Good evening. I’m John Byrne, in for British Chris.

Trump’s acting Attorney General is already hard at work making it harder for Democrats to prosecute Trump and his allies under a future Democratic administration. The Trump DOJ is now defending the president’s ballroom by arguing Trump has the right to bulldoze the Statue of Liberty. A federal judge just issued a ruling striking down one of Trump’s most extreme immigration policies. And migrants locked in ICE detention facilities across the country are going on hunger strikes to protest conditions that include beatings, tear gas, and contaminated water.

Before we get into the news, I need to ask you to help keep Raw America’s independent journalism funded. When I launched Raw Story 22 years ago, I saw firsthand how dogged journalism can lead to the administration’s preferred narrative crumbling. We’re in a similar moment today, and I feel even more confident that Raw America can be the independent voice that holds power accountable at a time when our legacy media outlets are either too scared of losing their access to challenge those in power, or too captured by right-wing billionaires to serve the people.

I launched Raw America this year as the answer to right-wing oligarchs trying to silence journalism across the country. We are proudly reader-supported, editorially independent and not for sale. But that also means our work is only possible if enough readers like you step up to become paying subscribers. If you’ve become a paying member of the Raw America community, thank you sincerely. But if you’ve been reading us on a free subscription, please take a moment to upgrade today. Independent journalism requires resources, and it can only survive with your support.

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Blanche Already Working to Keep Trump Out of Jail

In 2024, Todd Blanche was Donald Trump’s personal defense lawyer, hired to keep his client out of prison. Now he’s running the same Justice Department that once prosecuted his boss, but his goal appears to be the same: keep Trump out of prison.

In a recent NewsNation appearance, host Katie Pavlich asked Blanche about whether a future Democratic administration could go after Trump. Blanche said he’s convinced a Democratic revenge plot against his boss is coming, and that he’s already making preparations.

Blanche referred to the prosecutions against Trump — which were handled by special counsel Jack Smith — as “weaponization” of the DOJ, rather than an attempt to honestly prosecute an attempted coup and the mishandling of classified documents. Most notably, he said he’s already putting “roadblocks” in place, so Trump is never prosecuted again.

The acting attorney general’s remarks came after Illinois Governor JB Pritzker suggested that a future Democratic administration should pursue criminal cases against Trump officials who broke laws. That kind of talk has sent MAGA world into full panic mode.

Blanche became acting AG in April after Trump pushed out Pam Bondi. Bondi was accused of bungling the release of the Jeffrey Epstein files while failing to deliver the prosecutions of Trump’s political enemies that the president wanted. Blanche stepped in and quickly moved to revive investigations into Trump adversaries like New York Attorey General Letitia James and former FBI Director James Comey.

This week, Trump announced he’ll nominate Blanche to the job permanently. Blanche called it “the honor of a lifetime.”

We’re watchin the complete transformation of the DOJ into a shield for one man. Blanche is going far beyond law enforcement and explicitly working to preempt accountability before the process even starts.

DOJ Argues Trump Has Absolute Right to Tear Down Statue of Liberty if He Wants to

The Trump administration’s legal team went to a federal appeals court Friday and made an argument that should stop every American in their tracks.

The case is about Trump’s White House ballroom project, which would take the place of the demolished East Wing. A federal judge tried to halt construction back in March. The appeals court paused that ruling and let construction continue. And now the administration is defending the whole thing with a legal theory that has almost nothing to do with the ballroom itself.

The administration’s lawyers are arguing that once the federal government moves fast enough and spends enough money, courts can’t touch it: even if it’s illegal.

Judge Patricia Millett, an Obama appointee, pressed DOJ attorney Yaakov Roth, asking if the same logic applies if the government decided to bulldoze the Statue of Liberty and moved too fast for anyone to stop it legally.

Roth said yes.

The DOJ’s position is that because national security is involved, the courts should step back entirely, and if there’s a legal problem, Congress can sort it out later. Roth pointed to the 3 million pounds of steel rebar already installed as evidence the project has crossed the point of no return.

The National Trust for Historic Preservation filed the lawsuit, arguing the White House grounds are a designated national park and can’t be altered without congressional approval. Their attorney, Tad Heuer, made it simple: “They just don’t want to go to Congress.”

Two of the three appeals court judges on the panel expressed real skepticism about the administration’s position. The third, a Trump appointee, questioned whether the plaintiffs had standing to sue at all.

But the broader legal argument is the thing worth paying attention to. The DOJ is telling the federal courts that speed and scale can immunize presidential action from judicial review. That shows this isn’t about a ballroom, but rather about a president attempting to place himself beyond the reach of the law.

Federal Judge Rules Trump Broke the Law on Immigration

A federal judge handed down a significant ruling Friday, finding that the Trump administration violated the law when it froze immigration applications for people from 39 different countries.

The policy, implemented by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services starting last November, placed a hold on processing asylum requests, work permits, green cards and citizenship applications for immigrants from countries subject to Trump’s travel bans. Those countries span Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Middle East.

Chief District Judge John McConnell from the District of Rhode Island, an Obama appointee, ruled that the policy was unlawful from the start.

He wrote that USCIS “threw the lives of countless immigrants living in the United States into indeterminate legal limbo.” He pointed out that the people affected hadn’t done anything wrong, followed the rules, went through the legal process and were still left waiting anyway, “for months on end, for benefit requests that USCIS refuses to adjudicate.”

“The rule of law has to apply to everyone equally,” he added.

The lawsuit that led to this ruling was filed back in March by immigrant service organizations and labor unions. They argued that the administration had essentially decided to bypass the immigration system that Congress created and USCIS is legally required to administer. Judge McConnell agreed.

Murad Awawdeh, the president of the New York Immigration Coalition, called the ruling a reaffirmation of what advocates had been arguing all along: that the administration acted against both the rule of law and existing law itself, and that freezing applications based solely on a person’s country of birth is exactly the kind of thing the courts were meant to stop.

Immigrant Launch Hunger Strikes at ICE Detention Centers Nationwide

Hundreds of migrants held in ICE detention facilities in at least four states have launched hunger strikes to protest the conditions inside.

At Delaney Hall in Newark, New Jersey, roughly 300 detainees are taking part in an ongoing hunger and labor strike. The facility is run by private prison company GEO Group under a 15-year contract with ICE. Outside the building, there have been daily protests. Inside, families say their relatives are being beaten and tear gassed by guards.

In Adelanto, California, at least 20 detainees at the Desert View Annex went on hunger strike to draw attention to what they described as substandard conditions, including mold, unsafe drinking water and inadequate medical care.

Last month, hunger strikes broke out at the North Lake Processing Center in Baldwin, Michigan, which is the largest ICE facility in the Midwest. Detainees are also on a huger strike at Moshannon Valley in Clearfield County, Pennsylvania, which is the largest in the Northeast. In Pennsylvania, striking detainees were reportedly placed in solitary confinement.

The GEO Group operates all four facilities.

New Jersey Governor Mikie Sherill said the state Department of Health tried to conduct a health inspection of Delaney Hall and was denied full access. She’s called for the facility to be shut down, saying the consistent stonewalling “raises serious questions about what ICE is trying to hide.”

Gabriela Fuentes has been protesting outside Delaney Hall for days. Her husband came to the U.S. from Guatemala on a work visa and told her he’d been beaten and tear gassed inside.

“We’re all human, we’re all people,” she said. “Just because we’re Hispanic does not mean that we need to be treated like this.”

Attorneys and advocates are struggling to even track the full scope of what’s happening. In Pennsylvania, communication lines to affected units were cut after the strike began, leaving families and legal advocates unable to find out what was happening inside. In Michigan, an attorney called for more state oversight, noting that current mechanisms are woefully inadequate.

This is what it looks like when a government refuses to treat human beings with basic dignity.

Raw America is hard at work not only breaking down stories like these, but putting reporters on the ground at the Capitol, breaking exclusive stories the billionaire-owned outlets won’t cover. Our Capitol Hill partner, Joe Galina with Call to Activism, recently interviewed Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) in Washington. We’ll be releasing that video this weekend.

We’re also expanding our live interview coverage, speaking to both prominent elected leaders and respected experts offering you inside perspectives on the biggest stories of the day that the Trump regime wants to keep hidden. If you’ve been enjoying Raw America’s independent journalism on a free subscription, now is the time to upgrade to a paying membership. None of this would be possible without you.

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I’m John Byrne, with Raw America. Thanks for reading. We’ll see you next week.

STORIES YOU MAY HAVE MISSED:

• Construction Crews Remove Trump’s Name from Kennedy Center. After a federal judge ruled that President Donald Trump illegally added his name to the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, construction crews were seen Friday removing Trump’s name from the building’s facade. A Kennedy Center memo gave employees a June 12 deadline to remove Trump’s name from all signage, marketing materials, social media accounts, letterhead and website. Current law stipulates that any official name change has to first be authorized by Congress.

• Trump Says ‘That’s the Way Life Goes’ When Asked About Attending Pricey NBA Finals Game. President Trump is expected to be in attendance for Game 3 of the NBA Finals at Madison Square Garden, where he will be present at the invitation of New York Knicks owner James Dolan. The cheapest tickets available are currently selling for more than $8,000 apiece. When a reporter pointed out to Trump that he’s attending the game at a time when more Americans are having trouble affording basic necessities, the president said, “that’s the way life goes.”

• New Republic Editor Blames New York Times for Bari Weiss’ Rise. In a recent essay for the New Republic, Michael Tomasky — the publication’s editor — observed that CBS News editor-in-chief Bari Weiss is only in her position thanks to being consistently platformed by the New York Times. As an opinion editor at the Times, Weiss carved out a niche for simultaneously criticizing the left while apologizing for and complimenting rich and powerful conservatives. Tomasky lamented that liberal institutions like the New York Times often “place such value on proving that they’re open-minded that other liberal values, like standing for actual liberal things in the world, get tossed aside.”

• Maine Democrats Stand By Graham Platner Despite Controversies. Maine Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Graham Platner appears to remain the favorite to win Maine’s Democratic primary next Tuesday, despite his personal baggage. The New York Times reported this week that Platner had been accused by former girlfriends of being abusive and lying about a tattoo on his chest which had been revealed to be a Nazi symbol. However, multiple Democratic voters in Maine told MS NOW that Platner’s controversies still pale in comparison to Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Senate Republicans’ failure to rein in the abuses of the Trump administration.

• Trump Calls on New Intel Chief to Fire More Workers. Just days after naming Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Bill Pulte to be the next Director of National Intelligence (DNI), President Trump expressed hope that Pulte would fire a significant chunk of employees working in the DNI office. If confirmed, Pulte would oversee more than a dozen intelligence agencies, and multiple lawmakers have expressed concerns that Pulte would use the powers of his office to harass the president’s political opponents.

I started in radio news as a teenage reporter at WITL-AM/FM in Lansing, Michigan, then the number one station in the capitol city. I began reporting from the Capitol and City Hall, and was writing and reading the morning newscasts within a year.

The station owner was a hardcore Goldwater Republican, our news director was a liberal but Libertarian-curious Democrat, and I was a long-haired anti-war hippie member of MSU SDS.

I did the news there for years, and nobody ever told me how to spin it or what to insert or delete. I knew that I couldn’t bias it to reflect my own opinions: the news — accurate, factual, honest information — was sacred.

It was also the cost of our broadcast license, and we all knew it. The widely misunderstood Fairness Doctrine’s main demand was that radio and TV stations “program in the public interest” and that was widely understood to mean straightforward, reliable, faithful-to-reality news at the top and bottom of every hour on radio and an hourlong news block in prime time on TV.

We did this — and embraced the Fairness Doctrine — because we knew it was part of the price of freedom, of democracy in our republic. When Thomas Jefferson said he’d rather live in a country with newspapers and no government than in one with a government but no newspapers, he wasn’t knocking government; he’d help create ours and was its president for 8 years. He was talking about the vital importance of an honest and free press.

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Part of that honesty came from the competition; there were multiple stations in Lansing and most had an in-house news operation like ours, and the ones that didn’t ran the CBS or AP radio newscast twice an hour. Honesty and clarity were essential to get and maintain an audience, as well as hanging onto our license.

Reagan ended the Fairness Doctrine in 1987 and now Trump and his oligarch enablers are trying to bury the entire concept of honest, straightforward news.

Over the past year-and-a-half we’ve watched Brendan Carr, Trump’s hitman at the FCC, go to CPAC conferences and brag about how he’s going to assault stations that say things he and Trump dislike. He’s trying to intimidate ABC affiliates into muzzling Jimmy Kimmel — again. And he succeeded in taking down Stephen Colbert.

And a Trump-adjacent billionaire nepo-baby has acquired CBS and is systematically stripping it of its journalistic integrity, starting with the evening news and now gutting the nation’s number-one news magazine show, 60 Minutes.

Storied journalist and 60 Minutes reporter Scott Pelley isn’t taking it lying down, even though it’s a virtual certainty that he has the standard non-disparagement clause that most media operations now require for talent which forbid them to ever speak ill of their former employer should they leave for any reason. He’ll probably get sued for it, but he’s a man committed to the truth.

Trump, Ellison, Weiss, the billionaire owners of Sinclair, the billionaire Murdoch family’s Fox “News,” the 1,000+ billionaire-owned radio stations across the country, the billionaire-subsidized podcasters, and billionaire-owned social media sites like Facebook and X that have apparently been algorithmically slanted toward Trump’s neofascist movement are all following an ancient script.

Hitler, Mussolini, Tojo, and Franco all seized control of the news in their countries in their first year in power. It took both Putin and Orbán two or so years, because they wrote a new script for the takeover: sue the news outlets and reporters into bankruptcy for “defamation” or “slander,” then have friendly oligarchs take over the outlets.

Orbán even came to CPAC in Dallas to tell Republicans that they should do the same thing as he had done by turning America’s media over to rightwing billionaires. He also told the American CPAC conference in Budapest four years ago, during the Biden administration, that they should do the same in America when Republicans next seized control of the US government:

“Have your own media,” he said. “It’s the only way to point out the insanity of the progressive left. The problem is that the western media is adjusted to the leftist viewpoint. Those who taught reporters in universities already had progressive leftist principles.”

He added:

“Of course, the GOP has its media allies but they can’t compete with the mainstream liberal media. My friend Tucker Carlson is the only one who puts himself out there. His show is the most popular. What does it mean? It means programs like his should be broadcasted day and night. Or, as you say, 24/7.”

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Thus, this is now the Putin/Orbán/Trump formula:

— Manufacture a crisis.

— Declare an “emergency.”

— Seize powers the Constitution doesn’t grant.

— Bypass Congress.

— Bully or ignore the courts.

— Use masked, secret police and the military against your own residents.

— Send people to foreign concentration camps.

— Build concentration camps within the United States.

— Prosecute lawyers and judges.

— Assert control over universities.

— Merge corporate and state interests.

— Cow the media into silence about your corruption and crimes.

— Then call it all “law and order.”

Trump is 18 months into his project and he’s already taken down the Voice of America, defunded PBS and NPR, seen the Washington Post and LA Times acquired by sycophantic billionaires, and turned CBS over to a nepo-baby billionaire who’s going after CNN next. As Jefferson pointed out, this is how democracies are fatally corrupted, which is apparently Trump’s and his billionaire enablers’ goal.

Combine that with a capture of the police and prosecutorial agencies of the government so, like in Putin’s Russia, they can harass and prosecute anybody who dares speak up against their destruction of our way of life and you have the classic formula for turning a democratic republic into an oligarchic dictatorship.

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The classic symbol of authoritarian governance dating back to ancient Rome and Caligula — violence as entertainment — will come to the White House as musclebound men will beat each other bloody and senseless for spectacle and the amusement of our 80-year-old “president” on our nation’s birthday.

Masked thugs snatching people off the street without warrants and putting them into concentration camps in violation of the Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, Seventh, and Eighth Amendments also plays well for the fascist Klan-remnant Republican base, so long as the people they beat, pepper spray, or murder are either dark-skinned or “liberal agitators.”

We’re now way down the road to the complete destruction of America, all in less than two years, as I wrote and warned of in The Hidden History of American Oligarchy in 2020.

The courts are packed with Trump toadies, thousands of lawyers have been purged from government, the FBI is now weaponized against Americans, Blacks and women are being pushed out of senior military commands by an openly white supremacist Defense Secretary, our history is being whitewashed in national parks, museums, and every federal property, and Trump’s face hangs, 60 feet tall, on multiple federal buildings.

And now they’re coming for the news. If it falls, recovering our republic will be possible — the examples are Hungary with Peter Magyar and Volodymyr Zelenskyy being elected in Ukraine — but very, very difficult. It will take years and cost a fortune both in work, cash, and probably blood, as it did in those two countries.

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But we can gain courage from our heroes of this moment. Scott Pelley is unintimidated, telling us bluntly that the new owner and management of CBS tried to force him to lie to us on the air and spin stories so they could please wannabe-Emperor Trump. When they tried to lie their way out of the PR mess Pelley created for them, he immediately called out their falsehoods.

This crisis isn’t limited to CBS: the same nepo-baby billionaire who’s taken over that network also, according to Bernie Sanders, now owns, controls, or soon will control:

“TikTok, Warner Bros., Paramount, DC Studios, The Discovery Channel, CNN, CBS, HBO, BET, Fandango, Rotten Tomatoes, Nickelodeon, MTV, Cartoon Network, Food Network, Travel Channel, Investigation Discovery, Animal Planet, Comedy Central, Showtime, TBS, TLC, HGTV, and more.”

Oligarchy and monopoly are two sides of the same anti-democratic fascist coin. They’re always tied together.

As anti-democracy billionaires continue their march across the American media landscape and pour billions into elections, it falls to us to resist.

To register our discontent with those outlets. To boycott them. To demand that our politicians start breaking up the monopolies that Reagan legalized when in 1983 he ordered the SEC, FCC, and FTC to stop enforcing the antitrust laws that went all the way back to the 1890s (leading to three decades of “merger mania”).

Monopolies are destructive, but media monopolies are pure Putin-style poison.

We all must become truth-tellers, regardless of whether our platforms are, like mine, on radio, TV, and Substack, or if the place we can make our mark and speak our voice is on social media, the local newspaper’s letters to the editor, financial or volunteer support for a fighting progressive politician, or the town square with a protest sign.

We are all Scott Pelley.

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Raw America Is Building Something Big. But We Need Your Help to Do It.

Trump is following the Orban playbook of consolidating media ownership among his right-wing billionaire friends. And what we’re seeing unfold at 60 Minutes is only the latest example. This is exactly why we launched Raw America this year, and why we’re committed to growing it to the point where it can not only compete with the billionaire-owned outlets, but beat them.

This week, Raw America brought you three exclusive interviews with prominent experts sharing inside knowledge that the Bezoses, Ellisons and Murdochs of the world want to keep buried. We talked to author and political analyst Jared Yates Sexton about how the far right is planning to stay in power after Trump. We talked to Ben Rhodes, who was President Obama’s deputy national security advisor, to get his inside knowledge on what’s really happening with the Iran war. And we talked to veteran TV news executive Jennifer Schulze about what the death of 60 Minutes means for journalism as a whole. You won’t find perspectives like these anywhere else, but we need your help to keep this work alive.

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This is just the tip of the iceberg. Our Washington reporter, Luke De Cresce, is in the halls of Congress, and is on the ground at major hearings in the House and Senate. Our Capitol Hill partner, Joe Galina of Call to Activism, is talking directly with members of Congress about everything from the affordability crisis to ICE abuses, and everything in between. We’re doing all of this as a five month-old publication, with no billionaire behind the scenes writing checks or corporate advertisers telling us what to report and what to bury. If you’re already a paying subscriber, thank you sincerely. We mean that. But if you’ve been enjoying our work on a free subscription, today is the day to upgrade to a paying membership.

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A top cardiologist is sounding the alarm over Trump’s habit of falling asleep in public. Bari Weiss is facing growing pressure from Paramount executives over the chaos she’s unleashed at CBS News. A whistleblower is revealing that Trump officials planned to falsely declare nearly 3 million living people dead. And a federal watchdog has found that ICE detention center guards in Louisiana used a chokehold and even stabbed a detainee with a pen.

Before we get into the news, I need to ask for your help to keep Raw America’s independent journalism alive. This week’s collapse of 60 Minutes was a bright red flashing alarm signaling that even the gold standard of broadcast journalism isn’t safe from pro-Trump billionaires. The playbook is the same everywhere: buy a media outlet, snuff out all accountability reporting and fire everyone in the newsroom who speaks out against it.

This is exactly why Raw America exists. We are proudly reader-supported, editorially independent and not for sale. But that also means that none of our daily news breakdowns, Capitol Hill reporting or live interviews would be possible without your support. We don’t have the Ellisons’ investment portfolio or Jeff Bezos’ checkbook. We have you. If you believe independent journalism that only answers to readers matters, then take a moment to subscribe to Raw America. Every subscription is an act of resistance to the billionaire conquest of the media.

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Cardiologist Says Trump’s Doctors Are Hiding Something

Dr. Jonathan Reiner has seen enough. The man who served as Dick Cheney’s personal cardiologist for years is raising serious concerns about Donald Trump’s health, and he’s not pulling punches.

It started with footage showing Trump, who is almost 80, with his eyes shut during an Oval Office event. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum was thanking Trump for opening trade doors and lavishing praise on him, and the president was asleep in his chair.

Reiner insisted there’s a “glaring omission” in Trump’s most recent physical, saying his public sleeping episodes are “not normal.”

That physical, conducted at Walter Reed Military Medical Center on May 26, covered a lot of ground. Trump’s weight is up 14 pounds from last year, now at 238 pounds, so he says. His resting heart rate climbed from 62 to 73 beats per minute. The report covered preventive screenings, cardiovascular risk, and metabolic evaluations. But not a word about sleep.

That omission matters more than the White House wants to admit. Trump’s social media posting patterns suggest he’s not sleeping through the night on more than 80 percent of days. Reiner told CNN last month that Trump has what he called “severe daytime somnolence,” which he described plainly as a “severe illness.”

And this isn’t a one-time thing. Trump has been caught nodding off in public settings repeatedly. In the most recent footage, he wasn’t just blinking slowly at his desk. He was slumping sideways in his chair, head lolling, even as Energy Secretary Chris Wright and EPA administrator Lee Zeldin were praising him.

The White House responded typically, calling Reiner a “Democrat hack doctor” and insisting Trump is “the sharpest, most accessible, and energetic president in American history.”

Reiner simply proposed putting Trump’s physician in front of the press to answer questions. But the White House won’t do it.

Trump turns 80 in nine days. The American public has every right to know the full picture of his health.

After Woodrow Wilson had a stroke in 1919, his wife and his doctor hid how incapacitated he really was, running the country in his name while the public was kept in the dark, and we ratified the 25th Amendment in 1967 precisely so that could never happen quietly again. A president’s fitness to do the job isn’t his private property, it belongs to the people who hired him, and a White House that locks the doctor away from the press is telling you it’s got something to hide.

Bari Weiss in Hot Seat Over CBS News Meltdown

Bari Weiss came into CBS News promising to shake things up. Paramount’s leadership now appears to be second-guessing the hire.

The implosion at “60 Minutes” is now bleeding far beyond the news division. CBS Entertainment chief Amy Reisenbach has been telling associates privately that Weiss is inflicting serious damage on the broader CBS brand. Even the network’s showrunners are panicking: after new “60 Minutes” executive producer Nick Bilton publicly compared linear television to a melting ice cube, they’re asking why they should keep developing shows for CBS at all. Others in Hollywood are voicing concern that Weiss is MAGA-fying the network/

Reisenbach isn’t alone. Dozens of senior Paramount figures reportedly share the view that Weiss is hurting the company, and some believe she should be removed.

The immediate crisis centers on “60 Minutes.” Weiss fired the show’s senior leadership, then ousted correspondents Scott Pelley, Cecilia Vega, and Sharyn Alfonsi. That left three remaining correspondents, Lesley Stahl, Bill Whitaker, and Jon Wertheim, privately meeting for over an hour to figure out what to do next.

Bilton has been working the phones and the dinner circuit trying to keep them from walking. He sent a memo to staffers praising the trio as “core” to the show’s success and vowed he “will never be instructed by ownership of the company” on what stories to cover. He also elevated Maria Gavrilovic, a respected senior producer who had worked closely with Pelley, to a top slot.

