Good afternoon. I’m Ryan Rose, and this is AlterNet America. Please take a moment to click the ❤️ and restack this post. The oligarchs’ platforms are trying to keep stories like the ones below from hitting your feeds, and this helps us break through.
Trump promised to ban everyone from using the phrase “artificial intelligence.” Jared Kushner was allegedly paid $50 million by the United Arab Emirates to get former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson fired. Republican Rep. Randy Fine said he would be open to deporting Melania Trump and Elon Musk. And the DOGE operative who gutted USAID had no record of employment at the agency while firing thousands of its staff.
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If only the Founders had anticipated a president trying to ban speech.
Trump posted on Truth Social that his administration will officially ban the term “artificial intelligence” from all relevant documents “and everything else.” He also urged news organizations to stop using the old term, which he called “very bad and inaccurate.”
The announcement follows an order signed by Trump in late September directing the federal government to use “super intelligence” instead of “artificial intelligence” in all official documents. He posted at the time that the White House considers anyone who uses the original phrase “THE ENEMY.”
Trump first suggested renaming AI in a Truth Social post over the summer, asking followers to vote on options including “superior intelligence,” “extreme intelligence” and “supreme intelligence.” He revealed the winning term at the United Nations General Assembly last month.
His latest post was aimed at The Wall Street Journal after its opinion section published a newsletter pushing back on the name change. The newsletter noted that “SI” is already the abbreviation for Sports Illustrated and the International System of Units.
The property was at 666 Fifth Avenue, because of course it was.
A new book by author Matthew Cole alleges the United Arab Emirates paid Jared Kushner $50 million to advocate for the firing of Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. Tillerson had publicly spoken out against blockading Qatar, and the Saudis and Emiratis pressed Trump’s White House to get rid of him.
Tillerson was secretary of state from 2017 to 2018, and was fired by tweet after months of Kushner pushing for his removal. Kushner reportedly pressed UAE President Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan to speed up the agreed payment, which was sent via Azerbaijan to a bank account in Cyprus.
Tillerson’s firing caused a panic in Qatar, which then decided it could just pay off Kushner too. In late March or early April 2018, the Qatari government quietly told Kushner that it would help him acquire property at 666 Fifth Avenue in Manhattan.
Soon after, Trump hosted Qatar’s emir at the White House in April 2018 and praised him as a major buyer of American military equipment. Trump seemingly had had a change of heart, as he had accused the same country of funding terrorism at a very high level months earlier.
Nobel laureates, Olympic athletes, and one model from Slovenia.
Rep. Randy Fine told NewsNation Monday that he would support deporting Melania Trump and Elon Musk if either were ever found to have lied on their U.S. immigration paperwork. The Republican from Florida called for the federal government to review the case of every person who has become a naturalized citizen since 1990.
Fine was reacting to a raid by Homeland Security Investigations on the Washington, D.C., home of Minnesota Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar on October 12. He claimed without evidence that the type of fraud alleged against Omar is common in Minnesota, claiming that many people get citizenship without properly filing documents.
When anchor Nichole Berlie pressed Fine on whether the same standard should apply to people connected to the Trump administration, he said, “I believe anyone who lied on their paperwork to become a citizen should be denaturalized and should be deported. Anyone.”
Both Melania Trump and Elon Musk have faced serious questions about their own immigration histories. Melania got her green card through the EB-1 ‘Einstein visa’ program, for people like Nobel laureates and Olympic athletes, and Musk worked illegally in the country after dropping out of Stanford and starting his first company on a student visa.
You need more credentials to drive for Uber than he had to dismantle USAID.
Jeremy Lewin, then 28, a former investment banker and DOGE affiliate, canceled lifesaving aid programs and signed off on the termination of thousands of USAID employees without completing the paperwork required by law to work at the agency. USAID’s security office couldn’t issue him an ID card because they had no record of his employment in their database.
In March 2025, Secretary of State Marco Rubio handed Lewin control of USAID using a little-known legal clause designed to deploy emergency personnel to disaster sites. Eight days later, Lewin still had not accepted his job offer or submitted the pre-employment background screening form required by federal law before an agency can complete an appointment.
On March 28, Lewin signed a letter firing all remaining USAID staff, even as HR was still chasing after his missing paperwork. No one in their office saw any delegation documents until late April 2025, a top HR executive later told WIRED.
Kevin Byrnes, a federal employment law attorney representing more than 170 former and current USAID staffers, said Lewin could be personally liable if a court rules he wasn’t authorized to take those actions. Byrnes is asking the court to reinstate all of his clients to their positions with back pay.
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Massive Groups of Volunteers Are Organizing to Monitor Polling Sites for ICE Activity. Dozens of organizations across the country are training volunteers to document and report sightings of federal immigration agents near polling places in advance of next week’s midterms, Wired reported. National groups like Common Cause, the ACLU and Indivisible have offered training sessions, equipping tens of thousands of people to recognize ICE uniforms and vehicles and to report sightings through encrypted messaging apps. Organizers with the 614 ICE Watch group expect to have about 250 trained volunteers on hand on Election Day in Columbus, where the early voting site is in a Somali American neighborhood that was targeted by ICE’s Operation Buckeye in December.
** Judge Extends Block on Trump’s Plans to Renovate Washington Golf Course.** U.S. District Judge Ana C. Reyes extended an order that prevents the Trump administration and the National Park Service from cutting down more trees at the historic East Potomac Golf Links while the lawsuit over the project is ongoing. The order also requires the administration to give ten days’ notice before making any irreversible changes to the property. Trump responded on Truth Social, denouncing the decision as “unconstitutional” and vowing to ignore it and get to work immediately. The administration cut down more than 400 trees at the 106-year-old public course earlier this month as part of Trump’s plan to turn it into a venue for championship golf tournaments. Preservationists say the renovation violates the congressional act that created the park in 1897.
Judge Blocks Homeland Security From Conducting Election-Related Sweeps. U.S. District Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín granted a preliminary injunction barring the Department of Homeland Security from conducting field operations near polling places in California, Connecticut, Georgia, Missouri, Nevada, New York, Pennsylvania, Washington and Wisconsin. The ruling followed allegations by voting rights advocates that DHS had dispatched armed agents to homes to question residents about their voter status. A DHS internal memo filed in court outlined a “surge initiative” that targeted several of those states in September. The judge found that the public’s interest in voting free from intimidation outweighed the administration’s interest in rooting out noncitizen voting, which studies have shown occurs rarely.
Florida College Pays $250,000 to Employee Fired for Criticizing Charlie Kirk on Facebook. Eastern Florida State College agreed to a $250,000 settlement with former grant accountant Erika Santos, who was fired after an anonymous letter tipped off the school to private Facebook posts in which she criticized the late Turning Point USA founder. With the help of the ACLU of Florida, Santos sued the institution, arguing her posts were on issues of public concern and were made outside of her job responsibilities. The college said her comments were “repugnant” and “divisive” and undermined public confidence in the institution. Santos said in a statement that silence would have allowed the college to stand behind its own false narrative.
