As the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) looks to shed as many as 35,000 mostly vacant health-care jobs this month — having already cut nearly 30,000 since President Donald Trump returned to office — a disabled Vietnam veteran has gone public, railing against the administration.

Ronn Easton, 76, is the face of a new video calling out the Trump administration for its attacks on veterans and produced by Home of the Brave, a nonprofit focused on portraying what it calls “catastrophic harm” under Trump.

“This is not what I intended my retirement years to be like,” Easton told Raw Story.

“I've only taken one oath in my life, and there is no expiration date on that oath, and that oath says that I am to defend this country against all enemies, foreign and domestic, and right now, as I have said many, many times, Donald John Trump is the biggest threat to democracy that this country will ever see.

“I'm duty-bound to do whatever I can to fight against it, and I will do that until the day I die.”

‘Veterans' lives at risk’

Last week, Trump announced a $1,776 “veterans dividend” — its value symbolizing the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence and the Revolutionary War against Great Britain.

Analysts pointed out that Trump misrepresented the source of the cash, implying it was raised by tariffs when in fact it was money already approved by Congress for a one-time housing allowance.

In his new video, Easton said Trump’s latest VA moves are “killing soldiers,” particularly as veterans need access to VA health care and suicide hotline resources.

Easton served as an armorer in the Vietnam War, enlisting after two childhood friends were killed in action. He said he has used the Veterans Crisis Line himself.

Following his service, Easton became 100 percent disabled, diagnosed with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), tinnitus, neuropathy and Type 2 diabetes due to exposure to Agent Orange, the cancer- and neurological disease-causing herbicide used in Vietnam to clear enemy hiding spots.

“There have been times where I have had a gun in my mouth, but I made a promise to my daughter, to my bride, that I would never do something like that,” Easton said.

“That's not an option for me anymore, so that's why I do what I do now. I fight.”

With the Trump administration cutting billions of dollars in medical research funding, including cancer research, veterans end up suffering as many have cancer due to exposure to chemical agents like Agent Orange, Easton said.

“All they're doing is putting veterans’ lives at risk again,” Easton said.

Easton puts a lot of the responsibility on Elon Musk, who led the now-sunset Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which took a sledgehammer approach to cutting government funding and employees in the first months of Trump’s second term.

“People like that, who come in and make little of veterans, and they do all of these cuts to the VA, where they fired thousands of people, and all that does is affect the health care [for] people who have served this country,” Easton said.

‘Pattern of callousness’

Easton first got fired up about speaking out against Trump when he watched the then-2016 presidential candidate imply that veterans with PTSD weren’t strong enough, during an address at the United States Military Academy, at West Point.

Trump, 79, has long attracted skepticism and anger among veterans, given his own record of avoiding service during the Vietnam War.

Trump received five draft deferments — four educational and one medical, over a diagnosis of bone spurs in his heels that has been widely questioned.

He famously said avoiding sexually transmitted diseases in Manhattan nightclubs in the 1970s was his “personal Vietnam.”

On entering politics, Trump also courted controversy with attacks on John McCain, the late Republican presidential candidate and Arizona senator who suffered torture as a prisoner of war in Vietnam.

"He's a war hero because he was captured,” Trump famously said of McCain in 2015. “I like people that weren't captured."

Easton said Trump had continued a pattern of “callousness and the lack of caring” toward veterans over the years, including recent controversy over photo opportunities at Arlington National Cemetery.

Easton, a former epidemiologist with the Minnesota Department of Health, started a new podcast this fall focused on current events, where he frequently hosts veterans.

Called Cover Your Six — a military term for “I’ve got your back” — the podcast is the latest of Easton’s efforts to speak out against racism and injustices, which he said he learned from his grandmother, a civil rights activist with the NAACP who hosted figures including late icons John Lewis and Martin Luther King, Jr. in her Memphis living room.

“I've been a warrior all my life,” Easton said.

Two Alabama Black Lives Matter activists accused of setting a shopping cart on fire as part of a protest against the fatal police shooting of a young Black man have been charged with conspiracy to provide material support to terrorists, in what one supporter calls a “railroading.”

The federal charge unveiled as part of a superseding indictment against Mercutio Southall, 41, and Lillian Colburn, 26, alleges that the pair committed terrorism through an arson at a Walmart Supercenter in Homewood, a Birmingham suburb, on Aug. 22.

“They’ve been trying to label Black Lives Matter a terrorist movement,” RaShaun Whetstone, a friend of Southall and Colburn, told Raw Story. “This is a railroading.”

The indictments come as President Donald Trump attempts to paint left-wing activism as “domestic terrorism,” through a national security memorandum that accuses activists of undermining “support for law enforcement” in order “to justify and encourage acts of violent revolution.”

This month, Attorney General Pam Bondi issued a memo instructing the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Forces, which include local law enforcement partners, to prioritize investigations of antifascist groups.

Echoing Trump’s national security memo, Bondi claimed: “These domestic terrorists use violence or the threat of violence to advance political and social agendas, including opposition to law and immigration enforcement; extreme views in favor of mass migration and open borders; adherence to radical gender ideology, anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, or anti-Christianity.”

‘Not even Mercutio’s MO’

Luke Baumgartner, a research fellow at the Program on Extremism at George Washington University, told Raw Story the Alabama case is, as far as he knows, the first time the federal government has applied the material support to terrorists charge to Black Lives Matter protesters.

Southall and Colburn pleaded not guilty.

Whetstone told Raw Story he believes Southall and Colburn to be falsely accused. He said the alleged crime was completely out of character for Southall, who as an early leader of Black Lives Matter became one of the most high-profile racial justice activists in the Birmingham area.

Whetstone added that Colburn doesn’t match the person seen in store surveillance video.

Homewood has seen protests since June, when an 18-year-old Black man, Jabari Peoples, was fatally shot by an unidentified police officer at a city park. Police said the shooting followed a struggle, after which Peoples attempted to retrieve a handgun from his car, according to WVTM 13. Peoples’ family and a young woman who was with him say he was unarmed.

Community members have held several protests resulting in multiple arrests, WVTM 13 reported. The news station quoted a leader of the Birmingham chapter of Black Lives Matter as saying they planned to disrupt businesses until their demands, including the release of police body camera video, were met.

Homewood police said in a press release shortly after Southall’s arrest on state charges that detectives obtained evidence he attended a protest at the park on the day of the alleged arson.

The police allege Southall traveled from the protest to Walmart, and accuse him of filling “a shopping cart full of rags, blankets, charcoal bags, small engine fuel, and paint thinner,” then pre-positioning “the shopping cart in a clothing aisle,” before returning to the protest.

Southall was charged in state court with arson and first-degree criminal mischief.

The police said at the time they were working with the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms “on pursuing federal arson charges.”

Colburn was arrested on identical charges.

AL.com reported that detectives testified that Colburn accompanied Southall from the protest to Walmart and the two loaded the cart together, then left in a car that investigators determined was registered to Colburn.

Later, investigators said, a woman wearing a blond wig, identified as Colburn, returned to the store and ignited the cart.

Whetstone told Raw Story he doesn’t buy prosecutors’ claims.

“It’s not even Mercutio’s MO,” he said. “Never has he done anything like that. Being who he is, he’s going to set a shopping cart on fire? What the hell kind of sense does that make?”

Federal prosecutors obtained an indictment for arson in late October. A month later, a grand jury returned a superseding indictment adding the charge of material support to terrorists.

Southall and Colburn could not be reached for comment.

An announcement by the FBI’s Birmingham office last week did not mention the defendants’ ties to Black Lives Matter, but characterized them as “violent actors.”

“Let it be clear: While peaceful protesting is a protected right, arson and destruction of property are violent crimes that will not be tolerated in our community,” Special Agent in Charge Dave Fitzgibbons said.

Baumgartner told Raw Story: “It’s not surprising they would levy this charge given that their focus has shifted [to the left]. They’re focusing on these left-wing or anarchist groups. Coming at them with all the tools in their toolkits is definitely in line with their stated strategy.”

The U.S. Attorney’s Office for Northern Alabama did not respond to a question about whether AG Bondi played any role in the decision to charge the defendants with terrorism. A spokesperson said the office did not comment on ongoing litigation.

‘Federal crime of terrorism’

Federal statute makes it a crime to act in support of “an offense identified as a federal crime of terrorism.”

Federal prosecutors have applied the material support to terrorists charge to white supremacist groups and activists, recently including Dallas Erin Humber, the leader of Terrorgram Collective, who is linked to a mass shooting targeting LGBTQ+ people in Slovakia and a deadly school shooting in Brazil, in addition to plots to assassinate politicians and attack the power grid.

The United States, Canada and New Zealand have all designated Terrorgram as a terrorist entity.

In another case, in 2022, four white supremacists pleaded guilty to material support to terrorists, for plotting to carry out coordinated attacks on the power grid in an attempt to instigate race war.

The charge is also being used to pursue violent nihilist groups.

Writing with Barry Jonas, Baumgartner noted in the journal Just Security that in October, for the first time, federal prosecutors indicted a leader of 764, a nihilist network, for conspiracy to provide material support to terrorists.

The government alleges that 764 leader Baron Martin manipulated child victims to self-harm.

Baumgartner and Jonas wrote: “By charging Martin with conspiring to provide material support for terrorists, the shift represents a long-overdue recognition that such conduct is not just depraved — it is terrorism.”

Last week, Canada became the first country to list 764 as a terrorist entity.

A closely related and better-known statute making it a crime to knowingly support “a foreign terrorist organization” has been used frequently since the Sept. 11 attacks to prosecute American citizens who attempted to join jihadist groups such as al-Qaida and ISIS.

Baumgartner said federal prosecutors now appear to be utilizing the material support charge with increasing frequency against defendants across the ideological spectrum.

Last month, prosecutors in Texas obtained an indictment against eight defendants for providing material support for terrorists, regarding an attack on an ICE facility.

The government has named one defendant as firing a weapon at law enforcement, while alleging others ignited fireworks, destroyed a surveillance camera, and vandalized vehicles and a shed.

‘Cause of justice’

Birmingham is a Southern city known as a cradle of the Civil Rights movement, where the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. launched a massive desegregation campaign in 1963, in which child marchers were met with police dogs and firehoses.

In his famous “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” King excoriated “the white moderate” and called himself an “extremist for the cause of justice.”

Of the two activists now facing federal charges, Southall has a long history of activism — which has seen him singled out by Trump for verbal abuse.

In November 2015, the activist was forcibly ejected from a Trump rally in Birmingham.

After Southall disrupted the event by chanting, “Black lives matter,” the Washington Post reported that video showed him falling amid a throng of white men who appeared to kick and punch him.

A Post reporter observed a man put his hands on Southall’s neck and a female onlooker shout, “Don’t choke him!”

“They said, ‘Go home, n-----, and somebody punched me,” Southall told Al.com.

Speaking to Fox News, Trump reportedly said: “Maybe he should have been roughed up, because it was absolutely disgusting what he was doing.

“I have a lot of fans, and they were not happy about it. And this was a very obnoxious guy who was a troublemaker who was looking to make trouble.”

‘Untethered from reality’

Despite Trump’s hostility, conservative efforts to get Black Lives Matter designated as a terrorist group did not gain traction in his first term.

In 2017, the FBI drew criticism for an internal assessment that appeared to classify BLM activists as “Black Identity Extremists” who posed a threat of lethal violence.

Three years later, a law enforcement training group characterized BLM protesters as “terrorists.”

It also drew rebuke, one advocate for police reform calling the characterization “untethered from reality” and worrying that it could lead “to people dying unnecessarily.”

In the South, the Ku Klux Klan long waged a campaign of terror which succeeded in intimidating Black people from exercising their right to vote and ousting multiracial governments. Whetstone noted that the U.S. government has never designated the Klan as a terrorist organization.

“Black Lives Matter ruffles a few feathers, and they want to call us terrorists,” he said. “This is just one small step in how they normalize punishing anyone who is associated with any liberation movement. They’re trying to criminalize it.”

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump's handpicked board of trustees voted on Thursday to add Trump's name to the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, while allegedly muting the objections of Democratic members of the board and likely in violation of federal law that named the Kennedy Center by statute.

Democratic lawmakers reacted to the news with disgust and dismissal, telling Raw Story the rename will not stick and will be reversed swiftly when they retake power in Washington.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) had one of the most forceful reactions, speculating MAGA allies will eventually try to rebrand the White House.

"Well, I mean, he appointed all the sycophants to the board," she said. "So I mean, they're going to name the White House — they're going to try to name the White House after him before we're done with this, and then we're going to take the White House back and we're going to fix it all. Enjoy having two years of that."

Asked for comment, Rep. Brendan Boyle (D-PA) mockingly claimed that the Longworth House Office Building will have his name added to it because he says so.

Boyle added, "Everything's about him, the plaques that he actually put up, plaques with his, with his nonsense" — a reference to a series of juvenile plaques installed below various former presidents' pictures written by Trump himself.

Rep. Don Beyer (D-VA) took a similar position to Ocasio-Cortez.

"An infinite ego. You know, I mean, I just, it makes Stalin look humble. The board that he handpicked, it's embarrassing and, and it won't last very long."

WASHINGTON — Republican leaders’ refusal to consider extending Affordable Care Act subsidies set to expire at year’s end is weird, according to at least one senior GOP senator, after the issue erupted and fueled high drama in the House this week.

“It's just strange,” Sen. Mike Rounds (R-SD), who sits on the Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee, told congressional reporters.

“We had the vote last week, and … now the House passed [its own measure], and we're going to have a vote, and of course, that’s not going to go anywhere.

“There could have been a one-year extension. Maybe there was a chance to have enough votes … we need 60 votes here. I want to vote on something that can actually pass, and I don't know why that's not our plan.”

No one really knows what Republicans’ plan is — other than to craft a plan.

While swing-state Republicans have been freaking out — especially the four endangered moderates who crossed Speaker Mike Johnson when they formally crossed party lines Wednesday — GOP leaders have, basically, shrugged off widespread fears of Obamacare subsidies expiring on New Years, leaving millions of Americans bracing for brutal rate hikes.

Most Republicans remain unmoved, even after Democrats have successfully raised alarm bells about the unaffordable rate hikes for months, including by using the issue as fuel for the longest government shutdown in history.

Just last week, the GOP-led Senate failed to pass dueling health-care bills. In response to a Democratic measure to extend COVID-era insurance subsidies another three years, rank-and-file Republicans cobbled together a last-minute measure aimed at promoting health savings accounts over Obamacare exchanges.

Both failed by a vote of 51-48 in the chamber where 60 votes are needed to pass most bills.

Then the four moderate House Republicans dramatically crossed the aisle, joining a Democratic-led discharge petition to force a vote on a Democratic measure that would extend subsidies for three years.

Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-PA), Mike Lawler (R-NY) , Rob Bresnahan (R-PA) and Ryan Mackenzie (R-PA) were the members who chose to cross Speaker Johnson, underlining the Louisianan’s lack of control of his party ahead of next year’s midterm elections.

“We have worked for months to craft a two-party solution to address these expiring health-care credits,” Fitzpatrick said in a statement.

“Our only request was a floor vote on this compromise, so that the American People’s voice could be heard on this issue. That request was rejected ... Unfortunately, it is House leadership themselves that have forced this outcome.”

The Democratic proposal will now get a vote in the new year — but only after subsidies lapse.

Observers noted that in July, three of the four Republican rebels voted for the “One Big Beautiful Bill,” the GOP budget measure which contained massive cuts to spending on Medicaid, another key health-care resource for millions of Americans. Fitzpatrick said no then too.

This week, the picture grew more confusing still, as a separate House GOP health bill passed.

Seen as barely even a bandaid, as it doesn’t address the expiring subsidies, it has no chance of gaining 60 votes in the Senate, according to South Dakota Sen. Rounds.

‘24 million people’

Gridlock aside, it seems most everyone on Capitol Hill loves a bit of political drama — even at the end of a year of relentless chaos.

“This is huge,” Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) marveled to Raw Story after learning that a fourth Republican had signed off on the discharge petition.

“This is, like, huge for my district.”

The member of the progressive “Squad” of lawmakers was far from alone.

“I think it's a big victory, and it's a victory for the American people,” former House Majority Leader Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-MD) told Raw Story.

“We need to pass that, put it over in the Senate and see whether they have the courage to do what's right.”

Securing a House vote does nothing to dislodge Republicans on the other side of the Capitol, though.

And Senate Majority Leader John Thune is insulated from House rules, including on discharge petitions.

There are Senate Republicans who like their moderate House colleagues fear the electoral repercussions of failing to extend subsidies, but nowhere near enough to buck leaders and secure an extension.

Still, with the 2026 midterms just around the corner, Rep. Glenn Ivey (D-MD) and other Democrats are celebrating the four Republican moderates’ decision to buck Speaker Johnson and force a vote on extending health insurance subsidies.

Like Sen. Rounds, Ivey also marveled at the larger GOP’s continued opposition to helping so many Americans, however dire their need.

Despite “24 million people” facing a financial cliff when ACA subsidies expire, Ivey told Raw Story, “Republican leaders weren't listening to that.

“I don't know what they were listening to. I just don't understand what they're doing, and in the Senate they’re saying they’re not going to move something forward anyway.

“So I'm like, ‘Worst of all possible worlds, from a Republican standpoint.’

“We hit 218 so we got the votes to move [the discharge petition], but they don't want to bring it to the floor, and then the Senate Republicans want to block it. It's crazy.”

WASHINGTON — Even as Democrats accuse the Trump administration of misleading Congress in the wake of the president’s announcement of an oil tanker blockade on Venezuela, Republicans are dismissing Democrats’ — and some Republicans’ — fears.

At the Capitol on Wednesday, one senior GOP senator went so far as to mock Democrats for speaking up.

“Poor babies,” Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) told Raw Story.

Asked if he had been surprised by Trump’s announcement on Tuesday night, as senior Democrats complain they were, Cornyn said: “Not really.

“I mean [Venezuelan oil] is the lifeline for Iran and to some extent, for China, and an outlet for Russia to continue to be able to sell oil and finance its war machine against Ukraine. So I think it's not a surprise from that standpoint.”

Cornyn is a member of the Senate Intelligence and Foreign Relations committees.

Raw Story said, “Your Democratic colleagues are saying they wish [Secretary of Defense Pete] Hegseth and [Secretary of State Marco] Rubio would have focused on this yesterday, and they kind of feel deceived or misled a little bit.”

Rubio and Hegseth briefed both chambers of Congress during the day on Tuesday about controversial U.S. strikes on boats alleged to be carrying drugs in the Caribbean Sea.

“Well,” Cornyn said. “I was in this briefing and [Democrats] were asking questions about the strikes. They weren't asking about” the blockade.

Raw Story suggested that was because the Democrats didn’t know the blockade was coming.

“Poor babies,” Cornyn said. “They just need to open their eyes.”

Most Democrats’ eyes have long been wide open to President Trump’s moves to secure regime change in Venezuela.

The administration has implemented boat strikes that have now killed nearly 100, while Trump’s regular statements on the matter have accompanied reports of both a major U.S. military buildup in the Caribbean and CIA covert action in Venezuela itself.

Most Democrats and some Republicans maintain Trump needs congressional approval for any action against the regime in Caracas, led by the left-wing authoritarian Nicolás Maduro.

On the House side of the Capitol on Wednesday, Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-NY), the ranking Democrat on the Foreign Affairs Committee, told Raw Story: “We heard it again from the Chief of Staff, who said that these bombings won't stop until Maduro is out” — a reference to remarks from White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles in a bombshell Vanity Fair profile.

After Trump’s blockade announcement, Meeks said, it was clear Venezuela was “about oil. It's not about drugs. It's about taking oil.

“You know, I'm a former special narcotics prosecutor. If you really try to stop drugs, you don't take the little guy, kill them and then pardon the top guys and don't go after them at all.”

