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.
Happy Election Day! This newsletter is a little late because I was out voting. If you haven’t yet, go do it right now. Hopefully, tomorrow we’ll have another all-positive edition for you.
Our stories this afternoon: A prominent Trump rally regular has been indicted on 10 felony charges related to child sexual abuse material. The former head of the FBI’s Chicago office accused Trump of pressuring him to investigate political opponents and turning him into a scapegoat when a prosecution collapsed. A Trump-appointed federal judge accused ICE agents of fabricating arrest records to cover up illegal detentions of American citizens. And Trump said that could move to Israel if the U.S. gets sick of him.
Before we get started, the billionaires are squeezing independent media and we need your help. Our stories are being suppressed on Facebook, where many of you first discovered us, after we called out Mark Zuckerberg for being a Trump lackey. Elon Musk, the GOP’s top donor, is also censoring AlterNet America’s stories on his social media platform. We’re clearly getting under their skin, but we can’t keep this work going without you.
By subscribing, you ensure these stories go directly to your inbox, where they can’t reach, and your voice becomes one more the billionaires can’t silence. You’re also keeping this publication free for the people who can’t afford a subscription. Become a paying member today.
The front row at a Trump rally is apparently not the worst place he’s been spotted.
Adam Radogna, a 37-year-old Ohio restaurant owner who said he attended more than 40 Trump rallies, has been indicted on 10 felony charges related to child sexual abuse material. The Cuyahoga County grand jury returned the indictment on October 28, six days after investigators from the Ohio Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force searched his home.
The charges include nine counts of child sexual abuse material, each a second-degree felony, and one count of possessing criminal tools, a fifth-degree felony. Prosecutors said investigators found dozens of images on Radogna’s devices after a joint federal and state investigation traced file-sharing activity to his home.
Radogna is one of the so-called “Front Row Joes,” Trump supporters who travel the country to attend his rallies. Social media archives reveal photos of him posing with Trump, Donald Trump Jr., Pete Hegseth, and Lauren Boebert.
Radogna posted a $75,000 bond on October 23 and was placed on home detention with orders to surrender his passports. His restaurant, Adamo’s Italian, released a statement on Facebook calling the allegations “baseless and false,” which appears to have since been deleted.
Perjury is usually the thing the Department of Justice prosecutes, not commits.
Douglas DePodesta, who ran the FBI’s Chicago office until July 2026, filed a federal lawsuit November 2 claiming senior Justice Department officials pressured him to target the Trump administration’s political opponents. The suit names FBI Director Kash Patel, Attorney General Todd Blanche, and U.S. Attorney Andrew Boutros as defendants.
DePodesta claims Boutros sent him emails demanding he open FBI investigations into individuals whose political views were counter to the administration. DePodesta says he turned them down every time because there wasn’t enough evidence to warrant opening a case.
The dispute is over the prosecution of a group of protesters known as the Broadview Six, who were indicted in October 2025 for protesting outside an ICE facility in suburban Chicago. The federal grand jury initially rejected the proposed charges, but Boutros personally appeared before the grand jury to seek the indictment.
Boutros told the court the prosecution had not been coordinated with DOJ leadership, a claim DePodesta says was “intentionally false,” as he had attended meetings where Boutros discussed the case with Patel and Blanche. The prosecution later fell apart after a judge found evidence of misconduct in the grand jury proceedings.
DePodesta was blamed for the failure, and was forced out of the FBI in July 2026 after 24 years of service.
You know how Republicans want Ilhan Omar deported for an alleged paperwork error?
A Trump-appointed federal judge in New York found that ICE agents fabricated an arrest warrant and lied about a U.S. resident’s immigration status to cover up an illegal detention. In a 28-page ruling, Judge Gary R. Brown accused the agency of systemic dishonesty, lack of training, and falsification of official records.
Almonte, one of those detained, said agents grabbed him while he was walking home from a store. Later, forged records stated he had been flagged for drug dealing.
In another instance, officers arrested a man named Concepción and later admitted in court that they had the wrong person. The judge ruled the arrest was illegal and said agents had used “extremely violent” and unnecessary force.
