Good morning. I’m Thom Hartmann. If you’re watching this on Substack, do us a quick favor: click the ❤️ and tap the circular restack icon. Those two clicks help us immensely and make sure these important stories don’t get buried in the algorithm.
Today, the White House is reportedly in a state of panic as Donald Trump is apparently on the fence about whether to fire his longtime chief of staff, Susie Wiles. Several people inside Trump’s inner circle of MAGA activists are now contemplating a martial law declaration and even the seizure of voting machines if Republicans lose the November midterm election. Big Tech oligarchs are reportedly spending more than $1 million every day in an effort to stop California’s proposed billionaire tax. And New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani is now asking owners of private parking lots to stop ICE from using their properties as staging grounds.
Before the news: we’re counting on readers like you, who believe in independent journalism, to keep this work going. Every day the billionaires who own most of the media lay off talented journalists and bury stories that tell the truth they find inconvenient. Raw America has no billionaire owner. We have you. But whether we stay in the fight is completely up to you.
The West Wing is quickly becoming embroiled in chaos. According to today’s edition of the Politico Playbook, Trump had what was described as a “freakout” after his intensely devoted aide Natalie Harp printed out a previous Playbook from earlier this week about White House chief of staff Susie Wiles potentially being replaced after the midterms. That Playbook described how the president was put off by bad press about Wiles’ lobbyist daughter, Katie, doing paid work for an ally of Vladimir Putin.
Both Wiles and her team apparently spent most of the day calling anyone who would listen to assure them she was staying put, but that strategy didn’t pan out. One unnamed White House source told the outlet that Trump’s White House is “in a state of panic,” with Wiles apparently scrambling to enlist people to vouch for her. Meanwhile, Trump has reportedly spoken with allies about potentially replacing her with candidates like deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, New York Yankees president Randy Levine, special envoy Steve Witkoff, Trump loyalist Bill Pulte and even former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy.
The White House is publicly denying that anything is amiss. Spokesperson Danielle Alvarez slammed Politico’s reporting as “unbelievably stupid and false” and claimed there’s no panic because no one in the administration reads the outlet. Trump himself told Politico that Wiles has his “COMPLETE confidence.” However, that could change if Republicans suffer significant losses in the midterm election. One Trump ally anonymously confided to the outlet that the current power struggle is only going to intensify in the coming weeks.
Back in 1883, we professionalized the federal government with the Pendleton Act after a failed political candidate assassinated President James Garfield. Congress knew that a government dependent on one man’s moods and loyalties is more of a royal court than a republic. When the president’s chief of staff spends the bulk of her day begging supporters for endorsements instead of running the country, all of us who depend on a functional government end up paying the price.
This next one is particularly alarming: some of the people with direct access to the president are reportedly now urging him to declare martial law and even seize voting equipment should Republicans lose their majorities in the midterms. They believe a Democratic wave would be evidence that the election was “rigged,” which in their view would justify extreme measures — including ones that are blatantly illegal and unconstitutional.
Donald Trump’s childhood friend and attorney Peter Ticktin recently joined a livestreamed video call with noted election denier Gregory Stenstrom and recently pardoned MAGA activist Tina Peters. The group suggested various ideas including halting the election, invoking the National Emergencies Act and mandating that all ballots nationwide be hand-counted — a process that’s both incredibly error-prone and that could take weeks. These aren’t fringe extremists, either: Peters and Ticktin met with Trump earlier this month. Prominent 2020 election deniers like Heather Honey now hold senior roles overseeing election integrity at the Department of Homeland Security.
Experts well versed in U.S. election law make it clear the Constitution doesn’t allow the president to have this kind of power. Derek Tisler of the Brennan Center for Justice explained to Axios that even under emergency powers and martial law, the president doesn’t have the authority to override state election laws, postpone elections or have federal agents seize ballots and voting machines. Tisler noted the president is still bound by laws passed by Congress, and clear language in the Constitution that grants states, not the federal government, oversight over elections.
White House spokesperson Lauren Bis would only give a boilerplate response stating that Trump believes every legal vote should be counted and that Americans deserve safe and secure elections conducted in a transparent manner. The administration has yet to act on any of these extreme ideas after nearly two years in office. But the fact that the president’s closest allies are seriously pitching these ideas should be seen as a flashing red light as the November election approaches.
