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Judge Halts Ellisons’ Attempt to Buy CNN’s Parent Company

This story is a genuine win for anyone worried about media consolidation.

A federal judge just hit pause on a planned $110 billion merger between Warner Bros. Discovery and Paramount Skydance. U.S. District Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín — a Joe Biden appointee — issued a 14-day restraining order, siding with 12 Democratic attorneys general who argued the merger would jack up consumer prices and give consumers fewer choices.

Judge Martínez-Olguín wrote in her ruling that there are still serious questions about the merger’s legality, and that the public would benefit from enforcing antitrust law designed to encourage competition and discourage monopolies.

Paramount says it plans to appeal the ruling. But California Attorney General Rob Bonta, who is leading the coalition of states opposing it, called it a critical early win,. He cautioned that media consolidation negatively everyone’s daily life when one billionaire or company is allowed free rein to limit competition and put out worse products.

The mega-merger would have combined two massive film studios, two streaming platforms, and two news organizations — including CNN — under one man: David Ellison. He’s the son of billionaire Larry Ellison, one of the world’s richest men who also happens to be one of Donald Trump’s biggest donors.

Ellison hosted a dinner honoring the Trump White House back in April. Trump himself was there, along with Marco Rubio, Stephen Miller, Pete Hegseth and Todd Blanche. Just a few weeks later, the DOJ’s antitrust division closed its antitrust investigation and cleared the way for the merger.

Now Paramount is in a bind. It promised Warner Bros. shareholders a penalty of $600 million each quarter if the deal didn’t close by September 30. That bet looked a lot safer when Trump’s DOJ seemed ready to fast-track the whole thing.

This is the exact same playbook we see in authoritarian regimes around the world. Billionaires court the leader, the leader’s regulators grease the skids, and a handful of wealthy oligarchs decide what news the people get to see. For now, a judge stopped it. But the fight isn’t over.

Republicans Admit Their Finances Are Worse Under Trump

New polling from the Washington Post, ABC News and Ipsos shows 65 percent of American adults disapprove of how Trump is handling the economy. A full two-thirds of Americans say groceries are flat out unaffordable. And 59 percent don’t believe they have a good shot at improving their standard of living.

Only 17 percent of adults say they feel better off today than when Trump’s second term began. A whopping 43 percent say they feel worse off.

The most shocking part of the poll? Among non-MAGA Republicans, the share of respondents who feel worse off jumped from 22 percent in April to 35 percent in July, while the share of people who feel better off dropped from 23 percent to 16 percent. Those trends should be a flashing red light to everyone in the White House.

Even among White evangelical Protestants, who are typically one of the most reliably Republican voting blocs in the country, the number who feel worse off climbed from 19 percent to 26 percent.

Inflation cooled slightly in June, down to 3.5 percent from 4.2 percent in April, That’s largely because gas prices fell during the brief ceasefire with Iran. But gas has since climbed back above $4 a gallon after the Iran war flared up again.

A Harris Poll from late May and early June found that 95 percent of Americans believe the country is in an affordability crisis. And a majority of those polled, 57 percent, believe the economy is getting worse, up from 46 percent in February.

The share of Republicans who think things are improving fell from 49 percent to 27 percent over that same stretch. The affordability crisis isn’t a partisan issue. Americans of all political stripes are now screaming for help.

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Trump DOJ Sends Subpoenas to Reporters’ Families

Newly unsealed court documents show the Trump DOJ’s subpoena campaign against New York Times journalists went even further than previously believed. The DOJ sought phone records not just for reporters, but for members of their own families.

That includes the phone numbers of two reporters’ spouses, one of whom works as general counsel at a major law firm, and the phone number of another reporter’s mother, who works as a mental health professional who is bound by provider-patient confidentiality.

These subpoenas came after an earlier attempt to compel reporters to testify before a federal grand jury about their reporting on security issues with Trump’s gift jet from Qatar’s royal family. While the DOJ defended the subpoenas as consistent with federal law and department policy pertaining to national security, the New York Times said the government’s conduct suggests this isn’t really about national security at all.

The Times found in its initial report that Secret Service officials reportedly had concerns that were serious enough to merit Trump flying back from the NATO summit in Turkey on an older Air Force One jet while the Qatari plane went to an airbase in the United Kingdom.

Here’s the most worrying detail about the latest subpoenas: the DOJ is reportedly demanding phone records dating back to the beginning of 2026, which is obviously well before the articles in question were published. The Times’ lawyers argue that the DOJ’s real goal is to learn who the reporters’ sources really are.

The Times also said the DOJ never told the reporters it was trying to access their records through a third party, and accused the department of acting in bad faith. A government going after journalists’ spouses and mothers to find out their sources is textbook intimidation, and is the exact kind of thing we’re not supposed to have in a democracy.

Republicans Worry Trump’s 2020 Conspiracy Theories Harming Their Own Chances

Trump used his primetime address last week to revive his debunked 2020 election fraud conspiracy theories, and called on Republicans to push for bans on mail-in ballot bans. He also demanded purges of state voter rolls and investigations into what he alleged was a deep state cover-up.

Republican candidates are now apparently doing their best to tune all of that out.

The day after Trump’s speech, former Republican National Committee chairman Michael Whatley, who is now running for North Carolina’s open U.S. Senate seat, held a 34-minute campaign event that never mentioned Trump’s claims. When a reporter asked him about it, Whatley offered a vague line about election integrity and moved on. Whatley is currently trailing his Democratic opponent, Roy Cooper, who is the former two-term governor of North Carolina.

Texas Republican U.S. Senator John Cornyn also didn’t hold back. He told the Washington Post he doesn’t understand why anyone’s talking about 2020 with a little more than 100 days left before the midterms.

Republican strategists are consistently finding that voters care a lot more about affordability and the cost of living than Trump’s stale grievances from six years ago. One strategist told the Washington Post that candidates who aren’t talking about the economy simply are risking losing the attention of voters.

Despite Trump’s unfounded conspiracies, he’s still the president, and he’s using his government to pursue his debunked claims to the ends of the earth. Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin recently threatened to jail state election officials who refuse to “scrub” their voter rolls. Mullin doesn’t actually have the power to do that, as Congress would have to pass legislation to make that official. But the threat itself shows how serious this administration is about legitimizing Trump’s conspiracy theories, even if it hurts Republicans’ electoral chances.

Keep Raw America Independent

This administration has done its best to consolidate ownership of America’ biggest media outlets under a handful of his friends and donors. This includes Jeff Bezos at the Washington Post, Patrick Soon-Shiong at the Los Angeles Times, and the Ellison family at CBS News.

Today’s ruling was a small but important victory in the fight against the billionaire takeover of the media. But the best counter to MAGA oligarchs trying to control the narrative is healthy independent journalism that doesn’t answer to anyone but readers.

Raw America is completely funded by our readers. We’ll never self-censor to appease advertisers, and we never have to worry about a wealthy owner pulling the plug on a story that may harm their pending federal contract. But we’re currently behind on our fundraising, and we need more readers to help close the gap. If you found this newsletter valuable, the best thing you can do is become a paying subscriber right now. Can you take a moment to keep independent journalism alive?

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Thanks for watching. I’m British Chris. We’ll see you tomorrow.

Here are some stories you may have missed:

• Colorado River Drying Up at Its Source. The Colorado River — which provides drinking water for tens of millions of Americans across seven western states — is reportedly drying up at its source in the Rocky Mountains. In addition to climate change making rainfall and snowpack numbers more unpredictable, the proliferation of data centers had also had a profound impact on water resources, with data centers requiring hundreds of millions of gallons of water every year to cool servers.

• Trump’s Border Czar Says ICE Made No Mistakes in Minnesota Despite Killings of U.S. Citizens. Border Czar Tom Homan said Monday that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents didn’t make any mistakes during its crackdown in Minnesota this winter. Those comments came despite federal agents killing U.S. citizens Renee Good and Alex Pretti, both of whom were killed on video in broad daylight. Without saying their names, Homan said the people who died at the hands of ICE agents were killed because they “failed to comply with law enforcement.”

• Democratic U.S. Senate Candidate in Alaska Out-Raises Republican Incumbent. Democrat Mary Peltola, who is running against Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska) in one of the most competitive U.S. Senate races this fall, vastly out-raised her opponent in the second quarter of 2026. Federal campaign finance filings show that Peltola’s campaign brought in $6.9 million since April 1, while the Sullivan campaign raised $2 million. However, Sullivan has more than $10 million spread across all campaign organizations and another $8 million on hand in his campaign account, while Peltola has just $6 million in cash on hand.

FIFA quietly edited Donald Trump out of World Cup victory photos after he refused to leave the stage during Spain’s celebration. Trump’s Pentagon has been caught hiding dozens of American casualties from the Iran war. A new national poll shows a plurality of American voters think it’s wrong for the federal government to be taking ownership stakes in private companies, and even MAGA is deeply split on the idea. And there are new concerns about the vulnerability of American elections to foreign meddling due to the Trump administration’s budget cuts to election security agencies.

Before we get into it, we want to sincerely thank every reader who decided to become a paying subscriber to Raw America. You keep the lights on. That’s not a figure of speech. We don’t have a billionaire backer, a hedge fund behind the scenes or an ad department urging us to censor out of fear of what the White House might say. We have you. And that won’t change as long as we can help it.

If you haven’t yet become a paying subscriber, we hope that will change after reading this newsletter. You and I are the very last people standing in the way of the billionaires capturing the free press one outlet at a time. Oligarchs like Jeff Bezos and David Ellison are counting on you to sit on your hands. If you’ve been reading for free and you’ve been planning to upgrade, this is when it matters most.

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FIFA Edits Trump Out of Spain’s World Cup Victory Photo After He Tries to Photobomb It

Spain beat Argentina 1-0 in extra time on Sunday night to win the World Cup final. It should have been a moment of pure celebration for Spain’s national team. Instead, it turned into a diplomatic conundrum, because Donald Trump decided to make himself the center of the trophy ceremony.

Trump took the stage alongside FIFA president Gianni Infantino to greet the Spanish champions. Several players appeared visibly reluctant to shake his hand. That should have been the end of it. Instead, Trump planted himself front and center as the team’s captain, Rodrigo Hernández Cascante, or Rodri, prepared to lift the trophy.

Rodri tried to usher him off the stage, but Trump stayed put. Spanish radio commentator Dani Garrido described how Rodri held his position until Trump finally stepped offstage, calling it an act of real personality on Rodri’s part.

Eventually Infantino guided Trump to the side, and Rodri lifted the cup. But by then, FIFA’s official account on social media had already decided how to handle it. When FIFA posted the celebratory photo, Trump had been cropped out entirely. The Spanish Football Federation went even further, choosing to use a photo taken seconds after Trump had walked away, so there was no cropping required at all.

Spain may have been prepared for a Trump photobomb given how Trump did something similar last summer at the Club World Cup. After Chelsea won the tournament, Trump wedged himself into the middle of the trophy photo next to Chelsea’s captain. The Spaniards seemed a lot more comfortable letting King Felipe VI join their celebration.

It may seem small in the scheme of things, but Spain’s refusal to let Trump bask in their glory is still pretty significant. Even foreign institutions with no stake in American politics are now editing this president out of their own coverage rather than deal with his behavior.

They used to joke that Theodore Roosevelt wanted to be the bride at every wedding and the corpse at every funeral, and we laughed because it was harmless vanity in a man who otherwise respected the office. When a president needs to stand at the center of everyone else’s triumph, and neutral institutions around the world quietly crop him out rather than feed it, that vanity stops being a punchline and starts telling us something about the man we’ve handed the most powerful job on earth.

Trump’s Pentagon Caught Hiding American Casualties of Iran War

Iran recently carried out three separate strikes against American troops in Jordan which wounded dozens of U.S. service members and damaged multiple helicopters. The Pentagon never told the American public.

The Defense Department remained silent about the Jordan strikes until Friday, when a fourth Iranian attack killed two American soldiers and left another service member missing. But the three earlier attacks, and their resulting injuries still haven’t been fully accounted for.

U.S. Central Command framed its statements to the media about last week’s airstrikes as a response to Iranian attacks on commercial ships in the Strait of Hormuz. CENTCOM didn’t mention Iran’s strikes on American bases in the Middle East, and it has refused to announce how many sites it’s hitting inside Iran each day.

Military officials defending the media blackout say it’s necessary for operational security, arguing that disclosing casualties could help Iran perfect its missile and drone targeting. While that’s a valid concern, it’s also true that the last time we got a substantial briefing from the Pentagon on the Iran war was nearly three months ago.

Friday’s deaths bring the total number of American troops killed since the war began in late February to 16. There have also been more than 400 service members injured, though the Pentagon quietly stopped updating that running total in more recent weeks.

This is entirely unprecedented compared to previous administrations. During Joe Biden’s presidency, the Pentagon regularly reported casualties when Iran-backed militias attacked American bases in Iraq and Syria. But under Trump, basic information we used to get as a matter of routine now has to be dragged out through anonymous sourcing.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said the deaths would harden American resolve. Trump said the soldiers died serving their country, and repeated his line about refusing to let Iran develop nuclear weapons. Noticeably, neither one explained why the earlier attacks were kept quiet in the first place.

We learned it the hard way with the Pentagon Papers, that when the Defense Department starts deciding which parts of a war the public is allowed to see, it’s almost never to protect the troops and almost always to protect the people who started the war. A government that can hide the wounded can hide anything, and a war whose human cost the public isn’t permitted to know is a war being waged without our consent.

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Most Voters Disapprove of the Trump Administration Buying Equity Stakes in Private Companies

A new CNBC All-America Economic survey finds that a plurality of American voters, 49 percent, think it’s inappropriate for the federal government to take ownership stakes in private companies. Only 19 percent defended the practice. Roughly a third are undecided.

The Trump administration has already negotiated roughly 30 equity deals with private companies worth nearly $27 billion, according to the Council on Foreign Relations. The administration is purportedy in talks to take on a stake in Sam Altman’s OpenAI if the company launches an initial public offering.

The biggest deal so far came last August, when the federal government took a 10 percent stake in chip manufacturer Intel in exchange for grant money that the Biden administration had already approved. That stake has shot up in value by 372 percent as of last week, and is now worth roughly $42 billion.

Even Republicans are wary of the implications of the U.S. government partially owning private companies. Senator John Hoeven of North Dakota said he understands the appeal for taxpayers but urged caution. Senator Jon Husted of Ohio said while partial government ownership may have some national security justification, it still shouldn’t be permanent. He’s now sponsoring legislation that would cap those investments at eight years.

The Pentagon’s backing of a rare earth mining company to reduce dependence on China may have some national security value. But that may not be the key reason, as ProPublica reported that the White House pushed the Pentagon to support the company as it was linked to the president’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., whose firm ultimately got a $620 million dollar loan from U.S. taxpayers. The White House called the report fake news. A spokesperson for the president’s son said he wasn’t personally involved.

CNBC’s poll shows that it isn’t just Democrats who are skeptical of the practice of government taking a stake in private companies. Self-identified MAGA Republicans are split almost evenly, with 31 percent calling it appropriate and 31 percent saying it’s inappropriate. Whatever else is happening, the administration clearly hasn’t effectively sold the public on this.

The men who wrote the Constitution had just finished a revolution against a crown that treated the public treasury like a family bank account, so they wrote a rule right into the founding document barring officeholders from cashing in on their positions. When federal money starts flowing toward companies tied to the president’s own son, we’re not watching clever industrial policy, we’re watching the precise thing that clause was written to prevent.

Trump’s Budget Cuts Leave American Elections Open to Foreign Meddling

The midterms are just months away, and the Trump administration has spent the last year systematically cutting staff and dismantling the government infrastructure built to detect and disrupt foreign disinformation campaigns aimed at U.S. elections.

This is happening all while the Trump regime has sounded the alarm about foreign disinformation around the Iran war. It’s a strange contradiction to warn about a threat while simultaneously eliminating the tools designed to counter it.

In 2024, both China and Russia launched disinformation campaigns targeting congressional races, though they refrained from getting involved in the presidential race. Most governments would have responded by strengtheniing the guardrails ahead of the 2026 midterms. Not this government.

Between January and August of last year alone, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence cut more than 500 staff members, amounting to roughly 30 percent of its total workforce. Then-Director Tulsi Gabbard announced further cuts to the Foreign Malign Influence Center, which is tasked with tracking these campaigns, including one Iran-backed effort that targeted Trump himself. Its duties have since been scattered across various other offices.

The FBI also quietly shuttered its foreign influence task force, which was created in response to Russia’s documented interference in the 2016 election. The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency has since lost roughly a third of its workforce, with hundreds more positions reassigned. Trump’s newest budget plan would impose even more cuts on the agency. More than a dozen CISA staffers who monitored foreign disinformation campaigns were reportedly among those fired. And Marco Rubio’s State Department completely shut down its Global Engagement Center.

It’s important to note that foreign governments have never successfully manipulated states’ vote counts or hacked American voting machines. But foreign disinformation campaigns — particularly those supercharged by generative AI capable of producing deepfakes at a massive scale — have become a regular and problematic feature of today’s elections. And the government’s ability to detect and respond to them has now been deliberately hollowed out right on the eve of a major election.

Almost 90 years ago, watching foreign propaganda seep into our politics, Congress passed the Foreign Agents Registration Act to drag that influence out into the open where American voters could actually see it. It tells you everything that the offices built to do that work are being quietly dismantled in the months before an election, because the surest way to hand a foreign disinformation campaign a victory is to fire the people whose only job was to catch it.

Be Part of the 5 Percent

The administration is trying to lie to us every day. The fact that Donald Trump and Pete Hegseth are trying to conceal injuries to American troops during a war is a flashing red light showing just how important it is to have a Fourth Estate that refuses to let power operate in darkness.

But too many media outlets are being hollowed out from within by billionaire owners who want to censor journalism to curry favor with the administration. Jeff Bezos owns the Washington Post. The LA Times is owned by a MAGA billionaire who has made it clear that he wants to steer the paper in a rightward direction. But Raw America remains courageous, and we’re committed to calling it like it is.

This is all because we’re entirely funded by readers. We don’t have an owner to please, or advertiser spooked when we show a spine, or an FCC license to maintain. But we’re behind on our fundraising numbers.

If just one in 20 people who read this — five percent — become paying subscribers, we can fund our entire reporting budget right now. That includes our White House reporter Brian Karem, our Capitol Hill reporter Luke De Cresce and our editors and video producers.

Will you be one of the five percent?

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I’m Thom Hartmann. Thanks for reading. And thanks for supporting independent media.

Here are a few stories you may have missed:

• Pentagon Releases Names of Troops Killed in Iranian Airstrikes. The Department of Defense announced Monday that 25 year-old 1st Lt. Tyler James Feehan of Ewa Beach, Hawaii and 19 year-old Pvt. Isabella Gonzales of Carrollton, Texas were killed by Iranian airstrikes in Jordan last week. Their deaths marked the first time since March that U.S. troops were killed in the war, which has been ongoing since February with a brief detente in June that ultimately fell apart.

• U.S. Teeters on Brink of All-Out War After More Troops Die. One unnamed Pentagon official recently told the Washington Post that “the U.S. is planning for a wider war” with Iran after recent strikes killed American troops in Jordan. That official added, however, that the U.S. response to those troop deaths will be somewhat limited given that its air defense and long-range munitions have been significantly depleted since the war began this winter. Military experts are also cautioning against ground troops in Iran, saying the U.S. military isn’t prepared for the resources such an action would require.

• Trump’s Budget Cuts to CDC Created ‘Perfect Storm’ That Led to Cyclospora Outbreak. Dr. Joel Barratt — who previously led the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention team tasked with monitoring parasitic outbreaks — recently described how the Trump administration reducing his staff from 11 to 3 and cutting his office’s budget by $30 million led to the cyclospora outbreak causing explosive diarrhea for thousands of Americans. He told CNN that he warned his superiors in multiple emails that the cuts would risk exposing the American public to an outbreak like the one currently sweeping the nation.

• Sculptor Spent $100,000 on Charlie Kirk Statue That Nobody Wants to Buy. New York-based sculptor Sergio Furnari was hoping his statue of slain far-right activist Charlie Kirk would have led to millions of dollars in donations. Instead, he told the Guardian he’s been unable to find a buyer for the sculpture, and that he’s received numerous emails from people saying they intend to urinate on it. Furnari also noted that he broke his foot on the sculpture while tripping in his studio, suggesting that the statue may be “cursed.”

• Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Not Ruling Out 2028 Presidential Run. While campaigning for Michigan U.S. Senate candidate Dr. Abdul El-Sayed in Detroit this weekend, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) notably refused to rule out a campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2028. The progressive 36 year-old congresswoman told Politico “I can’t say I’ve ruled it out” when asked about a White House run. The Bronx congresswoman, known by her initials AOC, urged the Democratic Party to take a big-tent approach and focus on issues important to working-class voters.

Hey, Raw America family. Welcome to the Sunday Wrapup. I’m here with my cup of coffee, mulling over what happened Thursday night.

Before we get into it — thank you for being a paying subscriber this week. You keep the lights on here. There’s no billionaire behind Raw America, no hedge fund, no ad department nervously watching the White House. There’s you. I sincerely appreciate it.

Kaitlan Collins Did The Job

Thursday night, the president gave a 24-minute primetime address on “election integrity.” CNN didn’t take it live. Kaitlan Collins anchored her own hour and told viewers why: Trump’s well-documented history of falsehoods. John King put it plainly: we have to be skeptical when this president talks about elections.

ABC and NBC didn’t carry it on their main channels either. ABC ran a game show; NBC ran a show about alligators. CBS joined a few minutes late, leaving before he finished. MS NOW aired seventeen minutes and cut away. Fox carried the whole thing.

NBC and ABC affiliates owned by Sinclair ran it live anyway, against their own networks’ judgment. Sinclair’s conservative ownership likely explains why.

While Fox ran the speech live, it received scant attention the following day on Fox & Friends. Fox paid $787.5 million to settle with the voting firm Dominion over 2020 election lies. Some of what looked like editorial spine was also lawyers doing math.

Trump’s response was to attack ABC and NBC from the podium, and say that “fraud like this should mean a revocation of their licenses.” Bernie Sanders called it what it is: authoritarian.

The Actual Election Interference Is On Tape

While Trump rages about election interference, let’s remember who actually committed it.

