Good morning. I’m Thom Hartmann, and this is Raw America.
We’re in truly unprecedented times. Trump is threatening to “shut down” unfavorable elections, Republican insiders are sounding the alarm about the midterms, and the news outlets that should be covering all of this are being systematically dismantled by craven billionaires pushing their own agendas.
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Now, let’s get to today’s news.
Talarico Gets Huge Boost from CBS Censorship
Early voting has just begun in what may be the most consequential Senate primary of 2026, and Democrat James Talarico is riding a wave that nobody in the corporate media establishment saw coming. CBS’s decision to pull his “Late Show” interview with Stephen Colbert didn’t kill his campaign. It launched it into the stratosphere.
Talarico’s interview already has more than 5 million YouTube views, and he raised two and a half million dollars in donations in 24 hours. This is what happens when working people feel like powerful forces are trying to silence someone speaking truth to power.
And here’s the deeper story that the corporate pundits keep missing. The Republican playbook has always been about grievance, about positioning yourself as the persecuted underdog fighting against shadowy elites. Trump built his entire political career on that formula. But Democrats are finally, finally learning that when Trump and his administration attack you, when they try to silence you, the grassroots response can be absolutely overwhelming.
We saw this with Jimmy Kimmel and with Mark Kelly. Now we’re seeing it with Talarico, a state lawmaker from Texas who turned attempted censorship into a national fundraising bonanza.
When Trump himself essentially admitted that Don Lemon’s arrest was probably the best thing that could have happened to Lemon, he was accidentally revealing the central contradiction of authoritarian overreach. Suppression creates martyrs. And martyrs, in the social media age, create movements.
Trump on Elections: “I Will Be The One to Shut It Down”
Donald Trump took to Truth Social late Tuesday night to post one of his trademark cryptic threats, declaring that “crooked elections cannot be allowed in the USA.” He then shared an image of himself with his eyes blazing white and the text: “I will be the one to shut it down.”
That’s not an expression of concern about election integrity: It’s an open threat that the president will use the full weight of the federal government to shape who gets to vote and whose votes get counted.
This is while Republicans are pushing their so-called “Save America” bill through the Senate. Voting rights advocates and legal scholars have widely condemned the bill as a voter suppression vehicle designed to make it harder for Democratic-leaning voters to participate in the midterms.
Trump ally John Solomon went on Dan Bongino’s podcast to praise it, predicting Trump will “change some senators’ minds” and start releasing so-called intelligence about alleged interference in the 2020 election, which Biden won decisively with nearly 57 percent of the electoral college and 51 percent of the popular vote.
And now Trump is floating executive orders on elections ahead of the midterms, repeatedly threatening to “nationalize” the voting process without explaining what that means, while polls show only 60 percent of Americans believe their votes will be counted fairly.
That loss of faith is not an accident, but the entire point.
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Even Pro-Trump Pollsters Are Sounding the Alarm
When the cameras are on, Republicans dismiss talk of a 2026 midterm disaster as hysteria. Behind closed doors, according to reporting from Zeteo, those same officials are the ones most panicked about what’s coming.
Multiple Trump advisers have reportedly been scrambling to get accurate data in front of the president. Some are being shut out. One close Trump adviser put it bluntly: The numbers were bad months ago and have only gotten worse.
What makes this particularly significant is the sourcing. This is not just establishment pollsters that the White House routinely dismisses as fake. Some of the most reliably pro-Trump pollsters in the business are arriving at the same conclusions. Some are describing the administration’s internal numbers as “awful.”
On almost every issue that was once considered Trump’s strength, the president is now underwater. And the bleeding is coming from voting blocs that put him over the top in 2024. Republicans have very little comfort to offer right now, beyond the fact that there is still more than a year before Election Day.
CBS Star Issues Veiled Jab at MAGA Leadership
Norah O’Donnell, a longtime CBS correspondent and former anchor of CBS Evening News, sat down for a podcast interview this week and described an atmosphere of fear and uncertainty at the network following a series of leadership upheavals. She was careful not to name names, but it’s not hard to figure out who she’s referring to.
Paramount CEO David Ellison installed Bari Weiss as editor-in-chief of CBS News last October. Since then, the newsroom has seen constant resignations, layoffs, and buyouts. Anderson Cooper is not renewing his contract, citing what he described as the rightward direction Weiss and Ellison are steering the network. That decision followed reports that Weiss sandbagged a story Cooper was working on about the Trump regime’s selective admissions of white South African refugees.
Reports also indicate that Weiss was considering terminating correspondents Sharyn Alfonsi and Scott Pelley after both publicly criticized her editorial decisions. In the past eight years, CBS News has cycled through five different presidents, after having just one in the eight years prior.
What is happening at CBS is not an isolated corporate reshuffling. It is part of an intentional pattern: MAGA billionaires buying up media brands and neutering them so they’ll be compliant with the regime. Viewers deserve to know who is making editorial decisions, and why. And when the people who have spent careers asking those questions start walking out the door, that is itself a major story.
I’m Thom Hartmann for Raw America. Thanks for your support of independent journalism. Become a paying subscriber and help our work reach more viewers. None of this would be possible without you.
Stay informed, and stay vigilant. And in the words of Jesse Jackson, keep hope alive.
STORIES YOU MAY HAVE MISSED
Democrats Go to War Against Trump’s Billionaire Tax Cuts. Democrats’ “Fair Share America” has rebranded as “Families Over Billionaires” and is launching the Stop the Billionaire Bailout PAC. The group will focus on building pressure throughout the midterm cycle to raise taxes on the ultra-rich to fund things like expanding healthcare, clean energy projects and public education.
Pope Leo XIV Declines Trump’s Board of Peace Invite. The Holy See is officially stiff-arming the Trump administration’s “Board of Peace” initiative, with Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin saying Trump’s board has several “points that leave us somewhat perplexed.” Parolin insists on the United Nations continuing to play a leading in role in resolving global crises.
GOP Senator Doesn’t Even Know what Voter Restrictions He’s Pushing. Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.) recently said Republicans’ so-called SAVE America Act says a marriage certificate will serve as a valid voter ID to cast a ballot under the proposal, though the bill never once mentions marriage certificates. One prominent concern about the bill is that married women who changed their surnames would not be allowed to vote if the bill were signed into law in its current form.
Embattled Republican Governor Gets First Democratic Challenger. New Hampshire Gov. Kelly Ayotte (R) now has a Democratic opponent in the form of former executive council member Cinde Warmington. This race is viewed as a potential flip in 2026, given that New Hampshire has a Republican governor but a fully Democratic congressional delegation.
US Military Kills 11 More People in Boat Strikes. The Trump administration killed eight people in the Pacific Ocean on Tuesday, and another three in the Caribbean Sea. More than 100 people have been killed so far. To this date, the administration has not charged any of those killed with crimes, or even publicly named them. Democrats in Congress maintain the strikes are illegal as those killed are not posing an imminent threat of violence.
