Good morning. I’m Thom Hartmann.
An alleged Epstein victim who accused Trump of assaulting her as a teenager is reportedly hiding out and living in fear of retaliation. A veteran CBS News producer left “60 Minutes” and took a parting shot at billionaire lackey Bari Weiss. The Washington Post has uncovered a secret half-billion-dollar no-bid contract behind Trump’s White House ballroom. And a small Texas city just became the first in the state to ban data centers outright.
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Woman Who Accused Trump and Epstein of Assault Living in Fear of Retaliation
A woman identified only as Jane Doe 4 says she’s staying off the grid in fear of retaliation from the president. According to a relative, she’s terrified of what could happen to her as the fight over disclosing her case files escalates.
This woman sat down with FBI agents four separate times in 2019, during Jeffrey Epstein’s second prosecution. During those interviews, she accused Epstein of abusing her in the 1980s, and that Donald Trump assaulted her as well when she was between 13 and 15 years old.
The White House said the allegations are baseless. But a federal judge just gave acting attorney general Todd Blanche a deadline of July 2nd to either hand over unredacted versions of the Epstein files that have already been released, or give the court a valid explanation of why he won’t.
Keep in mind that Blanche is Trump’s former personal attorney, and was running the Justice Department’s document review operation in the wake of the Epstein Files Transparency Act becoming law, overseeing 500 reviewers who decided what got released and what didn’t.
Blanche is currently keeping roughly 2.5 million records under wraps, labeling them “duplicative” or otherwise protected and refusing to let them see the light of day. Nobody outside the DOJ actually knows what’s in them.
Sky Roberts, whose sister Virginia Giuffre was one of Epstein’s most prominent accusers before she died in 2025, says it shouldn’t be on Jane Doe 4 to keep coming forward time and again. The DOJ already has her testimony, and it’s their job to release it.
The handwritten notes from the victim’s FBI interviews are still being kept secret in direct defiance of the Epstein Files Transparency Act, despite the law saying documents can’t be withheld just because they embarrass powerful people. Blanche is heading into Senate confirmation hearings this summer, and it’s a certainty that this case will be a major point of contention in the Judiciary Committee.
Louis Brandeis wrote back in 1913 that sunlight is the best disinfectant, and he wasn’t talking about hygiene. He was talking about the fact that powerful men commit their worst acts in the dark, and the only reliable cure is forcing the light onto them. A Justice Department sitting on millions of records to spare the president embarrassment is the exact disease Brandeis was describing, and Congress already wrote the prescription. Blanche’s job is to fill it.
CBS Producer Takes Jab at Bari Weiss After Leaving Network
Henry Schuster, a producer who’d been at “60 Minutes” since 2007, announced he’s leaving the show after nearly two decades. And he isn’t going quietly.
In his goodbye post, Schuster made clear he was leaving of his own volition. But he also attributed his departure to all the forced exits happening around him under the leadership of Bari Weiss, who the pro-Trump billionaire Ellison family installed after they took over the network.
Let’s also point out that Weiss is editor-in-chief of a major news network, despite being a right-wing opinion columnist who never worked in broadcast news before she was elevated to her role. She even bragged about not even having a TV in her own house.
Weiss has had one mess after another happen under her tenure. Ratings have plummeted. Veteran correspondents Cecilia Vega and Sharyn Alfonsi got fired last month, along with longtime executive producer Tanya Simon, on a day CBS staffers called “Black Thursday.”
Scott Pelley, another “60 Minutes” mainstay, was also pushed out after a contentious staff meeting with the show’s new executive producer, where he accused Weiss of “murdering” the program. He was fired two days later.
Weiss was also behind the yanking of a segment about torture at the notorious CECOT mega-prison in El Salvador that Trump sent Venezuelan immigrants to, right before it was set to air.
Schuster said he didn’t want to be a cliche and wouldn’t start a podcast or a Substack. At least not yet. But the picture he’s painting of “60 Minutes” under Weiss is particularly dark, not only for the people who built that show’s reputation over decades, but for the millions of Americans who watch it.
Back in 1945, the Supreme Court told the Associated Press that the widest possible spread of news from diverse and antagonistic sources is what keeps a free people informed. Justice Hugo Black wrote that a press protected from the government doesn’t get to hand private power the right to choke that diversity off. That’s what we’re watching at CBS right now. A billionaire family bought a newsroom, installed a boss who’d never worked in broadcast, and started deciding which truths the country gets to see, while the people who spent decades earning the public’s trust get walked to the door.
Raw America will never take on a billionaire owner, because we know that’s the death knell of real journalism. But because we don’t an oligarch writing checks, we need readers like you to step up and help keep us alive. Take a moment and subscribe to Raw America right now.
Trump’s $500 Million Ballroom Being Built Under No-Bid Contract
The Washington Post recently got its hands on a contract showing Trump’s White House secretly handed out a no-bid deal worth up to 500 million dollars to build the new East Wing ballroom.
The massive contract got secretly routed through the Executive Residence office, which handles things like furniture and minor repairs. It also happens to be exempt from the competitive bidding rules that apply almost everywhere else in the federal government.
And according to internal documents, the president was personally involved in negotiating costs on this project. At one point he haggled over the price of concrete with a subsidiary of the construction company, Clark Construction.
Trump repeatedly claimed this ballroom would be funded by private donors, even saying Clark offered to build it for free. But internal company documents say otherwise. Clark is projected to pull in 65 million dollars in combined profit and overhead just from this one project.
The estimated cost has tripled since last year, and taxpayers are on the hook for roughly half of it. Keep in mind, Trump bulldozed the historic East Wing without once notifying Congress.
