Neo-Nazis Have Never Found It Easier to Join the Army
Trump wants Graham's Senate seat handed to his sister, ICE agents shot and killed an authorized worker in Maine, and USAID cuts have already contributed to an estimated 700,000 deaths
Good afternoon. I’m Ryan Rose, and this is AlterNet America.
Trump wants South Carolina’s governor to hand Lindsey Graham’s Senate seat to Graham’s sister. ICE agents shot and killed a 26-year-old Colombian man in Biddeford, Maine, who was authorized to work in the United States. Researchers now estimate the dismantling of USAID has already contributed to roughly 700,000 deaths worldwide. And the U.S. military filled its war-on-terror ranks by recruiting neo-Nazis and white supremacists.
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Trump Recommends Lindsey Graham’s Sister for Senate Seat
There is a certain honesty in treating a United States Senate seat like a family heirloom.
Donald Trump on Monday urged South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster to appoint the late Sen. Lindsey Graham’s sister, Darline Graham Nordone, to fill the seat through the rest of his term. Graham, 71, died Saturday of an aortic dissection, according to preliminary findings from the D.C. medical examiner.
“I recommended, to Governor Henry McMaster, Lindsey Graham’s wonderful sister, Darline, to serve as interim Senator,” Trump posted on Truth Social. “This would be a fabulous tribute to Lindsey, who loved her dearly!”
Sen. Tim Scott quickly agreed, calling Graham Nordone “a fantastic pick.” Nobody mentioned any qualifications beyond being related to the deceased.
Under South Carolina law, McMaster has the authority to name an interim replacement, and he scheduled a Monday afternoon news conference to do just that. The seat matters: Republicans hold a narrow majority, and the interim appointment keeps it intact.
A crowded field is already lining up for the Aug. 11 special primary, including Reps. Nancy Mace and Ralph Norman, both fresh off failed gubernatorial bids. The winner faces Democrat Annie Andrews in November.
ICE Kills Again, One Week After the Last Fatal Shooting
A 26-year-old Colombian man was shot and killed Monday morning by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in Biddeford, Maine, according to local media and authorities. He was authorized to work in the United States and had been issued a Social Security number.
He appears to have been shot while operating a car. Footage of the aftermath shows agents standing around him in an intersection, beside a white Kia sedan with several bullet holes in the windshield.
A witness told the Portland Press Herald he heard gunshots, then watched an SUV try to ram the small white car before agents in vests pulled the man out. Bleeding from the head, the man was still talking. “I tried to stop,” he said.
Sen. Angus King said the FBI would investigate, and that Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin told him the victim was targeted “based on his immigration status.” The agents wore no body cameras.
This is at least the eleventh fatal ICE shooting since Trump returned to office, and the second in less than a week, coming days after ICE killed Lorenzo Salgado Araujo in Houston.
Another witness said the man’s family was at the scene. An older woman stood with a distressed family, including a toddler in Bluey pajamas. “You took her dad,” the woman yelled.
USAID Cuts Have Already Killed 700,000 People
Elon Musk says critics of his agency cuts “cannot cite a single name of someone who died.” That’s because there’s too many to list.
The dismantling of the U.S. Agency for International Development has already contributed to an estimated 700,000 deaths worldwide, according to former USAID official Atul Gawande, who cited multiple academic studies warning the toll could reach into the millions.
Speaking to The New Yorker, Gawande said the estimate draws on analyses from Boston University researchers and a study in The Lancet, which found USAID programs had saved roughly 92 million lives over two decades. Rep. Ro Khanna has cited research estimating as many as 4.5 million children could die by the end of 2030 if funding stays at current levels.
The damage is already visible. The World Health Organization estimates emergency health services reached over 80 million people in 2024, but more than 50 million fewer in 2025. In South Sudan, Gawande said local records from seven districts showed child deaths rising from 42 over two years to 214 after USAID-supported clinics closed.
A UN Women report found at least one million women and girls have lost access to life-saving support over the past 18 months due to global aid cuts. Forty percent of women’s organizations surveyed across 52 countries could shut down within a year.
It’s Never Been Easier For Neo-Nazis to Join the Army
The military spent two decades warning about extremists at home. It could have started by checking its own onboarding paperwork.
To keep its occupations in Iraq and Afghanistan running, the United States opened the door to the people it had once excluded: neo-Nazis, white supremacists, gang members, and violent felons. After 9/11, so-called “moral waivers” surged, letting in recruits who would have been turned away a generation earlier.
The story runs from Donald Rumsfeld’s pre-9/11 plans to “transform” the Pentagon, through the occupation of Iraq and the explosion of waivers that gutted the military’s own recruitment standards.
The math was simple. A permanent war economy needed bodies. The draft was politically impossible. So the standards bent. The country that could not tolerate conscription found another way to fill the ranks and just stopped asking questions at the door.
The consequences came home. Those recruitment policies incubated a new far right, as radicalized veterans carried military training back into civilian life. Journalist Matt Kennard draws a line straight from Vietnam to Iraq to the storming of the Capitol on January 6, 2021. The war on terror didn’t just fail to eliminate extremism — it put it on the public payroll.
