Good evening. I’m John Byrne, founder of AlterNet America.

Trump may be about to hand himself a Supreme Court majority that lasts three decades. A missing American pilot is being hunted by armed Iranian civilians after a $60,000 bounty was placed on his head. Trump posted a white nationalist slogan on Truth Social while threatening Iran with a 48-hour ultimatum. And new reporting reveals that FBI interviews with a 13-year-old Trump accuser were stripped from the official Epstein file summaries.

But first — if you value journalism that holds power accountable, please subscribe to AlterNet America. It’s our people-powered response to MAGA’s takeover of American media. We don’t have ads. We don’t have a billionaire owner. Our business model is dependent solely on you.

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Now, let’s get into it.

Trump May Be About to Get Two More Supreme Court Seats

This is the story that should keep you up at night.

Progressive advocacy group Demand Justice is launching a multimillion-dollar preemptive campaign to oppose potential Trump Supreme Court nominees before they’re even named. As much as $18 million stands ready to deploy.

The reason: Justices Clarence Thomas, 77, and Samuel Alito, 76, are expected by multiple progressive legal groups to retire during Trump’s term. This would give him the opportunity to replace them with younger, more radical loyalists.

Josh Orton, president of Demand Justice, invoked the cautionary tale of Ruth Bader Ginsburg. “If you think that Trump’s willing to leave two of the three justices he thinks are most loyal on the court in their 80s past when he leaves office,” he said, “you’re not paying attention.”

Trump’s already placed three justices on the court. Two more would give him a 5-4 majority of his own personal appointees, potentially for the next three decades. On abortion. On elections. On voting rights. On executive power. On everything.

Blocking a Trump nominee would require all Senate Democrats plus four Republican defectors. Orton believes as many as six Republicans could break ranks under the right political pressure. That math only works if Democrats hold together completely and if the political conditions are right. A Democratic Senate takeover in November would also change the calculation.

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Armed Iranians Are Hunting a Missing American Pilot. Iran Put a $60,000 Bounty on His Head.

A U.S. F-15 was shot down over Iran on Friday — the first American warplane downed in enemy territory since the six-week war began. One pilot was rescued in a dangerous operation that left two Black Hawk helicopters damaged by enemy fire. The second pilot remains missing.

Iranian state TV wasted no time. Broadcasters urged civilians to scour the mountains for the downed airman, telling viewers: “If you capture the enemy pilot or pilots alive and hand them over to the police, you will receive a precious prize.” The prize has since been reported as $60,000. Footage on Iranian social media shows armed civilians trekking through mountainous terrain, waving Iranian flags and telling cameras: “Don’t worry, we will find them, God willing.”

A second American aircraft, an A-10 Warthog, was also shot down near the Strait of Hormuz. That pilot managed to navigate into Kuwaiti airspace before ejecting and was rescued safely.

Trump told NBC News the shootdowns won’t affect negotiations, adding: “No, it’s war. We’re in war.” He then posted on Truth Social that the U.S. “hasn’t even started destroying what’s left in Iran,” promising to strike bridges and electric power plants next.

The administration blitzed Iran’s tallest bridge on Thursday, killing eight people and injuring 95 more. Iran has rejected a 48-hour ceasefire proposal, with its foreign minister stating the country will only accept a permanent end to the war.

Thirteen American service members have now been killed. Gas prices have topped $4 a gallon nationally. And the search for a missing pilot continues in hostile territory, with a bounty on his head.

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While His Pilot Was Missing, Trump Posted a White Nationalist Slogan

This morning, with a missing American airman being hunted in Iranian mountains, Donald Trump posted a 48-hour ultimatum warning that “all Hell will reign down” (sic) on Iran. Hours later, he pivoted to Truth Social with a different message.

“If you import the Third World, you become the Third World!” he wrote. “AND THAT’S NOT GOING TO HAPPEN TO THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA AS LONG AS I AM PRESIDENT.”

The phrase is a long-standing white nationalist slogan, previously used by Trump adviser Stephen Miller, that frames immigration from developing nations as an existential civilizational threat. Historians have noted it’s closely aligned with Great Replacement theory — the same ideological current as Trump’s earlier remarks that immigrants are “poisoning the blood” of the country.

This comes as 13 service members are dead, gas is at $4 a gallon, and the economy is contracting. Trump’s response, on a Saturday morning, was to post a white nationalist slogan. He also, separately, signed off his Iran ultimatum with “Glory be to GOD!”

Key Details About the 13-Year-Old Trump Accuser Were Stripped From the Epstein Files

New reporting from The Daily Beast, building on earlier work by The Post and Courier, reveals that FBI handwritten notes from interviews with a woman who accused Donald Trump of sexually assaulting her when she was 13 years old contain details that did not appear in the official summaries released as part of the Epstein files.

The woman told the FBI she was abused and trafficked by Epstein, who introduced her to Trump in 1984 in New York or New Jersey. The official summaries — known as 302s — described some uncertainty about her travel with Epstein. The handwritten notes, according to the reporting, are “slightly less tentative,” and could constitute evidence of underage sex trafficking if accurate. The notes also record two additional interactions with Trump that the official summaries reference only briefly.

The FBI interviewed her four times in 2019. Approximately 30 pages of documents related to her claims have still not been publicly released. The DOJ has denied that any files are missing, calling it a “media-created myth.” The White House has denied the woman’s account entirely.

