Good morning, I’m Thom Hartmann.
This morning, Pete Hegseth led a prayer at the Pentagon using a monologue a screenwriter invented for a hitman in Pulp Fiction. The Supreme Court’s most powerful conservative justice went on television to blame “intellectuals” for the decline of America. An 86-year-old French widow of a U.S. Army veteran is sitting in an immigration detention facility in Louisiana because she overstayed a tourist visa. And a political analyst is raising serious questions about whether the administration is quietly preparing for conflicts well beyond Iran. Corporate media is not asking these questions. The FCC chair has made clear what happens to broadcasters who do. And the billionaires are lining up to buy every outlet that’s left. This is what independent journalism looks like right now.
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Hegseth Prayed a Pulp Fiction Monologue at the Pentagon
Pete Hegseth held a religious worship service at the Pentagon this week and opened it with what he described as a prayer written by the lead mission planner for a recent Air Force rescue operation in Iran.
The prayer, Hegseth said, was entitled “CSAR 2517” — Combat Search and Rescue 2517 — meant to reference the Bible verse Ezekiel 25:17.
There is just one problem. Most of what Hegseth recited is not from Ezekiel 25:17. It is from Pulp Fiction. Specifically, it is the monologue delivered by Samuel L. Jackson’s hitman character Jules Winnfield immediately before he shoots someone dead — a passage that screenwriter Quentin Tarantino largely invented and put in the mouth of a killer.
Hegseth’s version: “The path of the downed aviator is beset on all sides by the iniquities of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men. Blessed is he who, in the name of camaraderie and duty, shepherds the lost through the valley of darkness, for he is truly his brother’s keeper and the finder of lost children. And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who attempt to capture and destroy my brother. And you will know my call sign is Sandy 1 when I lay my vengeance upon thee.”
The actual Ezekiel 25:17 ends with “I will execute great vengeance upon them with furious rebukes; and they shall know that I am the Lord, when I shall lay my vengeance upon them.” Everything before that in Hegseth’s prayer is a lightly modified version of the fictional Tarantino monologue.
This is not the first time Hegseth has used a Pentagon worship service to call for violence. Last month, at a similar event, he recited what he said was a prayer from troops following the capture of former Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro, including the line: “Give them wisdom in every decision, endurance for the trial ahead, unbreakable unity, and overwhelming violence of action against those who deserve no mercy.”
When a nation’s military leaders start framing warfare as a holy crusade, borrowing the language of Hollywood hitmen and wrapping it in scripture, that’s not just embarrassing — it’s a warning about how they see the people on the other end of those weapons. Every democracy that has slid into authoritarianism has done it with a flag in one hand and a Bible in the other.
The man running the United States military is reciting Pulp Fiction at Pentagon prayer services and framing warfare as a religious crusade. The press corps covering this war is doing so under explicit threat of having their broadcast licenses pulled if they report things the administration does not like. Trump has endorsed the FCC chair’s threat to revoke broadcast licenses, calling critical news organizations “Corrupt and Highly Unpatriotic.” Media advocacy groups say the pressure is designed to push broadcasters toward self-censorship without the government having to take explicit action. That is the environment in which this story is being covered. Or not covered.
Clarence Thomas Went on Television to Blame Intellectuals for America’s Decline
Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas delivered a lengthy televised address at the University of Texas Law School this week in which he argued that “progressivism” is an existential threat to the founding principles of the United States, and that the nation’s colleges and universities have allowed those values to “fall out of favor.”
“Progressivism seeks to replace the basic premises of the Declaration of Independence and hence our form of government,” Thomas said. “It holds that our rights and our dignities come not from God, but from government. It requires of the people a subservience and weakness incompatible with a Constitution premised on the transcendent origin of our rights.”
Thomas, 77 and the Court’s longest-serving conservative member, also took aim at Washington officials he said lack commitment to “righteous cause, to traditional morality, to national defense, to free enterprise, to religious piety or to the original meaning of the Constitution.” He said such figures “recast themselves as Institutionalists, pragmatists or thoughtful moderates, all as a way of justifying their failures to themselves, their consciences, and their country.”