But the broader industry verdict is damning. Former correspondent Steve Kroft told New York Magazine that “’60 Minutes,’ as the audience has known it, no longer exists.” The Writers Guild of America East called the firings “cruel and needless.” SAG-AFTRA called them a “continued assault on the foundations of CBS News.” Former CBS News president Andy Lack said he was “stunned” by how Weiss handled it and that Pelley didn’t deserve what happened to him.

Meanwhile, Bilton is pulling down $2.5 million a year for the job. That’s a million dollars more than the executive producer he replaced.

Nobody inside CBS News even knows if there will even be a “60 Minutes” on the air by fall. Edward R. Murrow built the very standard CBS News was supposed to live by, and back in 1958 he stood in front of a room full of broadcasters and warned that television would rot into nothing but wires and lights in a box the moment its owners cared more about the bottom line than the truth. Watch what’s being done to 60 Minutes and tell me he wasn’t describing this exact day.

This is what happens when billionaires buy legacy media outlets. Honest journalism suffers, and the people who kill it get rewarded. This is exactly why we created Raw America. Become a paying subscriber and help keep independent media strong.

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Trump’s White House Wanted to Falsely Declare 2.7 Million People Dead

A former senior Social Security executive named Jeremiah Schofield has filed a 49-page whistleblower disclosure with two Senate committees revealing that Trump administration officials, working with Elon Musk’s DOGE operation, planned to falsely classify 2.7 million living people as dead.

The goal was chaos. According to Schofield, a DOGE official working with the Department of Homeland Security spelled it out plainly on a conference call: people would either self-deport, or they’d show up at a Social Security office to prove they were alive, and get arrested.

Schofield joined Social Security in 2000, worked his way up over 25 years, and was leading IT modernization efforts when DOGE arrived. He initially welcomed them. That changed fast.

When he pulled a sample of 25 people from the 2.7 million on the list, he found they were all alive. Some were U.S. citizens. Some were lawful permanent residents. There were teenagers. Senior citizens. A widow collecting survivor benefits.

The Social Security Administration’s lawyers warned that falsely marking living people as dead would violate federal law. Schofield raised the alarm up the chain. His supervisor agreed with his concerns, then abruptly left the agency two weeks later.

Being placed in Social Security’s Death Master File is economically devastating. Banks use it, along with employers and landlords use it. Once you’re in there, you can’t open a bank account or receive wages. You can’t get credit, or even maintain your insurance plan.

The administration already ran a smaller version of this scheme, moving 6,100 immigrants into the death file in 2025. Some had to physically go to Social Security offices just to prove they were still alive.

Senator Elizabeth Warren was direct, calling it “an illegal attempt by DOGE to weaponize Social Security to carry out Trump’s cruel immigration agenda.”

The men who wrote our Constitution banned bills of attainder right there in Article One because they’d watched governments destroy a person by simple decree, stripping away their standing without a trial, without evidence, without any chance to answer back. Declaring a living, breathing human being legally dead so they can’t bank or work or feed their family is that same ancient abuse dressed up in a spreadsheet, and it’s exactly the power our founders fought a revolution to keep out of the hands of any king or any president.

ICE Guards Choked and Stabbed Detainees

The Department of Homeland Security’s own internal watchdog has documented abuse at one of the country’s biggest ICE detention centers, and the findings are ugly.

At the Winn Correctional Center in Louisiana, a federal inspector general’s report found that a guard applied a chokehold to a detainee to “gain control” during a scuffle with another detainee. ICE’s own policy manual explicitly forbids chokeholds and neck restraints unless deadly force is authorized. The officer received “remedial training.”

In a separate incident, a guard stabbed a detainee’s thumb with a pen because the detainee didn’t move his hand away from a door. The facility determined the officer needed disciplinary action, but investigators found no documentation that any discipline was ever carried out.

A third incident involved a five-person team using mechanical restraints and a suicide smock on a detainee who refused to change into it. Staff failed to document the required medical review.

The broader picture from the report is grim: unsanitary food storage, leaking ceilings, denying immigrants meetings with their lawyers, and medical staff failing to document required treatment. The inspector general warned that guards’ behavior toward detainees could lead to “property damage, injury, and death.”

More than 60,000 people are held in ICE detention on any given day. The Trump administration has told Congress it wants to expand that to 99,000.

DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin told the House Homeland Security Committee this week that ICE’s detention standards are better than most U.S. prisons. A DHS spokesperson dismissed the inspector general’s findings as “minor infractions.”

The people detained in these facilities aren’t convicted criminals. They’re immigrants entitled to due process. And the government’s own watchdog is documenting abuse that the administration is shrugging off as nothing to worry about.

When Madison and the First Congress wrote the Fifth Amendment, they chose their words with deliberate care, promising that no person, not no citizen but no person, shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law. The instant a government decides which human beings count as persons and which ones don’t, it stops being a government of laws, and an administration waving off chokeholds and stabbings as minor infractions is telling you exactly where that line has already moved.

At Raw America, we’re ramping up our efforts to break more exclusive news directly from the Capitol, where decisions are made that affect all of our lives. We aim to bring you more original reporting that the billionaire-owned outlets either ignore or bury. We’ve also been bringing you even more live interviews with experts and insiders giving you perspectives you won’t hear on the Ellisons’ CBS.

But because we don’t have a billionaire backer, none of this work can happen without paying subscribers stepping up to provide the necessary resources. If journalism that only answers to readers matters to you, subscribe today and help keep it going.

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I’m Thom Hartmann. The fight is here. Thank you for being in it.

STORIES YOU MAY HAVE MISSED:

• Senate Votes to Keep ICE Funded Through the Rest of Trump’s Term. The Republican-controlled Senate has passed a $69.5 billion bill that would fund U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) through 2029, when President Donald Trump’s second term ends. Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) was the only Republican to oppose the bill. The legislation now heads to the House of Representatives, where Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) says he plans to pass it next week.

• Trump Confirms He’ll Attend NBA Finals in New York Next Week. President Trump announced this week that he’ll be in attendance at Madison Square Garden to watch Game 3 of the NBA Finals on Monday, at the invitation of Knicks owner James Dolan. Trump also did not rule out attending Game 4 next Wednesday night. He would be the first sitting U.S. president to attend an NBA Finals game. Oddmakers at BetOnline.ag estimate a 75 percent likelihood that Trump will be booed by fans at Madison Square Garden.

• Utah Residents Petition to Court to Let Them Vote on Data Center Construction. A group of Utah residents are now asking state courts to intervene to allow a ballot referendum on a proposed data center outside Great Salt Lake. The data center — which would span 40,000 acres and be twice the size of Manhattan upon completion — was initially approved by the Box Elder County Board of Commissioners earlier this year, and plaintiffs are arguing that the Utah Constitution stipulates that any law passed by a county’s legislative body is subject to a voter referendum.

• New York Legislature Passes One-Year Moratorium on New Data Centers. Lawmakers in New York voted this week to impose a one-year ban on all new data center construction. The bill would also require new rules for data centers to follow that include energy efficiency goals, labor standards and direct benefits to communities. The legislation awaits Gov. Kathy Hochul’s (D) signature.

• Anti-Trump Republicans Struggle in Democratic Primaries. Despite being prominently featured in the media, anti-Trump former Republicans running as Democrats in various primaries across the U.S. have so far had mixed results this election season. Former Georgia Lieutenant Governor Geoff Duncan finished fourth in Georgia’s Democratic gubernatorial primary last month. In Pennsylvania, former federal prosecutor Ryan Crosswell — who left the DOJ after being asked to drop a corruption case against then-New York City Mayor Eric Adams — failed to secure the Democratic nomination in a contested Democratic primary for a congressional seat. And in New York, George Conway, who is the former husband of one-time Trump advisor Kellyanne Conway, is struggling to make headway in the Democratic primary for New York’s 12th Congressional District.

A bipartisan pair of senators is asking a federal judge to keep blocking Trump’s slush fund for insurrectionists. Republicans in Congress are pressing the Todd Blanche to investigate explosive new allegations against men tied to Jeffrey Epstein’s network. New reporting shows connections between Jared Kushner’s business world and Epstein’s inner circle. And Trump’s own former White House strategist is now openly predicting that Republicans will lose the Senate this fall.

Before getting into the news, take a moment to keep Raw America’s independent journalism alive. At a time when even the most storied legacy media outlets like the Washington Post and the LA Times are being gobbled up by right-wing billionaires and the Ellisons are gutting 60 Minutes, independent journalism that doesn’t self-censor or pull punches to benefit the wealthiest people in America has arguably never been more essential.

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Republican Asks Judge to Keep Blocking Trump’s January 6 Slush Fund

Republican Bill Cassidy of Louisiana and Democrat Cory Booker of New Jersey just filed a joint brief in court, urging a federal judge to keep blocking the Trump administration’s proposed taxpayer-funded $1.8 billion compensation fund for MAGA loyalists. That fund was created to pay people claiming they were victims of politically motivated prosecutions, and critics on both sides of the aisle have called it a slush fund for the president’s allies.

Judge Leonie Brinkema already put a temporary hold on the fund last week. She’s got a hearing scheduled for June 12 in federal court in Alexandria, Virginia. The senators’ brief urges her to rule against the administration, calling the fund “an immediate and dire threat to our constitutional order.”

Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche told Congress that the DOJ was withdrawing the proposal entirely. But the very next day, Trump walked it back, saying he still loved the idea of handing taxpayer money to January 6 rioters. And now the administration is citing a decades-old law to greenlight payments anyway.

The original lawsuit was filed by Andrew Floyd, a former federal prosecutor who was fired after working Jan. 6 cases. Skye Perryman of Democracy Forward, which brought the suit, put it plainly: the Constitution still matters.

And now that a Republican is joining that fight, Trump’s slush fund has a powerful new enemy.

Republicans Want Answers from Blanche on New Epstein Revelations

Todd Blanche has made it clear he wants the Epstein story to go away. But a group of Republicans aren’t letting go of it.

House Oversight Committee chair James Comer, along with Republicans Andy Biggs, Lauren Boebert, Clay Higgins, and William Timmons, sent a referral to the acting attorney general this week asking him to investigate new criminal allegations made by Sarah Kellen, Jeffrey Epstein’s longtime personal assistant.

Kellen told the Oversight Committee that she was assaulted by celebrity hairstylist Frédéric Fekkai and Philip Levine, the former mayor of Miami Beach, both of whom she identified as Epstein co-conspirators. She also testified that fashion photographer Patrick Demarchelier exposed himself to her, and that Ghislaine Maxwell abused her as well.

Kellen has long been listed as a potential co-conspirator in Epstein’s 2007 plea deal, and other Epstein victims have accused her of participating in his abuse. But Kellen insists she has been wrongly vilified, that she was groomed and exploited, and that law enforcement never once contacted her for nearly two decades. Kellen also testified that she met Donald Trump briefly at Mar-a-Lago, where Epstein had been a regular at the gym.

This puts Blanche in a tough spot. He’s already taking heat from both parties over the slush fund controversy and a backroom IRS immunity deal with the president. His predecessor, Pam Bondi, reportedly blamed him for bungling the release of the Epstein files. And now Trump, whose base spent years demanding Epstein accountability, is calling the whole thing a hoax.

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Kushner’s Epstein Ties Revealed in New Report

The more the Epstein files come into focus, the more familiar the names become.

Jared Kushner’s planned $1.4 billion development on an Albanian island traces back to a yacht trip with Nathaniel Rothschild. And according to new reporting from Grabien founder Tom Elliott, Nat Rothschild’s world overlaps substantially with Jeffrey Epstein’s.

Rothschild doesn’t appear directly in Epstein’s flight logs. But he shows up repeatedly in the emails of Peter Mandelson, a former British government minister who was simultaneously a friend of Rothschild’s and a close Epstein associate for roughly a decade.

In one 2010 exchange, Mandelson forwarded Epstein an email he had written to a JPMorgan executive, promoting Rothschild’s plans for a London stock listing. Epstein responded, calling him “devious.” The released correspondence also includes Mandelson reporting to Epstein from a Rothschild family estate in Buckinghamshire, and Epstein asking whether Nat Rothschild’s sister knew about him.

That’s not the question of someone who has never been near the family.

A separate branch of the family connects more directly. Ariane de Rothschild, chair of the Edmond de Rothschild Group, met with Epstein more than a dozen times between 2013 and 2019, according to the Wall Street Journal. Released correspondence shows Epstein arranging meetings for her, and the two discussing internal Rothschild family business at length. The bank calls it routine contact, but the emails show a lot more.

The bottom line: Kushner’s new business deal came about thanks to a family that has close ties to Jeffrey Epstein. And we should all be asking a lot more questions about why Trump’s family is so closely intertwined with perhaps the most notorious child sex trafficker in history.

Steve Bannon Says Republicans’ Senate Majority May Be Doomed

Even Trump’s former White House chief strategist thinks Republicans’ days as the majority party in Congress are numbered.

On the most recent episode of his War Room podcast, Bannon said flatly that the GOP will lose its Senate majority in the November midterms. He said grassroots Republican voters have gone cold on the party, noting that there’s no enthusiasm for door-knocking or voter engagement.

Bannon pointed specifically to the Texas Senate primary, where incumbent John Cornyn lost his seat to Trump-backed Attorney General Ken Paxton in a race that shattered previous primary spending records. Bannon worried that Republicans spent too much money trying to save Cornyn.

He didn’t stop there. Bannon issued what amounted to a threat, telling the establishment to put their “freaking pencils down” in North Carolina, Maine, Ohio, and Michigan. He argued that grassroots Republicans would rather let Democrats win rather than reward the GOP establishment.

That’s a remarkable thing to hear from one of Trump’s closest former advisers. The fact that Bannon is saying this out loud at all reflects the growing fractures inside the Republican coalition heading into November.

Raw America is building something that doesn’t exist anywhere else in independent media, and we need your help to do it.

This summer, we’re expanding our Capitol Hill team to break the kinds of stories the billionaire-owned outlets refuse to cover. We’re also working overtime to bring you even more live interviews with experts and insiders offering perspectives and knowledge you won’t find in billionaire-owned outlets. Today we interviewed veteran TV news executive Jennifer Schulze about the hollowing out of CBS. You can watch the full interview below, or by clicking this link.

This kind of thoughtful, in-depth reporting requires resources. And because Raw America doesn’t have a billionaire backer or corporate advertisers, it can only happen with enough readers like you deciding that independent journalism is worth financially supporting. If you’ve been enjoying our daily news breakdowns, live interviews, and Washington reporting on a free subscription, today is the best day to make the leap and become a paying subscriber. We couldn’t do any of this without you.

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Thanks for watching. I’m British Chris. We’ll see you next time.

STORIES YOU MAY HAVE MISSED:

• Trump’s Ballroom Funders Won $50 Billion in Contracts After Donating. A new Washington Post analysis found that 14 of the 27 corporations that gave money to President Donald Trump’s proposed White House ballroom were awarded more than $50 billion in federal contracts. This includes corporations like Lockheed Martin, Booz Allen Hamilton, Palantir, Amazon, Microsoft, Google, Caterpillar and T-Mobile.

• Nearly 100 Pardoned January 6 Rioters Went on to Commit Additional Crimes. Lawfare reported Thursday that of the more than 1,500 people who attacked the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021 — who were later pardoned by Trump —at least 97, or roughly one in 16 people, went on to commit more crimes. The crimes include low-tier offenses like property damage and possession of drug paraphernalia, while others committed major felonies like child molestation and reckless homicide.

• Kennedy Center Directs Employees to Remove Trump’s Name from Institution. After a federal judge ruled that President Trump improperly added his name to the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, the Kennedy Center is instructing employees to remove all references to Trump by June 12. This includes not only the building itself, but the Kennedy Center’s website, voicemail, social media accounts, press releases, brochures, forms and signage. Federal statute requires that any name change to the facility has to first be authorized by Congress.

• Bipartisan Group of Senators Say Trump’s Boat Strikes Being Conducted Illegally. Sens. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) and Rand Paul (R-Ky.) are now publicly saying the Trump administration’s bombings of boats in the Caribbean Sea are being carried out on false pretenses. While the Pentagon has insisted that the boats are being piloted by “narcoterrorists” transporting drugs to the United States, Kaine and Paul say that, according to classified briefings they’ve attended, the U.S. military doesn’t require boats singled out for strikes to have drugs or weapons on board. More than 200 people have been killed in the strikes since last September.

• 50 Senate Republicans Vote to Kill Resolution Opposing Trump’s Slush Fund. The U.S. Senate voted 50-49 on Thursday to kill legislation meant to stop President Trump from setting up a taxpayer-funded compensation scheme for MAGA loyalists. Republicans’ support for the slush fund came despite a federal judge halting the Trump administration from implementing the plan. Only Sens. Susan Collins (R-Maine), Jon Husted (R-Ohio) and Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska) voted for the measure.

Conversations like this one, in which proven experts share inside knowledge about how power actually operates in American media, don’t happen without the support of paying subscribers. If you find value in Raw America’s independent journalism, we need readers like you to step up and become paying subscribers. Every subscription is a direct act of resistance against the pro-Trump billionaires trying to permanently snuff out accountability reporting.

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CBS’ Gutting of 60 Minutes Is an Attack on ‘the Gold Standard’ of Broadcast Journalism

This week’s firing of 60 Minutes correspondent Scott Pelley, along with the forcing out of star journalist Sharon Alfonsi — who spearheaded the bombshell investigation into El Salvador’s CECOT gulag that CBS management tried to kill — and the exit of Anderson Cooper have left the journalism world watching to see what’s next for the remaining faces of 60 Minutes. Schulze didn’t mince words about what’s being lost.

“When I was young, it was the kind of place where you were like, ‘Oh my god, if I could work there — that would be it,’” she said. “To see it go through this trauma intentionally is just remarkable to me. I’m dumbfounded by it, I really am.”

Schulze emphasized that 60 Minutes isn’t some relic of a pre-digital era. Nine million people watched every episode last season. The show has been the gold standard of American broadcast journalism for 52 years, and the journalists who work there earn that distinction every week.

“You have to be a journalist at your core,” Schulze said of 60 Minutes’ on-air talent. “The gutting of 60 Minutes is just unfathomable, really.”

CBS’ Real Strategy: Keeping Donald Trump Happy

CBS Evening News ratings under new anchor Tony Dokoupil have cratered — hovering around 3.7 million viewers while ABC’s David Muir pulls close to 9 million on a regular night. But Schulze argued that’s beside the point, because the people making these decisions aren’t actually trying to run a news organization.

“The strategy is the owners of Paramount — who own CBS and are trying to buy CNN and Warner Brothers Discovery — their strategy is keep Donald Trump happy so he will approve all of the business deals they want to make,” Schulze explained. “They have an $11 billion merger pending right now.”

That context, Schulze said, explains everything from the Taiwan embarrassment — where CBS reported on Trump’s visit to China from Taiwan, 1,000 miles from the actual story — to the destruction of 60 Minutes. The veteran journalist argued that CBS’ billionaire owners, and their hand-picked editor-in-chief, Bari Weiss, care less about ratings and more about greasing the wheels that will lead to the growth of their empire.

Bari Weiss Has No Idea How to Run a Newsroom — But That’s the Entire Point

Bari Weiss came to CBS News from The Free Press, a right-wing opinion website she founded after leaving the New York Times. She has no TV news experience. By her own admission, she doesn’t own a television. Schulze, who worked her way from reporter to field producer to executive producer to running WGN Chicago’s newsroom, described Weiss’ hire as, at minimum, an insult to everyone who spent decades preparing for that kind of role.

“She was mostly an opinion editor. She wrote a few columns at the New York Times, left in a huff, and started this Substack,” Schulze said. “I do find it a little bit offensive. I mean, I know people who run these big news organizations who spent their lives preparing for this and working at it every day. And then she swoops in — she’s a political hire, and there it is.”

The practical results have been visible. Schulze documented CBS’ string of failures in a May essay for her Indistinct Chatter Substack. Tony Dokoupil’s broadcast from Taiwan happened because Weiss failed to obtain a visa for him to go to China. She wrote that reporters unable to get to where the story is suggests a newsroom in visible distress.

“Logistics are it,” Schulze said. “You can’t do the news without a solid logistics operation, and they clearly have muffed that. And nobody cares.”

All the Media Properties the Ellisons Could Control Under the Proposed $11 Billion Merger

Oracle founder Larry Ellison — one of the wealthiest people on earth — and his son David Ellison, CEO of Paramount Skydance, are racing to finalize an $11 billion merger with Warner Brothers Discovery. If it goes through, the Ellisons will control not just CBS, but also CNN, HBO, MTV, Nickelodeon, Comedy Central, Cartoon Network, BET, TLC, the Discovery Channel, Paramount Pictures, and streaming services including Paramount Plus and HBO Max — in addition to their existing ownership stake in TikTok’s U.S. entity.

David Ellison hosted a private dinner for Donald Trump and acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, who would need to bless the merger, on the same week as the White House Correspondents’ Dinner. Schulze called the situation blatantly corrupt.

“There are some really important concerns here,” she said, noting reports that Ellison has already privately assured Trump he’d address Trump’s grievances about CNN. “He’s already shown us how powerful he is with 60 Minutes. It’s terrifying, really.”

Schulze expressed hope that California Attorney General Rob Bonta’s lawsuit and a coalition of state attorneys general could slow or stop the deal, particularly given that Democrats are expected to make gains in the midterms. Schlulze noted that Democratic lawmakers have already said they’ll be targeting the merger if they win back a majority in one or both chambers of Congress.

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Local News Vanishes Overnight in Indianapolis

In a May 4 post to her Substack, Schulze wrote about how the entire newsroom of Indianapolis, Indiana ABC affiliate WRTV was shut down without warning literally overnight. Over 50 journalists lost their jobs. By 10 PM that same night, a newscast from a competing station took the WRTV team’s place.

Schulze said what happened in Indianapolis is coming to communities across the country, especially if the Nexstar-Tegna merger — which would give one company ownership of 256 TV stations reaching roughly 80 percent of the country — goes through. She argued the stakes are much higher than most people realize.

“Local news is the lifeblood of a community in many respects,” she said. “It’s the place where your local officials are being held to account. It’s the place where reporters are digging into that sketchy contract, or that data center that got secretly approved, and they lied to you about how much energy the data center was going to suck out of your community.”

She urged people to find out who owns their local TV station, and to be vocal with advertisers if they don’t like what they see.

How Nexstar Is Laundering Right-Wing Narratives Through Local Media

Nexstar — which brands itself as a non-biased, middle-of-the-road news organization — owns NewsNation, a cable network that Schulze plainly described as “Fox Lite.” Its prime time lineup is full of former Fox News personalities, and Nexstar chairman Perry Sook has made a series of moves aimed at winning favor with the Trump administration for his pending merger. Schulze warned that NewsNation’s programming is already being fed into Nexstar’s local stations, with more to come.

“We do not need any more of that,” she said. “The right wing has done a perfectly executed capture of media, and it’s not a new project for them. They’ve been doing it for decades.”

The Solution: Public Funding and Independent Media

With legacy media increasingly captured by billionaires trying to cozy up to the powerful, Schulze sees independent media as a critical part of the answer. She also called for expanded public media funding in the vein of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, in that a federally funded entity could provide grants to media outlets that don’t have corporate advertisers. She also expressed a need for a national media literacy program, along with a Democratic-led antitrust movement willing to break up media monopolies similar to how railroad and oil barons had their empires broken up by the Sherman Antitrust Act.

“We need to start thinking about media as a public good, instead of a political tool,” Schulze said.

The veteran broadcast journalist also applauded Hungary’s new government as an instructive example the U.S. could soon follow. After a decade of former Hungarian leader Viktor Orbán consolidating media control among his donors and political allies, Peter Magyar’s new government has moved to dismantle the machinery used to target journalists and opposition figures. She stressed that today’s consolidated media environment can be undone, but only if enough people stand up and fight for it.

“Get out there and support any local media and independent media you can,” she said. “They need your help. Help them in the meantime, while we sort this out.”

Help Support Raw America’s Independent Journalism

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Trump’s Justice Department is quietly finding legal backdoors to funnel taxpayer money to January 6th rioters even after the so-called “anti-weaponization fund” collapsed. New details are emerging about the MAGA loyalist with zero intelligence experience being handed control of America’s entire spy apparatus. Trump is furious at Republicans just broke with him to rein in his ability to wage war in Iran. And a man caught on video attacking the Capitol on January 6th was just given a high-level counterterrorism job at the Pentagon.

