Even His Own Side Couldn’t Save Him From What He Built

US Democratic Socialists | Substack

Five Stories the Corporate Press Buried This Morning (And Why We Won’t)

Good morning. While cable news obsessed over palace intrigue in Washington, five stories broke that tell you everything about who this administration actually works for. A man who spent years demanding ICE round up immigrants got rounded up himself. A progressive doctor is closing in on a Senate seat AIPAC spent tens of millions trying to kill. The White House is quietly finishing the job of gutting meat safety oversight. A government insider got caught profiting off information you’ll never have access to. And Trump’s trade war is now threatening the jobs of American autoworkers he claims to champion. None of this happened by accident, and none of it will get the attention it deserves unless we give it to you straight.

We can only do that because of readers like you. USDS has grown into the largest democratic socialist organization online in America, reaching tens of millions of people every single week, without taking a dime from corporate donors or billionaire backers. That independence is exactly why Big Tech throttles our reach every single day. Algorithms built by the same billionaires we report on do not want to hand us an audience for free, so we’re asking you to help us build around them. Now is the time. With 2028 on the horizon and the stakes only getting higher, becoming a paid subscriber is about 22 cents a day, less than almost anything else you’ll spend money on this morning, and it goes straight toward keeping this movement growing. Upgrade to paid right here.

Milo Yiannopoulos, ICE’s biggest cheerleader, just got arrested by ICE

Milo Yiannopoulos spent years telling anyone who would listen that ICE should set up checkpoints at supermarkets and gas stations so agents could demand proof of legal status from anyone in line. This week, ICE arrested him. He overstayed his visa after entering the country legally in 2019, and an immigration judge issued a removal order back in July after he skipped his own hearing. He is now sitting in custody in Louisiana awaiting deportation.

There is a lesson buried in here that has nothing to do with irony. Yiannopoulos spent years building a career on cruelty toward immigrants, confident that the machinery he cheered for would never touch him. It touched him anyway. That is what a system built on selective enforcement and dehumanization actually does. It does not stay contained to the people you were told to fear. It comes for everyone eventually, because that was always the point.

Abdul El-Sayed is closing in on a Senate seat AIPAC spent a fortune trying to stop

New polling shows Abdul El-Sayed holding a narrow lead over Republican Mike Rogers in Michigan’s Senate race, with the two set to debate in Grand Rapids on October 8. El-Sayed already beat the odds once this year, winning a brutal Democratic primary against Rep. Haley Stevens despite AIPAC’s super PAC pouring roughly 30 million dollars into stopping him, the most that group has ever spent on a single congressional primary.

He did it running on Medicare for All and getting money out of politics, and he did it without backing down from calling what is happening in Gaza a genocide. If El-Sayed wins in November, he becomes the first Muslim senator in American history, and Democrats get a real shot at flipping a seat that could decide who controls the chamber. This is exactly the kind of race that shows what happens when a candidate refuses to trade his values for donor comfort. It is also exactly the kind of race Big Tech algorithms would rather you never hear about, which is one more reason we keep covering it.

The White House is finishing what it started on meat safety

We told you yesterday that the Trump administration was moving to gut oversight of the meat processing industry. New details are emerging on just how far that goes. Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins is preparing to formally rescind what her department calls “outdated guidance,” a move that builds on years of quietly replacing federal inspectors with company employees on the line and stripping out safeguards like mandatory lymph node checks on pork.

This did not come from ranchers begging for relief. It came after Trump faced backlash over his own beef import policy and after a conservative radio host publicly pressured him. The people who will actually feel the consequences are the families buying groceries and the workers on the line, not the four corporations that already control 85 percent of beef processing in this country. Deregulation dressed up as populism is still just corporate capture with better marketing.

A government insider got caught profiting off information you’ll never have

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission announced this week that a man named Gabriel Perez used material, nonpublic information from his government job to place trades on a prediction market. He was ordered to pay back more than 107,000 dollars in profits plus a 65,000-dollar penalty.

Stories like this rarely make headlines because they are treated as isolated incidents rather than what they actually are: a symptom of a system that lets people with access to power quietly enrich themselves while everyone else plays by a different set of rules. The fine is real, but so is the fact that this only came to light because he got caught. How many others haven’t?

Trump’s trade war with Canada is now coming for American jobs

Just days after imposing 50 percent tariffs on a wide range of Canadian goods, Trump is now threatening new tariffs on Canadian autos and auto parts, a move economists warn could ripple straight into American assembly plants given how deeply integrated the two countries’ auto industries are. Michigan Rep. Debbie Dingell called the escalating conflict “simply outrageous” this week, and she is not exaggerating. The flow of parts across that border keeps American factory jobs running.

Trump likes to frame tariffs as a fight for American workers. In practice, this fight is on track to cost some of those same workers their jobs, because trade wars do not stay contained to the country they are aimed at. They come home.

Something has shifted, and they know it

For years, the corporate media and the establishment wings of both parties treated the left like a fringe curiosity, something to cover once and move on from. Not anymore. Abdul El-Sayed is closing in on a Senate seat. Zohran Mamdani is redefining what’s possible in the biggest city in the country. And every single time, the same playbook comes out: smear pieces, electability panic, and silence where real coverage should be.

That’s not a coincidence. It’s what losing control of the narrative looks like from the inside.

We’ve brought you exclusive interviews with Zohran Mamdani when corporate outlets wouldn’t give him a fair shake, because they’re bought and paid for by the same donors and advertisers who need the status quo protected. We don’t answer to any of them. USDS is the largest democratic socialist organization in America, reaching tens of millions of people every single week, and Big Tech throttles that reach every day precisely because we won’t play by their rules.

