Trump Fundraises Off Of Death As ICE Ups Surveillance
Trump Fundraises Off The Dead; ICE Is Targeting Farm Workers With AI; Hegseth Goes Off The Rails; Mamdani Sticks It To CBS
Good morning, and this is your Raw America morning briefing for Saturday, March 14th.
We are two weeks into a war nobody voted for, and this morning the picture is getting darker. Trump is fundraising off dead soldiers’ coffins. Government insiders are describing chaos, absent objectives, and panicked allies. ICE agents are using secret AI apps to sweep up farm workers on their way to work. New York City’s mayor just walked out of a CBS interview after the network tried to ambush him. And Pete Hegseth spent Friday at a Pentagon podium calling journalists liars while Iranian leaders marched openly through Tehran. This is what Day 13 of Operation Epic Fury looks like.
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Now here is what you need to know.
Trump Is Fundraising Off Dead Soldiers’ Coffins
Thirteen U.S. service members have now been killed in Trump’s Iran war. And this week, the president used a photograph of himself saluting flag-draped coffins at Dover Air Force Base to solicit donations for his political operation.
The email went out to Trump’s supporter list promoting what it called a “National Security Briefing Membership,” asking for contributions up to $1,000 and beyond to support the, quote, “MAGA agenda.” The photo featured in the email was taken at the dignified transfer of soldiers killed in his own war. Trump was wearing the same $55 “USA 45-47” baseball cap he wore at the transfer ceremony, making him the first president in American history to show up to that solemn ritual in a campaign hat.
The backlash was swift and bipartisan. California Governor Gavin Newsom called it “the most disgraceful thing” he had ever seen. Arizona Senator Ruben Gallego, an Iraq war veteran, demanded Trump retract the email. New York Congressman and veteran Pat Ryan called Trump a “Grifter in Chief.” Former Republican congressman Joe Walsh used language we cannot repeat in a family newsletter.
The White House has not responded. Meanwhile, Trump posted Friday that it was a “great honor” to be killing Iranian leaders. More than 1,300 Iranian civilians have died in the conflict. Thirteen Americans have come home in flag-draped coffins. The president is charging $55 for the hat.
Inside the Iran War Chaos: “It Was a Mess”
Sources inside the State Department and across the administration are describing a war launched without clear objectives, without coordination with allies, and without a plan for what comes next.
One State Department insider described the frantic effort to evacuate Americans from the Middle East after strikes began, saying the hotline set up to help people get out played an automated message telling callers they could not rely on the government for an exit. “It was a mess,” the source said flatly. Another official said it was nearly impossible to write briefing papers because no one inside the administration could agree on what the war’s actual goals were. Is it destroying Iran’s military? Forcing regime change? Declaring victory and going home? The answer kept changing depending on which day and which official you asked.
A third source described Gulf allies who were “caught off-guard” and furious over inadequate coordination ahead of Iran’s retaliatory strikes. The war has now killed more than 2,000 people in two weeks, mostly in Iran and Lebanon, and displaced millions more.
Trump told a radio host Friday that he will know the war is over “when I feel it in my bones.” That same evening, he announced via social media that he had personally ordered a massive bombing raid on Iran’s most important oil export terminal. The message from the White House remains, by any measure, completely incoherent.
ICE’s Secret AI App Is Targeting Farm Workers
Courtroom testimony in a federal lawsuit in Oregon has pulled back the curtain on how ICE is actually conducting its mass deportation operations, and what is being revealed should alarm every American who believes in due process.
Agents testified under oath that they were using a custom app called Elite that functions like a heat map, showing officers which neighborhoods contain higher concentrations of people with any history of contact with immigration officials. That contact could include naturalized U.S. citizens. Officers used the app to identify a Woodburn, Oregon apartment complex where agricultural workers lived, surveilled it, then followed a van of farm workers heading to their jobs in the early morning hours. They smashed the windows, detained all seven occupants, and ran one woman’s face through a facial recognition app called Mobile Fortify.
The arrest records filed afterward described the stop as “consensual.” A federal judge noted the records were inaccurate. The woman detained, who had entered the country on a valid visa, was taken to a detention center in Washington state, then released without explanation and left to find her own way home to Oregon.
