Good evening. I’m British Chris, and this is Raw America.
A Republican senator sicced Capitol security on a reporter who asked him about Mitch McConnell’s health. Donald Trump’s endless string of court losses is now costing taxpayers millions of dollars in legal fees. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is launching his own cooking show while the country deals with a parasite outbreak causing explosive diarrhea. And Marco Rubio’s State Department is being widely mocked after using an AI-generated map of Africa that didn’t correctly label one single country.
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GOP Senator Calls Security on Reporter Asking About McConnell
When TMZ reporter Charlie Cotton asked Republican Senator Pete Ricketts about his colleague, Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, Ricketts decided the best response was to sic security personnel on him.
Cotton caught up with Ricketts on Thursday and asked whether Mitch McConnell needs to do more to demonstrate he’s capable of serving. It’s a fair question, since McConnell is 84 years old and hasn’t made a public appearance since early June. Since then, he’s been in the hospital and the only thing his office has given the public is two still photographs. Not video or even audio. And the speculation has only increased the longer McConnell remains absent.
Ricketts gave a polite non-answer about praying for McConnell’s recovery. When Cotton tried to follow up, Ricketts gestured toward security, who then stopped Cotton at a metal detector.. Ricketts made sure to tell officers that his own aide was allowed through, but that Cotton was not with them.
Cotton unsuccessfully argued that he’d already been through security. The video then cuts off.
Ricketts’ stonewalling is the latest development in the ongoing saga over whether McConnell is still healthy enough to serve out the remainder of his Senate term, which ends in January. Kentucky’s two-term Democratic Governor, Andy Beshear, this week demanded McConnell either verbally prove to his constituents he can do his job or resign.
McConnell’s staff isn’t exactly rushing to stop the speculation. His communications director and his longtime spokesperson both fled from reporters asking basic questions earlier this week. Those same staffers are pulling six-figure taxpayer-funded salaries. Both Kentuckians and Americans deserve to know whether a longtime U.S. senator can actually do the job he was elected to do.
Trump’s Constant Court Losses Costing Taxpayers Millions
Donald Trump’s administration keeps losing in federal court, and every one of those losses is being billed directly to American taxpayers. And after just a year and a half, those losses are racking up a seven-figure total.
Bloomberg found that attorneys have sought fees exceeding $100,000 in at least ten separate cases over the past year alone, adding up to more than $2.5 million just in the big-ticket requests. And that number doesn’t even include the smaller fee requests piling up in immigration-related cases. Those can run in the hundreds or low thousands of dollars but add up quickly given the sheer number of lawsuits that have been filed.
A 1980 law called the Equal Access to Justice Act lets people who successfully sue the federal government recover their attorney’s fees, as long as the government’s position wasn’t substantially justified. That law is important so ordinary people and small organizations aren’t priced out of holding their own government accountable.
A federal judge in Florida already ruled that Trump himself should cover his opponents’ legal fees as a sanction for filing what the judge called a “bad faith” lawsuit against the IRS for $10 billion. The Association of American Universities, which includes schools like Harvard and Yale, is also seeking more than $1.5 million in attorneys’ fees after successfully challenging research funding cuts.
Even ordinary Americans wronged by the administration are seeking to have their attorneys’ fees reimbursed: Jazz musician Charles Redd is asking for more than $250,000 from the Kennedy Center. The Trump-controlled institution sued Redd for canceling a scheduled concert in response to Trump illegally putting his own name on the building. A judge quickly tossed out the Kennedy Center’s case.
This is all part of a pattern: the Trump administration takes an aggressive action on legally shaky grounds, gets sued, loses, and then sends the legal bill to the taxpayers.
RFK Jr. Announces New Cooking Show in the Middle of Explosive Diarrhea Outbreak
Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. apparently believes the best use of his time right now is co-hosting a cooking show.
Kennedy is rolling out a new series called The Real Food Show, aimed at promoting the Trump administration’s new dietary guidelines. Kennedy has already flipped the food pyramid to prioritize full-fat dairy and protein, and he’s been pushing beef tallow and butter over seed oils, even though those oils are linked to lower rates of cancer and heart disease.
This is all happening while America’s food supply is reeling from multiple crises. There’s the cyclospora parasite outbreak causing explosive diarrhea that’s affecting lettuce and other produce. Salmonella has been tied to eggs in Texas. And there’s still a flesh-eating parasite known as the New World screwworm affecting cattle across multiple states, racking up an estimated $1 billion dollars in damage.