That was a reference to Trump’s recent pardon of a former Honduran president convicted of drug trafficking.

“You try to get the little guys to get you all the information that you can so that you can go after the big guys,” Meeks said, going on to condemn the “double tap killing” of two men on a boat hit by the U.S. on Sept. 2.

The two men survived the original strike but were killed with a second missile — by most observers’ standards, a war crime or plain murder.

Hegseth has vehemently denied the strike was illegal, while shifting responsibility to a senior military commander.

Meeks and other Democrats said they were not satisfied with Rubio and Hegseth’s briefings.

“That wasn’t a classified session,” Meeks said.

Rep. Mike Quigley (D-IL), a House Intelligence Committee member, said: “No one has gotten an intel briefing. So that's what we're owed.”

On the other side of the Capitol, Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) also lamented the absence of comprehensive briefings, telling Raw Story: “That just reflects the attitude [the Trump administration has] with Congress.

“If the Republican majority in Congress will allow it, they will continue to follow their agenda regardless.”

Among that Republican majority, not all opinions were as dismissive, or harsh, as Cornyn’s.

Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) voiced his continuing concern about the “double tap” boat strike.

Two months after the Sept. 2 killing, Paul said, when U.S. forces “saw people in the water, they're like, ‘Oh, you know what? Maybe we shouldn't kill helpless people in the water.’ And they plucked them out. And did they prosecute them? No, they sent them back to their country.

“There's so much that's inconsistent and wrong about this. With the video, every American should be able to see it. We should continue talking about it.”

Raw Story asked Paul for his view on Trump’s surprise announcement of an oil blockade.

“I’m opposed to it,” Paul said, bluntly.

WASHINGTON — Outspoken Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders raised dire concerns Wednesday about the rapid expansion of artificial intelligence and robotics, warning that the United States is unprepared for the economic disaster that such technologies will bring.

In comments to Raw Story, Sanders cited major tech figures such as Elon Musk in noting that industry leaders openly predict an ominous future in which traditional work becomes obsolete. According to Sanders, the U.S. faces the prospect of widespread unemployment, particularly among young people already grappling with a dearth of entry‑level jobs.

"He tells us that the concept of work itself, your job, may be obsolete. That means mass unemployment," Sanders warned. "Is Congress dealing with that issue?"

Sanders emphasized that while AI offers potential benefits, the nation must ensure that tech serves the broader public rather than a tiny group of billionaires. To that end, Sanders demanded a temporary "moratorium" on new data centers until lawmakers can figure out how to integrate AI responsibly and protect workers from economic ruin.

The senator also cast doubt on the motivations of tech elites, including Musk, Larry Ellison, Jeff Bezos, and Mark Zuckerberg, suggesting that their priorities don't align with the needs of the working class.

He called President Donald Trump an "oligarch" who is "working with other oligarchs."

"Do you think he's staying up nights worrying about the working class of this country? I don't think so," said Sanders.

The Supreme Court is poised to overturn a 90-year-old decision protecting the heads of independent federal agencies from firing by the president — a move more significant in the court’s rightward march than the 2022 decision to overturn the right to abortion in Roe v. Wade, alarmed legal experts tell Raw Story.

“This is the most important case of the decade,” said Seth Chandler, professor at the University of Houston Law Center.

Following oral arguments in Trump v. Slaughter last week, most observers predict the Court will side with President Donald Trump in his firing of Federal Trade Commissioner Rebecca Slaughter.

That will “further unleash massive corruption by this executive branch,” said Lisa Graves, co-founder of Court Accountability and author of Without Precedent: How Chief Justice Roberts and His Accomplices Rewrote the Constitution and Dismantled Our Rights.

‘Even more powerful’

Trump v. Slaughter revisits a 1935 case, Humphrey's Executor v. United States, which concerned President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s firing of an FTC commissioner over disagreements about New Deal policies.

The Supreme Court ruled that Congress could enact laws limiting the president’s ability to fire independent agency officials.

Now, Dec. 8 arguments in front of the current, right-wing-dominated Court made it clear there’s likely no “path for Humphrey's Executor to survive,” Chandler said.

“You're really changing the structure of government and a precept of law on which Congress has relied for 90 years and delegated immense power to these so-called independent agencies, and if these independent agencies are no longer independent, but are basically subject to loyalty tests from the president, that really changes the way that our government functions.”

Harold Krent, professor at the Chicago-Kent College of Law at the Illinois Institute of Technology, agreed that “Humphrey’s Executor is mostly dead.”

“For the most part the idea of an independent-expert-type agency will be over,” Krent said. “It's incredibly significant. It gives the president even more powerful control over these agencies.”

Along with the FTC, agencies likely to be affected are the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), Krent said.

“It’s just a wide array of agencies which would almost for sure fall in the wake of the Slaughter case,” he said.

“It just means that there's more of a political edge to all agency investigations and policymaking, and so there is less of a check.”

Chandler said Justice Elena Kagan, a liberal appointed by President Barack Obama, questioned whether “Congress would ever have given so much power to the agencies if it knew that they were going to be subject to the political control of the president.”

“In a post-Humphreys Executor world where Congress felt the people who took leadership positions in these agencies were immune from political firings by the president, they were willing to grant enormous powers to these agencies and basically make them a fourth branch of government,” Chandler said.

“But, now we have half of the deal being taken away. We have that the agencies are now subject to the political desires of the president, but they still have all the power that they did originally.”

‘Out of control’

Legal experts predict that the Court will rule 6-3 in Trump’s favor in Slaughter, along ideological lines.

“I think the majority is going to say Humphrey’s Executor was very dubious when it was enacted and that the agencies look quite different from the way they were conceived,” Chandler said.

The process of weakening Humphrey’s Executor was already in motion, Chandler said, pointing to a 2020 decision, Seila Law LLC v. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which allows the president to remove the leader of a single-headed agency at will.

It’s likely the same logic will apply to a multi-person commission, Chandler said.

“I think they're going to say that in some sense the die has already been cast, that Humphrey's Executor has been on life support for a decade, and that it's now time to pull the plug,” Chandler said.

Humphrey’s Executor was an explicit target of Project 2025, the hard-right leadership plan from the Heritage Foundation, Graves said.

Noting that the Court had already “chipped away” at Humphrey’s Executor, Project 2025 said: “The next conservative Administration should formally take the position that Humphrey's Executor violates the Constitution's separation of powers.”

Trump’s claim on the campaign trail that he had no involvement with Project 2025 “misled the American people grossly,” Graves said, adding that the Court has since matched Trump’s “aggression in trying to destroy long-standing rules.”

“That the Supreme Court is playing along with this and actually eagerly embracing it is a sign of how out of control and arrogant the Roberts Court is, because the easiest thing for this Court to do would be to uphold the lower courts that are following those long-standing precedents,” Graves said.

“Instead, it has sought to combine its counter-constitutional edict, giving Donald Trump immunity from criminal prosecution, which swept him back into the White House.

“It's been seeking to combine that ruling, giving Trump extraordinary, unprecedented and unwise powers, with a whole series of rulings through the shadow docket, and now through the primary docket, that further expand presidential power, and I would say so, expand it recklessly.”

‘Loyalty pledges’

After Trump v. Slaughter, Chandler said, he anticipates Trump will seek to extend his firing power to lower-level agency employees, because if the Supreme Court determines “the Constitution vests all executive power in the president, and you take that literally, then it's hard to see why the decision wouldn't extend all the way down the federal bureaucracy.

“President Trump has not been shy about insisting that loyalty to him, personally and to his ideas, is extraordinarily important in government … even with Humphrey's Executor on life support, so I don't see why he would show any restraint once it's killed off,” he said.

“Could he require, essentially, loyalty pledges from mid-level clerks at the NLRB? Why couldn't he insist that they're part of the executive branch and that they are just acting as his delegates, and if they're unwilling to commit to him, why should they have a job?”

Krent agreed.

“The Heritage Foundation, that's what they had recommended in terms of giving the president absolute power over all federal employees, and there is the extreme version of the unitary executive.

“I don't think the Court's going to go there in this particular case, but that's certainly within the goals of the Trump administration, and so it's something the Court may have to face at a future date.”

Graves called giving the president the power to fire independent agency heads at will “a recipe for corruption.”

“The corruption that Trump is engaged in is manifesting on a daily or weekly basis,” she said.

“The idea that the president would be controlling the decisions of the FTC, which relate to an array of matters about corporate conglomeration, as he's basically trying to orchestrate who gets control of a major swath of media, including CNN — it’s extraordinary.”

Warner Bros. Discovery, the parent company of CNN, is preparing to undergo a merger with Netflix or Paramount. Trump has called for selling CNN to new owners.

‘Rampant corruption’

Commissions leading federal agencies typically have split-party representation — which could also disappear following a ruling for Trump in Slaughter, Krent said.

“This whole idea of a balanced independent agency thinking about energy policy or labor policy, banking policy, consumer relations policy, that seems to be done,” Krent said.

That would allow Trump to enact his policies, such as tariffs, as he pleases.

“If he wants to just start changing even tax policy or energy policy or labor policy, he'll be able to do it by saying, ‘This is what I want you to do, or I fire you,’” Krent said.

“It would have all sorts of ramifications across the economy.”

Congress could theoretically limit the power of agencies by defunding them, “but not in reality,” Chandler said.

“It's just something that we took for granted, that you could have, in effect, a fourth branch of government in which immense power had been vested, and when you take that away, and you say it's all subject to the president's control, and you don't undo the prior delegations of power, that is a huge deal,” Chandler said.

A ruling in Trump’s favor will give him “far more power than the founders ever anticipated,” Chandler said.

Krent said overturning Humprey’s Executor “cuts against not only history, but precedence.”

“That could lead to the end of the civil service,” he said.

Graves said: “This would be yet another instance of the Roberts Court handing Donald Trump extraordinary powers that no president should have, and the presidents before him did not.

“This would return, in some ways, the United States to a previous era, which was really disreputable, where civil service appointments … were handed out as a part of a political spoils system, which was rampant with corruption.

“That's why the modern civil service system came to be over 100 years ago, to try to make sure that we would have people serving us at all levels of federal agencies who were well-qualified for those positions and not merely supplicants to the president.”

Krent said overturning Humphrey’ Executor would lead to “increasing politicization of policymaking across the government,” to “the detriment of the American people.”

“It may mean that you're going to have less expertise in government, less political party balance in terms of how these agencies work, and ultimately, that's against the congressional design.

“Regulation and policymaking will just be infused with the president's brand of whatever is politically convenient at the moment.”

Growing up in an ultraconservative Mormon family, Jennie Gage said, she was primed to become a Christian nationalist and supporter of Donald Trump’s Make America Great Again movement — or MAGA.

But about two years ago, at 49, Gage had a reckoning, realizing she had been “literally a white supremacist from birth,” based on teachings from the Book of Mormon.

Gage said she came to see Mormonism as “the OG Christian nationalist church.”

So, she flipped her life upside down, leaving organized religion and the Republican party.

She now calls herself “a raging feminist,” hosts a podcast, “Life, Take Two,” and is a member of “Leaving MAGA,” a nonprofit online community for former Trump followers who found themselves lost in conspiracies, losing friends, even committing crimes in the president’s name.

‘God’s president’

“I would have never said, ‘I'm white supremacist. I'm Christian nationalist,’” Gage told Raw Story. “I would have just said, ‘I'm traditional, and I'm conservative because I believe in church and family and America.’”

But when Trump ran for president in 2016, Gage embraced MAGA.

“I will never forget him on my big-screen TV, saying the words, ‘Make America Great Again,” Gage said.

“The first time I heard that, I literally started crying … and I pictured Norman Rockwell.”

What came to mind was the painter’s “Freedom from Want” — ”The grandma putting the turkey on the table, the Thanksgiving dinner, the beautiful home and just that American traditional family and conservatism," she said.

“Obviously, I hated brown people. I hated all the illegal immigrants. I hated that our country was being overrun with lesbians and feminists, women who worked instead of being in their proper place in the home, gay people — they are like the biggest sinners in Mormonism — and baby killers, all of that,” Gage said.

“When [Trump] said, ‘Make America Great Again,’ what I pictured was this businessman not only is going to save our economy, but he's also going to get rid of all of that stuff that people are doing that's destroying our country, and we're going to return to the 1950s where life was great and everything was simple, and he's going to make America great again.”

‘God’s president’

Gage’s family, she said, took Mormonism to “next-level insanity,” as much of her childhood revolved around The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

“It is a cult without walls,” Gage said.

She attended Brigham Young University, the flagship Mormon college, for two years, taking classes including early childhood development, as well as dating and marriage.

“Even going to Mormon college, I was just indoctrinated also,” Gage said.

As treasurer of the BYU Young Republicans, she canvassed for President George H.W. Bush when he ran against Bill Clinton in 1992.

“It was devastating to see this evil Democrat Bill Clinton get elected,” she said.

As Gage had children, she became less politically involved. Her interest revived when Mitt Romney ran for president.

She remembered thinking, “‘We're gonna have a Mormon boy,’ and then that's probably gonna usher in the Millennium, so it's gonna be Mitt Romney and then Jesus.”

Gage began watching Fox News, listening to conservative commentators and reading books by Republican politicians. When Trump announced his run, Gage was familiar with his reality TV show, The Apprentice, and his books, The Art of the Deal and The Art of the Comeback.

“The Apprentice was actually my pipeline into MAGA. It was just really interesting, as we had a business and were really wealthy,” Gage said.

“That sucked me into … completely buying into it because NBC, The Apprentice and his ghost-written books, they showcased him as this really savvy entrepreneur, and that spoke to me because I was this conservative Christian wife of an entrepreneur.”

Gage said she liked the idea of a “businessman” running America, instead of “slimy politicians.”

She became more active on social media and engaged in arguments defending Trump. She recalls one verbal fight with her 10-year-old nephew.

She told him, “Donald Trump to America is going to be what Napoleon was to France. He is going to free us, and generations to come are going to thank God that Donald Trump was voted in office.”

When Trump beat Hillary Clinton in 2016, Gage thought: “President Trump is God's president.”

‘A major shift’

Gage began to upend her life in October 2018. One day at church, she “literally stopped believing.”

“I Googled my own religion for the first time,” she said. “I had never researched Mormonism outside of books that I would go to the Mormon bookstore and read. And so I resigned from the church.”

The church’s history of polygamy pushed her away. Simultaneously, she said, she ended her 24-year marriage, due to infidelity.

She “plunged pretty headlong into Christianity, and in a way, that kind of kept me stuck in that traditional conservative Americana,” she said.

But she continued “deconstructing” her beliefs, and by the time of the 2020 election had seen “a major shift” in her values.

She was prepared to vote for Trump, but on the way to the voting booth, Gage said, “my MAGA started to crack."

“I remember sitting there in the car, and I just felt sick thinking about Donald Trump because some of the debates that year, he started to seem a little bit unhinged, and the MAGA crowd was just no longer aligning with me.”

Gage and her partner decided not to vote for either Trump or Joe Biden.

Gage returned to her computer, to research political issues.

“I’m like ‘Oh s—. There's not one f—- thing that the Republicans are doing that I support. Not one. I'm a Democrat,” Gage said.

“I literally support everything that most of the Democratic leaders are currently doing, and the entire Democratic platform speaks to me so much.”

Gage said she began “really stepping into my true, authentic self.”

While it was “extremely unsettling” and “terrifying” to change her beliefs,” her life in Tucson, Ariz., now looks far different than her life in MAGA.

She has a diverse group of friends, is an atheist feminist, and calls herself an “anarchist” and “white apologist,” for her ancestors’ roles in massacres of Native Americans.

“I am moving farther and farther away from everything that originally made me lean into MAGA,” she said.

‘American Gestapo’

To Gage, Trump is now “f— reprehensible” and “so hateful.”

“Donald Trump is the president of only the people he gives a f— about,” Gage said.

“Everybody else is just out. He's more of a mob boss, and he is a president, and that's not the way that America is supposed to work.”

During the 2024 election, Trump accused Haitians in Springfield, Ohio, of eating cats and dogs. Gage called that the “a straw that broke the camel's back.”

“I wouldn't want him to be in charge of our PTA. I wouldn't vote for him for the president of our homeowners’ association,” Gage said.

“Listening to the debates and the hatred in some of the rallies, I felt like I was having an out-of-body experience, and it made me panic because I'm like, ‘Oh, now what? I hate Donald Trump, and the whole entire MAGA movement no longer aligns with who I am.’”

Gage now calls Trump administration immigration enforcement agents an “American Gestapo.”

Just in cases reported by Raw Story, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has detained a breastfeeding mother, proposed a plan to deport unaccompanied immigrant children, physically assaulted bystanders and deported young adults with pending immigration cases.

“The whole point of the Gestapo was to be this police force out there terrorizing people,” Gage said.

“Sure, deport illegals if they're a threat, but to drag people down the street, the masks, the fear-mongering, the scare tactics, is absolutely reprehensible.”

‘It’s going to re-brand’

Gage is starkly concerned about Trump and the GOP’s quickening push toward Christian nationalism.

“I wasn't just Christian nationalist for logistical reasons,” she said. “It was part of my religion.

“I believed Jesus had written the Constitution and that the American government was just the interim government until Jesus came back, and then Jesus was going to rule America, and the rest of the world from America.

“The Charlie Kirk people … or Christian nationalists, honey, they ain't got nothing on the Mormons. We took Christian nationalism next-level. I believed all of that 100 percent.”

Gage likens Christian nationalism to “a virus,” particularly as it gains a platform with Turning Point USA, the youth nonprofit founded by Kirk, who was killed in September.

“My worry is that these religious institutions and these political movements … are targeting the people that they need to target in a way that's effective enough that they are always going to be 10 steps ahead of us, and they're specifically targeting those emerging young adults,” Gage said.

“I'm afraid that conservative Christian nationalism will not die out, that just like a very smart virus, it's going to adapt. It's going to re-brand. It's going to emerge on the other side, maybe a little bit different than the 2020 MAGA movement, but it has a vested interest in protecting itself.

“They have the money, they have the power. They don't want to let that go, so they're going to fight to the death.”

WASHINGTON — To end the longest government shutdown in American history, a bipartisan group of U.S. Senators came together and agreed to kick the can.

The can seems to have hit a brick wall.

Unless Congress acts, massive spikes in health-care premiums are coming in the New Year for millions of Americans — the reason Democrats refused to fund the government this fall.

“This whole year we've been moving backwards on health-care because of this administration,” Sen. Andy Kim (D-NJ) told Raw Story just off the Senate floor.

While President Donald Trump and congressional Republicans have yet to offer a policy solution, this week, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer introduced a measure to stave off premium spikes by extending COVID-era health insurance subsidies for three years.

As part of the deal that ended the shutdown, Senate Majority Leader John Thune promised to bring Democrats’ proposal up for a formal vote. That is now scheduled for next Thursday.

But the measure’s fate is all but sealed. Many Republicans say they could stomach a one- or two-year extension but not three, which is why many in the GOP dismiss Schumer’s bill as a show vote aimed at next year’s midterm elections.

“No, not to the people in Nevada. They don't think that's a show vote. They need it,” Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-NV) told Raw Story as she walked through the basement of the U.S. Capitol.

“They need us to extend those subsidies if they're going to be able to afford health care. That's what we should be doing.”

‘We got a health-care crisis’

No one in Washington was really discussing health-care until the shutdown. Now it’s the talk of the town. Cortez Masto says that’s because, unlike in 2024, Democrats are now listening to voters.

“If you just are talking to the American public, we got a health-care crisis,” Cortez Masto said. “Too costly, too high — prices are too high. People can't afford medicine when they need it, so we do need reform.”

