CNN Founder Is Dead, as Paramount Circles

ICE's head has been deporting people to countries he'd never heard of, the FBI is investigating a reporter who wrote about Kash Patel, and Trump wants the DOJ to disappear his $83 million settlement

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

The Justice Department has been drafted to make Trump’s $83 million sexual assault verdict disappear. The FBI is investigating a journalist for reporting that the FBI director drinks too much. The acting head of ICE confessed, in public, on a stage, that he has been sending people to countries he had never heard of. And Ted Turner died this morning at 87, just in time to miss Paramount buying the network he built.

Before we get into it: We don’t have a network that needs White House access to survive. We don’t have a parent company doing quiet deals with the administration. We don’t have advertisers who’d rather you look away. What we have is readers. Right now, that’s the only position in American media that can’t be pressured into silence. A paid subscription to AlterNet America is a direct bet that independent journalism survives this moment. If you haven’t yet, please consider upgrading yours today.

Now let’s go.

Trump Lost to E. Jean Carroll, So He’s Sending In the DOJ

Here is the legal theory the Justice Department would like the Supreme Court to accept: when Donald Trump spent years calling E. Jean Carroll a liar who made up a sexual assault to sell books, he was just doing his job.

The DOJ has asked the Supreme Court to substitute the United States for Trump in his appeal of the $83.3 million defamation verdict, on the grounds that the president was acting as a government employee when he denied Carroll’s allegations.

The logic is elegant in the way that all audacious things are: the federal government can’t be sued for defamation, so if you can convince a court that the president was speaking in his official capacity, the case disappears. Poof.

The appeals court already rejected this argument once, noting that no ordinary defendant would be permitted to substitute the United States in their place fifteen months after a jury ruled against them. But that was before the administration decided to just ask again, higher up.

Carroll has been waiting since 2019. Two juries have agreed that Trump defamed her and sexually abused her. He is now deploying the United States government to disagree.

Ted Turner Is Gone and the Vultures Are Already Circling CNN

Ted Turner, the media maverick who founded CNN, died peacefully Wednesday surrounded by his family. He was 87. His family said he had battled Lewy Body Dementia for years. Turner launched CNN on June 1, 1980, on the theory that people might want to know what was happening in the world at any hour of the day.

He won’t be around to see what happens next. Paramount has been privately discussing the prospect of combining CNN with its CBS News unit, and shareholders have already voted to approve the $111 billion acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery, CNN’s parent company.

Trump himself said last December that “it’s imperative that CNN be sold,” signaling he favored Paramount’s takeover. The CEO doing the buying, David Ellison, reportedly assured Trump administration officials that if he acquired Warner, he would make sweeping changes to CNN.

Ellison has since said, repeatedly, that editorial independence “will absolutely be maintained — it’s maintained at CBS, it’ll be maintained at CNN.” This is the same CBS that quietly delayed a critical “60 Minutes” segment about the Trump administration, and the same Paramount that paid Trump $16 million to settle a lawsuit around the time the FCC approved its last merger.

Ted Turner built the thing on the belief that the news should never stop and never flinch. The people buying it have already shown what they do when the news becomes inconvenient.

Paramount is buying CNN because independent journalism is worth a lot of money to the right people for the wrong reasons. We are not for sale because there is nothing to sell. No parent company, no sovereign wealth funds, no CEO on the phone with the White House. Just readers who keep the lights on. Please consider becoming one today.

ICE Director Has Been Sending People to Countries He’d Never Heard Of

Acting ICE Director Todd Lyons told a crowd at the 2026 Border Security Expo in Phoenix that his agency is “removing people to countries that I didn’t even know existed.” He said this proudly.

He was describing the administration’s third-country deportation program, which has been sending immigrants to African nations they have no connection to. He called it “a huge game changer” in implementing Trump’s mass deportation agenda.

To recap: the man running the agency responsible for determining where human beings are permanently sent did not know, until recently, that some of those destinations were countries. This was said at a conference. To applause.

Lyons, who is set to resign at the end of this month, oversaw a hiring surge of 12,000 new employees and more than 570,000 deportations during his tenure. He will be moving to the private sector, which is presumably located somewhere he has heard of.

Lyons was one of several administration officials at the event. Border czar Tom Homan also addressed the crowd, telling them: “You ain’t seen shit yet.” He was not referring to geography lessons.

The FBI Is Investigating a Reporter For Writing About Kash Patel

Last month, Atlantic journalist Sarah Fitzpatrick published a story reporting that FBI Director Kash Patel had engaged in excessive drinking that was compromising his ability to do his job. It was based on more than two dozen anonymous sources who described multiple instances where his security detail had trouble waking him up after nights of heavy drinking.

The FBI has now launched a criminal leak investigation focused on Fitzpatrick. The so-called insider threat investigation is highly unusual because it did not stem from a disclosure of classified information. Typically, leak investigations involve matters of national security. This one involves whether people told a journalist that their boss drinks too much.

Some FBI agents assigned to the investigation have expressed deep concern. “They know they are not supposed to do this,” one source said. “But if they don’t go forward, they could lose their jobs. You’re damned if you do and damned if you don’t.”

Atlantic editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg responded that this represents “an outrageous, illegal, and dangerous attack on the free press and the First Amendment.” The FBI’s own spokesperson denied the investigation exists, saying Fitzpatrick “is not being investigated at all.”

Two sources say she is. The FBI says she isn’t. The FBI is also currently run by the man whose drinking habits prompted the story. We’ll let you sort that one out.

We Don’t Have a Billionaire and We’d Like to Keep It That Way

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.

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