Good morning, I’m Thom Hartmann.
We are waking up this Wednesday to a war that stopped — at least for now — not with a peace treaty, not with diplomacy, but with a Truth Social post and a phone call from Pakistan. The Iran crisis has reached a fragile two-week ceasefire after weeks of escalating threats, airstrikes on civilian infrastructure, and a president who told the world that “a whole civilization will die tonight” if his demands weren’t met. Now, less than 24 hours later, that same president is floating a “joint venture” with Iran to manage the Strait of Hormuz. This is not normal. None of it is. And the corporate press is largely letting it slide.
Raw America is Raw Story and Really Americans’ people-powered response to the MAGA billionaire takeover of American media. We are built to give you the unfiltered truth that the captured outlets won’t deliver. CBS, CNN and The Washington Post are being swallowed by oligarchs. The LA Times is in the same boat. Corporate networks are running cover for this war in Iran, and the FCC chair is now openly threatening media organizations that don’t fall in line. Independent journalism has never mattered more than it does right now. If you’re not already a paid subscriber, please become one today. It’s how we keep the lights on and keep fighting.
Trump’s Iran Whiplash: From ‘Obliterate’ to ‘Joint Venture’ in 24 Hours
Just hours before his self-imposed Tuesday 8 p.m. deadline, President Trump threatened to destroy Iran’s power plants, bridges, and warned that an entire civilization faced death if Tehran didn’t reopen the Strait of Hormuz. Within hours of the planned attack, he took to Truth Social to announce he had reversed course, crediting Pakistan’s prime minister and field marshal for mediating a last-minute suspension of bombing.
The two-week ceasefire came more than five weeks after the U.S. and Israel launched the war, contingent on Iran agreeing to the complete, immediate, and safe opening of the Strait of Hormuz, through which roughly a fifth of the world’s daily oil supply travels.
Then Wednesday morning arrived, and the president shifted gears entirely. Trump told reporters the U.S. may seek a “joint venture” with Iran to safeguard the Strait of Hormuz, saying “it’s a way of securing it — also securing it from lots of other people,” and called the arrangement “a beautiful thing.” He also claimed Iran had agreed to abandon all uranium enrichment, a claim Tehran has repeatedly rejected.
The ceasefire’s 10-point framework, as described by Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, reportedly includes controlled passage through the Strait of Hormuz coordinated with Iran’s armed forces, the end of the war against regional resistance forces, and withdrawal of U.S. combat forces from bases in the region. Trump claimed the U.S. would assist Iran with reconstruction and provide sanctions relief — a significant concession that has received remarkably little scrutiny from the mainstream press.
The ceasefire announcement noted that 13 U.S. service members were killed in the operation. An elementary school was struck early in the war, killing roughly 170 children. Major universities and health care facilities were also heavily damaged. These are not footnotes. They are the story. And the corporate outlets running wall-to-wall coverage of Trump’s spin are not giving you that story.
The calls for invoking the 25th Amendment are growing louder. A president who threatens a civilization’s annihilation one evening and proposes a business partnership the next morning has raised serious questions about his fitness for office — and those questions are not going away.
What we’re watching here isn’t just erratic foreign policy. It’s a president who launched a war that killed children, killed American service members, and shattered civilian infrastructure, and then pivoted to a business pitch before the smoke cleared. Democracies don’t go to war on a whim and cover it with spin. They account for the dead, they answer to Congress, and they tell the truth. None of that has happened here.
TSA Was Feeding ICE a Dragnet: 31,000 Travelers Flagged — and That’s Just the Start
Internal ICE data reviewed by a major wire service reveal that the Transportation Security Administration shared records on more than 31,000 travelers with ICE for possible immigration enforcement since Trump took office, resulting in more than 800 arrests. The agency designed to screen passengers for security threats was being used as a feeder system for immigration roundups.
The TSA-to-ICE pipeline is one piece of a much larger surveillance architecture being built by this administration and its billionaire allies. FBI Director Kash Patel confirmed before the Senate Intelligence Committee that the bureau has resumed purchasing commercial location data on Americans from data brokers, reversing his predecessor’s policy. When Sen. Ron Wyden pressed him to commit to obtaining a warrant first, Patel refused. The FBI now conducts roughly 200,000 warrantless “backdoor searches” of Americans’ communications data per year.
ICE has also partnered with Palantir — co-founded by Trump-aligned billionaire Peter Thiel — to use AI and data mining to track and deport suspected noncitizens through a platform called ImmigrationOS, at a cost of $30 million to taxpayers. Palantir is simultaneously working with DOGE to compile a “master database” cross-referencing tax records, immigration files, and more. Thiel and Elon Musk built their early fortunes together. Now they are building a surveillance state on the public dime.
This apparatus is not aimed only at undocumented immigrants. It is aimed at anyone who protests, anyone who records a federal agent, anyone whose data ends up in the wrong database.
Every authoritarian government in modern history started by surveilling the people it deemed outsiders, and then expanded that apparatus inward until it reached everyone. The Fourth Amendment wasn’t written to protect the popular or the powerful. It was written precisely for moments like this one, and it’s being quietly dismantled by billionaires using your tax dollars to build the tools.
Bari Weiss Wants to Remake 60 Minutes — and CBS Staff Is Alarmed
60 Minutes is American television’s most decorated and longest-running news program, currently pulling more than 10 million viewers a week. It has earned 10 Emmy nominations just this cycle. And the woman now running CBS News reportedly wants to blow it up.
