Good morning. I’m Corrine Straight, and this is AlterNet America.
The Pentagon burned through half its missile stockpile in seven weeks. The Justice Department indicted the Southern Poverty Law Center for paying informants to infiltrate hate groups, the same thing the FBI does. A federal appeals court ruled Texas can hang the Ten Commandments in every public school classroom. And Virginia voters gave Democrats up to four new House seats by doing unto Republicans exactly what Republicans have been doing to everyone else.
Before we jump in: AlterNet America doesn’t have a billionaire owner. No corporate parent. No ad relationships with the people we cover. No broadcast license sitting on a shelf waiting to be yanked. We have readers and subscribers, and that’s it. When you pay for this newsletter, you’re paying for the only business model in American media that doesn’t come with strings. If you’ve been reading for free, please consider upgrading your subscription today. It matters.
Now, let’s go.
The Pentagon Is Almost Out of Missiles. Yes, Really.
Trump has been telling anyone who will listen that the U.S. has a “virtually unlimited” supply of missiles and could strike Iran “forever.” He has also been requesting emergency funding to replace the missiles, which is not something you do when you have a virtually unlimited supply of missiles.
A new analysis from the Center for Strategic and International Studies found that in seven weeks of war, the U.S. has expended at least 45 percent of its Precision Strike Missile stockpile, at least half of its THAAD missiles, and nearly half of its Patriot air defense interceptors. It may take three to five years to fully replenish those stockpiles to pre-war levels.
Before the war began, Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Dan Caine and other military leaders warned Trump that a protracted campaign could impact U.S. weapons stockpiles, particularly those going to Israel and Ukraine. Trump launched the war anyway.
The remaining stockpiles are likely sufficient to resume operations against Iran if peace talks collapse, but may not be enough to confront another major adversary.
The Pentagon responded to this analysis by saying the military “has everything it needs to execute at the time and place of the President’s choosing.” The President’s choosing has so far involved spending roughly half the arsenal in under two months, so that’s a fun baseline.
The Rioters Got Pardons. The Group That Tracked Them Got Indicted.
The Southern Poverty Law Center, which has tracked hate groups and domestic extremism since 1971, was indicted on federal fraud charges. The announcement was made by acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, who you may remember from his previous role as Donald Trump’s personal defense attorney.
The Justice Department announced an 11-count fraud indictment accusing the SPLC of secretly funding leaders and organizers of hate groups as part of a paid informant program. Important context: the program was used to monitor threats of violence, and the information was shared with local and federal law enforcement.
The SPLC’s program worked the way FBI informant programs work: pay someone inside a hate group to tell you what the hate group is doing. One informant was paid more than $1 million while affiliated with the neo-Nazi National Alliance. Another was embedded in the leadership chat that planned the 2017 “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville.
The DOJ’s position is that this is fraud. The FBI’s position, when it does the same thing, is that it’s law enforcement.
It’s not immediately clear why the DOJ charged the organization rather than specific individuals from leadership. What is clear, is that the same Justice Department that has investigated media, nonprofits, and universities that have crossed the administration has now indicted a group Kash Patel had already declared a “partisan smear machine” before anyone convened a grand jury.
The SPLC says the program saved lives by preventing violence before it happened. It plans to vigorously defend itself. The acting attorney general said the indictment is not politically motivated. The acting attorney general was Donald Trump’s personal lawyer eight months ago.
Texas Kids Will Learn the Ten Commandments Whether Their Parents Like It or Not
The Ten Commandments are going up in every Texas public school classroom, including the science ones.
The 5th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Tuesday that Texas can require the Ten Commandments to be displayed in public school classrooms, reversing a lower court that had blocked the law. The ruling was 9-8.
The families who sued — a multifaith group including Jewish, Muslim, and nonreligious parents — argued that the law subjects children to a state-imposed Protestant version of the Ten Commandments that many Texans do not recognize. Children legally required to attend school also have virtually no way of avoiding it.
