Good morning, I’m Thom Hartmann. This morning, the right-wing civil war over Trump’s Iran war is accelerating, with conservative influencers, podcasters, and a Republican gubernatorial candidate openly breaking with the president. Trump’s inner circle is privately panicking that the oil crisis could be catastrophic for Republicans in November. The data infrastructure that tells Americans how safe their water is, how hungry their neighbors are, and how their children are doing in school is being systematically dismantled and deleted by the administration. And polling analysts are warning that Republican turnout in the midterms could be the lowest in a generation. Corporate media is running cover for all of it. The FCC chair has made sure they know the cost. And the Ellisons keep buying. Let’s get into it.
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The Right-Wing Civil War Over Iran Is Now in the Open
A growing faction of conservative influencers, commentators, and political figures is publicly breaking with Donald Trump over his Iran war, and the split is getting louder.
“There’s a real civil war happening in the Republican Party right now,” James Fishback, a 31-year-old right-wing investor running for the GOP gubernatorial nomination in Florida, told the Financial Times this week. “Some say it’s MAGA versus America First.” Fishback, who is backed by Tucker Carlson, represents a camp that includes Carlson, Megyn Kelly, and Candace Owens, all of whom have slammed the Iran conflict as a betrayal of the America First principles that brought Trump back to power.
Carlson has called the war “absolutely disgusting and evil.” Conservative Christian podcaster Joel Webbon described its impact on the GOP coalition as “a Generational Coalition Squandered For Israel.” The perception that Netanyahu drove Trump into the conflict has become a rallying point for the anti-war right.
On the other side of the split are figures like Ben Shapiro, Mark Levin, and Laura Loomer, who have defended the attacks on Iran as a necessary campaign against a state sponsor of terrorism.
The civil war is playing out against genuinely alarming electoral numbers. Trump’s approval rating sits at 37 percent, comparable to the immediate aftermath of January 6. Democrats hold nearly a 6-point advantage on the generic congressional ballot and need only three seats to retake the House and four to retake the Senate. The constituency that was most loyal to Trump in 2024 is now one of the loudest voices calling him a fraud.
No president since Eisenhower has launched a war that didn’t eventually shatter his own coalition, and Eisenhower told us exactly why on his way out of office in 1961 when he warned us about the military-industrial complex. When a Republican president outsources his foreign policy to a foreign prime minister and a defense lobby, the working-class voters who were promised no more endless wars are always the first ones to walk away.
Trump’s Inner Circle Is Privately Panicking About the Midterms
The Wall Street Journal reported this week that Trump’s aides are increasingly worried the oil and gas crisis caused by the Iran war could be a political catastrophe for Republicans in November, and that the pain may not ease even if the war ends soon.
Former New Hampshire Governor Chris Sununu, now the head of Airlines for America, has met directly with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and other administration officials to warn them about the looming damage. “They get it,” Sununu told the Journal, “and I think that’s why they’re trying to get through the war as fast as they can.” He added, however, that even if the Strait of Hormuz reopens immediately, elevated prices will likely persist through summer and fall.
The numbers back up the concern. Domestic round-trip economy airfare has risen 21 percent since the war began. Spirit Airlines, which had been hoping to survive a second bankruptcy, was pushed over the edge by the spike in jet fuel costs. Gas is at $4.30 a gallon nationally.
Iran called the White House’s 14-point memorandum of understanding “more of an American wish list than a reality.” Trump’s Project Freedom naval escort operation was paused after one day. And the White House is now telling industry groups it is working to “address their concerns” while insisting the administration had a plan all along.
A plan all along. At $4.30 a gallon.
Every president since Nixon has learned the same lesson about Persian Gulf adventures, which is that whatever happens at the pump is what eventually happens at the ballot box. Carter found that out in 1980, the first Bush found it out in 1992, and now Trump’s own people are quietly admitting that the global oil markets don’t read White House talking points.
The GOP’s Turnout Problem Is Looking Worse Than Usual
A polling analysis published this week found that Republican enthusiasm for the 2026 midterms is dramatically lower than in any recent cycle, and that Trump’s historic unpopularity is compounding a structural problem his party already had.
The core issue is that Trump’s base turns out in force when his name is on the ballot. Without it, they historically underperform. That was a factor even in 2022, when Republicans were widely favored and still fell short. Now add a president at 37 percent approval who has alienated significant portions of his own coalition.
A Washington Post/ABC News poll this week found that 73 percent of Democrats say the upcoming election is more important than past midterms, compared to just 52 percent of Republicans. In September 2022, 72 percent of Republicans said the same. That 20-point enthusiasm gap is a red flag that does not easily go away.
A recent poll found just 48 percent of Republicans said their midterm vote would be cast to show support for Trump, while 76 percent of Democrats said their vote would be a message of opposition to him. The analyst noted that figure is “a smidge below” the 51 percent of Democrats in October 2022 who said their vote was meant to show support for Joe Biden, “and Biden has never commanded anything close to the level of loyalty and devotion in the Democratic Party that Trump has in the GOP.”
Six months remain before November. But the structural conditions right now point toward a blue wave.
