Good morning, I’m Thom Hartmann.
This morning, the president of the United States spent the night firing off 14 Truth Social posts in under an hour, raging at Iran, at Supreme Court justices he appointed, at James Carville, at the Wall Street Journal editorial board, and at wind farms. White House aides are leaking signs of his deteriorating mental state to reporters. The FBI director is facing a congressional investigation into whether he is a functioning alcoholic, and responded to questions about it by attacking the press. The wife of a 28-year Army veteran was arrested by ICE as her husband watched, at an appointment they thought was a routine immigration interview. And Virginia voters just handed Democrats a redistricting victory that could by itself flip the House majority. Corporate media is covering some of this. The FCC chair has made clear what happens when they cover too much. And the Ellisons keep buying. Let’s get into it.
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Trump Spent the Night Melting Down on Truth Social. Aides Are Leaking About His Mental State.
Just days after reports that Trump was kept out of the crisis room during the rescue of two downed U.S. airmen in Iran because he had become too agitated, the president spent Thursday night publishing 14 Truth Social posts in under an hour.
He raged at the Wall Street Journal’s editorial board. He attacked Democratic strategist James Carville. He went after Supreme Court justices he appointed. He celebrated the reopening of coal plants in Pennsylvania and took shots at wind energy for killing birds. He shared videos claiming Barack Obama ran a “seditious conspiracy” to overthrow the U.S. government in 2016. He reposted his own posts with added commentary from supporters. He claimed Iran is “collapsing financially” and losing $500 million a day. He finally logged off just after midnight.
White House aides have begun leaking concerns about the president’s mental fitness to reporters. This follows a separate overnight posting spree last week in which Trump attacked Pope Leo XIV, threatened Iran, praised coal, and shared articles about Russiagate and supposed 2020 voter fraud.
Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt has told reporters that Trump personally manages his own Truth Social account. “If you see it on Truth Social, you know it’s directly from President Trump,” she said in February. “That’s the beauty of this president and his transparency.”
The 25th Amendment was ratified in 1967 because the country had just watched an assassination and, a decade before that, a president incapacitated by a stroke, and Congress decided the Constitution needed a clearer path to remove a leader who couldn’t do the job. That amendment assumes a cabinet and a Congress willing to act. We’re watching in real time what happens when neither one is.
Virginia Voters Just Flipped the Redistricting War — and Potentially the House
Virginia voters approved a redistricting measure Tuesday that could reshape the entire congressional map in Democrats’ favor, dealing a direct blow to Trump’s effort to lock in Republican majorities.
The current Democratic maps, sources say, could give Democrats 10 of Virginia’s 11 congressional seats, up from six today. The Republican House majority currently stands at two seats. The math is not complicated.
Sources say the referendum fueled more than $81 million in ad spending, making it one of the most expensive non-presidential contests in Virginia history. Trump posted on Tuesday morning urging voters to reject it: “VIRGINIA, VOTE ‘NO’ TO SAVE YOUR COUNTRY!” They voted yes anyway.
The move fits a broader national redistricting war that Democrats and Republicans have both been waging. Republicans pushed new lines in Texas and North Carolina. Democrats countered in California. Courts intervened in Utah. Now Virginia tips the scale in a way that could matter enormously in November, when Democrats are already overperforming in every special election across the country by double digits.
The word “gerrymander” dates back to 1812, when Massachusetts Governor Elbridge Gerry signed off on a state senate map so distorted it looked like a salamander. Rigged maps have been a feature of American politics for more than two centuries, but when voters get a direct say on whether their own elections are honest, they still tend to choose democracy over the rigging.
An Army Sergeant’s Wife Was Arrested by ICE as He Watched. He’s Served 28 Years.
Sergeant First Class Jose Serrano has served in the U.S. Army for nearly 28 years, including a deployment to Afghanistan. On April 14, he accompanied his wife Deisy Rivera Ortega to what they believed was a routine immigration interview for a program specifically designed for military families.
ICE was waiting. Agents arrested Rivera Ortega as Serrano watched. It was the last time he saw her.
“They just took my wife away,” he told the BBC. “I’m searching on the internet how I can help my wife. If not, I’m walking in the house back and forth. Or jumping in my car and just driving for four hours.”
Rivera Ortega entered the U.S. in 2016, applied for asylum, and in 2019 received what is called a “withholding of removal” order, a legal protection granted by a judge who determined she would face physical harm if returned to El Salvador. That order also granted her permission to remain in the United States. DHS is now indicating it plans to deport her not to El Salvador but to Mexico, a country she has no ties to.
Her attorney called the arrest “arbitrary and capricious.” “She was following the prescribed law of what someone is supposed to do,” he said.
Serrano, born in Puerto Rico and a U.S. citizen by birth, says he remains proud of his service. “I love the Army. If I had to do it again, I’d go in and do it again.” His government is deporting his wife to a third country while he serves.
This is at least the second military spouse detained by ICE this month. Earlier, agents held Annie Ramos, wife of Army Sergeant Matthew Blank, for five days before releasing her. Ramos is an undocumented immigrant from Honduras who was brought to the United States as a child.
