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 told a rally crowd in Nebraska that Iran can “take out Los Angeles” and “take out San Diego.” An FBI whistleblower alleges the White House pressured the bureau to unconstitutionally investigate anti-ICE protesters. Soldiers wounded in the Iran war say the Pentagon made them arrange their own medical care. And a lawyer who previously pleaded guilty to hacking election websites was hired by the Trump DOJ to monitor voting.
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Trump Says Iran Can “Take Out” Los Angeles and San Diego
He can’t win California, so he’s letting Iran have it.
At a midterm rally in Grand Island, Nebraska on Monday night, Trump told supporters that losing American cities to an Iranian attack would be a “very small price to pay” for the ongoing war in the Middle East. He said Iran can “take out Los Angeles” and “take out San Diego,” and assured the crowd that the conflict will “end very soon.”
The remarks drew immediate bipartisan condemnation from California officials. Governor Gavin Newsom posted on X that Trump is “deranged and dangerous,” and again called for the 25th Amendment to be used to remove him from office.
Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass also responded on X, writing that the president’s statements “are dangerous and could potentially compromise our safety.” Jim Desmond, the Republican congressional nominee in a metro San Diego district and a Navy veteran, said he “served to protect Americans, not write off American cities as an acceptable price of war.”
The White House insisted that Trump was making the case for stopping Iran’s nuclear development, not volunteering American cities. The majority of Americans are neither blind nor deaf.
White House Pressured FBI to Investigate Anti-ICE Protesters
Trump has been warning you about cartels since 2015, which is why he pulled the FBI off their cases to investigate a TikTok.
An FBI whistleblower has filed a formal complaint with the Senate Judiciary Committee alleging the White House pressured the bureau to unconstitutionally investigate anti-ICE protesters. Trump reportedly ordered FBI Director Kash Patel to investigate organizers after seeing a TikTok of people with megaphones warning their neighbors that ICE was nearby.
Former supervisory intelligence analyst Jill Fields says she was explicitly told “the President wants this investigation.” The FBI’s Los Angeles agents were then pulled from active drug cartel cases to provide what one of her supervisors described as “optics” and a way to “make a show for the president.”
When Fields voiced constitutional concerns to a senior bureau official, the official told her she planned to resign. Fields herself resigned after she was removed from three programs she had been leading, which she believes was retaliation.
She wrote in her complaint that the FBI’s actions “created a chilling effect within the workforce” and “signaled to other employees that raising constitutional or legal concerns could carry professional consequences.”
Soldiers Wounded in Trump’s War Left to Fend for Themselves
The party of “support the troops” would like you to know that support does not include medical care.
On March 1, Tehran attacked a makeshift tactical operations center in Kuwait, killing six U.S. service members and wounding more than 30. Nine of the wounded have since told the Associated Press the military never recorded them as combat casualties or admitted them to a hospital.
Army Lt. Col. Arturo Lincón, a veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan, had shrapnel damage to his left vertebral artery that put him at risk of a stroke. He was sent to Army barracks and told to schedule his own outpatient appointments.
Major Stephen Ramsbottom waited more than four months for MRI results after having shrapnel removed from his head. He said the military offered no help navigating the system, leaving him to track down his own records and file his own claims.
Chief Warrant Officer 4 Rodney Bearman, who had shrapnel in his face and legs, was not evacuated out of Kuwait for 10 days. Bearman arrived in Germany to find that, because of a coding error, the military had not listed them as wounded in combat and would not give them treatment.
Other soldiers only learned they had traumatic brain injuries after they returned to the United States.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth called the strike in Kuwait “a squirter” the day after the attack happened. He later complained that media reporting on troops killed was a ploy to make the president look bad.
Convicted Election Hacker Credentialed to Monitor Voting in Arizona
He listed “election hacking” under relevant experience and Trump called it a perfect fit.
