Good evening, and welcome to Raw America. I’m British Chris.
Republicans just blew up their own DHS funding bill, the FBI director got hacked by Iran, the conservative movement’s biggest event of the year is a giant bust, a top Pentagon aide implied the President of the United States is a racist, and the head of ICE is being hospitalized for stress. We’ve got a lot to cover.
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Mike Johnson Now Fully Owns DHS Shutdown
The Department of Homeland Security has been shut down for six weeks, causing chaos at airports across the country. And just when it looked like there might be a deal in sight, House Republicans decided to blow the whole thing up.
The Senate, in one of those rare moments of bipartisan agreement, unanimously passed a compromise deal in the early hours of Friday morning. The plan was to fund all of DHS, except for Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol, both of which are still ticking over on cash reserves from last year’s spending bill.
Reasonable? You’d think so. Not according to Speaker Mike Johnson.
Johnson got on the phone with his members, then came out and called the Senate deal “a joke.” He claimed he’d spoken to President Trump personally, and that Trump “understands exactly what we’re doing and why, and he supports it.”
Johnson then floated a different plan entirely — a two-month stopgap measure to keep DHS funded at current levels through late May. The problem? Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer made it crystal clear that a 60-day continuing resolution is “dead on arrival” in the Senate. And half the Senate has already left Washington for a two-week spring recess.
So the shutdown continues, airports remain disrupted, and Republicans can’t even agree on so a temporary fix.
Iran Just Hacked the FBI Director’s Personal Email
FBI Director Kash Patel just had his personal email account breached by a hacker group with ties to the Iranian government.
The group, known as Handala HackTeam, claimed responsibility, posting images online of Patel along with what appears to be a copy of his personal resume, including his personal email address. The FBI confirmed the breach and stressed that no government information was compromised. The group bragged that the “impenetrable” systems of the FBI had been “brought to their knees within hours.”
The State Department has offered a $10 million reward for information leading to the identification of the group’s members. This isn’t Handala’s first rodeo — they’ve previously been linked to malware attacks on a US-based medical technology company and the publication of sensitive data on nearly 200 individuals connected to the Israeli military.
The fact that the sitting FBI director had his personal email compromised by a foreign adversary is a significant embarrassment, whatever the official line about government data being unaffected.
CPAC Was an Empty Snoozefest — and MAGA Knows Their Time Is Up
The Conservative Political Action Conference rolled into Grapevine, Texas this week, and it has largely been defined by lackluster attendance and a lineup so boring it’s literally putting people to sleep.
One photo from CPAC that went particularly viral showed an unnamed member of the press fast asleep in full view of the cameras. Reporters also captured embarrassing photos showing rows and rows of empty seats in the auditorium. One attendee told CNN that it seemed inevitable that Republicans would get “destroyed” in the midterms because even his MAGA friends have become disgusted with Donald Trump.
Perhaps the most awkward moment came courtesy of Matt Schlapp, chairman of the American Conservative Union, which hosts CPAC. He asked the crowd whether they’d like to see impeachment hearings take place — only to immediately regret it. The crowd erupted in enthusiastic approval. Schlapp visibly froze, then tried to walk it back, saying: “No... that was the wrong answer.” He asked again. The crowd cheered again, just a little more quietly this time. Schlapp’s response was to gesture to event staff and suggest they bring coffee out for the audience.
If this is the state of the conservative movement in 2026, the blue wave in November may end up being a political tsunami.
Hegseth Aide Allegedly Said Trump Doesn’t Want to Stand Next to Black Women
One of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s own staffers seemingly called Trump a racist.
According to reporting from The New York Times, Ricky Buria, chief of staff to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, told Army Secretary Daniel Driscoll last summer that President Trump wouldn’t want to stand beside a Black female officer at military events. The officer in question was Maj. Gen. Antoinette Gant, who was being considered for a role leading the Military District of Washington. Driscoll reportedly pushed back immediately, saying: “The president is not a racist or sexist.”
Gant got the job anyway. She took command in July 2025, was promoted to two-star general in February, and appeared alongside Trump at a wreath-laying ceremony at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier on Veterans Day. Buria has denied making the remarks, calling the story “completely made-up.”
