Trump's Face Is Going on Your Passport

The FCC wants to yank ABC's license over Jimmy Kimmel's Trump jokes, the DHS is speed-deporting toddlers, and a mold inspector who visited Jeffrey Epstein's home reveals what he saw inside

Good afternoon. I’m Ryan Rose, and this is AlterNet America.

The State Department is putting Trump’s face on your passport. The FCC is threatening to yank ABC’s broadcast licenses over a Jimmy Kimmel joke about Melania. A mold inspector who visited Jeffrey Epstein’s home has finally shared the disturbing things he saw inside. And the government is speed-deporting children so young they wet themselves in immigration court.

Corporate media is running cover. The FCC chair is making sure they know what happens if they don’t. And independent outlets are being bought out one by one. This is the news they don’t want you reading. AlterNet America is the people-powered response to the MAGA billionaire takeover of American media. We are reader-funded, editorially independent, and not for sale. We exist because of you. If you’re not yet a paid subscriber, please upgrade today.

Now let’s get into it.

Your New Passport Will Feature a Scowling Man You Did Not Elect

The State Department is redesigning the U.S. passport, and if you guessed “it now has Trump’s face on it,” congratulations, you have been paying attention.

According to images of the passport redesign shared with The Bulwark, the inside cover of the new document will feature Trump superimposed over the Declaration of Independence. It will also have his signature in gold, and the founding fathers on the back.

The redesign is being framed as part of the broader celebration of America’s 250th anniversary. The Treasury Department is simultaneously preparing to produce coins featuring Trump’s image, and the National Park Service has been told to put Trump’s face on its park passes.

The State Department is planning a “limited run” of 25,000 Trump-emblazoned passports, and as of reporting, the design was still awaiting final approval.

During his second term, Trump has also put his name or likeness on currency, park passes, battleships, a new drug website called TrumpRx.gov, the U.S. Institute of Peace, and the Kennedy Center, which is now slated to be closed for two years for renovation.

King George is somewhere, smiling.

The FCC Has Found Its Moment to Come for Jimmy Kimmel

Here is what happened, in order.

On Thursday, April 23, Jimmy Kimmel did a bit on his show that included a joke about Melania Trump having the glow of an “expectant widow” — a reference to the fact that Trump is almost 80 and Melania is considerably younger than him.

On Monday, both the president and the first lady took to social media to demand that ABC fire Kimmel. On Tuesday, the FCC started making calls.

The FCC is preparing to “call in all of the TV station licenses for Disney/ABC for early renewal,” covering eight owned-and-operated ABC stations in cities like New York and Chicago. The paperwork could be filed as early as Tuesday afternoon.

To appreciate how extraordinary that is, you need to know that the agency has not revoked a U.S. broadcast license in more than 40 years. Brendan Carr has decided this is the moment to end that streak.

The administration’s official position is that none of this is about Kimmel. A source familiar with the matter told CNN that the FCC will claim the license review stems from an ongoing probe into Disney’s DEI practices, not the Kimmel controversy.

They have also sent a letter of inquiry to ABC to examine whether equal-time rules were violated by The View’s liberal commentary. So, the official story is that there are just a remarkable number of reasons, all procedural and all predating this weekend, which happened to be the same week the president demanded a comedian be fired.

Speaking of broadcast licenses: we don’t have one. The FCC can’t touch us, Brendan Carr has no opinion about this newsletter, and nobody is going to pull our plug because a joke made the wrong person uncomfortable. What keeps us on the air is you. Become a paid subscriber today.

A Mold Inspector Walked Into Epstein’s House and Never Forgot It

James Detwiler was a certified industrial hygienist. In September 2003, he was hired to check a Manhattan townhouse for mold contamination. He had no idea whose house it was.

He knocked. No answer. Tried the handle. It was open. Someone came, he explained why he was there, and a renovation supervisor took him on a tour. The first thing he noticed was the foyer: shelves on either side lined with clear jars of liquid containing eyeballs. The supervisor shrugged it off. “This guy has a lot of odd things in here.”

The tour continued. There was a laboratory with an exotic tub that had overflowed and grown mold. There was a bedroom kept at 50 degrees — an engineering challenge significant enough that special equipment had been designed to maintain it. Just outside the bedroom was a large walk-in closet with one wall covered in woolen hats of every color. The supervisor explained that girls visiting the home were told it was going to be cold in the bedroom. They picked a hat first.

Then they went to the gymnasium.

“I think my mouth dropped open at that point,” Detwiler told Raw Story. Covering all four walls were approximately two dozen large black-and-white photographs of scantily clad young women posing in front of tropical scenery. Some of them appeared to be teenagers.

Detwiler asked where the photos were taken. Florida, the supervisor said. He flies them there. That’s why you can see the pool and the palm trees.

Detwiler filed his mold report, concluded the contamination risk was low, and went home. It wasn’t until Epstein’s first conviction in 2008, when news footage showed the townhouse exterior, that it clicked. He is 78 now and retired, living back in Pennsylvania.

The mold report came back clean. Nothing else did.

The Government Is Rushing Four-Year-Olds Through Immigration Court

Immigration court is hard enough when you’re an adult with a lawyer. The Trump administration would like to know how four-year-olds handle it alone.

The Trump administration is taking steps to accelerate the deportations of migrant children in U.S. custody, with immigration hearings being moved up by weeks or even months. This makes it more difficult for attorneys to obtain immigration relief for kids in an already-cumbersome process.

Children as young as four years old are being forced to repeatedly appear in court and provide updates on their cases, without legal help or translators, within a matter of weeks. Many of them are unaccompanied minors, or have been separated from parents who were detained.

Children are frequently feeling “enormous pressure” — some wet their pants when they have to go to court, according to Emily Norman, regional director for the east coast at Kids in Need of Defense.

The government’s official response is that they are trying to get children “returned to safe environments as quickly as possible” and that “moving cases forward helps disrupt trafficking networks.” A fascinating thing to say when you are the one moving children to unknown locations without their consent or a lawyer.

The FCC Can’t Come For Us. You Can.

Free speech, it turns out, is doing fine for the people Republicans agree with. For the rest of us, the outlets that might have covered these stories are getting quieter. Networks are killing segments. Newspapers have new owners who golf with the people we write about. The ones that are still loud are loud in the right direction.

We don’t have any of that. No advertiser needs us to find the charitable interpretation. No board of directors has opinions about tone. No billionaire bought us and then discovered he didn’t like the coverage.

What we have is readers, and we’re asking you to pay for this. Not because it would be nice, but because it’s the only way it exists. If you’ve been reading for free, subscribe today.

Thanks for reading. We’ll see you tomorrow.

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