For most of the shutdown, the mood was so bitter on Capitol Hill, party leaders refused to talk to each other. But as the shutdown stretched to a record-breaking seven weeks, rank-and-file lawmakers reported productive bipartisan talks on health reform, just way off our screens.

“I had been somewhat hopeful during the shutdown,” Kim, who served in the House until he was sworn in as a Senator in January, said. “I was engaged with a number of House Republicans that were expressing a similar sentiment of wanting to make progress, but Speaker [Mike] Johnson successfully silenced them during the shutdown.”

“Has their tune changed since the government reopened?” Raw Story inquired.

“They're still pissed,” Kim said. “… but I think that they're feeling like … Johnson's just continuing to be obstructionist.”

Kim’s not too optimistic ahead of next week’s vote to extend Obamacare subsidies, in part because the Republican whose opinion matters most has been MIA.

“We’ll see. I'm still engaged with my colleagues on both sides right now,” Kim said. “But right now, what we need to have to actually move this is for Trump to weigh in and get engaged. And so far, he's been not only unwilling but often being obstructionist as well.”

The New Jersey Democrat wonders what happened to Trump’s populist appeal, let alone heart.

“It just boggles my mind. I mean like, the majority of people that are going to be hurt by these tax credits expiring live in states that he won,” Kim said.

“And it just makes no sense. Even if they have thoughts about reforms that they could be doing, none of that can get implemented in the next month, so, like, why not extend this work to try to get some type of reform going forward? It just makes no sense to me. We're just pulling out the rug on these people.”

While the current debate centers around extending Affordable Care Act subsidies, Democrats say that’s just the start.

“That's the first step. There's more that needs to be done,” Cortez Masto said. “We've been fighting this battle against big pharma, against health companies, against PBMs [Pharmacy Benefit Managers].”

Most all small bipartisan efforts, even as health-care remains a bipartisan wedge issue, political leaders love to use to fearmonger and fundraise.

‘The people would reward us’

Many Republicans are itching to rally behind a GOP plan — most any GOP plan to “replace” Obamacare will do, as they didn’t campaign on specifics.

But they need Trump-sized cover and gold spraypainted salesmanship — they need President Trump. Otherwise, Republicans on Capitol Hill aren’t going to walk the legislative plank alone.

“The White House clearly believes that we need to have a solution,” retiring Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC) told congressional reporters. “That would be very helpful for them to weigh in.”

After refusing to engage with Democrats on health-care subsidies during the shutdown, a growing number of Republicans now say the party should take the lead on health-care reform.

“It's an opportunity. Health-care really hasn't been addressed for years, for decades,” Rep. Troy Nehls (R-TX) told a gaggle of reporters on the Capitol steps.

Nehls is retiring at the end of his term — his twin brother running to replace him — but he says the GOP will be rewarded by voters if they take the lead.

They just need an actual proposal first.

“This is an opportunity for us to do it and address it, because we have a unified government. So everybody gather around President Trump. He's got smart people, very smart people around him. Come up with a good plan,” Nehls said.

“Let's get it done and then get this done in 2026. I think it'd be great. And forget about the 2026 election, it's just good for the American people. It's the right thing to do. It's the right thing to do, and I then believe that the American people would reward us.”

As with all things policy, the devil is the details. And thus far, the GOP’s all over the map.

Like many on the right, freshman Sen. Bernie Moreno (R-OH) says Democrats are just calling for a band-aid to keep health insurance premiums from spiking by extending COVID tax credits — aka “five-year subsidies,” because they were passed in 2021 with a sunset at the end of 2025 — instead of addressing cost savings.

Like many in the GOP, Moreno’s touting tax-free health savings accounts. He also wants to end free, $0.00 premium plans offered to qualifying low-income families through Medicare or Affordable Care Act marketplaces.

“We have to fix that eventually. The Democrats are talking about this very hyper-specific five-year subsidy, but I think we can go along with extending it for those two reforms,” Moreno told reporters. “I would like to see the money go into household accounts."

Demands like those have Democrats wary.

‘It really is a mess’

A part of the reason health-care politics have heated up is, the GOP already raided Medicaid to the tune of $1 trillion as a part of their GOP-only Budget Reconciliation Act — aka the One Big Beautiful Bill.

“It really is a mess,” Rep. Glenn Ivey (D-MD) told Raw Story as he rode an elevator up to the House floor during a vote this week.

That’s why many Democrats, especially in the House, aren’t expecting any help from the other side of the aisle.

Rather, they think the issue paints a stark contrast between the parties ahead of next year’s winner-take-all midterms.

“That's our view, because even if they fix the ACA tax credit, you still got the $1 trillion in cuts to Medicaid,” Ivey said.

“And so if they just extend the ACA tax credits, that's a big step in the right direction, helps millions of people, but the Medicaid cuts are putting even more people at risk. And then you're also putting medical institutions at risk, hospitals — especially in rural and urban areas, that sort of thing.”

Then there’s “repeal and replace” — the GOP’s repeated promise to eradicate Obamacare.

“They just want to kill it. They want to repeal but not replace,” Ivey said. “Going back to, like, when pregnancy was a pre-existing condition? I just can't see folks being okay with that. Or your kid, you know, not being able to stay on your insurance until he turns 26?

“I mean, why would people walk away from that?”

WASHINGTON — A pair of top Democrats in the House of Representatives slammed President Donald Trump's "deranged obsession" with attacking Somali-Americans on Wednesday.

On Tuesday, Trump said he does not want Somalis in the United States because "they contribute nothing," the AP reported. His most recent attack follows a report by the conservative outlet City Journal that accused Somali Americans of committing fraud in Minnesota, the report added.

Speaking exclusively with Raw Story on Wednesday, Reps. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) pushed back against the president's remarks.

"He's a bigoted fool," Omar said. "There's nothing surprising about the president using racist, xenophobic, and Islamophobic rhetoric to attack an entire community."

Omar added that Trump's comments make him look weak to the Somali community she represents.

"They're all mockingly wondering if he's ok, and so am I," she said. "Even the reporters were asking, 'Why are you bringing them up?' It just seems like he has a very deranged and creepy obsession with me and, by extension, the Somali Americans, and it's really off-putting. It puts his mental decline on display in a way that I don't think he's smart enough to recognize."

The Trump administration has since stepped up its immigration enforcement activities against Somali-Americans since the president made his remarks, officials told the AP.

Ocasio-Cortez said the immigration raids show Trump is not aware of the legal complexities of his actions. She warned that his actions could leave him vulnerable to legal action.

"There are so many legal exemptions, from libel laws to slander, that, as an elected official, there are very few protections," she said.

After President Donald Trump called for the execution of Democratic lawmakers on social media, some Republican members of Congress are uncomfortable taking a hard stance on the matter when asked by Raw Story.

Trump's anger stemmed from a video in which half a dozen Democratic senators and representatives with a background in military service reminded active-duty troops that they have an obligation, under both the Constitution and the Uniform Code of Military Justice, to refuse illegal orders even from the president himself. This reminder comes as legal experts rebuke Trump's orders, including the deployment of National Guard to American cities and the military targeting of alleged drug boats off the coast of Venezuela.

"I thought [Democrats] video was cowardly, foolish, it was dangerous," Rep. Eli Crane (R-AZ) told Raw Story. But when asked his stance on Trump calling for those Democrats' execution, he replied, "I haven't seen his reaction so I'm not going to comment on it ... I usually don't comment on things I haven't seen yet."

When Rep. Dan Meuser (R-NY) was also pressed on whether Trump's comments could trigger violent threats against members, he said he hoped not — but was quick to argue "the left" was at least as responsible.

"We've been seeing that, and I completely denounce anything of that nature," said Meuser. "So no, I certainly don't expect that will occur, hope it doesn't occur, and we can't have, you know, language that leads to, hostile language that leads to violence. Which by the way, once again, how many times are we going to see it before we admit and acknowledge that the left's language has caused incredible levels of violence. Half my friends in tough areas ... have security details, okay?"

Meanwhile, Rep. Jason Crow (D-CO), one of the six who delivered the original video, made clear he wasn't backing down.

"I won't allow myself to be intimidated and to back away from by Constitutional oath," he said. "I served my country, I went to war three times for this country. That is a lifetime oath. And I will do anything and everything necessary to maintain my fidelity to the Constitution."

Rep. Barry Loudermilk (R-GA) disclosed exclusive new details to Raw Story on Friday about the activities of the suspect in the pipe bombs left at the Republican and Democratic National Committees on Jan. 6.

"Based on those reports, it should have been a lot worse," said Loudermilk, explaining that many details known to the FBI have gone unshared with the public for years.

"Why wasn't that information shared?" Raw Story's reporter asked.

Loudermilk went on to detail "videos that we hadn't seen before" about the Jan. 6 pipe bomber, who has never been identified but can be seen in videos wearing a gray hoodie. "The newest revelation which we're just getting out today is that the pipe bomber, the gray hoodie jacket person, actually made a stop ... at the Congressional Black Caucus before he placed the device at the Democratic National Committee."

"They walked into the property ... stayed there for a minute or so, then got up and left," Loudermilk added.

"So the FBI never released that information," Raw Story confirmed.

The new information raises a number of additional questions about the plot, Loudermilk said, including, "Was the one at the RNC supposed to go to the CBC?"

Rep. Tim Burchett (R-TN) told Raw Story that aliens may have come to the Earth 1,000 years ago or more and could have been living in the deep ocean.

Walking on Capitol Hill Wednesday night, Burchett mused, "What if these are entities that are on this Earth that have been on this Earth — who knows how long, and that we, we, think that they're coming in from way out. Maybe they did a millennium ago, but they're here in these deep-water areas and that's why — I mean, like we say, we know more about space than we do what's going on there."

The oceans have gone largely unexplored and unmapped. Google began a project 12 years ago to map the oceans as part of a partnership with The Catlin Seaview Survey. The images can be seen on Google Maps and Google Earth.

"We have a higher propensity of silence around these five or six, I believe, deep-water areas," Burchett continued. "And so, for me it, just, um, creates a question. And then when we have Naval personnel telling me that we have these sightings and that there's these underwater craft they're chasing that are doing hundreds of miles of hour and the best we've got is something that goes a little under 40 miles an hour. So, I got a lot of questions about that stuff."

Last week, Rep. Eric Burlison (R-MO) showed a video seen on social media in a House Oversight and Reform Subcommittee hearing that showed a U.S. MQ-9 Reaper drone attempting to intercept an unidentified object off the coast of Yemen in 2024. It failed to do so, VICE reported.

Four witnesses spoke in the Sept. 9 hearing about their experiences with unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP).

USA Today noted that congressional leaders allege that the federal government knows more than is being said and is intentionally keeping Congress in the dark on the matter.

NOW READ: If Donald Trump’s skin gets any thinner, America will have its first translucent president

Michael Whatley, the Trump-backed Republican candidate for U.S. Senate in North Carolina, has made it his “mission” to “get more men and women of faith into the public square.”

Whatley’s own church, however, has repeatedly clashed with the Trump administration over the past six months, as its national leader has embraced a reputation as a bulwark of “resistance” to the president’s agenda.

In a recent op-ed for Religion News Service, the presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church, the Most Rev. Sean Rowe, wrote that the church is experiencing a “long-overdue reckoning” on its proximity to political power.

Rowe also said that what was “once the church of the Founding Fathers and presidents” is today “less known for the powerful people in our pews than for our resistance to the rising tide of authoritarianism and Christian nationalism emanating from Washington, D.C.”

For Whatley, that might have made for uncomfortable reading.

Now chair of the Republican National Committee, having led the North Carolina Republican Party, he said in a 2023 podcast interview it was “a personal mission of mine” and “a really big deal” to get people of faith into politics.

He added that he serves as the treasurer for his church, and previously served as a senior warden on the vestry.

But even that church has taken stances seemingly at odds with Whatley’s embrace of Trump.

St. Mark’s Episcopal Church in Gastonia describes itself as “a progressive parish” whose members volunteer for programs “to combat hunger, homelessness, racism and other significant issues.”

The St. Mark’s website notes that the Episcopal Church embraces “inclusion,” and that “people of all genders and sexual orientations serve as bishops, priests, and deacons in our church.”

The church’s donations page bears Whatley’s name, as stewardship chair, along with those of the rector and senior warden. A post on the St. Mark’s Facebook page, meanwhile, shows that Whatley delivered the “message” during “services” at the church in September 2020.

Whatley could not be reached for comment, either through his campaign or the Republican National Committee.

But Robert Orr, a former associate judge on the North Carolina Supreme Court and former Republican candidate for governor who is also a member of the Episcopal Church, told Raw Story he believes “all the basic tenets of Christianity are completely at odds with the policies being imposed by the Trump administration.”

Orr cited decisions to cut funding for school lunches, to end humanitarian aid to poor countries by shutting down the U.S. Agency for International Development, and to “turn a blind eye to the humanitarian devastation going on in Gaza.”

“I think that those who are in lockstep with Mr. Trump have an obligation to explain how those kinds of policies are not inconsistent with the teaching that you hear on Sunday in your Episcopal church, your Baptist church, or your synagogue,” said Orr, whose alienation from the Republican Party began during the 2016 election before he switched his voter registration to unaffiliated following the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol.

‘Intertwined and inseparable’

The intertwining of faith and politics has undoubtedly been a central theme of Whatley’s life.

In the 1990s, he earned a master’s degree in religion from Wake Forest University, then a joint degree in law and theology from Notre Dame. The Assembly reported that Whatley’s dissertation “centered on the Roman Empire’s occupation of Palestine just before and after the time of Christ,” in which he wrote that “religious and political power were intertwined and inseparable.”

Contemplating faith, Whatley also pursued politics.

As a sophomore at Watauga High School in Boone, N.C., he volunteered for the 1984 Senate reelection campaign of the Republican Jesse Helms — a hardline conservative leader.

After clerking for a federal judge in Charlotte, in 2000 Whatley volunteered for the Republican candidate George W. Bush’s recount effort in Florida, key to Bush’s presidential election win over the Democrat Al Gore.

Following stints working for the Bush administration, the staff of then North Carolina Sen. Elizabeth Dole, and an oil and gas lobbying firm, Whatley was elected chair of the North Carolina Republican Party in 2019.

In 2021, following Jan. 6, the state party censured then Sen. Richard Burr for voting to impeach Trump for inciting an insurrection. In early 2024, as Trump was locking up the Republican nomination, he backed Whatley to chair the national committee.

The current North Carolina Senate race is to replace Sen. Thom Tillis, a Republican who announced his retirement after opposing Trump’s package of tax cuts and slashed domestic spending, known as the “big beautiful bill.”

When Whatley formally launched his campaign in Gastonia on July 31, his loyalty to Trump took center stage.

Six days earlier, Trump issued a “complete and total endorsement” on Truth Social, all but assuring Whatley’s victory in next year’s primary.

Trump wrote: “I need him in Washington, and I need him representing you!”

In his kickoff speech, Whatley thanked Trump for his “vision” and “leadership,” while pledging to support Trump’s “efforts to deport violent criminal illegal aliens.”

The Rev. Shawn Griffith, Whatley’s pastor at St. Mark’s, gave a nonpartisan invocation, asking for God’s blessing on Whatley and his family.

“We pray that you give Michael wisdom in seeking your will in the decisions he will face,” Griffith said. “We pray that you give him strength and courage to choose and do the right things rather than those that are popular.”

Whatley’s 18-minute speech eschewed religion, referencing Trump nine times. The word “faith” received zero mentions.

Whatley said he would champion “North Carolina values,” which he enumerated as “a healthy, robust economy, safe kids and communities, and a strong America.”

‘Win elections for faith’

Whatley hasn’t always shied away from faith in the political sphere.

In Charlotte in 2022, addressing the Salt & Light Conference — hosted by the Faith & Freedom Coalition, led by longtime political strategist Ralph Reed — Whatley said: “I work hard every day to make sure the North Carolina Republican Party is going to be the party of faith … I pray that I can use this platform that I’ve been given by the voters of North Carolina, and the Republicans of North Carolina to be an instrument of God.”

That year, Whatley teamed up with Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson to speak at a series of pastor luncheons hosted by the American Renewal Project, an organization the Southern Poverty Law Center has linked to an anti-LGBTQ agenda.

Robinson wound up badly losing his 2024 bid for governor after CNN reported that he had described himself as a “Black Nazi” on a pornographic website.

During a December 2023 interview for a podcast hosted by Clearview Church in Henderson, N.C., Whatley said he had appeared at “30 different pastor lunches across the state” and spoken to 4,000 pastors.

“We talk about how to win elections for faith, not Republican versus Democrat,” Whatley said. “This is good versus evil. How do we get everybody to engage on this? Because I can assure you liberal churches are engaged. How do you get the evangelicals and other conservative churches to engage?”

Whatley said then it was imperative to recruit “moral” people to run for office, because “I’ve never seen someone who became a more moral person after they got elected.”

Six months into the second Trump administration, Whatley’s church is moving faith into the public square.

One day after the inauguration, the Rt. Rev. Marian Edgar Budde, the Episcopal bishop for the Diocese of Washington, D.C. directly pleaded with Trump to “have mercy” on “gay, lesbian and transgender children in both Republican and Democratic families who fear for their lives.”

Budde went on to admonish Trump that while some “may not be citizens or have the proper documentation, the vast majority of immigrants are not criminals.”

The following month, the Episcopal Church joined more than two dozen Christian and Jewish groups in filing a lawsuit against the Trump administration’s move to give immigration enforcement agents more latitude to make arrests at houses of worship.

In May, the Episcopal Church terminated a partnership with the federal government to provide refugee resettlement services, in response to Trump’s move to classify white Afrikaners as refugees based on the discredited claim that they face racial discrimination in South Africa.

Most recently, the Episcopal Diocese of New York hired a lawyer to free a South Korean university student whose mother serves a priest in the diocese from ICE detention.

Orr told Raw Story the apparent drop-off in Republican rhetoric on religion since the 2024 election reflects “a political purpose.”

Voters who helped elect Trump in response to appeals to their faith, Orr said, “were used in a cynical way to exploit their beliefs on social issues and conservative flashpoints.”

Twenty-three years ago, pioneers in artificial intelligence received an invitation to a Caribbean conference funded by “some rich guy.”

Now there is dismay among those who attended the three-day St. Thomas Common Sense Symposium in the U.S. Virgin Islands in April 2002 — because that “rich guy” was Jeffrey Epstein, the financier later convicted as a child sex offender who faced federal sex trafficking charges when he killed himself in 2019.

Amid swirling scandal, as President Donald Trump resists calls to release FBI files on his former close friend, two participants in the St. Thomas symposium told Raw Story what they remembered, having never before discussed the event with the media.

Another two attendees shared memories of the symposium via email.

“It was very disturbing when I first discovered that there was that connection, and I wish it had never happened,” said Benjamin Kuipers, a computer scientist who retired from the University of Michigan last year.

Symposium attendees said they did not witness illegal activity or have concerns about children in Epstein’s presence.

“When the Epstein thing all hit the fan, people would say … ‘Everybody had to know,’” said Mary Shepherd, 75, an owner of machine-reasoning AI company Cycorp who attended the meeting with her late husband and cofounder, Doug Lenat.

‘And I'm like, No, everybody didn't have to know, because I didn't know that this was going on.”

‘Really strange vibe’

The symposium took place on St. Thomas, but Shepherd and Kuipers recalled visiting Epstein’s private island, Little St. James, two miles away.

Kuipers remembered a banquet on the beach. An attendee who declined to be named said via email they remembered being “taken by boat to a beach on [Epstein’s] island for a bbq. We were not taken to any buildings on the island.”

Kuipers said: “As far as I know, being on Jeffrey Epstein's Island was a one-off. We were brought there for the banquet, and then brought back.”