The three summaries that mentioned Trump were the only documents “accidentally” left out of the original Epstein files release. The DOJ called it a coding error. The handwritten notes with additional detail remain unpublished. The acting Attorney General who closed the Epstein investigation is Todd Blanche — Donald Trump’s former personal defense attorney.

Why I’m in This Fight

These are the stories that don’t fit neatly into the Iran war coverage.

Two Supreme Court seats could reshape America for a generation. A missing pilot being hunted while the president posts white nationalist slogans. The Epstein files being stripped from official records while the man who closed the investigation now runs the Justice Department.

I founded AlterNet America because someone has to stay on all of it. We’re completely reader-funded — no billionaires, no corporate owners, no one deciding what’s too risky to say.

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One in twenty. That’s all it takes. Will you be one of them?

Thanks for being with us tonight. We’re in it to win it.

— John Byrne

Founder, AlterNet America

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.

To our paying subscribers: thank you. Your support has allowed us to launch this newsroom free of billionaire influence. We showed up because you make it possible. That means everything.

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. Upgrade your subscription today.

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Kristi Noem’s husband was outed as a cross-dresser this week. As someone who’s a big fan of drag as an art form, this “scandal” gave me a lot to think on. Let’s talk about it.

The Bimbofication of Kristi Noem’s Moral Crusade

There’s a version of this story where what Bryon Noem did is simply none of our business.

A man explored a fetish in his private life, sent photos to consenting adults, and paid women online for a particular kind of roleplay. Strange? To many people, sure. Harmful? Not obviously. To think this rises to the level of public scandal? Absurd.

Unless, of course, you’re the husband of a politician who built her career on the premise that gender nonconformity is a moral emergency.

Kristi Noem is one of the most aggressively anti-drag politicians in America. As governor of South Dakota, she signed a religious freedom bill that sanctions discrimination against queer people. She spearheaded a campaign to ban drag shows, and even announced a hotline so people could report universities for encouraging drag performances.

Meanwhile, her husband Bryon was an active participant in the online “bimbofication” community. He confessed to being into exaggerated physical appearances and allegedly sent at least $25,000 to different models. He played the devoted husband of the deporter-in-chief by day, and fabricated a J-cup bosom for photoshoots by night.

Let’s be honest about what kind of story this actually is. The Bryon Noem revelations are a scandal of hypocrisy, not a scandal of wrongdoing. Cross-dressing is not wrong. Participating in online fetish communities between consenting adults is not wrong.

None of what Bryon Noem allegedly did — leaving aside questions about fidelity — would register as newsworthy if his wife hadn’t spent years telling voters that gender nonconformity was dangerous, deviant, and in need of government intervention.

This is a pattern the American right has revisited so many times it practically has its own genre. The politician who campaigns against gay rights and is later caught in an airport bathroom. The family-values crusader whose marriage is a wreck. The anti-porn legislator whose browser history tells a different story.

In every case, the real issue isn’t the private behavior — it’s the weaponization of other people’s identical behavior for political gain.

Noem rose to political power in part because of the wholesome image she projected. Then she devoted herself to an administration that launched a war on transgender people. The machine she served treated drag performers as predators, gender expression as grooming, and anything outside rigid norms as an existential threat to children.

That machine didn’t slow down because Bryon Noem was privately doing something it would publicly condemn. It kept going because the condemnation was never really about the behavior, it was about who was doing it.

It was always a tool. Never a belief.

Bryon Noem’s private life, whatever it consists of, didn’t hurt anyone. The policies his wife championed did. The drag bans, the hotlines, and the legislation all had real effects on real people.

There’s a lesson to be learned here: Shame is a political weapon, but it doesn’t work when you’re unashamed. Drag queens are A-list celebrities now. You won’t see them making headlines simply for cross-dressing. But that’s because they’re doing it openly and authentically.

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The Women Who Took the Fall

Let’s be clear: Every single person in Trump’s cabinet, regardless of gender, is entirely incompetent. But isn’t it a little weird that he’s only firing the women?

Within the span of a single month, Trump has fired two of the most prominent women in his Cabinet. He removed Kristi Noem from her position as DHS Secretary in early March, then announced just this week that Pam Bondi was out as Attorney General.

He then tapped Republican Senator Markwayne Mullin to succeed Noem at DHS. For Bondi’s replacement, Trump installed his former personal attorney, Todd Blanche. He’s reportedly considering Lee Zeldin, currently running the EPA, as a longer-term successor. All men.

The message is consistent: these women served him well, but ultimately they fell short. And conveniently, the things they fell short on were things Trump made impossible to navigate.

Bondi had become a scapegoat for MAGA conspiracy theorists frustrated that their fantasy of mass arrests of Democrats hasn’t materialized. Noem, similarly, was out there executing a brutal immigration crackdown. When the political heat became too much, she was the one who went. The men who designed the policies stayed.

There’s also the question of what comes next. Bondi was told she would be given a different job, with Trump suggesting he could appoint her as a judge. Trump then asserted she would be leaving government entirely. Noem was made Special Envoy for the Shield of the Americas — a title that sounds important and means very little.

Reports have also surfaced that Trump publicly blamed press secretary Karoline Leavitt for his bad press coverage. Another woman potentially in his crosshairs, per multiple outlets, is Tulsi Gabbard at the Director of National Intelligence.

