Good morning. I’m Thom Hartmann.
Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche is under fire after a top Democrat claimed Blanche privately admitted Trump’s $1.8 billion slush fund for MAGA loyalists was a mistake. Democrats are also accusing Senator Susan Collins of lying about ICE’s recent killing of a 26 year-old man in Maine. A witness to that same shooting is now revealing his account of what he saw, and what he personally said to that ICE agent after the shooting. And Trump’s Justice Department subpoenaed five New York Times reporters over their coverage of Trump’s Qatari-gifted jet.
Before we get into the news, a brief ask. Raw America runs on paid subscribers and nothing else. We don’t have a billionaire owner, a corporate parent or a hedge fund quietly deciding what we can and can’t say. Just readers who believe independent journalism is worth funding. Right now we are behind on our fundraising goals, and we need you to help close that gap. Corporate media and the oligarch-funded outlets propping up this regime will never answer to their readers the way we do. Become a paid subscriber today and keep independent journalism alive.
Dick Durbin Says Todd Blanche Quietly Admitted Trump’s Slush Fund Was Illegal
Senator Dick Durbin, the top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, dropped a bombshell this week, telling reporters that in a private meeting, Blanche admitted Trump’s $1.8 billion fund for MAGA loyalists was a mistake.
According to Durbin, Blanche said, “What more can I do? What more can I say? I made a mistake. I don’t want to see the weaponization fund go forward.” The Illinois Democrat said he told Blanche to put that admission in writing so it would be taken seriously.
The DOJ’s rapid response account fired back, accusing Durbin of taking a “cordial private meeting” out of context, and said Blanche looks forward to correcting the record during his confirmation hearing.
You may remember how the DOJ initially set up $1.8 billion to pay Trump allies who claim they were wrongfully persecuted by the Biden and Obama administrations. That includes people convicted of attacking police officers during the Capitol insurrection on January 6th.
That fund was part of a deal where Trump dropped his $10 billion lawsuit against the IRS over his leaked tax returns, which also gave him, his family and his businesses full immunity from audits.
The backlash to the fund was bipartisan, and the DOJ ultimately promised to abandon the effort. But notably, Blanche still hasn’t confirmed that in writing.
Durbin didn’t just mention the slush fund. He also accused Blanche of “aiding and abetting the most corrupt administration in history,” pointing out Blanche oversaw the botched release of the Epstein files as well as the IRS deal, along with what he referred to as Blanche’s cryptocurrency corruption.
The senior Democrat added that Blanche never stopped being Trump’s personal lawyer. And after this week, he may become the top law enforcement officer in the United States.
We’ve been here before. Back in 1924, after Attorney General Harry Daugherty ran the Justice Department as a favor bank for Warren Harding’s cronies, Calvin Coolidge brought in Harlan Fiske Stone to scrub the place clean, and Stone made it his mission to prove the department answered to the law, not to any president. A century later we’re watching that lesson run in reverse, and the question before the Senate this week is whether the nation’s law firm works for the American people or for one man’s legal defense.
Democrats Say Susan Collins Is Lying About the ICE Shooting in Maine
Outrage is building over an ICE agent in Maine fatally shooting 26-year-old Colombian national Joan Sebastian Guerrero on Monday. Guerrero had a U.S. work authorization and a Social Security number. He leaves behind a partner and a 3-year-old daughter.
Maine Republican Senator Susan Collins told reporters the agent wasn’t wearing a body camera because ICE still doesn’t have them deployed. She then blamed Democrats, saying the government shutdown over ICE funding delayed the purchase and rollout of the cameras.
Democrats are now loudly calling Collins a liar.
Senator Patty Murray of Washington state, who is the top Democrat on the Senate Appropriations Committee that Collins chairs, pointed out that Republicans gave ICE nearly $30 billion last summer in Trump’s Big Ugly Bill. Another $10 billion went to the Homeland Security secretary for what is effectively a discretionary slush fund.
ICE has had plenty of money just sitting there, which could have paid for body cameras on all federal agents across the country at any point.
Murray said the Trump administration instead blew taxpayer money on private jets and gold-coated SUVs the Department of Homeland Security can’t even use. And she added that blaming Democrats for a lack of body cameras was “completely absurd.”