The Supreme Court ruled in the 1866 Ex parte Milligan decision that no president can impose martial law anywhere that civilian courts are operating. That case originated from Abraham Lincoln’s own wartime military commissions during an armed uprising. If the Court refused to grant Lincoln those powers during the Civil War, there’s no way under the Constitution that Donald Trump gets them simply because he doesn’t like the result of an election.
California’s billionaires are showing just how far they’ll go to avoid paying their fair share of taxes. The Guardian is reporting that Silicon Valley billionaires have amassed a war chest in excess of $340 million to defeat Proposition 40, which would impose a one-time tax of five percent on all assets over $1 billion. The revenue would go toward funding healthcare, education and food assistance programs that Republicans cut last year in order to pay for more tax cuts for the wealthiest. In just the first 19 days of September, billionaires spent at least $21.2 million opposing Prop 40, amounting to more than $1 million a day.
Google co-founder Sergey Brin — the world’s fourth-richest man with a net worth exceeding $259 billion — has spent $102 million of his own money on opposing Prop 40. Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt has put in more than $42 million, while right-wing billionaires Peter Thiel, Patrick Collison and Tony Xu are also spending significant sums. Meanwhile, the Yes on 40 campaign, which is mostly funded by the healthcare workers union SEIU-UHW, has raised a little under $33 million to rally support for the initiative.
The union says the money that would be raised from the new tax is essential to preserve healthcare for 3.4 million low-income California residents who would otherwise lose Medicaid coverage thanks to Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act. The opposition’s ads deceptively call Prop 40 “an everyone tax” and focus on doctors, teachers and firefighters without once mentioning billionaires. Opponents of Prop 40 are also backing two countermeasures — Propositions 41 and 42 — which will appear on the November ballot. If either measure more “yes” votes than Prop 40, the billionaire tax will be dead even if it passes, and any future billionaire tax would be put on ice.
The massive wave of spending seems to be influencing voters. A University of California poll conducted in late September found that Prop 40 was only leading by a 45-42 margin, which is a decrease from its previous 7-point lead from August. Independent Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont held a rally in San Francisco last week and called Prop 40 the most important ballot initiative in the country. California Labor Federation president Lorena Gonzalez urged Californians to support the initiative, saying the state can’t let billionaires “buy our elections and choose who gets to live or die.”
In 1936, Franklin D. Roosevelt spoke at Madison Square Garden, boasting that organized money was unanimous in their hatred of him, and that he welcomed their hatred. But while Roosevelt’s enemies had to win an election to stop him, Sergey Brin and his fellow oligarchs are hoping to just write a big enough check and hire actors to play doctors and firefighters on television.
Finally, New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani is joining more than 100 elected officials from across the Empire State to urge more than a thousand owners of private parking garages and parking lots to stop letting U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents use their properties as staging grounds. In a joint letter issued today, they’re also challenging lot and garage owners to directly tell ICE that it agents don’t have authorization to use their facilities.
The letter comes a week after ICE agents in New York City’s Marble Hill neighborhood surrounded 28-year-old Oscar Belgal’s car and fired on him, striking him in the neck while his five year-old son was inside the vehicle. Agents were reportedly using a private lot just a few blocks away as a staging ground prior to the shooting.
New York City law already prevents ICE from using city-owned property without first obtaining a judicial warrant. However, those protections don’t include private property. ICE has also used two bank-owned parking lots in Queens and a garage on Morton Street in Manhattan as staging grounds. Those lots removed ICE vehicles after community members spoke out. Notably, no officials from the Republican-dominated borough of Staten Island co-signed the joint letter.
The founders wrote the Third Amendment — which prohibits the government from quartering armed forces on private property without owner consent — because the redcoats used colonists’ homes as staging grounds. They correctly understood that when an armed federal force relies on private property to oppress their neighbors, the easiest solution is to allow a property owner to say no.
It’s not hard to see why billionaires are using their bottomless wealth to buy elections and gobble up media outlets:** they know we outnumber them and that we have the power to defeat them if we unite.** This is why independent media is so critical in a democracy, and why we’re counting on you to step up and make sure we have the ability to stand up to organized money.
I’m Thom Hartmann. Thanks for reading, thanks for believing in independent media, and please be sure to help us get these stories in front of the most people by tapping the ❤️ and hitting restack. Have a great weekend.
