Good morning. I’m Thom Hartmann. Before we get started, take a quick second to click the ❤️ and restack this newsletter. That helps us break through the algorithm to reach the people who need to hear these stories the most.
Republicans in Donald Trump’s adopted home state of Florida are quietly worrying that the state once seen as a safe Republican stronghold could slip out of their control this November. Paramount Skydance CEO David Ellison dined with Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping at the White House while reporters from CNN — the cable network he’s about to own — were prevented from covering it. Michigan Republican Senate candidate Mike Rogers is blaming Trump’s war with Iran for high grocery prices, despite spending several months cheering it on earlier this year. And Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson is now warning that her colleagues are eroding public trust in the court by continuously abusing the shadow docket.
One more thing: MAGA billionaires are closing in on the Fourth Estate and we need your help. This is not a drill. David Ellison is about to take over CNN and put Bari Weiss in charge of its newsroom so they can do to that network what they did to CBS. They won’t stop until they’ve snuffed out every voice capable of holding them accountable. We launched Raw America because we refuse to let that happen. But independent journalism can only survive if readers believe in it enough to financially support it. Become a paying member of Raw America for just 22 cents a day so we can keep this work going.
After both Governor Ron DeSantis and President Donald Trump won by large margins in 2022 and 2024, respectively, Florida was seen as the Republican Party’s firewall. The GOP currently has 1.55 million more registered voters in the Sunshine State than Democrats. But Florida Republicans are now confiding to Politico that the same forces dragging the GOP down across the country are also hurting them. That includes Trump’s war in Iran and the resulting high gas prices, Hispanic voters turning on him over his ICE crackdowns and the persistently high cost of living.
More recent polls are now showing that both the races for Florida governor and U.S. Senate are inside the margin of error. Decision Desk HQ rates the governor’s race between Republican Byron Donalds and Democrat David Jolly are a toss-up. A Fox News poll released this week showed several Florida House races shifting in Democrats’ favor.
Nearly two dozen Republican politicians, operatives and consultants told Politico the party can no longer take Florida for granted. Former GOP Congressman Carlos Curbelo, who was ousted after the midterm blue wave of 2018 compared the current vibe of the 2026 midterm cycle to that election. He added that many of his former colleagues in Congress are quietly “bracing for the worst.”
One Republican county chair anonymously confided that while the Florida GOP isn’t “on life support,” it is “hemorrhaging.” They then asked if Republicans should “stop the bleeding now, or wait until we reach critical condition?”
That bleeding includes Republican Congresswoman María Elvira Salazar, who represents parts of Miami-Dade County, running a TV ad accusing Trump of going “too far” in his mass deportation efforts. And a massive scandal over $10 million in “misappropriated” funds meant for children’s healthcare money that was instead funneled to Florida First Lady Casey DeSantis’ nonprofit has roped in Republican U.S. Senator Ashley Moody and Attorney General James Uthmeier, who are both on the November ballot.
Also, the 1.5 million voter registration advantage isn’t as solid as it seems. An analysis from one GOP consultant found that nearly all of the Florida GOP’s growth since 2022 came from people who either switched party affiliation from the Democratic Party or from no party at all. Pollster Brad Coker said many of those voters are considered to be “squishy,” pointing out that a lot of them moved to Florida during the pandemic because of its lack of Covid-19 restrictions and aren’t necessarily diehard GOP loyalists.
Republicans also still have an edge when it comes to money. Byron Donalds has raised nearly $121 million, which is more than ten times what David Jolly has raised for his own campaign. But despite that significant advantage, the gubernatorial race continues to tighten even after Republicans poured nearly $80 million into campaign ads. Five Florida Republicans told Politico they’d be especially nervous if Jolly managed to raise even $20 million before the election.
In the other marquee race, Democratic U.S. Senate nominee Angie Nixon — who Raw America interviewed last month — is a charismatic grassroots movement organizer who could energize the core of the Democratic Party’s base. That includes Black voters, young people and progressives alike. But Moody is running a lackluster campaign that some Republicans have compared to former President Joe Biden’s uninspiring 2024 run.
