Good morning. 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.
Trump’s DHS asked the federal cybersecurity agency to secretly hack a voting machine for the White House. A new documentary alleges three male escorts were paid for sex by the late Senator Lindsey Graham, including one who claims he was 17. Elon Musk just invested $1 billion in the company that now controls Paramount. And Pete Hegseth’s staffers broke one of Eisenhower’s World War II globes because they couldn’t wait for trained historians to move it.
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This is the federal equivalent of asking the fire department to commit arson.
Political appointees at the Department of Homeland Security asked the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency to secretly buy a voting machine, hack it, and deliver the findings to the White House, ProPublica reported. Agency staff were also told not to notify the manufacturer of any flaws they found.
CISA employees worried the request was designed to create evidence that could be used to delegitimize election results. The operation never took place, in part because the specialists who could have done it had already been fired by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency.
Since Trump returned to office, over 1,000 CISA employees have been laid off or pushed out, reducing the agency’s workforce by about a third. The administration’s Fiscal Year 2027 budget request would cut another $700 million in funding and eliminate the agency’s election security program entirely.
Tulsi Gabbard, the Director of National Intelligence, spearheaded a separate effort to seize election machines in Puerto Rico. The contractor hired to look into the machines, Mojave Research, found nothing to support the administration’s fraud claims and its contract was not renewed.
Lindsey Graham voted against gay marriage 17 times. According to three men, that was not his only number.
Three male escorts allege in a new documentary that the late Republican senator Lindsey Graham paid them for sex, including one who says he was 17 at the time. The movie, The CLOSETocracy, opened Thursday, just twelve days before Graham’s sister and Senate replacement, Darline Graham Nordone, faces election.
One of the men, identified as Kelvin, said he met Graham at a property in Arizona in 2001 when Kelvin was just 17 years old. Graham reportedly paid him $120 for the encounter.
Another man, identified as Jesse, said that Graham had paid him for sex when he was a college student, and that Graham had worn red lingerie during their encounters. A third, Cory, spoke of similar paid encounters and said he believes Graham’s sister knew about his sexuality.
The stories are supported by receipts and travel tickets that coincide with Graham’s public schedule. The film also suggests Graham recorded some of the encounters, raising concerns of possible blackmail by foreign adversaries.
Apparently owning one media platform wasn’t enough.
Elon Musk has invested some $1 billion in David Ellison’s entertainment company Skydance, which has recently finished its acquisition of Paramount. The deal was struck around the same time as equity investments from other Skydance investors, including board member Laurene Powell Jobs.
The deal strengthens an existing relationship between Musk and Oracle founder Larry Ellison, David’s father, who invested $1 billion in Musk’s 2022 acquisition of Twitter and sat on Tesla’s board for years. Ellison has personally guaranteed more than $40 billion of the equity financing for Skydance’s purchase of Paramount and Warner Bros.
Billionaire cable executive John Malone said publicly this week he expected a partnership announcement between Musk’s Starlink satellite network and Skydance. Skydance has also tapped Mattel’s Ynon Kreiz as co-CEO as the company looks to cut costs and raise its stock price.
Skydance acquired Warner Bros. Discovery on Oct. 6, creating a combined entertainment company with nearly $70 billion in revenue. The company now owns Paramount Pictures, Warner Bros., CBS, CNN, HBO, and two major streaming services.
Ike planned D-Day with that globe. Hegseth’s guys couldn’t get it down the hall.
A World War II globe used by General Dwight D. Eisenhower was smashed by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s staff after Hegseth demanded it be relocated to his Pentagon office. Rather than bringing in trained curators to move the artifact, the staffers decided to move it themselves, dropping it and creating a gash several inches wide that cracked its shell.
The incident occurred in February after Hegseth said he wanted the globe, which was made in the 1930s and mounted in a wooden frame. After the globe was damaged, staffers abandoned plans to deliver it to Hegseth and it stayed where it was.
A Pentagon official admitted the incident but said the sphere was a replica, a characterization that contradicts other officials and a plaque that was attached. Defense analyst John Ridge said he couldn’t think of a more fitting metaphor for Hegseth’s Department of Defense.
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** Massachusetts Early Voting Turnout Surges Past 2022 Numbers.** As of Wednesday, over 476,000 Massachusetts voters have already cast ballots through mail-in voting and early in-person voting, representing more than nine percent of registered voters. The state had a midterm turnout record last cycle and Secretary of State William Galvin has said early indications suggest enthusiasm is up again this year. Early voting has also grown in states with competitive Senate races, with Maine seeing a more than 30 percent increase over 2022. More than a million mail-in ballots have been sent out, which Galvin’s office has been encouraging early voting as an alternative to long lines.
** New York City Votes to Ban Horse-Drawn Carriages in Central Park.** The New York City Council voted Thursday to ban horse-drawn carriages from Central Park, putting an end to a 160-year tradition that has been criticized by animal-rights groups for decades. The ban goes into effect in June 2028, and Mayor Zohran Mamdani said he would help develop a transition plan for the roughly 200 drivers in the industry. According to the Manhattan Borough President’s office, 40 horses working in Central Park have died since 1982 from causes including overheating and collisions. The legislation is called Romanch’s Law in honor of 18-year-old tourist Romanch Mahajan, who died in June when a horse bolted and he fell from the carriage.
** New Mexico’s Clean Energy Transition Is Running Ahead of Schedule. **New Mexico’s 2019 Energy Transition Act mandated its investor-owned utilities to hit 50 percent renewable energy by 2030, but the state achieved that goal in 2024 and kept growing. Public Service Company of New Mexico, the state’s largest utility, generated 80 percent carbon-free electricity last year and has asked regulators to approve a nearly 1.7-gigawatt mix of new wind, solar and battery storage. New Mexico is developing additional clean energy to meet an expected 40 percent increase in energy demand by 2032, and it has also established a Renewable Energy Transmission Authority that facilitates permitting and financing for new transmission lines.
** Personalized mRNA Cancer Vaccine Clears Final Trial Stage for Melanoma.** Merck and Moderna said Tuesday their personalized mRNA cancer vaccine stopped melanoma from coming back and spreading in a Phase 3 clinical trial, the final test before it can be submitted for FDA approval. In the trial, more than 1,000 melanoma patients whose tumors had been removed but were at risk of recurrence were treated with the combination of the personalized vaccine and the immunotherapy drug Keytruda, and the combination significantly outperformed Keytruda alone. Earlier in Phase 2 trials, the treatment reduced the recurrence of melanoma by 49 percent and the spread of the cancer to distant organs by 59 percent. The technology is now being tested against lung, bladder, kidney, and pancreatic cancers.
