Good morning. I’m Thom Hartmann. Before we get started, take a few seconds to click the ❤️ and hit restack. That’s what helps us break through the algorithm to reach the people who need these stories.
A White House insider has revealed to Raw America that Donald Trump “completely melted down” after his own appointed Supreme Court justices sided with the Court’s liberal justices to strike down his mail-in ballot restrictions. A new report alleges that Vice President JD Vance once begged Hillary Clinton’s campaign to stop Trump by focusing on Rust Belt states. The Trump administration is planning to put signs outside the Smithsonian’s American history museum accusing it of partisan bias. And U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has been detaining record numbers of pregnant women while apparently losing track of how many of them have had miscarriages while in federal custody.
Before we go further, we’ve learned that Trump’s White House has singled out Raw America White House reporter Brian Karem and is blocking him from the grounds. The president of the United States going out of his way to target a Substack publication is a sign we’re doing something right. But it also means we’re likely in for a fight with the White House. We’re counting on readers like you, who believe in independent journalism, to become paying subscribers so we have the resources to fight back against Trump’s censorship. All it takes is 22 cents a day.
Our paying subscribers make it possible for us to do everything from these twice-daily newsletters, original reporting from Washington and live interviews with the people shaping the news. Tune in tomorrow at 1 PM to catch our interview with former Pennsylvania Democratic Congressman Conor Lamb. You can watch it live on our homepage at RawAmerica.com.
SCOOP: Trump ‘Completely Melted Down’ When Learning His SCOTUS Appointees Ruled Against Him
Raw America can now reveal new details about how Donald Trump reacted when learning the conservative Supreme Court justices he put on the Court ruled against him. According to a White House source who spoke with Raw America White House reporter Brian Karem on condition of anonymity, the president did not take the loss well, and apparently believes those justices are obligated to serve him exclusively.
The decision stems from Trump ordering the U.S. Postal Service to roll out a complicated new data collection system for mail-in ballots — just a handful of weeks before the midterms — in order to comply with an executive order he issued back in March. If the courts allowed the rule to go into effect, it would have almost certainly resulted in millions of legitimately cast mail-in ballots getting thrown out.
After several lower court judges ruled against the administration, the case eventually landed on the Supreme Court’s emergency docket. And in a 7-2 ruling, the Court struck the restrictions down, with everyone on the Court upholding the lower court’s decision save for Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas.
Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who Trump himself appointed to the Supreme Court in 2018, wrote that the Postal Service simply would not have enough time to implement the new rule before the election. Justices Amy Coney Barrett and Neil Gorsuch, who Trump appointed in 2020 and 2017, respectively, joined him, along with Chief Justice John Roberts and the Court’s three liberal justices.
According to Raw America’s confidential source, Trump’ exploded in a fit of rage when learning how his appointees ruled.
“He was furious,” the source said. “He kept saying, ‘they owe me. They owe me. They work for me.’”
That’s obviously not how the judicial branch works. Supreme Court justices don’t serve the president who nominated them. They’re sworn to serve the Constitution. But Trump doesn’t seem to care about that distinction, as he’s spent years treating every institution around him as an extension of himself.
Raw America reached out to Justice Gorsuch for comment. As of this writing, those calls have not been returned.
There’s a reason this one stings. In 1974, three justices Richard Nixon appointed to the Court joined the unanimous ruling that forced him to hand over the Watergate tapes. 16 days later, he was out of office, because a judiciary that answers to the man who appointed it isn’t a judiciary at all, but a royal court. This country fought a revolution to be done with those.
JD Vance Begged Hillary Clinton to Campaign in Rust Belt to Stop Trump
According to a new Vanity Fair profile, Vice President JD Vance went out of his way to help Hillary Clinton beat Trump back in 2016. Before his MAGA makeover, Vance was apparently horrified by the idea of a Trump presidency. He’d famously once wondered publicly if Trump would become “America’s Hitler.”
One source close to Clinton’s campaign told Vanity Fair that Vance, who had just written his bestselling memoir Hillbilly Elegy, repeatedly tried to get in touch with Jake Sullivan, who was a senior policy advisor to Clinton at the time. Sullivan later went on to be Joe Biden’s national security advisor.
“JD called me and said, ‘Can you put me in touch with Jake Sullivan?’” the source told Vanity Fair. “I was like, ‘Jake is running Hillary’s campaign. He’s way too busy.’ He called me again, and he said, ‘I hate Hillary. But I hate Trump more. Trump can’t win. He can’t win. Hillary’s going to lose, but she doesn’t have to.’”
Behind the scenes, Vance urged Clinton to focus on Midwestern swing states like Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — the very same Rust Belt battlegrounds that would eventually flip the election. He then wanted her to apologize to audiences for her prior support of George W. Bush’s war in Iraq when she was a senator. Vance argued that Clinton was spending too much time fundraising with celebrities, and that she should instead go directly to the states that sent sons and daughters to fight and die in Iraq.
