Good morning. I’m Thom Hartmann.
Trump’s own voters are turning on him after learning he made over $2 billion from his side businesses last year while they struggle with higher prices. Justice Amy Coney Barrett is getting hammered by sexist attacks from the far right after she voted to uphold the plain language of the Constitution. Speaker Mike Johnson’s own party is turning against him as he fails to follow through on his promises. And Karoline Leavitt, Trump’s White House press secretary, still owes hundreds of thousands of dollars from her failed congressional campaign in 2022, and she’s doing nothing to pay it back.
Before we get to the news, let’s talk about why you’re reading this newsletter instead of watching a cable network owned by a right-wing billionaire with ties to the current administration. You and I both know that MAGA oligarchs like Jeff Bezos, the Ellisons and Rupert Murdoch buy news outlets specifically to prevent journalists from holding them and their rich friends accountable. That’s why independent journalism like Raw America is so necessary. But because we don’t have a billionaire backer, everything we do here is only possible with the support of readers like you who fund people-powered media. If you’re still on a free subscription, we need you to make today the day you become a paying subscriber. Don’t let the billionaires win.
Trump Voters Furious as He Pockets Billions
Two people who voted for Donald Trump in 2024 recently sat down with MS NOW, and didn’t pull punches when asked about whether it was appropriate for the president to make billions from lucrative side hustles while in the Oval Office.
One man said bluntly that Trump’s presidential salary should suffice, and that his investments should be in the hands of people who don’t answer to him.
The woman standing next to him agreed, saying Trump should just focus on being president, and that the multi-billionaire already has enough money.
Nicolle Wallace reminded her audience that these are people who proudly voted for Trump just 18 months ago.
Trump’s newly released financial disclosure form shows the president personally made more than $2.2 billion last year alone. More than $1.4 billion of that came from the cryptocurrency ventures run by his adult sons. Crypto has even passed real estate as the main way the Trump family makes their money.
World Liberty Financial, which the president co-founded with Don Jr. and Eric Trump, brought in more than $500 million for him last year alone. His bogus Trump-branded meme coin added another $635 million from sales.
This is the same candidate who ran twice on lowering the cost of living for everyday Americans. Instead, his pointless tariffs and the failed war in Iran sent gas prices skyrocketing, while everyday families are getting squeezed by higher prices on everything.
Trump was asked about all this while showing off his new Air Force One that he got as a gift, arguably a bribe, from Qatar’s royal family. He didn’t apologize for anything, and insisted he’s profiting because the stock market is up. He said his own 401(k) is up 85 percent, and argued people should instead be thanking him.
This is a pretty strange defense from a man who built his brand on being a fighter for the working class. His own voters are starting to notice that the billionaire they elected cares more about his investment portfolio than their checking accounts.
The men who wrote the Constitution put a clause right in Article One barring anyone holding office from pocketing gifts and payments from foreign kings and princes, and they did it because they’d watched money quietly buy up the courts of Europe. A president collecting a jumbo jet from Qatar while his family’s crypto tokens pull in cash from all over the world is the exact thing they built that wall to stop.
Justice Barrett Hit with Barrage of Sexist Attacks After Birthright Citizenship Ruling
Amy Coney Barrett was Trump’s third Supreme Court nominee of his first term. But this week, she joined Chief Justice John Roberts and the three Democratic-appointed justices in striking down Trump’s executive order trying to end birthright citizenship by decree. Even though five justices signed onto that reasoning, Barrett is taking almost all the heat from MAGA herself.
Republican congresswoman Nancy Mace of South Carolina called for impeaching what she called rogue, activist judges, singling out Barrett by name. She then suggested female justices don’t understand the 14th Amendment the way the men who wrote it did.
Republican senator Mike Lee of Utah mocked Barrett’s vote with an asinine joke about babies born at the Supreme Court. MAGA influencer Laura Loomer said Barrett was sending the country to its grave. And even Notre Dame’s College Republicans chapter, from Barrett’s law school, called her a disgrace to the university’s name.
