Epstein Survivors Bash Trump's DOJ in Powerful Hearing
Trump wants Venezuela to be the 51st state, a man suing the DHS for two wrongful detentions was arrested a third time, and Louisiana is moving Confederate monuments from storage to state parks
Good afternoon. I’m Ryan Rose, and this is AlterNet America.
Trump wants Venezuela to be the 51st state. Epstein survivors are testifying publicly for the first time. An Alabama construction worker suing ICE after he was wrongfully detained twice has been arrested for a third time. And Louisiana wants to take its Confederate monuments out of storage and put them back on display at state parks.
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Let’s dive in.
Trump Floats Making Venezuela the 51st State
The president of the United States picked up the phone and called a Fox News anchor to pitch his latest idea: making Venezuela a U.S. state.
Fox News co-anchor and White House correspondent John Roberts revealed that Trump told him directly, over the phone, that he is “seriously considering a move to make Venezuela the 51st state.” Venezuela’s acting president, Delcy Rodríguez, responded by saying her country has no plans to join the U.S.
Rodríguez became Venezuela’s leader after U.S. forces captured Nicolás Maduro in January. So the nation we invaded, whose president we arrested and flew to Brooklyn in handcuffs, and whose oil industry we are now actively trying to carve up has politely declined statehood.
The main draw for Trump appears to be Venezuela’s oil reserves, which he estimates at around $40 trillion. This is the entire foreign policy theory of the second Trump administration expressed in one sentence.
It’s not the first time Trump has floated annexing a country. He’s repeatedly threatened to take control of Canada, Greenland, and Cuba. The man is running out of continents to proposition. Antarctica, consider this your warning.
Epstein Survivors Are Testifying Publicly for the First Time
Jeffrey Epstein has been dead for seven years. Today, his survivors finally got to speak.
A nearly three-hour hearing was held today in Palm Beach, Florida, organized by Democrats on the House Oversight Committee. It focused on how the current administration’s actions have hindered the quest for justice.
The women were asked what they would say to former Attorney General Pam Bondi, who earlier this year sat in a congressional hearing room with survivors present and could not turn around to face them.
Jena-Lisa Jones had an answer: “You’re a woman. You’re a mother. And you look at us — couldn’t even look at the survivors. So what’s your part in this?” Dani Bensky wanted to know about Ghislaine Maxwell’s recent prison transfer: “What was the process — and we would ask the same of Todd Blanche — what was the process for moving Ghislaine Maxwell?”
Rep. Krishnamoorthi used the hearing to reveal that the Senate Finance Committee has found Epstein made wire transfers totaling $1.5 billion detailed in Suspicious Activity Reports that include the names of women and girls he may have trafficked, as well as the names of potential clients. Those reports have not been released by the Treasury Department.
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U.S. Citizen Suing ICE for Wrongful Detentions Is Arrested Again
There is a class-action lawsuit currently working its way through federal court in Alabama. The lead plaintiff is Leo García Venegas, a construction worker and U.S. citizen who is suing the Department of Homeland Security for arresting him twice without cause.
While that lawsuit was pending, ICE arrested him a third time.
Venegas was detained twice in 2025 during raids on private construction sites where he was working, even though he had a REAL ID identifying him as a U.S. citizen. Each time, he told officers he was a citizen. Each time, they didn’t care. He filed suit.
Less than two weeks ago, Venegas was parking in front of his own house in Silverhill when an unmarked SUV blocked him in. Before he could hand his REAL ID to the two ICE officers who approached him, they pulled him out of the truck, tackled him to the ground, and shackled him around both his arms and legs.
The officers showed no interest in looking at his ID. They held him for roughly 15 minutes before their own technology confirmed what the card in his hand already said.
Leo García Venegas is a U.S. citizen, has been a U.S. citizen all three times ICE arrested him, and will presumably still be a U.S. citizen when they show up again.
Louisiana Is Moving Confederate Monuments From Storage to State Parks
In 2017, New Orleans made international news when it removed four Confederate monuments in the middle of the night, under heavy security, with workers wearing body armor and face coverings because of credible threats. It was not a casual weekend project. It was a statement.
Nine years later, three of those four monuments are still sitting in city-owned storage. And Louisiana lawmakers want to move them to state parks.
A bill moving through the Louisiana legislature would transfer any “historical statue or monument” owned by a government and removed from public display on or after August 1, 2006, to the Office of State Parks. The parks would be required to provide signs with “accurate historical context,” including why each monument was both erected and removed.
The legislation is written broadly and technically covers all removed monuments, but Lt. Gov. Billy Nungesser said plainly in an interview that it was designed to deal with Confederate monuments taken down in New Orleans in 2017.
It passed the Louisiana House 78-14, without any representative speaking against it on the floor.
Historians studying similar questions have pointed to Germany as a model: concentration camps preserved as museums, with detailed context about the horrors that occurred there, and not a Hitler statue in sight. Louisiana is considering a different approach: move the statues to a nicer location, add a sign, and call it history.
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