Authorities have not disclosed a motive for Daniel Moreno-Gama, the 20-year-old man accused of throwing a Molotov cocktail at OpenAI CEO Sam Altman’s home, but the suspect may have outlined it himself in his 2,879-word Substack post titled “AI Existential Risk.” In the post, published January 6, Moreno-Gama argues that artificial intelligence (AI) poses an existential threat to humanity and criticizes the motivations of tech leaders, writing that for them “morality and safety become a hindrance to their goals.” The post focuses heavily on Altman, repeating a series of unsubstantiated allegations, including claims that Altman “raped his own sister,” “assassinated an OpenAI whistleblower,” and lied “under oath to Congress.” Altman has denied the allegations involving his family, and his relatives have said his sister struggles with mental health issues. The whistleblower referenced, Suchir Balaji, was determined by the San Francisco Chief Medical Examiner to have died by suicide. Moreno-Gama expresses frustration that Altman has “faced zero consequences and is likely to never face any.” To address what he describes as the threat posed by AI, Moreno-Gama advocates halting the expansion of AI infrastructure. He calls for “stopping the construction of new data centers,” which he describes as “the brains of these models,” and scaling back existing facilities. He also suggests the United States should “strike deals with China” to slow the global development of AI.  He writes that “as many people as possible need to be acting in as many strategic ways possible,” recommending that supporters spread information online and through traditional methods, as well as engage in campaigning and protests. He describes inaction as “akin to suicide.”  Authorities said Moreno-Gama was found with a manifesto that included a list of AI executives and investors along with their addresses. He expressed hostility toward other prominent figures in the tech industry, including xAI Founder Elon Musk, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, Amazon Executive Chairman Jeff Bezos, and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, though Altman was the primary focus of his writings.  Additional posts published on Moreno-Gama’s Substack account provide further insight into his thinking in the weeks leading up to the alleged attack.   In one article, he reflects on the meaning of life, writing, “Every generation of humans has for the most part done whatever is in its power to increase the standards of living for their children and therefore the next generation.”  He also wrote that he grew up Protestant but later drifted between practicing faith and atheism, adding that he no longer identifies as an atheist.  Elsewhere, he contrasts the idea of a “martyr,” someone willing to die for a cause, with a “warrior,” who he says may also be willing to kill for it. Moreno-Gama invokes Jesus Christ as the ultimate example of the martyr. The final post before his alleged attack was a poem titled ‘What Will Their Children Say,” questioning how future generations might judge the present. “Did you think this could happen?” it asks. “Was there anything you could’ve done to stop it?” Weeks later, Moreno-Gama allegedly threw a Molotov cocktail at Altman’s home and threatened to burn down OpenAI’s headquarters. Altman responded with a blog post and a photo of his family, saying he hoped it would deter future acts of violence. 

Texas Republican Rep. Tony Gonzales said Monday that he plans to file his retirement from Congress on Tuesday after admitting to an affair with a former staffer who committed suicide last year.  “There is a season for everything and God has a plan for us all. When Congress returns tomorrow, I will file my retirement from office. It has been my privilege to serve the great people of Texas,” Gonzales posted on X.  There is a season for everything and God has a plan for us all. When Congress returns tomorrow, I will file my retirement from office. It has been my privilege to serve the great people of Texas. — Rep. Tony Gonzales (@RepTonyGonzales) April 13, 2026 The news came about an hour after Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA) announced he would step down over a sex scandal. On March 5, Gonzales dropped his re-election bid in Texas’s 23rd Congressional District after being forced into a runoff by GOP challenger Brandon Herrera. He’s also faced calls from fellow Republicans to resign his seat.  Those calls came after Gonzales admitted to an affair with former staffer Regina Santos-Aviles, a 35-year-old married mother who “doused herself in gasoline and was ignited into flames” in the backyard of her Uvalde, Texas home, according to the fire department. The Daily Wire previously reported that Gonzales said his affair with Santos-Aviles ended in the summer of 2024, more than a year before Santos-Aviles killed herself. Text messages published in February by the San Antonio Express-News appear to show Gonzales making sexual requests to Santos-Aviles.

