Good morning. It’s Monday, February 23rd. I’m Thom Hartmann, and we have a lot to get through today — because this week is already moving fast. Over the weekend and into this morning, we got stories about the President attacking the Supreme Court on social media, new data demolishing the administration’s immigration talking points, Greenland’s prime minister delivering a cold rebuke to Washington, and a hardcore Trump supporter’s spouse has been arrested by ICE. So let’s get to it.
And before we do — a quick word. Raw America is Raw Story and Really American’s people-powered response to MAGA and the oligarchs’ takeover of the media. We built this so you’d have a place to get the real story, without corporate filters, without advertiser pressure, without anyone telling us what we can and can’t say. That only works if you’re with us. If you’re not already a subscriber to the Raw America Substack, please subscribe right now. It’s the single most direct way to support independent journalism at a moment when it has never mattered more.
Trump Goes to War With the Supreme Court
Let’s start with the President and the Supreme Court, because what’s happening there is extraordinary even by the standards of this administration. On Friday, the Court handed down a 6-3 ruling limiting Trump’s ability to impose tariffs. The President did not take it well. At a White House press conference, he called the decision a “disgrace to our nation.” Then, over the weekend, he moved on to Truth Social, his nazi-infested social media site.
In a series of posts, Trump announced he would no longer capitalize “supreme court” — his way of signaling disrespect. He then argued the ruling had, in his words, accidentally given him far more power than he had before. He claimed he can now use licensing authority to do, and I’m quoting here, “terrible things to foreign countries.” He argued the Court had approved other tariffs in ways that he can now use in a “more powerful and obnoxious way.”
He also went after the Court on birthright citizenship, claiming it would eventually rule in favor of China on the 14th Amendment. He called the justices “incompetent,” with the notable exception of what he called “the Great Three” — his own nominees. This is a sitting president publicly attacking a co-equal branch of government because it ruled against him. And his response is not to comply — it’s to announce new workarounds. This is worth watching closely.
By the way, all three of the “Great Three” are not his nominees, only one of them is, Brett Kavanaugh, who seems to be on a revenge thing against Democrats. The others, of course, are Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, the two on-the-take guys who voted for Citizens United. when the president treats the Supreme Court as an enemy to be mocked and maneuvered around, he’s not just venting: He’s conditioning our country to see constitutional limits as illegitimate obstacles. That’s how executive power expands – with public contempt for the rule of law.
“Worst of the Worst” — The Data Tells a Different Story
The Trump administration has one line it goes back to again and again on immigration: They’re only going after the worst of the worst. DHS Secretary Kristi Noem used it on Fox News right after her Senate confirmation. It’s been in hundreds of press releases. They even built a website around it. And now we have data that tells a very different story.
The Guardian, working with the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, obtained nearly 140,000 immigrant records through a FOIA lawsuit against DHS. These are the official government forms filed when deportation proceedings begin. When you run the numbers, 77% of people who entered deportation proceedings for the first time in 2025 had no criminal conviction whatsoever. Nothing at all. Only 23% had any conviction on record either. And of those convictions, nearly half were for non-violent traffic offenses and for immigration offenses, like being in the country without documentation. Which. by the way, is not a criminal crime, it’s only a civil crime, like a parking ticket. Traffic violations alone made up the largest single category, close to 30% of all convictions. Homicide convictions accounted for less than half of one percent. So much for the murderers, right?
Researchers at the University of Washington’s Center for Human Rights put it plainly: this is dragnet enforcement, they called it. Not targeted removal of violent criminals. An attorney with the American Immigration Council noted that if the data supported the administration’s position, they’d be releasing it themselves. But they’re not, because it doesn’t. What the records actually show is a cross-section of people who have been in this country for years, with jobs and families and roots in their communities.
When the rhetoric is public safety but the reality is mass sweeps of working families. That’s not law enforcement. It’s political theater built on fear. And fear has always been the tool authoritarians use to divide working people from each other while power consolidates at the top.
Greenland to Trump — No Thank You
Over the weekend, President Trump posted on Truth Social that he was sending a hospital ship to Greenland to care for, in his words, “the many people who are sick, and not being taken care of there.” He included what appeared to be an AI-generated image of a Navy hospital ship sailing into a sunset. Maritime tracking data, according to the Washington Post, showed no U.S. hospital ships actually heading toward Greenland. The Navy’s two hospital ships were reportedly sitting in a maintenance facility in Alabama.
Greenland’s 34 year-old prime minister, Jens Frederik-Nielsen, responded on Sunday with a statement that was brief, pointed, and worth reading. He said, essentially: Thanks but no thanks. Greenland already has free public healthcare for all of its citizens by deliberate choice, and that’s how they want it. He added, pointedly, that this is not how it works in the United States, where it costs money to see a doctor. He closed by asking the president to talk to Greenland directly rather than issuing random statements on social media.
