Good afternoon. I’m Ryan Rose, and this is AlterNet America.
GOP voters booed Trump as Lindsey Graham’s sister won the Republican runoff for U.S. Senate in South Carolina. Republican lawmakers mourning Dolly Parton publicly have quietly cut funding for her children’s book charity. Minnesota is suing Texas Gov. Greg Abbott to force extradition of an ICE agent accused of shooting a man. And Meta has agreed to pay up to $16.7 billion to settle a lawsuit that alleges Facebook and Instagram have harmed children.
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The last time a crowd in South Carolina was this mad about outside interference, they fired on Fort Sumter.
Republican voters in South Carolina booed Trump’s name at an election event Tuesday after the candidate he supported won the state’s GOP Senate runoff. Defeated candidate Ralph Norman was barely able to make it through his concession speech before the crowd turned on the president.
Trump had endorsed Darline Graham, the sister of the late Lindsey Graham, who was appointed to the seat last month after he died unexpectedly of an aortic dissection. Republican strategists thought she would get crushed, but she won by five points after outside groups spent $8 million on her campaign.
Norman said every dollar he raised came from in-state donors and his own pocket, while Graham’s money came from outside PACs and prominent Republicans who, in some cases, gave more than federal election law allows.
Graham will face Democrat Annie Andrews in November. South Carolina hasn’t elected a Democrat to the Senate since 1998, but Republican voters openly booing the president in a deep red state doesn’t bode well for that streak.
Sponsored Kalshi Poll: When will traffic at the Strait of Hormuz return to normal?
If condolence tweets were checks, Dolly’s charity would be fully funded.
Country music icon and philanthropist Dolly Parton died yesterday at the age of 80 after a brief battle with cancer. Republican lawmakers around the country spent the day posting tributes, calling her a national treasure and praising her generosity. Trump even ordered all flags to fly at half-staff in her honor.
In a terrible bit of timing, multiple reports this week revealed that Republican lawmakers have been gutting public funding for her Imagination Library, a nonprofit that sends free books to children. Indiana ended the program last year after it lost all state funding. Missouri cut its state allocation for the Imagination Library from $6 million to $2 million and froze enrollment July 1.
Since its beginnings, the Imagination Library has delivered more than 300 million books. The organization vowed to uphold Parton’s legacy, which is more than can be said for the legislators who spent yesterday tweeting about what she meant to them.
Interstate extradition used to be one of the least controversial parts of the American legal system.
Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison on Tuesday filed a lawsuit against Texas Governor Greg Abbott to force the extradition of ICE agent Christian Castro, who faces four counts of second-degree assault. Castro is accused of firing a gun through the front door of a Minneapolis home on Jan. 14 and striking a man named Julio Cesar Sosa-Celis in the leg.
Castro was arrested by Texas Rangers on May 29 and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz signed extradition papers in early June. Texas law caps the amount of time someone can be jailed without an extradition warrant, meaning Castro could be released as early as Thursday if Abbott continues to delay.
Abbott’s office has argued that technically Castro may not even be a fugitive because he didn’t flee Minnesota, but was reassigned to Texas for work. The Constitution and federal law require states to extradite people accused of crimes in other states, no matter how they crossed state lines.
Since Castro’s arrest, Texas has extradited three other criminal defendants to Minnesota without incident, Minnesota officials said. The one thing they all have in common is that none of them shot anyone while working for Abbott’s favorite federal agency.
At $16.7 billion, this is officially the most expensive bedtime ever enforced.
Meta has agreed to pay up to $16.7 billion and overhaul Facebook and Instagram to settle claims brought by 29 U.S. states that the company designed its platforms to addict children, misled consumers about their safety, and illegally collected personal data from minors.
Meta will now be required to impose daily usage limits, restrict nighttime usage by children, and enhance measures to prevent minors from accessing age-restricted content. The company denied wrongdoing as part of the agreement.
The settlement also resolves lawsuits by California, Illinois, New Mexico, and Washington, D.C., over privacy claims related to the Cambridge Analytica scandal, in which the consulting firm collected personal data from millions of Facebook users. Those states will receive $459 million to resolve those cases.
Meta is framing the settlement as a call to action for YouTube and TikTok to adopt similar protections for teens. The company that just today needed 29 states to sue to start protecting children now wants credit for telling everyone else to do it faster.
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Judge Strikes Down Texas Drag Show Ban, Tells Offended People “Just Don’t Go.” A federal judge in Texas struck down the state’s ban on drag shows on Tuesday, ruling that Senate Bill 12 was too broad and too vague. Under the law, businesses could have been fined up to $10,000 and performers could have faced up to a year in jail. U.S. District Judge David Hittner, a Reagan appointee, cited Dolly Parton as an example of someone who could have been punished under the law’s broad definitions, noting that critics had attacked her appearance throughout her career. His advice to anyone who finds drag offensive: “The solution is relatively simple... just don’t go.”
** Father of Navy Sailor Deployed on USS Abraham Lincoln Released from ICE Detention.** Luis Manuel Aviles, 48, was released from federal immigration detention on Monday, two days after his arrest garnered national attention. ICE took Aviles on Saturday near a Publix in Key West, Florida while he was taking his car to the mechanic. His son, Joshua Aviles, is a sailor in the Navy serving on the USS Abraham Lincoln, which departed San Diego in November and broke a U.S. military record for most consecutive days at sea. Joshua wrote on Facebook about his father’s detention from the ship, saying he worked 12-hour days with no break for nine months and could not keep going mentally knowing his father was being treated like a criminal.
The Iran War Is Accidentally Making Recycled Plastic Competitive. The blockade of commercial shipping through the Strait of Hormuz has interrupted about half the world’s supply of ethylene and polyethylene, and companies such as Dow Chemical have hiked prices for plastic resins by 30%-40%. In many markets, recycled plastic is now cheaper than virgin plastic for the first time in years. One analyst called it “a big moment” for an industry that has struggled for decades to compete on price, though others warn the shift may not survive a reopening of the strait. But laws like California’s 2022 bill that mandates all single-use plastics to be recyclable or compostable by 2032 could help make some of the gains stick.
Amtrak Is Getting New Trains and They’re Actually Nice. This fall, Amtrak is rolling out 83 new trainsets, called Airo, starting on the Pacific Northwest’s Cascades route between Seattle, Portland, and Vancouver. The $8 billion fleet, with a top speed of 125 mph, is compliant with the EPA’s toughest emissions standards and switches automatically between diesel and electric power, saving Northeast Regional riders the hour they currently wait at Union Station while Amtrak swaps out the entire locomotive. Despite the Trump administration’s attempts to gut passenger rail funding, Amtrak has set ridership records for two years running and the federal government just announced $3 billion in new grants in August.