Trump does fire men, too. He is, above all, an equal-opportunity chaos agent. But the pattern is worth naming.

The loyalty flows in one direction. The consequences, increasingly, seem to flow in another.

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Bari Weiss Is Cutting Back CBS. We’re Growing.

It took Bari Weiss less than six months to shutter CBS News Radio. A news institution that survived recessions, wars, and the entire digital media revolution — gone, just like that.

And now, she’s reportedly ready to “blow up” 60 Minutes itself the moment the season wraps in May. More layoffs are coming. More voices silenced.

This isn’t just a media story. This is a power story.

This is exactly why AlterNet America exists. We didn’t build this place because it was easy or because the money was great. We built it because someone has to. Because the kind of journalism that actually holds power accountable doesn’t happen by accident. It happens because people fight for it.

We don’t have a Paramount Skydance deal. We don’t have a David Ellison swooping in with a checkbook. We don’t have a billionaire patron with a pet agenda and a PR team to spin it. What we have is something those outlets will never be able to buy: you. Readers who actually give a damn.

Here’s the uncomfortable truth about corporate media: it can’t hold power accountable, because it is the power. The people who need to be investigated are, more often than not, the same people signing the checks.

AlterNet works for you. Full stop. No oligarch in the background. No deal that compromises what we cover or how we cover it. Just independent journalism trying to do right by the people who read it.

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The great work continues.

— Ryan Rose

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

The president of the United States posted on social media this morning that he wants to “make a fortune” with his Iran war. Bari Weiss is planning major layoffs at 60 Minutes. The acting Attorney General is even worse on Epstein than Pam Bondi. And Trump is blaming the war’s unpopularity on disinformation, despite having dismantled the agencies built to fight it.

Before we get started, AlterNet America was built as a direct challenge to billionaire control of the American press. When the ultra-wealthy own the outlets, they own the narrative. That's not a conspiracy theory, it's a business model. Independent media exists to break that stranglehold, but only if readers step up to fund it. If you believe independent media matters, become a paying subscriber today.

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Now, let’s get into it.

The President Would Like to Make a Fortune With His War

At some point Friday morning, the 79-year-old commander in chief of the most powerful military on earth sat down and typed the following into Truth Social:

“With a little more time, we can easily OPEN THE HORMUZ STRAIT, TAKE THE OIL, & MAKE A FORTUNE. IT WOULD BE A ‘GUSHER’ FOR THE WORLD???”

Three question marks. The war is five weeks old. Fifteen American service members have been killed. Oil is up more than 50 percent since February 28. And the president’s public contribution to this moment is a Truth Social post about making a fortune.

To be clear about what Trump is proposing here: seizing a sovereign nation’s oil as spoils of war is not a plan that exists anywhere in American law, international law, or the operational orders of Operation Epic Fury. It’s a thing he typed. With a gusher metaphor.

What’s notable is that this comes one day after Trump gave a primetime address to the nation that managed to simultaneously promise the war was “nearing completion” and that the U.S. would strike Iran “extremely hard” for the next two to three weeks. Oil prices surged 11 percent after the speech.

Friendly reminder: this is the guy with the nuclear codes.

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Bari Weiss Is Planning Mass Layoffs at 60 Minutes

When Bari Weiss took over CBS, she described her approach as “move fast and break things.” The things she’s breaking are: CBS News Radio, Anderson Cooper’s contract, the CBS Evening News ratings, and next, 60 Minutes.

Weiss is prepared to “blow it up as soon as the season is over” in May, according to multiple reports today. Layoffs are expected in June.

Correspondents Sharyn Alfonsi, Cecilia Vega, and Scott Pelley are reportedly at risk. So are veteran hosts Lesley Stahl and Bill Whitaker. In their place, Weiss is expected to bring in younger journalists aligned with her editorial vision.

That means talent connected to The Free Press, the outlet Weiss founded.

Weiss says she wants to make the show “harder.” To understand what that means in practice, it helps to look at what she’s already criticized. Sharyn Alfonsi produced a segment on El Salvador’s CECOT mega-prison that was pulled before airtime by new leadership before ultimately airing after staff pushback.

Scott Pelley is reportedly on the list partly because he’s been willing to criticize the Trump administration. These are not soft stories. They are exactly the kind of stories that make powerful people uncomfortable.

This is what media consolidation looks like when it’s moving fast. One editor-in-chief, backed by a new billionaire ownership structure, remaking American institutions to fit a narrower editorial vision.

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Meet Your Acting Attorney General. He’s Even Worse on Epstein.

Todd Blanche has been Trump’s personal defense attorney, his hush money trial companion, his classified documents lawyer, and the man who stood beside him when a New York jury found him guilty. He is now the acting attorney general of the United States.

The promotion took about four hours after Pam Bondi was fired Thursday. Blanche went straight to Fox News to make his case, and the first thing he wanted to talk about was Epstein. Specifically, that everyone should stop talking about Epstein.

“To the extent the Epstein files was a part of the past year of this Justice Department,” Blanche said, “it should not be a part of anything going forward.”

Here is what Blanche’s Epstein record actually looks like. After the administration came under fire for burying the files, Blanche personally flew to interview Ghislaine Maxwell and returned with the news that Maxwell said she’d never seen Trump behave inappropriately around Epstein.

