Good evening, and welcome to Raw America. I’m British Chris.
Trump’s $1.8 billion slush fund just collapsed under bipartisan pressure. A veteran 60 Minutes correspondent publicly accused the lackey put in place by CBS’ billionaire owners of “murdering” the show. Federal judges across the country are calling out Justice Department lawyers for lying in court. And a MAGA TV host went on the air to beg Trump to stop hurting his own supporters.
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Trump Abandons MAGA Slush Fund After Republicans Promise to Kill It
Trump is in full retreat mode after suffering an embarrassing public loss.
Republicans pushed back so hard on Trump’s proposed $1.776 billion slush fund for MAGA loyalists that House Speaker Mike Johnson was reportedly planning to confront Trump over the fund at the White House. Then two federal judges stepped in.
First, Judge Leonie Brinkema in Virginia halted disbursements from the fund. In Florida, Judge Kathleen Williams, the judge who oversaw the original lawsuit, announced she’d be launching her own inquiry.
And just like that, senior administration officials are now telling Axios it’s dead.
Now, here’s the important caveat: nothing in the Trump administration is final until Trump himself says so. One source said Trump “believes in it” and that “nothing is final until it’s final.”
But the political and legal pressure got to be too much. What started as a sweetheart deal tucked inside an IRS settlement is now being walked back. One senior administration official even told Axios the White House itself didn’t even know the fund was being created, saying staffers were “blindsided.”
‘60 Minutes’ Star Accuses Bari Weiss of ‘Murdering’ Show
Bari Weiss — the head of CBS News hand-picked by the network’s new billionaire owner — is now facing a full mutiny at 60 Minutes.
On Monday, veteran correspondent Scott Pelley walked into a staff meeting and didn’t hold back.
According to reports, Pelley looked at the room and said, point-blank that Weiss was “murdering 60 Minutes,” adding, “she was brought in to kill it and is doing exactly that.”
The room gave Pelley a standing ovation.
The newly appointed executive producer told Pelley he wouldn’t be “intimidated.” CBS News’ managing editor accused Pelley of being rude. Pelley reportedly shot back that the network had been rude in the way it fired Tanya Simon, the ousted executive producer. Additionally, Weiss fired the show’s executive producer, its executive editor, and two respected correspondents, Sharyn Alfonsi and Cecilia Vega.
Alfonsi, whose segment on a brutal El Salvador prison was shelved by Weiss back in December, released a statement calling out what she described as the systematic dismantling of the wall between editorial independence and corporate interest.
Vega was even more direct. She said her producing teams had experienced efforts to insert political bias into their work, and that reporters were self-censoring out of fear. She called it “dangerous for democracy.”
It’s hard to dispute what’s happening in plain sight. Experienced journalists are being pushed out, replaced by people who are expected not to push back. And one of the last people left standing is pointing out that the whole thing is being killed on purpose.
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Judges Say Trump DOJ ‘Unworthy’ of Public Trust
Across multiple federal courtrooms, judges have been issuing rulings in recent weeks that go beyond the usual legal back-and-forth. They’re calling Justice Department lawyers liars. By name. In writing.
In Rhode Island, Judge Mary McElroy found that a DOJ lawyer told her the hospital at the center of a transgender health records dispute had gone silent since February. Emails showed that wasn’t true. The hospital’s lawyers had stayed in close contact the entire time.
McElroy called the government’s account “misleading, if not utterly false,” and wrote that the Justice Department “has proven unworthy of this trust at every point in this case.”
In Chicago, Judge April Perry found that DOJ lawyers had improperly influenced a grand jury in a case involving activists protesting outside an immigration detention facility. When they handed her transcripts of those proceedings, portions had been redacted to hide misconduct by the U.S. attorney’s office.
And in Tennessee, a judge was skeptical about whether a local U.S. attorney was really acting independently when he brought federal charges against Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the Salvadoran man who was wrongly deported to an El Salvador mega-prison. Emails showed the Trump administration was in constant contact with that prosecutor, calling the case a “top priority.”