Shepherd remembered going to the island on a boat sent by Epstein for her and Lenat, and MIT cognitive and computer scientist Marvin Minsky, who died in 2016, and his wife, Gloria Rudisch Minsky.

“Because the sea was a little rough, as soon as I got there, I needed to use the ladies room, so I went inside to use it, and Ghislaine Maxwell [Epstein’s associate and former girlfriend] was in the room that I had to walk through to get to the bathroom, and there were two girls there who I assumed were her children,” Shepherd told Raw Story.

Shepherd said she thought the teenage girls were Maxwell’s children “because of the way they were interacting,” which Shepherd compared to when “your mom was giving you instructions.”

In 2022, Maxwell was sentenced to 20 years in federal prison for sex trafficking and other charges related to Epstein’s abuse of teenage girls.

Amid the current Epstein scandal, Maxwell is at the center of considerable attention. Last Friday, after giving a prison interview to Todd Blanche, Trump’s Deputy Attorney General, Maxwell was transferred from Florida to a minimum security facility in Texas.

“Things just did not seem right,” Shepherd said. “There was a lot of security. There was just a really strange vibe when I was there.”

Shepherd said she told her husband she was “not comfortable here,” and they left with Minsky and his wife to return to St. Thomas.

Shepherd said she didn’t report anything from her visit because “it was just a feeling.”

She and Lenat declined a Cycorp investment from Epstein. She did not recall the amount.

“Epstein had been considering investing in our company, and I said, ‘Doug, I don't like him. There's something wrong with him. I don't like him. He's a wheeler-dealer, and he's not the kind of person we want to be representing our technology,’ so we decided not to take his money.”

Shepherd recalled a conversation with her husband after Epstein was arrested in July 2019.

“It's like, ‘Wow, we really dodged that bullet,’” Shepherd said. “I'm really glad we got that feeling that he was skeevy because that would have been terrible. Terrible.”

‘That's rich guys for you’

During the symposium, Epstein “walk[ed] around like any sponsor of one of those things would,” Shepherd said.

Kuipers said: “It was clear he had a number of attractive young women around. Aside from just noticing that and thinking, ‘Well, that's rich guys for you,’ I really didn't have any sense that any of them were underage. Now, what that really means is it didn't occur to me to think about it.”

In August 2019, Slate reported that the AI theorist Roger Schank recalled Epstein walking into the symposium “with two girls on his arm.”

“[Epstein] was in the back, on a couch, hugging and kissing these girls,” said Schank, who died in 2023.

Neither Shepherd nor Kuipers remembered seeing Epstein hugging or kissing girls.

“I guess I had the impression that he had a number of assistants, and so they were functioning as assistants to him as he sort of hosted the conference,” Kuipers said.

“They were both at the conference itself in St. Thomas, and they were on the island. But, I mean, they were helping out, doing various things.”

Receiving a conference invite to a luxurious destination from a wealthy sponsor wasn’t out of the ordinary, Kuipers said.

“At the time, there were a variety of rich people who were interested in AI and would spend money to make this happen,” Kuipers said.

Epstein paid for accommodations and travel, offering rides on his jet, two attendees said.

Kuipers declined the ride since he was teaching at the University of Texas, Austin, so flying from New York “didn't make any sense at all.”

Aaron Sloman, 88, a philosopher and AI and cognitive researcher, attended the conference and co-authored a paper on the discussions. He told Raw Story via email Epstein paid for his travel from the U.K. He traveled on “a private plane owned by Epstein” to the island, he wrote.

“I think the accommodation provided by Epstein was lavish, though I can't remember details now,” said Sloman, citing memories “partly restricted by my slowly but steadily worsening dementia.”

The attendee who requested anonymity recalled staying in a “nice hotel” on St. Thomas.

Kuipers said: “Here was this rich guy, and he wanted to hold a conference … bringing together a whole bunch of people that I knew quite well, and we were talking about interesting things, and it was in the Virgin Islands ... so I figured, why not?

“Of course, a couple decades later, it became clear why not, but that was way in the future.”

‘Completely clueless’

Kuipers said the conference’s small size, with about 20 attendees, was appealing.

“The little ones tend to be particularly exciting because if you've got a bunch of people who are working on the same kind of stuff, then you can really spend a lot of time together, so I kind of felt like that was this,” Kuipers said.

“Clearly, news these days makes it pretty clear that there was a subtext going on. I was completely clueless.”

Kuipers said he didn’t remember spending time on St. Thomas beyond the conference days.

“We all spent a lot of time talking about how to solve these AI problems, and we had very compatible views,” Kuipers said. “We did go swimming. There’s a visual image of being on the beach and swimming in the water and enjoying that.”

Shepherd said she thought she and Lenat arrived a day early and stayed a day after the symposium.

“It's a beautiful island, and it’s almost like, ‘Oh, come to paradise for a meeting,’” she said.

Kuipers, Sloman and Shepherd all said the symposium did not have a significant impact on their work.

“I was actually somewhat disappointed because it had been built up as being this big deal, and it really wasn't,” Shepherd said.

Sloman said he didn’t remember if Epstein himself presented about AI or cognitive science.

“I think he was hoping to be able to use the new AI technology to extend/enhance his financial activities, though I don't recall that aspect being discussed,” Sloman wrote. “It could explain his motivation for spending so much money to bring people to the symposium.”

The attendee who requested anonymity described Epstein as “like an ADHD curious kid.”

“He was eccentric. If he had an interesting conversation with a scientist or liked them, he’d ask them what they would do if they had more funding,” the attendee wrote.

“Sometimes he’d ask a scientist a technical question, then would follow with a personal question, which I always found odd."

The same attendee said “Epstein had an interest in AI, believed it would grow in importance, and was very fond of Marvin Minsky.”

In a May 2016 deposition, unsealed in 2019, Epstein victim Virginia Giuffre — who killed herself in April this year — alleged Maxwell directed her to have sex with Minsky, The Verge reported. Minsky’s widow told the New York Post Minsky did not have sex with any girls.

“We were always together,” Rudisch said. “We didn’t stay at [Epstein’s] house or anything.”

Rudisch told the Post “none of” the girls at Epstein’s residences “seemed very young.”

“I’m a pediatrician, I think I would have noticed,” Rudisch said.

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WASHINGTON — A senior Democratic senator slammed President Donald Trump as trying to realize the "wet dream of the dirtiest players in the fossil fuel industry."

The vivid comment was made to Raw Story after Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency chief announced the scrapping of a key control on greenhouse gas emissions.

Speaking at the U.S. Capitol, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) fumed to Raw Story that EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin, the former New York Republican congressman and 2022 gubernatorial candidate, was doing “the bidding of the fossil fuel industry, which paid good money for this kind of corruption."

“The endangerment finding is what brings carbon pollution under the Clean Air Act,” Whitehouse added of the measure Zeldin promised to scrap this week.

Issued in 2009, the endangerment finding also imposes emissions standards on cars, trucks and buses.

Announcing its demise, Zeldin claimed “the Obama and Biden EPAs twisted the law, ignored precedent and warped science to achieve their preferred ends and stick American families with hundreds of billions of dollars in hidden taxes every single year.”

The move is being hailed within the administration as “a monumental step toward returning to commonsense policies that expand access to affordable, reliable, secure energy and improve quality of life for all Americans,” as Energy Secretary Chris Wright claimed.

But Whitehouse charged the Trump administration with simply rewarding polluters who are also big money donors, by pursuing “the deletion of all regulation of carbon emissions, which is obviously the wet dream of the dirtiest players in the fossil fuel industry and the result of a lot of dark money spending by the industry to buy an administration that will do its dirty bidding.”

Zeldin’s move has prompted outcry among climate crisis activists but it is not a done deal, as lawyers on both sides gear up for what promises to be a drawn-out legal battle.

“I think it has … legal problems,” Whitehouse said, “because there really isn't a factual basis for what they are doing, outside of the boardrooms of Big Oil and creepy front groups who pretend climate change isn't real.”

Raw Story asked Whitehouse if he had any hope that the MAGA-infused GOP of Trump and Zeldin might resist efforts to cripple the fight against climate change. He said he did.

“You could actually see fairly significant efforts within the Republican Senate Caucus to try to repair some of the stupid damage that Trumpsters were trying to do,” Whitehouse said.

“We continue to have ongoing, healthy conversations about carbon water tariffs, about interesting solar investments, we had a very good conversation last night with a Republican member about the threat to the real estate markets arising out of the uninsurability and hence unmortgageability of so much American real estate.

“I think there's a lot of genuine and underlying concern, but Trump’s political strategy is to try to terrorize Republicans in the Senate, and he's done a pretty good job of it, and most of their money comes from fossil fuels, so they are also having that problem.

“But facts don't go away. As [President John] Adams said [in 1770], facts are stubborn things, and so I have not given up.

“It may take a real kick in the head, like a collapse of Florida's insurance and real estate market, to get them to focus on this as a today issue and not a someday issue.”

'I didn't see it'

At least one Republican from that climate-vulnerable state seemed unlikely, at first glance, to heed Whitehouse’s words.

Catching up with Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL) as he walked through the Capitol, Raw Story asked: “Have you been able to look at the EPA announcement this week on climate change?”

“I didn't see it,” Scott said, of the widely publicized, reported and debated announcement.

Another Republican, from a state historically dominated by the coal industry, was giddy when discussing the dismantling of the EPA.

“What do you make of what Zeldin is doing at EPA, his announcement this week?” Raw Story asked Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, (R-WV). “Do you think it’s a game changer?”

“It's a huge announcement,” Capito said. “I think it just shows [it’s about] getting rid of the over-regulation [of fossil fuel industries]. So I'm gonna support it.”

Many Democrats are retooling their message and focusing on public health, rather than rising temperatures and seas.

“What Lee Zeldin announced was the greatest crime against nature ever committed in American and world history,” Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA) fumed to Raw Story.

“What Zeldin announced was a complete capitulation to the oil, gas and coal industry, and giving them a permission slip to continue to pollute and endanger the planet and the health of all Americans.

“There is now going to be a dramatic increase in the number of cancers, asthmas and other diseases in the United States of America, and it's going to hit kids and it's going to hit pregnant women disproportionately.

“So what Zeldin just did was to fulfill the payoff that Trump is providing to the oil, gas and coal industry for their contributions by the hundreds of millions to his re-election campaign, but the price is going to be paid by American families.”

No matter what Zeldin and Trump’s EPA are up to, Democrats say the GOP and their funders can’t just wave a wad of cash and reverse the globe’s changing climate.

“It's very bad for the climate,” Sen. Brian Schatz (D-HI) told Raw Story, of Zeldin’s move. “The best thing we can do is help people to understand that all these increasing natural disasters are being made worse because of Republican policies.”

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Joe Kent, the newly confirmed director of the National Counterterrorism Center, once complained that federal agencies responding to the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol were promoting “a narrative that labels all of us terrorists or insurrectionists just for questioning things.”

It was September 2021, and Kent was an Iraq war veteran and candidate for Congress, speaking at the “Justice for J6” rally at the U.S. Capitol.

Kent claimed without evidence that the Jan. 6 defendants were “political prisoners” who had been “denied due process” — thereby pioneering a false claim Donald Trump would use in his 2024 presidential campaign.

Federal law enforcement and prosecutors were engaged in “banana republic stuff” when they investigated and charged those who attacked the Capitol, Kent claimed.

In fact, every Jan. 6 defendant held in jail before trial received a detention hearing, in which the government persuaded a judge that they posed a flight risk or a danger to the community.

“That happens overseas all the time,” said Kent, a retired member of the Army Special Forces and CIA paramilitary officer. “Unfortunately, we conducted operations like that when I was in Iraq serving overseas, and it did nothing but further radicalize people.”

Some analysts have traced the rise of ISIS to the power vacuum and destabilization created by the U.S. invasion of Iraq.

Kent holds a painful connection to this history: his first wife, a Navy cryptologist and linguist, was killed by an ISIS suicide bomber in Syria in 2019.

At the Capitol in September 2021, Kent seemed to argue that arresting and jailing the perpetrators of the Jan. 6 attack risked further radicalizing them.

He could not be reached for comment for this story.

As director of the National Counterterrorism Center, Kent will be responsible for leading “U.S. government efforts to analyze, integrate, and share intelligence to prevent and respond to terrorist threats at home and abroad.”

Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard praised Kent on Thursday for his “practical understanding of the enduring and evolving threat of Islamist terrorism, as well as the threats we face from the cartels’ human trafficking and drug trafficking operations.”

Left unmentioned was the threat from far-right extremists whom Kent suggested were unfairly labeled “terrorists or insurrectionists” through the FBI’s sprawling Jan. 6 investigation.

‘We’re at war’

During two unsuccessful runs for Congress, Kent continued to demonstrate a penchant for provocative statements and associations with extremists.

When the FBI executed a search warrant at Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s private residence, in August 2022, Kent said on MAGA strategist Steve Bannon’s podcast: “This just shows what many of us have been saying for a very long time. We’re at war.”

Kent lost his 2022 general election to Democrat Marie Gluesenkamp Perez after sitting for an interview with Nazi sympathizer Greyson Arnold, whom he later disavowed.

Arnold went on to threaten Washington state Gov. Bob Ferguson on X with a “judgement by lead.” The Washington State Patrol investigated but no charges have been brought.

During his rematch with Gluesenkamp in 2024, Kent hired a campaign consultant, Graham Jorgensen, who was revealed to be a member of the Proud Boys.

Photos of Jorgensen archived by an antifascist group show him attending two 2017 rallies in the Pacific Northwest organized by the far-right group Patriot Prayer, which frequently clashed with left-wing opponents.

Kent brushed off the matter during a debate when Gluesenkamp asked him to “apologize to southwest Washington for hiring a Proud Boy.”

“This is a complete distraction from your actual voting record of voting for more inflation, voting for a wide-open southern border, fentanyl killing our loved ones and neighbors,” Kent responded.

‘Domestic terrorism’

Contrary to Kent’s claims about Jan. 6, the FBI and at least two federal judges have decided the term “terrorism” fits the attack on the Capitol, which disrupted a joint session of Congress to certify Joe Biden as the winner of the 2020 presidential election.

“That attack, that siege, was criminal behavior, plain and simple,” then FBI Director Christopher Wray testified before Congress in March 2021. “And it’s behavior that we, the FBI, view as domestic terrorism.”

Two federal judges, sentencing leaders of the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys for seditious conspiracy two years later, ultimately agreed.

Prior to sentencing members of the Proud Boys leadership cadre, U.S. District Court Judge Timothy Kelly cited statements by members of an elite planning group convened on Telegram by Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio.

On the morning of Jan. 6, one chat member wrote: “I want to see thousands of normies burn that city to ash today. The state is the enemy of the people.”

“I will settle with seeing them smash some pigs to dust,” another wrote.

During a melee at the Capitol, one Proud Boy, Dominic Pezzola, stole a police riot shield, which he later used to smash a window, resulting in the initial breach of the building. Pezzola was convicted of felonies including obstruction of an official proceeding, but not seditious conspiracy.

In a statement to the court, Capitol Police Officer Mark Ode, the victim of Pezzola’s assault and robbery, said Jan. 6 was “not a random response of a small group of angry demonstrators who simply disagreed with the political climate of the period,” but rather “a planned and organized attempt to overthrow our constitutional process by individuals” who “decided to use violence and terror to impose their will.”

Judge Kelly applied a terrorism enhancement to the sentences of Pezzola and Tarrio, along with Joe Biggs, Ethan Nordean and Zachary Rehl, based on the finding that their crimes were “calculated to influence or affect the conduct of government by intimidation or coercion, or to retaliate against government conduct.”

Judge Amit Mehta, who sits with Kelly on the District Court for the District of Columbia, applied the terrorism enhancement to Oath Keepers leader Stewart Rhodes’ sentence.

“This is an additional level of calculation,” Mehta said. “It is an additional level of planning. It is an additional level of purpose. It is an additional level of targeting, in this case, an institution of American democracy at its most important moment, the transfer of power.”

Shortly after his 2025 inauguration, Trump pardoned Tarrio, while commuting the sentences of the other Proud Boys and Oath Keepers leaders.

WASHINGTON — Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer confused the heck out of Capitol Hill this week when he deployed a little-known procedural maneuver — the "Rule of Five" — to try and force the Trump Justice Department to release the "Epstein files."

“Never heard it before,” Senate Finance Committee Chair Mike Crapo (R-ID) told Raw Story.

“No, never heard of it,” two-term Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-AK) told Raw Story.

“I gotta go,” Senate Budget Committee Chair Lindsay Graham (R-SC) responded to Raw Story’s inquiry.

All the confusion and consternation stems from Schumer invoking the arcane 1928 "Rule of Five," which — on paper, at least — enables any five members of a congressional committee to band together and demand executive branch documents within their jurisdiction. No matter their party.

While Democratic leaders feel bullish on the issue, some Democrats are urging caution — in part because the party didn’t touch the topic during former President Joe Biden’s four years in the White House — despite Schumer’s latest effort to dislodge the files on the former billionaire financier who allegedly trafficked and abused minors.

"It's not a stunt”

Heads turned on Wednesday after Schumer announced their new strategy to force the Department of Justice to release most of the files the government has on Epstein.

Many Republicans initially laughed off the camera-loving New York Democrat as whispers of the minority leader’s gambit to deploy the little-known rule spread across the Capitol grounds.

But Schumer, flanked by Democrats on the Senate Homeland Security Committee — all of whom formally signed off on the effort — brushed aside charges of politics as usual.

"It's not a stunt. It's not symbolic. It's a formal exercise of congressional power under federal law," Schumer told members of the congressional press corps Wednesday. “And we expect an answer from DOJ by August the 15th. That's what accountability looks like. This is what oversight looks like. And this is what keeping your promises to the American people look like."

Stunt or not, this latest effort by Schumer puts him in league with at least one of the nation’s most far-right senators.

“Hey, what do you make of this ‘Rule of Five’ that Schumer and Dems are deploying?” Raw Story asked the former chair of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, the same committee trying to force the disclosure of the Epstein docs.

“I used it,” Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) told Raw Story. “I never got the information.”

“So are you writing this effort off?” Raw Story asked.

“Well, they can try,” Johnson said. “We tried it a number of times. It’s very difficult to do. You gotta take that to the committee. When you’re in the minority, you really can’t do it.”

That doesn’t mean Democrats aren’t following suit.

The Epstein investigation — or "coverup," depending on who you ask — was dismissed by many Senate Republicans just a couple weeks ago. Not anymore.

After rank-and-file House Republicans forced Speaker Mike Johnson to address the topic — which he did by recessing his chamber early ahead of their August recess purely to avoid debating Epstein — Senate Republicans took note.

“What do you think should happen with the Epstein investigation?” Raw Story asked.

“Well, isn’t it kind of materializing in the House of Representatives right now?” Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Chuck Grassley (R-IA) — who as the president pro tempore of the Senate, is third in line for the presidency, thus always flanked by security — told Raw Story.

“Yeah? Well, they’re on recess now,” Raw Story pressed. “But you’re watching that?”

Grassley said nothing as he, his security detail and aides entered a Senators-only elevator.

Even though many Senate Republicans still want to avoid the scandal at all costs, like Grassley, many are now quietly pressuring the Trump administration to judiciously address this homegrown scandal.

“I think the administration’s gotta be transparent,” Ron Johnson said.

“It’s very difficult to do”

It’s not just Republican heads that were turning this week.

“Did you know about this ‘Rule of Five’ before yesterday?” Raw Story asked a veteran Democrat.

“I don’t know if I did,” Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) told Raw Story.

Even though many have never heard of the rule, Schumer’s procedural gambit has many on the left giddy as they continue ramping up pressure on the administration, but Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA) cautions his fellow Democrats to keep the bipartisan scandal in context.

“I don’t really spend any time thinking about this,” Fetterman told Raw Story. “I don’t get any kind of outreach on it or whatever.”