Non-citizens have fought in every American war going back to the Revolution, and their families have always been part of the bargain this country made with them. When a 28-year Army veteran watches federal agents haul his wife away at an appointment designed to protect military families, you’re watching that bargain get shredded on camera, by the same government that sent him to Afghanistan.
Democrats Are Investigating Whether the FBI Director Is a Functioning Alcoholic
After The Atlantic published a report this week citing more than two dozen sources describing FBI Director Kash Patel’s “conspicuous inebriation and unexplained absences,” House Judiciary Committee ranking member Jamie Raskin launched a formal congressional investigation.
Raskin sent Patel a letter demanding he complete a standard ten-question alcohol screening test and submit the results to Congress under penalty of perjury by April 28. The letter cited specific allegations from The Atlantic, including that Patel had passed out drunk behind locked doors so many times that agents had to fetch SWAT-level breaching equipment to wake him, and that early meetings had to be rescheduled repeatedly because of his alcohol-fueled nights.
Patel denied the allegations and filed a $250 million defamation lawsuit against The Atlantic. When a reporter asked him Tuesday whether he could say definitively he had never been intoxicated on the job, Patel did not answer the question directly and instead attacked the press. He eventually declared he was the “first one in and the last one out” and said, “I’ve never been intoxicated on the job.”
Raskin is also separately demanding Patel testify under oath if he ignores the letter, calling the reported behavior a matter of national security. Democrats including Rep. Ted Lieu have publicly called on Patel to seek treatment, with Lieu saying he “appears to be a raging alcoholic.” The probe is not expected to receive cooperation from House Republicans. But if Democrats take the majority in November, that changes.
The Church Committee spent 1975 exposing what J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI had been doing in the dark for fifty years, and Congress wrote new oversight rules because an unaccountable director running the nation’s top law enforcement agency is a standing threat to a free republic. Those rules only matter when Congress is willing to use them, and right now one half of Congress isn’t.
This Is Why Raw America Exists — and Why We Need You
Let’s be direct.
The government is arresting the wives of combat veterans at immigration appointments designed specifically for military families. The FBI director may be unreachable behind locked doors while the country is at war. The president is posting at midnight about wind farms. And the press corps that is supposed to cover all of it is being bought by the billionaires who benefit from the silence, threatened by an FCC chair who has made clear what happens to broadcasters that step out of line, and folded into portfolios controlled by Trump allies who have told administration officials directly that the coverage will change once they’re in charge.
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This is Thom Hartmann for Raw America. The fight is here. Thank you for being in it.
STORIES YOU MAY HAVE MISSED:
Marjorie Taylor Greene Says Trump Gave Explicit Instructions to Bury Epstein Files. During a Tuesday interview on “The Shannon Joy Show,” former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) said President Donald Trump specifically instructed then-Attorney General Pam Bondi: “Do not release the Epstein files.” She added that Trump was “blocking everybody” who attempted to get the Department of Justice (DOJ) to publicize any evidence pertaining to convicted child sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein’s two federal criminal investigations. According to Greene, Trump’s reasoning for keeping the files hidden was because “people are going to get hurt.”
Former Pam Bondi Staffer Says MAGA Incapable of Executing Trump’s Plans. Chad Mizelle — who was chief of staff to former Attorney General Pam Bondi before resigning in 2025 — recently argued that MAGA diehards in the DOJ are too inept to carry out Trump’s revenge prosecutions. Mizelle told CNN that the “Weaponization Working Group” that sought prosecutions of Trump’s top political enemies was doomed to fail because “you need people who are MAGA and who are really competent,” and that “career prosecutors are not interested in this kind of work.”
Palantir Posts a 22-Point Racist Manifesto on Social Media. Surveillance giant and military contractor Palantir recently posted a manifesto from CEO Alex Karp and a top company lawyer. Among other things, Palantir called for mandatory military service, emphasizing “hard power” in international relations over diplomacy and dialogue. Palantir also slammed multiculturalism as “hollow pluralism” and derided certain cultures as “regressive,” and also lamented that the post-World War II defanging of the German and Japanese militaries went too far.
Senate Republicans Attempt to Give ICE Another $70 Billion. Republicans in the U.S. Senate are aiming to pass a bill to fund all agencies in the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) save for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), then funnel $70 billion to the agency to fund it through the remainder of Trump’s second term. Republicans aim to use the budget reconciliation process — which only requires 51 votes — in order to circumvent Democratic opposition, meaning Democrats would need four Republican defectors in order to stop it. The DHS has been shut down for more than nine weeks, with Democrats insisting on major reforms to ICE before they agree to reopen DHS.
Federal Judge Throws Out Kash Patel’s Defamation Lawsuit. FBI Director Kash Patel recently suffered a loss in court after U.S. District Judge George Hanks Jr. — an appointee of former President Barack Obama — threw out his defamation lawsuit against former FBI agent Frank Figliuzzi. Figliuzzi claimed in an interview on MS NOW’s “Morning Joe” that Patel was “visible at nightclubs far more than he has been on the seventh floor [of the J. Edgar Hoover Building].” Judge Hanks ruled that Figliuzzi’s remark was “rhetorical hyperbole” that didn’t meet the standard for defamation in federal court.
