• Whether corporate Democrats are trying to derail Michigan U.S. Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed’s campaign to argue leftists can’t win swing states

• What the Democratic establishment’s coordinated attack against Twitch streamer Hasan Piker actually reveals

• What Hakeem Jeffries’ secret meeting with Jared Kushner could signify about his priorities as speaker should Democrats retake the House

• Why the Republican Party has embraced “revolution” while Democratic leaders remain committed to the status quo

• The rise of insurgent candidates like Zohran Mamdani and the competing 2028 primary visions of “restoration” and “transformation”

• How conservatives’ “unitary executive theory” has created an imperial presidency

• Whether a future Democratic president should wield the powers of the presidency for good as Donald Trump has for himself

• If the U.S. is capable of reining in extreme wealth through a billionaires’ tax and/or a philosophy of limitarianism

In-depth conversations like these, with expert guests like David Sirota, require resources. And because Raw America has no corporate parent or billionaire owner, we’re counting on readers like you to help keep this work going. Upgrade your subscription right now to ensure we remain fully independent.

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Could Abdul El-Sayed Break the Democratic Establishment?

Gibson and Sirota began by discussing Dr. Abdul El-Sayed’s U.S. Senate campaign in Michigan, where the progressive challenger defeated establishment favorite Haley Stevens despite being outspent by tens of millions of dollars. Gibson asked whether El-Sayed winning in a swing state like Michigan could “open the floodgates” to more leftist candidates challenging establishment Democrats across the country.

Sirota agreed with that premise, saying the Democratic Party’s donor class views an El-Sayed victory as uniquely dangerous.

“I think if you’re a corporate Democrat, the idea of many many Abdul El-Sayeds across the country in swing districts and swing states is terrifying to you,” Sirota said.

“[Corporate donors are] willing to potentially have the Democratic Party lose the general election … if that faction perceives that to be the cost of that faction retaining its power inside of the institution,” he added.

Are Corporate Democrats Using Hasan Piker to Attack Abdul El-Sayed by Proxy?

Gibson then pivoted to the Democratic establishment’s intense pressure campaign against leftist Twitch streamer Hasan Piker, in which party leaders are forcing candidates to condemn the immensely popular leftist figure over past statements he made that he has since apologized for. He then asked Sirota whether it’s accurate to suggest that the Hasan Piker campaign is actually a proxy attack on Abdul El-Sayed, since Democrats can’t directly attack their own nominee in a must-win Senate race.

Sirota agreed with that assessment, calling it a “kitchen-sink strategy” meant to throw everything possible at the party’s populist wing. He then suggested that the real threat Hasan Piker poses isn’t ideological, but rather that he’s unwilling to be a complicit mouthpiece for the party.

“[Piker] has built a truly independent media channel that doesn’t play by the rules and doesn’t answer to either party’s political apparatus,” Sirota said.

Gibson then pointed out that Democratic strategists repeatedly called for a “Joe Rogan of the left” to emerge in the aftermath of the 2024 election. And he noted the irony in that, like Rogan, Piker is someone using new media to engage with an audience of millions of voters in the millennial and Gen Z demographics.

“Say what you will about Joe Rogan, he’s not reading the Republican Party’s talking points,” Sirota said, arguing that any real leftist version of Joe Rogan has to be completely independent of partisan influence or control. He then drew on his decades of work in Democratic politics, emphasizing that the party’s establishment values “loyalty and control” over everything else.

Should Democrats Be Worried About Hakeem Jeffries’ Meeting with Jared Kushner?

Gibson then asked Sirota about House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries’ (D-N.Y.) recent meeting with Donald Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and whether that means Jeffries would be willing to cut deals with members of the president’s inner circle if Democrats retake the House of Representatives and make Jeffries the next speaker.

Sirota said the Kushner meeting should be viewed in the context of his recent comments on Meet the Press in which he opposed Medicare for All. When factoring in both Jeffries’ refusal to accommodate the Democratic base’s widespread calls for Medicare for All along with his decision to meet behind closed doors with Jared Kushner, Sirota warned this sends the message that “Even if you vote for us, there won’t be real change.”

“I don’t think that’s good for the Democratic Party,” Sirota said. “I don't think it's good for democracy, and I think that’s what Jeffries has done.”

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The 2028 Primary Battle: ‘Restoration’ Versus ‘Transformation’

Gibson observed that despite the Republican Party’s open embrace of “corruption, authoritarianism and war” during Trump’s second term, it has been more willing than Democrats to empower its young leaders while Democrats like Nancy Pelosi refuse to cede power despite giving the illusion of stepping back to allow the next generation to lead.

Sirota then argued that Republicans have actually been the party of “revolution” more than Democrats, pointing out that it was less than two decades between Barry Goldwater’s 1964 loss and Ronald Reagan’s election to the presidency in 1980. He then pointed out that the GOP has consistently been letting its base drive its vision through moments like the Tea Party of the 2010s and the MAGA era of the 2020s, while Democrats have been viewed as the party of the status qup.

The Lever News founder cautioned that the GOP’s revolutionary arc is reaching its denouement, similar to how the French Revolution ended in the cult of personality centered around Napoleon Bonaparte. However, he said it would be “healthy” for the Democratic Party to embrace revolution of its own.

“I think for the for the people who are currently in power in the Democratic Party — who have spent 30 years becoming rich, famous, and powerful — clinging on to that internal party power even as the party has lost elections and lost policy battles, I think that's terrifying to them,” Sirota said. “They've had a good run for themselves for the last 30 or 40 years, even if it's been a terrible run for the country, so they're going to fight as hard as they can to stop that kind of uprising in the party from moving forward.”

Gibson pointed out that the progressive wing of ther Democratic Party has seen several major victories, pointing to New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s victory over the Cuomo dynasty, and several leftist candidates unseating establishment incumbents in various deep-blue House districts. He then posited that the 2028 primary could be seen as a battle between candidates like Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear and California Gavin Newsom who would call for unifying and moving forward rather than accountability, and justice-focused candidates running on making sure that the Trump administration’s repeated violations of the Constitution and federal law are prosecuted.

Sirota said the two competing visions could also be defined as “restoration” and “transformation.” He noted that some candidates will likely run on returning society to a “pre-Trump normal,” while ignoring the conditions that made it possible for Donald Trump to be elected to office in the first place. And he cautioned that a torrent of corporate money will go toward tilting the scales in favor of “restoration” candidates.

“Big corporations, oligarchs, billionaires-they were doing great before Trump,” he said. “They're doing they're doing even better now, but they're fine with going back to to the working class getting destroyed, hope and change becoming more of the same.”

How Trump Is Taking Advantage of an ‘Imperial Presidency’ and Whether Democrats Will Do the Same

The conversation then turned to Sirota’s Master Plan podcast, which is in its second season and focusing on the immense powers of the U.S. presidency. Gibson asked Sirota to expand on the season’s premise that the conservative legal theory of a “unitary executive” — in which the president assumes full control of the entire federal government — has now been fully realized.

Sirota argued the idea of an “imperial presidency” traces back to Watergate, in which Congress sought to constrain the presidency after Richard Nixon resigned in disgrace. He then explained how the subsequent years led to the conservative movement regrouping to elect Ronald Reagan, with the far-right Heritage Foundation guiding his policies through its Mandate for Leadership playbook (which was also the predecessor to Project 2025).

The expansion of executive powers then continued through 9/11 after then-Vice President Dick Cheney took advantage of a national emergency to ram through sweeping authoritarian surveillance powers. He then noted that former President Barack Obama continued the expansion of presidential powers by “assert[ing] the right for a president to have a kill list” to conduct assassinations of U.S. citizens around the world.

“How much power do we want one person to have? Because this was not the way the country was founded,” Sirota said.

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Do Democrats Have the Stomach to Use Expanded Presidential Power to Its Fullest Potential?

Gibson reminded viewers of the scene in the film The Dark Knight (2008) in which Christian Bale’s Batman instructed Morgan Freeman’s Lucius Fox to use an “unethical” and “dangerous” surveillance tool for the sole purpose of locating Heath Ledger’s Joker, with the promise to shut it all down once the Joker was apprehended. He then asked Sirota if he thought Democrats were capable of using the massively expanded powers of the presidency that conservatives ushered in to do all the things the base calls for, with the goal of dismantling it all before the next Republican can use those powers to reverse progress.

Sirota pointed out that as part of the final episode of this season of Master Plan, he interviewed numerous prospective 2028 Democratic presidential candidates and asked them this specific question. He said most of them believed that the next Democratic president should use all available executive powers to achieve their goals. He added that it “makes a whole lot of sense” for the next president to impose strict new limits on the ability of presidents to participate in self-enrichment and corruption. But he was also skeptical that Democratic candidates would be willing to upset the donor class too much once they were back in power.

“Are Democrats really willing to use the power that’s available to the president to do the things that they’re promising, even the things that will make their donors... upset?” Sirota asked, reminding viewers that the private equity tax loophole Democrats had promised to end is still open.

How Democrats Can Ready Themselves for Retaliation from Wall Street

Gibson asked whether a Democratic president who aggressively used executive power to rein in Wall Street and big corporations — for example, a hypothetical President Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez — could trigger a “capital strike,” with corporations and financial institutions withholding jobs and investment to exact revenge.

“I do think that capital will side with authoritarianism against democracy if democracy is perceived to be a threat to capital,” Sirota said, saying there have been multiple examples of this throughout history. He noted that FDR provided the blueprint for how to weather that backlash by “never allow[ing] himself to be cast as part of the problem” and successfully ran for reelection during the height of the Great Depression openly embracing the hatred of Wall Street and corporate executives.

Gibson pointed out that progressives called on former President Joe Biden to use expansive presidential powers to forgive all federal student debt. Activists with Strike Debt/The Debt Collective referenced language in the Higher Education Act of 1965 making it clear that the secretary of the U.S. Department of Education had sole control over all federally issued student debt and could simply cancel it if a president ordered it done. But when Biden — who represented Delaware in the U.S. Senate, which is known as the main hub of student debt servicing companies — was asked directly whether he would enact such a policy, he flat-out refused.

Sirota argued this type of refusal to use power to do good is what creates the conditions that allow authoritarian leaders like Trump to take power.

“I genuinely think that liberals are afraid of the use of power,” Sirota said, lamenting that many liberals seem to view the concept of power itself as a bad thing. He was emphatic that change won’t come without conflict.

“Power will have to be taken through democratic means, and the oligarchs will be mad about it, and it will be a loud, messy confrontation, and that’s okay,” he said.

Is ‘Limitarianism’ a Viable Path Forward?

To closing the conversation, Gibson asked Sirota about limitarianism — laid out in Dutch political scientist Ingrid Robeyns’ 2024 book “The Case Against Extreme Wealth” — in which there would be a limit imposed on how much wealth a single individual could accumulate. Gibson argued that democracies may be in an “arms race” against centibillionaires like Elon Musk to rein in their ability to use their wealth to drastically reshape governments in their favor before it’s too late.

Sirota framed the debate as the latest iteration of the ongoing battle between capitalism and democracy, warning that concentrated capital may now be able to exceed democracy’s attempts to “guardrail” it. However, he said a wealth tax shouldn’t be the end goal but rather a corrective measure toward a fairer tax system that adequately taxes the wealthiest at a rate that would render them unable to become more powerful than democratic institutions. The Lever News founder mentioned a RAND Corporation estimate that workers would have earned roughly $70 trillion more over the last 50 years had wage growth actually kept pace with productivity.

“We’re talking about real confiscation,” Sirota said. “Like, an economy built on confiscation.”

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• How Nixon’s people-powered campaign overcame an 18-to-1 fundraising disadvantage to win the Democratic primary

• Why she believes an unapologetically progressive message can still win in Republican-dominated Florida

• Her case for Medicare for All and the fallout from expired Affordable Care Act subsidies

• Her criticism of how Florida bailed out big insurance companies instead of homeowners after major hurricanes

• The banned-books bookstore she opened in Jacksonville and the various services it provides for the community

• Her viral bullhorn protest against Florida’s Republican gerrymander

• Her closing pitch to volunteers and donors ahead of the general election

Raw America is only able to bring you live interviews like this one, in which we speak directly with an unapologetic progressive running against both the Democratic and Republican establishments, because readers like you step up to keep this work funded. We have no billionaire backer or corporate parent keeping us afloat. We have you. Upgrade your free subscription to a paying one right now for just 22 cents a day.

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How Nixon Won Despite Being Outspent 18-to-1 Fundraising Gap

Gibson opened by noting that Nixon had been massively outspent in her primary against establishment favorite Alexander Vindman — who, to his credit — immediately endorsed Nixon and even asked his fundraisers to donate to her campaign.

Nixon confirmed that she was outspent by a margin of $18 million to $1 million. She still won by an 11-point margin, and credited her victory to her campaign’s strategy of grassroots organizing. She added that as a union organizer and member of a union family, organizing was practically in her blood.

“It’s just good old-fashioned grassroots organizing,” Nixon said.

Why Nixon Thinks a Progressive Can Win in a Republican State

Gibson pressed Nixon on running as an unapologetic progressive in Florida, where Democrats haven’t held a statewide elected office since Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.) left the Senate in 2019. Nixon responded that she isn’t framing the race in terms of left vs. right, but in terms of “top versus bottom.”

She also accused Sen. Moody of protecting her corporate donors in the health insurance industry at the expense of everyday Floridians, blaming the expired Affordable Care Act subsidies on Moody’s party and its subservience to corporate interests. She also lamented that millions of dollars in funds meant for needy children were diverted to defeat abortion rights and marijuana legalization ballot measures

“This is about right and wrong. It’s about ending corruption in Washington, D.C.,” Nixon said of her campaign.

Nixon Says Her Embrace of Medicare for All Isn’t a Liability, But a Strength

Gibson cited an Associated Press report finding that Floridians have been hit with particularly high healthcare costs following the expiration of ACA tax credits last year, and asked Nixon whether building her campaign around support Medicare for All was a political risk in a Republican-dominated state. Nixon insisted her support for universal healthcare was actually a secret weapon, citing conversations with tens of thousands of voters across all 67 counties.

“Medical debt is the leading cause of bankruptcy. People are literally going bankrupt because they’re trying to stay alive,” Nixon said.

Drawing on her own experience as a single mother of more than a decade who had to sometimes choose between buying asthma medication and other necessities, Nixon cited a Yale study finding that a universal healthcare program like Medicare for All could save the federal government more than $1 trillion annually while saving roughly 114,000 lives each year.

“The only people that are upset about the idea of us having universal health care are insurance companies, and I don’t care about insurance companies,” she said.

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Holding Insurance Companies Accountable After Hurricanes

Gibson, who in 2022 worked as a flood insurance adjuster in Florida after Hurricane Ian, pointed to the recent pattern of major insurance companies denying wind claims and asked Nixon about Florida’s decision to bail out insurance companies rather than homeowners following the historic storm. Nixon didn’t dispute that assessment.

“The biggest recipients of welfare in this country are corporations and billionaires,” Nixon said.

She proposed a fully state-funded public insurance option that could lower premiums by directing savings toward a catastrophe fund instead of shareholders, using Florida’s insurer-of-last-resort, Citizens, as a starting point. She also attributed to Ashley Moody’s inaction on the issue to her deference to her donors in the insuranceindustry

“[Moody] didn’t check them for slow-walking people’s claims,” Nixon said, describing some Florida homeowners forced to sell to private equity firms after giving up on getting their insurance claims paid.

How Nixon’s Banned-Books Bookstore Is Fighting DeSantis’ ‘War on Woke’

Gibson then pivoted to Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ (R) “war on woke,” and asked Nixon about her Café Resistance Bookstore and Coffee Shop. The Florida lawmaker opened the Jacksonville business in direct response to Florida’s book bans, which proliferated after DeSantis signed a series of laws aimed at silencing Florida’s Black and LGBTQ+ communities.

Nixon described the bookstore as a “third space” that not only stocks banned books, but offers free tutoring, mentorship services for Black boys led by Black men and free contraceptive care paired with conversations connecting visitors to low-cost healthcare resources. Nixon also said the store functions as a popular meeting spot for community organizing groups.

“ICE is not welcome,” she said of Café Resistance.

Nixon’s Bullhorn Protest on the Floor of the House of Representatives Against Florida’s Gerrymander

Gibson brought up one of Nixon’s most viral moments from earlier this year, when she used a bullhorn on the floor of the Florida House of Representatives in Tallahassee to protest Florida Republicans’ new congressional redistricting map. Republicans proposed the map to give themselves an additional advantage in the U.S. House of Representatives following the Supreme Court’s Louisiana v. Callais ruling that significantly weakened the Voting Rights Act.

Nixon reminded viewers it wasn’t her first such protest, pointing out that she had also staged a sit-in against a 2022 map that eliminated two Black-majority congressional districts.

“I knew they were going to try to talk over me like they did last time,” she said of her decision to bring the bullhorn.

The Florida Democrat pointed out that the new maps violated a 2010 citizen-led ballot measure explicitly banning partisan gerrymandering. She also noted that Gov. DeSantis even unveiled the maps on Fox News in color-coded form before he even notified legislators. The protest led to Nixon’s formal reprimand — the first in the Florida legislature in 20 years — and a later arrest after leading a sit-in at the governor’s office.

“What good is decorum and professionalism when democracy is literally being attacked?” she said.

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How Nixon Is Counting on People Power to Flip a Red Senate Seat

Gibson closed by referencing Congressman Maxwell Frost’s (D-Fla.) comment that Florida isn’t a red state, but rather an “under-organized” one, and asked Nixon if she feels that her organizing prowess can lead to her victory in November. Nixon lauded her campaign’s army of volunteers and said that it was an essential tool to turn out votes.

“We have over 40,000, maybe 50,000 volunteers in the state of Florida, and people are ready,” Nixon said.

She then made a direct appeal for financial support to run television ads across the state, while also stressing that donations go toward grassroots organizing rather than being spent “frivolously” on consultants.

“I did not get this far to lose. I need your back,” she said, urging supporters to visit her campaign website at AngieNixon.com.

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Raw America is proud to be able to bring you regular live conversations with people shaping the news, like Angie Nixon. Earlier this week we also spoke with Epstein researchers Ellie Leonard and Kait Justice, who have been out-hustling billionaire-owned legacy media outlets to cover the most explosive Epstein angles. This work can only continue if readers like you, who believe in the power of independent journalism, chip in to become paying subscribers. Upgrade your free subscription to a paying one right now for just 22 cents a day. We’re counting on you.

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Gibson, Leonard and Justice covered multiple topics including:

• New evidence suggesting Epstein was at Trump Tower in November 2016 while then-President-elect Donald Trump was putting together his Cabinet

• The deep ties between Epstein, Trump and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick

• Recently confirmed Attorney General Todd Blanche’s efforts to stop the release of millions of pages of Epstein files

• Wall Street executives’ alleged role enabling Epstein’s human trafficking over many years

• Epstein’s ties to foreign governments and as-yet untranslated foreign-language documents in the Epstein files

• Former Attorney General Bill Barr long-standing family’s connections to Epstein

• Katie Phng’s ongoing lawsuit against the DOJ and a federal judge’s contempt threat against Blanche

• Lingering questions about the circumstances of Epstein’s suspicious 2019 death in federal prison in Manhattan

• The stalled investigation into Epstein’s Zorro Ranch in New Mexico

• What personally drives both journalists to pursue the truth in the Epstein files

Raw America is only able to bring you live interviews with people getting to the heart of the truth because our paying subscribers make it possible. We have no billionaire owner or corporate parent keeping us afloat. We have you. If you found this conversation valuable, upgrade your free subscription to a paying one right now so we can keep this work going. You can do it for just 22 cents a day.

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Was Epstein Spotted at Trump Tower While He was Picking His Cabinet?

Gibson began the interview by asking about Leonard’s reporting that Jeffrey Epstein may have been at Trump Tower on November 13, 2016 — the same day then-President-elect Donald Trump was meeting with prospective nominees for his first-term Cabinet. Leonard explained how she pieced together the timeline from various email threads referencing Epstein’s whereabouts that day, then cross-referenced it with public photography from the building.

“Until we have proof of him walking in the building, the assumption is he was there on [November] 13th, in the morning, sometime between nine and 11, and he was there while Trump was picking all his Cabinet picks,” Leonard said, noting that Epstein likely would have used a private elevator from the parking garage that went directly to Trump’s office, rather than risk being seen in the public lobby.

Justice added that her own research corroborated the timeline.

“He was definitely in New York,” she said. “That’s for sure without a doubt that day, and he was around that area for sure without a doubt because there’s other emails from that day of him coordinating meetings and things.”

The fact that Epstein may have been in Trump’s company is newsworthy, with both Leonard and Justice pointing out that Trump has publicly said he kicked Epstein out of Mar-a-Lago after his 2007 plea deal for sex trafficking was publicly announced.

Was the Trump-Epstein Relationship Blackmail or Mutual Complicity?

Gibson then asked whether Epstein’s apparent close access to Trump’s inner circle was the result of blackmail or of a genuinely close friendship. Leonard said the evidence shows that both Trump and Epstein had plenty of mutual contacts both from a business standpoint and on a personal level. Leonard observed that people like current Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick have had deep ties to Epstein and ran in the same circles for years.

“I think it’s not so much that they were like best friends, but they were, like, complicit, and they knew they had to protect each other to protect themselves,” Leonard said, pointing to an investigation called Operation Chain Reaction that led to allegations of human trafficking tied to modeling agencies used by both Epstein and Trump’s businesses.

Justice noted how thoroughly Lutnick’s public denials about his relationship with Epstein — who was his longtime next-door neighbor in Manhattan — have been contradicted by documents released by the Justice Department.

“You have this, like, long email thread of all the planning for him to come to the island,” Justice said, referring to Lutnick’s 2012 visit to Epstein’s island despite years of denying it ever happened.

She also noted that Lutnick has been caught lying publicly about when he cut off ties with Epstein, at first saying it was after a 2005 visit to Epstein’s home. Documents eventually revealed that Lutnick not only visited Epstein’s Little Saint James Island, but bought a business with him shortly after that trip.

Will Todd Blanche Succeed in Burying the Epstein Files?

With roughly two million pages of Epstein-related documents still unreleased in direct defiance of the bipartisan Epstein Files Transparency Act, Gibson asked if there’s concern that Attorney General Todd Blanche may succeed in destroying or burying the files before a future Democratic administration can bring them to light.

“I mean, of course,” Leonard said. “I think that’s his pipe dream. He’d love this all to disappear.”

Justice connected Blanche directly to a blocked investigation tied to the Chain Reaction case, saying Blanche “specifically personally stopped that from happening.”

“We do not have that investigation that is related to Epstein because of Todd Blanche,” she said.

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Did Wall Street Banks Know What Epstein Was Doing?

Gibson brought up the recent report by the office of Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), who appeared on Raw America earlier this month — about how major Wall Street banks looked the other way while Epstein was making millions of dollars in suspicious payments through various accounts for shell companies. He then asked whether Leonard and Justice had “smoking gun” evidence that big bank CEOs had direct knowledge of Epstein’s international human trafficking ring.

Justice called the U.S. Virgin Islands’ forensic investigation into J.P. Morgan Chase one of the most damning pieces of evidence in the entire Epstein case.

“Here’s in the first year, here’s the red flags, here’s all the red flags in the second year, and you kept this guy here for like 13-plus years,” Justice said, describing how 134 bank accounts were tied to Epstein with only first names and countries of origin attached. She added that this is typically a glaring trafficking indicator that bankers are trained to catch.

Leonard agreed, saying there is already “more than enough evidence” to support the criminal indictment of former Barclay’s CEO Jes Staley and “many many more” Wall Street executives who allegedly ignored Epstein’s crimes while making millions.

Could New York State Prosecutors Step In if Trump Pardons Everyone?

Gibson pointed out that Trump has a habit of pardoning those close to him, and that there’s a significant possibility that he would issue preemptive pardons to anyone remotely connected to Epstein before he leaves office in 2029. He then asked if there was a chance that prosecutors in New York could move forward with criminal investigations of their own, since a president can’t pardon state-level offenses.

Justice said there’s ample ground for a state investigation. However, one caveat is Epstein’s well-documented ties to the Southern District of New York, meaning there may not be the political will to do so given the possibility of what names may emerge as investigations unfold.

“All of this could be investigated in New York, but somebody has to want to do it, and I feel like that’s where the compromise is,” she said.

Leonard added that a probe by the New York Attorney General’s Office could delve into foreign intelligence angles. She said both Epstein and some of his closest associates appeared to be gathering compromising information on powerful men.

“I think a lot of those missing files that we don’t have would clarify a lot of that,” she said.

Was Epstein Working as a Foreign Intelligence Asset?

In one exchange, Leonard revealed that her own research — which she forwarded directly to the office of Congressman Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) — found evidence Epstein was helping Saudi officials design an oil-backed currency and associated “stablecoin” cryptocurrency to move the nation away from the U.S. dollar and Western banks.

“[Epstein] absolutely was working with the Saudis to help them get their own currency going,” Leonard said, adding that Epstein even filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to obtain his own FBI and/or CIA file. She noted that those agencies denied his request without confirming if such a file even existed.

Justice raised the largely unreported detail that entire batches of foreign-language documents in the Epstein files still have yet to be translated as of this writing.

