Good morning. I’m Thom Hartmann. If you’re reading this on Substack, help us out by taking a second to click the ❤️ and restack this newsletter. Those two clicks do a lot to help us get these stories in front of the most people.
A new poll finds that most Americans believe Donald Trump cares more about using his office to enrich himself than about actually leading the country. A top Republican super PAC is officially giving up on several GOP incumbents with 21 days to go before the midterms. A new report confirmed that Ken Paxton spent New Year’s Eve 2024 in Dubai with his mistress and two fugitives from US law who donated to his campaign. And new data shows that Trump voters who live near data centers are now lining up to support Democrats in the midterms.
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A newly released poll from the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research has found that roughly six in 10 American adults believe Donald Trump is illegally or unethically profiting from the presidency. Only about two in 10 respondents think what he’s doing is legal, and a similar share say they still aren’t sure.
Those numbers come after the president’s June financial disclosure filings show Trump made more than $1 billion from various cryptocurrency ventures after his administration weakened regulations on the industry. One of those ventures resulted in a $500 million investment from a company with ties to the royal family of the United Arab Emirates. Additionally, Trump’s real estate empire made eight foreign development deals during the president’s first year back in office, with several of those projects taking place in authoritarian or one-party states.
Just over half of survey takers — 56 percent — said Trump has prioritized adding to his personal wealth since returning to the White House. Only about a quarter of respondents said Trump was putting the country first, and only one in 10 told pollsters Trump was focused “a lot” on people like them.
Oscar Delgado, a Ford employee in Lansing, Michigan, voted for Trump in 2024. But now, he believes Trump is consumed by greed and isn’t putting America first. He told the AP, “I wanted a change, but I didn’t expect this change.”
Barbara Thaxton, who is an 87-year-old independent voter based in Florida, told AP-NORC survey-takers that the president’s wealth keeps growing while ordinary Americans are barely making ends meet. The White House maintains that Trump has zero conflicts of interest, even though the president told The New York Times that he doesn’t think anyone really cares about that.
The authors of our Constitution saw all of this coming, which is why they wrote the Foreign Emoluments Clause into Article I to prevent federal elected officials from accepting any payments or gifts from foreign countries without the express consent of Congress. They knew a president who could be bought off by a king or a prince wasn’t really working for the american people anymore. Thankfully, it seems most Americans still understand that.
With the midterms right around the corner, Republicans are walking away from their own members of Congress. The New York Times is reporting that Trump-aligned and House GOP leadership-affiliated super PACs have officially withdrawn all remaining ad buys for Congressman Tom Kean of New Jersey and Congresswoman Mariannette Miller-Meeks of Iowa after their own polls showed them losing ground to their Democratic opponents.
This is the first time in the 2026 cycle that national Republican PACs have abandoned sitting incumbents. Last week, they pulled money out of the Omaha, Nebraska-area seat being vacated by retiring Republican Congressman Don Bacon. That means Republicans have essentially surrendered three districts they currently represent, even after aggressively carving up multiple House maps aimed at padding their narrow majority.
Republican-aligned groups also cancelled their plans to spend money in an attempt to oust Democratic Congressman Greg Landsman of Ohio and Democratic Congresswoman Kristen McDonald Rivet of Michigan (who Raw America interviewed last week). The Congressional Leadership Fund (CLF), which is House Speaker Mike Johnson’s super PAC, is now re-allocating $10 million into 16 deep-red districts where Democrats are gaining ground. That includes the Texas seat held by Republican Congresswoman Monica De La Cruz, which Trump easily won by 18 points in 2024. Republicans now apparently feel the need to spend millions of dollars to prevent it from flipping.
CLF president Chris Winkelman insists the strategic retreat keeps Republicans competitive in the battle to get to the majority-clinching number of 218 seats. But a party pouring money into districts it previously seen as safe red territory isn’t a sign of confidence heading into November. One of the Times’ sources suggested Republicans could be abandoning even more seats this week.
When the Supreme Court ruled in the 2019 Rucho v. Common Cause case that federal courts had no say in partisan gerrymandering, Republicans saw that as a green light to pick their own voters rather than allowing voters to pick them. But the current midterm cycle shows the limit of that strategy, because while anyone can redraw a map, you can’t redraw what people think of your leadership.
