Good morning. Happy Saturday, and happy Halloween! 🎃 I’m John Byrne. Before we get going, tap that ❤️ and restack this edition. Three days from the election, every share helps us get out the vote.
ICE paid nearly $500 million for a shuttered Minnesota prison that the owner offered to the state for $75 million last year, and the owner gave Trump’s inaugural committee half a million dollars. Trump tried to talk about his sisters at a Florida rally and couldn’t get the words out. Satellite imagery shows Iran damaged 274 buildings at two dozen U.S. installations, while Pete Hegseth was declaring the war won. And the husband whose money set off Alina Habba’s White House feud isn’t the 29-year-old billionaire he claims to be.
Quick note before the news. October is almost over and we’re well behind our paid subscriber goal for the month. That matters more than usual, because Facebook has essentially cut off our distribution and Elon Musk’s X is doing the same. That leaves your inbox as the only reliable way this reporting reaches you, because it’s the one channel they can’t touch. We’re also raising money to file suit against the White House to get our reporter back inside. Right now, a paid subscription runs about 17 cents a day, less than you’d spend on a single cup of coffee each week.
Trump’s ICE Paid Six Times the Asking Price for a Prison Owned by a Trump Donor
Here’s a deal only a government could make.
In August, ICE paid $495.6 million for the Prairie Correctional Facility in Appleton, Minnesota, The Independent reports. The prison has been closed for 16 years.
In May 2025, its owner, the private prison giant CoreCivic, offered to sell the exact same building to the state of Minnesota for $75 million. That price included upgrades.
The state decided it didn’t want it. Appleton is nearly three hours from the Twin Cities, and officials worried they couldn’t find 500 people to staff it.
ICE didn’t share those concerns. It paid $420.6 million more than the state was asked to pay, according to unsealed emails obtained by KARE 11 investigative reporter AJ Lagoe.
Minnesota Corrections Commissioner Paul Schnell said he was “stunned.”
“It’s unexplainable,” he said. “I don’t know how they could justify this amount.”
It gets better for CoreCivic. The company sold four prisons to the government this summer for a combined $2.2 billion. It will also be paid an estimated $75 million a year to run the Minnesota facility for the next five years.
Federal records show CoreCivic gave $500,000 to the Trump-Vance inaugural committee.
Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison called on Congress to investigate why Trump “paid almost half a billion to a Trump donor for a prison worth just $75 million.”
CoreCivic says independent appraisers set the value and the federal government “ultimately determined the sale price.”
This isn’t a one-off. In September, the Government Accountability Office warned of an “urgent need” to stop ICE wasting money, after the agency spent $1.07 billion on 11 warehouses it planned to turn into detention centers, then changed its mind and lost $20 million.
Republicans in Minnesota have spent the year screaming about benefit fraud. Their president just handed a donor $420 million for an empty building in a cornfield.
‘I Have Two Luhlaaa’: Trump Can’t Get Through a Sentence About His Sisters
Trump went to Daytona Beach Friday night to attack Rep. Ilhan Omar with his favorite smear, that she married her brother. Then he turned to his own family.
“I did not marry my sister!” he declared.
What followed, according to Raw Story, was mush. MeidasTouch’s Acyn Torabi transcribed it as: “Lovely. I have two LEHHRR — two lovely uhhh — I have one left.” The account FactPost heard: “Lobely — I have two luhlaaa — I have two lovely.”
For the record, Trump had two sisters. Maryanne Trump Barry, a retired federal judge, died in 2023. Elizabeth Trump Grau is living.
Ron Filipkowski, a former federal prosecutor and editor-in-chief of MeidasTouch News, called it “another cognitive glitch that will never be shown on any network news show.”
Paul Gundlach, a retired advertising executive, said it’s “astonishing” that Trump thinks these appearances help his party, “and equally astonishing that not a single Democrat has said out loud that he has lost it completely.”
Days earlier, Trump snapped at a reporter who asked whether he’d skipped a Kansas trip because he was sick of travel. “I feel perfect,” he said.
At 80, he’s the oldest person ever elected president. The White House insists he’s in excellent health.
Perfect health, three days before an election, and the words won’t come out.
You won’t get the truth about Trump’s health from network TV. Raw America gives you the truth, but we depend on readers to do it. Upgrade your subscription today, and help us meet our October goals.
Analysis Reveals Iran Did $15 Billion of Damage to U.S. Bases
On March 13, Pete Hegseth stood at the Pentagon and said Iran’s missile program had been “functionally defeated, destroyed.”
On July 17, an Iranian strike on Muwaffaq Salti Air Base in Jordan killed three American servicemembers and damaged at least 19 buildings where troops sleep.
