Good afternoon. I’m Ryan Rose, and this is AlterNet America.
Seven of Trump’s 16 Senate-confirmed Treasury appointees have already been fired or fled, four over concerns the tax law was being broken. Lindsey Graham’s sister told a South Carolina debate crowd she is “not that informed on national security,” and got booed. ICE admitted it investigated a Rochester man for calling the acting director “a monstrous human being” in an email. And Liberia has agreed to take up to 1,200 deportees from the United States, the largest such deal yet.
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The Trump Treasury Department keeps losing employees to an unlikely competitor: the law.
Seven of Trump’s 16 Senate-confirmed Treasury appointees have either been fired or walked out. Four of them left after the administration asked them to bend or break tax law.
Those who left said the administration pushed them to use confidential IRS taxpayer data to identify and deport immigrants. It also sought to create a $1.776 billion fund, branded as “anti-weaponization,” that would have operated with little oversight.
“They’re asking them to do stuff that is well beyond the norm, and for some things that may or may not be legal,” said Mark Mazur, a former high-ranking IRS official. He noted these people expect careers after this administration, and “being disbarred would be a bad thing for them.”
Treasury Secretary Bessent is supposed to be managing all of this, and he’s on his third chief of staff. His first chief of staff, Dan Katz, left in October for the number two job at the IMF. His replacement, Michael Friedman, lasted three months before decamping to the SEC.
Neither one left government entirely, they just found agencies where the work doesn’t require a defense attorney.
Usually the point of a dynasty is that the next one is ready.
Darline Graham was appointed to the Senate after her brother Lindsey died in July, chosen by Gov. Henry McMaster at Trump’s urging. She is running to keep the seat, though her chances didn’t look great during a debate in Newberry on Tuesday.
When co-moderator Greta Van Susteren asked her whether Taiwan and the South China Sea were national security issues for the United States, Graham asked her to repeat the question. Then she admitted she was “not that informed on national security,” prompting the audience to boo.
She attempted to recover by noting she supports the military, citing her brother’s 33-year Air Force tenure and her father’s Army service. “I’m not a polished politician up here,” she said.
Graham had another rough moment when she claimed “there’s 50 million people in South Carolina.” The actual figure is around 5.5 million.
Neither Graham nor her primary opponent, Rep. Ralph Norman, cleared the threshold to avoid an Aug. 25 runoff. She has until then to learn where Taiwan is.
If you’ve ever wondered whether the government reads its emails, David Streever of Rochester, New York can confirm.
Streever sent an angry email in January to Todd Lyons, then acting ICE director, two days after DHS agents fatally shot Minneapolis protester Alex Pretti. Streever called Lyons “a monstrous human being” and likened him to a Nazi official.
Five months later, two DHS investigators left a “WARNING NOTICE” with his wife telling him he “MAY BE IN VIOLATION OF FEDERAL LAW” and should “promptly remove and/or discontinue the aforementioned behavior.” Agents then tried to intercept him at JFK Airport as he returned from Finland with his 7-year-old daughter.
ICE closed the case June 30, having never actually interviewed him. In court, the government’s own lawyers conceded his email “put words to his disagreements with a current administration official.” That is a lawyer’s way of admitting they investigated protected speech.
ICE is sending people to countries its own agents would need Google Maps to locate.
The Trump administration has sent roughly 22,000 people to 26 countries they did not come from, according to Refugees International and Human Rights First. Liberia just became the biggest destination, agreeing to accept up to 1,200 third-country deportees.
Information Minister Jerolinmek Piah told reporters in Monrovia that the first group of 20 was expected Thursday, drawn from Africa, the Americas, and the Caribbean. “The government wants to emphasise that those being brought to Liberia are being received as guests of the Republic,” he said.
Liberia first entered the arrangement last year when it agreed to take Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the Salvadoran man the Trump administration deported to El Salvador’s CECOT mega-prison despite a court order protecting him. In return, the Trump administration extended certain Liberian visas from 12 to 36 months and committed $124 million for the country’s health services.
Call it foreign policy if you want, but it’s human trafficking with a wire transfer.
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** A Democrat Is Leading a Special Election in a District Trump Won by 18 Points.** Trump carried Pennsylvania’s 12th state House district by 18 points in 2024. On Tuesday, Democrat Brandon Dukes, a bank loan officer, flipped the seat by 88 votes. He beat Republican Scott Timko, who ran on fiscal conservatism while his Cajun restaurant company owed the state over $42,000 in unpaid taxes. The district hadn’t elected a Democrat in over 30 years, and the win pushes the Democratic majority in the state House to 103-100. Dukes and Timko face each other again in November, giving Timko a few months to pay his taxes.
** Two Democrat-Endorsed Candidates Flip the Sarasota School Board.** Two former teachers, Beth Mayberry and Megan Tennimon, easily defeated conservative challengers to flip the Sarasota County School Board, which a conservative majority had controlled since 2022. They ran on school funding, academic achievement, and helping under-served students. A third seat, once held by Moms for Liberty co-founder Bridget Ziegler, is headed to an Aug. 25 runoff after no candidate cleared 50%. Ziegler, who backed cooperating with ICE and investigating what undocumented students cost the district, did not seek re-election.
** Wyoming’s Freedom Caucus Loses at Least 14 Incumbents in a Single Night.** The hard-line Wyoming Freedom Caucus went into Tuesday’s primaries hoping to build a supermajority in the House and a majority in the Senate. Instead, at least 14 caucus members and allies lost their seats, including one senator. House Speaker and caucus member Chip Neiman was trailing Senate President Ogden Driskill by nearly 10 points with 65% counted, and caucus chair Rep. Rachel Williams lost her own secretary of state bid to a more moderate candidate. Williams had told reporters the group needed “reinforcements in Cheyenne. “ At least over a dozen of them now have plenty of free time to regroup.
** Judge Halts Trump’s Abstinence-Only Overhaul of Teen Sex Ed Program.** In June, the Trump administration terminated 53 of 66 grants under the Teen Pregnancy Prevention Program and rewrote the guidelines to prohibit use of funds for anything but abstinence-only programs and even the term “gender ideology.” A federal court issued a temporary restraining order on Wednesday, calling the policy “likely arbitrary and capricious.” The federally funded program was established by Congress with bipartisan backing in 2009, spending about $101 million a year providing evidence-based sex ed. It has steadily helped drive teen pregnancy rates down, but it’s hard to build a forced-birth pipeline without the pregnancies.
