Good evening. I’m British Chris, and this is Raw America.
A hearing on Capitol Hill exploded into a shouting match as a Republican congressman refused to honor two Americans killed by federal agents. Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson delivered a blistering rebuke of her colleague, Clarence Thomas, after the court narrowly upheld birthright citizenship. Usha Vance was just publicly embarrassed after speaking to an empty crowd at Trump’s “Great American State Fair.” And a New Jersey Republican just revealed the diagnosis behind his months-long disappearance, missing more than 100 votes in the process.
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Capitol Hearing Derailed By Screaming Match
Things got ugly during a House Judiciary subcommittee hearing on sanctuary policies this week. Ranking Democrat Jamie Raskin of Maryland tried to get Republican Mike Lawler of New York to simply acknowledge the deaths of Alex Pretti and Renee Good. Both were killed by immigration agents in Minneapolis earlier this year.
Lawler wouldn’t do it. He kept steering the conversation toward victims of crimes committed by undocumented immigrants instead, completely dodging the question.
That’s when things fell apart. Raskin continued to press Lawler directly, asking if he felt any outrage at all about the deaths of Pretti and Good. Lawler shot back that Raskin should be “ashamed” of himself and called him “a disgrace.” Raskin didn’t take that lying down, declaring that Lawler didn’t belong on the committee and that he should “get the hell out of here.”
The exchange continued to get even more heated, with Raskin demanding Lawler say the Alex Pretti and Renee Good’s names out loud. He never did. That refusal should speak volumes for everyone paying attention. Two Americans were shot dead in broad daylight by federal agents, and a sitting member of Congress couldn’t even bring himself to acknowledge it on the record.
Justice Jackson Tears Into Clarence Thomas’s ‘Ahistorical’ Dissent
The Supreme Court handed down a major ruling on Tuesday, upholding birthright citizenship by a narrow 5-4 margin. Chief Justice John Roberts, a George W. Bush appointee, wrote that children born in the U.S., regardless of their parents’ immigration status, are still American citizens under the plain language of the 14th Amendment. That’s been the law of the land for more than 150 years, and the court just barely reaffirmed it.
But Clarence Thomas, who was appointed to the Court by George H.W. Bush, wasn’t having it. He argued the 14th Amendment was only ever meant to secure rights for formerly enslaved Black Americans and that applying it more broadly to the children of immigrants was improper.
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, who Joe Biden appointed in 2022, wasn’t going to let that slide. She called Thomas’s reasoning “ahistorical” and accused him of trying to pit Black Americans against immigrants, something the actual framers of the amendment never did. She wrote about the founders’ vision of equality before the law, saying it applied to everyone rather than just a narrow few, as Thomas argued.
Trump, of course, threw a fit on his social media platform, saying the ruling was “bad for our Country” and demanded Congress act to pass a law stripping away birthright citizenship in spite of the Court’s ruling. He’s been chasing this fight for over a year now, even though the courts keep telling him no. Every single lower court ruled against him unanimously before the case even got picked up by the Supreme Court.
Usha Vance Speaks to Empty Bleachers at Trump’s Great American State Fair
Usha Vance showed up at Trump’s “Great American State Fair” this week to host a children’s bookmark contest. But almost nobody was there to watch.
Photos and video showed a crowd of just a few dozen people scattered around the National Mall as the second lady handed out awards for a bookmark design challenge tied to America’s 250th anniversary. It’s just the latest embarrassment for an event that’s been a disaster from the start.
Musical acts have been dropping out left and right. Generator failures shut down the Ferris wheel and melted all the ice cream. Several states declined to host a booth entirely, and the ones that did show up looked like they belonged at a county fair, rather than a national celebration. Extreme heat and thunderstorms shut the whole thing down for a day, and organizers couldn’t even spell their own event’s name right when they posted the closure notice.
Trump’s transportation secretary called the musicians who cancelled “libtards.” Fox News keeps insisting there are “thousands” of visitors despite the cameras showing dozens. And Trump himself spent his early morning hours on Truth Social, proclaiming that neither Obama or Biden could never have pulled off an event this “fantastic.” But our eyes and ears tell us otherwise.
House Republican Reveals Why He’s Been Missing for More than Three Months
Republican Tom Kean of New Jersey stood before the House chamber this week and said he’s been receiving treatment for severe depression, which caused him to miss more than 100 House votes since early March.
Kean said the diagnosis came as a surprise and figured he’d be back at work after a few weeks. Instead, his recovery stretched on for months, causing him to miss major votes on ICE enforcement funding and the Iran war.
Republicans grew increasingly anxious during Kean’s absence, and have been expressing concerns that his competitive House seat could swing back to Democrats in a tough midterm cycle. House Speaker Mike Johnson expressed hope that voters would respond with empathy rather than judgment.
Kean spoke about how millions of Americans are quietly carrying the same burden without the same level of resources he had access to. He encouraged those battling depression to ask for help. It’s important to note that depression affects a huge share of the population, and treatment has proven effective for a lot of people. But notably, when reporters pressed him on why he waited so long to come clean to his own constituents, Kean didn’t have much to say.
Support the Independent Journalism That Doesn’t Pull Punches
These four stories all have a common thread: power runs amok without accountability. A Republican lawmaker won’t even say the names of two people killed by Trump’s immigration agents. Clarence Thomas tried to rewrite the 14th Amendment to fit the MAGA agenda. Trump’s flagship 250th anniversary celebration is falling apart in real time. And Congress kept the public in the dark about a colleague’s health for months. We recently spoke to Skye Perryman, the CEO of Democracy Forward, which is one of the groups leading the fight for accountability in the courts. You can watch that interview below, or by clicking here.
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