While many Democrats have been feeling the wind at their backs for the first time in this second Trump administration, Fetterman cautions his colleagues against spiking the football.

“If they release it, fine, but it’s a strange argument when we were in absolute control for four years, we didn't release it or say anything with it,” Fetterman said. “So I’m just kind of like, ‘okay, release it. That’s fine. I don’t care.’ But I don’t think it’s a Democratic, another ‘get rich quick’ kind of scheme. You know, it’s like Russiagate or the ‘pee tape.’”

Unlike the fabled "pee tape," Epstein lived, breathed and, allegedly, abused. A lot.

These days, even Republicans who’ve avoided Epstein like the plague he became are now tuned in.

“People are interested,” Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL) told Raw Story.

When Scott was governor, U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi served as Florida's top law enforcement officer, so he’s in her corner, lonely though it may be.

“I trust Pam Bondi,” Scott said. “I think Pam feels like she’s doing the right thing. She’s protecting victims. She doesn’t want to release pornography. When I’ve talked to her, she’s doing the right thing.”

If Bondi’s doing the right thing, then someone else in the administration is the culprit, according to many of the president’s supporters who are increasingly frustrated with taking campaign pledges as ironclad promises.

“Something’s not on the level”

Bondi may have powerful Senate allies, but it’s been lonely for the 59-year-old lawyer of late.

The attorney general’s chorus of critics has grown since her claim to have the "Epstein list" on her desk unraveled — or disappeared, as many members of the MAGA wing of the GOP believe — in real-time.

While the Epstein affair was never a central issue for Democrats, the party’s rank-and-file are now engaged. And now that they are, they say things just aren’t adding up with this mysterious scandal.

“You don’t have to be a conspiracy theorist to see that something’s not on the level,” Sen. Peter Welch (D-VT) told Raw Story.

With the Trump administration seeming to stall — even as reports swirl about Trump’s relationship with the former financier — Democrats are piling on, even as that means angling to co-opt this issue many dismissed as a conspiracy mere weeks ago.

“They don’t want to release information that they’ve been demanding. It’s a Republican issue. It’s gotten some lift because Republicans are furious that the president is not being transparent,” Welch said. “There’s a lot of internal pressure. The Republican base wants this information. Might be they’re entitled to it. We all are."

NOW READ: Behind the real reason Americans voted for Trump

WASHINGTON — The Jeffrey Epstein saga continues, in spite of the Trump White House and many congressional Republicans wishing it would go away already.

Epstein, a financier and convicted sex trafficker, died in federal custody in New York in 2019, his death ruled a suicide. Speculation about his links to powerful men, including President Donald Trump, has flourished ever since.

But in trying to put the Epstein scandal behind them, Attorney General Pam Bondi, the FBI and Department of Justice have awoken the sleeping giant that is Trump’s MAGA base, including members of the congressional GOP.

“I don’t trust them,” Rep. Tim Burchett (R-TN) told Raw Story of Bondi and her DOJ.

On the other side of the aisle, Democrats can hardly get enough of this latest conspiracy-tinged GOP civil war. Many are echoing calls for transparency from the Republican far right, arguing too many Trump officials campaigned on an Epstein coverup only to change their tunes.

“Why have they changed? Did they lie then? Are they lying now? Something Pam Bondi said is not accurate,” Rep. Jared Moskowitz (D-FL) told Raw Story.

“I either want her to say there was no [Epstein client] list and she lied about that” — Bondi first said such a list existed — “or there is a list and they can’t release it and here are the reasons why.

“It’s one or the other, right? She said the list was on her desk. So that was either not true or she’s not releasing the list."

‘A hell of a lot more problems’

“We’ve got a hell of a lot more problems than Epstein,” Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) told Raw Story.

More senior Republicans avoided wading in.

“No. I don’t know anything about it. Nothing,” said Sen. Jim Risch (R-ID). “I didn’t look into it to begin with, not looking into it now.”

“I really haven’t paid much attention to it, to be honest with you,” said Sen. Shelly Moore Capito (R-WV). “It’s just not something I’m focused on. Just let the story play out however it does.”

Many party leaders, including Senate Majority Whip John Barrasso (R-WY), are echoing President Trump and trying to move past the controversy.

“No. It’s not something that comes up in Wyoming,” Barrasso told Raw Story. “Nobody at all is asking about that topic.”

As much as they want to move past the Epstein scandal, GOP leaders can’t avoid it, in part because rank-and-file Republicans keep raising questions.

“I have no information on it whatsoever. I’m as curious as everybody else,” Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) told Raw Story. “I’ve got questions, I don’t have any answers.”

In the House of Representatives, Republicans have been formally investigating the Epstein affair. Many blame Bondi for blocking their probe.

‘It’s been overwhelming’

At the start of this Congress, House Republican leaders established a formal Task Force on the Declassification of Federal Secrets.

The panel’s tasked with investigating conspiracy theories of old, including the assassinations of John F Kennedy, Robert F Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr, and even the decades-long hunt for UFOs.

The Task Force has also been looking into more contemporary conspiracy theories, including the origins of COVID-19, the 9-11 terrorist attacks, and Epstein. Many on the panel have been frustrated with Bondi for months.

“I’ve already done everything I can from my perspective. I literally have multiple inquiries that went unanswered, so it’s not in my hands,” Task Force Chair Anna Paulina Luna (R-FL) told Raw Story.

While Trump has tried to dismiss the Epstein scandal as “boring,” Luna and others on the far right have only fanned conspiratorial claims about evidence destruction at the DOJ.

“I’ve been looking into this for a while, and there was still, back I think it was February, a whistleblower came forward that he had firsthand knowledge or secondhand knowledge that there were files being destroyed,” Luna said. “But either which way, there’s still information that can be released.”

Luna and others on the Secrets Task Force say their voters demand Epstein answers.

“I’m getting calls on it, emails, texts, DMs, comments in the last hundred hours. It’s been overwhelming,” Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) told Raw Story.

Mace says Bondi should appoint a special counsel and stop dodging questions.

“If they do the special counsel, have a press conference and there’s more transparency from the DOJ, I think everyone will have a better understanding of what has been going on and what really happened,” Mace said.

Many Republican lawyers, like former Missouri attorney general Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO), are demanding transparency too.

“Make it all public. That’s my view. I’m in favor of getting it all out there,” Hawley told Raw Story. “I know they’ve got an ongoing series of prosecutions. Unload it all on the public. I think they deserve to know.”

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) has jumped on the bandwagon,

“I’m for transparency,” the speaker told conservative podcaster Benny Johnson this week. “It’s a very delicate subject. We should put everything out there and let the people decide it.”

‘They made this a campaign issue’

The president’s MAGA base has grown increasingly frustrated with FBI Director Kash Patel and his deputy, Dan Bongino.

The two conspiracy-peddling firebrands helped stoke the Epstein flames throughout the 2024 election, but since becoming senior FBI officials have been mum, causing consternation, cursing and new conspiracies on the right.

“I just find this fascinating. They made this a campaign issue, right?” said Moskowitz, the Florida Democrat. “And all of a sudden it’s like, pay no attention to the man behind the curtain, there’s no files.

“It’s amazing how they pivoted. The very same people who talked about it, Kash Patel, Dan Bongino, wind up in the administration, probably got their jobs because of the attack on Epstein, get in there and they’re like, ‘Let’s just move on to something else.’

“It makes us more interested. The polling on this, Democrats, Republicans, Independents think the [justice] department is not being transparent. And so that makes you want to pull the string more.”

With competing conspiracies flying, many Democrats are now lined up with the far right as they call for the Trump administration to release the so-called Epstein files.

“I’d love to see more information,” Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA) told reporters this week.

As vice-chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Warner can’t help but crack a smile as he watches the president and his top cops squirm.

“It is more than a little ironic,” Warner said. “Meaning that, when you create what appears to be a false flag operation and then there’s nothing there, and you’ve gotta live with the ramifications of that — a little poetic justice seems to be coming about.”

WASHINGTON — Some Republicans on Capitol Hill are all but daring President Donald Trump to take control of the local government that oversees Washington D.C.

Others in the GOP are aghast at the idea, which Trump teased again last week.

“We have tremendous power at the White House to run places when we have to — we could run D.C.,” Trump told reporters Tuesday.

“We would run it so good. It would be run so proper, we’d get the best person to run it. The crime would be down to a minimal, would be much less. We're thinking about doing it, to be honest with you.”

Just down Pennsylvania Ave., at the Capitol, some Republicans are cheering the president on.

“If we can’t take care of our nation’s capital, what do we expect out of these other cities? It's awful. Look at the streets, littered,” Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) told Raw Story. “That'd be pretty easy. I'd love to own that. Let me do it.”

Others in the GOP are praying the president’s joking about seizing power from local elected leaders and that allies like Tuberville never get near the reins of power in the capital.

“I don’t think that's a good idea,” Sen. Shelly Moore Capito (R-WV) told Raw Story. “We seem to have a good system right now that's worked pretty well.”

Broken or not, Trump is set on fixing it, and he has allies on Capitol Hill.

‘Adult supervision’

All year long, Republicans have been testing the D.C. system — one that’s held for decades — and hardliners aren’t done yet.

“So would you be supportive of doing something?” Raw Story pressed Tuberville.

“Yeah. Doing something where we might have a little say so about cleaning up the capital city of the United States of America, because right now it's — just walk around, it's just a pigsty,” Tuberville said.

Elected leaders in the capital decry the idea of a Trumpian nanny state, but Mayor Muriel Bowser and city council members have grown to expect interference when Republicans run Capitol Hill.

In February, Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) and Rep. Andy Ogles (R-TN) introduced their Bringing Oversight to Washington and Safety to Every Resident (BOWSER) Act. It would repeal the 1973 D.C. Home Rule Act, which gave elected local leaders power over local affairs, even if the Constitution gives Congress final say over the city’s budget.

While many Republicans don’t know what to make of Trump’s latest threats, most are acutely aware the Constitution gives Congress the final say on D.C.

“I missed that. It sounds fun, but I don't know anything about it,” Sen. Cynthia Lummis (R-WY) told Raw Story of Trump’s latest remarks. “I don't know what he means by ‘takeover,’ but you know the Constitution says D.C. is Congress' responsibility.”

Last month, House Republicans passed measures barring undocumented workers from voting, restoring collective bargaining rights for Washington police officers, and forcing city leaders to work with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) on migrant raids.

On one level, this is nothing new. For instance, since roughly 65% of voters legalized recreational marijuana in the nation’s capital back in 2014, far-right House Freedom Caucus Chair Andy Harris (R-MD) has blocked city officials from regulating recreational cannabis — thereby effectively enshrining D.C.’s thriving black (or gray) market in federal law.

But on another level, local officials face unprecedented federal interference. Leaders argue President Trump and congressional Republicans are to blame for many of D.C’s woes.

This spring, Moody’s Ratings downgraded Washington’s credit rating, due to the loss of an estimated 40,000 federal jobs in the National Capital Region from Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) cuts alone.

The GOP also flexed its power over the city while averting a government shutdown earlier this year.

In the continuing resolution to fund the federal government, House Republicans effectively stripped $1 billion from Washington’s 2025 budget by forcing officials to operate at 2024 spending levels.

House Speaker Mike Johnson has refused to take up a bipartisan, Senate-passed fix aimed at undoing those congressionally-mandated cuts, so even though the city has the money, leaders have been forced to use accounting tricks, furloughs and service cuts to get through the year.

Many Republicans hope Trump is bluffing when he teases a federal takeover — unless he’s talking tough on migration.

“It depends on what facet you're talking about,” Sen. Capito said. “In terms of sanctuary cities or cities that are … harboring illegals that are here and committing crimes, I think the president has made clear what he's going to do here.”

“Some people in your party do want a takeover of the federal city,” Raw Story pressed.

“He's not going to take over cities. He can question the governance of cities, and I think that's what he's doing,” Capito said.

“D.C. does have a lot of federal funding, and there's a lot of relevance there, but I think he's just concerned with the ‘defund police’ and illegal activities that are going on that are not being addressed by some of our big city mayors.”

Other Republicans say it’s within Trump’s authority to oversee affairs in the federal city, but caution the president to stay focused.

“I think the president's dealing with enough messes, I'm not sure why you'd want to take another one,” Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) told Raw Story. “I wouldn't want him to take it over, but D.C. could definitely use adult supervision.”

Even though violent crime fell to a 30-year-low in 2024, according to the U.S. Department of Justice, many in the GOP, along with fringe-rightwing talking heads, portray the capital as lawless.

Local elected leaders find themselves transformed into political piñatas.

“Nobody does anything here,” Sen. Tuberville said. “Ever since I've been here, it kind of runs on its own. I don't know what they do with money up here. I’m sure they got plenty.

“It’s pretty easy to clean the streets up, get the graffiti off the walls, get the homeless out of the way of the tourists.”

Democrats are working to get the GOP out of the way.

‘How’s he gonna do that?’

President Trump has also teased taking over New York City, if the democratic socialist mayoral candidate, Zohran Mamdani, wins the race for City Hall.

"We're not going to have — if a communist gets elected to run New York, it can never be the same,” Trump said. “But we have tremendous power at the White House to run places when we have to."

California Democrats know that all too well, as they fight heavy-handed ICE raids in Los Angeles.

They’re warning city leaders across the nation to be ready for unparalleled federal intrusion, especially because the GOP’s “one big beautiful bill” is infusing upwards of $100 billion for ICE and other immigration efforts.

Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) speaks to members of the media. REUTERS/Nathan Howard

“We see the cruelty and extreme actions in Los Angeles, so I’m expecting to see more of the same, if not worse,” Sen. Alex Padilla (D-CA) told Raw Story.

“That's one of the cruel outcomes of the budget reconciliation bill, no change in policy with a huge infusion in the budget for immigration enforcement.”

Whether in California or in Washington, Democrats say there’s no mistaking President Trump’s efforts to amass more and more power, including meddling in local and state issues.

“Look, this is his king complex, right?” Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) told Raw Story. “He wants to be king. He wants to get rid of democracy.

“He doesn't want the people of the District of Columbia to have the right of self-determination, so it's just part of his authoritarian ruler complex.”

Raw Story asked. “Do you worry that he could actually…?”

Van Hollen interjected: “No. Well, I mean, we need to all make sure he doesn’t. I mean, how’s he gonna do that?”

“But he’s pushed every other boundary,” Raw Story replied.

“We all need to make sure we stand up,” Van Hollen said. “Unfortunately, to your point, you have Republicans continuing to be a rubber stamp to anything dear leader wants.”

WASHINGTON — An increasing number of congressional Republicans are nervous that President Donald Trump is forcing them to walk the proverbial plank and pass his “Big Beautiful Bill” — even if that means losing their seat. With the expansive measure stalled in the House, Democrats sense fear in the air.

“I think my colleagues across the aisle are scared,” Rep. Chuy Garcia (D-IL) told Raw Story.

“They know there's a lot of pain. They know it's gonna be tough, but they're even more afraid of Trump.”

Even so, the Trump card isn’t working as Republican leaders hoped. The president spent Wednesday trying to persuade GOP holdouts to pass the bill as overhauled by their Senate colleagues.

While the president is promising carrots, he’s also wielding a stick.

Trump’s made multi-million-dollar moves to oust one Republican who has rejected the measure from day one, libertarian-leaning Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY). Other fencesitters are now weighing limited options: Cross Trump or cross their constituents by, say, booting millions off health insurance.

Threats haven’t worked yet, as members of the far-right Freedom Caucus demand more drastic budget cuts and the last remaining more moderate members fight for mortgage deductions for their upper-middle-class constituents.

Analysts and Democrats say the “Big Beautiful Bill” will have a devastating effect on millions of Americans who rely on programs including Medicaid and food stamps, while also damaging U.S. renewable energy production and loading tax cuts in favor of the wealthy.

The bill’s a MAGA wishlist, including billions of dollars for masked ICE agents and tens of billions of dollars more in military spending.

Polling shows clear majorities of Americans don’t like the bill.

Regardless, Republican leaders are attempting to ram it through the House and have it on Trump’s White House desk by Friday, Independence Day.

On Wednesday, rank-and-file Republicans ground the bill to a halt, and Democrats claimed a mini-victory.

“Obviously, there's a message to be had. It speaks for itself. The largest transfer of wealth from ordinary people to rich people. That's real simple,” said Garcia, a member of the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration Integrity, Security, and Enforcement.

“The pain … it's real. Real people are affected by this.”

But real people aren’t a part of the debate — politicians are. Trump, Garcia charged, is thereby guilty of a “huge betrayal” of the 77 million Americans who voted for him over Joe Biden last year.

“How long will people go for this, once they start to see the impact on regular people,” Garcia said. “That’s the question.”

The Senate passed Trump’s bill on Tuesday by the barest margin, 51-50, Vice President JD Vance casting the tiebreaker after three Republicans defected.

Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), an independent-minded Republican, faces continued ire from progressives for voting in favor of the tax and spending package despite saying she did not like it and hoped the House would change it.

So far, SpeakerJohnson’s been working tirelessly behind the scenes to keep the Senate measure intact. Otherwise, Senate Republicans will have to pass the measure again.

‘The House is totally frozen’

In the House, with the Fourth of July recess canceled, members from both sides of the aisle faced challenges just getting to Washington to vote.

Rep. Jim Himes (D-CT), a senior voice in his party, told Raw Story he abandoned a vacation in France to fly back to the Capitol. While he didn’t stop to shave, the former Goldman Sachs executive was miffed that he had to buy a second round ticket, so he could vote against the “Big Beautiful Bill” before rejoining his family.

As Wednesday evening drew on, Himes took to social media to vent and goad the GOP.

“The House is totally frozen right now,” he wrote.

“Even Republicans know that adding $4 trillion to the national debt while kicking 17 million people off health insurance just to give tax breaks to rich people is A BAD IDEA.”

After campaigning on soaring promises to ‘Read the Bill,’ some Republicans were shrugging off pesky questions about how much of the more-than-900-page bill they had read. Many admitted they hadn’t read it, which had Democrats smarting.

“I read it all night long,” Rep. Diana Degette (D-CO) drily joked to Raw Story: “I decided not to support it.”

“I decided not to support it when Chuck Schumer stripped the title out,” Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-IL) quipped back.

That was a reference to the Democratic Senate minority leader’s gambit on Tuesday, when he had the bill’s title removed moments before it passed the Senate.

"This is not a ‘big, beautiful bill’ at all,” the New Yorker told reporters. “That's why I moved down the floor to strike the title. It is now called ‘the act.’ That's what it's called. But it is really the ‘big ugly betrayal,’ and the American people know it.

"This vote will haunt our Republican colleagues for years to come. Because of this bill, tens of millions will lose health insurance. Millions of jobs will disappear. People will get sick and die, kids will go hungry and the debt will explode to levels we have never seen.”

Schumer’s move did not meet with universal applause, many observers saying stunts were less effective than action. Nor, on Wednesday, did House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries’ (D-NY) decision to pose with a baseball bat, to illustrate his determination to oppose Trump’s bill.

Rank-and-file Democrats said such antics were a distraction.

“You know, this is the most consequential bill for hard-working Americans in our lifetime, and not in a good way,” Rep. Veronica Escobar (D-TX) told Raw Story.

“You’d think that because these are such radical changes, that we would be given the time and courtesy to be able to read through all of this. We know, of course, the broad strokes and they're horrible, but there are probably innumerable details in there that are just as bad or even worse that we haven't even gotten to.”

WASHINGTON — The Jan. 6, 2021 attack is once again the talk of Capitol Hill.

While Democrats are hanging replica plaques across the Capitol pressuring Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) to display an official congressionally-mandated plaque honoring Capitol Police officers for defending the Capitol on Jan. 6, President Donald Trump continues quietly pressuring Republican congressional leaders to formally investigate the bipartisan select Jan. 6 committee that disbanded in 2023.

