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White House Takes the Bait as Ossoff Targets Trump Aide Natalie Harp

The White House is pissed after Senator Jon Ossoff questioned Trump’s relationship with his much younger aide.

By Malcolm Ferguson | The New Republic

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The Trump administration is lashing out after Senator John Ossoff referenced Trump’s mysteriously close relationship with his much younger assistant Natalie Harp.

Ossoff questioned the president’s relationship with Harp, 34, at an Atlanta rally on Sunday.

“He golfs and trades stocks,” he said. “See, he doesn’t want to do the job. He wants to build his ballroom and travel with Natalie on their apparently defenseless flying palace gifted by the emir of Qatar.”

The crowd broke into applause—and the White House took the bait.

Trump himself lashed out after being asked about Ossoff’s comments Monday afternoon.

“You mean Pee-Wee Herman? Pee-Wee Herman lookalike?” Trump replied, pulling out his recent nickname for Ossoff. “I would much rather do other things.”

“Jon Jackoff has to be the biggest cuck loser in politics,” Steven Cheung, the ever-cantankerous White House communications director, posted on X. “Instead of denigrating hard-working people serving their country, Jon should look deep into his soul and ask himself why he’s a miserable person who hates this country. It’s because he’s a radical, extremist Dumocrat.”

“Jon Ossoff is a cringeworthy, feminine theatre kid cosplaying as Barack Obama. Nobody gives a shit what this lightweight loser says,” White House spokesperson Davis Ingle said on X, launching a homophobic insult at Ossoff.

Trump and Harp’s working relationship has long been the subject of scrutiny, and Ossoff calling her out by name will only intensify it.

Harp was one of the few administration members who snuck away with Trump on a secret flight out of Turkey last month, while Secretary of State Marco Rubio, other Cabinet members, and journalists remained aboard the Air Force One gifted by Qatar—amid concerns it would be the target of a potential Iranian strike.

Harp’s own brother told The Daily Mail that Harp and Trump’s relationship was “very unhealthy,” and in their book Regime Change, The New York Times writers Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan reported that Harp in 2023 left Trump what amounted to love letters, with one even reading, “You are all that matters to me.”

“Ossoff winking at the rumor that Natalie Harp is more than just Trump’s staffer,” liberal podcaster Tommy Vietor wrote on X. “The question now is whether this will kick up a round of actual reporting by news outlets.”

This story has been updated.

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The Republicans Are Going to Kill People—but Not Until After They Vote

In the Big Beautiful Bill, the GOP put off Medicaid cuts until after midterms. America is about to find out why.

The New Republic | Substack

By Norman J. Ornstein

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One of Ronald Reagan’s most famous lines, referring to disarray in his White House, was, “Sometimes the right hand doesn’t know what the far-right hand is doing.” More appropriately for the Trump White House: “Sometimes the far-right hand doesn’t know what the radical lunatic right-wing hand is doing.”

In fall 2017, less than a year into President Trump’s first term, I wrote a piece in The Atlantic titled “American Kakistocracy.” As I wrote then, “Kakistocracy is a term that was first used in the 17th century; derived from a Greek word, it means, literally, government by the worst and most unscrupulous people among us. More broadly, it can mean the most inept and cringeworthy kind of government. The term fell into disuse over the past century or more, and most highly informed people had never heard it before (but to kids familiar with the word “kaka” it might resonate).” They should pay attention now.

Bad as the first Trump term was, it was nothing compared to this one. And the key components of the anti-science, anti-government nihilism, combined with willful ignorance about the consequences of their actions, and the interrelationship across policy areas, are about to play out big time starting next year, with health care and policy on the front lines. Three components of horrible policies across disparate areas will interact to engender a catastrophe in an already stressed health ecosystem.

One is the insane anti-vaccination conspiracy theories brought into full focus by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and his cohort in the Trump administration, all amplified by Trump himself. The measles outbreak, the emergence of tetanus cases, the attacks on the flu and COVID-19 vaccines, and the evisceration of food safety programs leading to outbreaks of norovirus, cyclospora, E. coli, and Listeria have begun to put more stress on the system, with increased costs, more hospital burdens, and likely more trouble ahead when flu season begins and new COVID strains emerge. Not only that, many undocumented immigrants have been working in meat processing plants—some estimates have been as many as 200,000. The massive deportation policy has left many of those plants with fewer workers to do the same volume of processing, and often a form of self-regulation by the industry for the safety of their products.

