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.
A heckler called the president a pedophile on live television. A Republican senator said that Trump made a “colossal mistake” by backing Ken Paxton for the Texas Senate seat. The Trump administration scouted locations inside Grand Teton National Park to build a baseball stadium. And major TV networks say they’ll resume White House pool coverage even though Trump is still blocking CNN.
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There are some things the Secret Service can’t protect you from.
Trump was heckled for the second time in two days on Sunday when a man shouted a profane accusation at him on live television during the Presidents Cup golf tournament at the Medinah Country Club in Illinois. The day before, Trump had been loudly booed at a college football game in Knoxville, Tennessee.
As Trump and PGA Tour CEO Brian Rolapp posed with the Presidents Cup trophy, a man in the crowd shouted the accusation loud enough to be picked up by the broadcast microphones. Other spectators cheered and whooped, while Trump stared straight ahead.
Before the interruption, Trump had congratulated himself on the warm reception he was receiving. He told the crowd that the “fake news media” would claim he got a bad reception, but that in reality, “they love what we’re doing.”
The day before, Trump had been at a game between the University of Texas and the University of Tennessee at Neyland Stadium in Knoxville. When his face appeared on the stadium’s video screen, the crowd booed loudly.
Trump has often been interrupted at public appearances, with much of the heckling focusing on his friendship with late convicted sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. A man yelled “Pedophile protector!” at a Trump rally in Michigan in July and a protester did the same at a factory event in Pennsylvania in June.
Courage is a lot easier when you’ve already cleaned out your desk.
Republican Senator Thom Tillis of North Carolina went on CNN on Sunday and publicly criticized Trump for endorsing Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton over incumbent Senator John Cornyn in the state’s Republican Senate primary earlier this year. He told host Jake Tapper that Trump’s decision was a “colossal mistake.”
Tillis added that Republicans would not be spending “tens or hundreds of millions of dollars” trying to hold Texas if Cornyn had won the primary.
Trump endorsed Paxton over Cornyn in May, helping him win the primary and advance to face Democratic state Representative James Talarico in the general election. The endorsement appeared to be motivated by revenge, as Cornyn had said during the 2024 presidential campaign that the GOP should move on from Trump.
Tillis, who announced his retirement last year, said the party’s demand for total loyalty is unsustainable. He told Tapper that if Republicans are going to attack other Republicans for being in “only the 95th percentile” of loyalty, they need to find another party.
Bulldozing a wildlife habitat because billionaires asked has always been America’s pastime.
Major League Baseball and the Trump administration are exploring plans to build a temporary baseball stadium inside Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming to host a single game, according to the Washington Post. National Park Service Deputy Director Frank Lands visited the park this past week and scouted three potential locations within its boundaries.
Luther Propst, a Teton County commissioner, said he spotted Lands at an event inside the park on Thursday but that the deputy director did not mention why he was there. Neither Propst nor any other local official was notified about the proposal or the scouting visits.
The White House said in a statement that this was “not a Presidential directive” and “not being directed by the White House” or “driven by the Department of Interior.” The National Park Service is part of the Department of Interior, which reports to the president.
MLB told the Washington Post that the league approached the administration to ask if it would be possible to host a game at a national park, similar to the Field of Dreams game it has hosted in Iowa. So, don’t blame this entirely on the White House.
The free press defended itself for nine days.
The major television networks that suspended White House pool coverage in solidarity with CNN announced Sunday they would resume filming the president, even though CNN is still banned. ABC, CBS, Fox, and NBC will take turns sending a camera crew to cover presidential events for all of the networks, a job that CNN had been sharing until the ban.
Trump announced he was banning CNN, MS NOW, and Politico from the White House on September 18. He wrote on Truth Social that the three outlets “shouldn’t be able to constantly write or report FICTION and LIES,” though he did not cite any specific examples.
Also on that day, all five members of the TV pool, including Fox News, issued a rare joint statement announcing they would suspend coverage of the president. The three banned outlets sued, and a federal judge ordered their access restored on Thursday.
CNN returned on Friday and covered the Trump-Xi visit to the National Archives. That night, the White House pulled the network from the pool again, and barred it from Air Force One for Trump’s trip to Tennessee on Saturday.
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Supreme Court Blocks Missouri’s Gerrymandered Map for Midterms. The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday blocked Missouri from using a gerrymandered congressional map for this year’s midterm elections, ending a yearlong legal battle over redistricting. The unsigned opinion, which noted no dissents, criticized Missouri Secretary of State Denny Hoskins for creating undue confusion about what map was in effect. The gerrymandered 2025 map would have eliminated a Democratic district in Kansas City, but earlier this month the Missouri Supreme Court ruled the map couldn’t take effect unless voters approved it in a November referendum. Voters in Missouri have already begun voting under the old district lines.
** GOP Senator Says No Living Politician Should Have a Building Named After Them.** On CBS’s “Face the Nation” Sunday, Republican Senator John Kennedy of Louisiana said public officials should not spend public money promoting themselves and should not have buildings named after them while they are alive. His remarks came as a new taxpayer-funded advertisement promoting Trump as “the toughest, most resilient person” aired on several networks and as Trump continued his campaign to rename the Kennedy Center after himself. Kennedy called for a formal change in the rules, jokingly acknowledging that the suggestion might get him in trouble with the president.
** Trump-Appointed Judge Finds ICE in Contempt for Deporting Young Asylum Seeker.** U.S. District Judge Stephanie Gallagher, who was appointed by Trump in his first term, found the administration in contempt of court Friday for deporting a young asylum seeker to El Salvador in violation of three different court orders. The petitioner, identified only as ELA to protect his identity, was deported twice in the last six months despite being covered by a settlement designed to protect his class of immigrants from removal while their asylum claims are processed. ELA was first deported in March 2026 and returned to the U.S. in August thanks to the efforts of his attorneys, only to be deported again on September 1. Gallagher ordered the administration to send ELA back to the United States and to return all his property and documents.
Federal Court Upholds Block on Tennessee Law Criminalizing Abortion Information. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit ruled Thursday that a Tennessee law criminalizing the sharing of information about legal out-of-state abortions with minors will stay blocked, agreeing with a lower court that the law violates the First Amendment. In her ruling, Senior United States Judge Jane Stranch said Tennessee had “no compelling interest in shielding its citizens from information about activities outside its borders.” Stranch also noted that the law makes it a crime to speak in a way that encourages a minor to have an abortion, but it says nothing about speech that encourages a minor to carry a pregnancy to term. Passed in 2024, the law made it a misdemeanor for any adult to “recruit, harbor or transport” a pregnant minor to obtain an abortion without the consent of their legal guardian.