Good evening. I’m British Chris, and this is Raw America.
Whoopi Goldberg just issued a direct challenge to Mitch McConnell’s team. Trump took a vicious beating in three separate court battles in the last 24 hours. The White House is playing partisan politics with life-saving disaster aid for four blue states. And there’s one big reason the president isn’t flying back from the NATO summit on his brand new $400 million Qatari jet.
Before we dive in, we need to ask you something.
Raw America is completely funded by paying subscribers. That’s it. We don’t have a billionaire backer or a corporate owner writing checks behind the scenes. Just readers like you, who believe hard-hitting independent journalism is worth financially supporting. And right now, we’re short on our fundraising goals. We need readers who are still on free subscriptions to help us close the gap. We all know the pro-Trump billionaires who own most of the media will never hold his government accountable the way we do. Keep Raw America alive and become a paying subscriber right now.
Whoopi Goldberg Offers Simple Solution to Put McConnell Rumors to Bed
The View co-host Whoopi Goldberg is taking aim at Mitch McConnell’s team for refusing to do the bare minimum to show America their boss is fine.
McConnell hasn’t been seen in public in nearly a month, when he was reportedly rushed to the hospital on June 14th. A 911 call mentions CPR in progress and cardiac arrest. Since then, we’ve heard nothing about the 84 year-old former Senate Republican leader.
Goldberg bluntly reminded everyone that Republicans and conservative commentators like CNN’s Scott Jennings keep insisting everything’s fine, but nobody’s actually showing any proof. Her solution? FaceTime him. And if they don’t know how, “get somebody young to show you what to do.”
McConnell’s wife, Elaine Chao, finally released a statement this week after days of pressure from the public and the media. She defended her decision to stay on a trip to China during his hospitalization — where she met with Xi Jinping’s vice president — saying her husband’s condition “did not warrant an immediate return” from Beijing.
That statement came only hours after Scott Jennings claimed on air that he’d personally spoken to McConnell by phone. There was no recording or transcript, of course. Just take him at his word.
Goldberg admitted a video call might not even settle things at this point, joking people would just claim it was an AI deepfake. But her larger is that this is exactly the kind of transparency Republicans demanded of Joe Biden for years, and now that the shoe’s on the other foot, they’re waffling.
Trump Loses 3 Major Court Battles in One Day
Donald Trump has three rough court decisions go against him in the last 24 hours, showing even the most powerful person in America can’t stop running into walls when plaintiffs sue him.
First, a federal judge in Tampa threw out Trump’s $3.8 billion defamation suit against the Washington Post. Trump’s media company argued the paper ran a smear job about its financing ahead of going public on the Nasdaq. The judge ruled Trump Media and Technology Group couldn’t clear the bar set by the actual malice standard, meaning they had no evidence the Post knowingly published false information or recklessly ignored the truth. Trump Media is framing a minor correction in the original article as vindication, but the case itself is dead barring a successful appeal.
Second, a judge ordered more than $5 million to be finally released to Trump accuser E. Jean Carroll, rejecting the president’s attempt to sit on the money while he waits on the Supreme Court. Trump’s lawyers argued paying up now would cause him “irreparable harm,” while Carroll would only suffer a “temporary delay.” Carroll has already told the public she plans to give away whatever she collects, and the judge’s ruling means that Trump doesn’t get to hold her money hostage while exhausting every possible appeal.
Third, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals officially denied Trump’s request to put his name back on the Kennedy Center while he keeps up the fight in court. A judge already ruled that renaming the center was illegal since only Congress has that authority, and ordered Trump’s name be removed from the building, website and all promotional materials. The appeals court found the administration couldn’t show any real harm from waiting, and dismissed claims that the missing name was hurting fundraising, saying there was no evidence to back it up. The building’s facade is still covered by a giant tarp, by the way.
Again, for those keeping track, that’s three losses in three courts, all in the span of about one day.
Trump Rejects Disaster Aid to Blue States — and Approves it for Red States
New reporting is raising valid questions about whether FEMA has become yet another political weapon in Trump’s White House.
Last Friday, Trump denied $227 million in disaster aid to New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island, who all requsted help after a major snowstorm in February. Just two days earlier, he green-lit aid for six Republican-led states, using the announcements to praise individual Republican candidates.
Every state Trump turned down had documented damage that cleared FEMA’s own threshold for qualifying. New Jersey’s damage was more than four times the required amount. Rhode Island’s was roughly ten times its threshold. Simultaneously, some of the Republican-led states that had their requests approved just barely scraping the minimum amount of damage needed to qualify.
This is all part of a pattern for Trump. Politico reported back in March that Trump had approved only 23 percent of disaster requests from states with Democratic governor and two Democratic senators, compared to 89 percent for states with Republican leadership.
