Trump Replaced a Real Charity With His Own and Took the Money
The FBI is recounting the 2020 election again, a congressman took paid leave for months after voting against it for everyone else, and a man in ICE custody was restrained until he died
Good afternoon. I’m Ryan Rose, and this is AlterNet America.
A congressional investigation reveals Trump turned the nation’s 250th birthday into a shadow corporation that sold a “historic photo opportunity” for over $10 million. The FBI is sending 260 analysts into Atlanta to re-investigate an election Joe Biden won two recounts ago. A New Jersey congressman spent four months on fully paid medical leave after spending his career voting against paid leave for everyone else. And a man who begged for his mental health medication at an El Paso detention center was restrained by guards until his body went limp.
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Now, let’s dive in.
Trump Turned America’s 250th Birthday Into a Pay-to-Play Scheme
Trump swapped the bank accounts between the real charity and the fake one. That’s not politics, that’s the plot of Catch Me If You Can.
According to a congressional investigation released Thursday, Trump staged what House Democrats call a “hostile takeover” of the nation’s 250th anniversary to enrich allies, harvest voter data, and promote Christian nationalist ideology. The interim report is titled “From Vanity to Insanity: How the White House Cheated the American People Out of Their 250th Birthday.”
When the nonpartisan America250 Foundation resisted turning the celebration into a campaign rally, the White House built a wholly owned subsidiary called Freedom 250 inside the National Park Foundation. That gave the operation a charity’s tax-exempt credibility while dodging government transparency laws.
The report alleges fundraisers gave donors Freedom 250’s banking numbers instead of America250’s, which Democrats say could constitute wire fraud. Sponsorship packages started at $500,000 and climbed past $10 million, culminating in a “historic photo opportunity” with Trump.
Event Strategies, the firm that planned the January 6 rally, was handed roughly $40 million in federal contracts. Then there are the “Freedom Trucks,” a federally funded fleet of mobile museums sent to schoolchildren with content from PragerU and Hillsdale College. One exhibit features an AI-generated George Washington declaring that “our rights are a gift from God.”
Washington never said that. But he also can’t sue, so.
The FBI Is Re-Investigating the 2020 Election Biden Won
Somewhere, an actual criminal is having the best week of his life.
The FBI’s Directorate of Intelligence has requested “surge support” to Atlanta for what it calls Director Kash Patel’s “priority” investigation into the 2020 results in Fulton County. The memo asks every field office to contribute analysts, aiming for 260 total. Large offices are told to send eight, smaller ones three to five. Each analyst is asked to review 708 records and finish by July 17.
These “tactical intel” staffers normally run license plates, prepare subpoenas, and review subpoena returns for active cases. They are now being pulled off that work to comb through ballots from an election that ended more than five years ago.
Trump has repeatedly alleged without evidence that Fulton County manipulated the count and that dead Georgians voted. Biden’s narrow win in the state was confirmed twice over.
The case was referred to the FBI by Kurt Olsen, a lawyer who previously fought to overturn the 2020 results and now works at the Justice Department. A judge denied Fulton County’s request in May to get its seized ballots back.
So a lawyer who tried to overturn the election got hired by the Justice Department and then asked the FBI to investigate the election. That’s not a referral — that’s a do-over.
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Republican Voted Against Paid Leave, Then Took Three Months
Tom Kean took four paid months off for mental health treatment. He has also voted to make that impossible for you.
Rep. Tom Kean (R-N.J.) vanished from Washington in March, citing a personal medical issue. He returned this week to announce he had been hospitalized for clinical depression. He took more than three months off, on his full salary.
During his time in the New Jersey legislature, Kean voted against bills requiring paid leave and backed legislation to bar New Jersey towns from enacting their own paid leave rules. “Our solutions won’t cost taxpayers any extra money,” he said of that 2015 package.
Sen. Andy Kim (D-N.J.) wished him a full recovery, then noted the obvious. “Congressman Kean has opposed these very benefits for all workers that Members of Congress get,” Kim wrote.
