. We learned how brazenly the government thwarts the Constitution through loopholes and legal maneuvering, made possible by courts that rely on interpretations of law that predate the digital revolution of our modern world. There have been improper searches of innocent Americans. In fact, the government doesn’t even need to collect Americans’ information to search it; it can simply buy it from data brokers. The practice of selling customer data to the government should be illegal, and there are restrictions in existing law, but once again, the legal architecture is too old and doesn’t properly reflect the digital nature of records-keeping. This is why a warrant requirement is so important. The American people now see that the constitutional wall of protection around their rights has a wide-open gate. It’s why about two-thirds of Americans now support a warrant requirement for information collected under FISA, while only 16 percent oppose it. The momentum is towards reform, which is why many congressional opponents of reform, including the leadership of both political parties, have collaborated with the surveillance state in an attempt to co-opt the FISA reform momentum. Instead of adopting strong protections like a warrant requirement, they push for illusory, pretend reforms. For example, the 2024 FISA extension bill ignored popular reform proposals introduced in Congress — including a warrant requirement — and instead included a collection of “reforms” that either codified already-existing practices or actually weakened protections, according to an assessment published by the Brennan Center. After pushing empty reforms in 2024, the same figures are now calling for a “clean” extension of FISA. In Washington-speak, a “clean” extension means no reform. Congress must stand firm against such a plan. At one time, these figures told reformers like me that they needed a clean extension of FISA because abuses weren’t happening. We’ve come so far that they now concede that it’s happening, but that it’s good. At least they’re being more honest now. Congress cannot pass the buck again. The solution is to restore the constitutional standard: if the government wants to search an American’s private data, it must get a warrant based on probable cause. It’s what the American people want. It’s what the Constitution demands. *** U.S. Senator Rand Paul, M.D., (R-KY) is one of the nation’s leading advocates for liberty. Senator Paul serves as the chair of the U.S. Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs. He has represented Kentucky in the U.S. Senate since 2011. He and his wife, Kelley, live in Bowling Green and are the parents of three sons.

In a startling new development surrounding the International Criminal Court (ICC), a witness statement claims that the Qatari government promised to “look after” prosecutor Karim Khan if he moved forward with arrest warrants against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, The Wall Street Journal reports. The accusation, which is supported by audio recordings reviewed by investigators, suggests a potential quid pro quo agreement between the Gulf state and the ICC’s top prosecutor. According to the witness statement submitted to the FBI, the promise of state protection was made while Khan was reportedly hesitant to issue the warrants. “I want to issue the warrant, but I’m terrified to do it,” Khan told intermediaries, according to a recorded conversation cited in the report. “If you do it, then we’ll look after you,” a voice described as linked to the Qatari state responded, according to the recording. These revelations add to a layer of geopolitical intrigue to the scandal already engulfing Khan, who took a leave of absence in May 2025 following allegations of sexual misconduct involving a subordinate. Khan has denied the accusations and described them as part of an “orchestrated campaign” to discredit him. Investigators are also examining whether a Qatar-linked intelligence effort sought to discredit Khan’s accuser, according to the report. The operation, involving London-based firms Highgate and Elicius Intelligence, allegedly sought to find “links” between the female accuser and Israeli intelligence. Documents and recordings indicate the firms investigated whether the victim—a Malaysian Muslim lawyer—had a “Jewish grandmother” or a secret Israeli passport. They even scrutinized her husband’s former employment at a company with a kosher-food subsidiary, speculating that a rabbi associated with the firm could provide “cover employment” for an agent. The witness statement claims the intelligence operation also targeted Tom Lynch, a senior American ICC official who first reported the assault allegation, and Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC). Investigators reportedly attempted to link Lynch to the “Israel political lobby” in Washington. Khan has denied any knowledge of or involvement in the intelligence operations. His lawyer said Khan never discussed the warrants with Qatari officials prior to the warrants and “was not offered or given (and would not have sought or accepted) any ‘promise’ by any state to ‘look after’ him.” The Qatari government has dismissed the allegations as “unfounded.” According to the report, individuals involved in the recordings referred to their employer as “the client country” or “Q country,” with one manager reportedly clarifying: “No, it’s the state.” The controversy comes as the ICC’s governing body has voted to advance disciplinary proceedings against Khan. A United Nations inquiry previously found a “factual basis” for the sexual misconduct claims and allegations of retaliation against staff. As the Dutch counterterror agency (NCTV) interviews ICC officials who may have been targeted by the spying operation, the cloud over the court’s objectivity continues to darken. Critics argue that if the prosecutor’s legal decisions were influenced by promises of state protection, the integrity of the warrants against Israeli leaders—and the ICC itself—may be permanently compromised.

