REVEALED: Trump's FBI Director Has Been Arrested Twice

The DOJ is bringing back firing squad executions, a Senate candidate is under a protective order from his ex-wife, and the DHS is deporting the wife of a man who died on the Francis Scott Key Bridge

Good afternoon. I’m Ryan Rose, and this is AlterNet America.

The Justice Department just announced it’s bringing back firing squads. The FBI director admitted he was arrested twice for alcohol-related incidents. A Minnesota Senate candidate running on law and order is under a protective order from his ex-wife. And the woman whose co-parent died in the Francis Scott Key Bridge collapse is now being deported.

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Let’s dive in.

The Justice Department Is Bringing Back Firing Squads

The Justice Department woke up today and chose violence. Quite literally.

The Trump administration announced Friday that it is expanding the federal execution protocol to include death by firing squad. DOJ officials framed this as restoring what was “utilized during the first Trump Administration.”

Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said the prior administration “refused to pursue and carry out the ultimate punishment against the most dangerous criminals, including terrorists, child murderers, and cop killers.”

The announcement also commits to streamlining internal processes to cut down the years between conviction and execution. In other words, the goal is to make the path from death sentence to death shorter.

Five states currently permit death by firing squad for capital cases. In March, a South Carolina man became the fourth person executed that way since the 1970s. The federal government would now like to be the fifth option on that list.

The DOJ added that this would allow them to move more efficiently. We’ll just note that the countries historically most enthusiastic about efficient executions are not usually the ones we hold up as models.

Kash Patel Was Arrested for Public Urination After a Night of Drinking

FBI Director Kash Patel is currently suing a magazine for saying he drinks too much. One problem: he has admitted to being arrested twice after drinking too much.

Patel’s personnel file from the Miami-Dade Public Defender’s Office, where he worked after passing the Florida Bar in 2005, was released by The Intercept on Friday. It includes a letter Patel wrote himself, per instructions of his employer, disclosing two prior arrests.

The first incident occurred in 2001 at the University of Richmond. Patel was escorted out of a basketball arena for excessive cheering and arrested for public intoxication. He was not yet 21. He was found guilty on a misdemeanor charge and paid a fine.

In 2005, Patel and friends spent an evening working through “a few of the local bars” in New York. On the walk home, they made what Patel would later describe in writing as “a gross deviation from appropriate conduct.” Specifically, they attempted to urinate in public. A police cruiser materialized before they could complete the mission. They were arrested. He paid a fine.

Patel concluded his letter by assuring the Florida Bar that both incidents “are not representative of my usual conduct of behavior.” That was twenty years ago.

Patel is suing The Atlantic for $250 million after it reported that he has been intoxicated at private clubs in Washington and Las Vegas, and that his drinking has become “a recurring source of concern across the government.” The man who was arrested for drinking too much in public would like you to know he has never drunk too much in private.

A Senate Candidate Is Under a Protective Order From His Ex-Wife

Royce White is a Republican Senate candidate in Minnesota. He’s a former NBA draft pick, self-described patriot, MAGA populist, man who once said the bad guys won World War II, and reportedly did not vote in his own 2022 primary.

He’s also under a court-issued protective order.

A Hennepin County judge signed the order in February after finding evidence that White had threatened and physically and verbally abused his ex-wife and one of their children. He must stay a quarter-mile away from her, her workplace, the child’s school, and their home. He is required to complete domestic abuse programming.

White says the ruling is a “substantial miscarriage of justice” and is appealing. The judge wrote that his ex-wife “is plainly in fear” and had appeared in court “utterly at a loss for how else to gain peace from him.”

This is not the first time a protective order has come up in White’s orbit. In 2020, he pleaded guilty to violating an order for protection from the mother of two of his children. His 2024 Senate campaign also made news for spending more than $1,200 at a Miami strip club after the election.

He lost to Amy Klobuchar by 12 points. He is running again in 2026. His campaign website describes him as “a thoughtful leader for the populist movement in American politics.” The MAGA base has heard worse and cheered louder.

DHS Is Deporting the Families of the Men Who Died on the Key Bridge

Six men were killed in 2024 when the Francis Scott Key Bridge collapsed after a cargo vessel struck it. The men were immigrant workers, most undocumented, filling potholes on an overnight road maintenance crew. Their deaths brought international attention.

President Biden called them “hard-working, strong, and selfless” and said they were “Marylanders.” His administration reached out to roughly 30 family members of the victims and encouraged them to apply for immigration protections.

Zoila Guerra Sandoval was one of them. Her co-parent, José Mynor López, was the last of the six to be found and taken out of the water. She had a 7-year-old U.S. citizen daughter with him, which made her eligible for the protection program.

She gave the government her personal information, her fingerprints, her trust.

This April, she received a denial from USCIS and learned, almost as an afterthought, that she was already in removal proceedings. Neither she nor her lawyer had received any formal notice of when or where she needed to appear before a judge. Her lawyer had to physically go to the Baltimore Immigration Court to retrieve it.

The removal notice had been filed April 10. The denial letter came days later. She found out she was being deported the same way she found out her co-parent was dead: someone else had to tell her.

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POSITIVE STORIES YOU MAY HAVE MISSED:

Appeals court says Trump’s asylum ban at the border is illegal. A federal appeals court ruled Friday that Trump’s day-one executive order suspending asylum access was illegal, finding that the president cannot unilaterally override immigration law Congress passed, invent his own deportation procedures, or simply declare an “invasion” and start removing people without due process. The administration can appeal to the Supreme Court, which is probably where this was always going.

Virginia passes law to expand ranked choice voting. Virginia passed a law this week making its ranked choice voting program permanent and expanding it to town councils, which means voters in more places can now rank their candidates instead of holding their nose and picking one. It is the first state to pass pro-RCV legislation in 2026, and notably, both Republicans and Democrats have used it there without the republic collapsing.

Tlaib Introduces Bill to Ban ICE From Using Warehouses to Detain Immigrants. Rep. Rashida Tlaib introduced a bill this week to ban ICE from converting warehouses into immigration detention facilities, which is a response to the agency’s current plan to purchase 23 warehouses across the country and add capacity for 92,600 more detainees. ICE would like you to know the cages come with jobs. The detainees would bring a death rate of about one per week.

China to send giant pandas to Atlanta again. China announced Friday it is sending two giant pandas to Zoo Atlanta as part of a decade-long conservation agreement, which is a very sweet gesture that is also arriving conveniently three weeks before Trump flies to Beijing to talk trade with Xi Jinping. The pandas are named Ping Ping and Fu Shuang. They did not ask to be involved in any of this.