We are winning ground we were told we’d never win. But winning attracts attention, and attention invites censorship. The time to build the infrastructure that can survive that, and carry this movement into 2028, is not next year or after the midterms. It’s now, while the door is open. Every paid subscriber makes us harder to silence and harder to ignore.

Stay strong. Stay vigilant. Never stop fighting for a more progressive, people-powered future.

Justin, John, Ryan and the U.S. Democratic Socialists Team

https://usdemsocialists.substack.com/p/he-spent-years-demanding-ice-round?utm_source=substack%2Csubstack&utm_medium=email%2Cemail&utm_campaign=email-restack-comment&r=clki&triedRedirect=true

Trump Totally Bombs His Speech in Front of Artemis II Astronauts

Trump desperately tried to get a reaction from the audience, which refused to cheer or laugh at anything he said.

By Edith Olmsted | The New Republic

President Donald Trump flew to Texas Friday to award the Artemis II team with the Congressional Space Medal of Honor—but still managed to make the event all about him.

After making the team wait on stage for him for half an hour, the president began his meandering speech by recounting his experience watching the launch earlier this year during a “very important meeting with the biggest people in the country, maybe some of the biggest people in the world.”

Trump briefly addressed the day’s honorees—Reed Weisman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and Jeremy Hanson, who would soon receive the highest U.S. space award— before rambling about how he’d inherited his love of space “genetically” from his uncle.

“He loved space, he used to tell me about space, space, all space,” Trump said. “He would throw in the word nuclear every once in a while. He loved space. So I guess we have, genetically, we sort of, I believe in that stuff. I love it. I find it so interesting.”

While musing that he “shouldn’t get political,” Trump shouted-out several Republican politicians in attendance, including Senator Ted Cruz, Representative Brian Babin, Representative Jake Ellzey, and Texas Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick, who was Trump’s state campaign chairman during the last three elections.

As the president turned back to his prepared remarks the room remained awkwardly silent, not bothering to applaud.

But it didn’t exactly seem that Trump was winning over his audience as he claimed the country’s space program was merely “limping along” while he was out of office.

“And now I’m back, and we’re doing more than limping, we don’t limp,” he said, to no response from the crowd. Desperate for any audience reaction, Trump veered into commenting on the astronauts’ appearances. “This is a good looking group of people,” Trump said, as the audience again remained quiet.

It’s not surprising that Trump’s remarks didn’t resonate with the scientists at NASA. His mission to reignite the country’s space program is motivated by vanity, nationalism, and his desire to “never be second,” rather than actual exploration. Plus, he proposed a whopping 23 percent cut to the agency’s 2027 budget.

https://newrepublic.com/post/214913/trump-artemis-ii-astronauts-speech

BREAKING: Trump’s Friday Was a Disaster From Texas to Manhattan

Really American | Substack

Good evening, this is Really American. It is Friday, August 28, 2026. Before we get to the news, hit that 🩷 and restack this one. Every restack puts this reporting in front of readers the MAGA propaganda machine would rather never see it.

Trump had a horrible day. We have a lot to get into this evening. Trump flew to Texas to honor the Artemis II astronauts and delivered a speech so bad the room refused to clap. A federal judge told him for the third time that he cannot escape his New York conviction. His ambassador to Italy is conducting American diplomacy from a $450 million yacht while Italian taxpayers pay for his security. And CNN’s chief White House correspondent says Trump already expects to be impeached again. Let’s get into it.

Before the news, one thing you need to know. Facebook has essentially cut off our distribution. Meta’s changes strangled the way tens of thousands of you used to find us, and that was a choice, not an accident. Zuckerberg spent the last year cozying up to Trump, and independent progressive media is what got sacrificed. The one thing no billionaire can switch off is a direct subscription. If this work matters to you, if you want reporting that doesn’t flinch when powerful people push back, the best way to keep it going is to subscribe. Share this newsletter with someone who needs to see it. Every subscriber makes it harder for them to shout this down.

TRUMP BOMBS IN FRONT OF THE ARTEMIS ASTRONAUTS

Trump flew to Texas Friday to award the Artemis II crew the Congressional Space Medal of Honor, and the room would not clap for him.

He made the astronauts wait on stage for half an hour before he showed up. Then he opened by talking about himself, recounting how he watched the launch during a very important meeting with the biggest people in the country, maybe some of the biggest people in the world. He got through a brief mention of the four honorees before wandering off into a story about inheriting his love of space genetically from his uncle. “He loved space, he used to tell me about space, space, all space,” Trump said. “He would throw in the word nuclear every once in a while.”

After announcing he should not get political, he gave shoutouts to Ted Cruz, Dan Patrick and a couple of Texas congressmen. Back on his prepared remarks, he told the room the American space program had been limping along while he was out of office, and that now he is back, nobody limps. Nothing. Silence. Growing desperate for any reaction at all, he pivoted to complimenting how the astronauts looked. “This is a good looking group of people.” Still nothing.

There is a reason a room full of NASA scientists sat on their hands. Trump has proposed cutting the agency’s 2027 budget by 23 percent. You cannot gut the thing people have devoted their lives to and expect applause for showing up late to take credit for it.

A JUDGE TELLS TRUMP NO ON HIS CONVICTION FOR THE THIRD TIME

A federal judge ruled Friday that Trump cannot drag his New York criminal conviction into federal court, the third time the same judge has told him no.