The Trump administration hired a man who admitted to hacking election websites to oversee voting in Maricopa County, Arizona. Nonprofit Democracy Forward obtained government records showing David Michael Levin was named as a DOJ election observer for the county’s July primary.
In an email on July 15 to Maricopa County officials, an attorney in the Civil Rights Division called Levin one of the people “helping with our election monitoring effort.” The county certified him as a DOJ observer, allowing him access to polling sites.
Levin was arrested in 2016 by Florida authorities for hacking into the Lee County Supervisor of Elections website, stealing logins, and using them to access restricted areas of the site as an administrator. He pleaded guilty to two misdemeanors and served 20 days in jail.
DOJ lawyer Christopher J. Gardner, who worked with Trump’s attorneys to challenge the results of the 2020 election, was also on the monitoring team. Gardner helped coordinate the group of Georgia Republicans who signed documents falsely claiming to be the state’s legitimate presidential electors.
The DOJ has announced plans to deploy roughly 1,000 election monitors for the November midterms, a force far larger than the Civil Rights Division itself. Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon has not said who will be part of the unprecedented operation, though the Maricopa County records offer some hints.
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POSITIVE STORIES YOU MAY HAVE MISSED:
Democrats Could Flip the Longest-Held Republican Senate Seat in American History. Kansas has not sent a Democrat to the U.S. Senate since 1919, the longest any party has held any Senate seat. That 107-year streak is now at risk, as the war in Iran pushes up diesel and fertilizer prices in a state where agriculture is everything. Adam Hamilton, a Democrat who is a pastor and founded the nation’s largest United Methodist Church, is in a dead heat with Republican incumbent Roger Marshall. A New York Times/Siena poll had Marshall at 47 percent and Hamilton at 46 percent, within the margin of error, while a Wedgewood Polls survey showed Hamilton ahead 50 to 48. The Cook Political Report lists the contest as Lean Republican but says Hamilton is running an “increasingly strong race.”
California Passes New Laws to Build Affordable Student Housing. Governor Gavin Newsom signed a package of four laws aimed at accelerating the construction of student housing and lowering costs for developers. The highlight is the Student and Faculty Housing Opportunity Act, which excludes student housing projects at public colleges and universities from the California Environmental Quality Act. Other measures in the package provide incentives for developers to build affordable housing, exempt student housing from local ordinances and allow courts to require bond money from plaintiffs who bring lawsuits designed to block construction. Newsom also signed another law that gives priority for on-campus housing to students who are former foster youth or unhoused, and allows them to defer payments until their financial aid arrives.
A Woman Who Was Sent to Prison After a Miscarriage Has Won $1.6 Million. Patience Rousseau, 34, was living in Winnemucca, Nevada, in 2018, when she miscarried. She was convicted of violating a state law passed in 1911 that makes it a felony to take drugs to end a pregnancy after the 24th week, and served more than two years in prison before her conviction was overturned on the grounds of ineffective assistance of counsel. Her lawyers said prosecutors could not prove Rousseau’s drug use caused the miscarriage, pointing to testimony from the county’s own medical examiner that the cause of death could not be determined. Humboldt County has now paid $1.6 million to settle her civil claims, with Rousseau receiving about $1.2 million of the settlement. The ashes of her infant’s remains, which had been taken by one of the officers who arrested her, were returned as part of the settlement terms.
NYC Is Stepping In to Provide Gender-Affirming Care After Hospitals Caved to Trump. The Department of Health in New York City plans to allocate $8.9 million to healthcare nonprofits that offer gender-affirming care for patients under 18, according to a city record published October 6. The funding comes in response to major hospital systems shutting down their transgender youth programs in the last year under pressure from the Trump administration. Trump’s Justice Department subpoenaed 20 hospitals across the country for providing gender-affirming care. Systems like Mount Sinai, NYU Langone and New York Presbyterian all folded. The city’s three-year contract would start in February 2027 and pay for services including puberty blockers and hormone replacement therapy.
