Good morning. I’m Corinne Straight, and this is AlterNet America.
The White House is planning 250 pardons to celebrate America’s birthday. The man Trump just made acting ICE director once had a woman deported as a personal favor for the man who introduced Trump to Melania. A North Carolina congresswoman told a fourth grader his teachers were indoctrinating him. And the federal government is spending your tax dollars on a nine-hour Christian nationalist prayer rally on the National Mall.
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 dive in.
Trump Wants 250 Pardons for America’s 250th Birthday
The White House has discovered that 250 is both the age of the country and a perfectly reasonable number of felons to set free.
Trump is considering granting 250 pardons this summer to mark the 250th anniversary of the United States. If approved, the announcement could come on June 14, which is Flag Day and Trump’s birthday, or on July 4.
Trump has already issued several high-profile pardons this term, including the founder of Binance, the founder of Silk Road, and a former CEO convicted of fraud. The next 250 recipients are unconfirmed.
The proposal has sparked intense speculation about who might make the final list, with Ghislaine Maxwell and Sam Bankman-Fried among the names being floated. Trump has reportedly shut the door on Bankman-Fried, whose pardon would trigger a massive political backlash given that his victims were everyday investors.
Trump has already issued more than 1,600 acts of clemency in his second term. More than half of the 88 individual pardons he granted through January went to white-collar criminals. In many cases, he also wiped out the requirement that they pay restitution, costing their victims an estimated $1.3 billion.
Happy birthday, America. The cake is for the convicts.
New ICE Director Deported a Trump Ally’s Ex-Girlfriend as a Favor
The Trump administration has named David Venturella as ICE’s next acting director. Venturella spent 12 years at GEO Group, the massive private prison contractor, before returning to the federal government last year. That alone would be a story. But it is not the story.
Among the lowlights of Venturella’s time back in government: he helped a Trump ally get his ex-girlfriend deported during a custody battle.
Paolo Zampolli, the man credited with introducing Trump to Melania, called Venturella after learning his Brazilian ex, Amanda Ungaro, had been arrested on fraud charges in Miami. Venturella coordinated to have ICE agents pick Ungaro up before she could be released on bail.
Venturella emphasized that it was a favor for a friend of the president during the call. Zampolli denied asking for special treatment, claiming he simply called the head of ICE to understand the process.
GEO Group, Venturella’s former employer, is ICE’s largest detention contractor. During the 2024 presidential campaign, the company’s employee-funded super PAC donated over $1 million to a pro-Trump super PAC.
The man who now runs ICE used to run the company that profits from ICE’s expansion, called in a deportation as a personal favor, and did not have to be confirmed by the Senate for any of it. The revolving door is spinning so fast it has achieved flight.
A Congresswoman Picked a Fight With a Fourth Grader and Lost
Rep. Virginia Foxx of North Carolina, 82, received a letter this week from a constituent. The constituent was ten years old. He had written a persuasive essay about electric vehicles for a school assignment, suggested a $5,000 federal tax rebate, and mailed it to her in an envelope with “4th grade” on the return address. He was proud of it.
Foxx wrote back. She told him he and his classmates would be personally responsible for paying down the national debt, cited climate articles from Fox News and the Wall Street Journal editorial board, and then, in the section his mother later posted on Instagram —
“My guess is that your teachers will not give you a good educational experience and help you learn to think, as they are too interested in indoctrinating you. How sad,” Foxx wrote. She also instructed him to ask his teacher to explain propaganda to him.
Foxx, who chairs the House Rules Committee, voted for Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill,” which is projected to increase the national debt by trillions. She used a letter about national debt to lecture a ten-year-old whose generation will inherit the debt she voted to create.
The post was shared more than 12,000 times. Foxx has not apologized. She did, for what it’s worth, chair the House Education Committee for six years.
Your Tax Dollars Are Funding a Christian Nationalist Prayer Rally
The Trump administration has found a new way to spend your tax dollars: nine hours of Christian nationalism on the National Mall.
The Trump administration is hosting an all-day prayer festival this Sunday called “Rededicate 250: National Jubilee of Prayer, Praise & Thanksgiving” as part of the nation’s 250th birthday celebration.
The event will feature mostly evangelical Protestant leaders and members of the Trump administration, many of whom falsely claim that America’s founders wanted the country to be explicitly Christian. House Speaker Mike Johnson, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio are all slated to speak.
Trump’s spiritual adviser, Paula White-Cain — who has compared Trump to Jesus — said the festival is about “really truly rededicating the country to God.” She added that the celebration would not include leaders “praying to all these different Gods.”
The First Amendment, ratified in 1791, has some thoughts on government-funded religious festivals. Legal scholars say that senior cabinet officials speaking at a taxpayer-funded event promoting Christianity as the nation’s founding faith is exactly what it was designed to prohibit.
Trump will not attend in person, sending a video message instead. A golden statue of him was recently unveiled at his Florida estate. The event is about humility before God.
Nobody Owns This Newsletter But You
Let’s be direct about what is happening.
The government is threatening to pull broadcast licenses from outlets that won’t cheerlead a war. Billionaires are buying up the newsrooms that remain. And the reporters still doing real work are running out of places to do it.
AlterNet America exists to be one of those places. In three weeks, we’ve launched a whole new brand. I’m giving you all the morning news. Ryan Rose gets afternoons and Saturday coffee with you. In the coming weeks, we’ll be introducing Substack Lives in various topic areas so you can get all your progressive news in one subscription.
The people in power are counting on you to scroll past this and do nothing. Don’t.
If you’ve been meaning to subscribe, this is the moment. The stories we are chasing right now won’t wait, and neither can we. Hit the button below and put independent journalism on the right side of history.
Thanks for reading, and we’ll see you tonight.
POSITIVE STORIES YOU MAY HAVE MISSED:
Senate advances legislation to withhold pay from senators during government shutdowns. The Senate voted 99-0 to withhold senators’ pay during future government shutdowns, a policy that would have been useful during the 43-day shutdown last year when 670,000 federal workers were furloughed and Congress kept getting paid. It won’t take effect until after the midterms, so senators can still get paid through the next shutdown they cause.
Ukraine Support Act wins enough signatures to force vote in US House. A bipartisan discharge petition for the Ukraine Support Act hit 218 signatures Tuesday, forcing a House floor vote on military aid to Kyiv despite Speaker Mike Johnson refusing to bring it up. The final signature came from former Republican Kevin Kiley, who left the party to become an Independent, which says something about where the party is.
Oklahoma ban on child marriage becomes law. Oklahoma became the 17th state to ban child marriage this week, after a bill requiring anyone getting married to be at least 18 passed the House by a single vote. Republicans claimed it was government overreach into parental rights. The governor didn’t sign it, but under Oklahoma law it became law anyway, which is a sentence that tells you everything you need to know about how he feels about children marrying adults.
Judge Orders U.S. to Return Colombian Woman Deported to Congo. The Trump administration deported a 55-year-old Colombian woman to the Democratic Republic of Congo in April, a country she has no ties to and that had formally refused to accept her. Congo rejected her specifically because she has diabetes, hyperlipidemia and hypothyroidism, conditions its health system could not treat. A federal judge ordered her return this week, calling it “likely illegal.”