He then helped move Maxwell to a new facility that, by multiple accounts, was considerably more comfortable than her previous one. The investigation concluded there was no client list, no credible blackmail operation, and nothing else worth pursuing. Case closed. Blanche closed it.

The upgrade from Bondi to Blanche on the Epstein question is not an upgrade. He started his career putting people in prison, and now he’s making sure the right ones get out.

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Trump Killed the Agencies That Fight Disinformation. Now He’s Fighting Disinformation.

Here is a timeline worth knowing.

In early 2025, the Trump administration shut down the State Department’s Global Engagement Center. It employed about 120 specialists and spent roughly $61 million a year tracking Russian, Chinese, and Iranian propaganda.

Trump officials also gutted the Voice of America’s Persian-language service right as Iran was becoming a front-burner issue. Then they disbanded the FBI’s Foreign Malign Influence Task Force.

Fast forward to 2026. Iran is spreading AI-generated disinformation: fake images of destroyed American aircraft, fabricated footage of the USS Abraham Lincoln on fire, staged evidence of attacks that didn’t happen the way they were described.

Trump’s response, in a March 16 event: “They are a country that for years — I didn’t know this until recently — they’re a country based on disinformation. And now they’re using disinformation plus AI. And that’s a terrible situation.” He also accused American news outlets of “TREASON” for spreading Iranian propaganda, though couldn’t point to any examples.

The administration that dismantled America’s disinformation-fighting apparatus is now discovering, with what appears to be genuine surprise, that adversaries use disinformation during wars. And the experts who would have been tracking this are gone.

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What You Can Do About It

Bari Weiss is remaking American television news one institution at a time, replacing veterans with Free Press alumni and calling it disruption.

The CBS Evening News is down below 4 million viewers. 60 Minutes is next. What she’s building is a media apparatus answerable to a specific worldview, funded by a specific class of people, aimed at a specific set of conclusions.

AlterNet America is the opposite of that. Reader-funded, no corporate ownership, no ideological benefactors. When you subscribe, you’re not just getting a newsletter. You’re making a bet that the press this country needs still exists somewhere outside the Skydance acquisition. Help us prove it. Subscribe today.

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Thanks for reading. We’ll see you Monday.

POSITIVE STORIES YOU MIGHT HAVE MISSED:

Trump’s anti-voting order may backfire, damaging DOJ’s voter roll campaign. Trump’s executive order restricting mail-in voting is almost certain to be struck down as unconstitutional — but on its way out the door, it may also torpedo the DOJ’s 30 ongoing lawsuits to seize state voter rolls, because the order openly confirms the nationwide voter database that DOJ lawyers have been swearing to federal judges doesn’t exist.

Artemis 2 Crew Become First Humans to Travel Beyond Earth Orbit Since the 1970s. While Washington spent the day firing attorneys general and posting about oil gushers, four people quietly slipped the bonds of Earth. The spacecraft’s toilet broke almost immediately, which is the most relatable thing to happen this week.

In bad news for Trump, judge who blocked his last anti-voting order will hear challenge to new one. Trump’s new executive order restricting mail-in voting has been randomly assigned to the same federal judge who already blocked his last executive order restricting mail-in voting. A judge who wrote in three separate opinions totaling over 300 pages that the president has no authority over elections The assignment was a coincidence. The outcome probably won’t be.

Fundraiser for fired Tennessee librarian raises $80K. The Rutherford County Library Board fired director Luanne James on March 30 for refusing to move 132 books to the adult section. The list included LGBTQ+ titles, books flagged for “female empowerment,” “diverse children in urban settings,” and witches. Within days, the community raised $80,000 for her.

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Pete Hegseth has been quietly blocking promotions for Black and women officers. Evangelical pastors who helped elect Trump are now watching their congregations disappear one ICE raid at a time. The Trump administration paid a French energy company a billion taxpayer dollars to stop building wind farms. And a Texas Democrat running for Congress played in a band with a convicted sex offender.

Before we jump in, AlterNet America is our people-powered response to the billionaire capture of America’s media. Corporate media won’t cover these stories because their model is based on access and ads. That’s why independent media matters now more than ever. If holding power accountable is important to you, support the work that keeps democracy alive. Without independent voices willing to speak truth to power, the billionaires win. Become a paying subscriber today.

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Now, let’s dive in.

Hegseth Has Been Quietly Purging Black and Women Officers Across the Entire Military

By now you’ve heard that Pete Hegseth fired the Army’s top general this week and replaced him with his personal aide. What you may not have heard is that the firing was just the most visible piece of a much larger operation.

Hegseth has taken steps to block or delay promotions for more than a dozen Black and women senior officers across all four branches of the military. The officers have been targeted because of their race, gender, or perceived affiliation with Biden administration policies, according to nine U.S. officials familiar with the process.

This isn’t one branch, one list, or one bad week. As one of those officials put it: “There is not a single service that has been immune to this level of involvement by Hegseth.”

A list of naval officers selected to be promoted to one-star admiral has been sitting on Hegseth’s desk for more than a month, with officials expressing concern that some of those officers could be removed because of their race or gender. None are under investigation. Their branch recommended them. Hegseth just won’t sign off.

When former Army Chief Gen. Randy George asked to meet with Hegseth specifically to discuss the promotion blocks, Hegseth refused to meet or discuss his decisions. George was fired this week without explanation.

