Good afternoon. I’m Ryan Rose, and this is AlterNet America.
Leaked documents show that Trump’s name is what caused the Kennedy Center’s financial collapse. A federal judge has rejected Ghislaine Maxwell’s bid to overturn her sex trafficking conviction. The wife of an active-duty Army sergeant has been deported to Honduras. And Trump’s EPA is proposing a rule that would let data centers hide their air pollution from the public.
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At least the guys in *The Producers *had to bankrupt a performing arts venue on purpose.
Confidential documents obtained by the Washington Post show that ticket sales and donations began falling after Trump took over the Kennedy Center, and both plunged after his board voted in December to rename the venue and put his name on the front of the building.
By late May, the center was projecting that it would bring in only about $124 million of its $220 million revenue target for the fiscal year. Officials slashed projected expenses by roughly a third, and the center was still looking at a $23 million deficit.
An official familiar with the center’s finances called it “an absolute fiscal cliff” and compared the situation to “doomsday.” A spokesperson for the Kennedy Center did not dispute the Post’s reporting on the internal projections.
Despite all of this, the board approved a new resolution this month claiming that Trump is “successfully engaging in fundraising efforts” and “already raising hundreds of millions of dollars” for the venue. They also voted to put his name back on the building after being ordered to remove it, inscribing “Restored and Renovated by President Donald J. Trump” directly below Kennedy’s name and renaming the surrounding grounds “President Donald J. Trump Plaza.”
If at first you don’t succeed, rename the dirt.
Prison gives you a lot of free time, but apparently not enough to read the documents you plan to cite in your own defense.
A federal judge on Tuesday rejected Ghislaine Maxwell’s bid to overturn her conviction for recruiting and grooming teenage girls for Jeffrey Epstein. Maxwell, 64, had filed a habeas petition in December arguing that new information from the Epstein files constituted evidence that should have exonerated her at trial.
Judge Paul Engelmayer called the case against her “the epitome of a virtuous prosecution” and described Maxwell’s petition as “rambling.” He also noted that the Epstein files she cited as exonerating actually added to the evidence of her guilt.
Maxwell was convicted on five counts related to enticing, grooming, and trafficking girls and young women for Epstein. She is being held at a minimum-security prison camp in Bryan, Texas, and will not be eligible for release until July 2037.
She is the only person who has been convicted of a crime in connection with Epstein, who died in a Manhattan jail cell in 2019 while awaiting his own trial. Trump, who had a years-long relationship with Epstein, has repeatedly blocked the case files from being released.
Support the troops, unless they happen to be married to someone who wasn’t born here.
Cristy Maryori Villafranca-Trejo, the wife of Army Sgt. Hedar Leonel Turcios Juarez, was deported to Honduras on Monday. She is at least the seventh spouse or parent of an active-duty U.S. military service member to be deported under Trump’s immigration crackdown.
Villafranca-Trejo has no criminal record. She entered the U.S. in 2016 at age 18 and was issued a removal order in 2017 after she failed to appear at a hearing that her husband says she was never notified about. She did not even know she had been ordered deported until the couple went to apply for her green card after getting married in 2022.
She had a pending appeal and had been waiting about a year for a decision on her application for military parole-in-place, which is a program that allows the immediate family of troops to remain in the country while applying for a green card.
Her husband, who became a U.S. citizen in 2024 after enlisting two years earlier, said he has been struggling to manage his military duties since she was detained in July.
The Associated Press has found more than 50 cases in which immediate family members of U.S. troops were placed in federal immigration detention after the administration rolled back protections for military families. Meanwhile, the yellow ribbon crowd has been awfully quiet…
It turns out the “protection” in Environmental Protection Agency actually refers to data centers.
The Trump administration has proposed a new EPA rule that would remove the Clean Air Act requirement for data centers, meaning they would no longer be required to publicly disclose their air pollution. The rule would make those disclosures voluntary at the discretion of state and local officials, many of whom already have business agreements with data center companies.
A Sierra Club investigation found 10,500 diesel generators at data centers in Northern Virginia alone. Amazon’s backup generators in the region are permitted to emit about 4,200 tons of nitrogen oxide, which is roughly the same amount of pollution you would get from a mid-sized coal plant.
The EPA described the proposed change as intended to “reduce administrative burden and responsibly speed up permitting.” Joe Goffman, the EPA’s former assistant administrator for the Office of Air and Radiation, said the real effect would be to eliminate public oversight and squash criticism.
The people living next to these facilities will no longer know what substances they are being exposed to, and they will have no evidence to cite if they try to challenge it in court. This is the government equivalent of unplugging a smoke detector because you don’t like the noise.
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** Homicides Dropped 18.1% in 2025 to the Lowest Rate Since 1956.** The homicide rate in the U.S. was 4.1 per 100,000 people in 2025, the lowest since 1900, tying 1955 and 1956, according to an FBI report released Aug. 14. Violent crime overall fell 9.3 percent, property crime was down 12.4 percent, and motor vehicle theft was down nearly 23 percent to the lowest levels in more than 20 years. In an unusual move ahead of the midterms, the FBI report also noted that violent crime has continued to fall during the first six months of 2026. Adam Gelb, the president of the Council on Criminal Justice, said the data is “historic and crystal clear,” but what is driving it is “about as clear as a glass of milk.”
New York City Mayor Mamdani Launches “Renew Crew” to Fix Up Parks Faster. NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani and Parks Commissioner Tricia Shimamura Monday announced a new team of 24 painters, electricians, plumbers and other trade workers who will focus on making quick, visible improvements to playgrounds, recreation centers and sports courts across the city. The team will take on up to 30 projects a year, with turnaround of three weeks or less, compared with the months-long timelines New Yorkers have been used to. The project began with a repair blitz at Dry Harbor Playground in Queens, where crews are repainting basketball courts, restoring play equipment, and beautifying the landscape around the 9/11 memorial.
** FDA Clears Two More Alzheimer’s Blood Tests in a Single Week.** Just over a year ago, there were no FDA-cleared blood tests for Alzheimer’s disease. Now there are four. Two got approved this week, including one for patients as young as 40. Up until now, a diagnosis of Alzheimer’s could only be made with expensive PET tests or invasive spinal taps, and researchers estimate that around 75 percent of dementia cases worldwide go undiagnosed. Labcorp and Quest Diagnostics say they will be offering the newest tests through their laboratory networks, which means the disease could soon be flagged with a standard blood draw at your doctor’s office.
** Fat Marmot Week Is Here and the Contenders Include a Big Boy Named Goblin.** Scientists at the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory in Colorado are kicking off Fat Marmot Week, an online tournament celebrating the yellow-bellied marmots of an abandoned mining town called Gothic as they bulk up for winter hibernation. The contest is a play on Fat Bear Week, and also raises money for the lab’s 64-year marmot study, which lost National Science Foundation funding after the Trump administration eliminated more than $700 million in NSF grants. The team had previously launched “OnlyMarms,” a G-rated OnlyFans account featuring marmot videos, as a fundraiser. Voting is open until August 28 with the winner announced August 30.
