Good evening, I’m British Chris, and this is Raw America.
Tonight, we’ve got four stories that expose the rot spreading through American institutions. A former ICE trainer is blowing the whistle on unconstitutional training practices. A GOP congressman faces calls for his resignation from a fellow Republican. The U.S. women’s hockey team declines Trump’s State of the Union invitation. And one top Republican is now admitting he can’t actually save Trump’s tariff agenda after the Supreme Court struck it down.
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Now, let’s get into what they don’t want you to know.
ICE Agents Being Trained to Violate Constitution
A former ICE trainer is set to tell a congressional forum that the agency is “broken” and actively training new agents to violate the Fourth Amendment. Ryan Schwank, who resigned from Immigration and Customs Enforcement on February 13th, joined ICE as legal counsel back in 2021. In his prepared testimony, he states plainly: “ICE is lying to Congress and the American people about the steps it is taking to ensure its 10,000 new officers faithfully uphold the Constitution.”
That’s not a protester. That’s someone who was inside the building, teaching the classes.
The specifics are damning. A congressional memo reveals that new ICE recruits are receiving significantly less training than previous officers. They’re also taking fewer exams. One exam that was cut was designed to train agents on when it’s appropriate to fire a weapon.
Meanwhile, Senator Richard Blumenthal had already alerted DHS Secretary Kristi Noem about a secret policy allowing agents to bypass Fourth Amendment privacy protections. But her agency responded by insisting no training requirements have been removed.
The Department of Homeland Security is telling the public one thing while internal documents say another. That’s not bureaucratic confusion. That’s a cover-up.
Newly Revealed Epstein Email Refers to His ‘Murder’
Buried inside the Justice Department’s release of 3.5 million Epstein files is an email that may blow the official narrative wide open. A redacted DOJ attorney, identifying themselves as an assistant U.S. attorney working in the Eastern District of New York, wrote to an unnamed recipient in mid-2020 referencing an ongoing “investigation into the murder of Jeffrey Epstein.”
Not suicide. Murder.
This email was written nearly a year after Chief Medical Examiner Barbara Sampson officially ruled Epstein’s death a suicide. The same ruling that came despite broken neck bones forensic pathologists said were more consistent with strangulation than hanging.
Now we have a sitting DOJ attorney, working inside Trump’s own Justice Department, casually referencing a murder investigation in an inter-agency email about a confidentiality agreement.
Mid-2020 puts this squarely inside Trump’s first term. If his own DOJ was quietly investigating Epstein’s death as a homicide, that directly contradicts the memo his administration released last year declaring the matter closed as a suicide. Those two things cannot both be true.
The context of the email itself also matters. The attorney wasn’t making an accusation or a political statement, but rather asking a bureaucratic question about a confidentiality agreement. That’s exactly what makes it credible. People don’t accidentally call things murders in administrative emails unless that’s genuinely how the investigation is being classified.
Third, the cover-up timeline. Epstein was arrested in July 2019. He was dead five weeks later. The guards monitoring him were asleep. The cameras outside his cell malfunctioned. His cellmate had been transferred. And then, six days after his body was found, a medical examiner who wasn’t even present during the autopsy overruled the findings of the pathologist who was there and declared it suicide.
The question that needs answering is simple: if Epstein’s death was being investigated as a murder inside the Eastern District of New York in 2020, what happened to that investigation? Who shut it down, and when?
These are the kinds of stories you’ll never hear in billionaire-owned outlets. But because Raw America has no corporate owners telling us what we can and can’t say, we take pride in bringing you news you won’t find anywhere else. But we can’t do that without your support. Become a paying subscriber today and help us keep holding power accountable.
Boebert Demands Fellow Republican Resign from Congress
Republican Congressman Tony Gonzales of Texas is facing calls to resign from within his own party after newly published text messages surfaced showing him sending sexually explicit messages to a former staffer, Regina Santos-Aviles, who died by suicide last September.
The messages are graphic. The congressman is seen repeatedly asking his former staffer to send him suggestive photos even after she refused. He then pivoted to asking her explicitly sexual questions. They eventually made plans to meet up, even though Gonzales is a married father of six. Those messages have now been followed by testimony from another former staffer who described himself as Santos-Aviles’s best friend, who says she admitted the affair to him and had been battling depression ever since her husband discovered the relationship.