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Texas Senate candidate Ken Paxton’s Senate campaign now has another headache to deal with. The Wall Street Journal is now reporting that Paxton spent New Year’s Eve of 2024 at a luxury hotel in Dubai alongside his mistress, Tracy Duhon, and two fugitives from American authorities who were indicted on federal healthcare fraud charges.
One of those men — healthcare executive Anosh Ahmed — donated $190,000 to Paxton most recent campaign for attorney general, including $25,000 just a few days after federal prosecutors indicted him. Ahmed and his associate Sameer Suhail were both criminally charged with embezzling $15 million from a Chicago-area hospital. Ahmed was later charged for allegedly participating in a much more serious scheme that involved roughly $195 million in payments for fraudulent Covid-19 tests. He’s pleaded not guilty to all charges. Since that night with Paxton, both men have since made their way back into the U.S. where their trials are pending.
Paxton hasn’t directly addressed the video of him in Dubai, though Paxton senior advisor Nick Maddux told the Journal that Paxton, like Donald Trump, has been a victim of political persecution.
Trump apparently had knowledge that there could be damaging revelations about Paxton coming down the pike ahead of the election, prior to him endorsing the Texas attorney general over longtime incumbent Senator John Cornyn. Trump shrugged off those warnings, and Democratic state representative James Talarico is now holding a narrow but consistent lead in the latest polls. If he wins on November 3, Talarico could become the first Democrat to win any statewide election in the Lone Star State in more than 30 years.
Paxton has significant amounts of baggage. The Republican-controlled Texas House of Representatives impeached him in 2023 on abuse-of-office charges before he was acquitted by the Texas Senate acquitted him. Former Paxton aides who were punished for the whistleblower complaint that led to his impeachment won $6.6 million in a lawsuit, though Paxton continues to deny their claims. State Senator Angela Paxton, his wife of 38 years, filed for divorce alleging he committed adultery. Additionally, his net worth grew from less than $175,000 before his first campaign back in 2002 to around $5.5 million by 2018. He also owns 15 properties valued at $9 million on a public employee’s salary.
A Senate Republican PAC is now running ads from Angela Paxton urging voters to support Texas’ GOP ticket. However, she never once utters the name of her estranged husband.
Texans have seen this show before. When the Sharpstown stock fraud scandal broke in 1971 and exposed numerous Lone Star State leaders trading favors with a Houston-based banker, voters responded the very next year by kicking the governor out of office and replacing roughly half of the Texas House. That’s a good reminder that corruption is only normalized if voters stop punishing it.
Finally, data centers appear be costing Republicans significant numbers of votes. The Economist matched nearly 150,000 respondents from its weekly YouGov survey with their closest AI data center. Since May, support for Democrats among likely voters who live within a few miles of a data center has jumped from 54 percent to 61 percent. That’s significant, the nationwide shift was only from 53 to 55 percent.
The jump in Democratic support among Trump’s MAGA base is even more noticeable. About 17 percent of his 2024 supporters who live in the vicinity of a data center now say they would vote for a Democrat, compared to just 6 percent of Trump voters who don’t. People have legitimate concerns about how data centers are overburdening local power grids, making their utility bills skyrocket and broader concerns about artificial intelligence as it pertains to putting people out of their jobs.
The president has previously said that any community that opposes the development of new data centers could become backwards and poor. However, that message doesn’t appear to be resonating with even his own supporters. Democratic candidates in competitive House and Senate races have made data centers a key focus of their campaigns. That includes Nevada’s 2nd Congressional District, Colorado’s 4th Congressional District — which Republican Lauren Boebert currently represents — and in Ohio’s 15th Congressional District. Voters in those communities aim to make data center operators pay for new power and to give local residents more autonomy over where data centers get built.
Americans fought a similar battle back in the 1930s, when a small group of giant utility holding companies were gouging working families in order to build their own business empires. Congress responded by passing the Public Utility Holding Company Act of 1935, which FDR signed into law. Whether it’s a power trust 100 years ago or a tech billionaire’s server farm today, the people who live next door to those facilities shouldn’t be shackled with the bill for some billionaire’s fortune.
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I’m Thom Hartmann. Thanks for reading, and thanks for supporting independent media. If you haven’t already, please tap the ❤️ and it restack so we can break through the algorithm and reach the readers who really need to hear these stories.
Make sure to catch our live interview today at 1 PM ET with Bob Corn-Revere of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, where he’ll discuss Trump’s attacks on the First Amendment and what you can do to fight back. Watch live on our homepage at RawAmerica.com.
