Good morning, I’m Thom Hartmann.
This morning, Pete Hegseth refused to say he would not deploy troops to polling stations during November’s midterms. The private prison company that runs ICE detention centers handed a million dollars to a Trump super PAC the same day it was frozen out of $426 million in new federal contracts. The Justice Department has resurrected a case against James Comey over seashells he found on a beach, and even Trump’s own allies are calling it embarrassing. And Trump is now begging the same allies he has threatened, insulted, and abandoned to join a new coalition to reopen the Strait of Hormuz. Corporate media is running cover for all of it. The FCC chair has made clear what happens to broadcasters that don’t. And the Ellisons are still buying. Let’s get into it.
Raw America is Raw Story and Really American’s people-powered response to the MAGA billionaire takeover of American media. We are reader-funded, editorially independent, and not for sale. CBS is already under Ellison control and CNN is next. The FCC chair has threatened to pull broadcast licenses from any outlet that covers this war the wrong way. And independent newsrooms are being absorbed into billionaire portfolios at every level, not just the Washington Post and the LA Times, but local stations and digital outlets across the country going soft or going dark. If you’re not yet a paid subscriber, today is the day.
Raw America is bringing you two exclusive interviews today. At 1 PM ET, Raw America managing editor Carl Gibson will be speaking with attorney Anne P. Mitchell to discuss the Epstein files and the Supreme Court’s gutting of the Voting Rights Act. And at 3 PM ET, Raw America founder John Byrne will sit down with former Trump DHS chief of staff Miles Taylor to discuss his new anti-ICE campaign. Watch live on our homepage at RawAmerica.com.
Hegseth Refused to Say He Would Not Deploy Troops to Polling Stations
At a House Armed Services Committee hearing Wednesday, Democratic Rep. Jill Tokuda of Hawaii asked Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth a direct question: would he carry out an order from Trump to send troops to polling stations during the November midterms?
Hegseth dodged. Tokuda pressed. He dodged again. She eventually boiled it down to a binary: “It’s a simple question. Who would you follow? The president or the Constitution?”
He still would not answer.
Federal law makes it a crime, punishable by up to five years in prison, to bring troops or armed men to a polling place. Tokuda had read the statute into the record before asking the question. She also quoted Trump’s January interview with the New York Times, in which the president said he “should have” deployed the National Guard to seize voting machines in swing states after the 2020 election but worried the Guard wasn’t “sophisticated enough” to pull it off.
Hegseth pivoted to a false claim that Biden had deployed troops to polling locations in 15 states during the 2024 election. He had not. The roughly 250 National Guard personnel active on Election Day 2024 had been activated by individual state governors, not by Biden, to provide cybersecurity and logistical backup. No federal troops were sent to polling places.
Hegseth also defended the administration’s deployment of federalized California National Guard members and Marines to Los Angeles last year, which a federal judge ruled illegal in September for violating the 1878 Posse Comitatus Act. By the end of the hearing, several Democrats were openly calling for his resignation.
The Pentagon and the White House did not respond to questions about whether they would rule out sending troops to polling stations in November.
The Posse Comitatus Act exists because the founders watched what happened when a king used soldiers to police colonial elections, and they swore we’d never let an American executive turn the military into a domestic political weapon. A Defense Secretary who won’t say he’d refuse that order is telling you exactly which side of that line he’s prepared to stand on.
A Private Prison Company Donated $1 Million to Trump’s Super PAC the Day it Lost $426 Million in Contracts
On March 9, the Washington Post reported that GEO Group, one of the largest private prison operators in the country and a major operator of ICE detention facilities, had been frozen out of $426 million in new federal contracts.
On that same day, a GEO Group subsidiary called GEO Reentry Services LLC logged a $1 million donation to MAGA Inc., Trump’s super PAC.
The timing was reported by PunchUp and Migrant Insider. Federal law bars government contractors from donating directly to super PACs, but GEO has long routed contributions through subsidiaries that technically do not hold the contracts themselves.
Massachusetts Rep. Jim McGovern called the donation what it looks like, saying it makes the Trump administration “the most corrupt administration in history” and that “it makes Richard Nixon look like a Boy Scout.” California Rep. Robert Garcia said the House Oversight Committee is probing DHS contracting under former Secretary Kristi Noem and her associate Corey Lewandowski, alleging a broader pay-to-play operation.
The White House and GEO Group did not respond to requests for comment.
When you privatize incarceration, you create a permanent constituency that profits off cruelty and has every incentive to buy the policies that keep its cells full. That’s not corruption as a glitch in the system. That’s the system working exactly the way the people who designed it intended.
Trump Is Prosecuting James Comey Over Seashells. His Own Allies Are Calling it Embarrassing.
Almost a year ago, former FBI Director James Comey found shells on a North Carolina beach arranged to spell “86 47.” He photographed them and posted the image on Instagram with the caption, “Cool shell formation on my beach walk.”
Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, who took over after Pam Bondi was fired for reportedly not going after Trump’s political enemies aggressively enough, has now resurrected the case. Trump posted about it around midnight Wednesday, explaining that “’86’ is a mob term for ‘kill him’” and that the shell formation constituted a death threat against him. He added: “EIGHT MILES OUT, SIX FEET DOWN!”
The response from lawyers, including Trump’s own allies, has been withering.
Good Morning America’s Jonathan Karl said he has “spoken to no serious lawyers who think these charges will result in a conviction” and that “the near-universal view is that it will be thrown out before it gets to trial.” A former senior Trump DOJ official told Karl the case was “depressing.” A former DOJ official told sources the case “might be the worst case DOJ has filed in my lifetime.”
