Good morning. I’m Corinne Straight, 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.
The White House used Customs and Border Protection money to pay for TV ads promoting Trump weeks before the midterms. Pete Hegseth is planning to eliminate 20 percent of the Pentagon’s top military leadership positions. A Venezuelan DoorDash driver shot in the back by an ICE agent in Texas has been charged with a federal crime while the shooter remains free. And MAGA influencers are furious at another ad for casting a young white man as the face of welfare fraud.
**Before we get to the news, a brief ask: **AlterNet America was launched as a direct response to MAGA billionaires buying up networks like CBS and newspapers like the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times. We’re going all-in on the bet that reader-supported journalism can compete directly with the billionaires by being the one thing they can’t buy.
We’re incredibly grateful to all the free subscribers who have signed up to receive our newsletters in recent weeks. But if you’ve been thinking about making the leap to become a paying subscriber, this is the time when it matters the most. Please upgrade today.
After months of calling for CBP and ICE to be defunded, we’re a little torn on this one.
The White House used money from U.S. Customs and Border Protection to pay for a series of television ads praising the president, the Wall Street Journal reported. The ads started running last week on Fox News, Newsmax, CBS, and local stations across the country, just five weeks before the midterm elections.
The commercials look and sound like campaign ads, with images of Trump set to music and text boasting about tax cuts and manufacturing. The only difference is a line at the bottom of the screen that reads, “Paid for by the U.S. Government.”
Democratic Senators Patty Murray and Chris Murphy wrote in a letter to DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin that using taxpayer funds on propaganda is illegal. They said the ads “need to immediately come off the air, taxpayers need to be paid back for this theft, and everyone responsible needs to be held accountable for this corrupt and illegal propaganda.”
Under Pete Hegseth, the U.S. has lost almost more generals than it did in WWII. That’s not a joke — go look it up.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is planning to cut 20 percent of the Pentagon’s admirals and generals, two officials told The Hill. He is expected to formally announce the cuts in a speech Wednesday at a military base in Quantico, Virginia.
Hegseth has already overseen a steep reduction in the number of top-ranking military officers. At the time of his confirmation, there were ten four-star generals on active duty. Now there are only five.
Hegseth in May signed an order to reduce four-star generals by 10 percent and National Guard general officers by at least 20 percent. He called the policy a way to make the military more efficient, but gave no guidance on how the cuts would actually be made.
Roughly 60 percent of the senior officers Hegseth has fired are women or Black, according to Senator Jack Reed of Rhode Island, even though those groups make up fewer than 20 percent of all generals and admirals. His chief of staff reportedly told the Army secretary Trump wouldn’t want to be seen next to a Black female officer at military events.
The cuts come as Hegseth faces increased scrutiny over reports he concealed the number of U.S. service members killed in the ongoing conflict in the Middle East. The House has already scheduled an impeachment vote against him for after the midterm elections.
A DoorDash driver got shot in the back by an ICE agent and somehow he’s the one facing 20 years in prison.
Wilber Rafael Garces Perez, 28, was out making a delivery in Austin, Texas on September 20 when ICE officers in an unmarked truck pursued him during a traffic stop and shot him. His attorney, Kate Lincoln-Goldfinch, said officers hit his car twice before shooting him in the back of the neck.
Federal prosecutors charged Garces Perez Tuesday with assaulting a federal officer, saying his side mirror struck an agent when he drove away. The officer who shot him did not have a body camera on. ICE agents who made similar claims after past shootings were revealed to be lying once footage was released.
Garces Perez entered the United States legally in 2024 via CBP One, a Biden-era program that scheduled appointments for asylum seekers. ICE used a deportation order issued after he missed a hearing in immigration court because the notice was sent to a former address as justification for the stop.
A federal judge has issued an emergency order to halt Garces Perez’s deportation, and a hearing is scheduled for Wednesday. He’s one of 21 people shot by on-duty ICE and CBP agents during Trump’s second term, eight of whom have died.
