Good morning. I’m Thom Hartmann.
Mitch McConnell’s wife is finally explaining her curiously timed trip to Beijing after her husband was hospitalized. A Republican congressman just got an earful from his Nebraska constituents for defending Trump’s cuts to Medicaid. The president is threatening to blow up trade with a major European ally. And ICE is quietly spending $1.5 billion to make sure nobody can conduct oversight of two immigrant detention centers in California.
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Elaine Chao Breaks Silence Over Her China Trip While McConnell Was Hospitalized
Former Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao, who is Republican Senator Mitch McConnell’s wife, has been noticeably quiet about her 84 year-old husband’s hospitalization. McConnell was found unconscious in his D.C. home last month and needed CPR. But his wife was in China the entire time, meeting with Xi Jinping’s vice president.
Chao’s family made its billions in the shipping industry, with her father being a well-known Chinese-American shipping magnate. She served in Trump’s first administration before quitting after January 6th, which Trump still holds against her.
When the Daily Beast started asking questions about her whereabouts, a spokesperson finally responded with an official statement. Chao was apparently in China to support her family’s philanthropic work. The statement said she met with several people, including the US ambassador, and it noted that McConnell’s health “did not warrant an immediate return.” Chinese state media and China’s own embassy separately reported that she also sat down with vice president Han Zheng on June 17 to talk up stronger US-China ties.
Chao holds no official US government position. There’s no clear diplomatic reason for her meeting in Beijing with one of the top officials in Xi’s government, especially in the middle of a family medical emergency.
CNN’s Scott Jennings meanwhile claimed McConnell called him from his hospital bed for a 17 minute chat. That claim surfaced the same day as Chao’s statement, seemingly timed to reassure all of us that the octogenarian senator was healthy enough to chat with a cable news pundit while his own wife was on the other side of the globe.
None of this adds up. And when the people involved won’t give direct answers to the most obvious questions, that’s usually because there’s something else they don’t want us to know.
When Woodrow Wilson had a stroke in 1919, his wife Edith ran interference and hid just how incapacitated he was, and the country went months without knowing who was really steering the government. A hundred years later we’re watching a Senate seat go dark while the people closest to McConnell decide what the rest of us are allowed to know, and Kentucky deserves better than a guessing game about whether its senator can still do the job.
Republican Congressman Gets Heckled by Constituents Over Support for Medicaid Cuts
Nebraska Republican Mike Flood just held another town hall, and it went about as well as his last one.
A few weeks ago, Flood got hammered by constituents over Trump’s war in Iran, the still-unreleased Epstein files, and the president’s various vanity projects. This time, the crowd was ready for him again. This isn’t some Democratic stronghold, but a county Trump won by double digits in 2024.
When someone asked about their disability benefits, Flood brought up Trup’s One Big Beautiful Bill, which the president signed into law last year. He got immediately drowned out with boos while arguing the bill protected Medicaid for the disabled and elderly in a bipartisan way.
While the bill did let states apply for waivers for home-based care, it also gutted a rule requiring minimum staffing ratios in nursing homes. Cutting a staffing requirement sounds more like protecting nursing home operators’ bottom lines than vulnerable elderly people in nursing homes.
Flood also told the crowd there’s no greater ally to the United States than Israel and rattled off atrocities committed by Hamas, without a single mention of the ongoing slaughter of Palestinian civilians in Gaza. The crowd booed him for that too. Flood, by the way, has taken more than $48,000 from the pro-Israel lobby, according to the group Track AIPAC.
The Nebraska Republican also got pushback defending Trump’s SAVE Act, which is designed to make it much harder for millions of American citizens to vote. At one point, a constituent even asked Flood directly when he was going to stand up to Trump before the president bankrupts the country.
This town hall shows a pattern. Flood got booed for supporting Elon Musk’s DOGE back in March. He was booed again last August for backing the Big Ugly Bill. His town halls have basically turned into venting sessions for constituents, who keep telling the congressman the same thing over and over. He’s not listening.
The First Amendment doesn’t just protect what we say, it protects our right to petition the government for a redress of grievances, and a packed town hall is exactly that right in action. Flood’s constituents have shown up again and again to tell him he’s on the wrong side, and a representative who keeps hearing that and keeps voting the other way isn’t misunderstanding them, he’s ignoring them.
Trump Threatens to Cut Off Trade with Major European Ally
At the ongoing NATO summit in Turkey, Trump decided to publicly blow up U.S. relations with Spain, which has been a reliable American ally.
Sitting next to NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, Trump called Spain “a wasted cause” and said the US should stop all trade with and visits to the country immediately. He claimed Spain treats Rutte poorly and doesn’t pull its weight in the NATO alliance. He then predicted Spain would come crawling back once the trade cutoff started to hurt.
Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez’s office shrugged off Trump’s attacks, saying his country is treating his comments as business as usual and has no plans to change what it called an excellent trade relationship with the US.
This is all despite NATO members agreeing at last year’s summit to increase defense spending to 5 percent of GDP by 2035, though Trump has spent the time since pushing for allies to get there faster. Spain is the one nation that openly rejected the full target and negotiated an exemption to cap its spending closer to 2 percent, which is probably why Trump is singling them out. Though Trump may also be holding a grudge because Spain refused to let the US use its military bases for operations tied to his war on Iran. The Spaniards have also not been shy about criticizing this administration out loud.
Threatening to nuke trade with an ally live from a NATO summit because a country won’t fall in line is just the latest example of Trump replacing diplomacy with temper tantrums.
