Good evening, and welcome to Raw America. I’m British Chris.
Trump’s DOJ just gave Trump and his family full IRS immunity. Republican senators are furious after Trump blindsided them with a controversial endorsement. New polling shows Democrats have their biggest midterm generic ballot lead of any party in 20 years. And the Senate Republican leader John Thune is openly breaking with the president over his $1.8 billion slush fund for his friends.
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Trump Gives Himself and His Family Full IRS Immunity
On Tuesday, the DOJ quietly posted a document to its website revealing that as part of a settlement between Trump and the IRS, the agency has been “forever barred and precluded“ from pursuing Trump, his family members, and his companies over any unpaid taxes. This addendum was signed by acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, who was Trump’s former personal attorney.
The settlement itself was released Monday. This key piece wasn’t. It was slipped onto the DOJ website the next day with no announcement.
The New York Times found in 2024 that one ongoing audit alone could cost Trump more than $100 million. Forever shielding yourself from that kind of liability, using the power of the Justice Department to do it, is unprecedented.
The broader settlement also includes a nearly $1.8 billion fund drawn from IRS resources to compensate January 6 rioters and members of Trump’s own super PAC who claim they were unfairly targeted by the Biden administration. Republican Senator Bill Cassidy had already called that fund one of the most fraudulent creations of Trump’s second term. Now we know the full picture is even worse.
GOP Senators Furious Over Trump’s Endorsement of Ken Paxton
Senate Republicans were livid on Tuesday after Trump endorsed Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton over 20-year Senate incumbent John Cornyn in the state’s Republican primary runoff.
John Hoeven of North Dakota walked out of the Senate chamber, saying simply, “Oh boy.” Roger Wicker of Mississippi refused to answer questions entirely. Senator Lisa Murkowski didn’t hold back at all, saying she was “supremely disappointed” and warned that Trump’s endorsement “puts that seat in jeopardy.”
The problem for Republicans is that Paxton isn’t just a controversial pick. He’s a scandal-plagued figure who’s going to make a reliably red Texas Senate race genuinely competitive. Texas’ Republican-controlled House of Representatives impeached him over bribery and corruption allegations, and his wife divorced him over an alleged affair. Democrats have nominated James Talarico, a state legislator who has posted serious fundraising numbers.
What’s getting lost in the drama is the broader context. Trump’s decision comes right after his endorsed challenger defeated Senator Bill Cassidy in Louisiana. If Cornyn loses his primary too, Republicans could be looking at three lame duck senators who have very little reason to fall in line. The caucus’s already narrow majority just got more complicated to manage.
Democrats Have Biggest Midterm Lead of Any Party in 20 Years
The generic congressional ballot is one of the most reliable early indicators of where a midterm election is heading. And right now, it’s pointing toward a blue wave.
As of May 18th, Democrats hold a 7.2-point lead in the RCP average. That nearly matches the 7.3-point lead they had heading into Election Day 2018, which gave them 40 new House seats. More importantly, no party has built a seven-point lead this early in a midterm year since 2006, when Democrats were riding anger over the Iraq War, Hurricane Katrina, and the push to privatize Social Security.
History says that lead is likely to hold. No party that reached seven points in the RCP average at any point during a midterm year ended that year below seven points.
But here’s the catch. Republicans have aggressively gerrymandered the map following the Supreme Court’s rollback of the Voting Rights Act, and a Democratic gerrymander in Virginia just got blocked. Before those rulings, Cook Political Report had 217 seats leaning Democratic. Now it’s 210. The wave may be building, but the walls have been raised.
If Democrats maintain their current margin, forecasters think they could win a majority, but potentially by just a single seat, well below the post-war average wave gain of 25 seats. To get into double-digit seat flips, the lead will need to stay strong and the legal fight to protect the vote will need to be just as strong.
Top Senate Republican Publicly Slams Trump’s Slush Fund
In a striking moment of Republican dissent, Senate Majority Leader John Thune publicly broke with Trump over the $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization fund” established as part of the IRS settlement, saying he doesn’t “see a purpose for it.”
He’s not alone. Senator John Kennedy of Louisiana said he has “a lot” of questions about where the money comes from, who qualifies for it, and how “weaponization” is even defined.
The fund is ostensibly designed to compensate people Trump says were targeted unfairly by the federal government. Critics, including members of Trump’s own party, have called it a slush fund for the president’s political allies.
Two of the Senate’s top Republicans openly questioning a major presidential initiative in the same week is not nothing. Combined with the Paxton endorsement fallout, the relationship between Trump and Senate leadership is under real strain right now.
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Thanks for watching. I’m British Chris, with Raw America. We’ll see you tomorrow.
STORIES YOU MAY HAVE MISSED:
Louisiana Republican Senator Votes with Democrats to Rein in Trump’s War Powers. The U.S. Senate on Tuesday narrowly advanced a resolution to end President Donald Trump’s war in Iran. Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.), who lost his reelection bid last week in Louisiana’s Republican U.S. Senate primary, voted with Democrats on the measure to give the “nay” votes a slight majority. Cassidy recently defended his 2021 vote to convict Trump in his impeachment trial over the January 6 attack.
NAACP Calls on Black Athletes to Boycott Schools in States Redrawing Maps. NAACP President Derrick Johnson called on high school football and basketball recruits to boycott schools in the Deep South in protest of those states’ governments eliminating majority-Black congressional districts. Johnson and the Congressional Black Caucus specifically singled out public universities in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, South Carolina, Tennessee and Texas. These states are all host to Southeastern Conference (SEC) schools, which is one of the major “Power Four” conferences in Division One football and basketball that tend to attract a disproportionate number of four-star and five-star recruits.
Trump DOJ Official told GOP Lobbyist Jan. 6 Defendants Were Getting Big Payouts. Department of Justice Pardon Attorney Ed Martin previously confided to a Republican lobbyist that the Trump administration was planning to funnel a significant amount of money to pardoned January 6 defendants. According to NBC, Martin told Norm Coleman — a former U.S. senator from Minnesota — earlier this year that the DOJ could soon divert millions of taxpayer dollars directly to people charged and convicted for attacking the U.S. Capitol. The report comes as Trump’s DOJ announced a $1.776 billion fund to compensate people it claims were subjected to “weaponization” of the DOJ under former President Joe Biden.
ICE Has Separated 145,000 Children from Their Parents during Trump’s Second Term. A Brookings Institution report released Tuesday found that more than 145,000 immigrant children have ben forcibly separated from their parents since January of 2025, when Trump’s second term began. More than 22,000 of those children have been separated from both parents. Brookings emphasized that those numbers were conservative estimates, and that the real numbers are likely much higher. This is also significantly more family separations than the estimated 5,500 children separated from parents during Trump’s first term.
Trump’s Special Envoy to Greenland Gets Cold Shoulder During Official Visit. Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry (R), who Trump named as his administration’s special envoy to Greenland, took his first official visit to the island’s capital city, Nuuk, this week. However, despite Landry’s pledge to “make a bunch of friends,” Greenlanders were less than enthusiastic to meet the Louisiana governor, with his offer of MAGA hats and chocolate chip cookies roundly rejected by most residents he encountered. Greenland Prime Minister Jens-Frederik Nielsen said Landry’s visit would not change his “red lines” about the island’s independence.
