Good morning. I’m Corinne Straight, and this is AlterNet America.
Trump’s DOJ is sending election monitors six states ahead of the midterms. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is accused of committing voter fraud six times. The Pentagon dispensed a record number of erectile dysfunction prescriptions to active-duty troops while banning gender-affirming care for trans service members. And FEMA is threatening to withhold terrorism-prevention funds unless states adopt Trump’s anti-voting rules.
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.
Now, let’s get into it.
Trump’s DOJ Is Sending Election Monitors to Six States
It’s Groundhog Day at the Department of Justice, except nobody’s improving.
The Trump DOJ announced Tuesday it will send federal election monitors to 15 jurisdictions across six states during the 2026 primary season. Civil Rights Division chief Harmeet Dhillon named Arizona, Michigan, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Hampshire, and Virginia in a video posted to social media.
Dhillon framed it as business as usual, noting the department sent monitors to nine jurisdictions in 2022 and 27 in 2024. “This is something that DOJ does routinely,” she said.
What is not routine is what landed the same day. The department sent letters to all 50 states and D.C. warning that election officials could face criminal liability if they knowingly keep noncitizens on voter rolls or let them cast ballots.
That campaign has not gone well in court. The DOJ has lost 11 district court cases and its first appeal in its push to force states to hand over unredacted voter rolls. Not one judge has ordered a state to comply.
At least Bill Murray learned piano.
Ken Paxton Ran on Voter Fraud. Now He’s Accused of Six Counts.
Texas says voting in the wrong county is a 20-year felony, which is awkward for the guy who prosecutes them.
ProPublica reported Tuesday that Republican Attorney General and U.S. Senate candidate Ken Paxton voted in six elections while registered at an address where he does not live, his Collin County home. According to filings from his ex-wife, State Senator Angela Paxton, he has not lived there since their divorce two years ago.
Prior reporting linked Paxton to a home in Denton County. If true, that would make him ineligible to vote in Collin County. In Texas, doing so is a second-degree felony punishable by up to $10,000 and up to 20 years in prison.
The voter rolls show Paxton voted in Collin County in the March Republican primary, and again in May when he became his party’s nominee for the U.S. Senate.
David Becker, a former voting rights lawyer, told ProPublica that a residence “where someone does not live, does not spend the night” would raise red flags in any state. He added that the state’s chief law enforcement officer should be expected to know the residency laws.
Especially since Paxton wrote them down. In February, when he announced a tip line for suspected voter fraud, his office shared guidelines requiring registrants to “provide the address where you reside.”
A paid subscription costs less than one of Ken Paxton’s six fraudulent votes and does a lot more good. Consider upgrading yours today.
The Pentagon Set a Record for ED Pills While Banning Trans Care
The good news is that someone at the Pentagon still believes in gender-affirming care. The bad news is who qualifies.
Newly released Pentagon data, obtained by the New York Post through a Freedom of Information Act request, shows the U.S. military dispensed 108,332 erectile dysfunction prescriptions to active-duty troops in 2025. Across the wider military community, including dependents and veterans, the number was 639,355.
The figures arrived while the military continues to enforce a policy barring clinics and insurance from covering gender-affirming care, including for veterans.
In February, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced the rule banning gender-affirming medical care for trans service members and blocking enlistment for anyone with a “history of gender dysphoria.”
That policy is now being challenged in Doe v. Department of Defense, brought by GLAD Law and the National Center for LGBTQ Rights on behalf of three families who accessed care for their transgender children through the military health system for over a decade.
Six hundred thousand boner pills and the Pentagon drew the line at hormones.
FEMA Is Holding Terrorism-Prevention Money Hostage
The Homeland Security Grant Program is a $1.064 billion terrorism-prevention fund. It pays for cybersecurity, emergency planning, training, equipment, and protections for crowded public spaces.
FEMA is now using it as leverage.
