Good morning. I’m Corinne Straight, and this is AlterNet America.
The Trump White House apparently decided that Germany was a fine place for an American Ebola patient. Colorado’s Democratic governor commuted the sentence of a convicted election saboteur under pressure from Donald Trump, and his own party voted to censure him. ICE arrested a grandfather who was helping police solve his own daughter’s murder. And Trump’s ballroom just got killed in the Senate by Republicans.
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The White House Sent American Ebola Patients to Europe
An American doctor got Ebola while saving lives in the Congo. Trump’s government decided that was his problem.
Dr. Peter Stafford was working as a missionary doctor in the Democratic Republic of Congo when he operated on a patient with severe abdominal pain. The patient turned out to have Ebola. The patient died. Days later, Stafford began feeling sick, experiencing fever and nausea.
By the time of his evacuation, he was unable to walk without assistance. The White House refused to allow Stafford to return to the United States, according to five people familiar with the Ebola response. This delayed his evacuation and his care until he was ultimately flown to a hospital in Berlin.
A second American, Patrick LaRochelle, was flown to a hospital in Prague.
The administration’s reluctance marked a sharp contrast with the 2014 West Africa Ebola outbreak, when the first two American patients were evacuated to Atlanta for treatment. Individuals familiar with the current response say the optics of bringing a possible Ebola patient into the country remain major concerns inside the White House.
This is the part where you need to know what Trump was posting on social media in 2014. “The U.S. cannot allow EBOLA infected people back,” he wrote. “People that go to far away places to help out are great — but must suffer the consequences!”
The White House called the Washington Post’s reporting “absolutely false.” They said the hospital in Germany is world-class, which is true, and also not the point.
Colorado Democrats Censure Their Own Governor
Colorado’s Democratic governor spent last Friday doing a favor for an election denier. Colorado’s Democratic Party spent Wednesday returning the favor.
Tina Peters, the former Mesa County Clerk, was convicted in 2024 of orchestrating a security breach of her county’s election system. Her offenses included attempting to influence a public official, conspiracy to commit criminal impersonation, official misconduct, and failure to comply with an order of the secretary of state. A judge gave her nearly nine years.
Last Friday, Gov. Jared Polis cut that sentence in half. During a virtual meeting Wednesday evening, 90% of the Democratic Party’s State Central Committee voted to censure Polis. The party also suspended him from speaking at Democratic Party events or attending as a featured guest.
Polis said he didn’t regret his decision and called the censure politically motivated. His spokesperson offered that “sometimes the right thing isn’t the popular thing with everybody,” which is technically true and also what people say right before a 90% vote goes against them.
The party’s ban on Polis appearing as a featured speaker or recognized guest faces its first test on June 6, when Colorado Democrats are holding an all-day organizing event in downtown Denver called DemFest, followed by the party’s annual Obama Gala. One assumes the seating chart is being revised.
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ICE Arrested a Grandfather Who Was Helping Solve His Daughter’s Murder
Last February, Erasmo Zavala Almanza lost his 20-year-old daughter. The Mexican national living in Reading, Pennsylvania watched her get fatally shot, her newborn baby critically injured by the child’s father, who then took his own life.
As Almanza cared for the recovering, orphaned infant, he cooperated with authorities in the homicide investigation. His assistance qualified him to seek a U visa, which offers a path to legal residency for undocumented immigrants who aid law enforcement. The U visa program was created specifically so that witnesses and victims have a reason to trust law enforcement.
Three months after applying, ICE agents arrived at his home and took him into custody. When Almanza explained to the agents that he had a pending U visa application and had cooperated with the district attorney’s murder investigation, ICE agents told him there was “nothing they could do.”
A last-minute judge’s order stopped deportation. Almanza is currently being held at a processing center in Pennsylvania. The orphaned infant, an American citizen, is without her only known living family.
The Berks County District Attorney expressed concern about the chilling effect this could have on victims and witnesses of crimes. A Republican district attorney, for the record.
Senate Republicans Pull the Plug on Trump’s Ballroom
You will recall that the White House ballroom has been looking for a federal subsidy for some time now. Senate Republicans tried to slip $1 billion for it into an immigration enforcement funding bill, labeling it “Secret Service security upgrades” in what may be the most expensive rebrand since someone decided to call a used car “pre-owned.”
It didn’t work. Not because Democrats stopped it. Because Republicans did.
Senate Republican leaders are expected to abandon the proposal after members of their own party questioned the timing and the lack of detail in the Secret Service request. Republican senators had been invited to lunch with Secret Service Director Sean Curran to be pitched on the need for $1 billion in security enhancements, but left saying they wanted more details to justify the project.
Louisiana Senator Bill Cassidy put it plainly: “People can’t afford groceries and gasoline and healthcare, and we’re going to do a billion dollars for a ballroom?” Cassidy, for the record, just lost his GOP primary after Trump endorsed his opponent. A man with nothing left to lose is a wonderful thing.
The Senate parliamentarian had already ruled the provision out of order on procedural grounds. The members of the president’s own party are now agreeing with her. The ballroom has now been rejected by more people than were ever invited to it.
The Part the Billionaires Hate
The business model that kept journalism independent is gone. What replaced it is billionaires, access deals, and quiet understandings about which stories don’t run. The networks are getting phone calls they don’t talk about. The newspapers have new owners who play golf with the people we’re writing about. The FCC is making examples of outlets that don’t play ball.
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