Before we dive into the news, I need to ask you to help keep Raw America’s independent journalism going. Billionaire Trump donor David Ellison — who owns CBS News — has almost completely destroyed 60 Minutes, and he’s about to own CNN. Once that deal is finalized, far-right oligarchs will fully own almost 80 percent of cable news in America. The Murdoch family also just added new digital platforms to their empire. They’re not spending vast sums because they love the news, but so they can snuff out all attempts to hold them and their wealthy friends accountable and fire anyone who dares to speak out.

Raw America was created as the answer to the billionaire takeover of legacy media. We are proudly reader supported, editorially independent and not for sale. But that also means we need readers like you to become paying subscribers to keep this work going. Our daily news breakdowns, Capitol Hill reporting and exclusive live interviews are only made possible through the support of our paying subscribers. If you believe in media that answers only to readers and not billionaires, become a paying member of the Raw America community today.

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DOJ Finds Loophole to Pay January 6th Rioters

The Trump administration’s $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization fund” may be dead, but the effort to pay Trump’s allies with taxpayer dollars is very much alive.

After Republican lawmakers threatened to sink an ICE funding bill if the slush fund moved forward, Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche told Congress the Justice Department wouldn’t proceed with it. Trump, however, refused to admit the fund was finished, and said he still loved the idea. So they found a loophole.

DOJ officials are now making clear they have both the authority and the resources to settle lawsuits against the federal government however they see fit. Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward posted on social media, “We’re on it,” in response to a suggestion from Senator Lindsey Graham that the government should use existing law to compensate people who claim they were politically targeted. Woodward later deleted the post.

The legal mechanism they’re eyeing is the Federal Tort Claims Act, an 80-year-old law that allows people to sue the federal government for wrongful actions or negligence. Last Friday, nine pardoned January 6th defendants filed a lawsuit under that law, arguing their prosecutions amounted to selective enforcement driven by their support for Trump and orchestrated by senior officials at the DOJ and FBI.

The Trump regime has already gone down this road. In March, the DOJ paid Michael Flynn $1.25 million to settle claims he was the victim of a politicized prosecution. Flynn had pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his contacts with Russia’s ambassador, later sought to withdraw the plea, and was pardoned by Trump. A similar settlement was reached with Carter Page, the former Trump campaign adviser who was placed under court-ordered surveillance.

One January 6th plaintiff, Treniss Evans, said he thinks some defendants might have taken smaller payouts through the scrapped fund. Now he’s expecting something bigger.

And there’s already a backlog building. Lawyer Mark McCloskey says he delivered boxes containing administrative claims for nearly 400 January 6th defendants to the Justice Department in December. Under the Federal Tort Claims Act, those claims can move to federal court if the government doesn’t act within six months. That deadline is approaching.

Legal experts are alarmed. Anthony Sebok, a professor at the Cardozo School of Law, put it plainly: the Justice Department, like any competent defense firm, should be making plaintiffs fight for every inch. Instead, he says, the plaintiffs’ lawyers are pushing on an open door.

Keep in mind, this is taxpayer money flowing to people who stormed the Capitol, through a legal loophole. While the administration calls it justice.

The founders wrote the power of the purse into Article One for one reason, to keep any president from reaching into the public treasury to reward the people loyal to him, and Madison called that power the most complete and effectual weapon the people’s representatives could ever hold. Watching it get picked apart by a loophole that pays the very people who stormed the Capitol is exactly the corruption the framers built that wall to stop.

Trump’s Allies Celebrate New Spy Chief as Devout MAGA Soldier

Bill Pulte is about to become the most powerful intelligence official in the United States government. He has no background in intelligence, no military experience, and no national security credentials of any kind. What he does have is Donald Trump’s ear.

Pulte, who currently runs the Federal Housing Finance Agency, is set to take over as acting director of national intelligence by the end of the month. He’ll oversee a network of 18 agencies, including the CIA and the NSA.

Three people with knowledge of Trump’s decision told NBC News that Pulte earned his place in Trump’s inner circle by taking aggressive action against prominent Democratic critics. At the housing agency, he levied mortgage fraud allegations against New York Attorney General Letitia James, Senator Adam Schiff, former Congressman Eric Swalwell, and Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook. Trump is apparently always with Pulte, one source said, and always talking about running out of time to get things done.

That urgency is exactly what’s got former intelligence officers worried sick.

Steve Bannon, who helped shape Trump’s 2016 campaign, told NBC News that Pulte’s mandate is to pick up where Tulsi Gabbard left off. That means focusing on so-called foreign threats to U.S. elections, investigating the deep state, and offering up alternative assessments to what comes out of the CIA. Former CIA officer John Sipher said Pulte’s track record suggests he’s meant to run a detective agency for the president.

And here’s the thing about intelligence work that makes this so dangerous: it’s classified. Someone with a political agenda can choose to selectively declassify documents to push a particular narrative, while keeping classified everything that might complicate or contradict that narrative. There’s no way for the public to push back, because they can’t see what’s being withheld.

Former intelligence officials who served under both Republican and Democratic presidents are warning that Pulte could use his access to target political opponents or manufacture justifications for federal oversight of elections, which Trump has already called for, despite his own Cabinet members confirming there was no widespread fraud in 2020.

Some Republicans aren’t buying the sales pitch either. Senator John Cornyn of Texas said he sees no evidence of any qualifications for the job. Senator Bill Cassidy of Louisiana told NBC News the same thing. Senator Thom Tillis said the timing couldn’t have been worse, given that Congress is preparing to vote on renewing Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which allows spy agencies to collect overseas electronic communications.

Pulte hasn’t been nominated permanently and would need Senate confirmation for the full-time role. That confirmation fight, if it comes, is going to be ugly.

We’ve watched this movie before. Back in the seventies the Church Committee pulled back the curtain and found the nation’s intelligence agencies had been turned inward, spying on Americans and hunting a president’s political enemies, and every reform that came after was built to make sure it never happened again. Handing the keys to eighteen spy agencies to a loyalist whose only qualification is going after the president’s critics isn’t a personnel decision, it’s the exact abuse those reforms were written to prevent.

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Trump Erupts at Republicans Who Defied Him on Iran

Four Republican members of Congress joined House Democrats to pass a war powers resolution rebuking Trump’s military campaign against Iran. The vote was 215 to 208.

Trump went straight to his Nazi-infested social media site to call the vote “meaningless” and “unpatriotic.” He accused Democrats of having “Trump Derangement Syndrome.” The four Republicans who crossed him? He called “grandstanders” who should be ashamed of themselves.

The Republicans who voted with Democrats were Thomas Massie, Warren Davidson, Bryan Fitzpatrick, and Tom Barrett.

Davidson defended his vote, saying the War Powers Act does not give a president a blank check to wage war for 90 days. What the administration still doesn’t have, he said, is congressional authorization. His obligation, he said, is to the Constitution and to the men and women who actually fight the wars.

Trump’s claim that he’s in the middle of active, productive negotiations isn’t holding up to scrutiny. The Iranian government has publicly stated there’s been no tangible progress in the talks.

The resolution itself is mostly symbolic. It’s not going to stop the military campaign. That would require Trump’s signature, and Trump isn’t going to sign something that limits his own power. But what the vote does reflect is something the administration can’t dismiss: growing unease, even within the Republican Party, about an undeclared war being prosecuted without congressional authorization.

Madison wrote that the Constitution vests the question of war in the legislature because history shows the executive is the branch most prone to it, and the framers split that power on purpose so no single man could march the country into a fight on his own say so. Those four Republicans who crossed Trump weren’t grandstanding, they were doing the one thing their oath actually demands, holding the line that Congress, not the president, decides when America goes to war.

Pentagon Caught Hiring January 6th Rioter for Top Counterterrorism Post

The Washington Post reported this week that Elias Irizarry, who was filmed for more than five minutes during the January 6th attack moving through restricted Capitol grounds and climbing through a broken window while carrying a metal pole, was hired into a sensitive counterterrorism role at the Pentagon.

Irizarry was 19 years old on the day of the attack. He drove up from South Carolina with two companions to attend the Stop the Steal rally. He and his group left before Trump’s speech even ended and headed straight to the Capitol.

Video shows him in a red bandanna and a MAGA hat. It shows him directing rioters toward a staircase. A voice that prosecutors say was likely his can be heard on video shouting at rioters to go up the side. He crawled through a broken Senate-side window at around 2:26 in the afternoon, still holding the pole. He spent more than 20 minutes inside the Capitol, at one point climbing onto a Ronald Reagan statue and posing for a photo.

His travel companion, Grayson Sherrill, was caught on video swinging a metal pole at a D.C. police officer and later pleaded guilty to assaulting federal officers.

Irizarry himself pleaded guilty to misdemeanor trespass in 2022. At his sentencing in 2023, he said he was ashamed and that January 6th represented the largest attack on American democracy since the Civil War. Trump later pardoned him.

Now, he’s a political appointee in the Pentagon’s Special Operations and Low Intensity Conflict office. That team handles embassy security, personnel recovery, and hostage rescue.

The acting Pentagon press secretary called Irizarry a qualified, patriotic young professional. It’s unclear who in the administration made the hire.

The same people who attacked the People’s House for the first time since the War of 1812 are now being given high-level positions in a convicted felon’s administration. That’s the state of America under Donald Trump.

After the Civil War the country wrote Section Three of the Fourteenth Amendment for this exact situation, barring anyone who swore an oath to the Constitution and then joined an insurrection from ever holding federal office again. The generation that survived a war for the Union understood what we’re being forced to relearn, that the people who attack the seat of government don’t get handed the keys to it.

Raw America is continuing to grow, and we’re committing to having more eyes and ears inside the halls of power, breaking stories that the billionaire-owned outlets won’t cover. We’re also doubling down on our mission to bring you more live interviews with leaders and experts who are sharing inside knowledge with you that the Trump regime wants to keep buried. Today at 1 PM Eastern Time, we’ll be broadcasting a live interview with former TV news executive and reporter Jennifer Schulze, who has a lot to say about what the Ellisons are doing to CBS and 60 Minutes. Watch live on our homepage at RawAmerica.com.

Because Raw America doesn’t take billionaire money or run ads from corporate sponsors, we need readers like you to step up and become paying subscribers. If you have a paid subscription to Raw America, thank you sincerely. But if you’ve been enjoying our work on a free subscription, today is the best day to change that. None of this work would be possible without your support.

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I’m Thom Hartmann. The fight is here. Thank you for being in it.

STORIES YOU MAY HAVE MISSED:

• Trump Officially Nominates Todd Blanche as Attorney General. President Donald Trump announced this week that he is formally nominating Todd Blanche — who was once his personal criminal defense lawyer — as Attorney General of the United States. Blanche, who was confirmed as deputy attorney general last year on a 52-46 vote, has spearheaded the Department of Justice’s prosecutions of Trump’s political enemies like former FBI Director James Comey, and recently brokered a DOJ settlement with Trump over the leaking of his tax returns that led to the president, his family and his businesses getting permanent immunity from IRS audits.

• Democrats Demand Answers for Trump Jr. Getting Massive Pentagon Contract. A group of Democratic lawmakers recently sent a letter to White House chief of staff Susie Wiles asking for details on a new Pentagon contract for a company led by President Trump’s eldest son, Donald Jr. His investment firm, 1789 Capital, is a stakeholder in the North Carolina-based rare-earth magnet company Vulcan Elements. That company won a $620 million Defense Department loan — along with $50 million from the Commerce Department — for producing 10,000 metric tons of magnets.

• New Poll Shows Americans Souring on Data Centers. A new survey conducted by Heatmap Pro finds that 71 percent of Americans oppose having an AI data center built near them, with 55 percent of those polled saying they would “strongly” oppose it. This is a significant increase in opposition from the same poll from nine months ago, which found 43 percent of respondents in support and 42 percent opposed. The increase in opposition is likely due to the proliferation of information about how data centers are linked to an increase in utility bills and a drastic worsening of water quality.

• Oil Prices Could Skyrocket to $150 Per Barrel in Coming Weeks. Energy industry analysts and executives are warning that oil prices may significantly increase in the summer months, as the chances of a deal to end the Iran war seem more unlikely by the day. While the price per barrel for Brent crude — a global benchmark for oil prices — is currently at $98, the price could jump to as high as $150 or $160 in the coming weeks if the Strait of Hormuz remains closed. The sharp increase in oil prices is attributed to strategic oil reserves that were activated in response to the strait’s closure being depleted.

• NFL Commissioner Refuses to Testify Before Congress About Streaming Deals. NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell recently declined an invitation to testify before the House Judiciary Committee about the National Football League’s broadcasting deals. The league has been criticized for increasingly forcing viewers to use paywalled streaming services like Netflix and Amazon Prime to watch regular-season games. Earlier this year, the DOJ announced it was investigating the NFL for potential anticompetitive practices in relation to its broadcasting agreements.

Retired federal judges are banding together to push back on what they’re calling lawless conduct by the Trump administration. Two 60 Minutes legends may be about to join Scott Pelley’s revolt against CBS. Marco Rubio got caught lying to Congress about Trump falling asleep in Cabinet meetings. And Texas’ outgoing Republican senator is now pumping the brakes on his plans to rename a highway after Donald Trump.

Before diving into the news, take a moment to help keep Raw America’s work going. The ongoing rebellion at 60 Minutes is a perfect illustration of what happens when treasured news brands are acquired by pro-Trump billionaires. And it shows that even America’s number one news show isn’t safe from right-wing oligarchs. Jeff Bezos followed the same playbook at the Washington Post, along with Patrick Soon-Shiong when he bought the LA Times. Kill all accountability reporting, and fire everyone who doesn’t play along.

Raw America was created as a direct response to the billionaire conquest of legacy media. We are 100 percent reader-supported, editorially independent and not for sale. But that also means our work is only possible if enough readers step up to become paying subscribers. If journalism that answers to readers instead of billionaire owners matters to you, upgrade your free Raw America subscription to a paying one. We can’t do any of this without you.

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Retired Federal Judges Unite Against Trump

Scores of retired federal judges are now waging war against Trump in the courts, filing briefs challenging his administration. And they’re not pulling any punches.

In Florida, a federal judge took a motion from 35 former federal judges so seriously that she ordered the Trump administration to respond to their request to reopen the case used to create a $1.8 billion slush fund for MAGA loyalists that also shields Trump from the IRS. The former judges called it collusion and fraud.

More than 175 former judges filed a brief at the Supreme Court arguing that emergency orders without written reasoning shouldn’t bind lower courts. And in Boston, more than 100 former judges filed briefs urging a federal appeals court to address what they described as a pattern of abuse by ICE, including moving detained immigrants around the country specifically to dodge court challenges.

Yale Law professor Harold Koh was expecting maybe 20 judges to sign onto that Boston case. He got 135. Yale law professor Harold Koh said it’s no longer about ICE versus immigrants, but rather ICE versus the courts.

The most prominent name on all three briefs is J. Michael Luttig, a George H.W. Bush appointee who served on the federal bench for 15 years and was considered for the Supreme Court by George W. Bush. He’s now saying out loud that the rule of law itself is under threat.

The White House response? Spokeswoman Abigail Jackson used the question as an opportunity to attack sitting judges and accuse them of pushing “policy schemes.”

That tells you everything you need to know.

60 Minutes Veterans May Join Scott Pelley’s Crusade

Scott Pelley is out at 60 Minutes, and two longtime correspondents may soon follow him out the door.

Bari Weiss, who was installed by CBS’ billionaire owners as editor in chief earlier this year, brought in Nick Bilton as executive editor of the program. After Pelley questioned Bilton’s credentials at a staff meeting, Bilton fired him that same night in a letter, though Pelley fired back in a statement of his own, saying Weiss killed 60 Minutes “to curry favor with the Trump administration.” He also called out his new bosses’ “incompetence and unprofessionalism.”

Now, everyone is watching to see what Lesley Stahl and Bill Whitaker do next.

Stahl has been at CBS News since 1971 and at 60 Minutes since 1991. Whitaker has been there since 1984. Both are journalism elders in the truest sense of the word. And according to people familiar with the show, they’re wrestling with a painful question: if they leave, is there anything left?

Stahl and Whitaker have more leverage right now than they’ve ever had. Whether they use it, or whether they stay and try to protect what’s left of the program from the inside, is a decision only they can make.

But make no mistake: what’s happening at CBS News is corporate capitulation. And the people paying the price are some of the finest journalists in the business.

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Rubio Embarrassed with Video of Trump Asleep at Cabinet Meeting

Secretary of State Marco Rubio was testifying before Congress Wednesday when Democratic Congressman Ted Lieu asked him a straightforward question: had he been to “more than one meeting where President Trump has fallen asleep?”

Rubio didn’t hesitate, saying, “That’s false. I’ve never seen him fall asleep. The guy doesn’t sleep.”

Lieu responded: “I’m going to show you in a moment a video that shows you just lied to Congress.”

The committee then watched footage from a Cabinet meeting last month showing Trump with his eyes closed for an extended period while Rubio was right next to him, giving a speech about the war in Iran.

Lieu pointed out that while Rubio was “talking about issues of war and peace,” the president was “sleeping right next to you.”

Rubio called the whole thing “a joke” and tried to redirect the conversation.

Trump turns 80 in less than two weeks. He’s the oldest president ever inaugurated. He spent years ridiculing Joe Biden’s health. And now the questions about his own condition have become a daily feature of the news cycle.

Trump hasn’t had a scheduled public appearance since May 27. He visited Walter Reed for a checkup, and the White House released a medical report that doctors publicly criticized as incomplete and missing crucial details. He hasn’t been seen in nearly a week, though he’s been posting on Truth Social at all hours of the night.

The White House insists everything is fine. But the videos don’t lie.

Cornyn Says Renaming Texas Highway After Trump No Longer a Priority

John Cornyn spent the better part of this election cycle trying to get Trump’s blessing. He pushed legislation to rename a Texas highway after the president and even posted photos of himself reading “The Art of the Deal.”

Trump endorsed Ken Paxton anyway, and Cornyn lost.

Now, one week after that defeat, Cornyn is suddenly comfortable saying what he apparently always thought: His bill to rename a highway after Trump is not at the top of his priorities list.

He’s also questioning Trump’s nominee to lead the Director of National Intelligence, saying he’s “yet to see any evidence” the pick meets the legal requirement of having extensive national security experience.

Cornyn insists he’s not joining what he called the “Wounded Bear Caucus” of Republican lame duck senators who lost primaries to Trump-endorsed candidates, and he’s still supportive of the Iran war. But a senator who was posting Art of the Deal selfies months ago is now openly disagreeing with Trump.

When the flattery’s no longer useful, it apparently evaporates pretty fast.

Raw America is ramping up our work to bring you high-quality journalism and report on the stories the billionaire-owned outlets won’t. That includes building out our Capitol Hill team so we can break more news from the halls of Congress. We’re also focusing on more live interviews with newsmakers and insiders who have perspectives the billionaire-owned media simply won’t touch. Today we brought you an exclusive interview with President Obama’s deputy national security advisor, Ben Rhodes. You can watch it below or by clicking this link.

None of that happens without paying subscribers. Seriously, none of it. If you want to see independent journalism that isn’t beholden to the billionaires firing reporters holding them accountable, becoming a paying subscriber to Raw America is how you make that possible.

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Thanks for watching. I’m British Chris, with Raw America. We’ll see you tomorrow.

STORIES YOU MAY HAVE MISSED:

• House Passes Resolution to End Trump’s War in Iran. The Republican-controlled U.S. House of Representatives on Wednesday passed a resolution limiting President Donald Trump’s ability to wage war in Iran by a 215-208 margin. Republicans Tom Barrett of Michigan, Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania, Thomas Massie of Kentucky and Warren Davidson of Ohio voted with Democrats to pass the resolution. House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) said it was “very dangerous” for a resolution taking away the president’s war powers to pass as negotiations with Iran continue.

• Media Reporter Says Entire Staff of ‘60 Minutes’ Could Leave in ‘Weeks, if Not Days.’ Dylan Byers — a reporter with Puck News — recently told MS NOW host Ana Cabrera that after the departure of Scott Pelley from CBS News’ “60 Minutes,” the show could see a total exodus of all remaining on-air talent. According to Byers, the three remaining correspondents could decide “in weeks, if not days” to leave the show entirely.

• Trump Removes Job Protections from Thousands of Federal Workers. President Trump on Wednesday issued an executive order that turned roughly 8,000 federal workers into “at-will” employees, who can now be fired without any reason. Almost all of the affected workers have a GS-15 classification, which is the highest level of the federal civil service. This includes leaders of policy-making offices, their chiefs of staff, workers overseeing spending and grants and senior public relations officers, among others.

• New York Democrats Reveal Proposal to Flip up to 4 Republican House Seats in 2028. Democratic lawmakers in New York are now rolling out a plan for a 2027 ballot referendum that would allow the legislature to redraw congressional districts to eliminate as many as four Republican-held seats. Democrats say the move is necessary in order to correct the imbalance from Republican legislatures across the Deep South eliminating majority-Black congressional districts in Alabama, Florida, Louisiana and elsewhere.

• Trump Suggests UFC Octagon Outside White House May Remain in Place Permanently. In a post to his official TikTok account, President Trump on Wednesday posted a video of the UFC octagon on the South Lawn of the White House with the caption: “MAYBE WE’LL NEVER TAKE IT DOWN.” He compared the octagon to Paris’ Eiffel Tower, in that it was originally intended to be temporary but ended up being a permanent fixture. The octagon is in place for a scheduled day of mixed martial arts fights on June 14, which is also Trump’s 80th birthday.

Rhodes broke down why Bill Pulte’s nomination as Director of National Intelligence represents a genuine threat to national security, explained why Democrats should use intelligence funding as leverage to stop his confirmation, walked through the origins and likely resolution of the Iran conflict, assessed the fragile state of the NATO alliance, weighed in on the political cost Democrats paid for backing Israel’s war in Gaza, and explained how the Republican Party of Ronald Reagan ended up as the cult Donald Trump.

Interviews like this one — where experts who helped shape history share inside knowledge that the regime wants to keep buried — are what sets Raw America apart from the billionaire-owned press. The only way we can keep bringing you this kind of reporting is with the support of readers like you. If you’re not already a paying subscriber to Raw America, now is the time to make the leap. Your subscription directly funds the journalism you’re watching and reading right now.

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Bill Pulte as Director of National Intelligence: “This Is Police State Stuff”

Gibson opened by asking Rhodes about President Trump’s nomination of Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) Director Bill Pulte to serve as Director of National Intelligence (DNI), following Tulsi Gabbard’s departure. Gibson noted that federal law — specifically 50 U.S. Code Section 3023 — requires that any DNI nominee have “extensive national security experience,” a qualification Pulte conspicuously lacks.

Rhodes didn’t hedge. “One hundred percent,” he said when asked whether Pulte’s appointment constitutes a threat to national security. Rhodes noted that his first job in Washington was working for Lee Hamilton, who was co-chair of the 9/11 Commission and one of the architects of the DNI legislation.

“Let’s just say Bill Pulte is not who he had in mind,” Rhodes said of Hamilton.

But Rhodes argued the danger goes beyond mere lack of qualification. He pointed to Pulte’s record at the FHFA, where Pulte used access to mortgage records to build allegations (which were later dismissed) against high-profile Trump critics including Federal Reserve Board member Lisa Cook and New York Attorney General Letitia James. Rhodes said that pattern should terrify Americans when applied to the intelligence community’s far broader surveillance capabilities.

“Imagine with him having access to the National Security Agency — the signals intelligence people that intercept phone calls and email communications,” Rhodes said. “I’m not suggesting he’s even going to find crimes. I’m suggesting he’s invented them before with mortgage fraud. This guy going through everybody’s emails to try to find something he can use against Trump’s enemies should be a terrifying thought for every American. It’s police state stuff.”

Rhodes also raised the prospect of Pulte continuing work Gabbard had begun — using the intelligence apparatus to advance conspiracy theories about election fraud, potentially laying groundwork to contest future Democratic electoral victories.

“If they lose the midterm elections, and let’s say Trump wants to say that this was fraud and that some foreign government must have interfered to help Democrats,” Rhodes said, “that’s your nightmare scenario right there.”

Democrats’ Leverage to Stop Pulte’s Confirmation

Gibson noted that Democrats have threatened to withhold votes to reauthorize Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) — the provision authorizing the intelligence community to collect and analyze foreign intelligence — as leverage against Pulte’s confirmation. He asked Rhodes whether he thought the threat was credible, or whether national security hawks in the Democratic caucus would ultimately fold. Rhodes was unequivocal about what Democrats should do.

