Good morning. I’m Thom Hartmann.
JD Vance is desperately trying to spin the disastrous Iran peace talks while admitting a major blunder by his team. Trump is trying to his army of lawyers to silence reporting holding him accountable. Senate Republicans are openly telling reporters they no longer trust the president. And we’re showing how Elon Musk’s trillionaire status is a direct result of Trump sticking it to rural Americans.
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JD Vance Admits Iran Talks Are Falling Apart
Vice President JD Vance flew to Switzerland this weekend to sell the world on Trump’s Iran deal, though his sales pitch fell flat.
Speaking at a press conference at the Bürgenstock Resort, Vance was forced to explain a string of failures that would embarrass most world leaders.
Vance first acknowledged that Iran threatened to walked out of the peace talks while trying to spin it by saying negotiations ran past 1 AM and the technical teams were still working on the language.
The vice president also conceded that Trump’s social media posts threatening to “blow the s— out” of Iran if it closed the Strait of Hormuz made the peace negotiations more difficult. Vance insisted Trump’s posts were simply what “us millennials might call trash talk.” Keep in mind, these talks are about nuclear weapons, and America’s president is resorting to “trash talk.”
The third part is perhaps the most damning: Vance admitted that the American delegation, which includes real estate developers Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, tried to call nuclear inspectors at 2 AM and couldn’t get anyone to answer the phone. Vance then confirmed nuclear inspectors still hadn’t called back by the time he held his 1 PM press conference.
Vance also defended language in Trump’s interim deal that would unfreeze Iranian assets, saying freeing up billions in Iranian money would “make American farmers richer.” Senate Republicans Tom Cotton and Bill Cassidy called that provision a potential $300 billion lifeline to a state sponsor of terrorism. The deal is already on shaky ground after Iran briefly closed the Strait of Hormuz over the weekend following Israeli attacks on Lebanon — all while Vance was simultaneously telling Fox News the strait it was open.
There’s still a long way to go before a deal gets made, and right now it looks like Trump is in no hurry to make peace with Iran.
When John Kennedy walked the world back from the Cuban Missile Crisis, he did it by keeping the threats quiet and the back channels open, because he understood that one reckless sentence could end everything. We’re now running nuclear diplomacy through midnight social media posts and locker room taunts, and history has never once rewarded that kind of recklessness.
Trump Calls New York Times’ Iran Coverage ‘Treasonous’
Donald Trump is still angry at The New York Times’ reporting on his administration. But he significantly escalated his war on the paper this weekend.
Trump took to his Nazi-infested social media site on Sunday night to call the Times’ coverage of the Iran war “TREASONOUS” in all caps, and vowed to add their latest reporting to his existing lawsuit against the paper.
What set him off? Trump appears to be focused on a Times analysis published yesterday with the headline “What Changed After Almost 4 Months of War? Analysts Say Not Much.” Trump insisted Iran’s military and economy had been “severely damaged,” that the Strait of Hormuz was open, and that American markets were at record highs.
He then called the paper “corrupt and unethical” and labeled its reporters as “Criminals.”
You may remember Trump filed a $15 billion defamation lawsuit against the Times last September. A federal judge threw out his complaint within days, calling the 85-page document “tedious and burdensome,” full of claims that weren’t relevant to the actual legal case.
Trump came back with a revised 40-page complaint the following month, naming the newspaper, publisher Penguin Random House, investigative reporters Suzanne Craig and Russ Buettner, and chief White House correspondent Peter Baker as defendants. His suit alleges a book, as well as articles about his finances and his time as host of The Apprentice were damaging to his “hard-earned professional reputation.”
The Times rightly called the lawsuit meritless and an attempt to silence journalism with intimidation. That case is still pending.
This is all part of a broader pattern of how Trump attempts to use his team of lawyers to bully journalists honestly reporting on his administration. Trump previously sued ABC News and CBS News’ 60 Minutes over coverage he disliked. Both of those got settled out of court by the networks’ respective parent companies. He also sued The Wall Street Journal and Rupert Murdoch over the paper’s report on a birthday card he allegedly wrote to Jeffrey Epstein.
Trump is sending a very loud message: if you report things I don’t like, I’ll bury you in legal costs. It doesn’t matter if the lawsuits are baseless, as a media company being forced to defend itself in court can be financially ruinous. And the chilling effect on the rest of the press corps is very real.