Add to that the soon-to-be forced removal and deportation of Haitians, among others losing Temporary Protected Status. Over 100,000 Haitians have been employed in the healthcare sector, many taking care of seniors in nursing homes and via home health care, others working in hospitals as orderlies, nurses, or in other jobs. It will be a significant blow when those jobs are vacated.

Now comes the biggest problem. When the Republican Congress enacted Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill in July 2025, it included massive cuts in the Medicaid program, totaling around $1 trillion over 10 years—but made sure to postpone them until 2027, conveniently after the midterm elections. The cuts focused on adding onerous work and paperwork requirements, all designed to force recipients off the rolls, and will remove somewhere between 10 and 15 million people from the program, leaving them without any health coverage. That is in addition to the millions losing coverage or facing huge premium increases with the erasure of subsidies for the Affordable Care Act. But the impact will go far beyond those directly losing their health insurance. Medicaid money does not go to Medicaid recipients. It goes to the providers. The loss of a major chunk of the money going out to them will have big reverberations.

The American health care system, unlike in most advanced countries, was jerry-built, a combination of public and private entities, and state and federal involvement. But the public and private are not separate. They are like the organs in the human body—if one declines or fails, it has huge impact on the others. And these cuts are going to reverberate in many catastrophic ways.

Start with hospitals, most of which already face major financial strain, and not just in rural areas. There have been major consolidations as those strains have increased; hospitals have had to be creative, to say the least, in finding the revenue to stay solvent. Independent, community-based hospitals have declined precipitously, and the market has shifted to giant, integrated health systems, with major involvement by both private equity firms and large corporations like health insurers and pharmacy giants buying physician groups and integrating vertically and horizontally. Significant revenue, especially via the emergency rooms, comes from Medicaid.

Cut that revenue, and some hospitals will close, in both urban and rural areas. For those that remain, the burden in the ERs will increase their costs and strain their staff. The law requires hospitals to provide emergency care to anyone in health crisis coming to their ERs, whether they can pay or not. Poor people and the undocumented will either go to the ER and not be able to pay, or will defer any treatment, including drugs they need, and that will mean more emergencies, more deaths, more burden on the broader system.

The loss in revenue may cause many hospitals to reduce staff, adding to the burden on nurses and doctors who remain. For many, their staff will already be burdened when the deportations take full effect. And reduced staff will also put more hospital patients in jeopardy if there are fewer nurses and doctors to watch over them and care for them. Of course, to maintain revenue, hospitals will find ways to charge more for their paying patients, so those cost burdens for them and their insurers will go up as well.

Next, turn to nursing homes. Almost two-thirds of those elderly and disabled people living in nursing homes have their care paid for by Medicaid. They have all reduced their assets to a negligible level to qualify for Medicaid coverage, enabling them to be in these facilities instead of in their children’s homes or in precarious situations living on their own.

Nearly all nursing homes rely heavily on that Medicaid revenue. Lose it, and many elderly and disabled will be out on their ears. Their families will take them in—but there is a double whammy here. The subsidies that exist for home health care, including by family members, are going to be slashed as well, leaving families with their own terrible dilemmas, worsened when trained and trusted Haitians depart.

As for the nursing homes, some will close; others will cut staff and staff pay. The ratio of residents to staff will decline, meaning residents are unable to secure help when they need it for such vital tasks as getting medications when they require them, getting help going to the bathroom, getting help in bed to prevent bedsores or worse, having responsive care during a health trauma or emergency. More unqualified staff could mean more abuse of the residents.

There will be more effects seen throughout the country, for everyone who is a part of our intertwined health care system, from those working in it to those using it. No wonder Republicans made sure none of the Medicaid cuts would happen before voters experienced the impact. It turns out that kakistocracy is not just a funny word, but a reality with horrific consequences.

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Revealed: Trump Decision Helped Poison 24,000 Americans

Ellison whines about the “needless costs” of the empire he’s buying, Melania tops the Epstein subpoena list, and Ivanka can’t buy her way into Miami’s most exclusive club

John Byrne | Raw America

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Good morning. Happy Saturday! I’m John Byrne.