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POSITIVE STORIES YOU MAY HAVE MISSED:
Federal Judge Sanctions Trump’s Lawyers Over the IRS “Slush Fund.” Florida District Judge Kathleen Williams ruled Monday that Trump filed a dubious lawsuit against his own IRS for the sole purpose of forcing a settlement that bailed out him and his family from tax investigations. Trump had sued his own administration for $10 billion, pitting his personal lawyers against his own DOJ, and secured immunity that shielded him from a ruling that could have cost him more than $100 million. Williams referred attorney Alejandro Britto to the Florida Bar and barred another Trump ally, Daniel Z. Epstein, from the district for at least a year. The $1.776 billion “Anti-Weaponization Fund” attached to it, she wrote, looked more like “branding” than a calculation of damages.
Democrats See Opening After Graham’s Death Shakes Up South Carolina Senate Race. Lindsey Graham’s sudden death has turned one of the GOP’s safest Senate seats into an actual race, and Democrats can barely contain themselves. Their candidate, pediatrician Annie Andrews, was already running what everyone assumed was a noble but doomed campaign, and now she gets to spend the next few months raising money in peace while Republicans scramble through a special primary that could feature Nancy Mace, who just lost a governor’s race, a self-funding guy who already lost to Graham, and whoever Trump posts about at 3 a.m. South Carolina hasn’t elected a Democrat statewide in over two decades, so it’s still a long shot.
Roy Cooper Leads Michael Whatley by 4 Points in North Carolina. Former Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper holds a lead over Republican Michael Whatley in the North Carolina Senate race, one of the states that could decide control of the chamber after the 2026 midterms. A new Public Policy Polling survey of 759 voters, taken July 10-11, showed Cooper at 48 percent to Whatley’s 44, with a margin of error of plus or minus 3.6 points. Other recent polls have put Cooper’s lead as high as 14 points, and forecasters like Cook Political Report and Sabato’s Crystal Ball rate the race Lean Democratic. Prediction markets are more emphatic, giving Cooper an 87 to 88 percent chance of victory.
Twelve States Sue to Block the Paramount–Warner Bros. Discovery Merger. A coalition of 12 state attorneys general, led by California’s Rob Bonta, filed suit Monday to stop Paramount Skydance’s acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery on antitrust grounds. The combined company would control nearly a third of films and nearly a third of basic cable TV programming, uniting CBS, MTV, and BET with CNN, TNT, and HBO Max. Bonta, who held a press conference in front of the Hollywood sign, warned the deal would “snuff out competition, drive up prices, diminish content quality, and produce fewer movies and shows.” The Writers Guild of America and the world’s largest theater trade association both backed the suit.
Whatever happened to FBI background checks for military entrants?
When we had the draft, the Army entrance exams included the check off listing of every one of the associations and groups that the government was concerned with. We filled out a form that named every group that the Congress listed as "un American" . It was a listing of every group named under HUAC. That being the House on UnAmerican Activities Committee form. You ran down the list of over 100 mostly obscure groups that had been investigated for criminal or seditious or outright dangerous revolutionary behavior and checked off any on the list that you had had any association with personaly. Those factions being known that would be a disqualifier for Federal employment. If you checked off any, the FBI would follow up. If you checked off any and you weren't associated with, in an attempt to escape the draft by lying about it?? The old $10,000 fine and Prison time warning prominently printed on the bottom of the form.. The list contained the John Birch Society, the Communist Party and the American Nazi Party as well as the KKK in addition to the Chopin Society. I guess joining a radical classical music group was a thing back in those troubled times.
Point is: When a draft system is deemed too politically incorrect and not used and your country has a need for soldiers, the ranks become filled in with less than desirable people who may have malicious intent and are actually associated with hate groups. Especially when recruiting becomes a rigged game that allows entrance to those less than desirable, not better people from the civilian world that can be vetted by local draft boards operating under the Selective Service and guidelines established by the military based on actual needs and then fully scrutinized by actual Armed Forces Entrance and Examining Stations weeding out undesirables before they can enter. The follow ups by the FBI in the old days might often caught an under age boy that snuck in and served honorably before being caught. I knew one. He got a visit from an agent and was forced out for lying about his age. He was still barely 17, had been in about two years with a combat tour in Vietnam. I asked him what he was going to do? He said he was going back home and finishing high school and was going to try and get back in the Army later. It might have been a bit tough. A General Discharge under less than honorable conditions, because of lying on his entrance. Just slightly above a Dishonorable Discharge. That kid was known as a damn fine soldier. A Spec 4, Earned his Combat Infantryman's Badge and Airborne qualified before his high school peers graduated. Our Company Commander, the XO, his Platoon Leader, our First Sgt., his Platoon Sgt and Squad leader all were going to write letters commending him and asking for leniency in his case. I hope he did well in his life. Just an adventurous individual of a sort that the Army needed.