“That’s going to be all your Russian information. That’s going to be all your Saudi information. That’s going to be all your Israeli information,” she said. “So that is also being hidden in the Epstein files.”

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Could Todd Blanche’s DOJ Actually Be Held in Contempt?

Gibson asked about the status of journalist Katie Phang’s ongoing lawsuit against the Justice Department, in which she claims that Blanche and DOJ leaders are intentionally violating the Epstein Files Transparency Act.

He also noted that U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan, a Clinton appointee, even threatened to hold the DOJ in contempt for withholding documents. This includes 37 missing pages of notes from the Jane Doe Four case, which pertains to the woman who accused Donald Trump of assaulting her when she was just a teen.

Justice walked through the latest hearing and revealed that the missing notes in question actually surfaced online shortly after the contempt threat, thanks to a conservative journalist.

“So now it becomes this narrative of how did we get access to them because they were released through a conservative journalist who posted them quietly online in a public forum,” Justice said, pointing out the DOJ must produce its official versions by this Thursday, August 27.

What Really Happened the Night Epstein Died?

Gibson remarked that August 10 marked the seven-year anniversary of Epstein’s death, and asked Leonard and Justice to help make sense of conflicting accounts, including a claim from Epstein’s brother, Mark, that his death was a homicide and not a suicide.

Justice acknowledged that there are two popular theories that have circulated to contradict the federal government’s claim of a suicide, in that Epstein was believed to have either been murdered or removed. However, she said the timing of Epstein revising his trust documents just before his death suggests the notorious sex trafficker likely died by suicide.

Leonard reminded viewers of the multiple failures at the Manhattan Detention Complex (MDC) that night. Nine of eleven security cameras malfunctioned during. scheduled “update,” Epstein had no assigned cellmate, and was even taken off suicide watch just one day before his death.

“It was allowed to happen in a way that for other criminals who are in there, especially high-profile ones, would have had a lot more oversight,” Leonard said.

DOJ Told New Mexico to Stop Digging Into Epstein’s Human Trafficking

Gibson asked the two for updates about New Mexico’s lawsuit against the DOJ and Attorney General Blanche over documents pertaining to Epstein’s Zorro Ranch property that the state says the Justice Department is intentionally withholding. Multiple Epstein survivors have alleged that serious abuse occurred at the ranch, and there’s also been speculation that Epstein may have buried the remains of some girls at the sprawling New Mexico property.

Leonard said the property remains “incredibly under-investigated” despite years of testimony from survivors, and said there have been multiple suspicious changes to the property’s ownership records.

“All they’re asking is to just be able to investigate it. It’s been what, seven years since [Epstein] died?” Leonard said.

At one point, Justice revealed she had discovered an email from federal investigators explicitly telling New Mexico prosecutors to de-prioritize human trafficking-related inquiries tied to Jeffrey Epstein and Zorro Ranch.

“They were reaching out to the officials in New Mexico and asking them very specifically to stop investigations as far as trafficking is concerned,” Justice said.

What Motivates Leonard and Justice to Stay on the Epstein Story

Gibson closed by asking both Leonard and Justice what motivated them to pour so many hours into this story. Leonard, a mother of four, told the Associated Press in February she wants to contribute to a world where human trafficking survivors are believed and protected, and where the men who abused them are held accountable.

“Nobody was standing up for them when they were 13 and 14 and 15 years old,” Leonard said. “All that I can do... is creat[e] a world where this doesn’t happen again, and that’s really, really important to me.”

Justice, who herself is a mother of three girls, recalled how she partnered with Leonard’s Substack after multiple late-night message exchanges comparing their findings.

“I call myself an average informed citizen,” Justice said. “It’s not your job to know everything, but it’s important that we make sure that we’re asking questions and paying attention.”

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Gibson and Biden covered various topics including:

• The double standard between Republican attacks on the “Biden crime family” and the Trump family’s shady business dealings during his first and second terms

• Whether Democrats should pursue a third Trump impeachment or a more deliberate strategy of hearings and subpoenas if they retake Congress in the fall

• Whether there should be a “Nuremberg 2.0” reckoning and whether America needs a formal accountability process to move past the Trump administration

• Who could lead the Democratic Party in 2028, including Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and other figures

• His remarks calling Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “evil incarnate” and describing Gaza as a genocide, and his disagreement with his father

• His journey through addiction recovery and his father’s support through it all

Conversations like this one, with one of the biggest names in the news right now, are only possible with the support of our paying subscribers. Raw America isn’t beholden to a billionaire owner or a corporate parent, and answer only to you, the reader. We’re only able to speak at length with guests like Hunter Biden thanks to our paying subscribers who make it possible. Chip in and help keep independent journalism like this going. You can do it right now for just 22 cents a day.

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Hunter Biden Calls Out Republicans Over Corruption Double Standard

Gibson opened the conversation first by pointing to economist Dean Baker’s recent comparison of the Biden and Trump families’ finances during each administration. Baker noted that while Hunter Biden had a board seat on a Ukrainian energy company and sold paints, Trump’s family was raking in $1.4 billion in profits from cryptocurrency-related ventures, while the president himself boasted about taking $13 billion in oil money from Venezuela and received a $400 million jet as a gift from Qatar’s royal family.

Biden pushed back hard on Republicans’ allegations against him, noting that buyers of his paintings were forced to testify under oath about the actual prices they paid, while the president’s son went out of his way to pursue an income in ways that couldn’t possibly be perceived as political. He added that his income during his father’s presidency averaged around $215,000 to $220,000 a year, and that the scale of scrutiny he faced looks absurd next to what’s happening now.

Hunter Biden pointed to Donald Trump Jr.’s 1789 Capital fund and its portfolio companies’ billions of dollars in Pentagon contracts. He also drew attention to Jared Kushner’s exorbitant compensation from a Saudi-backed investment fund.

“It’s such a target-rich environment that I don’t know if I could add anything more than what is also obviously directly in front of their eyes,” Biden said.

‘Yes, And’: Hunter Biden Calls for Both Impeachment Proceedings and Hearings

Gibson noted that there’s a debate right now among Democrats about whether to pursue an unprecedented third impeachment of Trump, or whether to pursue a more focused strategy of subpoenas and congressional hearings.

Biden replied with “yes, and,” indicating he prefers an all-of-the-above approach. Former President Joe Biden’s second son noted that he’s skeptical anyone in the Trump administration will play by the old rules at all, suggesting Democrats shouldn’t feel compelled to hold themselves to what he called “Marquess of Queensberry” rules.

“Donald Trump is the singular existential threat, because he’s broken it all,” Biden said, adding that the current president was a “one-man crime wave.”

He described how he and his wife have talked about the struggle Democrats have on whether to abandon procedural restraint entirely to fully pursue accountability or bind themselves to rules Republicans have long since abandoned. In one example, he noted that Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick’s sons paid pennies on the dollar to buy companies’ tariff refunds in the event tariffs were overturned and rebates were issued, leading them to eventually make billions in profit once those rebates were finally paid out.

‘There has to be a reckoning’: Biden Supports Calls for ‘Nuremberg 2.0’

Gibson then asked Biden how would prefer to see Democrats move beyond the Trump administration should they regain control of the executive branch in 2028. He noted that some prospective presidential candidates have called for Americans to unite and move on, while others have stressed the need for public accountability measures, citing Sen. Ron Wyden’s (D-Ore.) call for a “Nuremberg 2.0” process.

Biden agreed with the latter option, saying that whether it’s framed as “Nuremberg 2.0” or another truth and reconciliation process similar to post-apartheid South Africa is necessary, calling attention to the Trump administration’s direct defiance of federal court orders pertaining to the Epstein files and oversight requests related to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

“We’ve lost the constitutional republic as we’ve known it already,” Biden said, adding that Trump’s comments about a third term shouldn’t be dismissed as jokes.

“If [Trump] leaves and he does not have power, there will be a reckoning. And he fully 100 percent knows that,” Biden added.

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Biden Bullish on AOC and the Democratic Party’s Next Generation of Leaders

Gibson noted that Biden previously referred to Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) as “the future of the Democratic Party.” He then asked whether Biden believes the country is ready to elect a female president, given that highly qualified female presidential candidates like former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and former Vice President Kamala Harris each lost to “an adjudicated rapist and a convicted felon.”

Biden responded by saying that no one thought in 2008 that America would elect a Black U.S. senator from Illinois who was born in Hawaii as president, but that those ceilings were meant to be shattered. Hunter Biden also said he rarely disagrees with Ocasio-Cortez, and heaped praise on her for being able build relationships across the aisle. He also lauded Michigan U.S. Senate candidate Dr. Abdul El-Sayed and Texas state representative James Talarico, and called on Democrats to stop fussing over who belongs in its “big tent.”

“People just want you to be authentic, like truly authentic,” Biden said. “You can’t fake authenticity.”

Biden Calls Netanyahu ‘Evil Incarnate’ and Gaza a ‘Genocide’ — While Defending His Father’s Record

Gibson pointed out that when Hunter Biden told Tucker Carlson that he viewed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as “evil incarnate” and described Israel’s war in Gaza as a “genocide,” those positions were contradictory to the policies his father’s administration embraced. He then asked Hunter if he ever confronted his father over his Israel policy.

Biden acknowledged that Israel was carrying out the “wholesale murder of children,” he noted that his father’s approach was centered on securing the release of hostages taken during Hamas’ October 7, 2023 attack on Israel, in which 1,400 people were killed in one day. He also noted that President Biden privately clashed with Netanyahu, called him a “crazy motherf—ker” to his face, and withheld 2,000-pound bombs and only agreed to supply defensive weapons like Patriot missiles.

Hunter Biden then turned the question back on his father’s critics, asking where Palestinian solidarity protests are now given how much worse the Trump administration is on Gaza. He also accused Gulf Arab states were silent even as Palestinian civilians were being slaughtered, and emphasized that the whole conflict is intensely complicated. However, he insisted that the most obvious villain was Israel’s far-right regime.

“If you can’t see that Bibi Netanyahu is evil incarnate, then I don’t know what you’re looking at,” Biden said. “It is the wholesale murder of children. Of children!”

Biden Credits His Support Network with His Recovery from Addiction

To close the conversation, Gibson asked Hunter Biden about the viral 2018 voicemail Joe Biden left his son urging him to get help, and what he would say to people currently struggling with addiction battles of their own.

Biden said that voicemail was one of dozens or even hundreds his father left him while he was in the throes of addiction, and credited his recovery to his family — including his father, aunts, uncles, mother, and daughters — who he says never gave up on him. He also pushed back on the oft-repeated advice to first let addicts “hit bottom” before offering to help, saying that in his experience, that’s usually fatal.

“The one advantage that I had is that my family never closed the door on me,” Biden said. “They kept shining the light down the well I had fallen into.”

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Read the full transcript of Gibson and Biden’s conversation below:

CARL GIBSON: Well, Hunter, let’s get right into it. I know one thing I’d love to get your perspective on is the fact that the very same Republicans who spent the last four years accusing you and the “Biden Crime Family” of corruption are suddenly a lot more silent when it comes to this current president and his family making billions off of the presidency. Economist Dean Baker, he wrote a great piece this week, which I’ll link to in the write-up of this conversation. But he broke down the differences between your family and the Trump family, and the contrast is pretty astounding. So, real quick, just to recap: so you know, you sold a painting, you got a board position on a Ukrainian energy company. Trump has bragged about stealing $13 billion worth of oil money from Venezuela, the Trump family has made $1.4 billion from cryptocurrency since just last January. Of course, he was gifted a $400 million jet from the Qatari royal family, which then got almost a billion dollars in upgrades, courtesy of we the taxpayers. And now he’s doing what some would say is insider trading by selling early access to his truth social posts. So, Hunter, I guess my question is: What would you like to see from Democrats when it comes to tackling Trump’s corruption should they win back control of Congress in the fall?

HUNTER BIDEN: It’s it’s such a target-rich environment that I don’t know if I could add anything more than what is also obviously directly in front of their eyes. Here’s the thing, okay? What I say is that, regardless if you believed all of the lies that they told about me and my family — and they’re all lies, there’s not a single piece of evidence that I ever involved my dad in any of my business — 90 percent of the things that they talk about occurred during a period of time when my dad was neither vice president nor president. I sold paintings. I did because I’m a painter, and that’s what I chose to do. I chose to do something while my dad was president that was literally the furthest thing that I could think of that was away from politics, away from any idea that there could be any influence or anything, and they created this lie that I was selling paintings for $500,000 to, you know, shadowy people. Every single person who bought a painting from me was named, and had to go and testify before Congress before an impeachment investigation, under oath, and talk about the fact that they bought a painting from me for $35,000 or whatever it may be.

My income was during the period of time when my dad was president was, basically averaged over the four years, about $215,000 to $220,000 a year. That’s it. I didn’t do any other business while my dad was president. Anything. But [if you] believe everything that that they spun about the “Biden crime family,” it doesn’t even remotely compare. It almost pains me to, like the idea that they’re mentioning that supposed corruption in the same breath as we’re watching the country get completely and utterly fleeced. And just the few things that you named, I mean, that’s not even the tip of the iceberg.

Think about this: Don Jr. and Eric Trump, or Don Jr. in particular, started a venture capital fund called I think 1789 Capital a few days before their dad gets inaugurated. That fund — I believe this is the numbers, I’m not positive — but that fund, the underlying companies have received over $3.4 billion in [Department of Defense] contracts to companies, many of them that never existed before they became companies under the umbrella of 1789 Capital, which means Don Jr. got the largest single loan ever granted by the Department of Defense. $620 million pushed through. We’ve seen the communications by Peter Navarro inside the White House for a rare earth minerals company. They used to say like, what did Hunter Biden know about natural gas? What the hell does Don Beavis Jr. Trump know about rare earth minerals? They got a $1.2 billion deal in Kazakhstan. In Kazakhstan. I mean, and it goes on and on. And forget about Jared Kushner, you know, our unelected, non-Senate confirmed spokesperson and policymaker in the Middle East. Well, he’s literally getting paid by the Saudis of at least $6.2 billion, and over $100 million a year, just annually, and it’s all out in the open. They don’t care anymore.

And so, what I say to the members of. Congress that are about to come into, I hope, a position of oversight and chairmanships, at least in the House of Representatives and hopefully in the Senate, is do not let anything go. Don’t let any of this go. They’re not going to participate. It’s not going to be as as straightforward as a lot of people think, because you see what Todd Blanche just did. Todd Blanche says that he will adhere to the Constitution. He gets his nomination goes through. He gets Senate-confirmed, and within 24 hours, he writes a memo to the White House that says executive privilege applies not only to discussions with senior White House staff — which, for the last 250 years, that’s what executive privilege meant — it now applies to anyone basically that the president designates as an outside senior advisor.

So every single person that his family is doing business right with right now, whether it’s Saudis or whether it’s in Indonesia or whether it is in Azerbaijan, or Albania, or in Turkey — by the way, all places that they’re doing business with right now, all places that they’re doing business with — and many more, Qatar, Oman, and keep going down the line, is that they now are senior advisors and will not have to, according to Todd Blanche, will not have to comply with congressional subpoenas in oversight or any investigate investigatory body.

CG: You know, whether Democrats sweep back into Congress or not, some people have called for another impeachment trial. Of course, the list of impeachable offenses is a mile long. Like I think we could agree any other president who did half of what this administration does would be facing impeachment, and rightly so. Now, Jamie Raskin, the who would be the chairman of the Judiciary Committee if Democrats win back the majority, has talked about instead pursuing a strategy of hearings and subpoenas and dragging people before Congress rather than another impeachment trial, which, you know, 67 votes in the Senate, not likely. Do you have any thoughts on like that strategy? Is it like yes, and? Is it one or the other? Like, what do you think about that?

HB: Yes, and, I don’t, look, I think that this idea that we’re going to play by any set of rules that, and, I have this discussion with my wife all the time. She says, “just lock them up.” You know what I mean? And I say, “well, what about the Constitution?” And she says, “they don’t follow the Constitution.” They don’t follow the rules. They run roughshod over everything. And by the time people wake up to the idea that all the rules have changed, they get away scot-free and everything. And by the way, that’s January 6. That’s everything that happened before January 6. I mean, people’s memories are so short. The level of corruption that occurred in the first Trump administration was beyond what every single other president combined had ever done, and that’s in the first administration. We forget how many cronies of theirs took advantage of COVID and were selling masks and getting contracts with the government and the DoD and the DHS and all of that.

And by the way, we’re talking about the Trump family alone. Think about what Howard Lutnick is doing right now. Think about the one instance of this. Okay, the Secretary of Commerce decides that he’s going to go out and he’s going to push for these tariffs, and his sons, at the same time, are going to go and they’re going to buy up the rights that companies potentially have if the tariff gets overturned by the [Supreme Court]. So pennies on the dollar, they go to these major corporations and they say, “if the tariff gets overturned and you’re due a refund, we’ll buy that from you now for 10 cents on the dollar.” So when it got overturned, the tariffs — that he said were completely constitutional — Howard Lutnick and his sons just made billions, billions of dollars when they knew it was unconstitutional. They knew that it was going to get overturned. And so my point is, is that I just, I don’t fully know the answer, and I don’t pretend to know the answer. I don’t know. What’s your opinion? What’s the opinion of people that are listening to this right now? It’s like, you know, sorry, I talk too much, but I’ve had four cups, I’m on my fourth cup of coffee.

CG: It’s all good.

HB: Exactly! So do you remember, there’s a famous play, and then also a movie called “A Man for All Seasons,” and here’s a scene in the play where the son goes to Thomas More, and the king is about to basically eventually execute Thomas More, and his son says, “You have to go after the king.” And he said, “by what law?” And he says, “what does it matter with the law?” And Thomas More says to his son-in-law, Roper, he says — and it’s an overused thing — but he says, “when you chase the devil into the forest and you cut down every tree to get to him, what tree do you hide behind when he turns on you?” And that I think is the question of our time. What is it that we can do to stop the lawlessness of this president within the bounds of the of the Marquess of Queensberry rules of Congress, of oversight of the Constitution as it exists right now? And I don’t know the answer to that, and that’s why I say that Donald Trump is the singular existential threat because he’s broken it all. What does he do? He’s literally a crime boss. We are going through a one-man crime wave globally right now. Okay? He’s making money off the Iran War. He’s making money off of Gaza. He’s making money off of the death and destruction of thousands of people, and that’s not even the tip of the iceberg. So what do we do? He’s broken it. He’s broken the whole system. The question is, how do we rebuild it in a way that it never it never happens again?

CG: Well, aside from the corruption issue, which obviously we could talk about all day, but you look at ICE. I know they just spent $20 million to equip agents in the field with electric shock gloves. Of course, you know the shootings of Alex Pretti and Renee Good, no accountability has happened for them. Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon, who we had here on Raw America last week, he’s used the phrase “Nuremberg 2.0,” which calls up images from the post-World War II trials of Nazi officials. Do you think we need something like that to heal as a country before we can move forward? I know a lot of people who are going to run for president in 2028 will say, you know, let’s let’s not rehash the past, let’s move forward, let’s unite. And some people would say we have to have trials, we have to have accountability. If we’re going to have the rule of law in this country, we have to enforce those laws and show that no one is above the law. Like, what direction would you be leaning in?

HB: 100 percent, I believe that whether you call it Nuremberg 2.0, whether you call it Truth and Reconciliation, whatever it is, you don’t have to be punitive to the degree that there’s not a chance for healing, but they they have to be held accountable. And I know that there are a lot of people out there say, “Oh, well, you got a pardon in this, that, and the other thing.” Well, I’m here to say this. They’ve broken the entire system. They have broken it to a degree that there has to be a way in which we are all at least able to come to a common set of facts and truth about what just occurred. And I’m just hoping that we get there. I’m hoping, I want people to understand that this battle — and we should call it a battle — the battle that is occurring right now isn’t to sustain or save our democracy. We’ve lost the the constitutional republic as we’ve known it already. It’s that it’s happened. It’s not a matter of whether we will lose it. I truly believe that.

Think about it. What are the ultimate guardrails? Is it that he ignores court orders? Look what he’s doing as it relates to the Justice Department and the Epstein files right now. They are literally in Judge [Emmet] Sullivan’s court completely ignoring all a congressionally mandated oversight and the release of the files, and they’re just purely ignoring it. They’re doing that in I don’t know how many cases as it relates to the DHS, as it relates to ICE, they’re doing it. They’re doing it in terms of any oversight, as it relates to what [former DHS Secretary] Kristi Noem did… the guy that dressed up in the Nazi uniform—

CG: —Gregory Bovino.

HB: They are completely ignoring the rule of law, and when you have a president of the United States that continues to go out and “joke” about running for a third term and calls himself a king, I would suggest to people that it is not a joke. He can’t leave. If he leaves and he does not have power, there will be a reckoning, and he fully 100 percent knows that. And I’m not here to say that I have the answer to it, but I think that Senator Wyden is 100 percent right, and whether you call it Nuremberg 2.0 or, you know, or Trump 1.0. I don’t know, but but there has to be a reckoning.

CG: We’re here with Hunter Biden. Hunter is joining us. We’re talking about everything from Trump’s corruption to the midterms and everything else in between. If you’re just joining us, I’m Carl Gibson, managing editor of Raw America. If you like independent media that doesn’t take a dime from billionaires and doesn’t have a corporate owner deciding what you get to know. Please support, subscribe to Raw America. We greatly appreciate it. You can also follow and subscribe to Hunter Biden on his Substack as well.

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Hunter, I want to get into now as we’re talking about 2028. Who could be the [Democratic] Party’s standard bearer in the next presidential election? I noticed in your most recent interview you referred to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez as “the future of the Democratic Party,” and that she isn’t afraid to acknowledge that the system is broken and that we need radical change. She hasn’t ruled out a run for the White House in 2028, but, you know, a lot of people would say that America is too sexist to vote for a woman, seeing as highly qualified candidates like former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, former Vice President Kamala Harris, lost to an adjudicated rapist and convicted felon. What would you say to those people who are hesitant about running a woman in 2028?

HB: I would say that I remember a time when America wasn’t ready for somebody named Barack Obama, a Black United States senator from the state of Illinois who was born in Hawaii. I mean, I think that those rules are meant to be broken, and they better be meant to be broken because it’s time that we have a woman as president of the United States. I think that just for the pure reason that I think that there is so much leadership that has been provided out there by women — and mainly, in my opinion, in the Democratic Party — women of color. And so, look, I don’t have any time for anybody that tells you that we have to figure out right now who’s going to be the leader. You know, that’s what a primary process is for. I always say to people, you know, Will Rogers’ words, “I’m I’m not a member of any organized party. I’m a Democrat.” It’s true, and it’s been true for a very long time.

It’s because we are the Big Tent Party. We do welcome a plethora of voices, and then we go and we form circular firing squads, and and we decide that these talking head arbiters that have never really done much, but spend a lot of time talking on cable news shows, tell us that this person should be in and that person should be out, and the label of socialist is going to be the thing that kills us, and we’re going to lose with rural voters. And you know what? I think that we’re going to we will land on our leadership by the process that we’ve always gone through as a party, by a competitive race, by people expressing their vision of what this country should look like. I listen to AOC a lot, and I very, very, vary rarely disagree with her, and I think that she is an incredible communicator, and I think that she also has proven that she is able to talk to people outside of her direct constituency or her perceived constituency. Look at the way that she has relationships across the aisle, even in this environment, and is able to sit down and talk with other people. And so, I mean, I just really love her.

That being said, I also love Gretchen Whitmer. I and I know that a lot of people in the Democratic Party right now are mad because she didn’t do this, or did this, or did that. But you know, it’s the same way, I say we’re crazy if we all don’t just get behind Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, you know, 100 percent. We have a a Michigan-born Rhodes scholar who is this incredible athlete. On top of that, who is also a a board-certified doctor, who’s also an epidemiologist, who also talks to people the the way that they talk to each other. The same way that I think that [Texas state representative] James Talarico is an incredible candidate.

I think that we have this incredible cast of leaders that are out there, that are young, that are, you know, that have an enormous amount of energy, and we just all need to get behind them rather than sitting around talking about, you know, whether Hasan Piker should be a part of the party. Like, I look at somebody like Hasan, and I realize that he’s grown up on these platforms, and he’s created an incredible constituency that he has, and he’s said really stupid things in the past that he’s taken back, and, I don’t know about you, but there’s a whole generation from 18 to 35 years old that understands politics in a very, very different way than anybody like James Carville, the Pod Save America guys, understand politics. And they’ll say, “Oh, Hunter doesn’t know what the hell he’s talking about.”

But you know, I’ve been out there, I’ve been talking to people, I’ve been on these shows, and one of the reasons I so enjoy being on these shows is because I’ve figured out that, you know what? People just want you to be authentic, like truly authentic. You can’t fake authenticity, and more than anything, they can sniff out a bullshitter from a mile away. Ane so anybody that’s going out there, and figuring out that with their political analysts, like you know their eight-point plan … you know, doesn’t interest me. And I and that’s why I like AOC. It’s a long answer about AOC. Sorry.

CG: Well, you talk going on all these different shows, and you know, as I was is watching different appearances that you’ve done, you went on Tucker Carlson’s podcast earlier this month, and I thought it was really interesting. You referred to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as “evil incarnate.” You called what the Israeli military is doing in Gaza as a “genocide.” I know your dad caught a lot of heat for his support of Netanyahu in spite of the slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza, which is ongoing. Did you ever talk to him to try to get him to see the other side of that issue? And I’m just curious, like your journey on that issue, like when you started really seeing what was happening and speaking out about it.

