'Pedophile Protection Racket': AOC savages Mike Johnson's Effort To Block Epstein Probes

A CNN takeover, a passport even conservatives can't defend, and a 250th birthday party nobody wanted to attend — this is what week 250 of America looks like

Good morning. I’m John Byrne.

AOC announced that Trump is running “one of the Largest Pedophile Protection Programs in American History.” David Ellison is weeks away from putting CNN under the same roof as CBS. Trump’s “commemorative” passport landed with a slogan so incomprehensible that even a conservative pundit couldn’t defend it on live TV. And the nation’s 250th birthday fair opened on the National Mall with melting ice cream, dead generators, and a third of the states refusing to show up.

Before diving into the news, we need to talk about what is happening to American media right now. Fox just announced a $22 billion deal to buy Roku. The Ellison family got DOJ approval to put Bari Weiss in charge of both CBS News and CNN. Bezos owns the Post. Murdoch runs Fox and now Roku. The billionaire conquest of American media is accelerating and the window to fight back is closing faster than most people realize. Raw America exists as a direct response to all of it, fully reader-supported, editorially independent, and not for sale. But we can only keep doing this work if enough readers take action today. If you have been reading Raw America on a free subscription, right now is the moment to upgrade to a paying membership. Not tomorrow. Today. Every subscription goes directly toward keeping independent journalism alive at the exact moment it is needed most. Subscribe or upgrade right now.

Mike Johnson Just Admitted, on Camera, That He’s Running a Protection Racket

Every so often a politician says the quiet part so loudly that there’s nothing left to interpret. This week, House Speaker Mike Johnson did exactly that.

Speaking Friday at the Faith and Freedom Coalition’s annual summit, Johnson warned the crowd what awaits them if Republicans lose the House in November. “If we were to lose the midterms, heaven forbid, these Democrats — y’all, impeachment’s not even the big concern,” he said. “They will turn every committee of Congress into an investigative body, and they’ll go after the president’s family, the Cabinet, his donors, friends. Half of you in this room will be targeted.”

Then came the line. “I run the protection program. I’ll take care of you.”

The Speaker of the House, third in line to the presidency, the man whose chamber is supposed to be a check on executive power, told a room of donors that his job is to shield them from accountability.

Congress exists to investigate corruption. Johnson just described his role as the thing standing between corruption and daylight.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez named it for what it is. Asked about the remarks by Jen Psaki, she said Johnson was treating any future oversight of Trump “as though it’s some partisan witch hunt.”

Her response: “But if you don’t want to be prosecuted for crimes, don’t do crimes.” What Johnson is really defending, she argued, is a Republican Party in Congress “running a protection racket.” And she didn’t stop at corruption. “We are already seeing that this Trump administration has run what some have called one of the largest pedophile protection programs in American history,” she said, pointing to the administration’s ongoing burial of the Epstein files.

The timing matters: this came the same week a federal judge ruled the Justice Department admitted to breaking the law by refusing to release the bulk of its Epstein files. The protection program isn’t a metaphor. It’s a model.

The Ellisons’ CNN Takeover Is Raising the Staff’s Blood Pressure

The New York Times reported this morning that as David Ellison closes in on completing his $111 billion takeover of CNN’s parent company, the network’s newsroom has curdled into something close to a group anxiety attack. The 18th-floor office of Amy Entelis, the executive who oversees CNN’s on-air talent, has reportedly turned into “something of a psychiatrist’s couch,” with anchors and correspondents dropping in to air their fears about what’s coming.

What’s coming is Bari Weiss. Ellison and his deputies are actively weighing whether to hand the former opinion writer — the one with virtually no broadcasting experience, who’s already fired the leadership of 60 Minutes and been accused of editorial interference she denies — oversight of CNN, a network far larger than CBS News and a major profit center. One option on the table, according to the Times, is pairing Weiss with a more experienced executive to handle the parts of running a cable network she’s never done.