David Ellison, the MAGA billionaire buying Warner Bros., is having a temper tantrum about the “needless costs” of the antitrust suit standing between him and CNN. A cyclospora outbreak that poisoned more than 24,000 Americans was worsened by a food-safety rule Trump delayed. Melania Trump just landed at the top of a Democratic subpoena list as House investigators circle the Epstein files. And here in Miami, Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner still can’t buy their way into the island club where money, for once, isn’t enough.

Raw America exists to be something legacy media can’t be: a newsroom that doesn’t answer to corporate boardrooms, doesn’t recycle the same talking points every outlet is handed, and doesn’t let gatekeepers decide what you get to know and when. Our reporters stay up late tracking incoming reports, chasing down documents, and verifying what’s real before it hits your inbox. None of that happens without you. A paid subscription costs about 22 cents a day, and every one of them goes straight toward keeping this work independent. If you’ve been reading on a free subscription, this is the week to change that. Subscribe or upgrade today.

Exposed: How Trump Made Cyclospora Outbreak Worse

Here’s what Trump’s budget cuts mean when it hits your lunch. More than 24,500 Americans have been sickened this year by cyclospora, a parasite that causes explosive diarrhea, cramps, and dehydration. The bug killed two people in Michigan. The source: iceberg lettuce from a Taylor Farms plant in Mexico, served at Taco Bell.

It took nearly two weeks to nail that down: two weeks during which Michigan health officials wrote Taco Bell’s parent company three separate times begging for supply-chain records.

Here’s why: a federal rule, drafted under the 2011 Food Safety Modernization Act and set to take effect this past January, that would have forced the company to hand those records over in 24 hours. But the Trump administration delayed it until mid-2028, saying companies needed “more time to prepare.” Then Republicans in Congress went further; they barred the FDA from spending a dime to enforce it.

“Time translates into illnesses and lives,” one food-policy expert told the New York Times.

And there’s more. The delay wasn’t the only cut. Trump’s FDA also fired staff who supported food inspectors and coordinated with foreign governments. In addition, Trump killed a program that specifically tracked cyclospora. Foreign food inspections last year hit a 15-year low.

This is what happens when you treat the agencies that keep food safe as waste to be trimmed: people eat lunch, and some of them die.

You won’t get this honesty from the Washington Post, an outlet whose owner is kneeling to Trump. If the truth matters to you, become a paying subscriber. Just 22 cents a day keeps our lights on. Upgrade your subscription today.

Melania Tops the Epstein Subpoena List

No matter how hard Trump’s White House works to bury them, the Epstein files aren’t going away. Katie Phang, the lawyer and journalist suing Attorney General Todd Blanche to force the release of remaining records, said this week that if Democrats retake the House in the midterms, one name sits at the very top of the subpoena list: Melania Trump.

Rep. Robert Garcia, the ranking Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, explained it this way. Republicans set a precedent, he said, when they subpoenaed and questioned first ladies, former first ladies, and presidential family members, going after the Clintons and Hunter Biden. Garcia intends to use that same precedent.

“Does anyone here across the country think that the first lady doesn’t have additional information?” he asked. Melania and Epstein were photographed together with Trump and Ghislaine Maxwell at Mar-a-Lago in February 2000.

Melania’s strange April press conference, where she denied being Epstein’s friend while at the same time calling on Congress to let survivors testify, only sharpened investigators’ interest.

“If Melania Trump wants real justice for the survivors, then she would work with us to try to get the truth,” Garcia said. The midterms will decide whether he gets to ask.

The One Thing the Trumps Can’t Buy

For all the corruption that money greases open in this administration, here’s a small, delicious exception. And it’s happening a few miles from my desk, here in Miami Beach.

Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner have spent years trying to break into the Indian Creek Country Club, a century-old Miami institution on the 300-acre island known as the “Billionaire Bunker.” The members still won’t have them.

According to the Wall Street Journal, the couple owns a lot on the island and got sponsored for membership by the widow of legendary Dolphins coach Don Shula, and still only about half the club’s board bothered to show up to their own housewarming party. When the message is that blunt, you’re not getting in.

They’re not the only rejects. Jeff Bezos recently spent $234 million to buy three properties on the island and still hasn’t landed an invite. This comes six months after personally working the room at a February dock party. Even the CEO of Goldman Sachs had to survive an organized petition against his membership before he got in.

Kushner, ever the player, has hit on a novel angle: fix the sewage. The president’s son-in-law took a seat on the Indian Creek Village governing board and helped broker a deal to repair the island’s aging septic system, which has been leaking waste into Biscayne Bay for years. A new pump station is conveniently going in across from his own house.

