BREAKING: Florida Republican Charged With Kidnapping and Child Sex Abuse

Minnesota is suing Texas Gov. Greg Abbott for harboring an ICE officer , 173 witnesses of Charlie Kirk’s shooting want trauma benefits, and Trump is opening 45 million acres of forest to loggers

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.

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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.