Good morning. I’m Corinne Straight, 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.
National security officials have been secretly meeting with state governments to prepare for the possibility that Trump refuses to accept the midterm results. Trump threatened a White House reporter who asked him a question, telling him he’d “better be careful.” Vivek Ramaswamy’s campaign aired a grotesque attack ad that features the estranged mother of his opponent Amy Acton, a childhood sexual abuse survivor. And a Texas father who shot and killed his 23-year-old daughter after an argument about Trump faces no charges.
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In most countries, national security officials protect the election from *outside *interference.
A group of national security officials has been secretly advising state governments and members of Congress on how to protect the midterm elections from interference by the Trump administration, The Washington Post reports. The group is concerned that Trump will attempt to undermine the integrity of the vote in an effort to keep Republicans in power after November.
The roughly ten current and former officials, some of whom previously worked on countering authoritarianism abroad, have met with governors, election officials, and lawmakers from both parties in ten states. At least one state has kept in touch with the group as it tries to shore up vulnerabilities in its election systems.
The warnings come as the White House works to limit voting ahead of the Nov. 3 midterms that Democrats are expected to sweep. In August, a federal judge blocked postal rules that would have let the White House decide who could vote by mail, and this week federal agents arrested 11 Californians using an unverified list of alleged noncitizens.
Trump himself has continued his attacks on the legitimacy of American elections, writing on Truth Social last month that “Voting in America is CORRUPT!!!” He also recently reposted his January 6 video telling people to “go home at peace,” the same speech he gave while his supporters stormed the Capitol.
The deal sounds great, until you remember one percent of zero is still zero
Trump verbally attacked multiple reporters while announcing a new government anti-fraud website in the Oval Office Tuesday afternoon. He first snapped at a female reporter, shouting “Wait! Shh! No, no, no!” before taking a question from a male reporter instead.
The Independent’s Andrew Feinberg asked Trump why his anti-fraud tip program would pay only a one percent commission when the existing False Claims Act provides whistleblowers between 10 and 25 percent. Both Trump and Vice President JD Vance snapped at Feinberg, asking where he was from.
When Feinberg followed up five minutes later, Trump appeared not to recognize the reporter he had just spoken with. Trump pointed a finger at Feinberg and said he didn’t know who he was, and that he “better be careful.”
Trump then turned to Feinberg a third time, asking him what was wrong with him and if he is “a sick person.” Vance later posted the exchange on social media, calling Feinberg an “imbecile journalist.”
Feinberg responded by writing that if the vice president was going to insult him, he should “at least have the guts to tag my account.”
Vivek Ramaswamy has never met a sex offender he wouldn’t put in a campaign ad.
The Republican candidate for governor of Ohio released an attack ad that features the estranged mother of his Democratic opponent, Amy Acton. Court records show Acton was removed from her mother’s care at age 12 after years of documented sexual abuse by her stepfather.
In 1978, Acton’s stepfather was charged and indicted for rape after sexual contact with her when she was under 13 years of age. In a 2019 interview, Acton said that after he pleaded guilty, he skipped bail and her mother left town with him.
The ad does not include the “paid for by” disclaimer that campaign finance law requires on political advertising and it is not running on television or through paid social media channels. It’s only being shared by right-wing influencers, so there’s no way to know who paid for or produced it.
Ramaswamy has repeatedly mocked Acton’s abuse, saying that Ohio needs someone with a “positive vision” rather than “a governor who has none at all other than to complain about what someone else did to her.” His campaign was forced last week to re-edit a separate ad after viewers discovered it featured a convicted child sex offender.
Acton’s brother Philip Stearns called the ad “a desperate, disgusting attack” that reveals who Ramaswamy is “at his core.” Acton herself said in a television interview that she would not normalize a candidate who treats the sexual abuse as something someone is “just complaining about.”
On January 10, 2025, in Prosper, a Dallas suburb, Kris Harrison shot his 23-year-old daughter Lucy in the chest with a Glock 9mm semi-automatic handgun. Harrison told police the gun “just went off” as he was showing it to his daughter visiting from England, and a Collin County grand jury chose not to indict him.
Earlier that morning, Lucy and her father had argued about Trump’s civil liability for sexual abuse against writer E. Jean Carroll, according to Lucy’s boyfriend Sam Littler. When Lucy asked her father how he would feel if she were raped, he allegedly said he had two other daughters who actually lived with him, so he wouldn’t care.
Police never tested Harrison’s breath or drew blood, even after an officer reported smelling alcohol on his breath when he arrived at the home. Harrison denied drinking at first but later said he was a recovering alcoholic who had relapsed, and convenience store footage showed him buying wine two and a half hours before the shooting.
In February 2026, a British coroner who reviewed the American police file ruled Lucy’s death to be an “unlawful killing on the grounds of gross negligence manslaughter.” They determined that Harrison would’ve had to point the gun at his daughter and pull the trigger from seven feet away.
Last month, Jane Coates, Lucy’s mother, flew from England to Dallas to try to get the case reopened, but neither the prosecutor nor the police chief would see her. Since her daughter died, the only contact she has had with her ex-husband is a handwritten letter saying he could not give her answers.
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** Trump Can ‘No Longer Walk’ Without ‘Leg Braces’ as Fitness Questions Grow. **Video of Trump walking across White House South Lawn toward Marine One this week showed the 80-year-old president unable to walk in a straight line, repeatedly grabbing his right thigh and standing with legs apart before leaning forward to board. Political commentator David Pakman, who has been tracking the president’s movements, said Trump “is increasingly looking like a man who can no longer walk from one place to another” without leg braces or other supportive equipment. In another video, Trump was slumped over and appeared to struggle to walk after returning from a rally in Ohio, and he admitted to having “some very severe problems” at a Rose Garden event.
Federal Judge Rules That DOGE Unlawfully Accessed Government Workers’ Data. U.S. District Judge Denise Cote ruled Tuesday that the Office of Personnel Management violated federal law in providing Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency access to sensitive personal data about government employees. In February 2025, the American Federation of Government Employees sued, and Cote shut down DOGE’s access that June after finding its agents had used Social Security numbers and sketchy citizenship records to gain entry into the system. In Tuesday’s ruling, the government barely tried to defend the legality of what it did, instead arguing that the case is moot because DOGE has since been dissolved.
New York City to Help Nearly One Million Residents Keep Health and Food Benefits. Mayor Zohran Mamdani on Monday announced the activation of the city’s Health and Affordability Resource Team, a cadre of outreach workers fluent in 13 languages who will help New Yorkers retain their Medicaid and SNAP benefits as new federal eligibility restrictions go into effect. City officials say up to 900,000 residents could lose Medicaid coverage when new work requirements begin in January and 26,500 city residents have already been removed from SNAP since work requirements were expanded in March. It is funded with $3 million from the city budget, and workers will target neighborhoods where residents are most at risk of losing coverage.
Allegheny County, Pennsylvania Becomes First in U.S. to Pass Paid Parental Leave. Allegheny County Council voted 11 to 4 Tuesday to require most employers with 15 or more workers to offer 12 weeks of fully paid parental leave after the birth or adoption of a child, at 100 percent of regular pay up to $4,200 per week. Council member Lissa Geiger Shulman noted statistics showing Black women in the Pittsburgh region have some of the highest maternal mortality rates in the country, and that the county’s infant mortality rate is comparable to those in Bulgaria and Qatar. The measure was first introduced in May as a public health intervention and was revised after more than 1,400 public comments, cutting the leave period from 18 weeks to 12. Employers will have up to 12 months to meet the new requirement.