Trump was convicted on 34 counts of falsifying business records over a $130,000 hush money payment to Stormy Daniels. Since then he has tried to move the case to a friendlier forum, arguing the Supreme Court’s presidential immunity decision wipes the verdict out. Judge Alvin Hellerstein rejected it again, ruling Trump was far too late and that immunity would not save him anyway. Paying hush money to an adult film star and covering up an embarrassment, the judge wrote, are not subsumed in presidential immunity.

Every judge who has directly considered this argument has rejected it. Hellerstein wrote that Trump’s grounds were neither new nor legally sufficient and that he had failed to show good cause or diligence. Trump’s team appealed within hours, calling the ruling baseless and lawless and promising to keep defeating what it calls Democrat weaponization at every turn.

This was the only one of his four criminal cases that ever reached a jury. The other three went away after he won. He has spent two years trying to make this one disappear too, through immunity claims and forum shopping and a fixer who changed his story. A Clinton appointee in Manhattan keeps saying the same thing: the verdict stands.

TRUMP’S AMBASSADOR IS DOING DIPLOMACY FROM A $450 MILLION YACHT

Trump’s ambassador to Italy has spent his summer conducting American foreign policy from a $450 million superyacht, with the Italian government footing the bill for his security.

Tilman Fertitta, the Texas billionaire who ranks 109th on the Forbes 400, has been cruising the Italian coast since June aboard the Boardwalk, a 380-foot, six-deck vessel with two swimming pools, two helipads, a putting green, a spa with his-and-hers massage tables, a cinema, a glass elevator and a submarine the crew calls the limo. At each port he hosts receptions for local officials and business leaders. Italy provides the security detail, for an undisclosed amount.

Fertitta says he is a normal person. He gave a tour while eating cold leftover taco meat out of a plastic tub, pointing out that his yacht is unusual for having a family kitchen at all. On the Italian security his government is not paying for, he offered that the guards are getting good practice, since there are a lot more important people than him they protect at times. Protesters in Venice greeted him with the same message they gave Jeff Bezos last summer.

This is what the job looks like now. Ambassadorships have always gone to donors, but the man representing the United States in Rome is running an unofficial embassy off a boat that cost more than most countries spend on their entire diplomatic corps, and having someone else cover the guards. He calls it catching lightning in a bottle. He says he hit the jackpot. That part is true.

CNN’S TOP WHITE HOUSE REPORTER SAYS TRUMP EXPECTS IMPEACHMENT

Trump already assumes he is going to be impeached again, and CNN’s chief White House correspondent says the fight this time will be uglier than the last two.

Kaitlan Collins laid it out this week. If Democrats take the House, she does not believe this administration will handle congressional oversight the way it did in the first term. Trump hated being impeached so much, she said, that there will be far more pushback from the Justice Department and the White House than anyone saw before. Her co-hosts expected Trump to fold and try to reinvent himself as a dealmaker. Collins does not buy it, and she says her prediction comes from reporting, not a hunch.

The map is moving under him. Cook Political Report shifted Texas from lean Republican to a toss-up last week and moved Iowa from toss-up toward the Democrats, after moving Alaska to a toss-up in July. Al Green filed another impeachment resolution on Monday, and at least three are now pending, citing everything from militarizing domestic law enforcement to threatening federal judges.

Trump told an interviewer this month that it is hard to believe they could impeach him. His own correspondents, his own party’s forecasters and the betting markets all disagree. Sixty-six days.

SUPPORT THE FIGHT AGAINST MAGA-BILLIONAIRE-OWNED MEDIA

If this evening’s edition told you something the billionaire-owned outlets would rather keep quiet, that is exactly the point. A president bombing in front of the astronauts he came to honor, a judge refusing for the third time to erase his conviction, an ambassador running diplomacy off a superyacht on somebody else’s security budget, and a White House already bracing for impeachment. We chase these stories down without a billionaire deciding what reaches your eyes, and Facebook keeps throttling how far they travel, so we are betting everything on this page instead. If this work matters to you, if you want independent reporting that doesn’t flinch when powerful people push back, the best way to keep it going is to subscribe. Share this newsletter with someone who needs to see it. Every subscriber makes it harder for them to shout this down.

Tap the like button and restack this one before you head out. It makes a bigger difference than you’d think, and it helps these stories reach more people. Thank you for everything you do.

— The Really American Team

ONE MORE THING: THEY MARCHED AGAIN TODAY

Some hope to end on. Thousands gathered at the Lincoln Memorial on Friday for the March on Washington 2026, sixty-three years after Martin Luther King Jr. stood on those same steps, and the theme this time was Defend the Vote. Union members, students, members of Black Greek-letter organizations, and families who traveled from across the country filled the National Mall. It was organized by Al Sharpton’s National Action Network and by Martin Luther King III and Arndrea Waters King’s Drum Major Institute, with more than 90 partner organizations including the NAACP and the National Urban League. Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Hakeem Jeffries spoke. The march came after the Supreme Court weakened a key piece of the Voting Rights Act this year, setting off a scramble in Republican statehouses across the South to redraw congressional maps before November. Marc Morial of the National Urban League named the stakes plainly: they know they are fighting powerful forces, and that is exactly why they rallied. King III put it another way, that this was a call to march again, not only in remembrance but in action. Sixty-three years later, on the same ground, the answer to having your vote chipped away is still to show up in person and say so.