The wider Times report adds important context. Hegseth apparently blocked the promotion of four Black and/or female Army officers to one-star general. The Pentagon says all of this is “fake news from anonymous sources.” The White House press secretary declined to address the specific allegations about Buria’s remarks.
What isn’t in dispute is the broader picture the Times paints: under Hegseth, the chairman and vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs, all five service chiefs, and nine of the military’s ten combatant commanders are white men.
Make of that what you will.
Acting ICE Chief Hospitalized Twice for Stress
Todd Lyons, who is the acting director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), was hospitalized twice in the past seven months over stress-related incidents.
Two unnamed current and former officials in President Donald Trump’s administration told Politico that Lyons was frequently berated by White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller during morning phone calls. Four people who were present on those calls confirmed that Miller regularly yelled at Lyons, with one aide describing his tirades as “passionate.”
Lyons also reportedly began sweating profusely and turned red during a ride-along in Los Angeles, California, when ICE agents were unable to locate an immigrant on their target list. One person present with Lyons reportedly retrived a portable defibrillator from a nearby government office in the event Lyons lost consciousness.
Other sources said Lyons was often “visibly upset and struggling to make the decisions that were needed to be made by the director.” Politico’s sources, who were given anonymity in order to speak candidly, said Lyons would often take a long time to make decisions, causing more work for his deputies.
Lyons didn’t address the hospitalizations, but these medical episodes suggest that Trump’s acting ICE chief may not be up to the job. And the finger-pointing at Miller also implies that Trump’s top deputy is becoming even more unpopular even within Trump’s inner circle.
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In case you missed it: Raw America managing editor Carl Gibson interviewed 50501 Movement national press coordinator Hunter Dunn on Friday. 50501 is one of the main groups organizing Saturday’s massive No Kings protests, which are taking place in hundreds of American cities in all 50 states across the country, in addition to solidarity events in over a dozen cities worldwide. Watch the full interview below:
See you next week.
STORIES YOU MAY HAVE MISSED:
FCC Chair Brags ‘Trump Is Winning’ as Billionaires Buy Media Outlets. Federal Communications Commission chairman Brendan Carr boasted during his CPAC speech that President Donald Trump is remaking the media in his image. Carr cited the defunding of PBS and NPR and firings of cable news hosts like Joy-Ann Reid and Jim Acosta as evidence of Trump’s victories, and celebrated the likely acquisition of CNN’s parent company by a billionaire Trump donor by saying the president was “winning” in his battle with the “fake news media.”
Trump’s Former Iran Advisor Warns White House Likely to Escalate Hostilities. Former National Security Council member Nate Swanson — an Obama holdover who was the NSC’s Iran director — previously warned that if attacked, Iran would retaliate by targeting “global oil flows and international shipping.” And as predicted, Iran has closed the Strait of Hormuz and launched drone and missile attacks against oil and gas-related targets in the Middle East. Swanson told Politico that “the war is probably going to go on longer than anyone anticipated.”
Elon Musk Joined Trump’s Call with Foreign Leader Over Iran War. Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk reportedly participated in a phone call with Trump and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi regarding the war in Iran and the Strait of Hormuz. It is not clear if Musk — who is a private citizen and has not been appointed to any diplomatic role — spoke on the call, and no reason for his participation has yet been given.
DHS Partnering with DOJ on States’ Voter Roll Data. The Department of Homeland Security confirmed Friday it would be working in tandem with the Department of Justice, with a DHS statement reading that the partnership is meant “to prevent illegal aliens from corrupting our republic’s democratic process and further ensure the integrity of our elections nationwide.” A 2024 report from the far-right Heritage Foundation found that there have been less than 30 undocumented immigrants prosecuted for illegally voting in federal elections over the last 20 years.
Financial Markets Plunge as Iran War Spooks Investors. The S&P 500 Index posted its fifth consecutive weekly loss on Friday, marking its longest such streak in the last four years. The slump has been attributed to ongoing concerns about the Iran war, with inflation climbing higher and energy markets reeling from the continued closure of the Strait of Hormuz.