HB: Look, I’m not here to defend my dad’s position on anything. I’m here to defend my dad as a dad and as a person. And I think that obviously there were some mistakes made. But one of the things I do know is that what my dad was doing with Netanyahu was not embracing him during that period of time. There was one instance after October 7, where a horrific massacre occurred… let’s all realize how complicated it is, and not very complicated in that moment. Over 1400 Israelis, Israeli Jews were murdered, and I don’t remember the exact number, but well over 100 that were taken as hostages. Okay? My dad’s first principal goal was to get the hostages released, and that’s what he began to do. And he had to work directly with the Israelis to do that.

And, by the way, I’m of the belief that that Benjamin Netanyahu and the Israelis and the Mossad knew that an attack was coming. I don’t see any other way that it could possibly have happened that the response time could have taken 10 hours, and so I think that. I believe in that conspiracy, by the way. But regardless, a response was due, and then from that point on, I know that my dad — and he gets to write about this in his book — I mean, I don’t know how many times he kicked Benjamin Netanyahu out of his office and called him, you know, a crazy motherfucker, literally to his face. I mean, all they did during that time, he took away the 2000-pound bombs… The vast majority of the weaponry that they did provide at that time was the defensive weaponry as it relates to the Patriot missile system.

People can all agree with that, but let me ask this question: for all the people that were out there protesting my dad, that were in front of the White House on a daily basis, and I understand their passion and the reason why. Where are they now? Where are they now? Is there a permanent Palestinian protest outside of the White House right now? Because Donald Trump has literally posted images that he’s going to turn Gaza into a Trump-themed golf course. Literally! They are literally advocating the removal of the remaining million-plus Palestinians from Gaza, to where nobody knows, so that they can turn it into a resort designed by Jared Kushner, and that isn’t even a joke. That’s literally what they’re saying. So where are they now?

And here’s another question that I have for all of these people that out there that are saying that this is, you know, such a cut-and-dry thing. Where are the Saudis on this? Where are the [United Arab Emirates]? They’ve never lifted a finger to be able to do anything for the Palestinians. Not a finger from any single other place. The only place that ever did anything was Lebanon, and Lebanon was ended up becoming destroyed by it. And so, the history of this is far more complicated then they’re right or wrong. But I know this in this moment, if you can’t see that Bibi Netanyahu is evil incarnate, then I don’t know what you’re looking at, because what he is doing, the way in which he has gone about organizing his government, the IDF, and the Israeli people, to, I don’t know what other word to use than genocide. I don’t know what other word. If somebody can come up with a better word that that that that appeases their sense of justice, then please let me know what it is. But whatever it is, it is the wholesale murder of children. Of children! And so, I don’t know the solution to this, and it is one of the most intractable and painful things to watch. But that’s why I like going on and talking to people that I don’t agree with.

CG: Well, and I’d love to talk to you more about that. We’re a little short on time. I did want to ask, Hunter, just as we’re closing out here, I wanted to talk about your journey as a recovering addict. I remember the audio of the voicemail that your dad left you back in 2018. I’ll link to this in the write-up as well. He said, “It’s Dad, I called to tell you I love you. I love you more than the whole world, pal. You got to get some help. I don’t know what to do.” And I know you started your recovery journey in 2019. I’m curious to know if that voicemail like helped start you on that path, and also what you would say to people watching right now who may be in the middle of their own struggles with addiction, whether it be alcohol or drugs or anything else.

HB: Yeah, you know the thing is, that was just one of probably, I don’t know, tens, if not dozens or hundreds of voicemails during that period of time that my dad left me on my phone. And the thing that I talk about as it relates to my recovery, I don’t have a prescription for anybody else — and I’m here to tell you, if anyone tells you that they do have, like, you go from A to Z, they’re not telling you the truth — all I can say is what helped me, and one of the things that I had an incredible advantage over anybody, and I was incredibly privileged, is this: I had a family that never let me go. Not just my dad, but it also included my aunts and uncles, and my mom, and included my daughters more than anybody else. My three adult daughters that never let me go.

And one of the things that people say often in recovery is, when you get these people, the advisors, and it’s well meaning, and I understand it because there’s a lot of pain, that addiction is a family disease. It is not just the disease of the individual. It affects it. There’s a blast radius around it, and one of the things they say is, you just got to let them hit bottom. Well, from my experience, the people that have hit bottom are dead. And the one advantage that I had is that my family never closed the door on me. Not only did they not close the door on me, but they kept shining the light down the well I had fallen into, and in order to get better, you have to have some sense of connection… These windows in addiction that I’ve experienced, at least, in which you get this kind of clarity of what you’re doing to yourself, and and in that window, if there’s no hand reaching out to you, it’s so much harder. And that’s why I always say, like, my God… comparatively to so many people that I know have gotten clean and sober on their own, without the family that I had, without the love that I had — and that those people I think are the bravest, most amazing people in in the world — and but for me that voicemail is indicative, but it does not paint the whole picture. Just how much my father’s always been there for me.

CG: We’ve been here talking to Hunter Biden. Hunter Biden is joining us here on Raw America. We’ve been talking about politics, world affairs, everything else here on Raw America. If you’re just joining us, I’m Carl Gibson, managing editor of Raw America. We are fully reader supported. We are editorially independent. We are not for sale. If you like supporting independent journalism that doesn’t take orders from billionaires or corporations, please subscribe and follow us. We greatly appreciate it. Hunter, I just want to say thank you so much for taking the time to talk to us, and I hope this isn’t the last time that we talk to you.

HB: No, thanks, and I really, really, really appreciate it. And I love this Substack. Go to my Substack too, guys. You know? No billionaires for me either.

CG: Yeah, Hunter Biden is on Substack. Follow and subscribe to him as well. Everyone.

HB: By the way, I listen to you guys all the time, and just keep doing what you’re doing. It’s truly amazing, and you know, it’s not like I agree 100 percent of the time, but I appreciate it 100 percent of the time. So I really mean it. Thank you, and I’m honored that you would have me on.

CG: That means a lot, Hunter. I appreciate it.

HB: Thank you. Thanks, man.

• How the NDTC trains Democratic candidates in the how-tos of campaigning

• How to build the Democratic bench ahead of 2028 in local and national races

• The NDTC’s new guide on volunteering for 2026 campaigns

• How to persuading skeptical or undecided voters at their doorstep

• How Democrats can unite after bitter primary fights

• The widening midterm enthusiasm gap between Democrats and Republicans

• How to counter the Trump administration’s election interference tactics

• What first-time candidates need to start doing now to run in 2028

• Why working-class Democratic candidates don’t need to fear fundraising

Raw America is only able to bring you live interviews like this — with an expert revealing inside knowledge of how to run campaigns and persuade voters — thanks to the support of our paying subscribers. We can’t thank you enough.

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What the NDTC Actually Does

As Dietrich explained, the NDTC isn’t an official arm of the Democratic Party, but rather a separate organization that exists to lower the barrier for would-be candidates to get the knowledge they need to mount their own campaigns for office “no matter how small the race or how red the district.”

Dietrich’s organization has trained more than 130,000 Democrats over the past decade, with 1,500 candidates already winning their primaries in the 2026 cycle alone. Dietrich emphasized that his group doesn’t make endorsements, and is committed to neutrality in contested primaries.

“We do not pick winners and losers. If you are willing to stand up and work in your community, you are willing to fight MAGA Republicans... we offer the free resources, tools, and trainings for you to be successful,” he said.

Building the Democratic Bench for 2028 Up and Down the Ticket

With Democrats aiming to flip dozens of Republican seats in a potential blue wave in November, Gibson asked Dietrich what the NDTC is doing to deepen the party’s bench ahead of the 2028 elections, both in Congress and in down-ballot races at the municipal and state levels.

Dietrich said the NDTC’s approach starts with helping people figure out whether running is even right for them in the first place, then pairing candidates with groups and resources that can help them quickly gain ballot access and then start engaging with voters in their own communities.

The NDTC founder and CEO pointed to incumbent Democratic lawmakers, including Congresswoman Lauren Underwood (D-Ill.), as examples of people who benefited from the NDTC’s resources and training. Dietrich also stressed that his group works alongside and not in competition with other Democratic organizations like Run for Something,EMILY’s List, Voto Latino and others.

“We are very much a collaborative, not competitive organization,” Dietrich said.

The NDTC’s New How-To Guide for 2026 Campaign Volunteers

Gibson asked Dietrich to walk through the NDTC’s newly released guide on how everyday Democrats can support local campaigns this fall in a volunteer capacity. Dietrich said volunteering is just as easy to learn as it is an essential resource for candidates aiming to reach as many voters as possible ahead of the general election.

Dietrich recalled his own mother’s nervousness the first time she called a Republican U.S. senator’s office to register her disapproval with the senator’s position on an issue. He noted the NDTC’s guide is specifically designed to knock down the hesitation many people may feel when calling their member of Congress or trying to persuade a voter.

“You want to know the best practices, how to knock a door, we got it. You want to know how to do a text bank or a phone bank? We got it,” Dietrich said.

Dietrich also reminded viewers that the high-profile, marquee House and Senate races are far from the only campaigns that need volunteers. This includes candidates running for local school boards, city councils, mayoral offices, county commissions and other elections up and down the ticket.

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The Art of Persuading a Gettable Voter

The conversation then turned to various tactics volunteers can tap into in order to persuade voters either while canvassing door-to-door or phonebanking. Gibson asked: if a voter appears unmoved, is it better to double down on persuasion or cut your losses and move on?

Dietrich said the answer ultimately depends on whether the campaign has identified the voter as persuadable in the first place, though he stressed the underlying approach is always the same: listen first, and lead with shared values rather than facts and statistics.

“Let’s be 100 percent clear: facts, figures, logic, and common sense are not the way to persuade swing voters,” Dietrich said. “Start connecting on a personal level. Humans are storytellers.”

The NDTC founder described using his own 13 year-old daughter as his “why” when talking to voters, reminding himself that the whole reason he engages in politics is so that she grows up in a country with a more responsive government. He encouraged campaign volunteers to really lean into asking open-ended questions to find out what’s keeping voters up at night, before pivoting to selling their candidate as the solution.

Why ‘No’ Is Still a Good Answer

As the conversation delved deeper into the art of persuasion, Gibson asked how volunteers should actually close the conversation with a voter and ask for a commitment, after presumably building rapport over shared values.

Dietrich reminded viewers that the ultimate goal when volunteering isn’t to get every person to commit to voting for the chosen candidate, but ultimately to deepen the campaign’s knowledge of the electorate.

He argued that while all volunteers would hope for every voter to agree to vote for their chosen candidate, display a yard sign, commit to volunteering and donating to the campaign itself, a firm “no” can also be a very useful data point.

“No is a good answer, which sounds counterproductive, but there’s a reason for it,” Dietrich said, explaining that it helps campaigns avoid wasting limited resources on unpersuadable voters.

How Democrats Can Re-Unite After Hard-Fought Primary Races

Gibson observed that the 2026 cycle has been rife with contested primaries in states like Michigan and Wisconsin. He observed that while Rep. Haley Stevens (D-Mich.) agreed to stump with Dr. Abdul El-Sayed through November, unity is still an open question in Wisconsin’s Democratic gubernatorial primary between Democratic socialist Francesca Hong and moderate David Crowley. Gibson then asked the NDTC founder what advice he’d give to Democratic factions looking to reunite after expensive and personal primary fights.

Dietrich replied by first pushed back on the idea that the party is as divided as it’s often portrayed in the media, then reiterating that Democrats should learn from the example of total unity seen in Michigan.

“The algorithms and the right and others have a vested interest in us believing that the split in the party is so much more divisive than it is. We need to remember we agree on 90 to 95 percent of everything,” Dietrich said.

Dietrich also credited Maryland Gov. Wes Moore with a framing he found useful — that Democrats have typically been been seen as “the party of no and later” when they need to be the party of “yes and now.”

“MAGA is the problem, not fellow Democrats,” he added.

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Preparing for Election Interference in 2026

The conversation then took on a more sobering tone, with Gibson asking what the NDTC is doing to prepare Democrats for the possibility of the Trump administration’s Department of Justice engaging in voter suppression efforts ahead of the midterms — particularly now that Todd Blanche, who is Trump’s former personal lawyer, has now been confirmed as attorney general.

Dietrich said any response will begin with mass mobilizations of campaign volunteers.

“Everyone watching, listening right now, we need you,” Dietrich said, urging viewers to enlist family and friends as volunteers. “I don’t care where you live, we need you.”

The NDTC founder reiterated that sunlight is still the best disinfectant when it comes to attempts to undermine the midterms.

“They can only cheat if we allow it to happen, and if we are loud and stand our ground,” he said.

Dietrich’s Advice for Potential 2028 Candidates: Start Building Relationships Now

Gibson noted that he has a friend in Kentucky considering a campaign for Congress in 2028, and asked Dietrich what advice he would give someone who has a plan to run but doesn’t know where to begin.

Dietrich said anyone who was considering declaring a run for office should take advantage of the current moment to start building relationships without having to ask for anything in return. He added this is the ideal time to build what campaign strategists call a “power map” of local influencers who candidates can later call on to help them down the road.

According to Dietrich, the most successful campaigns already have a built-in network of contacts ready to help them enlist volunteers, knock doors, phonebank and raise money by the time they declare their candidacy, and that these networks take time to develop.

How to Fundraise Without Having Rich Friends

Finally, Gibson asked about one of the biggest barriers for working-class would-be candidates: how does a candidate who lacks moneyed connections raise enough funds to win, especially when running against candidates with an army of resources?

Dietrich, a who is a former finance director for Democratic campaigns, said that fear of asking for money is common but easy to conquer.

“You are not wrong and not alone in feeling this way,” Dietrich told viewers, before explaining that the NDTC specifically teaches Democratic candidates how to map and grow their personal networks into a fundraising base. He also urged viewers to reframe how they think about asking for money.

“Your reality is not the donor’s reality,” Dietrich said, describing how his own discomfort with asking for large donations early in his career came from projecting his own limits onto potential campaign donors. “You’re going to get used to hearing no, and you’re going to love hearing yes.”

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• The Trump administration’s cuts to Medicare Part D subsidies

• The threat that Medicaid cuts in Republicans’ so-called “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” pose to rural hospitals across the country

• The toll the COVID-19 pandemic took on frontline healthcare workers while Republicans point fingers at Dr. Fauci

• Whether Medicare for All or similar universal healthcare models could solve the healthcare affordability crisis

• The administrative burden private insurance places on both doctors and patients

• How “brain drain” is causing a significant shortage of doctors and nurses, and

• Whether the profit motive belongs in the healthcare sector, and more

Conversations like this one — with a practicing emergency room physician speaking candidly about problems with the American healthcare system — require resources. Raw America will never accept a dime from a billionaire backer or allow corporate advertisers to dictate our coverage. But that also means we need support from our readers to keep this work going. If you’re reading this on a free subscription, please consider making today the day you upgrade to a paying membership. Interviews like these couldn’t happen without our readers stepping up. Subscribe today.

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How Trump’s Cuts to Medicare and the Affordable Care Act Are Driving Up Costs

Gibson opened by noting that President Donald Trump’s administration is ending federal subsidies to Medicare Part D, which is a double whammy for working-class Americans after Republicans allowed the enhanced Affordable Care Act premium tax credits to expire last year. ACA premiums are up anywhere from 58 to 114 percent, according to Kaiser Family Foundation data. Ford said the burden often falls squarely on emergency rooms like his.

“We in emergency medicine are the safety net for the country,” Ford said, pointing out that patients tend to delay care as long as they possibly can, until they reach a breaking point.

“When you can’t breathe, or when you know you have that stroke that could have been preventable, and you got to go to the emergency department,” Ford said, noting that by then, the damage is often much worse than had they been able to get non-emergency care.

Doctors ‘Scared as Hell’ About Rural Hospital Closures

Gibson then pivoted to Republicans’ so-called “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” which Trump signed into law last year. The law includes more than $1 trillion in cuts to Medicaid, which provides health insurance to low-income and disabled Americans. But as Gibson noted, most of the more severe cuts won’t take effect until after the midterms. Ford said many of his across Wisconsin fear their hospitals are at risk of closing.

“You know, people are scared as hell,” Ford said, citing a University of North Carolina study tracking hospitals nationwide at risk of closure. He named three critical access hospitals in Wisconsin under threat — in Manitowoc, Stanley, and Osseo — and warned that losing them could mean potentially deadly delays for patients experiencing serious health episodes like heart attacks, strokes or complications with childbirth.

“That can be the difference between life and death,” Ford said of the extra time it would take for rural patients to reach the nearest hospital, particularly in states like Wisconsin with harsh winters.

Gibson noted that rural hospitals like St. Claire Regional Medical Center in Morehead, Kentucky (where he went to college) often also function as major economic engines for their communities, and that those hospitals closing could also be an economic disaster.

Ford agreed, and added that the risk of rural hospital closures only adds to the ongoing staffing crisis plaguing hospitals nationwide. He described how Wisconsin’s post-Dobbs abortion law drove obstetricians and gynecologists out of the state entirely, as they feared being prosecuted for simply doing what they were trained to do.

“The safety net is fraying,” Ford said. “There’s only so much that we can do.”

‘Witch Hunt Ran By a Clown Show’: Dr. Ford’s Choice Words for Republicans Attacking Dr. Fauci

Gibson also noted that on Thursday, Republicans on the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee voted to Dr. Anthony Fauci in contempt after his repeated assertions of his Fifth Amendment rights during a recent hearing. He then asked Ford to compare Republicans’ political theater to his own harrowing experience treating Covid-19 patients on the front lines in 2020.

Ford described how he had to intubate a patient just two hours before his own son was born during the first Covid-19 shutdowns, and how he had to wear an N95 mask around his newborn for the child’s first six months because so little was known about the virus.

“Science is not about being right,” Ford said. “It’s about learning more. It’s about working with the evidence in front of you.”

The ER physician called the congressional hearing “a witch hunt ran by a clown show,” arguing their behavior was disrespectful of both Fauci’s decades of experience and of the sacrifices made by healthcare workers who, unlike Fauci’s critics, couldn’t stay home during the pandemic.

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Is Medicare for All a Solution to the Affordability Crisis?

After Dr. Abdul El-Sayed’s recent victory in Michigan’s Democratic U.S. Senate primary win, Gibson asked Ford whether El-Sayed’s promise to fight for Medicare for All (which he described in his April interview with Raw America) could realistically solve the affordability crisis, and what solutions Dr. Ford would like to see implemented as a physician.

Ford praised Medicare for All and said he appreciated El-Sayed’s advocacy for the policy, but also said its chances of becoming a reality in the near future were slim.

“It’s going to be hard as hell to get through just a single payer system in the way that our healthcare system is organized now,” Dr. Ford said.

He pointed instead to ideas with more bipartisan support, like “Medicare by Choice,” which would expand Medicare eligibility with new subsidies. He noted this was similar to successful universal healthcare models currently used in Germany and France. Ford also stressed the need for additional mental health coverage, describing how patients have been repeatedly turned away from care while in crisis simply because they lacked health insurance.

How Much Time Does it Cost Doctors to Fight With Insurers?

Gibson acknowledged that because Dr. Ford works in the emergency room, he personally doesn’t have the burden of having to contend with insurance providers. But he asked the ER physician whether his colleagues lament about the burden of navigating the confusing bureaucracy of private health insurance networks, and whether that ordeal tends to push more doctors toward supporting solutions like single-payer healthcare.

Ford confirmed that was a very real concern among his colleagues, and said insurance fights are almost always the top reason for physician burnout.

“I can diagnose you. I can tell you what you need to do,” Dr. Ford said. “But then you add in the added hurdle of now, okay, we have to find a way for you to afford it.”

The Milwaukee physician observed that even in emergency medicine, where pre-approvals aren’t required for treatment, the fallout from insurance denials often lands in his ER, given that patients who have no other options usually show up once conditions become emergencies.

The Threat of ‘Brain Drain’ in Healthcare

Since Trump returned to power in 2025, his administration has consistently made cuts to critical programs like the National Institutes of Health and zeroed out grants for important medical research, leading to scientists, physicians and others to leave the United States for countries more accepting of science. Gibson asked whether Ford was concerned about lasting damage from the administration’s cuts to programs aimed at training the next generation of doctors.

Ford pointed to his own experience suing the state of Wisconsin over its post-Dobbs abortion law alonngside his colleague Dr. Kristin Lyerly (also of the Paging America Substack). He said that following that law’s passage, residency applications to Wisconsin OB-GYN programs experienced a significant drop while rural maternity wards shuttered across the state. He also urged his fellow physicians to speak out against misinformation, calling it as an ethical obligation.

“If you’re standing on the sidelines and not saying anything, are you [com]plicit in this?” Ford said. “Everybody here needs to do their part.”

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Does the Profit Motive Belong in Healthcare?

To close the interview, Gibson referenced the book “An American Sickness” by Dr. Elizabeth Rosenthal, in which the author — a New York Times journalist and physician — diagnosed the problems with the American healthcare and prescribed multiple solutions. Gibson noted that Rosenthal’s book was rife with examples of how the pursuit of profit consistently interfered with the actual process of providing care, and then asked Dr. Ford whether it’s appropriate for private companies to treat healthcare as a profit center.

Ford quoted his mentor, who gave him a crucial piece of advice before he died of Covid-19 during the pandemic’s first wave: if you want to get rich, don’t go into medicine.

“I went into medicine to help people,” Dr. Ford said, reminding viewers that physicians’ salaries usually make up a single-digit percentage point of total healthcare spending. He contrasted that with private equity-backed insurers prioritizing profit over outcomes, and raking in billions as a result.

“They don’t really give a shit how the healthcare outcomes are,” Ford said of companies like UnitedHealthcare, arguing that healthcare reform should focus on redirecting money toward patient care and away from administrative profit.

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• His new Finance Committee report accusing major banks of anti-money-laundering violations tied to Epstein

• How J.P. Morgan executives allegedly coached Epstein on how to move money through various shell companies

• A damning internal J.P. Morgan email referencing “nymphettes” at Epstein’s home

• Specific dollar figures tied to Epstein’s payments to women in various high-risk countries from one of his J.P. Morgan accounts

• The specific Wall Street executives Wyden would subpoena if Democrats retake the Senate

• A possible connection between President Donald Trump’s nomination of Supreme Court Justicve Brett Kavanaugh and Deutsche Bank

• The DOJ’s withholding of roughly 2 million pages of Epstein-related documents

• Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche’s pending confirmation vote and Trump’s IRS audit exemption

• Whether Wyden has heard from Sen. Mitch McConnell’s (R-Ky.) office

• What Democrats hope to accomplish if they retake Congress

Live interviews like this — with a sitting U.S. senator, giving you inside knowledge on a story the billionaire-owned media is working hard to bury — are only possible because of Raw America’s paying subscribers funding this work. We’ll never take a dime from a billionaire and we don’t have a corporate parent watering down our coverage to please advertisers. Every exclusive report, every newsletter and every live interview with newsmakers like Sen. Wyden happens because our readers believe in independent journalism enough to become paying subscribers. If you’re reading this on a free subscription and find our work valuable, take a moment and upgrade to a paying membership right now.

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Big Banks Knew Epstein ‘Was Dirty’

Gibson opened by laying out the core argument in the Finance Committee’s report: that Bank of America, Deutsche Bank and J.P. Morgan Chase may have violated federal anti-money laundering laws by failing to screen and report payments — including from billionaire hedge fund manager Leon Black to Epstein — and by underreporting Epstein’s suspicious transactions to the Treasury Department. Wyden didn’t hold back when describing the report’s conclusions.

“Epstein would not have gotten away with sex trafficking for so long if these banks had done their job and followed the law,” Wyden said.

The Finance Committee’s ranking Democrat argued that bank executives “knew that Epstein was dirty, and they just looked the other way,” adding that in his view, it was because “they made money out of it as a result.” He said the report was designed to lay out “a roadmap for prosecution and investigation by federal law enforcement.”

Banks Coaching Epstein on Using Shell Companies

Gibson noted one of the report’s most striking findings was that top J.P. Morgan executives reportedly coached Epstein on how to withdraw his cash through various shell companies instead of through his personal accounts. This helped him obscure the money trail from federal compliance officers and regulators.

Wyden called that particular finding “a showstopper,” but said the real test now is what comes next, and if Congress and the administration has the guts to actually pursue accountability.

“We want to make sure that the regulators, Treasury, the Federal Reserve, DOJ, follow the roadmap and hold these guys responsible,” Wyden said, calling the revelation “a jaw-dropper.”

Bank Executive Commented on ‘Nymphettes’ at Epstein’s House

Gibson brought up one specific document Wyden posted publicly to his Bluesky account: an email from a J.P. Morgan executive comparing the exclusive Union Club to Epstein’s residence, joking that it was “more tasteful” but with “fewer nymphettes.” Gibson asked whether this suggested deeper knowledge inside the bank of what Epstein was doing.

Wyden agreed, and accused J.P. Morgan of trying to “whitewash” its role in Epstein’s network. He argued that “the top executives were up to their eyeballs” in their relationship with the notorious sex trafficker, and observed that some of the people involved — specifically J.P. Morgan asset ands wealth management division CEO Mary Erdoes — “are still there, making big money.”

