Raw America Goes To The White House As Rival War Protests Erupt

Raw America On The Ground; Putin Cashing In On The War; Hegseth Contradicts Trump; Epstein Trump Contact Worst Than We Imagined

Good morning. One week in, and the administration still can't agree on why it started a war or who it's killing.

This morning we’re sending you dispatches straight from the streets of Washington, where our reporter Luke De Cresce was on the ground yesterday as pro-war and anti-war protesters faced off in front of the White House. We’ve also got Putin quietly cashing in on Trump’s war while helping Iran target American troops. A girls’ school in southern Iran was hit by missiles, and the Pentagon’s own preliminary assessment points to American forces. And the Epstein files keep getting worse, one document at a time.

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Now. Let’s get into it.

On the Ground: Two Protests, One Street, Zero Consensus

Raw America was at the White House yesterday. For you. This is what new media looks like, and you’re the ones making it happen. Luke De Cresce is our new Capitol Hill reporter, and what you’re about to read is the first of many great things to come from him. Welcome him to the team.

By Luke De Cresce, Raw America’s Capitol Hill Reporter

Good morning. My name is Luke De Cresce, and I’m Raw America’s new Capitol Hill reporter. On Saturday, I attended a pro-war protest in front of the White House, and I’m here to tell you all about it.

It’s been a tense week here in DC. I’ve been in the middle of it all week — reporting live from Kristi Noem’s Senate testimony on Tuesday and the House’s vote on the War Powers Act on Thursday. Yesterday, I was on Pennsylvania Avenue during dueling demonstrations over Trump’s military intervention in Iran.

Two protests were scheduled for the same Saturday afternoon in downtown DC. An anti-war demonstration organized by the Party for Socialism and Liberation, the Palestinian Youth Movement, the National Iranian American Council, and 50501 was set for 3 p.m. in front of the White House. A pro-intervention march organized by DCProtests 4Iran was scheduled to start at 2 p.m. and end at the same location. The inevitable confrontation on Pennsylvania Avenue was something I couldn’t miss.

DCProtests 4Iran consists mainly of Iranian Americans who support returning the Pahlavi dynasty to power in Iran. The Lion and Sun flag — which the Islamic Republic banned in 1979 — flew above the march constantly, often alongside American and Israeli flags. Portraits of Reza Pahlavi, the Shah-in-Exile, were everywhere. Two men toward the front of the procession carried a stretcher bearing a skeleton dressed in Ayatollah Khamenei’s robes.

The support for Trump’s intervention was clear. “We want to thank President Trump, the first President brave enough to confront the Islamic Republic,” said Sam, a flag-bearing protester. Another, who identified as pro-Trump, told me: “He’s the only one who has cleaned up the mess after Carter, Biden, Obama. The Democrats wanted the mullahs in power.”

I also caught up with a Make Iran Great Again hat-wearing protester who identified himself as “Mikey Mike.” I asked what Trump could do to lose his support. “If he would walk away without getting it done,” Mikey Mike said. He then voiced support for a potential regime change in Cuba and, somehow, sanctions against European countries. I started to lose the thread at that point.

When the pro-war march settled into its position less than a block from the anti-war protest, the two sides came face to face with only a police line between them. Flashpoints of confrontation erupted at the intersections between the crowds, some devolving into shouting before police intervened. The tensions here in DC show no signs of easing anytime soon.

Luke’s dispatch is what your paid subscription makes possible — if you haven’t yet, help us put more reporters in more rooms by upgrading today.

Putin’s Double Dividend: Oil Profits and a Distracted Pentagon

While America buries its dead and burns through its missile stockpiles, Vladimir Putin is having a very good week. Trump’s war in Iran has handed Moscow a windfall it couldn’t have engineered on its own.

Global energy markets are in chaos. Tankers cannot move freely through the Strait of Hormuz, which carries roughly 20 percent of the world’s daily oil supply. Buyers across Asia are scrambling for alternatives. Russian crude, which was sitting unsold on sanctioned tankers just weeks ago, now has a line of customers. The U.S. Treasury, in a remarkable turn, has temporarily eased sanctions to allow some buyers including India to purchase Russian oil stranded at sea.

Putin, never one to miss a moment, went on Russian state television this week to threaten cutting off the remaining gas Russia supplies to Europe. “Other markets are opening now,” he said. The subtext needed no translation.

But the windfall extends beyond oil prices. Multiple sources, including a senior U.S. official, told CBS News that Russia has been providing Iran with intelligence on American military positions in the Middle East. Defense Secretary Hegseth, asked about it, said U.S. commanders are “aware of everything.” He had told reporters earlier in the week that Russia and China were “not really a factor.”