Gonzales has denied everything, and accused Republican primary opponent Brandon Herrera of orchestrating the story. But that framing is getting harder to sustain as more evidence emerges. Congresswoman Lauren Boebert has now called on Gonzales to resign directly, which is notable given that she’s in the same party and the Republican majority in the House is historically thin.
If Gonzales steps down, Republicans would hold a 217 to 214 margin with four vacancies. At those numbers, it only takes a handful of defectors to sink legislation. Republicans like Don Bacon and Thomas Massie have already shown they’re willing to break with the party. Speaker Johnson cannot afford this story getting bigger, because his majority is rapidly getting weaker.
Johnson Admits No One Wants Trump’s Tariffs
Finally, House Speaker Mike Johnson admitted Monday that Congress is unlikely to pass any legislation to codify Trump’s tariff agenda following last week’s Supreme Court ruling that struck down the administration’s sweeping global import taxes.
Johnson told reporters it would be “a challenge to find consensus on any path forward on the tariffs.” When asked about including tariffs in the budget reconciliation megabill, his response was equally deflating.
Trump’s 15 percent global tariffs are set to expire after 150 days. At that point, Congress would need to extend them. But senior Republicans are privately saying they don’t have the votes to do it. Senate Democrats have already vowed to block any extension, and given that extensions would require 60 votes, they have the numbers to make that stick.
Republican Don Bacon, who already voted to overturn Trump’s Canada tariffs, said bluntly that Trump is putting “a ball and chain” on the GOP going into the midterms. He also predicted his new global tariffs will also fail in the courts.
The administration built an entire economic strategy around executive tariff authority. The Supreme Court said no. And now the legislative branch, controlled by Trump’s own party, is declining to stake their careers on his blunder.
This Is Why We Built Raw America
These aren’t four separate stories. They’re four illustrations of the same problem. Institutions designed to protect the public are being hollowed out and even weaponized. The people inside those institutions who speak up are fighting to be heard. The people at the top are hoping the news cycle moves on before accountability arrives.
Raw America exists precisely for moments like this, because we know billionaire-controlled news outlets will sweep these stories under the rug. Share this video, become a paying subscriber, and keep showing up. Those in power are counting on you to be too exhausted to fight back. Don’t give in.
I’m British Chris for Raw America. Thanks for watching.
STORIES YOU MAY HAVE MISSED
Trump Administration Kills 3 in New Boat Strike. The Pentagon announced Monday that it killed three more people after blowing up an alleged drug boat in the Caribbean Sea. At least 151 people have been killed since the strikes began last year. The administration has not named any of those killed, or charged any of those killed with crimes.
House Democrats Bring Epstein Survivors to Trump’s State of the Union Address. Several House Democrats are using this week’s State of the Union address as a way to bring attention to survivors of convicted sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein and highlight their calls for justice. Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) is bringing Epstein survivor Haley Robson, who said she was trafficked by Epstein was she was just 16 years old.
Maryland Takes Trump’s DHS to Court Over Detention Center. Maryland Attorney General Anthony G. Brown (D) sued the Department of Homeland Security and DHS Secretary Kristi Noem on Tuesday over the government “secretly” purchasing an 825,000 square-foot warehouse to be used for jailing immigrants. Brown said state law requires that the facility must undergo an environmental impact review and public comment period before it can be repurposed as a detention center.
Democrats Likely to Pick Up Seat in Deep-Red State After Judge’s Ruling. After a three-judge panel blocked a Republican-led effort to strike down new congressional maps in Utah, Democrats are favored to pick up another seat in the 2026 midterm elections. The new district packs most of liberal Salt Lake County into one district, meaning more favorable territory for Democrats in November.
Trump’s Top General Warned Against New Strikes in Iran. Gen. Dan Caine, who is Trump’s appointed chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, is warning that a new wave of strikes in Iran would carry “significant risks,” and could risk miring the U.S. military in another lengthy conflict in the Middle East. Caine’s warning comes as Trump continues to flirt with the idea of attacking Iran, and as the U.S.S. Gerald Ford and the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln are both in the Middle East in preparation for a possible military operation.