Former GOP strategist Alex Patton, who now identifies as an independent, told the outlet that there is a “perfect storm” for Democrats. He said part of that is due to “an arrogant GOP that thinks they can’t lose.” Florida Republican Party chairman Evan Power insisted he’s “not raising alarms” and expects Republicans in the Sunshine State to “come home” in November.
We’ve seen this movie before. In 2006, opposition to a Republican president’s unpopular war in the Middle East helped hand Democrats both houses of Congress and turned districts Republicans considered safe GOP territory into genuine battlegrounds. Americans can feel a war at the gas pump and the grocery store, meaning that party loyalty gets a whole lot thinner than any registration number or financial advantage suggests. A firewall can only hold up if the people behind it still believe you’re fighting for them.
Chinese President Xi Jinping sat down for Donald Trump’s official state dinner at the White House Thursday night. CNN’s reporters weren’t allowed inside. But the man who’s about to own the network had a prime seat at the table.
Deadline reported that Paramount Skydance CEO David Ellison was on the guest list as he works to get final approval for a settlement agreement allowing Paramount’s $111 billion merger with Warner Bros. Discovery to move forward. Ellison is the son of Oracle founder Larry Ellison, who is the world’s sixth-richest man and one of Trump’s closest billionaire allies. He’s gotten particularly comfortable with the White House in his successful pursuits of both Paramount and now Warner Bros. Opponents of the mega-merger have been repeatedly sounding the alarm about the Ellison family’s closeness with the president, especially given what’s they’ve already done to CBS News. Ellison put far-right opinion columnist Bari Weiss in charge of CBS’ newsroom, and she’s expected to take the reins at CNN once the merger is official.
Ellison was joined at the state dinner by pro-Trump billionaires like Elon Musk, Sam Altman, Mark Zuckerberg, Sergey Brin, Jensen Huang, Tim Cook, Jamie Dimon, Michael Dell and Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos. Fox News personalities Jesse Watters, Laura Ingraham and Bret Baier were also on the guests list along with several Cabinet members, GOP leaders in Congress and multiple Supreme Court justices.
The fact that CNN wasn’t allowed inside came after the president banned the network from the White House last week along with MS NOW and Politico. Those outlets sued, and U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly — a Trump appointee from his first term — ordered their credentials re-instated early Thursday morning while their lawsuit plays out in court. Deadline reported that those outlets had their access back for part of the day Thursday, though by the evening it had been revoked once again.
So while a billionaire with a pending merger was breaking bread with the president, the journalists whose paychecks he’ll soon sign were locked out. Feel free to draw your own conclusions about the state of press freedom in Trump’s America right now.
The First Amendment doesn’t protect the press because journalists are privileged, because no government should get to decide what we’re allowed to know. When the billionaire about to take over a newsroom dines with the president while reporters are barred from entering, the message is loud and clear that those reporters had better toe the line if they expect to keep their jobs.
This story is a perfect illustration of why America needs independent media. We’ll never take a billionaire’s money or dine with a president attacking the First Amendment. But independent journalism only lasts if its readers are willing to financially support it. Become a paying member of Raw America for just 22 cents a day.
Michigan Republican U.S. Senate candidate Mike Rogers recently debuted a new campaign ad blaming Trump’s war with Iran for high grocery prices. But in reality, Rogers spent months cheering on that very same war.
In the ad, the GOP congressman is seen inside what appears to be the same grocery store chain from his viral 2024 ad comparing the cost of groceries under both Trump and Biden. He’s even dressed almost identically. But this time, he’s pinning the blame for high prices directly on the war. Rogers said the Iran war “needs to end and end quickly,” and that “when it does, energy costs will plummet, but Michigan families can’t afford to wait for that to happen.”
But CNN’s KFile noted that when Trump first launched the war in late February, Rogers said it was “long overdue.” Then in March, he told a talk radio host that the war shouldn’t have a fixed end date. The following month, he went on MAGA pundit Scott Jennings’ show and said that Iran had become “absolutely a toothless wonder.” He added that Trump’s war was the best chance for peace in the Middle East that he’d seen in his lifetime. And even as recently as May, Rogers acknowledged that while the war had led to higher gas prices, he still supported its initial purpose.
