This week on the Gilead Gazette, the stories the press isn’t covering.

YouTuber Jesse Ridgway and his wife shared that they ended a pregnancy after a Down syndrome diagnosis, a decision made by roughly 74% of families who receive that diagnosis. The post drew nearly 25 million views and a wave of death threats. Conservative figures including Matt Walsh and Abby Johnson attacked the family, and House Speaker Mike Johnson called their private decision “evil.” The family says they now sleep next to a gun.

In Illinois, one of the most pro-choice states in the country, a man who secretly drugged his girlfriend with abortion medication to end her pregnancy was sentenced to seven years for “voluntary manslaughter of an unborn child,” a fetal-personhood charge that casts the woman not as the victim of an assault but as incidental to it.

In Georgia, Republican gubernatorial candidate Rick Jackson was recorded agreeing that rape victims should have to “prove” they were assaulted to qualify for the state’s narrow exception. Two of three rape victims never report to police, and roughly 98% of perpetrators are never convicted.

In Arkansas, Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders is invoking sovereign immunity to avoid disclosing what her office told the family of Emily Waldorf, who was denied emergency abortion care and nearly died.

Plus: an Alabama AG threatens websites that share abortion-pill information, the Texas Alliance for Life urges the GOP to drop its “abolitionist” execution plank, and a TPUSA Women’s Summit speaker defended the Salem witch trials.

Sources:

https://www.usmagazine.com/celebrity-news/news/jesse-ridgway-sleeping-next-to-a-gun-amid-abortion-backlash/

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/leaked-audio-shows-gop-candidate-agreeing-that-women-should-prove-rape-to-access-abortion_n_6a0f1637e4b0bb04cec3cc88

This week on the Gilead Gazette, the stories the press isn’t covering.

YouTuber Jesse Ridgway and his wife shared that they ended a pregnancy after a Down syndrome diagnosis, a decision made by roughly 74% of families who receive that diagnosis. The post drew nearly 25 million views and a wave of death threats. Conservative figures including Matt Walsh and Abby Johnson attacked the family, and House Speaker Mike Johnson called their private decision “evil.” The family says they now sleep next to a gun.

In Illinois, one of the most pro-choice states in the country, a man who secretly drugged his girlfriend with abortion medication to end her pregnancy was sentenced to seven years for “voluntary manslaughter of an unborn child,” a fetal-personhood charge that casts the woman not as the victim of an assault but as incidental to it.

In Georgia, Republican gubernatorial candidate Rick Jackson was recorded agreeing that rape victims should have to “prove” they were assaulted to qualify for the state’s narrow exception. Two of three rape victims never report to police, and roughly 98% of perpetrators are never convicted.

In Arkansas, Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders is invoking sovereign immunity to avoid disclosing what her office told the family of Emily Waldorf, who was denied emergency abortion care and nearly died.

Plus: an Alabama AG threatens websites that share abortion-pill information, the Texas Alliance for Life urges the GOP to drop its “abolitionist” execution plank, and a TPUSA Women’s Summit speaker defended the Salem witch trials.

Sources:

https://www.usmagazine.com/celebrity-news/news/jesse-ridgway-sleeping-next-to-a-gun-amid-abortion-backlash/

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/leaked-audio-shows-gop-candidate-agreeing-that-women-should-prove-rape-to-access-abortion_n_6a0f1637e4b0bb04cec3cc88

Abortion, Every Day

Dozens of women detained at Delaney Hall, the for-profit ICE detention center in Newark run by the GEO Group, have joined a hunger and labor strike now in its third week. Among their demands: the firing of a female guard accused of sexually assaulting at least ten detained women.

According to Democracy Now and advocates working with detainees, most of the hunger strikers have been transferred to other ICE facilities in recent days, moves advocates describe as retaliation that separates strikers from family, counsel, and outside observers. DHS has disputed the hunger strike’s existence, pointing to increased commissary snack sales at the facility.

The strike at Delaney Hall is no longer isolated: the ACLU and detention-watch groups count at least five additional active hunger strikes in ICE detention across six states, with the Tacoma, Washington facility seeing nine separate strikes this year. Meanwhile, New Jersey’s attorney general is suing GEO Group over access for state health inspectors, and Jersey City has voted to divest from a bank that finances GEO.