DHS Secretary Kristi Noem and Attorney General Pam Bondi have been named in multiple federal court orders this year for defying judicial orders and spreading false criminal allegations about detainees. In one case, a federal judge found that DHS falsely accused a mother who lost a baby in ICE custody of having an active homicide warrant that had already been voided.
Normally we’d fact-check a claim like this, but honestly, we don’t want to discourage him.
Donald Trump told Fox & Friends on Election Day that his approval rating in Israel is 99 percent, and if Americans got tired of him, he could move there and become prime minister. He presented no data to support his claims.
Trump made the same 99 percent claim in May during a U.S. Coast Guard Academy graduation ceremony, again without citing a source. He said in July that he had a 59 percent approval rating, when his actual approval rating was below 40 percent at the time.
According to a study by the Jewish People Policy Institute, an Israeli research organization, the share of Israelis who expressed “a great deal of trust” in Trump’s handling of U.S.-Israel relations dropped from 34 percent in March to 7 percent in July. By July, 45 percent of respondents said they had no trust at all in him.
Israeli law requires the prime minister to be a Knesset member, a member of Israel’s 120-seat parliament, and to be Israeli citizens. Trump is not an Israeli citizen and doesn’t qualify for citizenship under Israel’s Law of Return, but we’re willing to look past all that if it gets him out.
If this afternoon’s piece told you something the billionaire-owned outlets would rather keep quiet, that’s exactly the point. As Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg are burying independent reporting on their platforms while sucking up to Trump, a paid subscription is the most direct way you can help fight back.
**It costs about 22 cents a day, the day of the election. So if you haven’t upgraded to a paid subscription yet, today is the day. **With billionaires deciding what you get to see, every paid subscriber is one more voice they can’t silence. Please subscribe or upgrade now.
Thank you again for reading and for supporting independent media. And if you haven’t yet, click the ❤️ and restack this post so we can reach more feeds.
Democrats Appear to Flip First Midterm Seat as Guam Releases Unofficial Results. Unofficial Guam Election Commission figures show Democrat Alicia Anne Garrido Limtiaco, a former Guam attorney general, with a 662-vote lead over Republican incumbent James Moylan for the territory’s non-voting U.S. House delegate seat. Limtiaco captured 51 percent of the vote to Moylan’s 48.84 percent, although the results are not final and there are still ballots left to count. The result provides Democrats an early symbolic gain as they try to gain control of the House, though the seat does not count toward the 218 needed for a majority.
Nashville Judge Blocks Law Stripping Driver’s Licenses from DACA Recipients. Davidson County Chancellor Russell Perkins issued a temporary injunction November 3 against a Tennessee law that made it harder for DACA recipients and certain work permit holders to get a driver’s license. The law, which went into effect October 1, required applicants for temporary licenses to show a federally authorized period of stay, a standard that DACA recipients cannot meet because their status does not come with a specified time period. The Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition and the National Immigration Law Center sued the state on October 30 to challenge the law. The injunction means the state has to go back to its old process and accept valid employment authorization documents.
Paleontologists Confirm First Discovery of Dinosaur Blood in Fossils. A team of international researchers has discovered intact blood molecules and mineralized red blood cells inside a 115-million-year-old dinosaur fossil from northeastern Brazil, according to a study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. This is the first time scientists have chemically identified heme, oxygen-carrying blood compounds, in a fossilized specimen, overturning longstanding assumptions that such molecules could not survive that long. The findings could help understand more about the evolution of blood and how dinosaurs metabolized, researchers say, and could even influence the search for life beyond Earth.
World’s First Microplastics Removal System Launches at Atlantic City Wastewater Plant. The Atlantic County Utilities Authority has installed a first-of-its-kind system that cleans microplastics from wastewater before it enters the Atlantic Ocean. The tech comes from a startup called PolyGone Systems, founded by Princeton alumni Nathanial Banks and Yidian Liu. The system mimics the waxy surfaces of some wetland plants that repel water but trap tiny plastic particles. In controlled laboratory testing, the system removed more than 98 percent of microplastics, a threshold no state or federal law yet requires.
