Good morning. I’m Thom Hartmann.
The president’s Justice Department has opened a criminal investigation into E. Jean Carroll, the woman who won back-to-back civil judgments against Donald Trump for sexual abuse and defamation. Trump skipped out on visiting 14 soldiers wounded in the Iran war during his trip to Walter Reed. A Trump-backed concert is already falling apart before it even happens as artists are pulling out. And a Trump-appointed federal judge is green-lighting Trump’s executive order cracking down on mail-in voting.
Before we get into it, take a moment to keep independent journalism alive. We’re witnessing the real-time capture of America’s biggest media outlets by MAGA billionaires aiming to snuff out all reporting that holds them accountable. They’ve captured the Washington Post and the LA Times. They’ve taken over CBS News. They’re about to conquer CNN. Every day there are fewer and fewer outlets willing to challenge America’s richest and most powerful people.
This is exactly why we created Raw America. We are completely reader-supported, editorially independent and not for sale. But that also means that none of our work would be possible without readers like you stepping up to be paying subscribers. We don’t have Jeff Bezos’ wallet or the Ellison family’s checkbook. We have you. If you’ve been enjoying our daily news roundups, exclusive live interviews and Capitol Hill reporting on a free subscription, today is the day to upgrade to a paying one. None of this would be possible without you.
Trump Sics His DOJ on E. Jean Carroll
The Justice Department has officially opened a criminal investigation into E. Jean Carroll, the former magazine writer who accused Donald Trump of sexually assaulting her in a Bergdorf Goodman dressing room in the mid-1990s. She even proved the accusation in court. Twice.
In May 2023, a federal jury found Trump liable for sexually abusing Carroll and defaming her. She was awarded $5 million. That verdict was upheld on appeal in December 2024, just weeks before Trump was sworn in for his second term. A three-judge panel of the Second Circuit unanimously rejected Trump’s request for a new trial.
Then came the second case. A jury awarded Carroll $83.3 million in January 2024, including $65 million in punitive damages. The jury found Trump had acted with malice. His attacks on Carroll were relentless during the trial itself, and the court noted she faced death threats and threats of physical injury as a result of his statements. That verdict was also upheld by the Second Circuit, again unanimously.
And now the Justice Department wants to investigate her for perjury.
The investigation is reportedly being led by Andrew Boutros, the Trump-appointed U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Illinois. The probe centers on whether Carroll committed perjury in her civil lawsuits against Trump. One area of focus appears to be funding her litigation received from Reid Hoffman, the LinkedIn co-founder who is a vocal Trump critic. Trump’s lawyers had previously raised questions about whether Carroll concealed that financial support.
Carroll is just the latest target of Trump’s revenge prosecutions. James Comey was charged last month over a social media post of seashells. Letitia James, the New York Attorney General, has been targeted. John Brennan, the former CIA director, has been investigated. Federal judges have thrown out some of these cases already, but the department keeps coming.
Todd Blanche, the acting attorney general, recused himself from the Carroll probe because he previously represented Trump. But the DOJ is still involved.
What’s remarkable here is that the very conduct of prosecutors under Boutros has been called into serious question just recently. Last week, he was forced to dismiss misdemeanor charges against protesters outside a Chicago immigration detention facility after it emerged that prosecutors had allegedly spoken with individual grand jurors outside the courtroom, which is a serious breach of procedure.
The pattern is clear. The department has become a tool for settling personal scores. And the people who already won in court against Trump are now learning that the legal system, under this administration, doesn’t necessarily end when the verdict comes in.
The founders separated the power to prosecute from the will of one man precisely because they’d watched English kings turn the law into a sword against anyone who’d embarrassed them. When a president can sic federal prosecutors on the citizen who beat him in open court, twice, before an impartial jury, we’re not living under the rule of law anymore. We’re living under the rule of his grievances, and that’s the exact tyranny the Constitution was written to prevent.
Trump Skips Meeting Troops Wounded in Iran War
The president traveled to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center for his second physical since October, making sure to say everything had checked out “PERFECTLY,” which is the kind of update we expect from this president.
While he was there, he visited with service members, which is a standard tradition for sitting presidents. But here’s what wasn’t standard: 14 soldiers injured during the ongoing Iran war were recovering at that very same facility. Trump didn’t see any of them, according to a military official and the family of one of those soldiers.
The White House confirmed Trump met with service members and medical staff. When asked why he didn’t visit the 14 wounded troops, a spokesperson declined to explain.
The Iran war has now left 409 American troops injured and 13 dead since the attacks began in late February. Many of those wounded have been treated at Walter Reed.
