WASHINGTON — Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) had a serious response on Thursday to reporting involving allegations of FBI Director Kash Patel's conduct and excessive drinking.
In an exclusive interview with Raw Story, the ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee described what could come after midterms if Democrats take control of Congress.
"It's going to look pretty good from my vantage point because, you know, we've been trying to investigate so many of the corrupt schemes that we see taking place, and a lot of the incompetence that we see taking place and just the mismanagement," Raskin told Raw Story. "And it comes out this week in The Atlantic magazine that the director of the FBI is passing out drunk; people can't find him. We already knew that he was abusing a lot of the resources of office in terms of the jets and the airplanes. We know that he's been working to cover up the Epstein files. And now it turns out that there's this major drinking problem, which is why we sent him a letter saying he needs to come clean."
Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee this week called on 46-year-old Patel to take an alcohol-abuse test or testify under oath after The Atlantic published a deeply sourced report on his alleged excessive drinking. Raskin sent him a letter seeking a sworn statement statement authenticating the accuracy of his answers.
Patel has since filed a lawsuit following The Atlantic story, denying the accusations.
"He's suing The Atlantic magazine, but it's not just between him and a magazine," Raskin added. "It's between him and the whole country. And we need to know whether or not the director of the FBI has a serious drinking problem that's interfering with his ability to successfully execute the duties of his office."
WASHINGTON — "Weak sauce." "A joke." "A performance artist." That's how a West Point grad and Army vet on the Armed Services Committee described Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth, who is running the Department of Defense in the middle of a war.
Rep. Pat Ryan (D-NY) didn't mince words Wednesday after Hegseth fired Navy Secretary John Phelan, effective immediately, with no explanation given, while U.S. warships actively blockaded Iranian ports.
“It's more score settling. The revenge tour. In the middle of a war. In the middle of a naval blockade," he lamented to Raw Story.
Ryan added, "He pretends to be tough but has the thinnest skin and is weak sauce. He knows he's in — and this is true, I'm not just saying — he knows, like, every military officer and senior leader knows he's a joke and he's a performance artist. So they all do not take him seriously."
Rep. Jason Crow (D-CO), a former Army Ranger who served with the 82nd Airborne in Iraq and the elite 75th Ranger Regiment in Afghanistan Serve America, piled on, noting the Armed Services Committee got zero heads-up.
"So it's very disturbing. We're going to obviously be pressing to get information about why this is happening and what is the basis for these firings," Crow told Raw Story.
Just three weeks before Phelan's ouster, Hegseth fired Army Chief of Staff Gen. Randy George mid-war. Phelan himself, a billionaire and major Trump campaign donor, had clashed repeatedly with Hegseth before Wednesday's ax fell after 13 tumultuous months at the Pentagon.
Hegseth sent Phelan a message telling him to resign or be fired, but Phelan didn't believe Trump was aware and began phoning White House officials asking whether the president even knew.
Ryan put it more colorfully.
"So Hegseth calls Phelan, tells him to resign or be fired. Phelan doesn't believe Hegseth, so he goes — literally, physically himself — goes to the White House to say, basically, like 'mommy and Daddy, is this true?' And Trump's like, 'yeah, no it's true.'"
Ryan concluded that with half a trillion in new defense spending demanded and the Pentagon failing audits, the ones paying the price are "our troops in theater — and literally every American at the gas pump."
"Wah, wah, wah," Ocasio-Cortez told Raw Story on Wednesday, mimicking a whining baby and laughing in response to a question from reporter Matt Laslo. "Democrats have attempted and asked Republicans for 10 years to ban partisan gerrymandering, and for 10 years, Republicans have said, 'no.'"
Laslo was asking Ocasio-Cortez to respond to complaints from the GOP that it would be unconstitutional for Democrats to have a 10-1 congressional majority in Virginia, which the gerrymandering ballot measure would make possible. A Virginia circuit court judge blocked the vote-approved redistricting on Wednesday, however.
Still, Ocasio-Cortez saw no problem with Democrats supporting gerrymandering after years of opposing it when done on the Republican side. For AOC, the GOP "wanted to start this," and the Democrats are just fighting back.
"What they're mad at is they're accustomed to a Democrat Party that rolls over, doesn't fight and takes everything sitting down," Ocasio-Cortez said. "What they're mad at right now is that we are here in a new day."
She mentioned Republican gerrymandering in North Carolina and Texas, where Democrats lost seats. Trump's call for Texas Republicans to gerrymander arguably kicked off what's now seen as a redistricting arms race.
"We have been asking the Democratic Party to stand up and fight, and now they did," AOC continued. "Now the Republican Party doesn't like the fact that they are fighting against someone who actually will stand up for the American people."