An American man will soon learn whether he’s being charged in the recent disappearance of his wife while they were boating in the Bahamas. Brian Hooker has been in custody in Freeport since Wednesday, when authorities arrested him in relation to his missing wife, Lynette Hooker. Brian claimed that she fell overboard from their small dinghy on April 4 at sunset. Since extending Brian’s custody an additional 72 hours on Friday, Bahamian officials have a deadline of 7:20 p.m. local time to either release Brian or charge him in connection to his wife’s disappearance, according to his lawyer, Terel Butler. From the beginning, Brian has denied any foul play and insisted that Lynette simply fell overboard due to rough seas near Elbow Cay. Elbow Cay is a five-mile long cay in the Abaco Islands in the Bahamas, known for its shallow, clear waters where tourists and locals alike drop anchor and spend a day on the water. “He definitely denies causing her death, and he still asks about her and is hopeful that she will be recovered,” Butler said Friday. Brian reportedly called fellow sailors, Marnee and Blaine Stevenson, a day before his arrest and explained what had happened as the couple headed back on the dinghy to their sailboat, Soulmate. “She basically just bounced off the dinghy in the middle of a little blow, like 20-something knot winds that popped up,” Brian said. Marnee and Blaine recorded the April 7 phone call with Brian and posted the video on their YouTube account. Marnee also shared text messages with CBS from a conversation with Lynette, during which the 55-year-old told Marnee she could not be out on the water with Brian. “We were married 21 years. Our marriage lasted 6 weeks cruising,” Lynette wrote in the texts. “It was real bad. I can’t be out there with him.” A flotation device has been recovered and since Lynette disappeared — and according to Lynette’s mother, Darlene Hamlett, her daughter’s Apple Watch was recovered — but Lynette still has not been located. Brian’s lawyer said authorities are “close to a decision” on whether or not to charge Brian with a crime, per Fox News. “Even if they decided to charge him, it’s highly unlikely that he would go to court today,” Butler said. “So we will know by 7:20 p.m. today what their decision will be … It is possible that when a person has completed their time, that when they walk out, they can be re-arrested and time starts again.” Butler said her client is “drained” from the interrogations and that he is “just hoping to have closure to be released so that he can continue to search to find out what has happened to his wife.” Lynette’s mom joined the “Drop Dead Serious” podcast, describing in detail how her daughter was repeatedly abused by Brian over their more than 20-year marriage. “He has two sides to his personality, he can be very pleasurable, pleasant and he can be very vicious,” Hamlett said. “He threw her down on this bench … the boat has a little bench where you sit around the table in the galley. She landed on that, he was on top of her, he was choking her, and she felt something crack in her neck. She was so stiff-necked for a long time. I don’t know how or why, but she stayed on the boat that night … one of the conversations that they had while they were on the boat the next morning is he told her that he wished he had finished the job and thrown her overboard.” Stories like the one Hamlett shared are why she, along with her granddaughter, Kylie Aylesworth, wanted a thorough investigation into Lynette’s disappearance. Lynette has reportedly left Brian several times during their marriage and often documented the abuse with photos to help her not go back to him, according to Hamlett. Her daughter would often come stay with her in Florida when things with Brian were tumultuous, and every time Lynette returned to the Bahamas Hamlett said she believed it could be the last time she saw her daughter. The 76-year-old said she doesn’t want to talk to Brian, but if she could talk to Lynette she would tell her daughter this: “I love you, and I wish you would have come home.” The Daily Wire reached out to the United States Coast Guard, who is looking into the incident, and officials with the Coast Guard told us “we cannot comment on an ongoing investigation.”

This article is part of Upstream, The Daily Wire’s new home for culture and lifestyle. Real human insight and human stories — from our featured writers to you. *** Sabrina Carpenter is canceled. It’s surprising it took so long. The pop star famous for her bubbly, retro sounds is no stranger to controversy. She’s come under fire in the past for her performances simulating sex acts on stage, and her music videos routinely feature male murder fantasies. But now, Carpenter has finally stepped on a progressive cultural land mine. During her headline Coachella performance, the singer committed a grave act of “xenophobia” when responding to a disruptive fan, and her carnivorous fan base has finally found an excuse to take out its queen bee. Coachella 2026 was poised to be the highlight of Sabrina Carpenter’s meteoric rise to pop stardom. Her headline show, dubbed by fans “Sabrinawood” for its nods to Old Hollywood, was a star-studded affair with over-the-top stage production and cameos from iconic actors such as Sam Elliott. As initial videos of the performance trickled onto social media, the internet crowned her the reigning princess of Coachella. Then the unthinkable happened. An interaction with a loud fan summoned the internet’s cancel culture vultures with accusations of racism and xenophobia. X user Poppy posted a clip of the incident, which has now been removed, showing a performance interrupted by what Sabrina Carpenter called a “yodel.” After being informed by the audience member that it was a cultural custom, Sabrina grimaced and responded, “That’s your culture?” Poppy’s caption expressed disappointment: “sabrina saying that she doesn’t like a cultural arabic cheer… this is so insensitive and islamophobic.” The post garnered 30.9 million views and a response from Carpenter, who quickly apologized after being informed of the disruptor’s cultural background, “my apologies I didn’t see this person with my eyes.” The fan was not from Appalachia or the Swiss