Good morning. I’m Corinne Straight, and this is AlterNet America.
Trump’s war on Iran is causing the people who voted for him three times to turn on him. The White House sent its staff an email reminding them not to bet on wars they’re helping run. ICE shot a man in California eight times and lied that he was a gang member. And a federal judge struck down the Pentagon’s unconstitutional press ban.
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Let’s get into it.
Trump Is Losing the People Who Voted for Him Three Times
Trump promised to cut Americans’ electricity bills in half. In West Virginia, where all 55 counties went for him in 2024, residents are now posting screenshots of their power bills on social media and demanding answers.
Rebecca Michalski, a disabled woman on a fixed income in Rainelle, opened her February electric bill to find a charge of $940.08, more than her monthly check. She keeps one energy-efficient lamp on at night and turns the lights off during the day. She took out a loan after receiving a cut-off notice during an arctic blast.
She used to support Trump. She doesn’t anymore.
The energy bill frustration is one thing. Then Trump went on Truth Social and called other conservatives “low IQ” and “stupid people” for criticizing the Iran war. Multiple Truth Social users who claimed to have voted for Trump three times pushed back.
One wrote that Trump was “going against everyone that fought for him to win” and that they felt “so betrayed.” Another, a self-described “proud deplorable” in California who said they owned a MAGA hat Trump had personally signed, told the president to “get right” and said they were hanging it up.
A political coalition can survive a lot. Bad polls, bad press, bad vibes. What it has a harder time surviving is supporters eulogizing it in the comments section of the president’s own social media app.
Someone Bet $600,000 on the Iran Ceasefire Right Before It Happened
The Iran war has been, depending on who you ask, a geopolitical catastrophe, an energy crisis, and — for at least a few people with suspiciously well-timed internet gambling accounts — a tremendous financial opportunity.
Here is what we know. On April 7, at least 50 newly created Polymarket accounts placed substantial bets that the U.S. and Iran would agree to a ceasefire shortly before Trump announced the deal on Truth Social at around 6:30 p.m. E.T.
The bets generated hundreds of thousands of dollars in profit. This came weeks after more than $760 million worth of oil futures contracts changed hands in less than two minutes, about 15 minutes before Trump announced a policy shift pausing strikes on Iran.
The White House sent a staff-wide email warning employees against using confidential information to place trades on financial markets and fast-growing event betting platforms. The White House’s position is that the email proves there’s nothing to worry about, which is definitely how innocent people communicate.
The scandal echoes a January episode in which an unknown trader made $400,000 betting on Nicolás Maduro’s capture less than five hours before it happened. The White House would like to stress that lightning can, in fact, strike the same place thrice.
ICE Shot a Man Eight Times. Then They Called Him a Gang Member.
As a man remains hospitalized after being shot by ICE agents during a traffic stop in Central California, his lawyer is pushing back against the agency’s claims that the man is a gang member wanted in El Salvador in connection with a murder.
ICE Director Todd Lyons said agents fired after the man, Carlos Ivan Mendoza Hernandez, tried to run an officer over. His attorney says it was quite the other way around, and that he fled in panic because he was already being shot at.
Mendoza Hernandez, 36, has had at least three significant surgeries to patch up his wounds, including a visible one to his face. He works as a laborer repairing fire-damaged buildings. His fiancée, Cindy, a U.S. citizen, said she gets only scarce updates about his condition through a social worker at the hospital.
As for the gang allegation: a court document from a judge in El Salvador shows Mendoza Hernandez was acquitted in October 2019 after being accused of murder and ordered immediately released. There is no mention in the document of him belonging to a gang or having committed gang activity.
DHS has not responded to questions about the document. There have been at least 14 shootings involving ICE since September. The administration has not released findings on how many it has investigated, which is itself a finding.
The Pentagon Lost in Court, Tried the Same Thing Again, and Lost Again.
The Pentagon tried to ban the press, got taken to court, lost, quietly did the same thing again, got taken back to court, and lost again. Democracy is slow, but it is apparently faster than Pete Hegseth.
A Pentagon policy unveiled last September required media organizations to pledge not to gather information unless officials from the Department of Defense formally authorized its release. Nearly the entire Pentagon press corps refused to sign it and walked out of the building.
A federal judge ruled the policy unconstitutional in March. The Pentagon said it would comply – before it closed the “Correspondents’ Corridor” and required journalists entering the building to be escorted at all times.
Judge Paul Friedman was not fooled. He wrote that the case is “really about the attempt by the Secretary of Defense to dictate the information received by the American people, to control the message so that the public hears and sees only what the Secretary and the Trump administration wants them to see.”
The current Pentagon press corps is comprised mostly of conservative outlets that agreed to the original policy. Journalists from outlets that refused have continued reporting on the military from outside the Pentagon.
The Pentagon plans to appeal. Presumably to a judge who hasn’t already ruled against them twice.
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