Good morning. I’m Corinne Straight, and this is AlterNet America.
Half the country is suing to stop the Postal Service from throwing out your mail-in ballot. A Florida grand jury found that Gov. Ron DeSantis funneled $10 million meant for children’s health care into Republican campaigns. Instead of fighting illegal censorship, major media networks complied with an order to stop filming Trump. And the EPA wants to make it harder for you to complain about the data center going up in your backyard.
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Half the Country Sues to Block Trump’s Mail Ballot Crackdown
Trump couldn’t get the courts to throw out ballots in 2020, so he gave the job to the mailman.
This week, 24 states and Washington, D.C. sued to block new USPS restrictions on mail-in voting ahead of the midterms. The lawsuit, led by Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, came two days after the Supreme Court paved the way for Trump’s executive order changing the way mail ballots are processed.
Under the new rules, states would be required to input mail-in voters’ personal information into a federal portal and follow strict new requirements for their ballot envelope designs. If they don’t comply, their voters’ ballots could be thrown out before they are even counted.
The lawsuit itself cites Trump’s own admission that mail voting would “lead to the end of our great Republican Party,” and his post-inauguration vow to “get rid of mail-in ballots” altogether. More than 46 million Americans voted by mail in 2024, the majority of whom voted for Democrats.
The White House responded by calling the lawsuit the work of “radical Democrats” who oppose “commonsense measures” to protect elections. This is the same president who asked Georgia’s secretary of state to find him 11,780 votes.
DeSantis Stole $10 Million From Sick Kids to Fund Anti-Marijuana Ads
They say you shouldn’t take candy from a baby, but nobody said anything about Medicaid money.
A sealed grand jury report out of Florida has revealed that Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis’ administration stole $10 million meant for children’s health insurance and spent it on political ads against legalizing marijuana. A health care company called Centene owed the state $67 million for overbilling Florida’s kids’ insurance program, and DeSantis officials carved $10 million out of the settlement before taxpayers ever saw it.
The grand jury said James Uthmeier, who was then DeSantis’s chief of staff and now serves as the state’s attorney general, directed where the money was to go once it arrived at the Hope Florida Foundation. Of the $10 million, $8.5 million went to his own political action committee, Keep Florida Clean.
State officials had left the settlement with Centene to languish for three years before suddenly deciding to resolve it in September 2024, just 45 days before the election. The original terms would have sent all $67 million back to the state, but the administration rewrote the deal twice in two days.
Within 25 days of Hope Florida getting that money, every penny of it was spent. Former chairman Joshua Hay said he agreed to send the $10 million to political committees without asking questions because he assumed it was needed to help hurricane victims.
Uthmeier, who is up for election in November, has been blocking the report’s release for seven months. He dismissed the whole thing as a “big nothingburger,” but nothingburgers don’t usually come with a forensic accountant and a grand jury.
Trump Staff Ordered Cameras Off, and Every Major Network Obeyed
If the president fights with his wife on live television and every network agrees not to film it, did it even happen?
During Sunday’s live broadcast of the Freedom 250 Grand Prix, a staffer dressed in an IndyCar uniform ordered the pool camera operator to stop filming Trump in the presidential suite. The operator told him she was pool press filming for every major network in the country but he told her to turn the cameras off anyway.
The order came as cameras captured an apparent heated exchange between Trump and first lady Melania Trump, who had not been seen in public for more than a month. Video appeared to show Melania walking away from her husband’s side after she noticed Natalie Harp, Trump’s 35-year-old personal assistant who has been dubbed the president’s “human binky” for her unusually close relationship with the commander in chief.
The order is most certainly illegal. The government can tell journalists where to stand, but it cannot tell them what to film, and the First Amendment protects the right to record elected officials in any location where the press has been granted access.
Fox, CBS, and ABC covered the rest of the race as if the incident never occurred, with CNN correspondent Brian Todd calling the event “a real success.” The only outlets that reported on the press censorship were independent and overseas publications. Apparently you need to read a Spanish sports blog to find out what happened on American television.
Trump’s EPA Wants to End Public Comment on Data Centers
The last time something this unpopular got this much government support, it was Prohibition.
The Trump administration is undoing a requirement that states seek public input before approving air pollution permits for new industrial facilities, including data centers and the power plants that run them. If the rule goes into effect, communities may not find out about a project until construction is already underway.
Environmental and health groups submitted comments warning the rule would undo nearly 50 years of the Clean Air Act. It also flies in the face of EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin’s own transparency memo from March, where he promised the public must be able to trust the agency’s work, said the Environmental Protection Network.
The move comes as the administration’s own party is raising the alarm over how toxic data centers have become with voters. This month, the National Republican Senatorial Committee sent a memo to candidates warning that internal polling indicates data centers are as popular as spent nuclear waste.
Americans haven’t agreed on anything this strongly in years, so of course the government is trying to shut us up.
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POSITIVE STORIES YOU MAY HAVE MISSED:
James Talarico Asks Court to Unseal Ken Paxton Depositions. James Talarico, the Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate in Texas, has asked a court to unseal depositions in a civil fraud case against his Republican opponent, Ken Paxton. Paxton had ties to Unity Resources, a company that trades in mineral assets, and the depositions could contain damaging testimony, though he was not a defendant and the case was settled. Paxton has denied all allegations against him, calling them politically motivated, as he did when the Texas House impeached him and when he was charged with securities fraud.
Catholic Bishops Tell Florida AG There Is No Religious Reason to Skip Vaccines. Florida’s Catholic bishops have resisted Attorney General James Uthmeier’s threat to withhold state voucher money from diocesan schools unless they permit religious exemptions from vaccine requirements. In a letter sent to Uthmeier, the Florida Conference of Catholic Bishops reminded him that it is the bishops, not the government, who decide how to interpret Catholic principles and theology. The bishops cited the Catechism of the Catholic Church, which refers to life and physical health as precious gifts of God which must be safeguarded with due respect for the common good.
FDA Approves Groundbreaking Pancreatic Cancer Drug That Doubled Survival Times. Daraxonrasib (sold as Rasonque) was approved by the FDA to treat adults with metastatic pancreatic adenocarcinoma. In a trial of 500 patients, those given the drug lived about twice as long as those given standard chemotherapy alone, with average survival rising to 13.2 months. The pill, taken once a day, targets the RAS protein that drives tumor growth in most pancreatic cancers. It’s the first drug of its kind to earn approval. Pancreatic cancer has long been one of the deadliest and hardest-to-treat cancers, and researchers at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute called the approval the most important therapeutic advance they have seen.
Woman Regains Sight After World’s First Central Retina Transplant. Elena, 67, from Italy, has regained her sight after more than five years of complete blindness. A car accident had destroyed the optic nerve in her left eye and the retina in her right eye, rendering it blind and leaving her with no chance of recovery by any known treatment. At Turin’s Molinette Hospital, surgeons spent six hours performing an unprecedented operation, transferring healthy tissue from the left eye to the right eye to reconstruct what had been destroyed by the accident. The first things Elena saw when she opened her eyes were her dog and her son.
