Good morning. I’m Thom Hartmann.
ICE is in open revolt over Trump’s new pick to run the agency. Members of Congress on both sides of the aisle are criticizing the president for turning America’s 250th birthday into a MAGA campaign rally. A former Trump Cabinet secretary is warning that Democrats could not only impeach but also convict Trump in a third impeachment trial if they win the midterms. And Trump was the butt of jokes at a recent Kennedy Center ceremony after he tried and failed to stamp his name on the building.
Before we dive in, we need to talk about the billionaire takeover of the media. Anderson Cooper has been sounding the alarm about right-wing lackey Bari Weiss taking over CNN and doing there what she’s already done to CBS after the pro-Trump billionaire Ellison family completes its acquisition of the network. The Murdochs just added several more digital platforms to their empire, including New York Magazine and Vox Media. The billionaire conquest of the media is rapidly advancing, and independent media outlets like Raw America are the answer. We are fully reader-supported, editorially independent and not for sale. But we can only keep this work going if enough readers decide today that they’ll support independent journalism. If you’ve been enjoying Raw America’s newsletters on a free subscription, we’re counting on you to make today the day you upgrade to a paying one.
ICE Agents Threaten Mass Resignations Over Trump’s New ICE Director
Donald Trump just handed control of ICE to someone nobody in the agency has ever heard of, and rank-and-file agents are apparently not taking it well.
On Saturday, Trump announced he’s nominating Richard “Lance” Schroyer to be the next director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Schroyer is a former Oklahoma state trooper and ex-Marine. But he doesn’t actually have any federal immigration experience.
Neither Tom Homan nor Stephen Miller wanted him. Rather, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin recommended him. Schroyer used to work Mullin’s residential security detail back when Mullin was a senator. They were reportedly close enough that Mullin would sometimes invite him over for dinner.
That’s apparently how you get to run a $78 billion agency with 32,000 employees.
DHS insiders told the PunchUp Substack that the nomination landed like a grenade inside the agency’s office, with one source saying: “Everyone was blindsided, including Homan and Miller.” The same source suggested Schroyer’s nomination could mean Miller “may be getting boxed out.” Another senior ICE figure told the outlet that “Homan is going to lose all power.”
Three separate insiders told PunchUp agents are furious. An unnamed senior source within the agency said they were outraged their new boss had “no experience” and that he was “never a leader” who “never had to manage a budget.” Another Trump administration official said the reaction to Schroyer was “very bad” and warned that agents are ready to walk. Another said: “We’re gonna look like idiots.”
One agency veteran called Schroyer a “fish cop.” That’s apparently a dig at Kristi Noem’s handpicked ICE deputy Madison Sheahan, who was only 29 years old and widely mocked inside the agency. That source called Mullin “the new Noem.”
These are the same agents Trump is counting on to carry out the biggest deportation operation in American history. The timing couldn’t be worse.
After a disappointed office seeker assassinated President Garfield, Congress passed the Pendleton Act in 1883 to bury the spoils system and put federal power in the hands of people who earned it, not people who’d guarded the right patron’s house. Handing one of the most coercive agencies in the country to an inexperienced loyalist is that same corruption marching back in a uniform.
Lawmakers Slam Trump for Hijacking America’s 250th Birthday
The United States turns 250 years old on July 4th, and Congress had been planning this milestone for a decade. Back in 2016, Congress passed a bipartisan bill to create the America250 commission, which would coordinate unifying national celebrations that would honor the country’s founding principles.
What they got instead was Trump. And he decided to make it all about himself.
The president has essentially disregarded the congressionally-created commission and handed plans to his own Freedom 250 group, which got $68 million in taxpayer money this year. The bipartisan America250 commission, meanwhile, told Congress it’s facing a $100 million funding shortfall, while the Trump administration continues withholding funds it’s owed under law.
Rather than bringing Americans together, celebrations in Washington have taken on the feel of a MAGA rally. Trump kicked things off with a speech on the National Mall where he attacked transgender people, heaped praise on ICE, and promoted his deal with Iran that has since fallen apart. He’s planning a July 4th event he’s calling, in all caps, “the most spectacular TRUMP RALLY of them all.”
Several Democratic-led states are boycotting the celebrations. Progressive groups are planning competing events. And longtime DC residents are skipping the National Mall on the Fourth for the first time in their lives.
Even Republicans are uncomfortable. Senator Thom Tillis of North Carolina said: “If the celebration of the miracle of democracy that comes from the founding of this nation becomes partisan, shame on us,” Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska said the country is “already divided enough.”
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy made the partisan mood explicit at the state fair last week, saying the military band that performed after several artists pulled out of the event were “way better than those libtards that canceled on us.”
Democrat Alex Padilla of California raised pointed questions at a Senate hearing this week, asking how much taxpayer money has gone to Freedom 250 versus the congressionally-created commission, and whether any of the private donations flowing to Trump’s favored group came with strings attached. And his colleague, Democrat Adam Schiff, sent a letter to the Interior Department back in March asking why Freedom 250 was receiving taxpayer money. He has yet to receive a response.
Congress appropriated $150 million of our money for the 250th celebration. And no one knows where that money went. America’s birthday doesn’t belong to any president. It belongs to the American people.
