Alternet America

BREAKING: Florida Republican Charged With Kidnapping and Child Sex Abuse

AlterNet America — Tue, 18 Aug 2026 20:46:09 GMT

Good afternoon. I’m Ryan Rose, and this is AlterNet America.

Ron DeSantis suspended the Palm Beach County clerk he appointed after the 67-year-old was arrested on five felony counts including child molestation and kidnapping. Minnesota is suing Greg Abbott for refusing to extradite an ICE officer charged with shooting a Venezuelan man through his front door. So far, 173 witnesses to Charlie Kirk’s on-camera killing have applied to Utah for state trauma benefits. And the Trump administration has moved to open nearly 45 million acres of protected wilderness to logging and road construction.

Before we get to the news, a brief ask: AlterNet America was launched as a direct response to MAGA billionaires buying up networks like CBS and newspapers like the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times. We’re going all-in on the bet that reader-supported journalism can compete directly with the billionaires by being the one thing they can’t buy.

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Florida Republican Charged With Kidnapping and Child Sex Abuse

Gov. Ron DeSantis appointed Michael Caruso, a Republican and former state legislator, as Palm Beach County Clerk of Court in August 2025. On Tuesday morning, DeSantis suspended him after he was arrested on child sex abuse charges.

Caruso, 67, faces five felony counts including kidnapping, child molestation, lewd exhibition, luring a child, and child abuse causing mental injury. Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier said the investigation is still open and more charges may follow.

Investigators say Caruso abused a young relative between the fall of 2024 and August 2025 on multiple occasions — during a fishing trip, at a Thanksgiving gathering, and aboard a family cruise. On the cruise, they say he separated the boy from his parents for about an hour under the pretense of getting ice cream.

The boy’s father reported the abuse in October after seeing his son behaving in a sexualized manner. According to his arrest report, Caruso suggested his ex-wife had invented the whole thing to “poison the child against him.”

Caruso has already filed to run for a full four-year term. He has not yet stated whether or not he intends to drop out, though any campaigning will have to be done from his Orange County jail cell.

Minnesota Sues Texas Gov. For Refusing to Hand Over ICE Officer

In a twist on the usual border dispute, Minnesota wants Texas to hand over one of its people.

Minnesota sued Texas Gov. Greg Abbott on Tuesday over his refusal to extradite an ICE officer charged with shooting a Venezuelan man in Minneapolis earlier this year.

Christian Castro, 52, faces four counts of second-degree assault with a deadly weapon and one count of falsely reporting a crime. Texas Rangers arrested him in May, and he has been in a south Texas jail since.

Gov. Tim Walz requested Castro’s extradition in June, with a county attorney sending the paperwork on July 30. Nearly a month later, Abbott still has not signed the warrant.

Prosecutors say Castro was chasing a Venezuelan immigrant who ran into his north Minneapolis home, then fired through the front door and hit the man’s roommate, Julio Sosa-Celis, in the leg. Castro then told investigators he fired because he was attacked, which led them to charge Sosa-Celis with assault.

But police body-camera video contradicted Castro’s account, showing no attack. The charge against Sosa-Celis was dropped, and Castro was charged with falsely reporting a crime.

Abbott has not acted on the extradition request, though he’d likely be more motivated if Castro left Texas and came back without papers.

Hundreds of Witnesses to Charlie Kirk’s Death File For Victim Benefits

On paper, the Charlie Kirk shooting had one victim. In practice, whether or not you’re a victim depends on how good your seat was.

Kirk was shot and killed at Utah Valley University last September in front of a crowd of thousands, hundreds of whom have since turned to the state for help paying for mental health care. Utah Office for Victims of Crime Director Chyleen Richey said at least 500 people approached her office in the days after the shooting, and 173 have actually applied for benefits.

To decide who qualifies, her office worked with the FBI to define a “zone of danger” — the rows closest to Kirk when he was shot. Someone at the front who saw everything might get different benefits than someone further back with an obstructed view. The office ultimately classified those closest as primary victims, entitling them to 25 reimbursed mental health sessions.

The agency received more than $24.4 million in state and federal funding in fiscal year 2025 and paid nearly $7 million to Utah crime victims. Court records show one student recently filed a restitution claim for $105 for a single therapy session. Usually you take that up with UnitedHealthcare, not the United States government.

Trump Will Open 45 Million Acres of Wilderness to Loggers

Pave paradise, and you don’t even get a parking lot. You get a logging road.

The U.S. Forest Service advanced a plan Tuesday to repeal the 2001 “roadless rule,” a quarter-century-old protection that kept nearly 45 million acres of national forest wild, opening the land to construction and logging.

Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said “outdated restrictions” have kept forests “off-limits to the very treatments that improve forest health and reduce wildfire risk.” In reality, nearly 85 percent of wildfires start with human activity.

The affected land includes the nine million undeveloped acres of Alaska’s Tongass, the largest intact temperate rainforest on Earth. Trump stripped its protections during his first term, before President Joe Biden restored them in 2023.

The protected forests supply drinking water to at least 25 million Americans. The Angeles National Forest alone serves more than four million people, and nearly 60 percent of the population in Colorado gets drinking water from roadless watersheds.

Residents are encouraged to start collecting rainwater, which is, of course, also illegal.

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POSITIVE STORIES YOU MAY HAVE MISSED:

Federal Judge Orders Release of Virginia Giuffre’s Case Files at Last. After eight years of litigation led by Miami Herald investigative journalist Julie Brown, a federal court in Manhattan last week ordered the public release of files from Virginia Giuffre’s 2015 defamation lawsuit against Ghislaine Maxwell. U.S. District Judge Loretta Preska ruled that the Epstein Files Transparency Act supersedes the grand jury arguments Maxwell had used to keep the records sealed. The discovery yielded thousands of pages, including depositions of Maxwell and Giuffre, reportedly containing more evidence against Epstein and his accomplices.

Disney Sues the FCC and Brendan Carr Over Its “Campaign of Censorship.” Disney’s ABC filed an unprecedented lawsuit against the Federal Communications Commission on Tuesday, alleging that the Trump administration has waged a retaliatory campaign against the network over its criticisms of him. The suit seeks to block the FCC from forcing ABC’s eight television stations through an early license renewal process years ahead of schedule. FCC Chairman Brendan Carr, who was appointed by Trump, has said the review focuses on Disney’s DEI practices, but ABC’s filing maintains it’s really about Jimmy Kimmel’s monologues and commentary on The View.

South Carolina’s Age-Based Vote-by-Mail Restrictions Are Unconstitutional. The Fourth Circuit ruled Tuesday that a South Carolina law forcing younger voters to provide employer certification or proof they’ll be out of the county in order to vote by mail is unconstitutional. Judge Roger L. Gregory wrote that the law abridges the right to vote on the basis of age, therefore violating the 26th Amendment, which lowered the voting age to 18 in 1971. The panel reversed a 2025 trial ruling, flatly noting that the Fifth and Seventh Circuits reached the opposite conclusion by “applying the wrong analysis.”

Maine Will Keep Providing Gender-Affirming Care for Minors. Maine will keep covering gender-affirming care for minors with state money after a Trump administration rule cuts off Medicaid and CHIP funding for hormone therapy and procedures for people under 18 on Oct. 13. State law requires MaineCare to cover the treatment, and the cost shift is one Maine has made before: it already funds abortions that the federal Hyde Amendment won’t. About 27 percent of the 3,000 to 4,000 Mainers receiving gender-affirming care pay through MaineCare, and advocates say few of those are minors.

Trump Cast Another Mail Ballot He Doesn't Want You to Cast

AlterNet America — Tue, 18 Aug 2026 14:31:06 GMT

Good morning. I’m Corinne Straight, and this is AlterNet America.

Donald Trump voted by mail in Florida’s Republican primary for at least the third time, months after signing an order to restrict mail voting. The Trump DOJ spent a year investigating a fundraising firm co-owned by the daughter of the judge who oversaw his hush money conviction. Mitch McConnell has kept his full $193,000 salary through nine weeks of paid medical leave, a benefit American mothers don’t get after childbirth. And the DOJ is sending 1,000 election monitors to polling places in November.

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Trump Voted by Mail After Signing Order Restricting Mail Voting

Rules for thee, stamps for me.

Donald Trump voted by mail in Florida’s Republican primary, according to Palm Beach county voting records. The White House confirmed it. This was at least the third time the president has mailed his ballot after doing so in 2020 and in a statehouse special election this year.

The New York Times reported it could not access Trump’s voting record through the county elections website, which said the record was “protected from public disclosure.” A White House spokeswoman confirmed the vote anyway, noting the president “is a resident of Palm Beach” but “primarily lives at the White House.”

Trump has spent years falsely claiming his 2020 defeat came from widespread fraud, and implying that mailed ballots are insecure. In March, he signed an executive order restricting mail-in ballots ahead of the November midterms.

He was still at it on Truth Social on Monday, demanding Congress pass the SAVE Act to require photo ID.

DOJ Investigates Daughter of Judge Who Ruled Against Trump

$468 wouldn’t cover a night at Mar-a-Lago, but it will cover a federal subpoena.

The Trump DOJ opened an investigation last August into a fundraising firm co-owned by the daughter of Judge Juan Merchan, who oversaw the Stormy Daniels hush money case. Loren Merchan was a VP at Authentic Campaigns as recently as 2024, the year her father’s court convicted Trump.

The investigation is being run by Chicago U.S. Attorney Andrew S. Boutros, whose own prosecutors have been flagged by a federal judge for misconduct in a separate corruption case — the same two who signed the Merchan subpoena.

The subpoena sought the firm’s internal communications with a list of Democratic clients including Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, Kathy Hochul, Hakeem Jeffries, and the DNC. Prosecutors eventually narrowed it to focus on a $468 payment from the Harris campaign and emails between Loren Merchan and her father.

The investigation was spawned by a supposed “criminal referral” from Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee. It’s not even the first retaliatory act taken against a family member of one of Trump’s detractors — the DOJ fired Maurene Comey, a respected federal prosecutor whose only transgression was being James Comey’s daughter.

McConnell Has Gotten More Paid Leave Than New Mothers

If hypocrisy paid sick leave, every American would be covered.

Mitch McConnell has been allowed to keep his full $193,000 salary even after nearly three months without proof of life. Meanwhile, millions of American women get no guaranteed paid maternity leave at all.

Congress has no paid sick leave policy, allowing members to collect their salary indefinitely while out. For the rest of us, the United States is the only wealthy nation without a federal paid parental leave. FMLA offers up to 12 weeks of time off, but does not require it to be paid.

Some states have their own paid family leave programs, but McConnell’s state of Kentucky is not one of them. Democratic Governor Andy Beshear has questioned whether the Republican can still serve, urging a two-minute video or phone call to prove his fitness.

“I’ve heard absolutely nothing back from Mitch McConnell,” Beshear said Sunday.

Since entering the Senate in 1985, McConnell has voted against creating or expanding medical leave at least 23 times. He voted against the Family and Medical Leave Act in 1993, blocked extending paid sick leave during COVID in 2020, and voted against giving rail workers seven days of paid sick leave in 2022.

The DOJ Is Sending 1,000 Monitors to Watch You Vote

Harmeet Dhillon is 8-for-30 in court, which wouldn’t get you into law school but apparently gets you a thousand field agents.

The Justice Department plans to send 1,000 monitors to watch polls during the November midterms, the Assistant Attorney General told Bloomberg. She said the figure is “probably going to be a historic number for a Republican administration.”

The announcement lands as Trump repeatedly warns that Democrats will “cheat” to retake Congress. In July, he devoted a prime-time address to reviving his stolen-election claims and refused to rule out declaring a national emergency before the election.

The department already sent monitors to four Democratic-leaning Michigan cities, home to the state’s largest Black, Arab-American, and college-student populations. It also sent monitors to Arizona during its July primary.

Separately, Dhillon has lost nearly two dozen of the more than 30 lawsuits she’s filed to pry nonpublic voting records from states, including partial Social Security numbers. She hasn’t ruled out taking it to the Supreme Court before November.

Dhillon says the monitors will only observe, not intervene, and that they will “help instill confidence in the election process.” She did not say whether the observers would be armed.

“Observe, not intervene” is also what they said about Vietnam.

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POSITIVE STORIES YOU MAY HAVE MISSED:

North Carolina Governor Vetoes Sweeping Voting Restrictions. Gov. Josh Stein on Monday vetoed a Republican elections bill that would have reduced early voting by a week, allowed party watchers to challenge votes three days after the election returns came in and required the DMV to release voters’ entire Social Security numbers. The legislation was proposed by Senate leader Phil Berger following his primary loss. Earlier versions would have made it illegal for election officials to encourage residents to vote, which apparently went too far even for some Republicans. The GOP has already overridden three Stein vetoes this summer, but no longer holds the supermajority necessary to do so easily.

Planned Parenthood to Spend More Than $600,000 Against Susan Collins in Maine. Planned Parenthood is spending $600,000 on ads attacking Susan Collins in Maine, its most expensive investment in any state this year. The ads condemn Collins for voting to confirm Brett Kavanaugh after she famously assured everyone he wouldn’t touch Roe v. Wade, which he then helped overturn. One ad features a Maine woman who voted for Collins and would like that back. Planned Parenthood’s Maine chapter backed Collins as recently as May last year, which Collins’s campaign pointed to in response. It’s a bit like citing a positive Yelp review from before the health inspection.

Meta Faces a $1.4 Trillion Reckoning in Trial Over Social Media Addiction. After trying and failing to get the case thrown out, Meta goes to trial in federal court Tuesday. Dozens of states have accused the company of deliberately making its products addictive for children and illegally collecting data on users under 13, and are seeking up to $1.4 trillion in penalties. Meta called the figure “outlandish” in a court filing that also disclosed it spent $2.4 billion on legal costs last quarter, which is its own kind of outlandish. The trial’s audio will be livestreamed to YouTube and will feature testimony from Mark Zuckerberg, setting it up to be the most-watched episode of a show Meta didn’t make.

‘Preserve the Stuff We Own’: Right-to-Repair Laws Surge Across the US. Legislators have introduced more than 50 right-to-repair bills across 22 states this year, covering everything from wheelchairs in Florida to motorcycles in Missouri. House Democrats and Republicans have also united to push the federal Repair Act. Supporters say corporations have monopolized repairs, forcing customers to overpay or simply buy new. Even Trump, after meeting GM and Ford executives in June, said he’d “never heard of” companies blocking people from fixing their own cars. As one Portland repair-shop worker put it, “we don’t really own anything any more.” These bills might just change that.

Trump Voter Shocked ICE Would Detain His White Wife

AlterNet America — Mon, 17 Aug 2026 20:42:31 GMT

Good afternoon. I’m Ryan Rose, and this is AlterNet America.

Trump is blaming vandals for a patch of dead grass on the National Mall exactly where he built his Fourth of July stage. A convicted election denier who breached voting equipment is set to become an assistant registrar of voters in California. The FTC has agreed to stop enforcing court orders that barred auto dealers from charging Black and Latino borrowers more. And a three-time Trump voter is looking for sympathy after watching ICE drag away his wife.

Before we dive in, a brief request to keep independent media alive, because it’s the entire reason we’re here. You’re reading this because you know the billionaire-owned cable networks and newspapers will never give you the full story. And we’re only able to cover these stories the way they need to be covered because we don’t answer to a MAGA oligarch. But we’ll be honest: that can only happen if enough of our readers believe in independent journalism enough to fund it. An AlterNet America subscription costs just 22 cents a day. That’s less than a cup of coffee. And your subscription allows us to keep telling the truth without fear of censorship by a wealthy owner or corporate parent. If that matters to you, please subscribe now.

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Trump Blames Vandals for the Grass He Killed

The president would like to report a crime that he committed.

Trump took to Truth Social on Sunday to blame vandals for a large patch of dead grass on the National Mall — on the exact spot where he built a massive stage for his Fourth of July celebrations.

“Look what VANDALS did to the grass connecting the vandalized World War II Monument and the vandalized Reflecting Pool,” Trump wrote. He added that anyone who doubted the Reflecting Pool was vandalized “should go back to Law School!”

Trump also blamed vandals when the Reflecting Pool’s blue sealant began peeling shortly after a $16 million renovation was completed. The administration arrested four people, including former Olympic canoeist David Hearn, who said he merely touched a loose piece.

The Department of Justice later dropped the charges, concluding that Trump and his contractors were responsible for the damage. The same contractors also cracked the fountain at the German-American Friendship Garden. The German-American Friendship Garden, much like the German-American friendship, has seen better days.

Convicted Election Denier Tina Peters Is Getting a New Job Counting Votes

Getting convicted of election fraud and then getting hired to run elections isn’t a second chance, it’s a sequel.

Clint Curtis, Registrar of Voters in Shasta County, California and open election denier, said Sunday he has tapped Tina Peters to replace his current assistant in September, just over two months after her release from prison.

Peters previously served as the GOP clerk in Mesa County, Colorado, until she was arrested for her role in a 2021 voting system breach. A jury convicted her in 2024 after prosecutors showed she facilitated unauthorized access to voting equipment and helped compromise sensitive data, all driven by false claims that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump.