On Jan. 2, 2021, Trump called Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and said he wanted to find 11,780 votes — one more than he needed. Raffensperger, a Republican, refused. The call was recorded: you can listen to it right now.

That’s a sitting president pressuring a state official to manufacture a result. Not an allegation.

There were rumblings before Thursday that Trump would use the speech to declare Georgia’s Democratic senators illegitimately elected. We’re glad that didn’t happen.

He Released Evidence Of Russian Interference

This is the part that would be funny if it weren’t so grim.

Trump declassified intelligence files to prove China interfered in 2020. Experts read them. The documents don’t support the China claim. What one assessment does describe is Putin and senior Russian officials overseeing proxy efforts to spread damaging claims about Joe Biden.

The paperwork meant to prove Trump’s case describes Russian interference on his behalf.

Then came the admissions.

John Solomon, the conservative journalist who worked with the White House on releasing these documents, told MS NOW shortly after the speech that the intelligence community has zero evidence a foreign power flipped a vote in 2020, 2022, or 2024.

Ben Ginsberg, a Republican election attorney, told CNN there’s still no evidence of any effect on an election result.

The people who built the case took it apart within the hour.

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Jon Ossoff Quietly Emerging As Presidential Candidate

I want to talk a little about Georgia senator Jon Ossoff, who I think is emerging as a strong presidential candidate.

Here’s why. For the last two weeks he’s been doing what Democrats talk about constantly and almost never do: going straight at Trump, in public, without checking a poll first.

Ossoff calls Trump “a failed president and a national disgrace,” leading a “Mar-a-Lago mafia.”

“When he’s not posting, he’s been trying to rob us,” he adds. The IRS lawsuit. The fund that could pay January 6 rioters. The foreign deals by “Prince Don and Prince Eric.” An Iran war “no one voted for and no one can explain.” All while you pay more for gas, groceries and healthcare.

Then came the hearing for Jay Clayton, Trump’s nominee for Intelligence Director. Ossoff stopped looking like a senator and started looking like something bigger.

He asked Clayton one question: who won the 2020 election? Clayton dodged. He asked again. And again. Finally: “Isn’t it humiliating to be unable to answer this question, to have to indulge the president’s delusions?”

That’s not a rally line to a friendly crowd. That’s a man running an interrogation and winning it on camera.

He also got out ahead of Trump’s speech Thursday night, which nobody else did. Hours before Trump reached the podium, Ossoff named the real election criminal in Georgia — Trump, when he “dialed up our state’s senior most election official” and “tried to bully him in a recorded phone call to find the exact number of votes Donald Trump needed to win in a state that he had lost.” He’d already predicted the speech would be “equal parts pathetic and dangerous.”

One viral hearing isn’t a national campaign. But for two weeks, people got a look at what a Democrat who fights and wins actually sounds like.

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Why It All Matters

Thursday night worked as a test. CNN’s Kaitlan Collins passed. But look at what passing required: an anchor willing to tell viewers the president lies, at a network being circled by new ownership, on a night the president threatened broadcast licenses from the podium.

That instinct exists because of who signs the checks. It survives only as long as those people allow it. Bezos owns the Washington Post. The LA Times went MAGA. But Raw America is here, courageous, calling it like it is.

I started Raw Story in 2004 out of college. We ended up naming a CIA black site the Washington Post wouldn’t touch. The ethos then was simple and it hasn’t changed. We’re not interested in deference to power.

Raw America fights for you. We’ve got a spine of steel, because of our subscribers. Thanks for being part of our community.

If you enjoy our newsletters, please share them with someone who needs to know. Let’s keep building!

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See you next Sunday.

—John Byrne / Founder, Raw America and Raw Story

Good morning. I’m John Byrne.

A blockbuster investigation reveals the Trump administration has lost or abandoned nearly half of its criminal cases accusing protesters and immigrants of assaulting federal agents. A federal judge just used a January 6 rioter’s own petition to permanently cement the true history of the Capitol attack in the federal record. New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani says he’s still exploring whether he can order Benjamin Netanyahu’s arrest when the Israeli PM comes to town in September. And in deep-red Utah, the Republican lieutenant governor is telling the Trump administration to stop threatening the states over elections.

Before the news, a quick word about why Raw America exists. Trump’s sons are quietly building a defense tech empire funded by your tax dollars while their father runs the Pentagon. Bezos owns the Post. Murdoch runs Fox. The billionaires own the government and they own most of the media covering it. Raw America is the alternative to oligarch-controlled media: fully reader-supported, editorially independent, and not for sale. We’ve seen a massive surge in new free subscribers, and we’re grateful you are here. If you’ve been reading on a free subscription, today is the day to upgrade to a paying membership. Every subscription funds the independent journalism you are about to read. Subscribe or upgrade right now.

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Trump’s Cases Against Protesters and Immigrants Are Falling Apart

The New York Times just published the most comprehensive review yet of the Trump administration’s signature legal weapon against people who get in ICE’s way, and the results are devastating. The administration has charged more than 550 people with assaulting or impeding federal agents. Of the more than 400 cases resolved so far, nearly half have collapsed. Juries acquitted defendants, judges tossed charges, or prosecutors quietly withdrew them.

To understand how abnormal that is, consider that the Justice Department typically wins more than 90 percent of its criminal cases. Of the 26 people who insisted on jury trials, 22 were acquitted.

The details are worse than the numbers. In dozens of cases, video and court records showed federal agents were the ones who got physical first, shoving, tackling, and pepper-spraying the people they later accused of assault. In more than 100 cases, prosecutors never even claimed an agent was injured. Officers charged more than two dozen people whose only offense was filming agents or shouting warnings. Judges found that agents purposely destroyed evidence, including forcing a 19-year-old American woman to permanently delete photos from her phone. Then they charged her with assault.

Two young mothers in Charlotte were surrounded by armed, masked agents on a dead-end street while screaming to a 911 operator for help. An agent smashed their car window with the barrel of his rifle. Their charges were so weak the U.S. attorney’s office eventually dropped them.

And Gregory Bovino, the Border Patrol commander who championed these tactics, told the Times his only regret is that they didn’t charge more people.

There’s a precedent for this moment. During the Palmer Raids of 1920, the Justice Department rounded up thousands of immigrants on flimsy charges, until a career official named Louis Post canceled deportations and federal judges condemned the raids as lawless. The courts eventually broke the fever then. They’re doing it again now, one dismissed case at a time.

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Judge Uses Rioter’s Case to Destroy Trump’s January 6 Rewrite

A January 6 rioter named Jennifer Ryan, the Dallas realtor who joined the mob at the Capitol, asked a federal judge to go beyond her Trump pardon and erase her conviction from the record entirely. Judge Christopher Cooper didn’t just say no. According to Raw Story, he used the ruling to permanently enshrine the truth of that day in the federal record.

“Given the historical significance of the events of January 6 and ongoing efforts to rewrite them, the Court will take the opportunity to set the record straight,” Cooper wrote. He then walked through the facts: a mob breaking windows, assaulting police officers, and forcing its way into the Capitol. Ryan watched the violence unfold on television from her hotel room, he said, and chose to join it. She chanted “Fight for Trump!” inside the building while fire alarms blared, and afterward threatened news studios from beside a broken Capitol window.

The consequences of her participation, Cooper wrote, “will not be scrubbed from public memory, even if her conviction is vacated.” And in a line aimed squarely at the man who pardoned her, he observed that “there are some who wish to rewrite the history of that day, and that desire resulted in her pardon.”

If you agree that January 6th rioters should continue to carry the stain of that fateful day, we’re with you. If you want a media that’s on your side, upgrade your subscription today. We rely 100% on subscribers to keep the lights on. Subscribe today to join the fight.

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Mamdani Says He May Still Order Netanyahu’s Arrest in New York

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani told The New York Times that his administration is considering whether he has the legal authority to arrest Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu when he arrives for the U.N. General Assembly in September.

“I believe that Prime Minister Netanyahu belongs in The Hague,” Mamdani said, pointing to the International Criminal Court’s warrant over the war in Gaza. “Whatever the law allows me to do in New York City, that’s what we will do, but we won’t be writing our own laws to that end.”

Netanyahu, locked in his own reelection fight, responded by accusing the mayor of championing Hamas and claiming Mamdani “secretly hates America.”

Mamdani has condemned the October 7 attacks and doesn’t praise Hamas. What he does do is say out loud what a growing share of his party believes: nearly half of House Democrats just voted to end U.S. aid to Israel. That vote failed, but the shift is unmistakable.

In 1998, a Spanish judge’s warrant got Augusto Pinochet arrested in a London hospital bed, and the British courts ruled that a former head of state has no immunity for torture. The dictator’s untouchability ended not with an army, but with a piece of paper and officials willing to honor it. Mamdani understands that principle; international law only means something when someone is willing to enforce it.

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Republican Civil War Erupts as Utah’s Lt. Governor Blisters Trump

Trump spent his Thursday address claiming America’s elections are worse than those of “third-world” nations and hacked by China, offering no evidence for either. On Friday, the pushback came from his own party. Utah Lieutenant Governor Deidre Henderson, a Republican, demanded Trump “stop threatening states and filing frivolous lawsuits.”

Trump’s DOJ has sued Utah and other states for refusing to hand over voters’ Social Security numbers. They’ve also sent state election officials letters threatening criminal prosecution over noncitizen voting. Trump claims 278,000 noncitizens are registered to vote. That’s false. Henderson’s own audit found that out of more than two million registered Utah voters, just 27 people shouldn’t have been on the rolls.

“We call on the federal government to restore the election security resources that have been cut over the past several years,” Henderson said, adding that Utah will keep delivering “secure, free, and fair elections” with or without Washington’s cooperation.

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How You Can Fight Back Against the Oligarch Takeover of Media

The stories you just read exist because readers fund them, not billionaires. The oligarchs are buying up American media outlet by outlet, and every newsroom they swallow is one less place willing to report on collapsing prosecutions of ICE protesters or a president threatening his own states over elections. The single best way to fight back is to fund the independent media they cannot buy. If you have been reading Raw America on a free subscription, upgrade to a paying membership right now. Subscribe or upgrade today.

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If today’s newsletter made you angry, or hopeful, or both: turn that into something.

I’m John Byrne. Thanks for reading, and thanks for supporting independent media.

One of Trump’s own judges just delivered another blow to his administration’s voter data crusade, marking his 16th straight court loss on the issue. Epstein survivors say acting Attorney General Todd Blanche turned what was supposed to be a meeting about accountability into what one attendee called a performance. ICE is under new scrutiny after new information shows the agency hired a man with a documented history of violence and serious mental health struggles who later killed a man in Maine. And Citizens Bank is cutting ties with two private prison companies profiting off ICE detention, after months of public pressure.

Before we get to the news, I need to ask you to support Raw America’s independent journalism by becoming a paying subscriber. CBS will never be able to report honestly on the Ellisons. Rupert Murdoch knows Fox will never shine a light on his family. And the Washington Post can never tell the truth about Jeff Bezos. This is why billionaires buy media outlets, and why Raw America will never take on a billionaire backer. But because we’re fully independent, we need readers like you deciding today is the day they’ll invest in the future of independent media to keep this work going. Don’t wait. Become a paying subscriber right now.

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Trump’s Own Appointed Judge Hands Him Humiliating Loss

Back in January, Donald Trump’s Department of Justice was popping champagne after a federal judge in Connecticut ordered the state to respond to the government’s lawsuit over its voter rolls. The DOJ treated that procedural step like a major legal victory. Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon even bragged about it online.

But in the end, all that order did was tell Connecticut’s Secretary of State to explain why she shouldn’t have to hand over the state’s voter database.

Now the actual ruling is in, and it’s a disaster for the DOJ. U.S. District Judge Kari Dooley, who Trump himself appointed back in 2018, denied the Justice Department’s demand outright. She’s now the 16th judge in a row to rule against the administration’s push to collect sensitive voter data from states. These lists include information like names, dates of birth, home addresses and Social Security numbers. Precisely zero judges have actually sided with Trump on this.

Dooley found that Connecticut’s voter registration list doesn’t fall under the law the DOJ was using to justify its demand, which is Civil Rights Act provision from 1960. That law, Title III, covers records the state receives and has to preserve. The voter roll isn’t that. Judge Dooley pointed out in her ruling that the voter list is a living document that election officials constantly update.

What makes this even more embarrassing is who’s been delivering these losses. Dooley is now the seventh of Trump’s judicial appointees to reject the DOJ’s effort to seize voter rolls. The other nine judges include three George W. Bush appointees, meaning two-thirds of the judges who have ruled against the DOJ were put on the bench by Republican presidents. This means Trump can’t point partisan judges blocking him out of spite. The DOJ is now officially 0 and 16 at the district court level when it comes to seizing statewide voter databases, and 0 and 1 on appeal. If Trump put up these numbers as a head coach, he’d be fired.

Epstein Survivors Outraged by Todd Blanche’s 5-word Excuse

Survivors of convicted sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein say they were just totally let down by the man who wants to be the nation’s top law enforcement official.

During his confirmation hearing this week, acting Attorney General Todd Blanche — who was previously Donald Trump’s personal criminal defense lawyer — got an unexpected ultimatum from Republican Senator Thom Tillis of North Carolina. Tillis said he’d only support Blanche if the would-be attorney general agreed to sit down with Epstein survivors before the Judiciary Committee voted to pass him on the full Senate. That meeting happened took place that same afternoon at DOJ headquarters.

It did not go well.

According to people in the room, Blanche began by telling survivors he wasn’t going to commit to anything, and he didn’t expect to commit to anything either. When Sky Roberts, brother of late survivor Virginia Giuffre, asked what Blanche needed to open a new investigation, Blanche said he needed testimony and evidence.

Survivors were stunned by that response, given that they’ve provided sworn testimony for decades. Giuffre herself left behind multiple depositions and FBI interview memos. When Roberts asked about investigating Prince Andrew (whom Giuffre had accused in her book of assaulting her) Blanche said he couldn’t pursue that because the prince “won’t cooperate” and “Virginia [Giuffre] is not here.” One attendee pushed back by pointing out that prosecutors often build evidence-based cases without a defendant’s cooperation on a regular basis.

Blanche also reportedly said there was “very little corroboration” against Ghislaine Maxwell, who was Epstein’s chief co-conspirator. But that claim also fell apart immediately, as Annie Farmer, who was one of four women who testified against Maxwell at her 2021 trial, was present in the room. Farmer later said Blanche wouldn’t commit to looking into why her sister’s 1996 report about Epstein never went anywhere, and would only say “I’m just the attorney general.”

By the end of the meeting, Epstein survivor Dani Bensky reportedly broke down in tears. One attendee told MS NOW’s Carol Leonnig that Blanche was stone-faced the entire time. The DOJ called the meeting productive. But the representative for the Epstein survivors present said it was little more than a performance.

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ICE Under Fire For Hiring Man with Violent Past and Mental Health Issues Who Later Killed a Man

In Maine, an ICE agent’s recent fatal shooting of a Colombian father is raising new questions about whether the Trump administration is even vetting people before handing them badges and guns.

On Monday, Colombian national Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero was shot and killed by 37 year-old ICE agent David Brouillette in Biddeford. Independent Senator Angus King says Durán Guerrero wasn’t subject to any arrest warrant, and officers on scene weren’t wearing body cameras. Durán Guerrero also had a Social Security number and was legally authorized to work in the United States.

Brouillette’s ex-wife says she wasn’t surprised he ended up armed and dangerous, given his history. Family members said Brouillette has a long list of psychiatric struggles dating to childhood, along with documented violent behavior, including an incident where he allegedly threw boiling water at his ex-wife while she held their daughter. Brouillette also allegedly threw his own daughter through a wooden table and is accused of saying in a voicemail that he would cut her throat.

Initially, military recruiters turned Brouillette away due to his mental health diagnoses. He went off his medications and enlisted anyway, deploying to Afghanistan for nearly three years. One of his relatives told the Associated Press that the deployment “destroyed him.” After his stint in the military, he cycled through various jobs, working as a corrections officer, a police officer at the local VA, a truck driver and a real estate agent, before eventually ending up at ICE.

When asked about how it vets prospective agents, ICE refused to confirm or deny any details. The White House has also refused to comment. Brouillette’s shooting of Durán Guerrero comes after ICE bragged in December about receiving over 220,000 applications following a hiring push that included $50,000 signing bonuses. Nearly 12,000 people were hired. Though clearly ICE values quantity over quality.

Major Bank Cuts Ties to ICE Contractors After Massive Public Pressure Campaign

This last story also involves ICE, but this time, it’s good news for a change.

Citizens Bank announced it’s winding down its financial relationships with CoreCivic and The GEO Group, two of the largest private prison companies in the country, which both have major contracts to operate ICE detention centers.

The bank didn’t suddenly develop a conscience. This decision happened because Americans across the country organized and made enough noise that Citizens Bank could no longer tune it out. Advocacy groups ran sustained pressure campaigns explicitly targeting the bank, and city councils in Montclair and Jersey City, New Jersey, both voted to pull their municipal accounts out of Citizens if the bank didn’t cut off its relationship with ICE.

Citizens argues its decision was purely business-related, pointing out that the federal government is now looking to buy several facilities directly from these companies, reducing their need for outside financing. Whether that framing is accurate or not is less important than the outcome. One of the main financial pipelines helping to fund immigrant detention just got cut off, all because ordinary people and public officials refused to let them off the hook.

Stand Up and Fight Back Against the Billionaires

These four stories all underscore one major point: American democracy can only survive if powerful people are held accountable. Epstein survivors are still seeking justice after being stonewalled by Trump’s attorney general. ICE is giving badges and guns to people with violent pasts and mental health issues. But Trump’s attempt to steal voter data got halted by one of his own judges, because she placed the law above loyalty, and the American people got a big bank to cut ties with ICE after an intense organizing campaign.

Raw America can cover stories like these because we don’t have a billionaire owner or a corporate parent. But that also means readers like you are the only thing keeping us operational. If you found this newsletter valuable and are still reading this on the free list, we need you — yes, you — to become a paying subscriber right now. Don’t wait.

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Here are a few stories you may have missed:

• Second Ex-Wife of ICE Agent Responsible for Maine Killing Files for Protective Order. A second former wife of 37 year-old David Brouillette — who was identified by his first ex-wife, Ashley, as the man who killed Colombian national Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero in Biddeford, Maine this week — is now seeking a protective order from a judge, along with sole custody of their 11 year-old daughter. Brouillette married his second wife following his 2010 divorce from Ashley Brouillette, and ended his second marriage in 2019.

• Trump-Endorsed Candidate for Minnesota Governor Isn’t Even Registered in the State. This week, President Donald Trump endorsed Mike Lindell in Minnesota’s August 11 Republican gubernatorial primary election. But according to the Minnesota Star-Tribune, Lindell is currently registered to vote in Texas, not Minnesota. Lindell is known as one of the most outspoken 2020 election conspiracy theorists, and continues to argue without evidence that the election was rigged in favor of Joe Biden.

• Trump’s Ambassador to Italy Protested by Locals Over $450 Million Yacht Tour. Billionaire Tilman Fertitta, who is President Trump’s ambassador to Italy, recently announced he would be touring 13 coastal Italian cities in his $450 million yacht in celebration of the United States’ 250th birthday. Italians have responded to his yacht tour with widespread protests. Organizer Stella Morion told the Associated Press Fertitta’s tour felt like “the umpteenth slap in the face of a city and all of the people in Venice who struggle to reach the end of the month due to an increase in prices caused by Trump's war.”

• DHS Secretary Threatens to Jail Officials for Refusing to Comply with Trump’s Election Demands. Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin issued an ominous threat to Democratic-run states on Friday, saying states had better be prepared to “scrub” their voter rolls if they wanted federal grants for administering elections. Mullin added that any election official who refused to implement the Trump administration’s “security” measures could face “prison time.” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) vowed that state leaders “will not be intimidated” and that Senate Democrats would work to make sure election funds would still be available for states regardless of whether they acceded to the White House’s demands.

• Trump Suggests New Tariffs for Canada Likely Over Wildfire Smoke. President Trump on Friday refused to rule out hiking tariffs on Canadian imports in response to smoke from Canadian wildfires worsening air quality across the Midwest and East Coast. On his Truth Social platform, Trump wrote that the U.S. was being “unnecessarily invaded by filthy, polluted, and unhealthy air.” Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney fired back by saying climate change was a serious threat and that the United States needed to step up its own efforts to counter its effects.

Last night, Donald Trump essentially told us exactly what he will do this November. When reports start coming in that the Democrats are winning this fall, he will send in the troops.

He’ll point back to last night‘s speech and tell the nation:

“I told you so. I warned you. They rigged the election for the Democrats and now I have to stop it.”

He’ll mobilize ICE and the National Guard’s “Rapid Reaction Force” that he’s assembled over the past six months to seize ballot boxes and crush the inevitable “insurrection” — protests in the streets against his seizing ballot boxes — by “left-wing communist radical domestic terrorists.”

He’ll declare a state of emergency, invoke his NSPM-7, and blame it on a foreign country and/or “Antifa.” He’ll declare protesting a crime, and tear gas will fill our streets.

The Hartmann Report

A Daily Newsletter of Renaissance Thinking about Progressive Politics, Economics, Science, and the Political News Issues of Our Day

By Thom Hartmann

This is easy for me to imagine: I was there in 1967 when Lyndon Johnson did nearly the same thing, although for an entirely different purpose, and I’ve worked in several countries where this very scenario had already played out.

And those same white supremacists Trump has already pardoned can also easily imagine how it should play out when he calls them out to attack protesters; they’ve been terrorizing minority communities for centuries and are very good at it.

This includes his tens of thousands of well-armed loyalist cult members who’re salivating at the idea of splitting that $1.776 billion they believe they’ll get when he seizes absolute control of the country.

As Senator Amy Klobuchar said on MSNOW last night:

“This is a man desperate to hold onto his power and he will do anything to keep that power.”

Would he actually be so audacious as to try that? Could he actually pull it off?

He could, he will, because he’s already tried it once.

The difference is that six years ago — the last time he tried to overturn an election he lost — his Attorney General, FBI Director, Director of National Intelligence, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, DHS Secretary, and Chief of the National Guard would all have refused such an order, so he called on thousands of violent thugs to attack the Capitol, stop the election certification, and murder the vice president.

This time, in a classically Putin-esque move, he’s replaced all of those people with lickspittles like Blanche and true believer fanatics like Miller and Homan who’ll do exactly what he tells them to.

