Good evening. I’m British Chris, and this is Raw America. A Democratic congresswoman just put Mitch McConnell’s stonewalling to shame with a video statement despite being hospitalized from a hit-and-run crash. Republican Congresswoman Lauren Boebert of Colorado’s 21-year-old son has been arrested on felony charges of sexual exploitation of a child. A new report finds Trump’s mass deportation machine is burying the federal court system, with hundreds of judges ruling the administration’s detention policy unlawful. And Democrat Ilhan Omar is demanding answers after an ICE agent with mismatched license plates was caught surveilling one of her town halls in apparent violation of state law.
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Democratic Congresswoman Embarrasses McConnell with Hospital Video
Democratic Congresswoman Marcy Kaptur of Ohio, who is 80 years old, was hospitalized earlier this month after a driver slammed into the vehicle she was riding in on her way to church, then sped off. But this week, Kaptur did something that everyone has been calling on Republican Senator Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) to do for months: she turned on a camera, and gave her constituents a real update on video.
From her hospital room, Kaptur told constituents she’s making a rapid recovery, and thanked everyone who’s kept her in their thoughts. That’s a pretty stark comparison to McConnell, who no one has heard from since he was rushed to a hospital on June 14th.
That was nearly two months ago. And since then, we’ve gotten gotten exactly two photographs of the 84 year-old senator, which both show him propped up in a hospital bed in nearly identical poses next to his wife, Elaine Chao. He has yet to release a video or even call into a news show to assure Americans he’s OK and recovering.
McConnell’s office has opted instead for vaguely worded statements, including one Thursday saying he’d been discharged from a rehab facility to continue his recovery at home. Several of his Senate colleagues say they’ve spoken with him, but he hasn’t uttered a single word on camera since before he went into an ambulance in June.
One social media user plainly observed that Kaptur has no problem providing us with a video update while McConnell’s team hides behind statements and staged photos. Kentucky Democratic Governor Andy Beshear, says he hasn’t even talked to the senator on the phone. Beshear has repeatedly asked McConnell’s office for basic transparency about his condition, only to be stonewalled by the senator’s staff.
McConnell has been in the Senate since 1985. And in recent years, he’s suffered a spate of public falls. There were also several widely publicized moments in which McConnell simply froze mid-sentence and had to be escorted away from the microphone by staff. His ongoing absence also means Senate Republicans are short on one of their most dependable votes at the exact moment Donald Trump is trying to ram his agenda through a narrowly divided chamber before the midterms. Kentuckians and Americans alike deserve to know the condition of the man representing them. Marcy Kaptur takes her duty to her constituents seriously. The same can’t be said for McConnell.
Lauren Boebert’s 21 Year-Old Son Arrested on Child Exploitation Charges
Congresswoman Lauren Boebert’s 21-year-old son, Tyler, was arrested last week in Garfield County, Colorado. Court documents show he’s been charged with five felony counts, including three counts of sexual exploitation of a child, and two counts of contributing to the delinquency of a minor. The alleged crimes reportedly took place in 2024.
This isn’t Tyler Boebert’s first brush with the law. In February of 2024, Tyler was picked up on felony trespassing and theft charges after he and some friends allegedly broke into cars and boosted debit cards, gift cards and cash.
He’s now due in Garfield County District Court on August 19th and is currently out on a $10,000 bond. His mother, who is in a tight reelection race, released a short statement saying she loves her son, that the family takes the allegations very seriously, and asking for prayers during what she called a challenging time.
While everyone is innocent until proven guilty, it’s noteworthy that, yet again, another Republican-adjacent figure is now in police custody for allegedly preying on children. One could almost say the GOP’s fixation with calling their political opponents pedophiles is thinly veiled projection.
‘All Hands on Deck’: Trump’s Deportation Machine Overwhelming Federal Courts
The federal court system is buckling under the weight of Trump’s deportation agenda clogging court dockets in virtually every state.
Politico recently reported that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) quietly rewrote its own rules last July to expand mandatory detention of immigrants without bond. The new rules apply not just to those caught crossing the border, but now to any undocumented immigrant, no matter how long they’ve lived here, whether they have families or whether they hold jobs. They can be detained even if they’re actively in the process of seeking citizenship. For context, no prior president has ever applied that rule to people already living in the U.S.
The result has been chaos in the courts. Judge Fred Biery — a Bill Clinton appointee — told Politico his courthouse usually handles around 1,500 cases a year. By May of this year, they’d already blown past 4,000. He said the sheer breadth of cases in his court is unlike anything he’s never seen in his legal career.
The new rules also rarely pass muster when challenged in court. Since ICE rolled out the new policy, 469 federal judges across the United States have deemed it unlawful a whopping 16,000 times in the past year alone. Only 54 rulings have gone the administration’s way.
Judge Troy Nunley, who was appointed to the bench by Barack Obama, said his staff often have to pull all-nighters just to keep up, calling it an “all hands on deck” moment. His court used to see roughly four immigration habeas cases a year. In May alone, they handled 675. He’s had to pull in judges from other states just to help with the caseload.
Meanwhile, the Trump administration continues to fast-track hundreds of thousands of asylum seekers straight into deportation without even granting them an interview, while also rapidly speeding up removals of immigrant children. One anonymous federal judge said the judiciary is the glue barely holding the country together.
ICE Agent Accused of Spying on Democrat’s Town Hall from Car with Mismatched Plates
Democratic Congresswoman Ilhan Omar of Minnesota says she recently caught ICE doing something she says crosses a serious line.
Local police providing security at Omar’s recent town hall noticed a woman sitting in a Ford Explorer watching the building, in a car with license plates that didn’t match the vehicle. When officers ran the plates and approached her, she first claimed to be security, then eventually admitted she worked for the Department of Homeland Security, and was conducting an undercover drug operation. When police called her supervisor, she left.
Omar said the car in question was parked in plain view of a large sign announcing her town hall. She’s now officially asking DHS in a letter to the agency why a community center hosting a congressional town hall was somehow the best spot for a supposed drug investigation. She said the entire episode raises serious questions about whether ICE is actually being used to spy on Trump’s political opponents.
The fact that the agent had mismatched plates is also noteworthy, given that it was so prevalent during the ICE crackdown in Minneapolis that Omar had to force ICE to officially promise that agents were no longer switching out their license plates, which violates Minnesota law. She had apparently confronted ICE with dozens of complaints from the local community about the practice. Now it appears those assurance weren’t true. She’s given ICE a deadline of this Friday to provide an explanation for what happened at her town hall.
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