Good morning. I’m Ryan Rose, and this is AlterNet America.
Trump is threatening to send the FCC after an NBC journalist who accurately described his endorsement record as “mixed.” The FBI has quietly dropped its ban on hiring applicants who have patronized sex workers, stolen from employers, or engaged in bestiality. West Point fired its only climate scientist after he refused to stop teaching that humans cause climate change. And a federal judge just ruled that the Trump administration cannot deport students for criticizing Israel.
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Trump Threatens NBC’s Kristen Welker With FCC ‘Punishment’
Apparently the FCC now stands for Federal Compliment Commission.
Trump posted on Truth Social on Sunday that Meet the Press host Kristen Welker would be reported to the Federal Communications Commission for “rebuke or punishment” because she noted that candidates he’s endorsed have had “mixed results.”
He called her assessment a “purposeful inaccuracy” and a “Threat to our Country,” despite the fact that six candidates he endorsed lost their primary elections in August alone. In a second post, he attacked what he called “FAKE POLLS USED BY OUR CROOKED MEDIA” and wrote “FCC TO THE RESCUE.”
FCC Chairman Brendan Carr previously issued a threat to broadcasters over their coverage of the Iran war in March after Trump complained on social media. In April, Carr initiated an unusual challenge to ABC’s local station licenses the day after Trump called for Jimmy Kimmel’s firing. He also has an open investigation into NBC’s parent company, Comcast, over what Trump has called “invidious forms of DEI discrimination.”
Anna Gomez, the lone Democrat on the commission, responded that the FCC has no authority to punish journalists the administration does not like. The FCC’s complaint form does not currently include a box for “a journalist used a word I didn’t like,” but give it time.
FBI Drops Hiring Ban on Applicants Who Patronized Sex Workers
Three strikes and you’re out is now the official FBI hiring policy, but only for prostitution.
In a June internal memo, the FBI quietly loosened its hiring standards for agents and staff. Hiring sex workers is no longer an automatic disqualifier if it happened fewer than three times and not within the last ten years. Stealing from an employer is acceptable if it occurred more than three years ago. And bestiality or animal cruelty will be forgiven as long as it happened before the applicant turned 18.
An FBI spokesperson framed the bestiality change as applying to a narrow set of circumstances, such as applicants who were sexually abused with animals as children. But sources told CBS News that the new eligibility requirements do not actually distinguish between candidates who were coerced and those who participated willingly.
The FBI lost 1,139 special agents in 2025 alone, according to a review of government personnel data. Many of them were fired for investigating Trump’s retention of classified documents and his efforts to overturn the 2020 election.
To fill the gap, the bureau eliminated the requirement that agents hold a bachelor’s degree and cut training at Quantico from 18 weeks to eight. The FBI still insists it maintains “some of the highest suitability standards in the U.S. government,” which gets easier to claim the more everyone else lowers them.
West Point Fires Its Only Climate Scientist After He Refused to Stop Teaching Science
The U.S. Military Academy would like to prepare the next generation of Army officers for every possible threat to national security, except for the one that is actively melting the Arctic.
Dr. Adam Kalkstein, who taught climate science at West Point for 17 years with consistently “outstanding” reviews, was fired after the spring semester for refusing to stop teaching that humans cause climate change. In a lawsuit filed this week, he says Brigadier General Shane Reeves gave him the order in November 2025 because Trump doesn’t believe it.
Kalkstein told the dean that the order was immoral and potentially illegal. He said that teaching climate science without mentioning human causation would be like trying to teach the law without being able to mention the Constitution.
Kalkstein specifically asked how the U.S. could compete with Russia in the Arctic if it refuses to acknowledge what is causing the ice to melt, or how it could protect coastal military assets if it refuses to examine what is making the seas rise. When Reeves suggested he resign, Kalkstein declined, and the general stormed out of the room. Six months later, he was fired.
West Point has not yet commented on the case, which is consistent with their new policy of not knowing things.
Federal Judge Rules Trump Cannot Deport Students for Criticizing Israel
Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses — unless they have opinions about Gaza.
U.S. District Judge Noël Wise ruled Friday that the Trump administration can’t deport students who speak out against Israel’s war in Gaza. The case was brought by The Stanford Daily, Stanford University’s student newspaper, after international students said they were too scared to speak to reporters because they feared the government would retaliate.
Wise said the government’s actions amounted to a viewpoint-based restriction on protected speech, noting that Secretary of State Marco Rubio personally decided what speech was acceptable and what was grounds for deportation. If the government’s approach were permitted to stand, she warned, targets could eventually include anyone in the United States.
Judge Wise’s ruling builds on a decision from last year by a federal judge in Boston who found that deporting noncitizens solely for supporting Palestinians was unconstitutional. In her 90-page opinion, Wise catalogued a pattern of retaliation by immigration authorities against people who engaged in pro-Palestinian speech beginning in March 2025 and against people who criticized Turning Point USA co-founder Charlie Kirk after his assassination last September.
The government has now lost this argument in both Boston and San Jose, which means free speech is working its way across the country faster than the deportation orders.
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POSITIVE STORIES YOU MAY HAVE MISSED:
Women Are Turning on the GOP in Massive Numbers. In a new poll of 1,604 women by pollster Christina Matthews, white women now favor Democrats 47 percent to 39 percent, a stunning turnaround from the last two House elections when they favored Republicans by double digits. Married women, who had favored House Republicans by 22 points in 2022 and by 13 points in 2024, are now evenly split between the parties. Mr. Trump’s approval among women who are eligible to vote is now 32 percent, and one in four women who voted for him now disapprove. Matthews told Politico that when she looks at those numbers, she is “seeing sirens.”
Minnesota Supreme Court Rejects Mike Lindell’s Bid to Recount Gubernatorial Primary. MyPillow founder Mike Lindell, who has long refused to accept Trump’s loss in the 2020 election, now refuses to accept his own loss after state House Speaker Lisa Demuth beat him by 45,000 votes in the Minnesota Republican primary. Chief Justice Natalie Hudson wrote in a six-page ruling Saturday that Lindell’s claim “fails on the merits,” and the Secretary of State’s plan for a recount is in compliance with state law. Lindell had promised to pay the $825,000 cost of the recount, but backed out when he learned the recount would only count ballots cast for him and Demuth. He told NBC News he plans to take his case to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Elon Musk’s X Loses First Amendment Lawsuit Over New York’s ‘Stop Hiding Hate Act.’ U.S. District Judge John Cronan rejected X Corp.’s challenge to a New York law requiring large social media companies to disclose their content moderation policies and issue semiannual reports about their treatment of hate speech, extremism, disinformation and harassment. The law requires disclosure of factual business information, not a mandate that X adopt certain content moderation policies, the judge said, comparing the requirement to mandatory calorie counts at fast food restaurants.
Cities Terminate Flock Surveillance Contracts at Record Pace. In August alone, Flock Safety, a surveillance company that deploys AI-powered cameras to take photos and record the license plate of every car that passes by, lost contracts with 90 cities and counties. That’s four times the number of cancellations in July, and about three a day, bringing the total to 214 since 2021. Concerns from communities included surveillance overreach, data sharing between police agencies, high costs, and officers misusing the system. Flock said new partnerships outnumber cancellations ten to one but would not say how many new customers it has actually signed up.
So now “mixed results” is apparently a federal offense if the president doesn’t like hearing it. That’s the part that should bother everyone, regardless of party. Presidents aren’t supposed to have a government agency standing by like customer service because a journalist used an unflattering word. The First Amendment exists precisely because powerful people have always wanted the authority to punish speech that annoys them.
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