Good morning, I’m Thom Hartmann.
This morning we have a story about the president’s son-in-law’s family quietly walking away with a $20 billion Pentagon contract while Jared Kushner plays diplomat in the same war that contract services. We have a president attacking Tucker Carlson, Candace Owens, and Alex Jones by name in a morning Truth Social rant. We have 20 Republican House members breaking with Trump on surveillance powers. And we have the man Kristi Noem fired for opposing her — being brought back to run FEMA permanently. It is a busy Friday. Corporate media is covering some of it. The FCC chair is making sure they know what happens when they cover too much. And the billionaires keep buying. Let’s get into it.
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The Kushner Family Just Landed a $20 Billion Pentagon Contract
Let’s start with the one that should be front page everywhere but isn’t getting the attention it deserves.
The Pentagon has awarded a $20 billion, sole-source contract to Anduril Industries, a defense tech company backed by Joshua Kushner, the younger brother of Jared Kushner, who is simultaneously serving as Trump’s informal mediator in the very wars this contract helps prosecute.
The 10-year deal consolidates what had been more than 120 separate procurement actions for Anduril’s commercial solutions into a single enterprise contract covering hardware, software, infrastructure, and services. At its core is Anduril’s Lattice platform, an AI-driven command system capable of detecting and responding to threats without human input. The company also makes surveillance drones, sentry towers, and loitering munitions that can hunt and eliminate targets autonomously across hundreds of miles.
The contract was awarded under a “sole source” framework, meaning the Pentagon bypassed the normal competitive bidding process, claiming no other company could match Anduril’s capabilities. The public notice inviting vendors to respond was posted over the holiday period in December and gave companies just three weeks to reply. One company confirmed it couldn’t compete. Three others either didn’t respond or turned out not to be defense contractors at all. The Pentagon took that as confirmation that only Anduril could do the job.
Joshua Kushner holds his Anduril stake through his venture capital firm, Thrive Capital. Sources say Thrive co-led a $4 billion funding round for Anduril just days before the Pentagon announced the contract.
Meanwhile, Jared Kushner, who holds no official government title but has been repeatedly deployed by Trump to lead negotiations in Ukraine, the Middle East, Iran, and Venezuela, is currently facing a congressional inquiry after Democrats accused him of soliciting billions from Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund and Gulf monarchies while conducting those diplomatic missions. Qatar, sources say, ultimately poured around $200 million into Kushner’s private equity firm, Affinity Partners, after initially declining and reconsidering ahead of Trump’s reelection.
This is the same Jared Kushner who sat at the table in Islamabad for ceasefire talks with Iran last weekend. His brother’s company just received a $20 billion Pentagon contract to service those wars.
The White House declined to comment. The Pentagon said contracts are awarded based on merit.
Dwight Eisenhower warned us back in 1961 about the military industrial complex gaining what he called unwarranted influence in our government, but even Ike couldn’t have imagined a version where the president’s in-laws own pieces of that complex while one of them is walking into ceasefire rooms with a direct financial stake in how long the shooting lasts. This is exactly the kind of self-dealing the founders wrote an emoluments clause into the Constitution to prevent, and it’s happening in broad daylight while most of corporate media looks the other way.
There is more. Defense Secretary Hegseth faced allegations last month that his financial broker inquired about defense sector investments in the weeks before Trump launched his Iran attacks. Senator Markwayne Mullin, now DHS secretary, purchased stocks in defense contractors and oil companies five days before the Venezuela invasion, while sitting on the Senate Armed Services Committee. Sources say $580 million in oil futures flooded the market roughly 16 minutes before Trump announced a pause in strikes on Iranian power plants. The administration has denied any wrongdoing on all counts.
The picture these stories collectively paint is one that demands sustained, independent scrutiny. That is not what is happening in corporate media right now.
Trump Attacks His Own Base: Tucker Is ‘Low IQ,’ Candace Is ‘Mentally Ill’
President Trump spent Friday morning on Truth Social going after prominent figures from his own political orbit.
“Tucker is a Low IQ person — always easy to beat, and highly overrated!” he wrote. “So are Megyn Kelly, ‘Candace’ — Really Dumb and mentally ill — and Bankrupt Alex Jones, who is completely ‘fried.’” He added, “There are others, also!” and floated the idea of publishing a ranked list of who he considers good, bad, and somewhere in the middle.
The post came in response to a segment on conservative media comparing his approval ratings against other prominent right-wing commentators. Trump is known for late nights and early morning posting. His vice president once described it to Fox News this way, sometimes the president will call you at 12:30 or 2:00 in the morning, and then he’ll call you at 6:00 in the morning about a totally different topic.
Tucker Carlson, it should be noted, was one of the figures raising questions before this post about whether Netanyahu may be using leverage against Trump to keep the United States in the Iran war.
Every authoritarian movement in history eventually reaches the point where it starts devouring its own, from Stalin’s purges to Mao’s Cultural Revolution to the loyalty oaths of McCarthy’s America, and when the leader starts ranking his followers by devotion instead of ideas, you’re watching a cult rather than a political party. The people getting labeled low IQ and mentally ill this morning are the same voices who were told they were patriots yesterday, and that’s how it always goes with strongmen who can’t tolerate anyone asking the wrong question.
20 Republicans Broke with Trump on FISA — and Forced a Punt
Late Thursday night and into early Friday morning, 20 House Republicans joined most Democrats to block Trump’s push for a five-year extension of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, the surveillance law that allows U.S. intelligence agencies to monitor overseas communications without a warrant, including communications involving American citizens.
Trump had publicly called on Republicans to “stick together” and pass a “clean” extension. Speaker Mike Johnson backed the plan. It failed anyway.
Leadership then tried a shorter 18-month renewal. That failed too. The final result was a short-term extension pushing FISA’s expiration back only to April 30, a few days, not years.
“Are you kidding me? Who the hell is running this place?” said Democratic Congressman Jim McGovern on the House floor, as the chaos unfolded.
Democratic Congressman Ro Khanna, who championed the bipartisan coalition that blocked Trump, framed it as a transparency fight. “Now, they will have to fight in daylight,” he said.
The Republican rebels did not all oppose surveillance itself. Many wanted reforms and limits. That 20 of them were willing to defy the president publicly, on a national security vote he had personally lobbied, is worth watching.
The Fourth Amendment exists because the colonists remembered exactly what it felt like to have British soldiers rifle through their homes on general warrants, and they built this new country specifically so that would never happen again on American soil. Two hundred and fifty years later, we’ve constructed a surveillance apparatus those colonists couldn’t have imagined in their worst nightmares, and the fact that 20 House Republicans refused to hand a five-year blank check to a president with open authoritarian instincts is one of the few genuinely hopeful things that happened in Washington this week.
Trump Is Bringing Back the Man Noem Fired for Opposing Noem
In a move that manages to be both vindication and embarrassment simultaneously, Trump is nominating Cameron Hamilton to permanently lead FEMA, the same man Kristi Noem fired last May for publicly refusing to support her plans to dismantle it.
Hamilton, a former Navy SEAL, was serving as acting FEMA administrator when he told a congressional hearing, “I do not believe it is in the best interest of the American people to eliminate the Federal Emergency Management Agency.” He was escorted out of FEMA headquarters the following day. Noem also reportedly made him take a lie detector test to find out if he had leaked details of a private meeting about FEMA’s future.
Now Trump is nominating him for the job on a permanent basis.
This is the latest in a series of reversals at DHS and FEMA since Trump fired Noem in March following a tenure that included a $220 million self-promotional ad campaign, a policy requiring her personal sign-off on any DHS contract over $100,000, and a management style described by more than 80 current and former employees as chaotic and allegedly unlawful. Her successor has already eliminated the contract approval bottleneck that caused delays in disaster relief, and brought back several officials Noem had pushed out.
Hamilton still needs Senate confirmation. His path may be complicated by his lack of state emergency management experience. But the story of his return is also a straightforward accounting of what happens when someone tells a hard truth in Washington and eventually gets proved right.
There’s an old truth about Washington that the real measure of any administration isn’t how it treats the powerful, it’s how it treats the people who stand up and tell inconvenient truths. Cameron Hamilton told the truth about why FEMA exists and paid for it with his job, and now he’s being asked to come run the thing he was fired for defending, which tells you everything about how the ideological dismantling of American government goes when it finally collides with an actual hurricane or flood or wildfire that doesn’t care about anyone’s Heritage Foundation policy paper.
This Is Why Raw America Exists — and Why We Need You
The Kushner-Anduril story. The Mullin stock trades. The FISA revolt. These are the stories that take resources, time, and independence to tell correctly. Corporate media is running cover for a war and the financial interests behind it. The FCC chair has made clear what happens to broadcasters who don’t. And the billionaires are buying up whatever newsrooms remain, from the Washington Post and the LA Times down to local outlets most people have never heard of.
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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:
ICE Agents’ Shady Backgrounds Revealed. The Associated Press (AP) recently uncovered the backgrounds of dozens of ICE agents added to the payroll during President Donald Trump’s hiring spree. While the AP had to limit their findings to ICE agents who publicized their hiring on LinkedIn due to ICE’s efforts to keep agents anonymous, reporters discovered that many had legal and competency issues that would typically result in them being passed over by other law enforcement agencies. One agent lied in a police report to justify a felony charge against an innocent woman, leading to a $75,000 settlement. Another failed to graduate from police academy and only lasted three weeks as a police officer.
Republican Says Trump ‘Almost the Second Coming’ of Jesus. Rep. Troy Nehls (R-Texas) defended Trump’s attacks on Pope Leo XIV by saying the president was “better than sliced bread” and “almost the second coming [of Jesus Christ].” Nehls’ comment came just days after Trump posted (and eventually deleted) an AI-generated image of himself as Jesus Christ. Nehls also said after Trump’s reelection that if Trump ordered Republicans to “jump three feet high and scratch your head,” they should all do it.
Billionaire Trump Belittles Americans for Paying Their Taxes. During a recent roundtable discussion in Las Vegas, Nevada to promote his One Big Beautiful Bill Act, Trump — whose net worth is in excess of $6 billion — criticized Americans for paying their full amount of taxes. Trump told the crowd that while poorer taxpayers “don’t think in terms of deductions,” rich people are always looking for tax deductions. The standard deduction for a single taxpayer is $15,750, which is typically well above any itemized deduction amount for working-class taxpayers.
Trump’s Acting ICE Director Quits. Todd Lyons — who is the acting director of ICE — recently announced he would be leaving his role at the end of May. Lyons’ tenure has been marked by high-profile incidents like the killing of Renee Good in Minneapolis, Minnesota by ICE agent Jonathan Ross, and widespread domestic protests against his agency’s actions. Lyons was reportedly hospitalized at least twice for stress-related events. White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller called Lyons “a phenomenal patriot,” and border czar Tom Homan said he “served selflessly.”
California Democrat Running for Governor Wants ICE Agents Jailed. Tom Steyer, who is a progressive billionaire running for the Democratic nomination in California’s 2026 gubernatorial election, is now proposing that both ICE agents and ICE leadership be subject to criminal prosecution. Steyer referred to ICE as a “violent extremist group” and also proposed a special task force to investigate crimes at ICE detention centers, and a widespread “know your rights” campaign to educate Californians should they have an encounter with ICE.
