President Donald Trump’s “big beautiful bill” takes a major step forward — upping the prospect of making his tax cuts permanent. The FBI is warning Americans about the alarming rise in the sexual exploitation and extortion of kids online. And, a new Daily Wire investigation raises questions about activist judges’ roles in padding the Social Security database with dubious disability claims.
It’s Friday, April 11, and this is the news you need to know to start your day. If you’d rather listen to your news, today’s edition of the Morning Wire podcast can be heard below:
House Advances Trump-Backed Budget Bill
Kayla Bartkowski/Getty Images
Topline: The House passed a budget blueprint on Thursday in a critical step toward a permanent renewal of Trump’s 2017 tax cuts.
GOP leaders were able to overcome conservative holdouts to push the budget reconciliation process forward for Trump’s “Big, Beautiful Bill.” The legislation makes the 2017 tax cuts permanent and includes funding for Trump’s priorities on defense, energy, and immigration. It also lifts the debt limit for two years.
However: The Senate resolution recently approved by the House outlines about $400 billion in budget cuts, whereas the original House blueprint called for at least $1.5 trillion. Calls for deeper spending cuts among House conservatives drove much of the opposition to the bill.
Reconciliation is a complicated process, but the short version is that with this House vote, lawmakers in both chambers can now haggle over the final version of a budget bill. The eventual bill to come out of those negotiations only needs 50 votes in the Senate instead of the usual 60 to overcome a filibuster, but there’s always the concern that the gripes from House conservatives over Thursday’s bill could threaten the final bill as well. Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-LA) has said he hopes to have a bill on Trump’s desk by Memorial Day.
Meanwhile: According to the Trump administration, as many as 75 nations have offered to renegotiate trade deals with the United States in the wake of the 90-day pause on Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariff scheme — a baseline tariff rate of 10% remains in force, however, while China has been singled out for retaliatory tariffs of 145%.
Inflation has also slowed at a greater-than-expected rate, according to the March Consumer Price Index, which recorded year-over-year inflation of 2.4%, below the projected 2.6%.
FBI Raises Alarm About Online Exploitation Of Minors
Alan Oliver via Getty Images
Topline: The FBI is warning about the sharp rise in the sexual exploitation and extortion of minors online, leading to dozens of suicides of teens across the nation.
One form is called “sextortion” — sexual extortion is when a predator, usually an adult, either coerces or coaxes a minor into sending sexually explicit images or video footage, then extorts them over it. Predators will threaten to release that material unless the minor either produces additional explicit content or gives them cash. In some cases, the offenders are motivated by sexual gratification, but at other times, they are primarily after money.
The FBI posted a video last week about the sharp rise in sextortion, specifically citing a violent online network known as 7-6-4. Members in the U.S. and abroad are coercing minors and other vulnerable people to commit disturbing sex-related crimes or self-harm. “People have been asked to engage in cruelty to animals, self-mutilation of some sort,” FBI agent Ashley Johnson told Fox 2 earlier this month. “In some cases we’ve had individuals ask children – if they knew they had a sibling – to film themselves sexually abusing their sibling.”
Another subtype of sexploitation primarily targets teen boys — offenders will pose as attractive women online and trick the minors into sending explicit content. They then threaten victims, telling them they will post the material publicly and send it to their friends and family if they don’t send payment. One report found that 90% of all financially motivated sexual extortion victims were males between the ages of 14 and 17. These schemes have been linked to a string of suicides by young boys. A memo from the FBI’s Sacramento Field Office says that these sextortion offenders are often foreigners, primarily from West African countries like Nigeria and Ivory Coast or Southeast Asian countries like the Philippines.
From October 2021 to March 2023, the FBI and Homeland Security Investigations received more than 13,000 reports of this activity. There were about 12,600 victims, who were mostly boys, and at least 20 suicides have been connected to these schemes. But those numbers are likely even higher — a more recent report from USA Today found that sextortion cases have been tied to at least 30 suicides of teen boys since 2021.
And this trend is growing. In just a six-month period in 2023, for example, the FBI saw a 20% increase in reports of financially motivated sextortion. CyberTipline, which is an organization run by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, received nearly 190,000 reports of Online Enticement of Children for Sexual Acts. That number has quadrupled since 2021, when the Tipline received around 44,000 reports.
Instagram and Snapchat are the two most-used apps for these crimes. Messages can disappear on both apps, which might lead to victims putting their guard down before sending over explicit images used against them. If you or someone you know thinks they’re a victim of sextortion, please call law enforcement. You can report it to the FBI by calling 1-800-CALL-FBI or by visiting tips.fbi.gov.
Social Security Scheme
Tetra Images via Getty Images
Topline: A new investigation raises questions about activist judges’ roles in padding the Social Security database with dubious disability claims.
The Daily Wire’s Government Efficiency reporter, Luke Rosiak, found that dozens of judges overrule Social Security staff’s denials in almost every case they hear — granting what could amount to lifetime disability payments to people ruled ineligible to receive them.
About 1,200 administrative law judges are paid more than $200,000 a year to hear appeals from people who want to get disability benefits from Social Security despite having been ruled ineligible. They’re represented by a “union for judges,” the Association of Administrative Law Judges, that is suing to prevent the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) project from accessing information about Social Security staff.
The president of that union, a Democratic donor named Som Ramrup, overturned the rulings of Social Security’s experts and approved payments in 94% of the cases she heard last year. Ronald Herman, who hears cases in the Detroit area, approved 95% of the nearly 1,300 cases he heard. Jan Leventer, hearing cases in Queens, approved 94% of 2,200 cases. Some, including one of the supervisory judges, actually approved payments in 100% of the cases they heard last year. You’d think judges would operate on the assumption that Social Security’s staff experts were right most of the time, but as a group, they’re much more deferential to the people asking for money. The data show that 85 judges overturned non-disabled determinations more than 80% of the time, while only 16 upheld them more than 80% of the time.
Some of these rates seem mathematically impossible, and it’s evidence that the process is broken. This is important because you’ll hear that it’s a fool’s errand to try to cut the federal deficit because much of it is so-called “non-discretionary” items like Medicare and Social Security. But this is an example of how the DOGE project might find waste in those areas, too.