Ivanka, meanwhile, is playing golf with members and turning up at events. There’s something hilarious about the family that bent the entire federal government to its will reduced to handling everyone’s raw sewage.

Ellison Complains About the Cost of the Empire He’s Buying

Speaking of money: there’s a special kind of nerve required to spend $111 billion swallowing American media and then complaining it costs too much.

On Friday, Paramount announced that Mexico had approved its acquisition of Warner Bros., joining the European Union, the UK, and Trump’s own Justice Department. The only thing left in Ellison’s way is a coalition of 12 Democratic state attorneys general, led by California, which sued in July to block the deal.

Trump lackey David Ellison — the buyer — is furious. In a Friday news dump, Paramount whined that the states are inflicting “needless costs from penalty fees, litigation expenses and business disruption.”

Ellison’s problem? A $7 million-a-day “ticking fee” owed to Warner Bros. shareholders that kicks in October 1. Ellison would like the states out of his way before then. He’s even threatened to yank Paramount out of California, to Texas, Tennessee, or Georgia, if Sacramento won’t play ball.

California’s Attorney General isn’t blinking. His office says the merger means “higher costs, less competition, lower wages, job cuts, and fewer movies and TV shows.” A judge has already found the states likely to win at trial, and Ellison has conceded that the deal may take a year.

This is the same David Ellison whose family circled CNN and now controls CBS. When we tell you a handful of MAGA billionaires are vacuuming up the outlets that control what Americans see and hear, this is the man we mean. And he’s mad the law is slowing him down.

Before You Go, Help Support Independent Media

If today’s edition handed you something the billionaire outlets are busy softening, the best thing you can do is become a paying subscriber. And ask yourself why you had to come here to read half of it. When a handful of oligarchs own the megaphone, the story stops being what happened and quietly becomes whatever they’ll let you hear about it. Major outlets won’t tell you that Trump got caught destroying our food safety, Melania got fingered as an Epstein witness, and David Ellison got caught grousing. Instead, these stories will be softened by outlets owned by people who still need something from Trump. We ran it all because nobody owns us but our readers. Subscribe or upgrade right now.

I’m John Byrne. Thanks for reading, and thanks for supporting independent media. I’ll see you tomorrow.

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Revealed: Trump’s Creepy Surveillance Operation Against American Protestors

Veterans in Congress say Hegseth "lying" about U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln, Trump DHS caught spying on Minneapolis protesters, White House considers more tax cuts for the rich

Raw America | Substack

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Good morning. I’m Thom Hartmann.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is facing accusations from veterans in Congress of lying to military families about the horrendous conditions on the U.S.S Abraham Lincoln, where sailors have reportedly tried to jump overboard. Podcaster Joe Rogan, who endorsed Trump in 2024, is now using his platform to condemn the president for using his office to add billions to his own personal net worth. Newly surfaced documents confirm that ICE and the Department of Homeland Security spied on left-wing groups protesting the execution of nurse Alex Pretti in Minneapolis. And the White House is reportedly now considering yet another round of tax cuts aimed at making the wealthiest Americans even richer.

Before we get into the news, a brief ask: we’re up against a cadre of impossibly wealthy MAGA oligarchs tied at the hip to the Trump regime, who are all using their billions to buy as many news outlets as they can so they can quietly snuff out all dissent and make themselves the sole deciders of what we get to know. Raw America will never take a dime from a billionaire, because we know that means they get to control what gets reported and what gets buried. But to be perfectly honest, we’re short on our fundraising goals this month and need free readers like you who value the importance of independent journalism to chip in. The good news: you can upgrade to a paying subscription for just 22 cents a day. That’s it. For less than a cup of coffee, you can make sure we stay independent and answer to no one else but you, the reader.

Every dollar of every paid subscription directly funds our reporters, editors, video producers and on-air hosts working hard for you. That includes on-the-ground exclusives from Raw America White House correspondent Brian Karem, who wrote this bombshell report about what Trump’s inner circle is really saying about him leaving them on a decoy jet as sitting ducks for a potential missile attack. It also pays for our live interviews with top newsmakers like Hunter Biden, who will be sitting down with Raw America managing editor Carl Gibson today at 2 PM ET. Watch live on our homepage at Raw America | Substack. Now let’s get into the news.