Among those currently recovering there is Sergeant Cory Hicks, who sustained a traumatic brain injury, a severed spleen, and a lacerated kidney in an Iranian drone strike on an Army outpost in Kuwait in March. Six service members from that attack are now at the facility.
Hicks told CBS last month that he lost six of his fellow soldiers who were sitting close to him when the strike hit. He called it “a different battle” from the one he’d trained for.
On Memorial Day, Trump honored the 13 killed as “wonderful souls.” At a Cabinet meeting this week, he called their deaths “a terrible thing.” He’s made public statements acknowledging the human cost.
But he was in the same building as 14 of the wounded and didn’t stop in.
It’s worth remembering that this is the same president who, in 2024, dismissed traumatic brain injuries suffered by U.S. service members after an Iranian airstrike on a base in Iraq. The Atlantic also reported that year that Trump had privately described fallen soldiers as “losers” and “suckers.” Trump has denied that, but former White House chief of staff and four-star general John Kelly said he heard him say it.
A commander in chief sends these young people into harm’s way, and the least the office demands in return is that he walk down the hall and look them in the eye when they come home broken. The bargain at the heart of a republic that asks its citizens to bleed for it is that the powerful owe them something back, and a leader who can’t be bothered to honor that debt has told us exactly how much he values the lives he spends.
Music Acts Already Pulling Out of Trump Event After Outrage
The Trump-aligned “Great American State Fair” was supposed to be a celebration for America’s 250th birthday. It’s scheduled for June 27th on the National Mall. And it’s already coming apart at the seams.
The event, organized by a group called Freedom 250, was billed as bringing together “the very best of who we are.” The lineup begs to differ.
We’re talking about Vanilla Ice, who hasn’t had a hit since 1990. Flo Rida, whose last chart appearance was a decade ago. Milli Vanilli, who can’t actually be Milli Vanilli because one of its two original members died in 1998. C+C Music Factory, whose original member David Cole died in 1995. The Commodores, which is Lionel Richie’s old band, not Lionel Richie. And Bret Michaels of Poison, who won Trump’s Celebrity Apprentice back in 2010.
None of the acts that tend to actually show up at MAGA events, like Carrie Underwood, Nicki Minaj, or Kid Rock, are on the bill.
And now, some of the acts that were on the bill want off.
Young MC, who had a hit with “Bust a Move” in 1989, posted on Instagram this week that he’s out. He said the artists were never told about any political involvement with the event, and that despite organizers calling it non-partisan, he’s not comfortable with it being described as Trump-backed.
Morris Day and the Time, the Minneapolis funk band famous for their role in Purple Rain alongside Prince, also said no. His fans were audibly relieved. “Thank you,” one wrote. “I just let out the biggest exhale.”
Meanwhile, C+C Music Factory’s Freedom Williams had a more colorful response. He posted a seven-minute video explaining that his agent booked him three months ago without telling him the event had any connection to Trump. He made clear he doesn’t support Trump. But he also said he’s still going to perform, and that no one’s going to tell him what to do.
The one act fully on board, predictably, is Vanilla Ice, who’s been performing at Mar-a-Lago New Year’s parties for years.
I think we can all agree it’s pretty underwhelming that the only artists willing to show up to a patriotic blowout event are the ones who’ve been auditioning for relevance at Trump’s private club in Palm Beach.
There’s something telling in the fact that artists are scrambling to distance themselves from a celebration of the country’s founding once Trump’s name gets attached to it. Genuine patriotism has always belonged to the whole nation, not to one faction, and when the symbols of America get conscripted into one man’s brand, the people instinctively pull away. That instinct, the refusal to let the flag become a partisan prop, is healthier for the republic than any fair on the Mall could ever be.
Trump-Appointed Judge Green-Lights His Anti-Voting Executive Order
A federal judge Trump appointed in 2019 has declined to block Trump’s executive order targeting mail-in voting.
Trump signed the order back on March 31st. It directed the administration to build a list of confirmed U.S. citizens eligible to vote, using data from the Department of Homeland Security and the Social Security Administration. It required the Postal Service to only deliver mail-in ballots to voters on state-approved lists. And it told states to hold onto election records for five years.
Democrats, including Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, went to court to stop it, arguing it could disenfranchise millions of voters by relying on data sources that can be outdated and riddled with errors.
This order fits neatly into Trump’s long-running campaign to undermine confidence in mail-in voting, which he’s falsely blamed for his 2020 election loss for years. What the administration is building, if it gets implemented, is a federally controlled voter eligibility system that bypasses state authority over elections, using data that experts have long flagged as unreliable for this kind of verification.