Madison warned us in Federalist 10 about the danger of factions organized around individual personalities rather than shared principles, and we’re watching that warning play out in real time. A political movement that exists only to support one man can’t transmit itself to the next election, because the moment his name isn’t on the ballot, his voters don’t see a reason to show up.
The Trump Administration Is Deleting the Data That Tells Americans the Truth About Their Lives
This story does not have a dramatic villain or a single smoking gun. It is quieter and more consequential than that.
Over the past year, the Trump administration has systematically removed, altered, or defunded federal datasets that Americans have relied on for decades to understand what is happening in their communities, their schools, and their bodies. The scope of what has been deleted is staggering.
The EPA’s Risk Management Program tool, which allowed residents to type in a zip code and find out whether they lived near a hazardous chemical facility, has been taken down. The only way to get that information now is to drive to one of a few dozen EPA reading rooms and look at paper records. Latino, Black, and low-income Americans are disproportionately likely to live near chemical plants.
The Pregnancy Risk Assessment Monitoring System, the nation’s most comprehensive survey on women’s experiences before, during, and after pregnancy, is now completely inaccessible to the public after the Trump administration fired the entire CDC team that ran it. Mississippi, which has the highest infant mortality rate in the country, has already ended its data collection.
The federal food security survey, which has tracked hunger in America since 1995, has been terminated. The USDA called it “redundant” and said it does “nothing more than fear monger.” It was eliminated precisely as the administration prepares to make the largest cuts to food assistance in American history. One researcher’s summary: “If you don’t measure it, it’s not there.”
The Youth Risk Behavior Survey, used by school districts for drug abuse and suicide prevention programs, had its questions about transgender youth removed. At least 360 federal surveys have had gender identity and sexual orientation questions stripped out.
And NOAA has stopped updating its Billion-Dollar Weather and Climate Disasters database, which insurance companies use to price risk and which policymakers use to respond to increasingly severe weather. Without it, experts warn, insurance premiums will rise and coverage will disappear in vulnerable markets.
What is being dismantled is not just data. It is the government’s capacity to see the problems it is supposed to solve. When that capacity disappears, ordinary people pay the price in higher costs, worse outcomes, and a government that can credibly claim it simply does not know what is happening.
The framers wrote the census into Article 1 of the Constitution because they understood that self-government is impossible without an honest count of who we are and what we’re facing. Every authoritarian regime of the last hundred years has begun the same way, by corrupting or destroying the public’s ability to measure reality, because once the people can’t see the problem, the government can’t be held accountable for failing to fix it.
This Is Why Raw America Exists — and Why We Need You
The administration is deleting the data that documents its own failures. It is suppressing the press that reports on them. And it is buying the networks that are supposed to hold it accountable.
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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:
Jeffrey Epstein’s Purported Suicide Note Made Public. On Thursday, a note apparently written by convicted child sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein was made public following the New York Times’ petition to a federal judge to unseal it. The note reads in part: “They investigated me — Found Nothing!!! … It is a treat to be able to choose one’s time to say goodbye. Watcha want me to do — Burst out crying!! No FUN — NOT WORTH IT!!” Epstein’s cellmate at the time, Nicholas Tartaglione, said he found the note inside a graphic novel after Epstein was found dead in his cell.
Trump-Appointed Judge Allows His FBI to Keep Fulton County Election Records. U.S. District Judge J.P. Boulee — who President Donald Trump appointed during his first term — ruled Wednesday that the FBI can keep 2020 election records seized during a raid earlier this year. In his decision, Boule wrote that Fulton County had not demonstrated that the government acted with “callous disregard” for the county’s constitutional rights. Fulton County Board of Commissioners Chairman Robb Pitts said he “strongly” disagreed with the decision and suggested he would appeal.
Trump’s Counterterrorism Czar Targets the Political Left. The Trump administration rolled out its latest counterterrorism strategy on Wednesday, and while some of it pertains to traditional terror groups like ISIS, al-Qaeda and drug cartels, part of it also singles out leftist political activists both domestically and overseas. Counterterrorism czar Sebastian Gorka — whose family has ties to a Nazi collaborator group in Hungary — explicitly named “Antifa,” “radical pro-gender individuals” and “the nonbinary” as potential targets. Antifa is a decentralized movement with no formal organization and simply means “anti-fascist action.”
73 Year-Old Republican Senator Running for Reelection Reveals Benign Tumor. Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), who is running for another six-year term, announced Wednesday that she has a benign essential tumor. The Maine senator said she’s had the tumor since she began her U.S. Senate career in the 1990s. She revealed the diagnosis after questions about her health, which became more pronounced after she was seen visibly shaking with a quavering voice in recent campaign videos.
John Roberts Says Supreme Court Is Apolitical While Neil Gorsuch Goes on MAGA Radio. Chief Justice John Roberts defended the Supreme Court’s reputation on Wednesday while addressing a conference for lawyers and judges in Hershey, Pennsylvania. Roberts lamented that many Americans view justices as “political actors” who make “policy decisions,” but insisted that the Court was not influenced by politics. While Roberts spoke, Justice Neil Gorsuch — who Trump appointed to the Supreme Court in 2017 — encouraged young conservatives to “stand by their beliefs” in an interview with far-right podcaster Megyn Kelly.
