Good afternoon. I’m Ryan Rose, and this is AlterNet America. Please take a moment to click the ❤️ and restack this post. The oligarchs’ platforms are trying to keep stories like the ones below from hitting your feeds, and this helps us break through.
A New York psychologist has accused Donald Trump of sexually exploiting her as young as eight years old. Trump says he will issue preemptive pardons to protect his staff and allies if Democrats take Congress. Pete Hegseth’s Department of Defense just handed a $400 million contract extension to a weapons firm that admitted to defrauding the government. And Trump may be planning to flee to a friendly dictatorship if he faces prosecution after losing power.
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New York Psychologist Accuses Trump of Sexual Exploitation
A New York clinical psychologist released a video on Sunday publicly accusing Trump of sexually exploiting her beginning when she was about 8 years old. The abuse continued until Portnoff was 12 years old, then stopped for a few years before resuming when she was 16.
“I was one of the child victims of Donald Trump beginning when I was around eight years old,” she said. “Donald Trump very specifically targeted me, repeatedly and in very sexually exploitative ways.”
Portnoff believes she escaped what she described as a pedophile ring, but she alleges that exploitative interactions continued in her adulthood. She claimed Trump invited her to a New York Yankees game on Sept. 11, 2025, and later requested to meet in a private room at the Waldorf Astoria hotel.
Portnoff alleged that someone working on Trump’s behalf had located her home address, cleared her name with the White House, and improperly accessed her sealed court records under the name Jane Doe. “That is criminal,” she said. “It’s corrupt.”
Portnoff took her allegations to a Senate office, and the Senate Judiciary Committee sent the matter on to attorneys general for further investigation. She said the people involved have enough power to make it a national security matter, calling the operation “organized crime.”
Trump to Issue Preemptive Pardons if Democrats Take Congress
Most severance packages come with six months of COBRA, not immunity.
Trump told the New York Post that he would be willing to issue sweeping preemptive pardons to everyone who worked for his administration if Democrats followed through on threats to prosecute them after the midterms. “I would if I needed to. Sure,” he said, pointing to the approximately 1,500 pardons he awarded to January 6 defendants on his first day back in office.
Trump pointed to former President Biden’s pardons of Dr. Anthony Fauci, Gen. Mark Milley, members of the House January 6 committee and several of his own relatives as justification. Biden issued those pardons as he was leaving office to protect people from the incoming administration, while Trump is proposing to pardon members of his own administration for actions taken under his direction.
The Wall Street Journal reported in April that Trump has promised to issue mass pardons to senior officials, telling aides he would pardon everyone who has come within 200 feet of the Oval Office. Some Trump advisers are privately concerned that pardons won’t be enough to protect them because they only apply to federal crimes.
In November 2025, Trump issued preemptive pardons to 77 people connected to the effort to overturn the 2020 election results. An analysis by House Judiciary Committee Democrats found that Trump’s pardons across both presidential terms have erased more than $1.9 billion in court-ordered restitution owed to crime victims and taxpayers.
Hegseth Hands $400M Contract to Weapons Firm That Admitted to Fraud
The rest of us get sent to collections over a hospital bill.
Pete Hegseth’s Department of Defense awarded a contract extension worth up to $394 million to weapons manufacturer RTX’s Raytheon subsidiary a month after Navy officials decided not to suspend the company for defrauding the government. The deal is a two-year no-compete extension to maintain government radar systems. $112.3 million has been obligated.
In 2024, Raytheon acknowledged that it had overcharged the Air Force $11.1 million in 2017 and 2018 for a radar maintenance contract. The company also pleaded guilty to a $100.1 million fraud on a separate Patriot missile contract with the Army.
After the admissions, Raytheon entered into a deferred prosecution agreement and was placed under three years of government supervision. In September of this year, Navy officials decided that suspension or debarment proceedings were not necessary to protect the interests of the government.
The Pentagon also gave Raytheon two large missile contracts this month, including a Navy contract worth up to $24 billion and a Missile Defense Agency contract worth up to $6.3 billion. The deals come as the Trump administration is reportedly drawing up target lists for a post-election military strike on Iran.
Trump May Already Be Plotting an Escape to Friendly Foreign Dictatorships
In case anyone was curious, the last president to flee the country was Jefferson Davis.
Flavio Bolsonaro fled Brazil for Miami after losing the country’s presidential election, with the help of a contact inside the Trump White House who arranged a private jet and a convoy of decoy cars. The escape has fueled growing speculation that Trump himself might attempt to flee the United States to a country such as Russia if he loses power.
Trump still faces multiple felony convictions that could result in prosecution after he is no longer president. He has also maintained close personal ties with Vladimir Putin and other authoritarian leaders who have no extradition agreements with the United States.
Bolsonaro’s escape was carefully orchestrated despite multiple legal constraints that should have prevented him from leaving the country. Brazil’s Supreme Court had suspended his passport on suspicion of money laundering and corruption, but he crossed the border into Argentina and flew out on an Italian passport.
Jamie Rowen, a professor of international law at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, told All Rise News that Trump may have already arranged a way out of the country as well, through a leader like Putin. “They are laying a plan for all of them, no matter what the consequences in their countries are, to flee to other dictatorships that support them,” she said.
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POSITIVE STORIES YOU MAY HAVE MISSED:
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Wisconsin City of 16,000 Beats Back a $1.6B Data Center, Builds a Toolkit for Others. Residents of Menomonie, Wisconsin staged a grassroots campaign that stopped a secretive $1.6 billion data center planned for 320 acres of farmland on the edge of town. The project was proposed by a company called Balloonist LLC, which never disclosed which tech company would run the facility. More than 10,000 people signed up for a Facebook group to oppose the proposal, more than half of the town’s population, and the city council voted unanimously in January to place new regulations on data center development. The organizers released a toolkit for other Wisconsin communities facing similar fights. Their state representative, Republican Clint Moses, has introduced a bill that would prohibit nondisclosure agreements for data center proposals across the state.
Native Tribe Returns to 51 Acres in California After More Than a Century Without Land. The Fernandeño Tataviam Band of Mission Indians has reclaimed a 51-acre parcel along the Pacific Crest Trail above Santa Clarita through a $1.9 million grant from the California Natural Resources Agency. The tribe’s history extends to villages all over the San Fernando, Santa Clarita, and Antelope valleys, but it had lost every acre to the settlers and missionaries who displaced its people by 1900. The return marks the tribe’s second, following a 2024 donation of over 500 acres near Elizabeth Lake by an environmental offset company. Gov. Gavin Newsom’s administration, which formally apologized for the state’s role in what it called a genocide against Indigenous people, has now invested more than $200 million to help California tribes reacquire land, bringing more than 100,000 acres back to tribal stewardship.
Largest Renewable Energy Project in U.S. History Comes Online After 20 Years. This June, the SunZia Wind and Transmission project in central New Mexico began generating electricity, sending power from more than 900 turbines over a 550-mile transmission line to more than one million homes as far away as California. The project generates more electricity than the Hoover Dam, and immediately broke records for wind-generated power in California’s energy supply. Pattern Energy finally secured $11 billion in financing and brought it online after 20 years, five presidential administrations and surviving an ownership change, a major reroute and a standoff with a U.S. military base. By next summer, SunZia will have kept about 9 million metric tons of carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere.
Good news, for a change. ☺️
This will cause problems for the Trumpsters as they can be brought before the Congress or Senate or Grand Jury and be unable to plead the 5th. Their pardon removes that right. They will have to testify. And if they refuse they can be charged with obstruction and if they lie they can be charged with perjury. Fun will ensue