The judge called her a “charlatan” who peddled “snake oil” and sentenced her to nine years. She only served 20 months before Democratic Governor Jared Polis commuted her sentence in May, after months of pressure from Trump.

The new position gives her direct influence over ballot counting in a county that has long tried to buck state law by counting all ballots by hand. It would also position her to succeed Curtis if he leaves early.

The sequel is always worse.

FTC Allows Auto Companies to Discriminate Against Customers of Color

The FTC just set a legal precedent that discrimination is fine as long as nobody writes it down.

The FTC recently let three auto dealers off the hook for court orders requiring them to stop discriminating against Black and Brown borrowers, then told the states it had worked with to win those cases that it wouldn’t help them enforce the orders either. The reasoning is that the defendants didn’t explicitly instruct salespeople to treat borrowers of color differently.

The highly unusual agreements delete two sections from each court order, including one that prohibits discrimination based on race, religion, and national origin, and another requiring the dealers to train employees on fair lending and fire anyone who discriminates.

The FTC had previously accused all three of charging people of color more in discretionary markups and add-on fees than white borrowers. In one case, a financial institution had sent the dealership multiple letters flagging the disparities.

Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes, a coplaintiff on one of the cases, called the move “outrageous” and said the FTC essentially “greenlight[ed] discrimination against Arizonans.” Her office says it plans to keep enforcing the order alone.

The administration’s stated rationale, from an executive order titled “Restoring Equality of Opportunity and Meritocracy,” is that disparate-impact liability “undermines our national values.” Our national values officially have been marked up.

Three-Time Trump Voter in Disbelief After ICE Takes His Wife

Brent Jindra voted for Trump three times because of his promises of strict immigration enforcement. Now he thinks he didn’t get what he voted for.

Jindra, a 48-year-old tech salesman and former MAGA supporter, was stunned when ICE agents detained his wife, Galina Bobreneva, after the couple landed at Burbank Airport in California. Bobreneva, who is originally from Russia, “did not jump a wall, she did not swim a river,” Jindra claimed. She “came in Trump’s beautiful, big front door.”

Bobreneva arrived in 2021 on a tourist visa and applied for asylum in 2022. She met Jindra in March 2025 and married him that December. In April, he petitioned to sponsor her for a marriage-based green card. By the time she was detained, she had received confirmation her application was accepted and had been fingerprinted.

She was taken to the Adelanto ICE Processing Facility, where she said she felt “like a piece of meat, not like a human.” She described lights kept on around the clock and women crammed together.

Bobreneva was released July 29 on a $35,000 bond and fitted with an ankle monitor. DHS called her “an illegal alien” who “overstayed her welcome.”

“We are living in fear in my own country,” Jindra said, about the man he voted for.

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POSITIVE STORIES YOU MAY HAVE MISSED:

Trump Administration Briefly Pauses Its Big Bend Border Wall. After bipartisan outrage, the administration said Monday it is temporarily halting a contentious border wall project in Texas’ Big Bend National Park, where the park’s 1,000-foot riverbank cliffs and remote terrain already deter crossings. Customs and Border Protection chief Rodney Scott announced on X that he was pausing all construction to conduct a ‘personal, on-the-ground evaluation’ and listen to local leaders and stakeholders. Congress handed the administration $46 billion to build the wall and it has waived numerous regulations to race ahead, including the Endangered Species Act, the Clean Water Act, and the law that governs the National Park Service itself.

Supreme Court Rejects Trump’s Second Attempt to Dodge the Carroll Verdict. For the second time, justices declined to reconsider Trump’s appeal of a 2023 jury verdict finding him liable for sexually abusing and defaming writer E. Jean Carroll. He already had to pay the $5 million judgment plus interest after the court first rejected the appeal on June 29, leaving him on the hook for more than $5.6 million. His lawyers made the rare request for a second look, tying it to a separate $83.3 million defamation judgment by arguing he deserved presidential immunity for his 2019 comments.

The Trump Superstore Went Out of Business Because Nobody Was Buying. A large Tennessee store off Interstate 40 near Knoxville that sells nothing but Trump merchandise is closing and liquidating its inventory at 50 percent off. Owner William “Bill” Hays, 80, admitted the shutdown is simply due to lack of customers. An employee named Dan said business boomed after the 2025 assassination of Charlie Kirk and the launch of Trump’s war on Iran, but has since dried up, as Trump’s popularity is “dwindling.” He noted shoppers now face a choice between groceries and paying the electric bill amid tariffs and high gas prices.

Trump Is Losing Republicans Over the Economy. Trump’s net approval among Republicans has fallen 8 percentage points in a month, according to a new Financial Times/Focaldata poll. More than 53 percent of voters say they are financially worse off since Trump returned to office, including nearly a quarter of Republicans. 64 percent disapprove of his handling of inflation. Even Nebraska Republican Representative Don Bacon told Face the Nation that Trump “makes light of the affordability question” and that his tariffs have “hurt inflation.” Democrats now lead 44 to 39 percent on the midterm ballot and are trusted more on the economy.

Trump's Minimum Wage is $1.1 Million Per Hour

AlterNet America — Mon, 17 Aug 2026 14:26:46 GMT

Good morning. I’m Corinne Straight, and this is AlterNet America.

Donald Trump is making roughly $1.1 million an hour grifting the American people. Attorney General Todd Blanche refused to pledge he’d act independently of the White House. ICE shot journalist Carlitos Ricardo Parias in the elbow and has held him for nearly 300 days with a festering wound. And a registered Republican from Apollo, Pennsylvania cast presidential ballots in both Alaska and Pennsylvania in 2024.

Before we get into the news, a brief ask: we’re up against wealthy MAGA oligarchs tied at the hip to the Trump regime, who are all using their billions to buy as many news outlets as they can so they can quietly snuff out all dissent. AlterNet America will never take a dime from a billionaire, because we know that means they get to control what gets reported and what gets buried. But to be perfectly honest, we’re short on our fundraising goals this month and need free readers like you who value the importance of independent journalism to chip in. The good news: you can upgrade to a paying subscription for just 22 cents a day. For less than a cup of coffee, you can make sure we stay independent.

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Trump Made $1.1 Million an Hour in His First Year Back

Donald Trump has finally found a business that even he can make profitable.

The president has personally gained upwards of $2.2 billion during his first year back in the White House. Broken down over a 40-hour work week, that comes to about $1.1 million an hour. And that’s generous, because it assumes he spends 40 hours a week working rather than golfing.

The federal minimum wage, which the Trump-GOP has kept frozen, still sits at $7.25 an hour. Trump made $7.25 roughly every twenty-three-thousandths of a second.

Most of the $2.2 billion came from cryptocurrency ventures, including a company partially bought by the UAE for nearly $500 million the same month Trump took office. The $TRUMP memecoin he promoted to his own supporters has since lost 97% of its value, costing roughly 810,000 retail investors a combined $2 billion.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries called it a “culture of corruption.” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer wrote: “$2.2 BILLION for the Trump family. Higher costs for the American people.” Meanwhile, a carton of eggs will cost you about nine bucks.

Todd Blanche Won’t Promise to Act Independently of Trump

The last person this committed to not being independent was every guy on The Bachelorette.

Attorney General Todd Blanche on Sunday declined to commit to always acting independently of the White House. He insisted Trump has never asked him to cross a legal or ethical line, and that the Justice Department will “prosecute without fear or any sort of favor.”

“No, I’m not going to pledge that, and no attorney general should ever pledge that,” he told NBC’s Kristen Welker on Meet the Press.

He then stated that he would take the president’s views into consideration on individual prosecution decisions.

When asked about the story he loves to tell in which Trump called him up and said “Todd, go prosecute this,” Blanche claimed it was an exaggeration. This did not explain the Comey indictment, the James indictment, and Trump’s public call to revisit the Reflecting Pool case.

Blanche previously said the administration may ask the Supreme Court to force states to hand over their voter rolls, and has declined to guarantee that January 6 rioters won’t collect government money through a claims process he wouldn’t rule out.

Next time someone tells you crime doesn’t pay, remind them Blanche’s comes with direct deposit.

ICE Shot a Journalist and Treated His Wound With Bengay

Carlitos Ricardo Parias has spent nearly 300 days at the Adelanto detention facility while his arm turns purple from a gunshot wound.

Parias is a journalist who goes by the handle Richard Noticias LA on TikTok, where he has over 100,000 followers. In October, unmarked vehicles boxed in his small car near downtown LA before agents began smashing his windows. One fumbled his gun, juggling it between his hands on bodycam, then shot Parias in the elbow. He also hit a U.S. marshal.

The agents then scurried into a nearby strip mall’s security office, downloaded the surveillance footage onto a thumb drive, and deleted it from the system. U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli then posted a single screenshot from that lone copy and claimed Parias had “rammed his car into agents’ vehicles.”

A judge eventually threw out all criminal charges with prejudice, finding the government had violated Parias’s constitutional rights. DHS transferred him to immigration detention anyway.

Rep. Sydney Kamlager-Dove visited Parias in May, and found his wound was being treated with vitamin D and Bengay. She said the arm looked “on the verge of being amputated.”

Even locked up, Parias has kept reporting, exposing the cockroaches and the contaminated water at Adelanto. So the government now plans to ship him to San Diego, farther from his family and lawyers.

He surpassed the record for the longest a journalist has ever spent in U.S. custody months ago.

Pennsylvania Republican Charged After Voting for President Twice

The party that’s spent six years screaming about voter fraud finally produced some.

Federal prosecutors have indicted 65-year-old Jeffrey Pope of Apollo, Pennsylvania, accusing him of voting for president in two states in the November 2024 election. He is a registered Republican.

Pope, who has been registered to vote in Pennsylvania since 1999, bought a property in Alaska in 2023. According to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Pennsylvania, he mailed in an Alaska presidential ballot around October 18, 2024, then mailed in a Pennsylvania ballot for the same office around October 22.

Meanwhile, a review of 28 double-voting referrals from the 2024 election in Arizona found that 15 were registered Republicans, four were Democrats, and the rest were independents. Watchdog groups tracking voter fraud cases across multiple election cycles have consistently found that the majority of those actually charged are registered Republicans.

Pope now faces up to 10 years in prison, a fine of around $250,000, or both. It’s more time than anyone has served for trying to overthrow the election.

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POSITIVE STORIES YOU MAY HAVE MISSED:

US Courts Will Start Publishing How Often the Government Uses Spyware. For decades, the FBI has deployed hacking tools and spyware with essentially no accountability. That changed this week, when the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts told Democratic Senator Ron Wyden that it will begin tracking a new “spyware/hacking” surveillance category in the 2028 Wiretap Report. The data will reveal how many times judges authorized wiretaps carried out with hacking tools to intercept communications like Signal and WhatsApp messages. As the EFF’s Eva Galperin put it, it’s hard to claim spyware is a surgical tool once a public report shows you deployed it tens of thousands of times.

Community Solar Opens on a Former Coal Mine in Illinois. On June 16, two community solar projects opened in Minonk, Illinois on the reclaimed site of a 150-year-old coal mine. The projects use 16,950 solar panels across about 40 acres, capable of powering nearly 1,650 homes and saving money for 650 local subscribers, including Rush University Medical Center and the College of DuPage. This spring, solar surpassed coal in total U.S. electricity generation for the first time, making up 12.8% of the nation’s energy against coal’s 12.2%.

Idaho Must Allow Abortions to Preserve Women’s Health, US Judge Rules. A federal judge ruled that Idaho’s near-total abortion ban is unconstitutional because it only allows abortions to save a woman’s life, not to protect her health. U.S. District Judge Lynn Winmill wrote that a pregnant woman’s health “is not a state resource to be allocated at the legislature’s whim.” It’s the first federal ruling to recognize a constitutional right to abortion since the Supreme Court overturned Roe. The ruling blocks two laws that prevented doctors from providing abortion care to patients with serious medical conditions, including mental health conditions that raise the risk of self-harm.

First Test Flight of the Largest All-Electric Aircraft Used Just $5 of Electricity. On August 12, Heart Aerospace flew an all-electric aircraft for nearly half an hour at Plattsburgh International Airport in upstate New York on about five bucks’ worth of electricity. A conventional regional jet would burn around $500 worth of fuel on the same flight. The plane weighs 25,000 pounds, seats roughly as many people as a small regional airliner, and runs on four electric motors mounted to the wings. The test will inform Heart’s planned ES-30, a 30-seat hybrid-electric airliner that United Airlines has committed to buying 100 of.

Pro-Birth Party Melts Down Over Woman Trying to Have Baby

AlterNet America — Sat, 15 Aug 2026 14:21:01 GMT

Good morning, AlterNet America family.

Welcome to the Saturday Wrapup, where I give you my thoughts on the week’s biggest news as I consume my caffeine with you. I don’t actually drink coffee, so special shoutout to you energy drink and tea-lovers out there.

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Most of the time, the way mainstream media covers certain issues makes me want to tear my hair out. But there’s a few stories from this week that were especially bad. Let’s talk about them.

Republicans Want Women to Have More Babies, Just Not on Their Terms

For nearly 10 years now, Republicans have warned Americans that women are not having enough children. If they were capable of self-reflection, their reactions to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez freezing her eggs might give them a hint as to why women are so reluctant.

On Saturday, the New York Rep. posted a video of herself getting a fertility shot in preparation of having her eggs frozen. It’s the kind of thing you’d think would get a thumbs-up from the pro-baby people. Any woman in her mid-thirties willing to undergo a costly and uncomfortable medical procedure to secure her chances of becoming a mom later on in life should be a victory.

Instead, she was widely mocked by the conservative press, with some going so far as to accuse her of being selfish for waiting to have children, or insinuating that women without kids shouldn’t be weighing in on family policy.

While pundits like Matt Walsh and Ben Shapiro laughed, the White House grew nervous. A senior official told Axios the criticism of AOC was “not helpful,” noting many Republican women choose the same path. One MAGA consultant said that she has many conservative friends who froze their eggs so they could have families later in life, and that the decision should be celebrated.

We live in an age where even men are having to choose between a career and a family. If Republicans actually cared about birth rates, they’d expand IVF access, fund paid family leave, and pass universal childcare.

But they don’t, because the only version of motherhood their movement actually supports is the one where women don’t get to choose when or how it happens.

Oregon Is on Fire and the Media Still Won’t Say “Climate Change”

If your state breaks its wildfire record twice in three years, the problem isn’t the weather.

It’s only August, but Oregon already burned more acreage in a single wildfire season than ever before. In fact, 2.3 million acres have burned in Oregon this year, which blows away the previous record of 2.08 million set in 2024. There are currently 48 wildfires burning in Oregon, and 63% of all firefighting resources in the U.S. are fighting fires in the Northwest.

Just one of those fires, the Rowe Creek Complex, has burned more than 370,000 acres and isn’t fully contained yet.

The fires were started by a lightning storm, and because the area was so dry, plants acted almost like tinder. Firefighters say that they’ve never seen conditions like this in their entire lives, and while it’s a line we’re hearing more and more often each year, we can’t keep acting like Oregon setting a new record for acres burned twice in three years is normal.

The fire season is starting sooner and ending later because the Earth is getting hotter.

The media portrays the wildfires as isolated incidents, and while they may mention abnormally dry conditions, there’s no discussion that connects them to climate change. But linking the fires to climate change would mean linking climate change to the fossil fuel industry, and the fossil fuel companies that pay for commercials aren’t very keen on that.

Trump Has Attacked the Press Over 100 Times Since Taking Office

The White House has now attacked more journalists than it has passed bills.

There are now over 100 examples of the Trump administration taking action against journalists since Inauguration Day, according to Poynter’s Press Freedom Watch. That’s bans on access to the White House, raids on the homes of reporters, the arrest of Don Lemon at a protest in Minnesota, the requirement that members of the Pentagon press pool sign a loyalty oath, and beyond.

Nearly 20 percent of those acts were by Trump. He signed an order ending funding to sources he dislikes, then personally took over the press pool at the White House so he could decide which journalists get to enter.

His administration also created a database, the so-called “Bias Tracker,” which identifies journalists who have reported on the White House in an “unfriendly” way. In April, Trump told a roomful of reporters that covered a rescue mission in Iran to reveal their sources or face jail time.

While the NYT and Washington Post can push back against unconstitutional orders because they have billionaire owners and institutional power, the news outlets who are doing the most critical work right now can’t.

We don’t have any of that at AlterNet America. We don’t accept money from billionaires or advertisers because we don’t want them controlling our content. We’d rather ask you for five dollars than owe a favor to someone with five billion.

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—Ryan Rose, Co-Founder & Managing Editor, AlterNet America

Trump Wants Black People Barred From Med School

AlterNet America — Fri, 14 Aug 2026 20:28:00 GMT

Good afternoon. I’m Ryan Rose, and this is AlterNet America.

The Treasury Department has announced it will destroy the government’s registry of shell company ownership that law enforcement uses to trace money laundering. The Justice Department has spent nearly a year probing over a dozen top medical schools to root out any policy that admits Black and Hispanic students. ICE has begun releasing dying detainees from custody so their deaths don’t have to be reported. And Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said he’s seen “boxes and boxes” of McDonald’s food while traveling on Air Force One with Trump.

