Good morning. I’m Corrine Straight, and this is AlterNet America.
Trump called Epstein’s survivors “victims or whatever” and suggested they didn’t want to testify. Minnesota charged an ICE agent with felony assault for pointing his gun at two motorists. The Senate voted 50-49 to let a Chilean mining company dig upstream from America’s most-visited wilderness. And Congress wants your laptop to ID you before it lets you on the internet.
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Now, let’s go.
“Victims or Whatever”
Melania Trump went to the White House podium last week to declare that the lies linking her to Jeffrey Epstein “must stop today.” She called on Congress to let survivors testify publicly, asking abuse survivors to do the work her husband’s DOJ has refused to do for two years.
Then Trump got in front of cameras and, somehow, made it worse.
Asked about his wife’s call for survivors to come forward, the president called Epstein’s victims “victims or whatever” and suggested the real problem was that they had “refused to go under oath, which was a little surprising.”
There is no evidence for this. There is, however, a letter from a group of survivors pointing out that they have already filed criminal reports, testified in court, and shown what they called “extraordinary courage.” Asking more of them now “is a deflection of responsibility, not justice.”
Democrats on the House Oversight Committee noted they have been requesting public hearings for months, including testimony from Pam Bondi and acting AG Todd Blanche, and have been ignored every time. Blanche went on Fox News this week and said Melania’s statement “rings true” to him. He did not announce any hearings.
Trump publicly questioned whether the survivors wanted justice at all, which is what you say when you need them discredited, and then boarded a plane to Las Vegas.
Your Laptop Would Like to See Some ID
Protecting children online is the stated purpose of a newly introduced bill. It is also a bill that would require every American to hand their biometric data to Apple or Google as a condition of turning on a device they already own.
H.R. 8250, the “Parents Decide Act,” introduced by Rep. Josh Gottheimer with Republican co-sponsor Elise Stefanik, would require every operating system provider in America to verify the age of any user before they can use the device.
Not just apps. Not just social media. The operating system. Your phone. Your laptop. Your desktop. The thing you are using right now to read this newsletter about the bill that wants to know how old you are before you read newsletters.
Section 2(a)(1) requires users to provide their date of birth both to set up an account and to use the device at all. There is no opt-out for adults. The age check is the entry fee for owning a computer. What happens to that data afterward is left to the FTC to sort out at some point in the future.
Open-source Linux distributions face fines of $7,500 per violation for not having the compliance infrastructure of a trillion-dollar company. The bill has bipartisan support.
Teenagers who want around an age gate will use a VPN or a fake birthday, same as they always have. Everyone else will hand their biometric data to Apple and Google as a condition of turning on their phone.
ICE Agent Charged With Assault For Pointing His Gun at Civilians
ICE agent Gregory Donnell Morgan Jr. has been charged with two counts of assault related to a road rage incident, with a nationwide warrant issued for his arrest.
Morgan is accused of pointing his gun at two people in another car on February 5th, while illegally driving his unmarked SUV on the shoulder of a Minneapolis highway. The two people in the other car called 911 and reported what they believed was a “crazy person driving down the road aiming guns at people.”
Their windows were up. They had no idea he was a federal agent.
Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty called these the first criminal charges against a federal officer connected to Operation Metro Surge, the Trump administration’s operation that brought over 3,000 federal officers to the Twin Cities. The raids resulted in the fatal shootings of Renee Nicole Good and Alex Pretti.
Morgan’s own interview confirmed he drew his weapon after the other vehicle had already returned to normal traffic. No arrangements have been made for him to surrender, and the nationwide arrest warrant remains active.
The acting attorney general has warned that arresting federal agents could result in federal charges, which is the Justice Department’s way of saying the man who pointed a gun at two strangers from an unmarked SUV on a highway shoulder is actually the victim here.
The Senate Just Handed America’s Most-Visited Wilderness to a Chilean Mining Company
A foreign mining company has been trying to dig up a protected American wilderness for years. On Thursday, fifty United States senators decided to help.
The Senate voted 50-49 to reverse a 20-year mining ban protecting 225,000 acres of Superior National Forest land upstream from the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness. The beneficiary is Twin Metals, a subsidiary of Antofagasta, a Chilean mining giant.
Minnesota Sen. Tina Smith – who spoke for hours attempting to block the bill – warned that Antofagasta has what she described as a “sweetheart deal” with Chinese ore processors. The minerals dug out of this American wilderness would be processed and sold by China.
So to be clear: a Republican Senate majority voted to let a Chilean company mine a protected American wilderness so China can process the ore. In the name of reducing reliance on foreign materials.
The Forest Service’s own 2022 environmental review drew 675,000 public comments, over 95 percent of which favored protecting the Boundary Waters, and concluded that sulfide-ore copper mining in the area would cause irreversible harm.
The Senate passed it anyway using the Congressional Review Act, a parliamentary shortcut deployed here in a way it has never been used before to kill a public land order. The resolution also prohibits any future president from reinstating the ban.
It passed by one vote.
The Billionaires Have Their Outlets. This One’s Yours.
The business model that kept journalism independent is gone. What replaced it is billionaires buying papers they used to be afraid of, networks taking meetings they don’t disclose, and quiet understandings about which stories are worth the trouble. You’ve watched it happen in real time.
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Thanks for reading, and we’ll see you tonight.
POSITIVE STORIES YOU MAY HAVE MISSED:
GOP House majority shrinks as Democrat wins New Jersey special election. Progressive activist Analilia Mejia won New Jersey’s 11th Congressional District special election Thursday, narrowing Republicans’ House majority to 218-214. The AP called the race seven minutes after polls closed, which is the kind of margin that makes a Republican candidate’s “I look forward to the rematch” concession statement read a little differently.
US House approves bill to shield 350,000 Haitians from deportations. The House voted 224-204 Thursday to extend temporary protected status for roughly 330,000 Haitian nationals through 2029, with ten Republicans breaking from leadership to support the measure. The White House responded that the bill is “terrible” and “going nowhere,” which is also what they said about the discharge petition before it hit 218 signatures and forced the vote anyway.
Federal court sides with trans athletes & says Donald Trump’s executive orders aren’t law. A federal appeals court in Minnesota ruled Thursday that Trump’s executive orders banning trans kids from girls’ sports are not law, which is a thing that was already true when he signed them but apparently needed a federal judge to say out loud. The court wrote that “executive guidance and agency findings, in and of themselves, do not reflect settled law.”
U.S. Animal Shelters See Sharpest Drop in Deaths Since 2020. 34,000 fewer dogs and cats were killed in U.S. shelters in 2025 than the year before, the sharpest drop in five years, with four million pets finding homes. Dogs had a breakthrough year specifically, with shelter deaths dropping 8.5%, the first decrease since 2020. This newsletter covers a lot of ground that will make you want to hug a dog. The good news is that there are more dogs available to hug.
