Good morning. I’m Thom Hartmann. First, if you’re watching this on Substack, help us out by hitting the ❤️ and clicking the restack button. That’s how we break through the algorithm and get these stories in front of the most people.
Federal agents just searched Minnesota Democratic Congresswoman Ilhan Omar’s Washington, D.C. home in what appears to be an immigration-related investigation related to paperwork her father filled out decades ago. An Air Force major who stood on the Capitol steps in full uniform calling for Trump’s impeachment is now being illegally held in solitary confinement for 24 hours a day, according to his attorney. With three weeks to go before the midterms, Republicans are scrambling to defend seats once viewed as deep-red, and one GOP lawmaker blames Trump for dragging the whole party down. And retiring Republican Senator Thom Tillis of North Carolina says the president may be breaking federal law by easing sanctions on diesel imported from Russia.
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This morning, agents from Homeland Security Investigations (HS) raided Congresswoman Ilhan Omar’s D.C. home and executed a search as part of what the Justice Department maintains is a criminal fraud investigation. Fox confirmed the raid by posting video of agents in HSI jackets outside what it identified as the congresswoman’s residence.
A DOJ spokesperson confirmed the raid to the network, saying HSI “executed a judicially authorized search warrant secured by the Department of Justice” as “part of an ongoing federal investigation.”
Federal agents have yet to officially give a reason for the search, But Fox reported that investigators are apparently looking into immigration-related paperwork Omar’s father filled out several decades ago when she was just a child.
The context here is important: Donald Trump and his MAGA allies have spent years accusing Omar of fraudulently obtaining her citizenship and have fantasized in public about denaturalizing the congresswoman and removing her from the country. Omar has repeatedly denied the fraud allegations, but the president continues to drag them back into the news by launching personal attacks on a woman who, along with Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib of Michigan, became one of the first two Muslim women elected to Congress in 2018.
There’s also the timing around the midterm election that’s just 22 days away. Control of both chambers of Congress could potentially flip to Democrats, and this administration has a lengthy track record of weaponizing the legal system against its critics. Reuters has consistently tracked Trump’s retribution efforts dating back to January of last year, so it’s hard for this president to argue he’s not abusing federal law enforcement agencies by using them as a club to bludgeon his political opponents.
Presidents have gotten in trouble for this in the past. Back in 1798, John Adams’ Federalists locked up Vermont Congressman and Irish immigrant Matthew Lyon under the Sedition Act for criticizing the president. Voters responded by reelecting him from his prison cell and kicking the Federalists out of power. A government that uses the full weight of law enforcement to intimidate the opposition weeks before a major election is making it clear that it believes prosecutors rather than voters should decide who sits in Congress.
While we’re on the topic of people who’ve gotten in trouble for criticizing the president, let’s discuss Air Force Major Jason Watson.
Watson was arrested in full uniform on July 1 on the steps of the U.S. Capitol. He held a sign that reading “Impeach. Convict. Remove” while calling for Congress to remove Trump from office. Then on August 18, one day after he doubled down on that criticism in a CNN interview, the Air Force put Watson in pretrial confinement.
Now, Watson’s attorney, Christopher Mutimer, says his client is being held in solitary confinement for 24 hours a day. Mutimer told CNN that even when Watson gets an hour a day to eat or exercise, “he’s alone.” He added that Major Watson is simulataneously looking at the loss of his liberty, getting kicked out of the U.S. military, losing his benefits and possibly even spending years behind bars.
Prosecutors have officially charged Watson under three articles of the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ). That includes the rarely used Article 88, which prohibits officers from uttering “contemptuous words” against the commander-in-chief. The administration wants to try him at a general court-martial, which is the military’s version of a civilian felony trial.
But Mutimer says the government is actively violating Article 13 of the UCMJ, which states that no service member awaiting trial can be confined in conditions “any more rigorous than the circumstances require.” When a judge rules that pretrial confinement crossed a line into actual punishment, the court can award credit for time served against any sentence. Keeping Watson in 24-hour isolation — which a United Nations expert has once said is akin to psychological torture — could certainly qualify him for time served if nothing else.
The Air Force has said Watson is presumed innocent, but it hasn’t confirmed Mutimer’s assertion that his client is being kept in solitary confinement. Last month, a hearing officer recommended that most of Watson’s charges should be included in a general court-martial while calling for others to be dismissed. Mutimer is aiming to have his client’s case moved to a special court-martial, which is less severe. He’s citing the example of Marine Lt. Col. Stuart Scheller, who criticized military leaders over the 2021 withdrawal from Afghanistan and eventually pleaded to lesser charges.
Watson called his protest against Trump a matter of conscience. He told CNN that everything worthwhile “is going to cost something,” and that before taking action, he asked himself what would be the highest price he was willing to pay. There’s currently no trial date set.
A century ago, the U.S. Army court-martialed Billy Mitchell for publicly accusing his superiors of criminal negligence. 20 years later in 1945, Congress voted to award him a gold medal because he was actually right all along. Locking an officer in solitary confinement for an act of conscience doesn’t improve military discipline, but rather it makes it look afraid. A military that’s afraid of the truth is poisonous for democracy.
Republicans are looking more nervous by the day with the midterms just around the corner.
With 22 days left until voters head to the polls, CNN is reporting that the GOP has been forced into triage mode to save deep-red districts and states that have long been viewed as impossible for Democrats to win. They’re also abandoning their previous plans to try and flip purple districts represented by Democrats.
Republicans are expected to lose their slim majority in the House of Representatives, with voters telling pollsters they’re furious about both the ongoing war with Iran and higher costs for basic needs like food and fuel. Their Senate majority isn’t looking much better, with even longtime GOP strongholds like Kansas and Texas now within the margin of error. Some Republicans are now expressing fears that the president’s constant campaign rallies are doing the party more harm than good. One unnamed House Republican running for reelection confided to CNN that “Trump is dragging the party down.”