Pete Hegseth declared war on DEI so the military could finally reward the most qualified. The most qualified person he found to lead the entire United States Army was, it turns out, the guy who used to carry his bags.

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The Pastors Who Helped Elect Trump Are Watching Their Churches Empty Out

Evangelicals turned out for Trump in historic numbers. They prayed at his inauguration. Some of their leaders were photographed laying hands on him in the Oval Office. And now, in congregations across the country, the pews are emptying.

Not because people lost their faith. Because they’re afraid to leave their homes.

Amid ICE arrests and detentions, attendance has dropped and churches have closed. In some immigrant-heavy congregations, church attendance has dropped between 35 and 70 percent as parishioners fear leaving their homes amid enforcement activity.

One of the largest Latino churches in one state, which previously held four Sunday services, is now down to one, at roughly 60 percent capacity. Pastors across the country have told reporters the same story. A Latino evangelical leader put it as plainly as it can be put: “You’re deporting the future of American Christianity.”

The administration says it’s only targeting dangerous criminals. The pastors say their dangerous criminals were running the bake sale and hadn’t missed a Sunday in twenty years. Someone is lying and it’s not the people holding the casserole dishes.

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Trump Paid a French Company a Billion Dollars to Not Build Wind Farms

After having lost every single court case over its attempt to halt East Coast offshore wind projects, the Trump administration announced it will simply pay one of the companies roughly $1 billion to abandon ship.

The company is France’s TotalEnergies. In exchange for walking away from planned wind farms off the coasts of New York and North Carolina, TotalEnergies will redirect that billion dollars into oil and gas development in Texas, including a liquefied natural gas export facility in Brownsville.

Together, the two abandoned projects could have generated enough electricity to power nearly one million homes. The Interior Department called this an “innovative agreement.” Environmental groups had a different name for it.

One group described it as a “billion-dollar bribe” to kill clean energy, saying that after losing again and again in court, Trump had found another way to strangle offshore wind: pay them to walk away.

Trump’s personal hatred of offshore wind reportedly dates back to a wind farm built near his golf course in Scotland that he found unsightly. A billion dollars of taxpayer money, redirected to a French oil company, to protect the view from a golf course. Truly, a government that works for the people.

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Texas Democrats’ Rising Star Played in a Band With a Convicted Sex Offender

Democrats have been genuinely excited about Bobby Pulido. The two-time Latin Grammy winner and Tejano music legend is running for Texas’s 15th Congressional District, a majority-Hispanic seat that went for Trump by 18 points.

It hasn’t been a smooth rollout.

Pulido is under renewed scrutiny for performing with a bandmate who is a registered sex offender, convicted of indecent contact with an eight-year-old girl. Frankie Caballero appeared onstage with Pulido at concerts in multiple cities between 2018 and 2021, years after his 2014 conviction and prison sentence.

Pulido’s campaign says his management hired Caballero without conducting a background check, which they describe as standard practice in the music industry. They add that when management learned of Caballero’s criminal history in 2021, he was immediately let go.

But Pulido had previously admitted in a 2024 interview that it was a “shame” his old bandmate “just can’t stay out of trouble.”

Pulido is running in one of the most closely watched competitive House districts in the country, in a year when Democrats desperately need to flip seats. He has now accumulated enough scandal to sustain a full season of opposition research.

The music industry may not run background checks, but the congressional campaign vetting process is supposed to.

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A Note From AlterNet America

AlterNet America exists because someone has to. When MAGA is buying up the last of our media, we’re here to draw the line.

None of that happens without you. Coverage that challenges power, that refuses to sell wars, that will not propagandize for the billionaires and the Ellisons who are buying up American media, requires real support from real readers. Not ad revenue. Not corporate underwriting. You.

Here is a number to hold onto: if just 5% of the people reading this email became paid subscribers, we could fully fund our expansion plans through 2026. One in twenty. That is all it takes. Will you be one of the one in twenty? Become a paid subscriber today.

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Thanks for reading, and we’ll see you tonight.

POSITIVE STORIES YOU MAY HAVE MISSED:

Judge rejects Trump’s effort to end Jan. 6 civil suits ahead of trial. A federal judge ruled that Trump’s January 6th speech was a campaign event, not an official presidential act, which means he can be sued for it. Four years of claiming he was just doing his job, and the court said: actually, no, that one was on you personally.

Michigan permanently protected 73k acres in the Huron Mountains. Michigan permanently protected 73,000 acres of Upper Peninsula wilderness and secured public access to it forever. The land will not be sold to a French company, renamed after anyone, or used to settle a personal grudge.

Latino Republicans turn on Trump over birthright citizenship. Latino Republicans who voted for Trump are now turning on him over his push to end birthright citizenship. Turns out the voters who showed up for “America First” did not realize “America” had an asterisk next to it.

Sickle cell disease has just been cured for the first time in New York. Sebastien Beauzile, a 21-year-old from Long Island, became the first person in New York history to be cured of sickle cell disease. Good news is real, it just costs $3.1 million and shouldn’t.

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

Trump’s attorney general is out: fired for not being cruel enough. His spiritual adviser compared him to Jesus Christ at a White House Easter lunch. The administration’s voter suppression bill is quietly targeting the very women who helped elect him. And thousands of veterans are losing their homes because the VA pulled their lifeline with one week’s notice.