The number 86 is commonly used in restaurant kitchens to mean something has run out, and more broadly to mean discarding something. The administration’s theory requires a beach in North Carolina, a retired FBI director, and a very specific reading of informal slang to add up to an assassination plot.
Even the people who agree with Trump politically think this one is a stretch.
Lavrentiy Beria, Stalin’s secret police chief, famously said show me the man and I’ll find you the crime. When a Justice Department starts hunting for crimes to fit the people its leader doesn’t like, rather than the other way around, you’ve crossed a line democracies don’t easily walk back from.
Trump Is Begging the Same Allies He Insulted to Help Him Reopen the Strait
One month ago, Trump told allies suffering from the oil crisis caused by his Iran war that they would have to “just TAKE IT” themselves. He told them the U.S. would not be there to help. He threatened to pull American troops from Germany. He threatened to withdraw the U.S. from NATO.
This week, the State Department sent cables to U.S. embassies around the world asking those same countries to join a new coalition called the “Maritime Freedom Construct” to help reopen the Strait of Hormuz.
“Your participation will strengthen our collective ability to restore freedom of navigation and protect the global economy,” the cable said. “Collective action is essential to demonstrate unified resolve.”
Canada, France, the UK, and Germany have all declined to join the Iran war or assist in reopening the Strait. Trump recently attacked Germany’s chancellor after he said America was being “humiliated” by Iran. The administration is now asking the same governments, through their embassies, to reconsider.
The Strait has been effectively closed since the war began in February. One-fifth of the world’s oil normally flows through it. Gas is above $4 a gallon nationally. Oil prices have hit a four-year high. And Trump’s approval rating has hit a record low.
When asked Wednesday whether he would keep the blockade in place for several months, Trump replied: “The blockade is genius, OK, the blockade has been 100 percent foolproof.”
The allies he is now calling for help have heard all of this. Most of them are not answering.
American power for the last 80 years has rested not just on aircraft carriers but on the trust of allies who believed our word was good for something. You can’t spend years burning down that system and then expect it to put out the fire when it’s your own house in flames.
This Is Why Raw America Exists — and Why We Need You
Let’s be honest about where things stand.
The Defense Secretary will not commit to following the law on troop deployments to polling stations. A private prison company is writing million-dollar checks to a presidential super PAC while operating detention centers on federal contracts. The Justice Department is prosecuting a man over seashells. And the president is begging allies he threatened and insulted to bail him out of a war they never supported.
The press that is supposed to cover all of this is being bought by the billionaires who benefit from the silence, threatened by a regulator who has told broadcasters what happens when they step out of line, and handed to Trump allies who have been explicit about what the coverage will look like once the deals close.
Raw America was built to be the thing that doesn’t get bought.
Because of your support, we have had reporters on the ground at the most important hearings of this political era. We have broken exclusives the corporate press buried. We are joining the D.C. press pool and going after the interviews that hold power accountable, bringing them directly to you unfiltered and unbought.
That coverage requires your support. We have no corporate backer, no billionaire pulling our strings. That means we are behind on our fundraising, and we need your help to step up and hit our 2026 expansion goals. We answer to our readers and no one else.
If you’ve been meaning to subscribe, today is the day. Not next week. Today.
This is Thom Hartmann for Raw America. The fight is here. Thank you for being in it.
STORIES YOU MAY HAVE MISSED:
Maine Gov. Janet Mills Drops Out of U.S. Senate Primary. Two-term Democratic Gov. Janet Mills officially suspended her U.S. Senate campaign on Thursday, paving the way for Marine veteran and oyster farmer Graham Platner to become the presumptive Democratic nominee. Mills, who is 78, was recruited by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) to run, though she trailed significantly in polls for most of the race. Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) has already started rolling out ads attacking Platner for his controversial posts on Reddit forums, which he has previously addressed and apologized for in town halls with Maine voters.
Louisiana’s Governor Prepares to Steal a Congressional District. Just hours after the Supreme Court announced its Louisiana v. Callais decision that gutted a key section of the Voting Rights Act, Republican Gov. Jeff Landry announced he was suspending next month’s primary elections so the legislature can pass a new gerrymandered map. Louisiana’s 4-2 Republican advantage in the U.S. House of Representatives — with one district specifically drawn to allow for Black voters to have representation under the Voting Rights Act — could become 6-0 depending on whether the new maps go into effect prior to the November midterms.
Trump Erupts at Germany for Telling the Truth About Iran. President Donald Trump recently unloaded on German Chancellor Friedrich Merz in a series of posts to his Truth Social platform in response to Merz criticizing the United States’ war in Iran. After Merz told a group of students that the U.S. “quite obviously went into this war without any strategy,” Trump baselessly accused Merz of wanting Iran to have a nuclear weapon, and suggested he may withdraw some of the 34,000 U.S. service members currently in Germany.
Republicans Failing at Basic Governance Amid Constant Infighting. The Republican-controlled House of Representatives has recently been paralyzed by internecine warfare that prevented even a procedural vote from happening for roughly two hours. The New York Times reported that House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) was having to broker peace between two warring factions during an argument over a liability shield for pesticide companies buried in the latest version of the Farm Bill. And the Department of Homeland Security has been shut down for more than 70 days, with Johnson refusing to seek out Democratic voters for fear of losing the speaker’s gavel.
Court Refuses to Re-Hear Trump’s Appeal of E. Jean Carroll Verdict. The 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals declined on Wednesday to grant Trump an en banc hearing to appeal his $83.3 million judgment for defaming writer E. Jean Carroll, meaning the 2nd Circuit’s full slate of judges has slammed the door on all appeals outside of the Supreme Court. In 2024, a New York jury found Trump liable for defaming Carroll just a year after a separate New York jury ruled he was civilly liable for $5 million for sexually abusing Carroll in a New York department store in 1996.
