Good evening. I’m British Chris, and this is Raw America. Do us a quick favor and tap the ❤️ and restack buttons if you’re watching this on Substack. Those two clicks make sure we get these stories in front of the people who need them most.
Today, three-term Republican Congresswoman Lauren Boebert of Colorado has officially lost her House seat to a retired Navy rear admiral in the state’s reddest district. Donald Trump has pivoted from acknowledging Democrats’ midterm victory to now questioning the legitimacy of the election. Democratic Senator John Fetterman of Pennsylvania — one of the most pro-Israel Democrats in Washington — now has his first primary challenger in the form of Ahmed Moor, a democratic socialist who was born in Gaza. And after a judge’s ruling, New York’s county jails now have until November 25 to cut off all contracts with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
A quick ask before we get started: the new crop of Democrats are in Washington today after winning in a historic wave election. Raw America Capitol correspondent Luke De Cresce was on the ground, covering outgoing Congressman Thomas Massie introducing his impeachment resolution against Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. We’re committed to covering the next Congress as diligently as we covered the last one, but we can only do this work if our readers step up to support it.
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MAGA Republican Lauren Boebert Officially Loses Bid for 4th Term
Lauren Boebert career in Congress is now coming to an end. CNN is projecting that Democrat Eileen Laubacher has won Colorado’s 4th Congressional District, which is considered the Centennial State’s most conservative district. Laubacher is leading Boebert by a margin of 3,237 votes, 48.8 percent to 47.9 percent, with 98 percent of all ballots counted.
The race had been too close to call for several days after the election. Laubacher’s lead continued to grow as ballots arrived across the district after deep-red Weld County — considered Boebert’s friendliest — had finished counting votes. The defeated Republican’s campaign attorney, Scott Gessler, claimed the Boebert team was looking “some very unusual voting patterns,” though he never elaborated on what he meant.
Laubacher is a 58-year-old retired rear admiral with more than three decades of military experience. She’s also a former National Security Council official. The publication Colorado Politics reported that no Democrat had won the district since 2008, when its boundaries included Larimer County and Greeley, just north of Denver.
Boebert held onto her seat in the 3rd Congressional District in 2022 by just 546 votes. In 2024, she transferred to the far safer 4th District in order to prevent a rematch with the Democrat who almost beat her. This year, even that move didn’t save her. Trump was also not help down the stretchm with CNN reporting that the president called her “dumb” and “weak-minded” after she spoke at campaign rallies for Thomas Massie in Kentucky. Trump ultimately endorsing Boebert a few days before the midterms.
Boebert’s defeat is merely the latest for Republicans, who suffered staggering losses up and down the ballot Tuesday night, even in deep-red states like Kansas and South Carolina. Votes are still currently being tallied in Alaska and Mississippi’s Senate races. Democrat Scott Colom widened his lead over Mississippi Republican Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith, currently leading by more than 2,500 votes with 97 percent of ballots counted.
Tell Congress: Don’t allow Trump to build himself an arch at Arlington National Cemetery!
Trump Now Suggesting GOP’s Midterm Blowout Was Product of Cheating
Trump is still not quite accepting Republicans’ blowout losses on election night. On Tuesday night, the president called into Fox News and congratulated Democrats on having a good night, indicating he would be willing to work with the new majorities. He told 60 Minutes’ Ross Douthat that his party lost due to “bad messaging” on the economy and lamented that his immigration crackdowns had been “too tough.”
But that conciliatory approach seems to have gone out the window. On Monday, the same day that outed white nationalist Stephen Miller started as his new chief of staff, Trump posted to Truth Social asking whether anyone really believed the election was legitimate. He wondered how polls could have been so wrong, complained about early voting “dumps,” and asserted that it was “all about the machines” without offering any deeper explanation.
His complaint about the polls also doesn’t jibe with reality. Election forecasters had been predicting Democrats would make significant gains in both the House and Senate due to voter anger over Trump’s war with Iran and the ongoing affordability crisis. If polls were wrong, they were weighted too generously in Republicans’ favor as Democrats beat all expectations. As of Monday, they’re projected to win at least 54 Senate seats to the GOP’s 44 and 256 House seats to Republicans’ 160, with some races still uncalled.