If you’re new here, AlterNet America is AlterNet’s new people-powered response to MAGA and to the billionaire takeover of American media. MAGA allies like Larry Ellison and his billionaire cronies are buying up newsrooms. Legacy broadcasters are falling in line. Independent outlets like this one are in the crosshairs. We’re living through the most dangerous moment for a free press in modern American history.

If you’re not yet a paid subscriber, consider upgrading today. We don’t take ads. We don’t work for billionaires. We work for you.

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Now, let’s jump in.

Trump Fires the Attorney General Who Wasn’t Vindictive Enough

Attorney General Pam Bondi has been fired. Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche has been tapped as acting interim attorney general.

The firing has been building for months, and the reasons are exactly as alarming as they sound. Trump has grown increasingly frustrated with Bondi, with one person familiar with White House deliberations saying that while he likes her personally, he doesn’t think she has “executed on his vision” in the way he wants.

That vision, in practice, meant one thing: prosecuting his political enemies.

The irony is rich. Bondi bent the DOJ to the will of the White House unlike any attorney general in modern history, firing civil servants at Trump’s directive, investigating the president’s perceived enemies, and curbing enforcement disfavored by Trump allies. It wasn’t enough. Grand juries kept rejecting cases, and judges kept throwing them out.

The signature moment may have been her February hearing before the House Judiciary Committee. Epstein survivors sat in the gallery in white. Democrats asked Bondi to turn around and apologize to them for the Justice Department’s release of their personal information without proper redaction. Bondi declined, and instead started speaking about Merrick Garland.

But Trump didn’t fire her over any of that. The message is clear: Bondi’s failure wasn’t that she weaponized the Justice Department. It’s that she didn’t weaponize it well enough.

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Trump’s Spiritual Adviser Compared Him to Jesus. The White House Deleted the Video.

If waging war with Iran and being found liable for sexual assault makes someone “Christ-like,” we have been reading very different Bibles.

Trump’s spiritual adviser Paula White-Cain stood before more than 100 faith leaders in the White House East Room on Wednesday and compared Trump to Jesus Christ, breaking at least three commandments in the process.

White-Cain, who runs the official White House Faith Office — a real government position, funded by your tax dollars — justified it by saying that Trump has supposedly been betrayed, arrested, and falsely accused, just like the Son of God. And, just like Jesus rose from the dead, Trump rose above it.

The White House has since deleted the footage, but not before it spread widely across social media. The archived full video remains publicly accessible, which just means more attention has been drawn to it by deleting it.

None of this should be surprising once you know that White-Cain has previously declared the White House to be “holy ground” and stated that “to say no to President Trump would be saying no to God.”

This is not a fringe figure who snuck past the velvet rope. This is who runs the Faith Office, who apparently didn’t even read the first commandment: “Thou shalt have no other Gods before me.”

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Some Christians Want to Take Women’s Right to Vote Away Entirely

A movement is growing among conservative Christians who have identified the single greatest threat to American civilization: their wives having opinions at the ballot box.

The New York Times profiled the movement this week, focusing on pastor Dale Partridge. The Arizonan has built a following calling for the repeal of the 19th Amendment and replacing it with “household voting.” One household, one vote: the husband’s.

It has friends in high places. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth shared a clip last summer of pastors in his denomination arguing that women should be barred from voting. Anti-abortion activist Abby Johnson, who spoke at the 2020 Republican National Convention, has endorsed household voting.

Unmarried women, supporters acknowledge, present something of a logistical puzzle, though they suggest fathers, brothers, or uncles could stand in. Gay couples have no place in this system and are not expected to.

None of this is imminent as policy. Repealing the 19th Amendment would require approval from three-quarters of states. But Partridge himself told the Times he expects red states to eventually erect barriers to women’s suffrage.

Some obstacles may arrive sooner than people think. The SAVE America Act would require proof of citizenship documentation to register to vote. An estimated 69 million American women do not have a birth certificate that matches their current name because they took their husband’s last name when they married.

Research shows that conservative and Republican-leaning women are statistically more likely to have changed their surnames after marriage, meaning the bill falls hardest on women who voted for the people pushing it.

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Veterans Are Losing Their Homes. The VA Pulled the Lifeline With One Week’s Notice.

The Trump administration is happy to make veterans. It’s taking care of them afterward that seems to be the sticking point.

More than 10,000 veterans have lost their homes through foreclosure sales since May of last year, the highest pace of foreclosures for VA loans in a decade. Another 90,000 veterans are currently heading toward foreclosure.

This didn’t happen in a vacuum. The VA’s rescue program, known as VASP, had been working: it gave more than 33,000 veterans who were behind on their payments new, low-cost mortgages. Then the Trump administration took office and killed it.

The human cost is clear. One veteran interviewed, Shante Benfatto, served in Afghanistan and is rated 100% disabled by the VA. She and her husband fell behind on payments when he was between jobs. They tried for months to get into the VASP program, but their lender didn’t complete the paperwork before the VA shut it down. They are now paying hundreds more per month on a modified mortgage they didn’t want and can barely afford.

The VA says it’s working on a new program, but it still won’t be up and running for months. Industry groups warn that even when it arrives, it could push veterans’ monthly payments up by hundreds of dollars compared to what other homeowners pay.

These are people who served the country. The administration told them — with one week’s notice — that the country was done serving them back.