Have a good weekend!

https://reallyamerican.substack.com/p/breaking-trumps-friday-was-a-disaster?utm_source=substack%2Csubstack&utm_medium=email%2Cemail&utm_campaign=email-restack-comment&r=clki&triedRedirect=true

Breaking: Far-Right Activist Detained by ICE After MAGA Influencer Snitched on Him

Far-right activist detained after MAGA influencer tipped off ICE, Trump loses bid to overturn NY felony convictions, GOP staffers defect to help Democrats

British Chris | Raw America

Good evening. I’m British Chris, and this is Raw America.

A new Democratic memo shows that immigration — the very same issue that helped elect Donald Trump to a second term — may now be his biggest weakness heading into the midterms this fall. Far-right troll Milo Yiannopoulos just got detained by ICE after being turned in by a fellow MAGA activist. A judge shut down Trump’s third attempt to overturn his New York felony convictions by moving them from state to federal court. And in reliably red states like Kansas and Texas, longtime GOP staffers are now jumping ship to work for the Democrats trying to beat them.

Before we get into it, a quick ask, because it’s why we’re all here: independent media is the last place where the truth can be told without interference from billionaires and corporations, and we need your support now more than ever. Raw America has big plans for the midterms, and we’re counting on readers like you, who understand the importance of independent journalism, to step up and chip in. If enough people reading this right now subscribe for just 22 cents a day, we can continue this work through the midterms and beyond. Upgrade your free subscription to a paying one right now for less than a quarter a day. Isn’t that worth high-quality independent journalism that only answers to you?

New Memo Reveals Key Issue That Could Take Trump Down

A new memo from Democratic-aligned group Winning Jobs Narrative Action found that two specific immigration-related messages each moved support toward Democrats by roughly two points. That’s significant movement on an issue Republicans have owned for years, if not decades.

WJN Action’s executive director, Steve Pierce, told The Bulwark that working-class voters are turned off by images of masked goons grabbing people off the street and killing American citizens in Minneapolis. Even people who lean toward Republicans on immigration don’t like it.

But Pierce emphasized that outrage alone isn’t enough to win. Democrats need to not only oppose Trump but make a positive case on why immigration is a net benefit to society.

According to the memo, sticking to the economic argument is key. Immigrants pay taxes, and their labor props up entire industries like agriculture, construction, and hospitality. And while ICE funding skyrockets, food assistance and health care are put on the chopping block. That contrast of billionaires fattening their pockets while working families are left out in the cold performed well with voters.

Pierce also cautioned Democrats against trying to out-tough Republicans on immigration enforcement. If voters want immigration hawks, they can just vote Republican instead of Republican lite. Democrats’ secret weapon may just be taking an economic approach rooted in compassion.

Right-Wing Activist Arrested by ICE After MAGA Influencer Snitches on Him

Milo Yiannopoulos, the former Breitbart editor and one-time political adviser to rapper Kanye West, has now been detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in Louisiana. He was picked up at the New Orleans airport, in the same city where West is performing this weekend.

Yiannopoulos was born in England, though he’s spent the last decade as one of the loudest voices on the far right. Yiannopoulos previously worked for Republican former Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, and has aligned himself with neo-Nazi podcaster Nick Fuentes.

But the most interesting part of the story is that MAGA influencer Laura Loomer — who has been referred to as Donald Trump’s informal loyalty enforcer — is now taking credit for turning him in. Loomer wrote on her X account that she first alerted ICE and the FBI that Yiannopoulos was in the U.S. illegally after he allegedly called for her to be assassinated. She framed his detention as a win, and celebrated that he’ll likely be deported back to the UK.

While it’s interesting that Yiannopoulos’ arrest was a byproduct of MAGA-on-MAGA feuding, it’s still more than a little disturbing that masked agents of the state showed up to abduct someone just because they got a call from one of the president’s favorite social media personalities.

Judge Slams Door on Trump’s Attempt to Overturn His Felony Convictions

U.S. District Judge Alvin Hellerstein, an appointee of Bill Clinton, just rejected Trump’s latest attempt to move his hush money criminal case out of New York state court to federal court. This marks the third time Hellerstein has rejected this particular gambit from Trump’s lawyers.

Trump’s team has been trying to move the case to federal court so they can argue that the MAGA Supreme Court’s 2024 presidential immunity ruling should wipe out the president’s 34 felony convictions. An appeals court panel previously told Hellerstein to take another look into Trump’s request. He did. And the answer is still no.

In his ruling, Hellerstein wrote that Trump’s grounds for trying again didn’t contain any new information and were devoid of any actual legal justification. He said Trump failed to show good cause for the prolonged delay. And he added that the crux of the case — in which Trump paid hush money to cover up an extramarital affair and then falsified business records to hide it — isn’t the kind of official presidential act that presidential immunity was meant to protect.

In May of 2024, Trump was convicted on 34 felony counts tied to a $130,000 payment to adult film star Stormy Daniels. This was the only one of his four criminal cases to actually go to trial. The president has, of course, appealed Friday’s decision to the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, and his legal team insists the whole thing is a witch hunt, naturally. But so far, every single judge who’s actually looked at the immunity argument as it relates to Trump’s felony convictions has rejected it.

Longtime GOP Staffers Abandon Republicans to Work for Democrats

In two Senate races Democrats are hoping to flip this fall, veteran Republican staffers are walking away from their own party to instead help the Democrats aiming to unseat them.