Clinton had previously expressed contrition over her 2002 vote to authorize the initial invasion of Iraq in her 2014 memoir. She ultimately never took Vance up on his proposed Rust Belt apology tour, and ended up losing in all of the states Vance urged her to visit.
Vance and Sullivan reportedly spoke roughly six weeks before the election, not long after Clinton’s notorious “basket of deplorables” comment, in which she said half of Trump’s supporters were consumed by racism, sexism and xenophobia. Looking back, she wasn’t wrong. It’s probably more than half.
One unnamed source close to Sullivan, who now teaches at Harvard, said he didn’t specifically recall the apology tour proposal, but confirmed the two did discuss the fallout from Clinton’s comment about Trump supporters. That source said Vance wanted Clinton to “focus.”
Vance went on to vote not for Trump or Clinton but for independent candidate Evan McMullin.
Vance spokesperson Taylor Van Kirk, didn’t deny the account, but pushed back on the idea that Vance wanted Hillary Clinton to win the 2016 electon.
“[Vance] urged both Republicans and Democrats to care about working class towns like Middletown, Ohio. We 100 percent reject the characterization that he was trying to help Hillary win,” Van Kirk said.
Trump never let go of the “basket of deplorables” comment, and brought it up at a rally as recently as August. He called that remark “the end of her election.”
Vance has gone full MAGA since those days. In 2022, when his old Trump-Hitler comparison resurfaced in the news, one of his spokespeople said it no longer reflected his views. He’s now considered to be the main Republican frontrunner in 2028.
When the election of 1800 deadlocked in the House, Alexander Hamilton begged his fellow Federalists to back Thomas Jefferson, who he fought for a decade, over Aaron Burr, because Jefferson at least had principles while Burr was purely driven by ambition. Vance made Hamilton’s choice in 2016 and then spent the next eight years turning himself into Burr. The republic has reason to worry when the man a heartbeat from the presidency has shown he’ll believe whatever power requires him to believe.
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Trump Putting Up Signs Outside Smithsonian Warning of ‘Partisan Bias’
The Trump administration is apparently planning to post signs outside the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History accusing it of partisan bias. In a September 3 letter to Democratic Senator Jeff Merkley of Oregon, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said the National Park Service plans to install roughly a dozen signs at a cost of about $84,000.
One source familiar with the planning process told the Atlantic the physical design of the signs is set, but nobody outside the small group working on the project knows what the text will actually say, or even who will be writing it.
Burgum’s letter heaps criticism on museum director Anthea Hartig and outgoing Smithsonian Secretary Lonnie Bunch, arguing they’re leftist ideologues pushing a political agenda on visitors. It specifically mentions exhibits describing undocumented immigrants and transgender Americans. Burgum’s letter goes on to argue that museum visitors need “important context about the exhibits they are about to encounter and the personal viewpoints that the curators of the exhibits are seeking to advance.”
Burgum then argus that museum visitors should be told about Hartig’s past comments on white privilege that he gave during a 2020 lecture. He also mentions a 2000 essay Bunch wrote about racial discrimination within the museum industry, which Burgum says is evidence of “anti-white animus.”
The Smithsonian, which is partially funded by Congress, has operated as an independent institution for generations, and has its own governing board. Hartig has pushed back on the Trump administration’s claims, telling two House committees that the museum’s work is “governed by the Smithsonian’s standards of scholarship, accuracy, independence, and nonpartisanship” and that it “does not take sides in America’s political debates.”
Hartig also noted that the museum devotes 368 objects and 340 labels specifically to the founding era, and mentions George Washington 54 times. That’s important to remember given that Trump recently demanded the Smithsonian remove an abstract art display and replace it with a 30-foot statue of Washington.
The Atlantic reached out to some of the administration’s frequent collaborators to ask who was involved in writing the signs. PragerU and Hillsdale College said they weren’t involved. One senior fellow at the far-right Heritage Foundation — the group behind Project 2025 — who testified about the Smithsonian this year declined to give a direct answer, saying his conversations with government officials were strictly confidential.
Museum staff are still working diligently at their jobs despite the political turmoil. One recent afternoon, historians sat with visitors and talked through objects from the September 11th attacks with no glass or no wall text. Just pure conversation. Some people reportedly left in tears.
In 1846 Congress accepted James Smithson’s bequest and chartered the Smithsonian for “the increase and diffusion of knowledge,” deliberately putting it under a Board of Regents instead of a president. This is because the men who built it understood that whoever gets to write the labels on a nation’s history eventually gets to write the nation itself. Every strongman from Stalin to Orbán knew that too, which is why the first thing they go after is never the army, but the museums.