“The president wants it,” Rep. Barry Loudermilk (R-GA) told Raw Story.

Even so, the ball seems to be in Johnson's court, and he’s remained mum since saying he would launch his own J6 investigation at the start of the year.

Low-level form of legislative civil disobedience

In 2022, while the Capitol was still undergoing post-riot repairs, lawmakers from both parties came together and passed a law requiring a plaque for the west front of the Capitol — where officers were first overrun on Jan. 6, 2021 — honoring the men and women of the Capitol Police who protected Congress in the face of violent insurrectionists.

Three years later and there’s still no official plaque, which is why a handful of House Democrats, including House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY), unveiled their own replica plaques this week.

“It is a very low-level form of legislative civil disobedience,” Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) told Raw Story.

As the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, Raskin says the speaker is flaunting the very Constitution he swore an oath to uphold.

“The speaker is in violation of the law. That's an indefensible posture for a speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives,” Raskin said. “Our poster replicas are saying, we are going to go ahead and honor the officers until Mike Johnson starts following the law.”

To many of the lawmakers left trapped in the House gallery on Jan. 6, 2021, let alone Capitol Police officers themselves, the plaque is personal.

“It's important so that nobody ever forgets the truth,” Rep. Veronica Escobar (D-TX) told Raw Story.

Escobar says the refusal to hang the plaque shows Republican "tough on crime" rhetoric is mere lip service.

“It’s evidence of the fact that they really aren't interested in supporting law enforcement. That's what it comes down to,” Escobar said. “They are so afraid of Donald Trump, and these were his soldiers.”

Democrats accuse the speaker of thumbing his nose at the Capitol Police officers who protect him daily.

“It's pathetic,” Rep. Jim McGovern (D-MA) told Raw Story. “The speaker won't put it up. So I don't know what the hell's the problem, but it's an insult to our brave men and women in law enforcement who protected us that day.”

McGovern’s the top Democrat — or ranking member — of the House Rules Committee, which plays the all-important role of providing parameters for debate before any measure can be voted on by the full House of Representatives.

The veteran Massachusetts congressman says he plans to use that perch to regularly remind Republicans of their party’s sin of omission.

“I'm gonna raise it in every Rule I do now,” McGovern said. “Why isn’t the plaque up? Why is it not displayed? Why is he disobeying — why is the speaker disobeying the law?”

The White House is engaged

On the other side of the aisle, some Republicans are also wondering where the official plaque is.

“I'm surprised, personally surprised it hasn't been done," Loudermilk said. “I don't think that's controversial. Regardless of who did what, who started it, who was responsible — there was violence here that the Capitol Police were engaged in.”

Even though Loudermilk wants to investigate the former select Jan. 6 committee, he says commemorating the heroism of the Capitol Police is the least Congress can do.

“We've got some colleagues saying, ‘Well, there's nothing more than a tour.’ I'm like, ‘No, it was way beyond that.’ There was violence,” Loudermilk said. “There was violence on both sides. I mean, of course, police had to counter the violence. I don't have a problem with having the plaque honoring the Capitol Police and what they've done.”

Still, Loudermilk dismisses the work of the bipartisan Jan. 6 select committee, which is why he continues calling on the speaker to let him formally launch his own investigation.

“There's been no movement on it. I would say there's been a negotiation going on, but it's just been a one-sided negotiation,” Loudermilk said.

With Congress rushing to wrap up an array of measures ahead of their July Fourth recess, Loudermilk is hoping to get the speaker’s ear this week.

“I'm hoping by the end of the week we'll have something,” Loudermilk exclusively told Raw Story. “The White House is engaged.”

After interviewing upwards of 1,000 witnesses, reviewing thousands of documents and releasing a detailed 814-page report on their findings, Democrats who served on the panel dismiss this latest White House effort as a smokescreen intended to distract from the damning details they uncovered.

“The January 6 select committee may have produced the most successful legislative investigation, certainly in the 21st Century, and one of the most successful ones in the history of the US Congress,” Raskin told Raw Story. “We produced a report. They have not laid a glove on a single detail in that report. They're trying to rewrite history.”

Late one night last October, at a church in a remote corner of Yancey County, North Carolina, government emergency medical workers participating in the response to Hurricane Helene gathered medications, records, laptops and radios, threw them into backpacks — and abandoned their field clinic.

More than two weeks after the massive storm ravaged the region, roads were badly damaged. Led by an ambulance, side lights illuminating the winding two-lane highway that follows Big Creek, the group made its way across the state line and into Tennessee.

Rumors about armed militia members threatening teams from the Federal Emergency Management Agency had prompted FEMA to pause some operations. The same day in Rutherford County, roughly 70 miles from the field clinic in Yancey County, a 44-year-old man armed with an assault rifle was arrested for threatening to harm FEMA workers. In Tennessee, a sheriff said witnesses reported FEMA workers being harassed by armed people.

But the Oct. 12-13 evacuation of a state medical assistance team, including FEMA contract workers, on the order of a program director more than 250 miles away in the state capital, Raleigh, is being reported by Raw Story for the first time.

“It was late enough the community had gone to sleep,” said a FEMA contract worker who spoke on condition of anonymity. “We had a rotating cadre of [sheriff’s] deputies … They said, ‘We’re willing to set up an overnight guard.’

"The state medical team was like, ‘No, we’re not going to stay.’”

‘They know where you’re sleeping’

On Oct. 12, as darkness gathered, Dr. Tripp Winslow, medical director for the state Office of Emergency Medical Services (OEMS) and physician for the Yancey County site, paced in the parking lot at Big Creek Free Will Baptist Church.

A medic had delivered an alarming report — of observing snipers on rooftops and viewing a social media post indicating militias were hunting FEMA.

In another part of the parking lot, three unfamiliar men approached. One inquired about the medics’ sleeping accommodations. A FEMA contract worker told Raw Story one man wore a shirt bearing the insignia of Savage Freedoms, an armed volunteer disaster response group that had become a focal point of medical workers’ concerns.

“I mentioned to Dr. Winslow: ‘We had these three people come up, and they know where we sleep. They know we’re not in the clinic at night,’” the worker told Raw Story.

“The state was like, ‘We’re not comfortable with you guys staying here, especially now that they know where you’re sleeping.’”

Asked for comment, Winslow referred questions to the state Department of Health and Human Services.

A photo submitted to Raw Story by a member of the medical team shows Big Creek Free Will Baptist Church, where the NC Office of Emergency Medical Services set up a field clinic.

The church was a disaster-response hub for an area cut off due to a bridge washing out on the road to the county seat, Burnsville. By the time the state medical assistance team arrived, a group of military veterans, Keystone Dynamic Solutions, had established a “command center” to land helicopters for supply delivery and dispatch teams to assist residents, liaising with the church’s pastor and deacon.

Keystone, which provides tactical combat training to civilians, describes its role in the aftermath of Helene as “a crucial buffer between small isolated communities and the larger state and federal agencies.”

The Big Creek site also provided a base for the local fire chief whose volunteer department was destroyed by flooding, and a rotating set of deputies from across the state.

Marlon Jonnaert, a Marine Corps veteran who helped land helicopters at Big Creek, confirmed there was an effort to assess the threat to government and volunteer personnel.

Jonnaert told Raw Story that Stanley Holloway, the fire chief, received a phone call from the Yancey County Emergency Operations Center stating that “there was a militia threat that included Big Creek.”

Nathaniel Kavakich, leader of the Keystone Dynamic Solutions team and also a Marines veteran, said in a podcast interview he encountered 10 heavily armed men whose questions were markedly similar to those directed at the medics at Big Creek.

“Who are you with?” the men asked, according to Kavakich. “Where are you laying your head at night?”

Kavakich declined to comment.

Jonnaert told Raw Story he wouldn’t call Savage Freedoms a “militia” or characterize their actions as “threatening,” but said: “I will say that in those moments it seemed like they were energetically antagonizing the government and drawing attention to their operation.”

Adam Smith, a U.S. Army Special Forces operator turned motivational speaker who leads Savage Freedoms, told Raw Story his group deployed a “small team” to perform “human remains detection” in Relief, in Mitchell County, 22 miles from Big Creek Free Will Baptist Church.

But Smith said he doesn’t believe it was members of his team who asked questions about where medical workers slept, because the group didn’t receive its first shipment of T-shirts until late on Oct. 12 or early the next day.

“Whoever the medical team is claiming to speak to them, I don’t think it’s possible that they would have our shirt, and I don’t think it’s possible they had any affiliation,” Smith said.

Amid reports of threats across the region that weekend, Savage Freedoms found itself on the defensive, posting a video on Facebook warning against “imitators” and featuring Smith saying unnamed people “use the name to gain access” and “do things that we would not do.”

Following the arrest in Rutherford County for threatening FEMA, Smith said, a National Guard liaison visited Savage Freedoms’ base at a Harley-Davidson dealership in Swannanoa. Smith said the liaison asked: “Do you have any affiliation with any militia in North Carolina?”

“My answer was, ‘No, definitively not,’” Smith said.

Savage Freedoms’ activities also drew the attention of the U.S. Army Special Operations Command, headquartered across the state at Fort Bragg. Smith told Raw Story “an individual with direct connections” to the command contacted him to inquire about “a rumor that I, Adam Smith, was leading militia forces to subvert the efforts of FEMA.”

‘Rumors about FEMA’

Hostility towards FEMA, fueled by misinformation, appeared to drive a wedge between the state EMS team and the local community, medical responders told Raw Story. With the storm cutting off communication in a region with a longstanding distrust of the federal government, conditions were ripe for rumors supercharged by partisan imperatives in the final stretch of the presidential campaign.

When the FEMA contract workers arrived in Yancey County, state counterparts advised them to remove FEMA placards from ambulances and remove FEMA IDs from their belts, the FEMA contract worker said.

“As the week that I was there went on, there was some rumors about FEMA,” Jerry Zimmerman, a paramedic on the state EMS team, told Raw Story. “That kind of started the division between the state-funded resources, and Keystone and the community.”

Zimmerman went home before the team evacuated, but on the day he left, he mentioned to Holloway “that those ambulances were FEMA-funded.” The response was “very stand-offish and very agitated,” Zimmerman recalled, adding that he apologized to Winslow for inadvertently creating a rift.

Zimmerman said the medical team wondered: “With these rumors going around, are we going to be lumped in with FEMA and is that going to cause an issue for us? It ultimately did.”

The decision to pull out was made by Kimberly Clement, program director for the state Office of Emergency Medical Services, the FEMA contract worker said. Clement referred Raw Story’s inquiry to the NC Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS).

A DHHS spokesperson confirmed the evacuation, but emphasized the input of the team on the ground while sidestepping a question about the role of state officials in Raleigh in the decision.

"On Oct. 12, 2024, several members of this team contacted the NC Emergency Medical Services (NCOEMS) staff at the State Emergency Operations Center and indicated they had concern related to the current operation of the site," said Summer Tonizzo, a DHHS press assistant. "Their concern justified the team leaving the site."

Justin Graney, chief of external affairs and communications for NC Emergency Management, told Raw Story: “The misinformation that occurred surrounding Helene was unprecedented and helped to generate mischaracterizations of what the response looked like, what resources were available, and how different levels of government were working together.”

‘They felt they were abandoned’

The medical team returned to Big Creek four days later and stayed another three weeks, but the evacuation had ruptured community trust.

“Several of us felt a lot of guilt,” the FEMA contract worker said. “This community had no access … These people who normally have a doctor’s office and pharmacy 20 minutes away, now it’s a two-and-a-half hour drive — if they can make it at all.”

Zimmerman noted that the area was already cut off by flooding.

“Whenever this happened, they felt like they were abandoned,” he said. “From the community in Yancey County, they had nothing. The only thing they had was each other. We come up there and provide services for the length that we did and evacuate for our safety. It’s almost like they were abandoned again.”

Members of Keystone Dynamic Solutions criticized the evacuation.

“We do not want to downplay the concern for safety of all government employees and soldiers,” one wrote on Instagram the day after. “We disagree with the decision to withdraw those federal and state personnel that the local population is trying to trust. What we are seeing is a catastrophic loss of rapport.”

An Instagram post by a member of the Keystone Dynamic Solutions team references the evacuation of the state medical team on the morning after.Instagram screenshot

The medical team left the Big Creek site without telling any of their counterparts, including Pastor Todd Robinson and the Keystone team, of their plan. Local residents who showed up for appointments the following day discovered the staff had vanished.

They left a trailer and tent. The FEMA contract worker who spoke on condition of anonymity said the team left behind antibiotics and steroids, but a deputy agreed to guard them. The worker said they personally kept all narcotics on their person and no controlled substances were left behind.

Ricky Wilson, who lives next to the church, told Raw Story: “The militia teams that was supposedly threatening them — I don’t know. I told them they didn’t have anything to worry about. Most people would take care of them.”

The medical team gave Wilson’s wife some medicine to help with her Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease, Wilson said. She has since passed away.

“They checked on people that needed medical help,” Wilson said. “Older folks that was pretty well stranded, they helped them with medications. They was very much a help to the community while they were here.”

Dante Capane, logistics operations chief for the Keystone Dynamic Solutions team, said the medics treated one of their volunteers for a cut on his eye. The FEMA contract worker said they treated another volunteer who got his finger stuck in a log splitter.

The medics also treated two boys involved in an ATV accident, the worker said. A helicopter evacuated one of the boys, the worker said, adding that the other boy sustained injuries that warranted evacuation but his mother refused to let medics treat him.

“We did a lot of family medicine, refills on heart medication, diuretics, people stopping by with rashes and bee stings,” the FEMA contract worker said.

Some members of the medical team questioned whether pulling out was the right decision. But Zimmerman, who left before the evacuation, said they made the right call.

“I agree wholeheartedly with the decision,” he said. “They felt there was a threat of violence. If I walk into a residence and there’s a threat against me, I have all the rights to evacuate that residence, and wait for law enforcement.”

The FEMA contract worker told Raw Story they believe the state Office of Emergency Medical Services chose not to publicly disclose the evacuation out of a desire to avoid controversy.

“I think the amount of negative coverage coming out of the area was already impinging on the government’s attempt to help the community,” they said.

“People were already scared. They had been spun up about the negative aspects. I think OEMS was hesitant to pour more fuel on the fire, especially when [the threat] couldn’t be proven one way or the other.”

NOW READ: How Trump manipulates his supporters — and the rest of America

WASHINGTON — Pro-Israel Democrats fear the Trump administration is squandering what little goodwill remains with moderate Democrats on Capitol Hill by postponing congressional briefings on this weekend’s military strikes in Iran.

“I don't think it's a smart move. Members want to get a sense of what the administration’s thinking,” Rep. Ami Bera (D-CA), a member of the House Intelligence Committee, told Raw Story. “If this was successful, it's probably good for the president, so there's no reason not to do it.”

While progressive Democrats, like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), have decried the military strikes as “clearly grounds for impeachment," many in the moderate wing of the party are looking for a way to back Israel in the conflict, which they say only got more complicated since the administration delayed briefing Congress on the strikes.

“I don’t know what to make of it,” Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) told Raw Story. “Maybe they're hiding.”

Even if the Trump administration wasn’t hiding, many Democrats feel they are.

Confusion on Capitol Hill

With President Donald Trump’s "One Big, Beautiful Bill’ on thin ice in the Senate, lawmakers across Capitol Hill blocked out large chunks of time to hear directly about the strikes in Iran from Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, CIA Director John Ratcliffe and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chair Dan Caine in classified briefings Tuesday.

But by early afternoon, whispers fanned across Capitol Hill that the briefings were postponed.

“I just heard that,” Sen. Mark Kelly (D-AZ), a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, told Raw Story. “Did they say why?”

Even powerful Republican senators were left asking the same question on their way to their weekly conference lunch.

“Some of your Democratic colleagues are complaining about the delay in these briefings,” Raw Story asked, “what do you make of that?”

“I may be able to find out a little more in a few minutes,” Senate Armed Services Committee Chair Roger Wicker (R-MS) told Raw Story while walking through the Capitol Tuesday afternoon. “I'm going to check on why.”

As news of the postponed briefings spread, so did anger amongst many Democrats.

“It's outrageous, and I think it's astonishing,” Rep. Chrissy Houlahan (D-PA) told Raw Story. “I believe it's unlawful, and I believe it's unconstitutional.”

As a member of the House Intelligence Committee, Houlahan says her concerns go beyond the Trump administration.

“I think it's worrisome,” Houlahan said. “And I think it's even probably more worrisome that it would appear that the speaker of the House doesn't care, and so I'm pretty stunned. I'm hoping that smart people will figure out that this is not okay.”

But Houlahan and other Democrats aren’t holding their breath.

The Democratic skepticism over the postponed security briefings stems, in part, from the Trump administration bypassing protocol and only briefing congressional Republican leaders ahead of the military strikes in Iran, while only alerting Democratic leaders after the bombing campaigns.

“That's also really insane,” Houlahan said. “It's bananas.”

When it comes to matters of American intelligence secrets, nonpartisanship has always been the name of the game. Until now, at least.

In Congress, the responsibility of keeping those secrets, well, secret lies with the ‘gang of eight’ — the four party leaders from both sides of the Capitol along with the top Republicans and Democrats on the Intelligence Committees from both respective chambers of Congress.

Reports that the Trump administration alerted Republican congressional leaders ahead of time and Democratic leaders after the strikes occurred have Democrats of all stripes crying "foul."

“It's like the destruction of the system of government,” Lofgren said. “The so-called gang of eight never leaks, because that's their obligation and that's never once happened. It wouldn't have happened in this case. It's outrageous, really.”

“He's going to need Democratic support”

From the perch of more centrist Democrats, Trump made a huge miscalculation.

“If this escalates, he's going to need Democratic support on this,” Bera said. “Because you're going to have a number of Freedom Caucus, hardline… guys that are not going to fund a war. If he needs additional war funding, he's going to need our support.”

At the end of the day, even moderate Democrats are feeling pulled to the more progressive view of their party when it comes to Trump thumbing his nose at Congress.

“It's his general disdain for the legislative branch of Congress,” Bera said. “It's the petty stuff that Trump does.”

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WASHINGTON — The Democratic Party is at a crossroads, and Rep. Jasmine Crockett says she’s got the roadmap her beleaguered caucus needs.

The Texas Democrat known for electrifying the internet is only serving her second term in the U.S. House of Representatives, which is why her bid to become ranking member of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee Tuesday is turning heads.

“We have a very interesting figure that is currently in the White House, and I think I'm uniquely suited to kind of be the opposition to him,” Crockett told Raw Story, while walking through the Capitol.

“He already envisions me that way, and I'm sure, if there's one person he doesn't want in that seat, I'm sure it's me.”

Crockett is part of a four-candidate race to succeed nine-term Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-VA), who lost his battle with cancer earlier this year.

With younger progressives challenging veteran incumbents in heated primaries from coast to coast, this week’s internal Democratic debate over which direction the House Oversight Committee should go indicates broader tensions dividing the party ahead of the 2026 midterms.

‘I hate that committee’

Crockett knows how to get attention. But getting clicks is different than delivering Democrats out of the proverbial political wilderness voters banished them to in November.

Everyone on Capitol Hill knows Crockett is adept at garnering free media coverage and retweets. That’s no longer enough. In recent weeks, Crockett’s been pitching herself as a team player.

“So my big pitch is getting us to the majority and making sure that we start to build a rapport with the American people,” she said.

“From raising money to giving money away, I think a part of leadership is more than just kind of running the committee, it’s making sure that we can help the caucus get to the majority.”

While Crockett needs to convince her peers to back her move up the power ladder, in meetings with colleagues she’s been highlighting the party’s need to appeal outside the Washington Beltway. The 44-year-old lawyer sees herself as Democrats’ bridge to the future.