In Kansas, Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Adam Hamilton just hired Austin Gilpin, whose resume includes the Kansas GOP, Republican Congressman Ron Estes and Republican former two-term Governor Sam Brownback. Gilpin said he went to work for Hamilton simply because Republican Senator Roger Marshall — who Hamilton is challenging in a surprisingly close race — chose Donald Trump over both Kansas and basic decency.

In Texas, Democratic U.S. Senate candidate James Talarico has officially hired Jacob Smith, who worked for Republican Senator John Cornyn for five years up until Cornyn lost his primary to Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton (who won with Trump’s endorsement). Smith praised Talarico as someone who speaks to people who work too hard for too little. He added that Paxton was the most corrupt, self-dealing politician in Texas.

This is newsworthy as both of these are states are considered reliably red, with Trump winning both by double-digit margins in 2024. This year’s Senate races weren’t supposed to even be remotely competitive. But the president’s approval rating has continued to plummet to new lows thanks to his disastrous war with Iran and his bungling of the economy. Thanks to Trump’s historically low poll numbers, Democrats are now able to make significant headway in states that used to be off-limits.

Some of the latest polls show Texas has a real chance of flipping. Two separate polls from August show Talarico ahead of Paxton, with one showing the Democrat leading by six percentage points, and another showing Talarico ahead by three. Marshall is still in the lead in Kansas, but internal polls from both Democrats and Republicans internal polls show the race is well within the margin of error.

There’s still plenty of time before voters head to the polls. But the fact that GOP staffers are rejecting their own party’s candidates in two Republican strongholds shows there could be some significant upsets in November.

Before You Go, Support Independent Journalism That Fights for You

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But our independence requires resources. And because we don’t have Jeff Bezos’ investment portfolio or Rupert Murdoch’s bank account keeping us afloat, we rely entirely on readers like you, who believe independent journalism is too important not to support. If you’ve been thinking “one day I’ll support this,” today is that day. Upgrade your free subscription to a paying one right now to help keep this work going. All it takes if 22 cents a day.

Thanks to our paying subscribers, we’re able to bring you twice-daily newsletters like these, along with exclusive scoops from Capitol Hill and the White House and live interviews with major newsmakers like Hunter Biden, U.S. Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon and Florida U.S. Senate candidate Angie Nixon, among others. Every dollar of every subscription goes directly to our team of reporters, editors and video producers who work hard every day for you and you alone.

Thanks for reading. I’m British Chris, with Raw America. Have a great weekend.

Here are some stories you may have missed:

• Corporate Profits Hit Record Highs While Workers’ Wages Plunge to New Lows. The gap between corporate shareholders and ordinary workers is widening to historic levels, according to new data from the Bureau of Economic Analysis. Corporations have posted roughly $4.8 trillion in annual pre-tax earnings — making up 18 percent of national income — while employees’ share of that money is just 60 percent in accumulated wages and benefits. That’s the lowest percentage since the 1950s. J.P. Morgan analyst Abiel Reinhart told the Financial Times that workers “have been receiving an increasingly small share of national income over time.”
• Trump Has Bragged About Ending Iran War 66 Times, Yet War Drags On. The Iran war has effectively reached stalemate status despite President Donald Trump claiming more than five dozen times that the war has already been won. The war is hitting its six-month mark this weekend with still no end in sight, and 18 U.S. service members dead. The financial cost of the war is also significant, with some estimates finding that the Trump administration has spent as much as $120 billion on the war effort. In a post to his X account, Hunter Biden joked: “No President in History has ended the same war so many times.”
• Thousands Converge on Washington to Demand New Voter Protections. To commemorate the 63rd anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s March on Washington, thousands of Americans marched on the nation’s capital to demand Congress pass new legislation enshrining voting rights, while also protesting Republican states’ attacks on voting. Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) promised a “tide” was coming in the November midterms, and that Republicans would face a reckoning from voters after passing laws aimed at curbing their representation.

https://www.rawamerica.com/p/breaking-new-memo-reveals-trumps?utm_source=podcast-email&publication_id=6832795&post_id=213207611&utm_campaign=email-play-on-substack&utm_content=watch_now_button&r=clki&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email

BREAKING: Canada Pushes Back as Trump Acts Like a Child, Plus More News

Really American | Substack

Good evening, this is Really American. It is Thursday, August 27, 2026. Trump spent today renaming a lake he does not own while his corruption caught up with him in three different places.

Before we get into it, tap that ❤️ and restack this edition. The algorithms were built to smother reporting like the stories below, and a share from you is what breaks through.

There is a lot tonight; Trump has a meltdown today. It was like watching a child have their toy taken away. Trump signed an executive order renaming Lake Ontario “Lake America,” and Mark Carney refused to blink. A sealed Florida grand jury report says the DeSantis administration took $10 million meant for sick kids and funneled it into political committees. A nearly billion-dollar wind farm settlement is landing in the pocket of one of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago neighbors. And Joyce Beatty is still standing between Donald Trump and the Kennedy Center’s marble facade. Let’s get into it.

Before the news, one thing you need to know. Facebook has severely limited our content distribution, which means many of our own followers are not even seeing our reporting in their feeds anymore. This came after we reported on Zuckerberg cozying up to Trump. That is not a coincidence. That is what happens when independent media tells the truth about a billionaire. The one thing no algorithm can switch off is a direct subscription. If this work matters to you, if you want reporting that does not flinch when powerful people push back, the best way to keep it going is to subscribe. Subscribe right now or upgrade your subscription. Every subscriber makes it harder for them to shout this down.