Kean also voted for last year’s Republican tax bill and its Medicaid cuts, which could reduce access to mental health services for low-income Americans. The same services, roughly, that he just used four paid months to access.
Heal thyself. Defund thy neighbor.
ICE Killed a Man and Called It Suicide Prevention
The federal standard for inmates with serious mental illness is to move them somewhere they can get treatment. The facility settled for telling one ICE detainee to “practice coping skills to manage suicidal thoughts.”
Geraldo Lunas Campos, a 55-year-old Cuban immigrant with bipolar disorder and anxiety, repeatedly told staff at Camp East Montana in El Paso that he wasn’t getting the care he needed. He complained about his antidepressant dosage, expressed suicidal thoughts, and once went four days without his medications.
Three months before he died, guards found him with a sheet tied around his neck. Staff discussed moving him to “a higher level of care.” They never did.
On Jan. 3, guards took him to segregated housing after he demanded the medication he’d been refused. The lawsuit his family filed Monday alleges that four guards restrained him, and that even after he yelled that he couldn’t breathe, they “kept restraining him on the ground, putting pressure on his neck and chest until his body went limp.”
Lunas Campos is one of over 20 people to die in ICE custody so far this year. Less than two weeks after he died, another man died at the same facility in what ICE called a “presumed suicide.”
The El Paso County medical examiner ruled the death a homicide by asphyxiation. DHS says that security staff “immediately intervened to save his life,” which is a weird way to describe killing someone.
If you or someone you know needs help, visit 988lifeline.org or call or text the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline at 988.
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POSITIVE STORIES YOU MAY HAVE MISSED:
The House Voted 414-2 to Let Funds Freeze Suspicious Withdrawals by Seniors. In a rare burst of bipartisanship, the House last week passed the Financial Exploitation Prevention Act of 2025 by a 414-2 vote. The bill would let mutual funds and their transfer agents pause redemption requests from older adults or people with disabilities if financial exploitation is suspected, delaying transactions up to 15 days initially and 10 more if fraud is confirmed. It also directs the SEC to report to Congress within a year on ways to reduce fraud against vulnerable adults. Scams reported to the FTC by adults 60 and older hit $2.4 billion in 2024, and the agency estimates the real figure could be as high as $81.5 billion.
Tillis: SAVE America Act Is ‘Dead’ as Time Has Run Out to Implement New Voting Rules. Thom Tillis, a Republican senator from North Carolina who co-sponsored the original SAVE Act, is now calling Trump’s number one legislative priority “dead” and “theater,” saying even if Senate Republicans somehow found 60 votes, there’s no chance the election overhaul could be implemented before the midterms. This is the same bill that Tillis, along with Collins, Murkowski, and McConnell, already voted to kill once, and that Trump’s last-minute additions like eliminating mail-in voting “pissed off” enough Republican senators to nearly tank even the procedural vote. Trump’s number one priority has now been defeated repeatedly by his own party.
Another Big Study Finds No Link Between Tylenol and Autism. Researchers analyzing electronic health records from 2001 to 2023 for more than 700,000 mother-child pairs in Hong Kong found no link between prenatal acetaminophen use and autism, according to a study in JAMA Internal Medicine. About 43 percent of the children had been exposed to acetaminophen in utero. The finding refutes claims made in September by Trump and Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who told pregnant people to “tough it out” rather than take the drug. Medical organizations had warned that untreated fever during pregnancy is itself known to raise the risk of autism, miscarriage, and birth defects.
Stanford Scientists Regrew Cartilage and Reversed Arthritis in Old Mice. A Stanford Medicine-led study published in Science found that blocking an aging-related protein restored lost knee cartilage in older mice and prevented arthritis after ACL-type injuries. Human cartilage samples collected during knee replacement surgeries also began producing new, functional hyaline cartilage when exposed to the treatment. Osteoarthritis affects about one in five American adults and generates roughly $65 billion in direct health care costs a year, with no existing drug that treats the underlying cause. An oral version is already in clinical trials for age-related muscle weakness, meaning the joint you were told to just replace might one day be something you can repair.