Good morning. I’m Thom Hartmann.
A Democratic senator spoke with Raw America this morning about their plan to fight Attorney General nominee Todd Blanche’s upcoming confirmation vote, and to hold him accountable for obstructing the release of the Epstein files. Trump’s call to keep senators in Washington this August to fund his war has Republicans at each others’ throats, with one GOP senator warning the plan could “blow up” the entire Republican majority. A major Republican donor with a long history of financial fraud got a pardon from Trump just days after cutting a check to a vulnerable House Republican’s campaign. And the White House just made a move that’s set to raise prescription drug costs for millions of seniors on Medicare.
Before we get to the news, we want to express our deep appreciation for our paying subscribers. Thanks to you, we have a full-time Capitol correspondent credentialed to cover both the House and Senate, who just spoke with a U.S. senator about a major confirmation fight happening this week. He’ll also be filing a special report later today about an effort to draw attention to Trump’s mishandling of the Epstein files. None of that would be possible without your support, so thank you again.
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Exclusive: Senator Tells Raw America About Plan to Fight Blanche’s Confirmation
Raw America’s Capitol correspondent, Luke De Cresce, caught up with Democratic Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon this morning to talk about the upcoming confirmation vote for Todd Blanche, President Donald Trump’s pick for attorney general.
Blanche is Trump’s own former personal criminal defense attorney, who then-Attorney General Pam Bondi put in charge of releasing all Justice Department files related to convicted sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.
That was supposed to happen months ago after Trump signed the Epstein Files Transparency Act into law last fall. It still hasn’t. Blanche is currently sitting on millions of pages of documents that have yet to see the light of day, and he’s refusing to release them.
“Todd Blanche, every step of the way through this effort to get the truth out, obstructed it, stood in the way, did everything he could to make sure the facts didn’t come out,” Wyden told Raw America.
Wyden added he and other Democrats aren’t going to let this vote slide through without a major fight. He told Raw America he plans to “block his nomination” and “hold him accountable.”
Senate Republicans are already in a tough spot. They’ve got a law on the books that passed with overwhelming bipartisan support, and that Trump himself signed. They’ve got a nominee who, according to a sitting senator, has spent months directly violating that law. And they’re being asked to promote the same man who is shielding Jeffrey Epstein’s co-conspirators from justice to run the Justice Department.
This isn’t just about stopping one of Trump’s nominees, but about whether the Epstein Files Transparency Act actually means anything. Millions of Americans, as well as the survivors of Epstein’s crimes, deserve to know what’s in those files. Blanche is standing between the public and that information, and now he wants a promotion for it.
Article Two, Section Three of the Constitution says the president shall take care that the laws be faithfully executed. That's not a suggestion, that's the job description, and it's the single line the framers wrote to make sure no president could sit down and decide which laws he felt like obeying. When the man running the Justice Department treats a law his own boss signed as optional, we're not watching a paperwork delay. We're watching that clause get hollowed out in real time, by the one department whose entire reason for existing is to enforce it.
Raw America will keep following this story as it develops.
GOP Senator Says Trump Could ‘Blow Up’ the Republican Majority with ‘Divisive’ Demand
Donald Trump has made a significant mess of the Senate Republican conference with his consistent calls to scuttle the August recess.
Trump wants the Senate to cancel its scheduled five-week break to pass his draconian voter ID bill, and a funding package that includes tens of billions of dollars to fund his war with Iran.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune of South Dakota called the plan is “risky,” and has continued to warn Trump that the required 50 votes simply aren’t there. Of course, that has yet to stop Trump’s pressure campaign.
Canceling the recess wouldn’t just mean gambling on legislation when the math doesn’t add up. It would also mean vulnerable Senate Republicans like Susan Collins of Maine, Jon Husted of Ohio and Dan Sullivan of Alaska would be off the campaign trail during the exact stretch when they need to be shaking hands and raising money for their reelection campaigns back in their home states.
One Republican senator anonymously confided to The Hill that Trump’s plan “has the potential to blow up” the Senate GOP conference, calling it “a very divisive concept.”
Republican Senator John Cornyn of Texas — who lost his reelection bid to a Trump-backed primary opponent — is also worried about setting expectations Republicans can’t meet. He says pushing a bill that doesn’t have the sixty votes necessary to survive a Democratic filibuster risks “demoralizing our base” when it inevitably fails.
Trump has continued to trash Senate Republicans, calling the chamber “a place you send things when you want them to die.” He’s also been telling reporters on Air Force One that Thune has “got to get his job done.”
Republicans clearly aren’t comfortable being asked to walk the plank on a $95 billion funding package for a vastly unpopular war that won’t get enough votes to pass, with less than 100 days before the midterms. They’d also be teeing up a series of brutal amendment votes, known as a vote-a-rama, where Democrats get to force vulnerable Republicans to go on the record over and over on politically toxic issues that will almost certainly be used against them going into November.
Senator James Lankford of Oklahoma said Thune’s job right now is basically impossible, given that he’s simultaneously juggling tough confirmation fights like Blanche’s, a looming government funding deadline, expired surveillance authorities and the president’s increasingly outlandish demands.
The Republican Party is being pulled in different directions by its own president, right as the midterms are bearing down. Republicans have every reason to be worried about their immediate political future.
Back in 2013, five justices in Shelby County v. Holder tore the enforcement heart out of the Voting Rights Act, and Chief Justice Roberts assured the country we'd changed enough that we didn't need it anymore. What we got instead was a decade of purged rolls and shuttered polling places, state by state. Now that same project wants to go national in one bill, and the only things standing in its way are a Senate rule Trump keeps demanding they burn down and a handful of Republicans who'd rather be home campaigning. That's an awfully thin thread to hang the right to vote on.