Alps, as Sabrina likely assumed, and the noise was not a yodel, but a zaghrouta, a celebratory ululation used throughout North Africa and the Middle East. In the eyes of Sabrina Carpenter’s progressive fanbase, the offender was not a safe person to criticize. “I’m in a complete shock,” one of the viral posts said, “I used to be a huge sabrina carpenter fan and now she’s mocking my culture and calling me ‘weird’, this is so racist and inappropriate and it made me feel uncomfortable. this white blonde racist woman should be cancelled.” The speed with which Sabrina Carpenter’s fans were willing to condemn her is revelatory of the inner workings of “stan” culture, a pop-star-obsessed internet subculture. The name originates from Eminem’s 2000 song “Stan,” which chronicles a fan’s obsession that devolves from sending letters into a murder-suicide. For “stans” to adopt this identity as their own, even if done ironically, indicates a destructive underbelly. As I pointed out in this post, the quick switch-up from fan to hater is often rooted in progressive politics. Over a decade ago, a Tumblr account called Your Fave is Problematic became famous for its lists of celebrity transgressions. Even Katy Perry, the current girlfriend of former Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, was “called out” for transgressions such as “[demonstrating] unsafe binding techniques,” cultural appropriation, and “trivializing bisexuality” with her hit song “I Kissed a Girl.” As a pop culture-obsessed tween, I was introduced to progressive puritanism by blogs such as these. Stan culture is inextricably linked with progressive politics. Once a star has misbehaved, the incident serves as cover for a variety of heinous comments and obsessive cyberbullying of both the star and her fans. Sabrina Carpenter will undoubtedly encounter this fate. Her fans now have a decision to make that feels consequential: call her out and distance yourself, or become problematic too. This is an under-recognized entry point of the progressive radicalization pipeline: online stan culture. The participants are young and want to fit in, and participating in the cancelation mob is a moral duty in this environment. While many have correctly pointed out that Sabrina Carpenter has cultivated this type of fanbase, it is nearly impossible to ascend to her level of stardom without engaging in progressive politicking. The danger is that progressives are more puritan than puritans themselves and offer no path to redemption. The stakes of offending them, which is laughably easy to do, are incredibly high. For radical progressive pop fans, God is replaced by the pop star. In this role, it isn’t enough for Sabrina Carpenter to be exceptional; she must be perfect. If she is human, like the rest of us, then she doesn’t deserve the lights, the stage, the celebrity cameos, and most importantly, the money that comes with being at the top. In this light, Carpenter’s cancellation is completely predictable. *** Maggie Anders is a video journalist and political commentator. Her work explores international political movements, history, pop culture, economics, the cost-of-living crisis, and Gen Z social issues. 

Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA) is resigning from Congress amid multiple allegations of sexual misconduct, including an active sexual assault investigation in New York City. Swalwell faced mounting calls for his resignation and the possibility of expulsion. The House Ethics Committee launched a probe into his behavior on Monday afternoon. “I am deeply sorry to my family, staff, and constituents for mistakes in judgment I’ve made in my past. I will fight the serious, false allegation made against me. However, I must take responsibility and ownership for the mistakes I did make,” he said. “I am aware of efforts to bring an immediate expulsion vote against me and other members. Expelling anyone in Congress without due process, within days of an allegation being made, is wrong. But it’s also wrong for my constituents to have me distracted from my duties,” Swalwell added. “Therefore, I plan to resign my seat in Congress. I will work with my staff in the coming days to ensure they are able, in my absence, to serve the needs of the good people of the 14th congressional district.” Swalwell dropped out of the California governor’s race on Sunday night, after losing nearly all of his endorsements. “I am suspending my campaign for Governor. To my family, staff, friends, and supporters, I am deeply sorry for mistakes in judgment I’ve made in my past. I will fight the serious, false allegations that have been made — but that’s my fight, not a campaign’s,” Swalwell wrote in a post from his campaign account at the time. The allegations of misconduct initially started as social media rumors throughout last week, then hitting a breaking point when the San Francisco Chronicle and other outlets released stories of women who were alleged victims of Swalwell’s misconduct. Prior to dropping out of the governor’s race, multiple polls indicated that he was the leading Democrat in the top-two primary race. Once the allegations surfaced,  Swalwell lost nearly all of his major endorsements, ranging from Sen. Adam Schiff (D-CA) to major labor groups. Sen. Ruben Gallego (D-AZ) initially defended the California lawmaker against the early social media rumors, but then retracted his endorsement and called for Swalwell’s expulsion on Monday. “I support the ethics committee’s investigation and believe Eric Swalwell is no longer fit to be a Member of Congress. He should be expelled from Congress,” the senator said. “I want to be clear: I had no knowledge of the allegations of assault, harassment, and predatory behavior against Eric Swalwell. “I trusted someone who I believed was a friend, but it is now clear that he is not the person I thought I knew. The women who have come forward have shown courage. They deserve to be believed, to be supported, and to see justice served,” he added. There was an effort underway Monday to get him expelled from the chamber, which would have made him one of only six members of Congress ever to be removed if it passed with a 2/3 majority vote. This is a developing story, refresh the page for updates.