That’s just the start. Far-right podcaster Matt Walsh called Barrett a DEI hire and lumped her in with the court’s two liberal female justices, saying the worst justices in American history have all been women. Right-wing pastor Dale Partridge cited the Garden of Eden story from the Book of Genesis to argue there should be no more female judges or politicians.
MAGA even went after Barrett’s adopted children from Haiti. One commentator claimed her interracial family meant his own grandchildren no longer had a country.
The double standard is pretty clear. Kavanaugh voted the same way as Barrett but based his reasoning on a 1940 law rather than a broad reading of the 14th Amendment. He drew far less criticism, even though his vote also went against Trump’s order, just on narrower grounds. Some conservatives now see his opinion as a roadmap for Congress to legislate new restrictions on birthright citizenship.
The backlash against Amy Coney Barrett exposes the rank sexism within today’s Republican Party. This is a Supreme Court justice appointed by Trump himself, confirmed with overwhelming support from Senate Republicans, now being attacked in explicitly sexist terms for simply upholding the plain language of the Constitution.
Back in 1873, the Supreme Court told Myra Bradwell she couldn’t practice law in Illinois at all, because a woman’s place was supposedly in the home. The fact that grown men in 2026 are still insisting women don’t belong on the bench, aimed now at a justice who did nothing but read the 14th Amendment as written, tells you the fight Bradwell started is one this country still hasn’t finished.
Mike Johnson Rapidly Losing His Grip on the House
A year ago, Mike Johnson had House Republicans chanting his name after passing Trump’s big ugly bill. But today, that momentum is almost completely gone.
This week, Johnson couldn’t even get enough votes to bring up a resolution celebrating the one-year anniversary of that same tax law. The defense spending bill that included a pay raise for troops, went down along with it.
A pattern is emerging. Johnson keeps making big promises to the warring factions of the Republican Party to pass bills, and fails to deliver on them. He promised libertarian-minded Republicans a ban on central bank digital currencies. That went nowhere. A nasty fight over the gasoline blend E15 nearly blew up the farm bill. Immigration hardliners were promised a new border security bill by the 4th of July in exchange for their votes on an ICE funding bill, but there’s been no movement on that front either.
Johnson also promised a vote on Trump’s voting restriction bill, even though it has no path to 60 votes in the Senate. Now, Republicans who are angry about the border bill and the voter ID bill joined forces to block the defense spending bill and another government funding bill from even reaching the floor.
The speaker defended his record by telling reporters that some Republicans can’t control their emotions, and that they should be mad at the Senate instead of at him.
Former Republican congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, who tried to remove Johnson as speaker back in 2024, says she warned her fellow Republicans not to trust him, and pointed to his broken promise on Obamacare subsidies, which she supported, as proof.
Even Trump personally asking Republicans to put down their swords last week didn’t stop the revolt. Now that the midterms are just a few months away, Johnson’s razor-thin majority combined with his habit of breaking promises doesn’t bode well for Republicans.
It’s worth being clear about what’s freezing this House, and it’s Trump’s push to make it harder for Americans to vote. Sixty years ago a different Johnson, Lyndon, stood behind the marchers at Selma and drove the Voting Rights Act into law to open the ballot box wider, and this Johnson can’t even keep the floor running while he chases the opposite goal.
Karoline Leavitt’s Failed 2022 Campaign Still Hundreds of Thousands of Dollars in Debt
Before she became Trump’s second-term White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt ran for Congress in New Hampshire in 2022. She lost to Democratic congressman Chris Pappas by 8 points. That campaign still owes $326,370 to its creditors, and Leavitt raised exactly zero dollars last quarter to pay any of it.
More than $210,000 of that debt is money the campaign is legally required to refund to donors who gave in excess of federal campaign limits. But wihh no cash sitting in the account, there’s nothing to send back.
More than 100 creditors are still waiting for their refunds, including a former New Hampshire governor and a former state Senate leader who has since died. Vendors are owed money too, with Leavitt owing tens of thousands of dollars to a consulting firm and a pollster.
Leavitt’s campaign made payments to five creditors in January. Two of them were Leavitt’s own parents, who each got $2,900.