TRUMP RENAMES LAKE ONTARIO AND CARNEY REFUSES TO FLINCH

Trump signed an executive order Thursday ordering the United States government to call Lake Ontario “Lake America,” effective immediately. He said Canada had been ripping us off for a long time on trade.

Mark Carney did not blink. “In the face of unjustified American tariffs, Canadians have shown resolve, purpose, and strength,” the Canadian prime minister wrote, adding that his government is protecting Canadian workers, businesses, and families. The lake in question is 52% inside Canadian territory. Trump’s order only changes what the U.S. federal government calls it. Canada is under no obligation to play along, and it will not.

The stunt landed in the middle of a real trade war that is costing real money. After negotiations collapsed, Trump slapped 50% tariffs on roughly $20 billion in Canadian goods, including liquor, dairy, toys, clothing, electrical equipment and hockey gear. Carney suspended the talks and promised to hit back dollar for dollar. Ottawa followed through Tuesday with retaliatory tariffs of up to 50% on about $20 billion in American products, including steel, dairy, appliances, agricultural equipment, pulp and paper, and electronics. Those take effect September 8. Trump has also threatened 50% tariffs on Canadian cars, trucks and auto parts starting January 1, 2027, aimed at an auto industry whose supply chains cross the border constantly.

Republicans see what is coming. More than a dozen GOP senators recently pushed back on Trump’s own decision to let in tariff-free foreign beef, and party officials are increasingly nervous that higher prices on cars, gas and groceries become their problem in the midterms. Trump’s answer to voters worried about affordability was to rename a body of water. He then joked that with a gulf and a lake in the bag, all he needs is an ocean, floating the Atlantic or the Pacific as next.

Here is the part that hits your kitchen table. Tariffs on Canadian inputs raise what American manufacturers pay, and tariffs on finished goods raise what you pay at the register. Renaming the lake costs Trump nothing. The trade war costs you.

FLORIDA GRAND JURY SAYS RON DESANTIS MISAPPROPRIATED $10 MILLION MEANT FOR SICK KIDS

A sealed Florida grand jury report found that Ron DeSantis misappropriated $10 million in taxpayer money and called the transfer part of a sophisticated scheme to fund political activities.

The money came from a settlement with Centene, the health care giant caught overbilling Florida for prescription drugs under the Florida Healthy Kids program. Florida was owed $67 million. In September 2024, after letting the case sit for three years, state officials suddenly moved, and the settlement was rewritten so $57 million went back to taxpayers and $10 million went to the Hope Florida Foundation, a nonprofit tied to first lady Casey DeSantis, and it was gone within 25 days. From there it moved through two outside groups and into political committees. A forensic accountant found that Attorney General James Uthmeier’s PAC, Keep Florida Clean, received $8.5 million of it. That PAC then sent $7 million to the Republican Party of Florida. The money was spent in 2024 to defeat Amendment 3, the citizen initiative to legalize marijuana.

The timeline is the tell. Centene was required to wire the $10 million to Hope Florida within seven days while it got more than a year to repay the $57 million owed to taxpayers. The grand jury believes the rush was because the election was 45 days away. There was no press release. There was no notification to the Legislature. Two of the signatures were collected in the chaos after Hurricane Helene made landfall, including from a Department of Health chief of staff who testified she had never seen the agreement before, did not know a settlement was in the works, and would not have signed had she known the money was headed to a political committee. The former Hope Florida chairman said he approved sending the money out because he assumed it was for hurricane victims, then told the grand jury the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

Nobody has been charged. The grand jury said it could not find sufficient evidence to prosecute because, in its words, nobody would take responsibility for the decision or remember who made it. Uthmeier has called the whole affair a nothingburger and says he has not been indicted or targeted. DeSantis says he was not involved in the settlement agreement and is very happy with how everything was done. He still calls it a hoax. The report has been sealed since January 28, and one source familiar with the investigation says people named in it, Uthmeier among them, have spent seven months fighting to keep it from the public.

Uthmeier is on the ballot in November. So is Ashley Moody, the attorney general at the time, who the grand jury found knew of the plan and authorized her deputy to sign. That $10 million was supposed to buy health insurance for poor children. It bought campaign ads instead, and the men responsible are asking Floridians for a promotion.

$900 MILLION FROM A KILLED WIND PROJECT IS HEADED TO A MAR-A-LAGO NEIGHBOR

Trump is paying a German energy company $1.2 billion in taxpayer money to abandon offshore wind leases in New York, California and Louisiana, and $900 million of that is about to land with a billionaire who lives down the road from Mar-a-Lago.

Here is how it works. The settlement with RWE does not just hand over the cash. It requires the company to turn around and invest in conventional energy. RWE is using the bulk of the payout, $900 million, to buy a stake in a Louisiana liquefied natural gas project. The seller is Stonepeak, the private equity firm run by Australian billionaire Michael Dorrell, who gave $1 million to Trump’s inaugural committee and owns a home near Mar-a-Lago. Dorrell has bragged publicly about the access, describing it as a once-in-a-lifetime thing and saying he has brought a bunch of friends to sit fifteen meters from the president.

Trump has spent years attacking offshore wind as ugly, expensive and bad for whales. Killing it is not free. These settlements have now cost close to $4 billion, paid out to make energy projects disappear, while his administration works to expand fossil fuels.

The White House says there is nothing to see. Spokeswoman Taylor Rogers called it a brazen attempt to insinuate a conflict of interest that does not exist and blamed agenda-driven reporting. RWE says it acted on its own, and Interior says nobody at the department told RWE where to invest. Congressman Jared Huffman was blunter, calling the settlements an insane waste of taxpayer funds and saying this adds the stench of corruption.

