America's Biggest Fraudsters Are Lining Up for Trump Pardons
Michael Flynn has registered as a foreign agent, a missing GOP rep. is running unopposed in tonight's primary, and Oklahomans got oil in their bathtubs after asking for less regulation
Good afternoon. I’m Ryan Rose, and this is AlterNet America.
High-profile fraudsters are lining up for pardons as part of Trump’s rumored plan to free 250 convicts for the country’s 250th birthday. Michael Flynn has registered as a foreign agent collecting $100,000 a month from a Putin-allied entity in Bosnia. GOP Rep. Tom Kean has been missing from Washington since March 5 while running unopposed in today’s primary. And oil field wastewater is bubbling up through Oklahomans’ bathtub drains, with half the state living within a mile of a drilling operation.
Before we dive in: AlterNet runs on readers, not advertisers, not billionaires, and not a broadcast license anyone in Washington can revoke. We don’t have a corporate parent to please or a sponsor to soothe. We have you. If you want this kind of reporting to keep landing in your inbox every afternoon, become a paid subscriber today.
Now, the news
America’s Most Famous Convicts Are Lining Up for Pardons
Most countries mark a semiquincentennial with fireworks. We’re going with felons.
Trump’s White House plans to set 250 fraudsters loose to celebrate the occasion, first reported by the Wall Street Journal. The White House won’t confirm it exists. The murmur alone was enough to wake up the country’s most recognizable convicts.
Martin Shkreli, the man who raised the price of a $13.50 pill to $750, says his pardon application is in. He told the Washington Examiner the 250-by-250 idea was “one of the catalysts that brought me to just finally file.” He insists he won’t pay a facilitator a dollar.
Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes, eleven years into her sentence for defrauding investors, has gotten suddenly active online. She posted a photo of herself “locked in,” captioned “literally and figuratively.” She filed in January and commented on Shkreli’s post with a line from the Hunger Games: “May the odds be ever in your favor.”
Clemency petitions jumped from roughly 5,100 in 2024 to more than 16,000 in 2025. Lobbyists are now charging six and seven figures to promise access. Trump has already pardoned the Silk Road founder, the Binance founder, and roughly 1,500 Jan. 6 defendants.
The only people not filing are the ones who haven’t been caught yet.
Michael Flynn Registered as a Foreign Agent for Russia
Michael Flynn spent years warning America about foreign influence. He’s now on the payroll of one.
A Foreign Agents Registration Act form dated October 2025, posted Monday by far-right blogger Scott McMahan, shows Flynn earning $100,000 per month from the Republic of Srpska. That’s the confederated entity of Bosnia and Herzegovina run by Milorad Dodik, a key ally of Vladimir Putin.
The reaction was swift. Catturd, the right-wing troll, posted “$100,000 per month?” in apparent disbelief. Sebastian Gorka, currently angling to run the National Counterterrorism Center, suggested Flynn may have broken the law. He noted he had signed documents promising never to work for another government, and presumed Flynn signed similar ones.
This is the same Flynn who claims he was wrongfully prosecuted for lying to federal agents, a charge he pleaded guilty to. Twice.
MAGA is furious that one of their own is working for a Russian ally. Yet the man at the top of the ticket has been doing favors for Putin for years, and he hasn’t charged a dime.
We don’t take money from foreign governments. We take it from readers. Subscribe to keep it that way.
Missing GOP Rep. Is Running Unopposed in Tonight’s Primary
Tom Kean is running for a third term. He just isn’t showing up for the second one.
GOP Rep. Tom Kean of New Jersey is running unopposed in tonight’s primary. His last vote on Capitol Hill was March 5. House Speaker Mike Johnson and his team have been navigating their reed-thin margins without him since early March, and Kean has yet to give them a date for his return.
In late April he cited a “personal medical issue,” without specifying what it is, and said he’d be back “very soon.” Late last month he told The New Jersey Globe he’d return in the “next couple of weeks.”
His colleagues are worried about his health — and about holding a critical swing seat in a brutal midterm cycle. Some are quietly asking what happens if he drops out after the primary. Under New Jersey law, a post-primary vacancy gets filled by GOP county committee leaders.
Kean’s staff are attending the high school graduations and ribbon cuttings in his place. His last public events appear to have been in early March. He has, however, continued posting regularly on social media, and has earned a formal Trump endorsement ahead of the primary.
The frontrunner among four Democrats, former Navy helicopter pilot Rebecca Bennett, has raised nearly $3 million. She’s also left her house since March.
