Good morning. I’m Corinne Straight, and this is AlterNet America. Please take a moment to click the ❤️ and restack this post. The oligarchs’ platforms are trying to keep stories like the ones below from hitting your feeds, and this helps us break through.
Trump demanded that New Mexico rename itself “New America” for the second time in two months, calling it “one of the great vote cheating states of all time.” Federal agents arrested 11 people in California on voter fraud charges based on an unverified list of 20,000 alleged noncitizen voters. Elon Musk announced he will give one share of SpaceX stock to every child in America through Trump’s savings accounts. And Mississippi’s attorney general ruled that police were justified in shooting and killing a one-year-old baby who was sitting in his mother’s lap.
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Trump Demands New Mexico Change Its Name to “New America”
No one tell him about New Hampshire.
On Monday, Trump posted on Truth Social that New Mexico should “immediately” change its name to “New America,” writing that the change would raise home values and make elections honest again. The president has no legal power to rename the state, which would require amending the state constitution.
Trump first raised the idea over Labor Day weekend, posting a map on social media with the word “Mexico” crossed out in red and replaced with “America.” He followed it with an AI-generated video of himself slapping an “America” sticker on top of a “Welcome to New Mexico” road sign.
Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham wrote on X that “New Mexico’s name isn’t up for debate,” noting that the name is older than the country itself. She accused the White House of wasting time, writing, “While the White House wastes time coloring on maps, Nuevo México is busy doing the work.”
The demand is part of a larger campaign in which Trump has signed executive orders renaming the Gulf of Mexico as the “Gulf of America” and Lake Ontario as “Lake America.” He also floated calling the Strait of Hormuz the “Trump Strait” and has publicly mused about renaming the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.
Federal Agents Launch “Voter Raids” in California Weeks Before Midterms
They called it “Operation Protect the Vote” the same way they called the Titanic “unsinkable.”
Federal authorities arrested at least 11 people in California on Monday and charged 28, alleging they registered to vote but were not U.S. citizens. The arrests were part of “Operation Protect the Vote,” which relies on an unverified government list of 20,000 people federal agencies say are “likely noncitizens.”
The Justice Department told California election officials to review the list and withhold the ballots of those on it within 48 hours, then sued the state when officials declined to comply. Acting Deputy Attorney General Trent McCotter warned local officials who count ballots cast by the individuals on the list that they could face criminal prosecution for aiding a federal crime.
The arrests involve the same kind of federal database a judge already found to be inaccurate. The government’s Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements database, or SAVE, was created under immigration law to help agencies prevent government benefits from going to noncitizens, but the Trump administration repurposed it for mass voter verification.
In June, U.S. District Judge Sparkle Sooknanan ruled the expanded system unlawful after finding officials had combined Social Security numbers obtained through DOGE with unreliable citizenship data they knew about. States were using the results to wrongly purge US citizens from the voter rolls.
Elon Musk Promises to Give SpaceX Shares to Every American Child
The kids will get their shares right after the solution for world hunger.
Elon Musk announced Monday he plans to give one share of SpaceX stock to every child in the United States, calling it a gift and “the first of many.” He did not say how the shares will be distributed or offer other details of the pledge.
Trump said on Truth Social that the donation will be made through Trump Accounts, the tax-deferred savings accounts that were created under the so-called “One Big Beautiful Bill” for children born between January 2025 and December 2028. The Treasury Department is automatically enrolling as many as 60 million children in the program.
According to Census Bureau data, there are about 73 million children in the U.S. SpaceX shares ended Monday at $149.49, which would put the total cost at about $10.9 billion.
Musk has a history of making public promises that don’t come through. He had pledged $6 billion in 2021 to combat world hunger, if the UN could show how the money would be spent, and when the World Food Program published a plan, the money never arrived. He’s also predicted full self-driving Teslas by the end of the year almost every year since 2014.
Mississippi Attorney General Rules Police Shooting of One-Year-Old Was Justified
Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch announced Monday that a Senatobia police officer was justified in shooting and killing one-year-old Kohen Wiley in June while the child was sitting in his mother’s lap in a Walmart parking lot. The officers were responding to a report of a stolen pack of diapers.
Officers had responded to a shoplifting call alleging that Wiley’s mother, Vellesiya Wiley, and a friend, Latoya Ferrell, had taken a pack of diapers. The women left the store with the child, got in their vehicle, and started to leave when officers drew their weapons.
Vellesiya Wiley lifted her son up to show officers that a child was in the car. One officer fired into the vehicle anyway, killing Kohen and wounding Ferrell.
The state has not released any of the video evidence from the shooting, including body camera footage and overhead surveillance from the Walmart parking lot. Neither woman has been charged and authorities have produced no evidence that any shoplifting occurred.
The investigation’s subject, Hunter Foster, is white and the Wiley family is Black. Days before the shooting, Mississippi Today reported in July, Foster had faced internal complaints for making a racially offensive remark to a coworker, and two prior allegations of police misconduct in court cases have emerged since Wiley’s death.
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POSITIVE STORIES YOU MAY HAVE MISSED:
Republican Attacks Trump as Latino Voters in Miami Turn on the GOP. Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar, a Cuban-American Republican in Miami-Dade County, filmed a campaign ad in front of the White House telling Trump his immigration enforcement has “gone too far” and the Hispanic voters who helped elect him in 2024 “feel betrayed today.” Her district is more than 70 percent Latino, and the deportation campaign has cost local businesses workers and customers, and those losses have eclipsed the fear of socialism that once kept Cuban Americans reliably Republican. Hispanic voters would now pick the Democratic candidate for Congress over the Republican, 57 to 31, according to polling firm Equis Research.
More Than 40 Multimillionaires Sign Open Letter Backing Billionaire Wealth Tax. More than 40 California multimillionaires have signed an open letter this week in support of Proposition 40, the ballot measure that would impose a one-time 5 percent tax on residents with assets over $1 billion. The signers wrote that the state has “the chance to lead the world in establishing basic tax fairness, raising revenues for essential programs, and checking the power of the richest among us.” Supporters say the measure could raise about $100 billion for healthcare, food assistance and education to make up for federal cuts. Google co-founder Sergey Brin has spent more than $100 million fighting the measure, including funding two competing ballot initiatives aimed at overturning the tax even if voters approve it.
El Paso Nearly Doubles 2022 Rate on the First Day of Early Voting. More than 22,000 El Pasoans voted on the first day of early voting Monday, 90 percent more than the same point in the last midterm. It was the second-highest first-day midterm turnout on record, behind only 2018, when Beto O’Rourke was the Democratic nominee for Senate. More than 17,500 people cast ballots in person, the most ever for a first day of midterm early voting. At Central El Paso’s Bassett Place, voters waited in a line more than 100 deep for more than 30 minutes. Actual demand was probably even higher, as one of the main voting locations in the county was closed most of the day due to a building evacuation.
85,000 California Homes Sent 600 Megawatts of Power Back to the Grid. In an October heat wave, more than 85,000 California homeowners with Tesla Powerwalls discharged their home batteries into the state grid at once, sending back enough power to cover all the households in San Francisco and San Jose combined at peak hours. Including Sunrun batteries, the total dispatch was 745 megawatts, more than most of the gas plants California turns to during demand spikes. That was 28 percent more than the old record set just a month before, and the homeowners got paid for the electricity they sent back. A project funded by Google in San Jose is set to add 21,000 more home batteries this month.