“There’s no Democrat that should vote to reauthorize Section 702, full stop,” he said. “It would demonstrate a complete lack of understanding of the nature of the emergency moment that we’re in.”

Rhodes pointed out that the entire rationale for reauthorizing surveillance authorities rests on the argument that the intelligence community needs these tools to keep Americans safe. According to Rhodes, Pulte makes that case impossible to make in good faith.

“Do you really think Bill Pulte is going to effectively carry out the functions of that job?” Rhodes said. “Do you think he’s going to be making sure we’re connecting dots to foil terrorist plots? No.”

The author and former Obama administration official acknowledged the real risk: a small number of Democratic senators who have historically been sympathetic to intelligence community funding requests. He noted that while some may normally break ranks to confirm a new DNI, Pulte is so extreme that it should be possible to hold the caucus together and perhaps even peel off enough Republicans to stop Pulte from being confirmed. He also suggested Democrats should think beyond Section 702.

“I’d be looking at holding up the funding for the intelligence community,” he said. “It’s time to play some hardball.”

For Americans whose senators include traditional hawks like Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) — the current ranking Democrat of the Senate Intelligence Committee and a figure Rhodes cited as particularly susceptible to deferring to the intelligence community — Rhodes offered a specific framing constituents can use when calling their offices.

“The argument I’d make is: this person, Bill Pulte, makes the American people less safe. If you’re trying to protect the intelligence community by voting for Section 702, you’re not protecting them, because you’re not using your leverage to make sure they have appropriate leadership,” he said.

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To End the Iran War, Trump Has No Choice But to Eat Crow

Gibson turned to the ongoing U.S. military conflict with Iran, noting that Trump’s repeated promises of a swift resolution have gone unfulfilled, that negotiations have collapsed, and that Iran retains its most decisive leverage in control over the Strait of Hormuz. Gibson asked what a hypothetical new Democratic administration in 2029 should do to end the conflict if it’s still ongoing by then.

“You have to make a deal with the Iranians,” Rhodes said. “And you have to accept that that deal is not going to be everything you want.”

He drew on historical precedent, noting that both the United States and the Soviet Union made significant concessions in Cold War agreements, despite then-President Ronald Reagan maligning the Soviets as an “evil empire.” Rhodes argued the same logic applies to Iran, and that the refusal to accept anything short of complete Iranian capitulation is pure fantasy.

“Arms control agreements are by definition agreements you enter into with your adversaries in which you don’t get everything you want,” he said.

Rhodes also pushed back on the premise that sanctions represent meaningful leverage, noting that they primarily hurt ordinary residents of countries like Iran, Venezuela, Cuba, Russia, North Korea, while doing nothing to stop the regimes being sanctioned. The Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), he noted, has become expert at operating under sanctions and accessing illicit revenue streams, while ordinary Iranians bear the costs.

“Who’s getting hurt by these sanctions? The Iranian people,” Rhodes said. “It’s not changing their government. It’s actually entrenching the regime in power.”

Rhodes pointed out that during his time in the Obama White House, every national security war game scenario with Iran led to the closure of the Strait of Hormuz and the strangling of the global economy.

“The IRGC is saying: if you won’t give us access to our money from sanctions relief, we’re going to start tolling this strait. We’re going to get revenue one way or another,” he said. “I would rather they get access to frozen revenue from transactions than that suddenly Iran is running 20 percent of the world’s energy as a toll road.”

Trump’s Eventual Deal with Iran May Mirror Obama’s 2015 Agreement

Gibson asked about a specific flashpoint in the Iran debate — the charge, frequently advanced on Fox News and by Trump himself, that the Obama administration “gave” Iran hundreds of billions of dollars in the 2015 nuclear agreement known as the JCPOA. Gibson noted his own understanding that the money in question already belonged to Iran.

Rhodes confirmed this and spelled out the mechanics. Iran sold oil and gas to other countries — India, China, and others — and the revenue owed to Iran in return had been frozen in international accounts by the United States. America was not party to those transactions. Releasing the funds meant giving Iran access to its own money, not writing a check from the U.S. Treasury. The actual figure Iran received access to was approximately $55 billion, not the $300 billion Trump has cited — a discrepancy Rhodes attributed to the compounding effect of years of additional frozen assets.

Rhodes further argued that the entire premise of the criticism misunderstands how sanctions are supposed to work.

“You don’t put sanctions on a country just to keep them there in perpetuity,” he said. “You put sanctions on Iran to restrict their nuclear program. So when they accept those restrictions, they get access to the revenue they’re frankly entitled to.”

Rhodes reminded viewers that Iran fully complied with the JCPOA, and that it was Trump himself who withdrew from the agreement in 2018, not Tehran. The bitter irony, Rhodes suggested, is that Trump now finds himself pursuing something that will inevitably resemble the deal he spent years denouncing.

“He just kind of can’t seem to bring himself to do it, because he knows it is going to resemble the Obama nuclear deal,” he said.

Did Biden’s Support of Netanyahu Cost Democrats the 2024 Election?

Gibson asked Rhodes to assess the political fallout of the Biden administration’s decision to continue unconditional military support for Israel despite its atrocities against Palestinians in Gaza, and whether it contributed to Kamala Harris’s defeat in 2024.

Rhodes argued the damage was real, but more layered than a simple question of where voters stood on the Israel-Palestine conflict. The deeper wound, he said, was the perception of Democratic inauthenticity. He observed that Democrats’ comments about being troubled by the murder of civilians Gaza were undercut by continuing to authorize billions in military aid to Israel.

“It’s kind of what people don’t like about politicians,” he said. “If you actually believe that you’re concerned about what’s happening, you do something about it.”

Rhodes recalled a maxim from Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign that has continued to stick with him over the years.

“Obama used to say ‘in order to win an election, you have to show people that there’s some things you’re willing to lose over,’” Rhodes said. “If you’re not willing every now and then to take an unpopular or controversial position, you’re the perfect foil for Trump — because what Trump says to people is all these politicians are full of it, they tell you one thing and do another.”

Rhodes was more sympathetic to Vice President Kamala Harris in her 2024 campaign than to the Biden administration, acknowledging the impossible position a vice president faces when she’s duty-bound to defend her president’s politically toxic foreign policy. But the author and former Obama speechwriter argued that the attempt to signal quiet disagreement with Netanyahu while publicly maintaining the status quo was the worst of both worlds.

“That stuff just doesn’t work with people,” he said. “Because it’s like: well, if you really disagree with the policy, why don’t you convince your boss not to do it?”

How Trump Is Pulling the U.S. Out of NATO Without Officially Withdrawing

Gibson raised the state of the NATO alliance, noting reports that some European members have begun developing contingency plans for a European security structure that could function without American participation. He also asking what a U.S. withdrawal would mean for European stability.

Rhodes pointed out that Trump likely lacks the legal authority to formally withdraw from NATO without congressional approval, but that a president determined to hollow out American commitments could achieve the same effect without a formal declaration. The more immediate risk, he said, would fall on the Baltic states like Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, which share historical and geographic vulnerability to Russian pressure.

“If you remove the United States from NATO, you just make it that much more likely that we’re back in the days of conquest, of war between great powers,” Rhodes said. “We set up NATO to prevent a world war. And I think if you remove the United States from NATO, you make it that much more likely that we get drawn into a major global conflagration with Russia and China, because we no longer have the very institutions we set up to prevent that from happening again.”

On the episode in which Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced the withdrawal of thousands of troops from Poland only to have Trump reverse course, Rhodes speculated that the reversal likely reflected pressure from Poland’s allies in the Republican Senate caucus. He opined that some senators may have called the White House to flag that the move went too far.

“They don’t have any backbone, they don’t say anything publicly,” Rhodes said of those Republican senators, “but they might call over the White House and say, ‘Wait, you’re going too far on this one.’”

Trump Would Be Powerless to Stop China from Taking Taiwan

Gibson pressed Rhodes on the risk to Taiwan from China, given how broadly the Trump administration has extended American military commitments — simultaneously supporting Ukraine, backing Israel, pursuing regime change in Venezuela and Cuba, and now waging war in Iran.

Rhodes said he’s deeply worried about the convergence of conditions. Chinese President Xi Jinping, he argued, is almost certainly watching American overextension and diplomatic isolation and calculating whether this represents the optimal window for action on Taiwan.

“The maximum window is when the United States has no friends and allies around the world, when the American president doesn’t indicate any willingness to defend Taiwan, and when the world is already chaotic,” Rhodes said.

He pointed out that that the geographic fault lines in East Asia, the Middle East and Eastern Europe look uncomfortably like the map of World War Two. And for Americans inclined to dismiss Taiwan as a distant concern, Rhodes offered a more concrete argument: more than 90 percent of the world’s advanced semiconductors are manufactured there.

“If there’s a war in Taiwan, good luck having anything in this country work for a long time, like the computers in your car, like the way your refrigerator works,” Rhodes said.

How Ronald Reagan’s Republican Party Was Destined to Be Led By Donald Trump

In the interview’s final stretch, Gibson asked Rhodes about the historical argument in his new book, All We Say: The Battle for American Identity, a History in 15 Speeches — specifically in which Rhodes laid out how Donald Trump is the conclusion of events set in motion by Ronald Reagan. Gibson asked whether figures now positioned as anti-Trump conservatives — including Liz Cheney and others from the Bush era — bear some responsibility for creating the conditions that made Trump possible.

“Yes,” Rhodes said without hesitation.

He walked through how Reagan assembled a three-legged coalition of Christian evangelicals, national security hawks and small-government conservatives. The Cold War served as the glue holding those factions together. When the Soviet threat dissolved, the coalition’s internal contradictions came to the surface.

The enemy then shifted inward toward liberals and cultural change, while the economic policies those same Republicans championed hollowed out the industrial base and accelerated inequality. The hawks, meanwhile, steered the country into Iraq under George W. Bush, which Rhodes described as a direct precursor to Trump’s rise.

“With no war in Iraq, there’s no Donald Trump,” Rhodes argued.

Rhodes further observed that failed right-wing presidential candidate Pat Buchanan had already articulated the essential Trump message in 1992, which included a wall along the Southern border, punishing tariffs and an America First foreign policy. While Republicans were hesitant to embrace that platform in the early nineties, they were ripe to run on it by 2016.

“He was tapping into political forces that had been there all along,” Rhodes said of Trump, “and taking the wreckage of the Republican Party of Ronald Reagan and weaponizing it against the rest of us.”

What Comes After Trump: A Return to Compromise, or the Brutal Wielding of Power?

Gibson closed by asking Rhodes one of the book’s core questions: given the arc from Benjamin Franklin’s argument for compromise at the 1787 Constitutional Convention, to Trump’s open contempt for constitutional constraints in 2025, is the era of compromise over? Should Democrats, if they return to power, govern with the same force Trump has, or attempt to restore norms?

Rhodes drew a careful distinction. The problem with Trump, he argued, is not that his policies are unpopular, but that he has abandoned the legal framework within which political competition is supposed to happen. He argued that gerrymandering and the influence of dark money are more insidious in that they rig the contest itself.

“What is radical about Trump is he’s not playing within the lines of the compromise,” Rhodes said.

Democrats, he argued, have abundant tools available to them that are entirely within constitutional bounds and have simply gone unused out of excessive caution. This includes antitrust enforcement against big tech companies, rooting out entrenched corruption in government and eliminating the Senate filibuster (which Rhodes pointed out is not in the Constitution) and pass legislation on a simple majority. He added that Democrats should pushing hard for getting money out of politics and ending partisan gerrymandering.

“I’d be moving with speed and force to essentially reverse Trumpism,” Rhodes said.

Rhodes concluded with one note of historical optimism. He pointed out that the Gilded Age of the late 19th century — which was marked by extreme inequality, government corruption and a captured political system — gave way to a progressive era. He noted that this era brought about antitrust law, child labor protections, the direct election of U.S. senators and women’s suffrage.

“I think we’re in a Gilded Age,” Rhodes said. “And I think the next phase is going to be a progressive age.”

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Trump’s hand-picked candidate for Iowa governor just became the first Trump-endorsed gubernatorial pick to lose a primary. Veteran CBS journalist Scott Pelley is accusing network brass of ordering him to lie on the air. Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche got grilled on Capitol Hill over three million withheld Epstein documents. A Tennessee Republican congressman threw a staffer under the bus after his own social media account posted a homophobic attack.

Before we get into the news, I need to ask you to consider making the leap to become a paying Raw America subscriber. We’re witnessing the collapse of 60 Minutes’ credibility after Scott Pelley revealed that CBS’ billionaire owners instructed him to lie on the air in order to appease Trump. It doesn’t get any more damning than that. And the ongoing hollowing out of storied newspapers like the Washington Post and the LA Times is further proof that letting right-wing billionaires buy media outlets will lead to the inevitable death of journalism.

This is exactly why we launched Raw America. We are proudly reader-supported, editorially independent and not for sale. No billionaires or corporate advertisers will ever silence us or tell us what to say. But that also means we are entirely dependent on readers like you to keep us afloat. If hard-hitting journalism that is accountable only to readers matters to you, today is the best day to upgrade your free Raw America subscription to a paying one. None of our work could happen without your support.

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Trump Suffers Humiliating Loss in Iowa

Republican voters in Iowa are now openly defying Donald Trump.

Trump personally endorsed Randy Feenstra for Iowa governor just days before the primary wrapped up. He called Feenstra “MAGA all the way,” gave him his “Complete and Total Endorsement,” and posted the same message twice on Truth Social for good measure.

Iowa Republicans were unmoved, nominating Zach Lahn last night instead. Feenstra is now the first Trump-endorsed gubernatorial candidate to lose a primary ahead of the 2026 midterms.

Now, Trump’s team wasted no time trying to spin this. One Trump strategist texted NBC after the results came in and said it was “clearly a Randy problem,” adding, “we go with Lahn. That’s fine.”

Sure. Totally fine.

The timing of Trump’s endorsement didn’t help Feenstra. He got it so late that he couldn’t use it in his TV ads during the final stretch of the campaign. But even setting that aside, this race was a signal.

Lahn had support from RFK Jr.’s “Make America Healthy Again” crowd, and former Iowa Rep. Steve King, who Feenstra beat in 2020, actually campaigned against him this time around. Outside groups hit Feenstra on immigration, calling him soft. Feenstra’s team hit back by pointing out that Lahn invested in a company that sells sex toys.

Iowa Republicans, apparently, chose the sex toy guy. That tells you something about where the party’s internal tensions are running.

What this also means for November: with incumbent Republican Governor Kim Reynolds stepping aside and not seeking a third term, Democrats actually have a shot here. Their candidate, Rob Sand, has been Iowa’s state auditor since 2019 and ran unopposed in his primary. He’s running a bipartisan pitch, trying to bring in Democrats, independents, and moderate Republicans.

Iowa isn’t a state Democrats typically circle on the map. But after this primary? It’s worth watching.

Here’s what’s worth sitting with, folks. A strongman’s whole power rests on the belief that he can’t lose, and the moment voters prove otherwise the spell starts to crack. That’s exactly why the founders built primaries and elections in the first place, so that no single man could ever turn a political party into his personal property, and Iowa just reminded everybody that the people, not the patron, still get the last word.

Scott Pelley Says CBS Ordered Him to Lie on the Air

Scott Pelley, the longtime CBS News correspondent who was fired this week after publicly accusing network leadership of “murdering” 60 Minutes, has now gone on record with specifics. And he’s now making it known that the network’s owners told him to lie on the air.

In a formal statement issued Tuesday night, Pelley wrote, “new management has instructed me to inject falsehoods and bias into a politically sensitive story.” He said he’d been told to include claims that were unverified, and that so far, he’d managed to refuse or ignore those instructions.

But there’s more. Politicians, he wrote, were being invited to choose which correspondents would interview them. To be clear, sources getting to pick their own interviewers isn’t journalism, but PR with better lighting.

Pelley also said that mismanagement had nearly tanked an entire episode of 60 Minutes. The broadcast, he wrote, came within 19 minutes of not making it to air.

And he named the reason for all of this. The new billionaire owner of CBS, David Ellison, was dismantling the most successful program in television history to “curry a moment of favor” with the Trump administration.

This is the media environment we’re living in right now.

CBS fired Pelley “for cause” after he confronted network leadership at a staff meeting and accused them of killing the program. Senior leadership and two correspondents had already been let go before Pelley was shown the door. He said in his statement that “good people were silenced because they stood up for our audience.”

It’s important to remember that 60 Minutes wasn’t struggling at all. The show had just posted a 9 percent jump in viewership at the end of its 58th season. Pelley called that kind of growth “unheard-of.”

It’s important to emphasize that all of this is happening not because of poor ratings, but because someone at the top decided that access to power matters more than honest reporting.

Pelley closed his statement after 37 years at CBS by praying “for a day when sanity, competence, and courage return.”

The prayer is warranted.

This is the moment to remember why Jefferson said he’d rather have newspapers without a government than a government without newspapers. A free press isn’t a luxury of democracy, it’s the immune system, and when a billionaire takes the most trusted program in television and guts it to win favor with a president, he isn’t just killing a show. He’s pulling out one of the last tripwires we’ve got that warns us when power has gone rogue.

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Todd Blanche Confronted Over Three Million Missing Epstein Files

Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche went before the House Appropriations Committee on Tuesday, and Congresswoman Madeleine Dean of Pennsylvania hammered him over the remainder of the Epstein files. Dean came prepared. She’s been to the DOJ herself to review unredacted Epstein files in person, taking handwritten notes, because that’s apparently what it takes now to track down information the government is sitting on. And she made sure to confront Blanche on the record about millions more Epstein-related documents the DOJ has still not released.

This isn’t a fringe complaint. The Epstein Files Transparency Act passed with overwhelming bipartisan support and was signed into law by Trump himself. Dean asked Blanche whether the DOJ planned to comply with that law.

Blanche said they had complied, but Dean pushed back. She told him she remembered exactly what he’d said to her previously: that the remaining documents were “all duplicative” and that some of them involved “another guy named Epstein.” Blanche denied saying that.

The exchange got tense fast. Dean cut him off, told him she was repeating his own words back to him, and pointed out that now, in a public setting, he was trying to walk it back.

There was also the question of access. Some of the unredacted files that do exist are only available to members of Congress at the DOJ, not to the general public. Dean read from the transparency law itself. It says the documents “should be made publicly available.” That’s not ambiguous.

And then Dean said this: “The president has lied about being on Epstein’s plane, and the unredacted files prove that.”

The Republican chairman then tried to cut her off, telling her that her time had expired. But Dean kept going.

Her point is salient: The Epstein Files Transparency Act was passed, signed into law, and is apparently being ignored. Three million documents are still being kept under wraps in direct defiance of the law. And Todd Blanche is dodging questions about why they haven’t come out.

The Epstein story isn’t over. And this hearing made clear that Trump’s DOJ is still working overtime to keep the files buried.

Article Two of the Constitution hands the president exactly one job description when it comes to the law, and that’s to take care that the laws be faithfully executed. When a Justice Department buries three million documents in open defiance of a statute the president himself signed, it isn’t protecting anybody but the powerful, and a government that gets to pick and choose which of its own laws it’ll obey has stopped being a government of laws at all.

GOP Congressman Throws Staffer Under the Bus for His Own Post

Tennessee Republican Rep. Andy Ogles posted on X on Tuesday, the first day of Pride Month, that “homosexuality has no place in America.”

Then, when people pushed back, he blamed a staffer.

Ogles said in a follow-up post that he was blindsided when his phone started blowing up over a message sent by “a member of my comms team.” He called the post “stupid, hurtful and a complete distraction,” said the employee had been reprimanded, and moved on.

He did not apologize.

The backlash wasn’t just from Democrats. Republican Mike Lawler of New York went directly at Ogles, saying “Homosexuality exists. In America.” He then told his colleague he has: “family, friends, neighbors, colleagues and constituents who are gay and lesbian,” and that it “doesn’t make them less than or somehow unworthy of being an American.”

Lawler later called Ogles a “f***ing idiot” when TMZ asked him about it.

Republican former Congressman George Santos, who is openly gay, also weighed in, saying he never thought he’d hear someone he considered a friend say there was no place for him in the country because of who he loves.

It’s not clear whether it was Ogles or a staffer who actually posted the tweet. Congressional offices send social media posts. Most lawmakers have an approval process. But there’s a stark political reality that Ogles is sitting in a competitive seat. and this kind of post doesn’t help his party in a midterm environment where restless voters are eager for change.

Here’s the thing worth saying plainly. The entire story of this country has been the slow, hard work of widening that phrase “we the people” to take in the folks it left out at the start, and the 14th Amendment wrote equal protection into our founding promise for a reason. So when an elected official says a whole group of Americans has no place here, he isn’t just being cruel to his neighbors. He’s arguing against the country itself.

Raw America isn’t slowing down. We’re hard at work building up our team in Washington to go deeper on the stories that the billionaire-owned outlets networks refuse to touch. And Raw America is doubling down on bringing you live conversations with leaders and experts giving you the inside knowledge that you won’t get anywhere else. Today at 12:30 Eastern Time, Raw America will be conducting an exclusive interview with Ben Rhodes, who was President Obama’s deputy national security advisor. Watch live on our homepage at RawAmerica.com.

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I’m Thom Hartmann. The fight is here. Thank you for being in it.

STORIES YOU MAY HAVE MISSED:

• Democrats Unveil Plan to Stop Trump’s New Intel Chief from Being Confirmed. After President Donald Trump nominated Federal Housing Finance Agency director Bill Pulte as the next Director of National Intelligence, Senate Democrats revealed a new plan to stop him from being confirmed. Democrats aim to force Republicans’ hand b threatening to withhold their votes to re-authorize Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), which expires in nine days without a vote. Section 702 is what allows for the intelligence community to collect, analyze and share foreign intelligence information on national security threats.

• ‘Daily Show’ Shames Jared and Ivanka Over Albanian Resort. Both Ivanka Trump and her husband, Jared Kushner were the subject of ridicule on Tuesday’s episode of “The Daily Show.” Host Michael Kosta said Jared and Ivanka failed to “read the room” when investing in a $1.4 billion Mediterranean island resort while President Trump was overseeing spiking inflation, high gas prices and a war in the Middle East. The project has brought out thousands of protesters angry with the development’s construction on protected land intended as a sanctuary for endangered wildlife.

• Trump Wants JD Vance and Marco Rubio to Unite on 2028 Ticket. During a recent podcast appearance, President Trump suggested that both Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio run on the same ticket for the 2028 Republican presidential nomination. Trump notably didn’t say who he thought should be at the top of the ticket, though he said “I like them both,” and added “I like them together.” Other 2028 Republican candidates could potentially include former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, among others.

• Police Aim to Restrict Journalists’ Coverage of ICE Detention Center Protests. As protests outside of the Delaney Hall immigrant detention facility in Newark, New Jersey continue to escalate, local police are now seeking to be the decision-makers in allowing which journalists are allowed to cover the protests. Police are targeting journalists who lack “verified credentials,” and the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker documented 30 separate incidents of police attacking journalists outside the facility since protests began. Journalists are covering an ongoing hunger strike by detainees who say they’re being beaten and gassed in their cells, fed rotten and spoiled food and denied meetings with lawyers.

• Canada Demands Trump Renew Trade Deal with U.S. and Mexico. Canadian Minister for U.S. Trade Dominic LeBlanc is calling on the deal governing trade between Canada, Mexico and the United States to be renewed for another 16 years, saying it is “highly beneficial to each of our countries.” Mexican Economy Secretary Marcelo Ebrard also confirmed his country’s support for Canada’s recommendation. Their demand comes as Trump has revived talk of making Canada the “51st state” and as he announced another new 10 percent tariff on Canada and other countries.

Trump is still shielded from IRS audits even after his controversial slush fund got shelved; Jared Kushner’s Albanian resort deal is now under a formal corruption investigation; the White House wants political loyalty tests baked into federal grant applications; and a Trump supporter who threatened to murder federal judges is heading to prison.

Before we get into it, take a moment to upgrade your Raw America subscription to a paying one. We’re witnessing the complete capitulation of major media outlets like CBS, CNN, the Washington Post, the LA Times, and other storied legacy media brands to pro-Trump billionaires. They’re not using their endless wealth to invest in journalism, but to silence all accountability reporting and fire everyone who doesn’t play along.