Under the new terms, FEMA will withhold 20% of each recipient’s total award until the state proves compliance with the administration’s election requirements. Meeting a separate 3% election-security spending minimum does not release the holdback. The two conditions, FEMA wrote, “do not offset one another.”
The conditions read like a checklist of Trump’s anti-voting agenda. States must plan to transition away from voting systems that use bar codes or QR codes toward hand-marked paper ballots. They must show a 5% manual post-election audit. They must run everyone in their voter database through the federal SAVE citizenship checker within 120 days.
The SAVE requirement is especially bold given the courts. Last month a federal judge blocked DHS from using SAVE to purge voters. A separate judge blocked much of Trump’s election executive order. None of that stopped the search for new pressure points.
States used to worry about ransomware. Now the ransom is coming from the government.
No Billionaire, No Problem
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.
None of that is happening here, because we don’t have anyone to sell out to. We have readers. If you’ve been reading AlterNet America for free, we’re glad you’re here. But free doesn’t keep the lights on, and the lights need to stay on.
If you’re not yet a paid subscriber, this is the moment. Your subscription isn’t a donation. It’s the thing that makes tomorrow’s newsletter possible. Please consider upgrading to a paid subscription today.
Thanks for reading, and we’ll see you tonight.
POSITIVE STORIES YOU MAY HAVE MISSED:
Judge Blocks DOJ Subpoena of Fulton County Election Workers. The DOJ subpoenaed the names, home addresses, and phone numbers of thousands of Fulton County election workers from 2020. A Trump-appointed judge told them no, noting that the statute of limitations expired years ago, the subpoena was driven by out-of-district prosecutors rather than the grand jury itself, and handing over poll workers’ personal information would discourage people from working future elections. So the DOJ sent the FBI to raid an election facility, reassigned hundreds of analysts to comb through ballots from an election that happened six years ago, then asked a court to hand over contact info for volunteers, and even a judge appointed by the guy who wanted all this said absolutely not.
Judge Rejects Trump Administration’s Bid to Pause Mail Voting Ruling. Trump signed an executive order telling the Postal Service to stop delivering mail ballots unless states hand over their voter rolls to the DOJ. A federal judge blocked it in 23 states. The administration asked her to pause the block. She said no again, noting the order’s own logic doesn’t hold up. It would create a list of confirmed citizens, which is like building a metal detector that only beeps for people who aren’t carrying weapons. Meanwhile, the USPS told the court it doesn’t even have the time or resources to comply, which the judge cheerfully cited as further proof the whole thing is a mess. Legal Groundhog Day continues.
New Jersey Criminalizes Interference With Trans and Reproductive Care. New Jersey lawmakers passed legislation Tuesday creating a new crime of interfering with reproductive healthcare, a category the bill defines to include care for transgender people, and sent it to Gov. Mikie Sherrill for signature. The Assembly approved it 55 to 23 and the Senate 25 to 15, both along party lines. Under the measure, harassing or blocking patients, providers, staff, or volunteers becomes a fourth-degree crime, and anyone who injures someone during the interference faces up to ten years in prison and a $150,000 fine. It also shields providers from extradition to states that criminalize their practice. Trenton council member Jennifer Williams, who is transgender, said she “could not be happier.”
Mamdani Announces NYC’s First-Ever City-Funded Pet Food Pantry. On June 30, the Mamdani administration and the New York City Council agreed on a 2027 fiscal budget that includes a $1.5 million investment in pet services for low-income New Yorkers. Half of that, $750,000, will launch the city’s first-ever pet food pantry pilot program, while the other $750,000 expands existing spay and neuter services with mobile clinics and voucher programs. The pantries will run out of existing community food networks, with eligibility aligned to low-income public assistance guidelines. Council Member Harvey Epstein credited the collaboration with Speaker Menin and Mayor Mamdani for securing the funding across all five boroughs. The affordability agenda, it turns out, does include dogs and cats.
