Hey, Raw America family. Welcome to the Sunday Wrapup. I’m on my second cup of coffee and I’ve spent most of the morning thinking about a well.
First, to everyone who subscribes and keeps this thing running: thank you. You’re the reason we don’t have a billionaire’s thumb on the scale. We answer to you, and that’s exactly how we like it.
If you’re reading this free and you’ve been meaning to jump in: today’s the day. We put Hunter Biden on the record this week, and we did it because you make it possible. You can subscribe to Raw America for just 22 cents a day — less than a cup of coffee. Make the investment today. Your support keeps us in the fight.
Hunter Biden Sat Down With Us, And Gave Me Hope
On Friday, Raw America Managing Editor Carl Gibson sat down with Hunter Biden. The interview was fantastic, and you can watch the full thing here.
Asked about Republican corruption claims, Hunter said: look what’s actually in front of your eyes. He sat on a board. He got sober. He sold paintings. And every person who bought a painting had to testify under oath by name before Congress.
Meanwhile, Donald Trump Jr.’s 1789 Capital and its companies are swimming in Pentagon contracts, and Jared Kushner is making a fortune from a Saudi wealth fund.
But the real meat was what Hunter said about addiction, and his father’s love.
Carl asked Hunter about a 2018 voicemail from President Joe Biden.
“It’s Dad,” Joe Biden said. “I called to tell you I love you. I love you more than the whole world, pal. You got to get some help. I don’t know what to do.”
Lots of families, mine included, struggle with addiction. Hunter said that message wasn’t a one-off: it was one of dozens, maybe hundreds, his father left him during the worst of it. Picture that: a father calling into the dark again and again. His messages unanswered, but calling anyway.
When Carl asked what he’d say to someone in the grip of their own addiction, Hunter refused to offer a formula. “I don’t have a prescription for anybody else,” he said, “and I’m here to tell you, if anyone tells you that they do have, like, you go from A to Z, they’re not telling you the truth.”
What he could speak to was the one thing that saved him: a family that never let him go: his dad, his mother, and more than anyone, his three adult daughters.
The standard advice about addiction is that you have to let a person hit bottom before they’ll change. Hunter’s response was quiet and devastating: “The people that have hit bottom are dead.”
What pulled him back wasn’t the crash. It was that someone stayed. His family, he said, “kept shining the light down the well I had fallen into.” Recovery, he said, lives in the narrow moments when an addict can suddenly see clearly what they’re doing to themselves. And it matters whether there’s a hand reaching down when that window opens.
Hunter wouldn’t take credit for surviving. The people who get clean without the family he had, he said, “are the bravest, most amazing people in the world.” He wasn’t holding himself up as a success story. He was holding up the light. Telling anyone out there that the hand reaching down is what makes the difference, and that nobody has to climb out alone.
We’re Still Keeping Our Eye on ICE
We’ve stepped away from ICE for a few weeks, but I wanted to give you a grim update.
The Department of Homeland Security is planning to spend up to $20 million to outfit immigration agents with gloves that deliver electric shocks. Some jails and police departments already use them. Now they’re being directed to the agents carrying out the largest deportation campaign in modern American history.
Advocates are sounding the alarm that these things will eventually end up being used on protesters and on people held in custody. It’s time someone speaks out; we need to keep these in the box.
Also, a Guardian investigation this week found the administration used court orders to force-feed ICE hunger strikers on U.S. soil: a tube down the nose and throat. Trump’s team sought orders against roughly ten detainees; at least three were actually force-fed. One Kurdish asylum seeker was force-fed for nearly eight months. In six of the cases, the detainees had no lawyer. Human rights groups call it torture.
It makes me think of something Hunter Biden said about Trump: he’s not a president behaving badly, he’s “a one-man crime wave.” Look at the twenty million dollars, then look at what it’s for. Tell me that’s a man who respects democracy.
None of this reporting reaches you if outlets like ours don’t stay in the fight. We don’t have a corporate parent deciding the shock-glove story is too hot. We have you. Subscribe today.
Democrats Are Finally Making Plans for the Supreme Court
Here’s some good news this week.
For years, the Supreme Court has felt like a dark cloud: a 6-3 machine handing down decisions on voting rights and presidential power that most of the country never asked for.
This week, Democrats stopped complaining and started legislating. They proposed several bills. One would expand the court from nine justices to thirteen. A second would cap lifetime appointments at eighteen years. Other legislation would create an enforceable ethics code and drag the court’s “shadow docket” into daylight.
Would they pass a Republican Congress? No. But Rhode Island senator Sheldon Whitehouse, who’s led the term-limits push, says the point is to “keep trying the case” with the American public.
Term limits for justices poll above two-thirds nationally. More than three-quarters of Democrats support it, as well as two-thirds of independents. Even Republicans support term limits by more than a majority. This isn’t a fringe demand.
Democratic House leader Hakeem Jeffries says everything’s on the table. Given its recent poor decisions, it’s great to watch people treat the court as something that can be changed.
Which brings me back to the well.
One Last Thing
The bottom of the well is dark right now. Shock gloves. Force-feeding. A Supreme Court that feels beyond anyone’s reach. And there’s a real temptation, on a Sunday like this one, to look away and wait for things to bottom out.
But Hunter reminded me that the people who wait for the bottom don’t come back. The ones who make it are the ones somebody kept a light on for.
That’s the whole job of a free press. Not to save anyone. There’s only us; we’re the hand reaching down into the well.
We can only do that because of you. Yes, I mean you, specifically. For 22 cents a day, less than the coffee I’m finishing right now, you can keep this light burning. Keep us in the fight.
If you’ve been meaning to subscribe, let today be the day. Somebody down in the well needs to know we’re still up here.
Keep the door open. We’ll keep the light on.
I’ll see you next Sunday.
—John Byrne / Founder, Raw America and Raw Story
P.S. If you want to check out the full interview with Hunter, click below. With your help, we’re making moves!
Your message about keeping the light on for people in their darkest moments deeply touched me. As an Afghan veteran and former ally, I know what it means to be left behind, but I have not lost hope. Thank you for reminding us that someone is still reaching down and keeping the light on.
ICE should not have shock gloves- they could kill a pregnant women, small children , young preteens , as they just throw them to the ground & beat them in the head & 3-4 agents sit on them! They are monsters & I hope there is an place in Hell for all of them!!!🤬