Good morning. I’m Corinne Straight, and this is AlterNet America.
Trump is grossly overpaying his buddies for immigrant detention warehouses. House Republicans canceled their own vote on the Iran war rather than lose it. A senator who voted to start a war that’s costing his constituents $5-a-gallon gas is now asking those same constituents for gas money. And ICE’s captives are dying at a pace not seen in twenty years.
Corporate media is running cover. The FCC chair is making sure they know what happens if they don’t. And independent outlets are being bought out one by one. AlterNet America is the people-powered response to the MAGA billionaire takeover of American media. We are reader-funded, editorially independent, and not for sale. We exist because of you. If you’re not yet a paid subscriber, please upgrade today.
Now, the news.
Trump’s Friends Couldn’t Sell Their Warehouses So He Bought Them
It turns out the secret to making money in real estate is knowing someone who controls a $40 billion federal budget.
Under former Secretary Kristi Noem, the Department of Homeland Security was planning to spend nearly $40 billion to buy up dozens of warehouses around the country to convert them into makeshift detention camps capable of holding 1,000 to 10,000 people each.
Many of the warehouses had been sitting on the market for years. Now DHS is buying them at a massive markup. One warehouse in Socorro, Texas, recently valued at $11 million, was purchased by ICE from the company El Paso Logistics II LLC for $123 million — more than a thousand percent profit.
Investigative journalist Michael Wriston, who tracked the enormous markups, said the plan came from “folks very close to the White House who were sitting on properties that were causing them losses every year. And the decision was made to buy them at taxpayer expense.”
Goldman Sachs also owned or controlled loans for properties purchased by DHS, including one that the bank refinanced only months before its sale to the department. Goldman Sachs says it wasn’t involved in the sales process.
The administration has already purchased enough warehouse space to hold more than 41,500 people at once. The friends of the White House who couldn’t unload those properties are now considerably less burdened. America’s taxpayers are picking up the difference.
Republicans Canceled Vote on the Iran War Because They Were About to Lose It
Democracy is a fragile thing. Sometimes you protect it by voting. Sometimes you protect it by making sure the vote never happens.
House GOP leaders canceled a vote on a resolution to limit Trump’s war powers in Iran just as Republicans were on the verge of losing the vote due to absences. The resolution had been introduced by Democrats to rein in a war Congress never authorized. Democrats’ most recent attempt failed last week in a stunning 212-212 tie vote.
This time it looked even more likely to pass, so Republican leadership did the logical thing: they made it disappear.
Leaders held open a vote on a measure to establish a women’s museum for 45 minutes as they tried to whip against the war powers resolution. Nothing says “we are absolutely confident in our position” like using a museum as a distraction.
One representative said, “We’ve gone from losing by one to tying last week to this chicken s*** retreat they did tonight.” Historians will note this was the most honest thing said on the House floor all year.
The Republican leadership that canceled this vote is counting on you not paying attention. We’re counting on you to prove them wrong. If this kind of coverage matters to you, please consider becoming a paying subscriber today.
Senator Who Voted for the War Is Asking Constituents for Gas Money
There is a particular kind of politician who causes a problem and then asks the people most affected by it to help him get through it. Meet Senator Dan Sullivan of Alaska.
Sullivan has repeatedly voted to allow Trump to continue attacking Iran without congressional approval, claiming Tehran has “been at war with us for almost half a century.” The war has consequences Sullivan apparently did not fully think through.
The president’s war on Iran has brought shipping to a near standstill in the Strait of Hormuz, creating a bottleneck for global oil supplies from the Gulf that has sent prices soaring. As of Thursday, the average national gas price in the U.S. was $4.56 per gallon, while in Alaska drivers were paying $5.27 per gallon on average. In some rural communities, prices for gas and heating fuel are even higher.
Sullivan’s response to all of this was to send out a fundraising email asking Alaskans to help him pay for gas. Yes, seriously.
Meanwhile, Sullivan has dismissed Alaskans’ concerns about energy prices as mere “externalities.” An externality, in economics, is a cost borne by someone who did not choose to incur it. In Alaska, it is apparently also a fundraising opportunity.
Suicides in ICE Detention Are at a Twenty-Year High
Here is what is happening inside the facilities your tax dollars just dramatically overpaid for.
Five deaths by suicide have been reported in ICE detention facilities so far this year, the highest in two decades, and the year isn’t half over yet. Over the four years of the previous administration, which held half as many people, there were two suicides.
NBC News obtained more than 1,000 emergency calls made over the last year from six detention centers around the country. Of those, 28 involved serious incidents of self-harm.
ICE currently holds nearly 60,000 people, up from roughly 34,000 during the Biden administration, and immigrants are staying on average 50 days, up from 36. Many don’t know when or whether they’ll ever get out.
Nationwide, there were 19 instances in which facilities didn’t meet suicide prevention standards since the start of Trump’s second term. At the facility where the most recent suicide occurred, inspectors found staff had not completed suicide prevention training, and in some cases officials waited 125 minutes between checks on suicidal detainees despite standards requiring checks every 15 minutes.
DHS’s response was to note that, as a percentage of the total detained population, the death rate is consistent with the last decade. What they failed to note is that the population has doubled. The math is not difficult. The indifference to it is.
If you or someone you know is in crisis, call or text 988, or visit 988lifeline.org.
The Billionaires Are Counting on Your Silence
Most publications have someone at the top of the org chart who gets to decide what kind of stories are worth telling, and what kind of stories get pulled. These pulls are rarely announced. They just shape what gets covered, and how, over time.
We don’t have that problem because we don’t have that person. Our subscribers are the whole business. That means our only obligation is to the people reading.
If that’s valuable to you, a paid subscription is the most direct way to make sure it keeps existing. Please consider upgrading today. If you’re already a paid subscriber, you already know this. You’re the reason we’re here, and we’re eternally grateful.
Thanks for reading. We’ll see you tonight.
POSITIVE STORIES YOU MAY HAVE MISSED:
US Senate refuses to push through ICE funding amid row over Trump’s ballroom. Senate Republicans tried to sneak $1 billion for White House security, including $220 million specifically to secure the ballroom nobody asked for, into a larger budget bill. They abandoned the plan when four members of their own party said no. The nonpartisan Senate parliamentarian had already deemed the allotment spurious, at which point Trump tried to get her fired. The ballroom, for what it’s worth, is still under construction.
New York budget restricts local police cooperation with ICE. New York passed a budget bill banning local police from entering into ICE contracts, kicking immigration detainees out of county jails, and requiring all law enforcement officers to show their faces and display their names and badge numbers while on duty. Federal agents who have spent the last year arresting people in masks will now have to do it like everyone can see them, because they can.
Exceedingly rare trees appear to have survived Santa Rosa Island Fire. A wildfire started by a stranded sailor’s emergency flare tore through more than 17,000 acres of Santa Rosa Island in Channel Islands National Park, burning through the grove of rare Torrey pines that grow naturally in only two places on Earth. Initial assessments found the trees “still exist and remain largely intact,” though high-intensity fire burned small pockets of the area, and scientists won’t know the full extent of the damage until crews can get close enough to assess it.
Scientists Use Stem Cells To Fight Aggressive Blood Cancers. Researchers gene-edited donor stem cells to remove a protein that blood cancers and healthy cells share, solving a longstanding problem: immunotherapy couldn’t target the cancer without also destroying the healthy donor cells. One patient with one of the most aggressive forms of leukemia achieved complete remission and remains cancer free over a year later.