Many of them sat in the room with him last night, in the front row in front of the teleprompter, watching and nodding along with his lies. They know that if Democrats win and the election is certified this fall many of them, too, will end up on the wrong end of civil and criminal investigations.

Trump has recently declared, officially, that Democrats are traitors, communists, potential terrorists, and should be deported. The only thing he hasn’t demanded is for Democrats to be arrested for our politics, and that may well come in just a few months.

After all, he can’t afford to allow the House or Senate to fall into Democratic hands, because then he’ll be investigated with the power of law and subpoena for the many crimes he is currently committing.

He wouldn’t survive that politically, and he believes the Senate this time will actually convict him: they know that once he’s convicted and has thus lost his power, there’s no way he can regain it and he’ll no longer represent a threat to their political careers.

This is all why he’ll say or do anything to hang onto his power, because he knows if he loses that power his entire house of cards collapses.

He and his children go to prison or are forced into exile. His wife gets to reinvent her life the way she wants. What’s left of his properties gets sold off at auction like his casinos were the last time he went bankrupt.

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This is what he’s imagining at 2 o’clock in the morning when he’s rage tweeting. He’s also remembering the terrifying hours he spent sitting in a courthouse charged with 34 felonies for which he could go to prison.

It’s easy for him to imagine, because it’s exactly what he constantly tries to do to people he thinks have slighted him, from Jim Comey to Leticia James to Adam Schiff and dozens of others: he tries to break them financially while threatening them with long and brutal imprisonment.

He’s done this repeatedly, and his most recent threat to break or jail somebody was issued the day before yesterday.

But none of what he’s planning works without a lot of ordinary people saying, “Yes,” and that’s also where we may have a say.

That’s the thing about these operations that gets lost when we talk about them as if they’re just the work of one man, America’s Hitler, to quote JD Vance. It’s never one man who pulls the whole thing off, although it does take a lying psychopath with charisma and some leadership skills to get the process rolling.

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Ultimately, though, it can’t work without the National Guard captain who decides the order is lawful enough, the county clerk who hands over the machines because a federal agent showed her a piece of paper, the local cop who puts on the riot gear because his sergeant did, and the poll worker who turns his ballots over to masked ICE agents because it feels safer.

My friends who were there in Germany in 1933 told me, as does history, that that country didn’t fall to a majority; the Nazis never got a legitimate victory at the ballot box.

That nation fell, as others have throughout history, because tens of thousands of people in unremarkable jobs did the small thing that was asked of them in the moment it was asked, and told themselves it was only temporary, and it must be okay because somebody higher up must know something I don’t.

Every one of those people made that decision cold, under pressure, with a stranger in a uniform standing in front of them and about four seconds to think.

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Which is why the useful work right now isn’t reactive, and it isn’t something we do in November. It’s finding out, before November, what the people around us are going to do.

— Go meet your county election officials; they’re mostly your neighbors, and in a lot of counties they’re the ones who’ll be standing between a federal agent sent by Trump and a ballot box with nobody backing them up.

— Ask your sheriff, on the record, at a public meeting, whether he takes orders from Washington or from the county.

— Ask your state legislators what the plan is if the National Guard shows up, because most of them probably haven’t thought about it and they damn well should. Ask your governor and state attorney general.

— Find out which lawyers in your town do election work and whether they’re organized. Get to know the people on your block well enough that you can call them at midnight, if necessary.

— Get to know your local elected officials and, in the few months ahead, show up at your local Democratic Party meeting.

People who’ve already decided what they’ll do, and who know that the folks around them decided the same thing, behave completely differently when the moment arrives than people who are trying to figure it out on the spot.

That’s not optimism. It’s just how it’s always worked, in Selma and Kiev and Manila and everywhere else people have looked at an illegal order or an out-of-control authority figure and said, “No.”

What matters most in the next four months is going to happen at the local level, in county commission meetings and election offices that nobody’s watching.

Go be somebody who’s watching.

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Help Raw America Fight Back Against the Billionaires

The Trump regime is clearly rattled by the prospect of a Democratic-controlled Congress issuing subpoenas and investigating administration officials. And this president has made it clear he’ll do everything in his power to stop the American people from voting his Republican lackeys out of power. While media outlets controlled by pro-billionaires and corporations with business before the administration are watering down their coverages and pulling their punches, Raw America is doubling down on the kind of independent journalism America sorely needs in this moment.

Raw America’s White House reporter, Brian Karem, has been on the ground in Washington, and recently filed a report in which Senate Republican leaders confided to him that Trump is making a big mistake by relitigating the 2020 election instead of focusing on the economy and the cost of living. Brian also got a national security expert on the record who revealed the American origins behind the technology behind “Havana Syndrome,” which we’ll be publishing tomorrow.

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Next Tuesday at 1 PM ET, Brian will sit down with Raw America managing editor Carl Gibson for a live conversation in which he’ll be talking more about the work he’s doing in Washington. Brian’s decades of cultivating sources within numerous government agencies gives Raw America an edge in being able to report on what people inside the Trump administration are really saying about everything from the Epstein files, to the 80 yer-old president’s ailing health, the haplessness of his top Cabinet officials and other stories. You can catch that interview on our homepage next Tuesday, July 21, at 1 PM Eastern Time.

None of this work would be possible without our paying subscribers. Because we don’t have a billionaire owner or a corporate board calling the shots, we’re able to answer directly to readers like you. But that can only work if enough of our readers believe in independent journalism enough to financially support it. If you’ve been enjoying columns like these, our daily newsletters, our live interviews and our original reporting on a free subscription, make today the day you upgrade to a paying membership. Independent journalism can’t survive without reader support.

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Kentucky’s Democratic governor is revealing he received calls from officials suggesting Republican Senator Mitch McConnell had died weeks before the senator’s own health update was released. A former Trump White House is warning the president is preparing to declare a national emergency ahead of the midterms. The Trump administration is quietly lawyering up for a Democratic-controlled House next year, and two Republican FCC commissioners who approved a huge media merger took thousands of dollars in gifts from the very same company they were supposed to be regulating.

To our paying subscribers: thank you. We built Raw America because billionaires are devouring America’s newsrooms. Now we’re getting a glimpse of what it looks like when someone pushes back. You also helped us hire our new White House reporter, Brian Karem.

If you’re not yet a paying subscriber, the fight for independent media is exactly why we exist. We don’t have a billionaire backer or a corporate parent. Nobody at Raw America is pressuring the White House to grease a merger. We only answer to you. Please consider upgrading your subscription today.

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Governor Andy Beshear Says He Was Told Mitch McConnell May Already Be Dead

Two-term Democratic Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear just revealed something pretty stunning in a new interview with Katie Couric. Beshear says he got calls from multiple agencies suggesting that 84-year-old Senator Mitch McConnell had died. Beshear received those calls before McConnell’s own team put out its statement about his month-long hospitalization.

Beshear had been publicly pushing for more transparency from McConnell since July 8, four days before McConnell himself broke his silence. And what McConnell’s team did share on July 12th was still light on details. According to the senator’s statement, he was briefly rendered unconscious after a fall and developed pneumonia. The statement said there was no stroke, heart attack or tumor, but that’s still a lot for an 84-year-old to be dealing with quietly, out of public view, for more than a month.

Beshear told Couric that his office hasn’t had any direct contact with McConnell’s staff since he was hospitalized on June 14th. He called the July 12th update a step in the right direction, but insists Kentuckians deserve more information from their senator.

If McConnell’s seat opens up before his term ends in January of 2027, the path forward is anything but simple. Kentucky Republicans rewrote the state’s succession law in 2024, stripping the governor of the power to appoint a temporary senator and requiring a special election instead. If the seat comes open after August 3rd, there’s no time under the law for that election, and the seat would simply sit empty until January. Legal experts say the law has never been tested and could face a constitutional challenge, which means Kentucky could go months with only one senator while the lawyers fight it out.

Whatever is actually going on with McConnell, the secrecy surrounding him has become its own story. When a sitting U.S. senator disappears from public view for more than a month and government officials start suggesting he may be dead, voters should have real answers.

There’s a reason this feels so familiar. When Woodrow Wilson’s inner circle hid his massive stroke from the country in 1919, the nation eventually answered with the Twenty Fifth Amendment, and while no such safeguard exists for a senator, the principle is exactly the same, that in a self-governing republic the health of the people we elect can never be treated as a state secret.

Former Trump White House Lawyer Says Trump Preparing to Declare Emergency Ahead of Midterms

Ty Cobb, who served as a White House attorney during Trump’s first term, is now warning Americans to be ready for the president to do anything he can to disrupt the midterms, including a national emergency declaration giving himself new powers.

Cobb told PBS that Trump’s obsession with voting machines, his efforts to restrict mail-in voting and imposing new voter registration hurdles, and his firings of members of the Election Assistance Commission are all part of a pattern. He added that Trump appears to be seeking a justification to declare a national emergency right around the time voters head to the polls.

He noted it’s almost guaranteed that ICE agents will show up at polling places this fall, and possibly the National Guard. Cobb argued the goal is intimidation of immigrant and minority voters, and potentially even seizing voting machines, as Trump wanted to do back in 2020 before his attorney general told him there was no legal basis for it.

Cobb cautioned that Trump doesn’t have people like General John Kelly, General James Mattis, and Nikki Haley in his second-term administration willing to push back on his most reckless proposals, and that any internal checks are now gone. What’s left, in his words, are yes-men eager to carry out Trump’s orders.

The former White House counsel said the last real guardrail remaining is ordinary Americans showing up to vote. In his words, that’s the only guardrail left in our democracy, because the internal resistance of the first term is gone. And he’s urging Americans to treat any new claims about compromised voting machines or foreign interference with deep skepticism, saying those claims are inflated and won’t be backed by credible sources.

Abraham Lincoln held the election of 1864 in the middle of an actual shooting civil war, and afterward he reminded the country that if a rebellion could force Americans to forgo a national election, it could fairly claim to have already conquered us. If Lincoln refused to let a real war interfere with the vote, no president gets to invent an emergency to do it now.

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Trump White House Quietly Prepping for Democratic House in 2027

While Donald Trump’s White House is publicly dismissing the idea that Democrats could win in November, they’re privately preparing for a wave of accountability measures from a Democratic-controlled House of Representatives next January.

According to Bloomberg, the Trump administration is quietly lawyering up in preparation for a wave of legal challenges that would come with a Democratic-run House. Michael Williams, who worked in the first Trump White House, said staff are expecting another impeachment push, even while the administration publicly refuses to admit the possibility.

Emma Doyle, a former chief of staff at the Office of Management and Budget in the first Trump administration, confirmed the White House is bringing on experienced lawyers to help officials prepare for impeachment proceedings. Advisors Jason Miller and Johnny DeStefano have both rejoined the administration in the past month specifically to prep for the worst possible outcome after the midterms.

Doyle admitted recruiting in this environment is tough, saying nobody wants to sign up for a job where the boss is telling them they’re probably going to get impeached.

Trump himself seems to see the writing on the wall. He’s been saying since January that Republicans need to win the midterms, because if they don’t, Democrats will impeach him for a third time.

Democratic Congressman Ted Lieu of California, who sits on the House Judiciary Committee, laid out exactly what Democrats want to investigate. This includes Trump’s ICE crackdown, stock trades by members of his family, his federal prosecutions against his political opponents and others. Lieu separated impeachment from oversight, saying Democrats plan to dig into what he called massive corruption regardless of whether they choose to go down the impeachment path.

Republicans maintain they’ll stay in control of the House despite dismal polling and a razor-thin majority. A spokesperson for the Republican National Committee accused Democrats of counting their chickens before they hatch. But a president lawyering up for impeachment hearings isn’t something you do if you’re expecting victory.

And congressional oversight of a corrupt executive branch isn’t some partisan invention. In 1927, in McGrain v. Daugherty, the Supreme Court unanimously upheld Congress’s power to compel testimony and investigate the executive, in the same wave of Teapot Dome investigations that sent a Harding cabinet secretary to prison. Digging into corruption isn’t a stunt, it’s a constitutional duty.

Republican FCC Commissioners Took Lavish Gifts from Paramount Ahead of Merger

ProPublica is now reporting that two Republican FCC commissioners, Olivia Trusty and Chair Brendan Carr, took expensive gifts from Paramount while the company had massive deals requiring FCC approval. Trusty and a guest received tickets to the Kennedy Center Honors gala worth more than $12,000 courtesy of Paramount, just five months after she cast a deciding vote approving Paramount’s $8 billion dollar merger with Skydance.

Carr and his wife sat in a private skybox with Paramount CEO David Ellison — the son of billionaire Trump donor Larry Ellison — and other executives. Those seats reportedly sell for $125,000 apiece. It’s not clear whether Paramount actually paid for Carr’s seats, because the FCC still has yet to release his 2025 financial disclosure form.

This isn’t a one-time thing either. Records show Carr accepted Kennedy Center tickets from CBS or its parent company at least seven times since 2017, adding up to roughly $63,000 in value. And across the last ten years, seven of the ten commissioners who’ve served on the FCC accepted Kennedy Center gala tickets worth more than $260,000. Federal ethics rules explicitly prohibit officials from accepting gifts from companies that are regulated by, or seeking action from, their own agency, for obvious reasons.

Ethics experts told ProPublica this is about as clear cut a conflict of interest as it gets. Walter Shaub, who used to run the federal Office of Government Ethics, said there is no scenario where a top federal regulator should ever accept a gift from a company whose business will be directly affected by their decisions.

Keep in mind that December gala took place while Paramount was actively launching its hostile takeover bid for Warner Bros. Discovery — the parent company of CNN — which now needs approval from the very same FCC. That deal would put Paramount Plus, HBO Max, CBS and CNN, and dozens of other networks and platforms under the thumb of one billionaire and his son.

More than 5,000 actors and entertainment industry workers, including Robert De Niro, Javier Bardem, and Glenn Close, have signed a letter opposing the Paramount Skydance-Warner Bros. Discovery merger. And a dozen Democratic attorneys general have already filed a lawsuit trying to block it.

Ethics experts say Carr and Trusty should recuse themselves from any further votes on the Paramount deal in light of the gifts. It’s hard to imagine how anyone could trust a decision they make to be free of Paramount’s influence.

When Congress passed the Communications Act of 1934, it wrote a promise into law, that the airwaves belong to the American people and broadcasters only borrow them in exchange for serving the public interest. When the regulators guarding that bargain are sitting in a 125,000 dollar skybox with the executives they oversee, it’s not just an ethics violation, it’s a betrayal of a deal Congress made with every American nearly a century ago.

Fight Back Against the Billionaires

We launched Raw America because we were sick of watching right-wing billionaires buy up the free press one masthead at a time — and because the deaths of Renee Good and Alex Pretti showed exactly what happens when power stops fearing accountability.

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I’m Thom Hartmann. Thanks for reading, and thanks for supporting independent media.

Here are a few stories you may have missed:

• Trump’s Election Denial Speech Sparks Calls for 25th Amendment. Following President Donald Trump’s nationally televised address in which he doubled down on his debunked claims of election fraud in 2020, California Governor Gavin Newsom (D) is calling for the 25th Amendment to be invoked to remove Trump from office. Trump claimed documents showed that China allegedly interfered on behalf of Joe Biden in 2020, though the documents posted to the White House confirm Russia worked to undermine Biden’s campaign and help Trump’s reelection effort.

• Trump Demands FCC Yank ABC and NBC Broadcast Licenses for Refusing to Air His Speech. President Trump erupted at ABC and NBC after the networks announced they wouldn’t be airing the president’s national address live, and called on the Federal Communications Commission to revoke their broadcast licenses. The president went on to accuse the networks of being “part of a plot” to aid the “radical left” and to perpetuate election fraud. In addition to ABC and NBC, CNN also declined to air the live broadcast of Trump’s speech, while CBS preempted their own programming with a “special report” in which the network aired part of the president’s address while anchor Tony Dokoupil reported on Trump’s history of election fraud claims.

• 2020 Conspiracy Theorists Hope Trump Will Invoke Insurrection Act Ahead of Midterms. Far-right conspiracy theorists are now pointing to Trump’s election speech as evidence that the president may invoke the Insurrection Act in order to have the U.S. military be deployed on American streets and sent to polling places in November. Former CBS reporter-turned-election denier Lara Logan called Trump’s address “the opening salvo in a much bigger plan.”

• DOGE Fired Nearly Every Employee in CDC’s Cyclospora Lab. As the parasite cyclospora continues to cause explosive diarrhea for thousands of Americans in multiple states, new reporting from WIRED found that Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) initiative last year fired eight of 11 staffers at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s cyclospora lab. Former lab director Joel Barratt told the outlet that the lab’s capacity to quickly respond to outbreaks of dangerous pathogens like cyclospora have been “greatly diminished” due to the hollowing out of the CDC.

• Zohran Mamdani Rejects 18 Percent Pay Increase Approved by City Council. New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani (D) announced this week he wouldn’t be accepting a pay increase approved by the City Council that would boost his annual salary from $258,750 to $305,800. The pay raise, which applies to council members, the mayor, the public advocate, borough presidents, district attorneys and the city comptroller, is the first such salary increase since 2016. City Council Speaker Julie Menin also refused to accept her own pay raise.

Republicans in Congress are confiding to Raw America White House reporter Brian Karem that they’re worried about Donald Trump ignoring the economy to talk about his 2020 election conspiracy theories during his primetime speech tonight. Two of the biggest broadcast networks have already announced they won’t be airing the speech live. In Maine, the ICE agent who killed a 26-year-old father has been named, and his ex-wife says he asked her to lie for him. And Trump’s media company just found a new way to cash in on the presidency.

Before we dive into the news we need to talk about why you’re getting this from us and not from a cable network owned by a right-wing billionaire. The Murdochs control Fox, the Wall Street Journal, Roku, and Vox Media. Jeff Bezos owns the Washington Post. The Ellison family just got the green light to put Bari Weiss in charge of both CBS News and CNN. Raw America answers to readers, not to a media mogul with a Mar-a-Lago membership. We can only keep doing that if readers who are still on the free list decide today is the day they upgrade. Not next week. Today. Every paying subscription is what lets us cover stories like the ones below without asking permission. Subscribe or upgrade right now.

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Republicans Urge Trump to Stop ‘Rewriting History’ of 2020 Election

Multiple members of Senate Republican leadership are telling Raw America they think President Donald Trump is making a serious mistake with tonight’s address to the nation.

One Republican in Senate leadership told Raw America White House reporter Brian Karem that they were Trump would use the coveted primetime slot to talk about what he’s doing for the economy. Instead, it’s widely expected that he’ll waste much of the address “rewriting the history of the 2020 election,” in that lawmaker’s words.

Another member of Republican leadership was even more blunt, telling Raw America the 2020 election “has been investigated to death.” Joe Biden was the winner even after multiple recounts and audits. More than 60 courts, including federal judges Trump himself appointed, threw out the Trump campaign’s lawsuits. There’s nothing left to find, and Republicans know it.

Even Republican Thomas Massie, who’s on his way out of Congress, isn’t buying the fraud narrative. He pointed out that outside of Trump, Republicans actually did pretty well, telling Raw America the GOP “won most of them,” referring to down-ballot races. That’s a hard argument to square with Trump’s stolen election claims. If the election was rigged against Republicans as Trump insists, you’d expect Republicans to have suffered steep losses in every state. that didn’t happen.

So even inside Trump’s own party, there’s a growing sense that tonight’s speech is going to be more about grievance than governance. And several are visibly worried about what that says to the country, and what it means for their own political future if they keep entertaining the president’s delusions.

At Least 2 Major Networks Won’t Air Trump’s Address

ABC News and NBC News both confirmed to the Daily Beast that they will not air President Trump’s primetime address in full on their networks. That’s a significant break from the usual tradition of carrying a president’s national address live, and the decision is almost certainly due to Trump being expected to spend the bulk of the speech lying to Americans about an election he lost six years ago.

ABC says the speech will run on its free streaming service, ABC News Live, and on ABC News Radio, with what the network calls “comprehensive, anchored coverage.” ABC’s Special Report team says it’s ready to divert from regularly scheduled programming if Trump actually makes real news.

NBC is taking a similar approach. The network says it’ll air a special report after the remarks wrap up, and it’ll stream the speech itself on NBC News NOW rather than putting on its national airwaves.

CBS hasn’t said what it’s doing yet, but CNN media reporter Brian Stelter noted the network is likely take a cautious approach, where CBS Evenings News anchor Tony Dokoupil will reports on what Trump said and then fact-check it afterward.

As of Thursday, cable giants Fox News, CNN, and MS NOW hadn’t responded to the Daily Beast’s questions about whether they plan to carry the speech live. It’s rare that a president conducts a primetime national address. It’s even rarer when America’s biggest networks hesitate to air it.

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ICE Agent Who Killed Man in Maine Asked Ex-Wife to Lie for Him

The ICE agent who fatally shot 26-year-old Joan Sebastian Guerrero in Biddeford, Maine this week has been identified as David Michael Brouillette. Guerrero was a Colombian man living with his partner and young daughter when ICE agents killed him in his car.

Brouillette’s ex-wife, Ashley Brouillette, told the Portland Press Herald that her ex-husband called her Wednesday, using his current wife’s Facebook account, and admitted to being the one who shot Guerrero. She says he asked her to lie for him and vouch for his character.

She refused. She says he then said the shooting was justified because the Guerrero tried to hit him with his car. But she’d already seen video from the scene, and plainly told him that nothing in that footage shows Guerrero doing anything of the sort. She added her ex-husband was “unusually calm about it.”

Brouillette has bounced between several law enforcement and public safety jobs across Maine over the past decade, including stints with the Maine Correctional Center, the Maine Department of Health and Human Services, and the Manchester Fire Department, where coworkers say he was let go after clashing with leadership. He’s also an Army veteran who deployed to Afghanistan and left the service as a sergeant, though the Army won’t reveal the nature of his discharge.

Ashley Brouillette says she previously reported concerns about her ex-husband’s mental health to his superiors in the military, and that he was abusive during their relationship. She says she’s now getting threatening calls after coming forward.

ICE still hasn’t officially named Brouillette as the shooter. It took an independent watchdog site, run out of the Netherlands with volunteer help, to identify him using tips from two people who knew him personally. Independent Senator Angus King’s office says the head of Homeland Security has admitted Guerrero wasn’t even the intended target of the warrant.

