Breaking: Trump May Blow Up Mountain in National Park to Build Road No One Wants

Good evening. I’m British Chris, and this is Raw America.

Donald Trump’s handpicked Kennedy Center board is openly defying a federal court order by voting to close down the complex and put Trump’s name back on the building. The Trump administration could blow up a mountain in a national park in order to build a road that nobody actually needs. Top Democrats are now saying that if they win back control of Congress in November, they’ll be considering “dramatic” changes to the MAGA Supreme Court. And a federal judge just threw out Trump’s lawsuit against Harvard, ruling the government never actually proved its case.

Before we go further, a quick ask: we’re up against a cartel of pro-Trump billionaires using their bottomless wealth to buy up as many news outlets as they can, because they want to decide what we get to know and what gets buried. We rely solely on reader support because we refuse to let a billionaire owner or corporate parent dictate what we get to cover. But we’ll be honest: we’re behind on our fundraising numbers and need free subscribers like you who believe in the importance of independent journalism to chip in to keep this work going. Take a moment and upgrade your free subscription to a paying one. You can do it for just 22 cents a day.

Every dollar of every subscription goes directly toward our independent journalism. That includes not only twice-daily newsletters like these, but our on-the-ground reporting from Raw America journalists like White House reporter Brian Karem, who just wrote this groundbreaking report on what Trump’s inner circle is really saying about him abandoning top staffers on a decoy jet. Your subscriptions also fund our live interview programming with some of the biggest names in the news right now. Don’t miss our interview with Hunter Biden tomorrow at 2 PM ET, which you can watch on our homepage at RawAmerica.com. Now let’s get to the news.

Trump’s Handpicked Kennedy Center Board Violating Court Orders

On Thursday, the Kennedy Center’s board — which is almost entirely made up of Trump loyalists — met on Zoom and voted for a second time to shut down most of the arts complex. The official reason for the closure is so the Kennedy Center can undergo a two-year, $250 million renovation. But in that same meeting, the board also voted to put Trump’s name back on the building, this time with the words “Restored and Renovated by President Donald J. Trump.”

This is despite a federal judge already ruling in May that the board had no justification to close the Kennedy Center in the first place. A separate appeals court ruling struck down Trump’s push to keep his name on the building facade. This new vote directly violates both of those rulings.

Democratic Congresswoman Joyce Beatty of Ohio, who sits on the board as an ex-officio member, called the vote was a blarant effort to circumvent the court rulings.

Trump’s takeover of the Kennedy Center has already led to the Washington National Opera withdrawing from the institutions. Major performers have canceled shows. Ticket sales have plummeted. And the National Symphony Orchestra, whose budget is tied to the Kennedy Center, is now reportedly in the midst of its worst financial crisis in recent history.

The Kennedy Center board hasn’t shied away from petty gestures. Jazz musician Chuck Redd canceled last year’s planned Christmas Eve show that he’d hosted at the facility for almost two decades in response to Trump slapping his name on the building. The board sued him for it, but he fought back. And this week, a Washington D.C. judge ordered the Kennedy Center to pay more than $252,000 to cover Redd’s legal fees. The board says it plans to appeal the decision.

A tarp has covered the Kennedy Center’s entrance since June, shortly after the order to take Trump’s name off the building was handed down. As of Thursday, that tarp is still there.

Trump May Blow Up Mountain in National Park to Build Road No One Asked For

Federal maps show U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) is aiming to build a patrol road across Mariscal Mountain, which is inside Big Bend National Park. The terrain is so rugged that environmental groups say the only way to build the road would be with dynamite and heavy use of bulldozers.

Local sheriff Thaddeus Cleveland told Newsweek he’s hiked that exact trail, and said no one crosses there. He noted that anyone who did would have to walk for 110 miles before reaching a place where they could actually be picked up. He also said that he regularly gets tips about people trying to cross the border in that region, and said a road at that location would be both impractical and unnecessary.

It’s also worth noting that illegal border crossings in that area are already down by 85 percent compared to a few years ago. So there’s essentially no security case for blasting through a national park.

Wildlife biologists are also warning against detonating the mountain, given that Mariscal Canyon likely has the densest population of nesting peregrine falcons in Texas. Peregrine falcons are known to be highly sensitive to any disturbance near their nesting cliffs.

Ten House Democrats have already a letter demanding the administration disclose its actual plans for the area before any blasting starts, warning that debris from blasting could end up in the Rio Grande and trigger a decades-old boundary dispute with Mexico. CBP Commissioner Rodney Scott argues this isn’t a wall project and that the only thing happening right now is survey work, not construction. But no one outside the agency can verify that without the plans being released to the public.

Top Democrats Say ‘Dramatic’ Changes to Supreme Court in the Works if They Retake Congress

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) recently told reporters that “dramatic” reform of the Supreme Court is necessary. He characterized the Roberts Court as a subsidiary of the MAGA movement, and that no option is off the table should his party win back control of Congress after the November midterms.