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Banks Looked the Other Way on Epstein’s Suspicious Payments

Gibson walked viewers through some of the specific figures in the report, and chronicled how Epstein made hundreds of thousands of dollars in payments to women and girls in countries like Belarus, Lithuania, and Russia in the years leading up to his 2019 prosecution. This includes more than $500,000 in payments in 2011 alone.

Wyden’s report notes that J.P. Morgan neglected to flag those payments to authorities when it could have made a difference. He also said the bank showed a consistent pattern of doing “as little as possible,” and only acting after the fact rather than stopping problems as they emerged.

“They did everything they could to keep from doing steps that would help now,” Wyden said, “and then in the future get clean because they were doing something retroactive.”

Wyden’s Subpoena List if Democrats Retake the Senate

With the 2026 midterms rapidly approaching in less than 100 days, Democrats’ odds of retaking both chambers are steadily improving by the day. Gibson reminded viewers that a Democratic Senate majority would make Wyden chairman of the Finance Committee — with subpoena power.

Gibson ran through several names Wyden has floated for testimony: Mary Erdoes, former Barclays CEO Jes Staley, former J.P. Morgan Chase general counsel Stephen Cutler, and others. When asked what he would ask them if they came before his committee, Wyden kept it simple.

“We want to ask them why they tolerated this for so long,” Wyden said. He argued the executives were supposed to flag exploitation when they saw it, like Epsten “hurting girls and women.” He lamented that the men and women in charge of these institutions had the power to do something but instead “just tried to escape any kind of responsibility.”

A Possible Supreme Court Connection

Gibson asked Wyden about the possibility of one particularly high-profile set of subpoenas for either former Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy (a Ronald Reagan appointee) and/or his son, Justin Kennedy, who was an executive at Deutsche Bank between 1997 and 2009.

Gibson laid out the timeline prior to Epstein’s 2019 death in prison: Justice Kennedy’s retired in 2018, paving the way for Donald Trump to nominate Brett Kavanaugh to replace him. He then asked that given how Kennedy’s son worked at Deutsche Bank for more than a decade, whether Wyden would use his subpoena powers to bring Kennedy or his son before the committee to question them over their knowledge of links between Trump and Epstein.

“We’re not ruling anything out at this point,” Wyden said, though he pivoted to a broader frustration. The Oregon senator accused his Republicans colleagues of having “talked a big game” about Epstein, but then said they “weren’t there” when Democrats needed their votes to get subpoenas through.

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Revealing the Rest of the Epstein Files

The conversation then turned to how the Justice Department, under Todd Blanche, is still sitting on roughly two million pages of Epstein-related documents that still have yet to see the light of day. This is all in spite of the bipartisan Epstein Files Transparency Act — which Trump signed into law last year — mandating that the DOJ release all files to the public.

Wyden suggested that the files may eventually lead to new information about the decades-old allegations that Epstein was tied to money laundering and drug trafficking dating back to the 1990s. He said his office has been trying to obtain those materials, but has hit a wall despite the records being unclassified.

“[Todd Blanche is] making it impossible for a United States senator who’s been doing a four-year investigation to get something that’s called unclassified,” Wyden said.

Gibson then mentioned the Taking Epstein Survivors Seriously (TESS) database created in part by Colorado-based attorney Anne P. Mitchell to give Americans a window into the enormity of the financial crimes committed by Epstein and others in his network over the decades. He then asked whether Wyden’s staff was aware of the database and whether further financial investigations could follow if Democrats retake not just Congress in 2026, but the DOJ after the 2028 election.

Wyden said the investigation is ongoing and expressed interest in connecting with the database’s creator, and Gibson offered to connect Mitchell to his staff after their conversation.

Wyden on Todd Blanche, the IRS Audit Exemption, Mitch McConnell, and Tariff Refunds

With the Senate preparing to gavel out for the next five weeks, Gibson asked Wyden about whether Blanche is indeed going to be confirmed as attorney general. He noted that Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) has come out in opposition to his confirmation, while Sens. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) and John Cornyn (R-Texas) voted him out of the Senate Judiciary Committee after he agreed in writing to kill Trump’s slush fund for MAGA loyalists.

Wyden said he was deeply concerned about both the prospect of the slush fund potentially being revived down the road, along with the IRS audit exemption for Trump, his family and his businesses.

“I think the idea that Donald Trump would be the only person in the United States fully exempt from IRS audit is the ultimate indictment of the way they do business,” Wyden said.

Gibson also noted he’s a constituent of Sen. McConnell and asked Wyden that, given Mitch McConnell’s extended absence from the Senate that has now dragged on for more than 50 days, whether the Oregon Democrat had personally heard anything from McConnell’s office about his health or whereabouts.

“I’m not getting any information,” Wyden said. “I’m not probably the first person they’d contact, but I haven’t heard anything about it. Very unusual.”

Gibson closed out the interview by asking what Wyden is hearing from his Oregon constituents heading into recess about what they hope Democrats will do should they retake Congress, and whether there’s any path for consumers to recoup money lost to Trump’s illegal tariffs.

Wyden said tackling the ongoing affordability crisis and the Trump administration’s corruption top the list of concerns he’s hearing. On tariffs, he said Democrats are pushing for accountability, noting that Trump’s own lawyers “said that they would stay with it and get people refunds” in litigation, but that the administration has taken only “some baby steps” toward actually making consumers whole.

Raw America is doing all of this without a billionaire backer or running ads from corporate sponsors. Interviews like this one, with a sitting U.S. senator, are only made possible with the direct financial support of paying subscribers. We owe all of this to readers like you, who have decided that high-quality independent journalism is worth paying for. If you’re still reading us on a free subscription, make today the day you upgrade. We can’t do any of this without you.

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Read the full transcript of Gibson and Senator Wyden’s conversation below:

CARL GIBSON: Welcome to another edition of Raw America Live. We’re very excited today to have Senator Ron Wyden join us here on Raw America this afternoon. Ron is the ranking Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee. He is the senior U.S. senator from Oregon, and his office just released a pretty explosive report about how big Wall Street banks enabled Jeffrey Epstein for years, helped him move millions of dollars. The senator is going to talk all about that report. Senator Wyden, thank you so much for joining us here at Raw America. We appreciate it.

SENATOR RON WYDEN: Hey, thanks for having me on your show. Heard a lot of good things.

CG: Perfect. Always like hearing that. Well, senator, let’s get right into it here. So, I’m seeing here. I read this report, and it was pretty astounding. So, for those of you not familiar, Bank of America, Deutsche Bank, J.P. Morgan Chase likely violated federal anti-money laundering laws by basically failing to help screen and report payments from people like billionaire Leon Black, hedge fund manager, to Jeffrey Epstein, as well as underreporting Epstein’s suspicious transactions to the Treasury Department as required under federal law. Senator, talk about this report and what you hope happens as a result of this.

RW: Well, the most important thing is, is that people understand what this issue is all about. And Epstein would not have gotten away with sex trafficking for so long if these banks had done their job and followed the law. And these bank executives knew that Epstein was dirty, and they just looked the other way, and they did primarily, in my view, because they made money out of it as a result. And what we do in our report is lay out a roadmap for prosecution and investigation by federal law enforcement, and that’s the next step.

CG: I’m seeing here in this report as well several top executives at J.P. Morgan Chase actually coach Jeffrey Epstein on how to withdraw his cash from multiple shell companies rather than from his personal accounts, which, as I understand it, helped him hide information from federal offices, compliance personnel, government regulators. That alone seems like a pretty explosive crime. Do you think that there might be some criminal referrals that could come out of this?

RW: Well, it certainly struck me as a showstopper, but that’s the whole point now: is what happens, you know, next. And we want to make sure that the regulators, Treasury, the Federal Reserve, DOJ, follow the roadmap and hold these guys responsible, but I thought it was a jaw-dropper.

CG: Well, and one thing that’s particularly jaw dropping to me, you include an email from David Brigstocke, who I believe, and you posted this on your Bluesky account. I believe he’s a current or former J.P. Morgan executive. He apparently had knowledge of Epstein’s sex trafficking, or at least tangential knowledge of it. I’m quoting here: “the size of the Union Club. In fact, it used to be a club. Reminded me of J. E’s house, [Jeffrey Epstein’s house], except it was more tasteful and fewer nymphettes.” It seems like they have pretty extensive knowledge of what Epstein was up to. Is that your assessment?

RW: You bet. And J.P. Morgan constantly is trying to do whitewash business and trying to make it look like they were just the absolute epitome of responsibility. But we just think that in so much of what goes on at J.P. Morgan, the top executives were up to their work with Epstein up to their eyeballs, Mary Erdoes and some of these kind of people are still there making big money.

CG: Exactly, and you know, as your as your report shows, so Jeffrey Epstein made millions of dollars in direct payments to various women and young girls from just one of his J.P. Morgan accounts. You wrote on Bluesky: “A lot of these payments were to women in high-risk countries like Belarus, Lithuania, Russia.” It looks like in 2008, he spent $302,000 on these types of payments. 2011, $539,020. 2013, $473,000. At no point, as I understand, did J.P. Morgan flag any of these transactions to these countries. Is that correct?

RW: As far as I can tell, what J.P. Morgan tried to do was little as possible, and then think that everything was fine if they did something retroactive, which was exactly what we were concerned about with these three big big companies is that they were doing everything they can to stop. They they did everything they could to keep from doing steps that would help now and and then in the future get get clean because they were doing something retroactive.

CG: Now, Senator, you mentioned, and I think this is very important as we head into the midterms. Less than 100 days to go before voters head to the polls. It looks like Democrats have a good chance of retaking the House of Representatives. Democrats’ chances of retaking the Senate are also on the rise. If Democrats retake the Senate, you would be chairman of the Senate Finance Committee and would have subpoena power. You’ve named several Wall Street executives you would like to bring forward to the committee and subpoena. I’m going to name several of those: Paul Morris, Mary Erdoes, who you mentioned earlier, Jess Staley, Stephen Cutler. Who are some of these other names? And talk about what you’d like to ask them if you had the power to subpoena them and bring them to your committee?

RW: Well, we we want to ask them why they tolerated this for so long. I mean, they are supposed to have a kind of good government approach when they see these kinds of things that are taking advantage of people hurting girls and women. They’re supposed to step up, bring it to the attention of government. Why did they do none of that, and instead just tried to escape any kind of responsibility?

CG: You know, Senator, one question that I had when seeing this was, you know, people may not be familiar with the timeline. 2019, Jeffrey Epstein died in prison. 2018, Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy resigned from the Supreme Court, retired, and Trump was able to appoint his replacement, Brett Kavanaugh. Now, Justice Kennedy’s son used to work at Deutsche Bank for about a decade, and I’m wondering, senator, if you’re able to chair the Finance Committee come 2027, would you be willing to issue a subpoena to Justice Kennedy or his son and ask if they had any connections to or knowledge of Trump and Epstein?

RW: Well, we’re we’re not ruling anything out at this point, but one of the things that was particularly disturbing is that the Republicans in the Senate talked a big game, talked about how serious they were about dealing with Epstein, and then when we tried to get them to help with the subpoena, they weren’t there.

CG: Yeah, because, like you said nothing is off the table, and that’s interesting to know because you know I think this thing potentially goes a lot deeper. I know Todd Blanch and the DOJ are currently sitting on at least two million pages of Epstein-related documents that we have yet to see and that have not been released. So I’m wondering, you know—

RW: —You know, the significance of that is that there were, back in the ‘90s, all kinds of implications that Epstein was involved in money laundering and drugs and the like, and we have been trying to get those materials from Blanche, and they’re on a document that says unclassified. So he’s making it impossible for a United States senator who’s been doing a four-year investigation to get something that’s called unclassified.

CG: Well, and Senator, you know, previously a couple months ago, we had an attorney, Anne Mitchell, come on this program, and she talked about a database she created called TESS, [Taking Epstein Survivors Seriously]. She created this database to basically search through the Epstein files to allow people to have a window into the various financial crimes that Epstein had committed. Like you said, dating back decades. I wanted to ask if your staff was a aware of that database, and if you foresee additional financial investigations into the Epstein network, not only should Democrats retake Congress in November, but should they retake control of the DOJ after 2028?

RW: Well, first of all, we are continuing our investigations. We point that out in the report, and I’d very much like to be able to be in touch with this person who’s running this database.

CG: And I can connect her to your staff as well. It’s pretty explosive. I’ve I’ve gotten to look at it for a while. I wanted to ask, senator, as we’re talking about Epstein — and of course Todd Blanche’s is potentially going to be confirmed by the Senate pretty soon, I know you guys are trying to leave for August recess pretty shortly — how do you feel about Todd Blanche’s chances of being confirmed by the full Senate? I know Susan Collins came out against his confirmation, but of course Thom Tillis and John Cornyn passed him out of the Judiciary Committee. Do you feel Todd Blanche could be fully confirmed this week as attorney general?

RW: I’m concerned about it, and as the ranking Democrat on the Finance Committee, I’ve led the fight to get rid of this special audit exemption. I think the idea that Donald Trump would be the only person in the United States fully exempt from IRS audit is the ultimate indictment of the way they do business.

CG: And like, walk us through this, Senator, because as I understand, John Cornyn and Thom Tillis were satisfied with him putting in writing the slush fund is dead. But like you mentioned, that IRS audit protection that’s still in place, and I don’t really see anything in that document that says Trump can’t just bring back the slush fund at some point. I mean, is that a concern?

RW: I agree completely. It’s a top concern.

CG: And obviously with Mitch McConnell being absent from the Senate for a long period of time, I know that’s one less Republican vote. I’m wondering, senator, since I have you here, have you heard anything from Mitch McConnell’s office or staff about his whereabouts, his health? I’m one of his constituents here in Kentucky, and I have yet to hear anything about my senator.

RW: I’m not getting any information. I’m not probably the first person they’d contact, but I haven’t heard anything about it. Very unusual.

CG: And of course, real quick before August recess happens, you’re about to go back and talk to your constituents. What are you hearing from your constituents about things that they are hoping Democrats will do should they retake the majority? I know obviously Epstein investigations are a big one, but what are some things that you hope Democrats can accomplish should they regain a majority in November?

RW: I think the two things they really care about are costs and corruption. You know, around their kitchen table, they’re getting clobbered. I’m fighting Trump on these tariffs, and Democrats have always said we’re concerned about affordability. They’re letting him get all these extra tariffs. I think that’s a big mistake.

CG: Greg Casar, chairman of the House Progressive Caucus, he recently said that Americans should be the ones getting the refunds from the tariffs. I was seeing a CBO study that—

RW: —That’s way too logical for this administration.

CG: Exactly! You know, a lot of people have they paid so many higher prices because of these tariffs. These corporations are reaping the rewards. Like, is there any recourse for consumers like us to get some of this money back that we paid in higher prices?

RW: We’re pushing very hard, and I’m in particular pointing out that Trump’s lawyers in his litigation before the court said that they would stay with it and get people refunds, and he sure hasn’t done much. He’s done some baby steps, but not much. I’m being told I got to run to the next thing, but does that give you enough to start with?

CG: Absolutely, Senator. Thank you for taking the time. We really appreciate you coming on.

RW: Let’s do it again. I’d like to do it again.

CG: Absolutely, Senator. I would too.

RW: All right. Big thanks.

• How teachers and parents are being financially squeezed by rising gas, grocery, and housing costs

• The fallout from cuts to Medicaid and food stamps under the Trump administration

• The tripling of student loan payments after Trump ended Biden’s SAVE repayment plan

• Whether a future Democratic administration should cancel federal student debt

• Education Secretary Linda McMahon’s praise for AI-taught “Alpha Schools”

• How screens and generative AI harm children’s ability to learn

• Whether teachers might strike again, as they did during the first Trump administration

• How teachers in deep-red, right-to-work states can start organizing unions

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Teachers and Parents Are ‘Not Making It’ Financially

Gibson opened by asking Weingarten what AFT was hearing from its members about growing financial stress as the 2026-2027 school year approaches. Weingarten said a survey of 7,500 AFT members earlier this year found that three-quarters of them living paycheck to paycheck, with half of the union’s members counted among low-wage workers as adjunct faculty and paraprofessionals.

“You need seventy-five, $80,000 to live in a city these days,” Weingarten said, arguing that even with collective bargaining raises of three or four percent annually, many members can’t keep up with rising housing, gas, and grocery costs. She called for things like increasing the federal minimum wage to $25 an hour (something Gibson also called for in a 2021 Barron’s op-ed) and a new federal tax cut for workers, saying working-class people simply need “cash.”

Weingarten connected the ongoing affordability crisis directly to President Donald Trump and Republicans’ so-called “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” (OBBBA) and three compounding effects: roughly $1 trillion in Medicaid cuts shutting down rural hospitals, changes to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, or food stamps) that she said stripped away support for healthier school meals, and new tariffs pushing costs of consumer goods even higher.

“People are one illness away from bankruptcy,” she said of the hospital closures.

Student Loan Payments Have Tripled for Many Borrowers

Much of the conversation between Gibson and Weingarten centered on new federal student loan repayment terms outlined in the OBBBA. Weingarten said the elimination of former President Joe Biden’s SAVE plan has resulted in some of her union’s members paying roughly $440 a month, up from what had been closer to a more manageable cost of $60 or $100.

Weingarten noted that more than 3.6 million borrowers have defaulted since the changes took effect — a rate she described as one borrower defaulting every nine seconds — while total student debt has nearly tripled across 44 million young borrowers. She also argued the savings from eliminating income-driven repayment plans were redirected toward other priorities.

“Why? Because it was — it was used, all those repayment plans, all the saved interest, was used for tax cuts for billionaires,” Weingarten said.

Gibson pressed Weingarten on whether piling new costs onto borrowers made political sense for Republicans hoping to hold their congressional majorities this November. Weingarten proposed that Republicans’ strategy instead relies on manufacturing a cultural divide between working-class Americans who choose to attend college versus those who don’t.

“What they’re doing is they’re basically hammering at colleges and making it less affordable, and suggesting that there is an elitism to the people who are trying to go to college,” she said, adding that the goal is to conceal budget cuts in order “to pay for tax cuts for the rich.”

Should a Future Democratic President Cancel Federal Student Loan Debt?

Gibson proposed that the Biden administration had perhaps missed a chance to broadly discharge most federal student debt. He noted that the Higher Education Act of 1965 allows the secretary of education to have broad leeway over federal student loans, and noted that then-Education Secretary Miguel Cardona did not exercise that authority under Biden’s presidency. He then asked whether a future Democratic administration should pursue full cancellation.

Weingarten stopped short of endorsing the discharging of all federal student debt, but agreed the current system is “completely unaffordable” and pointed to the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program (in which student loans for graduates working in the public sector or nonprofit organizations can be forgiven after 10 years) as a template for capping how much borrowers ultimately have to repay.

“We should never be in a situation where people think the first generation going to college is elite. It’s opportunity,” she said, adding that Democrats “lost the narrative” on affordability by acting too slowly and communicating poorly.

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Linda McMahon’s Endorsement of AI to Replace Teachers and How AI Harms Students

Turning to education policy, Gibson pointed to Education Secretary Linda McMahon’s praise for the “Alpha School” in Austin, Texas, which uses AI to provide instruction to students while human staff serve as “guides” rather than teachers. Weingarten didn’t hold back in her criticism of both McMahon and the idea that AI could replace human teachers.

“Linda McMahon may be the only living human being that thinks that teachers are replaceable by humanoids,” Weingarten said, noting that even Silicon Valley executives opt to send their kids to schools that don’t allow personal electronic devices.

Weingarten also questioned the transparency of Alpha Schools, telling Gibson that the facilities have so far declined to let AFT observe how their AI provides instruction to students.

“They won’t let us visit. So what does that tell you?” she said.

Weingarten went on to describe a policy platform she laid out in a May speech dubbed “Devices Down, Eyes Up, Hands On.” Weingarten explained that research shows excessive screen time can significantly impact children’s cognition, attention spans and imagination during their critical developmental years between the ages of zero and six. She said AFT now supports banning all screens for students until after second grade, along with banning all student-facing AI in elementary schools. She said that can allow children to have the space to build their foundational critical thinking skills before they’re introduced to technology.

Gibson referenced a 2025 study by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology finding that adults aged 18 to 39 who used ChatGPT to write essays showed reduced brain function compared to those who didn’t. Weingarten agreed there’s a meaningful difference between assistive AI tools and generative AI that’s often used as a shortcut around actual learning, arguing that AI is only useful to someone who already understands the material.

“There’s a really important place for critical thinking, for struggling to learn, for actually connecting the dots,” Weingarten said.

Could Teachers Strike Again Soon?

Gibson then asked Weingarten whether AFT members might stage massive strikes similar to the wave of red-state teacher walkouts during the first Trump administration in states like Oklahoma and West Virginia. Weingarten urged that any action should be organized and backed by legal infrastructure.

Weingarten said that in West Virginia and Oklahoma, teacher strikes won short-term gains that were ultimately rolled back because those teachers lacked collective bargaining protections in their respective states. She then contrasted those efforts with a recent teacher strike in San Francisco that led to a concrete victory by securing premium-free healthcare for union member households.

“We are the fastest growing union in the United States of America,” Weingarten said, pointing to 179 newly organized units nationwide.

How Teachers in Deep-Red States Can Organize Their Own Unions

Gibson concluded by asking Weingarten what advice she would give teachers in deep-red states with anti-union right-to-work laws who are trying to organize their own unions. She encouraged teachers to start small, beginning with just a handful of committed colleagues, and to lean on the First Amendment to defend their right of association.

Weingarten pointed to an AFT lawsuit defending Texas teachers who nearly lost their jobs over private comments made after Charlie Kirk’s assassination, and a recent successful union election among librarians in Columbus, Ohio, where 80 percent of those present voted to unionize.

“If you get a bunch of people to be willing to act together, work together, be together, vote together, do that — that is the power of the people,” Weingarten said. “And the power of the people, still in a democracy, if we keep our democracy, still beats the power of privilege and the power of money.”

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• Sen. Mitch McConnell’s (R-Ky.) ongoing unexplained absence and rumors about his health

• Questionable details of McConnell’s “proof of life” photos

• Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear’s (D) options for filling a potential Senate vacancy

• How McConnell has kept getting reelected despite being universally loathed

• Karem’s new report on “Havana Syndrome” and the mysterious origins of a suspected sonic weapon

• Media consolidation and its effect on investigative reporting

• The differences between covering Trump’s first and second administrations

• Growing concerns about 80 year-old President Donald Trump’s health

• Karem’s history covering four decades of the White House press corps, and how his Playboy press pass literally saved his life

We want to thank our paying subscribers for conversations like this, in which Raw America’s White House reporter and managing editor break down the biggest news of the day coming out of the Capitol. You are quite literally keeping the lights on, and directly making it possible for Raw America to have boots on the ground in Washington, covering the stories the billionaire-owned outlets won’t touch.

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Is Mitch McConnell Still Alive?

Gibson began by asking Karem on the rumors swirling around McConnell, who hasn’t voted since being hospitalized on June 14 and who has now missed 29 votes in the Senate. Karem framed the secrecy as consistent with McConnell’s decades-long approach to public life, going back to the senator’s origins as a Reagan-era moderate-who later transitioned into the biggest power broker in Kentucky politics.

“This is all Mitch drama, fresh Mitch drama,” Karem said, adding that McConnell has “always been about the drama” dating back to his first election to the U.S. Senate in 1984.

Karem said he’s heard every version of events — that McConnell has aphasia (a speaking disorder), that he’s in a coma, that he’s dead and his staff are waiting until the window passes for a special election — and emphasized that he can’t confirm any of it given how tight-lipped McConnell’s staff has been. But he zeroed in on the silence from the senator’s office as the most telling detail.

“The fact that there are people who work for him who don’t know what’s going on, and I mean, I’ve known these people for years. [They] don’t know what’s going on. What does that tell you?” Karem said.

Karem went on to say the senator’s team may be trying to run out the calendar until August 3, specifically to avoid triggering a special election.

“It’ll come out when Mitch and Mitch’s people want to, even if he’s dead,” Karem said.

Karem Deconstructs McConnell’s Proof-of-Life Photo

Gibson brought up a photo released over the weekend showing McConnell in the same red shirt as an earlier image, this time posed with someone other than his wife, Elaine Chao. Karem said the image raised more questions than it answered, pointing to mismatched room numbers, a visible patient chart, and an IV bag positioned oddly far from the bed.

“That’s a starched clean shirt there, brother — it just come out of the laundry,” Karem said, questioning when and where the photo was actually taken. He said he’s been told McConnell is in a private rehab facility rather than a hospital, but that verifying even that much has proven difficult.

Karem framed the entire situation as part of a broader pattern of stonewalling. “If you’re around, I’ve interviewed you for 40 some odd years — just show up and take a couple of questions,” he said, addressing McConnell directly. “We really care.”

Karem Calls on Governor Andy Beshear to Get Busy Finding McConnell’s Replacement

Gibson noted that two-term Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear (D) has said he’s been told by unnamed sources that McConnell may have died, and asked Karem whether the term-limited governor may act preemptively despite Kentucky’s Republican supermajority legislature seeking to limit his powers.