Anyone who lived through the 2020 election knows Trump’s playbook. Over the weekend, the president amplified posts demanding “answers at the ballot level.” Prior to the midterms, the White House pushed for California to set aside ballots from roughly 20,000 voters, asserting those voters may not be legal citizens. When former Trump White House press secretary Sean Spicer noted on Saturday that it had been four days since the election without any protests or riots, Semafor’s David Weigel quipped that those kinds of activities usually happen in early January.
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Fetterman Gets Primary Challenger from Democratic Socialist Born in Gaza
Democratic Senator John Fetterman of Pennsylvania — one of the most militant pro-Israel voices on Capitol Hill — is now learning the limits of his power after no longer being the deciding vote in the Senate. 42 year-old Ahmed Moor, a Palestinian American writer born in Gaza, said Monday he’ll be challenging Fetterman for the Democratic nomination in 2028. Moor, who is a democratic socialist, told the Philadelphia Inquirer he’s running on a campaign of good government and upholding the rule of law.
With Democrats now holding 54 Senate seats with hopes of winning as many as 56, Fetterman can no longer hold votes hostage by threatening to side with Republicans. That’s a significant relief to Democrats who stopped putting their trust in him after he began heaping praise on Trump. The president has responded to Fetterman’s friendliness by calling the senator “a great guy,” adding that he would “love” to see him switch to the Republican Party.
Moor’s candidacy represents a major challenge to Fetterman’s unwavering support for Israel and the Netanyahu regime. More than 74,000 Palestinians in Gaza have been killed by the Israeli military since Hamas’ October 7, 2023 attack on Israel, which killed 1,200 civilians. The Inquirer reports Fetterman has met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (whose own political future is now uncertain after Israel’s latest election) more often than with Philadelphia Democratic Mayor Cherelle Parker. Moor aims to cut off U.S. aid to Israel and wants to impose sanctions aimed at securing equal rights for Palestinians.
Moor may be the first primary challenger, but he almost certainly won’t be the last. Longtime Lancaster County Democrat Mike Weidinger told the Guardian he’s expecting high-profile Pennsylvania Democrats like Congressman Chris Deluzio and state lawmaker Malcolm Kenyatta to jump in the race as well. Weidinger said local Democrats worked hard to reeelect Governor Josh Shapiro to a second term, while Fetterman didn’t spend a dime helping any Democrat in the Keystone State. Weidinger added that while Fetterman switching parties may have mattered in a tightly divided 51-49 Senate, he wouldn’t change anything by switching now.
New York County Jails to Cancel All ICE Contracts
Finally, local jails in New York will no longer help the Trump administration’s mass deportation campaign. Democratic Governor Kathy Hochul and Attorney General Letitia James — both of whom were reelected last week — have announced that every jail, police department, and youth detention center in the Empire State has until November 25 to cancel all contracts with ICE. The agency has been paying local jails to rent bed space for immigrants scheduled for deportation.
In a November 6 letter, Lillian Marquez — who leads the New York Attorney General’s Office of Immigrant Trust — informed all sheriffs and county executives that contracts for immigration detention will be void after Wednesday, November 25. Jails can still house federal prisoners who have been criminally charged and must still follow court orders and judicial warrants. Gov. Hochul said local law enforcement agencies should focus their resources on protecting New Yorkers and keeping criminals off the streets, rather than serving as tools for Trump’s “aggressive deportation agenda.”
15 sheriffs initially sued to block the law from taking effect, arguing it violated the Tenth Amendment and portions of the New York state constitution. They also pointed out counties would lose money by no longer renting out bed space to ICE. Rensselaer County currently takes in $136 a day per detainee from the U.S. Marshals Service. But two days before Marquez’s letter went out, U.S. District Judge Mae D’Agostino — a Barack Obama appointee — threw out the sheriffs’ suit, ruling they had no legal standing to sue the state over enforcing its own laws. She added that since those agreements with ICE are voluntary, canceling them doesn’t force any counties to violate federal law.
Ask yourself why you would never see half of these stories in the lead block of David Ellison’s CBS Evening News, or above the fold in Patrick Soon-Shiong’s Los Angeles Times. The answer is simple: the billionaires aren’t interested in covering anything that doesn’t help their bottom line. That’s why we can’t rely on them to give us the whole truth.
I’m British Chris, with Raw America. Thanks for watching, and thanks for supporting independent media. Before you go, please help us break through the algorithm by clicking the ❤️ and tapping the restack button. It helps more than you know.