“We've got to think about, ‘How is this going to be perceived by the outside?’ Will they then become more engaged? Because we need people to be more engaged in government,” Crockett said.

“We need them to know what it is that we're doing and what it is that we're fighting for.”

Republicans sense Democratic weakness on the Oversight Committee.

“You see how all over the map they are?” Rep. Andy Biggs (R-AZ) laughed to Raw Story after a recent high-profile hearing.

“When we were in the minority, our goal was always to try to at least win the hearing. Determine what your narrative and point is, and then see how much you can hammer it home.”

Being confined to the minority means Democrats are mostly locked out of the legislative process. That makes committee work tiresome for most, except those on the headline-grabbing Oversight panel.

"Because of the subject matter that it covers — which is anything — it has the propensity to actually elevate issues into headline issues,” Biggs said. “It has the potential to be a very high-profile committee, consistently.”

Oversight attracts rabble-rousers. On the right, there’s Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) and Lauren Boebert (R-CO). On the left, four out of seven of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’ (D-NY) so-called “Squad” members call Oversight home.

Still, the committee isn’t for everyone.

“I hate that committee,” Rep. Mark Pocan (D-WI) told Raw Story. “I was on it as a freshman. You don’t pass bills. You just go there to get on TV.”

Getting on TV used to be little more than a vanity project. These days, if your party isn’t winning American screens, it‘s barely even an afterthought. Far-right Freedom Caucus Republicans on the Oversight Committee know this all too well.

“Part of Oversight is conducting oversight and questioning these officials on why they continue to put their constituents and their citizens last and making sure that Americans get to see it on TV," Rep. Eli Crane (R-AZ) told Raw Story.

"That's a part of what Oversight is all about, so that the people in this country know what their representatives are doing.”

'Bomb throwing'

Crockett’s got competition. Connolly tapped 12-term Rep. Stephen Lynch (D-MA) to take over as top Democrat on Oversight — which has had many Republicans laughing or cringing as they’ve witnessed him ratchet up his rhetoric in recent weeks.

“He’s very different – the grotesque rhetoric,” Biggs told Raw Story, after Lynch compared ICE agents to the Gestapo at one hearing. “He's trying to show that he can compete on the bomb throwing.”

The bomb throwing comes natural to two-term Rep. Robert Garcia (D-CA). He’s been turning heads on social media since coming to Washington in 2023, and is making a similar pitch asCrockett: that he’s youthful, very online and understands angst in the next generation.

While the Congressional Hispanic Caucus has formally endorsed Garcia, the Congressional Black Caucus isn’t formally endorsing in this race, in part, because two of its members are facing off in the contest.

Which brings us to the last candidate pitch, which comes from the other side of the seniority spectrum.

After winning a fifth term in 1996, Rep. Kweisi Mfume (D-MD) resigned his seat to become president of the NAACP. In 2020, voters sent him back to Washington, maintaining the seniority from his first time in Congress — a card he’s playing to his peers, arguing the party needs the wisdom of old amid today’s digital duress.

The four candidates vying to be the senior Democrat on Oversight are twisting their rank-and-file peers into knots.

“You have four very different candidates, very different backgrounds. You have seniority versus kind of the younger generation," Rep. Ami Bera (D-CA) told Raw Story. “On policy, I don’t think there’s much difference between the four of them. On style, there is.”

The six-term congressman feels the tension between rewarding veterans and passing the baton to the next generation, which is why Crockett’s been on his radar.

“She’s got a talent on how to use social media. Talks about the younger generation, how to engage them,” Bera said. "I think there's something about seniority and experience, but I also think — I'm not the social-media darling — but you have folks that do know how to use those tools to communicate.”

Others concur.

“Clearly, I believe in seniority. It would be against my own personal interest not to be,” 10-term Rep. Emanuel Cleaver (D-MO) told Raw Story. “Everything equal I would certainly want to take the person with seniority — everything being equal. You know, these are some unusual times.”

Given the recent dustup at the Democratic National Committee over former vice-chair and anti-gun violence activist David Hogg’s decision to back primary challenges to sitting members of Congress, many congressional Democrats have been frustrated watching the party squabble.

“We’re wasting a lot of energy and money trying to help Donald Trump when we start fighting like this. It makes absolutely no sense. It’s not helpful,” Cleaver said.

Cleaver’s a former chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC), which recently invited all four Oversight candidates to a forum where they privately pitched their peers.

“One thing that I will say that I thought was great about this forum is all about who the best leader for this committee would be,” Rep. Greg Casar (D-TX), the current CPC chair, told Raw Story.

“It wasn’t about whose turn it is, it was all about who the best leader for the committee is and I think that's a good thing for Congress.”

Many senior Democrats are trying to stay out of the fray, for fear they may attract a primary challenger. But with an increasing number of progressives targeting what they see as an out-of-touch seniority system, veteran Democrats are embracing the four-way Oversight contest.

“It’s their prerogative,” Rep. John Larson (D-CT) told Raw Story. “Especially these days, there's a lot of feeling out there on seniority, term limits and all those discussions. You always go through these trends.”

“Do you think the seniority system still matters?” Raw Story pressed.

“Yes, I do. I think experience matters,” Larson said. “It's an education process for people, so I do think that that's important.”

‘New, energetic voices’

With Democratic leaders still trying to figure out how they failed the party’s base in 2024 by allowing President Donald Trump to win a second term, Republicans are giddy.

“Does top slot on Oversight for Dems really matter?” Raw Story asked.

“It does for the messaging for the Democrats,” Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-FL) — another darling of the far-right Freedom Caucus — told Raw Story. “Democrats, nationally their polling is in the s----- … so it's just all propaganda.”

Democrats are looking for a powerful, unifying voice, which is why Crockett’s become a party favorite.

“She's certainly a dynamic voice, and injects some new energy into a Congress that needs it,” Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) told Raw Story. “We need new, energetic voices.”

Crockett’s promising more than her megaphone. She’s trying to convince her colleagues she’s adept at more than winning news cycles: she wants to win back the White House, starting by reclaiming the House majority in 2026.

“Talking about things such as listening to people, not when we're asking them for votes, but like right now,” Crockett said. “Doing some shadow field hearings in Republican backyards where they don't want to show up. We're listening to the real stories of the people, letting their neighbors hear from them.”

Crockett’s also promising her peers she’s willing to share center stage.

“Doing my best to make sure that we're uplifting the voices of the team,” she told Raw Story.

“This is a very young committee, and so introducing them to the American people so that people don't feel like there's only a couple of Democrats that are part of the opposition, but they start to see more faces and voices.”

Crockett’s Oversight Committee bid is about more than just going viral. A trial lawyer by training, she argues her resume makes her a perfect fit for the Trump-era.

“Investigations is kind of all I did,” Crockett said, with a knowing laugh. “I dealt with criminals a lot so I know how to deal with them, that's for sure.”

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Candace Taggart contributed to this report.

As the U.S. and China race to develop advanced artificial intelligence chips — and as President Donald Trump recently considered broader restrictions on chip technology exports — publicly released technological innovations from hobbyist inventors in the U.S. could be giving foreign adversaries a competitive edge, experts tell Raw Story.

The stakes are high, as governments seek AI advances at unprecedented scale, with defense applications from satellites to stealth aircraft and missiles.

Irina Tsukerman, a foreign policy expert and national security lawyer, pointed to hobbyist inventors achieving advances in fields from drones to quantum communication and machine learning.

“A patented AI technique for optimizing logistics can be adapted for military planning by an enemy country, for instance, or a new sensor design could enhance missile guidance systems because a lot of missiles are now AI-guided,” Tsukerman said.

“They're civilian innovations, but they have potential military intelligence implications.”

‘Gray zone’

Innovations published online, especially those with defense applications, are subject to governmental export regulations. But research from inventors working outside traditional academic and business environments can go unmonitored, experts say.

Foreign companies and governments are searching the internet for research that falls in such a “gray zone,” Tsukerman said.

“When [inventors] publicize without adequate security review, or if there's no expert control oversight, they can become open source assets, so they're not just available to allies and commercial competitors but also to hostile state and non-state actors, and literally anybody who cares to open-mine,” Tsukerman told Raw Story.

“If one of these guys is masterminding a new type of AI chip, and that chip is not patented properly … China, that is basically working hard to automate as fast as possible and to make advances on the most top-of-the-line chips [but] cannot do so without exporting U.S. technologies, could use that sort of breakthrough for its own research.”

While a truly revolutionary idea would likely catch the attention of academic researchers or the U.S. government, that doesn’t stop foreign adversaries mining online research for advances in fields such as AI, experts say.

‘National security cracks’

One potential barrier to properly protecting independent innovations is the high cost of patenting, which can run between $25,000 to $30,000 as an attorney navigates the complex application process, said John N. Anastasi, a patent attorney in Boston.

“If you want to go outside the U.S., the cost can become exponential,” Anastasi said.

Nonetheless, “a patent is the only way to protect your invention,” said Mark Trenner, a patent attorney in Colorado.

The patenting process will also reveal any need for protection via “secrecy orders or export controls,” Anastasi said.

“If you have one of those sensitive areas, like something related to the military, they're not going to publish it. It's going to go under secrecy order,” Trenner said.

If an idea is published in the public domain without patent protections, inventors can lose foreign filing rights, Anastasi said. According to Tsukerman, “any future efforts to hide this is a no-go.”

Patented ideas enter the public domain 18 months after filing, but “a patent gives you the right to stop somebody else from making, using or selling your patented invention in the country that you have the patent,” Anastasi said.

Foreign competitors and governments scour patent databases, Tsukerman said, adding that such actors sometimes employ open source intelligence frameworks that look to replicate and build upon “emergent technologies that have slipped through national security cracks.”

”Any publicly available patent or trademark, anyone can look at … and adversaries can use that against us, and they do,” said John Price, founder of SubRosa, a cybersecurity firm.

“Everything from adversarial nations using it to even just corporate espionage, you could tell a lot about what a company’s developing from what they’re filing for patents.”

The same goes for government grant announcements and requests for research proposals.

“I could definitely see that being an attack vector, and [it] probably is something they're mining all the time, just to get a sense of what it is the government is asking for,” said Peter Morales, CEO at Code Metal, an AI start-up.

‘Blind spot’

Morales said, “There are plenty of hobbyists that have had huge impacts in AI specifically.”

But hobbyists unaffiliated with universities, federal agencies or government contractors “don't necessarily know all the potential weaponized applications of the invention because they're civilians,” Tsukerman said.

“It basically creates a blind spot and a weak pathway for intellectual capital that otherwise would be guarded under things like International Traffic in Arms Regulations or the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States,” U.S. government programs under the Department of State and the Treasury.

“Those have specific, highly prioritized legal processes that guard intellectual property from being disseminated to inappropriate venues,” Tsukerman said.

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Since the fatal shooting of a Minnesota state lawmaker and her husband in an act described by a federal prosecutor as a “political assassination,” scrutiny has turned to suspect Vance Boelter’s ties to independent charismatic Christianity, in particular a movement known as the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR).

Boelter is alleged to have posed as a police officer as he gunned down Democratic Rep. Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark Hortman, in the early hours of June 14. In a separate shooting, he wounded state Sen. John A. Hoffman, also a Democrat, and his wife, Yvette Hoffman. Investigators say Boelter visited two other lawmakers and had a list of 70 targets, including Democrats, civic leaders and abortion providers.

Boelter was described in a court filing supporting federal charges as embarking "on a planned campaign of stalking and violence, designed to inflict fear, injure, and kill members of the Minnesota state legislature and their families."

Researchers who study the Christian right have homed in on Boelter’s attendance at a Bible college in Dallas in the late 1980s and missionary work in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where he delivered sermons critical of abortion and LGBTQ+ people.

Christ For the Nations Institute (CFNI) confirmed that Boelter attended the college from 1988 to 1990, graduating with a “diploma in practical theology in leadership and pastoral.”

Christ For the Nations Institute has been a “merging space” for trends in independent charismatic Christianity, Matthew D. Taylor, a senior scholar at the Institute for Islamic Christian Jewish Studies, told the “Straight White American Jesus” podcast.

Those trends include dominionism — the idea of Christians taking control over the world — and NAR, which emerged in the mid-1990s.

Frederick Clarkson, a senior research analyst at Political Research Associates, described NAR to Raw Story as a movement whose adherents believe God speaks directly to modern-day apostles and prophets, and which seeks to “restore their vision of what they think 1st-century Christianity was.”

Both Taylor and Clarkson note that Apostle Dutch Sheets, one of the major proponents of New Apostolic Reformation, attended CFNI in the 1970s and taught at the college in the following decade, potentially overlapping with Boelter.

Sheets reportedly met Trump officials at the White House one week before the Jan. 6 insurrection.

Staff at Dutch Sheets Ministries declined Raw Story’s request for an interview.

In the early 2010s, Sheets was executive director at CFNI, where a sign in the lobby displays a quote attributed to founder Gordon Lindsay: “Every Christian ought to pray at least one violent prayer a day.”

Following the Minnesota shootings, the institute said its leadership was “absolutely aghast and horrified that a CFNI alumnus is the suspect,” and that it “unequivocally rejects, denounces, and condemns any and all forms of violence and extremism, be it politically, racially, religiously or otherwise motivated.”

The statement rejected any notion the college’s teachings were “a contributing factor” to Boelter’s “evil behavior.”

The statement also claimed Lindsay’s comment about “violent prayer” has been misrepresented.

“By ‘violent prayer’ he meant that a Christian’s prayer life should be intense, fervent, and passionate, not passive and lukewarm,” the statement said, “considering that spiritual forces of darkness are focused on attacking life, identity in God, purpose, peace, love, joy, truth, health, and other good things.”

‘Five soccer balls’

Researchers who track the Christian right have taken note of a sermon Boelter preached in Congo in 2023.

“They don’t know abortion is wrong, many churches,” Boelter said, in comments first reported by Wired. “They don’t have the gifts flowing. God gives the body gifts. To keep balance. Because when the body starts moving in the wrong direction, when they’re one, and accepting the gifts, God will raise an apostle or prophet to correct their course.”

Clarkson told Raw Story Boelter’s rhetoric had a familiar ring.

“Nobody but someone influenced by the New Apostolic Reformation movement would say something like that,” Clarkson said.

But Taylor saw a broader strain of charismatic Christianity in Boelter’s sermonizing, connected to the Latter Rain movement, a precursor to NAR that emerged after World War II.

“Many people today would say those are NAR ideas, but they were Latter Rain ideas before they were NAR ideas,” Taylor said. “I don’t know where he picked up these ideas. He’s very clearly charismatic in his theology and in his preaching as well.”

In a sermon in Congo in 2022, Boelter used an odd metaphor involving soccer balls to suggest he was burdened with regrets.

“Do you understand what God has given us?” Boelter asked. “He’s given us eternity — with Him. And what does he ask? He says, ‘Life didn’t go the way I wanted it for you. But it wasn’t my fault. Vance, you sidetracked. You messed up your life. You took your five soccer balls, and you wrecked ’em.’

“But He says he loves us so much he came and he died to pay for it all. And he says, ‘Vance, do you want to trade your five wrecked soccer balls for all of these? Do you want to live forever with me? Then get on your face, Vance, and repent of your sins.”

Clarkson told Raw Story he thinks both personal troubles and exposure to ideas in the realm of charismatic Christianity could have factored into Boelter’s turn to political violence.

“If he’s in NAR all the way, and his marriage and his finances are falling apart, he may lean into his faith to find purpose,” Clarkson said. “If he thinks his life as he knows it is over, he may be thinking about trying to go out in a meaningful way.”

Boelter reportedly texted his family after the shootings: “Dad went to war last night.”

“He’s been planning these things for a long time; he was armed for it,” Clarkson said. “It was literally war. He did seem to assume he would be killed … When people commit violence out of religious motive, that’s profound.”

‘Priming the pump for violence’

Clarkson said that if it turns out Boelter is an NAR adherent, “this would be the first major example of the violent vision and rhetoric of the New Apostolic Reformation movement manifesting.”

On the other hand, Clarkson said, “if it turns out that he’s not NAR, it’s still the case that there are all these NAR leaders that have been teaching people that they are in an end-times war. They’re priming the pump for violence in their lifetime.”

Taylor suggested a different way of looking at Boelter’s attack.

Political discourse in the U.S. is “at a high boil,” Taylor said. While Boelter might have been influenced by hostility towards abortion and LGBTQ+ rights in right-wing media, Taylor noted that political violence is manifesting against an array of targets, with a firebombing attack against Jewish demonstrators calling for the release of Israeli hostages in Gaza in Colorado this month only one example.

“There’s so much of this bile in the far-right and right-wing and independent media spaces about abortion, and about LGBTQ+ rights,” Taylor said. “And that’s something that Boelter touches on in his sermons as well — about trans people, about Muslims, about immigrants.

“I worry that this is the harbinger of what’s to come. And we could see more attacks like this in the coming time, because he fits a very common profile.”

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Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) finally bowed to pressure on Tuesday and removed social media posts in which he appeared to mock the murder of a prominent Minnesota Democrat and her husband and the wounding of another state Democrat and his wife.

“I have deleted it,” Lee told Raw Story at the U.S. Capitol, as senators emerged from a briefing on safety and security in light of the Minneapolis shootings.

Lee said he deleted the post after “a good conversation with my friend Amy Klobuchar this morning,” referring to the senior Democratic senator from Minnesota, who spoke out on the issue.

“It was important to her that I take it down,” Lee said. “We're good friends. I took it down.”

Lee had previously avoided answering questions on the matter.

In Minneapolis on Saturday, Minnesota House Speaker Melissa Hortman and her husband Mark Hortman were shot dead and state Sen. John Hoffman and his wife Yvette Hoffman were wounded by a gunman who came to their homes, dressed as a police officer.

The suspect, Vance Luther Boelter, 57, was charged with murder. Law enforcement said Boelter visited other lawmakers’ homes and compiled a list of targets.

Boelter’s rightwing views and ties have been widely reported, including that he voted for Trump.

Nonetheless, in posts to X on Sunday, Lee wrote, "This is what happens when Marxists don't get their way,” and "Nightmare on Waltz Street,” the latter a misspelled reference to Gov. Tim Walz, the Democratic nominee for vice president last year.

Subjected to a barrage of disapproval, Lee was initially unrepentant.

Earlier on Tuesday, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) said President Donald Trump should “demand that Mike Lee takes down his disgusting tweet on X about the Minnesota shootings.”

“I asked [Lee] to do it yesterday,” Schumer added. “Well, he wouldn't listen to me.”

Sen. Tina Smith (D-MN) confronted Lee on Monday.

“Mostly, I think he was just sort of shocked to have me talking to him,” Smith said on Tuesday, adding that Lee “did not really seem sorry.”

On Tuesday afternoon, both posts had disappeared.

‘Nobody’s entirely safe’

The Senate continues to wrestle with Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill,” a package of spending and tax cuts, but on Tuesday the security briefing occupied minds. Asked if lawmakers felt safe in the Capitol and in their states after the Minneapolis shootings, Sen. Thom Tillis (R-SC) chose to be laconic.

“Nobody’s entirely safe,” he told Raw Story. “Everybody should be on guard. I am.”

Schumer was more passionate.

“When political opponents are treated like enemies, when leaders encourage the kind of protest that can lead to violence, it increases that violence,” the New Yorker told reporters.

“So it's the responsibility of all leaders, especially President Trump, to not just unequivocally condemn hatred, but to stop the violent and regressive language against political opponents.”

Trump has repeatedly abused Walz, when asked if he will offer support.

Sen. Bernie Moreno (R-OH) accused Democrats of stoking hatred themselves.