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Trump Is Destroying the Database That Tracks Dirty Money

Finally, a government database Trump wants to delete that isn’t voter rolls.

The Trump administration announced it’s destroying the federal registry of shell company ownership, which law enforcement relies on to investigate cases of money laundering and tax fraud. It was established under the Corporate Transparency Act, a bipartisan bill enacted in 2021 that requires anonymous shell companies to disclose basic ownership information to the government.

Marco Rubio, one of the bill’s most prominent proponents, hailed the measure as “the most meaningful anti-corruption and anti-money-laundering legislation in decades.” Apparently, this doesn’t count now that he’s Trump’s secretary of state.

The Trump administration has already suspended most of the reporting requirements, allowing about 99 percent of the businesses that were supposed to file reports to avoid doing so. That suspension was now rendered permanent with the latest rule, which also included a directive to destroy all previously collected information.

That means no future federal administration or local law enforcement agency will be able to access the data.

It’s not the first time the Trump administration has demonstrated such disregard for the rule of law: It recently put the enforcement of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act on hold, arguing that holding companies accountable for bribing foreign officials “could negatively impact U.S. companies competing in global markets.”

The DOJ Is Investigating Medical Schools for Admitting Black Students

In May, the Department of Justice claimed that Yale School of Medicine used race in admissions, alleging Black or Hispanic applicants had “a substantially higher likelihood” of admission than white or Asian ones with the same credentials.

To reach that conclusion, the department only looked at GPAs and standardized test scores, ignoring every other part of the application.

Yale is just one of over a dozen more medical schools having their admissions practices investigated. Harvard, Columbia, and the University of Pennsylvania have all received similar inquiries since the spring.

The DOJ is building these cases as if the playing field has always been level, but Black students were barred from most U.S. medical schools for over fifty years after the 1910 Flexner Report recommended that Black doctors treat only Black patients and study hygiene instead of surgery.

Enrollment of Black medical students fell nearly 12 percent in 2024. In other words, the Trump administration hit rock bottom and reached for their pickaxe.

ICE Is Releasing Dying Detainees so It Never Has to Report Their Deaths

Jose Chajon-Raxon was booked into the privately run Delaney Hall in New Jersey on July 18 and began having recurring seizures. He was released four days later and sent to the hospital, where he died shortly after.

Less than two weeks later, Edwin Lopez-Cornejo had a medical emergency after being denied prescription medication for over a month, was quickly released, and died.

Neither family was told their relative had been transferred until after he was dead. In both cases, ICE filed no report and refused for days to confirm their deaths, relenting only after sustained pressure from activists, lawmakers, and the families.

ICE ended the requirement that it report to Congress any death within 30 days of detention in June. Now staff no longer have to report a death at all, as long as the person is released before they die.

DHS has since rewritten the rules on when a member of Congress can inspect a facility. Newark Mayor Ras Baraka and Rep. LaMonica McIver were both forced out when they visited Delaney for a routine check-in in May. Baraka was arrested for trespassing and the charges were quietly dropped, but McIver was indicted on three counts of assaulting federal officers and faces up to 17 years in prison for what body cam footage shows was incidental contact in a crowded hallway.

In 2025, 33 people are known to have died in ICE custody, more than during the entire Biden administration. There have already been 26 this year.

RFK Jr. Says Trump Eats McDonald’s on Air Force One to Avoid Food Poisoning

The president is afraid of food poisoning, which is understandable given what he’s done to the agencies that prevent it.

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. revealed on the Net Positive podcast this week that when you board the president’s airplane, it’s “just boxes and boxes of McDonald’s.” He said Trump insists on eating from national fast food chains while traveling because he is afraid of getting food poisoning.

Kennedy’s official line is that Trump eats well most of the time. When asked whether he’d ever tried to correct Trump’s diet, Kennedy said, “I’m not like a scold.”

This is the same Kennedy who built his entire public brand on fermented foods, grass-fed meat, and telling Americans that what they eat is killing them. He credits his personal regimen with helping him lose 20 pounds in 30 days and has reportedly converted Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and Vice President Vance to the program.

CMS Administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz has offered his own medical wisdom, telling Donald Trump Jr. in February that diet soda must kill cancer cells because it kills grass. These are the people deciding what’s in your kids’ school lunch.

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POSITIVE STORIES YOU MAY HAVE MISSED:

The Companies That Kept DEI Did Just as Well as the Ones That Caved. A growing body of research confirms the companies that caved to right-wing pressure and abandoned their diversity, equity, and inclusion were short-sighted. An HRC Foundation study found that LGBTQ+ employees at companies that rolled back DEI practices report a 48 percent decline in productivity, compared to just 6 percent at companies that maintained their commitments. A 15-year longitudinal study found that companies scoring highest on inclusion saw revenue growth of 12.3 percent, compared to 5.2 percent for those at the bottom. Meanwhile, shareholders at companies like Mastercard, Best Buy, and American Airlines have rejected anti-DEI proposals by margins approaching 100 percent.

6,000 Portraits of Black History Are Now Free to the Public for the First Time. Nearly 6,000 photographs by Richard Samuel Roberts documenting Black families and community life in early-20th-century Columbia, South Carolina are now available free online. Roberts worked as a Post Office custodian from 4 a.m. until noon, then spent his afternoons in a rented studio capturing farmers, socialites, babies, funerals, and civil rights matriarch Modjeska Monteith Simkins. His glass plate negatives sat in a crawlspace until the 1970s, when a university archivist moved them to the University of South Carolina, which purchased the collection from the family estate in 2020 and paid students to digitize it in 2024.

Personalized T-Cell Therapy Eliminated an Advanced Kidney Tumor in a Teenager. A teenager with kidney cancer that had been coming back for ten years is now cancer-free after doctors reprogrammed his own immune cells to hunt the tumors. They modified the cells to recognize the specific protein on his cancer, infused them last July, and within nine days found them already attacking the tumors. Three months later there was no living cancer left in his body. He’s racing bicycles now and just finished his vocational training. A trial for up to 18 children is planned for 2027.

Home Battery Installations Are Climbing Even After the Tax Credit Vanished. Federal tax credits for residential storage expired at the end of 2025, but instead of collapsing, home battery installations climbed. Homeowners installed 673 megawatts in the first quarter of 2026 alone, according to a BloombergNEF analysis of federal data. California accounted for around three-quarters of national installations in both 2024 and 2025, and Hawaii’s new incentive program drove a Q1 surge. Rooftop solar, stripped of its 30% credit by the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, is headed for its worst year since 2020.

EXPOSED: DHS Ran Secret Spy Ring Targeting Anti-ICE Protesters

AlterNet America — Fri, 14 Aug 2026 14:26:40 GMT

Good morning. I’m Corinne Straight, and this is AlterNet America.

The federal agency built to fight workplace discrimination froze every class action sexual harassment complaint from federal workers. DHS conducted a “mass spying campaign” using undercover agents against leftwing groups and anti-ICE protesters. As ICE prepares to spend up to $20 million on electric shock gloves, police in Omaha public schools are already using them. And the farm blamed for a lettuce outbreak that killed two people and sickened nearly 25,000 hasn’t been inspected in seven years.

Before we dive in, a brief request to keep independent media alive. You’re reading this because you know the billionaire-owned cable networks and newspapers will never give you the full story. And we’re only able to cover these stories the way they need to be covered because we don’t answer to a MAGA oligarch. But we’ll be honest: that can only happen if enough of our readers believe in independent journalism enough to fund it. An AlterNet America subscription costs just 22 cents a day. That’s less than a cup of coffee. And your subscription allows us to keep telling the truth without fear of censorship by a wealthy owner or corporate parent. If that matters to you, please subscribe now.

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Trump’s EEOC Dropped All Sexual Harassment Lawsuits

If you’re a federal worker and your boss lets inmates sexually harass you, there’s supposed to be an agency that handles that.

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission investigates discrimination on the job and either mediates a fix or clears workers to sue, serving as the main enforcement mechanism behind the Civil Rights Act. That system broke in December, when EEOC Chair Andrea Lucas quietly froze all class-action discrimination complaints from federal workers.

Among the cases that went dead overnight was a sexual harassment complaint filed by Deanna Chelette and Alexzandria Boyd, two correctional officers at the federal prison in Pollock, Louisiana. On July 28, they sued the EEOC in federal court, asking a judge to force the agency to start processing complaints again.

Because of the freeze, Chelette and Boyd can be assigned to work anywhere in the prison complex alongside male inmates who subject them and their female colleagues to what the lawsuit describes as “demeaning sexual comments and lewd gestures, exhibitionist nudity and masturbation, and rape threats.”

Their attorneys called the suspension “an abdication of its obligation” and “the latest chapter in the EEOC’s retreat from enforcing the civil rights laws mandated by Congress.” Their union, the American Federation of Government Employees, noted that the same agency has been busy launching probes into alleged discrimination against white men.

DHS Ran an Undercover Spying Ring on Anti-ICE Protesters

The FBI once killed Fred Hampton in his sleep. The Department of Homeland Security just sent a guy to hand out his phone number at a peaceful protest.

Newly disclosed records show the Department of Homeland Security launched an operation in January called “Operation Puppet Master” to map a “network of conspirators” organizing against ICE in Minnesota.

The records show agents infiltrated Signal chats, obtained financial records of unions and nonprofits, and posed as activists at community meetings in the Twin Cities and New York. DHS also used administrative subpoenas to obtain wire transfer records from SEIU, one of the largest unions in the country, and requested financial data on the Communications Workers of America.

At a Sunrise Movement seminar focused on peaceful protest, an undercover agent told an attendee he “works in construction and could build items that might assist other groups with more ‘direct-action’ protests.” He said going to jail didn’t bother him, then handed out his phone number.

None of the groups supposedly infiltrated have been charged with anything. Across a 94-page indictment, there are no allegations that any defendant injured a specific ICE officer. Mission accomplished.

Public Schools Are Already Using ICE’s $20 Million Shock Gloves

Detention has really changed since you were in school.

ICE is preparing to spend up to $20 million on high-tech gloves capable of delivering electric shocks, according to DHS documents published this week. The devices are dubbed G.L.O.V.E., Generated Low Output Voltage Emitter, delivering shocks between 324 and 362 volts.

But the technology is not new. An NPR analysis found more than 50 police departments across 20 states are already using the gloves.

In May 2025, the city of Omaha awarded its police department $65,924 for 40 units to be used in public schools. The police department said the gloves were bought for school resource officers as a “use of force option” with the goal of de-escalating and preventing use of force situations.

The manufacturer warns that the gloves should not be used as punishment, on people merely showing “verbal defiance or belligerence,” or on children, pregnant women, the elderly, or disabled people.

A former Navy SEAL who tested the gloves in a video review described being grabbed by the arms: “It goes into your nerve and it sends this shock up your arm and it hurts so bad. It was unbearable.”

Farm Behind Cyclospora and Salmonella Went Seven Years Without an Inspection

“Farm to table” has never sounded more threatening.

Two people are dead and nearly 25,000 are sick from contaminated iceberg lettuce that the FDA might have caught sooner if it had inspected the Taylor Farms facility in Guanajuato, Mexico anytime in the last seven years.

Taylor Farms was last inspected in 2019. The only visit before that was in 2013, after a different cyclosporiasis outbreak, when inspectors found the facility was recycling its wash water for salad mix.

Overall, the FDA carried out just under 1,000 foreign food safety inspections in 2025 when federal law requires nearly 20 times that every year. Outside the pandemic years, 2025’s count was the lowest since 2011, and early data shows 2026 on track to match it.

Neither party has met the inspection mandate in the decade it’s been law, but the Trump administration has made it considerably worse. Mass federal layoffs last year spared the inspectors but gutted their support staff, so the FDA’s 432 remaining inspectors now book their own flights and find their own translators.

Twenty of them are assigned to cover every foreign food facility on earth. If one of them calls in sick, that’s an entire hemisphere without coverage.

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POSITIVE STORIES YOU MAY HAVE MISSED:

Judge Warns Trump’s DOJ Could Be Held in Contempt Over Epstein Redactions. Journalist Katie Phang sued after Attorney General Todd Blanche withheld documents and refused to justify redactions, violating the Epstein Files Transparency Act. D.C. District Judge Emmet Sullivan took her side, and when DOJ lawyers spent weeks delaying and rebuffing his orders, he floated contempt proceedings on Thursday. “That’s not a threat. It’s a promise,” he said. “The public has a right to know what the hell is going on in this case.” The department responded by sending a new lawyer, Andrew Block, who had joined the case less than 24 hours earlier and could not tell the judge when the government planned to comply.

Voters Prefer a Socialist Over a MAGA Candidate in a 2028 Matchup. New polling from independent pollster Jeremy Zogby suggests the “socialist” label isn’t the electoral poison MAGA hoped it would be. If the 2028 election were held today, 55% of respondents said they’d back the socialist candidate against 33% for the MAGA candidate. Independents picked the socialist over 48% to 18%, and men, a demographic Trump carried by 12 points last November, selected the socialist 42% to 36%. The two were deadlocked among a group of parents in the MAGA movement with small children, some of Trump’s most ardent backers. Zogby noted the electorate “longs for candidates closer to the norm of politics.”

DNC Committee Approves Resolutions to Abolish ICE and Enforce the Leahy Laws. Two left-leaning resolutions were passed by the Resolutions Committee of the Democratic National Committee on Thursday. One calls for Democratic legislators to write bills that eliminate ICE and pursue justice for U.S. border agents who perjured themselves or killed detainees. The other resolution reaffirms that all recipients of U.S. security assistance, including Israel, are to be subject to “full, consistent, and impartial enforcement” of the Leahy Laws. The resolutions are expected to be approved by the DNC at large on Saturday.

Kalshi Ordered to Stop Most Betting Operations in Washington. A King County judge ruled Thursday that the online prediction market Kalshi is running an illegal gambling operation under Washington law and must halt most of its business by the middle of next week. Judge John McHale used the company’s own “bet on everything” advertising against it, ordering Kalshi to stop doing exactly that. Attorney General Nick Brown, who sued in March, said the company “has gotten rich promoting wagers on sports, elections, natural disasters” and more. Kalshi must block Washington IP addresses by Sept. 2 or face a $120,000-a-day fine.

Texas Jails Man Who Spoke Out Against Voter Suppression

AlterNet America — Thu, 13 Aug 2026 21:01:03 GMT

Good afternoon. I’m Ryan Rose, and this is AlterNet America.

Trump’s handpicked Kennedy Center board voted to inscribe “Restored and Renovated by President Donald J. Trump” beneath the sign a judge already ordered his name off. A Tarrant County man was booked into jail eight days after calling a commissioner’s polling-place plan a name at a public meeting. A 2024 COVID study cited by Republican lawmakers to claim vaccines killed millions was retracted for “misinformation.” And the Trump administration is planning to dynamite part of Mariscal Mountain inside Big Bend National Park for a road even locals say nobody uses.

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Kennedy Center Will Bear Trump’s Name After Judge Made Him Remove It

If at first you don’t succeed, try a slightly smaller font size.

Trump’s handpicked Kennedy Center board has voted a second time to close the performing arts institution for renovations and add an inscription below the center’s sign reading “Restored and Renovated by President Donald J. Trump.”

The board insists this is not a move to “rename” the center, but merely a plaque directly under the name.

The board voted in December to rename the building the Trump Kennedy Center. In May, US District Judge Casey Cooper blocked the plan and ruled the board violated the law when it added Trump’s name to the venue. Trump’s name was then scraped off, and the institution’s name remains hidden behind large tarps to this day.

One source briefed on the vote said the inscription would serve as a “permanent reminder” of his undermining of the institution, which is something everyone can agree on.

A Texas Man Was Jailed Eight Days After Swearing at a Public Meeting

In Monopoly, you go directly to jail. In Tarrant County, they give you an eight-day headstart.

Efrin “EJ” Carrion was booked into the Tarrant County jail early Wednesday morning, more than a week after addressing county commissioners at a public meeting. He faces a charge of disrupting a meeting, a Class B misdemeanor punishable by up to 180 days in jail, and was released on a $600 bond.

His crime was speaking during a session where commissioners proposed nearly halving the number of county polling locations. Carrion told Commissioner Manny Ramirez his vote was “extremist” and called the commissioners “bullsh*t.” County Judge Tim O’Hare ordered him removed before Carrion said “I’m walking out, you small man,” and left.

Eight days later, deputies came for him.

O’Hare’s office says the county judge is “not involved” and that this is purely “a law enforcement matter,” but Carrion wasn’t alone. Former state Rep. Lon Burnam was carried out by four deputies for briefly picking up a microphone and booked the same day.

The charge for picking up a microphone has not yet been determined, but sources say it may depend on whether he turned it on.

The Study That Convinced Republicans Vaccines Killed Millions Just Got Retracted

A study that vaccine skeptics cited as proof you should do your own research has been retracted for not doing its own research.

The controversial 2024 study was what vaccine skeptics used to claim millions died as a result of COVID vaccines. Published in BMJ Public Health in May 2024, it analyzed data from 47 Western countries, incorrectly concluding there were more than three million excess deaths between 2020 and 2022.

The journal’s retraction notice said the discussion “is imbalanced, lacks rigour, and includes misinformation.”