Staffers on the Republican-controlled House Homeland Security Committee said Murray is right: the cameras have already been purchased, and guidance on using them has already been written. ICE is simply dragging its feet on deployment.
Back in February, after ICE agents killed Alex Pretti in Minneapolis, then-DHS Secretary Kristi Noem promised to “rapidly acquire and deploy body cameras” across the agency. That still hasn’t happened almost six months after the fact.
Pretti’s death happened not long after ICE agents killed another U.S. citizen in Minneapolis, Renee Good. Minnesota officials said Tuesday they’d finally obtained body camera footage from both shootings after the Trump administration spent months stonewalling the investigation.
Collins said Guerrero’s death “appears to be a horrible tragedy” but that the investigation, which is being handled by Maine’s attorney general, the FBI, and an independent inspector general, needs to be allowed to carry on before anyone draws conclusions.
Here’s the thing. Article One of the Constitution says no money leaves the Treasury except by an appropriation made by law, and the founders gave Congress that power of the purse precisely so the executive couldn’t spend our money however it pleased while dodging accountability. When Congress hands an agency thirty billion dollars, that agency doesn’t get to sit on the safety equipment and blame the people who wrote the check. And Susan Collins chairs the very committee that’s supposed to enforce it.
Witness Reveals What He Said to ICE Agent Who Killed Man in Maine
Speaking of that shooting, people who actually witnessed it are now telling their side.
Dan Boucher lives right on the street corner in Biddeford, Maine where the shooting happened. He says he saw an ICE vehicle boxing in a small sedan before he heard gunshots.
He ran downstairs and watched ICE agents pull Guerrero from his car. He heard someone say, “I tried to stop.” Eventually, Guerrero stopped moving.
Boucher says he later confronted the agent who fired the shots and told him, “I hope you’re happy with what you did. I hope you’re satisfied.” The agent then reportedly said, “He tried to run me over.”
Witnesses became infuriated after learning Guerrero wasn’t even ICE’s intended target. Neighbor Rose Littlefield said he’d simply borrowed the supposed subject’s car to go to work.
They’re also frustrated by the Department of Homeland Security’s shifting explanations, first blaming a “weaponized car,” before then pivoting to “fears over public safety.”
Boucher is asking a simple question: why shoot someone over public safety concerns while standing in front of a moving vehicle? Witness Larry Humiston observed ICE always has the the same excuse every time they kill someone. It’s always about the car.
Witness Cecelia Humiston accused ICE of doing everything they can to protect the agent who pulled the trigger, and now an innocent man is dead and a three year-old child lost her father.
Boucher gave his statement to the FBI, the Maine State Police and the state attorney general’s office, which investigates all uses of deadly force by law enforcement.
And by the way, this isn’t some unsettled legal gray zone. Four decades ago the Supreme Court ruled in Tennessee v. Garner that police can’t use deadly force against a fleeing person who poses no immediate threat to anyone. That’s not a suggestion, it’s constitutional law binding every officer in America, federal agents included. So when the official excuse changes twice in one day and the man who died wasn’t even the target, the neighbors of Biddeford aren’t just grieving. They’re witnesses to whether that law still means anything.
Trump DOJ Subpoenas Reporters Over Qatari Jet Coverage
The Trump DOJ is escalating its war on the press in a major way.
Five New York Times reporters — Julian Barnes, Eric Lipton, Tyler Pager, Eric Schmitt and Adam Goldman — just got DOJ subpoenas demanding they testify before a grand jury in Manhattan. Some of the subpoenas were delivered straight to the reporters’ homes.
The subpoenas were apparently issued in response to the Times’ reporting that Trump departed the recent NATO summit in Turkey aboard the old Air Force One over security concerns, rather than the $400 million jet gifted to him by the Qatari royal family, which was sent ahead to a British air base. That reporting came alongside revelations that Trump considered himself a top target of Iran following new hostilities between the U.S. and the Islamic republic.
Press freedom experts say the way this investigation started is likely illegal. George Freeman of the Media Law Resource Center said reporters are supposed to be the last resort in an investigation into leaks, not the top target.
A DOJ spokesperson insists reporters aren’t being targeted, and that the department is simply trying to prevent the leaking of classified information.
But critics are pointing to the context og Trump’s long history of hostility toward the Times. Trump has repeatedly called the paper “failing” and “fake” and is in the middle of suing it for defamation over its coverage of his campaign.
