Good afternoon. I’m Ryan Rose, and this is AlterNet America.
Less than half of Republican attorneys general are willing to defend Trump’s war on mail-in ballots. The U.S. Postal Service is already failing to deliver those ballots on time in primaries across a dozen states. The Pentagon has been secretly hiring conservative influencers to promote Pete Hegseth’s agenda on social media. And a growing number of former Republicans are running for office as Democrats in the 2026 midterms.
**Before we get to the news, a brief ask: **AlterNet America was launched as a direct response to MAGA billionaires buying up networks like CBS and newspapers like the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times. We’re going all-in on the bet that reader-supported journalism can compete directly with the billionaires by being the one thing they can’t buy.
We’re incredibly grateful to all the free subscribers who have signed up to receive our newsletters in recent weeks. But if you’ve been thinking about making the leap to become a paying subscriber, this is the time when it matters the most. Please upgrade today.
When you’ve lost half your own team, it might be time to rethink the play.
Only 12 of the 27 Republican state attorneys general have signed on to defend Trump’s executive order to restrict mail-in voting, which the administration is trying to implement through a new U.S. Postal Service rule before the November midterms. The other 15 have been uncharacteristically quiet.
The 12 who did sign on echoed the Justice Department’s talking points, calling the new requirements “modest mailing conditions that increase the security of mail-in voting.” State election officials have said in court filings that the rule would require them to redesign and reprint millions of ballot envelopes, which cannot be done before November.
Meanwhile, all 24 Democratic attorneys general and Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro filed a new lawsuit last week to block the rule before November. They argued it will prevent states from administering their mail voting programs and disenfranchise a significant share of the 47 million Americans who voted by mail in 2024.
When asked why they sat this one out, Utah and Tennessee’s AGs declined to comment. The other 13 didn’t respond at all.
Sponsored Kalshi poll: Which party will win the U.S. House?
The Postal Service’s official advice to voters is to mail their ballots a week early, which is the bureaucratic way of saying “I wouldn’t eat here.”
Roughly a dozen states have seen a rise in mail ballots being rejected for arriving late, a trend that has appeared in both this year’s primaries and last year’s general elections. Election officials are now warning that the U.S. Postal Service may not be equipped to handle ballot delivery at all for the fall midterms.
The Postal Service has been consolidating mail operations into fewer regional processing centers to cut costs. As a result, mail now travels an average of 139 miles to reach a processing facility, and in some cases as far as 500 miles.
California officials said changes in how the Postal Service processes mail contributed to the rejection of more than 148,000 ballots following the state’s June primary. About 63 percent of those ballots were late even with a seven-day grace period. Hundreds of ballots were late in Wisconsin after an election in April.
The Postal Service said it remains committed to its role in the electoral process, and it has not changed its longstanding advice for voters to mail their ballots at least a week before their state’s deadline. Meanwhile, top officials in Kansas and Michigan are urging early voters to deliver their ballots in person rather than trust the mail.
The Defense Department has an $850 billion budget, and a non-zero amount of it goes to tweets.
The Pentagon has been secretly hiring conservative influencers with large online followings to spread Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s agenda. The department won’t say what they’re being paid, what they actually do, or how long their jobs are supposed to last.
The influencers include Rob Maness, a retired Air Force colonel with more than 135,000 followers on X, and Kurt Schlichter, a retired Army colonel with nearly 620,000 followers. Both have active government email addresses with a “.civ” suffix, meaning they’re civilian employees.
Retired Army colonel Thomas Anderson, who writes under the pen name Cynical Publius and has more than 323,000 followers, was listed in Pentagon records earlier this year. As of late last week, his name had been scrubbed.
All three are assigned to the office of Anthony Tata, the undersecretary of defense for personnel and readiness, not public relations. Readiness apparently now includes content strategy.
The Republican Party has gotten so bad that some of its former members would rather run against it than fix it.
A growing number of former Republicans are running for office as Democrats in the 2026 midterms, arguing that their backgrounds give them a unique ability to connect with voters who feel homeless in either party.
At least three Democratic House candidates in this year’s general election are former registered Republicans, including former TV anchor Janelle Stelson in Pennsylvania and Navy helicopter pilot Rebecca Bennett in New Jersey. Nancy Lacore, who left the GOP a decade ago, is now trying to flip Rep. Nancy Mace’s seat in South Carolina.
The most prominent of the group is David Jolly, a former Republican congressman from the Tampa area who switched his registration and won the Democratic gubernatorial nomination in Florida. He will face Republican Byron Donalds in November.
Democrats haven’t won the Florida governor’s race since 1994, but to be fair, they’ve never tried a Republican before.
There is a reason the stories above may not reach you through your television. Too many media outlets are being hollowed out from within by billionaire owners who want to censor journalism to curry favor with the administration. Jeff Bezos owns the Washington Post. The LA Times is owned by a MAGA billionaire. But AlterNet America remains committed to calling it like it is.
This is all because we’re entirely funded by readers. We don’t have an owner to please, advertisers who get spooked when we show a spine, or an FCC license to maintain. But we’re behind on our fundraising numbers.
If just one in 20 people who read this become paying subscribers, we can fund our entire reporting budget. Will you be one of the five percent?
Thanks for reading. We’ll see you tomorrow.
Federal Government Allows Return of U.S. Citizen Deported After Traffic Stop. Brian José Morales García, 25, was returned to the United States Sunday after the federal government agreed to a deal with his attorneys to recognize his citizenship. Morales was deported to Mexico in April after police stopped the vehicle he was riding in near Fredericksburg, Texas, and didn’t believe he was an American citizen. He told authorities over and over again that he had copies of his birth certificate and Social Security number at his home in Austin, but still, he was deported. His legal team submitted additional hospital records and his official Colorado birth certificate in a federal lawsuit challenging his deportation, and the Department of Justice allowed him to return to the country while the case is being heard.
** Pennsylvania Lawmaker to Propose Bill Establishing Universal Healthcare.** State Senator Nikil Saval of Philadelphia is going to introduce a bill to establish a universal single-payer health care system in Pennsylvania. The bill would create an Office of Healthcare in the Department of Health that would be available to all Commonwealth residents and non-residents working at least 20 hours a week in the state. The plan would be funded through a payroll tax and have no copays, deductibles, coinsurance or caps, and would cost less than the average monthly health insurance premium. Saval cited the $1.8 billion in medical debt held by Pennsylvanians and the 28 million uninsured Americans nationwide as proof that the current system is not working.
Right to Vote Restored for 100,000 Formerly Incarcerated Virginians. Governor Abigail Spanberger announced Friday that 100,000 Virginians who were formerly incarcerated had their voting rights restored. Virginia is one of three states that permanently disenfranchise people convicted of a felony, with the right to vote restored at the discretion of the governor in office. Spanberger said the right to vote is about whether every person should have a voice in democracy and she believes they should. In November, Virginians will vote on a ballot measure that could change the state constitution to automatically restore voting rights for felons upon their release from incarceration, eliminating the need for future governors to address this issue one person at a time.
** U.S. Overdose Deaths Decrease for Third Consecutive Year.** Preliminary figures from the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics show there were an estimated 69,973 drug overdose deaths in the U.S. in 2025, a decrease of nearly 14 percent from an estimated 81,313 deaths in 2024. Declines were seen in all but three states, with Rhode Island, New York, North Carolina, Alabama and Vermont all seeing declines of 25 percent or more. The number of opioid overdose deaths declined from an estimated 55,296 to 44,564, and deaths involving cocaine and methamphetamine also declined. Overdose deaths peaked above 110,000 in 2022, and have now fallen for three years in a row.
