Trump Skips His Own Son’s Wedding to Go Golfing

Trump’s White House tried to ban the machines that count your votes, and a MAGA congressional candidate running on family values has been accused of home-wrecking and swinging

Good afternoon. I’m Ryan Rose, and this is AlterNet America.

Trump’s White House tried to ban the machines that count your votes. The president skipped his son’s wedding to golf in New Jersey. A Trump-endorsed congressional candidate running on family values has been accused of recruiting his best friend into a swinger lifestyle. And the federal government would prefer American scientists stop talking to scientists from other countries.

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Now, the news.

Trump Tried to Ban Half of All Voting Machines

The 2020 election was six years ago. Donald Trump lost it. Courts confirmed it 60 times over. And yet, somewhere in the West Wing, a man with a law license and a grudge has been spending his days trying to ban the machines that did the counting.

Reuters reported Thursday that White House adviser Kurt Olsen pushed a plan to target Dominion Voting Systems machines by asking the Commerce Department to declare their components national-security risks.

Dominion, you may recall, is the same company that extracted $787 million from Fox News in a defamation settlement after Fox spent years claiming Dominion had helped steal the 2020 election. Apparently no one forwarded that memo to the White House.

Olsen wanted to replace the machines with a national system of hand-counted paper ballots. Election-security experts say the plan would actually be less accurate and more vulnerable than the current machines.

Olsen got far enough that officials began exploring what legal grounds could be used to execute it. He also helped lead a federal mission that seized Dominion machines Puerto Rico used in its 2024 gubernatorial election.

The analysis found some known vulnerabilities, but no evidence of fraud, foreign interference, or Hugo Chávez, who has been dead since 2013.

Trump Skipped His Son’s Wedding to Go Golfing

The Iran war has been devastating. It’s claimed American lives, spiked gas prices, and stranded thousands of citizens across the Middle East. It has also made it very difficult for the president to attend a wedding in the Bahamas.

Trump confirmed he will not attend the wedding of his eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., and Bettina Anderson, taking place in the Bahamas this weekend. He had previously told reporters he was going to “try to make” the ceremony, but noted the timing was not ideal.

The destination he chose instead was his golf club in New Jersey.

Trump described the situation to reporters in characteristically tortured terms: “That’s one I can’t win on. If I do attend, I get killed. If I don’t attend, I get killed, by the fake news, of course.” To be clear: the choice here was between attending your firstborn son’s wedding in the Bahamas, or not attending and going to Bedminster.

Nearly 12 weeks into the Iran war, Trump is facing record-low approval ratings amid the public’s growing discontent over high gas prices, groceries, and other everyday expenses. Despite that, he has spent at least five weekends since the start of the war at his golf properties. One of those weekends is this one.

Don Jr. didn’t get his father to show up. You, on the other hand, show up every day — and that’s exactly what keeps this newsletter alive. If you’re not yet a paid subscriber, today’s a good day to fix that.

MAGA Family Values Candidate Accused of Swinging and Home-wrecking

Mark Lamb is a former Arizona sheriff, a Trump-endorsed congressional candidate, a self-described “proud family man,” and, according to multiple women and a church investigation, a very busy man.

Lamb, who is the favorite to represent Arizona’s 5th Congressional District, is accused of roping his best friend, Matt Hilsabeck, into a years-long affair with Lamb’s wife, without the knowledge or consent of Hilsabeck’s spouse, Jillian Stannard.

The alleged arrangement not only led to Hilsabeck’s divorce but triggered a probe by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Lamb and his wife are members of that church. They are also apparently “open with a close circle of friends about their sexual activity and partners.”

A separate woman, Tammy Peacock, reportedly had a years-long relationship with Lamb and even had a sheriff’s badge tattoo with his name on it. Screenshots show Lamb allegedly wrote to her: “I love that tattoo. Nobody can top my favorite supporter!” In his book, Lamb claimed he was “mortified” when he learned of the tattoo.

Stannard says that when she forwarded certain photographic evidence to church officials as part of their investigation, Lamb got in her face and told her there would be consequences. His campaign’s legal adviser dismissed all of it as a political hit job with no verification.

Lamb himself has stated he has been with one woman his entire life. He did not specify which one.

American Scientists Can No Longer Publish With Foreign Colleagues

Science has long operated on a fairly simple premise: researchers everywhere share findings, build on each other’s work, and the sum is greater than the parts. The Trump administration has identified this as a problem.

Two of the U.S. government’s largest funders of scientific research, NIH and NASA, have recently placed unprecedented limitations on the ability of U.S. scientists to publish papers with co-authors from other countries. Officials are informing grantees individually, leaving researchers confused and concerned.

In several cases, NIH grantees say they have been asked to remove already-published papers with foreign co-authors from their annual progress reports. The new approach appears to redefine “foreign component” to include any co-authorship with a scientist affiliated with a foreign institution, even if all work was conducted in the United States.

Historically, such collaboration was accepted and common: 30% of NIH-funded papers in 2017 had both U.S. and non-U.S. authors. Also worth noting, the countries that have been most enthusiastic about isolating their scientists from the rest of the world are not usually ones we hold up as models of scientific progress.

You already know which countries those are.

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Congressman Introduces Six Articles of Impeachment Against John Roberts. Tennessee Congressman Steve Cohen introduced six articles of impeachment against Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts this week, accusing him of partisan bias, ethical violations, and putting his thumb on the scale for the wealthy and powerful. Roberts has built a career on the claim that he is an impartial umpire. Cohen would like to introduce the scoreboard.

All charges against Chicago protesters dropped in latest ICE case to unravel. The federal government spent seven months trying to put six ICE protesters in prison, ultimately dropping all charges Thursday after its own prosecutors were caught committing misconduct before the grand jury. The U.S. attorney said he was completely unaware of what his team had done, which the judge found about as convincing as you’d expect.

A Bipartisan Amendment Would End Police License Plate Tracking Nationwide. A bipartisan House amendment tucked into a federal highway bill would ban police from using automated license plate readers for anything other than toll collection, forcing cities and states to shut down surveillance programs logging the movements of millions of innocent Americans. The FBI, for its part, is currently seeking up to $36 million for nationwide access to that same data, which gives you a sense of how much the government would prefer this amendment not pass.

Bill banning child marriage in Oklahoma becomes law. Oklahoma became the 17th state to ban child marriage, a sentence that contains two pieces of information that should equally alarm you. The bill passed by one vote. The 36 Republicans who voted against it would like you to know they are not pro-child marriage but simply pro-parental rights, which is a different thing that happens to have the same outcome.