Veterans Say Hegseth ‘Lying’ to Military Families About Dire Conditions on Aircraft Carrier

Members of Congress who served in the military are accusing Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth of blatantly lying about what’s happening on board the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln. That’s the aircraft carrier that’s been on an extended deployment in the Middle East. The ship is carrying approximately 5,000 sailors and Marines who were expecting to be home three months ago.

Those service members are struggling to keep it together amid brutal conditions, according to family members, veterans and reporting from multiple outlets. They’re having to contend with moldy showers, long stretches with no hot water, shortages of various crucial supplies, toilets continuously out of service and even laundry rooms that have been inaccessible for weeks.

There’s also a significant mental health toll for the Marines and sailors on the carrier. Family members say a medical professional on the ship warned commanding officers that the crew needed to reach port before people started — in their words — “losing their minds.” At least one sailor reportedly tried to jump overboard before other crew members intervened.

Hegseth’s response to these claims was to downplay and dismiss them. He said the reports about the ship’s conditions “completely misrepresented” what is supposedly happening. He told reporters during a press gaggle in Panama that every ship has every amenity the Pentagon can provide.

Democratic Senator Ruben Gallego of Arizona, who served in the Iraq War as a Marine corporal himself, said he’s in direct contact with a military spouse who’s been forwarding him her husband’s text messages from the ship. Gallego told Hegseth to stop lying and fix the problem.

Democratic Congressman Seth Moulton of Massachusetts, a captain in the Marine Corps who also served in Iraq, also cast doubt on Hegseth’s claims. Moulton made sure to remind reporters that this is the same defense secretary who’s already been caught misusing classified information in last year’s “Signalgate” scandal. He also observed if everything’s fine on that ship, why is the Navy now rushing to replace it with the U.S.S. George Washington?

U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM), which oversees military operations in the Middle East, put out a statement last night pushing back on some unproven and debunked claims, like sailors reportedly dying in a brawl. But that statement notably never addressed the specific complaints from military families who have loved ones on board about the lack of food, showers and working toilets. CENTCOM did confirm one sailor went overboard, though the statement said he “fell” rather than addressing the accounts from families that described the sailor deliberately trying to jump into the sea.

The crew of the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln has now spent more than 260 days at sea. That’s more of a stress test than a standard rotation, and it’s happening while the people at the top of the chain of command try to tell us there’s nothing to see here.

George Washington spent the winter of 1777 at Valley Forge writing letter after letter to Congress about men with no shoes and no meat, because he knew a republic that hides what it's doing to its own soldiers has already started lying to itself. We didn't build a citizen military so the people running it could tell the families back home that everything's fine.

‘Literally Crazy’: Joe Rogan Calls Out Trump’s ‘Shady’ Corruption

Podcast host Joe Rogan, who endorsed Donald Trump’s 2024 campaign, spent a significant portion of his most recent episode condemning Trump and his family using the office of the president to pad their pockets with billions of dollars.

Rogan honed in on Trump’s crypto ventures as one prime example of corruption. Since his second term, Trump has pushed pro-crypto policies all while his family’s businesses have aggressively expanded their footprint into the crypto industry. Trump has already profited to the tune of roughly $1.4 billion from crypto, including his $TRUMP memecoin, which has plummeted approximately 97 percent in value since it launched last year. This means that while the Trump family made out like bandits, everyone else lost their shirts in what appears to be a textbook rugpull scheme.

Rogan went on to say this president has brazenly done things no American president has ever done before, specifically pointing to Trump’s sons, Don Jr. and Eric, being entangled in a plethora of “shady” crypto deals. He told comedian Shane Gillis, his guest, that there’s so much money moving around that if regulators wanted to, they could dig deep and find real problems.

The podcaster added that while all of this is technically legal, he’s not sure it should be.

Florida Atlantic University political science professor Craig Agronoff told Newsweek that Rogan’s analysis is spot-on, pointing out that no modern president has ever reported personal income from one specific industry of this level while simultaneously shaping the regulations governing that very same industry. Past presidents put their assets in blind trusts to avoid the appearance of self-dealing, but Trump has notably refused to do the same.

Rogan also took aim at Trump Media and Technology Group (TMTG), which is the parent company of the president’s Truth Social platform. The company recently launched a subscription service charging between $60,000 and $100,000 a month for early access to Trump’s market-moving posts. A new lawsuit is making the argument that this amounts to selling privileged access to information generated through the president’s official duties. Several high-frequency trading firms have already subscribed.

