Breaking: House Democrats Won't Try to Impeach Trump

Trump still menacing Greenland, Amazon plans most-polluting power plant in America, and Darline Graham is a flop

Good morning. I’m John Byrne.

Democrats are quietly building the machinery to gut Trump: no impeachment circus, just subpoenas. Greenland told a Trump-linked oil outfit to stop their plan to drill, and enlisted Dr. Phil to twist the knife. Amazon’s about to fire up the dirtiest power plant in America to feed its AI habit. And in South Carolina, Trump’s hand-picked heir to Lindsey Graham’s seat is cratering with his own MAGA voters. The wheels are coming off.

One quick thing first, because it’s the whole reason we’re here. When a billionaire or oligarch buys a newspaper, the coverage doesn’t change with an announcement; it just quietly does, and the stories that embarrass powerful people get softer until they vanish. Bezos owns the Washington Post and killed its endorsement when it suited him. Murdoch built a whole network around telling one audience what to believe. Bari Weiss has already killed stories at CBS. We don’t work that way, because no billionaire owns us. You do. That’s the only reason we can chase these stories without a phone call from upstairs shutting them down.

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Democrats Are Done Playing The Impeachment Game

House Democrats, projected to take the House in November, are quietly plotting their strategy to investigate Trump. Rather than march toward another doomed impeachment vote, they’re preparing to bury the Trump orbit in subpoenas, hearings and document requests.

The hope is that slow, methodical accountability work won’t hand Trump a martyrdom narrative.

Party insiders say they learned this lesson the hard way during Trump’s first term, when impeachment consumed Congress and let him play the victim.

“We’re not going into this to impeach,” one senior Democratic aide told Reuters. “No one wants a failed vote on day one.”

The plan instead targets the companies and financial firms swimming in Trump’s wake. Among them? Apple, Alphabet, Palantir, Blackstone, BlackRock, and Elon Musk’s Tesla. There are also plans to probe Trump-linked vehicles like 1789 Capital, where Don Jr. is a partner.

Democrats have already started sending letters to their targets. Paramount Skydance received one; YouTube’s parent Alphabet, over a curiously timed $24.5 million Trump settlement; and private prison operator GEO Group.

They're also eyeing Department of Homeland Security contracts, the financing behind Trump's planned White House ballroom, and foreign sovereign wealth funds whose money has flowed into Trump family-linked entities. And because those foreign funds are hard for congressional committees to reach, Democrats are mapping out the U.S.-based firms and intermediaries they can subpoena instead.

The companies can ignore Democrats’ letters for now. But the message is unmistakable: a paper trail is being laid, and the subpoenas are loaded. Turns out you don’t need an impeachment vote to make a president sweat.

Greenland Tells Trump’s Oil Cronies To Get Lost — With Dr. Phil In Tow

Though it doesn’t make the front pages, Trump continues to menace Greenland. He recently posted a Truth Social image of himself looming over the island and telling Americans to “bet” it’d be American-controlled before the decade’s out.

Greenland’s response was less theatrical and considerably more effective: a formal warning to a Trump-linked oil company that showed up with drilling equipment and no permission.

The company, Texas-based Greenland Energy, is a Trump-world all-star team. Billionaire megadonor Kenneth Griffin owns a chunk of it, and one of its directors worked on Trump’s Golden Dome missile plan. Its chairman runs in Trump’s circle. And its newest hire is none other than Dr. Phil, the right-wing former talk-show host tapped to film a documentary about the whole grubby enterprise.

Greenland’s government wasn’t charmed. Their warning to the company demanded that all future logistics be approved by mineral authorities before anyone sinks a shovel.

Greenland Energy’s chairman said “enthusiasm” led to “confusion.” The company, meanwhile, is still planning to ship 300 containers of drilling gear come September. Nothing says respect for sovereignty like sending the equipment anyway and hoping the paperwork catches up.

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Amazon’s About To Light Up The Most Polluting Plant In The Country

Amazon confirmed Friday that it’s investing in a natural-gas plant in Pecos County, Texas, that could belch out more planet-warming pollution than any other power plant in America. 35 gas turbines, up to 7.65 gigawatts, to feed the insatiable energy appetite of a single AI data center.

Amazon co-founded the Climate Pledge and vowed to zero out its emissions by 2040. The company’s emissions, however, continue to rise.

The culprit? The AI boom. Data centers devour electricity faster than the grid can supply it, so hyperscalers are simply building their own gas plants on-site. (Elon Musk has done this as well, in Tennessee.) Trump has cheered this along, fast-tracking data-center construction and preaching “energy dominance” while sidelining solar and wind.

The Pecos plant is permitted for roughly 33 million tons of carbon dioxide a year. That’s more than double the current national dirtiest, a coal plant in Alabama.

Amazon assures everyone it “won’t raise electricity costs for Texas families” because it won’t connect to the grid. Cold comfort for the lungs of West Texas, which will get smog and air pollution.

A watchdog called it “a foreshadowing of what’s to come.” He’s probably right.

Trump’s Golden Ticket In South Carolina Is Bombing With MAGA

Lindsey Graham died in July, and South Carolina will vote to fill his Senate seat in an Aug. 25 primary. Trump endorsed Graham’s sister, state Sen. Darline Graham.

But according to the Bulwark‘s focus groups, his own voters aren’t buying it.

“I don’t feel like she has the experience,” said one focus group member. Another bristled at the rush: “There’s a rush to make an emotional decision,” he said, vowing to research candidates on his own rather than vote on sentiment.

Most damning was the voter who sniffed out the whole arrangement: Trump, she said, likes Darline precisely because “he feels like he can just mold her into doing whatever he wants.”

Graham’s debut ad hit the obligatory notes: no men in women’s sports, only citizens voting (already the law), but there seemed to be no real argument underneath.

Whether she has enough support to clear 50 percent is an open question. What’s not in question: when Trump’s blessing stops moving Trump’s own voters, the spell is starting to break.

Before You Go, Help Support Independent Media

If today’s edition handed you something the billionaire outlets are busy softening, the best thing you can do is become a paying subscriber. And ask yourself why you had to come here to read half of it. When a handful of oligarchs own the megaphone, the story stops being what happened and quietly becomes whatever they’ll let you hear about it, and a week where Trump got caught lying about the Reflecting Pool, watched his family’s World Cup deal die, and lost in court for the nineteenth time is exactly the kind of week that gets softer on outlets owned by people who still need something from him. We ran it all because nobody owns us but our readers. Subscribe or upgrade right now.

I’m John Byrne. Thanks for reading Raw America.