Good morning, I’m Thom Hartmann. This morning, Trump announced something he is calling an “Election Integrity Army” while his allies purge voter rolls, push to deploy immigration agents to polling places, and rush through new congressional maps. Trump is publicly threatening his own Supreme Court appointees over tariff and birthright citizenship rulings. Congressional Republicans are openly attacking each other over legislative paralysis with six months until the midterms. And a Canadian voter data breach by a far-right separatist group has exposed ties to Trump’s White House and a coordinated cross-border assault on democratic infrastructure. Corporate media is running cover for all of it. Let’s get into it.
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TRUMP ANNOUNCED AN “ELECTION INTEGRITY ARMY” WHILE HIS PARTY WORKS TO MAKE VOTING HARDER
Trump announced on Truth Social Sunday that he is building an “Election Integrity Army” for the 2026 midterms, framing it as a defense against Democratic efforts to suppress Republican votes. The post gave no specifics about what the army would look like, but it arrived in the context of a coordinated Republican effort to restrict ballot access, purge voter rolls, redraw congressional districts, and potentially deploy immigration agents to polling places.
The announcement was a direct response to Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer’s new task force on election integrity, which has tapped former Attorney General Eric Holder and election law attorney Marc Elias. Trump called Elias “a terrible lawyer with a horrible track record.” Elias responded that he had beaten Trump in court more than 60 times when Trump tried to overturn the 2020 election, and that he wears Trump’s scorn as a badge of honor.
Meanwhile, the actual mechanics of Republican election strategy are considerably more aggressive than a Truth Social post. Republicans across the country are rushing to draw new congressional districts following the Supreme Court’s decision to gut the Voting Rights Act last month, even in states where primary voting is already underway. Trump’s Justice Department has sued 30 states for refusing to hand over voter registration data. The SAVE America Act, which critics say would block millions of Americans from voting by requiring in-person proof of citizenship, has been pushed by Trump even as the Wall Street Journal’s editorial board called its problems far greater than the issue it claims to solve.
Voter fraud, the stated justification for all of this, remains vanishingly rare by every credible measure. What is happening is not election protection. It is election architecture, built to favor one party before a midterm in which that party is currently trailing by nearly six points on the generic ballot.
Folks, the 15th Amendment was ratified in 1870 to guarantee the right to vote regardless of race, and it took another 95 years and the blood of civil rights marchers in Selma to get the Voting Rights Act that actually enforced it. What we’re watching now is the deliberate dismantling of that constitutional architecture, and history tells us that when a party gives up on winning elections, it always starts working to rig them.
TRUMP IS THREATENING HIS OWN SUPREME COURT APPOINTEES — IN A 545-WORD RANT
Trump fired off a 545-word Truth Social post Sunday naming and shaming Justices Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett, both of whom he appointed in his first term, for their votes to strike down his tariffs in February.
The post began with warm words. “I ‘Love’ Justice Neil Gorsuch!” and “I always liked and respected” Barrett. It then pivoted to what Trump clearly wanted to say. “They were appointed by me, and yet have hurt our Country so badly!” He added that it is “really OK for them to be loyal to the person that appointed them.”
That is the president of the United States, in writing, telling sitting Supreme Court justices that loyalty to him is expected.
He then predicted that the Court will also rule against him on birthright citizenship, an executive order he signed on the first day of his second term that would deny automatic citizenship to children born in the U.S. to undocumented parents or parents on temporary visas. Multiple lower courts have blocked it, citing the 14th Amendment. A decision is expected by late June or early July.
Trump attended oral arguments in person last month and abruptly left after his own conservative justices appeared skeptical of his position. His Sunday post made clear he had not recovered from it.
“A negative ruling on Birthright Citizenship, on top of the recent Supreme Court Tariff catastrophe, is not Economically sustainable for the United States of America!” he wrote.
The president is not describing a legal analysis. He is describing what he expects from justices in exchange for their appointments. That is not how the judiciary is supposed to work. It is, however, how Trump has always understood it.
Folks, Alexander Hamilton wrote in Federalist 78 that the complete independence of the courts is peculiarly essential in a limited constitution. When a president demands public loyalty from the justices he appointed, he isn’t critiquing a ruling, he’s announcing he doesn’t believe in the separation of powers the Founders built to keep men exactly like him in check.