ICE Detained Record Numbers of Pregnant Women and Lost Count of Miscarriages
New internal documents obtained by the Guardian show that ICE detained more pregnant women and teenagers last fall and winter than at any point in the previous year. At the same time, the agency appears to have lost track of how many of those women had miscarriages in federal custody.
The Guardian found that ICE recorded 18 miscarriages between January and October of 2025. But after October 3rd of last year, the agency has no miscarriage data at all.
One woman named Anabell didn’t even know she was pregnant until ICE tested her during intake at an immigrant detention center in Kentucky. One month later she started bleeding heavily while she was chained to a hospital bed. She told the Guardian through a phone interpreter that she’d lost the pregnancy. She apparently didn’t receive any follow-up care and has since lost 30 pounds.
A 21-year-old woman named Laura is still detained in Texas while in her third trimester of a high-risk pregnancy. Laura continues to experience pain and bleeding, and is still waiting for an OB-GYN appointment that a physician at the facility said she needs.
Medical experts say this is more than just about a supposed failure in data collection. Deborah Ottenheimer, who is an OB-GYN with Physicians for Human Rights, said immigrant women in federal custody aren’t getting their basic prenatal visits, let alone the follow-up care needed after a miscarriage to prevent infection.
ICE attributed the missing data to a change in its medical billing contractor, but immigration attorneys are skeptical. Sarah Decker, who is a senior attorney at the Robert and Ethel Kennedy Human Rights Center, told the Guardian she’s yet to meet a single pregnant detainee whose case met the “exceptional circumstances” standard meant to keep pregnant women out of immigrant detention centers. She argued the missing numbers aren’t an accident, but rather a way to evade accountability for what’s happening inside those facilities.
The Fifth Amendment doesn’t say no citizen shall be deprived of life or liberty without due process. It says no person, meaning citizens and non-citizens alike. The men who ratified it in 1791 used that specific word on purpose. When a government stops counting the miscarriages in its own jails, that’s a deliberate decision that some people don’t count, and in all of human history that decision has never once stayed confined to the people it was first aimed at.
Help Us Fight Trump’s Censorship
We led this newsletter with an exclusive report from our White House reporter, Brian Karem, who relayed a comment from a confidential White House source about Trump viewing Supreme Court justices as his own employees. Cable networks and newspapers owned by MAGA billionaires didn’t report that. We did. Now, this president is going out of his way to block Brian from the White House grounds. We won’t let this go without a fight, but we need help from readers like you to make sure Brian has the ability to keep doing his job. Become a paying subscriber for less than 22 cents a day to keep us in the fight.
Because we have no billionaire owner keeping us afloat, everything you read today was made possible by paying subscribers who believe in independent journalism enough to fund it. Our readers help us bring you twice-daily newsletters full of stories the billionaire-owned outlets want to keep hidden, along with our original reporting from Capitol Hill and the White House and live interviews with the people shaping the news. Tomorrow at 1 PM ET, Raw America managing editor Carl Gibson will sit down with former Pennsylvania Democratic Congressman Conor Lamb to talk about John Fetterman and the midterm elections. Tune in on our homepage at RawAmerica.com.
I’m Thom Hartmann. Once again, take a second to click the ❤️ and hit restack. That’s how we reach the people who need these stories the most. Thanks for reading, and thanks for supporting independent media.
Here are some stories you may have missed:
Kennedy Center Board Member Says Trump ‘Threw a Tantrum’ Over Ruling. Democratic Congresswoman Joyce Beatty of Ohio — who is an ex-officio member of the board of the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts — described in detail how President Donald Trump erupted after a federal judge banned the board from putting his name on the building. In an interview with MS NOW, Beatty said Trump’s outburst was “the most unprofessional thing that I’ve ever witnessed or been a part of.” The board, whose members were personally selected by Trump after he named himself chairman, voted Tuesday to close the Kennedy Center in response to the ruling.
Hegseth’s Oddly Specific Grooming Requirements for Troops Leaked. The Wall Street Journal is reporting on new details of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s physical requirements for troops he’s asking to stand with him during an upcoming speech. Hegseth is apparently demanding troops meet a specific waist-to-height standard to qualify. Troops will reportedly have their waistlines measured at the belly button and have that divided by their height, with 0.55 being the optimal result. Troops who meet the requirement will not only get to stand with Hegseth, but also exercise with him on camera.
House Votes for Third Time to Limit Trump’s Ability to Wage War. The House of Representatives passed a War Powers Act resolution on Tuesday night aimed at reining in Trump’s power to attack Iran. This marks the third time the GOP-controlled House has passed such a resolution, with seven Republicans defecting to vote with Democrats in a 220-204 margin on Tuesday night. It remains unclear whether the GOP-controlled Senate will vote on the measure before it recesses in two weeks.