Trump remains the largest shareholder of TMTG, with an equity stake worth approximately $1 billion.

Rogan’s reaction to Trump selling early access to posts for $100,000 a month was probably what most of us were thinking, called it “literally crazy.”

The White House response was, of course, a boilerplate denial of any conflicts of interest, with the president’s assets supposedly being held in independently managed accounts. Sure thing. Whatever you say.

After Watergate, Congress passed the Ethics in Government Act of 1978 to force presidents to open their books, because the country had just learned what happens when a man treats the office as personal property. Legal and clean aren't the same thing, and Rogan just said out loud what a lot of his own listeners have been quietly thinking.

ICE Caught Spying on Left-Wing Groups After Killing of Alex Pretti

In Minneapolis, January’s fatal shooting of 37-year-old V.A. nurse Alex Pretti by federal agents triggered a uniquely ominous response from the Trump administration.

Rather than investigating the agents who pulled the trigger — as is standard in any fatal shooting across law enforcement agencies — the Trump administration instead turned its investigative power on the people protesting them.

The New York Times just reported that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) proceeded to open investigations into labor unions, a climate change group, socialist organizations, and other leftists in an attempt to find out if they provided aid to “violent opportunists and agitators.”

This was a widespread effort. Government documents show federal agencies gathered intelligence on Americans who were never suspected or accused of any crimes. The Trump administration subpoenaed three years of financial records from the Sunrise Movement, which is a youth-led climate group. They did the same for the Communications Workers of America, which is the labor union representing journalists and editors at numerous media outlets, including at Raw America’s sister organization, Raw Story.

The Trump administration also investigated the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), which is the nation’s largest union of healthcare workers. Investigators demanded three years of the SEIU’s wire transfer records, saying they were inquiring about “domestic terrorist financing.” But those time periods included in the government’s request predate the very operation the administration claims justified its crackdown in Minneapolis, suggesting this was more about intimidation than investigation.

Federal agents also reportedly conducted extensive surveillance operations at various libraries, parks and churches, as well as online meetings of these groups. They took down license plate numbers of vehicles at these locations, gathered names and assembled details of discussion topics. They even infiltrated private Signal group chats to get details of planned protests and even the political opinions of the organizers.

Federal prosecutors went on to present a grand jury with a slide alleging a massive conspiracy to obstruct immigration operations that involved eighteen separate groups, including the AFL-CIO, which is the largest labor union in America.

Again, none of the groups the Trump administration targeted were ever charged with a crime. But in June, the Justice Department charged 15 individual protesters with interfering with immigration operations, framing them as part of the antifascist movement as if opposing fascism is a crime. The protesters maintain their actions are protected by the First Amendment.

This all shows the motivations aren’t to safeguard Americans’ constitutional rights. When a nurse was executed in broad daylight, the government’s response was to spy on people exercising their First Amendment rights rather than looking into their own agents’ conduct.

In 1958, the Supreme Court ruled in NAACP v. Alabama that a state couldn't force a group to hand over its membership lists, because the justices understood that exposure is itself the punishment and fear is the whole point. Swapping membership lists for three years of bank records doesn't change what's happening here; it just updates the technology.

Trump Wants to Cut Taxes for the Richest Americans — Again

With less than three months before a midterm election in which voters have the affordability crisis at the top of their minds, the Trump White House has apparently decided the best thing to do is to talk about potentially giving even more tax cuts to the wealthiest Americans.

According to Bloomberg, the Trump administration is weighing two specific proposals: one would peg capital gains taxes (which are exclusively paid by investors rather than people who actually work for a living) to inflation. The other would exempt home sales from capital gains tax up to $2 million. That’s a significant increase from the current exemption of $500,000.

It’s worth remembering that tax cuts for the rich are a genuinely unpopular position with a broad swath of the American public. Gallup has tracked this question since 1939, and as of right now, 52 percent of Americans say the government should redistribute wealth by imposing higher taxes on the rich. Pew Research found in April that 61 percent of Americans — and even 41 percent of Republicans — think the richest Americans don’t pay enough taxes.

So naturally, the Trump administration is trying to characterize these proposals as a benefit to the middle class.