REPUBLICAN INFIGHTING HAS BECOME OPEN WARFARE IN CONGRESS
Congressional Republicans returned from recess Monday facing a collapsing legislative calendar, a razor-thin House majority, and a party that is publicly fighting with itself on multiple fronts.
Senator Thom Tillis of North Carolina took direct aim at House Republicans in an interview with Politico: “We control Washington. When we don’t get things done, we’re making a huge mistake.” House Appropriations Chair Tom Cole fired back at the Senate in kind: “You can either be part of a functional majority and get almost everything, or you can hold out and get nothing and be in the minority next time.” He added, sarcastically, “I guess we can all vote no together. That’ll be exciting.”
The specific flashpoints include surveillance law, housing, and election proposals. The House passed a three-year extension of Section 702 surveillance authority tied to a permanent ban on a Federal Reserve digital currency. The Senate has no interest in the currency provision. The House is demanding the Senate eliminate the filibuster. The Senate does not have the votes to do it. House Majority Whip Tom Emmer publicly unloaded on Senate Republicans for excluding immigration enforcement funding from the DHS bill. “This is what Americans get so upset about with politicians. This is literally what they’re mad about.”
Republicans have until mid-June to sort out surveillance authority before another deadline. The legislative window is shrinking as members begin spending more time at home campaigning. Politico reports that “significant intraparty clashes” are now inevitable. With Democrats needing only three seats to retake the House, a Republican caucus that cannot govern while in the majority is doing the opposition’s work for them.
Folks, James Madison made Congress the first branch of government in Article I because he understood that legislative power, when wielded responsibly, is what keeps an executive from sliding into one-man rule. A majority party that can’t legislate isn’t just incompetent, it’s surrendering the constitutional muscle that’s supposed to protect the rest of us from a strongman in the White House.
A FAR-RIGHT GROUP IN CANADA BREACHED 2.9 MILLION VOTER RECORDS — AND ITS SOFTWARE WAS SHOWN TO THE TRUMP WHITE HOUSE
A separatist-linked organization in Alberta called the Centurion Project illegally obtained a database containing names, home addresses, and contact information for roughly 2.9 million Canadian voters. The group’s own organizer has said the software powering the operation was presented to Donald Trump’s White House.
The key figure behind the project, David Parker, has documented ties to MAGA activists and far-right figures including Tucker Carlson. He has previously been fined by Elections Alberta for voting law violations. Security experts warn that the breach may have already exposed Alberta voter data to American data brokers operating under weaker privacy protections than Canadian law requires.
The parallel to what is happening inside the United States is not subtle. Trump’s Justice Department has sued 30 states and the District of Columbia for refusing to hand over their voter registration lists, a campaign that voting rights groups say is laying the groundwork for mass purges before November.
A former senior officer with Canada’s federal policing program drew the broader picture directly. “Since Trump came back into power, he has destabilized democracy to the point where I don’t think you can legitimately call it a democracy any more.”
Trump has repeatedly floated the idea of Canada becoming the 51st state. His administration has openly expressed support for Alberta’s separatist movement. Researchers who tracked the surge of sovereignty-questioning narratives before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine say they are seeing the same language deployed against Canada now.
The breach in Alberta and the voter roll lawsuits in the United States are not unrelated stories. They are part of the same story.
Folks, George Washington warned in his farewell address that the gravest threat to a free republic comes from foreign influence operating in concert with domestic faction, and the Founders wrote prohibitions on foreign emoluments directly into the Constitution because they’d seen exactly this pattern destroy republics before. What we’re watching now is a transnational authoritarian movement that doesn’t recognize borders, and history is brutally clear that when democracies refuse to defend each other, they fall one by one.
THIS IS WHY RAW AMERICA EXISTS — AND WHY WE NEED YOU
The administration is building an Election Integrity Army while its allies gut the Voting Rights Act and purge voter rolls. It is threatening Supreme Court justices who don’t deliver the rulings it wants. And a network with ties to the Trump White House has stolen voter data in a NATO ally country.
The press that is supposed to cover all of this is being bought, threatened, and silenced. Raw America was built to be the thing that doesn’t get bought.
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This is Thom Hartmann for Raw America. The fight is here. Thank you for being in it.