This is precisely why we created Raw America. We are reader-supported, editorially independent and not for sale. But that also means we are completely dependent on readers like you becoming paying subscribers to stay operational. If you’ve been enjoying our daily news breakdowns, Capitol Hill reporting and exclusive live interviews on a free subscription, today is the best day to upgrade to a paying one. None of this would be possible without you.

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Trump Gets to Keep IRS Immunity Despite Giving Up His Slush Fund

Even though Donald Trump quietly put his $1.8 billion slush fund for MAGA loyalists on hold, the other arguably more controversial half of that IRS deal is still very much alive.

Under the terms of the Justice Department settlement, the IRS is “forever barred” from pursuing any known or unknown probes into Trump’s tax returns. That means no audits, investigations, or accountability for Trump, his family members, or his companies, for anything that happened before that agreement was signed.

The fund got paused after a federal judge in Virginia temporarily blocked the administration from moving forward with it. The Justice Department said it “disagreed strongly” with the ruling but would comply. But the audit immunity? That’s untouched.

It’s not just Democrats sounding the alarm. Republican Senator Thom Tillis told reporters that family members close to Trump have nearly doubled their net worth in the last year and a half, and wondered: “How can you not at least have them be subjected to the same thing I’m subjected to?”

Republican Senator John Curtis of Utah was even blunter, saying the audit immunity is “part of the problem” and calling for the provision to be killed completely. Curtis said he “needs it dead.”

The president’s finances being off limits from the IRS is the epitome of corruption. And now even members of his own party are calling for his taxpayer-funded legal fortress to be demolished.

Jared Kushner’s Albanian Resort Now Under Corruption Investigation

Jared Kushner’s luxury resort project on the Albanian coast has been met with fierce resistance from local protesters. Now prosecutors are joining the fight.

Albania’s Special Prosecution Office Against Corruption and Organized Crime, known as SPAK, has opened a formal inquiry into decisions governing protected land along the southern coast. Investigators are asking if environmental protections were removed specifically to clear the way for Kushner’s project.

The development, tied to Kushner’s investment firm Affinity Partners, would turn a stretch of protected coastline into a high-end tourism destination with reportedly 10,000 hotel rooms and villas. The area is home to flamingos, Mediterranean monk seals and sea turtles. Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama approved the project in December 2025 and has defended it as a major economic opportunity.

Meanwhile, thousands of Albanians have taken to the streets for two consecutive days. Protests have included clashes with security personnel, and viral footage of a demonstrator being dragged from the resort site has only added fuel to the fire. Demonstrators are calling for the project to be stopped and some are demanding Rama’s resignation.

Kushner and Ivanka Trump visited Albania earlier this year as negotiations continued, though final environmental studies still haven’t been completed. That detail alone should raise eyebrows. And now that SPAK is involved, the future of this project looks increasingly uncertain.

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Trump Wants MAGA Purity Tests for Federal Grant Applications

The White House released a roughly 400-page regulatory blueprint last Friday. One proposal buried in the fine print would require all federal grants to be approved by Trump’s political appointees, who would have to certify that the money “demonstrably advances the president’s policy priorities.”

This means every grant for health research, housing assistance, transportation and science funding would all be subjected to a MAGA purity test.

The rules would bar grants to organizations or projects that promote DEI, assist with voter registration or engage in what the administration calls “issue advocacy.” Grant recipients could face termination of their funding if the Trump administration later decides their work isn’t in the “public interest.” And scientists would face limits on which foreign labs they can collaborate with, and even which conferences they can attend.

This isn’t just about ideology, but about control. One conservative budget analyst told the New York Times that “the whole idea here is to have one control tower.” That’s not how federally funded public services are supposed to work.

Courts have blocked many of Trump’s previous attempts to cut or freeze grant funding. This time, the administration is going the regulatory route, which is harder to challenge legally and could be far more permanent. The rules are aimed to be finalized by October.

Public health groups, scientific organizations and nonprofits are already preparing to fight back. But communities that rely on these grants are the ones who’ll pay the price if this goes through.

Trump Supporter Who Threatened to Murder Judges Begs for Light Sentence

A Las Vegas man named Spencer Gear is heading to federal prison after threatening to murder federal judges, prosecutors and public officials. His attorneys begged the judge overseeing his case for a light sentence. She wasn’t having it.

Gear targeted prominent judges overseeing cases who presided over Trump cases. He also threatened Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg and New York State Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan, who handled Trump’s hush-money case.

He told Merchan he was “a dead man,” and told others he would “spill their blood.” In a voicemail to a female judge, he made comments targeting her gender, telling her she couldn’t do anything to Trump without sending a man to handle it.

At sentencing Monday, Gear told the court he was “embarrassed” by his behavior. The jury convicted him on nine counts of threatening a federal official and eleven counts of transmitting threats to injure. Judge Jennifer Dorsey sentenced him to 60 months in prison followed by three years of supervised release.

This is what underscores the belief system of MAGA diehards: violence and threats. For now, we still have a federal judiciary that delivers consequences.

Stories like these don’t get the attention they deserve from the billionaire-owned outlets that control most of what you see and hear. That’s exactly why Raw America exists.

We’re just getting started. Our Washington D.C. team is expanding so we can break more news directly from the Capitol. We’re also bringing you more live interviews with experts giving you the inside knowledge the Trump regime wants to keep hidden. None of that happens without readers like you stepping up to become paying subscribers. Today we interviewed author Jared Yates Sexton about the far right’s plans to stay in power after Trump. You can watch the full interview below or by clicking this link.

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Thanks for watching. I’m British Chris. We’ll see you next time.

STORIES YOU MAY HAVE MISSED:

• Republican ‘Spiraling Out of Control’ After Trump Endorses Her Opponent. Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.), who is running for governor of South Carolina, is reportedly “spiraling out of control” after President Donald Trump endorsed her primary opponent, according to former Rep. George Santos (R-N.Y.) Santos was responding to a series of social media posts Mace made on her X account after Trump’s endorsement, one of which resulted in a community note fact-checking Mace’s claim that Trump praised her as a “fighter.” Trump has since come out against Mace after she advocated for the full release of the Epstein files.

• DOJ Investigating George Santos for Insider Trading. Disgraced former Rep. George Santos (R-N.Y.) is now the subject of a new federal criminal investigation for allegedly trading off of insider information on the prediction market Kalshi, where bettors can make wagers on political and cultural events. Santos is accused of manipulating people who placed bets on who would attend Trump’s State of the Union address when he announced that he would be present in the House of Representatives gallery, only to forgo attending the speech. Unnamed sources told NPR Santos allegedly made tens of thousands of dollars in profit by betting on his own attendance.

• Trump’s Appointment of Bill Pulte as Director of National Intelligence Shocks Intel Community. Various prominent figures in the American national security and intelligence communities are expressing disdain over the recent appointment of Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Bill Pulte as the next Director of National Intelligence. 26-year CIA veteran Marc Polymeropoulos told Politico that Pulte’s appointment “will cause worry amongst IC professionals that the DNI will be fully weaponized in support of going after Trump’s political enemies.”

In-depth conversations like these, in which prominent writers and leading political thinkers offer their expert knowledge on what’s happening right now, are only made possible with the support of readers like you stepping up to become paying subscribers. If independent media that rejects billionaire money matters to you, become a paying member of the Raw America community today.

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Tucker Carlson’s Faux Populist Playbook

Gibson opened by asking Sexton about his recent essay “The Fascist Feint: Tucker Carlson and Faux Leftist Commentary.” Tucker Carlson has been discussed as a potential 2028 presidential candidate and Sexton observed that the far-right commentator is deliberately co-opting progressive language to stay relevant after Donald Trump leaves office.

“A right-wing movement doesn’t just suddenly wake up one day and they’re like, ‘Hey, we like democracy now,’” he said. “They grow worse.”

Sexton argued that MAGA figures actually view Trump as a moderate who is too soft on nationalism, and that Carlson has been positioning himself to capture that energy.

According to the author and political analyst, what Carlson is doing follows a well-worn historical pattern: make the necessary critique of capitalism and economic betrayal, but redirect the resulting anger away from the owner class and toward vulnerable working-class communities with no actual institutional power.

“The right wing does a very simple trick,” Sexton said. “They say, ‘yeah, capitalism isn’t working’ — or they don’t ever say capitalism, because they don’t want to address the actual system — they say there’s corruption, you have been betrayed, and then on behalf of the wealth class, they go ahead and say, ‘oh, we’ll tell you who did this,’ and it’s always vulnerable people.”

Can the Left Find Common Ground With Tucker’s Audience?

Gibson pressed Sexton on whether there are areas like opposing foreign wars and decriminalizing drugs where progressives and Tucker Carlson’s audience might find common cause, even if Tucker himself is a bad actor.

Sexton acknowledged the question but urged caution. While he said some Trump voters are genuinely reachable through class-based arguments, the danger is that Carlson’s critiques, even when they sound reasonable, are drawing people toward a dangerous project.

“We have to understand they’re not making this critique in good faith,” Sexton said. “They’re making it as political strategy to bring people into a project that is about capturing power.”

He also noted that many people in Carlson’s audience don’t realize how far they’ve drifted until it’s too late. He argued the key to reaching persuadable people is abandoning partisan stereotypes and having direct conversations about how the working class has been betrayed by the wealthy elite and the politicians they own.

Where the Democratic Party Falls Short

Gibson asked Sexton why Democrats — with a few notable exceptions like Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and Ilhan Omar — seem unable to make the kind of trans-partisan, class-based arguments that could actually win people over.

Sexton was blunt: the Democratic Party is too beholden to the same donor class to make an honest critique of the system that’s oppressing the working class.

“It’s a captured party that is doing the bidding of billionaire benefactors who pay for all of this,” he said.

Sexton pointed to the already-emerging framework around “Project 2029” — a Democratic Party policy playbook that until recently was spearheaded by Jeffrey Epstein associate Larry Summers — as evidence that even a post-Trump Democratic majority would fail to address the underlying material conditions that gave rise to fascism in the first place.

“The cycle that we live in,” Sexton explained, “is that a Republican gets in office, they break all kinds of rules and laws, they take more and more power, and they run up the debt, they crash the economy, and then a Democrat comes in and they promise a lot of things — ‘but guess what, we just don’t have the resources right now.’”

The “Dispatches from a Collapsing State” publisher argued that manufactured culture war issues like transgender bathroom access are deliberately created by the right in order to prevent Americans from uniting around class issues.

“These issues are created in order to divert us,” Sexton said.

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The Biggest Lesson from the Minneapolis General Strike

Gibson cited Sexton’s essay from January entitled “Shut It Down,” which he wrote at the height of the Trump administration’s ICE crackdown in Minneapolis. Sexton wrote about how tens of thousands of residents responded to the crackdown by organizing with local business owners to conduct a one-day general strike that ultimately contributed to a strategic retreat by federal authorities. Gibson asked Sexton whether targeted general strikes in key sectors —like trucking, nursing and education — could be an effective tool against the current administration.

Sexton said the potential for this kind of action is greater than most people realize, and that the primary obstacle is more psychological than logistical.

“This can end tomorrow,” Sexton said. “This whole facade, this whole crisis, this erosion, the growth of fascism, it could end tomorrow. What this relies on is a fear that has been instilled in us.”

Sexton argued that capitalism has deliberately destroyed American solidarity with each another, pointing to the assault on labor unions and social structures to ensure that American workers remain too precarious and too isolated to organize. However, he also said an economic collapse may change the calculus quickly, pointing to botj Bolivia’s recent general strike and South Korea’s response to its attempted coup as models.

“None of this works without us,” Sexton said. “We’ve been convinced that politics, that our representative government, is more important than us, that corporations are more important than us. We can stop, because the participation in capitalism is the only thing that keeps this thing going.”

The Organizing Opportunity Against AI Nobody Is Talking About

Gibson observed the backlash against AI and data centers, in which AI infrastructure is being forced on communities across the country — at the expense of water access and farmland — represents a rare and powerful organizing opportunity that transcends partisan lines.

Sexton agreed, calling data centers “the most uniting thing for people to go against.” He noted that opposition to AI and data centers draws together people who are concerned about environmental issues as well as rising energy bills, declining property values and job security. He added this coalition that would be nearly impossible to assemble around any traditional political issue.

“It just so happens that the hated and universally opposed product is the only product of an oligarchical, fascist, anti-human group,” Sexton said.

Sexton also argued that the broader “enshittification” of the internet — a term coined by writer Cory Doctorow — is creating organic openings for class-based conversations. When someone complains that they can’t watch their local baseball team without paying for multiple subscriptions, or that their Google search no longer works, and they ask “why doesn’t somebody do something about that?” — Sexton proposed that could be a doorway to deeper conversations.

“It cracks the entire edifice open,” he said, “and suddenly you’re not talking about who’s going to win in the midterms. You’re talking about class politics.”

Grieving the Empire and Building What Comes Next

Gibson closed by asking Sexton about his essay “Death to Empire: Trump, China, and Moving Beyond This Wretched Order,” and what ordinary Americans who are frustrated and searching for agency can do to maintain hope for themselves and their children.

Sexton opined that Americans need to move through a period of genuine grief about the end of U.S. dominance, and then recognize that what they are losing was always built on exploitation.

“The things that made our so-called first world lives so comfortable have come on the backs of exploitation, slave labor, coups [and] wars. Just violence upon violence upon exploitation upon exploitation,” he said. “We made a deal with the devil, which was capitalism.”

He rejected the nostalgic politics of both Trumpism and mainstream Democratic Party incrementalism, suggesting that a retreat to the past is no longer an option. According to Sexton, the lure of fascism may offer the promise of recapturing a lost greatness, but that’s a dangerous illusion that only leads to self-destruction.

“We can have better lives,” he said. “We deserve better than what we’ve got right now. We have to be honest with ourselves and accept that it’s falling apart — and that you can build something better on the other side of it. That opportunity is there.”

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Trump’s Freedom 250 concert series is collapsing in real time as artists flee and the White House points fingers; top administration officials head to Capitol Hill to answer for a billionaire slush fund and a mass deportation machine; a Republican senator says his own party’s Senate nominee in Texas is a liability; and a new report says the Trump White House is stuck in a summer funk, bogged down by a war it can’t end and an agenda that keeps hitting walls.

Before we get to the news, I need to ask you to support Raw America’s independent journalism. We’re witnessing the real-time conquest of America’s most storied legacy media institutions by a handful of pro-Trump billionaires. The Ellisons have turned CBS News into a propaganda mill. Jeff Bezos made the Washington Post a pathetic right-wing rag. Patrick Soon-Shiong drove the LA Times into the ground. The Murdoch family just expanded their empire to include new digital platforms. Time and again we’re seeing proof that independent media that only answers to readers is the only way we can have actual journalism in this country.

This is why we created Raw America. We are fully reader-supported, editorially independent and not for sale. But that also means we need readers like you to step up and become paying subscribers. If you find value in our daily news breakdowns like these, our Capitol Hill reporting or our exclusive live interviews, take a moment to become a paying member of the Raw America community. We genuinely can’t do any of this without you.

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White House in Full Meltdown Mode Over Freedom 250 Fiasco

Let’s start with what may be the most perfectly symbolic story of this entire administration: Trump’s big birthday bash is falling apart.

The Freedom 250 concert series was supposed to be a celebration of the country’s 250th anniversary, running from June 25 through July 10 on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. Instead, it’s turned into one of the most public humiliations of Trump’s second term, and the president is furious.

A White House source told the Daily Mail that Trump is irate over artists announced for the shows dropping out. The Commodores are out. Morris Day is out. Young MC is out. Poison frontman Bret Michaels is out. Headliner Martina McBride is out. And now Fab Morvan, the surviving member of Milli Vanilli, has confirmed he’s not showing up either.

What’s their reason? Nearly all of them are saying the same thing: they were misled. They thought they were signing up for a nonpartisan patriotic event. Instead, they found out it was being organized by Trump loyalists, and they want no part of it.

Morvan said the key moment for him was when Young MC pulled out just hours after the lineup was announced, saying artists were never told about any political involvement with the shows.

A White House source argued to the Daily Mail that the departures were a publicity stunt by irrelevant artists looking for attention. But then the same source admitted something telling: some of the artists hadn’t even been locked down contractually before their names were publicly announced. That’s just plain incompetence.

Inside the White House, it’s apparently a circular firing squad. One insider said that allowing, quote, “Z-list celebrities to embarrass the president” is “grossly negligent,” and that firings are coming.

Meanwhile, Trump himself took to his Nazi-infested social media site to attack the artists who bailed. He also insisted he could headline the event himself because he draws bigger crowds than Elvis in his prime.

Even conservative commentator Matt Walsh dragged the White House, writing that what should have been a massive celebration of the country’s history is instead becoming a Trump rally, calling the whole thing badly bungled.

Trump’s team says they can force the artists to perform because contracts were signed and money was paid. But they also admitted it’s not worth it.

Here’s what really stings about this one. Two hundred and fifty years ago a handful of farmers and printers and lawyers risked the gallows to declare we’d never again bow to one man who figured the nation existed to flatter him. That’s the whole point of 1776. We don’t do kings, and we don’t throw birthday parades for the powerful. So when these artists walk away because they signed up to honor a country and found out they were being roped into honoring a president, they’re guarding the very thing this anniversary is supposed to be about. George Washington could have been king, and he handed the power back instead. That act of letting go is the actual birthday worth celebrating.

Top Administration Figures in the Hot Seat

Some of Trump’s top Cabinet officials are heading to Capitol Hill today to face some uncomfortable questions.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin, and Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche are all testifying in budget hearings. And it’s not going to be a friendly room.

Blanche, who served as Trump’s personal criminal defense attorney before becoming acting Attorney General, is expected to face pointed questions about the proposed taxpayer-funded gifts for Trump’s political allies that the president just gave up on. The DOJ has backed off the fund for now while the legal challenge plays out, but Congress wants answers.

Blanche will also face questions about how the Justice Department is handling the Epstein files. Former Attorney General Pam Bondi told lawmakers in a closed-door deposition that she handed off oversight of those files to Blanche. Now he has to answer for millions of pages still being kept secret in defiance of federal law.

And Markwayne Mullin, who replaced the scandal-plagued Kristi Noem as DHS Secretary, will be testifying for the first time since his confirmation hearing back in March. His appearance comes after multiple DHS insiders told the Daily Mail that the former Oklahoma senator is “barely in the building.” One source said “Mullin seems to think DHS requires less work than a senator, and it shows.”

This is the accountability moment Congress is supposed to provide. Will Republicans actually do their jobs or roll over and let these officials off the hook?

Back in the 1970s a senator named Frank Church led a committee that pried open the locked drawers of the federal government and showed Americans what their own agencies had been hiding from them. He understood that secrecy is where democracy goes to die, that a government keeping files from the people it answers to has already started forgetting who it works for. That’s what today is really about. Congress holds the power of the purse and the duty to make the executive explain itself, and a Justice Department sitting on millions of pages it’s legally bound to release is daring lawmakers to find out whether they’ll do their jobs or roll over.

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Republicans Panicking About Ken Paxton

A sitting Republican senator is now openly saying that his own party’s Senate nominee is a threat to the seat.

Texas Republican John Cornyn lost his primary runoff to Attorney General Ken Paxton on May 26. And when a reporter asked Cornyn whether Paxton “endangers the seat as the nominee,” Cornyn didn’t hesitate, saying, “absolutely.”

Cornyn had come in first in the March primary with 42 percent of the vote. But in the runoff, turnout collapsed. Only about 7 percent of registered voters showed up. And the voters who did show up were, in Cornyn’s own words, Trump’s loyalists. Trump endorsed Paxton a week before the runoff.

Now, Senate Majority Leader John Thune says Republicans are going “all in” for Paxton. The National Republican Senatorial Committee has endorsed him. Thune told a radio show last week that the party needs to keep Texas red and keep a “far-left liberal” out of the Senate, framing the seat as critical to maintaining their majority.

But Cornyn’s warning is a real one. Paxton has been impeached by the Texas House. He’s been the subject of an FBI investigation. He was investigated for securities fraud. He had a messy public divorce after an infidelity scandal.

If Democrat James Talarico can turn his massive crowds into voters, this race could be far more competitive than national Republicans want to admit. And a sitting Republican senator openly saying his own party’s nominee is a liability shows they’re vulnerable.

Folks, James Madison warned us about exactly this in Federalist 10. He said the real danger to a republic is a passionate faction small enough to organize and intense enough to seize control while everybody else stays home. That’s what seven percent turnout looks like. A sliver of the most fired-up partisans handing a party’s nomination to a man who’s been impeached, investigated by the FBI, and accused of securities fraud. The cure Madison prescribed wasn’t fewer voters, it was more of them. When ordinary people show up, the faction loses its grip, and that’s the whole game in Texas.

Trump White House Staffers Admit They’re Stuck

The Trump administration has lost its momentum, and that’s according to Trump’s own allies.

Steve Bannon, who nicknamed the start of Trump’s second term the “days of thunder,” is now publicly asking whether this is how MAGA ends: “with a whimper, not a bang.”

People close to the White House who spoke to Politico describe an administration that’s all-consumed by the war with Iran, unable to notch a deal despite months of promises and threats. One person said “they’re pretty much in a funk” and that “there’s nothing happening.”

The Iran war was supposed to be short. Trump said so. Instead it’s still dragging on. Trump left a two-hour Situation Room meeting on Friday with nothing to announce. And on Monday, he told NBC he was fine with Iran suspending talks, saying, “We talk too much.” This is all while Americans are paying an average of $4.32 a gallon for gas, up roughly 37 percent from a year ago.

On the legislative front, the voter restriction bill Trump calls his top priority hasn’t passed. The housing bill hasn’t passed. The funding for Trump’s White House ballroom and underground bunker hasn’t come through. And the president just retreated from his $1.8 billion MAGA slush fund after a court blocked it and Republicans pushed back.

Courts have also stopped Trump from renaming the Kennedy Center after himself. As we already covered, the Freedom 250 festival is in disarray. And with the second term already nearly half over, the window for big legislative wins is narrowing.

One White House source told Politico that for the first time, they’re questioning whether Trump has the political capital they thought he did, or whether it’s just not being used the right way.

In his farewell address in 1961, Dwight Eisenhower, a five star general who’d actually seen war up close, warned the country about getting locked into conflicts with no exit and a war machine that feeds itself. He knew the easiest war to start is the hardest one to finish. Now here we are with a fight nobody can end, gas climbing past four dollars a gallon, and a president learning that courts and Congress can still tell him no. That’s not the system breaking down. That’s the system working, making sure no single man’s restlessness becomes the whole nation’s burden.

Raw America is committed to giving you the kind of coverage the corporate press won’t. And we’re just getting started.

We’re building out our operations at the Capitol so we can be in the room asking the hard questions to elected officials that the billionaire-owned outlets won’t. We’re also ramping up our live interview programming to bring you fresh perspectives from experts you won’t hear anywhere else. Today at 2:30 PM Eastern Time we’ll be interviewing author Jared Yates Sexton about how the far right is trying to pull the wool over our eyes by co-opting progressive language. You can watch it live on our homepage at RawAmerica.com.

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I’m Thom Hartmann. The fight is here. Thank you for being in it.

STORIES YOU MAY HAVE MISSED:

• Trump Announces New Intelligence Chief. President Donald Trump has officially nominated Bill Pulte — who currently leads the Federal Housing Finance Agency – to become the next Director of National Intelligence. Pulte, who is replacing former intelligence chief Tulsi Gabbard, is known as a staunch Trump loyalist who has no prior experience in intelligence. He also spearheaded a criminal inquiry last year into Federal Reserve Board member Lisa Cook, who was accused of claiming two homes as her primary residence.

• City of Newark Plans to Sue to Shut Down ICE Detention Facility. Newark, New Jersey Mayor Ras Baraka said Tuesday he’s planning to take his battle with the Delaney Hall immigrant detention center to the courts. The facility has become the flashpoint in the battle over the Trump administration’s immigration policies, as detainees there are in the midst of a hunger strike to protest inhumane treatment. Detainees’ families and advocates say they’re being served spoiled and rotten food, being denied meetings with legal representation and beaten and tear gassed in their cells.

• Republican Congressman Remains Missing After Nearly Three Months. Rep. Tom Kean (R-N.J.) hasn’t voted in Congress since March 5, and his staff say his ongoing absence is due to an undisclosed health issue. The New York Times reported that despite visiting both his primary residence and his vacation homes — as well as calling 20 different area hospitals to see if Kean was listed as a patient — the congressman’s whereabouts remain unknown. He’s running unopposed in Tuesday’s Republican primary, though he’s likely to face well-funded Democratic opposition in what is considered one of the most competitive U.S. House seats in the country.