So what would these proposals actually do? The Yale Budget Lab estimates that tying capital gains taxes to inflation would cost anywhere from $170 billion to $1 trillion over the course of a decade, depending on how it’s applied. The benefits are also extremely slanted in favor of the super-rich, as anyone making less than $100,000 would get almost nothing, while people making over $3 million a year would get a tax cut of roughly $350,000 annually.

As for the $2 million capital gains exemption, the National Association of Realtors says that would only help the richest 15 percent of homeowners, which is already far wealthier than the rest of the U.S. population. The other 85 percent are already not subjected to any capital gains taxes from home sales.

This proposal comes after last year’s tax cuts in Trump’s Big Ugly Bill already slashed federal tax revenues by an estimated $570 billion. Trump’s tariff rebates, which the Supreme Court allowed after striking down Trump’s tariffs as unconstitutional, amount to billions more in lost revenue. Those tariff rebates, by the way, went to the same corporations that gouged us with higher prices, and yet consumers got no rebate at all.

If this government truly wanted to bring down housing costs, they could consider real solutions like zoning reform, new investments in infrastructure, scrapping tariffs on imported construction materials like lumber and steel, and increasing subsidies for low-income housing. Handing out even more tax breaks to millionaires isn’t one of them.

Americans ratified the Sixteenth Amendment in 1913 for one reason, and that reason was the conviction that great fortunes owe something back to the country that made them possible. A century later, we're being told the way to fix housing costs is to hand another break to the people who already own most of the housing.

Before You Go, Support Journalism That Doesn’t Take Money from Billionaires

We all know the MAGA billionaires who control the biggest news outlets in America — like David Ellison at CBS, Jeff Bezos at the Washington Post, Rupert Murdoch at Fox and the Wall Street Journal, and Patrick Soon-Shiong at the Los Angeles Times — would never cover these stories this way. If it were up to them, they’d be watered down beyond recognition or buried entirely. That’s why here at Raw America, we’ll never take a penny from a billionaire owner or corporate parent. We refuse to allow ourselves to be silenced or censored just to stay funded.

Being fully independent of billionaire and corporate money means we can do hard-hitting journalism that the other outlets can’t, like Raw America White House correspondent Brian Karem’s latest report that includes direct quotes from members of Trump’s inner circle who told us they resented being treated like “cannon fodder” by being left to die on a decoy jet. Our paying subscribers also make it possible for us to broadcast live interviews with the people this government doesn’t want you to hear from, like Hunter Biden, who we’ll be interviewing today at 2 PM ET. You can catch that interview on our homepage at Raw America | Substack.

I’m Thom Hartmann. Thanks for watching, and thanks for supporting independent media. Have a great weekend.

Here are some stories you may have missed:

• Trump Treasury Department’s New Policy Is a Gift to Money Launderers. This week, President Donald Trump’s Treasury Department announced it would be scrapping its registry of shell company ownership. In her latest column for the Bulwark, Catherine Rampell pointed out that this flies in the face of existing federal law requiring the Treasury Department to maintain a shell company database in order to crack down on money laundering operations. Not only is the Treasury eliminating future gathering of shell company data, but its destroying its current database, meaning no future administration or law enforcement agency can access it.
• Female Federal Employees Accuse Trump Administration of Blocking Sexual Harassment Lawsuits. A new lawsuit from Deanna Chelette and Alexzandria Boyd, who are employed as guards at the federal prison in Pollock, Louisiana, alleges that Andrea Lucas, the Trump-appointed chair of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) is deliberately refusing to investigate sexual harassment claims. Chelette and Boyd say their superiors at the prison are refusing to restrain and discipline inmates who are harassing correctional officers. Lucas implemented a policy on December 10 of freezing all class-action complaints from federal workers.
• CNN MAGA Commentator Gives Update on Mitch McConnell. CNN commentator Scott Jennings — the one-time political director for Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) recently provided an update on the 84-year-old senator during a recent appearance on “The Arena with Kasie Hunt.” Jennings said McConnell “seemed to be doing a lot better” since his return home from a rehab facility. McConnell still has yet to make any public appearances since his June 14 hospitalization, which his staff attributed to a fall and a brief episode of pneumonia. McConnell staff has said he’ll continue to work from home while he continues his recovery. His lengthy absence from the Senate has meant missed votes on everything from War Powers Act resolutions to confirmation votes for federal judges.

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