Trump's EEOC Is Suing Newspapers on Behalf of White Men
The GOP has proposed $1 billion in taxpayer funds for Trump's ballroom, the FDA is hiding its own studies that show vaccines are safe, and a new bill could make horse meat legal. Yes, seriously.
Good afternoon. I’m Ryan Rose, and this is AlterNet America.
Republicans want you to spend a billion dollars on a ballroom Trump swore you’d never pay for. The government’s equal employment watchdog is suing a newspaper on behalf of a white man who didn’t get promoted. The FDA is hiding its own studies that show vaccines are safe and effective. And Congress has quietly passed a farm bill that pig farmers, animal welfare advocates, and conservatives who hate China all agree is terrible.
Before we get started, AlterNet America was built as a direct challenge to billionaire control of the American press. When the ultra-wealthy own the outlets, they own the narrative. That’s not a conspiracy theory, it’s a business model. Independent media exists to break that stranglehold, but only if readers step up to fund it. If you believe independent media matters, become a paying subscriber today.
Now, let’s dive in.
The Ballroom That Was Free Until It Wasn’t
At some point last year, Trump said the White House ballroom would cost taxpayers “zero dollars.” He wrote it in all caps on Truth Social.
Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Chuck Grassley released his committee’s portion of the long-term ICE and Border Patrol funding bill this week. It includes $1 billion in taxpayer funding for security features related to the White House ballroom.
To review the timeline: the White House boasted last summer that the price tag for the ballroom would be $200 million, and every penny would come from private donations. Late last year, it was up to $400 million, and the official line was still that American taxpayers wouldn’t be on the hook.
The White House press secretary said as recently as October, with apparent sincerity, “It’s not going to cost taxpayers a dime.” To be fair, a dime is technically not a billion dollars, so they weren’t entirely wrong.
Republicans have a justification. In the wake of the recent assassination attempt at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, which was held at the Washington Hilton, Republicans have argued that holding large events away from the White House poses unacceptable security risks.
This is like buying a $400 lock for a $200 door, except you didn’t want the door, and someone is making you pay for it.
The Government Is Suing the New York Times for Not Promoting a White Man
The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission exists to protect workers from discrimination. Under its new leadership, it has found a new calling: protecting white men from the New York Times.
The EEOC filed a lawsuit alleging that the Times discriminates against white male workers. It also brought claims on behalf of a white man who alleged his race and sex factored into the newspaper’s decision not to give him a promotion.
The Times had a response. The Times categorically rejected the allegations as meritless and politically motivated, saying it was being attacked out of political animus from Trump. The administration, naturally, called this a success. White House spokesperson Liz Huston said the Trump administration is “ending illegal D.E.I.-motivated race and sex discrimination.”
Here is the part that requires a moment of quiet contemplation: EEOC staffers have struggled to find legitimate “reverse discrimination” cases to pursue. In one instance, employees had to justify abandoning the case of a white man who said he was the victim of discrimination because he didn’t get a job.
The job went to another white man, and all the other applicants were also white men.
The nation’s civil rights enforcement agency, legally required to be independent, is now being used to file lawsuits against the administration’s critics. This is the kind of thing that in a different political climate might be called a scandal. In this one, it barely makes the afternoon news cycle.
This is exactly why independent media exists — to keep saying “this is not normal” on the days when everyone else has moved on to the next story. AlterNet America runs on reader subscriptions, not billionaire goodwill. If you’re not yet a paid subscriber, today’s news is a pretty good argument for becoming one.
The Government Is Suppressing Its Own Research Proving Vaccines Are Safe
The Food and Drug Administration paid scientists millions of dollars in public funds to study whether COVID-19 and shingles vaccines were safe. The scientists did the research. The research found the vaccines were safe.
The FDA then buried the research.
Officials at the FDA blocked publication of several studies supporting the safety of widely used vaccines against Covid-19 and shingles in recent months, a spokesman for the Department of Health and Human Services confirmed.
The studies, which cost millions of dollars in public funds, were conducted by scientists at the agency who worked with data firms to analyze millions of patient records. They found serious side effects to be very rare.
The scale of it is worth pausing on. In October, the scientists were directed to withdraw two Covid-19 vaccine studies that had been accepted for publication in medical journals. In February, top FDA officials did not sign off on submitting abstracts about studies of Shingrix, a shingles vaccine, to a major drug safety conference.
The government spent millions of dollars studying whether vaccines were safe, concluded that they were, and then classified the answer.
The SOB Act: Named by Accident, Fitting Upon Reflection
Congress named a bill the Save Our Bacon Act. The bill does not save bacon. What it does is considerably worse, and the people who named it were apparently counting on you not to notice.
The bill was introduced by Iowa Rep. Ashley Hinson (take a guess) and incorporated into the federal farm bill, a massive bill that lays out federal food and agriculture policy. The name refers to state laws that ban the sale of meat from animals kept in extreme confinement.
The confinement in question is the gestation crate — a metal cage so narrow that a pregnant pig cannot turn around, lie down comfortably, or fully extend her limbs. Both Massachusetts and California have passed laws banning the sale of pork from farms that use these crates, no matter what state it comes from.
The SOB Act would ban states from making these laws.
Which leads to the horse problem. The bill’s broad language may have unintended consequences: the provision bars states from regulating meat sales based on production methods for “covered livestock,” a category that inadvertently includes horses. This could force states like Texas, which has banned horse slaughter since 1949, to allow horse meat sales.
The House Rules Committee blocked a vote to remove it, the full House passed it, and the Senate hasn’t touched it yet. There is still time for this to get worse.
They Have Billionaires. We Have You.
The business model that kept journalism independent is gone. What replaced it is billionaires, access deals, and quiet understandings about which stories don’t run. The networks are getting phone calls they don’t talk about. The newspapers have new owners who play golf with the people we’re writing about. The FCC is making examples of outlets that don’t play ball.
None of that is happening here, because we don’t have anyone to sell out to. We have readers. If you’ve been reading AlterNet America for free, we’re glad you’re here. But free doesn’t keep the lights on, and the lights need to stay on.
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Thanks for reading, and we’ll see you tomorrow.
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