“When they go out there publicly [and] say Republicans are limiting Social Security, limiting Medicaid, limiting benefits to Americans, they're fanning the hatred of Republicans,” Moreno told reporters, nodding to debate over the GOP spending measure.

“By the way, Chuck Schumer is the same guy that stood in front of the Supreme Court and said that the Supreme Court justices are going to see whatever they deserve.”

In 2020, Schumer said he regretted remarks about justices then viewed as likely to remove the federal right to abortion, but did not apologize.

Moreno said Schumer had “zero credibility on this topic. Zero. He's responsible for the vast majority of inflammatory rhetoric that comes from the other side of the aisle. And we both have to stop it. We both have to say, ‘Look, this is what you believe. This what we believe, and do it in a respectful way.’”

Moreno also claimed Democrats were “7,000 times” more responsible for escalating tensions, adding: “The Democrats have called Trump Hitler, a fascist authoritarian.”

Moreno accused reporters of lacking credibility on the issue. He did not note that Trump’s own vice president, JD Vance, famously called him “America’s Hitler.”

‘Attacks on democracy’

Schumer described “a dramatic increase in threats against senators, congressmen, public officials and throughout America.

“And these are not just attacks on individuals, but on democracy, on our way of life, on what we believe in, and an attempt to intimidate people not to do their jobs, not to run for office.

“It's gross, it's disgusting, we must take immediate steps to ensure the safety of members, and that includes increased funding for the Capitol Police. And there was agreement in our meeting between Democrats and Republicans that we ought to have that increased funding.”

Sen. John Hoeven (R–ND) told Raw Story his “biggest takeaway” from Tuesday’s briefing was that “the Senate has some funding to help … if [senators] want to put cameras or other security equipment in place.

“And beyond that, people can use … the dollars we raise, we can use that for security purposes too. So whether to go beyond that or not at this point, I don't know, and it was more just information about what happened, and what folks could do and those kinds of things.”

Raw Story asked if Hoeven thought threats to lawmakers were the result of heated rhetoric.

He said: “That's always part of it. Look, how do we keep the debate as a debate and not get to the point where people are going beyond just speech and expressing opinions, kind of take the temperature down on those. That's always an important part of this.

“And members obviously have to show leadership in that regard.”

Raw Story asked about charges that Trump is worsening tensions.

“You’ve got to separate the underlying logic of what he's saying versus, you know, the political,” Hoeven said. “In other words, sure, Democrats are going to say that because they're in the blue states, so they're going to say they have a different opinion.”

Trump’s decision to target Democratic-run cities for mass deportation of undocumented migrants, thus stoking angry protests, was just logical, Hoeven claimed.

“Actually, if you look at it, it's a statement of fact. I mean, in terms of where most of the illegal immigrants are, it's in those larger cities in the blue states, because they're sanctuary cities. So it's just basic logic, and [Democrats are] actually politicized.

“When they say, ‘Oh, he's making a political statement.’ Well, it's actually a logical statement. But regardless, there's going to be that back and forth. The key is you keep it within the realm of speech and not resorting to violence.”

Lambasting Republicans as “hypocrites,” Schumer highlighted law enforcement cuts.

“The Trump administration cut the … program aimed to spot lone wolf, [lone] actor violence, violent people, violent extremists,” Schumer said.

“Doesn't that sound exactly what happened in Minnesota? And they're cutting it. It's outrageous, but that's what they do.

“The last top officials at this program that aims to spot … violent domestic extremists were reassigned in the four months that Trump has [been in] office.

“His administration has shrunk the Department of Homeland Security Center for Prevention Programs and Partnerships, CP3 , from dozens of analysts to fewer than 10 people.

“So here with violence increasing, they are shrinking the number of law enforcement people aimed at trying to prevent that violence from ever occurring.

“Right now we need to give our law enforcement more, not less. It's just totally hypocritical of this administration.

“The dangerous environment isn't spontaneous, however, it's being stoked, often deliberately, by reckless rhetoric coming from some of the most powerful voices in the country.”

Donald Trump’s White House even now contains staffers convinced he is unfit to be president, a former senior administration official who famously spoke out anonymously about such concerns during Trump’s first term said.

“If I was sitting with Donald Trump right now, I would say, ‘I have friends in your White House, and some of them are … laying very, very low, but share some of the same concerns that I had during the first Trump administration,’” Miles Taylor said.

Those concerns, Taylor said, were that Trump “is still the same man, but worse and emboldened, still deeply impulsive, but impulsive without checks and balances around him.”

Taylor was speaking to the Clinton adviser turned Lincoln biographer Sidney Blumenthal and the Princeton historian Sean Wilentz on their podcast, The Court of History.

Taylor was chief of staff in the Department of Homeland Security when he wrote the September 2018 op-ed for the New York Times saying he was “part of the resistance” to Trump, a group of senior officials concerned that the president was not fit to govern and dedicated to checking his wilder impulses.

The piece was published under the byline of “Anonymous,” as was a subsequent book, A Warning. The publication stoked intense speculation as to who the writer was. Taylor identified himself shortly before the 2020 election — and became a hate figure for Trump and his followers.

Returned to power, Trump recently signed an executive order suggesting Taylor may have committed treason and ordering an investigation.

This month, Taylor filed a legal complaint, calling for federal watchdogs to investigate such retaliation against him.

Trump was widely reported to have been stopped from numerous extreme actions in his first term by so-called “adults in the room” appointed to key roles, such as Defense Secretary James Mattis, a highly respected former U.S. Marine Corps general. In Trump’s second term, surrounded by loyalists such as Fox News host turned Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, the president is not seen to be subject to any such constraints.

Taylor told Blumenthal and Willentz: “The people around [Trump] aren't trying to talk him out of doing bad things — if anything, they are demonstrating fealty at every turn to the leader, and that's resulting in a lot of bad decisions getting made.

“Now, most of the folks I know are on, of course, the national security side of the [White] House, and some of them still think that they can keep their hand on the wheel. And I would prefer some of those people in the posts I'm thinking about than others who might replace them. But I think people of conscience in this administration know that they are an endangered species.”

As described by Wilentz, that is because Trump operates less as a traditional president than as an absolute monarch crossed with a mobster: “John Gotti meets Louis XIV.”

That remark prompted laughter, but straight faces prevailed when Taylor described the immense power enjoyed by Stephen Miller, the White House deputy chief of staff widely seen to be the most influential presidential aide, particularly in implementing ultra-hardline immigration policy.

Taylor said Miller’s power was “almost absolute,” though Miller himself “would never say that.”

“Stephen is very, very careful to always be entirely deferential to the president,” Taylor said, “but I can tell you, I remember when … I think it was 2018 … Stephen was growing frustrated, and he convinced the president, effectively, at the time to put him in charge of broader homeland security policy for the administration.

“It wasn't some public announcement, but he'd gone to the president and said, ‘Look, I'm tired of this … basically give me the authority to make some of these decisions over at DHS and essentially override the department.’

“And he called me to tell me this. I remember where I was. I was driving on Capitol Hill, and it was the words he used that stuck with me. He said, ‘Think of this as my coronation.’ That's what he called it. He called it his coronation, that he'd gotten the president to empower him to take on these new duties.”

According to Taylor, “that was, I think, the most revealing thing that I ever heard come out of [Miller’s] mouth. And Stephen, you rarely get these unguarded moments with him. He's extremely guarded. And that was sort of an unguarded moment from him, but I think illustrative of not just where his head is at, but also how this administration … thinks of governance not in terms of democracy and checks and balances, but how can you consolidate total rule?

“And so Steven certainly has that inside this administration, he's got much more authority than he had before. And you are seeing what that looks like if left unchecked, right up into these military deployments” in Los Angeles” against protests over deportations by Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

“That's got Stephen Miller's fingerprints all over it,” Taylor said, adding that Miller had effectively relegated Kristi Noem, the Secretary of Homeland Security, to little more than a “PR role.”

Asked if it would be fair to think of Miller as effectively Trump’s “co-president,” Taylor said “that might be a bridge too far, and Steven would never promote that notion.

“You know, he knows all of his authority is derived from the president. And I think he's probably the only person, I mean this genuinely … I've ever engaged with at the White House that never showed daylight with the president. There was never a private meeting where Steven said, ‘This f------ guy has no idea what he's doing.’

“But almost everyone else I engaged with, the biggest names to the no-names, would have that conversation in private: total frustration with the president, recognition of who he really was. But Stephen, in private, wouldn't even show you that he thought the president was what everyone knows him to be.”

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WASHINGTON — Masked ICE agents are the mysterious and menacing face of the Trump administration’s mass deportation drive.

Increasingly alarmed, Democrats are trying to conduct oversight on the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and related offices.

But Republicans care a lot less. In exclusive interviews with 10 senior senators, Raw Story found many of the most senior GOP figures on relevant committees aren’t even thinking about migrants’ rights, let alone debating the issue.

Furthermore, some of President Donald Trump’s top allies say migrants don’t have rights at all.

“I’m for ICE agents wearing anything they want to protect themselves,” Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) told Raw Story while walking through the Capitol.

“Don’t American citizens deserve the right to know who's knocking on their door?” Raw Story pressed.

“No!” Tuberville replied, with a loud laugh. “Not when they're looking for illegals that's killing people.”

Never mind reports such as one from the American immigration Council that showed “immigrants have had lower incarceration rates than the U.S.-born for each of the last 150 years,” and concluded that “immigrants are 60 percent less likely to be incarcerated than those who were born in the United States.”

In Trump’s Washington, studies are less important than anecdotes, talking points are more prized than facts, and rhetoric parades as reality.

Among Capitol Hill conservatives, in the midst of Trump’s rush to hunt, detain and deport entire communities, no one’s debating due process.

Rather, some Republicans are fighting to enshrine ICE agents’ legally questionable ability to permanently hide their faces, rallying around errant accusations that Democrats and the press are “doxxing” such operatives.

Even as Senate Republicans debate what to do with the House-passed “One Big Beautiful Bill,” and the roughly $185 billion it allocates to mass deportation efforts, there’s little to no discussion about trying to exert even some of the authority the Constitution explicitly gives to Congress.

“What are your thoughts on ICE agents wearing masks here in America?” Raw Story asked Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), the Senate Homeland Security Committee chair. “Do American citizens deserve to know who these agents are?”

“I don't have anything for you on that,” the self-described limited government libertarian dismissively replied.

Some Republicans defend ICE agents’ heavy-handed, secretive tactics. But that doesn’t mean they’re bothering to look into allegations that agents are running roughshod over the Constitution’s promise of due process for all.

“They should comply with the law — whatever that is on that — but we've got, you know, plainclothes police officers all the time,” Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) told Raw Story, while rushing to vote.

Hawley was attorney general of Missouri. He has no problem with ICE agents playing dress-up — dress-down, really — because local, state and federal law enforcement regularly work undercover.

“Sometimes they wore badges, sometimes they wouldn’t,” Hawley recalled.

‘Doxxing’ debate

Like many on the right, Hawley says his biggest concern is the safety of ICE agents, especially after the House minority leader, Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) joined rank-and-file Democrats in calling for agents’ identities to be released.

“What’s outrageous is Hakeem Jeffries and others saying that we ought to doxx these agents,” said Hawley, a member of the Senate Homeland Security Committee. “That's ridiculous.”

So ridiculous, it didn’t happen.

Doxxing means publishing someone’s private information, especially their home address, without consent. Responding to a question from Migrant Insider’s Pablo Manríquez, Jeffries called for the release of names of ICE agents, not addresses.

Jeffries was referring to agents accused of wrongfully detaining a staffer for Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY), as well as agents in Newark, New Jersey who members of Congress say roughed them up last month.

Just last week, Democratic Newark Mayor Ras Baraka sued Interim New Jersey U.S. Attorney Alina Habba, once Trump’s personal lawyer, for falsely arresting him at an ICE facility in May.

Jeffries says the Constitution doesn’t just protect elected officials. He says everyone on U.S. soil has a right to know the identity of badge-waving — and especially badge-hiding — accusers.

“Every single ICE agent who’s engaged in this aggressive overreach and are trying to hide their identities from the American people will be unsuccessful in doing that,” Jeffries said.

“This is America. This is not the Soviet Union. We're not behind the Iron Curtain. This is not the 1930s and every single one of them, no matter what it takes, no matter how long it takes, will, of course, be identified.”

But Jeffries’ words are meeting the far-right messaging machine. While he never called for agents’ addresses to be released, you wouldn’t know that from listening to top Trump officials.

In the Republican-run Capitol, meanwhile, Trump officials’ talking points are treated as gospel.

Raw Story asked Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA), chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, if he had “any concerns over ICE agents wearing masks and sometimes not identifying themselves?”

“Not if the reports I've heard [are right], that they get doxxed, and their families are threatened,” Grassley replied.

“We've got to make sure that people that are hired to enforce the law can do it without harm to themselves,” added Grassley, 91 and president pro tempore of the Senate, third in line for the presidency, flanked by a large security detail.

Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA), 91, chairs the powerful Senate Judiciary Committee. REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein

“And if [masks are] what it takes, I've got no problem with it because I don't want people to be terrorized just because they're doing their job of enforcing the law.”

“It doesn't raise any due process concerns?” Raw Story pressed.

“I'll let the courts take care of that,” Grassley said.

Other Republicans want the Senate to take care of it.

Just last week, Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) dropped a new anti-doxxing bill. The rumored 2026 gubernatorial candidate’s new measure, the Protecting Law Enforcement from Doxxing Act, makes doxxing federal agents illegal.

The fact no one has released the addresses of any ICE agents doesn’t matter, given few Republicans have even stopped to think about roving deportation squads of faceless agents knocking down doors and shattering windows.

“I hadn't thought about it,” Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL), who sits on the Homeland Security Committee, told Raw Story. “You want them to be safe, so if it's a safety issue, I completely understand it.”

“Don't American citizens have a right to know who's charging them?” Raw Story pressed.

“It's important for them to be clear who they are,” said Scott, a former Florida governor. “I don't know if it's important for them to know the exact person.”

‘Core concern’

Democrats are aghast.

Sen. Chris Coons (D-DE) told Raw Story there was a “long history in the United States of law enforcement having identifying badges with their names so that people can know who is carrying out an arrest, from what agency.”

Facing your accuser is central to the American justice system — or, at least, it was.

“It is a core due process concern if those who are facing arrest, detention, deportation, and their families, which in many cases includes American citizens, don't know what this is, who it is,” Coons said.

Coons fears heavy-handed ICE tactics will have repercussions in migrant communities.

“Trust between law enforcement and our communities is an important part of effective law enforcement,” Coons said. “Knowing that the person who's arresting someone or detaining someone is duly authorized is a key part of a system of order.”

It’s about more than masks. Coons argues checks and balances built into America’s legal system are being erased in real-time.

“Due process requires transparency, traceability and following court orders — all of those have been somewhat in play in recent months,” Coons said. “It's important that they be followed.”

Nonetheless, masked agents are central to the deportation debate.

After recent ICE raids across Virginia, its two Democratic senators, Mark Warner and Tim Kaine, addressed what they called an “alarming and dangerous turn.”

On May 23, in a fiery three-page letter documenting ICE-related unrest nationwide, the two former governors lectured Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, Deportation Czar Tom Homan and two ICE directors about the “unintended consequences” of secretive tactics.

“Such actions put everyone at risk – the targeted individuals, the ICE officers and agents, and bystanders who may misunderstand what is happening and may attempt to intervene,” Warner and Kaine wrote.

“We urge you to direct ICE officers and agents to promptly and clearly identify themselves as law enforcement officers conducting law enforcement actions when arresting subjects, and limit the use of face coverings during arrests and other enforcement.”

‘The fear’

Before Trump swept back into the White House, American policing had been bending slowly towards transparency, according to Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), a former state attorney general.

While many police forces and unions initially resisted body cameras, they’ve now become the norm in major cities.

“Even body cams are there to show the public that in fact [officers] behaved well,” Whitehouse said. “So I think that's the message [of ICE agents masking and operating without badges.] They intend to create a sort of image of creepiness and unaccountability, because that helps with the fear that they're trying to inculcate.”

That’s why Whitehouse and most other Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee are vehemently opposed to officers wearing masks.

“It's not consistent with the best traditions of American law enforcement,” Whitehouse told Raw Story. “It conjures unpleasant images. It runs contrary to the transparency that we customarily worked on, where people's name and badge number has to be visible.”

WASHINGTON – Democrats on Capitol Hill are nervously laughing off President Donald Trump’s so-called investigation into Joe Biden’s use of an autopen.

Prominent Democratic senators who spoke to Raw Story at the Capitol on Thursday dismissed the effort — passed through executive order and giving Attorney General Pam Bondi authority to launch a criminal probe — as a made-for TV “political stunt.”

“It’s a political stunt trying to change the narrative from tariffs that are gonna harm the economy,” said Sen. Jack Reed (D-RI), the top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee.

“It’s a gigantic distraction and totally frivolous and unfounded,” Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), the second-most senior Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, told Raw Story.

“They would be better advised to focus on problems that really matter to everyday Americans, like rising prices and threats to our economy from dumb moves like imposing across-the-board tariffs. It’s a political stunt.”

Biden’s use of an autopen to sign documents — from pardons to pieces of legislation — has become the subject of Republican conspiracy theories.

Riding the coattails of the new book Original Sin, by Jake Tapper of CNN and Alex Thompson of Axios, conservative pundits and far-right politicians are claiming Biden was too old to function properly as president.

Biden was 78 when he entered the White House in 2021, and 82 when he left office this year.

Trump, who turns 79 next week, has shared numerous conspiracy theories about the man who beat him in 2020.

Last week, Trump shared the objectively absurd claim that Biden was “executed in 2020” and replaced by “clones[,] doubles and robotic engineered soulless mindless entities.”

Compared to that, the autopen conspiracy theory is relatively mundane, holding that aides used the robotic device to sign documents and keep the government running because Biden was too old to keep up.

Republicans claim documents signed by autopen would be invalid, including pardons issued by Biden to family members and leading Democratic politicians, especially those who served on the House January 6 committee.

Experts, historians and journalists have repeatedly countered that presidential autopen use is long established and perfectly legal — as Trump would know, having used an autopen himself.

“I don't think there's a there there,” Sen. Chris Coons (D-DE) told Raw Story. “I think this is more of a political point.”

Coons has more reason to know than most. A close Biden ally, he holds the Senate seat Biden vacated to become President Barack Obama’s vice president in 2009. He has also served as an executive himself, in his home state.

“Broadly, governors, mayors [and] presidents should have and need to have processes that guarantee that the documents that are executed by them are, you know, duly reviewed and appropriately executed,” Coons said.

“When I was county executive, we used to have signing day once a month where I would sit down and sign a stack of a thousand documents. And I remember saying on several occasions, ‘Do I really need to personally sign every single one of these?’

“Anyone who's been an executive of any significant entity recognizes that the use of the approved, auditable use of an autopen is essential to carrying out the due functions of a large government. The number of things the U.S. president has to sign would boggle the imagination.”

Asked about Republican claims that then-First Lady Jill Biden really ran the government during much of Biden’s four years in the White House, Coons answered wryly.

“In the case of Edith Wilson, where the president was literally in a coma, yeah, that was true,” Coons said.

President Woodrow Wilson suffered a stroke while in office in 1919. Accounts of Wilson’s illness differ, but he is not thought to have fallen into a coma.

Coons said he was with Biden in his final days in office, and he says he was cogent.

“I had breakfast with President Biden the last Friday that he was in the White House and he was present, engaging, positive, clear,” Coons said — before admitting that at other moments Biden seemed his age.

“Did he have some bad moments in his last year as president? Like the debate? Yes.”

Biden’s catastrophic display against Trump in Atlanta last June ultimately precipitated his withdrawal as Democrats’ presidential nominee.

“But I've seen no evidence that he actually, at any point, wasn't fully capable of being president,” Coons said.

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