An ICE agent testified that the team had been given a verbal quota of eight arrests per day. DHS officials have repeatedly claimed publicly that no quotas exist. The agent acknowledged that the Elite app’s data could simply be wrong. He testified it “could say 100% and it’s wrong.” Officers were smashing car windows and detaining people based on a probabilistic surveillance tool that agents themselves admitted was unreliable.
This is not border security. This is a dragnet, powered by faulty AI, run by a government with arrest quotas it publicly denies having.
CBS News Tried to Ambush Zohran Mamdani. He Walked Out.
New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani sat down for what was supposed to be a standard CBS News interview Friday. What he got instead was an attempted ambush, and he walked out.
The details are still emerging, but the pattern is familiar to anyone who has been watching what has happened to CBS News. The network that once employed Edward R. Murrow is now a property shaped by corporate and ideological forces that have little interest in holding power accountable and considerable interest in protecting it. Mamdani represents exactly the kind of insurgent political energy that makes billionaire media owners uncomfortable.
CBS is hardly alone. Across the American media landscape, outlet after outlet has been absorbed by wealthy owners whose politics and financial interests align far more closely with the MAGA project and the war in Iran than with the voters those outlets are supposed to serve. They hire the consultants, book the generals, and frame every story around the assumption that American military power is presumptively good and its critics are presumptively naive. Mamdani walking out of that CBS interview is not a campaign stunt. It is a recognition that sitting down with certain outlets is not an interview. It is a trap.
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Hegseth’s Press Conference Was a Performance, Not a Briefing
Pete Hegseth held a Pentagon press conference Friday that was long on swagger and short on honesty. He claimed Iran has no functioning air force, navy, or missile defense network after 13 days of strikes. He claimed Iranian leadership was “cowering underground.” He said Iran’s new Supreme Leader was “wounded and likely disfigured.”
What actually happened: Iran’s president, security chief, and foreign minister were photographed the same day marching openly through Tehran. The claim about the Supreme Leader has not been independently verified by anyone. Iranian drones and missiles continued striking U.S. military installations across the Gulf. The Strait of Hormuz remains functionally closed to commercial shipping. Hegseth’s response to that last point was to suggest the strait is technically open as long as Iran stops shooting at ships passing through it. That is not how shipping lanes work.
Hegseth also confirmed that a U.S. military investigation is underway into the Tomahawk strike on a girls’ school in Iran that killed at least 175 people, most of them children. Preliminary findings have reportedly confirmed the U.S. bombed the school. Hegseth declined to address that substance directly. Instead, he spent much of the press conference criticizing journalists and at one point suggested alternative headlines reporters should be writing.
CBS aired it largely without challenge. See the previous story.
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Stay Strong. Stay Vigilant.
- The Raw America team
Editor’s Note: Zohran Mamdami is the Mayor of New York, not a mayoral candidate. This has been updated in the text but was incorrect in the original.
Also In The News This Morning
Trump Lifts Russia Sanctions to Clean Up His Own Mess
The White House quietly announced Thursday night that it was temporarily lifting sanctions on Russian oil shipments currently at sea, allowing that oil to reach buyers around the world through April 11. The reason? Trump’s own war on Iran sent global oil prices above $100 a barrel for the first time since 2022, and the administration is now scrambling to contain the damage. European leaders met the decision with immediate dismay, fearing it would provide a financial boost to Russia’s military operations in Ukraine. Ukrainian President Zelensky, standing alongside French President Macron in Paris, said lifting the sanctions would lead to a strengthening of Russia’s position and that the money from energy sales goes directly toward weapons used against Ukraine. The move did not immediately calm markets. Oil prices remained near their highest levels since 2022, shrugging off the announcement entirely. So to recap: Trump started a war without a plan, broke the global oil market, and is now rewarding Vladimir Putin to try to fix it. Europe is furious. Ukraine is horrified. And American families are still paying $3.65 at the pump.
