Good evening. I’m British Chris, and this is Raw America.
ICE is quietly dumping most of its massive warehouses it bought to supercharge Trump’s mass deportations. Trump was revealed to have been privately mocking the tech billionaires sucking up to him in text messages. Chicagoans are pushing to rename the street Trump Tower is on after Barack Obama. And Trump’s economic approval rating has now sunk below Joe Biden’s all-time low, as Americans feel the squeeze from the Iran war.
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Trump’s DHS Selling Off Mega-Warehouses it Bought to Detain Immigrants
After the 2024 election, ICE went on a billion-dollar shopping spree, buying up empty warehouses across the country to convert them into immigration detention facilities. Then-Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem bought eleven warehouses for roughly one billion dollars.
Now the DHS is quietly walking it all back after those purchases turned out to be a bust.
The New York Times is reporting that ICE is planning to offload seven warehouses they paid more than $700 million for, either by giving them to other agencies or selling them outright. New DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin has said he wants the agency to be quieter about how it conducts immigration enforcement.
So what happened? Pretty much everything went wrong at once.
Local communities pushed back, including in conservative areas worried about the impact on infrastructure and their local economies. Lawsuits piled up because ICE skipped the legally mandated reviews. A federal judge in Maryland blocked the agency from doing anything at a warehouse the government spent roughly $100 million to purchase. A federal judge in New York ordered ICE to cut the number of people it was detaining in a single office building. The DHS inspector general launched an investigation into the purchases themselves.
The deportation numbers the White House promised also failed to materialize. After Trump signed his big ugly bill into law, border czar Tom Homan declared ICE would have 100,000 detention beds by the end of 2025. They ended up with around 70,000.
What was supposed to be the crown jewel of the Trump immigration enforcement machine turned into a cautionary tale about what happens when you try to build a mass deportation apparatus without doing basic due diligence.
That billion dollars is gone and the deportation numbers aren’t there. Now, the Trump regime is trying to pretend this humiliating loss is just routine asset management.
Trump Mocked Fawning Texts from Tech Billionaires Behind Their Backs
A new book by New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan details what was happening behind the scenes after Trump won in 2024, when Silicon Valley oligarchs scrambled to ingratiate themselves with the incoming regime. One passage focuses on how Trump went out of his way to humiliate Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg.
Zuckerberg sent Trump a photo of a letter written by one of his children expressing excitement about “the golden age of America.” Bezos invited Trump to dinner and spent the evening trash-talking his own newspaper, calling the Washington Post as one of his worst financial investments ever.
Trump thought it was hilarious.
Weeks after those meetings, he was still telling associates that Zuckerberg and Bezos were “kissing my a—.” He reportedly showed guests the texts Zuckerberg had sent him, including the letter from his kid. Trump is quoted saying, “You would not believe the texts I got from these tech guys.”
Trump recounted the whole spectacle to Elon Musk, who called it “first-class groveling.”
These are some of the most powerful and wealthy people on the planet, performing for an audience of one, hoping it would translate into favorable treatment. Bezos literally sat across from the president and insulted his own employees to try to build goodwill, then came back months later asking Trump to steer government space contracts toward Blue Origin instead of Elon Musk’s SpaceX.
It didn’t work. Trump eventually reconciled with Musk, SpaceX kept its government access, and Bezos walked away with nothing to show for it except the added humiliation of his private communications being published in a book for everyone to read.
Chicagoans Want to Rename Trump Tower’s Address After Obama
Chicago residents are pushing to rename one downtown stretch of Wabash Avenue outside Trump Tower after former President Barack Obama. The petition calls for turning the building’s official address into Barack Hussein Obama Way, and it’s already exceeded 25,000 signatures.
This is happening on the same day Obama’s presidential center officially opened on Chicago’s South Side, with Bruce Springsteen, Stevie Wonder, Jennifer Hudson, and former Presidents Clinton, Bush, and Biden all in attendance.
Mayor Brandon Johnson indicated Wednesday that the renaming is at least on the table, saying “there certainly is no debate to the exceptional leadership of President Obama.”