That’s a remarkable shift in tone from even the most recent election cycles. Democrats have floated various ideas for Supreme Court reform ranging from adding new justices to the nine-member court, imposing new term limits and putting a binding code of ethics in place. Former Vice President Kamala Harris suggested adding four new justices to the Court. Michigan Democratic Senate nominee Dr. Abdul El-Sayed correctly pointed out that the U.S> Constitution never actually set the number of justices at nine members.

The public may be ready to talk about shaking up the Supreme Court. A recent Marquette University Law School poll conducted earlier this year found the public split right down the middle on court expansion, 50 to 50.

But there’s a signifiant obstacle in the White House even if both American voters and a Democratic Congress want changes to the nation’s highest court. Even if Democrats take both the House and Senate, most of these changes would need 60 votes to get over the filibuster hump. And they would need a two-thirds majority vote to get past a likely Trump veto. Real change would likely require Democrats to get rid of the filibuster altogether, which they’ve so far been unable to do.

Judge Throws Out Trump’s Lawsuit Against Harvard

A federal judge in Boston has thrown out the Trump administration’s civil rights lawsuit against Harvard University.

The government accused Harvard of ignoring the harassment of Jewish students during pro-Palestine protests on campus in the wake of Hamas’ October 7th attacks on Israel and Israel’s resulting massacre of Gaza, which is ongoing. The Trump administration sought to claw back billions of dollars in federal research funding over the alleged antisemitism.

U.S. District Judge Richard Stearns — an appointee of former President Bill Clinton — ruled that the incidents the government cited were, in his words, too isolated and episodic to prove an ongoing civil rights violation. Most of what the administration’s lawsuit pointed to happened in the 2023-24 school year and hasn’t continued since then.

This is all part of the Trump administration’s ongoing offensive against Harvard, which has also included attempts to cut research funding and make it harder for the university to enroll international students. In a separate court ruling, a federal judge previously ordered the administration to reverse more than $2.6 billion in funding cuts to Harvard, ruling the White House used antisemitism as a pretext to justify an ideologically motivated assault on America’s top universities.

Before You Go, Support Journalism Not Owned By Billionaires

Billionaire-owned news outlets like David Ellison’s CBS, Jeff Bezos’ Washington Post and Patrick Soon-Shiong’s Los Angeles Times could never cover these stories this way. Raw America can, because we don’t have a wealthy owner silencing coverage he doesn’t like, or a corporate parent burying stories because advertisers might complain. We only answer to you, the reader.

Your subscriptions not only fund newsletters like these, but original reporting like Raw America White House reporter Brian Karem’s latest piece featuring exclusive quotes from both Trump administration staff and an interview with a former White House press secretary, which you can view below or by clicking here. Your support also makes it possible for us to broadcast live interviews with the people shaping the news like Hunter Biden, who will be sitting down with Raw America managing editor Carl Gibson tomorrow at 2 PM ET. Watch on our homepage at RawAmerica.com.

The fact that you’re still reading shows that you believe in the importance of independent journalism. Make your support official by becoming a paying subscriber. You can upgrade your free subscription to a paying one for just 22 cents a day. That’s less than a cup of coffee. Subscribe now and help keep this work going.

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

Read Brian Karem’s latest original report:

Here are some additional stories you may have missed:

• Judge Warns Trump DOJ Could Be Held in Contempt Over Epstein Files. U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan — a Bill Clinton appointee — warned Justice Department lawyers Thursday that he is planning on holding the government in contempt of court for continuing to stall on the release of millions of pages of documents relating to convicted sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. Sullivan sided with attorney Katie Phang, who is accusing President Donald Trump’s administration of violating the bipartisan Epstein Files Transparency Act, which Trump himself signed into law last fall. Sullivan said if the DOJ continued to sit on the documents, contempt proceedings weren’t a “threat,” but “a promise.”

• Judge Rules Mamdani’s Empty Mansion Tax Can Stand While Legal Challenges Play Out. A New York state appellate judge ruled Thursday that New York City Zohran Mamdani’s pied-à-terre tax, which applies to vacant homes valued at $5 million or more, can continue its planned rollout while lawsuits challenging it play out in court. Roughly 17,000 residents received letters stating the new tax may apply to them, which is estimated to generate more than $500 million in annual revenue.

• DNC Committee Approves Resolutions on Abolishing ICE and Cutting Off Military Aid to Israel. A Thursday meeting of the Democratic National Committee’s (DNC) Resolutions Committee concluded with the approval of resolutions supporting the abolition of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and for barring further U.S. military support for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s regime. The resolutions will now move to a full vote by the full DNC in Austin, Texas on Saturday.

• Voters Prefer Socialist Over MAGA Candidate in Hypothetical 2028 Matchup. A new survey by independent pollster Jeremy Zogby found that if the 2028 election were held today, 55 percent of respondents would prefer a socialist candidate over a MAGA candidate. Only 33 percent of respondents indicated they would support the MAGA candidate, while 22 percent of those polled said they were undecided. Self-identified independent said they would back the socialist candidate over the MAGA candidate by a 48-18 margin.