Good morning. I’m Corinne Straight, and this is AlterNet America.
Rand Paul’s office published Anthony Fauci’s diaries and exposed more than 20 people by name alongside their cancer, Ebola, and HIV diagnoses. Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche privately told faith leaders the DOJ is working so the Dobbs decision “becomes permanent in every state.” ICE is fitting Springfield’s Haitians with ankle monitors and ordering them not to travel more than 75 miles from home. And Trump is tearing up his brand-new $5 million granite helipad because the White House lawn is slightly slanted.
Before we get to the news, a brief ask: AlterNet America was launched as a direct response to MAGA billionaires buying up networks like CBS and newspapers like the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times. We’re going all-in on the bet that reader-supported journalism can compete directly with the billionaires by being the one thing they can’t buy.
We’re incredibly grateful to all the free subscribers who have signed up to receive our newsletters in recent weeks. But if you’ve been thinking about making the leap to become a paying subscriber, this is the time when it matters the most. Please upgrade today.
Rand Paul Released Personal Medical Records With Fauci’s Diary
If you were a suspect in the Epstein files, your name would have been redacted. If you are a cancer patient who once asked to take a photo with Anthony Fauci, apparently not.
That’s exactly what happened to Leslie Adelman, one of more than 20 private individuals whose names and medical histories were published to the world when Sen. Rand Paul’s office released over 1,600 pages of Fauci’s personal diaries last week.
The initial dump was completely unredacted. It exposed more than 20 individuals by name along with their medical histories, diagnoses, symptoms, and test results. Two of them were children, including the child of Stephen and Katie Miller.
Days later, some files were quietly replaced with partial redactions. Craig Spencer, the ER doctor who contracted Ebola in 2014, got his name redacted. Adelman did not. Of two HIV-positive individuals Fauci recounted meeting, one name came out.
HHS handed the documents to Paul in response to an oversight request, not a subpoena, which could give the named individuals a constitutional claim against the agency.
Adelman donated her time and her body to NIH research that has likely benefitted millions of people. Fauci wrote that visiting her “made my day.” The rest of us just learned what volunteering for government research can cost you.
Todd Blanche Promised Faith Leaders He’d Ban Abortion “in Every State”
Remember when overturning Roe was about states’ rights? That was fun.
On a White House Faith Office call, the acting Attorney General told religious leaders the Justice Department was “working hand in hand” with federal health agencies and the White House “so that the Dobbs decision becomes permanent in every state.”
“We don’t have complete victory yet, but we will have victory, and victory will be soon, and it will be permanent,” Blanche said. He described himself to the audience as a “preacher’s kid” who shared their values and concerns.
He specifically pledged to stop doctors in states where abortion is legal from mailing abortion drugs to patients in states that have banned it, though he didn’t explain how.
The DOJ later said his remarks “need to be understood in their full context,” which it insisted was only about mail-order drugs, not a broader expansion of federal control over states.
This is the same nomination Trump nearly withdrew days earlier over a $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization fund” critics said would flow to January 6 rioters. The Senate Judiciary Committee advanced Blanche anyway, 12-10, in a vote along party lines. Busy week for a guy who almost got fired.
ICE Is Strapping Ankle Monitors on Haitians in Springfield
The Department of Homeland Security has settled on a new slogan: “you don’t have to go home, but you can’t stay here.” That’s not a joke. That’s real.
In Springfield, Ohio, dozens of Haitians with Temporary Protected Status were called to ICE offices, fitted with ankle monitors, and told not to travel more than 75 miles from their homes. The alternative was immediate deportation.
The DHS spokesperson called it “closing time” and offered “a $2,600 check and a free flight home” as “the good news.”
Springfield’s Haitian community is about 15,000 people. Many of these people have had asylum applications pending for years. The Supreme Court cleared the way in June to strip their TPS despite the security situation in Haiti.
Republican Governor Mike DeWine defended them, noting they filled jobs and opened businesses that revived a struggling economy. “Haiti is hell today,” he said. “So you’d be sending people back to hell.”