Press freedom advocates say the subpoenas are designed to chill reporting and intimidate the Times’ sources, harming government transparency long after Trump is out of office.
The Times’ top lawyer, David McCraw, said federal agents showing up at reporters’ homes with subpoenas should absolutely “shock the conscience of any American who believes in the Constitution.”
The National Press Club and the White House Correspondents’ Association both condemned the DOJ for issuing the subpoenas, adding that journalists should have the right to do their jobs free of government intimidation.
This all comes as Pete Hegseth’s Pentagon is announcing a new initiative to hunt down leakers, and while Trump’s FCC chair, Brendan Carr, is threatening the broadcast licenses of networks critical of the administration. It’s part of a much bigger pattern of intimidation of the press during the second Trump presidency.
This fight is older than the republic itself. In 1735, a New York jury refused to convict the printer John Peter Zenger for publishing the truth about a corrupt royal governor, and that verdict planted the idea that telling the public what its government is doing can never be a crime. Every subpoena delivered to a reporter’s doorstep is an attempt to dig up that root, and it’s exactly why freedom of the press is written into the First Amendment.
We need you to become a paid subscriber today.
We covered every single story above because we know corporate media and billionaire-owned outlets will either bury them or water them down beyond recognition. Raw America answers to no billionaire or corporate board. We answer to you, our readers, and that’s only because paid subscribers make that possible.
Right now we’re behind on our fundraising goals, and we need that to change today. Independent journalism won’t survive if readers don’t step up to fund it.
Corporate media and the oligarch-funded outlets propping up this regime will never answer to their readers the way we do. They can’t. Their owners won’t let them. We can, because you make it possible.
Become a paid subscriber today. Independent journalism won’t survive on good intentions. It can only endure if people like you deciding it is worth funding.
Here are some stories that you may have missed:
Trump’s FCC Clears Path to Allow Billionaires to Own Even More TV Stations. The FCC — which is led by President Donald Trump’s appointed chairman, Brendan Carr — announced it will vote on August 6 on a rule that could lift the cap put in place to prevent an owner from controlling TV stations that broadcast to more than 39 percent of markets. The vote comes as litigation continues over the proposed Nexstar-Tegna merger, which would allow one company to own TV stations broadcasting to roughly 80 percent of American households.
Senate Democrats Block Pentagon Funding Bill Over Trump’s War with Iran. Democrats in the U.S. Senate voted Tuesday to block the 2027 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) from advancing over concerns about Trump’s ongoing war with Iran. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said it was irresponsible for Republicans to conduct business as usual while “the nation’s most urgent national security crisis” continues unabated. The bill needs seven Democratic votes to pass the Senate’s 60-vote threshold to overcome a filibuster.
Trump Endorses MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell’s Campaign for Minnesota Governor. President Trump on Wednesday officially endorsed the gubernatorial campaign of Republican candidate Mike Lindell, a staunch Trump ally known for peddling baseless conspiracy theories about the 2020 election. That endorsement contrasts with Minnesota Republican Party activists’ endorsement of businessman Kendall Qualls, who won over a majority of the Minnesota GOP convention in May. Minnesotans will elect their respective parties’ general election nominees on August 11. Sen. Amy Kobuchar (D-Minn.), who is leaving her Senate seat at the end of 2026, leads all prospective Republican challengers in the latest polls.
Vast Majority of Michigan Democrats Want Single-Payer Healthcare. A new poll conducted by WDIV and The Detroit News shows that 82 percent of Democratic voters in Michigan would prefer a single-payer healthcare system over the current system. This is particularly significant as healthcare is a key difference between Democratic U.S. Senate candidates Abdul el-Sayed and Haley Stevens. El-Sayed, a doctor who previously served as Detroit’s chief health officer, supports universal healthcare, while Stevens does not.
Trump Demands ICE Pull Back from Promise to Halt Vehicle Stops Despite Latest Killings. President Trump wrote Wednesday morning on his social media platform that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) should continue conducting vehicle stops in spite of the recent killings of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo in Houston and Joan Sebastian Guerrero in Biddeford, Maine. Trump called the practice “one of ICE’s most important and effective crime fighting tools.” The Department of Homeland Security has already admitted that Salgado Araujo and Guerrero were not the original targets of the respective investigations being conducted at the time.