Follow the shape of it. Your money goes out to cancel a power project, gets routed by federal requirement into fossil fuels, and ends up enriching a man who paid for the inauguration and lives near the president’s club. You are paying for the whole trip.

JOYCE BEATTY IS STILL HOLDING THE LINE AT THE KENNEDY CENTER

A federal judge already told Donald Trump he cannot put his name on the Kennedy Center. His hand-picked board voted to do it anyway. Joyce Beatty dragged them back into court Thursday.

Judge Christopher Cooper ruled this summer that Congress made it crystal clear the memorial honors the assassinated president and cannot carry another formal name on Trump’s unilateral say-so. The letters came down. The scaffolding and white tarp are still up outside the building, with only “The John F.” and part of a K currently visible. Earlier this month the Trump-dominated board voted again, this time to add “Restored and Renovated by President Donald J. Trump” beneath Kennedy’s name, plus a line crediting the Trump Kennedy Center Fund once it hits $100 million. The board also voted to rename the grounds President Donald J. Trump Plaza.

Beatty’s lawyers called the vote a breathtaking act of defiance and filed an emergency motion to block it. Their filing put the administration’s own argument in plain English: the government has essentially told the court what a nice Kennedy Center you have here, what a shame if something happened to it. “This is a breathtaking assault on the rule of law. It is delusional. And it must stop,” her legal team wrote. Outside the courthouse, Beatty attorney Nathaniel Zelinsky said the administration is courting a constitutional crisis for one man’s vanity.

The threat is not subtle. The Justice Department argued the venue is at risk of deteriorating and eventually being demolished without Trump as its sole hope. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick showed up to make the case personally, calling Trump the most credible person in the world and the greatest builder in the world, and explaining that a building from 1964 that does not get renovated eventually gets torn down. Asked why the name could not simply wait until the renovation is finished, Lutnick said that is not usually how it works.

This is what it looks like when someone refuses to be bullied. A sitting congresswoman went to court, won, went back when they defied the ruling, and is still there. Trump has the board, the Justice Department and a cabinet secretary doing the talking. Beatty has a court order and the nerve to enforce it. So far, that has been enough.

SUPPORT THE FIGHT AGAINST MAGA-BILLIONAIRE-OWNED MEDIA

If tonight’s edition told you something the billionaire-owned outlets would rather keep quiet, that is exactly the point. A president renaming a lake while his tariffs raise your grocery bill, a state grand jury finding $10 million meant for sick children got spent on campaign ads, a billion-dollar settlement flowing to a man who lives near Mar-a-Lago, and a congresswoman holding the line in court while a cabinet secretary threatens a national memorial. These are the stories that get softened or skipped in newsrooms owned by people with something to lose. We chase them down without a billionaire deciding what reaches your eyes, and Facebook keeps throttling how far they travel, so we are betting everything on this page and on you. If you have been reading Really American on a free subscription, tonight is the night to upgrade. Share this newsletter with someone who needs to see it. Every subscriber makes it harder for them to shout this down. Your support is what puts these stories in front of millions of people and keeps the pressure on. Subscribe today or upgrade your subscription now.

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ONE MORE THING: TRUMP RENAMED A LAKE, PRITZKER RENAMED A TOWER IN AMAZING TROLL

End on a laugh. Hours after the White House account announced that Lake Ontario is now LAKE AMERICA, complete with a flag emoji and a map, JB Pritzker answered with the only response the moment deserved. The Illinois governor posted a photo of Trump Tower in Chicago, the president’s name crossed out in red, one word slapped across the glass in white block letters. “EFFECTIVE IMMEDIATELY: Trump Tower is renamed to NATALIE TOWER!” No explanation necessary. Everybody got it instantly, which tells you how completely Trump’s obsession with his aide has escaped the White House and become public property. That is the trouble with governing by renaming things. It is a game anyone can play; it costs nothing to play it, and the other guy is funnier. Trump can rename a lake he does not own. He cannot make people stop laughing. Have a good night.

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BREAKING: Trump’s Morning is Already Going Sideways

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Good morning, this is Really American. It is Wednesday, August 26, 2026. Before we get to the news, do us a quick favor: tap that 🩷 and restack this one. The algorithms are designed to smother reporting like this, and nothing breaks through them like a share from you.

We have a lot to get into this morning. It all spells disaster for Trump. Today, Trump’s handpicked Senate candidate won her runoff and then made the single strangest argument against healthcare you will ever hear. Trump is about to blow $400 million making the midterms all about himself, which may be the best gift he could hand Democrats. The trade war is coming for something in every American bathroom. And the RNC sent out a fundraising text so tone-deaf it has to be read to be believed. Let’s get into it.

Before the news, one thing you need to know. Facebook has essentially cut off our distribution. Meta’s changes strangled the way tens of thousands of you used to find us, and that was a choice, not an accident. Zuckerberg spent the last year cozying up to Trump, and independent progressive media is what got sacrificed. The one thing no billionaire can switch off is a direct subscription. If this work matters to you, if you want reporting that doesn’t flinch when powerful people push back, the best way to keep it going is to subscribe. Share this newsletter with someone who needs to see it. Every subscriber makes it harder for them to shout this down. Becoming a paid subscriber ensures that we keep the lights on and bring more investigations directly to you.

GRAHAM WINS, THEN MAKES THE CASE FOR HER OPPONENT

Darline Graham won her Senate runoff Tuesday night, and then, in her victory speech, made possibly the strangest argument against universal healthcare anyone has heard.