The paper never specifically blamed vaccines, but its authors noted the shots “appeared to be responsible” for many suspected adverse events. Several Republican lawmakers took it as proof the science was flawed or nefarious, and corresponding author Saskia Mostert testified before a US congressional subcommittee in June 2026.

The center’s report concluded the article paid “disproportionate attention” to the idea that containment and vaccination caused the deaths, and alleged the authors cherry-picked data and ignored evidence that opposed them.

“That excess mortality occurred, however, was known and not newsworthy,” the center wrote.

The BMJ and the Netherlands’ Princess Máxima Center, a pediatric hospital where three of the four co-authors worked, each launched an investigation a month after publication, which prompted Mostert to resign.

Trump’s Border Wall Construction Calls for Dynamiting a Mountain

Of all the places on the border, Trump has decided to blow up the mountain where no one is crossing.

The Trump administration’s border wall project in Texas could require contractors to blast through part of Mariscal Mountain, a limestone ridge rising nearly 4,000 feet inside Big Bend National Park.

The Center for Biological Diversity said the route would require “extensive dynamite blasting,” and called it the most heinous attack on an American national park in generations. Ten House Democrats warned that blasting could send rock and debris toward the Rio Grande and potentially trigger review under a 1970 US-Mexico boundary treaty. A former park biologist warned the site is likely Texas’ most densely populated peregrine falcon nesting area.

Local sheriff Thaddeus Cleveland says nobody even crosses there. “People simply don’t cross there,” he told Newsweek. If they did, they’d face roughly a 110-mile walk to civilization, making a road “both impractical and unnecessary.”

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Thanks for reading. We’ll see you tomorrow.

POSITIVE STORIES YOU MAY HAVE MISSED:

Judge Tosses Trump’s Antisemitism Lawsuit Against Harvard. A federal judge in Boston has dismissed the Trump administration’s lawsuit accusing Harvard of ignoring the harassment of Jewish students. US District Judge Richard G. Stearns ruled the government failed to prove an ongoing civil rights violation, calling the cited incidents “too isolated and episodic.” The lawsuit, filed in March, sought to restore billions in federal research grants that have been awarded to the university since October 2023, which were cut after administrators refused White House demands.

Seattle Bans Landlords From Charging Pet Rent and Other Junk Fees. In a win for Mayor Katie Wilson, the Seattle City Council has unanimously passed legislation banning pet rent and other charges known as “junk fees.” Landlords must now disclose all costs in rental advertising and can no longer charge for things like mail and package delivery, though landlords can still charge pet deposits and bill for actual damages. The city’s Department of Construction and Inspections also gains subpoena power to investigate violations. The bill takes effect July 1, 2027.

MAGA Rep. Loses Re-Election After Saying Gay People Have ‘No Place in America.’ Tennessee Representative Andy Ogles, endorsed by Trump since 2022, has lost his primary. The defeat followed a string of comments targeting marginalized groups, including a Pride Month post declaring “Homosexuality has no place in America” and a March post claiming “Muslims don’t belong in American society.” His remarks drew rebukes even from fellow Republicans, with Ted Cruz noting homosexuals “have been part of humanity” for all of recorded history and Rep. Mike Lawler calling the statement “absolutely idiotic.”

AI Data Center Bans Surge Past 500 as Communities Push Back Nationwide. Local bans on new data center developments have jumped past 500 in July, up from 300 in late June. The pushback has been bipartisan --- Texas Governor Greg Abbott issued a moratorium pending a power-grid audit, New York Governor Kathy Hochul paused approvals for centers drawing 50 megawatts or more, and Massachusetts and Nebraska halted developer tax breaks. Data shows over 70% of Americans oppose more AI data centers, and at least 37 people have been arrested protesting them this year.

Trump Saved His Beloved Personal Aide Over the Secretary of State

AlterNet America — Thu, 13 Aug 2026 14:31:28 GMT

Good morning. I’m Corinne Straight, and this is AlterNet America.

When Trump sneaked off Air Force One in a catering cart, he left behind everyone except his beloved personal aide, Natalie Harp. The Justice Department arrested a leading expert on far-right extremism who testified to the January 6 committee about the Proud Boys. Karoline Leavitt is leaving the White House press secretary job, ending a tenure defined by lies. And the Trump administration paid Eswatini $5.1 million to hold a Cuban man in a maximum-security prison with no charges.

Before we go further, a brief ask to our free subscribers: we’re glad to have you here, but we need your support now more than ever. Unlike CBS, the Washington Post, and the Los Angeles Times, we don’t rely on a billionaire’s checkbook. Whether our work continues depends entirely on readers deciding quality independent journalism is worth funding. You already read us. Subscribe for just 22 cents a day and make it official.

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Trump Saved His Beloved Personal Aide Over the Secretary of State

Marco Rubio is fourth in line for the presidency and he got bumped for the blonde aide.

Trump sneaked off Air Force One and boarded a decoy jet after the Secret Service flagged what the administration called a credible assassination threat from Iran on the way back from the NATO summit in Turkey. To escape the plane packed with press and staff, he and a select few hid in a catering truck.

Among those secretly chosen to accompany him on the military flight were Natalie Harp, his personal aide, White House Deputy Chief of Staff Dan Scavino, and Director of Oval Office Operations Walt Nauta. Secretary of State Marco Rubio was left behind on the Qatari-gifted jet, as were Stephen Miller and Scott Bessent.

Trump says the switch was the Secret Service’s idea. “I just follow what they like to do,” he told reporters. He added that the plane he left behind “was at greater risk.”

Journalists on that plane were told to keep their windows closed for the entire flight. When one asked why, Trump explained it was “because you’re probably on a dangerous flight because of the sleaze bags that we have to deal with.”

The DOJ Arrested a Woman for Fighting the KKK

Being in a hate group in America has never been easier, and it was already pretty easy.

On Wednesday, the Justice Department arrested Heidi Beirich, the former chief financial officer of the Southern Poverty Law Center. She has been charged with conspiracy to commit wire fraud, conspiracy to submit false statements to a federally insured bank, and conspiracy to commit concealment money laundering.

The charges stem from the government’s ongoing case against the SPLC, filed in April over a now-ended program in which the group paid informants to infiltrate white supremacist organizations. The indictment alleges Beirich was in a romantic relationship with one of the informants, and that $140,000 of donor money somehow ended up in their joint bank account.

The informant program ran for decades and the SPLC says law enforcement knew about it the entire time. The organization has filed court documents showing it shared intelligence from the program with federal agencies, and that the information was used to put violent extremists in jail.

The arrest was announced by FBI Director Kash Patel, who previously severed the bureau’s relationship with the SPLC, calling it a “partisan smear machine.” Trump has called the SPLC “one of the greatest political scams in American History” and said the case should somehow invalidate the 2020 election.

Last week, a Trump-appointed judge denied the SPLC’s motion to dismiss the case as a vindictive prosecution and also denied its request for discovery into how the charges came to be, meaning the SPLC cannot access the internal DOJ communications that might prove the case is political. Multiple former prosecutors have called the charges lacking — even the conservative Society for the Rule of Law has filed a brief saying the prosecution is vindictive.

America Will Soon Be Lied to by Someone Else

Karoline Leavitt is stepping down to spend time with her kids, meaning she’ll now be lying to a smaller audience.

Trump announced Wednesday that the White House Press Secretary is resigning at the end of the month to “spend more time with her beautiful young children and family.” He called her one of the best press secretaries in the history of the office.

The record she leaves behind tells a different story. Leavitt lied that Trump had blocked $50 million worth of condoms to Gaza, blamed a deadly collision between a military helicopter and an American Airlines flight that killed 67 people on DEI, called the Epstein files a “Democratic hoax,” and called a Maryland father wrongly deported by the administration a “foreign terrorist.”

Leavitt is the fifth woman in a high-ranking position to leave the Trump administration this year, following Attorney General Pam Bondi, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer, and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard. Leavitt’s replacement has yet to be announced, but all the others were replaced by men.

At eighteen months, Leavitt was Trump’s second-longest-serving press secretary. None of the others made it a year.

U.S. Paid Eswatini $5.1 Million to Hold Immigrants

Roberto Mosquera used to sit on his patio and tell his sister that Trump was going to change everything. Well, he wasn’t wrong.

Mosquera came to the United States on the Mariel boatlift from Cuba in 1980 when he was 12. He took a plea deal for a shooting in his twenties, serving nine years in prison. When Cuba refused to take him back, the government held him for six more years, until the Supreme Court ruled in 2001 that indefinite immigration detention was unconstitutional.

Mosquera was released in 2002 on the condition that he check in with immigration authorities once a year. He complied for over two decades, while he built a life as a plumber, a born-again Christian, and a father of four.

Mosquera went to renew his work permit last June and was instead met by ICE agents. He was held without access to a lawyer for two weeks, then loaded onto a jet with four other men and flown to the Kingdom of Eswatini, a country he had never heard of, 8,000 miles from his home in Florida. He later found out that the Trump administration gave the nation $5.1 million to hold them.

Mosquera is still in a maximum-security prison in one of the world’s last absolute monarchies, with no charges, no appeal, and no way home. He went on a 30-day hunger strike demanding a lawyer and stopped only when his organs began to fail. He has since developed glaucoma and lost most of his vision in both eyes.

When a reporter reached him by video call, Mosquera asked one question: “Do you think I’ll ever get out of here?”

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POSITIVE STORIES YOU MAY HAVE MISSED:

John Larson’s Defeat Makes 10 House Incumbents Ousted in Primaries This Year. Democratic voters appear to have decided that seniority is no longer a selling point, which is bad news for a caucus whose leadership still remembers the Carter administration. Connecticut Rep. John Larson, who has been in Congress since 1998, lost his Democratic primary Tuesday to former Hartford Mayor Luke Bronin by over 20 points. He is the tenth House incumbent to lose a primary this year, the most since 1970. Seven of the ten are Democrats, most of them are being replaced by younger, progressive challengers who ran on the argument that their opponents have done too little after being in Washington too long.

Ocasio-Cortez Surpasses Newsom as 2028 Dem Presidential Favorite. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has surpassed Gavin Newsom as the favorite for the 2028 Democratic presidential nomination on Polymarket, with 18 percent to his 17. Georgia Sen. Jon Ossoff is right behind them at 16 percent, while Kamala Harris, who actually ran for president already, is at 8. Polymarket isn’t entirely reliable and the election isn’t for another two years, but the Democratic Party’s three frontrunners are all under 50 and none of them are named Biden. Newsom still leads on Kalshi, the other major prediction market, so even the gamblers can’t agree on a frontrunner yet.

Greenland Forces a Trump-Linked Oil Firm to Delay Arctic Drilling. Greenland Energy, a Texas company with ties to Trump that was set up last year, landed drilling equipment on Greenland’s eastern coast without permission. Greenland’s government has now ordered it to delay drilling entirely, saying the regulatory process cannot be finalized in time to survey the environmental and social impacts. Drilling cannot happen until at least the winter of 2027, far from envoy Jeff Landry’s May prediction of barrels “on production within 10 months or so.” The company’s stock dropped by more than a third on the news.

Colorado’s Wolves Are Breeding Faster Than the Government Can Argue. In 2020, Colorado voters approved a ballot measure to reintroduce gray wolves to the state’s western slopes, where they had been hunted to near-extinction a century ago. The state now has five confirmed gray wolf packs, four of which produced pups this year, including the newly recognized Piney Ridge Pack in Eagle County. As of March, there were 31 collared wolves in the state, and roughly half of them were born here rather than relocated, meaning the population is now sustaining itself. The state halted new introductions last year after the Trump administration threatened to take over the program, but the wolves decided to keep it going on their own, if you catch our drift.

Trump’s DOT Hires Unqualified Gamers to Fill Air Traffic Controller Vacancies

AlterNet America — Wed, 12 Aug 2026 21:01:31 GMT

Good afternoon. I’m Ryan Rose, and this is AlterNet America.

The Trump administration has hired 2,000 video gamers to serve as air traffic controllers. Mike Lindell trailed by more than 45,000 votes in Minnesota’s Republican primary and still refuses to concede. Desperate sailors aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln have tried to jump overboard during an extended Middle East deployment. And 92 percent of American adults are now skipping the doctor because they can’t afford it.

But first, a brief ask, because it’s the whole reason we’re here. Trump’s billionaire friends are intentionally buying up cable networks and newspapers, and it’s not because they want to invest in journalism. They’re doing it so they can be the ones who decide what you get to know and what gets buried. This is why we started AlterNet America. But whether we’re able to keep doing this is entirely dependent on whether our readers believe in independent journalism enough to keep it funded. If you’ve been enjoying our newsletters on a free subscription, today is the day to change that. Upgrade now for just 22 cents a day.

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Trump’s DOT Is Staffing Vacant Air Traffic Controller Positions With Gamers

Your flight is now being guided by a guy who once threw a controller through drywall because he died in Fortnite.

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy announced that the administration has hired 2,000 video gamers to serve as air traffic controllers, calling the results “HISTORIC” in an all-caps social media post. He said another 2,000 hires were “in the pipeline.”

The FAA’s reasoning was that only about 25 percent of controllers hold a traditional college degree, and that gaming teaches people to “think quickly, stay focused, and manage complexity.”

Michael O’Donnell, a former FAA official, cautioned that gaming experience “doesn’t replace aptitude, or discipline, or decision making under pressure.” Another expert said it plainly: “If they f*ck up, people die. They can’t just restart a new game.”

Supporters, including billionaire Bill Ackman and actress Justine Bateman, dismissed the critics as “Debbie Downers” and “Negative Nellys.” One fan warned only that a new World of Warcraft expansion might cause planes to fall out of the sky.

Mike Lindell Refuses to Concede Minnesota Primary Despite Landslide Loss

Mike Lindell got 32 percent of the vote and somehow thinks the other 68 percent is the mistake.

The MyPillow salesman and Trump-endorsed candidate has refused to concede Minnesota’s Republican gubernatorial primary despite trailing by a double-digit margin the morning after polls closed.

The Associated Press called the race for Minnesota House Speaker Lisa Demuth, who beat Lindell by more than 45,000 votes, 43.4 percent to 32.5 percent.

Lindell dismissed the AP outright and insisted hundreds of thousands of votes remained uncounted. “I’m not going to give up this race until the votes are counted,” he said. “That’s nonsense.”

Lindell has spent what he says were tens of millions of dollars promoting the theory that Dominion Voting Systems rigged the 2020 election against Donald Trump. Dominion sued him for $1.3 billion, which he settled last month on confidential terms after taunting Fox News for paying $787 million to settle a similar lawsuit.

He also spent weeks not registered to vote in the state he wanted to govern, as his registration was still tied to a property in Lufkin, Texas. The voters, picky as ever, preferred someone who had been living in the state.

Desperate Sailors Tried to Jump Off the USS Abraham Lincoln

Jumping off an aircraft carrier means a five-story fall into open ocean at night, and right now, that’s beating the alternative.

Families say sailors aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln have tried to jump overboard during an extended deployment in the Middle East. The carrier, crewed by around 5,000 sailors and Marines, has been deployed since November 21. It was expected to return in May, and has no current return date.

Annabelle Loma said her husband is now on medical hold after trying to jump. “He’s scared,” she said. Maria Rodriguez said her husband hauled another shipmate off the edge with the help of four other sailors. At a town hall last week with Acting Navy Secretary Hung Cao, one wife said her husband messaged that he “hopes he doesn’t wake up tomorrow.”

Vice Admiral Joseph Cahill told them, “We hear you loud and clear.”

Families have reported sailors eating half a cup of rice and two tortillas a day, showering in mold, and running out of toothpaste. The Office of the Chief of Naval Operations had dismissed reports of food shortages aboard the ship as “false,” insisting every crew member was receiving healthy, balanced meals.

The Navy has not clarified whether mold counts as a food group.

Shocking 92 Percent of Americans Skip the Doctor Due to Cost

The good news is almost every American has something in common. The bad news is it’s not being able to afford a doctor.

A new JG Wentworth survey of 1,507 adults found that 92 percent have delayed or abandoned medical care because of cost. Among adults aged 18 to 28, the figure climbs to 94.2 percent.

Nearly 20 percent of adults said their health got worse because they skipped a visit, 31 percent have opted for over-the-counter medication instead of prescriptions, and 19 percent skip doses or cut pills in half to make them last.

A doctor’s office visit for the uninsured averages $171 across major cities. About 85 percent of Americans now carry medical debt, totaling $220 billion collectively.

The Trump administration’s “The Great Healthcare Plan” promised to lower drug costs. Then 953 of the 971 drugs available went up in price in January, marking the second-highest number of price hikes in five years.

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POSITIVE STORIES YOU MAY HAVE MISSED:

Republican Voters Keep Rejecting Trump-Endorsed Candidates. Trump’s reputation as a Republican king-maker is crumbling in the very primaries where his endorsement should mean the most. Amir Hassan of Michigan, Andy Ogles of Tennessee, and Mike Lindell of Minnesota all lost after Trump backed them, while South Carolina’s Darline Graham is nowhere near the 50 percent she needs to avoid a runoff. Hassan lost by over 10,000 votes to Thomas Smith, a candidate who had already dropped out and stopped campaigning. Lindell went down by about 11 points (45,000 votes) and lost to Lisa Demuth. Losing to the candidate who quit is a new low, even for Republicans.

