Good morning, I’m Thom Hartmann.
This morning, new inflation data shows prices up 3.8 percent from a year ago, with gas up more than 28 percent, completely wiping out every wage gain American workers made in the last year. Trump is reportedly weighing a major military escalation against Iran as negotiations collapse, with one official saying “we all know where this is going.” Trump spent Tuesday morning posting AI-generated images of himself on a $100 bill and Democrats drowning in sewage in the Lincoln Memorial reflecting pool. And Bari Weiss has personally intervened to give Benjamin Netanyahu’s 60 Minutes interview to a correspondent he apparently preferred, sparking open revolt inside the newsroom. Corporate media is running cover for all of it. The FCC chair has made sure they know the cost. And the Ellisons keep buying. Let’s get into it.
Trump’s Iran War Is Costing American Workers Every Dollar They Made This Year
The April Consumer Price Index, released Tuesday, shows prices rose 0.6 percent last month and are up 3.8 percent from a year ago. The main driver is energy. Gasoline is up 5.4 percent in April alone and more than 28 percent from a year ago. Oil prices were up 5.8 percent last month.
Here is the number that matters most: wages grew 3.6 percent over the past year. Inflation is running at 3.8 percent. The war in Iran has completely wiped out every real wage gain American workers made in the past twelve months. People are working just as hard, earning more dollars, and falling further behind. That is the economic legacy of a war that was supposed to be over in weeks.
It is also the central political fact of the 2026 midterms. Republicans want to run on a strong economy. Gas is above $4 a gallon. Inflation is eating what’s left. And the war that caused it shows no sign of ending.
Folks, every war America’s fought since World War Two without raising taxes on the wealthy has been paid for by working people through inflation, and this one’s no different. The oil companies and the defense contractors are booking record profits while the cashier at your grocery store watches her paycheck shrink in real time, and that isn’t an accident, that’s the design.
Trump Is Weighing a Major Military Escalation as Iran Talks Collapse
Sources across multiple outlets say Trump is now more seriously considering renewed military strikes against Iran than at any point since the ceasefire began in early April. One U.S. official told reporters, “He will tune them up a bit.” A second said, “I think we all know where this is going.”
The options under discussion include restarting “Project Freedom,” the naval escort mission in the Strait of Hormuz that was suspended last week, as well as resuming bombing campaigns targeting sites previously identified by the Pentagon but not yet struck. Israeli officials are also pushing for a Special Forces mission to seize Iran’s enriched uranium stockpile directly, though sources say Trump remains reluctant to go that far.
The talks have stalled badly. Iranian President Pezeshkian rejected Trump’s latest proposal Sunday, saying his country would “never bow our heads before the enemy.” Trump responded on Truth Social: “I don’t like it. TOTALLY UNACCEPTABLE.” Iran is insisting on an end to the naval blockade, guarantees against future attacks, war reparations, and recognition of Iranian sovereignty over the Strait. Washington has rejected all of it.
A complicating factor: Trump recently claimed Iran had agreed to hand over its enriched uranium stockpile to the United States, then Iran submitted a new proposal that made no mention of the uranium. Administration officials are also reportedly frustrated with Pakistani mediators, believing they have not fully communicated Trump’s position to Tehran.
Trump told reporters Monday, “The ceasefire with Iran is on massive life support.” He is on a state visit to China this week. A final decision on escalation is not expected before he returns.
The Strait of Hormuz remains effectively closed. Hundreds of ships and roughly 20,000 seafarers are stranded inside the Persian Gulf. Gas is at $4.30 a gallon nationally. And the president is weighing whether to start bombing again.
James Madison warned us that of all the enemies of public liberty, war is the most to be dreaded, because it’s the parent of armies, debt, and taxes, the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few. We’re watching a president weigh another country’s destruction on Truth Social at three in the morning, and Congress, the only branch the Constitution gave the war power to, hasn’t held a single debate.
Trump Posted an AI Image of Himself on a $100 Bill at 8 AM
After reportedly posting 54 times in 74 minutes Monday night, Trump continued his Truth Social posting spree Tuesday morning before 8 a.m. The highlight was a mock-up image of a $100 “federal victory note” bearing his face on one side and the words “God bless Donald Trump” on the other. The fake currency helpfully noted it was not legal tender.
Also in Tuesday’s posting blitz: an AI-generated image of Barack Obama, Joe Biden, and Nancy Pelosi submerged to their necks in dirty water in the Lincoln Memorial reflecting pool, captioned “Dumacrats Love Sewage.” An attack on House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries suggesting his New York district is a rat-infested slum. A recycled image of a battleship destroying an Iranian fighter jet captioned “Lasers: Bing, Bing, GONE!!!” A recycled bar chart comparing his “six-week” war to other U.S. conflicts, despite the war now being more than ten weeks old.
The Daily Beast has reported that throughout April there were only five days on which Trump could have gotten a full night’s sleep based on his posting timestamps. The president routinely posts between 9 p.m. and 6 a.m. and has been documented nodding off at official White House events.
This is the man who is deciding whether to resume bombing Iran. He is sleep-deprived, posting AI fantasies of himself on currency, and meeting with his national security team in between.
