Good morning, I’m Thom Hartmann. Welcome back. Here’s where we are.
Two nights ago, Donald Trump stood before a joint session of Congress and delivered what can only be described as a victory lap for authoritarianism. He called a Minnesota community “pirates,” announced a politically targeted “war on fraud” that by the next afternoon had already cost Minnesota $259 million in withheld Medicaid funds, and turned the chamber into a campaign rally. While he spoke, a disabled woman in the gallery stood up in protest and was arrested for it. Meanwhile, FBI Director Kash Patel was busy purging the agents who searched Mar-a-Lago, and the Justice Department is under growing pressure to explain why dozens of pages of FBI interviews from the Epstein files appear to be missing. Here’s what you need to know.
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A Disabled Woman Arrested for Standing Up
Aliya Rahman is 43 years old. She has a disability. She was a guest of Rep. Ilhan Omar at the State of the Union. And on Tuesday night, Capitol Hill Police arrested her for standing up.
Police say she refused a lawful order to sit down. Rahman told Democracy Now the Sergeant of Arms said directly that standing was the reason for her removal. She stood, she says, when Trump called Minnesota’s Somali community “pirates” and praised the Homeland Security agents who had dragged her from her car on the way to a doctor’s appointment in Minneapolis just over a month ago. She says Tuesday night’s arrest aggravated the injuries she sustained in that January encounter.
She now faces charges of unlawful conduct for disrupting Congress.
A woman already victimized by ICE, sitting as a congressional guest, stood silently in protest of racist remarks directed at her own community and was taken out in handcuffs. That is what happened in the United States Capitol on Tuesday night.
When a disabled woman can be arrested in the people’s House for the simple act of standing in silent protest, we are not witnessing strength, we are witnessing the brittle insecurity of power that fears even the quietest dissent. History teaches us that the first sign of democratic decay is not loud repression, but the normalization of punishing conscience.
Vance Gets a New Assignment: War on Fraud, First Target Is Minnesota
Trump announced during his address that JD Vance would lead a new “war on fraud.” By Wednesday afternoon, Vance and Dr. Mehmet Oz had already fired the opening shot: a pause on $259 million in federal Medicaid reimbursements to the state of Minnesota.
Oz gave Governor Tim Walz 60 days to submit a corrective action plan, warning the state could rack up a billion dollars in deferred payments by year’s end. The justification is an ongoing fraud probe tied to day care center funding. Trump publicly attributed $19 billion in fraud to Minnesota and its Somali community during the address. The Justice Department has actually charged 98 people, 85 of them Somali, with $1 billion in fraud. That is a real investigation. But $19 billion is a number without evidence, repeated from a presidential podium to a national audience.
Walz fired back on X, noting that the agents Trump sent to investigate fraud are shooting protesters and arresting children, that the DOJ is gutting the U.S. Attorney’s Office, and that Trump pardons another fraudster every week.
Vance claims he is “quite confident” the administration has legal authority to withhold funds appropriated by Congress. That claim will face serious legal challenge. Congress appropriates. The executive disburses. Using that disbursal as a political weapon against a Democratic governor who ran for vice president eight months ago is not a legal grey area. It’s a power grab dressed up as accountability.
When a president claims the authority to withhold funds Congress has lawfully appropriated, he is not fighting fraud, he is challenging the constitutional order itself. This is the oldest authoritarian trick in the book: weaponize the machinery of government against political opponents and call it reform.
FBI Director Kash Patel Fires the Agents Who Searched Mar-a-Lago
FBI Director Kash Patel has fired at least a half-dozen agents involved in the 2022 search of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate, with total dismissals potentially reaching ten employees including supervisors and support staff, according to NBC News. The firings came the same day Patel disclosed that his own phone records had been subpoenaed during the Biden administration as part of the Trump investigations.
The FBI Agents Association called the firings unlawful and a violation of due process, warning they strip the Bureau of critical expertise, destabilize the workforce, and ultimately put the nation at greater risk.
This is part of a broader purge. Since January, the FBI has dismissed employees connected to both the Trump investigations and the January 6th prosecutions. These agents didn’t write the law. They didn’t obtain the search warrant on their own. They executed a court-authorized order. Firing them for doing their jobs is a message to every law enforcement officer in this country about what happens when you investigate the powerful.
Purging law enforcement officers for carrying out a lawful court order is how republics slide toward rule by loyalty rather than rule of law. We have seen this movie before, in countries where institutions become extensions of one man’s will, and justice becomes a reward for friends and a weapon against critics.