It’s clear to see what’s happening if you follow the money. The Senate Leadership Fund, which is the key Republican super PAC for Senate races, has now pulled back all of its ad spending in the swing state of North Carolina and poured at least $10 million into Kansas, which hasn’t elected a Democratic U.S. senator since 1932. It’s also now spending $5 million in ruby-red South Carolina, where incumbent Senator Darline Graham is in a tight race with Democrat Annie Andrews. Republicans are also pulling out all the stops in Texas, spending more than $100 million in an effort to bolster Attorney General Ken Paxton’s race against Democratic state representative James Talarico as the latter continues to enjoy a slim lead in the latest polls.
In the last month alone, Trump has traveled to the Lone Star State three times to help Paxton. The embattled Texas Attorney General has been dealing with the fallout of relentless drips of leaked audio from a private fundraiser with GOP lobbyists. One unnamed White House adviser told CNN that they hoped the Iran war would’ve been over by now, and resented that Republicans are having to expend valuable resources to hang onto seats in reliably red states like Texas.
The Cook Political Report is now predicting Democrats to edge out Republicans in 18 separate House races. That includes five seats in states Trump won like Iowa and Pennsylvania, and a rural red district in Washington state. Democrats are now also seeing their polling leads continue to climb in Georgia and North Carolina. Mary Peltola may be the first Democrat to win Alaska since 2008.
Michigan-based Republican strategist Jason Roe, who is helping Congressman Tom Barrett in his tight reelection battle against Democratic nominee Will Lawrence, told CNN the midterm outlook for the GOP is far more grim than he anticipated. He added that if Republicans end up losing Michigan’s 7th Congressional District, there was never any chance they could’ve held it.
The White House insists all of the panic is overblown. Trump’s political team predicts the polls will become more favorable to Republicans once their base tunes in. They’re currently hoping to accomplish this by sending Trump into deep-red districts to hold rallies aimed at firing up the GOP base.
However, the president is staying far away from the swing state of Maine, where longtime incumbent Republican Senator Susan Collins is trying to eke out a win over Democrat Troy Jackson by keeping the White House at arm’s length. Trump’s team is reportedly now telling Republicans they’re better off making their own cases to voters. One source told the network the final weeks of the election cycle will be “hand-to-hand combat.”
Right up until the Seventeenth Amendment was fully ratified 113 years ago, state legislatures and party bosses picked U.S. senators in smoke-filled backrooms, while locking ordinary voters out of the process. The panic currently unfolding in both Kansas and Texas is exactly why the 17th Amendment was written in the first place. No seat was ever meant to be safe from the very same voters bearing the bulk of the costs for an unpopular war and shouldering higher prices for groceries that they never asked for.
Our final story: a sitting Republican senator is now all but accusing a sitting president of violating federal law.
Outgoing Senator Thom Tillis of North Carolina appeared on NBC’s Meet the Press yesterday to call out the president for temporarily easing sanctions on Russian diesel exports. The White House said it was importing Russian diesel as a way to bring down record-high diesel prices that spiked as a result of his war with Iran. Since the war began, the Iranian government has severely restricted commercial traffic in the Strait of Hormuz.
The North Carolina senator said there’s now “a legitimate case” to be made that Trump is breaking the law. He appears to be referencing both a 2022 executive order barring the importing of Russian fuel, along with legislation signed into law just last month named after the late Republican Senator Lindsey Graham that prohibits the U.S. government from making investments in the Russian energy sector.
Tillis also made it clear he’s holding Trump’s legislative priorities hostage over the move to import diesel from Russia. He said if the president wants his support for military funding and a deal to keep federal agencies open after December, the president needs to understand this is a line in the sand and that he won’t be the only Republican voting against the administration.
He’s not wrong: A bipartisan group of senators including Republicans Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and John Curtis of Utah along with Democrats Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire and Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut sent a joint letter to the White House demanding the administration cancel its deal with Russia. Senators argued that the United States shouldn’t give Putin “a financial lifeline while Russia continues to kill Ukrainian civilians.” Outgoing Republican Congressman Don Bacon of Nebraska also said it was “morally wrong” to prop up Putin’s economy in the midst of his war with Ukraine.
The deal came after Trump called Putin, with the latter announcing that he would put 300,000 tons of Russian diesel fuel on the global market, with another 500,000 tons on the way next month. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent defended the deal on Fox and Friends, saying the White House would use all the legal authorities it has to bring down prices. However, multiple energy market analysts say the move won’t bring prices down over the long term.
The president also attacked Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy over the weekend and suggested Ukraine should get a new president. Tillis countered that if Trump really wants to lower fuel prices, he should cut a deal with in Iran and recognize that Vladimir Putin — not Zelenskyy — is responsible for the Ukraine war.
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney’s office also heaped criticism on the agreement, saying it directly contradicts the joint efforts of Ukraine, Canada, and other European allies to end the war, and that Trump is helping to bankroll Russia’s invasion on Ukraine.
Tillis has been a vocal opponent of the administration since announcing last year he wouldn’t seek a third term in the Senate. His term officially ends in January.
In 1952 Harry Truman took control of the nation’s steel mills during the Korean War, prompting the Supreme Court to tell him in the Youngstown decision that even a wartime president can’t override laws passed by Congress. If a president can ignore a sanctions law the moment it becomes inconvenient for him, then laws become mere suggestions. Every autocrat is watching Trump and taking notes.
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I’m Thom Hartmann. Thanks for reading, and thanks for supporting independent media. If you haven’t yet, tap the ❤️ and hit restack so we can reach the people who really need these stories.