Good morning. I’m Corrine Straight, and this is AlterNet America.
Pete Hegseth has been quietly blocking promotions for Black and women officers. Evangelical pastors who helped elect Trump are now watching their congregations disappear one ICE raid at a time. The Trump administration paid a French energy company a billion taxpayer dollars to stop building wind farms. And a Texas Democrat running for Congress played in a band with a convicted sex offender.
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Now, let’s dive in.
Hegseth Has Been Quietly Purging Black and Women Officers Across the Entire Military
By now you’ve heard that Pete Hegseth fired the Army’s top general this week and replaced him with his personal aide. What you may not have heard is that the firing was just the most visible piece of a much larger operation.
Hegseth has taken steps to block or delay promotions for more than a dozen Black and women senior officers across all four branches of the military. The officers have been targeted because of their race, gender, or perceived affiliation with Biden administration policies, according to nine U.S. officials familiar with the process.
This isn’t one branch, one list, or one bad week. As one of those officials put it: “There is not a single service that has been immune to this level of involvement by Hegseth.”
A list of naval officers selected to be promoted to one-star admiral has been sitting on Hegseth’s desk for more than a month, with officials expressing concern that some of those officers could be removed because of their race or gender. None are under investigation. Their branch recommended them. Hegseth just won’t sign off.
When former Army Chief Gen. Randy George asked to meet with Hegseth specifically to discuss the promotion blocks, Hegseth refused to meet or discuss his decisions. George was fired this week without explanation.
Pete Hegseth declared war on DEI so the military could finally reward the most qualified. The most qualified person he found to lead the entire United States Army was, it turns out, the guy who used to carry his bags.
The Pastors Who Helped Elect Trump Are Watching Their Churches Empty Out
Evangelicals turned out for Trump in historic numbers. They prayed at his inauguration. Some of their leaders were photographed laying hands on him in the Oval Office. And now, in congregations across the country, the pews are emptying.
Not because people lost their faith. Because they’re afraid to leave their homes.
Amid ICE arrests and detentions, attendance has dropped and churches have closed. In some immigrant-heavy congregations, church attendance has dropped between 35 and 70 percent as parishioners fear leaving their homes amid enforcement activity.
One of the largest Latino churches in one state, which previously held four Sunday services, is now down to one, at roughly 60 percent capacity. Pastors across the country have told reporters the same story. A Latino evangelical leader put it as plainly as it can be put: “You’re deporting the future of American Christianity.”
The administration says it’s only targeting dangerous criminals. The pastors say their dangerous criminals were running the bake sale and hadn’t missed a Sunday in twenty years. Someone is lying and it’s not the people holding the casserole dishes.
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Trump Paid a French Company a Billion Dollars to Not Build Wind Farms
After having lost every single court case over its attempt to halt East Coast offshore wind projects, the Trump administration announced it will simply pay one of the companies roughly $1 billion to abandon ship.
The company is France’s TotalEnergies. In exchange for walking away from planned wind farms off the coasts of New York and North Carolina, TotalEnergies will redirect that billion dollars into oil and gas development in Texas, including a liquefied natural gas export facility in Brownsville.
Together, the two abandoned projects could have generated enough electricity to power nearly one million homes. The Interior Department called this an “innovative agreement.” Environmental groups had a different name for it.
One group described it as a “billion-dollar bribe” to kill clean energy, saying that after losing again and again in court, Trump had found another way to strangle offshore wind: pay them to walk away.
Trump’s personal hatred of offshore wind reportedly dates back to a wind farm built near his golf course in Scotland that he found unsightly. A billion dollars of taxpayer money, redirected to a French oil company, to protect the view from a golf course. Truly, a government that works for the people.
Texas Democrats’ Rising Star Played in a Band With a Convicted Sex Offender
Democrats have been genuinely excited about Bobby Pulido. The two-time Latin Grammy winner and Tejano music legend is running for Texas’s 15th Congressional District, a majority-Hispanic seat that went for Trump by 18 points.
It hasn’t been a smooth rollout.
Pulido is under renewed scrutiny for performing with a bandmate who is a registered sex offender, convicted of indecent contact with an eight-year-old girl. Frankie Caballero appeared onstage with Pulido at concerts in multiple cities between 2018 and 2021, years after his 2014 conviction and prison sentence.
Pulido’s campaign says his management hired Caballero without conducting a background check, which they describe as standard practice in the music industry. They add that when management learned of Caballero’s criminal history in 2021, he was immediately let go.
But Pulido had previously admitted in a 2024 interview that it was a “shame” his old bandmate “just can’t stay out of trouble.”
Pulido is running in one of the most closely watched competitive House districts in the country, in a year when Democrats desperately need to flip seats. He has now accumulated enough scandal to sustain a full season of opposition research.
The music industry may not run background checks, but the congressional campaign vetting process is supposed to.
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POSITIVE STORIES YOU MAY HAVE MISSED:
Judge rejects Trump’s effort to end Jan. 6 civil suits ahead of trial. A federal judge ruled that Trump’s January 6th speech was a campaign event, not an official presidential act, which means he can be sued for it. Four years of claiming he was just doing his job, and the court said: actually, no, that one was on you personally.
Michigan permanently protected 73k acres in the Huron Mountains. Michigan permanently protected 73,000 acres of Upper Peninsula wilderness and secured public access to it forever. The land will not be sold to a French company, renamed after anyone, or used to settle a personal grudge.
Latino Republicans turn on Trump over birthright citizenship. Latino Republicans who voted for Trump are now turning on him over his push to end birthright citizenship. Turns out the voters who showed up for “America First” did not realize “America” had an asterisk next to it.
Sickle cell disease has just been cured for the first time in New York. Sebastien Beauzile, a 21-year-old from Long Island, became the first person in New York history to be cured of sickle cell disease. Good news is real, it just costs $3.1 million and shouldn’t.