What Thomas is really doing here is laying the intellectual groundwork for the Court’s continued rightward march, dressing up raw judicial power in the language of divine authority so it can’t be questioned by mere mortals. When a sitting Supreme Court justice starts telling the country that his opponents are enemies of God and the founding, he’s not interpreting the Constitution anymore — he’s running a campaign.
The speech came as Trump himself has publicly floated the idea that Thomas and fellow conservative Justice Samuel Alito, 76, may be too old for the bench — comments that landed in Washington like a quiet grenade. Trump praised Alito as one of the “greatest justices of all time” but suggested there is “a theory that if you reach a certain age,” justices should step aside to make room for younger appointees of similar persuasion.
Thomas closed his remarks with a call to action echoing the signers of the Declaration of Independence. He did not reference Trump or any contemporary political figure by name.
Are They Preparing for a Bigger War?
A political analyst writing on Substack this week raised an alarm that deserves wider attention.
Political writer Heather Delaney Reese reports that the Pentagon was privately briefed last month on plans to dramatically boost weapons production — not just within the defense industry, but beyond it. Sources say the administration approached U.S. car manufacturers about converting factory capacity to produce munitions.
The Wall Street Journal confirmed the outlines of the story: “The Pentagon is interested in enlisting the companies to use their personnel and factory capacity to increase production of munitions and other equipment as the wars in Ukraine and Iran deplete stocks.”
Reese reports that by late March, the Pentagon had signed framework agreements with defense contractors to put the military on what it called a “wartime footing.” She also notes the administration is deploying more than 10,000 additional troops to the Middle East before the end of April — roughly 6,000 aboard one carrier group and another 4,200 from a Marine expeditionary unit — bringing total U.S. personnel in the region to approximately 60,000, with three aircraft carriers in theater.
Her conclusion is direct: “That is not what a country does when a war is almost over. That is what a country does when it is preparing for something much bigger.”
Congress hasn’t declared a war, the American people haven’t been asked, and yet the machinery of a major military escalation is already turning — quietly, without debate, without a vote. That’s how republics get pulled into catastrophic conflicts they never chose, and it’s how the defense industry gets exactly what it always wants.
Whether that preparation reflects deliberate planning, the logic of defense contractor interests, or something else entirely, the question deserves to be asked loudly: Where is this going? And who is being told?
An 86 Year-Old Widow of a U.S. Soldier Is Sitting in an Immigration Jail
Marie-Therese Ross is 86 years old. She is a French citizen. Her husband, William Ross, was a former captain in the U.S. Army. He died in January. They had married just months before.
On April 1, ICE agents detained her in Alabama for overstaying her 90-day tourist visa. She is now being held at a federal immigration detention facility in Louisiana.
The French government has “fully mobilized” to press for her release. The French Consul General in New Orleans has visited her in detention twice and told reporters, “Given her age, we really want her to get out of this situation as soon as possible. We want to get her out of jail.”
France’s diplomatic offices in Washington, Atlanta, and Paris are all engaged. They have contacted DHS directly. DHS has said she overstayed her visa, which is true, and that agents followed standard protocol.
This is what happens when enforcement replaces judgment and when a system stops asking who someone is and only asks whether they have the right paperwork. An 86-year-old widow of an American soldier in a Louisiana detention facility isn’t a border security success story — it’s what a government looks like when cruelty has become the point.
Marie-Therese Ross is an octogenarian widow of an American soldier, detained in a Louisiana jail, while the French government makes diplomatic calls on her behalf. This is the immigration enforcement regime this administration has built. It does not ask who you are. It asks for papers.
This Is Why Raw America Exists — and Why We Need You
Let’s be honest about the landscape.
The government is threatening broadcast licenses for war coverage it doesn’t like. The billionaires are buying the newsrooms that remain. And the reporters still doing the work — in the hearing rooms, at the briefings, asking the questions no one else will — are running out of places to stand.
Raw America exists to be one of those places. Because of your support, we have had reporters on the ground at the most critical hearings of this political moment. We have broken exclusives the corporate press buried. We are joining the D.C. press pool. We are going directly after the interviews that matter and bringing them to you unfiltered, unbought, and unafraid.
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This is Thom Hartmann for Raw America. The fight is here. Thank you for being in it.
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