Good morning. I’m Corinne Straight, and this is AlterNet America.
The federal agency built to fight workplace discrimination froze every class action sexual harassment complaint from federal workers. DHS conducted a “mass spying campaign” using undercover agents against leftwing groups and anti-ICE protesters. As ICE prepares to spend up to $20 million on electric shock gloves, police in Omaha public schools are already using them. And the farm blamed for a lettuce outbreak that killed two people and sickened nearly 25,000 hasn’t been inspected in seven years.
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Trump’s EEOC Dropped All Sexual Harassment Lawsuits
If you’re a federal worker and your boss lets inmates sexually harass you, there’s supposed to be an agency that handles that.
The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission investigates discrimination on the job and either mediates a fix or clears workers to sue, serving as the main enforcement mechanism behind the Civil Rights Act. That system broke in December, when EEOC Chair Andrea Lucas quietly froze all class-action discrimination complaints from federal workers.
Among the cases that went dead overnight was a sexual harassment complaint filed by Deanna Chelette and Alexzandria Boyd, two correctional officers at the federal prison in Pollock, Louisiana. On July 28, they sued the EEOC in federal court, asking a judge to force the agency to start processing complaints again.
Because of the freeze, Chelette and Boyd can be assigned to work anywhere in the prison complex alongside male inmates who subject them and their female colleagues to what the lawsuit describes as “demeaning sexual comments and lewd gestures, exhibitionist nudity and masturbation, and rape threats.”
Their attorneys called the suspension “an abdication of its obligation” and “the latest chapter in the EEOC’s retreat from enforcing the civil rights laws mandated by Congress.” Their union, the American Federation of Government Employees, noted that the same agency has been busy launching probes into alleged discrimination against white men.
DHS Ran an Undercover Spying Ring on Anti-ICE Protesters
The FBI once killed Fred Hampton in his sleep. The Department of Homeland Security just sent a guy to hand out his phone number at a peaceful protest.
Newly disclosed records show the Department of Homeland Security launched an operation in January called “Operation Puppet Master” to map a “network of conspirators” organizing against ICE in Minnesota.
The records show agents infiltrated Signal chats, obtained financial records of unions and nonprofits, and posed as activists at community meetings in the Twin Cities and New York. DHS also used administrative subpoenas to obtain wire transfer records from SEIU, one of the largest unions in the country, and requested financial data on the Communications Workers of America.
At a Sunrise Movement seminar focused on peaceful protest, an undercover agent told an attendee he “works in construction and could build items that might assist other groups with more ‘direct-action’ protests.” He said going to jail didn’t bother him, then handed out his phone number.
None of the groups supposedly infiltrated have been charged with anything. Across a 94-page indictment, there are no allegations that any defendant injured a specific ICE officer. Mission accomplished.
Public Schools Are Already Using ICE’s $20 Million Shock Gloves
Detention has really changed since you were in school.
ICE is preparing to spend up to $20 million on high-tech gloves capable of delivering electric shocks, according to DHS documents published this week. The devices are dubbed G.L.O.V.E., Generated Low Output Voltage Emitter, delivering shocks between 324 and 362 volts.
But the technology is not new. An NPR analysis found more than 50 police departments across 20 states are already using the gloves.
In May 2025, the city of Omaha awarded its police department $65,924 for 40 units to be used in public schools. The police department said the gloves were bought for school resource officers as a “use of force option” with the goal of de-escalating and preventing use of force situations.
The manufacturer warns that the gloves should not be used as punishment, on people merely showing “verbal defiance or belligerence,” or on children, pregnant women, the elderly, or disabled people.
A former Navy SEAL who tested the gloves in a video review described being grabbed by the arms: “It goes into your nerve and it sends this shock up your arm and it hurts so bad. It was unbearable.”
Farm Behind Cyclospora and Salmonella Went Seven Years Without an Inspection
“Farm to table” has never sounded more threatening.
Two people are dead and nearly 25,000 are sick from contaminated iceberg lettuce that the FDA might have caught sooner if it had inspected the Taylor Farms facility in Guanajuato, Mexico anytime in the last seven years.
Taylor Farms was last inspected in 2019. The only visit before that was in 2013, after a different cyclosporiasis outbreak, when inspectors found the facility was recycling its wash water for salad mix.
Overall, the FDA carried out just under 1,000 foreign food safety inspections in 2025 when federal law requires nearly 20 times that every year. Outside the pandemic years, 2025’s count was the lowest since 2011, and early data shows 2026 on track to match it.
Neither party has met the inspection mandate in the decade it’s been law, but the Trump administration has made it considerably worse. Mass federal layoffs last year spared the inspectors but gutted their support staff, so the FDA’s 432 remaining inspectors now book their own flights and find their own translators.
Twenty of them are assigned to cover every foreign food facility on earth. If one of them calls in sick, that’s an entire hemisphere without coverage.
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Thanks for reading, and we’ll see you tonight.
POSITIVE STORIES YOU MAY HAVE MISSED:
Judge Warns Trump’s DOJ Could Be Held in Contempt Over Epstein Redactions. Journalist Katie Phang sued after Attorney General Todd Blanche withheld documents and refused to justify redactions, violating the Epstein Files Transparency Act. D.C. District Judge Emmet Sullivan took her side, and when DOJ lawyers spent weeks delaying and rebuffing his orders, he floated contempt proceedings on Thursday. “That’s not a threat. It’s a promise,” he said. “The public has a right to know what the hell is going on in this case.” The department responded by sending a new lawyer, Andrew Block, who had joined the case less than 24 hours earlier and could not tell the judge when the government planned to comply.
Voters Prefer a Socialist Over a MAGA Candidate in a 2028 Matchup. New polling from independent pollster Jeremy Zogby suggests the “socialist” label isn’t the electoral poison MAGA hoped it would be. If the 2028 election were held today, 55% of respondents said they’d back the socialist candidate against 33% for the MAGA candidate. Independents picked the socialist over 48% to 18%, and men, a demographic Trump carried by 12 points last November, selected the socialist 42% to 36%. The two were deadlocked among a group of parents in the MAGA movement with small children, some of Trump’s most ardent backers. Zogby noted the electorate “longs for candidates closer to the norm of politics.”
DNC Committee Approves Resolutions to Abolish ICE and Enforce the Leahy Laws. Two left-leaning resolutions were passed by the Resolutions Committee of the Democratic National Committee on Thursday. One calls for Democratic legislators to write bills that eliminate ICE and pursue justice for U.S. border agents who perjured themselves or killed detainees. The other resolution reaffirms that all recipients of U.S. security assistance, including Israel, are to be subject to “full, consistent, and impartial enforcement” of the Leahy Laws. The resolutions are expected to be approved by the DNC at large on Saturday.
Kalshi Ordered to Stop Most Betting Operations in Washington. A King County judge ruled Thursday that the online prediction market Kalshi is running an illegal gambling operation under Washington law and must halt most of its business by the middle of next week. Judge John McHale used the company’s own “bet on everything” advertising against it, ordering Kalshi to stop doing exactly that. Attorney General Nick Brown, who sued in March, said the company “has gotten rich promoting wagers on sports, elections, natural disasters” and more. Kalshi must block Washington IP addresses by Sept. 2 or face a $120,000-a-day fine.
