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.
Mitch McConnell returned to Capitol Hill and needed to be told how to vote by aides and colleagues. JD Vance went on a podcast and begged voters to “give us another chance.” Trump’s top military adviser says American troops should prepare to fight wars around the moon. And the Trump administration has ordered caregivers to stop reporting when migrant children in their custody show signs of being trafficking victims.
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When we made a *Weekend at Bernie’s *joke the other day, we didn’t expect it to age this well.
Senator Mitch McConnell was wheeled into a Senate Agriculture Committee meeting on Wednesday after being absent from Capitol Hill for 92 days. When his name was called during a vote on a farm bill, he had to be told what to say.
McConnell’s aides and Republican senators seemed to nudge the 84-year-old to say “aye,” and his name had to be called twice before he raised a finger slightly and spoke in a hoarse voice. He remained quiet for the rest of the meeting while his chief of staff sat directly behind him, then left the meeting early – after the vote.
At no point during the day did McConnell answer questions from reporters. He simply flashed a thumbs-up as he entered and a peace sign as he left.
His X account later posted a long statement thanking the chairman of the committee and praising the Farm Bill. The post contained more words than McConnell had spoken publicly during his entire Wednesday appearance.
This is what you say after you forgot an anniversary, not after you started a war.
Vice President JD Vance went on the All-In podcast this week and was asked what his closing message was to voters ahead of the November midterms. Even his own allies were shocked at what came out of his mouth.
Vance told voters to “give us another chance” and to “give us another couple years to continue to work on the amazing things that we’ve been doing for the past two years.” He also asked voters not to give power back to Democrats, whom he described as “consumed by craziness.”
When host Jason Calacanis pressed Vance on the war in Iran and the broken promise to not start a new foreign conflict, Vance completely sidestepped the question. He said the administration welcomes people into the coalition who don’t agree with them.
Last week, Trump told voters at the Republican Midterm Convention to “pretend, please, that I’m on the ballot.” At the same event, Vance urged supporters not to “throw the baby out with the bathwater.” Republican candidates actually on the ballot this year were reportedly not thrilled with either message.
They finally found a new frontier for the forever war, and it’s the actual frontier.
The U.S. military needs to be ready to fight “from the seabed to cislunar space,” Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan Caine told service members and defense industry executives Wednesday. That’s the space between high Earth orbit and the moon itself.
Caine made the comments at the Air, Space and Cyber Conference outside Washington. They came days after Air Force Secretary Troy Meink told the same conference the U.S. already has weapons in orbit.
Lieutenant General Gregory Gagnon, chief of Space Force’s Combat Forces Command, told reporters separately that the Space Force is preparing to fight in space and around the moon. He said that humanity is moving farther into space, and the military’s job is to be ready to defend American interests wherever that may be.
The announcement raises immediate questions about the Outer Space Treaty, signed by the United States in 1967, which bans the placement of weapons of mass destruction in space. The treaty has been in effect for nearly sixty years, meaning it’s overdue for violation.
Drag queens reading picture books at the library are apparently a greater threat to children than actual trafficking.
The Trump administration has told those caring for migrant children to stop reporting human trafficking concerns directly to the Office of Trafficking in Persons, the federal office created to prevent trafficking and protect victims. The directive went into effect last week and covers about 1,800 children in federal custody.
Previously, caregivers were required to screen unaccompanied children for possible labor or sex trafficking within five days of their arrival at a shelter. If they suspected that a child was a victim, they were required to notify the Office of Trafficking in Persons within 24 hours.
Without the reporting requirement, trafficking victims will lose access to the services designed to protect them. They will also have a much harder time obtaining asylum or visas to remain in the United States.
The order is the latest in a series of policies that have made it more difficult for unaccompanied minors to get legal status. The administration has also made it more difficult for children to leave federal custody, arrested sponsors, and cut off their legal representation.
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House Oversight Committee Votes to Hold Billionaire Leon Black in Contempt. The House Oversight Committee voted Tuesday to recommend that Leon Black, co-founder of private equity giant Apollo Global Management, be held in contempt of Congress for defying two lawful subpoenas related to the committee’s investigation into Jeffrey Epstein. Black refused to testify in September, instead filing a lawsuit asking a federal court to block the subpoenas, calling the investigation “a fishing expedition.” In a rare moment of bipartisan unity, both Chairman James Comer and ranking Democrat Robert Garcia denounced his refusal.
** Top House Democrat Blocks Trump’s Latest Bomb Sale to Israel.** The top Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee took the rare step Wednesday of publicly announcing a hold on the Trump administration’s $2.8 billion plan to sell 40,000 one-ton bombs to Israel. New York Democratic Rep. Gregory Meeks, the ranking member of the panel, raised concern about the risk to civilian lives, given the high death tolls throughout Israel’s attacks on civilians in Gaza, the West Bank, and Lebanon. He said in a statement that his decision “reflects Congress’s responsibility to ensure that U.S.-funded weapons are used lawfully, responsibly, and with meaningful safeguards for human life.”
Macklemore Is Donating His Entire Ed Sheeran Tour Salary to Palestinian Relief. Macklemore has announced that he’ll be donating the $1 million in earnings he received from opening for Ed Sheeran on his Loop Tour to organizations working to support the Palestinian people. The Grammy Award-winning rapper was dropped from the lineup earlier this week after saying “free Palestine” onstage and performing his protest song “Hind’s Hall.” Macklemore wrote on Instagram that if those words cost him the stage while turning the conversation back to Palestine, it was the most successful tour he had ever been on. He then invited New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft, who rallied venue owners to blacklist him, to match his donation.
Solar Panel Costs Have Plummeted from $6 Per Watt in 2000 to Just 12 Cents Today. Solar panels that cost $5 to $6 per watt in 2000 now cost about 12 cents per watt, thanks mainly to China’s manufacturing boom. Lower prices have made rooftop and on-site solar viable in countries where power is expensive or unreliable. India is installing panels on about 500,000 homes a month through a national subsidy program, and in the Philippines a rooftop system pays for itself in just over three years. The world had grown to almost 1.2 terawatts of installed small-scale solar by 2025, three times the size of the global nuclear fleet.