Good morning, I’m Thom Hartmann.
Trump walked into the Supreme Court Wednesday, watched his own justices dismantle his birthright citizenship argument for 90 minutes, and walked out. His DOJ has secretly told him he can ignore the Presidential Records Act, effectively greenlighting the destruction of government documents. Bari Weiss is being held back from gutting 60 Minutes only temporarily, with sources saying she plans to blow it up the moment the season ends in May. And Trump bragged at an Easter lunch that America can’t afford daycare or healthcare because we’re spending it all on his war, then delivered a primetime address that offered no plan, no objectives, and no clarity on what victory in Iran even means.
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Trump Walked Out of the Supreme Court After His Own Justices Dismantled His Argument
Trump became the first sitting president to observe Supreme Court oral arguments Wednesday, showing up to watch his administration defend its executive order restricting birthright citizenship. He was reportedly spotted with his eyes closed. After less than 90 minutes, as several of his own hand-picked justices picked the arguments apart, he left.
White House lawyers challenged the 14th Amendment’s Citizenship Clause, which grants citizenship to all persons born on U.S. soil. Every lower court that has considered the order has blocked it. Legal experts broadly expect the Supreme Court to rule against the administration when its decision comes in early summer. If so, it will be Trump’s second major SCOTUS defeat this year, following February’s decision striking down his tariff policy.
Back at the White House, Trump posted that the U.S. is “the only Country in the World Stupid enough to allow ‘Birthright’ Citizenship.” More than 30 countries, including Canada, Mexico, Brazil, and Argentina, automatically grant citizenship to children born on their soil. He then posted a 488-word rambling rant covering law enforcement, Biden-era border policy, and an imagined Democratic conspiracy to defund police.
The man who showed up to stare down nine justices left before the arguments were finished.
What’s at stake here isn’t just one executive order. The 14th Amendment was written in the wreckage of the Civil War specifically to make sure no future government could strip citizenship from people it didn’t like. That guarantee is the floor of American democracy, and an administration willing to challenge it in court is telling us exactly how far it’s willing to go.
Trump’s DOJ Has Secretly Told Him He Can Ignore the Presidential Records Act
Pam Bondi’s DOJ has secretly advised Trump that he can legally violate the Presidential Records Act, the law passed after Watergate to prevent presidents from destroying or concealing government documents. The DOJ’s Office of Legal Counsel concluded the law exceeds Congress’s constitutional authority.
The Presidential Records Act was enacted specifically because of what happens when a president decides his records belong to him rather than the American people. Under this new interpretation, Trump does not have to comply with it.
This matters enormously given what we already know. Investigators concluded Trump retained classified documents tied to his own business interests. A woman told the FBI across four interviews that she was trafficked to Trump at age 13, and records of those interviews were withheld. Around 30 pages of documents listed in the DOJ’s own evidence inventory remain missing.
The same Justice Department sitting on those files has now told the president he doesn’t have to preserve his records at all. That is not a legal argument. It is a permission slip.
Every functioning democracy depends on the public’s ability to know what its government did and why. We learned that after Nixon. The whole point of the Presidential Records Act was to make sure a president couldn’t walk out the door with history stuffed in his pockets. When a DOJ secretly decides that law doesn’t apply anymore, it’s not just protecting this president. It’s dismantling the accountability structure that was supposed to protect all of us.
Bari Weiss Is Being Held Back From Gutting 60 Minutes. Only Until May.
Weiss wanted to overhaul 60 Minutes while it was still on air. Senior network leaders talked her out of it. She is now waiting until the show’s May break to, in the words of one staffer, “blow it up as soon as the season is over.”
60 Minutes is currently the number one primetime program in the country, drawing 10.3 million viewers last Sunday. The person preparing to dismantle it has already pulled a completed investigative segment hours before air, demanded a prison story include Trump administration talking points, and presided over the departure of Anderson Cooper, who left uncomfortable with the network’s rightward direction. CBS Evening News fell back below 4 million viewers last week. ABC’s World News Tonight now enjoys its largest audience advantage over CBS in decades.
The former president of CBS News said it plainly before she left: “What we can’t have is institutions collapse and, as a result, have newsgathering commitments go away. So much of what we see in the opinion space is built off the reporting of institutions. So what happens when that reporting is not there?”
When Weiss finishes with 60 Minutes, when Ellison closes his CNN acquisition, when the FCC has threatened every broadcaster that pushes back, that question answers itself. This is exactly why Raw America exists, and why your paid subscription is not optional right now. Please become one today.
60 Minutes has been a cornerstone of American investigative journalism for more than fifty years. It’s where the country went to find out what powerful people didn’t want it to know. When that kind of institution gets hollowed out, it doesn’t just change a network’s ratings. It shrinks the space where accountability journalism can exist at all, and that’s a loss that doesn’t come back.
Trump Bragged the U.S. Can’t Afford Daycare Because of His War. Then Gave a Primetime Address With No Plan.
At an Easter lunch Wednesday, Trump told guests the U.S. cannot afford federal daycare or healthcare funding because of military spending. “We’re fighting wars. We can’t take care of daycare,” he said, describing social programs as “little scams.”