Trump’s Social Media Company Selling Wall Street Previews of Trump’s Posts

Trump Media & Technology Group has rolled out a paid data product called Truth API, which sells banks and trading firms faster access to posts from the ten most influential Truth Social accounts, including the president’s. The company says it’ll beat a regular push notification, giving trading firms a speed edge on posts that regularly move global markets.

TMTG’s interim CEO, Kevin McGurn, says the product is meant to become “a meaningful, ongoing source of revenue” for the company. Trump’s own posts, like his “Liberation Day” tariff announcements and comments on China trade restrictions, have already jolted markets in the past, and now the company is charging traders for a head start on reading them.

The service launches August 1, with round-the-clock coverage and an archive going back to 2022. TMTG says firms have been scraping its data illegally for months already, and McGurn made clear the company plans to make life difficult for anyone who keeps doing that instead of paying up.

So just to be clear, Trump not only knows his social media posts move markets, but now he’s charging investors for the privilege of getting premium access to them. If this was in a movie script about a corrupt president, it would be rejected for being too on-the-nose.

If tonight’s newsletter told you anything, it is that this administration can’t stay out of its own way, and somebody has to keep track of all of it. Tonight alone we brought you an exclusive report about Republicans souring on Trump’s election conspiracies, major networks refusing to broadcast the president’s lies, the name of the ICE agent who killed a man in front of his daughter and the full details of Trump’s latest breathtakingly corrupt scheme. Raw America does this work without a billionaire owner calling the shots. If you’ve been reading on a free subscription, today is the day to upgrade to a paying membership. Every subscription goes directly toward keeping this kind of reporting alive. Subscribe or upgrade right now.

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Thanks for watching. I’m British Chris. We’ll see you tomorrow.

Here are some stories you may have missed:

• GOP Senate Candidate’s Son-in-Law Outed as White Nationalist Influencer. David Alan Scheer II — the son-in-law of Georgia Republican U.S. Senate candidate Mike Collins — has been outed as a white nationalist influencer following an investigation by CNNs KFile. The network reported that Scheer, who lives on a property that Collins owns and makes promotional videos for Collins’ trucking company, has a “track record of sharing antisemitic material and Nazi imagery in comments across the internet.” Collins is running against incumbent Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-Ga.), who was elected in 2020 as the first Democrat to represent Georgia in the U.S. Senate since the 1990s.

• Attorney Debunks FBI’s Claim That Man ICE Killed in Houston Had Drugs. The FBI recently sought a search warrant to obtain bags found in the van of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, who was killed by ICE agents in Houston last week while he was on his way to work. The FBI stated it suspects the bags contain methamphetamine, but Ruby Powers, who is a Houston-based immigration attorney representing Victor Hugo Salgado Araujo (Lorenzo’s younger brother) said the bags contained granulated salt. Manual laborers in Texas are known for combining the salt with lemon juice and water to make a homemade blend of electrolytes that make it easier to work in the heat.

• Trump Administration Dragging Its Feet on Disaster Aid Applications. The Trump administration’s Federal Emergency Management Agency has been accused of both excessive delays in processing states’ requests for federal disaster aid, and of denying aid to Democratic-run states that meet the threshold for qualification. The Associated Press found that the second Trump administration has taken the longest of any presidency dating back to 1989 when it comes to approving aid requests. The administration has also denied requests to states with Democratic-run governments like Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York and Rhode Island.

Republicans are reportedly “scared s—less” ahead of Donald Trump’s primetime address tonight, worried he’ll meander off-script while rehashing debunked 2020 election conspiracies during a war in the Middle East and an affordability crisis. Trump also pressed Pentagon contractors to use more magnets after his son landed a $620 million Pentagon loan tied to a magnet company. A new investigation found Trump has a pattern of promoting companies on Truth Social just days after buying their stock. And a new Human Rights Watch and ACLU report describes unconscionable abuse at the country’s largest immigration detention center in Texas, including beatings, medical neglect, and a death ruled a homicide. Let’s get into it.

Before the news, a quick word about why Raw America exists.

The Ellison family controls CBS News and is about to control CNN, with right-wing columnist Bari Weiss calling the editorial shots. Jeff Bezos owns the Washington Post. Murdoch runs Fox, the Wall Street Journal and just moved to swallow Vox Media, New York Magazine and Roku. A small group of billionaires are devouring the American media one outlet after another, and every last one of them has pending business before the Trump regime. Raw America answers to none of them. We are fully reader-supported, editorially independent, and are the one thing the billionaires will never be able to buy. But we can only stay that way if enough readers step up. If you have been reading on a free subscription, this is the single best moment to upgrade to a paying membership. Subscribe or upgrade right now.

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Republicans ‘Scared S—less’ of What Trump Might Say Tonight

Republicans are reportedly bracing for a rambling mess when President Donald Trump delivers his live, primetime address to the nation tonight. The 80 year-old president has hyped it as “really big news.” But those with inside knowledge expect it to mostly be Trump rehashing his widely debunked 2020 election conspiracy theories.

One former Trump administration official told Politico that his White House contacts ate all “scared s---less.” They’re reportedly less worried about the speech on the teleprompter and more concerned about what the president might improvise.

Trump’s own staffers have apparently been begging him to talk about the economy instead, given that inflation numbers have recently been on the decline. But Trump’s economic approval rating remains in the tank, as his tariffs and the ongoing Iran war continue to pile on more financial pain onto ordinary Americans.

The White House hasn’t given us a preview of the speech yet, but it’s reportedly going to focus on voting machine security and claims of foreign election interference. Remember, we’re now six years out from the election that states and judges all agree that Trump lost fair and square.

Even some of the president’s closest allies think this is a bad idea. Former adviser Steve Cortes said MAGA voters still believe there was a “grave injustice” in 2020. However, he warned that lingering on it before the midterms will turn off persuadable voters, saying it sounds like “sour grapes.”

Additionally, major networks, including CNN, Fox News, and ABC, apparently haven’t yet cleared their schedules for Trump’s speech. And nobody’s even sure if the White House officially asked.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt tried to spin the information blackout as a reason for Americans to watch, saying. “Nobody knows yet what President Trump will ultimately say, which is why everyone should tune in.”

Trump teased the topic to reporters in the Oval Office, saying the speech would cover “election machines and integrity” and that nothing “gets bigger” than that.

Here’s what makes tonight genuinely dangerous. In 1800, John Adams lost a brutal, bitterly personal election to Thomas Jefferson, and then he did something no ruler in history had ever done. He packed his bags and went home. That quiet act of accepting defeat, the first peaceful transfer of power between rival parties the world had ever seen, is the foundation everything else in this country stands on. When a president uses the most powerful podium on Earth to teach Americans that elections can’t be trusted, he isn’t just rewriting 2020. He’s sawing at the one beam that’s held this republic up for 226 years.

Trump Tells Pentagon Contractors to ‘Do Magnets’ After Don Jr. Invests in Magnet Company

Donald Trump is also raising eyebrows after comments he made recently at the Pennsylvania Defense & Innovation Summit. While addressing a room full of Pentagon contractors, the president decided the topic of the day should be magnets.

“I hope you’re gonna do magnets,” Trump told the audience. “Do magnets, OK?” He wouldn’t stop. “I’ll tell you how to make money. Do magnets.”

Trump has been focused on magnets for awhile. He told Fox News last fall that magnets are essential technology, while also insisting “nobody knows what a magnet is.”

This ignores the fact that physicists figured out how magnetism works back in the 19th century, and quantum mechanics confirmed the details in the 1900s. It’s well understood science. Just not by the person overseeing the world’s largest economy and most well-funded military.

Various posters on social media also casually observed that Trump’s magnet obsession sounds similar to a 2010 Insane Clown Posse song, where one lyric is, “f---ing magnets, how do they work?”

But what’s less funny is that Donald Trump’s eldest son, Don Jr., invested in a rare earth magnet startup through his venture firm, 1789 Capital. According to the Financial Times, that company, Vulcan Elements, was in line for a roughly $620 million loan from the Pentagon.

ProPublica went on to report that White House trade adviser Peter Navarro personally lobbied the Defense Department to approve the loan. Pentagon officials said they felt pressure to quickly green-light the deal because “the call came from the White House.”

So when Trump tells a room of Pentagon contractors to “do magnets,” it may be because his own family has financial skin in the game.

We’ve seen this movie before. Back in 1922, Interior Secretary Albert Fall quietly steered the Navy’s oil reserves at Teapot Dome to his wealthy friends, and it took Senate investigators years to drag the truth into the daylight. Fall went to prison, and the scandal became the very definition of government corruption for a century. Now a Pentagon loan gets fast-tracked because the call came from the White House, and the president’s own son holds the stake. The behavior hasn’t changed in a hundred years. The only question is whether anybody’s still willing to do what that Senate did and hold power to account.

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Trump Caught Boosting Companies on Truth Social Days After Buying Their Stock

Trump is now allegedly using the bully pulpit of the presidency to make his investments more valuable. A new CNN investigation found the president has promoted more than 20 companies on Truth Social within days of buying their stock, sometimes right before announcing government actions that could benefit those same businesses.

One example is the chip manufacturer Nvidia. Last spring, Trump posted to his Nazi-infested social media site that permits for AI supercomputer projects would be “expedited and quickly delivered.” What he didn’t mention was that he’d bought close to half a million dollars in Nvidia stock just a few days prior.

CNN found at least 44 stock purchases across 21 companies that were followed within a week by a glowing Truth Social post promoting that same company. The White House, of course, denies any links between the purchases and the posts.

Officials say Trump’s stock trades are completely handled by outside investment managers in “fully discretionary accounts,” and that neither Trump nor his family plays any role in choosing what stocks to buy. But there’s one notable catch: unlike his predecessors in the White House, Trump never actually put his assets in a blind trust.

That means he can still see what he owns, even if he’s not personally buying or selling stocks. For decades, presidents either sold off their investments, parked their money in diversified funds or used blind trusts specifically to avoid being accused of corrupt behavior. Trump chose an entirely different setup, naming his eldest son, Donald Jr. as his trustee.

Legal experts say that new arrangement is significant. Dan Greenberg of the Cato Institute called the arrangement “an ethics disaster.” He added that discretionary accounts managed by outsiders still aren’t the same thing as a blind trust.

Another notable example is Trump buying stock in U.S. Steel on the same day he posted that his tariffs would make the company “profitable and valuable” again. He also made dozens of trades in Tesla, including a buying spree the day before he called a detente on his public feud with Tesla CEO Elon Musk.

He’s also bought stock in GE Aerospace, pharma giant Eli Lilly and Apple just 48 houts before posting about all three companies simultaneously. He bought American Eagle stock a few before heaping praise on the company’s controversial ad campaign featuring actress Sydney Sweeney that critics said was a wink and a nod to white nationalist rhetoric about “good genes.”

Watchdog groups say the pattern itself is uniquely worrisome from an ethical standpoint. Dylan Hedtler-Gaudette of the Project on Government Oversight called it “a case study in presidential conflicts of interest.” He said even just the mere appearance of impropriety from the president can erode public trust.

Trump has personally called for banning Congress from trading stocks while in office. But he’s fighting efforts to hold himself to the same standard, and even attacked MAGA Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri for even suggesting it.

Gary Kalman of Transparency International US said that even Jimmy Carter voluntarily put his peanut farm in a blind trust when he took office, saying: “We have exempted the one person who can’t actually recuse themselves from a conflict of interest. He added: “That should be a huge red flag.”

There’s a reason this feels familiar. After Watergate, Congress passed the Ethics in Government Act of 1978 because Americans had just learned the hard way that democracy dies a little every time officials profit from their own power. That law forced financial disclosure on every senior official in the land, on the theory that sunlight plus shame would keep people honest. What we’re watching now is what happens when a president treats disclosure as a formality and shame as optional. Rules like that only work when the people at the top believe the rules apply to them too.

Country’s Largest Immigrant Detention Center Called a ‘Human Rights Disaster’

A harrowing new report was just released exposing the dehumanizing conditions at America’s largest immigration detention facility. Human Rights Watch and the ACLU published the report after speaking with 71 detainees at Camp East Montana, which is a privately run facility at the Fort Bliss Army Base near El Paso, Texas.

The report’s findings are heartbreaking. Detainees described being regularly beaten by masked guards, medical neglect, malnutrition, and being completely cut off from the outside world.

Angélica César, the report’s author, said detainees revealed “unbearable cruelty and international human rights violations.” She added some accounts could be reasonably defined as enforced disappearance under international law.

64 of the 71 detainees interviewed said they either directly experienced or witnessed beatings by so-called “anti-disturbance” guards. One detainee said guards would run into housing pods in groups of ten, sometimes as many as twenty, masked and without name tags, while randomly grabbing people for beatings.

The facility is already known for the death of Gerardo Lunas Campos in January. DHS initially claimed he tried to kill himself and died during a rescue attempt. But the medical examiner later ruled his death a homicide by asphyxiation.

Detainees who saw Lunas Campos’ death described something very different than what DHS alleged. One man recalled Lunas Campos asking for his prescribed medication, and instead getting shoved into a cell. He then screamed that he couldn’t breathe while guards allegedly beat him. Then everything went quiet.

The report also delves into the case of a 66-year-old Cuban cancer survivor who’d lived in Florida for four decades. He went on a hunger strike after staff refused to administer his daily medication. Instead of treating him, staff put him in solitary confinement and eventually transferred him elsewhere. His wife told Human Rights Watch and the ACLU that she’s afraid he won’t survive detention much longer.

An internal ICE inspection this year found dozens of violations at the facility, including failures to document medical care and use of force. A Government Accountability Office audit found ICE wasted millions of dollars rushing the facility’s contract.

DHS claimed a new contractor will fix those problems. But César said conditions still haven’t improved. Detainees are still living in squalor, still being denied medical care, and still having a hard time reaching lawyers.

The report calls for shutting the facility down entirely and ending the Trump administration’s mass deportation program for good.

Our Constitution settled this question a long time ago. In 1886, the Supreme Court ruled in Yick Wo v. Hopkins that constitutional protections belong to all persons within our borders, not just citizens, and not just people the government happens to like. That case was about Chinese immigrants being singled out by San Francisco officials, and the Court said the law’s shield covers everyone standing on American soil. What’s happening behind the fences at Fort Bliss isn’t just a policy failure. It’s the breaking of a promise this country made 140 years ago, and it lands on every one of us.

Help Raw America fight the Billionaire Takeover of American Media

If this morning’s newsletter told you something the billionaire-owned press softened, that is exactly why Raw America exists. Trump is scaring his own party with his primetime address, telling contractors to make his son richer, using his platform to make his stocks more valuable and brutally abusing immigrants in hellish conditions. We covered all of these stories without a billionaire calling the shots. Raw America is reader-supported and unbuyable, and every subscription goes directly toward keeping it that way. If you have been reading on a free subscription, this is the single best moment to upgrade to a paying membership. Subscribe or upgrade right now.

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Thanks for watching, and thanks for supporting independent media. I’m Thom Hartmann.

Here are a few stories that may have slipped by:

• Trump’s Border Czar Warns of More ‘Bloodshed’ Unless Democrats ‘Shut Their Mouths.’ Tom Homan, who is President Donald Trump’s appointed border czar, recently issued an ominous warning to Democrats: if they don’t “shut their mouths,” there will be more “bloodshed” in American streets. Homan made the remarks in response to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents fatally shooting Joan Sebastian Guerrero in Biddeford, Maine and Lorenzo Salgado Araujo in Houston, Texas. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has said that both men were not the original targets of investigations in those cities.

• White House’s Teleprompter Operator Made Over $100,000 Betting on Trump’s Speeches. Gabriel Perez, who has been Donald Trump’s official teleprompter operator since 2016, is accused of making bets on the prediction market Kalshi for what Trump would say in his speeches. Perez allegedly wagered tens of thousands of dollars on the contents of Trump’s State of the Union address in February, along with more than a dozen other public speeches. He is reportedly in settlement talks with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.

• New Billboard in Tehran Depicts Trump Lying in a Coffin. A billboard recently went up in Enghelab Square in the Iranian capital of Tehran that shows President Trump, with his eyes closed, lying in a coffin. Persian graffiti painted on the billboard translates to a threat against Trump’s life. Other graffiti reads: “In memory of Minab's children,” which is a reference to the U.S. airstrike on a girls’ school that killed more than 200 students and staff earlier this year.

• New Poll Shows Trump Approval Rating at 37 Percent Amid War and Lagging Economy. With less than four months before the midterm elections, a new Reuters/Ipsos poll shows that President Trump’s approval rating is at just 37 percent, with 61 percent of respondents disapproving of his job as president. The poll shows lagging enthusiasm for Trump even among Republican-leaning independents, with the president only having 52 percent approval from that group. Respondents registered their distaste for the ongoing Iran war and were not optimistic that Trump would succeed in lowering gas prices or the overall cost of living.

• Corporate PACs Kept Donating to GOP Congressman During Months-Long Absence. Rep. Tom Kean (R-N.J.) finally returned to Washington in June after having been gone since March of this year, missing hundreds of votes. Despite him being completely incommunicado with his whereabouts unknown, corporate political action committees continued to pour money into his reelection campaign. Some of the companies that maintained PAC donations to Kean include SpaceX, General Motors, Coinbase, UPS, Comcast, Entergy and New York Life Insurance, among others. Kean attributed his lengthy absence to a depression diagnosis. He’s running for reelection in 2026 in one of the most competitive congressional districts in the U.S.

Vice President JD Vance just admitted to Joe Rogan that the administration bungled the release of the Epstein files. The U.S. Mint just put Donald Trump’s face on a coin in direct violation of a law that’s been on the books since 1866. Trump’s pick to run America’s intelligence agencies can’t even bring himself to say Joe Biden won the 2020 election, and Pentagon officials are reportedly drawing up plans for a possible invasion of Cuba while the Iran war continues to drag on.

Before the news, a quick word about why Raw America exists. Trump’s FCC is quietly eliminating a rule so billionaires can own even more TV stations. Jeff Bezos owns the Washington Post. Rupert Murdoch runs Fox. The billionaires own the government and they own most of the media covering it. Raw America is the independent response to oligarch-controlled media: fully reader-supported, editorially independent, and not for sale. We’ve seen a massive surge in new free subscribers, and we’re glad you’re here. If you have been reading on a free subscription, make today the day you upgrade to a paying membership. Every subscription funds the independent journalism you are about to read. Subscribe or upgrade right now.

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Joe Rogan Hammers JD Vance Over Botched Epstein Files Release

Joe Rogan endorsed Donald Trump in 2024 and was recently seen grinning while holding the mic in front of a UFC fighter who insulted Michelle Obama at the White House, But on Wednesday he came directly at Vice President JD Vance with real questions about the Epstein files, and the vice president couldn’t dodge them.

Rogan reminded Vance of the February 2025 stunt when then-Attorney General Pam Bondi handed binders labeled “The Epstein Files: Phase 1” to MAGA influencers on the White House driveway. But the actual contents of those binders had already been public for years.

Rogan directly asked Vance flat out what the point of that whole display was, and Vance didn’t have a good answer, saying, “I don’t know what the purpose of it was but I know that the effect of it was to make people mistrust the entire effort.”

Rogan didn’t let up, suggesting that maybe the people who didn’t want the files coming out had more influence than previously believed. Vance eventually gave up, and said, “If people wanna say we mishandled the Epstein release, guilty.” he added that the White House did mishandle its communications with the public.

This all traces back to Bondi claiming in 2025 that an Epstein client list was “sitting on my desk.” The DOJ later walked that comment back, saying no such list exists. Rogan even pointed out that some of the redacted names in the released files weren’t victims at all, but some of Epstein’s co-conspirators. Vance didn’t have a response to that either.

US Mint Puts Trump’s Face on a Coin in Defiance of 160-Year Old Federal Law

The Trump’s Treasury Department is rolling out its new commemorative coin for America’s 250th birthday, and, naturally, it has Donald Trump’s face stamped right on the front.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced it Wednesday, calling it a tribute to “the enduring legacy of liberty.” The coin shows Trump in a suit with “LIBERTY” across the top and the dates 1776 to 2026 below.

There’s just one problem. Federal law says you can’t put a living president’s face on U.S. currency. The Thayer Amendment, which was passed back in 1866, exists specifically to stop presidents from turning American money into their own personal monuments.

This isn’t the first time Trump’s put his name on something that wasn’t his to claim. He’s slapped his name on the Kennedy Center, the U.S. Institute of Peace, and a whole class of Navy battleships. Bessent also announced in March that Trump’s signature will now appear on new paper currency as well, even though that job has always belonged to the treasurer and the treasury secretary, not the president.

The Treasury Department has yet to explain why the finished coin looks different from the design the Commission of Fine Arts originally approved. The initial design showed Trump leaning forward with his fists on a desk.

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Trump’s Pick for Intel Chief Confronted for Refusing to Admit Biden Won 2020 Election

On Wednesday, Jay Clayton, the Manhattan federal prosecutor Trump wants to install as director of national intelligence, was grilled by senators during his confirmation hearing. In several testy exchanges, Democrats asked him a question that should be easy: who won the 2020 election?

Clayton refused to say it. Over and over, he repeated only that “Biden was certified as the president of the United States.” That’s not the same thing as saying Biden won, and everyone in the hearing room knew it.

Senator Angus King of Maine called him out directly, reminding him: “One of your qualifications is you told us you’re going to tell the truth to power and you won’t even answer a simple question to tell the truth to power.”

Senator Jon Ossoff of Georgia also pressed him. Clayton clammed up and said, “I’m not going to engage in the theater.”

If confirmed, Clayton would oversee the entire intelligence community. Trump has already redirected the office Clayton is seeking toward investigating his own 2020 loss. Acting Director of National Intelligence Bill Pulte has no intelligence background at all and was told by Trump to look into “rigged” elections. The intelligence community is expected to declassify material as soon as this week that Trump is almost certainly to use in a primetime address pushing the same debunked claims of election fraud he’s made more than a hundred times.

Clayton’s also on record spreading conspiracy theories about mail voting in California. When senators asked him about it, he refused to walk any of it back. That alone says a lot.

Pentagon Reportedly Eyeing Cuba Invasion as Iran War Drags On

While Trump continues to drag the U.S. deeper into the Iran war, Pentagon officials are reportedly looking into a potential war with Cuba.

CBS News is reporting that the Pentagon has gamed out scenarios for a Cuban invasion, including an air assault led by the Army’s 101st Airborne Division. Officials are emphasizing that no official decision has been made, but the fact that these briefings are even happening at all is revealing.