That’s the gap between what this administration says and what satellites show. The Wall Street Journal examined tens of thousands of images and found 274 damaged structures at 24 installations with a U.S. presence in the war’s first six months.
The Pentagon privately puts the damage at $5 billion minimum. One person briefed on the cost says it could reach $15 billion. That’s on top of a war bill that hit $47.1 billion as of October 16.
More than 20 servicemembers have died since the war began February 28. More than 400 were wounded before the ceasefire collapsed in July. After that, the government stopped publishing war-specific casualty figures.
The pattern is damning. In the first two weeks, Iran hammered bases in Kuwait and Bahrain. Trump went on television April 1 and said Iran’s missiles were “just about used up.” In June, Marco Rubio told senators “the war is over now.”
Then the ceasefire fell apart on July 7. Iran shifted its fire west, hitting smaller targets with more precision. The buildings it struck were less than half the size of earlier targets. Current and former servicemembers say they looked like base housing.
Iranian state media claims of strikes on housing doubled. U.S. officials privately worried that Iran was targeting troops in their beds.
Hegseth’s response, four days after the Jordan deaths, was to call Iran “combat ineffective.”
Sen. Chris Murphy tried to see for himself this month. He was barred from Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar, where at least a dozen buildings show damage, and military leaders refused to brief him.
The administration is “withholding information about damages” to “mask the true cost of the war,” he told the Journal.
Now Trump is weighing a new round of strikes. The military is pulling personnel off several bases ahead of retaliation. Iran is digging out its buried missiles while the U.S. has drained its supply of interceptors.
Twenty dead Americans, 274 wrecked buildings and a defense secretary who keeps declaring victory. Somebody’s lying, and it isn’t Iran.
The Billionaire Behind Alina Habba’s White House War Is a 25-Year-Old With Unpaid Bills
Alina Habba stormed into the White House this month and accused Richard Grenell of skimming a $17.6 million donation her new husband made to the Kennedy Center.
Trump ordered an investigation. His aides found the money didn’t come from her husband. It came from a government account in the Democratic Republic of Congo, apparently to a Texas company tied to Grenell for a software contract.
So now the scrutiny has turned to the husband. The New York Times found he isn’t who he says he is.
Turhan Mildon tells everyone he’s a 29-year-old billionaire. His U.S. visa, his Turkish passport and British corporate records say he was born December 2, 2000. Former classmates confirm he’s 25.
He says Habba is his second wife. Former confidants say he celebrated a religious marriage to the daughter of a Venezuelan admiral last year, while chasing deals in Nicolás Maduro’s inner circle. His spokesman calls it an engagement.
He told Forbes Turkey his companies pulled in $2.6 billion last year. This month, Venezuela canceled his cement contract after he invested 6 percent of what he promised. One plant owes $5 million to more than 150 suppliers, including invoices for as little as six dollars. Managers at his shrimp plant are telling workers there’s no money for wages.
He claims close ties to Trump, Erdogan, Maduro and Congo’s president. A person close to Trump says the president wouldn’t recognize him. He showed someone a WhatsApp chat with Maduro in English; people close to Maduro say he didn’t use WhatsApp and doesn’t speak English.
In Congo, he’s won more than $500 million in contracts, including a $50 million drone base that’s barely been built.
This is the man whose “donation” turned Trump’s inner circle against itself. The president’s former lawyer married him in a matter of months. Nobody in Trump’s orbit checked his birthday.
Support the Fight Against MAGA-Controlled Media
If this morning’s edition told you something the billionaire-owned outlets would rather keep quiet, that’s exactly the point. A Trump donor paid half a billion dollars for a prison worth $75 million. A president who can’t get through a sentence about his own sisters. And a 25-year-old “billionaire” who can’t pay his own workers. October is almost over and we’re well behind our paid subscriber goal, at the exact moment Facebook has essentially cut off our distribution and Elon Musk’s X is doing the same. Three days from an election, if 3 percent of the people reading this went paid, we could keep every reporter we have on this story through November and beyond. Raw America has no owner, no billionaire and no network. Your inbox is the one place they can’t stop this reporting from reaching you.
One more thing before you go: hit the ❤️ and restack this edition. It’s what pushes these stories past the algorithm and into the feeds of people who’d never otherwise see them. And if you haven’t voted yet, Tuesday is Election Day. Make your plan today.
I’m John Byrne. Thanks for reading, and I’ll see you tomorrow. 🎃
Would that be his future home?
Alina Habba marrying an already married man who is clearly a moron and a charlatan and not a billionaire is so perfect for Alina. Karma, I love you!