Good morning. I’m Corinne Straight, and this is AlterNet America.
Trump canceled an attack in the same social media post he announced it in. Florida is $608 million in the hole thanks to Alligator Alcatraz. More than 100,000 American children have had a parent taken from them by immigration agents. And the EPA just decided that your drinking water can have a little forever chemicals in it, as a treat.
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Now, let’s dive in.
Trump Canceled an Attack on Iran in the Same Post He Announced It
On Monday, Donald Trump posted on Truth Social that he was calling off a planned military strike against Iran. This was also the first time anyone had heard about the planned military strike against Iran.
In a single social media post, Trump announced and suspended a previously undisclosed operation, promised that a deal was imminent, and claimed he was just doing what the leaders of Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE requested. He then fired off 36 more posts about Tuesday’s primary elections.
In the same post, he instructed Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Dan Caine to “be prepared to go forward with a full, large scale assault of Iran, on a moment’s notice.” His post mentioning Hegseth came just hours after Hegseth had stepped away from his official duties to campaign in Kentucky.
Trump has repeatedly insisted for weeks that the U.S. “won” the war with Iran and was closing in on a deal, but many of his claims that agreement appeared imminent did not come to fruition. The war has now lasted more than two and a half months, with Trump blowing through deadline after deadline he set for himself.
The Strait of Hormuz remains partially closed. The administration continues to call this winning. So far, the only clear winner is anyone who owns an oil company.
Alligator Alcatraz Cost Florida $608 Million and the Feds Won’t Pay It
When Ron DeSantis opened the detention facility in the Florida Everglades, he presented it as Florida leading the way on immigration enforcement. “Alligator Alcatraz” was a statement of values: a swamp full of detained migrants guarded by apex predators.
Then the bill arrived.
Florida has spent more than $1 million a day to run the facility, and DeSantis has said he expects reimbursement from the federal government. The state has not yet received the $608 million it has requested.
The Trump administration has declined to cover the costs, which is exactly what you’d expect from a White House that treats its allies the same way it treats its enemies.
DeSantis said Thursday that the facility “always was meant to be temporary.” He did not say this when he opened it. He did not say this when he was using it for photo opportunities. He is saying it now, when it became inconvenient to say anything else.
Detainees at the facility have described poor physical conditions and difficulty accessing lawyers. A handbook released as part of a lawsuit over attorney access revealed that during head counts, detainees aren’t permitted to move or speak.
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Over 100,000 American Children Lost a Parent to ICE Detention
Here is a number worth sitting with: over 100,000.
That is the Brookings Institution’s estimate of how many U.S. citizen children have had a parent detained since Trump’s mass deportation campaign began. About 400,000 people have been detained by immigration agents since Trump returned to office, but it’s nearly impossible to know how many family separations that has caused, since the administration does not track it.
This is not an oversight. The less data there is, the harder it is to argue about the data.
ProPublica found that in just the first seven months of Trump’s second term, at least 11,000 American children had a parent detained. Trump has been deporting about four times as many mothers of American children per day as President Biden did, and those are the conservative numbers from government data.
The Brookings estimate, which uses census data, comes in closer to 145,000 American kids with a detained parent.
A document known as the Parental Interests Directive was given a new name under Trump: the Detained Parents Directive. Its preamble, which once instructed agents to handle immigrant parents in a way that was “humane,” has been stripped of the word. No further editorialization required.
The EPA Is Letting Forever Chemicals Stay in Your Water
PFAS are called “forever chemicals” because they do not break down. They accumulate in the body. The EPA has found that PFAS are linked to cancer, obesity, decreased fertility, developmental issues, and many other health problems. In 2024, the Biden administration set the first-ever federal drinking water standards for six types of PFAS. This was considered a significant public health achievement.
You probably know where this is going.
The Trump EPA announced Monday it will roll back four of those six protections entirely, and give water utilities two extra years to comply with the remaining two. This will delay or eliminate critical drinking water protections for up to 105 million people whose water providers have already detected PFAS above the levels the 2024 standards allow.
The American Chemistry Council and National Association of Manufacturers had filed a joint lawsuit against the EPA over the original regulations. The Trump EPA is now giving them most of what they asked for.
Here is where it gets shameless: the EPA put two employees of PFAS manufacturer Chemours on its Science Advisory Board, which provides guidance on EPA’s drinking water regulations. The people producing chemicals are now advising the agency that just decided not to regulate those chemicals.
The administration calls this deregulation. The word for it is corruption.
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POSITIVE STORIES YOU MAY HAVE MISSED:
Republicans trail Democrats by double digits on generic congressional ballot: Survey. A new New York Times/Siena poll has Republicans trailing Democrats by eleven points on a generic congressional ballot, 50 to 39 percent, with 11 percent still undecided. The poll was conducted May 11-15 among 1,507 registered voters, and released the same week Trump’s approval rating hit a second-term low. Republicans do have one advantage: their campaign arm has more cash on hand than Democrats, $78.2 million to $69.9 million. They are going to need every dollar of it to explain to voters why the last several months happened.
Judge Bars ICE From Making Immigration Arrests at Courts in New York. A federal judge ruled Monday that ICE agents can no longer make arrests without exceptional circumstances in and around three Manhattan immigration courthouses. The ruling came from U.S. District Judge Kevin Castel, a George W. Bush appointee who had originally allowed the arrests last year, but reversed course after federal prosecutors admitted in March that ICE had misled them about the legality of arresting immigrants at their court appearances. In other words, the government got caught lying to a judge, and the judge did not care for that.
Democratic district attorneys vow to prosecute federal agents who target voting sites. A coalition of Democratic district attorneys from Philadelphia, Minneapolis, Dallas, Austin, and Tucson announced Monday that they will prosecute any federal agents sent to intimidate voters at polling places this November. The announcement comes after Trump told reporters last week that he would do “anything necessary” to ensure honest elections and declined to rule out sending ICE or the National Guard to the polls. Federal law already prohibits this. The district attorneys would like the administration to know that they are aware of that.
FDA just approved the world’s first once-a-week insulin injection for diabetics. The FDA approved the world’s first once-weekly basal insulin, meaning the roughly 37 million Americans living with diabetes could soon go from 365 injections a year down to 52. Clinical trials found it matched or outperformed daily insulin on blood sugar control, and 93.7 percent of patients in one trial said they preferred it, which is about as close to unanimous as medicine gets. The catch, as always, is that the people who need it most are also the ones least likely to get quick access to an expensive new drug, and insurers have not yet weighed in.