Karem said the laws GOP lawmakers in the Kentucky statehouse have passed regarding Beshear’s appointment powers likely wouldn’t pass muster in court — which is exactly why Kentucky Republicans want to avoid the fight altogether. Karem, who is a native of Louisville, Kentucky, noted that Republicans are hoping GOP Senate nominee will have the cleanest path possible to replace McConnell in November without having to compete with an incumbent appointed by Beshear.

Raw America’s White House correspondent pointed out that Beshear has lately been flirting with a potential run for the presidency in 2028, and that he could use this moment to his advantage.

“Look, Andy Beshear has made pretense of running for president. All right, well, you know what? Be demonstrative. Show us the leadership now,” Karem said. “Do it, and quit telling.”

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How Does McConnell Keep Winning Elections?

One viewer of Gibson and Karem’s conversation pointed out in the live chat that McConnell seems to have no trouble getting reelected every six years despite being consistently one of the least popular senators in the country.

Gibson — who is also a Kentucky native — noted McConnell has a particularly long record of directing federal appropriations back to Kentucky’s 120 counties via so-called “pork barrel” projects. He added that the city of Pikeville on the eastern edge of the commonwealth likely “wouldn’t exist” without federal money McConnell inserted into various spending bills over the years.

Karem said he personally has no issue with pork-barrel spending, but argued it’s buried a much deeper problem with McConnell.

“Mitch McConnell bribed, cajoled, threatened when he had to, paid off when he could, everyone who would ever oppose him,” Karem said. “Where is the integrity in that? We deserve better.”

Karem Breaks Down the U.S. Origins Behind a Weapon Being Used on Americans

Shifting topics, Gibson highlighted Karem’s recent Raw America report on what’s been called “Havana Syndrome.” That’s the term used to describe mysterious health episodes affecting U.S. diplomats and intelligence officers around the world, having first been documented in Havana, Cuba.

Karem traced the technology’s origins back to a passive listening device discovered in an American ambassador’s office in the 1940s, and said the underlying microwave-based technology has been “tuned up” ever since and used by American adversaries like China and Russia.

He said whistleblowers personally described a consistent pattern: “You’re standing in a room, your ears start to ring, your head starts to hurt, and then you walk two or three feet away and it stops.” Karem said the CIA has never acknowledged the phenomenon as real, leaving victims unable to get necessary medical care covered.

Karem connected the story to the broader issue of right-wing billionaires buying up media outlets, noting that media consolidation has led to fewer investigative reporters able to pursue complex, resource-intensive stories like this one.

“The only real journalism is investigative journalism. And the backbone of all journalism is local journalism,” Karem said, describing how national stories like Havana Syndrome typically start with local reporters noticing patterns.

The Biggest Difference Between Trump 1.0 and 2.0? Trump Is More ‘Muddled’ and ‘Dangerous’

When asked to how Trump’s two administrations compare since Karem has covered both of them, the Raw America White House correspondent said the biggest change has been the president’s declining physical and mental sharpness, as well as his accessibility.

Karem observed that in Trump’s first term, the president seemed to take joy in “the fight” of sparring with reporters in regular Q&A sessions. But in his second term, Karem noted that Trump is noticeably more “muddled” and “befuddled,” in addition to being what Karem estimated to be around 30 pounds heavier.

“He’s often not making sense, and he doesn’t engage with the press like he used to,” Karem said, adding that access is now mostly restricted to right-wing media and the press pool of roughly 15 handpicked reporters.

Karem opined that Trump’s nationally televised address last Thursday night marked a uniquely low point for the presidency itself, calling it “the worst speech by far of any president I’ve ever covered” since the Reagan administration.

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Karem Reveals What His Pentagon Sources Call Pete Hegseth Behind His Back

While acknowledging that Karem can’t give up his confidential sources, Gibson asked the veteran White House reporter about rumors surrounding various people in Trump’s inner circle. Karem confirmed that White House chief of staff Susie Wiles and deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller are the only ones with “walk-in” privileges to the Oval Office, and suggested that those two were more responsible than anyone else for “controlling” the president.

Karem also elaborated on what he’s heard about Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, saying sources inside the Pentagon have various unflattering nicknames for the part-time weekend Fox News host-turned-secretary of the newly christened “Department of War.”

“They call him Major,” Karem said of Hegseth, explaining the nickname is meant as an insult likening the defense secretary to an annoying middle management executive with no practical experience.

“And then when they really want to be insulting, they call him ‘little major,’” Karem added.

Karem argued that the insecurity that seems to consume people inside the president’s inner circle makes them even more “dangerous” despite their incompetence and lack of experience.

“They are extremely nervous individuals, extremely insecure individuals and extremely inept in what they do,” Karem said.

Karem Compares Press Coverage of Trump to Biden

Gibson asked directly about the increasingly frequent reports about Trump’s declining health issues, noting that he’s been officially diagnosed with chronic venous insufficiency (which can cause swelling in the ankles). He also asked Karem about Trump’s apparent heavy use of makeup to cover unsightly bruises on his hands, and his pattern of more frequent cognitive testing.

Karem reminded viewers that the press has seemed to paper over Trump’s obvious decline, and contrasted that with the zealous coverage of former President Joe Biden’s cognitive health.

“Having to take cognitive tests every four months, there’s a reason for that,” Karem said. “We haven’t reported Donald’s. Why is that? Is it because Donald controls the media, or that we’re exasperated and numb to all of it?”

Karem made it clear he isn’t a doctor and can’t officially diagnose the president, but spoke plainly about what he’s personally seen in the West Wing.

“Donald Trump is demonstrably nuts,” Karem said said, adding that reporters covering the White House regularly share their own speculation about the president’s health off the record, even when they can’t put their names to it.

How Karem’s Playboy Press Pass Saved His Life

Toward the end of the interview, Gibson asked about an anecdote Karem previously shared: how his old Playboy press credential from his years as the magazine’s chief White House correspondent helped save him twice, once in a war zone and once during the January 6 siege of the U.S. Capitol.

“That Playboy press pass got me into a few places I probably still can’t discuss,” Karem said, recalling how a Capitol rioter’s fascination with the credential defused a potentially violent attack at the hands of several insurrectionists. “He goes, ‘Ah, Playboy, can you get me into the mansion?’ I said, ‘Sure, anytime you want, pal.’”

Karem also reflected on Playboy’s frequently overlooked journalistic legacy, noting it published early coverage of the Civil Rights Movement and ran lengthy articles on influential figures like Roots author Alex Haley and legendary civil rights icon Malcolm X.

“I was there simply for the literary effort,” he joked.

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• 3 million people dropping ACA coverage after Republicans let tax credits expire

• What Dr. Davidson personally witnessed treating uninsured patients in the ER

• How the ACA changed his practice for the better

• The threat to rural hospitals from the “big ugly bill’s” Medicaid cuts

• What happens to rural communities when a local hospital closes

• Healthcare as a top midterm issue and what comes next

• Treating healthcare as a public good instead of a for-profit industry

• Money in politics as the root obstacle to real reform, and more

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3 Million Dropped ACA Insurance Plans After Republicans Let Tax Credits Lapse

Gibson opened the conversation by citing a recent report that roughly 3 million people have dropped their Affordable Care Act (ACA) plans since Republicans in Congress allowed premium tax credits to expire, marking a 13 percent drop in enrollment.

Dr. Davidson acknowledged that the financial obstacles patients face are hard to miss, even in emergency rooms where insurance isn’t a factor. He described seeing a patient this week who likely should have been admitted to the hospital but went home instead.

“That’s a lot of money, I’m gonna go home, I’ll come back if things get worse, I’ll follow up with the doctor tomorrow,” Dr. Davidson recalled the patient saying.

Dr. Davidson said the broader pattern troubles him most: when millions lose coverage, they make healthcare decisions based on cost rather than their actual medical needs.

How the ACA Improved Healthcare in Rural America

Gibson asked Dr. Davidson, who has practiced emergency medicine since the late 1990s, to compare his practice before and after the ACA’s passage in 2010. Davidson said that before the ACA, he’d see patients repeatedly for unrelated minor injuries, only to notice things like their blood pressure climbing each visit because they had no primary care doctor and no coverage.

But after the ACA expanded Medicaid — with his state of Michigan accepting expanded Medicaid in 2014 — he says he watched some of those same patients get on blood pressure and cholesterol medication and finally get their own primary care provider. He noted Michigan was one of roughly 40 states that expanded Medicaid, benefiting nearly a million residents in the Mitten State. Nationally, ACA enrollment peaked at 23 million and has since fallen to about 19.2 million, which Davidson attributed to Republican policies.

The Human Cost of Losing Coverage

The Kaiser Family Foundation estimated that the number of insured Americans could eventually plummet to 17.5 million as ACA plans become more costly without the tax credits. Dr. Davidson pointed to two distinct dangers if that comes to pass.

The first is what happens to people who lose coverage directly: the longtime physician recalled one patient who waited five days after a heart attack to seek care because he was uninsured. By the time he finally arrived, his heart function had been reduced by half. Davidson contrasted that with patients who get treatment within the first few hours of chest pain, who can often avoid lasting damage.

The second danger, according to Davidson, is what happens when the risk pool of insured Americans shrinks. Younger, healthier people are more likely to drop their coverage and “roll the dice,” meaning those remaining are older and sicker, prompting insurers to raise premiums and deductibles. Some insurers like Cigna are already exiting ACA markets in certain regions for 2027 due to being unable to cover those communities. In Cigna’s case, that’s resulting in 369,000 fewer people with coverage.

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Rural Hospitals Already Contending with Medicaid Cuts

Gibson brought up the roughly $1 trillion in Medicaid cuts Republicans’ “big ugly bill” locked in, and what that means for rural communities. Dr. Davidson noted that roughly 20 percent of hospitals in Virginia recently reported being on the brink of closure, while several hospitals in his own state are at risk of closing as well. He said he’s already seeing some hospital administrators cut back services, reduce specialist availability and rolling back lab and X-ray hours in anticipation of losing Medicaid funding once the cuts take effect — notably, not until after the midterms.

Dr. Davidson cautioned the harshest cuts are yet to come, and theorized that lawmakers who voted for the cuts may be trying to delay the political fallout as much as possible.

Gibson cited a 2025 study by the University of North Carolina’s Sheps Center for Health Services Research, referenced in a letter from several senators warning that roughly 330 rural hospitals nationwide were at risk of closure. This includes four in Dr. Davidson’s home state, and 35 in Gibson’s home state of Kentucky.

The Shock to Rural Communities When a Hospital Closes

Gibson asked what options rural residents have once their local hospital shuts its doors. Dr. Davidson pointed out that the impact isn’t limited to Medicaid patients.

“Even people with employer coverage or Medicare will be affected, because the hospitals and services disappear regardless of who’s paying,” he said.

Davidson described patients in remote areas like Michigan’s Upper Peninsula having to face multi-hour drives just to get basic screenings, as well as EMS systems being pushed to the brink by longer transport distances and rising fuel costs. He added this could lead to worse outcomes for time-sensitive emergencies like heart attacks and strokes, where every additional minute of delay means more permanent damage.

How to Fix America’s Healthcare System: Single Payer, a Public Option, or Something in Between?

When asked what he’d want to see if Democrats retake Congress and the White House in 2026 and 2028, Dr. Davidson said his Committee to Protect Healthcare is positioning itself to push for universal coverage, though he noted that single payer isn’t the only model that works. The physician pointed to Germany and France as examples of highly regulated, non-single-payer systems that regularly outperform the United States on cost, access, and outcomes.

He highlighted a proposal from the Center for Health and Democracy called Medicare by Choice, which would let individuals and employers buy into a Medicare-like public option with added vision, dental, and hearing coverage.

“Boy, that seems like a hell of a plan to me,” Dr. Davidson said, noting that a plan structured this way could potentially pass with 51 Senate votes through the budget reconciliation process rather than jhaving to clear the 60-vote filibuster threshold.

Having practiced emergency medicine in New Zealand in 2013, Dr. Davidson said universal coverage fundamentally changes the doctor-patient relationship by completely removing cost as a factor in treatment decisions. He further argued that the piecemeal, coupon-hunting nature of American healthcare delivery is a major contributor to physicians burning out and leaving the practice altogether.

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Healthcare as a Public Good, Not a Profit Driver

Gibson pointed to the book “An American Sickness,” by Dr. Elizabeth Rosenthal, which examines how healthcare has become driven by what’s most profitable for business rather than what’s best for patients. He then asked Dr. Davidson directlyt whether healthcare would be better off if it were seen as a public good rather than a profit-driven industry.

“100%. It should be a public good.” Davidson said.

The Committee to Protect Heathcare executive director cited the bipartisan Break Up Big Medicine Act from Sens. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), which is aimed at insurance conglomerates like UnitedHealth Group. Davidson said insurance giants have found ways to inflate profits even under the ACA’s statutory caps on overhead costs by acquiring physician groups and negotiating higher reimbursement rates. He then referenced a Chicago physician’s account of a patient who died of a treatable liver condition, saying the doctor concluded his patient hadn’t died of liver failure, but rather of being too poor to afford the necessary treatment.

The Root Obstacle: Money in Politics

Gibson asked whether money in politics or universal healthcare needs to be addressed first, given how insurance industry contributions shaped moderate Democrats’ opposition to a public option during the original ACA fight in 2010.

Dr. Davidson acknowledged campaign finance reform likely has to come first before it becomes possible to achieve significant changes to the healthcare system. He noted that Michiganders will soon vote on a ballot measure that would prevent entities with state contracts over $250,000 from contributing to campaigns. He said the initiative drew strong opposition from lobbyists in the capital city, but organizers still managed to gather more than 560,000 citizen signatures to qualify for the ballot.

The State of Abortion Rights 4 Years After the Dobbs Decision

Four years have passed since the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization ruling, in which the conservative Supreme Court majority overturned the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that legalized nationwide abortion rights. Dr. Davidson expressed optimism that states are taking charge to enshrine abortion rights in their own respective constitutions.

Davidson pointed to a wave of state ballot initiatives, including Michigan’s 2022 measure and 2024 votes in red states like Missouri, Montana, and Ohio, showing that abortion rights consistently win at the ballot box even among conservative voters. He pointed out that Florida’s measure fell short only because of the state’s unusual 60 percent approval threshold, despite 57 percent support from voters.

Gibson also asked about “crisis pregnancy centers” that deceptively present themselves to pregnant individuals as abortion providers, while actually working to prevent patients from abortion access. Davidson said medical organizations are pushing back, but that disinformation unfortunately extends beyond these centers.

The conversation then pivoted to the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (EMTALA), with Gibson asking Dr. Davidson how physicians navigate the tension between federal law requiring patients get life-saving treatment at emergency rooms and state abortion bans that can apply even in life-threatening cases like ectopic pregnancies.

Davidson relayed one colleague’s blunt description of the ambiguity doctors face under “life of the mother” exceptions. How much blood loss does it take before a prosecutor agrees a patient’s life was truly in danger? He recalled how one of his fellow ER physician colleagues in Wisconsin sued the state alongside another Paging America co-host to overturn a dormant 1800s-era abortion ban after Dobbs took effect.

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Bill Cassidy Finding His Spine: Too Little, Too Late

Gibson brought up the sudden shift in rhetoric from outgoing Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.), who lost his Republican primary to a Trump-backed challenger and has since become a vocal Trump critic. Gibson asked Dr. Davidson if Cassidy’s new combative approach to the Trump administration makes up for him casting the deciding vote to confirm Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as Health and Human Services Secretary last year. Davidson was blunt.

“Too late, buddy,” Davidson said.

The longtime ER physician heaped criticism on Cassidy — who is also a physician — and argued that a politician who abandoned his medical oath for political convenience shouldn’t get credit for speaking up only after he had nothing left to lose.

Did Vaccine Skepticism Kill a Military Recruit? And Are We Equipped for Another Pandemic?

Gibson also asked about how the Trump administration’s warmth toward vaccine skepticism is taking a human toll. Recently, the U.S. Air Force confirmed that 25-year-old Keon McDaniel died from a flu outbreak at Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland, which spread after Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth lifted vaccine requirements for troops. The requirement was later reinstated after the outbreak affected close to 300 people at the base.

Davidson called the tight conditions in military barracks a “petri dish” for infectious disease and said the data makes clear that the flu shot reduces transmission rates and saves lives.

When asked about the prospect of another pandemic given current federal health leadership, Davidson noted the incompetent response of the first Trump administration’s handling of the Covid-19 pandemic. He added that messaging from the top, including suggestions about ingesting bleach and opposition to masking, embedded itself in public behavior throughout the pandemic. He further expressed concern that state health departments and figures like RFK Jr., Dr. Oz and Jay Bhattacharya now dominate federal public health institutions.

Is it Too Late to Rebuild Trust in Government Institutions?

Gibson asked whether the credibility of agencies like the CDC can ever be restored after four years of leadership by officials who lack credibility and eschew expertise. Davidson said it’s possible but acknowledged it will likely take a generation.

He argued that after the midterms, Democrats controlling either chamber of Congress need to hold RFK JR’s HHS accountable by conducting public oversight hearings on a regular basis. He cited emails recently released by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) showing HHS officials instructed then-CDC director Susan Monarez to route agency communications through political staff before release. Davidson said the answer going forward is “radical transparency and honesty from public health communicators, even when the message is unwelcome, along with an acknowledgment that public health itself has become politicized.”

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Raw America doesn’t have a billionaire backer. We don’t run corporate ads. Interviews like this one, in which a practicing ER physician and public health advocate shares their unfiltered, on-the-record accounts of what’s actually happening in rural hospitals and emergency rooms across the country, only happen because readers like you are stepping up to fund this kind of journalism directly. If you enjoyed this interview and are still on the free list, make today the day you become a paying subscriber. None of this would be possible without you.

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Gibson and Perryman touched on a variety of topics, including:

• Democracy Forward’s multiple wins in the federal courts blocking the $1.8 billion slush fund for MAGA loyalists, voter purges and the federal funding freeze

• ICE detention conditions and the rising number of deaths in custody

• The ongoing fight over Trump’s permanent IRS audit immunity deal

• January 6 defendants attempting to backdoor their way into getting taxpayer money through the Federal Tort Claims Act

• Getting to the bottom of mysterious prediction market accounts making suspiciously timed bets tied to the president’s actions

• Contrasting Trump’s self-aggrandizing Fourth of July celebrations with the true intent of America’s founding principles

• Perryman’s upcoming book, “Ordinary People, Extraordinary Times”

• What a Democratic-controlled Congress should prioritize after the midterms

• Whether there’s momentum to reform or expand the Supreme Court

Conversations like this one, where Raw America features experts sharing inside knowledge that you won’t find anywhere else, require resources and a commitment to asking real questions instead of chasing clicks. This kind of work is only possible with the support of readers who decide to become paying subscribers. If you’ve been enjoying live interviews like this one on a free subscription, now is the time to upgrade to a paying one. We’re counting on you to keep this going.

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Democracy Forward’s Hundreds of Lawsuits Against the Trump Administration

Gibson openedthe conversation by noting that Democracy Forward has become one of the most active groups challenging the Trump administration in the courts, and asked Perryman to walk through some of her group’s recent work.

Perryman said Democracy Forward has been busy on multiple fronts, having just successfully blocked the president’s $1.8 billion slush fund meant to financially compensate people who attacked the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021. Perryman’s group also stopped the administration’s attempt to use a Department of Homeland Security database to remove eligible voters from the rolls, and challenged the federal funding freeze of congressionally appropriated money for programs like Head Start and Meals on Wheels.

Perryman further observed that 42 million Americans rely on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP (also known as food stamps), and that Democracy Forward had no choice but to sue the White House for using SNAP as a political tool during the government shutdown earlier this year. She added that her group is also working on guaranteeing due process protections and access to legal counsel, as well as legal challenges to untrained DOGE staffers accessing Americans’ sensitive private data without facing any accountability.

ICE Detention Deaths And The Fight For Transparency

Gibson referenced a Washington Post report that ICE will no longer report deaths of newly released detainees, and pointed to a roughly 140 percent surge in the deaths of immigrants in ICE custody since the start of Trump’s second term. He then asked what Democracy Forward is doing to protect detainees.

Perryman pointed to recent wins in the judiciary that have forced the government to allow detainees to have access to legal counsel, pointing out that the administration initially tried to block it outright. She also emphasized the importance of journalists exposing what’s happening inside detention facilities.

“Journalists are really important in this time, because they’re reporting things, sometimes even before the government admits that they’re doing it,” Perryman said, adding that her organization is looking for additional legal options to force transparency from the White House.

The IRS Slush Fund And Trump’s Audit Immunity Deal

Gibson mentioned Democracy Forward’s successful lawsuit blocking a $10 billion IRS payment to Trump, and then asked about the second half of the deal Trump struck with Todd Blanche. That deal gives Trump, his family and his businesses permanent protection from IRS audits.

Perryman confirmed the slush fund remains blocked while the case moves through discovery, and predicted more damning information will surface in the future. On the audit immunity piece, she said her organization is exploring legal options to challenge what she called “a one-sided, unfair, and we know unlawful deal.”

She noted that in a related Florida case, Democracy Forward has represented former government officials from both parties who understand how the IRS and the U.S. Department of the Treasury actually function, helping inform the judge’s options.

“I think you’ll see more to come from us on that,” Perryman said.

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January 6 Defendants Trying To Backdoor Their Way Into Receiving Taxpayer Money

Gibson then pointed to reports showing that some January 6 defendants and Trump loyalists are attempting to claim taxpayer money through the Federal Tort Claims Act (FTCA) after the $1.8 billion slush fund was blocked, and asked about what Democracy Forward was doing to prevent it.

Perryman acknowledged the FTCA was an important law, citing a separate, legitimate use of the act to help people genuinely harmed by the government — including children exposed to tear gas — file claims for compensation. She confirmed Democracy Forward has heard of January 6 defendants attempting to use the same statute for settlements and said that while Democracy Forward is reviewing legal options, Congress would still need to take action to prevent the FTCA from being abused. Perryman added that the judge overseeing the slush fund case issued a broad order making clear she doesn’t want to see related money moving.

“The judges are kind of catching on to what this administration is doing, where they try to play a shell game,” Perryman said.

Hunting Down Potential Insider Trading from Trump’s Decisions

Gibson referenced a BBC investigation from April finding that newly formed accounts on prediction markets like Kalshi and Polymarket — with Donald Trump Jr. serving as a strategic advisor for both groups — placed winning bets on events like the Iran war and a Venezuela invasion moments before they were publicly announced.

Perryman said several cases have been filed to investigate communications and documents related to the administration’s conduct, and that her group is paying close attention to allegations of administration figures potentially engaging in insider trading.

“We have a pattern that we can show, we can use the law to try to expose that pattern, and then to try to challenge that pattern,” she said, noting that tools like the Freedom of Information Act will be central to that effort.

Reclaiming The Fourth Of July from Trump’s Self-Aggrandizement

With the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence approaching this weejend, Gibson asked Perryman to address concerns that President Trump has turned what should be a unifying milestone into a partisan spectacle.

Perryman argued the president is using the anniversary to distract from low approval ratings and a government that hasn’t delivered for ordinary people. She pointed instead to the organizing happening across the country.

“We have seen over the past year and a half people in communities from all different walks of life … come together and step forward and say, you know, we’re not going to let a president violate our rights,” she said, observing that the plaintiffs in Democracy Forward’s cases are ordinary people rather than powerful institutions. She also pointed to the millions who turned out for this year’s “No Kings” protests as evidence of sustained public engagement.

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“Ordinary People, Extraordinary Times” and How Americans Can Find Meaning Through Action

Perryman’s forthcoming book, “Ordinary People, Extraordinary Times,” is available for preorder ahead of its August release. Gibson asked about the book’s message on local organizing — noting that even in places like his city of Louisville, Kentucky, the most recent No Kings turnout was conservatively estimated at 10,000 people.

The Democracy Forward CEO said her book points out that autocrats rely on a strategy of convincing people their voice and actions don’t matter. She urged readers to turn their outrage into action, and emphasized that this can include supporting independent media, voting in the upcoming midterms, and investing in public goods like libraries and schools — even for people without kids in them.

“There’s never been change … like, real change that came down from powerful people,” she said. “It’s always been demanded by the people.”

What A Democratic-Controlled Congress Should Prioritize

With the midterms approaching and Democrats poised to win back control of one or both chambers of Congress, Gibson asked what concrete steps Perryman would want to see from a Democrats, beyond the obvious calls for investigations of Trump officials and accountability for lawbreakers.

Perryman pointed to unfinished business from January 6, including the absence of comprehensive legislation to safeguard the peaceful transfer of power. She also called for more voting rights legislation in the wake of the Supreme Court’s ruling disenfranchising voters of color in the Deep South.

She additionally tied the affordability fight directly to Trump’s corruption, arguing that rising costs for ordinary Americans are connected to people inside the administration profiting from their roles in government.

“People are... less concerned now about exactly what you stand for on every single policy thing, and they really want to know that if they entrust you with power, that you are going to use your power to protect people,” Perryman said.

Is There Momentum for Significant Supreme Court Reform?

Gibson closed by asking whether there’s potential for Democrats to expand the Supreme Court, particularly in light of this week’s controversial rulings.