Denmark’s defense minister also weighed in, saying that the Greenlandic population gets the healthcare it needs, and describing Trump’s constant posting about the island as the new normal in international politics. Trump has been fixated on acquiring Greenland since before his second term, at one point threatening military force before walking that back at Davos in January. The obsession continues.
When foreign policy becomes a social media spectacle complete with AI imagery and imaginary deployments, America’s credibility erodes in real time. Democracies depend on trust, alliances and shared reality. When those are replaced with ego and propaganda, we weaken not just our standing abroad, but the democratic norms that keep us stable here at home.
A Trump Voter’s Husband Was Grabbed by ICE at the Airport
And we close with a story that puts a human face on everything we covered in story two. Abdellatif Hafraoui came to the United States at 22 years old. He’s now been here 38 years — longer than he ever lived in Morocco. He married his wife, Sandra, in 2011. Last August, the two of them were about to board a flight for a beach vacation when three plainclothes officers and a woman with a badge walked up to them. The woman identified herself as an ICE agent. Within moments, Abdellatif — in shorts and sandals — was handcuffed and put in an unmarked van. Sandra was left standing alone in the terminal with their luggage.
Hafraoui has no criminal record. The deportation order against him dated back to a missed immigration court hearing more than a decade ago — one his own attorney had failed to notify him about. Because of that administrative failure, he spent 108 days in a jail cell, in detention. When he refused to board a deportation flight while his case was still active, he was put in solitary confinement for 10 days.
Here’s the part that stops you cold: Sandra, his wife, had voted for Trump three times. She and her husband attended a Trump rally together in 2020. After watching ICE take her husband away at the airport though, she sent a message directly to the president. She said: “You said you were going after the worst of the worst, but instead you ruined our life.”
That’s the story the data tells in the abstract. Sandra’s husband is what it looks like up close. When government power becomes so sweeping and unforgiving that even loyal supporters find their own families shattered by it, that’s a warning sign for everyone. In a democracy, the law is supposed to protect the people. All the people. Not serve as a blunt instrument that punishes first and sorts out justice later.
These stories don’t happen in isolation. They’re the shape of what this movement, this MAGA movement, actually looks like. And the only way to keep covering them honestly, without fear of who advertises or who applies pressure, is with your support.
Raw America is Raw Story’s people-powered answer to what’s happening to the media right now. Subscribe to this Substack today. It matters. We’ll see you tomorrow. I’m Thom Hartmann.
STORIES YOU MAY HAVE MISSED:
Trump-Appointed Judge Blocks Release of Jack Smith’s Final Report. U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon — who Trump appointed to the Southern District of Florida in 2020 — ruled Monday that former Department of Justice special counsel Jack Smith’s final report detailing his investigation into then-former President Trump would never see the light of day. Cannon was the same judge who ruled in 2024 that Smith had been unduly appointed as special counsel and threw out his 40-count indictment of Trump for allegedly mishandling classified documents.
Mar-a-Lago Gunman Was a Trump Supporter Obsessed with the Epstein Files. 21 year-old Austin Tucker Martin was killed by Secret Service agents on Sunday outside of Mar-a-Lago while carrying a shotgun and a can of gasoline. Just last year, Martin praised Trump as a “strong leader.” However, he had recently told coworkers he was distressed over what he viewed as a massive government cover-up of powerful people who preyed on children.
Federal Judges Losing Patience with Trump Violating Their Orders. In just the last six months, there have been 35 instances of federal judges demanding the Trump administration explain why it hasn’t followed explicit orders from the court. Each one of these 35 instances involved cases in which the government detained immigrants who had been living in the United States for years after entering the country illegally.
Supreme Court Agrees to Hear Oil Companies’ Case to Stop Climate Change Lawsuits. On Monday, the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) granted a writ of certiorari to hear a case brought by oil companies being sued in Colorado over their impact on climate change. ExxonMobil and Suncor Energy are asking SCOTUS to intervene after the Colorado Supreme Court ruled last May that a lawsuit filed by the City of Boulder and Boulder County seeking billions in damages for the costs of climate change could move forward.
Stranded US Tourists Told to ‘Seek Shelter’ Amid Rampant Mexican Cartel Violence. After “El Mencho” — the leader of the notorious Jalisco New Generation Cartel — was killed in a raid by the Mexican military, tourist destinations like Puerto Vallarta were engulfed in chaos. Cartel members pulled drivers out of cars and set their vehicles on fire, and gunshots were heard across the city over the weekend. Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum insists the nation is now “at peace” and “is calm.”
