Raw Story News Releases

A federal judge categorically knocked down exemptions claimed by the U.S. Navy in a sweeping order that handed a victory to Raw Story in its effort to access records of an investigation into whether a neo-Nazi and Marine Corps veteran mishandled classified materials.

“The court agrees with Raw Story that there is substantial public interest in the requested records,” wrote Judge Loren L. AliKhan, who was appointed to the federal bench in District of Columbia in December 2023, in an order issued on Monday.

The order categorically rejected the Navy’s claims that even acknowledging whether it has the responsive records would both put national security at risk and violate the former service member’s privacy rights....

Three Raw Story investigations by investigative reporter Alexandria Jacobson won first place prizes in the National Federation of Press Women’s 2024 Professional Communications Contest.

Jacobson’s work was honored on June 22 at the organization’s national conference in St. Louis, Mo. Jacobson won first place in three categories:

• Continuing Coverage or Unfolding News for her series with Raw Story Editor-in-Chief Dave Levinthal, “Lawmakers, Law Breakers,” that identified at least 37 congressional violators of a federal conflicts-of-interest and financial disclosure law
• In-depth Reporting for “Losing Track,” a three-part series about various failures of the country’s enfeebled national security vetting system
• Specialty Articles: Education for “‘Too preposterous to be real’: College hires ‘pink slime’ publisher as journalism prof” about a Tennessee university’s controversial hire of an executive associated with a widely scrutinized conservative PAC-backed media network

“The NFPW professional communications contest puts a spotlight on outstanding entries from throughout the United States,” said Helen S. Plotkin, National Federation of Press Women professional contest director. “Our judges continue to comment about the high quality of entries they judge in the contest. The entries showcase high quality and exceptional efforts.”...

A Raw Story series that unveiled how South Carolina public military college The Citadel closed ranks to support honorary degree recipient Rudy Giuliani has won a 2024 Dateline Award for commentary and criticism.

Raw Story Editor-in-Chief Dave Levinthal obtained hundreds of internal school emails and records and conducted numerous interviews to reveal how officials at The Citadel worked to protect both itself as well as Giuliani, a leading figure in Donald Trump's effort to overturn the results of the 2020 election, from public scrutiny.

Of the Raw Story's series, Dateline Award judges wrote: ...

Raw Story investigative reporter Alexandria Jacobson has won the prestigious Sidney Award for her months-long investigation into violence against letter carriers and a recent spike in mail-related crime.

Jacobson's investigation, "Letter carriers face bullets and beatings while postal service sidelines police," prompted immediate reaction from federal lawmakers who called on Congress to pass legislation that helped enhance safety for postal workers and the mail itself.

“Jacobson’s meticulous reporting casts a light on the risks faced by letter carriers and the official indifference to their wellbeing on the job,” Sidney Award judge Lindsay Beyerstein said Wednesday. “This story makes it clear how the security of letter carriers affects not only the workers involved but all of us in terms of the scale of thefts and fraud.”...

Raw Story investigative reporter Alexandria Jacobson and Editor-in-Chief Dave Levinthal today won a 2023 Best in Business Award for their ongoing "Lawmakers, Law Breakers" series that's revealed how dozens of members of Congress have violated a federal law designed to stop insider trading and curb conflicts of interest.

The award, sponsored by the Society for Advancing Business Editing and Writing, comes in the contest's personal finance category.

Judges wrote of the "Lawmakers, Law Breakers" series: "In this well-executed investigation, Alexandria Jacobson and Dave Levinthal reveal that 37 members of Congress failed to properly disclose personal stock trades in just one year. Their dogged reporting effort raises important questions about the adequacy and policing of financial conflict-of-interest laws designed to give Americans confidence in their lawmakers’ impartiality."...

NEW YORK — Raw Story, America’s largest independent progressive news site, today filed suit against OpenAI for using thousands of Raw Story’s news articles to train ChatGPT in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

“Raw Story’s copyright-protected journalism is the result of significant efforts of human journalists who report the news,” said Raw Story Publisher Roxanne Cooper. “Rather than license that work, OpenAI taught ChatGPT to ignore journalists’ copyrights and hide its use of copyright-protected material.”

Raw Story is a trusted source of breaking political news and investigative journalism, whose mission is to surface underreported news and expose political hypocrisy. Begun as a small, one-man political blog, Raw Story grew to become the largest independent progressive news website in America. Today, more than 1,000,000 daily readers consume Raw Story journalism....

MS NOW’s Joe Scarborough said on “Morning Joe” that President Donald Trump’s explanation for canceling a rally is “a lie,” citing Republican operatives who told him the Kansas Senate race is already lost.

Scarborough said Trump was “giving lectures now on people’s mental health,” then said that what Trump has said about canceling, and why, is untrue. He said that Wednesday afternoon, Republican operatives called him and, in his words, said “this race has been gone for a week.”

Additionally, Scarborough said Democrats were surprised the president canceled at the last minute, but that the reason, in his account, is that Republicans feel Sen. Roger Marshall “has blown that race.”...

A former Trump administration staffer shared a startling prediction about how Donald Trump's presidency could end in a new podcast interview Sunday.

Anthony Scaramucci, one of Trump's press secretaries during his first administration, predicted during a new episode of "The Daily Beast Podcast" with host Joanna Coles that Trump could be asked to leave office after the midterms. The risk of him being asked to leave will become even greater if Trump agrees to sit down with Russian President Vladimir Putin and China's Xi Jinping to discuss an end to Russia's war of aggression in Ukraine, he added.

"If that meeting were to happen, then I would tell you that the Republican Party is completely dead," Scaramucci said. "We'd probably have to get a tombstone out, and you tell me the date that meeting and I will chisel into the tombstone."...

CNN's John Berman said Friday that he finds the White House’s sudden campaign cancellations “very, very odd,” just days before the midterm elections.

President Donald Trump canceled planned rallies for Sunday in Salina, Kansas, on Saturday and Dubuque, Iowa – where both states have competitive Senate races – and Vice President JD Vance also canceled a trip to Minnesota, another state with a competitive Senate race, where he was set to speak about fraud.

“Why is the White House pulling back from campaign trips just as we’re getting closer to Election Day?” Berman asked....