Perryman pointed to the Court’s historically low approval ratings, and attributed them to their refusal to protect the rights of all Americans and the Court’s inconsistency when it came to checking the Trump administration. She predicted things will get much harder for the Trump administration in the judiciary, but cautioned that structural reforms will require sustained public pressure from everyday Americans rather than waiting for institutions to act on ther own.

“Every time you get upset about another Supreme Court decision ... don’t just get upset about it, do something about it, make your voices heard,” Perryman said.

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Gibson and Attiah also discussed:

• Her ongoing arbitration fight against the Post after being fired via email following comments she made in the wake of the death of far-right activist Charlie Kirk.

• The gutting of the Post’s opinion section under Jeff Bezos, and what that says about billionaire control of American media.

• What it means for a newspaper serving a prominent Black community having no more Black columnists on its opinion page.

• The threat AI poses to organic, human journalism, and what independent media needs to do to survive.

• Attiah’s recent loss of her father, and what grief has taught her.

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‘Who Actually Wanted Me Out of There?’: Inside Attiah’s Fight with Washington Post Management

Eight months after being fired via email following more than a decade at the Washington Post, Attiah is fighting back through the arbitration with the support of her union: the Washington-Baltimore News Guild.

The paper’s management accused her of “gross misconduct” for posts she wrote on her Bluesky account in the immediate aftermath of Kirk’s death. In one post, she bluntly wrote she would decline to perform public mourning for a man she described as someone who had long espoused hatred toward Black people and women. Attiah argued her posts were less about Kirk specifically than about America’s reflexive insistence that people publicly grieve for recently deceased figures regardless of what those people stood for.

What emerged during arbitration, she said, was even more damning for the Post. A white male colleague — whom Gibson correctly guessed was conservative opinion writer Mark Thiessen — had been posting content on his own social media account encouraging people to dox and harass people expressing negative opinion about Charlie Kirk, yet faced no consequences. Attiah said the disparity in how they were treated makes it clear what the Post is actually willing to tolerate, and from whom.

Attiah said the arbitration also revealed that the Post never called her to discuss the posts, never checked on her safety amid a wave of death threats and bypassed its own basic journalistic standards before firing her, complaining that backlash from her comments necessitated it.

“On a scale of one to ten of crazy backlash or threats, I would consider that a 0.5 in my career,” Attiah said. “I went and had macaroni and cheese for dinner, went about my day, did not see any incoming threats.”

A decision in the arbitration is expected in the coming weeks. The potential outcome includes full reinstatement at the Post, with back pay.

Firing the Last Black Columnist at a Paper Serving a Significant Black Population

Gibson asked Attiah what it says about the Washington Post that it now no longer has any Black columnists on its opinion section, despite the paper serving a city that is more than 43 percent Black according to the latest Census data. Attiah said key indicators that the paper was taking a sharply different direction was Bezos’s 2024 decision to kill the paper’s endorsement of Kamala Harris, along with ordering the opinion section to cover only “personal liberties and free markets.” Management even offered the entire opinion section a buyout. Attiah said the entire process was an omen of things to come, both for Washington Post employees and for the media at large.

“It sends a profound chilling permission signal to other outlets to say, ‘sure, let’s get back to our white male points of view, like it should have always been,’” Attiah said. “This is an institution that has decided to take the lead in dismantling Black journalistic progress in this city. And it’s blatant, in your face.”

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What Billionaires Are Actually Buying When They Acquire Media Outlets

Gibson asked Attiah to weigh in on the larger wave of major media acquisitions by billionaires ideologically aligned with President Donald Trump’s administration. This includes Jeff Bezos and the Washington Post, as well as David Ellison — the son of billionaire Trump donor Larry Ellison — now poised to own CNN’s parent company after the Department of Justice greenlit Paramount-Skydance’s merger with Warner Bros. Discovery. Fox also recently acquired streaming platform Roku, making it the third-largest player in U.S. television. When Gibson asked Attiah if she thought billionaires were investing in journalism or aiming to control narratives, she didn’t hesitate.

“I’m gonna go with door number two,” Attiah said. “We’re already seeing it.”

The former Post columnist put the current moment in historical context, noting that for most of American media history, most media outlets were openly owned by wealthy oligarchs who used them as tools to suppress dissent and reinforce existing power structures. The mid-20th century ideal of an independent, objective press was, she argued, a relatively brief and commercially motivated aberration, and that what’s happening now is looking more and more like a reversion to the historical norm.

“I view it as a techno-fascist acceleration of a return to a mean in this country,” Attiah said. “We’ve been perhaps lucky in a lot of ways that we have gotten used to at least this myth of a media that is independent, is free from political pressures, has the power to take down presidents.”

She also sounded the alarm about how media maga-mergers are impacting the economics of investigative journalism, which has never been self-sustaining and has historically depended on institutional support that is now being stripped away or redirected.

“I don’t know if we’re going to Substack our way out of that problem,” Attiah said.

The Danger AI Poses to Journalism and the Internet Itself

When Gibson asked if AI had a role in modern newsrooms, Attiah acknowledged some potential uses, like AI poterntially help journalists search and retrieve information from decades of newspaper archives. But she said what’s actually being done with AI is for a much different purpose.

“Right now we’re in a point where the language is about increasing engagement or displacing human labor,” Attiah said. “That’s not towards getting people to understand more.”

She also raised the concern that AI-generated content is creating a new default voice for online writing, which she characterized as overly safe and less risky, and that even writers who don’t use AI are being pulled toward imitating its voice.

“It’s flattened what people write,” Attiah said. “There’s now a certain cadence that we can all recognize, and even if you don’t use AI, there’s now an incredible temptation to at least sound like it.”

Attiah argued that the fundamental value of journalism lies in original reporting, new framing and lived experiences, and that this is exactly what AI cannot replicate. She added a warning that news outlets embracing the tool as a replacement for human writers are undermining the one thing that makes them worth reading.

Resistance Summer School: Teaching What Columbia Wouldn’t Let Her Teach

Attiah announced that she’s now teaching courses through her Resistance Summer School, the independent online program she launched after Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs canceled her course on the history of American media and its intersection with race. She noted that decision came in direct direct response to pressure the Trump administration forced on the university.

Her course now has more than 1,000 students across two iterations, and she’s teaching it again this summer, using her direct experience as the Post’s last Black columnist.

“I am now a radical headmistress who gets to teach what I like,” Attiah said.

She connected the moment to historical precedents in European Eastern Bloc countries, where professors under authoritarian regimes established underground “flying universities” to keep knowledge going when the government came after education. Attiah noted that both independent journalists and educators are now operating in a similar fashion.

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‘Am I Gonna Be Okay?’ How Grief Creates Opportunities for Reinvention

Toward the end of the conversation, Gibson asked Attiah about a February piece she’d written on her Substack, The Golden Hour, about losing her father in the midst of her contesting her firing from the Washington Post.

Attiah said she only learned in the final months of his life that her father — a doctor who immigrated from Ghana — had been a student journalist, and had once even been expelled from school over an article he wrote criticizing a paint job on the building. His grandfather had to beg the school to reinstate him.

“To have that gift [of writing] from him, to know that maybe it’s in the blood, has given me a lot of strength to keep going,” Attiah said.

Attiah reflected on the convergence of losses over the past year, including her job, her father and her university teaching position, and what it means to rebuild one’s life well into adulthood. But she observed that grief has also clarified a lot, and allowed her to find freedom in something new after experiencing significant loss.

“I do think there’s a lot of grief in general for a lot of people right now,” Attiah said. “And I think we have an opportunity to build new worlds right now and build something else, or at the very least to support one another as we’re all navigating a sense of loss.”

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CBS’ Gutting of 60 Minutes Is an Attack on ‘the Gold Standard’ of Broadcast Journalism

This week’s firing of 60 Minutes correspondent Scott Pelley, along with the forcing out of star journalist Sharon Alfonsi — who spearheaded the bombshell investigation into El Salvador’s CECOT gulag that CBS management tried to kill — and the exit of Anderson Cooper have left the journalism world watching to see what’s next for the remaining faces of 60 Minutes. Schulze didn’t mince words about what’s being lost.

“When I was young, it was the kind of place where you were like, ‘Oh my god, if I could work there — that would be it,’” she said. “To see it go through this trauma intentionally is just remarkable to me. I’m dumbfounded by it, I really am.”

Schulze emphasized that 60 Minutes isn’t some relic of a pre-digital era. Nine million people watched every episode last season. The show has been the gold standard of American broadcast journalism for 52 years, and the journalists who work there earn that distinction every week.

“You have to be a journalist at your core,” Schulze said of 60 Minutes’ on-air talent. “The gutting of 60 Minutes is just unfathomable, really.”

CBS’ Real Strategy: Keeping Donald Trump Happy

CBS Evening News ratings under new anchor Tony Dokoupil have cratered — hovering around 3.7 million viewers while ABC’s David Muir pulls close to 9 million on a regular night. But Schulze argued that’s beside the point, because the people making these decisions aren’t actually trying to run a news organization.

“The strategy is the owners of Paramount — who own CBS and are trying to buy CNN and Warner Brothers Discovery — their strategy is keep Donald Trump happy so he will approve all of the business deals they want to make,” Schulze explained. “They have an $11 billion merger pending right now.”

That context, Schulze said, explains everything from the Taiwan embarrassment — where CBS reported on Trump’s visit to China from Taiwan, 1,000 miles from the actual story — to the destruction of 60 Minutes. The veteran journalist argued that CBS’ billionaire owners, and their hand-picked editor-in-chief, Bari Weiss, care less about ratings and more about greasing the wheels that will lead to the growth of their empire.

Bari Weiss Has No Idea How to Run a Newsroom — But That’s the Entire Point

Bari Weiss came to CBS News from The Free Press, a right-wing opinion website she founded after leaving the New York Times. She has no TV news experience. By her own admission, she doesn’t own a television. Schulze, who worked her way from reporter to field producer to executive producer to running WGN Chicago’s newsroom, described Weiss’ hire as, at minimum, an insult to everyone who spent decades preparing for that kind of role.

“She was mostly an opinion editor. She wrote a few columns at the New York Times, left in a huff, and started this Substack,” Schulze said. “I do find it a little bit offensive. I mean, I know people who run these big news organizations who spent their lives preparing for this and working at it every day. And then she swoops in — she’s a political hire, and there it is.”

The practical results have been visible. Schulze documented CBS’ string of failures in a May essay for her Indistinct Chatter Substack. Tony Dokoupil’s broadcast from Taiwan happened because Weiss failed to obtain a visa for him to go to China. She wrote that reporters unable to get to where the story is suggests a newsroom in visible distress.

“Logistics are it,” Schulze said. “You can’t do the news without a solid logistics operation, and they clearly have muffed that. And nobody cares.”

All the Media Properties the Ellisons Could Control Under the Proposed $11 Billion Merger

Oracle founder Larry Ellison — one of the wealthiest people on earth — and his son David Ellison, CEO of Paramount Skydance, are racing to finalize an $11 billion merger with Warner Brothers Discovery. If it goes through, the Ellisons will control not just CBS, but also CNN, HBO, MTV, Nickelodeon, Comedy Central, Cartoon Network, BET, TLC, the Discovery Channel, Paramount Pictures, and streaming services including Paramount Plus and HBO Max — in addition to their existing ownership stake in TikTok’s U.S. entity.

David Ellison hosted a private dinner for Donald Trump and acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, who would need to bless the merger, on the same week as the White House Correspondents’ Dinner. Schulze called the situation blatantly corrupt.

“There are some really important concerns here,” she said, noting reports that Ellison has already privately assured Trump he’d address Trump’s grievances about CNN. “He’s already shown us how powerful he is with 60 Minutes. It’s terrifying, really.”

Schulze expressed hope that California Attorney General Rob Bonta’s lawsuit and a coalition of state attorneys general could slow or stop the deal, particularly given that Democrats are expected to make gains in the midterms. Schlulze noted that Democratic lawmakers have already said they’ll be targeting the merger if they win back a majority in one or both chambers of Congress.

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Local News Vanishes Overnight in Indianapolis

In a May 4 post to her Substack, Schulze wrote about how the entire newsroom of Indianapolis, Indiana ABC affiliate WRTV was shut down without warning literally overnight. Over 50 journalists lost their jobs. By 10 PM that same night, a newscast from a competing station took the WRTV team’s place.

Schulze said what happened in Indianapolis is coming to communities across the country, especially if the Nexstar-Tegna merger — which would give one company ownership of 256 TV stations reaching roughly 80 percent of the country — goes through. She argued the stakes are much higher than most people realize.

“Local news is the lifeblood of a community in many respects,” she said. “It’s the place where your local officials are being held to account. It’s the place where reporters are digging into that sketchy contract, or that data center that got secretly approved, and they lied to you about how much energy the data center was going to suck out of your community.”

She urged people to find out who owns their local TV station, and to be vocal with advertisers if they don’t like what they see.

How Nexstar Is Laundering Right-Wing Narratives Through Local Media

Nexstar — which brands itself as a non-biased, middle-of-the-road news organization — owns NewsNation, a cable network that Schulze plainly described as “Fox Lite.” Its prime time lineup is full of former Fox News personalities, and Nexstar chairman Perry Sook has made a series of moves aimed at winning favor with the Trump administration for his pending merger. Schulze warned that NewsNation’s programming is already being fed into Nexstar’s local stations, with more to come.

“We do not need any more of that,” she said. “The right wing has done a perfectly executed capture of media, and it’s not a new project for them. They’ve been doing it for decades.”

The Solution: Public Funding and Independent Media

With legacy media increasingly captured by billionaires trying to cozy up to the powerful, Schulze sees independent media as a critical part of the answer. She also called for expanded public media funding in the vein of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, in that a federally funded entity could provide grants to media outlets that don’t have corporate advertisers. She also expressed a need for a national media literacy program, along with a Democratic-led antitrust movement willing to break up media monopolies similar to how railroad and oil barons had their empires broken up by the Sherman Antitrust Act.

“We need to start thinking about media as a public good, instead of a political tool,” Schulze said.

The veteran broadcast journalist also applauded Hungary’s new government as an instructive example the U.S. could soon follow. After a decade of former Hungarian leader Viktor Orbán consolidating media control among his donors and political allies, Peter Magyar’s new government has moved to dismantle the machinery used to target journalists and opposition figures. She stressed that today’s consolidated media environment can be undone, but only if enough people stand up and fight for it.

“Get out there and support any local media and independent media you can,” she said. “They need your help. Help them in the meantime, while we sort this out.”

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Rhodes broke down why Bill Pulte’s nomination as Director of National Intelligence represents a genuine threat to national security, explained why Democrats should use intelligence funding as leverage to stop his confirmation, walked through the origins and likely resolution of the Iran conflict, assessed the fragile state of the NATO alliance, weighed in on the political cost Democrats paid for backing Israel’s war in Gaza, and explained how the Republican Party of Ronald Reagan ended up as the cult Donald Trump.

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Bill Pulte as Director of National Intelligence: “This Is Police State Stuff”

Gibson opened by asking Rhodes about President Trump’s nomination of Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) Director Bill Pulte to serve as Director of National Intelligence (DNI), following Tulsi Gabbard’s departure. Gibson noted that federal law — specifically 50 U.S. Code Section 3023 — requires that any DNI nominee have “extensive national security experience,” a qualification Pulte conspicuously lacks.

Rhodes didn’t hedge. “One hundred percent,” he said when asked whether Pulte’s appointment constitutes a threat to national security. Rhodes noted that his first job in Washington was working for Lee Hamilton, who was co-chair of the 9/11 Commission and one of the architects of the DNI legislation.

“Let’s just say Bill Pulte is not who he had in mind,” Rhodes said of Hamilton.

But Rhodes argued the danger goes beyond mere lack of qualification. He pointed to Pulte’s record at the FHFA, where Pulte used access to mortgage records to build allegations (which were later dismissed) against high-profile Trump critics including Federal Reserve Board member Lisa Cook and New York Attorney General Letitia James. Rhodes said that pattern should terrify Americans when applied to the intelligence community’s far broader surveillance capabilities.

“Imagine with him having access to the National Security Agency — the signals intelligence people that intercept phone calls and email communications,” Rhodes said. “I’m not suggesting he’s even going to find crimes. I’m suggesting he’s invented them before with mortgage fraud. This guy going through everybody’s emails to try to find something he can use against Trump’s enemies should be a terrifying thought for every American. It’s police state stuff.”

Rhodes also raised the prospect of Pulte continuing work Gabbard had begun — using the intelligence apparatus to advance conspiracy theories about election fraud, potentially laying groundwork to contest future Democratic electoral victories.

“If they lose the midterm elections, and let’s say Trump wants to say that this was fraud and that some foreign government must have interfered to help Democrats,” Rhodes said, “that’s your nightmare scenario right there.”

Democrats’ Leverage to Stop Pulte’s Confirmation

Gibson noted that Democrats have threatened to withhold votes to reauthorize Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) — the provision authorizing the intelligence community to collect and analyze foreign intelligence — as leverage against Pulte’s confirmation. He asked Rhodes whether he thought the threat was credible, or whether national security hawks in the Democratic caucus would ultimately fold. Rhodes was unequivocal about what Democrats should do.

“There’s no Democrat that should vote to reauthorize Section 702, full stop,” he said. “It would demonstrate a complete lack of understanding of the nature of the emergency moment that we’re in.”

Rhodes pointed out that the entire rationale for reauthorizing surveillance authorities rests on the argument that the intelligence community needs these tools to keep Americans safe. According to Rhodes, Pulte makes that case impossible to make in good faith.

“Do you really think Bill Pulte is going to effectively carry out the functions of that job?” Rhodes said. “Do you think he’s going to be making sure we’re connecting dots to foil terrorist plots? No.”

The author and former Obama administration official acknowledged the real risk: a small number of Democratic senators who have historically been sympathetic to intelligence community funding requests. He noted that while some may normally break ranks to confirm a new DNI, Pulte is so extreme that it should be possible to hold the caucus together and perhaps even peel off enough Republicans to stop Pulte from being confirmed. He also suggested Democrats should think beyond Section 702.

“I’d be looking at holding up the funding for the intelligence community,” he said. “It’s time to play some hardball.”

For Americans whose senators include traditional hawks like Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) — the current ranking Democrat of the Senate Intelligence Committee and a figure Rhodes cited as particularly susceptible to deferring to the intelligence community — Rhodes offered a specific framing constituents can use when calling their offices.

“The argument I’d make is: this person, Bill Pulte, makes the American people less safe. If you’re trying to protect the intelligence community by voting for Section 702, you’re not protecting them, because you’re not using your leverage to make sure they have appropriate leadership,” he said.

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To End the Iran War, Trump Has No Choice But to Eat Crow

Gibson turned to the ongoing U.S. military conflict with Iran, noting that Trump’s repeated promises of a swift resolution have gone unfulfilled, that negotiations have collapsed, and that Iran retains its most decisive leverage in control over the Strait of Hormuz. Gibson asked what a hypothetical new Democratic administration in 2029 should do to end the conflict if it’s still ongoing by then.

“You have to make a deal with the Iranians,” Rhodes said. “And you have to accept that that deal is not going to be everything you want.”

He drew on historical precedent, noting that both the United States and the Soviet Union made significant concessions in Cold War agreements, despite then-President Ronald Reagan maligning the Soviets as an “evil empire.” Rhodes argued the same logic applies to Iran, and that the refusal to accept anything short of complete Iranian capitulation is pure fantasy.

“Arms control agreements are by definition agreements you enter into with your adversaries in which you don’t get everything you want,” he said.

Rhodes also pushed back on the premise that sanctions represent meaningful leverage, noting that they primarily hurt ordinary residents of countries like Iran, Venezuela, Cuba, Russia, North Korea, while doing nothing to stop the regimes being sanctioned. The Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), he noted, has become expert at operating under sanctions and accessing illicit revenue streams, while ordinary Iranians bear the costs.

“Who’s getting hurt by these sanctions? The Iranian people,” Rhodes said. “It’s not changing their government. It’s actually entrenching the regime in power.”

Rhodes pointed out that during his time in the Obama White House, every national security war game scenario with Iran led to the closure of the Strait of Hormuz and the strangling of the global economy.

“The IRGC is saying: if you won’t give us access to our money from sanctions relief, we’re going to start tolling this strait. We’re going to get revenue one way or another,” he said. “I would rather they get access to frozen revenue from transactions than that suddenly Iran is running 20 percent of the world’s energy as a toll road.”

Trump’s Eventual Deal with Iran May Mirror Obama’s 2015 Agreement

Gibson asked about a specific flashpoint in the Iran debate — the charge, frequently advanced on Fox News and by Trump himself, that the Obama administration “gave” Iran hundreds of billions of dollars in the 2015 nuclear agreement known as the JCPOA. Gibson noted his own understanding that the money in question already belonged to Iran.

Rhodes confirmed this and spelled out the mechanics. Iran sold oil and gas to other countries — India, China, and others — and the revenue owed to Iran in return had been frozen in international accounts by the United States. America was not party to those transactions. Releasing the funds meant giving Iran access to its own money, not writing a check from the U.S. Treasury. The actual figure Iran received access to was approximately $55 billion, not the $300 billion Trump has cited — a discrepancy Rhodes attributed to the compounding effect of years of additional frozen assets.

Rhodes further argued that the entire premise of the criticism misunderstands how sanctions are supposed to work.

“You don’t put sanctions on a country just to keep them there in perpetuity,” he said. “You put sanctions on Iran to restrict their nuclear program. So when they accept those restrictions, they get access to the revenue they’re frankly entitled to.”

Rhodes reminded viewers that Iran fully complied with the JCPOA, and that it was Trump himself who withdrew from the agreement in 2018, not Tehran. The bitter irony, Rhodes suggested, is that Trump now finds himself pursuing something that will inevitably resemble the deal he spent years denouncing.

“He just kind of can’t seem to bring himself to do it, because he knows it is going to resemble the Obama nuclear deal,” he said.

Did Biden’s Support of Netanyahu Cost Democrats the 2024 Election?

Gibson asked Rhodes to assess the political fallout of the Biden administration’s decision to continue unconditional military support for Israel despite its atrocities against Palestinians in Gaza, and whether it contributed to Kamala Harris’s defeat in 2024.

Rhodes argued the damage was real, but more layered than a simple question of where voters stood on the Israel-Palestine conflict. The deeper wound, he said, was the perception of Democratic inauthenticity. He observed that Democrats’ comments about being troubled by the murder of civilians Gaza were undercut by continuing to authorize billions in military aid to Israel.

“It’s kind of what people don’t like about politicians,” he said. “If you actually believe that you’re concerned about what’s happening, you do something about it.”

Rhodes recalled a maxim from Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign that has continued to stick with him over the years.

“Obama used to say ‘in order to win an election, you have to show people that there’s some things you’re willing to lose over,’” Rhodes said. “If you’re not willing every now and then to take an unpopular or controversial position, you’re the perfect foil for Trump — because what Trump says to people is all these politicians are full of it, they tell you one thing and do another.”

Rhodes was more sympathetic to Vice President Kamala Harris in her 2024 campaign than to the Biden administration, acknowledging the impossible position a vice president faces when she’s duty-bound to defend her president’s politically toxic foreign policy. But the author and former Obama speechwriter argued that the attempt to signal quiet disagreement with Netanyahu while publicly maintaining the status quo was the worst of both worlds.

“That stuff just doesn’t work with people,” he said. “Because it’s like: well, if you really disagree with the policy, why don’t you convince your boss not to do it?”

How Trump Is Pulling the U.S. Out of NATO Without Officially Withdrawing

Gibson raised the state of the NATO alliance, noting reports that some European members have begun developing contingency plans for a European security structure that could function without American participation. He also asking what a U.S. withdrawal would mean for European stability.

Rhodes pointed out that Trump likely lacks the legal authority to formally withdraw from NATO without congressional approval, but that a president determined to hollow out American commitments could achieve the same effect without a formal declaration. The more immediate risk, he said, would fall on the Baltic states like Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, which share historical and geographic vulnerability to Russian pressure.

“If you remove the United States from NATO, you just make it that much more likely that we’re back in the days of conquest, of war between great powers,” Rhodes said. “We set up NATO to prevent a world war. And I think if you remove the United States from NATO, you make it that much more likely that we get drawn into a major global conflagration with Russia and China, because we no longer have the very institutions we set up to prevent that from happening again.”

On the episode in which Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced the withdrawal of thousands of troops from Poland only to have Trump reverse course, Rhodes speculated that the reversal likely reflected pressure from Poland’s allies in the Republican Senate caucus. He opined that some senators may have called the White House to flag that the move went too far.

“They don’t have any backbone, they don’t say anything publicly,” Rhodes said of those Republican senators, “but they might call over the White House and say, ‘Wait, you’re going too far on this one.’”

Trump Would Be Powerless to Stop China from Taking Taiwan

Gibson pressed Rhodes on the risk to Taiwan from China, given how broadly the Trump administration has extended American military commitments — simultaneously supporting Ukraine, backing Israel, pursuing regime change in Venezuela and Cuba, and now waging war in Iran.

Rhodes said he’s deeply worried about the convergence of conditions. Chinese President Xi Jinping, he argued, is almost certainly watching American overextension and diplomatic isolation and calculating whether this represents the optimal window for action on Taiwan.

“The maximum window is when the United States has no friends and allies around the world, when the American president doesn’t indicate any willingness to defend Taiwan, and when the world is already chaotic,” Rhodes said.