The judge who heard the case and declined to issue an injunction is Carl Nichols, a Trump appointee based in Washington. His reasoning wasn’t that the order is legal, but that it’s too early as nobody has been harmed yet.
He left the door open for Democrats to come back once agencies actually start implementing the order. This feels like a good time to remind everyone that the election is roughly five months away and the courts aren’t exactly known for responding with lightning speed when rights are violated.
Also, there’s a separate challenge moving through federal court in Boston. That case was brought by a coalition of Democratic-led states and is before Judge Indira Talwani, an Obama appointee. Arguments in that case are scheduled for June 2nd. So the fight isn’t over.
The Constitution hands the states, not the president, the authority to run elections, and that division wasn’t an accident. The framers scattered electoral power across the country specifically so no single national figure could ever sit at a federal desk and decide who gets to vote. A president building his own citizenship database to control which ballots reach which Americans is reaching for a power the founders made sure no president would ever hold.
Raw America Interviews Zohran Mamdani
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos — while sitting in front of one of his Blue Origin spaceships — told CNBC last week that “you could double the taxes I pay and it’s not going to help that teacher in Queens.” Marco Foster, a reporter with Raw America partner Really American, asked New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani his thoughts about Bezos’ comments.
“I know a few teachers in Queens who would beg to differ. We’re talking about some of the wealthiest people in the world and what we’re asking is for them to pay their fair share,” Mamdani told Foster. “If we had people who are making more money than we can even imagine just in the time they’re taking to share those opinions paying their fair share, we would have a different city to call home.”
Raw America has big plans this summer. We’re building out our team at the Capitol so we can break exclusive stories that the billionaire-owned outlets won’t cover, and ask the hard questions to lawmakers that they won’t. We’re also bringing you more live interviews with policy experts, lawmakers, whistleblowers and people offering you inside knowledge that the regime wants to keep from you. Today at noon Eastern Time, we’ll be interviewing Lev Parnas, the former Rudy Giuliani associate who is now running for Congress as a Democrat. You can watch live on our homepage at RawAmerica.com.
None of this work would be possible without our paying subscribers. We don’t take billionaire money, and we don’t have any corporate advertisers. What we have is readers like you who believe in the importance of independent journalism enough to step up and keep it alive. If you’re a paying subscriber, thank you for making it possible for Raw America to exist. If you’ve been enjoying our work on a free subscription, today is the best day to upgrade to a paying one. Every subscription is an act of resistance against the billionaires trying to kill the free press. The link is right below.
I’m Thom Hartmann. The fight is here Thank you for being in it.
STORIES YOU MAY HAVE MISSED:
Supreme Court Justice’s Son Exposed for Working High-Level Job in Trump Administration. Philip Alito — the son of Republican-appointed Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito — has been quietly working as a lawyer in President Donald Trump’s Treasury Department. NOTUS reported Thursday that Philip Alito’s position in the Treasury Department’s Office of General Counsel is a “closely guarded secret,” as the son of the conservative jurist does not have a public LinkedIn profile, and the Treasury Department makes no mention of him on its official website.
Gavin Newsom Signs Bill Blocking Federal Interference in Elections. California Governor Gavin Newsom (D) on Wednesday signed legislation into law that would block all federal officials from accessing voter rolls and/or election technology without a court order. Newsom said the new law was necessary as he expected the Trump administration to attempt to interfere with the 2026 midterm elections.
Supreme Court Rules in Favor of Mississippi Death Row Inmate. The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) on Thursday issued a 5-4 ruling in favor of Mississippi death row inmate Terry Pitchford. Pitchford, who is 40, has been attempting to overturn his murder conviction and death sentence, arguing that prosecutors intentionally excluded Black jurors from his trial. SCOTUS’ Batson v. Kentucky ruling from the 1980s established the precedent that jurors could not be excluded from a trial solely based on race.
‘No Kings’ Movement Announces Nationwide June 14 Day of Action. The nationwide “No Kings” protest movement has announced its next national day of protest will be June 14, which is also President Trump’s 80th birthday. The “No Kings” protests have steadily grown in size since they launched last summer, with the most recent event on March 28 bringing out more than eight million people in several thousand cities across all 50 U.S. states. Multiple cities around the world also held their own “No Kings” protests in solidarity with U.S. protesters.
Trump Administration Aiming to Stop International Flights to Sanctuary Cities. The Trump administration’s Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is reportedly aiming to prevent international airlines from flying to Democratic-controlled “sanctuary cities” that don’t comply with the administration’s immigration policies. If implemented, this would include major travel hubs like Boston, Chicago, Denver, Los Angeles, New York, Philadelphia and Seattle.