There is also the question of what this war is costing Ukraine. The conflict is draining U.S. air defense and anti-ballistic missile stockpiles, leaving fewer available for the country Russia has spent four years trying to destroy. For Putin, the arithmetic is straightforward: surging oil revenues and a superpower too busy in the Persian Gulf to focus on Kyiv.

Trump and Hegseth Can’t Get Their Story Straight on a Dead Girls’ School

In the opening hours of Operation Epic Fury on February 28, three missiles struck the Shajareye Tayabeh girls’ school in Minab, a city in southern Iran. Between 165 and 180 people were killed, the vast majority girls aged 7 to 12. Funerals were held on March 3. The Trump administration’s response has been a masterclass in contradiction.

Asked who fired the missiles, Trump said Iran. Then, in the same breath, he said Iran is “very inaccurate” and “has no accuracy whatsoever,” apparently unaware that he had just undermined his own answer. Standing directly behind him, Hegseth declined to back his boss. “We’re certainly investigating,” the Defense Secretary said, which is as close as a Trump cabinet official gets to publicly breaking ranks. It was a rare and telling crack.

Two anonymous U.S. officials told reporters that preliminary assessments point to American forces as likely responsible. The New York Times concluded the same, noting the school sat immediately beside a confirmed IRGC naval target and that the strike likely resulted from a weapons malfunction or a catastrophic intelligence failure. The Pentagon has said nothing beyond “we’re investigating.”

The school story is jarring, but the contradiction it exposed is not new. Since Operation Epic Fury began, this administration has been unable to deliver a coherent sentence about why it started a war, what winning looks like, or who is responsible for what. Trump has cited regime change, nuclear deterrence, and an imminent threat to American forces, sometimes in the same interview. Hegseth has promised “no nation-building” and “no stupid rules of engagement.” Rubio has suggested diplomacy remains possible. None of them appear to be reading from the same document.

According to UNICEF, at least 20 schools and 10 hospitals have been damaged in Iran since the war began. Trump’s response on Truth Social was to promise “complete destruction and certain death.” Hegseth’s response was to say “war is hell.” Israel’s UN ambassador said “sometimes we have accidents.” What nobody in the administration has managed to say is: we are sorry, or we are responsible, or we even know what happened. The investigation continues. The messaging does not.

The FBI Interviewed Her Four Times. That Should Tell You Something.

The newly released Epstein files contain FBI summaries of four separate interviews with a woman who alleged Donald Trump sexually abused her when she was 13 years old. A Department of Justice source told the Miami Herald that the number of interviews was itself significant: investigators do not return to a witness four times if they believe she is lying.

According to the summaries, the woman told investigators that Jeffrey Epstein first approached her family after her mother, a real estate agent, placed a babysitting advertisement in a packet she gave to clients. Epstein later trafficked her to multiple men, including Trump, when she was between 13 and 15. She said Epstein took her to “a very tall building with huge rooms” in the New York or New Jersey area to meet Trump, and that everyone else left the room at Trump’s request.

What she says happened next is described in the FBI’s own words in the released documents. The woman told investigators she resisted. Trump, she said, then struck her. In a follow-up interview, she clarified: “he pulled her hair and punched her on the side of her head.”

The woman also told investigators she had received threatening phone calls throughout her life, and described four or five incidents where her car was nearly run off the road. She noted to her attorney, within earshot of investigators, that the threats had increased “when he was running.”

The Justice Department initially withheld these documents from the public database required by the Epstein Files Transparency Act, a law Trump himself signed. After an NPR investigation exposed the omission, the DOJ released 16 pages of interview summaries while acknowledging that 37 pages remain missing. The House Oversight Committee has subpoenaed Attorney General Pam Bondi. Trump has not been charged with any crime in connection with these allegations. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt called the accusations “completely baseless” from a “sadly disturbed woman” with a criminal history. The war in Iran has made sure most of America will never read this far.

A Note From Our Team

Luke De Cresce was on the streets of Washington yesterday so you didn’t have to be. Before that, we had reporters in the room when Kristi Noem testified before the Senate. We’ve brought you exclusive interviews with people like retired General Paul Eaton. We were on Capitol Hill for the War Powers Resolution vote. And we are on the verge of joining the D.C. press pool full-time — more access, more exclusives, more accountability journalism in the rooms where decisions get made and lives get spent.

All of that is because of paying subscribers. Period.

If this work matters to you — if you believe independent, people-powered journalism is the answer to what MAGA and the billionaires are doing to American media — please become a paid subscriber today. We cannot do this without you. We won’t pretend otherwise.