The White House’s response has, of course, been to attack the judges for their rulings. But one of those judges, McElroy, was appointed by Trump himself.
MAGA TV Host Begs Trump to Stop Iran War, Saying It’s Bankrupting His Supporters
NewsNation host Batya Ungar-Sargon, who has called Trump the “most effective president of my lifetime,” went on the air Saturday and delivered a distress call. She told Trump his supporters were “hurting,” and that they are now “broke” thanks to his policies.
She described supporters skipping meals and buying canned chicken in bulk because that’s all they can afford. She said savings are at an all-time low and credit card delinquency rates keep climbing.
She pointed out that Trump’s own base, many of whom supported his Iran war and said they were willing to pay a little more to help him, have now “paid all they can.”
And she asked a direct question: the U.S. has pulled in $200 billion in tariff revenue. Couldn’t some of that go back to the Americans struggling to put food on the table?
It’s a remarkable moment when one of the most loyal voices in MAGA media is on national television asking the president to please notice that his own voters can’t afford groceries. And that warning will only get louder as 2026 drags on.
Stories like these are exactly why we’re building something different here at Raw America.
This summer, we’re working to build out our Washington D.C. bureau so we can break more exclusive news directly from Congress. Our Capitol Hill partner just landed an exclusive interview with Senator Ron Wyden tomorrow, which you’ll be able to watch here on our website.
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Thanks for watching. I’m British Chris, with Raw America. We’ll see you tomorrow.
STORIES YOU MAY HAVE MISSED:
Trump’s Pentagon Caught Understating Damage to U.S. Bases from Iran War. Since President Donald Trump initially launched the war against Iran on February 28, the Iranian military has caused tens of billions of dollars in damage to as many as 28 American bases in eight different countries. A new BBC analysis found that Iran has also damaged or destroyed at least 42 aircraft, “including F-15 and F-35 fighter jets, 24 MQ-9 Reaper drones and an A-10 attack plane” since the war began.
Hegseth Blocks Black and Female Naval Officers from Getting Promoted. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth recently blocked the promotions of seven Naval officers who had been selected for their new roles by a board of U.S. Navy admirals. At least two of those officers are women, and two others are Black men. The exclusion of women from the pending list of one-star general promotions comes despite women making up 21 percent of active-duty U.S. Navy personnel.
Conservatives Now Attacking James Talarico’s Church. The far-right Daily Wire — which is funded by Texas-based billionaires Dan and Ferris Wilks — recently published an article critical of St. Andrews Presbyterian Church, where Texas Democratic U.S. Senate candidate is a member. The Daily Wire referred to St. Andrews as a “woke Austin church” due to its work supporting social justice-oriented nonprofit organizations like Planned Parenthood. The publication also attacked the church over its “Field of Hope” project, which was launched in 1993 to raise awareness about the AIDS epidemic and its impact on Texans.
Chicagoans Push to Rename Downtown Street Housing Trump Tower After Obama. A new petition aiming to rename a stretch of Wabash Avenue in downtown Chicago is picking up steam, and could be approved with a vote by the Chicago City Council. Local resident Bryce Jones wants to rename the portion of the street that houses Trump Tower after former President Barack Obama, meaning Trump Tower’s new address could soon be 401 Barack Hussein Obama Avenue.
Federal Judge Blocks Trump from Dismantling Colorado Weather Lab. A federal judge on Monday ruled that the Trump administration’s shuttering of the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colorado was illegal, and done as an act of political retaliation against the deep-blue state. The Trump administration had previously stripped the NCAR-Wyoming Supercomputing Center of its nonprofit owner as a means of breaking it up. U.S. District Judge R. Brooke Jackson — a Barack Obama appointee — ruled that the move was made in response to Gov. Jared Polis (D) refusing to free Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters from prison, who was convicted for allowing an activist affiliate with MyPillow CEO and election denier Mike Lindell to access county voting systems. Polis has since commuted Peters’ sentence. She has since made multiple appearance on far-right media outlets baselessly accusing Democrats of trying to steal elections.