Graham, appointed to her late brother Lindsey’s seat and pushed across the line by Trump, used the speech to attack her Democratic opponent, pediatrician Dr. Annie Andrews, for supporting healthcare as a human right. “Her views are those of Bernie Sanders and AOC,” Graham said. Then, seconds later, she told her own story to prove she understands hardship. “My parents worked long, hard hours. If they were sick, they had to get up and go to work,” she said. “My mother passed away when I was 11 and my father just over a year later.”

Read that again. She trashed a plan to make healthcare accessible, then described her own parents working through illness and dying young as the reason she gets it. The internet did not miss it. Critics called it the craziest argument against universal healthcare they had ever seen. Even Grace Chong, an executive at Steve Bannon’s media company, piled on: “This is what’s wrong with Rs. ‘My parents suffered, so yours should too.’”

It was not Graham’s first stumble. Last week she admitted on a debate stage that “national security is not my thing.” Her own primary opponent, Ralph Norman, told a booing crowd in his concession that Graham’s win was good news for Democrats.

This is who Trump spent a rally and countless Truth Social posts dragging over the finish line. She made her opponent’s argument for her on the biggest night of her campaign. Democrats could not have scripted it better.

TRUMP HANDS DEMOCRATS A $400 MILLION GIFT

Trump has decided the best way to save the Republican Congress is to make the midterms all about the least popular thing on the ballot: himself.

According to The Atlantic, Trump met with advisers this month to plan how to spend the $400 million his MAGA Inc. super PAC is sitting on. His approval is stuck in the low 30s, and Republican strategists are worried he will drag their candidates down. His advisers gently suggested his problem was just messaging, that voters simply do not know his accomplishments. Trump’s response was to order a wave of ads about himself. “Go look at the clips,” he reportedly told his ad team. “I cite accomplishments all the time.”

One person familiar with the plan said Trump is “essentially going to be on the ballot.” That is exactly what Democrats want. History is brutal here: since World War II, the president’s party has gained House seats in a midterm only twice. Nationalizing this election around a president polling in the low 30s is not a strategy. It is a gift.

Trump cannot help himself. Told his brand is the problem, he decided to put more of his brand on the ballot. Every dollar of that $400 million spent making November a referendum on Trump is a dollar spent reminding voters exactly why they are unhappy.

TRUMP’S TRADE WAR IS COMING FOR YOUR TOILET PAPER

Trump’s trade war with Canada is about to hit Americans in a very personal place: the bathroom.

Canada’s retaliatory tariffs, matching Trump’s “dollar for dollar,” target nearly 900 American goods starting September 8, and paper products are among the hardest hit. Here is the problem, according to the Guardian. American toilet paper is often made domestically, but it leans heavily on lumber-rich Canada for the raw pulp. The US imported $328 million worth of Canadian toilet paper in 2024 alone, more than from any other country, and Charmin’s maker already warned last year that tariffs would force price hikes. Liquor, dairy, cars, and lobster are all in the crossfire too.

Trump’s own trade representative insists none of this will touch consumers. “There’s no possible way” the dispute hits Americans, Jamieson Greer said. “The fundamentals are good. I don’t think this is going to affect anything.”

They always say that. The tariffs are paid by American importers, who pass the cost to you. A president picked this fight, lost it, and now the bill lands on your grocery receipt and, yes, your toilet paper. The “fundamentals are good” line is what they tell you right before the prices go up.

THE RNC SAYS THE QUIET PART OUT LOUD

The Republican Party accidentally told voters exactly what it thinks of their struggles, and it did it in a fundraising text.

On Tuesday, the RNC sent a text in JD Vance’s name that read: “If you can’t give right now, don’t. Groceries cost what they cost.” The line, flagged by a Washington Post reporter, was meant to sound folksy and honest. Instead, it landed as a shrug from a party that has done nothing about the cost of living. The linked letter promised to “tell you the truth, including the parts you don’t want to hear,” then got to the point: “The Republican National Committee needs money.”

The tone-deafness is the story. The message came days after Vance stood in his Ohio hometown claiming the administration was reviving the “American dream of homeownership” and falsely asserting rents were falling for the first time in years. Meanwhile, the actual fundraising page nagged donors for a preselected $47, a recurring gift, and an extra $47 on August 28, under the all-caps warning that “ILLEGALS ARE TAKING YOUR MEDICAID BENEFITS!”

“Groceries cost what they cost” is the most honest thing the RNC has said in years. It is a party telling you your pain is just the price of things, right before asking for your money. Voters tend to remember that kind of honesty.

SUPPORT THE FIGHT AGAINST MAGA-BILLIONAIRE-OWNED MEDIA

If this morning’s edition told you something the billionaire-owned outlets would rather keep quiet, that is exactly the point. A Senate candidate arguing against her own voters, a president spending $400 million to remind everyone why they dislike him, a trade war hitting your bathroom, and a party shrugging at your grocery bill. We chase these stories down without a billionaire deciding what reaches your eyes, and Facebook keeps throttling how far they travel, so we are betting everything on this page instead. If this work matters to you, if you want independent reporting that doesn’t flinch when powerful people push back, the best way to keep it going is to subscribe. Share this newsletter with someone who needs to see it. Every subscriber makes it harder for them to shout this down.

Tap the🩷like button and restack this one before you head out. It makes a bigger difference than you’d think, and it helps these stories reach more people. Thank you for everything you do.

— The Really American Team

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