Good morning. I’m Corinne Straight, and this is AlterNet America.
The Senate parliamentarian blocked Congress from making you pay a billion dollars for the president’s ballroom, which was supposed to be free anyway. A Colorado Republican Party chair was arrested in a child predator sting. ICE deported a mother and then blamed her when her toddler was murdered. And Trump is now allowing Chinese ownership of American farmland, which was a thing he spent two years campaigning against.
Before we get into it: Independent journalism survives on one thing, and it isn’t a billionaire who bought us because he “believed in the mission” and then discovered he didn’t like what we wrote. It’s readers who pay for what they read. If you’re one of them, thank you. If you’re not yet, this would be a good morning to fix that. Please consider becoming a paid subscriber today. We can’t do it without you.
Tomorrow at 1 PM ET, AlterNet America co-founder and managing editor Ryan Rose will be conducting a live interview with independent journalist Nolan Hamilton, who will discuss the rise of Christian Nationalism in the White House and across the country. Watch live on our homepage at AlterNetAmerica.com.
The GOP Tried to Bill You a Billion Dollars for the Ballroom and Got Blocked
When Trump announced his plans for a new White House ballroom last year, the White House said it would be funded entirely through private donations. Spoiler: it was not privately funded.
Senate Republicans signaled a willingness to support up to $1 billion in a federal spending bill for “security upgrades” related to the ballroom project. Senate Majority Leader John Thune clarified that only about $200 million of that would go toward the ballroom itself, with the rest going to other Secret Service needs.
The Senate parliamentarian has ruled the provision out of order, finding that as written, the language “inappropriately funds activities outside the jurisdiction of the Judiciary Committee.”
The parliamentarian is not elected. She does not appear on Fox News. She has not been photographed at Mar-a-Lago. She reads Senate rules for a living, which is either the most boring job in Washington or, as of Saturday, the most important one.
Republicans said they plan to redraft, refine, and resubmit, which is the legislative equivalent of being carded and going home to get a fake ID.
Republican Party Chair Arrested in Sting Targeting Child Sex Predators
Another week, another Republican official arrested in a child predator sting.
Hunter Rivera, the 24-year-old chairman of the Weld County Republican Party in Colorado, was arrested Thursday during an undercover operation targeting child predators. Investigators posted ads online posing as minors offering sexual acts; several dozen people responded. Rivera was one of two men who arrived at the agreed-upon location.
Rivera faces four felony charges: soliciting a child prostitute, internet luring of a child, cybercrime solicitation involving a minor, and attempted sexual assault on a child. He was held on a $6,500 cash-only bond, which feels like a detail worth sitting with.
Rivera has been involved in Republican politics since he was 17, when he joined the Northern Colorado Young Republicans. He went on to work as a field organizer, a national committeeman for the Colorado Federation of Young Republicans, and as a staffer on multiple Republican campaigns across the state.
U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert, a Windsor Republican who had supported Rivera’s bid for county chair, issued a statement condemning the allegations and calling for his immediate replacement. Colorado House and Senate Republicans called the charges “sickening, horrifying, and beyond reprehensible.”
The Weld County Republican Party accepted Rivera’s resignation Sunday. Apparently the GOP has some standards. They just don’t apply to the White House.
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ICE Deported Her and Then Blamed Her for Her Son’s Murder
Wendy Hernandez Reyes was pulled over in Alabama in early January while driving to her job laying concrete foundations. Local sheriff’s deputies, operating under the federal program that deputizes local law enforcement as immigration agents, handed her off to ICE.
Hernandez had no criminal record. She was an asylum-seeker who had missed an immigration hearing in 2022, which resulted in a deportation order. When she was detained, her two-year-old son Orlín needed somewhere to go.
She begged officers to let her take him. She begged them to release her because she was a single mother. They left Orlín in the care of her brother-in-law.
In March, the brother-in-law called 911 saying the two-year-old had collapsed. Orlín was dead. His body showed broken ribs, a transected pancreas, multiple burns, and evidence of possible sexual abuse. The medical examiner said the injuries were definitively not accidental. The uncle has been indicted on murder charges and has pleaded not guilty.
A week after Orlín’s death, Acting ICE Director Todd Lyons issued a statement that did not include condolences. It accused Hernandez of abandonment, saying she “chose to leave her son here with a violent murderer who took his life.”
The Washington Post reviewed court records and found that Hernandez had repeatedly requested to be reunited with her son throughout her detention. She is still in Honduras. She has not been permitted to return to bury him.
Trump Went to China and Broke a Promise to His Base
During his 2024 campaign, Trump repeatedly pledged to block Chinese nationals and companies from purchasing U.S. farmland as part of his “America First” agenda.
Beijing has a way of changing a man.
This week, after his high-stakes summit with Xi Jinping, Trump defended Chinese ownership of U.S. farmland and welcomed 500,000 Chinese students to American universities. When Fox News host Sean Hannity pointed out that China would never let Americans own farmland near its military installations, Trump replied that the market was the market.
The reversal was so complete that a side-by-side video began circulating: Trump in Pennsylvania in 2024 saying “we don’t want you buying our land,” followed by Trump in Beijing in 2026 asking, “you want to see farm prices drop?” MAGA influencer Mike Cernovich posted the clip and asked simply: “Has China defeated our country?”
For the record, Chinese entities own about 277,000 acres of U.S. agricultural land, less than one percent of all foreign-held farmland in the country. But the president didn’t campaign on one percent. He campaigned on a crisis.
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.
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POSITIVE STORIES YOU MAY HAVE MISSED:
Democrat’s chances of flipping North Carolina Senate seat surge. A new poll shows former North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper leading Republican Michael Whatley by eight points in the race for the Senate seat Thom Tillis is vacating, with Cooper’s lead growing every time a new poll comes out. Cooper’s favorability sits at nearly fifty percent while Whatley’s name recognition sits at nearly nothing, as over half of likely voters say they have never heard of him or have no opinion. Whatley’s campaign noted that no money has been spent on ads yet, which is the kind of thing you say when you are losing.
Louisiana rejects Gov. Jeff Landry-backed amendments again. Louisiana voters rejected every constitutional amendment backed by Governor Jeff Landry on Saturday, defeating them by margins of up to 56 points, with his own political organization having spent $1 million trying to pass them. This is the second time in about a year voters have done this, prompting Landry to issue a statement blaming George Soros for the loss. In Landry’s hometown parish, a majority of his own neighbors voted against him, which is the kind of feedback that is hard to spin.
Bernie Sanders and Ro Khanna Push Billionaire Tax Plan. Bernie Sanders and Ro Khanna introduced a bill this week to tax America’s roughly 938 billionaires at 5% annually, sending $3,000 to every person in a household earning under $150,000 and generating an estimated $4.4 trillion over a decade to fund Medicaid, teacher pay, and affordable housing. The Republican Party controls Congress, so the bill will not become law, but popularity and passage are different things in Washington, and this bill has one of them.
FDA approves first gene therapy for inherited deafness. The FDA approved the first gene therapy for inherited hearing loss, a one-time treatment that restored hearing for children born profoundly deaf due to a rare genetic mutation. Regeneron, the company behind it, said the drug will be free for patients in the U.S., forgoing what could have been $200 to $400 million a year in revenue, on the grounds that they didn’t need to charge millions of dollars to children who can’t hear in order to turn a profit. It is a low bar. They cleared it anyway.
