Good morning. New footage is blowing apart Trump’s story about the Iranian girls’ school. Lindsey Graham is having second thoughts, now that the oil is on fire. Markets opened in freefall. And in Columbus, Ohio, 60,000 Somali Americans are being terrorized while Washington runs a war it cannot explain.
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The Footage That Blew Up Trump’s School Strike Denial
Trump told reporters Saturday that the strike killing 175 people at a girls’ elementary school in Minab, Iran, was Iran’s fault. “That was done by Iran,” he said. “They’re very inaccurate, as you know, with their munitions.”
Then footage appeared. Pro-regime outlet Mehr News Agency uploaded video of last week’s strike on the naval base sitting directly next to the school. The New York Times independently verified it. The footage appears to show a Tomahawk cruise missile striking the base’s medical clinic. As the camera pans right, smoke is already rising from the school’s direction. The United States is the only military in this conflict that fires Tomahawks. Iran does not have them. Israel does not use them. The Pentagon’s own description: “long range, highly accurate.” The Navy released footage of Tomahawk launches from ships in the region, including on the day the school was hit. The footage was first surfaced by the investigative outlet Bellingcat.
Defense Secretary Hegseth confirmed an investigation is open, but told reporters from the podium: “The only side that targets civilians is Iran.” One hundred and seventy-five people are dead, most of them children. The White House has not responded to requests for comment. The administration’s current explanation is a missile that only one side in this conflict possesses.
When a government lies about dead children, it’s not just a PR problem. It’s a test of whether accountability still exists in a democracy. Every war in American history that was built on a lie, from the Gulf of Tonkin to Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction, began with exactly this kind of official denial in the face of contradicting evidence. We’ve been here before, and we know how it ends.
Lindsey Graham Loved This War Until Israel Burned the Oil
Last week Graham called Trump “the greatest commander-in-chief of all time” and told Fox News: “We’re going to blow the hell out of these people.” He told Meet the Press the U.S. bears zero responsibility for rebuilding Iran. “It’s not his job or my job.”
Then Israel bombed 30 Iranian fuel depots Saturday, and Graham found his concern. He posted on X urging Israel to be “cautious” about target selection, warning that Iran’s oil economy would be needed to rebuild after the regime falls. A senior U.S. official told Axios: “We don’t think it was a good idea.” A Trump adviser put it plainly: the president “wants to save the oil. He doesn’t want to burn it.”
Iran’s military has warned it could retaliate by targeting regional energy infrastructure, potentially pushing oil to $200 a barrel. Tucker Carlson, Nick Fuentes, and Andrew Tate have all broken with Trump, calling the war a betrayal of “America First.” At least seven Americans are dead. More than 1,300 Iranians killed. When Time asked Trump if Americans should worry about a strike at home, he said: “I guess.”
What you’re watching in real time is the collision between the fantasy of a clean, profitable war and the brutal reality that wars don’t stay inside the lines you draw for them. Graham didn’t find his conscience. He found the oil. And that tells you everything you need to know about what this war is actually about.
The Markets Are Telling You What the White House Won’t
Japan’s Nikkei fell 7 percent Monday. South Korea’s index dropped 8.2. Brent crude hit $104.57 a barrel, a 27-percent single-day spike and the biggest one-day oil price increase since 1988. First time above $100 since Russia invaded Ukraine. RBC Capital Markets called it “the worst oil supply shock since the 1970s.”
The Strait of Hormuz has effectively stopped moving traffic. Qatar shut its LNG facilities, removing roughly a fifth of global supply. Gas is up more than 40 cents a gallon in a week. Diesel is up 75 cents. Mortgage rates are climbing again. Grocery prices are next. The economists aren’t hedging anymore. They are describing cascading shutdowns across the region with no American off-ramp in sight.
Two weeks ago Trump stood before Congress and boasted about $1.99 gasoline. When asked about rising prices this week, he said: “I don’t have any concern about it.” Republicans heading into November’s midterms are going to have a great deal of concern about it.
This is what happens when working people aren’t part of the conversation before a war starts. The people making these decisions don’t fill up their own gas tanks. They don’t watch their grocery bill and wonder what has to go back on the shelf. That disconnect isn’t just callous. It’s the predictable result of a government that’s stopped listening to the people it’s supposed to serve.
In Columbus, a Community Is Being Terrorized. The President Started It.
In late December, men began circling a Somali American-owned daycare in Columbus before dawn, rolling down their windows to say: “We’re exposing all of you. You’re all going back.” On New Year’s Day, there was a break-in. This came days after Trump publicly claimed “the Somalis are ripping off the country” and ICE launched “Operation Buckeye” in Columbus.