The Supreme Court decided New York Times versus Sullivan in 1964 precisely so that powerful officials couldn’t sue critical coverage into silence by claiming they’d been wronged. The bitter irony is that the same actual malice standard Trump keeps promising to tear down is the only thing shielding him every time he hurls a word like treasonous at reporters doing their jobs.
The government sending an army of lawyers after reporters attempting to hold him accountable is exactly why independent journalism is so necessary in this current moment. Subscribe now and help Raw America keep up the fight.
Trump Quickly Losing Goodwill Among Senate Republicans
Trump’s relationship with Senate Republicans is deteriorating rapidly, and some senators are starting to say so on the record. The breakdown has been building for months, driven by a series of decisions from the White House that blindsided Republicans.
The most recent instance came when Trump suddenly ordered his own nominee for director of national intelligence, Jay Clayton, to skip his Senate confirmation hearing. Senate Republican Leader John Thune and other GOP leaders were, according to reporting from The Hill, “dumbfounded.”
Republican John Cornyn of Texas — who lost his Senate primary runoff to a Trump-backed opponent — didn’t hold back. He said Trump’s endorsement of Ken Paxton “destroyed what remained of any kind of trust.”
Republican Thom Tillis of North Carolina, who is not running for reelection, was even more blunt, saying Trump’s decisions are directly harming Republicans’ chances of keeping their majorities in November.
Trump is also insisting that surveillance reauthorization be attached to a voter ID bill that has failed on the Senate floor five separate times. This means essential national security legislation is in limbo because Trump won’t let it move without attaching a bill that’s doomed to fail.
Let’s also remember how the Trump regime’s proposed $1.8 billion MAGA slush fund in the middle of negotiations over a $70 billion ICE funding bill triggered a Republican revolt. A meeting between acting Attorney General Todd Blanche and Senate Republicans apparently turned into what one senator described as a “screaming-fest.”
Even Republican Tom Cotton of Arkansas, who is usually a devout MAGA loyalist, called Trump’s interference with the Jay Clayton nomination “regrettable” and went on Fox News to warn that Trump’s interim deal with Iran could be a huge national security issue.
One unnamed senior Republican aide told The Hill that senators have moved from being appalled to frustrated to simply “resigned” to Trump’s behavior, calling it “entirely an unforced error.”
With five months until the midterms, the Republican majority in both chambers is at risk of total collapse. And the fractures inside the GOP are only getting wider.
Back in 1950 it was a Republican, Margaret Chase Smith, who stood on the Senate floor and warned her own party that riding fear and silence to power would eventually cost them the country. These senators are relearning what she already knew, that a chamber willing to trade away its own constitutional advice and consent for a little quiet from the White House ends up surrendering both.
Trump Sabotaged Rural Broadband to Help Elon Musk
This story is one of the most straightforward examples of corruption in the Trump administration, and it deserves more attention than it’s getting.
In 2021, the Biden administration launched the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment program, known as BEAD. It was a $42 billion investment designed to finally get rural America fiber optic infrastructure that could deliver fast, reliable internet to communities that had gone without for decades. BEAD was meant to help the more than 40 million Americans who still lack access to broadband internet at speeds needed to hold down a job, pursue an education or run businesses.
Elon Musk didn’t like it. Starlink, which is the satellite internet arm of Musk’s SpaceX company, competes directly with fiber optic internet. If rural America got wired with fiber, Starlink would lose millions of potential customers. So Musk attacked the BEAD program “an outrageous waste of taxpayer money” that “should be dissolved.”
Then Trump won the 2024 election thanks to $288 million in campaign donations from Musk. And his administration helped Musk eliminate his competition.
Last June, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick rewrote the BEAD rules. Instead of prioritizing fiber, states would now award grants to whoever promised service at the lowest cost, as long as they hit a minimum speed threshold. That threshold was made low enough for Starlink to qualify. BEAD’s program’s former director, Evan Feinman, confirmed that Lutnick “asked if we had been talking to Elon” and that the “clear thrust of his directive was to increase the amount of satellite being used regardless of any other considerations.”
So now, Elon Musk’s company is now set to get $738 million in federal BEAD grants to cover 476,000 locations. And only $21 billion of the $42 billion allocated for BEAD has been deployed, because the fiber footprint was dramatically shrunk.
Instead of fiber, rural Americans are getting slower internet speeds, less reliable connections and no alternatives if Starlink raises its prices, which has already started happening. One Nebraska lawyer told the Washington Post she got a 44 percent price increase for service she described as “suboptimal,” adding that he “would switch to fiber tomorrow if it was offered.”
