Good morning. I’m Corinne Straight, and this is AlterNet America.
The president’s sons are running a financial empire out of the White House’s front yard. Two members of Congress are leaving in disgrace in a rare moment of bipartisan awfulness. Nearly 100 people were arrested on the streets of Manhattan for asking Democratic senators to stop funding genocide. And at “Alligator Alcatraz,” guards allegedly cut off the phones before abusing detainees.
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Let’s dive in.
The Trump Sons Are Making Millions Off Their Father’s Government
It turns out having a father who controls the Pentagon, the SEC, and American foreign policy is quite good for business.
Eric Trump and his brother Donald Jr. recently took ownership stakes in an armed drone company that is now seeking Pentagon contracts. The deal happened around the same moment the U.S. military engaged in a war in the Middle East.
The war those drones are designed for.
The two have also collected billions through cryptocurrency ventures. This includes a company called World Liberty Financial, which raised $2 billion selling governance tokens last year. This sent hundreds of millions flowing directly back to the family.
A separate bitcoin mining company, American Bitcoin, went public last fall and briefly gave Eric and Don Jr. roughly a billion dollars in paper wealth — right after their father announced a national bitcoin reserve that sent prices soaring.
The Trump Organization, which did zero international deals during Trump’s first term, has now completed eight overseas deals in the past year alone. Three of those involve Saudi Arabia, including a collaboration with a company owned by the Saudi sovereign wealth fund
Forbes estimates Trump’s net worth is now $6.3 billion, soaring 60% from before he returned to office. Harry Truman left the White House so broke he had to take out a bank loan. Different time.
In a Rare Moment of Bipartisanship, Congress Loses Two Members to Sexual Misconduct
As of Monday evening, the House had lost one Democrat and one Republican to sexual misconduct allegations. It’s the most unified Congress has been in years.
Rep. Eric Swalwell, a former Democratic frontrunner in the California gubernatorial race, resigned from Congress on Monday amid sexual misconduct allegations. The San Francisco Chronicle reported that a former congressional aide alleged a series of sexual encounters while he was her boss, including two occasions when she was too intoxicated to give consent.
CNN also reported that three additional women alleged various forms of sexual misconduct, including unsolicited explicit messages and nude photos. Swalwell denied the most serious allegations while acknowledging “mistakes in judgment.”
His announcement came just hours after Republican Rep. Tony Gonzales of Texas said he will retire from Congress amid bipartisan calls to expel him. Gonzales had already said he would not seek reelection after admitting to an affair with a staff member who later died by suicide.
A second former staffer also reportedly accused Gonzales of sending repeated sexually explicit messages and pressuring her for nude photos during his 2020 campaign.
Both men got to decide when, how, and in what language they left. The women in this story made no such choices.
Nearly 100 People Arrested for Asking Democrats to Stop Funding Genocide
Over 300 New Yorkers tried to visit their senators on Monday. Their senators were not accepting visitors. The police were.
Nearly 100 protesters were arrested during a demonstration Monday evening that called on Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer and Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand to block the sale of U.S. bombs to Israel.
Led by the antiwar group Jewish Voice for Peace, the crowd initially attempted to stage a sit-in inside the Manhattan offices of the two lawmakers. After they were blocked by security from entering the building, they stopped traffic outside, chanting “fund people, not bombs.”
Among those taken into custody were whistleblower Chelsea Manning, New York City Council Member Alexa Avilés, and Barbie actor Hari Nef.
The demonstration focused on a set of resolutions introduced by Sen. Bernie Sanders that could block the sale of more than $600 million in bombs to Israel. Similar measures previously introduced by Sanders have failed, but the most recent effort drew support from more than half of Senate Democrats. Schumer and Gillibrand were not among them.
Inquiries to Schumer and Gillibrand were not immediately returned, which is its own kind of answer.
The Phones Went Off at Alligator Alcatraz. Then the Guards Came In.
Attorneys representing immigrants held at the “Alligator Alcatraz” detention site alleged in federal court that guards beat and pepper-sprayed detainees after a protest over lost phone access.
Lawyers with the ACLU and civil rights groups said in a recent court filing that officers entered a unit and physically assaulted detainees. One man was thrown to the ground and “severely beat,” according to his attorney, who submitted photographs to the court showing her client with a black eye.
Officers also allegedly broke another detainee’s wrist and pepper-sprayed everyone in the cages. Each holds about 32 men. A detained older gentleman passed out, as he could not breathe.
Detainees were so afraid guards would come back to beat them, they barricaded the door, eventually allowing staff in to render medical care to the injured men. The phones were eventually turned back on after detainees allowed guards back in.
Staff never provided an explanation for why the phones had been cut off in the first place.
The contractor responsible for guards at the time of the alleged beatings, Critical Response Strategies, did not respond to requests for comment. The name “Critical Response Strategies” is doing a lot of work for an organization that allegedly pepper-sprayed a senior citizen.
We’re not going to pretend this news cycle is normal, because it isn’t. And we’re not going to tell you that it’s historically unprecedented, because we know you’re tired of hearing that too.
What we will say is this: something is being normalized right now that shouldn’t be.
Independent journalism exists to push back against that. That’s what we’re trying to do here. We don’t have a billionaire owner making quiet arrangements with the people we cover. We don’t have advertisers who’d prefer you look away from certain stories.
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We’ll see you tonight. Thanks for reading.
POSITIVE STORIES YOU MAY HAVE MISSED:
Trump media company drops lawsuit against the Guardian. Trump Media quietly dropped its defamation lawsuit against The Guardian just days before a scheduled hearing. The suit, which accused The Guardian of defamation for reporting that federal prosecutors had examined payments to Trump’s media company for possible money laundering, collapsed after the court found no evidence of actual malice. That’s legal shorthand for “you have to prove they were lying, not just that you didn’t like what they wrote.”
‘Spineless’: House Republican Pelted With Boos, Rage At Chaotic Town Hall. Rep. Mike Lawler of New York held a town hall in Mahopac to defend his support for Trump’s Iran war, and it went about as well as you’d expect. One constituent was escorted out after calling Trump “an incompetent psychopath” and the GOP “spineless” to loud cheers. Lawler then scolded the crowd by saying that the high school students who normally use the auditorium behave better than they do. That is a sentence a sitting congressman said out loud to his own voters.
Taco chain hit with boycott as MAGA CEO’s Trump posts emerge. Roberto’s Taco Shop, the California chain credited with inventing the California burrito with over 80 locations across, is facing a boycott after pro-Trump Facebook posts made by CEO Reynaldo Robledo surfaced. These include a 2020 appearance at a “Latinos for Trump” roundtable where he told the president “we love the work you’re doing.” The company responded that each of its 49 franchisees operates independently. Meanwhile, Robledo’s name is literally on the building.
EV prices drop again as the gap with gas cars hits a record low. The average transaction price for a new EV in March was $54,508, down 2.8% year over year and the third straight month of declines. The price gap between electric and gas vehicles has narrowed to about $5,800, the smallest gap ever recorded. Unfortunate timing for the administration, given that the war it started in Iran is making the thing EVs replace significantly more expensive.