Turning Point USA and right-wing influencers stationed themselves outside Somali-owned businesses and schools. Customers stopped coming. Schools saw attendance collapse. Hassan Omar of the Somali Community Association received death threats to his voicemail. “Motherfucker, go back to Somalia. I don’t know how they got my cell number. That’s not normal.”
Temporary Protected Status for Somalis expires March 17. Some TPS holders have been in this country for 36 years. Somalia is on the State Department’s “do not travel” list. More than 6.5 million people there face acute hunger. “I’m scared to go outside,” said Abukar Mohammed, part-owner of the targeted daycare. “Before this happened, I thought the president was going to be a good president.”
What’s happening in Columbus isn’t random. When a president uses the power of his platform to point at a community and call them thieves, he’s not just venting. He’s giving permission. That’s how democracies unravel, not all at once, but neighborhood by neighborhood, one terrorized family at a time.
The Epstein Accusation Just Got Harder to Dismiss
The Post and Courier published an investigation Sunday corroborating key details in the account of a woman who told the FBI that Trump sexually assaulted her when she was 13. The FBI interviewed her four separate times. A DOJ source told the Miami Herald the agency would not have done that if it found her not credible. She accused Trump of assaulting her in the mid-1980s, pulling her hair and striking her in the head.
The outlet verified that her mother rented a home to Epstein in South Carolina, confirmed details about another man she accused of assault, and found that her mother was charged with stealing $22,000 from her employer, which the woman told investigators was connected to Epstein’s blackmail scheme. Trump has not been charged with any crime. The House Oversight Committee has subpoenaed AG Pam Bondi over the handling of the files. Thirty-seven pages remain missing from the public database. The DOJ initially withheld these files entirely from the database the Epstein Files Transparency Act required them to populate. Trump signed that law. The war is ensuring this story gets a fraction of the attention it deserves. We are not going to let it disappear.
A functioning democracy requires that no one is above accountability, not even the most powerful person in the country. When the Department of Justice withholds files from a transparency law that the president himself signed, that’s not a bureaucratic mistake. That’s a cover-up in plain sight. And the fact that a war is drowning out this story doesn’t make it less true. It makes staying on it more important.
Why We’re Here
We are scaling up because of you. We had reporters at the Iran war protests at the White House yesterday. We were on Capitol Hill for the House War Powers Resolution vote, getting the inside scoop as it happened. We have been in DHS hearings with Secretary Kristi Noem. We brought you exclusive interviews with people like retired General Paul Eaton. And we are on the verge of joining the D.C. press pool full-time.
None of this happens without paid subscribers. If this work matters to you, become a paid subscriber today. We will keep showing up. We need you to make it possible.
Raw America is Raw Story and Really Americans’ people-powered response to MAGA and the billionaire takeover of American media.
STORIES YOU MAY HAVE MISSED:
Seventh Soldier Killed in Iran Strikes Identified as 26 Year-Old from Kentucky. Sgt. Benjamin N. Pennington of Glendale, Kentucky died on Saturday from injuries sustained in a March 1 attack on the Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia. Pennington, who enlisted in 2017, is the latest casualty in the Iran war, which has killed six other American troops.
Federal Judge Rules Kari Lake’s Entire Tenure as VOA Chief Was Illegal. U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth — an appointee of former President Ronald Reagan — ruled Saturday that Kari Lake was illegally and unconstitutionally put in her role to oversee Voice of America and declared all of her actions since 2025 to be null and void. This includes the layoffs of more than 1,000 journalists and staffers at both VOA and its parent entity, the U.S. Agency for Global Media.
Trump Officials Secretly Buying Nuclear Bunkers Amid Iran War. Texas resident Ron Hubbard, who owns bunker manufacturing company Atlas, told the Telegraph that his clientele includes two unnamed Trump Cabinet members, one of whom recently texted him asking: “When will my bunker be ready?” Hubbard’s company boasts of making bunkers capable of withstanding biological and nuclear attacks, as well as EMP events.
U.S. Military Kills Six in New Caribbean Boat Strike. U.S. Southern Command recently carried out an attack in the Eastern Pacific that killed six people, bringing the total death toll in the Trump administration’s boat strikes to at least 156 people. None of the people killed in the strikes have been publicly named or charged with crimes, and the administration has not provided evidence of drug smuggling. Experts say the strikes are illegal as those killed were not presenting an imminent threat of violence, even if they are suspected of conducting drug-related activity.
Republicans Panic as Trump Refuses to Make Endorsement in Texas Primary. Republicans are becoming increasingly worried bout the heated primary battle between incumbent Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) and Attorney General Ken Paxton, who is running as a MAGA acolyte. Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), who is not running for reelection, said the May runoff election will require millions more dollars that he said could be better spent preparing for the general election against Democrat James Talarico. He added that a Paxton runoff victory would lead to Republican donors spending money trying to win in Texas that could instead be spent in more competitive states like Georgia and Michigan.