Most of this traces back to the Trump administration’s 2025 cuts to a federal-state partnership tasked with tracking foodborne illness. Kennedy has mostly checked out of his actual job, showing up around 10 in the morning and leaving by 4. He’s mostly focused on his anti-vaccine agenda, which has led to measles cases in the U.S. skyrocketing to a 35-year record high. Trump’s only real complaint about Kennedy, apparently, is that he’s not moving fast enough to limit childhood vaccines.
At a time when multiple health emergencies are plaguing the country, it’s more than a little mind-boggling that the country’s top health official is spending his time filming cooking videos.
Marco Rubio Humiliated as Error-Laden Map Goes Viral
Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s team managed to embarrass the United States on the world stage today without any help from the media, foreign governments or anyone else. They did it all by themselves.
During a presentation at the AIDS 2026 conference in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, State Department officials displayed a map of Africa meant to highlight funding opportunities in several countries. There was just one problem: the AI-generated map the State Department used didn’t peg one country on that map anywhere close to its actual location, and apparently no one at the State Department knew enough basic geography to correct the error.
Nigeria, which sits on the Gulf of Guinea in West Africa, somehow got dropped into the middle of the Sahara Desert. Mozambique got moved from southeastern Africa all the way up to the Horn of Africa. Cote d’Ivoire was pegged clear across the continent to the east.
According to Reuters, the map was generated using OpenAI, which is the company behind chatGPT tools, watermarks and all. An expert at the Atlantic Council observed that whoever approved the map obviously didn’t know where African countries actually are, and didn’t care enough to find out.
The State Department eventually admitted the map was wrong and said a team member had hastily put it together before the event. While they may have meant for that to be reassuring, it says something pretty revealing about how the second Trump administration operates. Cut corners, don’t do your homework, and hope no one notices.
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Thanks for reading. I’m British Chris, with Raw America. We’ll see you tomorrow.
Here are some additional stories you may have missed:
Trump-Aligned Freedom 250 Asks for $10 Million More in Taxpayer Money. President Donald Trump’s “Freedom 250” initiative — which is an entirely different entity than the non-partisan America 250 — is now asking Congress for another $10 million. The administration-aligned group may have already spent more than $100 million on commemorating the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence earlier this month, though the exact amount may not be fully known until the end of the current fiscal year on September 30. Members of Congress have repeatedly been stonewalled when asking the White House about Freedom 250’s finances, and some Democrats suspect that money was funneled from America 250, which was established by Congress in 2016 to organize commemorative events.
Trump Administration Quietly Inks 7 New Equity Stakes in Private Companies. The U.S. Department of Commerce officially announced the U.S. government was taking equity stakes in seven new private companies in exchange for giving those companies roughly $870 million in incentives. The companies themselves specialize in the manufacturing of semiconductors and AI technology, and the incentives are being granted under the CHIPS & Science Act, which former President Joe Biden signed into law in 2022. The Trump administration is taking equity stakes in private companies as Trump himself has lately accused Democrats of being “communists” while campaiging for Republicans ahead of this fall’s midterm elections.
ICE Admits Not Giving Detainees Prescribed Medication — While Blaming Detainees. Immigrant detainees at Indiana’s largest U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention center were denied roughly 800 doses of medication, according to federal officials. However, ICE stated that 750 doses weren’t distributed because detainees allegedly refused to get in a pill line to receive their prescribed medicine. 44 more doses were on order and unavailable at the pharmacy at the time they were needed. The new data was released as part of an inquiry by Rep. Andre Carson (R-Ind.), who made the request in April.
Father Who Gave Gun to School Shooter Sentenced to 15 Years. Colin Gray, who is the father of the 16 year-old mass shooter who killed two students and two teachers in 2024 at Apalachee High School in Georgia, received a 15-year prison sentence on Thursday. Judge Nicholas Primm — who previously sentenced Gray’s son to life in prison without the possibility of parole — said the father’s crimes were “tethered to the tragedy committed by his son.” The younger Gray used a SIG Sauer M400 semi-automatic rifle to carry out the shooting, killing four and injuring nine. The gunman admitted to carrying out the shooting to gain notoriety.