The Intercept Sues Trump for Selling Premium Access to His Own Posts. The Intercept and the Freedom of the Press Foundation on Wednesday filed suit against Trump and his employees over plans by Trump Media to charge up to $100,000 per month for early access to his Truth Social posts. The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, contends that the “Truth API” proposal contravenes the First Amendment right of equal access to official government information, allowing Trump to sell access to his own public communications. The plan comes amid efforts to get the Trump Media & Technology Group company profitable after reporting a $238 million loss in the second quarter.

Kansas Reporter Settles Lawsuit for $850K Three Years After Police Raid on Newspaper. In 2023, police in Marion, Kansas, raided a small-town newspaper after a reporter looked up a public driving record. The publisher’s 98-year-old mother died the day after officers barged into her home. A federal judge later found that there was no probable cause for the raid. The police chief, Gideon Cody, has since resigned, moved to Hawaii, been charged with obstruction for telling someone to delete their texts, and lost his own lawyers. Meanwhile, the reporter who made the initial request has collected $1.45 million in settlements from the city and county.

John Oliver’s Buc-ee’s Beef Raised $500K for Charity. Following a report on the convenience store chain Buc-ee’s filing more than a dozen lawsuits against small businesses that have animal mascots, Last Week Tonight host John Oliver opened a “Buc-Off Shop” on its website that features a squirrel mascot of his own and dares the Texas-based company to sue him for trademark infringement. All proceeds from the merchandise, which will be sold until Sept. 8, go to Hunger Free America, and Oliver said the store has already raised nearly $500,000. While no one from Buc-ee’s has reached out to Oliver’s legal team, the company did recently file suit against Beaver Mini Mart, a small independent store outside Dayton, Ohio, where residents now flock to buy groceries in solidarity.

BREAKING: Epstein Associates Bankrolling GOP Senate Campaign

AlterNet America — Wed, 12 Aug 2026 14:28:54 GMT

Good morning. I’m Corinne Straight, and this is AlterNet America.

Trump says the U.S. missile shortage is Biden’s fault, not the six months he’s spent firing them at Iran. A Texas family named in the Epstein files over an attempt to buy the “Lolita Express” gave thousands to Ken Paxton’s Senate campaign. ICE plans to spend up to $20 million on gloves that deliver painful electric shocks to detainees. And Samuel Alito gained up to $2.9 million from oil and gas holdings before hearing a fossil fuel case in October.

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Trump Blames Biden for the Missiles Trump Fired

You can’t fire all your missiles at Iran and have them too, or however that saying goes.

Trump said on Real America’s Voice Tuesday morning that the U.S. is “fine with munitions,” then said the reason the stockpile is low is that Joe Biden gave “three hundred billion dollars worth” to Ukraine.

“They talk about munitions — and we’re fine with munitions, we’re fine. But the reason it would be lower — and we’re building them like crazy — but the reason it’s low is he gave three hundred billion dollars worth to Ukraine,” Trump said. “They never mention that. They never like to mention that.”

The actual reason the U.S. is short on long-range missiles and interceptors is because the Trump administration has been shooting them at Iran for the past six months. Biden did send some Tomahawks to Ukraine in 2024, but that doesn’t have the same effect as a six-month war.

The Center for Strategic and International Studies looked at the actual numbers and concluded the U.S. has enough missiles to continue the war under any plausible scenario, so the shortage Trump is blaming Biden for may not even exist.

It’s like reporting your car stolen while sitting in it.

They’re Named in the Epstein Files, and They Donated to Ken Paxton

A used Boeing got more due diligence than an FBI tip about children.

At least one member of the Jaffe family, a Texas real estate and aviation clan, donated upwards of $6,000 to groups supporting Ken Paxton, according to FEC filings. The family appears in the Epstein files twice.

1. Their aviation company, Jetran, was in talks to buy Epstein’s Boeing jet, the plane allegedly used to ferry teenage girls to his properties. The deal fell apart in June 2016, after Jetran walked away citing “due diligence” and concerns about “engine issues.”

2. Doug Jaffe III is named in a 2020 anonymous tip to the FBI alleging he hosted a caller at a Mexican villa where they saw a girl estimated at 11 or 12. The tipster said Jaffe took them to an Acapulco club where “young girls (possibly underage) were brought onto the stage and groped.”

The FBI listed the tip as “closed” in October 2021, with no indication it was substantiated. Doug Jaffe III says he never met Epstein and had no relationship with him.

The Paxton campaign did not say whether it would return the money. Seeing as he once fled his house to avoid being served a subpoena, returning a check seems unlikely.

ICE Is Buying $20 Million Worth of Shock Gloves

They’re calling them “de-escalation devices,” and in fairness, they do make people stop moving.

ICE plans to spend up to $20 million on thousands of “conductive distraction and de-escalation devices” by March, according to a notice DHS published Monday. The solicitation for a no-bid contract could go out as early as Friday.

The devices are called the G.L.O.V.E. — Generated Low Output Voltage Emitter — made by Compliant Technologies of Lexington, Kentucky. They look like normal patrol gloves, but when pressed to bare skin, they deliver a shock.

The ACLU’s Jenn Rolnick Borchetta noted that ICE has spent the last year showing the country it is too quick to use force. Now, officers can deploy electric shocks “with the slight push of a button that maybe nobody else can see them do.”

One expert described the sensation as being “like a bee sting,” which is reassuring until you remember bees don’t have qualified immunity.

Alito Has Made $2.9m From Oil and Gas Since Joining Supreme Court

Is it really a conflict of interest if the interests are getting along?

Justice Samuel Alito gained up to $2.9 million from his fossil fuel holdings between 2005 and 2024, according to an analysis by Court Accountability. Even at the lowest estimate, the figure is almost $400,000.

Most of Alito’s gains came from a mineral interest in Grady County, Oklahoma, held by his wife, Martha-Ann. The report suggests he undervalued it — he reported $100,000 to $250,000 while an adjacent plot sold for $800,000 in 2017.

The Alitos leased the land to Citizen Energy, later acquired by a company majority-owned by Paul Singer’s Elliott Investment Management, which also owns more than 52 million shares of Suncor worth over $2.3 billion. Singer paid for a 2008 private jet ride Alito took and did not disclose.

On October 5, the opening day of its term, the Supreme Court will hear Suncor and Exxon argue that federal law bars local governments from suing fossil fuel producers over climate damage.

The court says Alito need not recuse himself because his holdings don’t include the specifically named companies, and he has since sold his ExxonMobil stock. He is the only justice who has not filed his 2025 disclosure, which was due May 15.

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POSITIVE STORIES YOU MAY HAVE MISSED:

Judge Blocks U.S. Postal Service From Restricting Mail-In Voting. In 2026, “the Post Office must deliver mail” is a controversial legal opinion. Trump signed an executive order in March requiring states to hand over their voter lists to the federal government before USPS would agree to deliver mail-in ballots. If a state refused, the Postal Service just wouldn’t deliver them. A federal judge in Boston blocked it in June for 23 states. On Tuesday, she expanded that to all of them, writing that the executive branch has no constitutional authority to regulate elections. The administration is expected to appeal, because the only thing they deliver on time is litigation.

Kennedy Center Ordered to Pay Jazz Musician More Than $250,000. Jazz musician Chuck Redd backed out of a free Christmas Eve “jazz jam” after the Kennedy Center’s board voted in December to add Donald Trump’s name to the institution, and he said so publicly. The center sued him for breach of contract, citing a morals clause and accusing him of abusing “the public forum.” In June, D.C. Superior Court Judge Tanya M. Jones Bosier dismissed the case, noting Redd never signed a contract and that his conduct was protected under the D.C. Anti-SLAPP Act. She has now ordered the center to pay Redd $252,479.70 in fees and costs.

Darline Graham Fails to Secure Majority in Senate Primary in Spite of Trump. Trump could not clear the field Tuesday for Darline Graham, the younger sister of the late Sen. Lindsey Graham, who failed to win an outright majority in the South Carolina GOP primary. She will now face Rep. Ralph Norman in an August 25 runoff, and the winner will meet Democratic nominee Annie Andrews in November. Graham’s political career began exactly four weeks ago, two days after her brother’s July 11 death, when Trump pushed her to run for the full six-year term. At some point you stop calling it an endorsement and start calling it a jinx.

Administration Admits Defeat in Attempt to Get Trans Kids’ Medical Records. The Trump administration has spent the past year subpoenaing hospitals across the country for the private medical records of transgender children. Not because anyone was harmed, but because they wanted to find a reason to prosecute doctors who provided gender-affirming care. A federal judge in Pennsylvania called it out last December, writing that the DOJ’s arguments showed “callous indifference, if not abject cruelty.” The DOJ appealed, and this week, they quietly dropped the appeal with no explanation. The families’ attorney said his clients “can breathe easier with this litigation behind them.”

Coward Trump Used Reporters as Human Shields on Air Force One

AlterNet America — Tue, 11 Aug 2026 20:52:14 GMT

Good afternoon. I’m Ryan Rose, and this is AlterNet America.

Trump snuck off Air Force One in a catering cart while reporters sat on it as decoys against an Iranian assassination threat. Trump is breaking a decades-old norm to hand Republicans a 3-1 FCC majority. A Utah anti-trafficking group whose founder was accused of trafficking just got a no-bid $244 million contract to represent migrant kids. And the National Park Service quietly rerouted $323 million to White House grounds projects while cutting funds at Yellowstone, Yosemite, and the Grand Canyon.

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Trump Used Reporters as Human Decoys on Air Force One

Trump spent years trying to cut Meals on Wheels from the federal budget. Now he is Meals on Wheels.

Facing a credible assassination threat from Iran when he left last month’s NATO summit in Turkey, Trump told the press he’d ride the original Air Force One “for old time’s sake.” In reality, it was part of an elaborate ruse.

After boarding on camera, Trump was quietly rolled off the plane in a catering cart, according to two U.S. officials. He made his escape to England on a third military plane, then secretly returned to the original jet after landing. The press and some staff stayed aboard, none the wiser.

Only a few officials were briefed, including Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. Communications director Steven Cheung had hinted the administration would use “distraction and misdirection.” When the Times asked for fresh comment, the White House reissued the statement with that line quietly removed.

On the ride home, Trump told reporters, “I’m number one on their list, before you. But if I go, you go. Right?” The one time he wants to keep journalists close is when he needs them as human shields.

Trump Hands GOP a 3-1 FCC Majority, Leaves Democratic Seat Empty

“The FCC is supposed to be bipartisan. Trump heard “buy partisan.”

The FCC is split 3-2 along party lines, with the president’s party getting the extra seat. Presidents have always let the other party choose its own commissioners, which even Trump did in his first term when he nominated Democrat Geoffrey Starks at Chuck Schumer’s suggestion.

This time, he nominated Republican Danielle Thumann Severs, who works for Chairman Brendan Carr. He refused to fill the Democratic seat, giving Republicans a 3-1 majority.

Carr has spent his time as chairman investigating and threatening the broadcast licenses of networks he claims are biased against Trump. With a third Republican on the commission, he doesn’t need to threaten.

The scariest part is that the FCC only needs three members to function. If Trump has three Republicans confirmed, he can fire the last Democrat and run the commission with no opposition at all.

There is a federal law that says no single party can hold more than three of the five FCC seats, but the only way to enforce it is through the courts.

Disgraced Anti-Sex-Trafficking NGO Gets $244 Million to Rep Migrant Kids

The party of “protect the children” just handed a quarter-billion dollars to an organization whose own founder was accused of trafficking the people working for him.

On August 7, the Trump administration gave Our Rescue — formerly Operation Underground Railroad — a no-bid $244,034,658 contract to provide legal services to unaccompanied immigrant children. That’s seven times the total assets the group reported in 2025.

Our Rescue got famous in 2023 via the film Sound of Freedom, which glorified founder Tim Ballard. Shortly after, multiple former employees accused Ballard of sexual assault and trafficking, saying he coerced them into a “couples ruse” during stings and assaulted them while demanding they “remain in character.”

The current CEO, Derek Benner, spent a decade at Homeland Security Investigations, where the agency ran a fake school. The so-called University of Farmington was used to lure foreign students and arrest 250 of them.

The most recent deal follows a no-bid $150 million contract to Burke Law Group, a Texas firm with 24 attorneys, only two of whom handle immigration and asylum cases. Both awards came after the administration let the Acacia Center for Justice contract expire, jeopardizing legal aid for about 26,000 children. A federal judge had to order the government to pay the $65 million it already owed.

In related news, the arsonist lobby just landed a fire department contract.

Trump Raided National Parks to Gild the White House Lawn

Some men look at the Grand Canyon and feel awe. Others think, “This could use less funding.”

Internal National Park Service documents show $323 million was rerouted to White House grounds projects this year, an increase of nearly 5,000% over what was spent in 2024. Another nearly $100 million went to projects on the National Mall, a tenfold jump from two years ago.

The White House and Mall spending exceeds the total budgets of nine of the largest national parks. Meanwhile, Yellowstone, Yosemite, and the Grand Canyon all saw multimillion-dollar cuts.

The parks already had a maintenance bill of $23 billion before the cuts. When you reduce the number of staff, trails go un-repaired, campsites go un-maintained, and fires burn longer before being responded to.

Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon, which is currently on fire, accused Trump of “raiding wildfire prevention funding to pay for his vanity projects.” The state has requested federal wildfire assistance multiple times this summer and been denied.

Democrats on the House Ways and Means Committee offered a simple choice: your nearest national park, or “another monument to Trump?”

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POSITIVE STORIES YOU MAY HAVE MISSED:

New Study Finds Medicare for All Would Save 114,000 Lives and Over $1 Trillion a Year. Researchers at Yale released an analysis on August 11 concluding that Sen. Bernie Sanders’ single-payer legislation would cut total national healthcare spending by nearly 20%, or more than $1 trillion a year, while eliminating premiums, deductibles, copayments, and prior authorization. The savings break down into $377.5 billion on prescription drugs alone, $286.3 billion from cutting bureaucracy, and $285.7 billion from curbing fraudulent billing. On the human side, the study estimates 114,000 lives saved annually, including 33,232 uninsured Americans who can’t currently access lifesaving care and 20,111 who would keep coverage stripped by Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill.”

Social Media Companies Lose Appeal to Drop Thousands of Addiction Lawsuits. A federal appeals court ruled Monday that thousands of lawsuits accusing Meta, TikTok, and other platforms of knowingly addicting kids to their products can go to trial. They said they were immune from suit under Section 230, a 1996 federal statute holding that sites can’t be held liable for content posted on them by users. But the judge said Section 230 is a defense at trial, not a shield against it. A jury already ruled against Meta and YouTube on negligence in March, and a second trial against Meta begins Wednesday on claims that it used kids’ information to make them more addicted to its sites.

‘Block Party’ Protests Meta Data Center in Northeast El Paso. Speaking of Meta, residents in northeast El Paso held a “Block Party Protest” against the company’s massive data center, which could use up to 2.5 million gallons of water a day in one of the driest cities in the country. The community says it’s already causing dust, noise and enough light to rival an amusement park. The city council voted 5-3 against blocking the deal, despite hundreds turning out at City Hall demanding it. It is now fighting off a proposed $552 million gas plant just to keep the thing running during its first five years. Meta says it will return more water to the system than it consumes, which would be quite a trick in a town where the average rainfall is about eight inches per year.

Wisconsin Breaks Ground on Solar, Wind, and Battery Projects to Power 100,000 Homes. We Energies announced this summer that construction is underway on three Wisconsin energy projects that together will produce enough power for about 100,000 homes and support more than 450 jobs. The projects include the 75-megawatt Darien Battery Storage facility in Walworth County, the 150-megawatt Dawn Harvest Solar and Battery Park in Rock County, and the 110-megawatt Badger Hollow Wind Energy Center in Iowa and Grant counties. All three were previously approved by the Public Service Commission of Wisconsin and are being built by developer Invenergy, with the jobs described as “union-first.”

Trump Sells Wall Street Early Access to Presidential News

AlterNet America — Tue, 11 Aug 2026 14:32:04 GMT

Good morning. I’m Corinne Straight, and this is AlterNet America.

MAGA Rep. Lauren Boebert’s 21-year-old son was arrested on three felony charges tied to a 43-second sex tape he made with a 17-year-old. Trump’s Truth Social will now sell Wall Street early access to his posts for up to $1.2 million a year. An ICE agent was caught staking out Ilhan Omar’s town hall in a car with mismatched license plates. And the Trump administration is killing the federal report that tracks how fast the ice caps are melting.

A brief ask before we dive in: pro-Trump billionaires are increasing their stranglehold on the media while independent news outlets keep getting shut down or gobbled up by the day. AlterNet America is only able to cover these stories the way they need to be covered because we don’t answer to a billionaire backer or a corporate parent. Whether we keep this work going is entirely up to you. For just 22 cents a day you can upgrade your free subscription to a paying one. Subscribe right now and help keep independent journalism alive.

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Lauren Boebert’s Son Faces Three Felonies Over Child Exploitation

“Family values” is when your 21-year-old has a longer rap sheet than your legislative record.

