BREAKING: Scientists With Nuclear Clearance Are Vanishing or Turning Up Dead

Trump cancelled contracts to Catholic charities amid his feud with the Pope, the SAVE Act is being passed at the state level, and the DHS is paying local police departments to capture immigrants

Good morning. I’m Ryan Rose, and this is AlterNet America.

Ten American scientists with classified nuclear and aerospace clearances have either vanished or turned up dead since 2023. The president canceled a contract to house migrant children in Miami because he’s in a fight with the Pope. States across the country are passing their own SAVE Acts since the law can’t pass federally. And the DHS is paying local police departments performance bonuses for finding immigrants.

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Now, let’s dive in.

Ten Scientists With Nuclear Clearances Are Dead or Missing

Ten American scientists with classified nuclear clearances have vanished or died since 2023, which seems like the kind of thing someone should have brought up sooner.

Those who have died include a retired Air Force major general, multiple NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory scientists, a director at MIT’s Plasma Science and Fusion Center, and a former Los Alamos National Laboratory employee.

The MIT fusion director was shot at his home in Brookline. A Caltech astrophysicist who worked on missile tracking technology was shot on his front porch. A NASA JPL researcher died with no public cause of death given, but it wasn’t old age.

Among the missing: retired Air Force General William “Neil” McCasland, who oversaw a $2.2 billion technology program and appeared in 2016 WikiLeaks emails as an advisor on UFOs. He walked out of his home on February 27 without his phone, glasses, or wearable devices. He has not been seen since.

Also missing: Steven Garcia, a government contractor at the Kansas City National Security Campus — a facility that manufactures more than 80 percent of all non-nuclear components used in the military’s nuclear weapons. He walked out of his home on August 28 carrying a handgun. He has not been seen since either.

When Fox News’ Peter Doocy asked Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt about it at the briefing, she said she hadn’t spoken with the relevant agencies. She did promise to follow up, and noted that if the reports were accurate, the matter would “certainly warrant further examination.”

Ten people with classified nuclear access. Dead or missing. The White House will get back to us. Sleep tight.

Trump Cut Funding for a Children’s Shelter Because He’s in a Fight With the Pope

Trump isn’t backing down from his fight with the Pope. Eighty-one children are about to find out what that means for their housing situation.

The Trump administration has abruptly canceled an $11 million contract with Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Miami amid the president’s escalating feud with Pope Leo XIV. The organization has provided shelter and care to unaccompanied migrant children for more than 60 years.

The Pope has been outspoken against the Iran war and the administration’s treatment of migrants. Trump responded by calling him weak on crime and terrible on foreign policy. The Pope wrote that bombing civilians is not a Christian act. Trump said he had nothing to apologize for.

Miami Archbishop Thomas Wenski said the charity had an unmatched track record and would be forced to shut down within three months without the funding. The shelter houses 81 children and provides foster placement, family reunification, and psychological care for kids who experienced significant trauma before arriving in the U.S.

Those children will now need to be relocated. Finding licensed placements could take months.

To review: the Pope said bombs are bad. Trump said the Pope was wrong. A shelter for traumatized children is now closing. Both of these men claim to be Christians. We’ll let you decide which one is acting like it.

The SAVE Act: Coming to a Red State Near You

Trump’s SAVE America Act is dying in the Senate, which would be a relief if Republican governors weren’t already doing it themselves.

At least five Republican-led states have passed or advanced proof-of-citizenship voter registration laws that will disproportionately burden married women, trans people, and naturalized citizens. Because if you can’t pass the law, just pass fifty smaller versions of it.

Utah’s law takes effect May 6, ahead of its June primaries. South Dakota’s kicks in immediately, ahead of its June primaries. Mississippi’s requires voter rolls to be checked against state and federal databases, and anyone who can’t be confirmed must eventually produce proof of citizenship to vote.

Mississippi has the second-highest share of citizens without valid passports in the nation.

Half of all U.S. citizens don’t have a passport. The voters most likely to struggle with the new documentation requirements overlap heavily with the Republican base: rural voters and older voters.

Noncitizen voting is already illegal. It essentially never happens. Experts have been saying this for decades. The laws are moving anyway, timed to hit right before the midterms, because nothing says “election integrity” like making it harder to vote in an election that’s two months away.

Local Police Are Getting Bonuses for Finding Immigrants

The new DHS secretary told senators he’d like to keep immigration enforcement out of the headlines. He has found a way to do that: outsource it.

A leaked internal ICE ledger shows $257 million has already been paid or promised to 282 law enforcement agencies across the country under a program that authorizes local officers to make immigration arrests during routine patrol.

ICE reimburses agencies for full officer salaries, benefits, and up to 25% overtime. On top of that, agencies receive quarterly performance bonuses based on how many immigrants on ICE’s provided target lists they successfully locate — $1,000 per officer for departments that find 90 to 100 percent of their assigned targets.

For smaller agencies involved, the initial startup payment of $100,000 plus $7,500 per officer exceeded their entire annual budget.

Between 13,800 and 15,800 local officers have already been trained for this work — more than the roughly 12,000 new ICE agents DHS says it’s hired since Trump returned to office. In Vinita, Oklahoma, seven of the town’s 16 police officers are now federally certified immigration enforcement agents.

The Vinita Police Department is, at this point, functionally a regional ICE affiliate that occasionally responds to noise complaints.

This Is What They’re Trying to Defund

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Thanks for reading, and we’ll see you tonight.

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