• Celebrity Convicts Lobby White House for Pardons Ahead of Expected Clemency Spree. After learning that President Trump is planning to issue 250 pardons to commemorate the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, a number of high-profile convicts are pushing for Trump to free them from prison. This reportedly includes ‘Pharma Bro’ Martin Shkreli, who was released from federal prison in 2022 after serving time for securities fraud and conspiracy. Because of his felony conviction, Shkreli can’t serve as an officer for a publicly traded company. Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes — who was convicted for defrauding investors — is also making a clemency push, as she is currently serving an 11-year sentence at the Bryan Prison Camp in Texas (where Jeffrey Epstein co-conspirator Ghisliane Maxwell is also serving her sentence).

• Trump’s Former Border Patrol Chief Speaks Alongside Neo-Nazis. Former Border Patrol Commander Gregory Bovino, who was the face of the Trump administration’s ICE crackdown in Minneapolis earlier this year, recently spoke at the “remigration” summit in Portugal. Bovino shared the stage with a Belgian fascist activist convicted for Holocaust denial, a Swiss neo-Nazi and a far-right Austrian extremist who promotes the racist “Great Replacement” conspiracy theory. The founder of the summit, Afonso Gonçalves, was once quoted saying “Weimar problems require Weimar solutions,” which is a reference to Hitler and the Holocaust.

Trump’s $1.8 billion slush fund just collapsed under bipartisan pressure. A veteran 60 Minutes correspondent publicly accused the lackey put in place by CBS’ billionaire owners of “murdering” the show. Federal judges across the country are calling out Justice Department lawyers for lying in court. And a MAGA TV host went on the air to beg Trump to stop hurting his own supporters.

Before we get into it, take a moment to help keep Raw America’s independent journalism alive. The billionaires who own CBS are now facing a full-on rebellion from within their own newsroom after the gutting of 60 Minutes. Legacy media reporters and editors are seeing firsthand what happens when right-wing oligarchs buy up media outlets — it’s not because they love journalism, but because they want to ensure that any reporting aimed at holding them and their friends accountable gets snuffed out.

This is exactly why we created Raw America. We are completely reader supported, editorially independent and not for sale. But that also means none of our work would be possible without readers like you stepping up to become paying subscribers. If you’ve subscribed, thank you sincerely. If not, today is the best day to make the leap. Click the link below and help support journalism that doesn’t take billionaire money.

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Trump Abandons MAGA Slush Fund After Republicans Promise to Kill It

Trump is in full retreat mode after suffering an embarrassing public loss.

Republicans pushed back so hard on Trump’s proposed $1.776 billion slush fund for MAGA loyalists that House Speaker Mike Johnson was reportedly planning to confront Trump over the fund at the White House. Then two federal judges stepped in.

First, Judge Leonie Brinkema in Virginia halted disbursements from the fund. In Florida, Judge Kathleen Williams, the judge who oversaw the original lawsuit, announced she’d be launching her own inquiry.

And just like that, senior administration officials are now telling Axios it’s dead.

Now, here’s the important caveat: nothing in the Trump administration is final until Trump himself says so. One source said Trump “believes in it” and that “nothing is final until it’s final.”

But the political and legal pressure got to be too much. What started as a sweetheart deal tucked inside an IRS settlement is now being walked back. One senior administration official even told Axios the White House itself didn’t even know the fund was being created, saying staffers were “blindsided.”

‘60 Minutes’ Star Accuses Bari Weiss of ‘Murdering’ Show

Bari Weiss — the head of CBS News hand-picked by the network’s new billionaire owner — is now facing a full mutiny at 60 Minutes.

On Monday, veteran correspondent Scott Pelley walked into a staff meeting and didn’t hold back.

According to reports, Pelley looked at the room and said, point-blank that Weiss was “murdering 60 Minutes,” adding, “she was brought in to kill it and is doing exactly that.”

The room gave Pelley a standing ovation.

The newly appointed executive producer told Pelley he wouldn’t be “intimidated.” CBS News’ managing editor accused Pelley of being rude. Pelley reportedly shot back that the network had been rude in the way it fired Tanya Simon, the ousted executive producer. Additionally, Weiss fired the show’s executive producer, its executive editor, and two respected correspondents, Sharyn Alfonsi and Cecilia Vega.

Alfonsi, whose segment on a brutal El Salvador prison was shelved by Weiss back in December, released a statement calling out what she described as the systematic dismantling of the wall between editorial independence and corporate interest.

Vega was even more direct. She said her producing teams had experienced efforts to insert political bias into their work, and that reporters were self-censoring out of fear. She called it “dangerous for democracy.”

It’s hard to dispute what’s happening in plain sight. Experienced journalists are being pushed out, replaced by people who are expected not to push back. And one of the last people left standing is pointing out that the whole thing is being killed on purpose.

This is exactly why billionaires owning news networks is so dangerous, and why Raw America was created. This moment requires independent journalism that won’t pull punches to appease right-wing oligarchs. If that matters to you, become a paying subscriber to Raw America by clicking the link below.

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Judges Say Trump DOJ ‘Unworthy’ of Public Trust

Across multiple federal courtrooms, judges have been issuing rulings in recent weeks that go beyond the usual legal back-and-forth. They’re calling Justice Department lawyers liars. By name. In writing.

In Rhode Island, Judge Mary McElroy found that a DOJ lawyer told her the hospital at the center of a transgender health records dispute had gone silent since February. Emails showed that wasn’t true. The hospital’s lawyers had stayed in close contact the entire time.

McElroy called the government’s account “misleading, if not utterly false,” and wrote that the Justice Department “has proven unworthy of this trust at every point in this case.”

In Chicago, Judge April Perry found that DOJ lawyers had improperly influenced a grand jury in a case involving activists protesting outside an immigration detention facility. When they handed her transcripts of those proceedings, portions had been redacted to hide misconduct by the U.S. attorney’s office.

And in Tennessee, a judge was skeptical about whether a local U.S. attorney was really acting independently when he brought federal charges against Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the Salvadoran man who was wrongly deported to an El Salvador mega-prison. Emails showed the Trump administration was in constant contact with that prosecutor, calling the case a “top priority.”

The White House’s response has, of course, been to attack the judges for their rulings. But one of those judges, McElroy, was appointed by Trump himself.

MAGA TV Host Begs Trump to Stop Iran War, Saying It’s Bankrupting His Supporters

NewsNation host Batya Ungar-Sargon, who has called Trump the “most effective president of my lifetime,” went on the air Saturday and delivered a distress call. She told Trump his supporters were “hurting,” and that they are now “broke” thanks to his policies.

She described supporters skipping meals and buying canned chicken in bulk because that’s all they can afford. She said savings are at an all-time low and credit card delinquency rates keep climbing.

She pointed out that Trump’s own base, many of whom supported his Iran war and said they were willing to pay a little more to help him, have now “paid all they can.”

And she asked a direct question: the U.S. has pulled in $200 billion in tariff revenue. Couldn’t some of that go back to the Americans struggling to put food on the table?

It’s a remarkable moment when one of the most loyal voices in MAGA media is on national television asking the president to please notice that his own voters can’t afford groceries. And that warning will only get louder as 2026 drags on.

Stories like these are exactly why we’re building something different here at Raw America.

This summer, we’re working to build out our Washington D.C. bureau so we can break more exclusive news directly from Congress. Our Capitol Hill partner just landed an exclusive interview with Senator Ron Wyden tomorrow, which you’ll be able to watch here on our website.

We’re also bringing you more live interviews with leaders and experts giving perspectives the billionaire-owned outlets won’t touch. Tomorrow at 2:30 PM Eastern Time we’re interviewing author Jared Yates Sexton about how the far-right is trying to hoodwink progressives by co-opting populist language. And Wednesday we’re interviewing Ben Rhodes — President Obama’s former deputy national security advisor.

None of this work can happen without readers deciding independent journalism is worth paying for. If you’ve been enjoying our daily news breakdowns, Capitol reporting and exclusive live interviews on a free subscription now is the best time to become a paid subscriber to Raw America. We don’t have a billionaire backer or corporate advertisers. Your support is what makes all of this possible. The link is right below.

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Thanks for watching. I’m British Chris, with Raw America. We’ll see you tomorrow.

STORIES YOU MAY HAVE MISSED:

• Trump’s Pentagon Caught Understating Damage to U.S. Bases from Iran War. Since President Donald Trump initially launched the war against Iran on February 28, the Iranian military has caused tens of billions of dollars in damage to as many as 28 American bases in eight different countries. A new BBC analysis found that Iran has also damaged or destroyed at least 42 aircraft, “including F-15 and F-35 fighter jets, 24 MQ-9 Reaper drones and an A-10 attack plane” since the war began.

• Hegseth Blocks Black and Female Naval Officers from Getting Promoted. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth recently blocked the promotions of seven Naval officers who had been selected for their new roles by a board of U.S. Navy admirals. At least two of those officers are women, and two others are Black men. The exclusion of women from the pending list of one-star general promotions comes despite women making up 21 percent of active-duty U.S. Navy personnel.

• Conservatives Now Attacking James Talarico’s Church. The far-right Daily Wire — which is funded by Texas-based billionaires Dan and Ferris Wilks — recently published an article critical of St. Andrews Presbyterian Church, where Texas Democratic U.S. Senate candidate is a member. The Daily Wire referred to St. Andrews as a “woke Austin church” due to its work supporting social justice-oriented nonprofit organizations like Planned Parenthood. The publication also attacked the church over its “Field of Hope” project, which was launched in 1993 to raise awareness about the AIDS epidemic and its impact on Texans.

• Chicagoans Push to Rename Downtown Street Housing Trump Tower After Obama. A new petition aiming to rename a stretch of Wabash Avenue in downtown Chicago is picking up steam, and could be approved with a vote by the Chicago City Council. Local resident Bryce Jones wants to rename the portion of the street that houses Trump Tower after former President Barack Obama, meaning Trump Tower’s new address could soon be 401 Barack Hussein Obama Avenue.

• Federal Judge Blocks Trump from Dismantling Colorado Weather Lab. A federal judge on Monday ruled that the Trump administration’s shuttering of the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colorado was illegal, and done as an act of political retaliation against the deep-blue state. The Trump administration had previously stripped the NCAR-Wyoming Supercomputing Center of its nonprofit owner as a means of breaking it up. U.S. District Judge R. Brooke Jackson — a Barack Obama appointee — ruled that the move was made in response to Gov. Jared Polis (D) refusing to free Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters from prison, who was convicted for allowing an activist affiliate with MyPillow CEO and election denier Mike Lindell to access county voting systems. Polis has since commuted Peters’ sentence. She has since made multiple appearance on far-right media outlets baselessly accusing Democrats of trying to steal elections.

Trump’s doctor is releasing a medical report that raises more questions than it answers, and top physicians are laughing at it. Senate Republicans are quietly forming a new caucus aimed at frustrating Trump’s priorities. A fired Border Patrol commander is attacking Trump’s own team. And a Republican strategist is saying Trump just made a hundred-million-dollar mistake in Texas.

Before we get into it, take a moment to support Raw America’s independent journalism. We’re witnessing the wholesale capture of the media by pro-Trump billionaires like the Ellisons, the Murdochs and Jeff Bezos. We all know they aren’t investing in journalism when they buy up major networks and newspapers: they’re doing to kill reporting aimed at holding them and their friends accountable and firing reporters and editors who speak out.

This is exactly why we launched Raw America. We are reader-supported, editorially independent and not for sale. But that also means we are completely dependent on readers like you stepping up to become paying subscribers. If journalism that doesn’t pull punches for a billionaire backer or corporate advertisers is valuable to you, please consider upgrading your free Raw America subscription to a paying one.

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Doctor Calls Out Trump’s White House Over Medical Report

Donald Trump turns 80 in a couple of weeks, and his personal physician just put out a memo saying the president is in “excellent health.” Though his memo doesn’t actually show the results that led to that conclusion.

Trump’s doctor, Captain Sean Barbarella, listed a series of diagnostic tests, including a coronary CT angiography, a carotid artery ultrasound, an echocardiogram, and an AI-enhanced electrocardiogram. Then he said all of them showed no abnormalities. But he noticeably left out the actual numbers.

The White House argued that their absence should be seen as “confirmation” that nothing clinically meaningful was found, but Dr. Jonathan Reiner, who was Dick Cheney’s cardiologist, pointed out that’s not how medicine works.

Reiner said that explanation flat-out “not true” in a social media post. He pointed out that a medication list from a president’s physician is supposed to be complete, not have multiple medications omitted.

Some medications were listed without dosages. The memo mentioned aspirin and two other drugs, without specifying how much Trump is taking of any of them. The White House said the list was “abbreviated for readability and relevance.”

Physicians told the Wall Street Journal that the report was “almost too good to be true” for a man Trump’s age. Vascular surgeon Dr. William Shutze said it “seems to be a filtered narrative.”

Trump’s cholesterol numbers in particular are raising eyebrows. Daniel Torrent, a Georgia vascular surgeon, told the Journal his cholesterol numbers are abnormally good, and that medication alone doesn’t usually get you there, especially not for a man who famously lives on fast food and doesn’t exercise.

The memo also claimed that an AI-enhanced EKG estimated Trump’s cardiac age as 14 years younger than his actual age. Reiner told CNN that he and his cardiology colleagues laughed at that one.

And the report completely ignores Trump’s bruised hands, ankle swelling, neck rash, episodes of slurred speech, and the president visibly struggling to stay awake during high-stakes meetings and press conferences.

Trump has repeatedly bragged about acing a “high difficulty cognitive test” four times in a row. What he doesn’t mention is that the test in question, the Montreal Cognitive Assessment, is a dementia screening tool designed to be easy for any normally functioning adult. It doesn’t measure intelligence, but rather if someone has severe cognitive decline. Passing it doesn’t mean what Trump thinks it means.

Folks, we’ve seen this movie before. When Woodrow Wilson was felled by a stroke in 1919, his wife Edith and his physician hid the truth from the country for the better part of a year while the government ran out of a sickroom, and it’s exactly that kind of cover-up that gave us the 25th Amendment a half century later. The American people are the only ones who actually own this government, and a government that asks you to take its word for it, no numbers, no dosages, no honest accounting of what the whole country can see with its own eyes, isn’t being transparent. It’s running a stagecraft operation on the people it answers to.

Senate Republicans About to Cause Huge Problems for Trump

Congressional recesses are usually when tensions between the White House and Capitol Hill cool down a little. But Republicans in Washington are now taking their frustration with Trump to a new level.

It started with what Trump did to longtime Texas Senator John Cornyn, who was blindsided when Trump swooped in and endorsed scandal-plagued state Attorney General Ken Paxton. Cornyn lost badly. And his GOP colleagues are not letting it go.

Cornyn posted a parable on social media about a frog and a scorpion. The scorpion asks the frog to carry it across a river, then stings the frog and drowns them both, saying “I couldn’t help myself, it’s my character.” He didn’t mention Trump, but he didn’t have to.

Republican Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, who was pushed out of his own primary after Trump endorsed an opponent, didn’t hold back, saying: “The president does not understand functionally that you cannot get things done unless you have some sense of unity with the people who you must work with.”

Senate Republicans have told the White House they won’t move on a major $70 billion ICE funding bill until Trump cancels his $1.8 billion slush fund set up to compensate some of the people convicted for storming the Capitol on January 6th.

Trump can only lose three Republican votes on any partisan measure if Democrats stay united. And more than half the Republican conference is opposed to the fund. A federal judge has already ordered the administration to pause it while a legal challenge plays out.

The senators now willing to break with Trump include the usual names: Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, Mitch McConnell, Rand Paul. But that group has now expanded into what some senators are calling the “wounded bear caucus,” a loose collection of colleagues who Trump forced into retirement and no longer have anything to lose.

That includes John Cornyn, Bill Cassidy, and Thom Tillis of North Carolina, who stepped aside after Trump made clear he wouldn’t back him.

The expectation among Republican staffers is that almost all legislation outside of basic government funding and defense policy is now on hold. Most of the president’s legislative priorities, all potentially stalled because Trump keeps picking fights with the people he needs to win.

Folks, James Madison told us in Federalist 51 that the whole machine was built so ambition would be made to counteract ambition, so that the people running each branch would guard their own institution’s power even against a president of their own party. For nine years these senators buried that instinct and bent the knee, and now that Trump’s torched their careers anyway, they’re suddenly rediscovering that Congress holds the power of the purse and that Article One comes before Article Two for a reason. It’s a sorry reason to finally find your spine, but a Republic only works when the people we send to Washington remember they answer to the Constitution and not to one man.

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Trump’s Former Border Enforcer Goes Scorched-Earth on His Administration

Gregory Bovino used to be the face of Trump’s deportation operation. He oversaw the ICE operation in Minneapolis that ended with federal agents killing two U.S. citizens in broad daylight. Trump demoted him in January. And now Bovino is on the other side of the world, attacking Trump’s own team.

Over the weekend, Bovino traveled to Portugal, to speak at the Remigration Summit, a racist gathering of far-right Europeans pushing for the mass expulsion of immigrants and minorities. Before the event, he told a far-right outlet that he’s now in “battle” not with immigrants, but with “timid politicians,” specifically calling out Trump’s “inner circle.”

He went after Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin — who ran a plumbing business before being elected to the Senate, mocking Mullin as “a great plumber” who could “probably fix a leaky faucet” before suggesting Mullin ill-equipped to round up ande deport undocumented immigrants.

He also went after White House chief of staff Susie Wiles, accusing her of “caving to anarchists” over the ongoing protests outside a New Jersey immigration detention facility.

Bovino has been offering himself up to personally “handle” the Newark protests, and posting selfies at airport departure gates hinting he’s ready to fly in and take over. Though the White House has not publicly responded to any of it.

We’re witnessing a visible sign of fracture within the far-right. Bovino clearly believes Trump is going soft and that the people around the president are watering down the agenda he was hired to execute. He’s even airing his grievances on the global stage. Trump may not notice now, but his former border chief trashing his administration certainly doesn’t project strength.

Folks, let’s be clear about what that word “remigration” actually means, because it’s a sanitized European import for the forced expulsion of human beings based on where they came from, and we ought to know that story cold. We ran our own version in 1954 and called it Operation Wetback, and we built something far worse in 1942 when we rounded up our own citizens into camps, the policy the Supreme Court blessed in Korematsu before Justice Robert Jackson warned that such a precedent lies around like a loaded weapon ready for any hand that cares to pick it up. The fight inside this administration isn’t over whether to point that weapon, it’s over how fast, and a free people had better understand the difference between those two things before somebody makes the choice for them.

Republican Says Trump Made a ‘$100 Million Mistake’

Republican strategist Brad Todd didn’t mince words about Trump’s endorsement of Ken Paxton in Texas’ Republican US Senate primary, telling CNN the president “made a 100-million-dollar mistake.”

John Cornyn, according to Todd, was a “much more credible” candidate who was “going to be a shoo-in,” while Paxton is “a real lift.”

Paxton brings serious baggage into a general election. There are the accusations involving separate primary residences claimed with his ex-wife, her filing for divorce on “biblical grounds,” and his criminal record and long history of corruption. The GOP’s Senate campaign arm had been attacking Paxton’s record before Trump endorsed him and he won the runoff. Those posts were quietly deleted after Paxton became the nominee.

Even Steve Bannon, who’s about as far in Trump’s corner as anyone gets, called it “very tough” for Paxton to win in November.

Trump, meanwhile, is already declaring the general election over, posting on his Nazi-infested social media site that Paxton’s Democratic opponent, state Rep. James Talarico, is “the worst Texas candidate” he’s ever seen.

The irony is that Trump used his considerable political capital to knock out a loyal Republican senator who would have cruised to re-election, in favor of a candidate his own strategists are describing as a high-risk gamble.

Texas is a Senate seat the GOP was never supposed to have to fight for. And Republicans will be asking whose fault that was if Paxton comes up short in November.

Folks, don’t mistake me here, John Cornyn’s no hero in this story, and his record’s got plenty in it that folks watching this show would never sign onto. But two things can be true at once, and the second one ought to worry every American, because we’re watching a major party torch one of its own safe seats just to feed one man’s grudge and reward a candidate drowning in corruption charges. George Washington spent half his Farewell Address in 1796 warning us that the spirit of party would one day let a cunning and ambitious man put his own appetites ahead of the country, and a party that picks loyalty over character every single time is precisely the machine he was afraid we’d hand our children.

We’re building something new at Raw America. We’re proving that you don’t need billionaire money to break original stories directly from the halls of Congress. We’re also delivering on our promise to bring you more live interviews with experts and insiders giving you the knowledge the administration wants to keep buried. Tomorrow at 2:30 PM Eastern Time we’ll be interviewing author Jared Yates Sexton about how the far right is co-opting progressive language for their own destructive cause. Watch live on our homepage at RawAmerica.com.

This work requires resources, and none of it happens without readers like you deciding that independent journalism is worth supporting. If you’re already a paying member of the Raw America community, thank you sincerely. If you’ve been enjoying our work on a free subscription, today is the best day to make the leap and subscribe to Raw America. Click the link below and help support journalism that actually holds power accountable.

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I’m Thom Hartmann. The fight is here. Thank you for being in it.

STORIES YOU MAY HAVE MISSED:

• Trump Discourages Regulation of Prediction Markets His Son Is Invested In. President Donald Trump is coming out against efforts to regulate prediction markets, in which bettors can make wagers on geopolitical and cultural events. Both Democrats and Republicans on Capitol Hill have called for stricter regulation on prediction markets to prevent insider trading from decision-makers, but the Trump administration’s Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) has brought cases in multiple states that are attempting to pass their own regulations. Trump’s eldest son, Donald Jr., is a strategic advisor to prediction markets Kalshi and Polymarket.

• CBS Considers Making Joe Rogan a ‘60 Minutes’ Correspondent. Podcaster Joe Rogan is reportedly being considered as a potential replacement for Anderson Cooper on its flagship newsmagazine. An unnamed television industry insider told RadarOnline that Rogan “opens a direct pipeline to the massive MAGA audience CBS has struggled to reach for years.” Rogan — a comedian and mixed martial arts commentator who has no TV news experience — is known for his unscripted, hours-long interviews on his podcast with polarizing subjects, whom he rarely challenges.

• Iran Shuts Down Talks with U.S. and Vows to Keep Strait of Hormuz Closed. Ongoing negotiations between American and Iranian officials broke down over the weekend, causing oil prices to jump by up to seven percent. Iranian state media also reported that the government will stop relaying messages via intermediaries and will move to fully close the Strait of Hormuz in response to American strikes in violation of the temporary ceasefire between the two nations. Iran added that “no dialogue will take place” until Israeli forces stop attacks in Gaza and Lebanon.

• Schumer Announces Coordinated Effort to Stop Trump’s ‘Slush Fund.’ Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) announced this week that Democrats will be waging a new offensive aimed at permanently halting Trump’s $1.776 billion taxpayer fund aimed at compensating MAGA loyalists. In a “Dear Colleague” letter, Schumer said his party will force Republicans to go on the record to either defend the politically toxic proposal or to vote with Democrats to kill it, and that he will head off attempts by Republicans to avoid an up-or-down vote on the fund.

• Trump Complains ‘Rigged’ Courts Are Halting His Birthright Citizenship Order. During a Truth Social posting marathon over the weekend, President Trump lashed out at the judicial system for being “rigged” against his agenda. The missive comes as the Supreme Court is considering litigation against his executive order seeking to repeal birthright citizenship, which is guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution. The Supreme Court’s term ends this month, and judges are expected to strike down the order as it directly violates the 14th Amendment.

Hey, Raw America family. Welcome to the Sunday Wrapup. I’m here with my cup of coffee, and for once I want to spend our time together on something hopeful. A piece in the Times caught my eye this week, and I think you need to read it too.

First, a quick thank you. The response to our work this week was extraordinary: hundreds of you wrote in and shared our work with friends who needed to see it. Your subscription is the reason we exist.

Now, let’s get into it.

The Country That Just Beat Its Own Autocrat

This week the New York Times ran a remarkable piece by M. Gessen from Budapest, reporting on the inauguration of Peter Magyar, the man who just did what almost no one in our era has managed to do. He beat an entrenched autocrat at the ballot box and won decisively enough to start undoing the damage.