The Iran War Just Killed Its First European Soldier
An Iranian-made Shahed drone killed French Chief Warrant Officer Arnaud Frion, 42, at a military training facility in Iraq’s Kurdistan region Thursday, making him the first European service member killed in the Middle East conflict that began February 28. Six other French soldiers were wounded. Frion was part of an international counter-terrorism coalition training Kurdish forces and had nothing to do with the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran. President Macron called the attack “unacceptable” and said the war in Iran “cannot justify such attacks,” while reaffirming France’s mission is strictly counter-terrorism against ISIS. A pro-Iranian militia group warned it would target all French interests in Iraq and the region following the deployment of the French aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle to the Eastern Mediterranean. Italy also had a base struck in Erbil and has begun pulling its personnel out. A war that the Trump administration sold as clean and surgical is now dragging European allies into its blast radius. The coalition against ISIS that took years to build is starting to fracture in real time.
A Terrorist Attack on a College Campus. ROTC Students Stopped It.
A gunman walked into an ROTC classroom at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia on Thursday morning and opened fire, killing Army Lieutenant Colonel Brandon Shah, a decorated ROTC instructor, and wounding two others. ROTC students in the room showed what the FBI special agent in charge called “extreme bravery and courage,” subduing the attacker and preventing further loss of life. The shooter, identified as Mohamed Bailor Jalloh, had previously been convicted in 2016 of attempting to provide material support to ISIS and sentenced to 11 years in prison. He was released in December 2024 under a federal provision allowing early release for inmates who completed a substance abuse treatment program. The FBI is investigating the shooting as an act of terrorism. Lieutenant Colonel Shah was described by Virginia Governor Abigail Spanberger as a devoted teacher who did not just serve his country but taught others to follow that same path. He deserves to be remembered by name.
Cuba Is at the Breaking Point. Now It’s Talking to Trump.
Cuba has opened talks with the U.S. government, President Miguel Diaz-Canel confirmed Friday, as a Trump-imposed oil blockade pushes the Communist-run nation deeper into economic crisis. It is the first time Cuba has publicly acknowledged the discussions. Diaz-Canel said no fuel ships have arrived on the island in three months, with the energy shortage forcing hospital surgeries to be postponed, water distribution to collapse, and rolling blackouts to become a permanent feature of daily life. Trump seized Venezuela’s oil supplies to Cuba after ousting Maduro in January, then threatened tariffs on any country that kept selling fuel to Havana. The island is now running on fumes, literally. The Trump administration told reporters Cuba is “a failing nation” and that its leaders should make a deal, which the president believes “would be very easily made.” Whether this is genuine diplomacy or a slow-motion regime change operation dressed up as negotiation remains the central question. Given this administration’s track record in Venezuela and Iran, that question should not be taken lightly.
The U.S. Military Confirmed It Bombed That Girls’ School
This one deserves its own moment. A preliminary U.S. military inquiry has found that outdated targeting data likely caused an American missile strike to hit a girls’ elementary school in Iran on the first day of the war, killing at least 175 people, most of them children. This directly undercuts Trump’s repeated suggestion that Iran somehow bombed its own school. When a New York Times reporter pressed Trump on that claim at a White House briefing, pointing out that even his own Defense Secretary would not back up the story, Trump said, “I just don’t know enough about it.” Now the military’s own investigation reportedly says American targeting data was the cause. Pete Hegseth confirmed at his Pentagon press conference Friday that the investigation is ongoing and being led by a general outside U.S. Central Command, but declined to address the substance of the findings. More than 175 children are dead. The president blamed Iran. His own military says otherwise. Corporate media has largely moved on. We have not.
Editor’s Note: Zohran Mamdami is the Mayor of New York, not a mayoral candidate. This has been updated in the text but was incorrect in the original.
The article about Mayor Mamdani is ... confusing. It is written as if it were a current event:
"New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani sat down for what was supposed to be a standard CBS News interview Friday. What he got instead was an attempted ambush, and he walked out."
Mr. Mamdani has been the Mayor since January 1st. Perhaps another sentence to set the time frame of the CBS incident? I agree, CBS needs to be called out, but obvious errors of fact diminish the message.
Hi all: because of an editing error, Mamdani was identified as a candidate and not the Mayor. The story is contemporary, however, and is available here: https://nypost.com/2026/03/13/us-news/miffed-zohran-mamdani-scrapped-cbs-interview-over-bari-weiss-social-media-post-report/ Thanks, and sorry for our mistake!