A watchdog group filed a complaint over those excess donations during the 2022 electon, but that’s still in limbo as the Federal Election Commission doesn’t even have enough members to make binding decisions. Trump nominated two Republicans for open seats in February, but the Senate has yet to schedule a confirmation hearing. When the commission does finally reopen, it’ll be dealing with a backlog of more than 250 unresolved cases.
The woman who now spends her days defending the president’s every move can’t even clean up her own campaign’s books, and apparently is in no hurry.
Theodore Roosevelt pushed the first federal ban on corporate cash in our elections into law back in 1907, because he’d figured out that a republic where companies can quietly buy politicians doesn’t stay a republic for long. When the agency meant to enforce that century-old rule has been starved to the point where it can’t act, a press secretary stiffing her own donors is just the small, visible edge of a much bigger hole in the wall Roosevelt built.
Support the Journalism that Gives You the Plain Truth
We covered a lot in today’s newsletter. And if you found any of it valuable, the best thing you can do is become a paying subscriber. We covered how Trump made billions while his own voters wonder struggle to afford gas and groceries. We revealed how the MAGA base is unleashing sexist attacks on a Trump-appointed judge for simply upholding the Constitution. We showed you how the Republican House speaker can’t even keep his own party together. And we reported that Trump’s press secretary still owes creditors more than $300,000 with no plan to pay it back. And make sure not to miss our live interview with Dr. Rob Davidson of the Paging America Substack at 1 PM ET today, where Raw America managing editor Carl Gibson will ask him about millions of Americans dropping their health insurance after Republicans allowed Affordable Care Act tax credits to lapse last year. Watch live on our homepage at RawAmerica.com.
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I’m Thom Hartmann. The fight is here. Thank you for being in it.
STORIES YOU MAY HAVE MISSED:
Fox News Poll Shows Ossoff with Double-Digit Lead Over Republican Opponent. Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-Ga.) is currently enjoying a wide lead over Rep. Mike Collins (R-Ga.) in Georgia’s 2026 U.S. Senate race. Even conservative network Fox News’ latest poll shows the Georgia Democrat 13 points ahead of Collins. Former Atlanta mayor and Democratic gubernatorial nominee Keisha Lance Bottoms is also five points ahead of Republican Rick Jackson in the poll. 40 percent of Georgia voters said inflation was the key issue motivating their vote in the midterms.
Trump’s Fireworks Show Likely to Create Dangerous Levels of Air Pollution. President Donald Trump promised a record-breaking fireworks display for Washington D.C.’s 4th of July celebrations this weekend, though the show could come at a high cost for local residents. National Park Service documents obtained by the Washington Post show that the particulate matter created by the estimated 850,000 fireworks to be lit on the 4th will create “very unhealthy” levels of air pollution, and that spectators should avoid “prolonged exposure” to the areas surrounding the National Mall following the event.
Trump Administration Siding with Right-Wing Hate Groups. Top Department of Justice officials — including Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche and FBI Director Kash Patel — are consistently taking the side of right-wing evangelical groups labeled as hate groups by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC). Despite not proving any allegations, Blanche and Patel argue that the SPLC paid leaders of extremist groups to carry out crimes, with Blanche saying the SPLC is “manufacturing racism to justify its existence.”
The Onion Rolls Out New InfoWars Website After Taking Over Alex Jones’ Platform. Satirical media outlet The Onion is now previewing its new take on InfoWars, the conspiracy website formerly owned by far-right commentator Alex Jones. Creative Director Tim Heidecker (known for Adult Swim show “Tim and Eric Awesome Show Great Job”) explained that The Onion plans to copy InfoWars’ aesthetic while simultaneously pillorying right-wing conspiratorial content in its signature satirical fashion. Jones lost control of InfoWars after a lawsuit filed by families of children killed in the Sandy Hook mass shooting, which resulted in Jones having to sell off all of his assets.
Tucker Carlson Mocked Over Threat to Form New Party. Former Fox News host Tucker Carlson — who became a podcaster after his 2023 firing — has threatened to launch a new right-wing party in protest of Trump capturing the Republican Party. But critics on social media ridiculed him over his threat, with some saying he would hand over control of the federal government to Democrats by splitting the GOP, and others saying he had “zero influence in American politics” and that he was “no longer relevant.”