Republicans are weighing drastic Medicaid cuts to fund the Pentagon’s request for an additional $200 billion for the Iran war. Millions are already projected to lose health coverage under Trump’s spending bill. Senator Elizabeth Warren responded: “Imagine if instead of funding forever wars in the Middle East, the United States delivered universal child care and health care for all Americans.”
That evening, Trump addressed the nation in a primetime speech. He offered no new information, no plan, no clear objectives. He said the U.S. would hit Iran “extremely hard over the next two to three weeks.” He said the war would be over soon. He has been saying both things simultaneously for weeks. The Strait of Hormuz remains closed. Gas is nearly $4 a gallon. Thirteen Americans are confirmed dead, with hundreds more wounded in figures the military has been accused of deliberately undercounting.
The president’s primetime address lasted long enough to say nothing.
This is the oldest con in the book. Every society that’s ever chosen guns over butter has ended up with less of both. When a president tells you that working families can’t have healthcare or childcare because of a war he started with no authorization from Congress and no defined objective, he’s not making a budget argument. He’s making a choice about whose lives matter and whose don’t.
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An administration that has told itself it doesn’t have to preserve records. A DOJ sitting on Epstein files. A Supreme Court being personally visited by a president who left when the questions got hard. A war with no plan and a casualty count being deliberately understated. And a media landscape being bought by Ellison, threatened by Carr, and rebuilt around the agenda of the people in power.
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I’m Thom Hartmann. We will see you tomorrow.
Here are 5 “Stories You May Have Missed” from the last 24 hours:
An American Journalist Has Been Kidnapped in Baghdad by an Iranian-Backed Militia
American freelance journalist Shelly Kittleson was kidnapped in broad daylight in central Baghdad on Tuesday by individuals linked to Kata’ib Hezbollah, an Iranian-backed paramilitary group. Sources say the U.S. government had warned Kittleson multiple times about a specific threat against her and urged her to leave Iraq before she was taken. Iraqi security forces arrested one suspect but Kittleson has not been located. The U.S. Embassy in Baghdad has now issued a warning to all Americans in Iraq to leave immediately, citing credible threats of further kidnapping attempts against Americans in central Baghdad within the next 24 to 48 hours. The State Department says securing her release is a top priority.
Iran Says It Is Prepared to Fight for “At Least Six Months.” Oil Hit $104 a Barrel After Trump’s Speech.
Iran’s foreign minister said Tuesday the country is prepared to sustain military operations for at least six months, directly contradicting Trump’s claim that the war could be over in two to three weeks. Oil futures spiked more than 5 percent after Trump’s Wednesday night primetime address, with U.S. crude rising to $102 a barrel and Brent hitting $104, as markets concluded the speech contained no credible path to ending the conflict. Asian stock markets fell sharply Thursday morning in response. South Korea’s Kospi dropped nearly 3 percent. Japan’s Nikkei fell 1.4 percent. Iran’s military issued a statement Thursday vowing to deliver “more crushing, broader and more destructive” attacks and dismissed Trump’s assessment of Iran’s remaining military capabilities as “incomplete.”
South Korea Is Scrambling After the U.S. Quietly Moved Its THAAD Missile Defense System Out of Korea and Into the Middle East
The United States has begun moving components of its THAAD missile defense system from South Korea to the Middle East to meet demand from the Iran war, leaving South Korea without a replacement for one of its primary defenses against North Korea. South Korea’s president acknowledged the move and admitted Seoul could not compel Washington to stop it. The redeployment coincided with North Korea’s third ballistic missile test of 2026 last month. South Korea is now pushing a $17.3 billion emergency budget through parliament to address what its president called “the worst energy security threat” the country has faced, given that 70 percent of its oil comes through the region now disrupted by the war. The U.S. pulled a key defensive asset from an ally facing a nuclear-armed neighbor, without consultation, to fight a war that neighbor had no say in starting.
An Airstrike Hit Inside the Former U.S. Embassy Compound in Tehran
A U.S. or Israeli airstrike Wednesday morning struck inside the former American Embassy compound in Tehran, the site of the 444-day hostage crisis that began in 1979. The compound has been controlled by Iran’s Revolutionary Guard since the crisis ended and houses an anti-American museum. Witnesses reported blown-out windows across the massive compound on Taleghani Street. The strike is the latest in a campaign that has now hit thousands of targets inside Iran over 33 days of active combat. Meanwhile, Iran arrested 46 people for selling Starlink internet connections inside the country, one of the few remaining ways Iranians have been able to bypass government communication blackouts and access information about the war being conducted on their soil.
35 Countries Have Now Signed a Statement Calling for Maritime Security in the Strait of Hormuz. None Are Sending Troops.
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer announced that 35 countries have signed a joint statement committing to work together on restoring maritime security in the Strait of Hormuz, and that British Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper would lead a diplomatic conference on the issue. Military planners are working on potential plans to implement once the war ends. The statement did not include any commitment to send naval forces while the war is active. The UAE’s air defenses have now intercepted more than 438 ballistic missiles, 19 cruise missiles, and over 2,000 drones since the war began. The Gulf Cooperation Council’s economic model is under severe strain, with food imports to the region disrupted by more than 70 percent and a mass exodus of expatriates underway across the Gulf states.