The talent is already heading for the exits in their heads. Anderson Cooper, the network’s biggest star, has told colleagues he doesn’t want to work for Weiss. Kara Swisher says she won’t keep appearing on CNN if Ellison replaces its current chief. Mark Thompson, CNN’s CEO, recently told Paramount officials he won’t share oversight of the network with anyone. Jake Tapper flew to Los Angeles this spring to meet with Ellison; neither side will say what was discussed.

And then there’s the part that says everything. At a memorial this month for Ted Turner — the man who built CNN — the founder’s own grandson took the stage and said Turner would never have stayed quiet while venerable newsrooms were hollowed out. “He’d be the first to speak up,” he said, “especially now, as the very network he built... [is] facing similar threats.”

Ellison insists CNN’s “editorial independence will absolutely be maintained.” But this is the same man who hosted a dinner in Trump’s honor in April while regulators weighed his deal, and who sat cageside with the president at the UFC fight on the White House lawn this month. The journalists who actually work there aren’t buying the reassurances.

That’s the whole thesis of Raw America in a single newsroom: when politically connected billionaires control the news, the people inside it are the first to understand they can no longer hold anyone to account. Join the fight today with a paying subscription.

Trump’s New Passport Was So Embarrassing Even Conservatives Couldn’t Defend It

Here’s how badly Trump’s latest vanity project landed: it broke a conservative pundit on live television.

On Saturday morning, MS NOW’s “The Weekend” turned to Trump’s new “commemorative” passport, which features a scowling portrait of the president and a baffling catchphrase he claims it carries: “Welcome, but be good.” Co-host Jackie Alemany barely finished reading the line before all five panelists dissolved into laughter.

Conservative journalist David Drucker actually tried to defend it.

“I mean sure, we should all be good, whether you’re coming here or not,” he started — then stopped cold. “I don’t — I mean, what do you do with that?” he admitted, which set the table laughing all over again.

Boston Globe columnist Kimberly Atkins Stohr went to the obvious problem. “Does he understand what a passport does? A passport allows you to travel —.” Co-host Eugene Daniels finished it for her: “To leave the country!”

The laughter is the story, but so is the pattern underneath it. This is the same man who painted the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool his personal shade of blue, demolished the East Wing for a $600 million ballroom, and floated a 250-foot triumphal arch.

A passport with his glowering face on the inside cover, set to become the default at the Washington Passport Agency starting July 6, is just the next brick in a monument built to a single man, on the public’s dime, so clumsy that even his allies can’t say it with a straight face.

The 250th Birthday Party Half the Country Skipped

While Trump prints his face on travel documents, the actual birthday celebration is off to a rough start. The Great American State Fair opened on the National Mall this week, and reporters found melting ice cream, power outages, and a Ferris wheel that shut down for two hours when the generators failed. By Friday, food-hall workers were still waiting on an ice cream shipment after their entire stock melted.

But the real story is the empty chairs. At least ten states and territories refused to send delegations, many citing the cost of staffing a 16-day event. Connecticut, Oregon, Washington, Maine, Alaska, and the U.S. Virgin Islands left behind nothing but backdrops and bare carpet.

There was one bright spot: Donna, a 72-year-old retired teacher from Western Massachusetts, drove nine hours after her state declined to participate, brought maple syrup and kids’ coloring books, and is now staffing her state’s booth solo, eight in the morning to nine at night. The richest country on earth couldn’t be bothered to fund its own birthday booth. A retired schoolteacher covered it herself.

That’s the tell. The monuments keep going up. The republic keeps coming apart underneath them. And the people holding it together are the ones nobody’s paying — the volunteer at the booth, the reader funding the newsroom that won’t look away.

Support the Work That Keeps Up With All of This

If you found today’s newsletter valuable, the single best thing you can do to keep this work going is become a paying subscriber. A Speaker openly guarding the powerful, a network being swallowed by the president’s friends, a passport so embarrassing his own side laughed at it on the air — these are the stories billionaire-owned newsrooms would rather bury. Raw America covers them without a billionaire calling the shots. If you have been enjoying Raw America on a free subscription, today is the day to upgrade to a paying membership. Every subscription goes directly toward funding the independent journalism you just read. Subscribe or upgrade right now.

I’m John Byrne. Thanks for staying in the fight.