GOP Governor Nominee Says He Killed a Man at Age 7

A South Korean company fighting Trump's tariffs paid him $2 million, the State Department let $10 million in contraceptives spoil, and Trump cut two Utah monuments by a million acres each

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

The lead investor in a South Korean aluminum company fighting Trump’s Commerce Department paid the president $2 million last year. State Department officials let $10 million worth of taxpayer-funded contraceptives expire in a Belgian warehouse. A preacher who says he first killed a man at age 7 just won Colorado’s Republican gubernatorial primary. And Trump slashed two national monuments in Utah by another million acres each, reopening sacred tribal land to mining.

Before we get to the news, we need your help keeping AlterNet America operational. We are fully reader-supported, editorially independent and not for sale. We don’t have a billionaire backer or a corporate parent. We are 100 percent powered by readers like you, but right now we’re behind on our fundraising goals and need those on the free list to step up and become paying subscribers. If you’ve been opening and reading our newsletters and haven’t yet made the leap, make today the day you change that. Subscribe, chip in, and help us keep building independent media that works exclusively for you.

Korean Company Fighting Trump’s Tariffs Paid Him $2 Million

The nice thing about Trump’s corruption is it brings the whole world together.

The lead investor in a South Korean aluminum company that has challenged U.S. trade penalties made a $2 million payment to Trump’s holding company last year. The payment by the parent firm, Base Group, surfaced for the first time in Trump’s annual financial disclosure released in late June.

The disclosure described it only as a “nonrefundable development fee” tied to a “letter of intent.” The company and the Trump family say it relates to a still-unannounced golf course project.

Base Group has courted the Trump family for nearly a decade, exclusively selling Trump-branded wine in South Korea and hosting Eric Trump at its Seoul headquarters in February. The topic at that gathering, a company executive said, was ways to increase trade between the two countries.

Meanwhile, Base Group’s corporate affiliate, Korea Aluminium, has curbed exports to the United States after the Commerce Department concluded a group of South Korean firms circumvented duties on Chinese-made aluminum. As recently as last month, the agency signaled it was considering raising tariffs on the company further.

In Trump’s defense, it’s hard to keep track of which payments are suspicious when they all are.

DOGE Destroyed $10 Million in Birth Control

Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency found a stockpile of contraceptives in a Belgian warehouse. The products were already paid for by U.S. taxpayers and earmarked for women and girls in Africa.

So naturally, the Trump administration decided to destroy them.

By fall, officials told the press the contraceptives were abortifacients and had been destroyed. Neither of those things was true. Newly disclosed records show an official at the U.S. Embassy in Belgium admitted that “there is no one here that knows definitively what is in the warehouse.”

In an August email, a State Department official circulated a list of what he called “Current Viable Abortifacients” at the warehouse. Nothing on the list is considered an abortifacient by the FDA. He added that “everything else has practically been destroyed,” which turned out to mean nobody stored it properly and it spoiled.

After the New York Times pointed out that none of the products were actually abortifacients and that USAID couldn’t even purchase such substances, official Brendan Hanrahan emailed colleagues asking whether the stockpile could “induce an abortion if taken by a woman once she is already pregnant.” In other words: please, somebody find me a justification after the fact.

None of this came out voluntarily. The Center for Reproductive Rights had to sue the government for ignoring a Freedom of Information Act request. Stories like this only surface because someone fights for them. We’re trying to do the same thing here every day. If you want to keep this work going, become a paid subscriber.

Preacher Who Brags About Killing a Man Wins GOP Primary

If you haven’t heard of Victor Marx yet, buckle up.

The right-wing preacher turned politician was declared the winner of the Republican gubernatorial primary in Colorado on Thursday. Marx has said he first killed a man at age 7, at the insistence of an abusive stepfather, and is not sure how many deaths he has been responsible for since. Reporters have been unable to find evidence of that childhood homicide.

He is the son of a man named Karl Marx (no, not that one), who invented a form of “Cajun karate.” Victor holds a seventh-degree black belt and calls himself a “high-risk humanitarian.” His website once claimed he had saved more than 40,000 women and girls from sex trafficking, a figure he later revised to “more than one and less than a bunch.”

Charlie Kirk wrote the foreword to his 2024 book. His site reportedly sold a $99 guide to spiritual warfare, and he and his wife were involved in what appears to be a multilevel marketing company hawking vitamins. He has now catapulted past party gatekeepers to win a nomination for an important office.