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POSITIVE STORIES YOU MAY HAVE MISSED:

Appeals court blocks Republicans’ bid to dismantle Grand Canyon national monument. Arizona Republicans sued to open uranium mines next to the Grand Canyon, and a federal appeals court told them they didn’t even have legal standing to ask — meaning they couldn’t demonstrate any actual harm from one of the most breathtaking natural wonders on earth being protected.

Bipartisan bill revives efforts to lower insulin costs. A bipartisan group of senators introduced the INSULIN Act to cap the cost of the lifesaving drug at $35 a month, which sounds like a slam dunk until you remember that the exact same bill passed the House in 2022 and then died in the Senate, because apparently keeping diabetics alive is a “competing priority.”

Universities pressured to strip names of Epstein associates from campus buildings. Universities across the country are being pressured to remove the names of Epstein associates from their buildings, which raises the uncomfortable question of how many buildings at elite American institutions are apparently named after friends of a convicted sex trafficker.

The Public Has Spoken: The National Zoo’s New Elephant Calf Is Named… In the middle of all of this, the National Zoo’s baby Asian elephant — the first born there in nearly 25 years — has been named Linh Mai, which is Vietnamese for “spirit blossom,” after the public voted with their wallets and raised nearly $59,000 for conservation in the process.

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The DOJ is sitting on Epstein files tied to Trump’s 13-year-old accuser. The FBI’s fired agents are fighting back in court. RFK Jr. has managed to make rabies testing optional. And Trump, speaking at an Easter lunch, explained that daycare is for quitters – we’re a war country now.

AlterNet America is our people-powered response to the billionaire capture of America’s media. Corporate media won’t tell these stories the way they need to be told. That’s why independent media matters now more than ever. If holding power accountable is important to you, please subscribe to AlterNet America and become a member. Support the work that keeps democracy alive. Because without independent voices willing to speak truth to power, the billionaires win.

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Now, let’s dive in.

The DOJ Is Still Hiding the Epstein Files About Trump’s 13-Year-Old Accuser

The Trump administration spent considerable energy promising to release the Epstein files. It released 3.5 million of them. And yet, about 30 pages of documents linked to allegations that Trump sexually assaulted a 13-year-old girl remain missing from the public release.

The allegations involve a South Carolina woman who claims she was abused and trafficked by Epstein. She said that Epstein took her to New York or New Jersey and introduced her to Trump when she was about 13 in 1984. The FBI interviewed her four times in 2019.

The DOJ’s official position is that there are no missing pages, and the skipped serial numbers are just “duplicative notes.” The public will not be allowed to confirm the DOJ’s claim that the information is duplicative. You’ll just have to trust them.

Meanwhile, an investigation from The Post and Courier and NPR corroborated several verifiable details from the woman’s FBI interviews. This included her mother’s criminal record for embezzlement and a chance encounter she described at a Rick James concert in Savannah, Georgia.

None of these verified details relate directly to her accusations about Trump, but they do suggest she was telling the truth. And while no charges have ever been filed, the evidence that could shed more light remains, conveniently, unseen.

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Trump: There’s No Money for Daycare Because We Have to Fight Wars

Trump hosted an Easter lunch at the White House on Wednesday and used the occasion to outline, in unusually plain terms, which Americans the federal government intends to help.

Spoiler: it is not the ones with children, medical needs, or limited financial resources.

“I said to Russell Vought, ‘Don’t send any money for daycare because the United States can’t take care of daycare,’” Trump told guests. “We’re a big country. We have 50 states. We have all these other people. We’re fighting wars. We can’t take care of daycare. You’ve got to let a state take care of daycare, and they should pay for it, too. They should pay. They’ll have to raise their taxes.”

He did not stop at daycare. Trump added that it is also “not possible” for the federal government to manage Medicaid or Medicare. He added that the country’s one essential job is military protection.

The first six days of fighting alone cost $11.3 billion, with the tab estimated at $18 billion by mid-March and climbing. Congressional Republicans are now considering cutting federal health spending to fund a Pentagon request of as much as $200 billion for the ongoing Iran war.

To put that in perspective: the U.S. spends roughly $200 per year per child on federal child care support. Norway spends nearly $30,000 per child annually. More than 70 countries offer some form of universal health care.

We are, apparently, not those countries. We are a country that fights wars.

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RFK Jr. Cancels Rabies Testing. Yes, Really.

You’ve heard about measles outbreaks, now get ready for this next story: the United States has paused federal testing for rabies.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced Wednesday that it had suspended diagnostic testing for a range of viruses, including rabies and a group of pox viruses that encompasses smallpox and mpox.

Mass layoffs, hiring freezes, and resignations driven by Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s agenda have shrunk the number of qualified scientists who can assist state labs. By July, the rabies team will be down to just one person with the clinical expertise to advise state and local officials, and the pox virus team will have none.

One person. For rabies. In a country of 340 million people and an unknowable number of bats.

Kennedy has almost single-handedly transformed HHS over the last year. He replaced independent medical experts on the CDC’s vaccine advisory panel with vaccine skeptics, and overhauled the child vaccination schedule without notifying his own staffers.

The CDC is calling the pause “temporary” and “a routine review.” Routine, in the same sense that a house fire is a routine opportunity to redecorate.

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FBI Agents Fired For Investigating Trump Sue to Get Their Jobs Back

Kash Patel said he was “cleaning up a diseased temple.” Apparently the disease was “doing your job.”

