Join the resistance with me and 4,000 other subscribers who’ve signed up since January of this year.

Thanks for not looking away. Let me tell you what we're doing next.

Hey, it’s John. I want to talk to you directly today. Not as a founder asking for support. As someone who thinks about you — you specifically — more than you probably know.

You’re here because you keep caring, and I don’t take that for granted. Not for a single day.

This is an exhausting moment to follow the news. The Iran war. The Epstein cover-up. The wholesale destruction of the nation’s leading media outlets by craven billionaires.

Twenty-two years ago, I founded Raw Story. Last year, I took a break. Then something happened that I couldn’t shake.

Renée Nicole Goode and Alex Pretti were executed by ICE.

Alex was trying to help a woman being pepper-sprayed. Trump’s thugs shot him eleven times on American soil. The regime called him a terrorist and corporate media amplified the lie.

I sat with that. The grief of it. The rage of it. The particular sadness of a monstrous act being swept away like just another news story.

If the billionaires with the biggest platforms weren’t going to call a state-sponsored execution what it was, someone who knew how to call a lie a lie had to build a new platform.

That’s why Raw America exists: as a direct response to what happened to Renée and Alex. And every other person executed by ICE whose story got buried by the corporate press.

In January of this year, I launched Raw America believing that if I built something honest, people like you would show up. You did.

In late March, I went live with Miles Taylor, the man who was Anonymous, the senior Trump official who blew the whistle on the first administration. He sat down with us. Not CNN. Not MSNBC. A two-month-old publication that exists entirely because of readers like you.

Already, we have a reporter on Capitol Hill. We’ve talked to generals. We’ve covered the Trump Epstein War, the conflict this administration launched while working overtime to keep Jeffrey Epstein’s files buried.

We’ve reported on the billionaire capture of the American press: Bezos gutting the Post, CNN falling into the arms of David Ellison, whose father Larry is one of Trump’s closest oligarch donors.

We broke news as if we’d been doing this for a decade. Because of you.

None of that is possible without your support. Not the Capitol Hill reporter. Not Miles Taylor. None of it. Raw America answers to no one but readers. That’s not a slogan: it’s the only reason we can do what we do.

If my story speaks to you, but haven’t upgraded to a paid subscription yet, I’m asking you personally to consider doing that today.

I know times are hard. I know everyone is asking for something. I know your attention and your dollars are both finite. That’s why I want to be straight with you about what your support actually does. It pays for the reporter on Capitol Hill. It pays for the live interviews. It makes it possible for us to keep covering the stories that the outlets with billionaire owners won’t touch. Every paid subscriber is a direct vote for the kind of journalism that doesn’t answer to anyone but you.

Today, Status reported the FDA issued a warning letter against LA Times owner Patrick Soon-Shiong for false claims about his cancer drug. The LA Times hasn’t published a word about it. That’s billionaire media capture in practice. Not jackboots: silence. The boss’s interests protected by journalists at the readers’ expense.

I’ve been doing this for twenty-two years. I know what it looks like when an official narrative is starting to crack. We’re going to keep finding the story inside the story, keep reporting it, keep making noise.

But only if you’re with us.

Please upgrade your subscription today. Join the resistance with me and 4,000 other subscribers who’ve signed up since January of this year.

We have big plans: more live interviews with people who know where the bodies are buried, more Capitol Hill reporting, more investigations the corporate press won’t touch.

We’re building something real, something that exists entirely because you decided it should.

Just a few months in, and we’re already making noise they can hear.

I’m thinking of you. I’m grateful for you. And I’m asking for your help.

— John,

Founder, Raw America and Raw Story

P.S. I think about Renée Goode and Alex Pretti more than I can express. Their stories are part of why this publication exists. The fact that you're still here, still reading, still refusing to look away honors what happened to them. If you can support this work, please do. If you can't right now, just keep reading. We're not going anywhere.