He pointed out that that the geographic fault lines in East Asia, the Middle East and Eastern Europe look uncomfortably like the map of World War Two. And for Americans inclined to dismiss Taiwan as a distant concern, Rhodes offered a more concrete argument: more than 90 percent of the world’s advanced semiconductors are manufactured there.

“If there’s a war in Taiwan, good luck having anything in this country work for a long time, like the computers in your car, like the way your refrigerator works,” Rhodes said.

How Ronald Reagan’s Republican Party Was Destined to Be Led By Donald Trump

In the interview’s final stretch, Gibson asked Rhodes about the historical argument in his new book, All We Say: The Battle for American Identity, a History in 15 Speeches — specifically in which Rhodes laid out how Donald Trump is the conclusion of events set in motion by Ronald Reagan. Gibson asked whether figures now positioned as anti-Trump conservatives — including Liz Cheney and others from the Bush era — bear some responsibility for creating the conditions that made Trump possible.

“Yes,” Rhodes said without hesitation.

He walked through how Reagan assembled a three-legged coalition of Christian evangelicals, national security hawks and small-government conservatives. The Cold War served as the glue holding those factions together. When the Soviet threat dissolved, the coalition’s internal contradictions came to the surface.

The enemy then shifted inward toward liberals and cultural change, while the economic policies those same Republicans championed hollowed out the industrial base and accelerated inequality. The hawks, meanwhile, steered the country into Iraq under George W. Bush, which Rhodes described as a direct precursor to Trump’s rise.

“With no war in Iraq, there’s no Donald Trump,” Rhodes argued.

Rhodes further observed that failed right-wing presidential candidate Pat Buchanan had already articulated the essential Trump message in 1992, which included a wall along the Southern border, punishing tariffs and an America First foreign policy. While Republicans were hesitant to embrace that platform in the early nineties, they were ripe to run on it by 2016.

“He was tapping into political forces that had been there all along,” Rhodes said of Trump, “and taking the wreckage of the Republican Party of Ronald Reagan and weaponizing it against the rest of us.”

What Comes After Trump: A Return to Compromise, or the Brutal Wielding of Power?

Gibson closed by asking Rhodes one of the book’s core questions: given the arc from Benjamin Franklin’s argument for compromise at the 1787 Constitutional Convention, to Trump’s open contempt for constitutional constraints in 2025, is the era of compromise over? Should Democrats, if they return to power, govern with the same force Trump has, or attempt to restore norms?

Rhodes drew a careful distinction. The problem with Trump, he argued, is not that his policies are unpopular, but that he has abandoned the legal framework within which political competition is supposed to happen. He argued that gerrymandering and the influence of dark money are more insidious in that they rig the contest itself.

“What is radical about Trump is he’s not playing within the lines of the compromise,” Rhodes said.

Democrats, he argued, have abundant tools available to them that are entirely within constitutional bounds and have simply gone unused out of excessive caution. This includes antitrust enforcement against big tech companies, rooting out entrenched corruption in government and eliminating the Senate filibuster (which Rhodes pointed out is not in the Constitution) and pass legislation on a simple majority. He added that Democrats should pushing hard for getting money out of politics and ending partisan gerrymandering.

“I’d be moving with speed and force to essentially reverse Trumpism,” Rhodes said.

Rhodes concluded with one note of historical optimism. He pointed out that the Gilded Age of the late 19th century — which was marked by extreme inequality, government corruption and a captured political system — gave way to a progressive era. He noted that this era brought about antitrust law, child labor protections, the direct election of U.S. senators and women’s suffrage.

“I think we’re in a Gilded Age,” Rhodes said. “And I think the next phase is going to be a progressive age.”

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Tucker Carlson’s Faux Populist Playbook

Gibson opened by asking Sexton about his recent essay “The Fascist Feint: Tucker Carlson and Faux Leftist Commentary.” Tucker Carlson has been discussed as a potential 2028 presidential candidate and Sexton observed that the far-right commentator is deliberately co-opting progressive language to stay relevant after Donald Trump leaves office.

“A right-wing movement doesn’t just suddenly wake up one day and they’re like, ‘Hey, we like democracy now,’” he said. “They grow worse.”

Sexton argued that MAGA figures actually view Trump as a moderate who is too soft on nationalism, and that Carlson has been positioning himself to capture that energy.

According to the author and political analyst, what Carlson is doing follows a well-worn historical pattern: make the necessary critique of capitalism and economic betrayal, but redirect the resulting anger away from the owner class and toward vulnerable working-class communities with no actual institutional power.

“The right wing does a very simple trick,” Sexton said. “They say, ‘yeah, capitalism isn’t working’ — or they don’t ever say capitalism, because they don’t want to address the actual system — they say there’s corruption, you have been betrayed, and then on behalf of the wealth class, they go ahead and say, ‘oh, we’ll tell you who did this,’ and it’s always vulnerable people.”

Can the Left Find Common Ground With Tucker’s Audience?

Gibson pressed Sexton on whether there are areas like opposing foreign wars and decriminalizing drugs where progressives and Tucker Carlson’s audience might find common cause, even if Tucker himself is a bad actor.

Sexton acknowledged the question but urged caution. While he said some Trump voters are genuinely reachable through class-based arguments, the danger is that Carlson’s critiques, even when they sound reasonable, are drawing people toward a dangerous project.

“We have to understand they’re not making this critique in good faith,” Sexton said. “They’re making it as political strategy to bring people into a project that is about capturing power.”

He also noted that many people in Carlson’s audience don’t realize how far they’ve drifted until it’s too late. He argued the key to reaching persuadable people is abandoning partisan stereotypes and having direct conversations about how the working class has been betrayed by the wealthy elite and the politicians they own.

Where the Democratic Party Falls Short

Gibson asked Sexton why Democrats — with a few notable exceptions like Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and Ilhan Omar — seem unable to make the kind of trans-partisan, class-based arguments that could actually win people over.

Sexton was blunt: the Democratic Party is too beholden to the same donor class to make an honest critique of the system that’s oppressing the working class.

“It’s a captured party that is doing the bidding of billionaire benefactors who pay for all of this,” he said.

Sexton pointed to the already-emerging framework around “Project 2029” — a Democratic Party policy playbook that until recently was spearheaded by Jeffrey Epstein associate Larry Summers — as evidence that even a post-Trump Democratic majority would fail to address the underlying material conditions that gave rise to fascism in the first place.

“The cycle that we live in,” Sexton explained, “is that a Republican gets in office, they break all kinds of rules and laws, they take more and more power, and they run up the debt, they crash the economy, and then a Democrat comes in and they promise a lot of things — ‘but guess what, we just don’t have the resources right now.’”

The “Dispatches from a Collapsing State” publisher argued that manufactured culture war issues like transgender bathroom access are deliberately created by the right in order to prevent Americans from uniting around class issues.

“These issues are created in order to divert us,” Sexton said.

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The Biggest Lesson from the Minneapolis General Strike

Gibson cited Sexton’s essay from January entitled “Shut It Down,” which he wrote at the height of the Trump administration’s ICE crackdown in Minneapolis. Sexton wrote about how tens of thousands of residents responded to the crackdown by organizing with local business owners to conduct a one-day general strike that ultimately contributed to a strategic retreat by federal authorities. Gibson asked Sexton whether targeted general strikes in key sectors —like trucking, nursing and education — could be an effective tool against the current administration.

Sexton said the potential for this kind of action is greater than most people realize, and that the primary obstacle is more psychological than logistical.

“This can end tomorrow,” Sexton said. “This whole facade, this whole crisis, this erosion, the growth of fascism, it could end tomorrow. What this relies on is a fear that has been instilled in us.”

Sexton argued that capitalism has deliberately destroyed American solidarity with each another, pointing to the assault on labor unions and social structures to ensure that American workers remain too precarious and too isolated to organize. However, he also said an economic collapse may change the calculus quickly, pointing to botj Bolivia’s recent general strike and South Korea’s response to its attempted coup as models.

“None of this works without us,” Sexton said. “We’ve been convinced that politics, that our representative government, is more important than us, that corporations are more important than us. We can stop, because the participation in capitalism is the only thing that keeps this thing going.”

The Organizing Opportunity Against AI Nobody Is Talking About

Gibson observed the backlash against AI and data centers, in which AI infrastructure is being forced on communities across the country — at the expense of water access and farmland — represents a rare and powerful organizing opportunity that transcends partisan lines.

Sexton agreed, calling data centers “the most uniting thing for people to go against.” He noted that opposition to AI and data centers draws together people who are concerned about environmental issues as well as rising energy bills, declining property values and job security. He added this coalition that would be nearly impossible to assemble around any traditional political issue.

“It just so happens that the hated and universally opposed product is the only product of an oligarchical, fascist, anti-human group,” Sexton said.

Sexton also argued that the broader “enshittification” of the internet — a term coined by writer Cory Doctorow — is creating organic openings for class-based conversations. When someone complains that they can’t watch their local baseball team without paying for multiple subscriptions, or that their Google search no longer works, and they ask “why doesn’t somebody do something about that?” — Sexton proposed that could be a doorway to deeper conversations.

“It cracks the entire edifice open,” he said, “and suddenly you’re not talking about who’s going to win in the midterms. You’re talking about class politics.”

Grieving the Empire and Building What Comes Next

Gibson closed by asking Sexton about his essay “Death to Empire: Trump, China, and Moving Beyond This Wretched Order,” and what ordinary Americans who are frustrated and searching for agency can do to maintain hope for themselves and their children.

Sexton opined that Americans need to move through a period of genuine grief about the end of U.S. dominance, and then recognize that what they are losing was always built on exploitation.

“The things that made our so-called first world lives so comfortable have come on the backs of exploitation, slave labor, coups [and] wars. Just violence upon violence upon exploitation upon exploitation,” he said. “We made a deal with the devil, which was capitalism.”

He rejected the nostalgic politics of both Trumpism and mainstream Democratic Party incrementalism, suggesting that a retreat to the past is no longer an option. According to Sexton, the lure of fascism may offer the promise of recapturing a lost greatness, but that’s a dangerous illusion that only leads to self-destruction.

“We can have better lives,” he said. “We deserve better than what we’ve got right now. We have to be honest with ourselves and accept that it’s falling apart — and that you can build something better on the other side of it. That opportunity is there.”

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Parnas, who has deep personal ties to many of the key players inside Trump’s orbit, also opened up about the DOJ’s latest harassment campaign against E. Jean Carroll, the weaponization of a Fort Pierce grand jury under Trump-appointed U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon and his decision to leave the Democratic Party and run for Congress as an independent.

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The E. Jean Carroll Investigation: “A Trophy Win for Trump”

Gibson opened by asking Parnas about his recent Substack post, in which he wrote that the Trump DOJ’s criminal investigation into writer E. Jean Carroll — who won two civil cases against Trump in 2023 and 2024 — was “only the beginning.” Parnas framed the Carroll prosecution as a political gift from Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche to Trump himself.

“The E. Jean Carroll investigation is very important, and it means a lot, because knowing Donald Trump, knowing the players involved, especially his puppet, now Todd Blanche in the DOJ — this was more of a trophy win for Donald Trump, you know, by Todd Blanche gifting him E. Jean Carroll,” Parnas said.

Gibson noted that Blanche, Trump’s former personal criminal defense attorney, had technically recused himself from the Carroll case. However, because Blanche is the de facto head of the DOJ, Parnas dismissed his recusal as “theatrics.”

“That’s what the Trump DOJ is about right now,” he said. “That’s why I always say, don’t listen to what they say, watch what they do, watch their actions.”

Trump Planning to Indict Barack Obama in Florida

The conversation shifted to what Parnas described as the centerpiece of Trump’s revenge campaign: a grand jury quietly assembled in Fort Pierce, Florida overseen by U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon — the same Trump-appointed judge who threw out Trump’s classified documents case.

According to Parnas, one of Todd Blanche’s first moves upon taking over the DOJ was to reopen a long-dormant investigation into former CIA Director John Brennan and the origins of the Russia investigation, then move that probe to Fort Pierce, where Cannon sits as the lone judge. Blanche also appointed former U.S. Attorney Joseph DiGenova — who helmed the DOJ’s District of Columbia office during the Reagan administration — as special prosecutor. Parnas observed that he knows DiGenova well as his former personal lawyer.

“There is a grand jury that has been put together. There’s already, I’ve heard, hundreds of subpoenas that have gone out to ex-CIA agents and people that were part of the 2015-16 administration,” Parnas said. “And what I’m hearing is that one of the main targets that they’re going to be going after and that they’re going to indict is going to be ex-President Obama.”

Parnas said DiGenova’s appointment is significant, describing him as someone who has long been consumed by his belief that figures like Brennan, James Comey, and Obama committed treason by investigating Trump.

“Out of everybody that I know in Trump world, he’s the most passionate and the most aggressive,” Parnas said.

Could Presidential Immunity Shield Obama?

Gibson raised the question of whether the Supreme Court’s 2024 ruling in Trump v. United States — which established broad criminal immunity for presidents for any and all official acts — could be used by Obama’s lawyers to get any indictment thrown out before it ever went to trial.

Parnas acknowledged the argument, but said Trump insiders are deliberately gaming it out to put Trump’s predecessor through the same gauntlet Trump himself endured during his 2024 campaign.

“They want Obama to go prove that this was an official act. Obama has to go there, go through the process,” Parnas said. they want Obama to go through what Trump did, get indicted, get that mug shot.”

He also pointed out that the Fort Pierce venue is no accident. Routing the case through Cannon’s courtroom all but guarantees a friendly judicial hand, regardless of any current legal precedent.

“That’s why the case is in Fort Pierce, because it would be Judge Cannon on that case if Obama gets indicted in Florida,” Parnas said.

Judge Cannon’s Impossible Bind

Gibson pressed Parnas on what he sees as a legal catch-22 for Cannon: the very precedent she used to dismiss Trump’s documents case (in which she cited Clarence Thomas’ opinion in the Trump v. United States decision to justify throwing out the charges) could now be weaponized by Obama’s defense team. Parnas dismissed the idea that Cannon would feel constrained by her own prior ruling.

“A lot of people that come on these shows talk about how things used to be, how things should be, how in a normal society it would be. They keep forgetting that Donald Trump, and especially loyalists like Judge Cannon, don’t follow the rules,” he said. “That is why we are here. She will just say no, find an excuse, and this is what they’re good at.”

He also flagged the role of Stephen Miller, whom he described as the most dangerous figure operating behind the scenes, as the person who excels at finding obscure legal loopholes to justify whatever outcome Trump needs.

“It’s not if they’re gonna do it, it’s when they’re gonna do it. You’re gonna see lots of these indictments. I don’t say it unless I know it — and when I come out and say it, I pretty much know it,” Parnas argued.

The DOJ’s Credibility Crisis — And Why Trump Doesn’t Care

Gibson noted a string of high-profile DOJ failures — a botched Comey prosecution led by an inexperienced attorney, the collapsed Leticia James case, and the Carroll inquiry against someone who has already prevailed before two separate juries — and asked whether Blanche and Trump were worried at all about the damage being done to the institution’s reputation.

Parnas said the answer is simply that the DOJ’s credibility is irrelevant in a system oriented entirely around pleasing one man.

“Todd Blanche doesn’t care about what anybody’s saying right now. It’s such a cult mentality. Right now it’s one leader, one man, and trying to figure out how to please him and nobody else,” Parnas said. “We’re living in an authoritarian time. We’re living in a dictatorship. A lot of people don’t realize it. The system is cracking — it’s like a dam. If you have a little crack and the water keeps pushing, eventually it’s going to break.”

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Why Parnas Left the Democratic Party

Gibson noted that Ballotpedia still listed Parnas as one of five Democrats running in Florida’s 27th congressional district, prompting Parnas to correct the record: he is now running as an independent.

Parnas described the decision as a product of both frustration with Democratic establishment politics and a practical read of the electorate. He recounted attending a MAGA event in his district, where residents responded warmly to him until they learned he was running as a Democrat.

“When I was there as an individual, they loved to hear what I had to say and wanted to know more. But once I got labeled as a Democrat, all of that went out the window,” he said.

He also pointed to a larger structural reality: nearly half the country now identifies as independent.

“They don’t want to be either Democrat or Republican, because both parties got us here,” Parnas said. “Both parties have become radicalized. Donald Trump instilled division into us — we have to stop that.”

Running as an Independent: Spoiler or Disruptor?

Gibson asked the obvious question: in a first-past-the-post system, doesn’t an independent candidacy risk splitting the anti-Republican vote and handing the seat to the GOP?

Parnas pushed back, noting that Florida’s 27th Congressional District is currently drawn to disadvantage Democrats anyway, and that he believes he can pull more from the Republican side than the Democratic side. He also said he is eyeing the 22nd district — where several Republicans are competing with no Democratic presence — as a potentially stronger opportunity.

“I’m not changing my values. I’m running as an independent to get into Congress so Congress can change the laws … so a president could be able to run without being committed to be labeled a D or an R,” he said.

After Gibson pressed Parnas on how he would caucus, Parnas emphasized he would caucus with Democrats but would not be a reliable party-line vote.

“I’m going in there more to root out both of the problems we have, because the biggest problem we have in Congress is not Democrat or Republican. It’s that we have foreign money that has infiltrated our lobbying system, our super PACs, our special interests, and these are the people that are really running our Congress,” he said.

Parnas’ Firsthand Knowledge of Funneling Foreign Money Into Elections

Gibson brought up Parnas’s 2022 sentencing announcement, in which then-U.S. Attorney Damian Williams said Parnas was going to prison for 20 months for “pumping Russian money into U.S. elections and lying about the source of funds for political contributions.” Parnas acknowledged his wrongdoing, but said his firsthand experience inside the super PAC system makes him uniquely qualified to fight it from the inside.

“I take full responsibility for my actions,” Parnas said. “But I donated money to a Trump super PAC. The Trump super PAC did not get indicted, just so you understand. I got indicted.”

He said he watched firsthand how the campaign finance system was exploited by both parties.

“I know how the system works. It doesn’t matter if you’re Republican or Democrat, it works the same. They both do it,” Parnas said. “One of my main platforms is to try to destroy the super PACs and special interests and bring our country back to where each vote matters.”

Parnas Announces New Project Aimed at Digging Into Epstein Files

Gibson raised the question of how Parnas plans to hold people named in the Epstein files accountable not just for child sex trafficking but for financial crimes described in the documents.

Parnas used the question to unveil a significant new venture: a media and advocacy organization called Deep State Media, formed in partnership with Jonathan Hay (publicly identified as a plaintiff in the civil case against Sean “Diddy” Combs), activist David Sugerman, and Parnas’ son Daniel.

“Deep State Media is going to be set up to go out to fight corruption, to stand for survivors, and to stop this attack on women’s rights,” Parnas said. “The P. Diddys, the Epsteins, the Weinsteins, they not only treated women the way they did, but the business was also intertwined.”

Parnas said a signature feature of the venture will be fully livestreamed transparency for his congressional campaign.

“Every meeting will be livestreamed,” he said. “There’s no more closed-door, behind-the-scenes meetings. There are no more private conversations. My campaign is going to be run on pure, pure transparency, because that’s what we need. Enough is enough.”

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Trump’s $1.776 Billion Slush Fund Is an Endorsement of Right-Wing Violence

The Trump administration’s plan to funnel $1.776 billion to January 6 defendants — a figure whose digits are no accident — is, in Holt’s view, about as explicit an endorsement of that day’s violence as you can get. He described the original pardons as a sweeping “hall pass” issued with no moral or legal distinctions drawn between those who wandered in with the crowd and those who arrived with violent intent and proved their capacity to act on it.

“Because the pardons and commuted sentences were issued so indiscriminately ... that meant that some individuals who had gone to the Capitol — you know, in court being argued with the explicit intention of doing this, or had engaged in violent activity, had proven their capacity for crimes of that nature — also got the same pass,” Holt said. “I think it was interpreted as a thank-you card.”

Holt praised journalist Mike Wendling’s reporting, which identified dozens of pardon recipients who subsequently committed additional crimes, including violent offenses and crimes against children. When viewed collectively, Holt said, the recidivism rate is “pretty shocking.”

“If you could plausibly make an argument against these pardons being a hall pass or condoning what these folks engaged in, cutting them checks — or the prospect of cutting them checks — is about as explicit of an endorsement as you can get.”

Celebrating Vigilante Violence: Does Trump Have His Own Paramilitary?

The conversation turned to the administration’s pattern of elevating right-wing vigilante figures like Kyle Rittenhouse and Daniel Penny — men who killed people and were subsequently hosted in VIP boxes at championship games alongside Trump, JD Vance, and Mike Johnson — and what that pattern signals about the relationship between this White House and far-right street-level violence.

Holt drew a careful distinction between legal defense of an acquittal (as in the case of Rittenhouse) and the spectacle of organizations like Turning Point USA putting Rittenhouse on stage with fireworks, allowing him to build a public career on implicit threats of further violence. He connected this to a broader authoritarian playbook.

“Authoritarians throughout history around the world will gain power as a minority, and then attempt to maintain that control over society, over government, through the use of state force — which includes either the explicit or implied threat of violence against their opponents,” Holt said.

He stopped short of saying Trump has a formal militia in the mold of Mussolini’s Black Shirts or Hitler’s SA, but noted the administration has gone further than Trump’s first term in courting, cozying up to, and empowering far-right movements.

“[The administration wants] to have their cake and eat it too,” Holt said. “They want the electricity that is found in these movements, the ability to animate people in that intense way you can by fomenting hate and resentment and cynicism in society, but they also want to be treated as respectable, as real statesmen.”

Far-Right Dog Whistles Inside Federal Agencies — and the Reporters Who Could Expose Them

Holt confirmed that something significant is happening inside the social media operations of federal agencies like DHS and the Department of Labor. Executive branch agencies have repeatedly posted content containing recognizable far-right signals — including, in one notable case, a song with ties to white power movement that circulated on extremist Telegram channels around 2017 and would be virtually unknown to anyone who hadn’t been “marinating in those spaces” at the time.

“I know this song,” Holt said of the song “We’ll Have Our Home Again,” which Trump administration social media channels have invoked in the recent past.

He identified this as a significant and under-covered story, arguing there is genuine public interest in knowing who is writing and approving these posts — and that the answers would likely raise serious questions about vetting and how far up the chain awareness goes. He acknowledged the investigative path is difficult, noting that FOIA requests under this administration will almost certainly require litigation to enforce, and even then may yield heavily redacted documents. But he was unambiguous about the value of pursuing it.

“I would imagine that if we figured out who those people are, there would be a pretty concerning story there,” Holt said. “It raises a lot of questions about how they’re vetting people — or just how high up in the agency it goes. Is it just someone showing the press secretary ten tweets for the week and they say ‘yep, looks good’? Or are they fully aware?”

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The Insurrection Succeeded — Just Not on January 6th

Holt agreed with the framing that while the Capitol riot failed in its immediate tactical objective of stopping the certification of Joe Biden’s Electoral College victory, it has in a meaningful sense been vindicated. The same ideological universe that drove people to the building that day now staffs federal agencies and shapes White House policy. What changed between then and now is not the movement — it’s the Republican Party’s willingness to say so out loud.

“The government is loaded with sympathizers,” Holt said. “There are people working in the White House that are entirely sympathetic and entirely on board with the kind of thinking that motivated so many people to go to DC that day.”

He recalled the brief, anomalous moment of bipartisan condemnation in the days after January 6 — a moment that has been completely erased from the modern GOP. Those who condemned the attack, like Mitt Romney and Liz Cheney, have been driven out or sidelined. The machinery of retaliation now extends to state legislators who resist Trump’s midterm redistricting push, where even Republicans who privately oppose it are having primary challengers backed against them.

“Any criticism against the administration, against the tip-top brass of federal leadership, especially Trump, is extremely penalized,” Holt said. “There’s no room for dissent in the modern Republican Party. And I think that — just to boil it all down — that complete follow-the-leader mentality, and all the extreme rhetoric that comes along to justify it, is what’s dangerous.”

‘Nihilistic Violence’ Is a Law Enforcement Cop-Out for Right-Wing Terrorism

When a gunman attacked a mosque in San Diego — leaving behind documents filled with neo-Nazi references — local police attributed the attack to what they called “nihilistic violence.” Holt argued that this language is being systematically misapplied in ways that launder racially motivated terrorism into something more generic and less politically inconvenient.

He explained that “nihilistic violent extremism” originated as a useful, narrow descriptor for a particular category of online radicalization networks — like the 764 network — in which violent ideology functions more as an aesthetic costume than a sincere political belief system. In that limited context, the term had analytic value.

“My criticism, my issue with the term is that what has been included in the scope of that has broadened out and broadened out over the years, to the point where you could ask four or five organizations that track hate movements to define it and get five different answers,” he said.

His sharpest critique was reserved for how the term gets applied to attacks with unmistakable ideological fingerprints. In San Diego, he noted, the perpetrator appeared to replicate the 2019 Christchurch, New Zealand mosque attack almost exactly — and yet no one debates what motivated that attack. He placed the misapplication in broader political context: the Trump administration has simultaneously stripped resources from countering right-wing extremism while redirecting public attention toward undocumented immigrants and left-wing organizers.

“I just kind of think the way it’s being over-applied comes at a detriment to public understanding of these threats and what’s actually happening in these attacks,” Holt argued.