Secretary of State and National Security Advisor Marco Rubio says the U.S. still prefers diplomacy, but that process has stalled while the U.S. keeps squeezing Cuba financially, prompting widespread blackouts and shortages of food, fuel and medicine. Behind the scenes, there’s also friction between Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth over the Iran war, with Trump reportedly upset that an early diplomatic solution got rejected.

Tensions with Cuba have been escalating since the Trump administration indicted 95-year-old former Cuban leader Raul Castro, and the CIA’s visit to Havana that included introducing Cuban officials to the operator who helped capture Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro in January. The fire has been burning hotter for a year and a half, and it’s not slowing down.

Fight Back Against the Oligarch Takeover of the Media

The stories you just read exist because readers like you fund them, not billionaires. The oligarchs are quickly snapping up American media with new cable networks and newspapers being absorbed every day. Every newsroom they gobble up is one less news source reporting on Trump’s corruption or a Republican lawmaker stonewalling their constituents. The single best way to fight back is to fund the independent media they can’t buy. If you’ve been reading Raw America on a free subscription, upgrade to a paying membership right now. Subscribe or upgrade today.

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Here are a few stories that may have slipped through the cracks:

• JD Vance’s Secret Service Detail ‘Fed Up’ with Last-Minute Personal and Family Travel. Several members of Vice President JD Vance’s Secret Service detail are anonymously confiding to MS NOW that they are “fed up” with having to accommodate last-minute, hastily arranged family vacations. One example sources pointed to was Vance asking agents to accompany his elementary school-aged son and a helicopter crew to attend a golf lesson. Some agents considered such requests to be an inappropriate and unprecedented use of government resources.

• Corporations Get $110 Billion in Tariff Refunds Following Supreme Court Ruling. Business around the globe have been reimbursed to the tune of $110 billion after the Supreme Court ruled this spring that President Donald Trump’s so-called “Liberation Day” tariffs issued in April 2025 were unconstitutional. Many ordinary consumers expressed dismay at the refunds, pointing out that these same companies getting massive refunds already made up for the cost of the tariffs by hiking prices on imported goods, passing the cost onto buyers.

• Trump Administration Considers Walling Off Reflecting Pool Until 2027. The Independent is reporting that the chain link fence currently surrounding the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool may remain in place through the remainder of 2026. The outlet reported that the $37,263 contract for the fence, which was awarded to National Construction Rentals Inc., runs through January 8, 2027. The Trump administration recently drained the pool again, and many observers noted that the alleged 350-foot gash Trump said “vandals” carved down the middle of the pool’s lining was nonexistent. However, tire tracks from Trump’s convoy were still clearly visible when the president conducted his own “inspection” of the pool after the bottom was painted dark blue this spring.

Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche is under fire after a top Democrat claimed Blanche privately admitted Trump’s $1.8 billion slush fund for MAGA loyalists was a mistake. Democrats are also accusing Senator Susan Collins of lying about ICE’s recent killing of a 26 year-old man in Maine. A witness to that same shooting is now revealing his account of what he saw, and what he personally said to that ICE agent after the shooting. And Trump’s Justice Department subpoenaed five New York Times reporters over their coverage of Trump’s Qatari-gifted jet.

Before we get into the news, a brief ask. Raw America runs on paid subscribers and nothing else. We don’t have a billionaire owner, a corporate parent or a hedge fund quietly deciding what we can and can’t say. Just readers who believe independent journalism is worth funding. Right now we are behind on our fundraising goals, and we need you to help close that gap. Corporate media and the oligarch-funded outlets propping up this regime will never answer to their readers the way we do. Become a paid subscriber today and keep independent journalism alive.

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Dick Durbin Says Todd Blanche Quietly Admitted Trump’s Slush Fund Was Illegal

Senator Dick Durbin, the top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, dropped a bombshell this week, telling reporters that in a private meeting, Blanche admitted Trump’s $1.8 billion fund for MAGA loyalists was a mistake.

According to Durbin, Blanche said, “What more can I do? What more can I say? I made a mistake. I don’t want to see the weaponization fund go forward.” The Illinois Democrat said he told Blanche to put that admission in writing so it would be taken seriously.

The DOJ’s rapid response account fired back, accusing Durbin of taking a “cordial private meeting” out of context, and said Blanche looks forward to correcting the record during his confirmation hearing.

You may remember how the DOJ initially set up $1.8 billion to pay Trump allies who claim they were wrongfully persecuted by the Biden and Obama administrations. That includes people convicted of attacking police officers during the Capitol insurrection on January 6th.

That fund was part of a deal where Trump dropped his $10 billion lawsuit against the IRS over his leaked tax returns, which also gave him, his family and his businesses full immunity from audits.

The backlash to the fund was bipartisan, and the DOJ ultimately promised to abandon the effort. But notably, Blanche still hasn’t confirmed that in writing.

Durbin didn’t just mention the slush fund. He also accused Blanche of “aiding and abetting the most corrupt administration in history,” pointing out Blanche oversaw the botched release of the Epstein files as well as the IRS deal, along with what he referred to as Blanche’s cryptocurrency corruption.

The senior Democrat added that Blanche never stopped being Trump’s personal lawyer. And after this week, he may become the top law enforcement officer in the United States.

We’ve been here before. Back in 1924, after Attorney General Harry Daugherty ran the Justice Department as a favor bank for Warren Harding’s cronies, Calvin Coolidge brought in Harlan Fiske Stone to scrub the place clean, and Stone made it his mission to prove the department answered to the law, not to any president. A century later we’re watching that lesson run in reverse, and the question before the Senate this week is whether the nation’s law firm works for the American people or for one man’s legal defense.

Democrats Say Susan Collins Is Lying About the ICE Shooting in Maine

Outrage is building over an ICE agent in Maine fatally shooting 26-year-old Colombian national Joan Sebastian Guerrero on Monday. Guerrero had a U.S. work authorization and a Social Security number. He leaves behind a partner and a 3-year-old daughter.

Maine Republican Senator Susan Collins told reporters the agent wasn’t wearing a body camera because ICE still doesn’t have them deployed. She then blamed Democrats, saying the government shutdown over ICE funding delayed the purchase and rollout of the cameras.

Democrats are now loudly calling Collins a liar.

Senator Patty Murray of Washington state, who is the top Democrat on the Senate Appropriations Committee that Collins chairs, pointed out that Republicans gave ICE nearly $30 billion last summer in Trump’s Big Ugly Bill. Another $10 billion went to the Homeland Security secretary for what is effectively a discretionary slush fund.

ICE has had plenty of money just sitting there, which could have paid for body cameras on all federal agents across the country at any point.

Murray said the Trump administration instead blew taxpayer money on private jets and gold-coated SUVs the Department of Homeland Security can’t even use. And she added that blaming Democrats for a lack of body cameras was “completely absurd.”

Staffers on the Republican-controlled House Homeland Security Committee said Murray is right: the cameras have already been purchased, and guidance on using them has already been written. ICE is simply dragging its feet on deployment.

Back in February, after ICE agents killed Alex Pretti in Minneapolis, then-DHS Secretary Kristi Noem promised to “rapidly acquire and deploy body cameras” across the agency. That still hasn’t happened almost six months after the fact.

Pretti’s death happened not long after ICE agents killed another U.S. citizen in Minneapolis, Renee Good. Minnesota officials said Tuesday they’d finally obtained body camera footage from both shootings after the Trump administration spent months stonewalling the investigation.

Collins said Guerrero’s death “appears to be a horrible tragedy” but that the investigation, which is being handled by Maine’s attorney general, the FBI, and an independent inspector general, needs to be allowed to carry on before anyone draws conclusions.

Here’s the thing. Article One of the Constitution says no money leaves the Treasury except by an appropriation made by law, and the founders gave Congress that power of the purse precisely so the executive couldn’t spend our money however it pleased while dodging accountability. When Congress hands an agency thirty billion dollars, that agency doesn’t get to sit on the safety equipment and blame the people who wrote the check. And Susan Collins chairs the very committee that’s supposed to enforce it.

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Witness Reveals What He Said to ICE Agent Who Killed Man in Maine

Speaking of that shooting, people who actually witnessed it are now telling their side.

Dan Boucher lives right on the street corner in Biddeford, Maine where the shooting happened. He says he saw an ICE vehicle boxing in a small sedan before he heard gunshots.

He ran downstairs and watched ICE agents pull Guerrero from his car. He heard someone say, “I tried to stop.” Eventually, Guerrero stopped moving.

Boucher says he later confronted the agent who fired the shots and told him, “I hope you’re happy with what you did. I hope you’re satisfied.” The agent then reportedly said, “He tried to run me over.”

Witnesses became infuriated after learning Guerrero wasn’t even ICE’s intended target. Neighbor Rose Littlefield said he’d simply borrowed the supposed subject’s car to go to work.

They’re also frustrated by the Department of Homeland Security’s shifting explanations, first blaming a “weaponized car,” before then pivoting to “fears over public safety.”

Boucher is asking a simple question: why shoot someone over public safety concerns while standing in front of a moving vehicle? Witness Larry Humiston observed ICE always has the the same excuse every time they kill someone. It’s always about the car.

Witness Cecelia Humiston accused ICE of doing everything they can to protect the agent who pulled the trigger, and now an innocent man is dead and a three year-old child lost her father.

Boucher gave his statement to the FBI, the Maine State Police and the state attorney general’s office, which investigates all uses of deadly force by law enforcement.

And by the way, this isn’t some unsettled legal gray zone. Four decades ago the Supreme Court ruled in Tennessee v. Garner that police can’t use deadly force against a fleeing person who poses no immediate threat to anyone. That’s not a suggestion, it’s constitutional law binding every officer in America, federal agents included. So when the official excuse changes twice in one day and the man who died wasn’t even the target, the neighbors of Biddeford aren’t just grieving. They’re witnesses to whether that law still means anything.

Trump DOJ Subpoenas Reporters Over Qatari Jet Coverage

The Trump DOJ is escalating its war on the press in a major way.

Five New York Times reporters — Julian Barnes, Eric Lipton, Tyler Pager, Eric Schmitt and Adam Goldman — just got DOJ subpoenas demanding they testify before a grand jury in Manhattan. Some of the subpoenas were delivered straight to the reporters’ homes.

The subpoenas were apparently issued in response to the Times’ reporting that Trump departed the recent NATO summit in Turkey aboard the old Air Force One over security concerns, rather than the $400 million jet gifted to him by the Qatari royal family, which was sent ahead to a British air base. That reporting came alongside revelations that Trump considered himself a top target of Iran following new hostilities between the U.S. and the Islamic republic.

Press freedom experts say the way this investigation started is likely illegal. George Freeman of the Media Law Resource Center said reporters are supposed to be the last resort in an investigation into leaks, not the top target.

A DOJ spokesperson insists reporters aren’t being targeted, and that the department is simply trying to prevent the leaking of classified information.

But critics are pointing to the context og Trump’s long history of hostility toward the Times. Trump has repeatedly called the paper “failing” and “fake” and is in the middle of suing it for defamation over its coverage of his campaign.

Press freedom advocates say the subpoenas are designed to chill reporting and intimidate the Times’ sources, harming government transparency long after Trump is out of office.

The Times’ top lawyer, David McCraw, said federal agents showing up at reporters’ homes with subpoenas should absolutely “shock the conscience of any American who believes in the Constitution.”

The National Press Club and the White House Correspondents’ Association both condemned the DOJ for issuing the subpoenas, adding that journalists should have the right to do their jobs free of government intimidation.

This all comes as Pete Hegseth’s Pentagon is announcing a new initiative to hunt down leakers, and while Trump’s FCC chair, Brendan Carr, is threatening the broadcast licenses of networks critical of the administration. It’s part of a much bigger pattern of intimidation of the press during the second Trump presidency.

This fight is older than the republic itself. In 1735, a New York jury refused to convict the printer John Peter Zenger for publishing the truth about a corrupt royal governor, and that verdict planted the idea that telling the public what its government is doing can never be a crime. Every subpoena delivered to a reporter’s doorstep is an attempt to dig up that root, and it’s exactly why freedom of the press is written into the First Amendment.

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Here are some stories that you may have missed:

• Trump’s FCC Clears Path to Allow Billionaires to Own Even More TV Stations. The FCC — which is led by President Donald Trump’s appointed chairman, Brendan Carr — announced it will vote on August 6 on a rule that could lift the cap put in place to prevent an owner from controlling TV stations that broadcast to more than 39 percent of markets. The vote comes as litigation continues over the proposed Nexstar-Tegna merger, which would allow one company to own TV stations broadcasting to roughly 80 percent of American households.

• Senate Democrats Block Pentagon Funding Bill Over Trump’s War with Iran. Democrats in the U.S. Senate voted Tuesday to block the 2027 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) from advancing over concerns about Trump’s ongoing war with Iran. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said it was irresponsible for Republicans to conduct business as usual while “the nation’s most urgent national security crisis” continues unabated. The bill needs seven Democratic votes to pass the Senate’s 60-vote threshold to overcome a filibuster.

• Trump Endorses MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell’s Campaign for Minnesota Governor. President Trump on Wednesday officially endorsed the gubernatorial campaign of Republican candidate Mike Lindell, a staunch Trump ally known for peddling baseless conspiracy theories about the 2020 election. That endorsement contrasts with Minnesota Republican Party activists’ endorsement of businessman Kendall Qualls, who won over a majority of the Minnesota GOP convention in May. Minnesotans will elect their respective parties’ general election nominees on August 11. Sen. Amy Kobuchar (D-Minn.), who is leaving her Senate seat at the end of 2026, leads all prospective Republican challengers in the latest polls.

• Vast Majority of Michigan Democrats Want Single-Payer Healthcare. A new poll conducted by WDIV and The Detroit News shows that 82 percent of Democratic voters in Michigan would prefer a single-payer healthcare system over the current system. This is particularly significant as healthcare is a key difference between Democratic U.S. Senate candidates Abdul el-Sayed and Haley Stevens. El-Sayed, a doctor who previously served as Detroit’s chief health officer, supports universal healthcare, while Stevens does not.

• Trump Demands ICE Pull Back from Promise to Halt Vehicle Stops Despite Latest Killings. President Trump wrote Wednesday morning on his social media platform that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) should continue conducting vehicle stops in spite of the recent killings of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo in Houston and Joan Sebastian Guerrero in Biddeford, Maine. Trump called the practice “one of ICE’s most important and effective crime fighting tools.” The Department of Homeland Security has already admitted that Salgado Araujo and Guerrero were not the original targets of the respective investigations being conducted at the time.

ICE is quietly pulling back on vehicle stops in response to widespread protests against agents killing two people in less than a week. Tesla CEO Elon Musk may soon face criminal charges in Wisconsin after election officials found probable cause that he violated the state’s bribery laws. American soccer star Folarin Balogun is speaking out about how Donald Trump’s phone call to FIFA’s president threw his Team USA into chaos right before its match against Belgium. And Mitch McConnell’s hospital stay is putting the Senate’s farm bill in serious jeopardy, with Republicans short on votes and time running out before the August recess.

But before we dive in, we need to address something: Raw America is going all-in on the bet that we can fully reader-supported, independent media outlet can one day grow big enough to compete with the billionaire-owned cable networks. We all know David Ellison won’t let CBS tell the truth about the president he donated to, and that Jeff Bezos will water down any coverage at the Washington Post that could harm his federal contracts. But Raw America has no billionaire behind the scenes calling the shots. We have you. If you believe in independent journalism that only answers to readers, we’re counting on you to become a paying subscriber right now.

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ICE Pauses Vehicle Stops in Response to Massive Protests Over 2 Shootings

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is now instructing its agents to pull back on most vehicle stops nationwide. This comes right after ICE agents killed two people in a single week.

In Texas, agents shot Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, a Mexican national who’d lived in Houston for more than 30 years. He was driving to work with three passengers in the car. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) later admitted Salgado Araujo wasn’t even who they were looking for.

Then in Biddeford, Maine this week, agents shot and killed a 26 year-old Colombian man named Joan Sebastian Guerrero, again during a vehicle stop. And similar to last week’s deadly shooting, the DHS couldn’t even say clearly whether he was their intended target.

Republican Senator Susan Collins of Maine, who’s up for reelection this year, called for a stop to non-urgent vehicle stops. But local protesters are pointing out that Collins personally voted to give ICE $70 billion in funding just last month.

Federal officials claim both men tried to flee. They have yet to release any video to back up that assertion. That matters specifically because in other ICE shootings, video eventually surfaced that completely contradicted the official story. One of those cases, involving an agent who shot a Venezuelan man in Minneapolis, has now led to actual state criminal charges against that agent.

At least 22 people have been shot at by federal agents since Trump’s second term began last year. Six people are dead, three of them U.S. citizens. This is a pattern, and the calls for accountability are growing louder and more frequent.

Elon Musk May Be Criminally Charged with Election Fraud in Wisconsin

Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk may finally face legal consequences for allegedly trying to buy an election. According to the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, the Wisconsin Elections Commission recently voted 5 to 1 to refer two complaints against Musk to the Brown County District Attorney. The commission found probable cause that Musk broke the state’s election bribery law.

Lst spring, you may remember how Musk handed out million-dollar checks to Wisconsin voters trying to help conservative Brad Schimel win a state Supreme Court race. He also paid people $100 each to sign a petition tied to the race. All told, Musk poured at least $20 million into that election, making it the most expensive judicial race in American history.

The centibillionaire originally posted on his social media platform that he’d give away a million dollars to people who’d voted in the race. Once election experts and Democrats pointed out that sounded like bribery, he deleted the post and reworded it.

Ultimately, Musk’s money didn’t matter. Susan Crawford, the liberal candidate in the race, ended up beating Schimel by double digits anyway.

The Brown County District Attorney’s Office now has 40 days to decide whether to actually prosecute Musk. The Tesla and SpaceX CEO is also facing a separate lawsuit from the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign trying to stop him from pulling this stunt again. Musk may be the richest man in the world, but even a man of his immense wealth may have to answer in court for allegedly trying to buy a state Supreme Court seat.

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US Soccer Star Reveals How Trump Destabilized Team USA’s Morale

American soccer player Folarin Balogun scored three goals to help the U.S. reach the round of 16 in the FIFA World Cup. But he almost didn’t get the chance to compete against Belgium for a spot in the quarterfinals, because he’d been hit with a red card suspension.

Trump bragged about personally called FIFA president Gianni Infantino to get Balogun’s suspension overturned. Trump later admitted he didn’t even know what a red card was before all this happened. But FIFA gave in, Balogun’s suspension got reversed, and the whole thing became a global story.

Balogun is now telling his story of how the controversy rattled his teammates right before their biggest game. The 24 year-old said he “could almost see within my teammates a bit of nerves,” and added it was difficult to block out the noise from Trump’s interference. The U.S. lost to Belgium in 4-1 rout. Belgium’s players went on to mock Trump’s dance moves both on the field and in the locker room. Their team account posted a two word response to Trump’s complaints: “Overturn this.”

The White House’s own World Cup task force director even admitted the saga “potentially” distracted the team. A human rights group has now filed a complaint with the International Olympic Committee accusing Infantino of caving to political pressure. Trump turned what he hoped would have been a glorious moment into a scandal that ended Team USA’s World Cup hopes.

Mitch McConnell’s Absence Jeopardizes Must-Pass Legislation

84 year-old Republican Senator Mitch McConnell’s health is now complicating the fate of the farm bill. Kentucky’s senior U.S. senator has been in the hospital for more than a month: first for a fall, then for what he referred to in a statement as a mild case of pneumonia. He says he intends to come back, but has yet to give a timeline for his return.

Without McConnell’s vote, Senate Republicans won’t have the votes to move the farm bill out of committee on a party-line vote. Agriculture Chair John Boozman of Arkansas said he’s still hoping for a markup before senators leave for the August recess, but he added McConnell’s absence isn’t the only obstacle. Democrats are refusing to support the bill unless it delays new burdens imposed on states for paying for food stamp benefits — which used to be 100 percent covered by the federal government until the One Big Beautiful Bill Act became law last year. Republicans won’t consider it.

While McConnell’s health continues to dominate the headlines, farmers are increasingly desperate for billions in promised aid. Congress has mulled attaching that aid package to whatever legislation has the best chance of passing, whether that’s the farm bill, a Pentagon funding package, or something else entirely. As Boozman put it, farmers need help now, not later. But with one senator sidelined and Washington gridlocked, cash-strapped farmers may have to wait a little longer.

That’s your Tuesday evening rundown. ICE is in retreat mode after a wave of protests over its agents killing people, Elon Musk may find himself charged with election crimes in Wisconsin, Trump is being accused of derailing Team USA’s World Cup dreams, and help for American farmers may hinge on the health of an 84 year-old senator who’s been hospitalized since mid-June. The pro-Trump billionaires who own the major networks won’t cover these stories honestly. This is exactly why we need independent media, and why Raw America will never take on a billionaire backer or corporate advertisers. But that model only works if enough readers chip in to keep this work going. If you’ve been reading our newsletters on a free subscription, make today the day you upgrade to a paying one. Your support keeps all of this going.

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Thanks for watching. I’m British Chris. We’ll see you tomorrow.

Here are a few stories you may have missed:

• Trump’s Virginia Golf Club Has Pest Problem. A June 30 health inspection at the Trump National Golf Club in Loudoun County, Virginia found a “large quantity” of flies near the employee restrooms. Inspectors also found various perishable food items stored at temperatures too high to be considered safe for consumption, including blue cheese, sausage links, sausage patties and pasta. Trump’s golf resort in New York’s Hudson Valley received similarly poor marks from health inspectors earlier this year.

• Thomas Massie and Ro Khanna Redouble Efforts to Strip Pro-Israel Provision from Military Funding Bill. Reps. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) and Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) are joining forces once again on an amendment to remove Section 219 from the 2027 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). That amendment significantly increases U.S. military commitment to Israel, which Military.com reports would involve appointing an official responsible for “coordinating joint research, testing, weapons development, technology integration and industrial cooperation” between the U.S. States and Israel. Massie stated that he wouldn’t support billing U.S. taxpayers for “genocide.”

