Good evening, and welcome to Raw America. I’m British Chris. We’ve got a big one tonight. Kristi Noem is out at DHS, fired via Truth Social while she was mid-speech at a conference in Nashville. The House voted today on a war powers resolution that would have reined in Trump’s Iran war, and we were on Capitol Hill for it. A prominent MAGA figure just justified the deaths of more than 100 schoolgirls in Iran. The CBS boss cheerleading this war just put her own name to an attack on Tucker Carlson. And oil just topped 80 dollars a barrel with the White House still scrambling for answers. Let’s get into it.
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Noem Is Out — and the Replacement Is Already Named
It finally happened. Kristi Noem is out as DHS Secretary, fired by Trump via Truth Social on Thursday. In classic Trump fashion, he dressed it up as a promotion, announcing she will move to a newly invented role as “Special Envoy for the Shield of the Americas.” Nobody inside the department was fooled. An administration official told NBC News the decision came from “a culmination of her many unfortunate leadership failures including the fallout in Minnesota, the ad campaign, the allegations of infidelity, the mismanagement of her staff, and her constant feuding with other agency heads.”
Raw America had reporters on the ground for both congressional hearings this week. North Carolina’s Thom Tillis delivered a blistering ten-minute rebuke and called for her resignation to audible applause. Louisiana’s John Kennedy dismantled her on the $220 million ad campaign. Democratic Rep. Sydney Kamlager-Dove entered media headlines about Noem and Corey Lewandowski’s reported personal relationship directly into the congressional record. Before her firing, Trump told Reuters he never knew about that ad campaign — directly contradicting what Noem had told the Senate two days earlier. That contradiction appears to have been the final straw.
DHS staff are left in a grim situation. More than 90 percent of the agency is working without pay in a shutdown now in its third week. As one source put it: “Some GOPers were literally guiding her by the nose, and she still failed.”
Her replacement is Sen. Markwayne Mullin of Oklahoma, a Trump loyalist the president called “a MAGA Warrior and former undefeated professional MMA fighter,” effective March 31. There’s a wrinkle worth watching: if confirmed, Oklahoma’s governor would simply appoint a Republican to fill Mullin’s Senate seat, with no special election required. Democrats need four seats to retake the Senate in November. That math just got harder.
CBS Boss Bari Weiss Attacks Tucker Carlson as Her Network Cheerleads the War
Bari Weiss, David Ellison’s hand-picked editor-in-chief at CBS News, reposted a tweet of Trump’s attack on Tucker Carlson for criticizing the Iran war. In the exchange, Trump said: “Tucker has lost his way. He’s not MAGA. MAGA is saving our country, and Tucker is none of those things. And Tucker is really not smart enough to understand that.”
Sharing that is not a neutral editorial act. This is the editor-in-chief of a major broadcast network amplifying a sitting president’s personal attack on a media critic of his war. CBS staff have already described her Iran coverage as “propaganda-palooza.” Her anchor Dokoupil told viewers there were no American casualties during his Saturday special — just a day before six U.S. troops were killed in Kuwait. Weiss posted a fire emoji celebrating the death of Iran’s supreme leader and has been using CBS airtime to target progressive critics of the war. This is the billionaire takeover of American media playing out in real time, and it is shaping public opinion about a war most Americans don’t support.
This is exactly why Raw America exists. We don’t have a billionaire owner. We answer to you. Become a paid subscriber at Raw America on Substack today.
MAGA Ideologue Says Dead Iranian Schoolgirls Are Better Off
Matt Schlapp, who chairs the American Conservative Union and organizes CPAC, was on Piers Morgan Uncensored discussing the bombing of a girls’ school in southern Iran that killed an estimated 175 people, nearly all young children. When journalist Peter Beinart argued those girls would be alive had the U.S. and Israel not launched this war, Schlapp said they would have been “alive in a burqa” in “a barbaric society.” When Cenk Uygur asked, “So just kill them?” Schlapp said that wasn’t what he meant — and then kept going, arguing it was “hypocritical” to mourn women and children killed in a society where women face inequality.
