Good morning. I’m Corrine Straight, and this is AlterNet America.
The DOJ is sitting on Epstein files tied to Trump’s 13-year-old accuser. The FBI’s fired agents are fighting back in court. RFK Jr. has managed to make rabies testing optional. And Trump, speaking at an Easter lunch, explained that daycare is for quitters – we’re a war country now.
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Now, let’s dive in.
The DOJ Is Still Hiding the Epstein Files About Trump’s 13-Year-Old Accuser
The Trump administration spent considerable energy promising to release the Epstein files. It released 3.5 million of them. And yet, about 30 pages of documents linked to allegations that Trump sexually assaulted a 13-year-old girl remain missing from the public release.
The allegations involve a South Carolina woman who claims she was abused and trafficked by Epstein. She said that Epstein took her to New York or New Jersey and introduced her to Trump when she was about 13 in 1984. The FBI interviewed her four times in 2019.
The DOJ’s official position is that there are no missing pages, and the skipped serial numbers are just “duplicative notes.” The public will not be allowed to confirm the DOJ’s claim that the information is duplicative. You’ll just have to trust them.
Meanwhile, an investigation from The Post and Courier and NPR corroborated several verifiable details from the woman’s FBI interviews. This included her mother’s criminal record for embezzlement and a chance encounter she described at a Rick James concert in Savannah, Georgia.
None of these verified details relate directly to her accusations about Trump, but they do suggest she was telling the truth. And while no charges have ever been filed, the evidence that could shed more light remains, conveniently, unseen.
Trump: There’s No Money for Daycare Because We Have to Fight Wars
Trump hosted an Easter lunch at the White House on Wednesday and used the occasion to outline, in unusually plain terms, which Americans the federal government intends to help.
Spoiler: it is not the ones with children, medical needs, or limited financial resources.
“I said to Russell Vought, ‘Don’t send any money for daycare because the United States can’t take care of daycare,’” Trump told guests. “We’re a big country. We have 50 states. We have all these other people. We’re fighting wars. We can’t take care of daycare. You’ve got to let a state take care of daycare, and they should pay for it, too. They should pay. They’ll have to raise their taxes.”
He did not stop at daycare. Trump added that it is also “not possible” for the federal government to manage Medicaid or Medicare. He added that the country’s one essential job is military protection.
The first six days of fighting alone cost $11.3 billion, with the tab estimated at $18 billion by mid-March and climbing. Congressional Republicans are now considering cutting federal health spending to fund a Pentagon request of as much as $200 billion for the ongoing Iran war.
To put that in perspective: the U.S. spends roughly $200 per year per child on federal child care support. Norway spends nearly $30,000 per child annually. More than 70 countries offer some form of universal health care.
We are, apparently, not those countries. We are a country that fights wars.
RFK Jr. Cancels Rabies Testing. Yes, Really.
You’ve heard about measles outbreaks, now get ready for this next story: the United States has paused federal testing for rabies.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced Wednesday that it had suspended diagnostic testing for a range of viruses, including rabies and a group of pox viruses that encompasses smallpox and mpox.
Mass layoffs, hiring freezes, and resignations driven by Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s agenda have shrunk the number of qualified scientists who can assist state labs. By July, the rabies team will be down to just one person with the clinical expertise to advise state and local officials, and the pox virus team will have none.
One person. For rabies. In a country of 340 million people and an unknowable number of bats.
Kennedy has almost single-handedly transformed HHS over the last year. He replaced independent medical experts on the CDC’s vaccine advisory panel with vaccine skeptics, and overhauled the child vaccination schedule without notifying his own staffers.
The CDC is calling the pause “temporary” and “a routine review.” Routine, in the same sense that a house fire is a routine opportunity to redecorate.
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FBI Agents Fired For Investigating Trump Sue to Get Their Jobs Back
Kash Patel said he was “cleaning up a diseased temple.” Apparently the disease was “doing your job.”
Three FBI agents have filed a lawsuit after they were fired in what they say were acts of political retaliation. Michelle Ball, Jamie Garman, and Blaire Toleman each served on a public corruption squad that investigated Trump’s efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss. They were fired last fall, despite what the lawsuit describes as years of “exemplary and unblemished” service.
The suit includes a proposed class action on behalf of all FBI employees already fired, or who could be fired in the future. The three agents are seeking to include more than 50 FBI employees terminated since Trump took office.
The lawsuit names Kash Patel and Pam Bondi as defendants and points out something that might generously be called a conflict of interest: Patel was subpoenaed to appear before a federal grand jury investigating Trump’s retention of classified documents, while Bondi was part of the legal team that represented Trump at his first impeachment trial.
The firings have been sweeping. Some agents lost their jobs for working on the election or classified documents cases. Others were fired for refusing to fire their own subordinates without evidence of misconduct. More were fired for kneeling during 2020 racial justice protests. An agent in training claimed he was fired for hanging a pride flag at his workplace.
So to summarize the new FBI hiring criteria: don’t investigate Trump, don’t kneel, don’t have a flag, and don’t refuse an illegal order. Other than that, totally merit-based.
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Thanks for reading, and we’ll see you tonight.
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