For 16 years, Viktor Orban ran Hungary the way Trump dreams of running America. He dominated the media, rewrote election laws to favor his own party, and built what observers called a “mafia state.” He’d seemingly achieved what political theorists call “autocratic breakthrough,” the point past which you supposedly can’t vote a strongman out.

CPAC held conventions there to study his methods. JD Vance flew to Budapest to campaign for him. And then Hungarians handed the opposition not just a win, but a constitutional majority.

Here’s what grabbed me, and why I think it matters so much right now. Gessen lays out the lessons of how it happened, and almost every one of them is something we can do.

Magyar didn’t build another “machine of power.” He built an army of ordinary people: 2,000 local organizing hubs, tens of thousands of volunteers, thousands more working phones in the final week. He traveled to 700 towns and villages, holding five rallies a day, because it turns out that people seeing a candidate in person, again and again, is a powerful antidote to media fearmongering. When you can’t out-shout the propaganda machine, you go around it, mailbox to mailbox.

Magyar refused to mince words. Where earlier opposition figures called Orban’s government “corrupt,” Magyar called it a criminal enterprise. He ran on cleaning it up. Post-election polling showed corruption, not the economy, was the number one reason voters turned on Orban.

People were moved by moral outrage. By the sense that something precious was being stolen from the nation itself. Sound familiar? And the grassroots that powered the win weren’t political operations at all. They were teachers, parents fighting for kids in state care, Pride organizers, ordinary people who’d been fighting their own fights. In our context, Gessen notes, that’s the No Kings rallies, the ICE-resistance networks, and the people already in motion in your own town.

There’s one more lesson that matches our moment. Magyar’s rise began when he exposed a child sexual abuse scandal that Orban’s government had tried to bury. In Poland — the only other European country to claw back its democracy this way — a similar cover-up played a central role. There’s something about these stories that shows people exactly what unaccountable power does behind closed doors.

Jeffrey Epstein is our version of this scandal.

Magyar didn’t win by being crueler or more vulgar than the man he beat (the way, say, Gavin Newsom sometimes tries to out-troll Trump on his own terms). He won by being aspirational. At his inauguration he invited a choir of Roma children, Hungary’s most discriminated-against minority, to sing in Parliament. Grown legislators wept.

He told the people who’d voted against him that the country belonged to them too. That there was “no left, no right, only Hungarians.” He raised the European flag back over Parliament but kept a nationalist flag flying beside it, because his message was that this was everyone’s country now.

When the new prime minister finally walked out to the crowd, people were so desperate to close the distance that men hiked up their pants and went splashing straight across the reflecting pool the old regime had built to keep them away.

“This is your house now!” Magyar shouted.

I think we forget, in the grind of bad news, that elections are winnable. That a democratic America is still in the fight.

An autocrat who looked permanent, who had every institutional advantage, who had the world’s illiberal movement cheering him on, lost. Enough ordinary people refused to accept that he couldn’t be beaten, and then organized like they believed it.

We are not powerless. We’ve never been powerless. The machine wants us to feel that way, because despair is what keeps it standing.

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More Bright Spots From the Week

And it wasn’t just Hungary. Here at home, there were real wins this week worth holding onto. On Friday, a federal judge in Virginia temporarily blocked Trump’s $1.8 billion “weaponization” slush fund, the scheme that would have funneled taxpayer money to January 6 rioters and MAGA loyalists. The judge ordered the administration to stop all work setting it up while the courts weigh whether it’s even legal.

It’s a pause, not a permanent kill, but it’s the system working exactly the way it’s supposed to. And it came after the fund had already sent even Senate Republicans into open revolt.

The bigger picture keeps getting brighter. A wave of new polling this week confirmed what Republicans are privately panicking about: Democrats hold a commanding lead heading into the midterms, with one PBS/NPR/Marist survey showing a 14-point edge on the generic congressional ballot and independents breaking for Democrats by more than 30 points. Even Fox News’ own poll has voters preferring Democrats by seven.

The enthusiasm gap is real. The affordability crisis is landing squarely on the party in power, and analysts are openly comparing 2026 to the Democratic wave of 2018. None of it’s guaranteed. All of it has to be earned, the Magyar way: door by door. But the wind is at our backs.

That’s the note I want to leave you with this Sunday. Not that everything is fine, because it isn’t, but that the people who tell you resistance is futile are selling you something. Budapest just proved them wrong.

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The White House quietly released a medical memo that has Trump on the doorstep of clinical obesity. A new poll has Trump’s hand-picked Senate candidate in Texas trailing a Democrat. The president is openly second-guessing whether his own vice president has what it takes to succeed him. And America’s 250th birthday concert is collapsing as musical act after musical act refuses to take the stage.

Before we get into it, take a moment this Saturday to support independent journalism. We’re watching the real-time capture of America’s biggest newsrooms by right-wing billionaires with agendas. Jeff Bezos turned a national paper of record into a MAGA propaganda mill. The Murdochs keep expanding their empire, while the Ellison family is on the cusp of acquiring CNN’s parent company. If that deal goes through, right-wing oligarchs will control almost 80 percent of cable news in America.

We launched Raw America as the answer to the billionaire takeover of the media. We’re fully reader-supported, editorially independent, and not for sale. But our independence means we need readers like you to step up and become paying subscribers to do this work. We’ll never sell out to a billionaire or let corporate advertisers shape our coverage. We only answer to our readers. If independent media matters to you, take a moment to upgrade your free subscription to a paying one. We don’t take ads, so we genuinely can’t do this without you.

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Trump’s Own Doctors Put Him on the Edge of Obesity

The White House doesn’t usually drop medical news late on a Friday unless it’s hoping nobody reads it. So when a memo about Trump’s latest visit to Walter Reed went out after dark, it was worth a closer look.

According to the Washington Post, the president’s height was listed at 6’3” and his weight at 238 pounds, fourteen pounds heavier than his 2025 exam. That weight, paired with that height, lands him less than two pounds under the line the CDC uses to define clinical obesity. Retired Air Force colonel and administrative law judge Moe Davis noted that the commander-in-chief is right at the threshold.

Plenty of observers found the specific number suspicious. One retired senior assistant special counsel argued the 238 figure was deliberately chosen because it sits just on the “overweight” side of the obesity border, not the obese side. Whether or not that’s true, it tells you something that the White House felt the need to thread a needle that fine.

The founders never wrote a clause about presidential body mass, of course. But they did design a system that depends on an informed public being able to judge the fitness of the people they elect. When a White House drops a carefully engineered number on a Friday night and hopes the weekend swallows it, that’s not transparency. That’s the oldest trick in the book, performed by people who think you aren’t paying attention.

‘Paxton Is Cooked’: Texas Slips Away From the GOP

Texas isn’t supposed to be a competitive Senate state. Republicans have spent decades treating it as a vault. This week, the lock started to rattle.

A new poll from Texas Public Opinion Research has Democratic state lawmaker and Presbyterian minister James Talarico leading Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton 47 to 43. What makes that number dangerous for Republicans isn’t just the four-point gap, it’s that Talarico is closing in on the 50 percent mark, meaning Paxton would have to sweep all remaining undecided voters just to catch up.

Paxton beat incumbent Senator John Cornyn in a blowout primary runoff after Trump endorsed him. Now nearly a third of the Republicans who backed Cornyn in that runoff say they’ll vote for a Democrat in November. More than half point to Paxton’s criminality or corruption as the reason. Paxton carries a previous criminal indictment, an impeachment, and accusations of an extramarital affair.

A separate poll this week showed Talarico leading among Latino voters, a plurality of the state, by 27 points. Election analyst G. Elliott Morris put it plainly: if the real result lands anywhere near that, Paxton is cooked.

The trouble for Republicans is that even holding Texas now looks like it’ll cost hundreds of millions of dollars, money that gets drained away from every other battleground state on the map. This is what happens when a party lets a president pick its candidates based on loyalty instead of electability. Trump demanded Paxton. Trump got Paxton. And now the most reliable red state in the country is suddenly a race.

If you’re finding value in this kind of reporting, this is the moment to chip in. We don’t have a billionaire backer or corporate advertisers deciding what we cover. We have readers who decide the truth is worth funding. Upgrade to a paying subscription today.

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Trump Is Already Doubting His Own Heir

Loyalty is the only currency that matters in Trump’s world, and JD Vance has spent two years paying it in full. It may not be enough.

The New York Times reports that in private conversations with aides and allies, Trump keeps circling back to the same question about his vice president: does Vance have what it takes to go all the way?

The president usually answers his own question: he’s not so sure.

The needling is relentless. Trump reportedly reminds Vance that he’s never won a tough race without Trump’s help. He’s brought up the number of vacations Vance has taken. He’s raised, to Vance’s face, the vice president’s initial opposition to the Iran war, telling him, “I’m more of a peace person than you are, but I had to do it.” He’s revisited the moment Vance fumbled a national championship football trophy on the White House lawn.

Trump is running a running focus group on his own successor, in public, for sport.

Meanwhile, Trump has showered praise on Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who travels with him on Air Force One and bonds with him on Florida weekends. At a Rose Garden dinner this month, Trump went around the room asking guests, “Who likes JD Vance? Who likes Marco Rubio?” and made clear he was endorsing neither.

Vance’s problem runs deeper than trophy fumbles. His political brand was built on opposing exactly the kind of foreign war Trump just launched. Tucker Carlson, an ally, says the Iran war has put Vance in a tough spot. Marjorie Taylor Greene, who once recommended Vance for the job, warned that there’s nothing left to protect his old antiwar reputation. And in Indiana and Hungary, the two places Trump sent him to deliver wins, Vance came up empty both times.

Nobody Wants to Play Trump’s Birthday Party

The country turns 250 this year, and Trump wanted a concert worthy of an emperor. What he’s getting is a punchline.

The plan was a star-studded musical extravaganza on the National Mall, the Freedom 250 concerts running from late June into July. The reality is a steady stream of artists announcing they won’t be there. The Commodores, Young MC, Morris Day and the Time, Bret Michaels, and country star Martina McBride have all pulled out.

McBride said she was misled, told the event would be nonpartisan, and didn’t want her fans to feel she’d abandoned the meaning behind her music. That’s an artist with a conscience reading the room. The acts that have stayed on board tell their own story. Fab Morvan of Milli Vanilli, the group whose Grammy was famously stripped after it came out they hadn’t performed their own recordings, is appearing. So is Vanilla Ice, who told a celebrity outlet, “I don’t even vote, so I don’t even care.”

Bill Maher had the line of the week, joking that it’s got to hurt when you can’t close the deal with Milli Vanilli. He also took a shot at the other vanity project Trump is pushing, a new $250 bill with the president’s own face on it, a denomination no functioning economy has ever needed.

There’s something almost perfect about all of it. A president who governs through spectacle planned a spectacle, and the actual artists of the country looked at the invitation and said no. The founders built a republic, not a monarchy, specifically so that no one man’s birthday became a national obligation.

Two hundred and fifty years later, the test of that idea is playing out in the simplest way imaginable: when the king throws a party, do people show up? So far, mostly, they’re declining.

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We’re building out our presence on Capitol Hill so we can break the big stories, especially the ones the billionaire-owned outlets won’t touch. We’re bringing viewers more live interviews with elected officials, policy experts, and insiders sharing what the Trump regime and its enablers in corporate media want kept hidden from you.

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A federal judge has ordered Trump’s name stripped from the Kennedy Center. The president bought stock in the UFC’s parent company right before hosting a UFC fight at the White House. Kash Patel’s FBI showed up at the private homes of election workers in a key swing state. And an ICE agent who shot a man in Minneapolis has finally been arrested in Texas, eleven days after charges were filed.

Before we get into the news, take a moment to support independent journalism. Pro-Trump billionaires are counting on their bottomless bank accounts to snuff out all accountability reporting by buying up media outlets and firing reporters who refuse to be propagandists. Jeff Bezos has conquered the Washington Post. Patrick Soon-Shiong has neutered the L.A. Times. And once the Ellison family acquires CNN, right-wing billionaires will control almost 80 percent of cable news in America.

Raw America was launched as the answer to the billionaire takeover of the media. We are fully reader-supported, editorially independent and not for sale. But that also means that we are completely dependent on readers like you stepping up to become paying subscribers. After just four months we’ve broken major scoops, interviewed newsmakers like Senator Mark Kelly and provided on-the-ground coverage from Congress and even an ICE detention center. We’re just getting started, but we need your help to keep providing high-quality independent journalism. If just one in twenty people reading this become paying subscribers, we can fully cover all of our costs through the next year. Will you be the one in twenty?

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Judge Orders Trump’s Name Removed from Kennedy Center

Congress named the Kennedy Center after President John F. Kennedy. And according to a federal judge, only Congress can change that.

U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper, an Obama appointee, ruled Friday that the Trump administration had to remove all physical signage bearing Trump’s name from the iconic Washington venue. That means taking down the signs and scrubbing any references to a “Trump Kennedy Center” from official materials. The administration has 14 days to comply.

Judge Cooper wasn’t subtle about it. He wrote that the Kennedy Center’s organic statute makes it “crystal clear” that the center is named for President Kennedy, and that it cannot bear any other formal name based on the board’s unilateral decision.

The lawsuit was brought by Democratic Representative Joyce Beatty. And the ruling is a straightforward one. The administration simply didn’t have the authority to do what it did.

This is a pattern, of course. The Trump White House has consistently tried to act as if congressional statutes are optional, as if the executive branch can just rewrite the rules when it feels like it. Thankfully, the courts are pushing back.

Trump Caught Buying UFC Stock Before White House Cage Fight

President Trump bought between $15,000 and $50,000 worth of stock in UFC’s parent company, according to his latest financial disclosures. That’s the same company that’s about to get an enormous amount of free publicity from a fight scheduled to take place on the White House lawn on June 14, which happens to be Trump’s birthday.

The event is called “Freedom 250,” and it’s being framed as part of the country’s 250th anniversary celebrations. But the financial arrangements around it aren’t exactly patriotic.

Sponsorship packages for the fights are selling for as much as $1.5 million. Neither the White House nor the UFC has said where that money is going. The president and TKO are controlling who gets access to the event, and the process is opaque by design. Construction of the octagon on the White House lawn has already begun.

Every bit of that attention benefits TKO’s stock. And Trump owns TKO stock.

This isn’t the first time the president has been accused of trading on market-moving information he controls. From tariff announcements to Iran war speculation, there’s a documented pattern of the president and those around him appearing to profit from information the public doesn’t have in advance.

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Kash Patel Sends FBI Agents to Election Officials’ Doors

Federal agents in Kash Patel’s FBI have shown up at the private homes of current and former Wisconsin election officials, according to reporting from The Washington Post. They’re conducting interviews as part of an investigation into widely and repeatedly debunked 2020 election conspiracy theories.

This isn’t the first state the FBI has targeted. Agents have seized ballot images in Arizona, raided an election hub in Georgia, and demanded ballot access in Michigan. Now the probe has expanded to the Milwaukee area.

What are agents asking about? One involves a flash drive with absentee ballot results. In 2020, Milwaukee’s election director at the time gathered flash drives from ballot tabulators and brought them, under police escort, to a county office. She realized she’d forgotten one, and another election worker handed it to a police officer. That’s it. Election observers from both parties watched it happen.

The other theory involves a supposed secret backroom where an unnamed man from Illinois supposedly printed ballots for Biden. That claim originated with a public records lawsuit filed by a convicted felon. A judge threw it out.

None of this has stopped the FBI from showing up unannounced at people’s homes rather than contacting their offices through official channels. Critics, including local officials, are calling it blatant intimidation.

Officials in Wisconsin are also worried the FBI will try to seize absentee ballots that, because of a quirk in state voting rules, can be traced back to individual voters. Federal agents could potentially match voters to their choices, eliminating ballot secrecy entirely.

Biden beat Trump by more than 7 million votes nationally, winning 306 electoral votes to Trump’s 232. And using the FBI to relitigate it is a direct threat to the integrity of American elections.

ICE Officer Wanted for Minneapolis Shooting Arrested in Texas

Christian Castro, a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer, was arrested Friday in Texas, eleven days after prosecutors in Minnesota charged him with assault and falsely reporting a crime.

The charges stem from January 14th, when Castro fired through the front door of a Minneapolis duplex and shot Julio Cesar Sosa-Celis, a Venezuelan man, in the thigh. Sosa-Celis was legally in the United States. So was the other man present, Alfredo Alejandro Aljorna.

Federal authorities initially accused both men of attacking officers with a broom handle and a snow shovel. A federal judge later dismissed those charges. ICE and the Justice Department opened an investigation into whether officers lied.

ICE Director Todd Lyons acknowledged that Castro was one of two agents who lied about what happened. ICE still called the state prosecution “unlawful” and “a political stunt.”

Castro is the second federal agent charged over conduct during Operation Metro Surge, the Trump administration’s Minnesota immigration crackdown. Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty called Friday’s arrest “a critical step forward.” The county is still investigating Renee Good’s and Alex Pretti’s killings and has sued the Trump administration to gain access to evidence in those cases.

Federal agents should never be able to shoot legally present residents, lie about it, and expect the government to protect them from prosecution. Friday’s arrest is a reminder that accountability isn’t always fast, but it will always inevitably come.

Billionaire-owned media outlets won’t give stories like these the attention they should, but Raw America is working to correct that. This summer, we’re building out our Capitol Hill team to break more exclusive news directly from Congress. We’re also bringing you more live interviews with policy experts and officials who are giving you inside knowledge you won’t get anywhere else. Next week we’ll be talking to President Obama’s former deputy national security advisor Ben Rhodes, scholar and author Jared Yates Sexton and veteran TV news executive and reporter Jennifer Schulze.

None of this work would be possible without the support of paying subscribers. If you’ve subscribed to Raw America, thank you sincerely. If you’ve been enjoying our daily news breakdowns, live interviews and Capitol reporting on a free subscription, today is the best day to upgrade to a paying one.

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Thanks for watching. I’m British Chris, with Raw America. Have a great weekend.

STORIES YOU MAY HAVE MISSED:

• Trump Administration Begs Troops to Hang Out with Him on His Birthday. New details are emerging about the UFC fight on the South Lawn of the White House on June 14, which is President Donald Trump’s 80th birthday. According to reporting from the Washington Post, the Pentagon is currently seeking out low-level military personnel to be seat-fillers at the cage match, and that they must meet certain height and weight requirements. Troops selected to attend will have to pay their own way.

• Pam Bondi Throws Todd Blanche Under the Bus in House Hearing. During a closed-door interview with the House Oversight Committee on Friday, former Attorney General Pam Bondi made it clear that matters pertaining to the release of the Jeffrey Epstein files are now the responsibility of acting Attorney General Todd Blanche. Ranking Democrat Robert Garcia (D-Calif.) said if Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) doesn’t bring Blanche before the committee, he has the votes to subpoena Blanche to compel him to appear, with FBI Director Kash Patel “number two on the list.”

• Wisconsin Warns U.S. Postal Service of ‘Unusually Long’ Mail Voting Delays. Election officials in Wisconsin — which has long been one of the most pivotal swing states in presidential elections — are now warning in a letter to the U.S. Postal Service that it’s taking an “unusually long” time for people who requested absentee ballots to actually receive them. One county clerk wrote in a memo attached to the letter that they had to mark 40 ballots as returned after deadline in the April primary election, noting that they had never seen that many before in their career.

• Official White House Website Brags About ICE Arresting Over 700 U.S. Citizens. The White House’s new aliens.gov website mocking undocumented immigrants as extraterrestrials includes data showing U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has arrested hundreds of native-born U.S. citizens. The site boasts of more than 500,000 arrests in roughly 12,000 cities and towns across the United States. WIRED found that in 715 of those locations, the White House’s website identifies at least one of the arrestees as having been born in the U.S. And in 83 of the locations listed, every single arrestee is an American citizen.

• Pope Leo XIV Asked Chicago Mayor About Trump’s ICE Crackdown During Meeting. While meeting in Rome with Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson, Pope Leo XIV — who was born as Robert Prevost in Chicago — reportedly had questions about how the Windy City is dealing with the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown. Johnson told reporters the pope “wanted to know the conditions on the ground in Chicago” and “how we were responding.” The mayor added that Pope Leo XIV was acutely aware of “the mass effort to deport immigrants from the city of Chicago and really around the country.”

Corporations can now vote in Delaware. And they’re doing it.

Seriously. Not dystopian science fiction or a new novel by an AI version of George Orwell. Actual corporations — what America’s first Supreme Court Justice, John Marshall, in 1819 called “an artificial being, invisible, intangible, and existing only in contemplation of law” — are today voting in elections for everything from the mayor and town council to referendums on corporate taxes and limits on corporate behavior.

What could possibly go wrong?

There are, after all, more corporations than people in Delaware. They can now decide who’s going to run the government, what the laws are, and — through their votes to elect humans who’ll take corporate money to do what corporations want (something else that corrupt Republicans on the Supreme Court legalized) — even what regulations companies must follow and what limits there are on their behavior.

In a few weeks, my next book will be coming out, “Who Killed the American Dream: The Greatest Political Crime Ever Told,” and the timing couldn’t be more synchronous.

The Hartmann Report

A Daily Newsletter of Renaissance Thinking about Progressive Politics, Economics, Science, and the Political News Issues of Our Day

By Thom Hartmann

The book, written like a murder mystery but 100% true, tells the story of how a corrupt Supreme Court clerk conspired with a corrupt Supreme Court justice to hand “corporate personhood” to the railroad corporations that were then among the richest and most powerful in the world.

The decision was handed down in 1886; in it, the Court itself didn’t say a single word about corporate personhood. Back then corporations had the rights of “artificial persons” so they could pay taxes, own land, and execute contracts and lawsuits, but nobody seriously claimed they could assert human rights like free speech, privacy, or the right to vote.

But the clerk of the Court, a wealthy plutocrat named John Chandler Bancroft Davis, slipped into the headnote of the case — a commentary for law students and others wanting a summary of a decision, which carries absolutely no legal weight whatsoever — that the Chief Justice, Morrison Remick Waite, had claimed corporations were “persons,” implying they had rights under the 14th Amendment.

The railroads then hired a few retired members of Congress who were on the committees that wrote the Amendment as frontmen and for the next five years they traveled the country claiming that the “actual intent” of the authors of the 14th Amendment was to grant human rights to corporations, not former slaves.

Their efforts worked; just ten years later, in the Covington & Lexington Turnpike v. Sandford case, the Court cited the Santa Clara decision and ruled:

“[C]orporations are persons within the meaning of the constitutional provisions forbidding the deprivation of property without due process of law as well as a denial of the equal protection of the laws.”

That badly abused Amendment, ratified on July 9, 1868, was written to liberate formerly enslaved people, and its language is pretty clear about that:

“No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” (emphasis added)

The railroad corporations claimed that because they were taxed at different rates on property they owned in Santa Clara and Santa Ana counties in California, they were “persons” being denied the “equal protection of the law.” The Court determined that the California constitution already dealt with tax issues like that, giving the railroad the relief they wanted, but there was no federal action at all.

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However, the lie about corporate personhood buried in the headnote took root and lives on to this day. For example, yesterday afternoon I asked DuckDuckGo’s AI the question:

“Who won the 1886 Santa Clara Supreme Court decision?”

And the answer I got back was:

“The Southern Pacific Railroad Company won the 1886 Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad decision. The Supreme Court ruled in favor of the railroad, affirming that corporations are considered ‘persons’ under the Fourteenth Amendment.”

None of that is true, but it was nonetheless the basis of the 1978 First National Bank v Bellotti decision written by Lewis Powell himself (of “Powell Memo” fame), claiming that because corporations are “persons” with rights under the Bill of Rights — including the First Amendment right to free speech — they could spend big bucks to swing elections. In that decision, the Court majority footnoted:

“It has been settled for almost a century that corporations are persons within the meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment. Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific R. Co., 118 U. S. 394 (1886); see Covington & Lexington Turnpike R. Co. v. Sandford, 164 U. S. 578 (1896).”

Because corporations don’t have mouths to speak with, Powell reasoned, their money served the same purpose. So they could “speak” freely with millions thrown into elections, corrupting our democracy to their benefit and our detriment.

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Two years earlier, in Buckley v Valeo, the Court had struck down the 1970s campaign contribution limits Congress put into law after the Nixon bribery scandals. They ruled that wealthy Senator James Buckley (brother of William F. Buckley) could use his own money to finance his election campaign because his money was functionally the same thing as his First Amendment-protected free speech.