Podcaster Chuck Todd said Monday he plans to stop attending events featuring President Donald Trump because he no longer feels safe doing so. Todd, a longtime Trump critic and former host of NBC’s “Meet the Press,” argued that being near the president puts people at risk. “I’m not going to any more events where Trump’s at them. I don’t feel safe wherever Donald Trump is, chaos follows him,” Todd said during a podcast with Chris Cillizza. “If you decide to go into his orbit, you have become less safe. He does not care about your safety. He’s not going to protect you if you go into his orbit, because he’s always going to protect himself first.” “I’m not going to any more events where Trump is at them. I don’t feel safe.” —@chucktodd pic.twitter.com/LHi7T64mL0 — Chris Cillizza (@ChrisCillizza) April 27, 2026 His comments come after federal prosecutors charged Cole Tomas Allen with attempting to assassinate the president at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, marking the third attempt on Trump’s life in recent years. On his podcast, Todd also accused Trump of contributing to a climate of hostility. “The guy doesn’t care when people commit violence in his name. He only cares when the violence is committed against him, and he does not see that he is a contributor to the atmospherics of the world we’re living in,” Todd said. Todd’s comments drew pushback from media figures and commentators. Daily Wire Editor-in-Chief Brent Scher said Todd’s comments reflected a “recognition from somebody on the Left of kind of what the vitriol against Donald Trump from the Left has created.” .@BrentScher on Chuck Todd saying he will never attend an event where Trump is present again: “[That] is a recognition from somebody on the Left of…what the vitriol against Donald Trump from the Left has created, a world where it’s not safe to be anywhere in his vicinity.” pic.twitter.com/h2FgQgDsfV — Daily Wire (@realDailyWire) April 27, 2026 “Never, ever overestimate the media’s ability to make themselves into victims,” The Daily Wire’s Megan Basham posted on X.  CBS News legal correspondent Jan Crawford also criticized Todd’s remarks as “not only wrong but stupid.” “I was literally talking about this with one of my daughters this morning. She pointed out how anyone can walk into a wedding or concert or mall and start shooting,” Crawford said. “We actually were in a safe space at WHCD. We were in a completely secure ballroom protected by layers of Secret Service. Most people don’t get that protection from mentally disturbed assailants.” This is not only wrong but stupid. I was literally talking about this with one of my daughters this morning. She pointed out how anyone can walk into a wedding or concert or mall and start shooting. We actually were in a safe space at WHCD. We were in a completely secure ballroom… https://t.co/u2GzxHE1S7 — Jan Crawford (@JanCBS) April 27, 2026

Hundreds of Border Patrol agents are being pulled from across the country to address an influx of illegal immigrants trying to run from authorities in a Texas border town, multiple Department of Homeland Security sources told The Daily Wire. At least 200 Border Patrol agents from both the southern and northern borders are being pulled for 30-day volunteer duties to support colleagues in Laredo, Texas, who are trying to chase down the “gotaways,” sources said. The number of “gotaways” running through Laredo is not public. “Everyone from across the country is getting sent there,” one source said. Border agents monitor gotaways through sensors and cameras, but the true number isn’t known. During the Biden administration, the number of known gotaways surged past 2 million illegal immigrants, according to the House Homeland Security Committee. A Border Patrol source stationed along the northern border told The Daily Wire they’re not volunteering to head south because there’s not enough manpower to cover the smuggling traffic coming from Canada. While fewer than 600 illegal migrants have been caught crossing the northern border each month since November, some stations find it difficult with fewer agents to cover the largest land crossing in the world. Border agents stationed in the Laredo border sector were seeing thousands of illegal migrants cross each month under the Biden administration. Now, the numbers are in the hundreds and slightly jumped in March, when agents caught 1,242 illegal migrants. “They’re asking for manpower, they already have close to 2,000 agents on the southern border, so if you’re having that many gotaways then that’s a leadership thing,” the agent said. “None of us need to go over there because we got our own stations to take care of, that’s how most of the agents feel.” “On the northern border, we’re in small towns that are south of these small cities that are hubs for illegals. There is this massive influx coming out of all of these cities and they’re coming into small towns so we have to be vigilant of local police resources. Sometimes, you’re the only agent out in the field and you have to deal with people that are trying to get in pursuits,” the agent added. The Department of Homeland Security didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. President Donald Trump has imposed harsher consequences for illegal border crossers, while carrying out a mass deportation campaign. That effort has driven illegal crossings down to historic lows. More than 8 million illegal immigrants crossed the southern border during the Biden administration, which was releasing them en masse.