• 28 Year-Old Man Killed By Semi Truck After Fleeing ICE Agents in Florida. ICE has now been involved in a third death this week, this time in St. Augustine, Florida. The Miami Herald reported that a 28 year-old man was killed Tuesday morning after being hit by a truck while he was running away from ICE agents. The driver of the truck attempted to render first aid, but the man ultimately succumbed to his injuries. The man’s name and immigration status remain unknown, along with his nationality.

Mitch McConnell’s Senate seat might not be his to keep much longer, with Kentucky’s Democratic governor is looking hard at ways to replace him. Donald Trump is hijacking the airwaves to re-litigate the election he lost six years ago. A new report shows federal and local law enforcement have blinded and seriously injured protesters across the country with crowd control weapons. And New York just became the first state in the country to ban the construction of massive AI data centers, over concerns that they’ll overload the power grid and drain water supplies.

Before we get to the news, we need your help keeping Raw America operational. We are fully reader-supported, editorially independent and not for sale. We don’t have a billionaire backer or a corporate parent. We are 100 percent powered by readers like you, but right now we’re behind on our fundraising goals and need those on the free list to step up and become paying subscribers. If you’ve been opening and reading our newsletters and haven’t yet made the leap, make today the day you change that. Subscribe, chip in, and help us keep building independent media that works exclusively for you.

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Kentucky Governor May Override GOP Legislature’s Restrictions to Replace McConnell

Two-term Kentucky Democratic Governor Andy Beshear says he’s seriously exploring all legal options to replace Republican Senator Mitch McConnell if the 84 year-old can’t return to work. Beshear told MS NOW that he’s exploring his authority as governor to act in the event of a sudden vacancy.

Kentucky’s Republican legislature, which can override Beshear’s vetoes with its supermajority, did their best to curb his powers. They previously passed two laws designed to box out the term-limited Democrat. First, they tried forcing the governor to pick a potential Senate replacement from a list of three names approved by Republican lawmakers. When that didn’t stick, they passed a second law saying Beshear can’t fill the seat at all and instead has to call a special election.

But Governor Beshear thinks he’s found a way around Republicans in the state capitol. One provision in the Kentucky constitution gives the governor authority to appoint state officers when a vacancy opens up. What remains unclear is whether that language extends to vacant federal offices as well. Beshear observed that before Kentucky ever had a law spelling out the process, multiple governors made similar appointments anyway, presumably relying on that same language in the state constitution.

This conversation is increasingly noteworthy given that McConnell’s team released a so-called “proof of life” photo, showing the 84-year-old wearing a button-down shirt and jeans, sitting in a hospital bed next to his wife, Elaine Chao, holding a copy of last Sunday’s newspaper. It’s been roughly a month since McConnell was found unconscious at his D.C. home and needed CPR.

In a statement released alongside the photo, McConnell said he fell, didn’t break any bones, didn’t suffer a concussion, and didn’t have a heart attack or a stroke. He added there were no tumors or hemorrhages, but that he was briefly rendered unconscious and hospitalized. He also confirmed he’s been dealing with a mild case of pneumonia. Keep in mind that the 911 audio revealed paramedics mentioning cardiac arrest, meaning they couldn’t detect a pulse.

For weeks, McConnell’s staff, led by his aide Terry Alan Carmack, has stonewalled reporters with the same line about the senator “appreciating the outpouring of support.” There has yet to be any real update on his condition, his treatment, or whether he’ll actually be able to return to the Senate.

Beshear is also stating for the record that one staged photo isn’t enough. He wants to see McConnell actually speaking in an interview or a video, and prove he can actually do the job Kentuckians elected him to do. Until that happens, expect Beshear to keep looking hard at that constitutional provision.

And remember why the Seventeenth Amendment exists in the first place. Americans ratified it in 1913 because they’d had enough of party bosses in state legislatures cutting backroom deals over who got to sit in the Senate. Kentucky Republicans writing two laws to keep the voters’ twice-elected governor away from this decision is precisely the old corruption that amendment was designed to bury. That seat doesn’t belong to a supermajority in Frankfort. It belongs to the people of Kentucky.

Trump Plans to Hijack Airwaves to Air Grievances About 2020 Election

President Donald Trump is demanding a primetime TV slot this Thursday night to drag all of us back to 2020 all over again. Trump announced his plans for a national 9 PM address on Truth Social, writing about himself in the third person. He didn’t go into detail, but reporting suggests he’ll roll out a “potpourri” of topics, including alleged foreign interference in the 2020 election he lost to Joe Biden.

It’s not clear yet which countries Trump plans to name, or whether this is just a rehash of foreign interference attempts intelligence officials already investigated years ago. Russia did try to damage Biden back in 2020 by pushing bogus claims to U.S. media and officials, some of them close to the Trump administration. Iranian-linked hackers also tried and failed to compromise Trump’s 2020 campaign. And an official in the first Trump administration warned in 2019 that China was trying to influence public opinion in the U.S.

But none of that backs up the narrative Trump and his allies have clung to for six years running. Rudy Giuliani built an entire harebrained conspiracy theory around Dominion Voting Systems, falsely claiming the voting machine company’s software was built with help from a dead Venezuelan president and Chinese officials. Giuliani was eventually disbarred for peddling lies.

Trump has yet to accept that he lost the 2020 election. Remember, this is the same president who got impeached for pressuring Ukraine to make up dirt about Joe Biden ahead of that election in exchange for financial support. Whatever claims Trump may make Thursday night, don’t expect anything that changes the basic fact that he lost fair and square to Joe Biden.

When John Adams lost to Thomas Jefferson in 1800, in an election every bit as bitter as anything we’ve seen, he got in a carriage and went home to Massachusetts. It hurt him deeply, and he still did it, because he understood the republic mattered more than his pride. Every defeated president for over two centuries honored what Adams started. Six years of refusing to do what Adams did isn’t a grievance. It’s a slow-motion assault on the one tradition that separates a democracy from everything else.

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New Report Reveals Significant Injuries to ICE Protesters at Hands of Law Enforcement

A disturbing new report shows that crowd control weapons that both federal and local law enforcement deployed against anti-ICE protesters have caused serious, lasting damage to Americans, including blindings and traumatic brain injuries. Physicians for Human Rights and the Human Rights Center at UC Berkeley documented 412 verified cases of these so-called “less lethal” weapons like rubber bullets, flash-bang grenades, tear gas and pepper spray being misused between June 2025 and May 2026, resulting in at least 203 confirmed injuries.

Researchers say the real number is almost certainly higher, since things like chemical injuries, chronic pain and hearing loss are harder to verify through visual evidence.

This is still happening. Protesters assembled outside the Delaney Hall immigrant detention center in Newark, New Jersey, this spring in May and June with detainees who were on a sustained hunger strike. During the unrest, ICE officers pepper sprayed New Jersey Democratic Senator Andy Kim, which made national headlines and led to even larger demonstrations against Trump’s ICE crackdown. In the days that followed, officials used batons, shields, and tear gas on protesters, arresting dozens of people.

The lead author of the report, Dr. Rohini Haar, says she was inspired to dig into the hard data after seeing news of a pastor in Oakland getting shot in the face with a chemical weapon by a federal agent. Researchers classified “misuse” based on whether protected groups like journalists and healthcare workers were targeted, whether vulnerable people like children and the elderly were singled out, and whether weapons were used in ways that violated manufacturer guidelines, like firing at someone’s head or using them at point-blank range.

A separate ProPublica investigation found at least 79 children were harmed by tear gas or pepper spray during ICE operations. Nationally, Department of Homeland Security sub-agencies like ICE and U.S. Customs and Border Protection were responsible for 64 percent of the documented incidents of misuse. Local law enforcement played a role too, especially in cities like Los Angeles.

Researchers also found a sharp jump in incidents that tracked directly with former Border Patrol commander Gregory Bovino’s arrival in Minneapolis this winter, who led the aggressive ICE crackdown there before getting pulled from his post and reassigned after two U.S. citizens were killed. Bovino eventually retired and criticized the Trump administration for not going far enough.

Since Trump’s mass deportation operations began in January 2025, at least nine people have died during federal immigration enforcement operations according to the Associated Press. Two more deaths came just this month in a six-day span in botj Houston, Texas and Biddeford, Maine.

We’ve seen this movie before. On March 7th, 1965, state troopers met peaceful marchers on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma with tear gas and clubs, and Americans watching those images on their televisions were so sickened that Congress passed the Voting Rights Act five months later. The historians quoted in this reporting are drawing that comparison for a reason. The country knew what to do the last time it saw its own government gassing citizens in the street. The question now is whether we still do.

New York Bans Data Center Construction

New York will soon become the first state in the country to hit pause on new hyperscale data centers. These are the massive server farms that guzzle unprecedented amounts of electricity and water to power artificial intelligence. Democratic Governor Kathy Hochul is set to sign an executive order freezing state permits for these facilities for at least a year while regulators write new rules covering energy use, water consumption and environmental impact.

Hochul says data center development is threatening to increase New Yorkers’ utility bills and drain water resources for ordinary residents, and argues it’s her job to step in. Her order halts new permits and forces state regulators to actually study what these facilities are doing to the grid before any of them actually get built.

Tech companies are livid. They argue moratoriums like this one harm local job creation and give China an edge in the AI race. Maine tried something similar earlier this year, but Democratic Governor Janet Mills vetoed it. Roughly a dozen states have floated similar moratoriums without much progress, although some municipal and county governments have passed their own temporary bans.

This is a major issue taking place in the middle of a tight New York governor’s race. Hochul’s Republican challenger, Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman, is against a statewide freeze and wants local governments to be the ultimate deciders regarding new data center construction. The New York State Assembly already passed its own moratorium, but Hochul’s office said it was too complicated and opted for an executive order that takes effect the moment she signs it. New York hasn’t yet been a hub for data centers, but that’s exactly why Hochul wants rules in place before it plays host to any in the future.

This is an old American fight wearing new clothes. In 1935, Congress passed the Public Utility Holding Company Act because a handful of holding companies had turned the electric grid into their private piggy bank, jacking up rates on ordinary families while answering to nobody. FDR called them out by name and broke them up. The grid belongs to the people who pay for it and depend on it, and when the richest companies on earth want to drink it dry, somebody in public office has to say the public comes first. That’s what Hochul just did.

That’s your Monday morning rundown. Mitch McConnell’s ailing health has Kentucky’s governor actively exploring how to replace him. Donald Trump is commandeering primetime TV to push his own debunked conspiracy theories about an election he already lost. Federal and local police have caused documented, lasting damage to protesters by abusing crowd control weapons. And New York just took the boldest state-level action anywhere in the country to rein in Silicon Valley’s runaway power and water demands.

We can’t count on billionaire-owned networks like the Ellison’s CBS, or Jeff Bezos’ Washington Post, or Rupert Murdoch’s Fox to cover these stories honestly without seriously watering them down. We launched Raw America as a direct response to MAGA oligarchs buying up major media outlets, turning them into propaganda mills and firing everyone who doesn’t play along. Independent media like Raw America is the one thing they can’t buy. But we need support from readers like you to keep the lights on. If you found this newsletter valuable, please take a moment to become a paying subscriber. Your support is what makes all of this possible.

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I’m Thom Hartmann. Thanks for being here, and thanks for supporting independent media.

Here are a few stories you may have missed:

• Ron Johnson Doubts Authenticity of Mitch McConnell Photo. Even Sen. Mitch McConnell’s (R-Ky.) Republican colleagues are skeptical of the proof-of-life photo McConnell’s office released this week. During an interview with far-right outlet Real America’s Voice, Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) told host Eric Bolling that he “heard from some other sources that was an older photo.” He later issued a partial retraction of his remarks and urged everyone to consider the full context of his remarks, and went on to wish McConnell a speedy recovery.

• Artist Collective Mocks Trump’s Iran War with ‘Participation Trophy’ Sculpture. The artist collective known as “Secret Handshake” recently erected a statue in Washington D.C. of a giant golden trophy with a “#1” inscription on the bottom of the cup, which is labeled as an “Iran War Participation Trophy.” The group is also behind sculptures depicting President Donald Trump walking hand-in-hand with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

• FBI Fires Analysts Who Spoke Out Against Fulton County Raid. The FBI, which is led by Trump loyalist Kash Patel, recently fired two analysts who raised concerns about the raid on an elections facility in Fulton County, Georgia earlier this year. Agents seized “all physical ballots” from the 2020 election, in which Trump narrowly lost Georgia to Joe Biden thanks to high voter turnout in the Democratic stronghold of Fulton County. Agents have a deadline of July 17 to release the results of their investigation.

• Trump Calls Kamala Harris ‘Half’ a Person. President Trump recently quipped in an interview that he was up against “two and a half” people during his lone 2024 debate against then-Vice President Kamala Harris. The president argued that NBC News debate moderators Linsey Davis and David Muir constituted two opponents, while the first Black female vice president was the “half.” The founders of the United States initially decreed that Black people were considered three-fifths of a person when deciding on apportionment for slaves.

ICE just killed a man in Maine, and protesters are now demanding answers at Susan Collins’ office. A dozen states are suing to block the Ellison family’s attempt to turn CNN into yet another MAGA mouthpiece. Major media networks are getting caught letting Trump set the ground rules for his own interviews with no pushback. And in Minnesota, prosecutors finally got the administration to release critical evidence in the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti.

But before we get to the news, we need you to take a moment to support independent media. As you’ll learn in a moment, cable networks owned by corporations and right-wing billionaires are all too eager to allow this president and his friends to tell them how to do their jobs. Raw America was created specifically because we can’t count on media outlets captured by MAGA oligarchs to hold this administration accountable. But because we’re completely reader-supported, our work can’t continue unless readers like you decide it’s worth funding. We’re counting on you to make today the day you become a paying subscriber.

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Protesters Storm Susan Collins’ Office After Deadly ICE Shooting

A 26 year-old man from Colombia is dead after ICE agents shot him Monday morning in Biddeford, Maine. Witnesses say he was on his way to work. One eyewitness told the Portland Press Herald agents killed the man in front of his three-year-old daughter, who was still wearing her Bluey pajamas when it happened.

Videos from the scene show agents wearing vests marked “Police” and “ICE” trying to get into a white Kia sedan as it drove around in circles. Another vehicle appears to have struck the Kia. Bullet holes could be seen on the vehicle afterward.

One bystander said an agent pointed his gun at the driver and kept warning the man before firing when the car allegedly moved toward him. Another eyewitness said he heard the man say, “I tried to stop,” as he was pulled from the car, bleeding from the head.

By the afternoon, protesters had packed the entrance of Republican Senator Susan Collins’ Biddeford office, shouting “Vote her out!” Others carried signs reading “NO ICE” and “Melt ICE.” Collins has been heavily criticized by Maine Democrats since her June vote for a $70 billion ICE funding bill.

Collins called for a full investigation. Democratic Congresswoman Chellie Pingree said she was “disturbed and angry,” and asked the obvious question: why was ICE even operating in Maine in the first place?

This is at least the eleventh fatal shooting involving federal agents since Trump’s second term began last year. This winter, Maine went through a surge of ICE arrests under something the administration called Operation Catch of the Day. Officials claimed they were targeting the worst of the worst. But of the roughly 200 people arrested, only 11 had any criminal convictions at all.

12 States Sue to Block Ellison Family’s Attempt to Buy CNN

Twelve Democratic attorneys general filed suit Monday to stop Paramount Skydance’s $110 billion purchase of Warner Bros. Discovery, which is the parent company of CNN and other major media entities. California Attorney General Rob Bonta said the merger would lead to higher prices for customers, lower quality, and less content for audiences everywhere, from movie theaters to living rooms.

It’s worth mentioning that if this deal goes through, pro-Trump billionaire Larry Ellison and his son David would singlehandedly own CNN, CBS News, Warner Bros., and HBO Max. That’s a homemade right-wing media empire.

The Ellisons have already dragged CBS News hard right, installing conservative opinion columnist Bari Weiss as editor-in-chief of CBS News, with plans to give her the same job at CNN. Weiss push out veteran journalists at 60 Minutes. Trump himself has reportedly given his preferences for who he wants fired first at CNN once the Ellisons officially take over. Even Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has cheered on CBS’ right-wing editorial shift.

The Justice Department already blessed the merger last month. Now it’s up to a federal judge in California to decide whether letting two media giants become one is going to hurt the public too much to be legal.

Media consolidation like this is exactly why we launched Raw America this year. We’ll never beat the billionaires with audience size alone. But we can beat them by becoming the one thing they can’t buy. Become a paying subscriber and help independent media survive at a time when the billionaires are trying to crowd everyone out.

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Networks Caught Letting Trump Dictate the Terms of His Own Interviews

Trump called into NBC’s Meet the Press Sunday to talk about the late Senator Lindsey Graham. But when host Kristen Welker asked him about the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, Trump snapped at her.

“I don’t want to talk about it because I want to honor the life of Lindsey Graham,” Trump said. “I told you that before the call!”

Welker just said “yeah” and moved on. Journalist Tommy Christopher, writing on the Jim Acosta Show’s official Substack, said that sounded a lot like conditions had been set ahead of time for the interview, and that Welker obediently got back in line once Trump pushed back on her trying to step outside of the agreed-upon terms.

CNN host Jake Tapper caught similar heat for his own sit-down with Trump the same day, criticized for letting the president steer the conversation without much pushback at all. Like Welker, Tapper tried to get Trump to clarify the situation in the Strait of Hormuz. But Trump curtly responded, “don’t talk about it,” and told Tapper to “talk about the reason you asked me to speak.” Tapper meekly said “OK” and got right back in line.

Whether Tapper just didn’t feel like challenging the president or he’s auditioning to keep his job should David Ellison become his new boss remains unknown. But it’s a dark time for journalism when major cable news network hosts crumble to pieces the moment Trump criticizes them.

Minnesota Gets Breakthrough in Renee Good, Alex Pretti Cases

Prosecutors in Minneapolis announced Monday that the Trump administration finally turned over evidence they’d been sitting on for months in the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, the two U.S. citizens federal agents killed this January. That includes body camera footage, statements, and Good’s damaged SUV.

Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty celebrated the development, but Attorney General Keith Ellison said it should never have taken this long. The new evidence was reportedly overturned after federal officials asked the state for evidence in a separate case involving an ICE agent charged with assault. The state basically said fine, but only if it goes both ways.

Now, prosecutors in Houston say they’re getting the same runaround in trying to investigate last week’s fatal shooting of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, the father of three with no criminal record who was killed while he was on his way to work. They don’t even know the names of the officers who pulled the trigger.

At least nine people have died at the hands of ICE since their newest enforcement campaign began. And nobody’s been charged in any of those killings.

That’s your Monday evening rundown. A man is dead in Maine, and protesters want answers from their senator. Billionaires linked to Trump are trying to buy up CNN, CBS, and HBO Max in one shot. Cable network anchors are letting the president dictate his own interview terms without a fight. And it took the federal government six months to hand over evidence in the deaths of two U.S. citizens who were gunned down in broad daylight.

We all know none of this would get covered properly by corporate and billionaire-owned media outlets with ties to this regime. Raw America will never take on a billionaire backer or corporate advertisers, but that also means your financial support is essential to keeping this work going. If you found this newsletter valuable, the single most important thing you can do is become a paying subscriber right now.

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I’m British Chris, with Raw America. Thanks for watching. We’ll see you tomorrow.

Here are some stories you may have missed:

• Trump Shares Video Demanding Deportations of ‘Hardcore Communist Bastards’ Like Mamdani. President Donald Trump recently shared a video of far-right commentator Michael Savage demanding the arrest and deportation of “hardcore communist bastards,” specifically naming New York City Zohran Mamdani. The president sharing the video is particularly noteworthy given that he’s struck a friendly tone with Mamdani, telling reporters in the Oval Office after Mamdani’s inauguration that he believed the young Democratic socialist would be a good mayor.

• South Carolina Governor Appoints Lindsey Graham’s Sister to Serve Out His Term. After the death of Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) last weekend, South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster (R) officially named his sister, Darline Graham Nordone, to serve as his replacement. Nordone will likely have competition in next month’s special primary, which could see multiple candidates including Reps. Nancy Mace (R-S.C) and Ralph Norman (R-S.C.) along with several others.

• Kentucky Governor Prepares for Legal Battle in the Event of Senate Vacancy. Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear (D) said Monday he is already looking into the legal process for declaring a special election in the event the commonwealth has a sudden U.S. Senate vacancy. The two-term Democratic governor said two laws Kentucky’s Republican-dominated legislature passed regarding U.S. Senate vacancies may violate the Kentucky constitution. Beshear’s remarks come as speculation continues to mount about the condition of 84 year-old Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), who has been hospitalized since June 14.

Mitch McConnell’s team put out a proof-of-life photo and MAGA is already calling it fake. Trump and his family raked in over a billion dollars from crypto while taking regular investors for everything they have. The Senate has officially returned to Washington, with Republicans scrambling to fill Lindsey Graham’s seat and committee posts. And the Vatican is loudly refuting the White House’s accusation that Pope Leo was engaging in politics when criticizing the Iran war.

Before we get to the news, we need to address why you’re getting your news from Raw America, rather than from a network owned by a pro-Trump billionaire. We both know Jeff Bezos’ Washington Post, Rupert Murdoch’s Fox and David Ellison’s CBS won’t give you the full truth, because news outlets owned by MAGA oligarchs can’t be trusted to hold MAGA accountable. That’s why we launched Raw America. We don’t have a billionaire backer or corporate advertisers, and we never will. But that also means we need financial support from readers like you to stay operational. If independent journalism is important to you and if you’re still reading this on the free list, we need you to make today the day you upgrade your subscription to a paying one. Don’t wait.

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MAGA Calls BS on Mitch McConnell’s Hospital Photo

Republican Senator Mitch McConnell’s office released a photo Sunday showing the 84-year-old lying in what looked like a hospital bed next to his wife, Elaine Chao. It was the first anyone had seen of him since his June 14 hospitalization. The photo dropped just hours after McConnell’s Republican colleague, Lindsey Graham, died suddenly at 71.

McConnell’s office released a statement alongside the photo, supposedly written by McConnell himself. It says he didn’t have a heart attack or a stroke. Instead, he fell and was rendered unconscious, and later developed a mild case of pneumonia while recovering. The statement says he’s since been moved to a rehab center.

MAGA Republicans weren’t convinced. Trump loyalist Laura Loomer asked why McConnell’s staff would release a photo instead of video and wrote, “I call BS. The American people aren’t stupid.”

Loomer also zoomed in on the newspaper McConnell is holding in the photo, and said the text looked AI-generated, and that the tag on his shirt was also blurry. She also asked why there’s no IV in the photo if he’s really in a hospital bed.

