Good morning. I’m Corinne Straight, and this is AlterNet America.
The Trump administration is trying to use the recent shooting at the White House to build its ballroom. The Justice Department deleted its entire record of January 6th prosecutions and then bragged about it. Hundreds of detainees at a New Jersey ICE facility went on a hunger strike over moldy food and freezing cells. And Trump’s tariffs have finally accomplished something that decades of competition, recessions, and a global pandemic could not: they’re killing Texas barbecue.
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Now, the news.
White House Uses Shooting Death to Justify Its Ballroom
There was a shooting outside the White House on Saturday. The Secret Service shot and killed an armed man identified as Nasire Best, 21, after he opened fire at a checkpoint. A bystander was also struck.
By Sunday night, the administration had found a use for it.
An overnight Department of Justice filing argued that in light of the shooting, a federal judge’s injunction blocking construction of the White House ballroom should be lifted. The filing claims the ballroom would provide a “SAFE HAVEN” from attackers. The capital letters are theirs.
Without it, the DOJ claims large events are “relegated to vulnerable tents on the South Lawn, exposed to various threats, as again shown by last night’s shooting.”
Significant portions of the filing are written in a style that closely resembles a Trump social media post, calling the lawsuit against the ballroom “a complete embarrassment to our Country.” It also describes, in unusual detail, the planned features of the structure: a sealed rooftop to prevent air contamination, blast-proof glass, and a drone port with positions for rooftop snipers.
The DOJ said it had been “forced” to reveal these details to counter the court’s injunction. No one forced them to put snipers in the ballroom.
The DOJ Just Deleted the Entire Paper Trail of January 6th
History doesn’t repeat itself, but apparently it can be deleted.
The Justice Department has admitted to removing from its website all news releases about criminal cases related to the January 6th, 2021 insurrection, including charges, convictions, and sentencings. It defended the deletion by calling the prosecutorial record “partisan propaganda.”
Not archived. Not reclassified. Deleted, and then, when a journalist noticed, the DOJ’s rapid response account said there was “nothing quiet about it” and announced the department was proud to have done so.
Among the records scrubbed were those concerning seditious conspiracy cases against the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers. The DOJ had already moved to vacate those convictions and dismiss the cases. Now the documentation that the prosecutions ever existed is gone too.
The DOJ recently announced a multi-billion fund to compensate Trump allies who feel they were unjustly investigated and prosecuted, and the acting attorney general has not ruled out that rioters convicted of violence will be eligible for payouts. Turns out storming the Capitol was an investment.
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300 Detainees Are on Hunger Strike at a New Jersey ICE Facility
The detainees at Delaney Hall stopped eating on Friday. By Monday, the government had pepper-sprayed a senator.
About 300 detainees at the immigration detention center in Newark, New Jersey have launched a hunger and labor strike, alleging inhumane conditions inside the privately operated facility and demanding a meeting with Governor Mikie Sherrill.
Attorneys described the conditions as brutal: people sleeping on the floor, overcrowded rooms, cold showers, and cells so cold there were no blankets. A senator who visited said he witnessed milk congealed solid in the carton. A congressman said detainees showed him visibly moldy food.
ICE then threatened to transfer more than 100 of the striking detainees to facilities in Louisiana and Texas. When the governor arrived Monday morning to conduct oversight, she was formally denied entry. Agents used pepper spray and batons on protesters outside the facility in the early hours of Monday morning.
This wasn’t the first time elected officials were turned away or arrested at Delaney Hall. Newark Mayor Ras Baraka was arrested at the facility last year, though the trespassing charge was dropped. Congresswoman LaMonica McIver was charged with three felony counts of assaulting, resisting and impeding officers.
Nobody who works there is facing charges, for what it’s worth.
Texas Voted for Trump. Now His Tariffs Are Killing BBQ Joints
There are things woven into the fabric of American regional identity so completely that losing them feels irreversible. Texas barbecue is one of those things.
Over the past year, the price of brisket has risen 28 percent, a reflection of meat price spikes hitting grocery store customers nationwide. Ground beef now costs $6.70 a pound, up over 15 percent from a year ago. Beef steaks have climbed to $12.73 a pound. The USDA warns prices could climb another 10 to 18 percent before the end of 2026.
The price squeeze has contributed to the closures of Brett’s BBQ Shop outside Houston, known for its barbacoa tacos; Kirby’s BBQ to the north with its oak-smoked brisket; Sabar BBQ with its Pakistani fusion sausage in Fort Worth; and Wright On Taco & BBQ in East Texas. Owners and experts predict the closures will worsen this summer and continue for years.
One Houston pitmaster who has run his restaurant since 2001 recently raised his brisket price to $35 a pound and described the situation plainly: “This is as bad as it gets. Everybody’s at risk these days. You’re one bad week from closing.”
Restaurants that earned spots on best-of lists, that had lines out the door on opening day, are closing. Forty dollars a pound for brisket, courtesy of the tariffs Texas voted for.
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POSITIVE STORIES YOU MAY HAVE MISSED:
Linda McMahon loses bid to force victims of sexual abuse to publicly identify themselves. A federal judge rejected efforts by Education Secretary Linda McMahon to force the men suing her over alleged sexual abuse of WWE ring boys in the 1980s and early 1990s to publicly reveal their identities during the pretrial phase of the case. The lawsuit alleges that McMahon and her estranged husband Vince knew about the abuse and failed to stop it. She is currently in charge of America’s children.
Montana voter registration ruling deemed ‘big win’ for youth vote. A Montana judge blocked a state law that would have ended same-day voter registration at noon on Election Day, ruling it an unconstitutional restriction on voting access. The decision means voters can register right up until polls close at 8 p.m. for the June 2 primary. The law was designed to stop people from voting after lunch. A trial is scheduled for August, at which point Republicans will presumably try again.
Judge dismisses criminal charges against Kilmar Abrego Garcia in human trafficking case. A federal judge dismissed all criminal charges against Kilmar Abrego Garcia, finding the human trafficking investigation against him was “tainted” and had been reopened specifically to justify the administration’s decision to deport him to El Salvador. The judge found that Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche had started the investigation not to find who was responsible for smuggling, but to implicate Abrego after he won his deportation case in court.
Hawaii Governor Enacts 13% Tax Bracket on Million-Dollar Earners. Hawaii Governor Josh Green signed a new 13% income tax bracket for people earning more than $1 million a year, while preserving planned tax cuts for lower earners. The state is facing nearly $3 billion in reduced revenues amid declining federal support for SNAP and Medicaid. Someone has to pay for what Washington is cutting, and Hawaii has decided it’s going to be millionaires.
