Good morning, I’m Thom Hartmann. This morning, Republicans are fighting among themselves over whether taxpayers should fund Trump’s $400 million White House ballroom. A new Gallup poll shows more Americans say they are getting poorer than at any point in the last 25 years, including during the pandemic and the 2008 financial crisis. CBS News has fired its London bureau chief after she pushed back on Bari Weiss’s demands for more favorable coverage of Iran and Gaza. And the partial government shutdown is now 73 days old, DHS is about to run out of money to pay its own employees, and Republican leadership is describing this week as a “nightmare.” Corporate media is covering some of this. The FCC chair has made clear what happens to the outlets that cover too much. And the Ellisons keep 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 won’t cover this war the way the administration wants. 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.
Republicans Are Fighting Over Who Pays for Trump’s Ballroom
In the aftermath of Saturday’s shooting at the White House Correspondents’ dinner, Trump and his allies moved quickly to frame his $400 million White House ballroom project as a national security necessity. Republican Senators Lindsey Graham, Katie Britt, and Eric Schmitt introduced legislation to fund it with $400 million in federal taxpayer money. Graham told reporters, “This is not about Trump. It’s about the presidency of the United States.”
His fellow Republicans were not convinced.
Senator Rick Scott said he didn’t understand why public money was needed at all given Trump’s claims of private fundraising. “We have $39 trillion in debt. Maybe we ought to stop spending money.” Senator Rand Paul was blunter: “He already has the money. I’m not for funding the whole $500 million.” Senator Josh Hawley said he preferred private funding and raised a separate question about whether Congress even needs to authorize major reconstruction on White House grounds in the first place.
Graham, unbothered by the opposition, told reporters: “Just vote no. All I ask you to do is vote. I don’t care how you vote. I want a vote.”
The ballroom, a 90,000-square-foot addition that would dwarf the existing West Wing, is currently the subject of a lawsuit from the National Trust for Historic Preservation. When Andrew Jackson added the North Portico in 1830, his own allied newspaper attacked him for prioritizing grandeur over the needs of ordinary citizens, and Whigs in Congress demanded to know why the money wasn’t going to roads or debt relief instead. That fight was over twenty-four thousand dollars. Trump is asking the public to pay four hundred million for a ballroom while Americans tell pollsters they’re poorer than they’ve been in twenty-five years. A federal judge ruled last month that it cannot proceed without congressional approval. The DOJ sent the preservation group a letter Sunday morning demanding they drop the suit by 9 a.m. Monday or face government action. Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, Trump’s former personal criminal defense attorney, posted the letter on X with the message: “It’s time to build the ballroom.”
The shooting is now doing double duty: justifying a vanity construction project and providing cover for a Justice Department demand to kill a legitimate lawsuit. The Republican civil war over who pays for it is just getting started.
More Americans Say They Are Getting Poorer Than at Any Time in 25 Years
A new Gallup poll conducted April 1-15 finds that 55 percent of Americans say their personal financial situation is getting worse. That is up from 53 percent last year and 47 percent the year before. It is the highest number Gallup has recorded since it began asking the question in 2001, surpassing the pandemic, the 2008 financial crisis, and every other period of economic stress in between. It is also the fifth consecutive year the number has risen.
Five straight years of Americans saying they’re falling behind isn’t a glitch. It’s what 45 years of Reaganomics looks like when the bill finally comes due, with wealth that was supposed to trickle down instead flowing up to a handful of billionaires who now own our newsrooms, much of our political class, and increasingly our courts.
Thirteen percent of Americans now cite energy costs as their top financial concern, up 10 points from last year and the highest level since 2008. Gas prices are averaging $4.11 a gallon nationally, up from under $3 before Trump launched the Iran war on February 28. A recent CNBC poll found nearly 80 percent of Americans have taken concrete steps to cope with higher fuel costs, including cutting spending and leaning more on credit.
Trump has continued to argue that his economic agenda is producing a golden age. “There are factories and plants and thousands of businesses being built all over the country,” he said recently. The Gallup numbers say something different.
Former Trump White House aide Marc Short put it plainly to sources in March: “Affordability was one of the primary issues he was elected on. I think it’s going to be a growing, growing challenge for Republicans in the midterms this November.”
CBS News Fired Its London Bureau Chief for Pushing Back on Bari Weiss
CBS News has ousted its London bureau chief, Claire Day, after she clashed with editor-in-chief Bari Weiss over the network’s coverage of Iran and Gaza, according to reporting by the New York Post and multiple internal sources.
The Founders put press freedom in the First Amendment because they understood a republic cannot survive when a small handful of wealthy men get to decide what the public is allowed to know. William Randolph Hearst once used his newspapers to push this country into the Spanish-American War, and the Ellisons are now positioned to do something similar, with vastly more reach and a war already underway.
Day, who had worked at CBS News for nearly 25 years and was appointed London bureau chief two years ago, was cleared of any alleged bias by an internal probe. She is leaving the network on May 1. Her replacement, a newly hired foreign editor from the Wall Street Journal, has no prior television experience and, according to one CBS source, “very little managerial experience, certainly on the scale required.”
What Day apparently did have was a spine. Sources say she pushed back on calls with Weiss over coverage, wanted it to be balanced, and made that position known. In a network now run by installed by a Trump-aligned billionaire, that was apparently disqualifying.
