Good morning. I’m Thom Hartmann.
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.
This is exactly why Raw America exists. We are fully reader-supported, editorially independent and not for sale. But this also means all of our work is only made possible with the support of readers like you. Because we don’t take billionaire money or run ads from corporate sponsors, we are completely dependent on our readers to stay afloat. If you enjoy our daily newsletters like these, or our exclusive interviews with prominent experts and newsmakers, take a moment to become a paying subscriber to Raw America. We genuinely can’t do this without you.
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.
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.
This summer, Raw America is expanding our operations at Capitol Hill. That means more original reporting that doesn’t get filtered through outlets owned by MAGA billionaires. We’re also bringing you more live interviews with leaders and experts giving you knowledge and perspectives the Trump regime and its billionaire lackeys want to keep from you.
None of that essential work happens without readers stepping up to become paying subscribers. We don’t have David Ellison’s checkbook or Jeff Bezos’ portfolio. We have you. If independent journalism matters to you, the single most powerful thing you can do is become a paid subscriber to Raw America today.
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.