The Trump Administration Is Waging War on the Organizations That Expose It

The Department of Justice’s criminal prosecution of the Southern Poverty Law Center — which the SPLC is fighting as vindictive prosecution stemming from a 2019 exposé of Stephen Miller’s white nationalist email history — is, in Holt’s view, part of a coordinated campaign to destroy the institutional infrastructure that tracks and exposes far-right movements.

The escalation takes multiple forms: Elon Musk suing Media Matters and the Center for Countering Digital Hate with litigation expensive enough to bankrupt nonprofits operating on six-month budget cycles; congressional Republicans subpoenaing and grilling researchers on Capitol Hill; and now the federal government attempting criminal charges against the SPLC. Holt noted that many of his colleagues inside these organizations have significantly curtailed their public work and messaging as a result.

“This administration has explicitly saber-rattled against these kinds of organizations. Not just ones that track hate movements, but ones that track disinformation and misinformation,” he said. “A nonprofit gets sued for $50 million and they’re facing three or four million dollars in legal fees to defend themselves against the wealthiest man on the planet. Lights out.”

He expressed skepticism that the SPLC charges will stick, but emphasized that the point isn’t necessarily conviction, but cost. For the SPLC, which has substantial resources, the legal fight is survivable. For most organizations in the sector, it wouldn’t be. Holt and his Posting Through It co-host Mike Hayden — the SPLC reporter whose Miller story the prosecution appears to have originated from — have responded by doing their work independently, treating the podcast as a space that exists precisely because mainstream news organizations have fewer, not more, resources dedicated to this beat during the second Trump administration than they did during the first.

“At a time where this is front and center, breathing down your neck — a lot of news organizations in this country have less resources devoted to this issue than they did during the first Trump administration,” Holt said. “A fractured media is a weaker media.”

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Nick Fuentes and the Groypers Are Bluffing

When asked about figures like Nick Fuentes openly rooting for Democratic candidates in 2026 and 2028 as a form of protest against what they see as an insufficiently extreme Trump administration, Holt was blunt.

“They’re full of shit,” he said. “Nick Fuentes is not about to rally up support for Democratic candidates. He threatened to do that during the 2024 election, and he did not.”

The frustration itself, however, is real. The far-right base of the MAGA coalition feels the administration hasn’t delivered the racially focused, brutalist version of governance they believed they were voting for. They’re looking at rising prices, an Iran conflict they didn’t want, legal setbacks to the immigration agenda and ongoing entanglements with Wall Street and cryptocurrency interests they were told to overlook as the price of admission.

“What they’ve got is inflation going up, everything’s getting more expensive, a huge issue with Trump’s loyalty to Israel, a war they didn’t want — and they’re not really getting what they want exactly on immigration,” Holt said. “They’re frustrated because they don’t think he upheld his extreme far-right end of the bargain.”

Holt’s read is that figures like Fuentes, Alex Jones, Tucker Carlson and Megyn Kelly are engaged in a pressure campaignby threatening to fracture the base in order to force the administration to appease them. He noted that the White House is aware of and responsive to that dynamic. However, he dismissed the actual threat as hollow. Going from “I might sit this one out” to “I want a Democrat to win” is, he suggested, not a line that crowd will cross.

Tucker Carlson Is Dangling Bait — Don’t Take It

Holt pushed back firmly on the notion that Tucker Carlson’s occasional use of populist economic language — his acknowledgments of healthcare dysfunction, wealth inequality, and the unattainability of the American dream — makes him any kind of ally for people on the left. He characterized it as sophisticated audience-capture.

“What people like Tucker Carlson have realized is that if they can acknowledge those sentiments, validate those sentiments, that will differentiate them from the Fox Newses of the world. Once they get that audience, particularly younger audiences who feel the effects of this stuff in a much more profound way, they can start steering them in a right-wing direction,” he said.

The trap, Holt argued, is mistaking shared diagnosis for shared vision. Carlson may agree that healthcare in America is broken. But his prescription isn’t single-payer coverage — it’s building a deportation force to remove brown people from the country. Holt said when it comes to the fundamental question of what a positive future looks like, the left’s vision is “so diametrically opposed” to Carlson’s that no tactical alliance is coherent.

“One is creative, one is destructive. I just don’t think it’s advantageous or wise to take the bait,” he said. “Because the way I see it, that’s ultimately what it is.”

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Louisiana v. Callais Didn’t Formally Kill the Voting Rights Act. Murray Says It Effectively Did.

Gibson opened by asking Murray whether she agreed with the assessment of attorney Anne P. Mitchell — interviewed previously on Raw America — that the Louisiana v. Callais ruling significantly weakened but did not gut the Voting Rights Act. Murray said she sees it differently.

“Justice Alito, who wrote for the six-to-three conservative super majority, basically said that he was not overruling Section Two. He was instead ‘realigning and updating’ the jurisprudence and the statute,” Murray explained. “And if you’re concerned that a federal court is updating legislation, which seems like a legislative and congressional function, you would be someone who has read the Constitution, because that is exactly what legislators do.”

Murray drew a pointed historical parallel to the Court’s refusal in 1992 to overturn the Roe v. Wade decision to underscore her concern about the Court’s approach. Murray noted that justices “changed the ruling enough to allow states to effectively legislate the right to abortion to the point where it was really kind of a nub of a right.”

“If they had simply overruled Roe, I think you would have seen massive public galvanization over that issue in 1992,” she said.

Murray said she believes the Court deployed the same strategy in Louisiana v. Callais in keeping Section Two nominally alive while stripping it of its practical power.

“It actually would have been not only more responsible, but also better for the public, if the court had just come out and said, ‘We are overruling Section Two of the Voting Rights Act,’” Murray said. “This sort of too-clever-by-half really protects and insulates the court from public outcry.”

Why Partisan Gerrymandering and Racial Disenfranchisement Are Inseparable in the South

Gibson noted that the ruling has already had real-world consequences, with Alabama moving forward with a 2023 congressional map that would eliminate one of its two predominantly Black districts. He asked Murray whether this is proof that the Voting Rights Act remains as necessary today as it was when it was passed in 1965. She responded that this was “100 percent” the case.”

“This court has a really weird view of racial progress. It’s almost like none of them are racial minorities — although one of them is, although I’m not sure the Black delegation is claiming Clarence Thomas these days,” Murray said, referencing the Chappelle’s Show “Racial Draft” sketch.

Murray pushed back on Justice Alito’s argument in Louisiana v. Callais that what occurred in Louisiana was partisan gerrymandering rather than racial discrimination. She argued the distinction is nearly meaningless in practice across much of the South.

“Throughout the South and in many parts of the country, partisan affiliation runs closely with race. They’re inextricably intertwined, such that many minority voters are also Democrats,” she said. “So if you are consolidating for partisan advantage in the South, you’re likely doing it in a way that disenfranchises minority voters.”

Murray also flagged the cynical corollary of this logic — that the remaining shell of Section Two could now be weaponized in reverse. “When blue states now go to redistrict to consolidate their advantages for the Democratic Party, what you will instead see are white voters challenging those redistricting efforts under Section Two, on the ground that they’re actually about consolidating advantage for racial blocs,” she said. “It’ll just be used the opposite way.”

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Murray Calls on Congress to Pass a New Voting Rights Act

Gibson asked whether, if Democrats were to retake the House and Senate in future elections, passing a new Voting Rights Act should be a top priority. Murray was unequivocal.

“It’s past time for the Democratic Party to take seriously the threats to the right to vote and to protect it in earnest,” Murray said.

The NYU law professor and author also expanded on what she sees as the broader anti-democratic threat hiding beneath the racial dimensions of redistricting battles. She cited comments made by Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) following Louisiana v. Callais, in which Blackburn reportedly said the ruling would ensure Tennessee remains a red state.

“Do states have a partisan affiliation? No, they are comprised of individuals,” Murray said. “What does it mean to draw your districts to keep Tennessee red? It means you’re not only disenfranchising Black people, which may be your goal, but you’re also disenfranchising white Democrats — anyone who is a Democrat.”

Murray urged Raw America’s audience to understand the issue in its full scope. “If Black people are the canary in the coal mine here, they’re just the first. This is going to trickle down. Ultimately, this is an anti-democratic move to consolidate partisan advantage. It is profoundly, profoundly anti-democratic. It is the exact opposite of what the framers of the Constitution, and certainly the framers of the Reconstruction amendments, wanted to see.”

What Can Be Done to Rein In the Roberts Court?

Gibson asked Murray about potential structural remedies for a Supreme Court that many legal commentators have described as the most partisan in modern history — including court expansion, term limits, a binding code of ethics and requiring justices to ride circuit.

Murray said the conversation needs to start from a different premise.

“We need to stop thinking of court reform as the nuclear option,” she said. “We’ve had a Supreme Court that has been of different multiples at various points in our history — six justices, seven justices. It’s been at nine for a long time, but it doesn’t have to be.”

On term limits, Murray said the idea is reasonable but legally complicated, since Article III of the Constitution guarantees life tenure for federal judges. She noted a potential workaround — a justice could serve a defined term on the Supreme Court but remain in the federal judiciary in another capacity — though any such statute would almost certainly be challenged and could land before the very court it seeks to reform. She also argued for more aggressive congressional oversight.

“We ought to normalize the prospect of hauling the Supreme Court justices before Congress more often,” Murray said. “Congress could certainly call them in and ask them questions — at the very least, questions about the fact that some of the justices appear to have emotional-support billionaires who take them on lavish vacations, while the emotional-support billionaires also have very cozy relationships with the kinds of regulated industries and groups that regularly appear before the Supreme Court.”

She emphasized that public pressure, while imperfect, has already worked.

“We only got that non-binding ethics code because people made such a stink about Harlan Crow being so tight with Justice Thomas,” she said. “These justices — they care about what the people think. All the court has is its own legitimacy. There’s no way to enforce its judgments with the military. All it has is this idea that when they say something, we believe them, because we think they are doing law and not politics.”

The Threat of an Article V Convention Is Real — and the Right Is Already Mobilizing

Gibson raised the possibility of an Article V constitutional convention — a process by which states, bypassing Congress entirely, could force a rewriting of the Constitution itself — and asked Murray whether she thinks it’s realistic.

Murray said not only is it realistic, but that elements of the political right are actively working to make it happen.

“There are people who are very excited about the prospect of a state-led constitutional convention,” she said, noting that conservative state legislatures have been organizing in pursuit of exactly this goal. “I think it’s one of the reasons why there’s been so much pressure to gerrymander state legislatures — to consolidate partisan advantage so that there will be a super majority of state legislatures that may be amenable to amending or rewriting the Constitution to lock in certain privileges.”

“This is one of the reasons we don’t talk enough about why the Rucho v. Common Cause decision is so alarming — the decision that said federal courts have no role to play in partisan gerrymandering,” she continued. “If you have partisan-gerrymandered enough state legislatures so that a super majority of them are red, then it’s on. They will write a whole new constitution, and who knows what they’ll do.”

Why Murray Wrote a Guide to the Constitution — and What She Hopes Readers Learn

Murray got the idea to write her book thnks to a viral Twitter thread from hip-hop pioneer Luke Campbell (aka Uncle Luke) of 2 Live Crew.

“Luke had a list of all these things that he wanted Joe Biden as President of the United States to do, and I realized probably three-fourths of the list were things that Joe Biden did not have any constitutional authority to do,” Murray said. “It occurred to me that Uncle Luke probably hadn’t read the Constitution.”

Murray said the problem runs deeper than any one person — it reflects a generation-wide gap in civic education that opened up after No Child Left Behind began stripping civics from public school curricula.

“We have a whole generation of people now coming into political maturity who literally have no idea, through no fault of their own, how this government works, or what they can do to engage with it,” she said.

On what she most wants readers to understand, Murray pointed to the original intent behind the document itself.

“This is a trauma-informed document. The framers wanted a government that works, but they didn’t want it to work against us,” she explained. “It is really a document that is about restraining government power, dividing it between three branches so that no single branch, including the President, can become too powerful and despotic.”

Murray closed with an urgent message: the Constitution is not merely a weapon wielded by those in power — it belongs to everyone.

“We the people have actually played a role in making constitutional meaning,” she said. “Back in the Gilded Age, people were so upset about income inequality and the rise of oligarchs... and they got a constitutional amendment that would allow Congress to levy a progressive income tax. If this sounds familiar to you, it should. We the people can actually do stuff. We just have to remember that this document is not just a tool to be wielded against us. It’s something that we can use to change our own lives, too.”

Melissa Murray is a professor of law at NYU School of Law and a contributor to MS NOW. Her new book, The U.S. Constitution: A Comprehensive and Annotated Guide for the Modern Reader, is available now from Simon & Schuster.

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• How Republicans used nonsensical technical arguments to overturn the will of the people

• The Virginia Supreme Court declining to weigh in before the election happened

• Virginia counties being out millions of dollars in election-related expenses without hope for reimbursement

• The case Virginia justices cited that revealed their true motivations

• Democrats’ next steps after the April election results were thrown out

• A redistricting arms race that could still end up in Democrats’ favor

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‘Legal Calvinball’: Republicans’ Nonsensical Argument to Throw Out an Election

Fiddler didn’t mince words when asked whether Republicans had any legitimate legal footing for their challenge. “It was legal Calvinball,” she said, citing the fictional game from the Calvin & Hobbes comic strip in which rules are made up in the middle of the game.

“The State Supreme Court, specifically four justices on the Virginia State Supreme Court, decided that they were going to invalidate the results of this election,” Fiddler said. “And they had to get really creative to do it.”

She outlined Republicans’ three-pronged legal argument. The first centered on the definition of the word “election” itself , and whether “election day” constituted the entire election or just the final day of what is actually a broader voting window that includes early voting. The second argument was a procedural one about the scope of a special legislative session. The third leaned on a century-old law requiring constitutional amendments to be posted at every courthouse in Virginia for 90 days — a requirement tied to the state’s 1920 constitution, rather than the one that has been in effect since 1971.

Ultimately, Fiddler said, the four Republican-leaning justices latched onto the first argument and bent it to their purposes. “They decided that election is not actually the election — which is that Tuesday after Monday in November,” she said. “They decided that it includes the entire period before, during which folks have the opportunity to cast their ballot early. It’s not early voting if it’s election voting.”

The Court Had a Chance to Step In Before the Vote — And Chose Not To

One of the most damning aspects of the ruling, Fiddler argued, is that the Virginia Supreme Court had every opportunity to rule on the legality of the election before it happened — but declined to do so.

“Republicans went to their pet judge out in southwest Virginia, a guy that they had appointed who’s friends with some of the lawmakers, and he ruled the way they wanted,” she said. The case was then appealed to the state Supreme Court, which Republicans asked to block the April 21 vote entirely. The court refused.

“I am positive that at least four of those justices were just praying that the measure would fail at the ballot box so they wouldn’t have to weigh in,” Fiddler continued. “The State Supreme Court is actually, historically in Virginia, not super political. But we can’t say that about them anymore. I was frankly shocked by the ruling on so many levels.”

She confirmed that a state supreme court ruling invalidating an entire statewide election is essentially unprecedented in modern Virginia history.

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Millions of Voters Were Disenfranchised and Counties Are Out Millions of Dollars

Fiddler was blunt about the human cost of the ruling. The court’s decision to retroactively invalidate the election means that approximately $5 million spent by Virginia counties to conduct the election will never be reimbursed.

“Those localities are just out of the money for no reason,” she said, noting that the financial burden falls unevenly. Wealthier regions like Northern Virginia can absorb the hit better than rural counties that depend on state revenue sharing.

More importantly, she pushed back hard on the court’s claim that early voters were somehow disenfranchised by casting ballots before the legislature completed a procedural step.

“They were saying that voters were disenfranchised because of how they decided to define ‘election,’” Fiddler said. “But also, they were totally okay with disenfranchising even more voters — 1.6 million voters — who actually voted in this election directly on these maps.”

Citing Marbury v. Madison: The Court Showing Its Hand

In her article summarizing the Virginia Supreme Court decision, Fiddler flagged a telling moment in the majority opinion — the justices’ decision to cite Marbury v. Madison, the foundational 1803 case that established the Supreme Court’s power of judicial review.

“It’s the equivalent of the justices channeling [South Park character] Eric Cartman and saying, ‘Respect my authori-tye,’” she said. “It’s basically reminding everyone that we have the power to do this. The fact that you feel the need to flex like that is just very suspect.”

She added that the Virginia justices are not operating at the level of the U.S. Supreme Court — and that even the Roberts Court knows better than to lean on Marbury v. Madison as a crutch, adding: “That’s just crap.”

What Democrats Can Do — And Why It’s Complicated

Fiddler acknowledged that a lot of people in progressive circles have been asking whether Virginia Democrats could simply ignore the ruling. She said the answer is more complicated than a simple yes or no.

Fiddler pointed out that because Republicans’ favored judge in Tazewell County blocked certification of the April results, the new maps were never officially implemented. Any effort to proceed as if they had would require active, affirmative steps from the Virginia Board of Elections and local registrars across the state, which Fiddler said would require “a lot of proactive ignoring.”

One option being floated is for the Democratic-controlled legislature to lower the mandatory retirement age for Virginia Supreme Court justices — currently set by statute at 73 — to something like 54, which would effectively remove the current court and allow Democrats to appoint a new one. But Fiddler said that path runs through Democratic Governor Abigail Spanberger, who would have to sign the legislation.

“If she’s not on board with it, it’s not going to happen,” Fiddler said. “And the fact that it seems like lawmakers in Virginia are saying this is not happening — I think that’s coming from the top.” She also noted timing issues: the legislature still hasn’t passed a state budget, and with primaries already pushed back to August, the window to implement new maps for 2026 may have already closed.

How Democrats Can Still Win the Redistricting Arms Race

Fiddler observed that Republicans have been planning to interfere with the 2026 elections for months, and that the Virginia ruling is less a new template than a formalization of a playbook already in use.

“No tactic is off the table when it comes to Republicans looking to Donald Trump specifically, and his allies in the movement, doing everything they can think of to mess with elections and election results this fall,” Fiddler said.

But she also said Democrats are finally responding in kind. After initially trying to simply counter Republican redistricting moves state-by-state, Democrats are now behaving as though all restraints are off. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) has already begun outreach to blue-state counterparts in Colorado, Maryland, New Jersey, New York and other states.

“Unilateral disarmament does not work,” Fiddler said. “Democrats did not come at it with the ‘all bets are off’ approach from the start. They were just trying to counter what Republicans are doing and keep it more or less equal, and that didn’t work out for them. So now Democrats are finally behaving as though all bets are off — even though they’ve been off.”

Reasons for Hope: Federal Worker Fury, Special Election Trends, and Anti-Trump Energy

Despite the frustrating ruling, Fiddler offered several reasons for optimism heading into November. She pointed to the rage of Virginia’s more than 300,000 federal workers — many of them laid off or displaced by Elon Musk’s DOGE initiative — as a powerful undercurrent that hasn’t dissipated.

“If you weren’t a federal worker who got laid off, you absolutely knew one,” she said. “They remember this, and they’re not going to forget it, and they’re going to carry that with them through November.”

She also noted that Democrats have been dramatically overperforming in special elections throughout Trump’s second term, beating Kamala Harris’s 2024 numbers by an average of 10 to 12 points. Even on the old Virginia maps, she said, Democrats have a realistic shot at picking up two congressional seats if turnout reflects the current political environment.

“The anti-Trump juice is going to be real this year,” Fiddler said. “People in the country are going to remember why they’re mad and who they’re mad at — and they’re going to show up in November.”

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• Why the new maps may not survive a court challenge despite the latest Supreme Court ruling

• Florida Republicans endangering their own congressional representation by diluting their own districts

• Florida Democrats’ recent pattern of surprising wins in deep-red cities and districts

• How the cost of living crisis is impacting Floridians, and making it harder for Republicans to win

• The recent resignation of a Democrat in the U.S. House of Representatives, and what that means for an embattled Republican congressman

• The strength of Florida’s slate of 2026 Democratic candidates

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DeSantis’ Gerrymander: Rushed, Indefensible, and Likely Unconstitutional

Fried opened by explaining that Florida voters passed a Fair Districts amendment in 2010 with nearly 70% support, enshrining protections in the state constitution that prohibit partisan map-drawing, mandate the protection of minority districts, and require keeping communities and counties intact. DeSantis, she argued, is trampling all of that.

The special session moved with startling speed.

“On Monday, we saw the maps that he announced on Fox News — color coded red and blue — and talked about the partisan differences between Democrats and Republicans in our state,” Fried said. “None of that should be in consideration.”

By Tuesday, the legislature had passed the new maps in under 24 hours, with the bill’s own sponsor unable to answer basic questions about how the lines were drawn.

Perhaps most telling, Fried noted, was the silence from the GOP itself: “There was not a single Republican in either chamber that defended the maps, and I think that says everything we need to know.”

Lawsuits, she said, have been in the works for months. As soon as DeSantis signs the legislation, legal challenges will be filed by a coalition of advocacy organizations. Fried said the Florida Democratic Party has been closely involved in preparing for litigation, though the party itself may not be a named plaintiff given the non-partisan framing of the Fair Districts law.

‘They Just Handed Us Seats’: Why Democrats Think the Gerrymander Backfires

After Virginia voters passed their own pro-redistricting ballot measure, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) argued that the new maps would actually create more pickup opportunities for Democrats — just as he believed Trump’s redistricting effort in Texas had done. Fried said she shares that confidence.

Florida Democrats have flipped 29 seats since early 2025, outperforming the national leftward swing by 17 points. The new lines, Fried argued, diluted once-safe Republican districts.

She also pointed out that the state’s eight Democratic members of Congress — including Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Darren Soto, Kathy Castor, and Jared Moskowitz — are deeply embedded in their communities and their political influence extends beyond their district lines, making them difficult to unseat even with redrawn maps.

A Grassroots Wave: How Florida Democrats Are Winning Again

Gibson pointed to a string of striking Democratic victories: Miami’s mayoral seat flipping blue for the first time in 30 years, a Democratic mayor in Boca Raton, and a state legislative seat in Mar-a-Lago’s own backyard flipping Democratic. Fried attributed the turnaround to a combination of structural organizing and genuine voter frustration.

The party launched what it calls the “Pendulum Project” in early 2025 — a year-round organizing operation that contacted over 5 million Floridians in an off-year cycle alone. “For the first time, and probably maybe ever, can say that we are not in chaos, that everybody is rowing in the same direction,” Fried said.

She also pushed back on the perception that Florida’s voter registration numbers doom Democrats from the start. Around 1.5 million Democrats were shifted from active to inactive voter rolls under a DeSantis-backed law — a move she said inflated the GOP’s apparent advantage. Meanwhile, she said roughly 80 percent of independents have been breaking for Democrats this cycle, with 10 to 20 percent of Republicans crossing over as well.

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Cost of Living: The Issue Driving Voter Anger

Fried was emphatic that pocketbook issues are central to the Democratic message. She noted that Florida Democrats in the legislature introduced over 25 bills this session addressing affordability — covering housing, tax relief, subsidies, and healthcare — and not a single one received a hearing. Republicans, she said, spent the session renaming airports and arranging a Trump presidential library deal on prime Miami real estate.

“The reason why our insurance premiums — we’ve seen since DeSantis became governor a 400 percent increase in people’s premiums — that is not by accident,” she said, also faulting the state’s former CFO for failing to hold insurance companies accountable after major hurricanes.

On the national level, she connected soaring costs to Trump administration policies favoring wealthy corporations, pointing to recent reports showing CEO salaries rising roughly 25 percent in 2025 while worker wages declined.

“This is just corporate greed at its worst,” Fried said.

Holding Both Sides Accountable: The Corey Mills Question

Gibson noted that the Florida Democratic Party had taken an unusually firm stance when former Congressman Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick (D-Fla.) resigned amid an ethics probe, publicly stating that “corruption has no place in Congress.” Fried used the same standard to call out Congressman Corey Mills (R-Fla.), who faces his own ethics investigation and has been accused of Stolen Valor and other serious misconduct.

“If the Republicans aren’t going to hold him accountable, we will,” Fried said, adding that the party has a strong candidate — Bale Dalton, a former NASA Chief of Staff under Senator Bill Nelson — running against Mills in 2026.

Looking Ahead: Candidates and Cautious Optimism

Without making primary endorsements, Fried expressed enthusiasm for the overall candidate bench Florida Democrats are fielding — veterans, first responders, Teach for America alumni, and community organizers. She named Eliot Rodriguez, a well-known former TV news anchor, as a notable candidate in Florida’s 27th congressional district, and praised Gay Valimont for her 22-point improvement in the Florida Panhandle’s 1st district in the last cycle.

“Do not give up on us,” Fried said. “Florida is worth fighting for. Our people are worth fighting for. We were the lab rats of Project 2025 — it started here in Florida, and we’re going to end it here in Florida.”

Help Raw America Stay Independent

Fried’s exclusive interview with Raw America capped off a week in which we also spoke with attorney Anne P. Mitchell about the Supreme Court’s Louisiana v. Callais ruling that fundamentally weakened the Voting Rights Act, and with former Trump DHS chief of staff-turned-whistleblower Miles Taylor about his new anti-ICE initiative. Our Capitol reporter, Luke De Cresce, has also been bringing on-the-ground coverage of developments in Washington, directly from the halls of Congress.

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