Good morning. I’m Corinne Straight, and this is AlterNet America.
The DOJ just moved to erase the last remaining seditious conspiracy convictions from January 6th. The FBI’s new budget wants to classify gender as a terrorism issue. A toddler who nearly died in ICE detention was sent right back. And the U.S. just hit its 50th boat strike, killing over 170 people in waters off Latin America with no trial, no evidence, and no end in sight.
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Now let’s go.
DOJ Moves to Erase January 6th Convictions. Yes, All of Them.
Turns out commuting the sentences of the men who tried to overthrow the government wasn’t quite enough — the Justice Department also wants their records clean.
The Justice Department on Tuesday asked a federal court to vacate the January 6th convictions of a dozen former members of the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers, most of whom had been convicted of seditious conspiracy.
The request asks the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit to vacate the convictions and dismiss the charges with prejudice, meaning the government would be legally barred from ever bringing the cases again.
Among those who would benefit: Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes, who was sentenced to 18 years in prison after he and several lieutenants were convicted. Prosecutors said Rhodes and his followers stockpiled guns for possible use by “quick reaction force” teams at a Virginia hotel, but never deployed the weapons.
If their convictions are vacated, these men won’t face the collateral consequences that come with a felony conviction, such as being prohibited from owning a firearm. So: men who stockpiled weapons to potentially stop the peaceful transfer of presidential power will, if this succeeds, once again be legally permitted to own guns.
Stewart Rhodes served two of his eighteen years. His attorney called the dismissal “wise.” The word “justice” was not used.
The FBI’s New Terrorism Budget Is Really a List of Political Enemies
The White House’s proposed 2027 budget includes a push for the FBI to “proactively” target what it describes as “extremism” related to gender.
According to the new FBI budget, domestic terrorism is motivated by, among other things, anti-capitalism, anti-Christianity, and views on gender. Anti-capitalism and anti-Christianity are not further defined. Views on gender are not further defined. The $166 million is very specifically defined.
The budget request spells this out under a section titled “Domestic Terrorism,” stating that domestic terrorists are “commonly” motivated by, among other things, “extremism on migration, race, and gender” and “hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on family, religion, and morality.”
The budget calls for the creation of a new “NSPM-7 Joint Mission Center,” a hub drawing personnel from 10 federal agencies. It proposes a $166 million increase in the FBI’s counterterrorism budget.
The administration just spent a news cycle erasing the convictions of the people who actually stormed the Capitol, and is now redirecting counterterrorism resources toward people who think trans people deserve to exist.
A Toddler Nearly Died. ICE Sent Her Back Anyway.
Amalia was 18 months old when ICE detained her with her parents at the Dilley Immigration Processing Center in Texas. She arrived healthy. That did not last.
Amalia became so ill while in detention that she was rushed to a hospital with life-threatening respiratory failure. She spent 10 days there before immigration officers sent her back, where despite warnings from doctors that she remained medically vulnerable, staff confiscated her nebulizer, her albuterol, and her nutritional supplements.
Her parents were required to stand in an outdoor line for hours each day just to request her medication. The family was eventually freed after 57 days, without Amalia’s birth certificate, her vaccination records, or her medication.
Amalia’s story came up in a congressional hearing with then-Secretary Kristi Noem. Nothing changed. The number of children in ICE detention on a given day has surged more than sixfold since the start of the second Trump administration.
ICE describes the Dilley facility as a place where families receive “medical care, educational services, recreational opportunities, and essential daily living needs.” They sent an 18-month-old back there after she nearly died.
The U.S. Just Hit Its 50th Boat Strike. 170 People Are Dead.
The Trump administration hit a grim milestone this week: its 50th strike on a civilian vessel in the waters off Latin America. The death toll now exceeds 170.
Three strikes were conducted in the space of three days: two boats hit in the Pacific on April 11, and another on April 13.
Experts in the laws of war, as well as members of Congress from both parties, say the strikes are illegal, extrajudicial killings. The military is not permitted to deliberately target civilians who do not pose an imminent threat of violence.
Before the boat strikes began, suspected drug smugglers were detained by law enforcement and brought to trial on criminal charges. That practice has been replaced with explosions posted to social media.
The administration has never publicly identified a single person killed in these strikes. It has never produced public evidence that any of the targeted vessels were carrying drugs. Families in Colombia and Trinidad have come forward to say the dead were fishermen and informal workers.
Fifty strikes. One hundred and seventy dead. Congress has had two chances to stop it and declined both times, which is the legislative branch’s way of saying this is fine.
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POSITIVE STORIES YOU MAY HAVE MISSED:
US edges closer to popular vote deciding winner of presidential elections. Virginia Governor Abigail Spanberger signed a bill Monday adding the state to the National Popular Vote Compact, an agreement among states to award their electoral votes to the nationwide popular vote winner, bringing the total to 18 states plus D.C. — 222 electoral votes. The compact still needs 270 to take effect, which means the Electoral College lives to fight another day, and Wyoming’s 580,000 residents remain disproportionately important to history.
Democrats Formally File 25th Amendment Bill to Get Rid of Trump. Fifty House Democrats filed a bill Tuesday to create a commission empowered to order a medical examination of the president and determine whether he is mentally or physically fit for office. The move is designed to bypass JD Vance entirely, since Section 4 of the 25th Amendment requires either the vice president and Cabinet, or a body Congress creates by law, to make that call. The bill has approximately zero chance of passing a Republican-controlled House.
In major win for voters, judge blocks Indiana GOP’s student ID ban. A federal judge Tuesday blocked Indiana’s Republican-backed law banning student IDs as a valid form of voter identification, finding no evidence that student IDs had ever been used to commit fraud. Indiana had singled out student IDs as the only otherwise valid form of identification banned from the polls, which the court noted looks less like election integrity and more like a decision about which voters the state would prefer to discourage.
Staunch Trump Supporters Are Now Asking if He’s the Antichrist. After Trump posted an AI-generated image of himself as Jesus, MAGA media figures who spent years calling him God’s chosen president began publicly asking whether he might instead be the antichrist. Marjorie Taylor Greene declared it “an Antichrist spirit,” and one right-wing podcaster wrote that he’d gone from hesitantly voting for Trump to thinking there’s “a decent chance he’s the antichrist” in the span of 18 months.