Frederick Douglass stood up in 1852 and asked what the Fourth of July meant to the people the country had left out, because he understood the day belongs to everyone with a claim on America’s promise. Turning it into one man’s branded rally, bankrolled with money Congress set aside for all of us, is a theft of that shared inheritance.
Former Trump Cabinet Official Predicts Third Impeachment
The midterm elections are rapidly approaching this fall, and the stakes are starting to come into focus. And former Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, who served in Trump’s first term, has “no doubt” that if Democrats win the House, they’ll impeach Trump for a third term. He also believes a Democrat-led U.S. Senate would uphold the conviction.
Ross told Newsweek that, for Trump, “the stakes are extremely high.” Not just for himself, but also for his legislative agenda.
Trump is already the first president in American history to be impeached twice, and a third impeachment would be even more unprecedented. You’ll remember he was impeached in 2019 by a Democratic-led House over allegations that he pressured Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden and his son. He was impeached again in 2021 over his role in inciting the January 6th attack on the Capitol. Both times, Republicans in the Senate fell short of the two-thirds needed to convict.
Speaker Mike Johnson is also using the threat of a third impeachment to rally support for his party. He recently told the Faith and Freedom Coalition conference that Democrats would not only impeach Trump, but also investigate Trump’s family, his associates and his Cabinet. Johnson told attendees: “half of you in this room will be targeted.” Trump himself has admitted his own fears of a third impeachment.
However, Democratic leaders aren’t making impeachment the centerpiece of their midterm message. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said the party hasn’t reached a consensus on the issue. And Pete Aguilar, who is the fourth highest-ranking House Democrat, said in March that impeachment doesn’t come up in the party’s discussions.
But that was all before the Iran war. After Trump escalated his threats against Tehran, dozens of Democrats publicly expressed their desire to remove Trump from office, either by way of impeachment or the 25th Amendment.
Senator Brian Schatz of Hawaii told CNN that Trump has committed “a million” impeachable offenses, though he called the question of whether to go through with it an “important tactical question.”
Democrats currently have a 71 percent chance of winning the House. The Senate is far tighter, rated a toss-up with most forecasters giving Republicans a slight edge, and control hinging on a handful of close races in states like Alaska, Ohio and Texas.
Ross says Trump’s fate in November will come down to whether voters believe Iran was worth going to war over, whether Trump gets control of inflation and whether the president’s more erratic behavior alienates enough moderates to swing close seats. The clock is ticking.
When the House Judiciary Committee approved articles of impeachment against Richard Nixon in 1974, it did so with Republican votes, because enough members still believed Congress answers to the Constitution and not to the president. A Speaker who brags to a room of donors that he runs a protection program has decided the opposite, that his job is to shield power rather than check it.
Comedian Skewers Trump with Epstein Joke at Kennedy Center
The Kennedy Center recently honored Bill Maher with the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor on Sunday night. And the president who tried to rename the building after himself became the butt of everyone’s jokes
Trump wasn’t there. The White House had previously tried to block Maher from receiving the award.
Comedian Whitney Cummings opened the evening by going straight at the president. “I actually heard Trump may come tonight but he couldn’t make it,” she said, “He got caught in sex traffic.”
The joke was a direct reference to Trump’s decades-long friendship with convicted sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, which has continued to haunt the president despite his denials of any involvement in Epstein’s crimes.
Cummings also took a shot at Trump allies like singer Kid Rock and UFC CEO Dana White, telling the audience that “seeing Dana White, Donald Trump and Kid Rock all together at the White House really proves there is no God.”
Attendees also took notice of the white tarp still covering the facade of the Kennedy Center, which went up after a judge ordered Trump’s name to be removed as he had no authority to rename it without Congress.
Jay Leno called the tarp “hilarious” on the red carpet. Maher called it “hysterical.”
Maher told CNN that despite a brief detente, Trump was back to “yelling and screaming” at him. He said while he’d prefer to keep communication open with Trump, but acknowledged that being combative is just how the president operates.
Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick was at the Kennedy Center last night, and defended Trump’s takeover of the Kennedy Center, telling reporters the president is “gonna try his darnedest to make this building shine.” He added that his boss is “used to these courts always fighting with him,” but that he always wins in the end. The tarp outside the building suggests otherwise.
The framers wrote a ban on titles of nobility into Article One because they feared exactly this instinct, a leader who treats the country’s shared institutions as a pedestal for his own name. A tarp draped over the Kennedy Center is what it looks like when the law reminds him those buildings belong to all of us, and they’re not his to claim.
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If you found today’s newsletter valuable, the single best thing you can do is become a paying subscriber to Raw America. We covered how ICE is in revolt over an unqualified political appointee, how the president has turned America’s 250th birthday into a shameless campaign event while our tax money spent on the event is unaccounted for, how one of Trump’s former Cabinet secretaries is fearing a historic third impeachment, and how the president’s failed takeover of the Kennedy Center ended in embarrassment and humiliation. Raw America is bringing you the news without a billionaire funder or a corporate parent censoring us. But we can only do this with support from readers like you. If you’re still reading this on a free subscription, make today the day you upgrade to a paying one. Every dollar of every subscription goes directly toward funding the independent journalism you just read.
I’m Thom Hartmann. The fight is here. Thank you for being in it.
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