Is Pete Hegseth Replacing Generals With His Wife?
SCOTUS temporarily rescued abortion pill access, ICE is using pepper balls and physical force against detainees, and the EPA is no longer trusting its own chemical regulations
Good afternoon. I’m Ryan Rose, and this is AlterNet America.
Pete Hegseth has been bringing his wife to Pentagon meetings after firing several top officials. The Supreme Court temporarily rescued abortion pill access. Internal records show ICE guards are increasingly using pepper balls and force against detainees. And the EPA just declared that its own chemical regulations can’t be trusted — a position that happens to benefit the companies its new deputy administrator used to defend in court.
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Now, let’s dive in.
Pete Hegseth Fired His Generals Then Brought His Wife to Work
Pete Hegseth has spent a year purging the Pentagon of anyone who might push back on him, and the person he has chosen to fill that void is his wife.
With the professionals gone, Jennifer Rauchet, Hegseth’s third wife, has been spotted at multiple Pentagon meetings in recent months, surprising staff who say she holds no official title, no confirmed security clearance, and no accountability to Congress.
Hegseth has overseen an unprecedented wave of leadership removals. Since early 2025, at least 24 generals and senior commanders have been dismissed or forced into retirement without publicly disclosed performance reasons.
About 60 percent of those forced out have been Black or female. One recently removed leader was Army Chief of Staff Gen. Randy George, reportedly axed for refusing to obey Hegseth’s instruction to strike four officers from a list of prospective promotions.
Hegseth has also expressed fear and paranoia about Trump firing him. Given everything described above, he’s not wrong to worry.
The Supreme Court Restored Abortion Pill Access
Abortion medication by mail is legal again. At least, until Thursday.
The Supreme Court temporarily restored access to the abortion pill mifepristone, blocking a ruling that had threatened to restrict one of the main ways abortions are provided across the country. The order allows people seeking abortions to obtain the pill through pharmacies or by mail without an in-person visit to a doctor.
Louisiana had sued the Food and Drug Administration over its 2023 decision to lift a rule requiring mifepristone be administered in person. Since the Supreme Court’s 2022 ruling overturning Roe v. Wade, prescriptions by mail have become a major way that abortions are provided including to states where bans are in place.
Medication abortions accounted for more than 60% of abortions in the U.S. in 2023. Louisiana’s argument is that a federal drug safety decision is invalid because it allowed women in their state to make choices their state has banned.
The 5th Circuit agreed. The Supreme Court just said: not yet.
The administrative stay will continue until at least 5 p.m. ET May 11, but could be extended after that. Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill responded by saying the legal fight is not over. There is no indication she intends to stop. There is every indication she has more courts willing to listen.
ICE Guards Are Using Pepper Balls on People Asking for Water
It turns out that when you lock up record numbers of people in overcrowded facilities and eliminate the offices responsible for oversight, the guards start hitting people more. Who could’ve guessed.
The Washington Post has reviewed hundreds of internal ICE emails, dating from January 2024 to February 2026, summarizing every incident in which staff members used physical force against detainees at 98 detention facilities.
What they found: During the first year of Trump’s second term, detention staff used force 37 percent more times than the previous year. The number of people subjected to force jumped 54 percent, as guards increasingly stopped targeting individuals and started targeting crowds.
One of those crowds was eating lunch. Pedro Cantú Ríos was in the communal room when some detainees complained to a guard about needing their belongings. Guards arrived, pulled out gun-like weapons, and fired plastic spheres into the room that burst into clouds of chemical dust. Cantú Ríos has a lung condition. He stumbled to his cell and put a towel over his face.
The records were obtained from a government employee who shared them on the condition of anonymity, as the two oversight offices that might have caught any of this were shut down last year. The administration said they added bureaucratic hurdles. They did. The hurdle was accountability.
The EPA Just Decided Its Own Chemical Safety Rules Can’t Be Trusted
For four decades, a program inside the EPA called IRIS has done the unglamorous work of figuring out how much of a given chemical will hurt you. Its findings underpin regulations covering everything from arsenic in drinking water to lead in soil.
Now, the Trump administration is suggesting that their library of over 500 chemical assessments can’t be trusted, opening the door to weakening hundreds of efforts to protect people from harmful chemicals at the state and federal level.
In an internal memo obtained by ProPublica, deputy administrator David Fotouhi sharply criticized IRIS and directed EPA offices that have used any of the chemical assessments the program has produced to review them. He also advised “external entities” to consider undertaking similar reviews.
Before Trump appointed him as the second highest official at the EPA, Fotouhi worked as a lawyer for companies accused of causing toxic pollution. His memo specifically called out ethylene oxide, a chemical used to sterilize medical equipment. The same chemical is used by Medline, which he used to represent.
The EPA says he has complied with all ethics obligations. The EPA also says science is at the heart of the agency’s work. The EPA is currently run by people who used to get paid to argue that science was wrong.
Nobody Owns This Newsletter But You
Sit with these stories for a moment.The Pentagon is now partially managed by a Fox News producer with no security clearance. The EPA is being run by a man who used to sue the EPA on behalf of polluters. ICE guards are gassing detainees who asked for better food.
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