Good morning. I’m Corinne Straight, and this is AlterNet America.
MAGA Rep. Lauren Boebert’s 21-year-old son was arrested on three felony charges tied to a 43-second sex tape he made with a 17-year-old. Trump’s Truth Social will now sell Wall Street early access to his posts for up to $1.2 million a year. An ICE agent was caught staking out Ilhan Omar’s town hall in a car with mismatched license plates. And the Trump administration is killing the federal report that tracks how fast the ice caps are melting.
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Lauren Boebert’s Son Faces Three Felonies Over Child Exploitation
“Family values” is when your 21-year-old has a longer rap sheet than your legislative record.
Tyler Boebert, the son of MAGA Rep. Lauren Boebert, was arrested Sunday in New Castle, Colorado, on three felony charges related to sexual exploitation of a child. He was released the same day after he posted $10,000 bail.
The charges stem from a 43-second video Tyler allegedly filmed of himself having sex with a 17-year-old girl. The two were dating in February 2024, when he was 18. The girl, who was weeks away from turning 18, reported the video to Silt police shortly after it was made.
The video was subsequently posted to an anonymous Instagram account along with other child sexual abuse material. At least six other people, including at least four juveniles, “may have committed crimes” in connection with the account, according to the affidavit.
“I love my son,” Congresswoman Boebert said in a statement. “We take these allegations very seriously and pray for everyone affected during this challenging time.”
Tyler was also arrested in 2024 on 22 felony and misdemeanor charges connected to a string of vehicle break-ins, and pleaded guilty to attempted identity theft. He has twice been charged with child abuse without injury after allowing children he was watching to wander away.
Truth Social Will Sell Wall Street Trump’s Posts Before You See Them
They finally figured out how to make Truth Social profitable.
For $60,000 to $100,000 each month, trading firms are getting early access to Trump’s posts through a new service offered by Trump Media & Technology Corp. “Truth API” will allow Wall Street to receive presidential news on tariffs, central bank policy, and global developments before anyone else.
CEO Kevin McGurn said that 10 organizations have already signed up, generating $7 million to $12 million in annual revenue. He brushed off ethical concerns from both watchdog groups and congressional Democrats, claiming the product is similar to those offered by other social media platforms.
It’s true that many social media companies sell API access, but none are selling hedge funds a head start on presidential tariff announcements. That’s not a product, that’s insider trading with a subscription fee.
Trump Media has lost more than $1 billion since the beginning of last year. It has $1 billion in debt, some of which can be demanded back by lenders on November 30, shortly after the midterm elections.
One question that remains is whether trading firms will keep paying $1.2 million a year for Trump’s posts once Trump is no longer in office. Shares fell another 8% Monday to $9.39, down from a 2024 debut near $62.
An ICE Agent Was Caught Staking Out Ilhan Omar’s Town Hall
The FBI used to bug MLK’s hotel rooms. These guys got caught by event security.
An ICE agent was discovered parked outside Rep. Ilhan Omar’s town hall in Richfield, Minnesota, sitting in a Ford Explorer with license plates that didn’t match the vehicle — which is illegal under Minnesota state law.
Police providing security noticed the woman monitoring the building and ran her plates. When they approached, she first identified herself as “security,” then said she was an employee of Homeland Security Investigations taking part in an undercover drug operation in the area. She left after a call to her supervisor.
The agent was parked in plain view of a prominent sign indicating the town hall was happening at that location. Omar wrote to Michael McCarthy, who oversees the DHS’s St. Paul field office, that the presence “raises serious and uncomfortable questions.”
“At best, your agent was unable to assess that the parking lot of a community center hosting a Congressional event wasn’t the best place to conduct a drug operation,” Omar wrote. “At worst, it emphasizes many Americans’ growing concern that the Trump administration uses ICE to surveil political opponents.”
Omar says she met with DHS officials in March about dozens of reports of agents switching out license plates, and was assured the practice had ended. “It appears that this commitment was untrue,” she wrote.
She has given the DHS until August 14 to explain, which is more notice than ICE usually gives.
Trump Kills Funding for Key Arctic Climate Report
The ice caps and the report tracking how fast they’re melting have a lot in common right now.
The Trump administration has yanked federal funding from NOAA’s Arctic Report Card, an annual assessment that tracks how fast the Arctic is warming compared to the rest of the planet. NOAA has published it every year since 2006, using data from more than 100 scientists around the world on temperatures and ecosystems.
Last year’s edition found that Arctic surface air temperatures were the warmest recorded since 1900.
The data will still exist, but it won’t be easily available to the public. Zack Labe, a climate scientist who has contributed to the report since 2020, called the decision “truly devastating,” while Arctic specialist Rick Thoman warned it would leave a hole in environmental monitoring that no university or nonprofit can fill on its own.
The administration has been systematically dismantling the government’s ability to study and communicate climate science, from firing researchers to scrubbing data on federal websites. They even stopped updating the database that tracked the country’s costliest weather disasters.
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