This is a follow-up to my earlier report on Delaney Hall, where detainees described worm-infested food, denied medical care, and beatings, and where the Supreme Court ruled 9-0 this year that GEO Group can be sued for its $1-a-day forced labor program.

Sources:

https://www.democracynow.org/2026/6/12/headlines

https://inthesetimes.com/article/new-jersey-prison-immigrants-strike-ice-trump

A follow-up to Tuesday’s video on the World Cup crackdown. An anonymous US official now claims Omar Artan, the Somali referee denied entry ahead of the World Cup, was barred over “association with suspected members of terror organizations.” No evidence has been provided, no official has gone on record, and the claim surfaced only after international backlash. Artan says he was interrogated for eleven hours at Miami International, questioned about Somali politics and al-Shabab, shown no findings, held in a cell, and flown out without explanation. Andrew Giuliani, who runs the White House FIFA Task Force, said there was a “very good reason” but declined to share it.

Artan returned to Mogadishu to a hero’s welcome, with thousands filling a stadium to greet him. The mayor of Toronto and the premier of British Columbia, in co-host nation Canada, publicly invited him to referee there.

Meanwhile, hundreds of Scotland supporters, a country on no travel ban list, have had previously approved ESTA travel authorizations canceled without explanation, some hours before departure, with some told to obtain criminal-record checks that take longer than the tournament itself. Scotland’s First Minister has raised the issue in Parliament.

And days before kickoff, roughly 180,000 tickets remained unsold. FIFA slashed prices across all 104 matches and returned most of its block-booked hotel rooms, while New York and New Jersey’s attorneys general subpoenaed FIFA over ticketing practices.

Sources:

https://www.espn.com/soccer/story/_/id/49016259/us-official-somalia-omar-artan-suspected-terror-ties

https://www.npr.org/2026/06/10/nx-s1-5853075/somali-world-cup-referee-denied-u-s-entry-hailed-as-hero-at-home

https://www.espn.com/soccer/story/_/id/49011169/first-minister-scottish-fans-entry-world-cup

https://www.newsweek.com/scotland-fan-missing-world-cup-opener-says-trump-should-return-the-hospitality-12059715

https://theconversation.com/the-ticket-price-fiasco-for-the-mens-fifa-world-cup-has-been-a-spectacular-own-goal-282532

https://www.newsweek.com/reseller-platform-denies-fifa-collusion-as-world-cup-tickets-remain-unsold-12028175

The Trump administration’s official 250th-anniversary “Freedom Trucks,” mobile museums touring schools across the country, include a display claiming Muhammad Ali “disavowed” Islam. He did not. Ali converted in 1964, transitioned from the Nation of Islam to Sunni Islam in 1975, made the pilgrimage to Mecca in 1989, defended Islam publicly after 9/11, and had a Muslim funeral in 2016. CAIR is demanding a correction, calling Ali “a devout Muslim” and saying the display “distorts both his personal faith journey and the historical record.”

The exhibits were produced with Hillsdale College and PragerU, and reporting shows the displays skew American history toward Christian nationalism, including echoes of antisemitic myths about the Revolutionary War. The trucks have already visited more than 300 schools and aim to reach 20 million people, with corporate sponsors including ExxonMobil, Palantir, and Lockheed Martin.

The irony is generational: the U.S. government stripped Ali’s heavyweight title and cost him three prime years because his faith forbade him from fighting in Vietnam. One of his final public statements, in December 2015, was a rebuke of Donald Trump’s proposed Muslim ban. A month into Trump’s first term, border agents detained Ali’s son, a U.S. citizen, and asked him, “Are you a Muslim?”

This story was broken by independent journalist Jonathan Larsen , the only outlet reporting it. Subscribe to his work. The Fucking News Jonathan Larsen’s Substack

Sources:

The United States spent years lobbying to co-host the 2026 World Cup. Days before kickoff, it’s already turning the world away at the door.

Omar Artan, one of Africa’s top referees and set to become the first Somali to officiate a World Cup match, was denied entry to the US despite holding a valid visa. He flew to Miami and was turned away by Customs, which cited “vetting concerns.” Somalia is on the Trump administration’s travel ban list, and the president has previously disparaged Somali immigrants. FIFA said it would not intervene, noting the host nation controls entry.