The Republican candidate didn’t really start shifting his tone until July. And prior to August he told CBS Detroit he was still willing to give Trump a little more time to finish the negotiation process with Iranian leaders. His campaign is now highlighting comments he made this week in which he said “we’ve been pretty patient on the timeline” and that “the best option now is to wind it down.”
Rogers sees which way the wind is blowing. A recent CNN/SSRS poll found that nearly two-thirds of Americans believe Trump isn’t winning the war, and more than three-quarters of respondents said it wasn’t worth fighting. Rogers, who narrowly lost his 2024 campaign for U.S. Senate to Elissa Slotkin, is now running for the open seat being vacated by outgoing Senator Gary Peters. Democrat Abdul El-Sayed is leading in polls, and he’s opposed the war from the very start. Election Day is just six weeks away, and Rogers is now scrambling to convince voters to not believe their own eyes and ears.
We’re used to seeing politicians who cheer on a war before running away once Americans sour on it. That’s exactly why Congress passed the War Powers Resolution in 1973 in defiance of Richard Nixon’s veto, so the people who send Americans to a foreign war would have to put their own names on it. Rogers wants to take all the credit for sounding tough, but is fleeing responsibility for what it’s costing his constituents at the gas pump and the checkout line. In 6 weeks, Michigan voters will get to decide whether that’s the kind of person they want in Washington casting the vote on the next war.
Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson — who Biden appointed in 2022 — is loudly warning her conservative colleagues that they’re jeopardizing the Court’s credibility.
In a Thursday night speech to the University of the District of Columbia’s law school, Jackson slammed the Court’s frequent use of its emergency docket, also known as the “shadow docket,” where cases are decided quickly and often without oral arguments or even a basic explanation.
The liberal jurist said her fellow justices “cannot expect the public to have faith in our judicial system if, without clear explanation, we are consistently green-lighting harmful acts that do real damage to litigating plaintiffs.”
The White House has consistently relied on the emergency docket to overrule lower court decisions blocking his policies from taking effect. That’s exactly how the Trump administration got the green light to build the president’s gaudy $400 million White House ballroom, fire tens of thousands of federal employees, and strip hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans of their temporary protected status. A study from earlier this year found that the Supreme Court sided with the administration roughly 80 percent of the time in shadow docket rulings.
Jackson said the Roberts Court’s conservative majority has been “noticeably less restrained” in controversial cases brought by the Trump administration. She noted that unless justices were more careful, “the emergency docket can and will become an end run around the standard review process, a special avenue that certain privileged litigants can use selectively.” She also pointed out that one party seems to consistently get “a fast pass” to the Supreme Court while so many other litigants have to wait in line for months.
The timing of the justice’s speech was also significant. As Justice Jackson spoke, Chief Justice John Roberts and Trump-appointed Supreme Court Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett were among the president’s invited guests at his White House state dinner with Chinese President Xi Jinping.
This isn’t the first time Jackson has criticized the excessive use of the shadow docket. In an April speech at Yale, she noted that back in the late 1990s the Court used the emergency docket almost exclusively for death penalty decisions, rather than sweeping decisions impacting public policy. And in a March debate with Justice Kavanaugh, Jackson said the Roberts Court’s increasing reliance on the emergency docket was a “real, unfortunate problem.”
In 1952, the Supreme Court told then-President Harry Truman that he couldn’t seize the nation’s steel mills. Justices issued the ruling after hearing full arguments and explained their rationale in a written opinion that all Americans could read for themselves. The entire source of the Court’s power is the public’s belief that it applies the same rules to everyone. A conservative Supreme Court majority that gives one president a whopping 80 percent win rate on unexplained emergency orders is eroding that belief much faster than it can ever be earned back.
Billionaires are devouring newspapers and cable networks specifically so you’ll never hear stories like these. David Ellison wouldn’t allow CBS or CNN to report on how he dined with Donald Trump while keeping reporters out of the room. **This is why America needs independent journalism now more than ever. If you’ve been considering becoming a paying member of Raw America, today is the day to make it official. **
I’m Thom Hartmann. Thanks for reading, and thanks for supporting independent media. If you haven’t yet, take a few seconds to tap the ❤️ and restack this edition so we can reach the most readers. Have a great weekend.