Good morning. I’m Corinne Straight, and this is AlterNet America.
Donald Trump voted by mail in Florida’s Republican primary for at least the third time, months after signing an order to restrict mail voting. The Trump DOJ spent a year investigating a fundraising firm co-owned by the daughter of the judge who oversaw his hush money conviction. Mitch McConnell has kept his full $193,000 salary through nine weeks of paid medical leave, a benefit American mothers don’t get after childbirth. And the DOJ is sending 1,000 election monitors to polling places in November.
Before we get to the news, a brief ask: AlterNet America was launched as a direct response to MAGA billionaires buying up networks like CBS and newspapers like the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times. We’re going all-in on the bet that reader-supported journalism can compete directly with the billionaires by being the one thing they can’t buy.
We’re incredibly grateful to all the free subscribers who have signed up to receive our newsletters in recent weeks. But if you’ve been thinking about making the leap to become a paying subscriber, this is the time when it matters the most. Please upgrade today.
Trump Voted by Mail After Signing Order Restricting Mail Voting
Rules for thee, stamps for me.
Donald Trump voted by mail in Florida’s Republican primary, according to Palm Beach county voting records. The White House confirmed it. This was at least the third time the president has mailed his ballot after doing so in 2020 and in a statehouse special election this year.
The New York Times reported it could not access Trump’s voting record through the county elections website, which said the record was “protected from public disclosure.” A White House spokeswoman confirmed the vote anyway, noting the president “is a resident of Palm Beach” but “primarily lives at the White House.”
Trump has spent years falsely claiming his 2020 defeat came from widespread fraud, and implying that mailed ballots are insecure. In March, he signed an executive order restricting mail-in ballots ahead of the November midterms.
He was still at it on Truth Social on Monday, demanding Congress pass the SAVE Act to require photo ID.
DOJ Investigates Daughter of Judge Who Ruled Against Trump
$468 wouldn’t cover a night at Mar-a-Lago, but it will cover a federal subpoena.
The Trump DOJ opened an investigation last August into a fundraising firm co-owned by the daughter of Judge Juan Merchan, who oversaw the Stormy Daniels hush money case. Loren Merchan was a VP at Authentic Campaigns as recently as 2024, the year her father’s court convicted Trump.
The investigation is being run by Chicago U.S. Attorney Andrew S. Boutros, whose own prosecutors have been flagged by a federal judge for misconduct in a separate corruption case — the same two who signed the Merchan subpoena.
The subpoena sought the firm’s internal communications with a list of Democratic clients including Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, Kathy Hochul, Hakeem Jeffries, and the DNC. Prosecutors eventually narrowed it to focus on a $468 payment from the Harris campaign and emails between Loren Merchan and her father.
The investigation was spawned by a supposed “criminal referral” from Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee. It’s not even the first retaliatory act taken against a family member of one of Trump’s detractors — the DOJ fired Maurene Comey, a respected federal prosecutor whose only transgression was being James Comey’s daughter.
McConnell Has Gotten More Paid Leave Than New Mothers
If hypocrisy paid sick leave, every American would be covered.
Mitch McConnell has been allowed to keep his full $193,000 salary even after nearly three months without proof of life. Meanwhile, millions of American women get no guaranteed paid maternity leave at all.
Congress has no paid sick leave policy, allowing members to collect their salary indefinitely while out. For the rest of us, the United States is the only wealthy nation without a federal paid parental leave. FMLA offers up to 12 weeks of time off, but does not require it to be paid.
Some states have their own paid family leave programs, but McConnell’s state of Kentucky is not one of them. Democratic Governor Andy Beshear has questioned whether the Republican can still serve, urging a two-minute video or phone call to prove his fitness.
“I’ve heard absolutely nothing back from Mitch McConnell,” Beshear said Sunday.
Since entering the Senate in 1985, McConnell has voted against creating or expanding medical leave at least 23 times. He voted against the Family and Medical Leave Act in 1993, blocked extending paid sick leave during COVID in 2020, and voted against giving rail workers seven days of paid sick leave in 2022.
The DOJ Is Sending 1,000 Monitors to Watch You Vote
Harmeet Dhillon is 8-for-30 in court, which wouldn’t get you into law school but apparently gets you a thousand field agents.
