The Daily Grift: Apr 10, 2026

Four stories dropped yesterday, and they all connect to the same throughline: people in power doing exactly what they were paid to do – and counting on you not to notice. Let’s go.

The CIA Director’s Grandson Just Threatened the Pope

Pete Hegseth’s top policy aide – grandson of CIA director William Colby – invoked the Avignon Papacy to warn Pope Leo XIV to stay in his lane. That’s not a history lesson. That’s a threat dressed up in 700-year-old precedent.

The Pentagon doesn’t usually threaten popes. When it does, it’s worth asking who authorized it, why now, and what exactly the new pope said that made the Defense Department nervous enough to reach for medieval blackmail.

Israel Poisoned Lebanon’s Farms. Then Killed the 262nd Reporter.

Glyphosate doesn’t just kill crops. It kills the people trying to document what happened to the crops. Mohammed Wishah was the 262nd journalist killed in this conflict. He was covering the agricultural destruction when he was shot.

The evidence keeps piling up. The witnesses keep disappearing. That’s not a coincidence – that’s a pattern.

Altman Proposes Taxing Robots While Selling Them to the Pentagon

Sam Altman wants a robot tax. He also just signed a deal to sell AI systems to the Defense Department. The company that dropped its ethics policy lost the bid. The one that kept them got the contract. Draw your own conclusions about what “ethics” actually means here.

The sleight of hand is impressive: propose a safety net for the workers your products are replacing, while cashing the government check for deploying those same products at scale.

Epstein Helped Bannon Design the Authoritarian Playbook. Vance Is Running It.

This one connects some dots that have been sitting in plain sight. Bannon and Epstein were in contact during the period when the authoritarian movement playbook was being drafted. JD Vance – Thiel’s guy, Bannon’s ideological heir – is now in a position to run it.

The strategy was never improvised. It was designed. And the people who designed it knew exactly where they wanted to end up.

That’s the grift for today. Share what’s useful, ignore what isn’t, and I’ll see you tomorrow.