After the last world war, Congress passed the Marshall Plan and America spent billions rebuilding the very continent we now threaten with trade cutoffs, because we understood back then that strong allies make us safer, not weaker. Treating a democratic ally like a vassal that owes us tribute, and threatening to wreck its economy the moment it won’t salute, throws away the hard lesson that generation paid for in blood.
Trump’s DHS Spending $1.5 Billion to Remain Unaccountable
Trump’s Department of Homeland Security just spent roughly $1.5 billion buying two private detention facilities in Southern California from private prison company CoreCivic. While it may look like a real estate transaction, it’s actually more of a loophole to dodge public accountability.
CoreCivic’s workers will keep running both facilities, Otay Mesa and California City Detention Center, so the company will still make a hefty profit. But because DHS now owns the buildings, California’s state oversight laws that require inspections by local and state authorities and members of Congress, may no longer apply.
Civil rights attorney Alexa Van Brunt told Mother Jones that federal ownership creates a strong argument that state law can’t override it. That’s exactly the point. The DHS even admitted as much, saying California lawmakers keep pushing to make private detention “financially infeasible,” making federal ownership a convenient solution.
Legal experts say federal ownership could also help shield ICE’s detention facilities from lawsuits over labor violations and abuse, including an ongoing class action at Otay Mesa alleging forced labor dating all the way back to 2017.
GEO Group, the other major ICE detention contractor, is watching these developments closely. Its CEO told investors this spring that federal ownership is the “logical solution” to blue states trying to step up accountability efforts, as it gives facilities more ammunition in court and puts limits what states can regulate.
Keep in mind, this is all happening while immigrant detention numbers are exploding. ICE held around 45,000 people last year, though that number has since jumped to more than 63,000 as of this week. At least 21 people have died in ICE custody just this year, which has led UN’s human rights chief to demand urgent action. Democratic Senator Alex Padilla of California has already been denied entry during oversight visits to Otay Mesa, even before the sale went through.
Advocates say this part of a deliberate pattern to convert warehouses into detention centers, buy up existing jails and build new ones all while making it harder for anyone outside the system to see what’s actually happening inside. When the government buys its way out of accountability, the people paying the price are the ones with the least power to fight back.
Back in 2001, the Supreme Court ruled in Zadvydas v. Davis that the Constitution’s due process protections cover every person on American soil, citizen or not, and that the government can’t just lock people away indefinitely and out of sight. Buying the buildings to wall off inspectors and judges isn’t a real estate strategy, it’s an attempt to move thousands of human beings into a zone where that ruling and everyone charged with enforcing it can’t reach them.
That’s your Wednesday rundown. Elaine Chao dodging basic questions about flying to Beijing while Mitch McConnell has a medical emergency. A Republican getting booed by constituents in his deep-red districts for defending Medicaid cuts. Trump threatening to cut off ll trade with a key ally. And the DHS spending $1.5 billion of our tax dollars to make sure nobody can see what ICE is doing to immigrant detainees. Covering these stories is exactly why we launched Raw America, and why you can’t count on newsrooms owned by right-wing billionaires to give you the unfiltered truth.
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Thanks for reading, and thanks for standing with independent media. I’m Thom Hartmann.
Here are a few stories that you may have missed amidst all the chaos:
Oil Prices Surge After Trump Declares Iran Ceasefire Officially Over. President Donald Trump announced Wednesday at the NATO summit in Turkey that the tenuous ceasefire the U.S. negotiated with Iran in Islamabad last month is now no longer in effect. Immediately after his announcement, global oil prices increased by six percent, in anticipation of Iran potentially shutting down the Strait of Hormuz once again. The WTI crude benchmark is currently showing oil trading at $75.71 a barrel as of Wednesday morning.
Denmark Warns Trump it Will Defend Greenland from Invasion. After Trump revived his calls for the U.S. to annex Greenland, Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen warned him that her government was bound to defend the island from any foreign invaders, including the United States. Trump made the remarks at this week’s NATO summit, saying Greenland was “very important for the U.S.” If the U.S. and Denmark — who are both members of the NATO alliance – went to war over Greenland, it would effectively signal the end of the alliance.
Afghan Special Forces Veteran Dies in ICE Custody After Being Denied an Inhaler. Afghanistan immigrant Mohammad Nazeer Paktiawal — who is a veteran of Afghanistan’s National Arny Special Operations Command — died within 24 hours of being taken into ICE custody. In March of this year, when ICE agents arrested him, Paktiawal’s wife told agents he needed an inhaler to breathe, though they refused to take it and would not allow her to give it to him. It took the Dallas Medical Examiner three months to release ay details about Paktiawal’s death, simply labeling it as an “accident.”
Maryland Legislature to Meet for Redistricting Special Session Next Month. Lawmakers in Maryland will be returning to Annapolis on August 3, for a special session on whether to approve a constitutional amendment allowing for redrawing congressional district maps. The state’s Democratic-run legislature is expected to reshape the district currently represented by Rep. Andy Harris (R-Md.) — who chairs the far-right House Freedom Caucus — which is Maryland’s lone Republican district. Democrats have called on blue state legislatures to redraw maps in order to counter Republican gerrymandering efforts that swept across the Deep South following the Supreme Court’s Louisiana v. Callais decision that drastically curtailed the Voting Rights Act.
DeSantis’ Ban on ‘Woke’ College Curriculum Struck Down in Federal Court. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ (R) restrictions on how college professors teach race and gender-related curriculum were just struck down in a decision by an Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals panel. Judges ruled the so-called “Stop WOKE Act” of 2022 violated the First Amendment. The 2-1 decision was authored by Trump-appointed Judge Britt C. Grant and Clinton-appointed Judge Charles R. Wilson. Trump-appointed Judge Barbara Lagoa was the lone dissenter.