Experts who’ve spent careers managing federal construction contracts say a project of this magnitude should have gone through the competitive bidding process to be responsible with taxpayer money. Instead, the White House claimed national security justified the no-bid contract. Trump himself has used that excuse when describing the ballroom’s underground bunker and what he’s called a rooftop “drone empire to protect Washington.”
A federal judge already ruled this spring that the president doesn’t have the authority to build this thing without Congress signing off, and the court’s only let the underground security work continue while the case plays out. The administration is appealing. Keep a close eye on this one.
The men who wrote the Constitution put one sentence in Article One saying no money comes out of the Treasury except through appropriations made by law. They did that because they’d just finished fighting a king who spent public money however he pleased. Routing half a billion dollars through an office built for buying furniture, hiding it behind a national security claim, and handing taxpayers half the bill is the kind of one-man spending the founders wrote that clause to prevent. The bunker underneath isn’t the part that should bother you. The end run around Congress is.
Texas Town Bans Data Centers and Kicks Off Major Fight Over Local Control
Finally, let’s head to Texas, where a fight over data centers just produced a first-of-its-kind moment.
The city of San Marcos voted 4 to 3 earlier this month to become the first city in Texas to ban data centers outright. City council members who voted in favor of the ban noted that data centers have a reputation for draining water and energy resources from the community.
There’s no data center currently proposed in San Marcos. But there are two proposed just outside city limits in unincorporated Hays County, where commissioners passed a symbolic, non-binding pause on development.
San Marcos has home rule authority, which most Texas counties don’t. That gives certain larger cities the power to write their own zoning codes, which may very well survive a court challenge.
A challenge is almost certain. Republican State Senator Paul Bettencourt, who chairs the Senate Committee on Local Government, says he’s going after San Marcos the same way he went after Hood County, where commissioners tabled a similar data center ban after he raised legal objections.
Bettencourt said the data center ban violates a 2025 state law restricting development moratoriums, along with the so-called Death Star law from 2023, which prevents cities from passing rules that go further than state law allows.
But land use experts are countering that San Marcos didn’t pass a moratorium, but rather rewrote its entire zoning code. That’s a significant legal distinction, and is one key reason experts think the ban could actually hold up in court.
San Marcos is drawing a lot of attention over this. Polls show most Texas residents don’t want data centers, citing their drain on water, electricity, and deafening noise. Other Texas towns, like Lockhart and Kerrville are watching San Marcos closely and quietly tightening their own zoning rules while stopping short of an outright ban, hoping to avoid the same legal pitfalls. As one council member put it, every city in Texas right now is watching San Marcos.
Home rule isn’t a loophole San Marcos cooked up. It goes back to 1875, when Missouri became the first state to write into its constitution that a city has the right to run its own affairs instead of taking orders from the statehouse. That idea spread across the country because Americans decided the people who live somewhere ought to decide what gets built there. So when a state senator threatens to override a town that listened to its own residents about their own water, he isn’t defending the law. He’s defending the data centers, and he’s betting most people won’t notice the difference.
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If you found this newsletter valuable, the best thing you can do is become a paying subscriber to keep this work going. We reported on how a frightened Epstein accuser is living in fear of retribution from the most powerful man in the world. We covered how a 60 Minutes producer is walking away from a network that’s being hollowed out by a billionaire and his appointed lackey. You learned about how the president is exploiting a loophole in federal law to end-run transparency and how a small Texas town is standing up to Silicon Valley to protect its natural resources.
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I’m Thom Hartmann. The fight is here. Thank you for being in it.
STORIES YOU MAY HAVE MISSED:
Supreme Court Lifts Cap on Campaign Spending. In a 6-3 decision split along partisan lines, the Supreme Court on Tuesday eliminated the caps on how much political parties could spend in coordination with candidates. The case was initially filed by then-U.S. Senate candidate JD Vance. The decision comes just months before the midterms, with Republicans attempting to cling to their thin majorities in the House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate.
Supreme Court Narrowly Upholds Birthright Citizenship. In a 5-4 decision, the Supreme Court agreed that all children born in the United States are U.S. citizens regardless of their parents’ immigration status, which the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution clearly states. The decision strikes down President Donald Trump’s January 2025 executive order that attempted to repeal that language from the Constitution via presidential decree. Justices Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch and Clarence Thomas dissented, with Justice Brett Kavanaugh partially dissenting.
White House Reportedly Selling Pardons for $1 Million to $2 Million. President Trump is reportedly considering handing out 250 pardons to commemorate the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. Attorneys for convicts seeking pardons recently told The Atlantic that the going rate to purchase a presidential pardon ranged from $1 million to $2 million. Some high-profile convicts angling for clemency include Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes — who is serving her sentence for defrauding investors at the Bryan, Texas prison camp where Epstein co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell is also incarcerated — and FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried, who was convicted for using investor funds for his own personal use.
Kash Patel Criticized for Revealing Details of FBI Investigation on Social Media. Veteran FBI agents are accusing FBI Director Kash Patel of posting sensitive details of a terror plot to gain social media clout. Patel recently shared information about an alleged plot to carry out a terrorist attack at the UFC fight on the South Lawn of the White House, which led to five arrests. The inquiry into the plot had been sealed by a court order, preventing Patel from discussing it publicly. Patel has previously cited court orders as an excuse for not releasing grand jury testimony in the Epstein files.
Iran War Cost Every American Household an Additional $1,000. A new study from Moody’s Analytics chief economist Mark Zandi recently found that President Trump’s war in Iran cost every American household an average of $1,000 since it began in February. Zandi arrived at his estimate by calculating the additional financial burden to households in the form of higher gas prices, and that the subsequent increase in diesel prices led to higher prices for retail goods shipped via trucks from farms, factories and seaports.