Tyler Boebert, the son of MAGA Rep. Lauren Boebert, was arrested Sunday in New Castle, Colorado, on three felony charges related to sexual exploitation of a child. He was released the same day after he posted $10,000 bail.

The charges stem from a 43-second video Tyler allegedly filmed of himself having sex with a 17-year-old girl. The two were dating in February 2024, when he was 18. The girl, who was weeks away from turning 18, reported the video to Silt police shortly after it was made.

The video was subsequently posted to an anonymous Instagram account along with other child sexual abuse material. At least six other people, including at least four juveniles, “may have committed crimes” in connection with the account, according to the affidavit.

“I love my son,” Congresswoman Boebert said in a statement. “We take these allegations very seriously and pray for everyone affected during this challenging time.”

Tyler was also arrested in 2024 on 22 felony and misdemeanor charges connected to a string of vehicle break-ins, and pleaded guilty to attempted identity theft. He has twice been charged with child abuse without injury after allowing children he was watching to wander away.

Truth Social Will Sell Wall Street Trump’s Posts Before You See Them

They finally figured out how to make Truth Social profitable.

For $60,000 to $100,000 each month, trading firms are getting early access to Trump’s posts through a new service offered by Trump Media & Technology Corp. “Truth API” will allow Wall Street to receive presidential news on tariffs, central bank policy, and global developments before anyone else.

CEO Kevin McGurn said that 10 organizations have already signed up, generating $7 million to $12 million in annual revenue. He brushed off ethical concerns from both watchdog groups and congressional Democrats, claiming the product is similar to those offered by other social media platforms.

It’s true that many social media companies sell API access, but none are selling hedge funds a head start on presidential tariff announcements. That’s not a product, that’s insider trading with a subscription fee.

Trump Media has lost more than $1 billion since the beginning of last year. It has $1 billion in debt, some of which can be demanded back by lenders on November 30, shortly after the midterm elections.

One question that remains is whether trading firms will keep paying $1.2 million a year for Trump’s posts once Trump is no longer in office. Shares fell another 8% Monday to $9.39, down from a 2024 debut near $62.

An ICE Agent Was Caught Staking Out Ilhan Omar’s Town Hall

The FBI used to bug MLK’s hotel rooms. These guys got caught by event security.

An ICE agent was discovered parked outside Rep. Ilhan Omar’s town hall in Richfield, Minnesota, sitting in a Ford Explorer with license plates that didn’t match the vehicle — which is illegal under Minnesota state law.

Police providing security noticed the woman monitoring the building and ran her plates. When they approached, she first identified herself as “security,” then said she was an employee of Homeland Security Investigations taking part in an undercover drug operation in the area. She left after a call to her supervisor.

The agent was parked in plain view of a prominent sign indicating the town hall was happening at that location. Omar wrote to Michael McCarthy, who oversees the DHS’s St. Paul field office, that the presence “raises serious and uncomfortable questions.”

“At best, your agent was unable to assess that the parking lot of a community center hosting a Congressional event wasn’t the best place to conduct a drug operation,” Omar wrote. “At worst, it emphasizes many Americans’ growing concern that the Trump administration uses ICE to surveil political opponents.”

Omar says she met with DHS officials in March about dozens of reports of agents switching out license plates, and was assured the practice had ended. “It appears that this commitment was untrue,” she wrote.

She has given the DHS until August 14 to explain, which is more notice than ICE usually gives.

Trump Kills Funding for Key Arctic Climate Report

The ice caps and the report tracking how fast they’re melting have a lot in common right now.

The Trump administration has yanked federal funding from NOAA’s Arctic Report Card, an annual assessment that tracks how fast the Arctic is warming compared to the rest of the planet. NOAA has published it every year since 2006, using data from more than 100 scientists around the world on temperatures and ecosystems.

Last year’s edition found that Arctic surface air temperatures were the warmest recorded since 1900.

The data will still exist, but it won’t be easily available to the public. Zack Labe, a climate scientist who has contributed to the report since 2020, called the decision “truly devastating,” while Arctic specialist Rick Thoman warned it would leave a hole in environmental monitoring that no university or nonprofit can fill on its own.

The administration has been systematically dismantling the government’s ability to study and communicate climate science, from firing researchers to scrubbing data on federal websites. They even stopped updating the database that tracked the country’s costliest weather disasters.

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POSITIVE STORIES YOU MAY HAVE MISSED:

170,000 Borrowers Get $11 Billion in Student Loans Wiped Out. A federal judge has rejected the Department of Education’s attempt to delay student loan forgiveness for over 170,000 borrowers by 18 months, finalizing the largest settlement against the federal government in U.S. history. The borrowers are now set to have a combined $11 billion in debt wiped out under the Sweet v. McMahon settlement, which allows students who were defrauded by their schools to have their loans forgiven. The claims were submitted during a window from June 23 to November 15, 2022, and after two years of shifting federal loan policy, borrowers finally have an answer.

Three Republicans Cross Party Lines to Endorse Jon Ossoff. Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff has picked up endorsements from three prominent Republicans in just three days. Former GOP Sen. Jeff Flake of Arizona, Valdosta Mayor Scott James Matheson, and Tifton Mayor Julie Smith all backed Ossoff over Republican nominee Mike Collins. Flake cited Ossoff’s “character, constituent work and respect for the institution,” and said he was troubled by Collins’ refusal to acknowledge Biden’s 2020 victory. Matheson conceded he would “take heat” but said he couldn’t turn his back on the relationship. The endorsements land as Collins faces questions over reported campaign ties to antisemitic and white nationalist figures.

Delaware Becomes the Second State to Enshrine Voting Rights Protections. Gov. Matt Meyer has signed House Bill 444, the John Lewis Voting Rights Act, solidifying prohibitions against voter discrimination and vote dilution into state law. The bill responds to the Supreme Court’s April ruling Louisiana v. Callais, which weakened Section 2 of the federal Voting Rights Act and required plaintiffs to prove states “intentionally” gerrymandered. Delaware’s law crucially says intent does not have to be proved for future violations, empowers the attorney general and private citizens to bring complaints, and creates a “democracy canon” instructing courts to interpret ambiguous election laws in favor of access.

Mamdani Backs the Delivery Protection Act to Rein In Amazon. Mayor of New York City Zohran Mamdani said he will support legislation sponsored by Council Member Tiffany Cabán that would require last-mile warehouses to be licensed and make companies like Amazon liable for injuries caused by the couriers that make their deliveries. Amazon relies on subcontractor delivery drivers who it claims are not its employees, yet the company dictates the routes, quotas, and uniforms they use. At least 18 such warehouses have opened in the city since 2017, and 78% of the neighborhoods surrounding them experienced an increase in injury-inducing crashes after the warehouses opened.

Trump Order Forces Kids to Receive Vaccine That Doesn’t Exist

AlterNet America — Mon, 10 Aug 2026 21:01:34 GMT

Good afternoon. I’m Ryan Rose, and this is AlterNet America.

Trump signed an executive order claiming he can override the CDC and upend the vaccine schedule for children. The State Department revoked more than 175,000 visas, many over minor law-enforcement encounters that never reached a courtroom. Florida’s attorney general threatened to charge WNBA players with assault over a hard foul. And the Trump administration is building a border wall through the site of a 1918 massacre still being studied as a crime scene.

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Trump Signs Order Mandating Kids Receive Vaccine That Doesn’t Exist

The president would like pharmacies to carry three vaccines that don’t exist, to cure a problem that also doesn’t exist.

Trump signed an executive order on Monday that would require the measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine to be split into three separate shots. The problem: no individually licensed measles, mumps, or rubella vaccine exists in the United States, and the licensing process takes years.

The order props up changes to CDC recommendations that a federal judge has already halted, effectively attempting to override the agency responsible for vaccine guidance. It would also recommend that every childhood shot be given at a separate medical visit, adding financial and logistical strain on families and providers for no medical reason.

Only six of the 17 routinely recommended vaccines would keep their full endorsement. The rest get demoted to “high risk” or the obscure “shared clinical decision-making” category.

At the signing, Trump described the MMR vaccine as potentially “quite lethal.” The vaccine has been given to hundreds of millions of children; serious adverse reactions are so rare that the CDC counts them in single-digit cases per million doses. He also compared a vaccine dose to “the size of a bottle of soda, poured into a little child’s body.” A standard vaccine dose is 0.5 milliliters, roughly one-tenth of a teaspoon.

Twenty-nine states and D.C. have already decoupled their vaccine requirements from the CDC, and insurance still covers the shots. What the order does in effect is apply political pressure to states to address an autism link that does not exist.

The State Department Just Revoked Over 175,000 Visas

Strict constitutionalists who have memorized the Second Amendment apparently think the First starts with “Citizens only.”

The Trump administration announced Monday that it has revoked more than 175,000 visas from foreign nationals since taking office, with the reasons cited ranging from assault to posting mean things about Charlie Kirk online.

That’s more than 10,000 revocations a month in 2026. In all of 2025, the total was about 8,000.

The State Department called the majority the result of “law enforcement encounters,” but the category is broader than it sounds. The leading causes listed — assault, driving under the influence, theft, drug crimes — include charges that never went through the judicial process at all.

The department said it revoked visas from “multiple foreign nationals who celebrated the assassination of Charlie Kirk,” including one who said “when fascists die, democrats don’t complain” and another who said Kirk “died too late.” A Kuwaiti national was deported on “foreign policy grounds” for supposedly wishing violence against the president.

Florida’s Attorney General Threatens to Arrest WNBA Players Over a Foul

Florida does not have a WNBA team. It does, however, have an attorney general with strong feelings about one.

Over the weekend, Attorney General James Uthmeier said he would charge players with assault after a hard foul against Indiana Fever star Sophie Cunningham during a game in Indianapolis. The foul, by the Chicago Sky’s DiJonai Carrington, resulted in an ejection.

“The WNBA knows better than to play games down here in Florida, because I’ll be charging people with assault,” Uthmeier wrote. He followed up to clarify: “assault and battery.”

Cunningham has spent recent weeks pushing back on transgender athletes in women’s sports, and the league said it would review its eligibility policies in response. Uthmeier connected the two, asking, “What’s next, men assaulting women on the WNBA courts?”

And in case it needed to be said, there are no transgender women playing in the WNBA. Carrington, who committed the foul, is not transgender. The foul was a standard basketball play that the league handled in real time.

But other than getting the sport wrong, the state wrong, the player wrong, and the issue wrong, it was a very strong legal threat.

Trump Is Building a Border Wall Through a Massacre Site

It took a hundred years to get the government to acknowledge the massacre, and considerably less time to pave over it.

In 1918, Texas Rangers and U.S. Army soldiers dragged fifteen Mexican villagers from their beds and executed them against a rock outcropping in the West Texas desert. No one was ever prosecuted. For most of the twentieth century, the killings were absent from school books, which instead taught children the Rangers were mythic symbols of frontier justice.

In 2018, after decades of research and lobbying, descendants finally got the Texas Historical Commission to erect a marker documenting the atrocity. A 2015 excavation had already turned up military-issue cartridge casings, implicating the U.S. Army in the massacre.

Now the Trump administration is building a thirty-foot steel wall through it. Based on CBP’s “Smart Wall Map,” the barrier would cut off access to the site, bulldozing what remains of the archaeological zone and the evidence.

CBP said the route “has not been finalized” and that it collected public input between February and May. None of the descendants said they were contacted. Arlinda Valencia, 74, whose great-grandfather was one of the victims, asked: “Do you think if you started bulldozing Gettysburg that people would accept it?”

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POSITIVE STORIES YOU MAY HAVE MISSED:

Voters Back Adding 150 New Lawmakers to Congress. A new survey found that 54 percent of respondents support expanding the House of Representatives by 150 seats, and 50 percent support proportional representation. The House has been capped at 435 voting members since 1929, while the U.S. population grew from about 123 million in 1930 to more than 331 million in 2020. Supporters like political scientist Lee Drutman argue that smaller districts would give voters more direct representation, and advocates say proportional representation would curb gerrymandering. Congress has the authority to change the size of the House by legislation, though it would take a political consensus that has been missing for decades.

Trump Ballroom Deemed Unlawful by Federal Appeals Court. Late last week, a federal appeals court upheld a lower court’s finding that halted construction of Trump’s ballroom at the former site of the White House East Wing. The majority opinion noted that “Each President is a temporary tenant, not the owner, of the White House and its Executive Residence,” and found that Trump had no delegated authority to rebuild the East Wing to his liking. Trump responded on Truth Social by insisting, “We are not tenants... we are PRESIDENTS.” Meanwhile, a Washington Post/Ipsos poll found 65 percent view the D.C. building projects negatively, and an Economist/YouGov poll found just 24 percent support the ballroom itself.

Massachusetts Expands Abortion Access to Any Point During Pregnancy. Massachusetts became the tenth state to let doctors decide when an abortion is medically necessary, at any point in a pregnancy. Governor Maura Healey signed the bill Monday, replacing a 24-week cutoff that had been forcing hospitals to turn patients away even when their doctors wanted to treat them. Almost no abortions happen that late, and when they do, it’s almost always because something life-threatening went wrong. The new law just lets the doctor in the room make the call instead of a politician who wasn’t there.

Cherokee Nation Bans Hyperscale Data Centers on Tribally Owned Lands. The Cherokee Nation banned hyperscale data centers on its tribal and trust lands, making it the second Oklahoma tribe to do so after the Seminole Nation in March. A task force surveyed nearly 1,600 tribal citizens on the potential impacts of data centers, finding that 64% opposed them. Principal Chief Chuck Hoskin Jr. said the tribe won’t support any data centers on its reservation without proper consultation, including on non-tribal land, since those projects still affect Cherokee citizens.

Military Families Rage at Trump Over Gross Conditions for Troops

AlterNet America — Mon, 10 Aug 2026 14:43:57 GMT

Good morning. I’m Corinne Straight, and this is AlterNet America.

A Texas oil company tied to Trump landed a dozen drilling containers on Greenland’s coast without permission and hired Dr. Phil to film it. Relatives of the sailors fighting Trump’s Iran war are outraged as troops are forced to shower with moldy spouts and ration meals. ICE is publishing detention contracts that flatly declare state and local inspection laws “shall not apply.” And Nebraska Republicans are suing to keep a party called America First off the ballot, claiming a leftist stole Trump’s brand.

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Greenland Issues ‘Strong Warning’ as Trump-linked Firm Prepares to Drill

Dr. Phil has been to war zones, addiction clinics, and custody battles, but a protected Arctic wetland might finally be the thing that’s out of his depth.

A Texas company connected to Trump is preparing to drill in Greenland, recently bringing materials ashore without permission from local authorities. The local government has issued a “strong warning” that “all future logistical matters must be advised and approved by the mineral resources authority.”

The company, called Greenland Energy, was set up just last year. It claims $1 trillion of crude may lie beneath the Jameson Land region, and intends to spend $60 million drilling to find out. Oh, and it hired Dr. Phil to make a documentary series about “these modern-day wildcatters.”

Two days after the warning, Trump posted this menacing image on Truth Social showing himself looming over a Greenlandic village.

Greenland stopped issuing new oil licenses in 2021 on environmental grounds, and the planned wells fall inside a conservation area protected by the Ramsar convention on wetlands. The decision to approve a permit for the project now lies with local officials, who have every reason not to.

If this were a pitch on Shark Tank, Mark Cuban would offer sixty million dollars just to make them stop talking.

Military Families Rage at Trump Over Gross Conditions for Troops

Two tortillas and a half-cup of rice is not a military meal, it’s what falls out of a Chipotle bag on the way home.

The U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln left San Diego in November for a deployment that was supposed to last seven months. Trump launched his air campaign against Iran in February and said the conflict would last a “few weeks.” It has now been five months, and the ship’s 5,000-plus sailors and Marines still have no homecoming date.

The crew has been on land for just two days in more than eight months, spending 208 unbroken days at sea before reaching Oman on July 7. It is the longest a U.S. carrier has gone without a break in the modern era.

Families describe out-of-service toilets, long stretches without hot water, and mold growing in faucets. Nicole Conrad, who voted for Trump, said her son messaged her about a meal that came to two tortillas and a half-cup of rice.

The families went public two days after Trump handed Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s wife, Jennifer, control of a new panel on military family welfare during an executive order signing in the Oval Office on Monday.

When photos of near-empty meal trays spread online in April, Pete Hegseth called the coverage “fake news.” He’s doing a great job washing his hands of it, despite the mold growing in the faucets.

ICE Contracts Declare State Law ‘Shall Not Apply’

Most people at least swap a few sentences around when they copy the homework.

It took three years of lawsuits, 10 refusals of inspections and more than 3,500 detainee complaints before a federal judge told U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to allow health inspectors from the state of Washington into the Tacoma facility.

One day later, ICE published draft contract terms declaring that state and local laws “shall not apply” to its facilities.

The contracts read like they were written for one specific company: GEO Group. The private prison contractor is already running operations in some of the places where ICE says it will build its new prisons, and the number of beds they are required to have matches their current operations exactly. In Florida, 700 is the number of beds at the Pompano Beach detention center operated by GEO Group.

