Good morning. I’m Corinne Straight, and this is AlterNet America.
A Republican delegate stands accused of using Roblox to entice a child. DHS agents served a customs summons on a journalist’s phone company to spy on her. The man who died fleeing federal agents at a Florida gas station was a tourist two days into his beach trip. And the Trump administration will cut off federal student loans for programs that train social workers, barbers, and nail technicians because they don’t earn enough.
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Republican Delegate Accused of Enticing a Child on Roblox
The party of family values has found a new recruiting ground, and it’s a children’s video game.
Elliott Pritt, a Republican member of West Virginia’s House of Delegates, its assistant majority leader, and a public school teacher, has been arrested and charged with a federal count of enticing a minor. According to the criminal complaint, the 36-year-old began messaging one of his students on Roblox while she was in eighth grade.
Roblox is not a niche corner of the internet. It is one of the most popular gaming platforms in the world, with a user base made up almost entirely of children.
The conversations moved to Snapchat. He told her he loved her. He sent her nude photos of himself and asked for explicit images in return. Then, authorities say, he sexually abused her repeatedly, on school grounds.
When the girl’s family came forward, Pritt had already tried to keep her quiet. He warned her that if police got involved, it would be “in the news” and “awful” and that he would “lose my entire life.”
West Virginia House Speaker Roger Hanshaw has called on Pritt to resign and stripped him of all official roles. All that energy spent protecting children from library books and drag queens, and the actual danger was their assistant majority leader.
DOJ Uses Customs Summonses to Spy on Journalists
Customs summonses were designed to verify import duties and catch smugglers. Now they are being used to read a journalist’s phone records.
In January, the government arrested independent journalist Georgia Fort, former CNN anchor Don Lemon, and others for being present at a protest inside Cities Church in St. Paul, Minnesota, whose pastor doubles as the local ICE field office director. Fort is charged with three felonies, including a hate crime.
In a recent filing, Fort, Lemon, and co-defendant Michael Beute objected to a discovery delay and, in doing so, exposed something: the government has been using customs summonses — tools designed to catch smugglers and verify import duties — to pull Fort’s phone records.
HSI Agent Timothy Gerber had already tried to get search warrants for Fort’s devices in February. Magistrate Judge John Docherty refused them. So Gerber switched to customs summonses and, as of late May, had not stopped.
T-Mobile turned over Fort’s subscriber information and toll records under an April 12 summons, records the government has still not produced in discovery.
Today it’s a journalist who covered a protest. Tomorrow it’s anyone who attended one. When the government learns it can go around a judge and still get your phone records, it doesn’t stop at one person. The only reason you know about this at all is because someone read the filing. That’s what AlterNet America does. Subscribe so we can keep doing it.
Man Who Died Fleeing ICE Was a Tourist on Vacation
The administration promised to target the worst of the worst, so it found a 28-year-old on the second day of his beach vacation.
Juan Jairo Coronilla Durán, a Mexican man from Guanajuato, was killed on July 14 after an “encounter” with federal officials at a Florida gas station. He was vacationing in the US on a tourist visa, having arrived only three weeks earlier to see family in Atlanta before heading to the beaches.
Federal officials approached him and three other men that Tuesday morning. All of them ran. Coronilla ran into traffic and was hit by a semi-truck. His death is one of four ICE-related deaths in less than a week. Two people were shot and killed by ICE officers in Texas and Maine. A fourth died in custody during a transfer to a Georgia detention center.
Coronilla’s wife flew to the US to make arrangements. She had not heard from her husband, and found out he was dead by watching the news. She then contacted the immigrant rights group Colectivo Árbol for help.
He leaves behind a seven-year-old son and a seven-month-old daughter.
If Your Degree Doesn’t Pay, Trump Says You Can’t Borrow
The government has decided the value of an education is whatever the IRS says you earn four years later.
A new Education Department rule finalized this month will cut off federal student loans for college programs whose graduates consistently earn low incomes. To keep loans flowing, the median income of graduates must beat the median earnings of a worker with only a high school diploma. In California, that benchmark is about $36,000, roughly full-time minimum wage.
Cosmetology, massage therapy, film, music, drama, and fine arts programs are expected to fail at high rates. So are master’s programs in mental and social health. More than 90% of cosmetology certificate programs are expected to fail, with graduate income typically under $28,000.
About 3% of programs at public and nonprofit schools are expected to fail. At for-profit schools, that figure is 33%.
The rule was delayed a year for tipped occupations so they can be judged under the “No Tax on Tips” policy. The government’s plan to make sure barbers earn enough is to stop taxing the money it can’t confirm they make.
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POSITIVE STORIES YOU MAY HAVE MISSED:
McConnell’s Hometown Newspaper Published a Brutal Pre-Obituary. Louisville Courier Journal columnist Joseph Gerth decided not to wait for Mitch McConnell to die before assessing his legacy, writing on Wednesday that the 84-year-old senator is “every bit the detestable figure” that Richard Nixon was. He hammered McConnell for blocking Merrick Garland in 2016 while claiming an election should decide the seat, then confirming Amy Coney Barrett just eight days before the 2020 election. Gerth said he explicitly wrote the pre-obituary while McConnell is still alive so it wouldn’t draw the “how dare you” response that followed Lindsey Graham’s death.
A House Democrat Called for Hearings on Trump’s Saudi Nuclear Deal. At a House foreign affairs committee hearing on Wednesday, California Democrat Brad Sherman called for oversight of the Trump administration’s newly signed nuclear cooperation agreement with Saudi Arabia, which could enable the kingdom to enrich its own uranium. Sherman compared it to arming the Shah of Iran, warning that “everything the Shah had in 1978 was in the mullahs’ hands in 1979.” He also pointed out the hypocrisy of bombing Iran over enrichment while giving the Saudis a green light without the same inspections.
A Federal Judge Blocked Trump’s Bid to Strip Immigrants’ Work Permits. US District Judge Nathaniel Gorton on Tuesday temporarily blocked the Trump administration from revoking work permits for tens of thousands of asylum seekers and Temporary Protected Status holders, halting a policy set to take effect as early as Wednesday. In his five-page order, Gorton wrote that “the consequences faced by plaintiffs are potentially severe,” and blocked the penalties for not paying a new annual asylum fee while he considers a longer injunction. The ruling means TPS holders from El Salvador, Sudan, and Ukraine can keep working, with a decision expected by August 5.
Virginia Finally Has a Roadmap for Legal Recreational Marijuana Sales. After years of vetoes and compromise negotiations, Virginia’s state budget signed into law this week establishes a regulated cannabis marketplace beginning July 1, 2027. Adults 21 and older will be able to buy up to two ounces per transaction from as many as 350 licensed retailers statewide. The new cannabis law takes effect July 1, 2026, with the Virginia Cannabis Control Authority taking over regulation and tightening rules on intoxicating hemp products like Delta-8 and THCA. Possession has been legal in Virginia since 2021 — the state just spent six years figuring out where anyone was allowed to buy it.