“For Bari and Tom to discard her because she failed some undefined purity test is appalling,” one CBS insider said.
A freelance cameraman who accused Day of running her bureau like a “Hamas cell” apparently had, according to sources, a “direct line” to Weiss. Day asked him to leave the room before giving an emotional farewell to her staff on Monday morning.
This is the state of CBS News. A reporter with 25 years at the network is shown the door for wanting balanced coverage of a war. The person who fired her was installed by a man whose Defense Secretary said publicly that the sooner Ellison takes over CNN, the better. The machine is working exactly as designed.
The Partial Government Shutdown Is 73 Days Old and DHS Is About to Run Out of Money
The partial government shutdown, which began February 14 after Democrats demanded reforms to ICE and CBP before agreeing to fund DHS, is now in its 73rd day. DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin said last week that he has one payroll left and no more emergency funds. The first week of May, he says, DHS employees will stop getting paid.
“There is no more money there,” Mullin told Fox News. “The president can’t do another executive order because there’s no more money.”
Republican leadership aides described the week ahead to reporters as “a nightmare.” In addition to the DHS funding standoff, Republicans are also struggling to find votes for a FISA extension that some members oppose on privacy grounds, and a farm bill that the Make America Healthy Again faction is blocking.
House Speaker Mike Johnson has refused to endorse a Senate-approved measure that would fund most of DHS, calling it “haphazardly drafted.” Senate Majority Leader John Thune says anything beyond technical fixes would be “a real problem.” Trump posted on Truth Social Monday urging Republicans to unite behind a plan to bypass Senate Democrats entirely and fund DHS with Republican votes alone.
The Constitution gives Congress the power of the purse because the Founders had just escaped a king who funded armies without legislative consent, and they wrote Article I specifically to prevent that from happening here. Watching this White House manufacture a national security pretext to bypass Congress and ram through funding for the agency carrying out mass deportations should sound familiar to anyone who’s read a history book.
The shooting at the Correspondents’ dinner is now being used inside the White House as a pressure campaign to move holdout votes. Sources say the administration is “trying to wrangle some votes” by invoking national security concerns. Whether that works, with a one or two-seat effective majority in the House and multiple competing factions, is the question that will define the week in Washington.
This Is why Raw America Exists — and Why We Need You Today
Let’s be direct about where things stand.A reporter with 25 years at CBS News was just fired for wanting balanced war coverage. A billionaire’s hand-picked editor is now deciding what Americans hear about Iran and Gaza. The FCC chair has told broadcasters what happens when they step out of line. And independent newsrooms are being absorbed one by one into portfolios controlled by people with direct ties to this administration.
Raw America was built to be the thing that doesn’t get bought.
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This is Thom Hartmann for Raw America. The fight is here. Thank you for being in it.
STORIES YOU MAY HAVE MISSED:
Judge Questions Premise of Trump’s $10 Billion IRS Lawsuit. President Donald Trump’s $10 billion lawsuit filed against the Internal Revenue Service over the 2019 and 2020 leak of his tax returns by an IRS contractor may have just hit a snag. During a hearing on Monday, U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams — an appointee of former President Barack Obama — pointed out that the courts require two generally adversarial parties, which doesn’t appear to be the case when the president is suing a federal agency made up of people who answer directly to him. Williams hasn’t yet ruled on the lawsuit, though it’s possible it could end up before the same Supreme Court that includes three Trump appointees.
Trump’s ICE Warehouse Prisons Hit Major Hurdle. The Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) plan for to purchase large warehouses across the country and turn them into U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention facilities is now mired in litigation. The New York Times reported that multiple states are suing the DHS, arguing that the warehouse detention center plan skipped a mandatory environmental review process required under federal law. New DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin is now reportedly reconsidering the warehouse plan as more communities continue to push back.
Trump Fires Entire National Science Board. Two former members of the National Science Board — which guides the governance of the National Science Foundation and advises the president and Congress on science and engineering policy — said Monday the Trump administration fired the entirety of the board via an email on Friday. The board is made up of 22 officials serving six-year terms who come from universities, nonprofit organizations and private labs. According to Reuters, no reason was listed in the termination email.
Republicans Increasingly Worried About Midterms. Republicans are openly fearful that the high price of gas, the ongoing Iran war and concerns about affordability will cost them their majorities in both the House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate in the November midterm elections. Some White House allies are also accusing Trump of acting with a lack of urgency, as he has yet to tap into a $350 million super PAC. In one example, they noted that a stunt in which a DoorDash worker delivered McDonalds to the White House to highlight Trump’s “No Tax on Tips” policy, the president overshadowed the policy focus by talking about his feud with Pope Leo XIV.
Judge Gives Maurene Comey Permission to Sue Trump for Firing Her. Maurene Comey — a former federal prosecutor who is the daughter of former FBI Director James Comey — can now sue the Trump administration for her 2025 firing after a Manhattan judge ruled in her favor on Monday. Comey, who prosecuted both Jeffrey Epstein and Sean “Diddy” Combs, argued that she was fired simply due to Trump’s hatred of her father. Judge Jesse Furman rejected the Trump administration’s argument that Comey should first have to bring her case before the Merit Systems Protection Board (an entity that handles federal employment actions) by ruling that Comey’s case falls “outside the universe of cases” that Congress authorizes the board to handle, and that her lawsuit can move forward.