Subscribe. Share this with someone who needs to read it. And we’ll see you back here tomorrow morning.

John, Justin, Luke and the Raw America Team

Raw America is Raw Story and Really Americans’ people-powered response to MAGA and the billionaire takeover of American media.

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Stories You May Have Missed

Your Gas Bill Is a Direct Consequence of This War

The national average for a gallon of regular gasoline jumped 14% in a single week to $3.41 on Saturday, according to AAA — up from under $3 a week ago. The biggest single-day spike came Tuesday, when prices jumped 11 cents overnight — the largest one-day increase since Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022. Diesel is up 75 cents a week. Jet fuel has nearly tripled in parts of Asia. It’s worth remembering that at his State of the Union address just two weeks ago, Trump boasted about gas prices falling to $1.99 a gallon in some states. When asked this week about rising prices, Trump said, “I don’t have any concern about it.” Analysts expect prices to keep climbing as long as the Strait of Hormuz remains effectively closed. Mortgage rates are ticking up too. So are grocery prices. The war Trump started without asking Congress is now showing up in everyone’s wallet.

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Congress Voted on the War. Congress Lost.

Both chambers of Congress took up War Powers resolutions this week to force Trump to seek congressional authorization for the Iran war — and both failed. In the Senate, the resolution fell 47-53, with Democratic Sen. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania voting against his own party and Republican Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky the lone GOP vote in favor. In the House, the resolution failed 212-219, with Republican Reps. Thomas Massie and Warren Davidson breaking with their party to support it, while four Democrats voted no. Speaker Mike Johnson told reporters the U.S. is “not at war” — just engaged in a “defensive operation.” Trump, sitting next to him hours later, repeatedly called it a war. Sen. Kaine noted in classified briefings that the administration “could produce no evidence, none, that the US was under an imminent threat of attack from Iran” — the legal justification the White House has leaned on most heavily. The war continues without a single congressional vote authorizing it.

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Iran Is About to Name a New Supreme Leader. Trump Says He Should Have a Say.

Iran’s Assembly of Experts, the 88-member clerical body tasked with selecting the country’s next supreme leader, signaled Sunday that it has reached a majority consensus on a candidate. Multiple members are pointing to Mojtaba Khamenei, the second son of the assassinated Ayatollah, as the likely successor — selected, one member said, based on the late leader’s advice that Iran’s top figure should “be hated by the enemy.” Trump has declared Mojtaba an “unacceptable” choice and suggested he should have a role in the appointment — comparing the situation to Venezuela, where he said of post-Maduro leadership: “Leaders can be picked.” Iran analysts say whoever is chosen will almost certainly be a “status quo candidate” designed to signal the regime’s survival and continuity — which is precisely what U.S. intelligence said before the war started would happen regardless of how hard America bombed.

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The Six Americans Who Died Had Names

Trump attended a dignified transfer Saturday at Dover Air Force Base for the six Army Reserve soldiers killed in an Iranian drone strike on a command center in Kuwait on March 1. He was joined by Melania Trump, Pete Hegseth, and Steve Witkoff. The fallen were identified as Capt. Cody A. Khork, 35; Sgt. 1st Class Noah L. Tietjens, 42; Sgt. 1st Class Nicole M. Amor, 39; Sgt. Declan J. Coady, 20; Maj. Jeffrey O’Brien, 45; and Chief Warrant Officer 3 Robert M. Marzan, 54. All six were members of a U.S. Army Reserve unit based in Des Moines, Iowa. Sgt. Declan Coady was 20 years old. In the same week their remains came home, the president posted on Truth Social threatening “complete destruction and certain death” for Iran and told a reporter asking about potential casualties: “Some people will die. When you go to war, some people will die.” These are the some people.

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The War Is Spreading. Several Countries Are Now Involved.

What began as a U.S.-Israeli operation against Iran has widened considerably in nine days. Iran has launched waves of missiles and drones targeting Israel, U.S. military bases in Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait, the UAE, and Saudi Arabia, and strikes have hit or threatened Jordan, Turkey, Azerbaijan, Cyprus, and Iraq. An Iranian drone attack damaged a water desalination plant in Bahrain. Saudi Arabia’s military intercepted 16 drones headed toward the Shaybah oil field, one of the largest in the Middle East. Dubai’s international airport was struck multiple times. Azerbaijan, which wanted no part of this conflict, announced its military is preparing retaliatory measures after Iranian drones struck its territory. A NATO air defense system in Turkey intercepted an Iranian ballistic missile. Canada’s new prime minister said he could not rule out military participation. The war the administration promised would be “four to five weeks” is now touching more than a dozen countries, and it is nine days old.