Which led straight to Clarence Thomas — the most corrupt Supreme Court justice in history, then on the take from a Nazi-memorabilia-collecting rightwing billionaire — to cast the deciding vote in Citizens United.

That bizarre decision blew up hundreds of campaign finance and other good-government laws, claiming that there should be virtually no limits on the money morbidly rich individuals, corporations, and even foreign entities could pour into US elections.

Clarence Thomas even cited the Bellotti case and, thus, its reference to Santa Clara to justify handing our democratic processes over to the richest people and biggest companies in the nation.

And now we’ve arrived at terminal insanity. As Reuters reported on Tuesday:

“A judge in Delaware, where many big U.S. companies are incorporated, ruled ‌on Tuesday that a small town that allows corporations to vote in municipal elections was not violating the state’s constitution.

“Delaware Superior Court Judge Craig Karsnitz said the beach town of Fenwick Island was not diluting human votes by allowing companies ​and other legal entities that own property to cast votes in municipal elections.”

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More corporations are incorporated in Delaware than any other state in the nation because of that state’s lax corporate laws and low corporate taxes: there are more corporations in the state than people.

And now they can vote.

I wrote Who Stole the American Dream? to wake people up to the corruption of our democracy by the rich and powerful, particularly the corporate “artificial beings” that keep buying off judges and politicians because of corrupt Supreme Court cases citing that corrupt headnote, starting with Santa Clara and then going to Covington and then straight-lined to Bellotti and Citizens United.

The entire thing is a fraud, a 140-year-long scam, as knowledgeable legislators like Sheldon Whitehouse, Bernie Sanders, Ro Khanna, Mark Pocan, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Pramila Jayapal, and Elizabeth Warren will tell you in a New York minute.

And it needs to be overturned.

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There are a few ways to do that, the most effective being a constitutional amendment, but reorganizing the Supreme Court and even strong legislation can take a bite out of it. I detail them all in the book, and good government groups like Move to Amend and Public Citizen have been on this case for years.

The situation, after all, has become so bad that I suggested in my book Rebooting the American Dream (which Bernie read from on the floor of the Senate in his famous filibuster) that members of Congress should be required to wear NASCAR-style patches to let folks know which corporations are “sponsoring” them.

If we don’t get active and take back our democracy for humans, corporations may one day vote one of themselves into office and the Republican majority on the Supreme Court will probably simply nod along.

The book, FYI, is now available for pre-order…

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Raw America Is Building Something Big. But We Need Your Help to Do It.

Faceless corporations are rapidly expanding their powers in Trump’s America, and now instead of just pouring money into our elections, they now even have the right to vote. But the billionaire-owned press is sweeping this alarming story under the rug. This is exactly why we created Raw America.

This week, we broke major news in an exclusive live interview with former Rudy Giuliani associate and Trumpworld insider Lev Parnas, who has it on good authority that Trump is planning to indict former President Barack Obama in a kangaroo court overseen by one of his hand-picked judges in Florida. Raw America was the first outlet to report on this. You can watch the full interview by clicking here.

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We’re just getting started. Next week, we’re interviewing President Obama’s former deputy national security advisor Ben Rhodes about the Iran war and the state of the NATO alliance under Trump. We’ll also be bringing you an exclusive live interview with veteran TV news executive reporter Jennifer Schulze about billionaire David Ellison’s gutting of CBS News and what it means for journalism. We’re doing all of this as a four-month old outlet with no billionaire backer or corporate advertisers.

But this also means that none of this work would be possible without readers like you stepping up to be paying subscribers. If you’ve become a paying member of the Raw America community, thank you sincerely. We mean that. But if you’ve been enjoying Thom’s weekly column, our daily news roundups, our exclusive interviews and our Capitol Hill reporting on a free subscription, today is the best day to change that.

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Trump’s new DHS Secretary is reportedly obsessed with a revenge scheme that could cripple American air travel. A veteran 60 Minutes reporter blames Donald Trump for killing one of journalism’s most storied institutions. Former Attorney General Pam Bondi is sitting for congressional questioning about the Epstein files, under terms that Democrats are calling a sham. And the co-founder of Students for Trump has been arrested for allegedly assaulting and threatening to kill a woman he was dating.

Before we dive in, please consider becoming a paid subscriber to Raw America. This week, the MAGA billionaire who owns CBS just had his lackey dismantle 60 Minutes. Jeff Bezos is continuing to run the Washington Post into the ground. Every day, more reporters daring to hold the powerful accountable are getting fired. The richest men in America are intent on conquering the media so they can act with total impunity.

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Trump DHS Secretary’s Revenge Obsession Could Throw America Into Chaos

Markwayne Mullin hasn’t even been DHS Secretary for three months, and he’s already cooking up a scheme that could completely destabilize American air travel.

According to CNN, Mullin has become fixated on an idea to punish so-called sanctuary cities by pulling customs staffing from their airports. He’s arguing that if local officials won’t cooperate with immigration enforcement, the federal government shouldn’t process international arrivals at their airports. It sounds like a tough-guy talking point. The problem is it’s also deeply reckless.

Airlines for America, the lobbying group for major American carriers, put out a statement saying reduced customs staffing at major airports would have a “devastating effect” on the airline and tourism industries. The U.S. Travel Association says their reps actually met with Mullin, and he confirmed the administration is considering pulling customs agents from major international airports.

Mullin is ignoring the basic fact that just because an international flight lands at JFK or SFO doesn’t mean the passengers are staying in New York or San Francisco. Airline routes are set way in advance. You can’t just reroute international flights to friendlier airports. Most of the busiest airports don’t have extra capacity sitting around.

Disruptions at blue-state airports would cascade into red-state airports, into cargo delays, into hits on tourism revenue in communities all across the country.

Even Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy is speaking out against it, saying America “shouldn’t shut down air travel in a state that doesn’t agree with our politics.” For those of you keeping score, that’s a Cabinet secretary publicly breaking with another Cabinet secretary.

Two Trump officials told CNN the push is seen internally as “more of a personal desire of Mullin’s than one coming from inside the West Wing.” Another said Mullin has been “obsessed” with the idea, bringing it up unprompted in White House meetings.

We have a Cabinet secretary who keeps floating a catastrophic policy idea that his own colleagues think is reckless, that the White House hasn’t greenlit, and that the industry says could be devastating. And he just keeps bringing it up anyway.

This is what the founders feared when they warned about faction. James Madison wrote in Federalist 10 that the great danger of a republic is officials who use federal power to punish citizens for their political choices, and that’s exactly what’s being floated here. When a Cabinet secretary treats American cities as enemy territory because they voted the wrong way, we’re not looking at policy disagreement anymore. We’re looking at the slow unraveling of the idea that we’re one country.

Longtime 60 Minutes Correspondent Blames Trump for Killing Show

One of American journalism’s most iconic institutions is effectively dead, and a former correspondent who spent three decades there is pointing the finger directly at Donald Trump.

On Thursday, CBS News editor-in-chief Bari Weiss fired three of 60 Minutes’ most senior women in a single day. Executive producer Tanya Simon, who built her career at the show over 30 years, is out and is being replaced by someone with no television news experience. Correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi, who publicly clashed with Weiss over a segment that was allegedly pulled to avoid angering the Trump administration, was also fired. So was Cecilia Vega, the first Latina correspondent in the show’s 50-plus year history.

Vega found out she was fired over a short Zoom call. Weiss didn’t even personally deliver the news to Alfonsi.

Steve Kroft, who was a 60 Minutes correspondent for about 30 years, didn’t pull punches, telling Status News he never expected the death of 60 Minutes “would be executed by the president of the United States.” Kroft added that Trump’s “fingerprints and DNA are all over this,” and that after making constant threats against the show, “he finally got his wish.”

Trump has attacked 60 Minutes publicly for years. He filed a $10 billion lawsuit against it, which CBS initially called meritless before settling for $16 million to help clear the path for Shari Redstone to sell Paramount to MAGA billionaire David Ellison.

Inside the show’s Manhattan offices, the mood was grim. One staffer told Status it was “like a funeral in here.” Another staffer said the show was being gutted, and that they “don’t see how 60 will be able to function after this.”

Former executive producer Bill Owens, who resigned last summer citing corporate interference, was also blunt, saying: “They’re killing 60 Minutes.”

Thomas Jefferson once said that if he had to choose between a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, he’d choose the newspapers. He understood that a free press isn’t a courtesy in a democracy, it’s the immune system. And when a sitting president can sue an institution into submission and watch its best journalists get walked out the door, the immune system is failing in real time. The founders gave us the First Amendment first for a reason. They knew that everything else collapses without it.

This is the end result of right-wing billionaires buying up media outlets. Any outlet that tries to hold power accountable will be slowly strangled until it’s effectively dead. This is why we created Raw America, and why independent journalism is so essential. Help keep us afloat by subscribing today.

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Pam Bondi Questioned Over Epstein Files – with One Major Catch

Former Attorney General Pam Bondi is sitting down for congressional questioning Friday in front of House Oversight Committee investigators, but Democrats on the panel are arguing the whole thing is essentially a setup designed to give Bondi cover without actually producing accountability.

Bondi was subpoenaed back in March through a surprise motion from Republican Nancy Mace of South Carolina, which passed with support from four Republican colleagues and every Democrat on the panel. The subpoena came after years of public demand for answers about the federal investigation into convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

But Bondi isn’t being formally deposed by the committee. Today is a “transcribed interview,” which Democrats say violates the spirit of what a subpoena is supposed to produce. Bondi won’t be sworn in as a witness. Her testimony won’t be filmed. And according to ranking Democrat Robert Garcia of California, Bondi won’t even have to give a reason or invoke the Fifth Amendment if she refuses to answer a question. She can just decline and move on.

Additionally, Harmeet Dhillon, who leads the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division, showed up at Bondi’s side for the interview. Democrats are now wondering if the DOJ is effectively acting as Bondi’s personal attorney, which would be an enormous conflict of interest.

The DOJ also tried to limit questioning to just two hours and restrict questions only to the Epstein files specifically.

Democrat. Melanie Stansbury of New Mexico was direct, telling The Hill that Bondi “violated a congressional subpoena demanding the files” and “repeatedly engaged in manufactured lies to the American people over the Epstein case.” She added that based on what she’s seen in unredacted files, there are “dozens of potentially prosecutable crimes” in the Epstein files, and yet the DOJ hasn’t pursued a single investigation.

Stansbury emphasized some of those investigations would be directly tied to President Trump.

After Trump fired Bondi in April, the DOJ argued she shouldn’t have to testify at all since she was no longer attorney general. Some Republicans on the panel seemed to agree. But the subpoena held. And now Bondi has sat down under terms that give her significant protection from any real scrutiny.

The Epstein files have never fully seen daylight. And the people who know where the bodies are buried keep finding new ways to avoid answering for it.

Congress’s subpoena power isn’t decorative. It’s the tool the founders gave the legislative branch to keep the executive honest, and it’s the entire reason Article I sits before Article II in the Constitution. When the Justice Department shows up to shield its former boss from questions about a sex-trafficking investigation tied to the sitting president, we’re watching the oversight power get hollowed out in broad daylight. A republic that can’t compel honest answers from its own attorney general is a republic that’s already lost its grip on accountability.

Students for Trump Co-Founder Arrested for Allegedly Threatening to Kill a Woman

Ryan Fournier, who co-founded Students for Trump and also serves with the PAC connected to Charlie Kirk’s Turning Point USA, was arrested this week in Washington D.C.

According to a police affidavit obtained by Defector, a woman Fournier had been dating told police she found him passed out on the floor when she arrived at his place. When she woke him up, he allegedly “started swinging his fists at her and struck her in the face with a closed fist two or three times.”

She then said he got on top of her, had a knife at his side, and told her, “I’ll kill everyone here.” She told police the pro-Trump activist regularly makes statements like that.

A witness who identified himself as Fournier’s roommate told police he overheard Fournier saying things like “Do you want me to crush your head in with this lamp?” and “Do you want to die today?” The witness said the woman appeared to have been punched in the face, and she reportedly pleaded with the roommate, “Don’t let him stab me.” Both the witness and the woman hid in the bathroom until police arrived.

This isn’t Fournier’s first brush with the law. Back in November 2023, he was arrested on domestic violence charges for allegedly pistol-whipping a girlfriend. He’s also had two DUI arrests. And reporting from Yahoo News revealed he allegedly helped a friend create a fake law firm to defraud clients, then turned that friend in to federal authorities.

Fournier is one of the more visible figures in the online MAGA youth movement, someone who built his brand around patriotism and traditional values. The arrest affidavit reveals a very different person.

There’s a long, painful pattern in American political history of movements that wrap themselves in the language of “traditional values” while harboring leaders who treat the people closest to them with contempt and violence. The mask of patriotism has always been useful cover for men who want power without responsibility. And when a movement keeps elevating these figures, prior arrests and all, it tells you something about what that movement actually values, regardless of what it claims at the podium.

Stories like these take real resources to bring to you consistently. And Raw America is building something that independent media almost never gets to build.

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I’m Thom Hartmann. The fight is here. Thank you for being in it. We’ll see you next week.

STORIES YOU MAY HAVE MISSED:

• Judge Temporarily Blocks Trump from Setting Up $1.8 Billion Slush Fund. U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema issued a ruling Friday blocking President Donald Trump from creating a $1.776 billion fund to compensate January 6 insurrectionists and other MAGA loyalists. Brinkema — who was appointed by former President Bill Clinton — prevented the Trump administration from “taking any further action” to establish the fund while the legal process plays out in court.

• More Americans Going Hungry Now Than During Covid-19 Pandemic. Americans are experiencing a hunger crisis that is outpacing even the worst parts of the Covid-19 pandemic during 2020, according to new data. The Federal Reserve Bank of New York found that there is a “remarkable increase in food insecurity” in the U.S. right now primarily due to price increases resulting from Trump’s war in Iran. Around 10 percent of families surveyed reported having to skip meals due to costs, and 16 percent of respondents reported relying on local food banks. In 2020, four percent of families reported missing meals.

• Billionaires Fear Populist Revolt Due to AI. As artificial intelligence is poised to eliminate millions of jobs in the coming years while simultaneously allowing the wealthiest billionaires to become trillionaires, some of the world’s richest men are trying to stave off populist anger. Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk — who is likely to be a trillionaire after SpaceX rolls out its initial public offering in June — has proposed “universal HIGH INCOME” checks from the government. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, who recently argued against higher taxes for billionaires, has proposed eliminating federal income taxes for the bottom 50 percent of Americans.

• MAGA U.S. Senate Candidate Caught Fabricating Endorsements. The website for Rep. Mike Collins (R-Ga.), who is the frontrunner in Georgia’s Republican U.S. Senate primary, lists multiple endorsements from various local officials. But according to the conservative Daily Caller, many of those named never endorsed him at all. Wayne County Sheriff Chuck Mosely — who is included among the endorsements on Collins’ website — told the outlet: “I wouldn’t vote for [Collins] if he’s the only one running.”

• ICE Detainees Say They Were Beaten and Pepper-Sprayed in Their Cells. Families of detainees at the Delaney Hall immigrant detention center in Newark, New Jersey say federal agents repeatedly beat and used chemical weapons on detainees in their cells, including tear gas and pepper spray. Detainees at the facility are a week into a prolonged hunger strike to protest conditions including being served rotten and spoiled food, being denied due process rights, not being allowed visits with legal counsel and violent acts of retaliation from ICE agents over their protests.

The Trump administration is reportedly planning to put the president’s face on a new denomination of currency. Bari Weiss is officially blowing up 60 Minutes, firing veteran journalists and handing the keys to an outsider with no broadcast experience. Dell just landed a massive Pentagon contract after its CEO pledged billions to Trump’s pet project. And the Justice Department is now suing four Democratic-led states for refusing to give ICE agents special license plates.

Before we dive in, Raw America needs your help to keep our independent journalism going. We were launched as a direct response to right-wing billionaires like the Ellison family, the Murdochs and Jeff Bezos buying up major media outlets and turning them into propaganda mills. We are fully reader-supported, editorially independent and not for sale.

But that also means none of our work would be possible without readers stepping up to be paying subscribers. If you’ve been enjoying our daily news roundups, our exclusive live interviews and our Capitol Hill reporting on a free subscription, take a moment to upgrade to a paying membership. Every subscription is an act of resistance against the MAGA billionaires waging war on the Fourth Estate.

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Trump Plans to Put His Face on New $250 Bill

The Bureau of Engraving and Printing is reportedly laying the groundwork to print a commemorative $250 bill with Donald Trump’s face on it.

A Treasury Department spokesperson confirmed this is in the works, saying the agency is conducting “appropriate planning and due diligence” in response to what they’re calling “active legislation.”

Here’s the problem. There’s already a law that prohibits putting the image of a living person on U.S. currency. For that to change, Congress would have to pass an explicit exemption. The legislation being cited, introduced by South Carolina Republican Joe Wilson, hasn’t gone anywhere. There’s no evidence it’s going to pass anytime soon.

And here’s the detail that really tells you everything you need to know about the moment we’re living in: Trump’s signature would appear on the bill. Treasury Secretary Bessent is apparently planning to “recognize the historic achievements of our great country and President Trump” by adding the president’s signature to the currency.

They’re also insisting no tax dollars are being spent, since the Bureau of Engraving and Printing is self-sustaining. That’s a convenient talking point. But the underlying question is more about what it means when the machinery of the federal government starts treating a sitting president like Kim Jong-Un instead of a public servant.

Bari Weiss Announces Total Dismantling of 60 Minutes

CBS News editor in chief Bari Weiss is blowing up 60 Minutes.

Weiss, who was appointed to run CBS News by tech heir David Ellison and who has zero prior television experience, is officially firing the show’s longtime executive producer, Tanya Simon, who had been with 60 Minutes for more than three decades.

Her replacement is tech journalist Nick Bilton, a documentary filmmaker who has never worked a single day in traditional broadcast news.

That’s not all. CBS also fired Cecilia Vega, the show’s first Latina correspondent. And it fired veteran reporter Sharyn Alfonsi, whose segment on torture in a notorious El Salvador prisons was pulled off the air by Weiss last year before it ultimately leaked anyway.

60 Minutes is the most-watched news program in the country. Its ratings actually went up nine percent this season. There was no performance problem. There was no editorial crisis that required this level of intervention.

What there was, was Sharyn Alfonsi, who told the New York Times this week that CBS is no longer separating editorial independence from corporate interests. And now she’s been fired.

Weiss has already made CBS News a more Trump-friendly operation. She personally books guests. She pulled a segment critical of ICE. She named Tony Dokoupil as primetime anchor, who is known for a combative interview with a Black author over a book about race.

The people who built the most vaunted TV news institution are getting the boot. What replaces them will almost certainly be an inferior product.

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Dell Gets $9.7 Billion Reward for Trump Donation

The Pentagon announced this week that it’s awarding a five-year, $9.7 billion software contract to Dell Technologies.

The deal covers Microsoft 365 licenses, cloud subscriptions, and enterprise technology services for the military. Defense officials said Dell won through a “competitive process” and that the contract will save the Pentagon roughly $422 million a year.

Let’s all remember that last year, Dell CEO Michael Dell pledged $6.25 billion to fund what are being called “Trump accounts,” which are investment accounts for children that Trump has made a signature domestic policy initiative. Shortly after that pledge, Trump told attendees at a White House Mother’s Day event to “go out and buy a Dell.” Michael Dell joined Trump’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology. And now his company has a massive new contract.

Defense Department officials insist the decision was made on merit. Maybe. But we’ve seen this playbook before. Company donates to Trump’s priorities. Trump publicly praises the company. Company gets a federal contract worth billions. Everyone insists it’s a coincidence. We all recognize the pattern. And taxpayers pay the price.

DOJ Sues Democratic States Over ICE Undercover Plates

Trump’s Justice Department filed lawsuits Thursday against four states: Maine, Massachusetts, Oregon, and Washington. The issue? All four states refused to issue undercover license plates to ICE agents.

The DOJ argues the states are discriminating against federal law enforcement, since they’ve historically provided undercover plates to other agencies conducting covert operations. Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said officers “risk their lives every day” and must be able to do their jobs.

But those states’ Democratic leaders aren’t buying it.

Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey said the state supports legitimate criminal investigations, but that ICE’s tactics are “unconstitutional.” She added that Massachusetts won’t use state resources to help ICE “operate in secret, and without accountability.”

Maine’s attorney general had already sent a letter defending his state’s policy. Oregon is holding off on issuing any new undercover plates to federal agencies for now.

Healey is right: ICE has become notorious for aggressive tactics, including arrests in sensitive locations like churches, refusing to provide information on who they’re detaining and operating in ways that have made communities — including legal immigrants and U.S. citizens — afraid to cooperate with law enforcement.

Giving ICE undercover plates doesn’t just help them do their jobs. It just makes it harder for people to know whether the unmarked car following them is legitimate. When states are asking for basic accountability, Trump is responding by suing them.

Raw America will keep bringing you coverage like this, but we need your help to do more of it.

We’re putting more effort into reporting from inside the halls of Congress where decisions are actually being made, and asking decision-makers the hard questions that billionaire-owned media outlets won’t. We’re also bringing you more live interviews with the policy experts and elected leaders giving you inside knowledge this administration wants to keep hidden. Today, we interviewed former Rudy Giuliani associate Lev Parnas, who broke the news that the Trump DOJ is planning to indict former President Barack Obama, You can watch that interview below or by clicking this link.

None of this important work can happens without support from readers like you. If you’ve already become a paying subscriber, thank you. We mean that. If you’re not yet, today is the best day to change that. Subscribe to Raw America and help support the journalism this country actually needs.

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I’m British Chris, with Raw America. Thanks for watching. We’ll see you tomorrow.

STORIES YOU MAY HAVE MISSED:

• Trump Spending Millions in Tax Dollars to Cover Horse Statues in Gold Leaf. President Donald Trump has allocated $5 million toward covering four statues of horses on roads adjacent to the National Mall in 23.75 karat gold leaf as part of the upcoming America 250 celebrations. The four bronze horse statues are known as the Arts of War and the Arts of Peace, and a Maryland studio is handling their makeover thanks to a no-bid contract awarded by the National Park Service. The Department of the Interior is spending more than $95 million on beautification projects around Washington D.C., including $13 million on repainting the bottom of the Reflecting Pool to a dark blue shade.

• Trump’s D.C. Projects Funded by National Park Visitors’ Fees. At least $67 million of the more than $95 million President Trump is spending on sprucing up Washington D.C. ahead of 4th of July celebrations has come from fees tourists paid to visit national parks. The New York Times reported that of the roughly $75 million in visitors’ fees parks collected last year, more than 90 percent of that was spent on D.C. based projects. Under previous administrations, that figure was typically around 5 percent or less.

• Leading GOP Senate Candidate’s Chief of Staff Caught on Chat with White Nationalists. Kip Talley, who is chief of staff to Rep. Mike Collins (R-Ga.), was recently exposed as a member of a group chat featuring prominent white nationalists like Richard Spencer and Nick Fuentes. In one chat session, Talley boasted about using his role in Congress to get a Holocaust denier freed from prison. Collins — who is currently the front-runner for Georgia’s Republican U.S. Senate nomination — has not yet publicly responded to the allegations.

• Far-Right Billionaire Trump Donor Flees to Argentina. Palantir and PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel — who is also a prominent donor to President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance — recently announced he was leaving his homes in Los Angeles and Miami to relocate to Argentina. According to the New York Times, the main driver behind Thiel’s decision to move to South America is his concern about the direction of the United States. He’s also had meetings with far-right Argentinian President Javier Milei, who presented centabillionaire Elon Musk with a chainsaw at the 2025 Conservative Political Action Conference.

• Iran Betting on Trump to Be First to Fold. Despite President Trump saying publicly that Iran is “negotiating on fumes” and desperate to make a deal with the U.S., the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) has continued to be a thorn in the side of the U.S. military. Iranian leaders are pushing for a release of $12 billion in frozen funds as a precondition for any deal to end the war, while more hardline Iranian officials are balking at the very idea of peace talks with the United States. Trump is pushing for Iran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz — which was open and freely accessible prior to American and Israeli strikes on February 28 — and for Iran to give up its approximately 440 kilograms of highly enriched uranium, which it only developed after Trump destroyed former President Barack Obama’s previous deal with the Iranian regime.