Colorado Republicans are despairing. The GOP had little hope of winning a state this blue, but party members warn Marx at the top of the ticket could sink statehouse and congressional races. This is what happens when you let an algorithm write a political candidate.

Trump Shrinks Two Utah Monuments by a Million Acres Each

The Antiquities Act was signed by Theodore Roosevelt to stop people from looting cultural sites for personal gain, which makes it a strange law for Trump to use to do exactly that.

Trump announced a sweeping reduction to the Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments in Utah, cutting each protected area by an additional one million acres. He framed it at a White House signing event Monday as giving land back to the people.

He has done this before. During his first term he reduced both monuments, and the Biden administration reversed him, citing their spiritual, cultural, and prehistoric legacy. Now he is doing it again.

The land is not empty. Grand Staircase-Escalante holds large coal reserves, and the Bears Ears area has uranium. Proponents of the reductions say the boundaries stretch too far and hinder mining for essential minerals.

Bears Ears is jointly managed under an agreement between tribal nations and federal agencies. Davina Smith-Idjesa, a citizen of the Navajo Nation and co-chair of the Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition, said: “Our connection to this place cannot be erased by the stroke of a pen.”

We can’t count on billionaire-owned networks like Ellison’s CBS, or Jeff Bezos’ Washington Post, or Rupert Murdoch’s Fox to cover these stories honestly without seriously watering them down. We launched AlterNet America as a direct response to MAGA oligarchs buying up major media outlets, turning them into propaganda mills and firing everyone who doesn’t play along. Independent media like AlterNet America is the one thing they can’t buy. But we need support from readers like you to keep the lights on. If you found this newsletter valuable, please take a moment to become a paying subscriber. Your support is what makes all of this possible.

Thanks for reading. We’ll see you tomorrow.

POSITIVE STORIES YOU MAY HAVE MISSED:

Trump Administration Abandons Its Freeze on $10B for Blue States. The Trump administration has rescinded its effort to withhold $10 billion in childcare and social assistance funding from five blue states. The freeze, announced in early January amid a fraud probe into Minnesota’s social services, targeted California, Colorado, Illinois, Minnesota, and New York. It was paused by a federal judge in New York days later. It covered $7.4 billion in TANF cash assistance, nearly $2.4 billion for the Child Care and Development Fund, and roughly $870 million from the Social Services Block Grant. The states sued, calling the move political and unconstitutional, and in a letter last week HHS said they would no longer face the restrictions.

Minnesota’s Lawsuit Finally Pried Loose the Evidence on Three ICE Shootings. After months of the Trump administration refusing to share evidence with state investigators, the feds relented and turned over what prosecutors call the full trove of evidence from the shootings of Renee Good, Alex Pretti, and Julio Cesar Sosa-Celis during Operation Metro Surge. It includes the car Good was driving when ICE agent Jonathan Ross shot and killed her, plus body cam footage and statements from agents across all three cases. The breakthrough followed an unprecedented state lawsuit against DOJ and DHS and a June 3 letter from the state’s Bureau of Criminal Apprehension offering to trade evidence if the feds reciprocated.

ICE Is Temporarily Halting Vehicle Stops After Two Deadly Shootings. ICE has been ordered to temporarily stop conducting vehicle stops following fatal shootings in Texas and Maine. Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin issued the directive after Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, urged him to “cease all non-urgent vehicle stops.” The pause follows Monday’s killing of 26-year-old Joan Sebastian Guerrero, a Colombian national who was not even the target of the operation, in Biddeford, Maine. Officers will now receive new training on vehicle stops, though ICE will still use them for its “most dangerous” targets.

A House Committee Advances a Bill to Make Daylight Saving Time Permanent. The House rules committee approved the Sunshine Protection Act on a 6-4 vote Monday, teeing up a possible full floor vote to end the twice-a-year clock change. Sponsored by Florida Republican Vern Buchanan, the bill would make daylight saving time the permanent standard, and it has bipartisan support, including from Trump and some Democratic co-sponsors. The House energy and commerce committee previously backed it 48-1 in May, and 19 states already have laws that would enact permanent daylight saving time if Congress approves. Sleep medicine specialists argue that permanent standard time is the one that actually fits human circadian rhythms.