Under the proposed standards, facilities would be allowed to operate indefinitely at 85 percent staffing, including for medical staff. Inspections by third parties would be allowed, but only inspectors chosen by ICE.

Since 2024, two people have died at the Tacoma facility. A June inspection found that suicide-watch checks were being conducted nearly 14 hours apart when they’re supposed to be every eight hours, and a detainee received his required health assessment 22 days late.

Nebraska Republicans Are Suing to Keep America First Off the Ballot

“America First” is now a brand to be protected, not a principle to be shared, which is honestly the most Republican sentence ever written.

The Nebraska state Republican Party is suing to block the America First Party from appearing on the November ballot, asking a Lancaster County judge to declare the party’s name illegal and stop it from being officially recognized.

The party’s sponsor is John Cartier, attorney general of the Omaha Tribe, whose platform lists cracking down on illegal immigration, defending the Second Amendment, and opposing abortion.

The lawsuit calls the platform a “façade” that “crumbles under the slightest scrutiny,” arguing that Cartier is really a “well-known leftist political operative” hijacking “a nationally recognized brand inextricably linked to President Donald J. Trump.”

Secretary of State Bob Evnen agreed the party was likely created to cause confusion but declined to disqualify it unless ordered by a court, noting no other Nebraska party uses the words “America” and “first.”

A judge blocked certification of the America First Party until Monday afternoon, when a hearing is set for 2 p.m. By tonight, a Nebraska judge will have to rule on whether the words “America” and “First” can legally appear next to each other without Republican permission.

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POSITIVE STORIES YOU MAY HAVE MISSED:

Impeachment Articles Filed Against “Unelected Shadow President” Russell Vought. Rep. Sydney Kamlager-Dove filed two articles of impeachment Thursday against White House budget chief Russell Vought, the Project 2025 architect, accusing him of unlawfully terminating funds Congress appropriated. The articles allege “abuse of power through improper impoundment” and “failure to faithfully execute the laws of the United States.” Last month, administration officials admitted in court filings they killed billions in Biden-era clean energy grants “based solely” on whether Kamala Harris won the state in 2024.

Senate Recesses Without Passing the SAVE Act’s Voter ID Measure. Without the SAVE Act, which would limit what kinds of photo IDs you need to be able to vote, the Senate adjourned for recess. It’s already failed in the Senate at least five times this year. Friday night, GOP leaders figured out that there weren’t enough votes for the whole thing, so they tried to pass just the voter ID piece. And that failed too, with just 52 votes for a bill that needed 60 to pass. Sen. Mike Lee called the result “tragic,” and said “we’re just getting started.” Voters ranked the issue fifth in importance in a recent poll, behind things that actually affect their lives.

Voter Turnout Surges in Tennessee After a Black-Majority District Is Erased. Days after the Supreme Court gutted Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act in April, Tennessee’s Republican legislature split Memphis’s 9th District, the state’s only majority-Black district, into three districts that stretch hundreds of miles into rural areas. It has since backfired, as Democratic primary turnout in Shelby County more than doubled compared to 2024, hitting its highest level in a decade. A fifth of all active registered voters cast ballots in Democratic House primaries, proving nothing gets people to the polls like being told their vote doesn’t matter.

Congress Has Contempt for Fauci But Not Epstein's Clients

AlterNet America — Sat, 08 Aug 2026 14:21:29 GMT

Good morning, AlterNet America family.

Welcome to the Saturday Wrapup, where I get you the week’s news as I consume my morning caffeine with you.

Thank you again to our paying subscribers. Your support has allowed us to expand our social media coverage to reach a wider audience and combat the conservative disinformation running wild. We’ll have more on that in the coming weeks, so be on the lookout.

If you’re not yet a paying member, I’m asking you to join us today. Independent media has never mattered more. Support our people-powered movement and upgrade your subscription today.

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If you’re drinking tap water right now, I recommend swapping it for something else before you read our first story.

Iran Is Poisoning the Well. No, Literally.

The Pentagon budget could’ve bought every American a Brita filter, and it might’ve been more useful.

On July 26, somebody logged into 30 Minnesota water systems, changed all the passwords, and locked every operator out of their own equipment. By the time the FBI got around to issuing a warning, the same thing had already happened in 12 states.

Michigan confirmed attacks on nine of its systems shortly after. Then Georgia. Then South Dakota. By Thursday, the warning came out that “malicious cyber actors” were actively targeting water infrastructure across the country.

The FBI and CISA have been warning about Iranian actors targeting water systems for years. The difference is that now we’re in an active military conflict with them, and the Trump administration didn’t secure our drinking water before picking the fight.

The attacks haven’t contaminated any water supplies yet, though the key word there is “yet.” The FBI’s own bulletin acknowledged that the operational disruptions “could potentially allow untreated ground water to seep into pipes.”

Meanwhile, CISA says it is “observing a significant increase in cyber threat actors” going after water infrastructure. The affected facilities are mostly small, underfunded municipal operations running on outdated equipment that was not designed for internet connection.

The next attack might not just mess with water pressure, and the people in charge will be exactly as prepared as they are right now.

Congress Can’t Find Epstein’s Clients, But It Found Anthony Fauci

Congress can’t find a single person to subpoena over the Epstein files, but they can hold Anthony Fauci in contempt for telling people to stand six feet apart.

The Senate Homeland Security Committee voted Thursday to hold Fauci in contempt of Congress for invoking the Fifth Amendment at last week’s hearing. In other words, a private citizen was hauled before a committee and punished for refusing to answer questions that were designed to produce a perjury charge.

Now ask yourself who hasn’t been held in contempt — not a single person connected to the Epstein files. Jeffrey Epstein’s operation implicated some of the most powerful people in the country, and Congress has shown zero interest in dragging any of them before a committee and demanding answers under oath.

This also sets a precedent that Republicans are going to regret. If a preemptive presidential pardon doesn’t protect you from a contempt charge, then Pam Bondi can be held in contempt the moment Democrats retake a chamber. So can every Trump official who has stonewalled a subpoena or ignored a document request.

But they don’t care about that right now, because this was never about accountability.

Trump Lost 6-3 and Came Back for Round Two

Trump has always believed “no means yes,” why would the Supreme Court be any different?

Six weeks ago, the Supreme Court struck down Trump’s executive order targeting birthright citizenship. It was not a close call. It was 6-3, with Chief Justice Roberts writing that the 14th Amendment extends citizenship to “every free-born person in this land.”

On Thursday, Trump signed two more executive orders doing the same thing, just narrower. Stephen Miller stood next to him in the Oval Office and explained, with a straight face, that the ruling which explicitly rejected them actually gave them the authority to try again.

The new orders target children born to “alien enemies,” members of foreign terrorist organizations, and foreign government employees. There’s also one banning “birth tourism,” which is already illegal under existing visa law and accounts for 0.0074% of births in the U.S. each year.

On the same day Trump signed the orders, a federal judge certified a nationwide class action protecting every baby born on U.S. soil. That has to be some kind of record.

AIPAC Just Blew Millions in Michigan

Sixty million dollars buys you a lot of things in Michigan, but a Senate seat isn’t one of them.

In Michigan’s Democratic Senate primary this week, Dr. Abdul El-Sayed defeated Haley Stevens in what’s being called one of the most significant progressive victories of the cycle. You’ve heard a lot of people say it “wasn’t a blowout” because he won by just under a single percentage.

They’re lying to you.

Over $60 million was spent to back Stevens and oppose El-Sayed. AIPAC alone poured in more than $30 million through its affiliated super PAC, setting a record for the group in a single race. El-Sayed was outspent 11 to 1, and still managed to come out on top. That is a blowout, even if not in the traditional sense.

El-Sayed ran on universal healthcare, workers’ rights, and an end to unconditional military aid to Israel.

AIPAC has been buying Democratic primaries for years and getting away with it because most voters had no idea it was happening. Now that they’re paying attention, it turns out most people don’t appreciate a lobbying group spending $60 million to pick their lawmaker for them.

AlterNet America covers these races because we don’t take money from the groups trying to influence them. We’re not funded by AIPAC, billionaires, or advertisers. We’re proof that AIPAC can’t buy elections when voters have access to real information.

If you’re already a paid subscriber, forward this to someone who needs to hear it. If you’ve been reading for free, please consider upgrading your subscription to paid.

Sixty million dollars couldn’t beat one candidate in one state. Imagine what they can’t do to a newsroom full of people who don’t owe them anything.

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—Ryan Rose, Co-Founder & Managing Editor, AlterNet America

Trump Accidentally Defunds GOP Abstinence Programs

AlterNet America — Fri, 07 Aug 2026 21:02:07 GMT

Good afternoon. I’m Ryan Rose, and this is AlterNet America.

I’ve got something special for you this fine Friday evening: all of the stories I found are positive. After cutting millions from teen pregnancy programs, the Trump administration accidentally gutted abstinence-only Christian groups Republicans built. A federal appeals court just blocked Trump’s $400 million White House ballroom. Andy Ogles, a Trump-endorsed congressman, lost his GOP primary on Thursday. And the Trump administration has lost 75 of 93 First Amendment challenges in federal district courts since January 2025.

Before we get to the news, a brief ask: AlterNet America was launched as a direct response to MAGA billionaires buying up networks like CBS and newspapers like the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times. We’re going all-in on the bet that reader-supported journalism can compete directly with the billionaires by being the one thing they can’t buy.

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Trump Accidentally Defunds GOP’s Abstinence-Only Sex Ed. Programs

Abstinence-only education doesn’t work, but leave it to the Trump administration to find an even dumber reason to get rid of it.

Earlier this summer, the Trump administration terminated tens of millions in funding from the Teen Pregnancy Prevention Program. Some of the cuts landed where you would expect, like Planned Parenthood chapters and health departments in blue states.

But the termination letters also went out to conservative Christian groups in Texas, South Carolina, West Virginia, and Mississippi that only teach about abstinence. HHS accused them of “normalizing sexual activity for minors.”

Rena Dixon runs Fact Forward, a South Carolina nonprofit that lost more than $1.6 million in annual funding. The letter accused her group of showing children a video that “depicted youth engaging in sexual activity,” but Dixon said the video was two girls talking on a train about the consequences of having sex.

The cut came three years into a five-year grant, forcing her to lay off half her staff and leaving fall programming for thousands of students in limbo.

An anonymous HHS employee summed it up plainly. “They just stabbed abstinence educators in the back,” the employee said. “They labeled all these abstinence-only programs ‘sexually explicit,’ and the abstinence-only developers were completely blindsided.”

Federal Court Blocks Trump’s $400 Million Ballroom

Apparently, you do need a permit for that.

On Friday, the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit upheld an injunction ordering the administration to stop construction of the 90,000-square-foot ballroom on the site of the demolished East Wing.

The National Trust for Historic Preservation had brought the case after the administration tore down the East Wing and broke ground without congressional authorization, and District Judge Richard Leon ruled that no federal statute “comes close to giving the President” the authority to do it alone.

In a rant on Truth Social reacting to the ruling, Trump called the project “desperately needed” and “totally secure.” He claimed the court “refused to acknowledge” that the ballroom “is a gift from President Trump and Great Patriots of the United States of America.” He then demanded the Supreme Court overturn the decision “in its entirety.”

Trump insists there will be “no expense to the American taxpayer.” Meanwhile, Senate Republicans have sought $1 billion in taxpayer funding for security upgrades to the ballroom and the structures beneath it.

The administration’s lawyer argued the courts have no role in a privately funded project and that national security demanded the demolition. The preservation group’s lawyer had a simpler read. “They just don’t want to go to Congress,” he said.

Trump-Endorsed Congressman Loses GOP Primary

If you’re too bigoted for Tennessee Republicans, you might want to take a minute and reflect.

Former state Agriculture Commissioner Charlie Hatcher ousted Tennessee Republican Andy Ogles in the 5th District GOP primary Thursday, despite a last-minute push from Trump and Mike Johnson to save him. Hatcher had won a late endorsement from GOP Gov. Bill Lee, and benefited from a flood of outside money.

Ogles has a history of racist and homophobic comments, and has been under federal investigation since 2024. He deleted a social media post in June claiming “homosexuality has no place in America” after it was denounced by his own party. He also posted that “Muslims don’t belong in American society.”

In 2024, the FBI searched his phone during an investigation into his campaign finance records, after a watchdog group filed an ethics complaint. In 2023, he faced scrutiny for false claims about his resume.

Republicans redrew the seat to favor Trump by 23 points after the Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act this year. This is only made slightly less embarrassing by the fact that his loss actually makes him the second Trump-endorsed candidate to lose a primary this week. The first fell in Michigan to a challenger who had already dropped out.

Trump Has Lost 75 Free Speech Cases and Counting

Trump is batting .193 against the First Amendment, which wouldn’t even get you on a high school team roster.

A review of court cases found that the Trump administration has faced 93 First Amendment challenges since his second term began. Of those, 75 resulted in rulings against the White House.

For reference, the entire four years of the Biden administration drew 27 First Amendment challenges at the district level, and only 13 went against it. Trump has already lost nearly six times as many cases in a fraction of the time.

The administration has appealed some of the losses, managing to get 15 of the 75 reversed or paused with a temporary injunction. That still leaves 60 challenges standing, all of them saying the government broke the same amendment Trump swore to defend.

The cases spanned free speech, religious freedom, and press protections, including the high-profile case in which Trump’s Justice Department examined the phone records of journalists and their family members.

The Constitution says Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech. And friendly reminder that a president can’t make laws at all.

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(MORE) POSITIVE STORIES YOU MAY HAVE MISSED:

Sanders Introduces a Bill to Guarantee Two Weeks of Paid Vacation. Sen. Bernie Sanders reintroduced the Guaranteed Paid Vacation Act on August 6, legislation that would give every full-time worker in America at least two weeks of paid vacation per year. Workers would accrue at least one hour of paid leave for every 25 hours worked, usable for any reason, and protected from retaliation. The bill is endorsed by the UAW, SEIU, NEA, National Nurses United and dozens of other groups. A recent poll found 79% of Americans support it. The United States is currently the only major economy on Earth that guarantees its workers no paid vacation at all.

Appeals Court Says E.P.A. Cannot Block Billions in Climate Grants. Lee Zeldin tried to claw back $20 billion in Biden-era clean energy grants because they didn’t “align with EPA priorities.” A federal appeals court told him he can’t do that in a 6-4 ruling that found the EPA had no legal basis to terminate grants Congress already authorized just because the new administration doesn’t like what they’re for. Zeldin’s argument boiled down to “policy disagreement,” which the court did not find particularly compelling when the money was already sitting in a Citibank account earmarked for clean energy loans in underserved communities.

California Court Shuts Down GOP Bid to Sanitize Anti-Voting Measure. California Republicans put a voter ID measure on the ballot and then sued to change its official description because they didn’t like how honest it was. The attorney general’s language said Proposition 39 “prohibits citizens from voting unless they present government-issued identification.” Republicans wanted it replaced with something softer about “additional verification requirements.” Their legal argument was that the measure doesn’t technically stop you from voting, it just stops your vote from being counted, and a Sacramento County judge disagreed.

Japan Asks the U.S. Government to Stop Putting Pikachu in Its Memes. Japan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs has formally warned the U.S. government to stop using Pokemon, Mario, Naruto, and other Japanese properties in official social media posts without permission. It has apparently raised the issue with the U.S. Embassy in Tokyo in April, June, and again in August. The posts include a Department of Homeland Security Pokemon-themed immigration enforcement video, a “Make America Great Again” graphic, and an AI-generated clip depicting Trump as Naruto. The ministry cautioned that even public institutions need the creator’s permission and warned of possible copyright infringement and damage to the franchises’ image.

Judge Receives MAGA Death Threats After Defying Trump

AlterNet America — Fri, 07 Aug 2026 14:32:27 GMT

Good morning. I’m Corinne Straight, and this is AlterNet America.

The Trump administration is slashing federally funded preschool programs, threatening childcare for more than half a million kids. A federal judge in Rhode Island received at least six credible death threats after blocking Trump’s funding freeze. To help immigrant children find legal representation, the Trump administration is awarding a $150 million contract to a small Texas law firm with ties to the president. And the government just agreed to pay a German company $1.22 billion to kill its offshore wind leases and build gas plants instead.

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Trump Moves to Slash Crucial Education Program for Kids

Republicans spent three years screaming about protecting children from drag queens reading books and then loosened background checks on the adults actually watching them eight hours a day.

On Thursday, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. proposed a rule that would overhaul Head Start — the federal program that provides free childcare, meals, early education, and health services to about 800,000 low-income kids — by handing states the power to set their own standards. Those include class sizes, staff ratios, teacher credentials, background checks, and transportation.

The rule would slash the share of funding centers can spend on administration from 15 percent to 5 percent, supposedly “saving” the government $2.2 billion. HHS says it will reinvest those savings to “preserve or expand” 200,000 spots.

It claims the savings will come from “administrative overhead.” The overhead in question is speech therapists and disability specialists, but nobody’s putting that on the press release.

HHS calls this “increasing access by capping administrative overhead and reducing compliance-driven activities.” Kennedy says Head Start lost more than 100,000 slots under Biden because of “burdensome paperwork,” which is a hell of a way to describe background checks on people who work with children.