Oklahoma’s Oil Wastewater Is Coming Up Through the Bathtub Drain
Oklahoma has spent decades voting to keep the government out of the oil business. The oil business, in turn, has been getting into everything else.
Most families remember a milestone date because of a birth or a wedding. Kara Meredith remembers Aug. 23, 2025, because that’s the day oil started bubbling up around the base of her bathtub.
She was caring for her 5-week-old son in Fort Gibson when a daughter ran in to report water all over the bathroom floor. Her husband, Mitch, and his relatives spent all night trying to contain the dark liquid. Near dawn, his uncle finally said the word: “This is oil.”
The United States is the largest oil and gas producer in the world, and all that drilling generates hundreds of billions of gallons of toxic wastewater each year. For decades, companies have shot the briny fluid back underground through high-pressure injection wells. In Oklahoma, it’s no longer staying put.
The fluid is spreading uncontrollably belowground and blasting out of old, unplugged wells. It pollutes land and contaminates drinking water. About half of Oklahomans live within a mile of an oil and gas operation.
The Oklahoma Corporation Commission, the agency tasked with regulating the industry, said it is committed to “holding operators accountable” and “protecting Oklahoma and its resources.” Oklahomans voted for exactly this much accountability.
The Part the Billionaires Hate
The business model that kept journalism independent is gone. What replaced it is billionaires, access deals, and quiet understandings about which stories don’t run. The networks are getting phone calls they don’t talk about. The newspapers have new owners who play golf with the people we’re writing about. The FCC is making examples of outlets that don’t play ball.
None of that is happening here, because we don’t have anyone to sell out to. We have readers. If you’ve been reading AlterNet America for free, we’re glad you’re here. But free doesn’t keep the lights on, and the lights need to stay on.
If you’re not yet a paid subscriber, this is the moment. Your subscription isn’t a donation. It’s the thing that makes tomorrow’s newsletter possible. Please consider upgrading to a paid subscription today.
Thanks for reading. We’ll see you tomorrow.
POSITIVE STORIES YOU MAY HAVE MISSED:
New Tennessee Law Makes Data Center Owners Pay Their Own Infrastructure Costs. Tennessee has more than 60 data centers humming away across the state, about a third of them clustered around Nashville, all of them consuming staggering amounts of electricity. The state has now passed a law requiring data center owners to cover the full cost of the electricity infrastructure their operations demand by shifting the burden off ratepayers and onto the companies building power-hungry facilities. It comes after lawmakers noticed that Elon Musk’s xAI had quietly plugged a supercomputer into Memphis while leaving ratepayers holding the extension cord.
A Bill to Name a Mississippi River Bridge After Trump Failed in Louisiana. Legislation to brand a proposed Mississippi River bridge the “President Donald J. Trump Expressway” died in the Louisiana legislature, a state where about 60 percent of voters backed Trump in 2024. The bill, introduced by GOP state Rep. Michael Echols, cleared the House 68–26 in March but never received a Senate vote before the session ended June 1. Echols said Senate President Cameron Henry told him the chamber “wasn’t interested in naming bridges and roads after presidents at this time.” Even in ruby-red Louisiana, the appetite for more signage has run out.
MAGA Host Dave Rubin Couldn’t Name a Single Trump Achievement on Camera. During a Jubilee Media debate published Sunday, titled “Dave Rubin vs 20 Far-Left Democrats,” an opponent asked Rubin to name one metric — GDP, unemployment, inflation — that improved under the second Trump administration. Rubin tried to pivot to last year’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act and the tariffs before trailing off entirely as the room laughed. “Listen…” was as far as he got. The clip went viral days after a separate video cataloged his failed predictions about the war with Iran. Progressive influencer Hassan Piker noted that Rubin “would’ve lost the debate to an empty chair.”
A Once-Nightly Pill for Sleep Apnea Shows Major Promise in Phase 3 Trials. A drug called AD109 significantly improved obstructive sleep apnea symptoms in a six-month study of 644 adults across 69 sites in the U.S. and Canada. It found patients’ breathing interruptions dropped about 44 percent, with more than 40 percent moving into a lower severity category and 18 percent achieving complete disease control. The pill has FDA Fast Track designation, and Apnimed has already filed a New Drug Application with a potential action date in early 2027. For the many patients who can’t tolerate a CPAP machine, it offers the first treatment aimed at the underlying neuromuscular cause of the disease.