Good morning, AlterNet America family, and Happy Halloween!
Welcome to the Saturday Wrapup, where I give you my thoughts on the week’s biggest news as I consume my caffeine with you. Special shoutout to the “left-wing transgender witches” Ted Cruz has been ranting about. Today’s your day.
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But if you’re campaigning for the midterms, and he’s campaigning for the midterms, who’s driving this government?
At least nine of Donald Trump’s 15 Cabinet secretaries have been accused of violating the Hatch Act by taking part in Republican election campaigns. Watchdog groups and government ethics organizations have lodged formal complaints that the officials used their government titles to endorse candidates at partisan events.
Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, and FCC Chairman Brendan Carr are the subject of a formal complaint after appearing with Trump at a Republican rally in Alaska on October 13. Trump referred to both Burgum and Lutnick by their titles in government when introducing them.
Separately, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy is facing a complaint that he used his office to promote the Republican Senate candidate Mike Rogers in Michigan. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Attorney General Todd Blanche each have multiple complaints against them for appearances at GOP campaigns in Kentucky, Iowa, and New York.
Aileen Cannon finally met a case she couldn’t delay.
Judge Aileen Cannon received a lawsuit from Epstein victims and sent it to another judge within a day. That transfer sparked a consolidation fight that could force the DOJ to give up more evidence than it wants to and force Attorney General Todd Blanche to testify.
Maria Farmer, one of the earliest known victims of Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell, has filed a lawsuit claiming she reported the pair to the FBI in 1996 and the agency did nothing. A D.C. judge ruled the case should be in the Southern District of Florida, because it was virtually the same as another Epstein case already there, and assigned it to Cannon.
Cannon found “good cause” to move the case to Judge David Leibowitz, who is overseeing a related lawsuit filed by 34 other Epstein victims against the federal government. Leibowitz then ordered the parties to show cause why the two cases should not be consolidated for discovery purposes.
Victims of Epstein from both cases support consolidation, saying the lawsuits involve the same government failures and the same time period. The DOJ opposes it, as separate cases allow the government to limit what evidence it has to turn over in each.
Cannon is a Trump appointee who was once called a “godsend” by his inner circle for helping delay his classified documents trial until after the 2024 election. Now, the Trump Justice Department is seeking to quash a subpoena that would force Attorney General Todd Blanche to testify under oath about how the government handled the Epstein case.
This is not what anyone meant when they said “military readiness.”
Soldiers at Fort Bragg, North Carolina used bulldozers and excavators to practice digging temporary burial sites, the first drills of their kind in decades. It was also the first time in more than 20 years that military chaplains were trained for gravedigging on the battlefield.
A normal temporary burial plot has five trenches and will accommodate 100 casualties. During the North Carolina drills, soldiers took an average of one hour and 15 minutes to fill each plot, and estimated they could temporarily bury the remains of up to 2,400 troops in 24 hours using eight bulldozers and four excavators.
The military evacuated deceased soldiers back to the United States instead of burying them in the field during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Army now is preparing for a different kind of war, one in which the casualty rate could make that approach impossible.
The last time the Army buried its own troops en masse was during the Korean War, which killed nearly 37,000 American service members. No one in the current military has experience doing it.
Flock Safety treats a canceled contract the way your ex treats a blocked number.
Flock Safety reinstalled two surveillance cameras in Dayton, Minnesota after the city canceled its contract and specifically told the company not to complete any work orders. Residents spotted the cameras and alerted the police, who had to remove the devices themselves.
Dayton voters approved ending its contract in August, joining hundreds of communities that have dropped the company after reports that police officers used the technology to stalk former partners. Dayton’s city administrator said Flock took five days to acknowledge the cancellation and informed the city that removing the equipment would take 60 days.
This wasn’t the first time Flock ignored a city’s cancellation, as Grass Valley, California discovered in September that two cameras were reinstalled after the city canceled its contract and physically removed the devices. Flock blamed the city for taking them down before its internal process was completed.
Cities that succeed in getting Flock cameras off their streets may soon have to look up. The company said its drone program, which can read license plates from 400 feet in the air, is its fastest growing segment.
Right-wing billionaires are quietly gobbling up more media outlets, while smaller outlets unable to keep up shut down on a nearly daily basis. If left unchecked, the rich and well-connected get to do their dirt in the dark and escape all accountability. But AlterNet America doesn’t answer to them. We only answer to you, and that means we can cover these stories the way they need to be covered. But our editorial independence is only possible with the support of our paying subscribers.
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