Judge Receives MAGA Death Threats After Ruling Against Trump

A federal judge ruled against the Trump administration and within weeks the richest man on Earth was helping strangers find his daughter’s home address.

U.S. District Judge McConnell, an Obama appointee in Rhode Island, has received at least six credible death threats since he temporarily blocked the Trump administration’s freeze on trillions in federal funding.

The threats reached his wife first. The U.S. Marshals Service warned him one mentioned her by name. Then Laura Loomer doxxed his daughter’s personal information and posted a photo of her, and Elon Musk boosted it to his 200 million followers.

Then, someone sent a pizza to his home that he never ordered. The name on the order was Daniel Anderl — the 20-year-old son of a federal judge, shot and killed at their front door in 2020 by a gunman disguised as a delivery driver.

“I don’t think anything disturbed me as much as that did,” McConnell said.

Trump has repeatedly called judges who rule against him radical left lunatics and communists on Truth Social, after which the threats against those judges reliably spike. The White House said suggesting any of this resembles a threat is “deeply unserious.” A spokesperson added that “no one understands the dangers of political violence more than President Trump.”

Which is true in the same way no one understands fire better than an arsonist.

Trump-Linked Law Firm Chosen to Represent Immigrant Children

They drained the swamp right into the pockets of a Trump ally.

The Trump administration is awarding a $150 million contract to represent immigrant children to the Houston-based Burke Law Group, a small Texas firm where only two of its 26 attorneys actually practice immigration law. Co-founder Marcella Burke was previously appointed by Trump to the Senior Executive Service at the EPA and the Interior Department.

The deal was a “single source cooperative agreement,” which means the firm was selected without a standard bidding process. Michael Lukens of the Amica Center for Immigrant Rights called the group “clearly unqualified.”

The new contract doesn’t start until August 15, and the old one already expired last Friday, leaving a gap of over a week with no legal representation for these children at all. Officials offered to extend the existing contract only if providers agreed to share confidential information about their clients with the government, including details about the children and their sponsors. Nonprofit leaders refused, fearing the data would be used to target the same families for enforcement.

Meanwhile, children’s immigration hearings are being moved up by weeks or months, making legal help harder to find. In June, an average of 1,796 children were in ORR custody, with an average stay of 194 days.

You can build an IKEA bookshelf faster than these kids can get a hearing, and at least IKEA gives you instructions in your language.

The Trump Admin. Just Paid Another $1.22 Billion to Kill Wind Power

The Trump administration has now spent $4 billion paying energy companies to stop doing the thing that would save the planet.

The German energy company RWE has reached a $1.22 billion deal with the U.S. government to relinquish its offshore wind leases and redirect the funds toward fossil fuels. It’s the fifth such deal the Trump administration has struck, and it brings the running total to almost $4 billion of taxpayer money spent on killing offshore wind.

RWE is giving up leases off New York, California, and Louisiana, after it paid $1.1 billion for the New York lease alone in a 2022 auction. The company said there was “no path forward to permit these projects in the US for the foreseeable future.”

RWE will take that $1.22 billion and pour it straight into fossil fuels: $900 million for a stake in a liquefied natural gas export terminal in Louisiana, and $300 million to develop 15 natural gas power plants.

After a similar $928 million deal with TotalEnergies, seven states sued, with New York Attorney General Letitia James calling it a “sham deal” and “illegal agreement.”

A report last fall from the Environmental Integrity Project found that every fully operational LNG facility in the U.S. had violated federal pollution limits, discharging illegal amounts of bacteria, zinc and oil into waterways. So naturally we’re building more.

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POSITIVE STORIES YOU MAY HAVE MISSED:

Trump’s “Voter Fraud” Crusade Just Lost for the 20th Straight Time. The Justice Department’s push to seize states’ unredacted voter rolls has now failed in court twenty times, most recently on Monday when U.S. District Judge Philip Brimmer dismissed its case against Colorado with prejudice. Brimmer, a George W. Bush appointee, ruled the executive branch had no legitimate reason for access to records that were never under its constitutional jurisdiction. The DOJ has now sued in 30 states and D.C. and lost every time, with most of the judges who rejected it — including eight appointed by Trump himself — being Republican appointees. It is a perfect record, just not the kind Trump was hoping for.

Senate Unanimously Agrees to Oppose Pardon for Ghislaine Maxwell. The Senate unanimously passed a resolution telling Trump not to pardon Ghislaine Maxwell, Jeffrey Epstein’s convicted co-conspirator, who is serving 20 years for sex trafficking minors. When asked about a pardon, Trump said he’d “take a look at it.” Maxwell’s own lawyer had already offered her testimony in exchange for clemency, and Sen. Jacky Rosen said the resolution was specifically to prevent acting AG Todd Blanche from making that deal to clear Trump’s name. Every single Republican voted yes, which means even they didn’t want to be on record defending this one.

New York Becomes the First State to Halt New Data Centers. Gov. Kathy Hochul is set to sign the country’s first statewide moratorium on hyperscale data centers, blocking new construction in New York for up to a year. The pause halts state permitting and directs regulators to write standards addressing energy demand, water usage, and environmental impact. Communities across the country have been fighting to block these facilities for years, and moratoriums have been floated in at least a dozen states and gone nowhere. New York just became the first with the nerve to actually do it. Twelve other states are welcome to stop taking notes and start copying.

FDA Approves Moderna’s mRNA Flu Vaccine. The FDA approved the first mRNA flu vaccine, Moderna’s mFlusiva, for adults 50 and older, despite the fact that RFK Jr. has called mRNA vaccines “the deadliest vaccine ever made” and cut nearly $500 million in mRNA research funding last year. The FDA initially refused to even review it under Kennedy’s handpicked vaccine director, then reversed course two weeks later. In trials, the shot was 27% more effective than standard flu vaccines, and an independent FDA advisory panel voted unanimously to approve it. Kennedy’s HHS responded by saying he believes mRNA products “warrant heightened scientific scrutiny,” which is the coward’s way of saying he doesn’t believe in medicine.

Choked-up Trump Voter Regrets His Vote After ICE Locks up His Fiancée

John Byrne — Thu, 06 Aug 2026 22:01:30 GMT

Good afternoon. I’m John Byrne, and this is AlterNet America.

A 75-year-old Texas Republican who owns more than 1,000 billboards now compares ICE to the Gestapo after agents seized his fiancée at a Houston airport. The FCC voted 2-1 to scrap a 22-year-old cap on how much of the country a single broadcaster can reach. Stanford researchers used AI to design 16 functioning viruses from scratch. And Vice President JD Vance responded to a critic’s Iran column by calling him fat and telling him to lay off the burritos.

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A Lifelong Republican Voted for Trump. Then ICE Took His Fiancée.

It turns out the fastest way to change a 75-year-old Republican’s mind about immigration is to point eight ICE agents at the woman he loves.

John Gannon owns more than 1,000 U.S. billboards and spent a lifetime voting for the GOP. On July 24, he and his 45-year-old fiancée, Yasmin Suarez Reyes, were headed to a Las Vegas convention when eight plainclothes agents surrounded her at Houston’s international airport and took her away without explanation.

Weeks later, she is still held at a Texas processing center.

By her attorney’s account, Suarez Reyes did everything the law asked. A Venezuelan-born Spanish citizen, she entered legally under the Visa Waiver Program in 2023, filed for asylum before her stay lapsed, and holds a work permit and a Texas driver’s license with no criminal record. Her case is still pending. ICE moved to deport her anyway because her original entry permission expired.

Her lawyer, Anne Kennedy, is also a lifelong Republican.

Gannon told CBS News he feels “totally betrayed.” His disillusionment lands as ICE pushes arrests at airports, a tactic that drove detentions to a second-term monthly high in July.

Asked what he’d say to Trump, he wondered aloud what the president was doing. Then his voice broke. “Yasmin’s good as gold,” he protested.

He said it would be the last time he ever voted for the man. He called it a fiasco. He called it the Gestapo.

The FCC Just Deleted the Rule That Kept One Company From Owning Your TV

No one would dream of limiting the reach of YouTube or Amazon, and now, thanks to the FCC, no one will limit the reach of the conglomerate that owns your local news either.

On Thursday, the Federal Communications Commission voted 2-1 to eliminate the cap holding that a single company cannot own stations reaching more than 39% of the U.S. television audience. The 22-year-old rule is now replaced by a friendly “case-by-case approach.”

FCC Chairman Brendan Carr, appointed by Trump, made his case in an op-ed for Breitbart, calling the ownership limit “outdated” and a barrier to a “level playing field.”

There is one small problem. The 39% cap was codified in federal law by Congress, and critics say Carr does not get to erase an act of Congress because he feels like it. Free Press, a progressive consumer group, said it planned to sue over the “unlawful power grab.”

Anna Gomez, the lone Democratic commissioner, called the vote “unlawful on its face” and noted that the “local broadcasters” being freed here are in fact national companies that dictate what airs on your local stations.

The move delivers a tidy win to Nexstar Media Group, the nation’s largest owner of local TV stations, which is trying to swallow rival Tegna in a $6.2 billion deal. A federal judge already put that transaction on hold after eight state attorneys general filed an antitrust lawsuit.

The combined company would reach at least 60% of American households. The old cap was 39%. Carr had already exempted the merger from the cap back in March, which was one way to solve a math problem.

They can consolidate every station until one company decides what forty states get to watch on the evening news. They cannot consolidate what we publish here. We don’t have a license anyone can pull, and no broadcaster owns a word of it. Become a paid subscriber today.

AI Just Designed 16 Working Viruses From Scratch

The good news is the viruses only eat bacteria. The less good news is that a machine designed them.

US researchers say artificial intelligence has been used to design brand new viruses that are fully functional and can replicate in the laboratory. It is the first time whole genomes have been successfully designed by AI.

The resulting 16 novel viruses were built to infect bacteria and pose no threat to people. The team used AI models called Evo1 and Evo2, trained on genetic codes from viruses, bacteria, plants and people.

The tools work like ChatGPT, except they predict the language of life instead of words. “This is a next step in the complexity that’s designable by generative AI,” Brian Hie of Stanford told the BBC. “This was new territory for us.”

The breakthrough has been called a “very significant turning point” that could unlock a new era for treating disease. Experts also warn it raises “urgent” safety and security concerns.

A machine can now write a genome that replicates and functions inside living cells. Everyone agrees this is a very significant turning point, which is the reassuring way of saying nobody is sure toward what.

JD Vance Answers an Iran Column by Calling the Author Fat

There are many ways for a sitting vice president to rebut a policy critic. JD Vance picked the one about burritos.

Peeved at conservative columnist Marc Thiessen for criticizing his position on Iran, Vance jabbed at the man’s weight instead. “If you’ve ever met him in person,” he wrote on social media, “it’s quite obvious the man has never missed a burrito.”

Vance, the first millennial vice president, has dispensed with the decorum of his predecessors to go after the “idiots” and “scumbags” who anger him, from “limousine socialists” on the left to “disgraceful” conservatives on the right. He calls journalists “the dumbest journalist in Washington” and tells senators they are “full of shit.”

His allies say the personal attacks demonstrate accessibility and authenticity. A scholar of the vice presidency called it a departure from the norms of the office that “undermines the goal of promoting rational public discourse.”

Dick Cheney’s former communications director was blunter. “It’s childish behavior that is unbecoming of the office,” he said. “He’s behaving like a high school jock trying to win over the temporary young fun friends.”

Vance himself lost 30 pounds between 2022 and 2024, which some commenters helpfully recalled. The second-highest official in the country responded to a foreign policy critique by suggesting a man went back for seconds. He is reportedly auditioning to be president.

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Revealed: DOGE's Math Was Off By A Mere $35 Billion

John Byrne — Thu, 06 Aug 2026 15:00:22 GMT

Good morning. I’m John Byrne, in for Corinne Straight.

ICE is now hunting travelers off flight manifests, and even the airlines are refusing to help. A trans woman in gun-friendly Wyoming drew her pistol after three men shoved her to the ground, and she’s the only one facing charges. President Trump told a Las Vegas casino crowd that electing a Michigan Democrat would be worse than 9/11, and critics are firing back. And a federal watchdog found DOGE couldn’t verify nearly $35 billion of the savings Elon Musk bragged about, and took credit for lease cancellations that predated the group.

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ICE Is Making Arrests at Airport Gates. The Airlines Are Saying No.

The Transportation Security Administration spent two decades teaching Americans that the airport is where your rights politely wait in a bin. ICE has now decided the checkpoint is also a place to get arrested.

According to documents reviewed by The Wall Street Journal, ICE has stepped up immigration enforcement at U.S. airports, making one to three dozen arrests a day last month, from San Francisco to Miami to Kansas City. Top ICE leaders have told officers to attempt arrests at TSA checkpoints when possible.

The method is simple. TSA hands ICE the passenger manifests, and ICE scours them for targets. The cooperation started last summer and has led to hundreds of arrests.

Many of the people being taken into custody haven’t traditionally been targeted. Earlier cases involved final deportation orders. The new arrests include people with expired visas but a green card or asylum application still pending: people who typically have been allowed to keep working and have protections from being deported.

On July 25 in Dallas, an ICE agent stood near a gate and called out “David” as an Orlando-bound Southwest flight boarded. Agents tried to board with an administrative warrant. A gate agent refused to let them on without one signed by a judge, and declined to let them see the boarding screen.

Southwest has rebuffed ICE at least a half-dozen times in recent weeks. JetBlue says it doesn’t collect immigration status at all. A flight attendants’ union cited an agent in Minneapolis who boarded a plane to threaten a passenger who had criticized his presence.

The federal government spent years telling airlines to treat every passenger as a possible threat. Now the airlines are the ones asking for a warrant.

Wyoming Wrote a ‘Stand Your Ground’ Law. It Left Out the Fine Print on Who Counts.

Wyoming is the kind of place where you can carry a gun without a permit, register nothing, and stand your ground against anyone who threatens you. The catch, apparently, is a definition of “you” that nobody printed in the statute.

Rihanna Kelver, 28, is a transgender woman who grew up in Laramie, ran for the school board at 18, and now works at a local bar and grill. Last September, three men confronted her outside the Crowbar and Grill. One shoved her to the pavement.

The moment she landed on her back, she drew a .380 subcompact pistol and pointed it. She didn’t fire. The men walked away. The whole thing lasted about 10 seconds, and surveillance video captured it.

Wyoming’s “stand your ground” law says a person has no duty to retreat if they reasonably believe their safety is threatened and they were not the initial aggressor. Kelver was arrested and charged with aggravated assault and possession of a deadly weapon with unlawful intent, charges carrying up to 15 years.

None of the three men were charged. The man who pushed her, Scott Durham, is listed as the victim in police reports.

Kelver rejected a plea deal that would have spared her jail but stripped away her gun rights. She goes to trial in November.

The state built a law that lets you draw a gun when you’re knocked to the ground. The only person facing prison is the one who got knocked to the ground. (Read more about this story here.)

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Trump Ranks a Michigan Primary Above 9/11. New York Would Like a Word.

Every president eventually assembles a personal list of the worst things ever to happen to America, and Trump has now finished his. It ranks a Michigan Senate primary above Pearl Harbor.

Speaking in a Las Vegas casino on Wednesday, Trump went after Michigan Democratic Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed, calling him “a man of hate” and using an expletive to describe him.

Then he made the comparison that stunned the room. “Communism is the greatest threat to our country in its history,” Trump said, “including even World War I, World War II, Pearl Harbor, 9/11.”

On MS NOW’s “Morning Joe,” co-host Willie Geist said he was shocked, noting the president had said the election of a nominee in Michigan was worse than World War II, Pearl Harbor, and 9/11. Co-host Jonathan Lemire called the speech “obscene” and “inaccurate”, adding that the 25th anniversary of the September 11th attacks was coming up.

Contributor Mike Barnicle looked directly into the camera and issued a challenge. “Mr. President, if you’re listening this morning, I dare you to come to New York City on Sept. 11th,” he said, “and repeat what you just said here in Manhattan.”

Trump made the remarks weeks before the 25th anniversary of an attack that killed nearly 3,000 people.

The GAO Checked DOGE’s Math. Nearly $35 Billion of It Wasn’t There.

Elon Musk promised to run the government like a business, and he has finally delivered a business fundamental: inflated numbers on the receipts. The government’s own auditors just went through them line by line.

The Government Accountability Office examined $110 billion in savings DOGE claimed on its “Wall of Receipts,” a website tallying the cuts Musk swept through federal agencies to produce.

The results were not flattering. Of $61 billion in contract savings DOGE reported, the GAO found more than half — nearly $35 billion — was either not terminated at all or impossible to verify because DOGE’s data wasn’t specific enough to identify.

DOGE claimed it terminated 13,476 contracts. Nearly 2,000 of them were not terminated. It listed 264 leases as cuts, but 108 of them were already in process for termination before DOGE even existed.

The audit came at the request of Democratic Senators Gary Peters of Michigan and Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut. When the GAO tried to ask DOGE about its figures and submitted written questions, DOGE did not respond.

Musk aimed to cut $2 trillion. He claimed $215 billion. The auditors couldn’t confirm most of the slice they checked, and the group that produced the numbers wouldn’t answer the phone.

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