Good afternoon. I’m Ryan Rose, 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.
Donald Trump bragged about “making a fortune” off high oil prices while working families pay $4.33 a gallon at the pump. A software glitch in Texas has left nearly 600,000 voter registrations in limbo just days before early voting begins. Video shows an ICE vehicle intentionally ran over an immigrant on his way to work. And a Kansas Republican running for governor has accused his Democratic opponent of practicing witchcraft.
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At least when Bush invaded Iraq he had the decency to pretend it was about something other than oil.
Trump bragged to Fox News that his administration is profiting from surging oil prices as working families pay more for gasoline than at any point in either of his terms. He acknowledged the political risk, but said Americans’ financial suffering doesn’t factor into his decisions “even a little bit.”
Trump said that because far less oil was coming out of the Middle East, “people are finding other places to buy oil, like Texas.” He then added: “So I don’t want to say we’re making a fortune, you understand that? Because if I say that, they’re going to say ‘oh, he forgets about the little man with the $4 gasoline.’”
The Iran war has pushed gas prices up nearly 40 percent since the start of the year. An analysis by Sen. Ed Markey found that the average American motorist will pay nearly $1,100 more for gasoline in 2026 because of it.
Meanwhile, Trump’s personal wealth has grown as much as $15.5 million since January due to his investments in oil and gas stocks, according to a report by the Joint Economic Committee. Trump also bought another $3.6 million in oil and gas stocks in the first quarter of 2026, letting him cash in further on the war he started.
Leave it to Texas to outsource voter suppression to a consulting firm.
Nearly 600,000 Texans registered to vote on the state’s driver’s license website between December and February, but a software glitch meant none of their applications were actually saved. The League of Women Voters of Texas and MOVE Texas Civic Fund sued last week to force the state to fix the system before early voting starts Monday.
The mistake was made during a system upgrade between December 2025 and February 2026, which state officials missed for months. The upgrade was done by Deloitte, one of the world’s largest consulting and government IT contractors, state Sen. Paul Bettencourt told The New York Times.
Once the state discovered the error, it sent all 600,000 applications to county offices at once, just as election workers were getting ready for early voting. News coverage of the glitch prompted some voters to register a second time, which added duplicate applications to the pile.
The secretary of state’s office said it would reimburse counties for overtime and temporary workers, and that voters not on the rolls could cast provisional ballots. The lawsuit seeks to establish whether the error was made on purpose or by accident.
Even Uber fires drivers who hit pedestrians.
Harris County District Attorney Sean Teare said Tuesday video shows it’s “pretty obvious” an ICE vehicle intentionally struck 48-year-old Miguel Parra Hernandez during an immigration stop Saturday. The video shows the unmarked Jeep jumping a median and swerving at Parra, who was on foot, which constitutes aggravated assault with a deadly weapon under Texas law.
Parra was not the target of the ICE operation and his attorney and family say he has no criminal record. He was stopped on the way to work, and he ran because the unmarked vehicles had tinted windows and no sirens or emergency lights.
Teare said his office wanted to download data from the vehicle’s crash recorder, which could show speed, steering, and braking information at the time of the collision. But as his investigators were preparing a search warrant, an ICE agent got back into the Jeep and drove off with it, possibly destroying the data.
The DA also revealed that two people from a separate operation were in the back seat of the vehicle when it struck Parra, meaning ICE was pursuing new targets while detainees were still in custody. “In my 20-year career, I’ve never heard of anything like that,” Teare said.
Salem had a higher standard of evidence than the Kansas GOP.
Ty Masterson, the Republican nominee for Kansas governor, told a congregation at Praise Chapel in Wichita that his Democratic opponent, Cindy Holscher, is engaged in witchcraft. Masterson cited what he called “demonic stuff,” referring to the election as a spiritual battle God called him to fight.
The evidence for Masterson’s claims was a series of TikTok videos posted by Holscher’s 20-year-old daughter, Maddie. The videos show Maddie waving her arms around her mom as a song from the *Wicked *soundtrack plays, with captions joking about casting a spell so her mother wins the governorship.
Maddie Holscher responded to the accusation Tuesday with a childhood Halloween photo of herself and her sibling dressed as witches. She wrote that the allegations were “unfortunately true” and that she had been “practicing since elementary school.”
Republicans have spent $16.6 million on the Kansas governor’s race compared to $4.7 million from Democrats, according to the Sunflower State Journal. An August poll still showed Holscher leading Masterson 47% to 46%, with 20% of Republicans saying they would vote for her.
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** Trump Reverses Decision to Livestream Fort Hood Shooter’s Execution.** Trump said Thursday that the firing squad execution of Fort Hood shooter Nidal Hasan scheduled for December 3 will not be livestreamed after all. The reversal came after polls by ABC News/Washington Post/Ipsos found 80% of U.S. adults, including 64% of Republicans, said they opposed airing the execution. Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth discussed the decision and are “completely aligned,” Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said, although CNN reported that Trump did not know Hegseth was announcing the livestream plan in the first place. Republican Senator Thom Tillis of North Carolina had said that the plan was something “oppressive dictatorships” do, and even Vice President JD Vance had expressed doubt about it.
** NYC Comptroller Walks Back Campaign Pledge to Buy Israel Bonds.** New York City Comptroller Mark Levine told The New York Times that he will not follow through on his campaign promise to invest city pension funds in Israel bonds, citing financial considerations and technical challenges. Levine promised to do so on the campaign trail after his predecessor, Brad Lander, opted not to renew the investments in 2023. Mayor Zohran Mamdani said he supports the decision, noting that New York City does not buy the bonds of any other sovereign nation. When asked why he made the campaign pledge in the first place, Levine told the Times he did not have a full picture of the finances at the time.
** Washington Tribe Is One Signature Away From Reclaiming 1,100 Acres. **The Lower Elwha Klallam tribe is one presidential signature away from reclaiming 1,100 acres of ancestral land along Washington state’s Elwha River. The flooding of the land by a dam built in 1910 separated the tribe from sacred sites, historic villages and the place where elders say their people were blessed into existence. A federal bill to return the land has passed both houses of Congress. This year marks the fourth year in a row tribal members have been able to fish the river after the dam’s removal. “Our land isn’t just land. The river isn’t just the river. The salmon aren’t just salmon,” Tribal Chair Melissa Gilman said. “This is part of who we are as people.”
** North America’s Largest Wildlife Overpass Has Cut Animal Collisions by 91%.** Since the state built North America’s largest wildlife overpass over part of Interstate 25 near Larkspur, Colorado, wildlife collisions have dropped 91%. Before the opening of the 209-by-200-foot overpass earlier this year, vehicles were hitting a deer about once a day on that stretch of highway. Now the structure carries deer, elk, coyotes, bears and a federally threatened jumping mouse safely over the interstate. Pronghorn have been filmed on the west side of I-25 for the first time in generations, reclaiming migration routes severed by the highway when it was built in the 1950s.