The court’s majority said the law “does not tell churches or synagogues or mosques what to believe or how to worship.” It also doesn’t tell calculus classrooms what the Ten Commandments have to do with calculus.
The same point was actually made when a federal judge in Arkansas blocked a nearly identical law last year, writing that nothing could justify hanging the Ten Commandments in “a calculus, chemistry, French, or woodworking class.”
Arkansas and Louisiana have passed similar laws. Alabama’s governor signed one earlier this month. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled public school displays of the Ten Commandments unconstitutional in 1980. The plan, apparently, is to keep asking until they change their minds.
Virginia Just Voted to Take Four House Seats Away From Republicans
Republicans spent a year gerrymandering their way to a House majority. Virginia spent one Tuesday taking it apart. Last night, voters approved a Democratic redistricting plan that could allow the party to pick up as many as four new House seats in the midterm elections.
Here is how this happened: Trump encouraged Republican-led state legislatures to redraw their congressional maps mid-decade to lock in more GOP seats before November. Texas did it. Missouri did it. North Carolina did it. Democrats decided the correct response was to do it back.
The new Virginia map gives Democrats an electoral advantage in 10 of the state’s 11 House districts. Democrats currently hold six. California voters earlier approved a similar plan that created five seats favorable to Democrats, roughly offsetting Republican gains in Texas.
Virginia’s result wipes out the remaining Republican edge from Missouri and North Carolina.
Virginia Democratic state House Speaker Don Scott said the result “changed the trajectory of the 2026 midterms.” Republicans called the map a “severe partisan gerrymander.” This is true. It is also a description that applies to every map the GOP has drawn in the last twelve months.
The Billionaires Bought the Media. We Slipped Through.
The people who own the rest of American media have figured out how to make the news work for them. Advertisers get favorable coverage. Regulators get quiet. Critics get less airtime. It’s not a conspiracy. It’s just a business model, and business models have consequences.
We don’t have that business model. We have subscriptions, and subscriptions mean the only people with any say over what we cover are the ones who showed up to read it.
If you’re already a paid subscriber, this newsletter exists because of you, and we mean that. If you’ve been reading for free, we’re grateful, and we’re asking you to go paid. Please consider upgrading your subscription today. It matters.
Thanks for reading, and we’ll see you tonight.
POSITIVE STORIES YOU MAY HAVE MISSED:
Judge dismisses Kash Patel’s defamation lawsuit over claim he frequented ‘nightclubs.’ A federal judge dismissed Kash Patel’s defamation lawsuit against a former FBI official who said Patel had “been visible at nightclubs far more than he has been on the seventh floor of” FBI headquarters, ruling the statement was “rhetorical hyperbole that cannot constitute defamation.” Patel’s had argued that he had “not spent a single minute inside of a nightclub” since becoming FBI director, which the judge found unpersuasive, and the rest of us found extremely funny.
Cuban Americans are splitting off from Trump, poll shows. A new poll found that 68% of Cuban Americans strongly or somewhat disapprove of the Trump administration’s deportations of undocumented Cubans without criminal records, a notable split from communities that voted most enthusiastically for him in November. Cuban Americans voted for Trump in historic numbers. It turns out they meant deport the other people.
Teacher suspended for supporting trans athlete gets reinstated after allies fight back. A Michigan school district’s athletic director was placed on leave in December after he publicly expressed empathy for a transgender student athlete under a Title IX investigation, saying his “heart goes out” to any teenager facing public scrutiny like that. An independent investigation found all claims against the district were unsubstantiated, and he was reinstated this week.
Clean energy generation exceeded rise in global electricity demand in 2025. For the first time in history, clean energy met all global electricity demand growth in 2025, with renewables overtaking coal as the world’s largest source of electricity. Solar alone, which now generates as much electricity as the entire European Union consumes, accounted for 75 percent of demand growth, with solar and wind together covering 99 percent, effectively holding fossil fuel generation flat.