This is the same community Trump accused on the 2024 campaign trail of eating cats and dogs. They went from made-up victims to real ones.
Trump Is Ripping Out His $5 Million Helipad Because the Lawn Is Slanted
Breaking: man who doesn’t believe in climate science also doesn’t believe in gravity.
Crews spent weeks digging up the White House lawn to build a granite helipad for Marine One. Now, they have started dismantling it, including taking apart a 100-foot-wide presidential seal, because the president is frustrated the pad won’t sit level with the horizon.
The problem is the lawn slopes downward about 20 degrees in places. Federal guidelines note helipads don’t actually need to be perfectly horizontal, so water runs off. Trump wanted it level anyway.
“You’re landing on granite, which is the strongest stone,” he said.
Trump says Lockheed Martin subsidiary Sikorsky is covering the full $5 million to $6 million cost because the company “felt a little bit guilty” about singeing the grass with its new helicopters. He wants it finished by September, in time for a state visit from China’s Xi Jinping.
Trump has also demolished the East Wing for a $300 million ballroom, installed a UFC ring beside the rubble, and paid nearly $15 million in no-bid contracts to renovate the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool.
Anyway, the national debt is a big concern for this administration.
Help Independent Journalism Survive
There is a reason the stories above may not reach you through your television. Too many media outlets are being hollowed out from within by billionaire owners who want to censor journalism to curry favor with the administration. Jeff Bezos owns the Washington Post. The LA Times is owned by a MAGA billionaire. But AlterNet America remains committed to calling it like it is.
This is all because we’re entirely funded by readers. We don’t have an owner to please, advertisers who get spooked when we show a spine, or an FCC license to maintain. But we’re behind on our fundraising numbers.
If just one in 20 people who read this become paying subscribers, we can fund our entire reporting budget. Will you be one of the five percent?
Thanks for reading, and we’ll see you tonight.
POSITIVE STORIES YOU MAY HAVE MISSED:
Trump Loses a Senate Vote During Mitch McConnell’s Absence. Mitch McConnell hasn’t been seen in public for about 50 days, and nobody in his party will say why. Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear dropped his push for a special election after admitting the deadline had no legal teeth, but he’s using the absence to make a point: McConnell’s missing vote on June 23 made a critical difference when four Republicans crossed the aisle to approve a resolution directing Trump to withdraw troops from the conflict with Iran. Trump is now pressuring John Thune to kill the filibuster and pass a controversial voting restrictions bill, and he could use every warm body he’s got. To be fair, that still might not include Mitch.
The Supreme Court Just Protected the Trail Your Phone Leaves Behind. The Supreme Court has ruled that police need a warrant to access your phone’s location history even for a few hours. The case started with a 2019 bank robbery where cops used a geofence warrant to demand data on every phone in a 17.5-acre area, sweeping up homes and a church to find one suspect. The Court’s key line: using the basic features of a modern cell phone is not consent to government surveillance. The ruling doesn’t touch data brokers, which means police still can’t take your location data without a warrant — they just have to buy it instead.
Paramount-Warner Bros. Trial Set for March 2027 in a Blow to David Ellison’s Team. A coalition of 12 states suing to block Paramount’s $111 billion takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery won a scheduling fight this week, with the judge setting a 12-day antitrust trial to begin March 2, 2027. Paramount had pushed for a November start and lost, which means that beginning October 1 it must pay Warners shareholders a “ticking fee” of roughly $7 million per day — likely upwards of $1.5 billion — until the deal closes. For context, that’s roughly one Marvel movie per month in fees alone.
100 Animal and Plant Species Just Got Some Much-Needed Help. Two of the worst people you know just did a great thing. Leonardo DiCaprio’s Re:wild and the Bezos Earth Fund have launched the Phoenix Species Project, a $200 million initiative to recover 100 critically endangered species across 30 countries. The list includes a lemur from Madagascar, a salamander that lives in a single canyon in North Carolina, and a pupfish currently surviving in one pool in Mexico. Each species gets five years of sustained funding, which is either an unprecedented commitment to biodiversity or the most expensive Noah’s Ark since the original.