Loomer also claimed on July 6th that a “high-level source” close to the White House told her McConnell is “officially braindead” and is only being kept alive by machines. That claim kicked off a wave of speculation that McConnell’s team had been hiding his condition.

Former Republican Congressman Jason Chaffetz also jumped in, arguing that a written statement isn’t the same as hearing it from McConnell’s own mouth, on camera. Former Fox producer Kylie Jane Kremer said the public deserves an unedited video, instead of a photo and a paragraph of text. She also observed that there was no metadata on the photo, demanding to know when and where it was actually taken.

Metadata is often for security purposes so people can’t track someone’s location. But in an environment rife with distrust, even that choice is seen as evidence of a cover-up.

This story says less about McConnell’s current condition, and more about where the Republican base’s trust with him currently sits. When even a senator who’s spent over a decade as the party’s leader in the Senate can’t get the benefit of the doubt from the GOP, that shows how fractured Republicans are right now.

And there’s an older lesson buried underneath all this. When Woodrow Wilson suffered a stroke in 1919, his wife and his doctor hid the truth and quietly ran the country from behind a locked door, and the public didn’t learn how sick he really was until it was long past the point of doing anything about it. A self-governing republic can’t function when the health of the people who hold power over our lives gets treated as a private family secret, because you can’t hold accountable what you’re not allowed to see.

Trump Made a Fortune on Crypto While Thousands of Investors Lost Their Shirts

Back in 2021, Trump called Bitcoin a scam. Fast forward to 2025, and Trump and his family made more than $1.4 billion through their own cryptocurrency businesses. That’s the most profitable year of his entire business career, which includes decades of real estate developments including hotels and casinos in multiple cities and states. Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of everyday people who bought into Trump’s crypto ventures got crushed.

Take Fatime Elrgdawy, a 29-year-old software engineer in California. She put $2,000 into the $TRUMP coin, only to watched her investment shrink to less than $120 within five months. The coin lost 97 percent of its value from its peak.

The family’s crypto empire began with World Liberty Financial, which was launched in 2024 during the final weeks of Trump’s campaign. Crypto executives poured money into Trump’s reelection effort, with the industry eventually becoming the single biggest donor sector in the whole 2024 election cycle. Bitcoin hit an all-time high in 2025, and the White House gutted efforts to police the industry while pardoning convicted crypto fraudsters along the way.

Foreign money has also complicated the equation. Four days before Trump’s inauguration, a company tied to an Abu Dhabi royal quietly bought up nearly half of World Liberty Financial, funneling $187 million to the Trump family. That same week, Trump rolled out his meme coin monetizing his fist-pump photo from the assassination attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania. That deal made him roughly $636 million last year.

Ordinary retail investors weren’t as fortunate. Roughly two-thirds of people who bought Trump’s meme coin lost money, adding up to nearly $3.8 billion in total losses. Another analysis found 85 percent of buyers in one World Liberty token are underwater right now.

The same Abu Dhabi royal who invested in World Liberty later got approval to import advanced American AI chips,. Another firm tied to that same royal, which is holding $2 billion in a World Liberty coin, is now among the new owners of TikTok’s U.S. operations after the Trump administration spent months pressuring the app to sell off its American operations.

The Trump administration continues to insist there are no conflicts of interest. The president told CNBC last week he could know the details of his crypto fortune but doesn’t, insisting nothing illegal happened.

Meanwhile, prices for his coins have been sliding along with the rest of the crypto market. But the pattern remains the same: the man sitting in the Oval Office and his family are running a crypto empire, and making a killing while everyday investors are left holding the bag.

The founders saw this exact danger coming. They wrote the Foreign Emoluments Clause into Article One of the Constitution for one reason, to make sure no American official could pocket money or gifts from a foreign power and then bend our policies to serve that power instead of our own people. When an Abu Dhabi royal wires $187 million to the president’s family and then walks away with our most advanced AI chips and a slice of TikTok, that isn’t some clever loophole in the system the founders built. That’s the precise thing they built the system to stop.

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Republicans Scramble to Fill Lindsey Graham’s Seat and Committee Assignments

The House and Senate are back from recess, and there’s a lot on the agenda. This couldn’t come at a worse time for Republicans, after Republican Lindsey Graham of South Carolina died suddenly at the age of 71.

Speaker Mike Johnson is trying to break a weeks-long Republican blockade in the House, while Trump has effectively frozen the Senate over his demand to pass his restrictive voter ID bill. Senate committees are also holding confirmation hearings this week for attorney general nominee Todd Blanche, and Jay Clayton, who has been tapped to be the next director of national intelligence. The Senate’s also taking up its version of the defense bill, which Democrats are expected to block over Trump’s handling of Iran.

Graham is remembered as a staunch Trump ally. He also inserted himself into just about every major legislative fight, from budget battles to foreign policy and healthcare, and he did it long before Trump ever arrived on the scene. He occasionally crossed the aisle, even voting for some Democratic-appointed Supreme Court justices, which would get most Republicans run out of town in the current political climate.

Graham was close with both Senate Majority Leader John Thune and Mitch McConnell, serving as a bridge between the Senate and the White House. As Budget Committee chair, he was set to lead a third reconciliation package this year. He’d also just returned from a trip to Ukraine, where he announced a Russia sanctions deal with bipartisan support just one day before his death.

Now South Carolina has to figure out who replaces him. Republican Governor Henry McMaster will appoint someone to fill the seat through the rest of this year. Then a special primary kicks off, with filing opening next week , a primary election on August 11th, and a potential runoff on August 25th if nobody clears a majority. Names already circling include Reps. Ralph Norman, Nancy Mace, Russell Fry, and William Timmons, along with Lieutenant Governor Pamela Evette.

There’s also a scramble over Graham’s committee posts. Republican Ron Johnson of Wisconsin is preparing to take over the Budget Committee gavel, which would be a significant shift given Johnson’s history pushing for draconian spending cuts. Graham was also expected to become the top Republican on the Judiciary Committee next year. Now that job could go to Mike Lee, Ted Cruz, or Josh Hawley.

That;s a lot of change in just a handful of months, and it shows just how much one senator’s death can influence the entire chamber’s balance of power.

Here’s why that lands so hard. Back in 1946, Congress passed the Legislative Reorganization Act and handed a small handful of committee chairs enormous power over what does and doesn’t become law for the rest of us. Eighty years later, we’re watching that bargain play out in real time, where the death of one man and an appointment made by a single governor can quietly redraw the map of federal spending, judicial nominations, and national security. That’s an awful lot of power over your life for you to have almost no say over.

Vatican Hits Back at Trump’s Claim That Pope Leo Is a Politician

The Trump administration’s ambassador to the Vatican tried to dismiss Pope Leo XIV’s criticism of the Iran war by arguing the pope was speaking as a head of state, rather than as a religious leader. The Holy See is taking that accusation seriously.

Vatican spokesperson Andrea Tornielli published a statement directly refuting that argument. He argued that whenever the pontiff speaks on war, immigration or other pressing issues, he’s doing so as a spiritual leader proclaiming the Gospel, not a politician.

The Vatican is responding to Brian Burch, the U.S. ambassador to Vatican City and a prominent Catholic ally of Trump, who suggested in a recent that the pope is on equal footing with other heads of state and is acting as sovereign leader of Vatican City when criticizing Trump’s foreign policy.

This exchange shows the escalating tension between Leo, who is the first American-born pope, and the Trump White House. The pope has been careful not to cast himself as being in an adversarial relationship with the administration, but he’s also become more direct in calling out the White House’s policies. He’s repeatedly condemned the Iran war, spoken out against Trump’s claims that God favors the U.S. over Iran, and said in Spain that the war doesn’t meet the Catholic Church’s definition of a just war. And last year, the pope called the administration’s immigration crackdown inhuman.

Tornielli’s statement didn’t mention Burch by name, but the implication was obvious. He warned that characterizing the pope’s role as a politician comes at the expense of his true mission as a faith leader. Even when addressing war, migration or artificial intelligence, Tornielli insisted the pope remains first and foremost a spiritual guide, not a head of state.

This puts Catholics in the White House, including Vice President JD Vance, in a pretty awkward position. They have to balance their loyalty to Trump with the fact that their own church’s leader keeps publicly rebuking their boss.

We’ve seen this move before. When Martin Luther King Jr. stood up at Riverside Church in 1967 and called the war in Vietnam morally wrong, plenty of powerful people told him to stay in his lane and stick to civil rights, as though a moral leader had no business questioning a war. King’s answer was that conscience doesn’t stop at the edge of politics, and neither does the Gospel. When an administration tells a pope that his objection to killing only counts if we agree to file it under politics, it’s making that very same demand, and it deserves that very same answer.

That’s your Monday morning rundown. MAGA doesn’t trust Mitch McConnell’s team to be transparent about his health. Trump and his family made over a billion dollars from crypto while ordinary investors got soaked. A senator’s death has kicked off a scramble that will shape policy fights for months to come. And the head of the Catholic Church just loudly rejected the White House’s attempt to wave away the pope’s criticism.

Billionaire-owned media outlets can’t be trusted to cover these stories the right way, because they’re owned by the very same people whose fortunes depend on keeping us in the dark about what they’re doing behind the scenes. Raw America doesn’t answer to a billionaire with a Mar-a-Lago membership or a corporate board. But that also means we need readers like you to decide that independent media is worth funding. If you’ve been enjoying newsletters like these for free, today is the best day to change that. Subscribe today, chip in, and help Raw America stay independent. We’re counting on you.

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Thanks for watching, and thanks for supporting independent media. I’m Thom Hartmann.

Here are some stories you may have missed:

• ICE Just Killed Another Person in Maine. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents just shot and killed another person, this time in Biddeford, Maine. ICE has yet to release the person’s name or reveal any of the circumstances that led to the shooting. But this is the second fatal shooting by ICE in a week, after agents fatally shot Lorenzo Salgado Araujo — a father of three with no criminal record — in Houston, Texas last Tuesday.

• Trump Recommends Lindsey Graham’s Sister Be Appointed to Fill His Seat. President Trump on Monday endorsed Darline Graham Nordone, the sister of the late Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), to be appointed to succeed Graham in the wake of his sudden death last weekend. South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster (R) is expected to announce Graham’s replacement at a press conference on Monday afternoon, though a special primary is likely to follow next month. Reps. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) and Ralph Norman (R-S.C.) are expected to run.

• Rapper Boosie Badazz Out $600,000 in Effort to Buy Trump Pardon. Louisiana-based rapper Boosie Badazz (formerly known as Lil Boosie) reportedly paid right-wing lobbyists Jacob Wohl and Jack Burkman more than $600,000 in an effort to secure a pardon from President Trump ahead of his scheduled sentencing for a federal firearms offense. Wohl and Burkman apparently told the rapper, whose legal name is Torence Hatch, on New Years Day that his pardon was forthcoming. But six months later, the pardon has yet to be announced. Hatch is demanding half of the money be returned, but Wohl and Burkman say they never agreed to return any money.

• Democrats Trying to Minimize Impact of ‘Big Beautiful Bill’ Caught in Political Trap. Some of the most punishing provisions of Republicans’ “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” (OBBBA) — which President Trump signed into law last July — are set to take effect following the midterms, and some Democratic governors are hoping to save their constituents from the worst parts of the law. The OBBBA cuts funding for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (or SNAP, also known as food stamps) by roughly 20 percent while slashing Medicaid funding by more than $1 trillion over 10 years. Democrats are now faced with the conundrum of either intervening to minimize some of the worst effects of those policies like rural hospital closures through various administrative solutions, or allowing them to take effect. Political scientist Miranda Yaver wrote in the New Republic that any administrative fix could serve to “bail Republicans out of bad policymaking.”

Good morning, Raw America family. Welcome to the Sunday Wrapup. I’m here with my cup of coffee, and for once I’m smiling at the news. And it’s not about Lindsey Graham.

Thank you for being a paying subscriber. We built this publication because we saw billionaires swallowing America’s newsrooms whole. This week, for the first time, we got a glimpse of what it looks like when someone pushes back. You also helped hire our new White House reporter, Brian Karem.

Now, let’s get into it.

Farewell, Trump Enabler

First, we have to talk about Lindsey Graham, who died unexpectedly last night of a “brief and sudden illness.”

By sunrise, the whitewash had begun. Trump declared him a “true American Patriot.” Netanyahu mourned a beloved friend. Their eulogies will tell you about his service.

But they won’t tell you the truth. In 2016, Graham dared America on camera: “Use my words against me.”

Here are his words.

In December 2015, Graham called Donald Trump a “race-baiting, xenophobic, religious bigot.” By February 2016, he said: “I think he’s a kook. I think he’s crazy.” That May: “If we nominate Trump, we will get destroyed... and we will deserve it.”

Then Trump won. Within a year, he was scolding reporters for calling the president a kook.

He wept on the Senate floor for John McCain, then deepened his devotion to the man who mocked McCain’s captivity, and who kept mocking him after he was dead.

In 2016, he swore no Supreme Court seat should be filled in an election year. In October 2020, he rammed Amy Coney Barrett onto the Court eight days before the election.

Georgia’s Republican secretary of state said Graham called him about tossing legal ballots. On January 6th, he said “count me out,” but was back at Mar-a-Lago within months.

I’ll give him one achievement: he championed Ukraine to the end, dying a day after standing with Zelensky in Kyiv.

But the ledger is the legacy. He saw what Trump was, said so, and spent nine years kneeling anyway.

He asked us to use his words against him. Consider them used.

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The States Are Coming to Stop Paramount

David Ellison thought the hard part was over. His $110 billion bid to swallow Warner Bros. Discovery, which would put CNN and CBS News under one Trump-friendly roof, glided through Trump’s Justice Department without a scratch. His father Larry donated millions to a pro-Trump group. And according to The Wall Street Journal, he privately promised the president that Paramount could “overhaul” CNN once the deal closed. There was even a dinner honoring the Trump White House.

And then the states showed up.

This week, a coalition led by California and New York is preparing to sue to block the merger. Oregon’s AG has also asked a court to halt the deal while it investigates Paramount’s lobbying of the Trump administration.

Across the Atlantic, the U.K.’s media regulator says she’s “minded to intervene,” warning the merger threatens a “sufficient plurality of views” in the news media.

Career Justice Department staff also reportedly opposed the merger. As Norm Eisen told Status, the staff who got overruled “were absolutely right to question the deal, and judges may well be about to join them.”

The $650 Million Clock

At first blush, a few states opposing a merger in a landscape of Trump-friendly judges seems almost quaint. But Ellison has a real problem. When Paramount was fighting off Netflix’s competing bid, Ellison inserted a “ticking fee” into the deal to show off his confidence. Starting October 1, Paramount owes Warner Bros. shareholders 25 cents per share for every quarter the deal stays open.

That’s roughly $650 million. Per quarter.

So the states don’t even need to win. They just need to slow things down.

Jeffrey Toobin told Status that a court-ordered stay “could be almost as bad for Paramount as losing the case.” Because even for a rich guy like Ellison, that’s real money on top of the nearly $80 billion in debt his deal is already carrying.

The money behind the money is also getting nervous. Gulf sovereign funds from Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Abu Dhabi that pledged $24 billion in equity are reviewing their overseas investments as Trump’s war with Iran shakes the region.

Equally important: Larry Ellison’s Oracle has shed nearly 40% of its value in a year.

The Ellison empire has cash-flow problems. The meter starts running in October.

CNN Could Walk Free

According to Status, the pre-eminent media newsletter, there’s another outcome nobody will say out loud but everybody’s whispering about. If delays pile up, Paramount’s easiest escape hatch may be spinning off CNN as a standalone asset.

Wharton’s Paul Nary told Status that if it came down to divesting CNN or losing the deal, Paramount would take the deal. “CNN is almost immaterial when it comes to other WBD assets,” he said.

This is a big deal. Ted Turner’s cable news network, which was set to join Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News as a Trump-appeasing channel, could remain independent.

Ironically, CNN could slip out of the Ellisons’ grasp precisely because they got too cute courting the administration.

I’m not going to pretend the fight is won. But for the first time since the Ellisons started their shopping spree, the deal is actually at risk.

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ICE Killed Another Immigrant Who Wasn’t Even Their Target.

On Tuesday morning, Lorenzo Salgado Araujo did what he did every workday: he left home to pick up his construction crew and drive them to a job site. He never got there. An ICE agent shot and killed him during a traffic stop in Houston’s East End.

Salgado Araujo was 52. He’d lived in this country for more than 35 years. He had no criminal record and was close to finishing the long process of obtaining legal status.

DHS now admits he wasn’t the man they were looking for. Agents saw a white van and someone who “resembled the target,” and a father of three ended up bleeding on the pavement. His son learned of the shooting from a Facebook post.

ICE claims he rammed their vehicle. The three men who were in his van say that’s false.

This is the first known fatal shooting by federal immigration agents since Renée Good and Alex Pretti were killed in January. Alex’s death is part of why Raw America exists. The machine that killed him is still running, still unaccountable, and still shooting people it wasn’t even looking for.

Federal Agents Are Knocking on Reporters’ Doors

If buying the press doesn’t work, there’s always intimidation. On Friday, federal agents showed up at the homes of New York Times journalists with grand jury subpoenas. Four reporters have been ordered to testify next week over their reporting that Trump’s Qatari-gifted Air Force One lacks the security of the old plane.

The Times‘ top lawyer said the sight of federal agents on reporters’ doorsteps should shock anyone who believes in the Constitution. I agree.

Connect the dots. One billionaire family is trying to buy CNN and CBS. The government is criminalizing reporters at the Times. The free press in the U.S. is being squeezed from both ends: ownership above, prosecution below.

Thanks For Staying Ahead of the Billionaires

I launched Raw America because I watched billionaires buy up the free press one masthead at a time, and because Alex Pretti’s killing showed me what happens when power stops fearing accountability.

Here’s what your subscription builds: reporters in Washington breaking stories the corporate outlets won’t touch. Live interviews with officials Trump would rather keep off your screen. And a newsroom that keeps an eye on the biggest stories, while the oligarchs would prefer you look away.

Thank you again for being with us. You’re what makes our day possible.

— John Byrne / Founder, Raw America and Raw Story

P.S. Sharing this newsletter makes a huge difference as we try to build Raw America and get the word out. If there’s anyone you think who might be interested, please pass this along to them right now.

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Good morning,

Federal agents showed up at the homes of four New York Times reporters Friday night with subpoenas tied to their coverage of a security threat involving Trump’s new Air Force One, Trump is describing the posthumous orders he has left behind in case Iran succeeds in assassinating him, a top election forecaster just shifted four governors races toward Democrats, and Trump is quietly reopening a Canadian bridge that had been closed amid suspicions the closure was a favor to a major donor family. Let’s get into it.

Before we do, we need to ask you for something.

Raw America runs on paid subscribers and nothing else. No billionaire owner. No corporate parent. No hedge fund quietly deciding what we can and cannot report. This week alone we brought on veteran White House correspondent Brian Karem, and in his first week he delivered exclusives from Mitch McConnell’s aides and sources inside the Pentagon. That is the kind of fearless reporting corporate media will not touch, and it only happens because readers fund it directly. If you have not yet become a paid subscriber, now is the time to step up.

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DOJ Subpoenas Four Times Reporters Over Air Force One Coverage

Federal agents delivered subpoenas to the homes of four New York Times journalists Friday night, ordering them to appear before a federal grand jury this week. Reporters Julian E. Barnes, Eric Lipton, Tyler Pager, and Eric Schmitt are all being compelled to testify after their reporting on a security threat involving Trump’s new Air Force One, the jet Trump accepted as a gift from the Qatari government.

The Times called the move “an extraordinary escalation” in efforts to intimidate independent journalism, and the paper’s lawyer described federal agents showing up at reporters’ homes as a “brazen act” that “should shock the conscience of any American who believes in the Constitution.” The subpoenas themselves are vague, asking only that the journalists testify about an unspecified violation of federal criminal law.

The DOJ insists the reporters are not targets and that the investigation is focused on whoever leaked classified information. The underlying story reported that Trump switched planes during a trip to Turkey at the Secret Service’s request because of an unspecified threat, something Trump has since tied to an Iranian assassination plot, even as he publicly claimed the swap was so troops in the UK could admire the new jet.

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Trump Details “Instructions” He Has Left Behind if Iran Kills Him

In a new interview, Trump described the posthumous orders he says he has left in place in case Iran succeeds in assassinating him, as the war between the two countries stretches into its fifth month. “I’ve left instructions, if anything happens, to just literally bomb them at levels that they’ve never seen before,” Trump said.

The comments come after Israeli intelligence reportedly informed U.S. officials of an Iranian plot against Trump while he was in Turkey for a NATO summit this week, prompting him to leave the country on a different plane than the one he arrived on. Trump has made similar statements about posthumous retaliation since shortly after taking office in 2025.

Trump also took aim at his own negotiating team, saying it is “a waste of time” continuing talks with Iran through son-in-law Jared Kushner and envoy Steve Witkoff. Even Fox News host Brian Kilmeade criticized the pair this week, noting they have not been effective negotiators in Ukraine, Gaza, or now Iran.

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Election Forecaster Shifts Four Governors Races Toward Democrats

The Cook Political Report has moved four gubernatorial races in Democrats’ direction, while Republicans saw only one race shift their way. Ohio moved from “Lean R” to “Toss Up,” a serious blow to MAGA candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, while Arizona shifted from “Toss Up” to “Lean D.” New Mexico and Maine are now both rated “Solid D.” The lone shift toward Republicans came in Oregon, where poor approval ratings for the Democratic incumbent moved the race from “Solid D” to “Likely D.”

Ohio Republicans privately admit they are “not optimistic” about Ramaswamy, with one GOP source telling Cook Political Report he was “the wrong guy to roll the dice with in this political environment.” If Democrats flip Ohio and hold their expected gains elsewhere, they could control more governorships nationally than Republicans for the first time in over a decade. Prediction markets now give Democrats an 81 percent chance of retaking the House and a 44 percent chance of taking the Senate.

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Trump Quietly Reopens Canadian Bridge After Donor Family Suspicions

Trump is backing off his aggressive trade posture toward Canada, quietly allowing the completed Gordie Howe International Bridge between Detroit and Windsor, Ontario to finally open on July 27. The bridge had sat closed for months after Trump refused to open it, officially as protest over Canadian trade practices, while demanding the U.S. be given at least half ownership despite an existing agreement to simply split toll revenue.

