Good morning. I’m Corinne Straight, and this is AlterNet America.
Rudy Giuliani is in critical condition in the hospital, cause unknown. Over five thousand lawyers and staff have fled the Department of Justice. A federal appeals court just killed mail-order abortion access for the entire country. And Trump seized Washington’s busiest public golf course to give it a personal makeover.
Corporate media is running cover. The FCC chair is making sure they know what happens if they don’t. And independent outlets are being bought out one by one. This is the news they don’t want you reading. AlterNet America is the people-powered response to the MAGA billionaire takeover of American media. We are reader-funded, editorially independent, and not for sale. We exist because of you. If you’re not yet a paid subscriber, please upgrade today.
Let’s go.
Rudy Giuliani Is in the Hospital, and Nobody’s Saying Why
Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, 81, is in critical condition in the hospital, his spokesperson said Sunday. They did not give a cause.
What we do know is that Giuliani hosted his online show “America’s Mayor Live” on Friday night from Palm Beach, Florida. As he opened the show, he coughed and remarked that his voice was “a little under the weather.” By Sunday, he was in critical condition.
Giuliani was hospitalized last year after suffering a spinal fracture in a car crash in New Hampshire, and Trump said at the time he would award Giuliani the Presidential Medal of Freedom. That award has not materialized.
What has materialized is a Truth Social post. Trump wrote that Giuliani was “a True Warrior and the Best Mayor in the History of New York City,” then added that Democrats had “cheated on the Elections, fabricated hundreds of stories, did anything possible to destroy our Nation, and now, look at Rudy. So sad!”
Giuliani has spent the last several years spreading lies that Georgia election workers rigged the 2020 election, driving them from their homes with death threats, and ultimately losing a $148 million defamation judgment over it. Whatever happens next, the record is what it is.
The DOJ Has Lost Half Its Lawyers
Thousands of experienced attorneys and staff have left the DOJ since Trump returned to office, choosing a hasty exit over the possibility of being forced to prosecute unconstitutional cases at the president’s behest.
There were an estimated 10,000 attorneys working across the Justice Department before Trump returned to the White House. An estimated 5,500 people had left the department by September 2025, either voluntarily, by accepting the administration’s buyout, or by being fired.
The Civil Rights Division has been gutted with particular thoroughness. The number of trial attorneys in the Criminal Section dropped from roughly 40 before Trump took office to no more than 13.
The staffing crisis has reached a breaking point, with federal judges holding DOJ attorneys in contempt of court for their inability to manage mounting caseloads. One attorney, fined $500 a day for noncompliance, said a court order had simply fallen through the cracks because he could not keep up with the paperwork.
The people walking out the door include lawyers who prosecuted attacks on the Capitol during January 6, environmental and civil rights enforcers, counterterrorism prosecutors, immigration judges, and even attorneys who defend administration policies.
The administration is losing ideological opponents and loyalists alike. Apparently there is no loyalty oath that makes a caseload manageable.
Louisiana Ended Abortion Access in States That Never Banned It
Louisiana wasn’t satisfied banning abortion within its own borders, so it asked a federal court to export the ban nationwide. The court said yes.
A federal appeals court temporarily reinstated a nationwide requirement that abortion pills be obtained in person, undermining access to the method of abortion that now accounts for roughly two-thirds of all abortions in the United States.
The ruling came from the Fifth Circuit, written by a Trump-appointed judge. It affects every state in the country. Including yours.
Mifepristone was approved in 2000 as a safe and effective way to end early pregnancies. A panel of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals is now requiring that it be distributed only in person at clinics.
The Supreme Court unanimously preserved mifepristone access in 2024, but only because the plaintiffs in that case lacked standing to sue. The Court never actually ruled on whether the FDA’s rules were legal. Louisiana found plaintiffs who did have standing, filed the same basic challenge, and on Friday got the answer the first case never produced.
Louisiana has some of the harshest abortion restrictions in the country, banning the procedure without exceptions for rape or incest. The attorney general called the ruling the end of a nightmare. For the nearly a thousand women a month in Louisiana alone who relied on mail-order access, a different kind is just beginning.
Trump Is Giving D.C.’s Biggest Public Golf Course a Makeover
The president has shut down the busiest public golf course in Washington, D.C. so he can rip it up and turn it into a monument to himself.
The course, East Potomac Golf Links, had been managed by the National Links Trust, a nonprofit that invested more than $8.5 million in improvements, more than doubled rounds played, and kept the greens affordable for working locals.
The takeover was a complete surprise to the Trust. They found out from a news report.
A top Trump fundraiser is seeking donations to help pay for the plans, which include a new championship golf course and a proposed National Garden of American Heroes. The garden would feature life-sized statues of hundreds of historically significant Americans.
Some 250 names have been pitched, including Christopher Columbus, who was not American. Also on the earlier list: Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Kobe Bryant, and Jonas Salk, whose inclusion seems unlikely to survive whatever vetting process comes next.
The statues alone may cost more than the $40 million already approved for the project.
Trump has pictured the course not as a public space but as an exclusive, luxury destination. The people being pushed out have played here for generations. For some of them, these were among the only courses where Black Washingtonians could golf during segregation. They are not who Trump is building this for.
Nobody Owns This Newsletter But You
Let’s be direct about what is happening.
The government is threatening to pull broadcast licenses from outlets that won’t cheerlead a war. Billionaires are buying up the newsrooms that remain. And the reporters still doing real work are running out of places to do it.
AlterNet America exists to be one of those places. In three weeks, we’ve launched a whole new brand. I’m giving you all the morning news. Ryan Rose gets afternoons and Saturday coffee with you. In the coming weeks, we’ll be introducing Substack Lives in various topic areas so you can get all your progressive news in one subscription.
The people in power are counting on you to scroll past this and do nothing. Don’t.
If you’ve been meaning to subscribe, this is the moment. The stories we are chasing right now won’t wait, and neither can we. Hit the button below and put independent journalism on the right side of history.
That’s all for this morning. We’ll see you tonight.
POSITIVE STORIES YOU MAY HAVE MISSED:
Democrats Win in Republican Stronghold in Texas. A Democratic-backed candidate just won the mayoral race in Pearland, Texas, a Houston suburb that has voted for Trump in every election since 2016, making Quentin Wiltz the city’s first Black mayor. Pearland has had the same GOP-aligned mayor for 42 years. Everything in Texas is bigger, including the losing streak Republicans just started.
Minnesota passes ban on fake AI nudes; app makers risk $500K fines. Minnesota’s Senate passed the country’s first ban on nudification apps 65-0, targeting AI tools that let anyone upload a photo of a fully clothed person and generate a fake nude image with zero technical skill required. Congress has been trying to pass something similar for years and hasn’t managed it, so Minnesota just did it themselves unanimously.
Hawaiʻi bill challenging Citizens United advances, first of its kind in the nation. Hawaii’s legislature is advancing a first-of-its-kind bill that would bar corporations from spending money to influence elections. It takes direct aim at Citizens United by arguing that corporations are “artificial persons” created by the state and therefore only have the powers the state decides to give them. Hawaii’s own attorney general thinks it will get struck down in court, but sixteen years of waiting for Congress to fix this hasn’t worked out either.
Huntington Beach ordered to pay $1M in legal fees for censoring library books. A judge ordered Huntington Beach to pay $960,000 in legal fees after the city restricted children’s access to library books it deemed sexually explicit, a list that included titles like It’s Perfectly Normal and Sex is a Funny Word. A former librarian and plaintiff put it plainly: “It’s incredibly frustrating to know we’re losing another $1 million that could have been solved by just putting 10 books back where they belong.”