The Epstein Files: Two Threads Converging on the Justice Department
Senator Ron Wyden is demanding an investigation into whether the first Trump administration killed a DEA drug trafficking probe into Jeffrey Epstein. A recently uncovered 2015 memo references a case opened in 2010, code-named “Chain Reaction,” examining wire transfers tied to drug trafficking and prostitution in the U.S. Virgin Islands and New York. No prosecution was ever brought. Wyden wants to know whether DOJ and DEA moved to terminate that investigation to protect Epstein and his associates.
At the same time, the Justice Department is being forced to respond to evidence it withheld FBI interview documents from the Epstein files. A woman who accused both Epstein and Trump of sexual assault when she was a minor sat for four FBI interviews in 2019. The DOJ released material from only the first interview. According to reporting from NPR and independent journalist Roger Sollenberger, 53 pages of interview documents are missing from the public database.
One released FBI summary describes an encounter in the mid-1980s in which the woman, who would have been 13 to 15 years old, alleged that Trump assaulted her at a meeting Epstein had arranged. Trump appeared on an FBI list of prominent names in the files. The document contains no FBI evaluation of the accusation’s credibility.
Rep. Robert Garcia says he reviewed unredacted evidence logs at the DOJ and confirmed the department appears to have illegally withheld FBI interviews with this survivor. The DOJ denies it and says it is reviewing flagged materials. The White House says Trump “has been totally exonerated on anything relating to Epstein.” Given what has already been made public, that statement does not hold up.
Democrats brought Epstein survivors as State of the Union guests Tuesday night. Several wore badges reading “Stand with survivors. Release the files.” This story is not going away, and the selective release of documents is making the administration’s position worse, not better.
When files vanish and investigations stall around the wealthy and well-connected, it corrodes the very foundation of equal justice under law. From Watergate to Iran-Contra, Americans have learned that cover-ups are never about protecting the public, they are about protecting power.
We are living through a moment when the institutions most Americans grew up trusting are being systematically dismantled or captured. The courts are being tested. The FBI is being purged. The press is being bought, consolidated, and bullied into silence. In that environment, independent media is not a luxury. It is a necessity.
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I’m Thom Hartmann. Stay engaged, stay informed, and I’ll see you tomorrow.
STORIES YOU MAY HAVE MISSED:
New Healthcare Proposal Could Jack Up Your Deductible to $31,000. Dr. Mehmet Oz, who leads the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, has rolled out a new proposal for Affordable Care Act plans that would shift even more costs to American families. Under the new proposal, the deductible for a family health insurance plan on the ACA exchange could be as high as $31,000 per year, while an individual deductible could cost up to $15,000.
Trump Administration on Defense in Kilmar Abrego Garcia Case. The Trump administration is back in court on Thursday, in an attempt to convince a federal judge that its prosecution of Salvadoran national Kilmar Abrego Garcia isn’t politically motivated. Abrego Garcia, who has never been convicted of any crimes, was deported from Maryland to El Salvador in 2025 in spite of a 2019 court order barring the government from deporting him to his home country due to the likelihood of persecution. Abrego Garcia was jailed in the notorious CECOT mega-prison, where he said he was subjected to frequent abuse, beatings and torture.
Republican Senator Calls Out Trump for Appointing Unqualified Negotiators. Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), who is not running for another term in 2026, criticized President Trump for appointing his son-in-law Jared Kushner and real estate investor Steve Witkoff to handle sensitive foreign policy negotiations. Tillis said it “doesn’t make any sense” that Kushner is handling Middle East negotiations and Witkoff is heading the administration’s approach to the Russia-Ukraine war given that neither one has been confirmed by the Senate.
Hillary Clinton Testifies About Epstein Before GOP-Controlled Committee. Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is testifying before the House Oversight Committee — chaired by Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.) — in a closed-door deposition, where she is being questioned over her knowledge of Jeffrey Epstein. Mrs. Clinton said she had no knowledge of Epstein’s crimes and had no personal relationship with him. Her husband, former President Bill Clinton, is seen in photos with Epstein in files released by the DOJ. Bill Clinton has denied any wrongdoing and has not been charged with any crimes.
Republicans and Red States Push Back Against Trump’s ICE Detention Camps. Republican-dominated states like Mississippi, New Hampshire, Tennessee and others are vocally opposed to the Trump administration’s efforts to build massive jails for immigrants in their states. Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) is reportedly working with officials in Tennessee to stop a planned detention center in deep-red Wilson County. Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.), who chairs the Senate Armed Services Committee, previously wrote a letter opposing an ICE detention facility in Byhalia, Mississippi. And Gov. Kelly Ayotte (R) recently cancelled plans for an immigrant detention camp in Merrimack, New Hampshire amid local protests and bipartisan opposition.