Penn State telecom researcher Sascha Meinrath called it “free money” for Musk, saying the U.S. government is essentially “subsidizing their already existing, but inadequate, infrastructure.”
Let’s also keep in mind that without Starlink’s profits, there’s no SpaceX IPO at a $1.75 trillion valuation, and Elon Musk wouldn’t be a trillionaire.
Feinman, the former BEAD director, directly accused Trump of “stranding all or part of rural America with worse internet so that we can make the world’s richest man even richer.”
Rural voters gave Trump some of his biggest margins in 2024. This is what they got in return.
When Franklin Roosevelt created the Rural Electrification Administration in 1936, the entire point was to run power lines out to the farms that private companies had written off as not worth the bother. We’ve taken that promise and stood it on its head, pulling money meant to finally wire rural America with fiber and steering it to the one man who gets richer the longer those families stay stuck with something slower.
Fund the Journalism That Isn’t Pulling Punches
Today’s news breakdown cut through the vice president’s spin on peace talks that are going nowhere fast, exposed how the president is trying to muzzle accountability reporting with his army of lawyers, did a deep dive into how the MAGA coalition is breaking apart at the seams and exposed how the world’s first trillionaire used his endless wealth to force his captured government to hand him even more taxpayer-funded contracts. Raw America is bringing you completely unfiltered reporting lwithout a billionaire looking over our shoulder and telling us what we can and can’t say. But we can only keep this going with help from readers like you. If you’re still on the free list, today is the best day to upgrade to a paying subscription. Not tomorrow. Not next week. Right now.
I’m Thom Hartmann. The fight is here. Thank you for being in it.
STORIES YOU MAY HAVE MISSED:
Tulsi Gabbard’s Cult Leader Loomed Over Her Entire Career. The Washington Post reported over the weekend that President Donald Trump’s former Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard — who was also a Democratic congresswoman from Hawaii — had been under the control of guru and cult leader Chris Butler for effectively the entirety of her political career. The Post reviewed more than 25,000 documents showing the depth of Butler’s control over Gabbard, with Gabbard even repeating lines Butler fed her verbatim in media interviews. Butler led a breakaway Hare Krishna group, in which both of her parents held senior leadership positions. He also reportedly demanded total obedience and complete secrecy from members.
Trump Sends Ominous Profanity-Laced Threat to Iran During Peace Talks. Over the weekend, Iran’s government didn’t rule out closing the Strait of Hormuz, which is a critical choke point for 20 percent of the global oil supply, if Israel continued its attacks on Lebanon. Trump responded to Iran’s threat by pledging that if Iranian leaders do indeed close the strait, “you won’t even make it back to your f—ing country.” Trump also didn’t rule out taking the strait by force, suggesting that an extension of the war may not be off the table.
Trump’s Former Defense Secretary Has ‘Serious’ Questions About Iran Deal. Former Defense Secretary Mark Esper, who led the Pentagon toward the end of Trump’s first term, recently told NBC’s “Meet the Press” that while he approved of extending the ceasefire with Iran and reopening the Strait of Hormuz, he still had major concerns about the terms of Trump’s agreement with Iran. Esper told NBC’s Garrett Haake that he had “serious” questions about whether Trump was “too trusting of the Iranians” in allowing them to have full control of the strait, and pointed out Iran could still open or close the strait at a moment’s notice with no warning.
Maricopa County Supervisor Slams Republican Election Official Over Security Breach. Maricopa County, Arizona supervisor Thomas Galvin is publicly calling out Maricopa County Recorder Justin Heap — who is a Republican — over his office’s recent “disturbing” seizure of ballots and election equipment. Galvin said surveillance video showing Heap’s employees leaving a secure election facility with white envelopes is “highly problematic.” Maricopa County, which houses Phoenix, is the most populous county in Arizona, which narrowly went for Joe Biden in 2020 before flipping to Trump in 2024.
Ohio to Lose 51,000 Jobs and $5.3 Billion Thanks to Trump’s Cuts. Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” (OBBBA) will cost Ohio an estimated 51,000 jobs and bleed an estimated $5.3 billion from its economy by 2029, according to a new analysis by the Commonwealth Fund. The OBBBA’s deep cuts to safety net programs like Medicaid — which it slashed by more than $900 billion — and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, or food stamps) simultaneously funded an extension of tax cuts that primarily benefit the wealthiest Americans. The Commonwealth Fund found that those tax cuts for the rich come as Americans in the lowest 10 percent of earners lose about $1,200 annually.