There is no charitable reading of this. It is the argument that Muslim and Arab lives are cheap, and that casualties from a society Schlapp disapproves of somehow count less. He doesn’t even have his facts straight — women in Iran make up the majority of university graduates, and the burqa is an Afghan garment, not an Iranian one. But facts are beside the point when the goal is to make 175 dead schoolgirls someone else’s problem.
Oil Tops $80 a Barrel — and the White House Has No Plan
U.S. crude topped $80 a barrel Thursday, with West Texas Intermediate surging over eight percent. U.S. oil prices are up about 21 percent this week. At the pump, AAA reports the national average has jumped nearly 27 cents to $3.25 a gallon — the biggest single-day jump since Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022.
The cause is straightforward. Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz. About 20 percent of global oil consumption flows through it. Tanker traffic has stopped. Iran struck a tanker with a missile. The British Navy reported a large explosion at another tanker in Iraqi waters Thursday. Trump promised Navy escorts for commercial shipping but his press secretary admitted there is no timeline for when the strait will be safe again.
Inside the West Wing, Chief of Staff Susie Wiles and senior aides are scrambling. According to Politico, White House officials are “looking under every rock” for solutions and Energy Secretary Chris Wright is being “screamed at to find some good news.” The faction that understood what going to war in the world’s main oil-producing region would do to prices was apparently silenced before the strikes began. Nobody has a convincing answer now.
Raw America was on Capitol Hill today as the House voted on the war powers resolution. The Senate defeated a similar measure yesterday 47 to 53, with Rand Paul the only Republican to cross over. The House version was expected to fail, but the margins were tighter than the White House wanted, and Democrats say this is only the first round. That reporting exists because of our paid subscribers. We’ve also had reporters in both Noem hearings this week and brought you exclusive interviews with people like retired General Paul Eaton — voices corporate media is too busy flag-waving to seek out.
If you’re not yet a paid subscriber, become one today at Raw America on Substack. This is people-powered journalism, and it only works if you’re in it with us.
Good evening. We’ll see you tomorrow.
STORIES YOU MAY HAVE MISSED:
House Rejects Effort to Rein in Trump’s War in Iran. The House of Representatives voted 212-219 to defeat a War Powers resolution jointly sponsored by Reps. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) and Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), who also co-authored the Epstein Files Transparency Act. Reps. Massie and Warren Davidson (R-Ohio) voted with Democrats, while Reps. Henry Cuellar (D-Texas), Jared Golden (D-Maine), Greg Landsman (D-Ohio) and Juan Vargas (D-Calif.) voted against the measure with Republicans.
24 States Sue Trump Over New Tariff Threat. After President Donald Trump introduced a new 10 percent global tariff, a coalition of two dozen states responded by filing a lawsuit to stop them. The states — which are led by Arizona, California, New York and Oregon — are asking the Court of International Trade to strike down the new import taxes on constitutional grounds.
Trump Demands Right to Pick Iran’s Next Leader. Iranian clerics are currently in the process of selecting the Islamic republic’s next supreme leader following the killing of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei last weekend. However, President Trump is now demanding he be allowed to have a say in the choosing of the next leader, as he did in Venezuela after the capture of President Nicolas Maduro.
Disqualified DOJ Prosecutor Now Under Investigation in Florida. Lindsey Halligan, who served a brief stint as acting U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia last year, is now under investigation by the Florida Bar for her actions at the Justice Department. Halligan is accused of committing various ethical violations by falsely claiming to still be a U.S. attorney after a federal judge disqualified her due to being unlawfully appointed. Halligan was known for leading short-lived prosecutions of Trump’s political opponents — like former FBI Director James Comey and NEw York Attorney General Letitia James — which were ultimately dismissed.
Embattled Republican Admits to Affair with Staffer Who Died by Suicide. Rep. Tony Gonzales (R-Texas) admitted Thursday to having an affair last year with former staffer Regina Ann Santos-Aviles, who died by suicide in 2025 after self-immolating. Gonzales finished in second place in his Republican primary this week to far-right YouTuber Brandon Herrera, and will face off against him this May in a runoff contest. The three-term Republican has so far refused calls from within his party to resign.
