Good morning. I’m Corinne Straight, and this is AlterNet America.
The UFC will pay fighters at Sunday’s White House event in a cryptocurrency issued by the Trump family business. The FBI director has filed at least six defamation lawsuits against news organizations in seven years. A Haitian asylum seeker’s hypothermia death in a Pittsburgh bus shelter has been ruled a homicide. And several women at a Turning Point USA summit said they’d happily surrender their right to vote so their husbands could vote for them.
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Now, let’s go.
The UFC Paid Fighters in the President’s Own Crypto
The president paid cage fighters in his own cryptocurrency this weekend, which is either the most American thing that has ever happened or the least.
The Ultimate Fighting Championship announced that it will pay bonuses to fighters at Sunday’s White House mixed martial arts event in a cryptocurrency issued by World Liberty Financial, the Trump family business.
World Liberty Financial is a venture of the Trump family and the family of Steven Witkoff, Trump’s friend and special envoy to the Middle East. The UFC announced on Friday that World Liberty would be the “Presenting Partner” of a new $250,000 Performance of the Night bonus pool, paid in its USD1 stablecoin.
Trump’s financial disclosure lists his holdings in World Liberty Financial as “over $50m.” He was once publicly listed by the company as its “Chief Crypto Advocate.” A White House spokesman claimed there was no conflict of interest because Trump’s assets are in a trust managed by his children.
The Trump family’s crypto ventures have generated billions of dollars and become one of the largest sources of wealth tied to the president and his family. So in a way, the fighters weren’t the only ones getting paid to perform.
Kash Patel Has Sued the Press Six Times (and Lost)
The director of the FBI keeps suing journalists for calling him erratic, which is a strange way to demonstrate he is not.
Kash Patel has filed at least six defamation lawsuits against news organizations and commentators in nearly seven years, according to the New York Times. He has yet to reach a settlement or win a favorable jury verdict in any of them.
In 2019, as a White House aide, he sued Politico, the Times, and CNN over coverage of Trump’s dealings with Ukraine. In 2023, he sued a blogger who called him a “chud” for $10 million. In April, now leading the FBI, he sued The Atlantic for $250 million over an article describing his “erratic” behavior and alleged heavy drinking.
A Virginia appeals court affirmed the dismissal of his CNN suit, found his claims “conclusory,” and awarded CNN $150 in damages. A Texas judge dismissed his suit against a retired FBI official who said Patel was “far more” visible at nightclubs than at headquarters, calling the remark “rhetorical hyperbole.”
In several cases, Patel filed strongly worded complaints, then failed to serve court papers and let them languish. The goals are to run up opponents’ legal bills and send a message to journalists.
Patel’s lawyer says the director “pursues these cases to win them.” He has not won a case. He has not settled a case. He has, however, proven he is very easy to write about.
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A Woman Died of Hypothermia After ICE Deserted Her
She survived the border. She did not survive the bus shelter ICE left her at.
The Allegheny County Medical Examiner’s Office has ruled the death of Daphy Michel, a 31-year-old Haitian asylum seeker, a homicide. Michel died March 2 of hypothermia at a bus shelter in Pittsburgh.
According to her family’s attorney, Joseph Patrick Murphy, Michel arrived at the southern border in 2022 and was granted humanitarian parole based on urgent humanitarian need. She did not live to see a hearing scheduled for two weeks after she died.
She was arrested last summer for yelling at imaginary people due to her psychiatric challenges, Murphy said. She spent six months in Washington County Jail. A magistrate said he could not hold her for trial. Afterward, ICE arrested her in her cell, put an ankle monitor on her, and took her 25 miles to Pittsburgh, where she sat at a bus shelter for days in winter.
The medical examiner’s office described Michel as a vulnerable adult “suffering from untreated severe mental health issues and a significant language barrier” at the time of her release on February 27.
ICE is no longer reporting the deaths of detainees within 30 days of their release from custody, ending a 2021 Biden-era policy. Health experts say the change will reflect fewer deaths than actually occur.
At Women’s Leadership Summit, Women Volunteer to Stop Voting
At a conference called the Women’s Leadership Summit, the main topic was whether women should vote.
Several women at the Turning Point USA Women’s Leadership Summit in San Antonio said they would willingly give up their right to vote. All they wanted in return was a more conservative country.
Keynote speaker Savannah Stone, an influencer with nearly 500,000 Instagram followers, pushed the idea of one vote per household, deferring to the husband. On a podcast that labeled her “the female Andrew Tate,” she said that if women couldn’t vote, abortion would never have been legal.
The summit was headed by Erika Kirk, widow of Turning Point founder Charlie Kirk. A Nation reporter spotted “No Voter ID, No Vote” stickers throughout the conference, suggesting the enthusiasm for restricting votes did not stop at women’s own.
Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth reposted a video of a pastor arguing that women shouldn’t vote. The pastor leads a church network that holds the same position. Hegseth’s family attends one of its congregations, which gives the policy at least one household to practice on.
The Part the Billionaires Hate
The business model that kept journalism independent is gone. What replaced it is billionaires, access deals, and quiet understandings about which stories don’t run. The networks are getting phone calls they don’t talk about. The newspapers have new owners who play golf with the people we’re writing about. The FCC is making examples of outlets that don’t play ball.
None of that is happening here, because we don’t have anyone to sell out to. We have readers. If you’ve been reading AlterNet America for free, we’re glad you’re here. But free doesn’t keep the lights on, and the lights need to stay on.
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POSITIVE STORIES YOU MAY HAVE MISSED:
The Kennedy Center Has Fully Removed Trump’s Name From Its Building. Crews began removing the letters from an exterior wall of the Kennedy Center early Saturday morning, and by midday Executive Director Matt Floca said Trump’s name was gone. U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper had ordered the name removed from the building, website, and promotional materials. A small crowd gathered to watch, some arriving with champagne and chanting “Take it down.” DOJ lawyers warned that removing the name could force the return of hundreds of millions in donations tied to bylaws requiring his name to stay, which tells you what this was really about.
Maxwell Frost Wins His Primary Unopposed in Florida’s 10th District. Democratic Congressman Maxwell Alejandro Frost will serve a third term after qualifying for the 2026 elections without facing any Democratic or Republican opponent. Only a write-in candidate entered the race, ensuring Frost continues to represent District 10 in Orange County. Frost said his campaign has already brought on 87 campaign fellows this summer to help flip seats across Central Florida and defend incumbents. He is running unopposed and building his biggest campaign yet anyway.
ICE’s detention policy won at the 5th Circuit. Then judges found another way to reject it. The Trump administration celebrated a February appeals court ruling as a win on immigration detention, then watched as judges in Texas and Louisiana used a completely different legal argument to order the release of detainees more than 1,200 times anyway. Blocked from calling the policy illegal, judges simply called it unconstitutional instead, which turns out to be a different door to the same result. Of the more than 15,100 detention rulings tracked since last July, over 13,300 have gone against the administration, including from a majority of Trump’s appointees.
Judge Orders Trump Administration to Restore Signs Changed at National Parks. Federal Judge Angel Kelley in Massachusetts issued a scathing 63-page ruling ordering the administration to restore all signs changed or removed at national parks under Trump’s directive. The order stems from a February lawsuit by conservationists who accused the Interior Department of “mounting a sustained campaign to erase history and undermine science.” Under Trump’s March 2025 executive order “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History,” at least 45 signs were altered, including a Grand Teton marker noting an explorer’s role in the massacre of at least 173 Piegan Blackfeet members and a Fort Sumter sign on climate-driven flooding.