The Justice Department plans to send 1,000 monitors to watch polls during the November midterms, the Assistant Attorney General told Bloomberg. She said the figure is “probably going to be a historic number for a Republican administration.”
The announcement lands as Trump repeatedly warns that Democrats will “cheat” to retake Congress. In July, he devoted a prime-time address to reviving his stolen-election claims and refused to rule out declaring a national emergency before the election.
The department already sent monitors to four Democratic-leaning Michigan cities, home to the state’s largest Black, Arab-American, and college-student populations. It also sent monitors to Arizona during its July primary.
Separately, Dhillon has lost nearly two dozen of the more than 30 lawsuits she’s filed to pry nonpublic voting records from states, including partial Social Security numbers. She hasn’t ruled out taking it to the Supreme Court before November.
Dhillon says the monitors will only observe, not intervene, and that they will “help instill confidence in the election process.” She did not say whether the observers would be armed.
“Observe, not intervene” is also what they said about Vietnam.
Help Independent Journalism Survive
There is a reason the stories above may not reach you through your television. Too many media outlets are being hollowed out from within by billionaire owners who want to censor journalism to curry favor with the administration. Jeff Bezos owns the Washington Post. The LA Times is owned by a MAGA billionaire. But AlterNet America remains committed to calling it like it is.
This is all because we’re entirely funded by readers. We don’t have an owner to please, advertisers who get spooked when we show a spine, or an FCC license to maintain. But we’re behind on our fundraising numbers.
If just one in 20 people who read this become paying subscribers, we can fund our entire reporting budget. Will you be one of the five percent?
Thanks for reading, and we’ll see you tonight.
POSITIVE STORIES YOU MAY HAVE MISSED:
North Carolina Governor Vetoes Sweeping Voting Restrictions. Gov. Josh Stein on Monday vetoed a Republican elections bill that would have reduced early voting by a week, allowed party watchers to challenge votes three days after the election returns came in and required the DMV to release voters’ entire Social Security numbers. The legislation was proposed by Senate leader Phil Berger following his primary loss. Earlier versions would have made it illegal for election officials to encourage residents to vote, which apparently went too far even for some Republicans. The GOP has already overridden three Stein vetoes this summer, but no longer holds the supermajority necessary to do so easily.
Planned Parenthood to Spend More Than $600,000 Against Susan Collins in Maine. Planned Parenthood is spending $600,000 on ads attacking Susan Collins in Maine, its most expensive investment in any state this year. The ads condemn Collins for voting to confirm Brett Kavanaugh after she famously assured everyone he wouldn’t touch Roe v. Wade, which he then helped overturn. One ad features a Maine woman who voted for Collins and would like that back. Planned Parenthood’s Maine chapter backed Collins as recently as May last year, which Collins’s campaign pointed to in response. It’s a bit like citing a positive Yelp review from before the health inspection.
Meta Faces a $1.4 Trillion Reckoning in Trial Over Social Media Addiction. After trying and failing to get the case thrown out, Meta goes to trial in federal court Tuesday. Dozens of states have accused the company of deliberately making its products addictive for children and illegally collecting data on users under 13, and are seeking up to $1.4 trillion in penalties. Meta called the figure “outlandish” in a court filing that also disclosed it spent $2.4 billion on legal costs last quarter, which is its own kind of outlandish. The trial’s audio will be livestreamed to YouTube and will feature testimony from Mark Zuckerberg, setting it up to be the most-watched episode of a show Meta didn’t make.
‘Preserve the Stuff We Own’: Right-to-Repair Laws Surge Across the US. Legislators have introduced more than 50 right-to-repair bills across 22 states this year, covering everything from wheelchairs in Florida to motorcycles in Missouri. House Democrats and Republicans have also united to push the federal Repair Act. Supporters say corporations have monopolized repairs, forcing customers to overpay or simply buy new. Even Trump, after meeting GM and Ford executives in June, said he’d “never heard of” companies blocking people from fixing their own cars. As one Portland repair-shop worker put it, “we don’t really own anything any more.” These bills might just change that.