Trump has spent years attacking Chicago, calling it a “hellhole.” Last year he posted a meme on Truth Social suggesting the city was “about to find out why it’s called the Department of WAR,” before walking it back.
Chicago getting the last laugh here, at least symbolically, has a certain poetic logic to it.
Trump’s Economic Approval Rating Now Worse Than Biden’s All-Time Low
According to a new NPR/PBS News/Marist survey, just 33 percent of Americans approve of Trump’s handling of the economy. That’s a record low for his current term, and it’s even below Joe Biden’s worst economic approval rating in July of 2022, which was 36 percent when inflation was at record highs following the onset of the Ukraine war.
Trump’s overall disapproval number is 60 percent overall, including 65 percent of independents and even 22 percent of Republicans.
The driving factor here is the Iran war, which sent gas prices soaring near $5 a gallon. As of Thursday, a gallon of gas costs about $3.99 nationally. Before the war started in February, it was $2.98. Inflation has climbed past 4 percent for the first time in three years. And 45 percent of Americans say they’re not planning to take a summer vacation, with cost being the primary reason.
Trump signed a peace agreement with Iran late Wednesday night, and Thursday morning he was on Truth Social in all caps declaring that oil is flowing, markets are roaring, and prices are dropping. Republicans are considerably less cheerful, with Senator John Cornyn of Texas telling the New York Times he thinks the November midterms will “be a disaster.”
Keep in mind that Trump told reporters back in May that he doesn’t think about Americans’ financial situation and that he was only focused on making sure Iran can’t build nukes. With a deal now signed that doesn’t actually restrict uranium enrichment, it’s worth asking what exactly was accomplished, and at what cost to working families at the pump.
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I’m British Chris, with Raw America. Thanks for watching. We’ll see you next week.
STORIES YOU MAY HAVE MISSED:
Obama Appears to Criticize Trump’s Corruption Without Mentioning His Name. During the opening ceremony for his new presidential library in Chicago, former President Barack Obama delivered a 30-minute speech extolling both the “shared values that make democracy possible” while taking veiled jabs at President Donald Trump. Obama contrasted the founders’ vision of a country with “no kings or lords,” with individuals who “see government as nothing more than a way to divvy up the spoils and punish enemies and keep those who are different in their place.”
Trump’s NASA Chief Caught Buying Stock in SpaceX Partner Before IPO. Jared Isaacman, who has led NASA since December of 2025, was recently found to have bought up to $50 million worth of stock in SpaceX payments partner company Shift4 before SpaceX’s initial public offering (IPO) launched this month. Isaacman also helped broker a deal in 2021 that made Shift4 the official payment processor for Starlink, which is SpaceX’s satellite-based internet service. As NASA administrator, Isaacman is able to wield significant influence over space policy and the agency’s contracts, which could increase the value of his own investments.
Nearly 160 Troops Fall Ill After Hegseth Makes Flu Vaccine Optional. The Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas is now ground zero for a major influenza outbreak after Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth changed Pentagon policy to make flu vaccines optional for troops. According to the New York Times, roughly 160 troops now have the flu. Trainee Keon McDaniel, who is in his sixth week of training, recently died from illness. It’s not immediately known if McDaniel died of the flu, and a medical review is reportedly underway to determine how he died.
Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool Now Has 5-Year Record-High Amount of Algae. Just days after President Trump’s $14.3 million renovation of the Reflecting Pool between the Lincoln Memorial and the Washington Monument, the pool now has the highest amount of algae ever measured in June over the last five years. Trump’s renovation included painting the bottom of the Reflecting Pool a color he called “American Flag Blue,” which residents have observed is now peeling off and floating to the surface.
The Onion to Launch Its New Satirized Version of InfoWars on July 2. Tim Collins, who is publisher of the satirical newspaper The Onion, announced Thursday that he is no longer waiting for the courts to officially green-light his company’s planned takeover of InfoWars, which is the website previously owned far-right conspiracy theorist Alex Jones. Families of Sandy Hook shooting victims agreed to allow The Onion to buy InfoWars after Jones was found liable for $1.4 billion in damages. Families will receive their first estimated payment of $100,000 from InfoWars after multiple years of back-and-forth legal battles between Jones’ empire and The Onion.