Trump Pardons GOP Megadonor 3 Days After He Donates to Republican’s Campaign
This story has all the hallmarks of old-fashioned Washington corruption, and it’s happening right out in the open.
Adam Kidan is a major Republican donor. He’s also a convicted felon, and one of the central figures in the Jack Abramoff scandal that rocked Washington two decades ago. He served over two years in prison after pleading guilty to conspiracy and wire fraud.
On June 30th, Kidan donated $2,600 to the leadership PAC of Republican Congressman Ryan Mackenzie of Pennsylvania. Mackenzie is running for reelection in one of the most competitive House races in the country, facing Democratic challenger Bob Brooks in a seat rated a pure toss-up.
Trump personally campaigned for Mackenzie in his district a week before that donation went out.
On July 3rd, just three days after Kidan wrote that check, Trump pardoned him.
Mackenzie’s office insists the congressman never asked the White House about a pardon for his donor. But when asked whether Mackenzie plans to keep the donation, his office refused to answer.
Brooks’ campaign manager laid out the timeline, telling NOTUS: “Three days after a convicted fraudster cut Ryan Mackenzie a massive campaign check, that same fraudster walked away with a presidential pardon. That is corruption in plain sight.”
Federal records show Kidan has donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to Trump-linked committees and personally hosted fundraisers at Mar-a-Lago. He’s spread money around to other House Republicans in Pennsylvania, a Senate campaign in Michigan, a House race in Iowa and wrote a big check to Congressman Jim Jordan’s fundraising committee in Ohio.
As part of his sentence, Kidan was ordered to pay $217 million in restitution alongside Abramoff. It’s not clear how much of that he ever actually paid. Now that he’s pardoned, any remaining obligation is likely erased for good.
A hundred years ago this country had a scandal called Teapot Dome, where Interior Secretary Albert Fall took cash to hand federal oil reserves over to private drillers. Fall went to prison for it, the first cabinet officer in American history to do it, and what mattered wasn't the punishment. It was the establishment of a principle that a government decision isn't for sale at any price. That principle only survives as long as people believe it's being enforced, and every arrangement that looks like this one, whatever the paperwork says, spends down a little more of that belief.
Trump’s Latest Move Would Raise Drug Prices for Millions of Seniors
The Trump administration just announced it’s ending the Medicare Part D subsidy program that’s helped keep prescription drug premiums stable for years. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz defended the move, saying Medicare Part D benefits insurance companies more than seniors.
Right now, the government spends billions of dollars to keep the average Part D premium around $36 a month. Once that subsidy disappears at the end of 2026, premiums are expected to rise for roughly half of all recipients, with some seeing increases of up to $20 a month, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation.
Seniors won’t even find out their new monthly costs until later this fall, with the changes set to take effect beginning in 2027.
The Trump administration is framing the move as fiscal responsibility, making sure to blame former President Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act, for what they claim funneled billions to insurance companies. Oz insisted that “premiums will go up by less than $10 for most Medicare recipients, with many even seeing LOWER premiums.”
Let’s all remember that the Inflation Reduction Act let Medicare start directly negotiating with drug companies over the price of some of the most expensive medications on the market, leading to significant savings on life-saving drugs like insulin for diabetes patients.
This comes after Affordable Care Act subsidies have already expired, making healthcare one of the top issues in the midterms. Now, the Trump administration is rolling back yet critical safety net tens of millions of seniors rely on every day. This is real money out of real people’s pockets, hitting people on fixed incomes right when so many seniors are already financially squeezed.
61 years ago this week, Lyndon Johnson flew out to Independence, Missouri, to sign Medicare into law in Harry Truman's hometown, and he handed Truman the very first Medicare card in the country. Truman had spent twenty years getting called a socialist for proposing it. The whole idea was to take the question of whether a sick old person can afford her medicine out of the hands of the insurance market and put it in the hands of the country. So when an administration hands a piece of that back to the market and calls it fiscal responsibility, it isn't trimming a budget line. It's quietly withdrawing a promise from people who already spent a working life paying for it.
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That’s your Wednesday morning rundown. Democrats are determined to stop the man responsible for covering up the Epstein files from becoming the official new head of the Justice Department. Republicans are panicking that Trump could ruin their control of the Senate. Trump is pardoning convicted fraudsters if they write a big enough check. And millions of seniors are about to get hit right in the wallet.
Raw America is only able to cover these stories this way precisely because we don’t have a MAGA billionaire owner watching over our shoulder, or an ad department making us self-censor because some corporation wants to keep their federal contracts. But that kind of independence is only possible if enough readers decide that journalism that only answers to its readers is important enough to fund. If you found this newsletter valuable and you’re reading us on a free subscription, this is for you. Become a paying subscriber today and help keep this work going.
I’m Thom Hartmann. Thanks for reading, and thanks for supporting independent media.
Here are some stories you may have missed:
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Trump Now Asking Supreme Court to Dismiss $83.3 Million E. Jean Carroll Judgment. President Trump and his Department of Justice are now petitioning the Supreme Court to throw out the $83.3 million defamation judgment that writer E. Jean Carroll won against him. A New York jury ruled in Carroll’s favor in 2024 after Trump defamed her in response to her recounting of how he sexually abused her in a New York City department store in 1996. The Supreme Court previously declined to throw out the $5 million sexual abuse judgment Carroll won in a separate 2023 trial.
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