Three FBI agents have filed a lawsuit after they were fired in what they say were acts of political retaliation. Michelle Ball, Jamie Garman, and Blaire Toleman each served on a public corruption squad that investigated Trump’s efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss. They were fired last fall, despite what the lawsuit describes as years of “exemplary and unblemished” service.

The suit includes a proposed class action on behalf of all FBI employees already fired, or who could be fired in the future. The three agents are seeking to include more than 50 FBI employees terminated since Trump took office.

The lawsuit names Kash Patel and Pam Bondi as defendants and points out something that might generously be called a conflict of interest: Patel was subpoenaed to appear before a federal grand jury investigating Trump’s retention of classified documents, while Bondi was part of the legal team that represented Trump at his first impeachment trial.

The firings have been sweeping. Some agents lost their jobs for working on the election or classified documents cases. Others were fired for refusing to fire their own subordinates without evidence of misconduct. More were fired for kneeling during 2020 racial justice protests. An agent in training claimed he was fired for hanging a pride flag at his workplace.

So to summarize the new FBI hiring criteria: don’t investigate Trump, don’t kneel, don’t have a flag, and don’t refuse an illegal order. Other than that, totally merit-based.

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A Note From AlterNet America

AlterNet America is our response to the takeover of CBS and The Washington Post. We don’t have a hedge fund, a billionaire with an agenda, or a corporate parent deciding which stories are too risky to run.

What we have is readers. AlterNet America is purely subscriber-led. People who looked at the current media landscape and decided that independent journalism was worth paying for. This coverage doesn’t happen by accident. It happens because someone is paying attention and someone else is paying the bills. We’d love for that someone to be you.

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POSITIVE STORIES YOU MIGHT HAVE MISSED:

NASA Artemis II launches humanity’s first moon mission in more than half a century. NASA’s Artemis II launched on April 1, 2026, marking humanity’s first crewed mission to the moon in more than half a century. The crew includes Christina Koch, the first woman, and Victor Glover, the first Black astronaut, ever sent on a moon-bound mission.

Donald Trump and Melania Booed at Kennedy Center Appearance. Trump and Melania attended the opening night of Chicago at the Kennedy Center on Tuesday and were greeted with boos. The White House insists he was “warmly welcomed.” Videos posted show otherwise.

Judge strikes down federal effort to weaken Endangered Species Act. A federal judge struck down four regulations the first Trump administration used to weaken the Endangered Species Act, ruling them unlawful after seven years of litigation. Somewhere, a grizzly bear is having a better week than the president.

DHS pauses new immigrant warehouse purchases amid review of Noem-era contracts. DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin has paused the plan to turn warehouses into mass immigrant detention centers while he reviews the $38.3 billion scheme Kristi Noem hatched before she was fired. Apparently the strategy was to ask for forgiveness rather than permission, except nobody’s asking for forgiveness either.

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🚨 Now, the same billionaires who swallowed CBS are finalizing their takeover of CNN.

Pete Hegseth just said the quiet part out loud: “The sooner David Ellison takes over that network, the better.”

This is the oligarch takeover of American media — and we’re the resistance.

For decades, we trusted mainstream outlets to hold power accountable. But one by one, they’ve been captured. Billionaires don’t buy newsrooms to inform the public: they buy them to control the narrative. They spike stories that threaten their interests. They replace investigative journalists with talking heads. They turn the Fourth Estate into a public relations machine for the powerful.

The corporate media consolidation we’re witnessing isn’t just bad business. It’s a direct threat to democracy itself. When a handful of ultra-wealthy oligarchs control the flow of information, they control what Americans know, what we talk about, and ultimately, what we believe is possible.

But here’s the truth they don’t want you to know: We don’t need them anymore.

Today, I’m excited to announce our response: the launch of our new brand, AlterNet America. To counter mainstream media pandering and the downfall of TV news, we’re creating a new channel with you — not billionaire backers, not corporate advertisers, not political consultants. Just us.

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AlterNet has been fighting for independent progressive journalism since 1987. We survived the collapse of alt-weeklies and the slow billionaire buyout of the American press. Now, with Bezos controlling the Washington Post, CNN on the chopping block, and MAGA billionaires dominating cable news, that mission is more urgent than ever.

AlterNet America isn’t starting from scratch. We’re finishing what we started nearly four decades ago.

Like AlterNet, AlterNet America will bring you breaking, up-to-the-minute reports that the mainstream media won’t touch. But we’ll also make sure you see an “alternate America”: the resistance winning in courts, in elections, and in the streets. We’ll serve you bite-sized videos filled with humor and humanity, alongside the news that powerful interests would rather you ignore.

AlterNet America is the biggest liftoff in AlterNet’s history — and it’s only possible because of you.

AlterNet America will bring you familiar faces and new voices. We’ll grab you the best clips from breaking news events and break down what’s really going on behind the scenes.

AlterNet America lives on Substack, where independent media thrives. Each day we’ll break down the story behind the story — and offer you entertaining takes on underreported news that powerful interests would rather you ignore.

To create this exciting new channel, we’ve partnered with Really American, a social media brand. Combined with Really American’s YouTube and social media presence, we reach hundreds of millions of Americans hungry for truth instead of propaganda.

This is how we fight back. Not with their money. Not with their platforms. With our voices, our values, and our refusal to let democracy die in darkness while oligarchs turn off the lights.

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