Political observers had pointed out that the new bridge would compete directly with the privately owned Ambassador Bridge, controlled by a trucking family that contributed heavily to Trump’s super PAC, raising questions about who the closure was really protecting. Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer celebrated the announcement, calling the bridge a testament to Michigan and Canada’s partnership.

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We need you to become a paid subscriber today.

Every single story above happened because corporate media and billionaire owned outlets decided it was worth covering, or worth burying. Raw America answers to no billionaire. We answer to no corporate boardroom. We answer to you, our readers, and only because paid subscribers make that possible.

Right now we are behind on our fundraising goals, and we need that to change today. This week we brought on veteran White House correspondent Brian Karem, and within his first week he delivered exclusives sourced directly from Mitch McConnell’s aides and inside the Pentagon. That is the kind of fearless, on the ground reporting corporate media will not touch, and it only exists because readers fund it directly.

Corporate media and the oligarch funded outlets propping up this regime will never answer to their readers the way we do. They cannot. Their owners will not let them. We can, because you make it possible.

If you have not yet become a paid subscriber, this is the moment to step up. Independent journalism does not survive on good intentions. It survives on people like you deciding it is worth funding.

Stay strong. Stay vigilant Keep fighting.

John, Justin and the Raw America Team

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Stories You May Have Missed:

· Graham Platner has officially dropped out of the Maine Senate race. After the sexual assault allegation from a former partner surfaced this week, the Democratic candidate ended his bid to challenge Sen. Susan Collins. Maine Democrats now have until July 27 to pick a replacement, and Politico describes an “18-day primary” scramble already underway.

· Trump fired the last remaining members of the Election Assistance Commission. Two Democratic commissioners were fired outright and a Republican commissioner resigned, leaving the federal agency responsible for certifying voting systems and setting election guidelines unable to act just months before the midterms.

· An ICE shooting in Houston is raising serious questions. Federal agents killed Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, a father and small business owner, during an operation in which he was reportedly not even the target. Witnesses and video evidence reportedly contradict the official ICE account, and his family is demanding answers while Mexico separately pursues criminal charges over deaths of Mexican nationals in ICE custody.

· New Mexico’s attorney general is accusing Trump’s DOJ of obstruction. The state’s top law enforcement official formally alleges the Justice Department has been interfering with an inquiry into Jeffrey Epstein’s New Mexico ranch property.

· A bipartisan housing affordability bill is headed to law, with or without Trump’s signature. Trump has said he “will not sign” the measure “in protest” but stopped short of threatening a veto, meaning the bill can still become law over his objections.

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Republicans are worried Trump reigniting tensions with Iran is going to ensure Democrats sweep back into power after the midterms. A federal judge just handed the administration another stinging loss, blocking Trump’s attempt to strip grants from blue states and cities. CNN is taking great pains to distance itself from MAGA pundit Scott Jennings’ claims that Mitch McConnell is healthy and well. And Trump’s so-called “Freedom Fuel” gas stations are already charging more than the price plastered all over the White House’s own promotional posts.

Before we dive into the news, a quick word about why you’re reading this newsletter rather than watching a cable channel owned by a MAGA billionaire. It’s obvious that right-wing oligarchs like the Ellisons, the Murdoch family and Jeff Bezos aren’t buying up networks and newspapers for the love of journalism, but out of a desire to control what we get to know. We launched Raw America as the answer to that, because we believe you deserve news that won’t pull punches when it comes to holding power accountable. But this only works if enough readers like you become paying subscribers. If you support what we’re doing here, subscribe, chip in and help us stay fully independent. We can’t do this without you.

Fight back against the billionaires

‘He’s Screwing Us’: Republicans Say Trump Dooming Their Chances of Staying in Power

Donald Trump suddenly announced earlier this week that the ceasefire with Iran is over. He said Iranian attacks on ships in the Strait of Hormuz justified the U.S. military’s response of bombing more than 170 targets inside Iran in 48 hours. Iran has since hit back at American targets in four different countries across the region.

Capitol Hill Republicans are furious. Not because they disagree with fighting Iran, but because they think Trump may have just handed the midterms to Democrats by relaunching the war.

One unnamed House Republican told Politico that both Trump and Iran’s leaders share the same instincts for survival and control. They noted that while “not screwing us” might be the president’s goal, “he’s screwing us into political oblivion” anyway.

Republican strategist Matthew Bartlett also didn’t hold back. He pointed out the party has no unifying economic message, and now they have to contend with a messy international crisis mere months before the election.

Some Republicans want Trump to keep hitting Iran hard, while others are worried about gas prices climbing right as families go on summer road trips. Ultimately, the GOP looks like a rudderless party right before voters decide who controls Congress for the next two years.

Federal Judge Slaps Down Trump’s Attempt to Defund Blue States

A federal judge in California just delivered Trump another loss in his ongoing war against blue states.

U.S. District Judge William Orrick — a Barack Obama appointee — blocked the administration from attaching anti-DEI strings to federal grant money headed to Oregon and California. The judge said the move oversteps Congress’s constitutional authority over federal spending, which is plainly spelled out in Article 1, Section 8.

That funding helps cities support programs for domestic violence survivors, human trafficking victims, disaster relief and anti-terrorism. Trump apparently uses the term “DEI” to apply to anything helping children, elderly people and Americans targeted by abuse.

Orrick wrote in his ruling that nothing in the Constitution or federal law gives the president the power to restrict these funds, in full agreement with the plaintiffs.

This is now the third time in just a matter of weeks that federal judges have blocked Trump’s anti-DEI moves. It’s starting to become a predictable pattern. The regime keeps trying to use federal money as a political weapon, and the courts keep stepping in to tell the White House no.

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CNN Distances Itself from Scott Jennings’ Claims About McConnell’s Health

The mystery surrounding Mitch McConnell’s health keeps getting messier. CNN is making it clear it wants no part of the confusion.

A CNN spokesperson clarified to the Daily Beast that MAGA commentator Scott Jennings, who used to work for McConnell, isn’t a full-time journalist there, and his personal account of a conversation with his former boss doesn’t count as CNN reporting.

Jennings has been claiming he spoke with McConnell’s staff and that the 84 year-old senator may be soon returning to work. On Jake Tapper’s show, Jennings said he’d talked with senior staff and that McConnell is gearing up to go back, though he admitted he didn’t know the exact timeline.

CNN host Kasie Hunt pressed him harder on her show, even suggesting he call McConnell live on air so the public could hear directly from him. Jennings demurred, admitted he didn’t know why McConnell’s been hospitalized and that he didn’t ask for medical details during what he said was a private call.

McConnell has been hospitalized for nearly a month, and hasn’t been seen at the Capitol in more than six weeks. Dispatch audio from the day he was taken to the hospital referenced an unconscious person in cardiac arrest. His staff has said almost nothing publicly. Most of what Americans know is coming from GOP allies like Jennings and top Republican senators like John Thune and John Barrasso, who also claims to have spoken with him on the phone.

To be clear, we have no video showing McConnell is healthy and well, and no public statement from the senator himself. Just secondhand claims from his fellow Republicans. CNN is making it clear that the network won’t vouch for any of it.

Trump’s ‘Freedom Fuel’ Gas Stations Are Already Raising Prices

The White House rolled out the so-called “Freedom Fuel Network” this week, promising gas would be $3.47 a gallon in honor of the “47th President.” But it didn’t take long for that number to change.

The app GasBuddy has been tracking prices at most of the 25 Freedom Fuel locations and found most were charging at least $3.57 a gallon by this morning. Social media posts from New Jersey and Pennsylvania showed the same thing. Not a single tracked station was actually selling gas at the advertised $3.47.

One station in New Jersey was even caught charging $3.89 earlier in the week before it eventually lowered the price.

The White House is now claiming it isn’t actually behind the network and isn’t subsidizing the prices, though its own social media post credited Trump directly for lowering gas costs. When pressed by a Pennsylvania CBS affiliate, a White House spokesperson simply said prices would “fluctuate.”

Energy analyst Tom Kloza told the New York Times that these kinds of promotional pricing schemes never last, saying stations selling at a loss usually only manage to do so for hours, not days or weeks. Gas nationally was well under $3.47 a year ago, but now that Trump has reignited the Iran war, prices are already creeping back up.

That’s your Thursday rundown: Republicans panicking over the war jeopardizing their chances of staying in power, Trump once again losing a court battle over funding for blue states, a major cable news network refusing to let a MAGA commentator’s rumors be mistaken for journalism and the president’s attempt to be a hero on gas prices falling apart just as soon as it got off the ground.

We all know the media outlets captured by MAGA oligarchs won’t report on these stories honestly. And if they do, they’ll be softened and watered down beyond recognition. This is why we created Raw America, because right-wing billionaires shouldn’t get to dictate the narrative. But independent journalism can only survive with your support. If you found this newsletter valuable and you’re still reading on a free subscription, make today the day you upgrade.

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Thanks for watching. I’m British Chris, with Raw America. We’ll see you next week.

Here are a few stories you may have missed:

• Trump’s Record Stock Trades Are Beating the S&P 500. President Donald Trump’s flurry of second-term stock trading has so far netted him a 37.3 percent return, according to the group Unusual Whales, which tracks politicians’ investments. Meanwhile, the S&P 500 index has appreciated by just 23.5 percent over that same time period. Trump made 21,285 stock trades in 2025 alone, which is the equivalent of 85 trades per trading day. Trump’s son, Eric, maintains that neither the president nor his family have control over his trading, and that independent investment managers are responsible for all of the trades.

• JD Vance Brags About ‘Army’ of Private Chefs While Americans Struggle to Afford Food. Vice President JD Vance recently appeared on a podcast and boasted about how his life has “totally transformed” since becoming vice president. Vance said that while he previously enjoyed cooking, he now has “an army of people willing to cook my food.” He also bragged about “no more TSA lines for me and the kids,” since he now travels with his own 757 jet. Meanwhile, Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” recently turned one year old, and cut food stamp funding by tens of billions of dollars while food banks are seeing higher demand from millions of Americans having difficulty buying groceries.

• ICE Agents Who Shot Lorenzo Salgado Araujo Weren’t Wearing Body Cameras. The Associated Press is now reporting that the U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents who shot and killed Lorenzo Salgado Araujo in Houston, Texas on Tuesday were not wearing body cameras during the shooting. This is despite the Department of Homeland Security receiving $20 million in federal appropriations earlier this year to equip agents with body cameras, and former DHS Secretary Kristi Noem vowing that all federal agents would wear them following the fatal shooting of Alex Pretti in Minneapolis this January.

• Man Spotted Leaving McConnell’s Home with Floor Samples. Independent journalist Nick Ballasy recently filmed a man leaving Sen. Mitch McConnell’s (R-Ky.) townhouse in Washington D.C. with a palette of swatches containing floor samples. The man told Ballasy he was measuring the home for new flooring, setting off a wave of speculation about why McConnell’s wife, Elaine Chao, was apparently remodeling the couple’s home while her 84 year-old husband is hospitalized. McConnell has said he would be leaving the Senate in January of 2027 rather than seek another term, meaning Chao could be preparing to list the home for sale.

Democratic primary elections, in particular, are showing us America is both in the midst of a deep crisis and is on the verge of what could be transformational, positive, life-altering political and economic change comparable to FDR’s New Deal.

It became obvious, really, in the first minute of New Year’s Day this year, when two things happened at once vividly showing us all the contrast and the crises around where America stands right now.

Read more

Raw America White House correspondent Brian Karem is reporting that Pentagon officials are quietly criticizing Donald Trump and Pete Hegseth for blowing up the Iran ceasefire. Outraged Floridians are calling the renaming of Palm Beach International Airport after Trump an “egotistical grift.” Trump abruptly gutted one of the few federal bodies that helps states run clean elections just before the midterms. And new video shows Mitch McConnell being lifted into an ambulance on a stretcher, raising fresh questions about how forthcoming Senate leadership has really been about his health.

Before we go further, I need to ask you something directly: will you make today the day you become a paying subscriber to Raw America?

We launched Raw America in January as a direct response to billionaires aligned with the Trump regime buying up major cable networks and newspapers and making themselves the sole deciders of what we get to know. You’re reading this because you agree with us that news outlets owned by billionaires can never be fully trusted to hold those same people accountable. If you find our work valuable, support us with a paying subscription. We don’t answer to a billionaire backer or corporate advertisers. We only answer to you. Subscribe and help keep it that way.

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Pentagon Officials Rip ‘Extremely Ineffective’ Hegseth and Raise Alarm About Trump’s ‘Forever War’

Raw America’s very own Brian Karem spoke with several Pentagon insiders this week who confided that both Donald Trump and Pete Hegseth are losing the confidence of Defense Department officials over their bungling of the Iran ceasefire.

One official speaking anonymously out of fear of retribution said Trump is “risking the very ‘forever war’ the president campaigned against.”

Others inside Trump’s Pentagon are heaping criticism on Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. Multiple sources described him as feckless. One official said the former part-time weekend Fox News host was “extremely ineffective” at running the military.

“The president and the nation deserve far better,” the official said.

That’s a pretty serious accusation to level at the man running the Defense Department during a war. And it’s coming from inside his own Pentagon, not from cable news pundits or Democrats.

The Pentagon has been cautious in its messaging since the tenuous ceasefire struck in Islamabad broke down. DOD officials have already confirmed that new strikes are being carried out in the region, meaning the war is all but officially back on. Oil prices have been on the rise as traffic in the Strait of Hormuz has slowed to a crawl.

Let’s all remember that Trump ran in 2024 promising to keep America out of endless wars. He hammered that message relentlessly at his campaign rallies. But according to the people actually running military operations, the administration is stumbling into exactly the kind of open-ended conflict in the Middle East Trump swore he’d never allow.

The fact that this criticism is coming from multiple people inside the Pentagon is particularly noteworthy. Military officials using the phrase “forever war” to describe what’s happening in Iran just months before the midterms spells serious trouble for the president and his party.

Congress passed the War Powers Resolution in 1973, over Richard Nixon’s veto, because a generation of Americans had just watched a war widen in the dark while nobody in Washington would own it. That law is still on the books. It says the choice to keep fighting belongs to the people’s representatives and not to one man and a defense secretary he found on morning television. We’re more than four months into a war Congress never authorized, and the people in uniform are the ones sounding the alarm about where it ends.

Outraged Florida Travelers Furious Over Palm Beach Airport Being Renamed for Trump

The Palm Beach International Airport is now officially named for Donald Trump, and Florida travelers are livid.

As of Thursday, the airport formerly known by the code PBI is now coded as DJT, and has been rebranded as the “President Donald J. Trump International Airport.” The code passengers actually see on a boarding pass doesn’t change until August 18. The airport is just five miles from Mar-a-Lago.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed the renaming bill back in March, clearing the path for a rebrand the airport estimates will cost roughly $5.5 million. Florida taxpayers put up $2.75 million of the money.

Eric Trump shrugged off the backlash while talking to Fox News, calling the whole thing “slightly controversial.” But airport travelers are a lot more vocal.

MS NOW spoke with people at the airport Thursday. Florida resident Pat Brown, called it “disgusting, ridiculous, pompous, and a lot of other bad things.” She added that seeing the new highway sign on I-95 “makes me sick every time.”

Florida resident Phyllis Malmuth told MS NOW she’s tired of Trump’s name showing up everywhere, and that she “resent[s] that the name is on every institution that we have, this included.”

We’ve watched Trump spend much of his time in office trying to stamp his name on everything he can. His hand-picked board renamed the Kennedy Center after him last year, until a federal judge ruled the renaming illegal and ordered his name be taken off the building. An appeals court twice refused his attempts to put it back. Now he’s building a new arch next to Arlington National Cemetery, along with already having bulldozed the East Wing of the White House for a tacky ballroom, turned the Oval Office into a gilded eyesore and paved over the Rose Garden.

Keep an eye on the airport in the coming years, since Palm Beach County still owns the facility. Trump, however, owns the trademark on the new name. A Trump Organization spokesperson stated the family won’t take any money in royalties or licensing fees from the renaming. He also can’t collect direct payments from merchandise sold inside the airport, though his company still gets to deciee which vendors sell Trump-branded products there. He also retains the right to sell the same merchandise through his own online store.

The president can also license the name to outside parties and cash in on the trademark well beyond airport grounds, all while maintaining the final say over how his name and likeness get used in displays and promotions.

The first flight into the newly christened airport touched down just after 5 AM Thursday, carrying Eric Trump and his wife. Eric later told the Palm Beach Post his father deserved the honor, claiming “there’s probably no one that’s flown into this airport more times than Donald Trump.” Plenty of Floridians disagree.

The men who wrote Article I, Section 9 into the Constitution had one plain worry. They’d watched what happens in the old world when a ruler stops being able to tell the treasury from his own pocket, so they wrote a rule against it and put it near the top of the document. An airport isn’t a gift from a foreign king. But it’s the same instinct they were guarding against. Public property carries the president’s name, a private company controls the trademark, and the man who benefits gets to decide who’s allowed to sell the souvenirs.

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Trump Abruptly Guts Agency Helping States Run Elections Months Before Midterms

With the midterm elections looming, Trump has forced out the remaining three members of the U.S. Election Assistance Commission.

Reuters broke the news Thursday evening. The two Democratic appointees on the commission were fired by email from the White House Presidential Personnel Office. The lone Republican resigned. A fourth commissioner had already left back in April, meaning the commission is now completely vacant.

The EAC is the federal entity that helps states run elections and provides guidance on voting procedures. It certifies voting systems, accredits the labs that test them, and maintains the national mail voter registration form.

Trump made the firings after the recent Supreme Court ruling that tossed out more than ninety years of legal precedent, allowing Trump effectively unlimited power to fire the heads of independent agencies — including the ones Congress specifically designed to operate with merit-based protections. A White House official even cited that ruling by name when defending the firings.

Trump and his associates have reportedly spent the past year looking for ways to completely bypass the EAC on issues like voting machine system updates and changes. Emptying the commission outright accomplishes that goal.

The EAC is separate from the Federal Election Commission, which handles campaign finance enforcement and has also been paralyzed by vacancies that prevent it from reaching quorum. The EAC being hollowed out is just the icing on the cake.

All of this comes as Trump continues pushing his baseless and repeatedly debunked claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him. He’s actively working to enact strict new federal rules on mail-in voting, and has pushed for investigations into election workers in multiple states across the country.

Firing every member of the board responsible for helping states run smooth, secure elections right before the midterms isn’t a coincidence. When looking at the context, it’s clearly part of Trump’s strategy to cast enough doubt on the results to litigate them in court if he doesn’t agree with the results.

In 2013, in Shelby County v. Holder, the Supreme Court tore the heart out of the Voting Rights Act and told the country the protections weren’t needed anymore because America had changed. What followed was a decade of voter purges, closed polling places, and new restrictions in exactly the states that had been under federal watch. That’s the pattern, and you can set your watch by it. Somebody powerful announces the guardrails are unnecessary, and then the guardrails come down right before people vote.

New Video Shows Mitch McConnell Being Lifted Into Ambulance on a Stretcher

New footage has surfaced appearing to show Mitch McConnell being wheeled into an ambulance on a stretcher, following his apparent cardiac arrest at his Capitol Hill home last month.

The video was shot by a neighbor and published by CNN on Friday. It shows Washington D.C. paramedics loading someone onto an ambulance on the morning of June 14th. McConnell’s face isn’t visible in the footage, and bare feet are seen poking out from under a blanket.

The neighbor who recorded the video told CNN that a nearby eyewitness identified McConnell, saying, “Oh yeah, it’s Mitch, I saw his face.”

That same eyewitness who claimed to have seen the senator’s face also relayed something even more concerning. According to that account, McConnell wasn’t wearing an oxygen mask. And the neighbor with the camera said that while responders moved quickly, they didn’t have a sense of panic, saying “In a situation where perhaps time is of the essence, there seems to be a little bit more urgency, but there was no urgency here.”

Keep in mind that previously released dispatch audio indicated McConnell was found unconscious at his home and that first responders performed CPR on him. That will almost certainly cause significant damage to an 84 year-old man’s ribs.

Since the incident, rumors have swirled that McConnell may have suffered brain death. Senate Republican leadership has pushed back hard on those accounts, with a spokesperson for Majority Leader John Thune of South Dakota saying the two men had a lengthy phone conversation covering topics including national security. A spokesperson for Majority Whip John Barrasso of Wyoming described a 20-minute call in which McConnell was apparently “fully engaged” and eager to return to the Senate. CNN commentator and former McConnell adviser Scott Jennings said his old boss “sounded strong” on the phone.

But the gap between those reassurances and the eyewitness account of an unhurried, mask-free ambulance transport is noteworthy. McConnell has a well-documented history of public freeze-ups and falls, including one that left him with a cracked rib and a concussion in 2023. He was last seen at the Capitol on June 11th, three days before he was hospitalized.

McConnell, the longest-serving party leader in Senate history, already announced he won’t seek reelection and will leave the Senate in January. Congressman Andy Barr already won the GOP primary to replace him. Kenucky’s Democratic governor, Andy Beshear, has until August 3 to declare McConnell’s seat vacant and call a special election.

Woodrow Wilson had a stroke in October of 1919, and his wife Edith and his physician quietly ran the country’s front office for the rest of his term rather than tell the American people how bad it was. It took us almost fifty more years and the Twenty-fifth Amendment before we finally wrote down what’s supposed to happen when a president can’t do the job. We never wrote that rule for the Senate. So a senator can be unreachable for a month, his staff can pass along secondhand assurances, and there isn’t a line anywhere in the law that says the people who elected him are owed the truth.

These stories wouldn’t be covered properly by cable channels and newspapers captured by right-wing billionaires. Our very own White House correspondent is breaking the news that Trump and Hegseth’s own Pentagon officials fear getting mired into a “forever war.” Residents of Trump’s adopted home state are livid about him slapping his name on an airport while setting himself up to profit from it. He sacked officials helping states run secure elections right before voters head to the polls. And there are significant questions about how whether Senate Republicans have been lying about Mitch McConnell’s health.

Raw America is able to cover these stories this way precisely because we don’t have a MAGA billionaire watching over our shoulder or a corporation telling us what we can and can’t say. But that independent model only works if enough readers step up to support independent journalism. If you’ve been enjoying our work on a free subscription, today is the best day to change that. We’re counting on you.

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