New Jersey Democratic U.S. Senator Andy Kim didn’t mince words, saying the administration owes the public an immediate explanation if the denials are anything other than politically related. Rhode Island’s congressional delegation accused Trump directly of politicizing disaster relief. Governors in New York and Massachusetts both say they’ll appeal FEMA’s ruling.
The White House insists the rejections had nothing do do with politics, and claims Trump gave every request more scrutiny than past presidents. But the president using disasters to give Republicans his “complete and total endorsement” in the same breath while leaving Democratic governors out in the cold, that explanation doesn’t hold water.
The Real Reason Trump Isn’t Flying Home on His $400 Million Qatari Gift Jet
Donald Trump’s new luxury Boeing 747, which he got as gift by Qatar — and had retrofitted to the tune of more than a billion dollars — just made its first international trip. But now, Trump’s skipping it for a flight from Turkey to Britain, choosing an older Air Force One jet instead.
Trump wants us to think it’s for “old time’s sake,” and that the new plane will simply be parked so service members can tour it. But the sudden switch comes after months of questions over the rushed retrofit.
Security experts are concerned that equipping the plane with defense and anti-eavesdropping upgrades in such a short time frame means it may not be as secure as the older aircraft Trump wants to replace. Democratic lawmakers say both the cost and the speed of the work are glaring red flags.
The jet is meant to be a temporary fix while Boeing finishes building its two new Air Force One jets. Those are now running four years behind schedule, and their total price tag has ballooned past the $5 billion mark. Delivery isn’t expected until mid-2028, which means Trump may finish his presidency without ever flying in a plane built for the job.
For now, the taxpayer-funded gift jet with the flashy new paint job is sitting on the tarmac, while the commander-in-chief instead opts for the old reliable plane his predecessors used.
Support News That Answers to Readers, Not Billionaires
That’s your Wednesday evening rundown. A top Republican senator hasn’t been seen in weeks while his own staff stonewalls basic questions about his health. A president losing three separate court battles in a single day. Disaster funding that increasingly seems to be subjected to political litmus tests rather than simple damage assessments. And a billion-dollar gift jet that’s already too risky to fly just weeks after its debut.
These are the stories that get buried or rendered toothless by newsrooms owned by right-wing billionaires. Raw America will never take on a billionaire backer or run ads from corporate sponsors, but that’s also the reason we need your support now more than ever. Every dollar of every subscription goes directly toward funding independent journalism. We recently hired veteran journalist Brian Karem to be our new White House reporter, who will be interviewing Texas Democratic Senate candidate James Talarico tomorrow in Austin. If you found this newsletter valuable, the most important thing you can do is subscribe. Your support is what keeps Raw America alive.
Here are a few additional stories you may have missed:
Trump Has Spent More than $100 Billion on Iran War. With President Donald Trump officially declaring the short-lived ceasefire with Iran dead on Wednesday, the total sum spent on the Iran war could still increase. New estimates show the Trump administration has so far spent more than $100 billion on the war, which is more than three times what federal officials previously estimated. The administration has been pushing hard for Congress to appropriate more funding, but that could be a hard sell in a midterm environment defined by voter anger against the war.
Trump to Ask Supreme Court to Rehear Birthright Citizenship Case. President Trump on Wednesday announced that he would be filing a petition for the Supreme Court to issue a writ of certiorari in its next term to reconsider its recent ruling striking down his executive order attempting to revoke birthright citizenship. Five justices, including Trump-appointed Justice Amy Coney Barrett, agreed that the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution guarantees citizenship to every person born in the United States. Justice Brett Kavanaugh only partially agreed, while Justices Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch and Clarence Thomas dissented.
Texas Democrat Gina Hinojosa Proposes $1,500 Checks for Every Household. Texas Democratic state representative Gina Hinojosa, who is running against Republican Greg Abbott in November’s gubernatorial race, is now calling for every Texas household to receive a $1,500 check from the state’s rainy day fund if she’s elected. Hinojosa called the checks a “corruption tax refund,” and the payments would cost roughly $17 billion. Texas’ rainy day fund — officially known as the Economic Stabilization Fund — currently has more than $24.8 billion, which is a new record.
Mamdani Announces $2.3 Million Recovered for Wage Theft Victims. New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s office announced Wednesday that it had recovered more than $2.3 million for workers who filed wage theft claims against large businesses like Walgreens, Allstar Security & Consulting, Calzedonia and Kinship Coffee. Mamdani said companies that when companies short workers on their hours or infringes on their time off, workers have to pay for it by missing appointments, picking up their children or losing out on a shift they were counting on.