Iran, which qualified for the tournament and is scheduled to play all three of its group-stage games in the United States, has had visas delayed and denied for members of its delegation. As a result, the team is basing in Tijuana, Mexico, and traveling in for matches. When the players arrived, they wore gold pins reading “168,” the number of people, most of them children, killed when a missile struck an elementary school in Minab, in southern Iran, in February. No government has formally accepted responsibility; the UN condemned the strike and the Pentagon has said it is investigating.

The World Cup was supposed to showcase the host nation. This one is showing the world a country deciding, at the airport, who counts.

Sources:

https://www.espn.com/soccer/story/_/id/49002985/somali-referee-world-cup-denied-entry-united-states

https://abc7ny.com/post/irans-world-cup-players-wear-pins-for-victims-deadly-strike-on-school-as-they-arrive-mexico/19258775/

This week in tyranny: while the president rambled to farmers about sinking 159 ships, his administration was denying detainees water, hiding the dead, and getting help from the Supreme Court to rig the next election.

At the Florida detention camp nicknamed “Alligator Alcatraz,” detainees reported that guards withheld food and shut off drinking water, water they say was already contaminated with mosquito larvae, to pressure them into signing English-language self-deportation documents they could not read. Detainees with diabetes and high blood pressure were reportedly denied medication. The state called the accounts “complete fabrications.”

The same week, acting ICE director David Venturella issued a memo eliminating the requirement to report detainee deaths that occur within 30 days of release from custody, narrowing public reporting to deaths that happen in custody. The change lands as ICE records its deadliest stretch in two decades. The 2021 rule it rescinds was created precisely to stop the agency from releasing critically ill detainees to avoid recording an in-custody death.

The Supreme Court, via its shadow docket, allowed Alabama to use a congressional map that lower courts repeatedly found to be intentionally racially discriminatory, further eroding the Voting Rights Act. And NOTUS reported that the administration routed $26 million in national park recreation fees to nearly double the U.S. Park Police force in Washington, D.C., explicitly to expand immigration enforcement.

Plus: a DOJ lawyer conceded in court the government could demolish the Statue of Liberty if it moved quickly enough; the DOJ opened an FBI investigation into California’s election after Trump alleged fraud without evidence; CBS gutted “60 Minutes”; and the House voted to check Trump on Iran and advance aid to Ukraine.

Sources:

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jun/05/alligator-alcatraz-detainees-denied-food-water

https://www.washingtonpost.com/immigration/2026/06/04/ice-stop-reporting-deaths-newly-released-detainees-internal-memo-says/

https://www.notus.org/trump-white-house/president-trump-white-house-national-park-fees-park-police-doubled

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/trump-doj-demolish-statue-liberty_n_6a23066be4b0a18aef0bf611

The Fucking News Heather Cox Richardson The Contrarian

This week on the Gilead Gazette: a new report from City St George’s, University of London found that media coverage of violence against women has hit a record low, even as the attacks escalate. So here’s what the press isn’t covering.

The Trump administration funneled pregnant, unaccompanied immigrant girls, some as young as 13 and roughly half pregnant as a result of rape, into a single facility in San Benito, Texas, a state that bans abortion. A former Trump health official described the strategy as “100% and exclusively about abortion.” Rep. Maxine Dexter, a physician, was blocked from seeing any of the children, and the number held at the facility has dropped sharply, raising fears the girls have been deported, along with their US-citizen newborns.

The Republican Party of Texas announced that Abolish Abortion Texas, a group that supports charging abortion patients with homicide, is an official sponsor of its 2026 state convention. The FDA launched a new “safety study” of mifepristone, a drug proven safe over 25 years and hundreds of studies, with results conveniently not expected until after the November midterms. And House Republicans voted to cut $141 million from WIC, slashing fruit and vegetable benefits for low-income mothers and children.

Plus: a federal judge blocked Trump’s $1.8 billion “Anti-Weaponization Fund” on May 29, which was set to compensate anti-abortion extremists; Tennessee candidate Monty Fritts wants abortion patients charged with murder; and wins in Nevada and Illinois.