Matt Walsh spent his workday arguing that white men don’t sit around doing nothing all day.
Conservative influencers spent the weekend attacking Arkansas Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders after she posted a welfare ad promoting her state’s work requirement. The ad features a young white man named Brad who spends his time playing video games on his couch instead of finding a job.
The outrage had nothing to do with the work requirement. Commenters were angry because the welfare recipient in the ad was a white man.
Walsh, a pundit for The Daily Wire, said Republicans picked a white man because they didn’t have the courage to use the stereotypes he would have preferred. He suggested the ad should have featured a Black woman named “Shaniqua” instead.
James Fishback, a failed far-right Florida gubernatorial candidate, said the ad should have featured “the baby-momma with a BMW who just got back from her Carnival Cruise.” Far-right influencer RAMZPAUL said Sanders needed to “apologize for her blood libel.”
Brad was more accurate than Shaniqua would have been. Between 52 and 54 percent of food stamp recipients in Arkansas are white, according to state data, and so are 57.8 percent of the state’s Medicaid recipients.
Right-wing billionaires are quietly gobbling up more media outlets, while smaller outlets unable to keep up shut down on a nearly daily basis. If left unchecked, the rich and well-connected get to do their dirt in the dark and escape all accountability. But AlterNet America doesn’t answer to them. We only answer to you, and that means we can cover these stories the way they need to be covered. But our editorial independence is only possible with the support of our paying subscribers.
If you’re still reading, that means you found this newsletter valuable. Now we need you to make your support official by upgrading your free subscription to a paying one.** It only costs 22 cents a day, and ensures AlterNet America will be able to continue working exclusively for you instead of a billionaire or corporate owner. Please subscribe or upgrade now.**
Thank you again for reading and for supporting independent media. And if you haven’t yet, click the ❤️ and restack this post so we can break through to more feeds.
** California Passes Ban on Electric Shock Gloves for Law Enforcement.** California’s legislature has passed a bill to ban law enforcement from using gloves that can deliver electric shocks, and sent it to Governor Gavin Newsom, who has until September 30 to sign it. The bill comes after ICE awarded a $16.7 million contract to a Kentucky company for 6,000 pairs of the gloves, where an inmate last year died after being shocked 27 times with the gloves and 13 times with a Taser. The bill would also bar California police departments from buying the devices with public money.
** New Mexico Land Commissioner Bans Uranium Mining on 13 Million Acres.** New Mexico Commissioner of Public Lands Stephanie Garcia Richard, a Democrat, signed an executive order in September prohibiting all new uranium mining projects on state trust lands. She said the environmental and public health impacts of uranium contamination outweigh any potential revenues, citing about 350 abandoned mine sites that still dot the New Mexico landscape. The recent increase in proposals for uranium extraction was attributed by Garcia Richard to the Trump administration, which has sought to fast-track federal permits for mining and designated two proposals near Mount Taylor as priority projects.
Sandy Hook Promise Says Prevention Programs Have Helped Stop 20 School Shootings. Sandy Hook Promise, the nonprofit founded by parents of children killed in the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, announced that its prevention programs have helped stop at least 20 planned school shootings since 2018. The organization runs the Say Something Anonymous Reporting System, which trains students and teachers to spot warning signs of violence and report them through an anonymous tip line. The 20th confirmed intervention happened recently in Arkansas, where an anonymous tip led to the prevention of a possible shooting before it could occur.
New Fleet of Electric School Buses Hits New York City Streets. Bus operator First Student and utility Con Edison are moving forward with a $9 million pilot project to replace diesel school buses with electric ones in East New York, Brooklyn. There are already ten battery-powered buses in service, with a further 40 due by June. The project also has a second phase where the buses will demonstrate vehicle-to-grid capabilities that can feed stored power back into the electrical grid to reduce costs and increase reliability. As of June 2026, there were more than 8,500 electric school buses operating nationwide, up 66 percent from the same time last year.