Sources inside CBS say the network’s anti-woke editor-in-chief has been pushing to dismantle the show’s long-standing three-story format and has privately floated the idea of airing content from her own conservative opinion outlet on the broadcast. That idea, sources say, has “raised eyebrows” inside the building. Staffers are pushing back hard. “Seriously, go focus on the Evening News,” one employee said. “If that becomes a success, I’d be a lot more open to your ideas about changing the longest-running, most successful, most-watched news program in history.”
Perhaps most alarming: sources warn that the popular executive producer behind the show’s recent success could be pushed out. Multiple insiders described the prospect as “an earthquake-like event” that would trigger a wave of departures from one of the last major investigative franchises in broadcast news.
A free press isn’t just a nicety in a democracy. It’s the mechanism by which citizens hold power accountable, and when you replace the journalists with loyalists, you don’t just change the coverage, you change what people believe is real. That’s not media criticism, that’s how democracies die.
This is what oligarchic capture of media looks like up close. It is not just about bias or spin. It is about installing loyalists at the top of legacy institutions and systematically dismantling the editorial independence that makes them worth watching. CBS is not alone. The Washington Post. The LA Times. Network after network is being absorbed, redirected, or defanged. Raw America exists because that capture is happening in real time, and someone has to be left standing to tell you the truth. Paid subscribers make that possible. Join us.
Democrats Rack Up Big Wins in Wisconsin and Georgia
It was a strong Tuesday night for Democrats in two key battleground states, and GOP operatives are not hiding their alarm. In Wisconsin, Democratic-backed state Supreme Court candidate Chris Taylor won by nearly 20 points in a state Trump carried in 2024 by tens of thousands of votes. A Democrat also won a mayoral race in a Republican-leaning suburb. In Georgia, a Democratic congressional candidate in a special election runoff lost, but cut Trump’s 2024 margin of victory in that district by 25 points.
Sources with knowledge of Republican internal discussions described the Wisconsin result as a disaster. One GOP strategist, speaking anonymously, called for those involved to be “tarred and feathered and run out of Wisconsin politics.” A former Republican strategist who left the party in 2021 was more measured but equally direct, saying Republicans need to take a hard look at what just happened. “Republicans ought to be sitting down tonight and going, ‘Okay, we just screwed up another race. What are we going to do in November?’”
With midterms approaching, Democrats are showing they can turn out voters in off-cycle elections in swing states. That is not nothing.
State Supreme Court races don’t get the cable news treatment, but they decide who draws the maps, who certifies the elections, and whether your rights survive the next legislative session. A 20-point swing in Wisconsin isn’t just a good night for Democrats. It’s a signal that when people understand what’s actually at stake, they show up.
We have had reporters in the room at the most consequential hearings of this administration. We have brought you exclusive interviews with top generals and national security officials — the conversations the captured outlets either can’t get or won’t air. And we are now joining the D.C. press pool, working to put the best interviews and the sharpest reporting directly in front of you.
None of that happens without you. Coverage that challenges power, refuses to sell wars, and won’t propagandize for the billionaires who now own most of what you see on television requires real support from real readers. If Raw America’s reporting matters to you, become a paid subscriber today. It is the most direct way to keep independent journalism alive at the exact moment it is under the most pressure it has ever faced.
I’m Thom Hartmann. Stay informed. Stay engaged. We’ll see you tomorrow.
STORIES YOU MAY HAVE MISSED:
Todd Blanche Articulates Goal of Burying Epstein Files. Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche — President Donald Trump’s former defense attorney who inherited his new role after former AG Pam Bondi’s firing — announced Wednesday that the Jeffrey Epstein files “should not be a part of anything going forward.” Blanche, who authorized the transfer of Epstein accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell to a minimum security facility, famously said during a TV interview that it was “not a crime to party with Mr. Epstein.”
JD Vance and Pete Hegseth Had Major Confrontation Before Iran War. An excerpt of a forthcoming book by New York Times journalists Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan details a major argument between Vice President JD Vance and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth about Iran. Vance — who is rumored to seek the presidency in 2028 — reportedly warned Trump “in front of his colleagues” that attacking Iran “could cause regional chaos and untold numbers of casualties,” while Hegseth was “the biggest proponent of a military campaign against Iran.” Secretary of State Marco Rubio agreed with Vance that a regime change war was unwise, but that a targeted attack may be justified if it was limited to Iran’s missile program.
Trump DOJ Goes After January 6 Witness. Cassidy Hutchinson — who was one of the key witnesses for the House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack — is now reportedly under investigation by the Department of Justice. The investigation is apparently being conducted by the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division, led by Harmeet Dhillon. Typically that investigation would be spearheaded by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia, though U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro has racked up significant losses in court since being appointed to the role.
GOP Senators Rip Trump Over Iran Threat. Trump’s threat to wipe out “civilization” only to suddenly backtrack has frustrated multiple Republicans. This apparently includes Sens. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) and Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), with the latter saying the president’s rhetoric was an “affront to the ideals our nation has sought to uphold.” Other high-profile conservatives like former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) and podcaster Tucker Carlson have also condemned Trump’s threat.
Texas’ Tax Breaks for Data Centers top $1 Billion Annually. Texas is handing more than a billion dollars in tax breaks each year to data centers, and that figure is like a conservative estimate. Now, GOP lawmakers are seeking to rein in those tax incentives, with Republican state senator Joan Huffman — who chairs the Texas Senate Finance Committee — calling the figure “extremely concerning.” The money Texas is spending on data center tax breaks could double the state’s disaster relief fund to help communities like Kerr, Texas recover from flooding.