Sources:

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jun/01/pregnant-minors-texas-ice-facility

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/fda-abortion-pill-safety-study_n_6a223725e4b0d8021c9f018c

https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2026/apr/17/media-coverage-violence-against-women-low-report

Abortion, Every Day

A ProPublica investigation revealed that the Pentagon issued a $620 million loan to Vulcan Elements, a roughly 30-employee rare-earth magnet startup in North Carolina, about three months after Donald Trump Jr.‘s venture capital firm, 1789 Capital, took an undisclosed stake in the company. The loan came through the Defense Department’s Office of Strategic Capital, part of a broader, bipartisan effort to reduce U.S. dependence on China for rare-earth magnets used in drones, satellites, and weapons systems.

According to ProPublica, of the dozens of companies the Pentagon was weighing at the time, Vulcan’s was the only deal initiated by a top White House official: Peter Navarro, the senior counselor for trade, who has no formal role in Pentagon lending decisions. One defense official said staff were told, “The call came from the White House: We have to get this done.” Navarro is a close friend of Trump Jr., who visited him during his four-month prison sentence for defying a January 6th subpoena, and who promoted Navarro’s book to his streaming audience roughly a week before the loan was announced. After the deal, Vulcan’s estimated valuation grew roughly tenfold.

This week, a group of lawmakers including Sens. Elizabeth Warren, Richard Blumenthal, Mazie Hirono, and Reps. Jason Crow and Mike Levin sent a letter to the White House demanding answers. Sen. Patty Murray of Washington called for a congressional investigation, and Sen. Raphael Warnock of Georgia called it “corruption to the highest degree.”

Sources:

https://www.propublica.org/article/donald-trump-jr-vulcan-lawmakers-letter

https://www.propublica.org/article/donald-trump-jr-vulcan-deal-white-house

The Trump administration is moving to log and sell off public lands across the country, and Oregon is ground zero. In February, the Forest Service signed off on industrial logging across roughly 86,000 acres around Hells Canyon, including never-logged old-growth forest where wolves breed and salmon run. The administration is also working to rescind the 2001 Roadless Rule, the largest forest-protection policy in American history, which would open tens of millions of acres of national forest to road-building and logging. Last summer, an attempt to sell millions of acres of public land through a budget bill was struck down by the Senate parliamentarian, but the broader push continues, and public timber is already being sold to companies including Sierra Pacific Industries, the country’s largest private landowner.

Meanwhile, the National Park Service faces a maintenance backlog estimated at $24 billion, even as the administration has redirected roughly $76 million in national-park entrance fees toward beautification projects in Washington, D.C., ahead of the country’s 250th anniversary. That includes a no-bid contract to repair and repaint the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, which has ballooned to about $13.1 million, roughly seven times the initially stated cost. At Crater Lake National Park, 18 of 45 permanent positions sit vacant and the superintendent resigned after five months.

Credit to More Than Just Parks for tracking this throughout. Follow them for updates and for the public comment link when the next window opens.

Sources:

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/27/us/national-park-fees-dc-projects.html

There is not a single woman on the U.S. Navy’s new list of nominees for one-star admiral — in a force that is about 21 percent women. According to The New York Times, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth personally struck nine officers from a promotion list selected by a board of senior Navy admirals: three women, two Black men, and four white men. Under Pentagon rules, a defense secretary is supposed to remove names only for narrow concerns about an officer’s fitness to serve.

One of the women removed had completed the Navy’s advanced nuclear power school and was selected to aide a four-star admiral; her name had surfaced on a website targeting “woke” officers because she served as a diversity liaison two decades ago. Hegseth has already fired the first woman to lead the Navy and the second Black chairman of the Joint Chiefs, and nearly 60 percent of the senior officers he has removed are women or Black, according to Senator Jack Reed.

Hegseth also pushed to add his own special assistant, a SEAL who was ineligible under the board’s rules, to the promotion list, and told a member of Congress he was “not aware” of it when asked directly.

Separately, on the same week, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled his transgender troop policy unconstitutional, with the court describing it as driven by animus, though the ruling was narrowed to currently serving members and is on hold pending further appeal.

Sources:

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/01/us/politics/hegseth-navy-promotion-list.html

https://www.notus.org/donald-trump/circuit-court-strikes-down-pentagon-hegseth-policy-transgender-active-military