A security camera captured video of the alleged would-be assassin charging through a magnetometer at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner Saturday night. Some saw the ease with which he breached the security perimeter as a failure. It wasn’t. The perimeter allowed Secret Service and other security officers to immediately identify and take down a deadly threat. That’s a successful exercise in prevention and protection, and it required careful preparation. The partial government shutdown affecting the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) didn’t have any direct impact on the effectiveness of the response on Saturday. But with the shutdown now in its 11th week, Congress is playing with fire. The vital government function of prevention — the department’s most important mission — is challenging enough when DHS is running at full capacity. Congress should restore funding to end the shutdown now, before its cumulative effect leads to a catastrophic failure. The establishment of DHS in 2003 was a massive effort to improve the federal government’s ability to prevent harm to Americans. The immediate context was the 9/11 attack and the lack of coordination among government agencies that allowed the al-Qaeda plot to go forward undetected. By the broadest measure — the non-recurrence of a 9/11-scale attack or anything close — the DHS consolidation of agencies, breakdown of silos, and the addition of preventive legal authorities have been a success. Beyond examples like the Secret Service, whose importance in protecting the president and other VIPs is obvious, government preventive activities have always been a tough sell. One problem is that it’s not easy to prove you have successfully prevented something. Some will always argue that the bad thing in question would never have happened anyway. Foiled plots to kill the president end up in federal court, and a conviction requires proof beyond a reasonable doubt, so there’s some possibility of vindication there. But provable cases of prevention are relatively rare, not least because much of the preventive activity is necessarily secret. The failure of prevention, however, is easy to spot. The United States does not lack foreign enemies or domestic threats, and the expenditure of public resources to anticipate and identify them with the goal of disrupting them is money well spent. Much of the activity of prevention consists of informed speculation about what might happen. The idea is to map out plausible sequences of events leading to a bad outcome, then to derail the sequence. A lot of planning and war-gaming is essential to getting ahead of potential threats. Yet the partial shutdown at DHS has forced much of this activity to close shop as “non-essential.” The ability to respond, which DHS can mostly still do, is indeed “essential.” But a shutdown that shuts down anything but reactive activity is doing serious damage. The active-duty Coast Guard kept patrolling, but its civilian employees mostly faced furloughs. The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) is likewise operating mostly in a reactive mode. The government has managed to find other resources it can legally divert to meet payroll for some employees — mainly from the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which also funded Customs and Border Protection and Immigration and Customs Enforcement. But the ability to work around the absence of congressional funding is limited and won’t last forever. The threat profile the United States faces is diverse. The most recent DHS unclassified Homeland Threat Assessment identified terrorism and illegal drugs as threats to “public safety and security,” as well as migration and transnational crime in the area of border and immigration security. It warned of disruptive cyber and physical attacks on critical infrastructure. And it pointed to threats in the form of “economic manipulation and coercion” as well as espionage. Any catalog of potential dangers would have to note that the war in Iran has increased risks — but has also raised awareness of them. There can be little doubt that if hostile actors have the means to do so, they will direct drone attacks on the United States. It’s a preventive challenge of the first magnitude for DHS and U.S. intelligence agencies. The United States (along with Mexico and Canada) will host the World Cup this year. In addition to the 16 stadium venues, each of the 48 national teams has its own hotel and training center, and the 16 main venues have dedicated facilities for teams before they play there. The world will indeed be watching — as it was in Munich in 1972 when the Palestinian “Black September” organization took Israeli athletes hostage, ultimately murdering 12. In contrast, the world was simply enjoying the Paris Olympics in 2024 because French officials foiled several planned terror attacks before they could take place. Our situation is hardly hopeless. We have competent people working hard to meet these and other threats. Now we need to get them the resources they need to do so. The Secret Service and the Transportation Security Administration were both on the scene Saturday to perform essential functions, and they did their jobs. Because Democrats loathe the Trump administration’s immigration policies, it falls to the GOP to find a way to fund DHS. Never has “non-essential” been so essential. *** Tod Lindberg is a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute.