Good morning. I’m Thom Hartmann. Before getting into today’s news, take a second to tap that ❤️ and hit restack. That’s how we break through Substack’s algorithm to reach the most people.
Donald Trump’s aim to bribe voters with the promise of $5,000 is blowing up in his face, with new polling showing voters are rejecting it wholesale. The massive $110 billion merger that would allow a pro-Trump billionaire to control CNN now appears to be finalized after the states suing to block it agreed to a settlement. An ICE agent in Austin, Texas shot a 28 year-old DoorDash driver in the back, leaving him seriously injured and not even giving his family updates on his condition. And Stephen Miller’s wife is now worried that she and her husband will go broke paying for lawyers if Democrats win back control of Congress in the midterms.
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Trump’s Gambit to Help GOP in Midterms Is Backfiring
Donald Trump thought he had an ace up his sleeve to keep Congress in Republican hands this November. At the GOP’s convention in Dallas earlier this month, he promised every American adult a $5,000 check if Republicans keep both chambers of Congress. The price tag on that promise runs as high as $1.35 trillion. And voters aren’t buying it.
According to an NBC News poll taken right after the announcement, 46 percent of respondents — a plurality — said they’re less likely to support a GOP candidate following Trump’s promise, while only 21 percent said they’re more likely. and among independent voters, the number who said less likely was at 45 percent.
A separate Reuters/Ipsos poll found 63 percent of Americans disapprove of the $5,000 check idea. That includes 40 percent of Republicans and 90 percent of Democrats.
Midterms are almost always a referendum on whichever party holds the White House, and that’s likely to hold true this November. Trump launched his war with Iran back in February without seeking congressional approval, and now Americans are seeing the result of it at the pump.
Regular unleaded gas now costs $4.48 a gallon nationally right now, up from $4.14 just around Labor Day. Diesel is now at a record high of $6.49 a gallon. That means anything trucked to a store will also see its price go up.
That same NBC poll found 55 percent of voters now say Trump’s policies have harmed the economy. That’s a sharp increase from 48 percent in March, before Trump’s war started affecting the cost of living. More than 60 percent of voters say the Iran war wasn’t worth it, while 57 percent of respondents say they’re less likely to support a candidate who supported it.
Democrats now have a 4-point edge over Republicans when voters are asked which party they trust to better handle the war, and they’re in a statistical tie on the economy. That’s a significant shift from just three years ago, when Republicans held a 21-point advantage on the economy. Democrats are also up by 7 points when voters are asked who they trust to rein in runaway inflation.
But what should really worry Republicans is that a full 52 percent of voters say that Trump endorsing a candidate actually makes them less likely to vote for that person. And 43 percent of respondents say their vote in November is specifically meant to send a message to the president.
Democratic pollster Jeff Horwitt told NBC that because Trump has made this election about himself, he’s now driving record numbers of voters to cast ballots specifically in opposition to him.
Right now Democrats have a five-point lead over Republicans on the generic congressional ballot. Most election forecasters expect Republicans to lose the House, and they could also lose the Senate if Democrats flip four seats.
In 1888, Republican operatives got caught buying Indiana votes in “blocks of five” to put Benjamin Harrison in the White House. Americans were so enraged that states adopted the secret ballot within a few years. When voters smell a bribe, they get angry, and that’s one of the healthiest instincts a democracy has.
Pro-Trump Billionaire’s Bid to Control CNN Virtually Assured After Settlement
It looks like the Paramount Skydance-Warner Bros. Discovery merger is about to become official. After months of litigation, the states suing to block the $110 billion merger appear to have reached a settlement with Paramount. This means that MAGA billionaire David Ellison — who already controls CBS — will now also be in charge of CNN.
According to Bloomberg, Paramount Skydance struck a deal with California and a group of other states suing to stop the deal. Four holdouts — Connecticut, Massachusetts, Minnesota and New York — apparently decided to settle after concluding they couldn’t keep up the fight if California was no longer with them. An official announcement is expected later today.
The holdouts did manage to win a few more concessions before agreeing to the settlement. The agreement’s language stipulates that both CBS and CNN will have independent editorial boards. That could potentially be significant, as an editorial board independent of the Ellisons would be the one thing stopping the networks from becoming straight-up propaganda.
The settlement also includes financial penalties for Paramount if it doesn’t follow through on its promise to release 30 movies a year in theaters. They’ll be on the hook for $30 million per film that falls short of that goal. The company could also be forced to sell off the Miramax studio, which made Pulp Fiction and a host of other classics.
This is a giant merger that combines two of Hollywood’s biggest movie studios, two major streaming services in HBO Max and Discovery+ and two of the largest cable networks in the country. The initial lawsuit involved 12 state attorneys general and the Writers Guild of America, who argued the merger would crush competition, jack up prices for consumers and lower wages for working writers.
California’s Attorney General, Rob Bonta, was the initial key point person behind the suit. He had called for structural remedies like forcing the sales of assets like movie studios rather than more behavioral promises that are hard to enforce. What remains to be seen is whether the independent editorial boards will hold up once the ink is dry.
This kind of media consolidation is exactly why we launched Raw America. One right-wing billionaire family is now about to own the biggest media networks in the country. Independent media that rejects billionaire money runs on the support of readers like you. Become a paying subscriber for just 22 cents a day.
ICE Agent in Texas Shot DoorDash Driver in the Back
A U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent in Austin, Texas shot a DoorDash driver multiple times in the back yesterday, leaving him seriously wounded. And they’re not even updating his family about his condition.
The shooting victim has been identified as 28 year-old Venezuelan asylum seeker Wilber Rafael Garcés Perez, who entered the U.S. under the Biden administration’s parole program. His attorney, Kate Lincoln-Goldfinch, says his wife got a call from him around 12:30 that day. She heard him screaming in pain before the call abruptly cut off.
According to Texas state troopers, ICE had requested help with a vehicle pursuit involving a blue Toyota Corolla. A verified video shows someone stepping out of a dark SUV, and firing at least three shots while approaching a sedan that’s slowly rolling forward. There is no danger to the person holding the gun in that video.
Lincoln-Goldfinch says she went to the hospital with the Garcés Perez’s wife hoping for information. However, staff denied he was even there. Both she and the man’s wife were ultimately escorted away by officers who treated them like trespassers. It took Austin Mayor Kirk Watson showing up hours later and getting a hospital administrator on the phone before they learned Garcés Perez had already been taken into ICE custody.
Garcés Perez drives for DoorDash. And the company confirmed he was making a delivery for a customer when he was shot and says it’s currently conducting its own investigation.
His wife, who has legal status, said her husband has no criminal history. Lincoln-Goldfinch says no one has yet to inform his family about his condition or even his current whereabouts. She told reporters she believes her client is in a great deal of pain right now.
This shooting comes as ICE is significantly ramping up arrests and raids. the agency has conducted more than 50,000 arrests a month in both July and August for the first time in its 20-plus year history.
Austin Police Chief Lisa Davis confirmed there was a foot pursuit involving Garcés Perez and ICE, and said her department is investigating the shooting in conjunction with federal agencies. Mayor Watson said he was angry that someone claiming to be law enforcement shot someone on Austin’s streets, though he said he wasn’t surprised given ICE’s recent history of violence.
Democratic Congressman Greg Casar of Texas is now demanding an independent investigation and the full release of body camera footage, saying ICE has a pattern of shooting people and then lying about the details, like earlier this year in Minneapolis. He’s requesting a congressional briefing no later than September 28. Congressman Joaquin Castro and U.S. Senate candidate James Talarico are also demanding accountability and full transparency.
The League of United Latin American Citizens is also calling on Congress to establish independent oversight of all federal immigration crackdowns.
Protesters gathered near the site of the shooting Sunday, carrying signs that read “Stop ICE murder” and “Abolish ICE.” As the night wore on, state troopers showed up on the scene and deployed tear gas while also tackling protesters to the ground.
This is the second fatal or near-fatal ICE shooting in Texas in two months, after ICE fatally shot Lorenzo Salgado Araujo in Houston this past July.
Back in 1985, he Supreme Court ruled in Tennessee v. Garner that a badge doesn’t give any law enforcement officer the right to shoot someone running away who doesn’t pose a deadly threat. That rule has no carve-out for federal agents or for the immigration status of the person fleeing. When a government can shoot a man in the back and then hide him from his own wife, there should be full accountability.
Stephen Miller’s Wife Fears They Could Be Bankrupted By Legal Bills if Democrats Take Back Congress
Stephen Miller’s wife, Katie, is now worried that she and her husband will be buried in legal costs if Democrats win back control of Congress in the midterms.
Katie Miller wrote on social media this weekend that after the first Trump administration, her family spent large sums of money on lawyers because of what she referred to as partisan investigations. She said many of her friends also had to go broke paying lawyers simply because they worked for the first Trump administration, and she’s convinced that Democrats will do it again if they take back even just one chamber in the fall.
Miller is correct to assume her husband will be dragged before Congressional committees. Democratic Congressman Robert Garcia of California, who would chair the House Oversight Committee under a potential Democratic majority, said he would subpoena Stephen Miller if Democrats won the House of Representatives. Garcia also said he would question former DHS Secretary Kristi Noem and her former top aide Corey Lewandowski, FBI Director Kash Patel and Attorney General Todd Blanche.
Katie Miller wrote that social media post after New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman told Bloomberg that it was a virtual certainty that Democrats would subpoena Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk if they had a majority in the House.
Katie Miller has close ties to Musk, as she worked for his Department of Government Efficiency initiative before leaving in 2025 to work directly for him. She then left that role a few months later to launch her podcast where she gives softball interviews to MAGA figures and Trump administration officials.
In 2022, Stephen Miller testified for more than eight hours after the House January 6 committee subpoenaed him. The following year, he testified before the grand jury that eventually indicted Trump over his attempt to overturn the 2020 election. Those charges were eventually dropped after Trump was reelected.
Republicans currently hold the House by just a few seats, and have just a 53-47 lead in the Senate. Nonpartisan election analysts rate control of both chambers as a toss-up heading into November. Democrats could retake the Senate by flipping just four seats in any of the winnable races in Alaska, Iowa, Kansas, Maine, Nebraska, North Carolina, Ohio and Texas.
Harry Truman became a national hero in the 1940s by hauling war profiteers in front of his Senate committee and saving taxpayers billions of dollars. And yet, nobody called that persecution. Congressional oversight is exactly how a free society finds out what’s being done in citizens' names. The officials who dread it most are usually the ones who’ve earned it.
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We’ve been closely covering the Ellison family’s transformation of CBS News from one of the most respected legacy media outlets in the country to a sad former shell of itself. Now they’re likely to do the same thing to CNN. Right-wing billionaires controlling 80 percent of TV news in America is exactly why we need independent journalism. But we can’t keep this work going without your support. If you’ve been thinking about becoming a Raw America subscriber, today is the day to officially make the leap.
I’m Thom Hartmann. Thanks for reading, and thanks for supporting independent media. Once again, tap the ❤️ and restack this post so we can break through and reach the people who really need these stories.
