Good morning. I’m Corinne Straight, and this is AlterNet America.
The president is selling fake job titles to retirees in exchange for donations. His administration is being sued for firing 75% of Black officials in the federal government. A woman who survived a massacre and built a career interpreting for immigrants in court was detained by ICE. And a senator from Utah has decided the Boundary Waters needs a road.
Before we get into it: Independent journalism survives on one thing, and it isn’t a billionaire who bought us because he “believed in the mission” and then discovered he didn’t like what we wrote. It’s readers who pay for what they read. If you’re one of them, thank you. If you’re not yet, this would be a good morning to fix that. Please consider becoming a paid subscriber today. We can’t do it without you.
Let’s jump in.
The Administration Fired Most of Its Black Officials. They’re Suing.
Alvin Brown was a Democratic member of the National Transportation Safety Board, nominated by President Biden, when he was fired in May 2025. He is suing over it. His lawyers are not arguing politics — they are arguing math.
Brown’s attorneys say that 75 percent of Black officials at independent federal agencies have been fired under Trump. At the time of his removal, two other Democrats remained on the NTSB, which his lawyers say makes the “we just wanted Republican control” explanation difficult to sustain.
Robert Primus, who sat on the Surface Transportation Board and was also the only Black board member at his agency, has filed a parallel discrimination claim. Both men were fired without cause, which the law governing independent agencies requires before a removal can happen.
The administration has argued in separate cases that the president has near-unlimited authority to fire agency heads. This lawsuit asks a different question: even if that’s true, does “I can fire anyone” include “and also I fired three-quarters of the Black ones”?
The Supreme Court is currently considering how much power the president has to fire people. This lawsuit would like to add a follow-up question.
Trump Is Selling Fake Job Titles to His Supporters
The Trump National Committee recently sent supporters an email with a simple announcement: your most recent donation has earned you a promotion to “Midterm Senior Strategist.” The position comes with responsibilities, a title, and a sense of purpose.
It does not come with a salary, a desk, or any indication that it exists.
The perks of the new fake job include “breaking news updates” from the president himself and “priority access to all limited releases,” the nature of which remains unclear. The email was designed to look like it came directly from Trump and helpfully noted that he needed a response before his next meeting.
This is, remarkably, not the strangest fundraising email the Trump operation has sent in recent months. A separate PAC sent donors a message suggesting ICE would “track them down” if they didn’t confirm their citizenship by responding to a survey.
Before that, Never Surrender, Inc. sent an email using a photograph from a dignified transfer honoring fallen soldiers to pitch “National Security Briefing Memberships” in exchange for donations.
The CIA Director testified last month that donors were essentially duped by the national security briefing email, and that the access promised did not exist in the form described. Nobody was refunded. The new email went out anyway.
For the record, we did not offer anyone a fake title in exchange for writing this newsletter. The newsletter is free. A paid subscription just keeps it that way. No PAC money, no billionaire backstop, no donor who gets a phone call when they don’t like the coverage. That is, apparently, the most honest arrangement on the market. Please consider upgrading today.
An Immigration Court Interpreter Was Arrested by Immigration Agents
Geeta Batra is Texas’s only licensed interpreter in Hindi, Punjabi, and Urdu. For years, her routine involved flying from South Texas to wherever South Asian immigrants needed language access in immigration court. Given the shortage of people who do what she does, she’s frequently far from home.
Batra has lived in the United States for 35 years. She left India after her parents were murdered during a state-sanctioned pogrom against Sikhs in the 1980s. An immigration judge granted her “withholding of removal,” a legal protection for people who would face persecution if sent back.
Her work authorization was valid for another four years when ICE agents stopped her at Harlingen International Airport on March 17.
In a sworn deposition, Batra said the agents had no visible badges. When she explained her valid immigration status, an agent replied: “That doesn’t mean you can be here forever.” She is now in detention.
ICE has not said where it intends to send her, because people with her legal protection cannot be deported to the country they fled. They must be sent somewhere else, and the U.S. has paid up to a million dollars per person to find countries willing to accept them.
Batra spent decades helping immigrants navigate a system that was supposed to protect people like her. The agents who took her into custody reportedly took selfies with her in handcuffs. She is still in detention. The agents are still employed.
Republican Wants to Build Roads in the Boundary Waters
The Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness in Minnesota is the most-visited wilderness area in the United States. It has been specially protected under the Wilderness Act since 1964. It has no roads. That is, in large part, the point.
Republican Senator Mike Lee has introduced legislation called the Border Lands Conservation Act, which would allow the Department of Homeland Security to build roads, fences, surveillance systems, and other infrastructure in federally protected wilderness areas within 100 miles of either border.
This is, of course, about immigration. The Boundary Waters shares a border with Canada. Only there’s no evidence anyone is sneaking into the United States through a million-acre wilderness area accessible primarily by canoe. In fact, illegal crossings along the northern border are down 99 percent.
Lee would like to build roads there anyway, on the theory that there could be a problem someday.
The bill would give DHS unchecked authority to build whatever it wants in protected wilderness. The naming convention is the same one that gave us the PATRIOT Act, the Clean Skies Initiative, and the Healthy Forests Restoration Act, all of which did approximately the opposite of what their names suggested.
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.
None of that is happening here, because we don’t have anyone to sell out to. We have readers. If you’ve been reading AlterNet America for free, we’re glad you’re here. But free doesn’t keep the lights on, and the lights need to stay on.
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Thanks for reading, and we’ll see you tonight.
POSITIVE STORIES YOU MAY HAVE MISSED:
Jury finds that Live Nation acted as a monopoly and overcharged ticket buyers. A federal jury in Manhattan found this week that Live Nation and Ticketmaster operated as an illegal monopoly that overcharged ticket buyers, which every person who has ever tried to buy concert tickets already knew. The DOJ tried to make the case go away last month by settling for $280 million and small reforms. The agreement was so inadequate that 34 states still went to trial. The jury, unbothered by the settlement, found for the states anyway.
Key Trump lawyer who tried to overturn 2020 election permanently disbarred. The California Supreme Court permanently disbarred John Eastman this week — the lawyer who wrote the memos arguing Mike Pence could simply refuse to certify the 2020 election results. Pence declined, the courts rejected it, the Capitol was attacked, and Eastman spent the next five years fighting to keep his law license. He has now lost that fight too. The bar moves slowly, but it does move.
Judge halts construction of ICE facility in Maryland over environmental concerns. A federal judge halted construction on ICE’s plan to convert an 820,000 square foot warehouse in western Maryland into a detention facility, as the agency skipped required environmental reviews. During the hearing, the Justice Department lawyer conceded that DHS had “come to the conclusion” it should probably conduct an environmental analysis — a conclusion the judge noted they might have reached before buying the building for $102 million.
Gov. Hochul, Mayor Mamdani propose NYC tax on second homes worth over $5 million. New York Governor Kathy Hochul proposed a pied-à-terre tax this week that would levy an annual surcharge on second homes in New York City valued at $5 million or more. It’s estimated to generate at least $500 million a year to help close the city’s budget gap. The tax would apply to roughly 13,000 apartments, including a $238 million penthouse owned by hedge fund billionaire Ken Griffin, who will be fine.