Putting your own face on the country’s currency isn’t a meme, folks, it’s the oldest move in the autocrat’s playbook, from the Caesars to Mussolini, every strongman who needed his face in everyone’s wallet to remind them who owned them. The founders refused to put any living person on American money for exactly this reason, and now we’ve got a sleep-deprived commander in chief fantasizing about it at eight in the morning while deciding whether to bomb another country.
Bari Weiss Personally Gave Netanyahu’s 60 Minutes Interview to Someone Netanyahu Preferred
CBS News chief Bari Weiss has escalated her overhaul of 60 Minutes, stepping directly into high-profile booking decisions in a way that has ignited open hostility inside one of the most storied programs in American broadcast history.
According to media watchdog Status, veteran 60 Minutes correspondent Lesley Stahl had been pursuing a Benjamin Netanyahu interview for months. Weiss personally intervened, booked Netanyahu herself, and handed the interview not to Stahl or any 60 Minutes correspondent, but to Major Garrett, a CBS News correspondent whose primary platform is a little-watched streaming service. The internal feeling at 60 Minutes, according to Status, was that Netanyahu had effectively circumvented Stahl and the program’s reporting team, with Weiss facilitating the arrangement by providing an interviewer he apparently found more agreeable.
It is not the first time. In March, Weiss personally booked Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth for an interview and also assigned it to Garrett, directing it to air on 60 Minutes despite that being highly unusual for a program that reserves major interviews for its own correspondents.
A CBS News spokesperson defended the decisions but did not dispute the facts: “It’s the editor in chief’s job to make decisions about bookings and interviews.”
The pattern reveals something important about what Weiss is building. She does not appear to view 60 Minutes as an autonomous program with its own traditions and correspondent hierarchy. She appears to view it as a high-profile platform she controls, to be programmed according to her preferences and those of the subjects she books.
The season finale airs Sunday. According to Status, it may mark the end of 60 Minutes as it has existed inside CBS News for decades. Weiss is doing to 60 Minutes what Ellison is doing to CBS News and what Ellison’s family is trying to do to CNN. The model is the same. The money is the same. The outcome, if nothing stops it, will be the same.
The CBS News that Edward R. Murrow built once helped bring down Joe McCarthy, and now under Bari Weiss it’s letting a foreign prime minister hand-pick his own interviewer. When the subject chooses who questions him, it isn’t journalism anymore, it’s stenography for power, and that’s exactly the model the billionaires are buying because it’s the model that makes oligarchy permanent.
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This is Thom Hartmann for Raw America. The fight is here. Thank you for being in it.
STORIES YOU MAY HAVE MISSED:
Trump Refers to JD Vance as ‘a Little Boy.’ President Donald Trump recently quipped about the Secret Service’s response to the shooting at this year’s White House Correspondents’ Dinner, noting that agents whisked Vice President JD Vance away quicker than him. Trump observed that he saw agents “take JD by the shoulders and lift him up like he was a little boy” and that the vice president was “ripped out of the chair,” calling it a “view of the week.”
Louisiana’s Republican Governor Says Throwing Out Votes ‘Not a Big Deal.’ Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry (R) recently defended his decision to toss out 45,000 votes cast in the state’s May primary elections. During a Sunday interview on CBS’ 60 Minutes, Landry agreed with reporter Cecilia Vega when she asked him if he felt like invalidating the ballots was “not a big deal.” He added that it was “not [his] fault” given the Supreme Court’s recent Louisiana v. Callais ruling that significantly weakened the Voting Rights Act. Landry had tossed the votes in order to declare a new primary election that would accommodate Republican-friendly congressional districts drawn by the Republican-controlled legislature.
Supreme Court Greenlights Last-Minute Gerrymander in Alabama. The Supreme Court on Monday allowed for Alabama to eliminate one of its two majority-Black congressional districts prior to the 2026 midterm elections. The conservative supermajority overruled a lower court ruling that required the state to use a court-approved map keeping the districts in place, citing Louisiana v. Callais. Alabama will now be free to use a 2023 map drawn by the Republican legislature that has only one majority-Black district.
Virginia Congresswoman Under Fire After Endorsing Radio Host’s Racist Attack on Hakeem Jeffries. Rep. Jen Kiggans (R-Va.) is facing new calls to resign after she agreed with a conservative radio host who said House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) needed to “keep [his] cotton-picking hands off Virginia.” Kiggans later said the host “should not have used that language,” and that she “did not and do not condone it,” though at the time she responded to him by saying “that’s right, ditto, yes to that.”
Trump’s Smartphone Company Tells Buyers They May Never Receive It. The Trump Organization — which is run by the president’s eldest sons Don Jr. and Eric — previously announced it would be rolling out a new phone company named “Trump Mobile” that would make a gold-plated smartphone dubbed the T1, and began accepting $100 deposits from buyers last year. However, Trump Mobile recently rolled out fine print in April reading that the company “does not guarantee that a Device will be produced or made available for purchase” despite the deposits. Phones were supposed to ship to buyers last August, though the date got moved back to November, then December, then January of this year. As of May, there is still no expected date when the phone will be released to the public.