Ocasio-Cortez said she would "welcome" working with the Republicans to pass a ban on partisan gerrymandering.
"We have the bill right here to end this all today," she said, smiling. "But they don't want to because they like pursuing and continuing to enact an unfair electoral landscape."
After weathering years of challenges, from online competition to the COVID pandemic, President Donald Trump’s tariffs became “the last reason” why Jennifer Bergman decided to close down the New York City toy store her mother opened in 1981.
As small businesses currently navigate a complex tariff refund process and still face rising costs, Bergman, 59, is one of five business owners speaking out in a new $200,000 YouTube ad campaign launched Wednesday by Small Businesses Against Tariffs, a project from the Defending Democracy Together Institute, an advocacy group formed by anti-Trump conservatives.
“I'm not afraid of [Trump]. I'm not afraid of his goons, and if they want to throw us all into jail because we're saying things against them, that's fine by me,” Bergman told Raw Story.
“My parents would be really proud of me, and they'd bail me out if they were still around. Actually, they'd be right there with me in jail.”
Jennifer Bergman (provided photo)
Bergman closed her store, West Side Kids, in July after she realized she wasn’t going to be able to pay her rent or make payroll.
”I’d never had that before, ever, ever,” she said.
Over the years, Bergman’s staff shrunk from 12 employees to four. Those four people lost their jobs when the store closed and struggled to find new ones, with one even becoming unhoused, Bergman said.
When Trump added a 145 percent tariff on China last year, Bergman said a $10 toy she’d typically sell for $20 would need to be marked up to $45 to cover the extra costs since she couldn't “afford to eat any of it.”
The price of a scooter she’d typically sell for $150 shot up to $180 when her supplier called to say they needed to reroute shipping containers to Canada and raise prices after Trump announced tariffs last May.
“Prices were going up, and you only have a finite amount of money to spend,” Bergman said.
“The product was getting so much more expensive that I was spending more money for less.”
Bergman also blamed Trump’s tariffs for preventing her from closing on a deal to sell her store as she was in conversation with two potential buyers in early 2025.
“When the tariffs hit, they were both like, ‘We can't do this right now … we just need to deal with this,’ and so I lost the opportunity to sell my store, too.” Bergman said.
‘Never in my wildest dreams’
After deciding to expand to a second location in 2024, Gabe Hagen, co-founder and owner of Brick Road Coffee in Arizona, said starting construction in early 2025 was “rough” timing due to tariffs.
“Once we learned the results of the election and what the new administration was planning on doing with tariffs, we had to really think on our feet,” Hagen told Raw Story.
“We had to kind of re-pivot what we were doing, so we cut back a lot up front.”
Hagen, who is also featured in the Small Businesses Against Tariffs campaign, said the business decided to change equipment purchases and pre-purchased a year’s worth of cups and disposables to “weather the impacts of tariffs.”
Hagen’s projections for stocking the second location, which is both a roastery and a coffee shop, ended up being about a third of what he actually spent.
“The strain of that on a new small business — especially one that's just expanded — we're already so tight on our cash, it's just rough,” Hagen said.
At the end of 2024, raw coffee beans cost Hagen about $4 a pound. At one point, prices spiked to just under $7 a pound, Hagen said. Now prices for speciality coffee are still $5 to $6 per pound, he said.
When Hagen started, roasted coffee cost around $10 per pound. Now prices range between $12 to $14 on the wholesale side, he said.
“Never in my wildest dreams did I think we'd be paying 50 percent tariffs on a Brazil coffee, which is our number one coffee that we use,” Hagen said.
The Trump administration backed down its tariffs on coffee at the end of last year, but small businesses like Hagen's are still feeling the effects.
“Every new business, we expect some bleed, but this bleed is taking a lot longer than we expected,” he said.
Hagen took out another working capital loan and put his house up for collateral, he said.
Gabe Hagen at Brick Road Coffee's second location and roaster, Prism Coffee Lab (Photo provided by Brick Road Coffee)
“We don't really have many more levers left on a small business side, so that's why tariffs were so important for me to speak out against because I can't just grow my coffee,” Hagen said.
The unpredictability of Trump’s tariffs make it hard to know “when we'll feel relief," Hagen said.
“I don’t know if it'll change back, so I think the hardest part for me is I don't know how to do a 12 month forecast," he said.
From a trucking company to a DIY flower shop and an eco-friendly dinnerware company, small businesses have struggled to stay afloat due to tariffs, Raw Story reported.
"We felt it was important to run this campaign in light of spiking prices and confusion around the tariff refund policy,” a Small Businesses Against Tariffs spokesperson said.
“Our hope is that it will help to educate Americans about who truly pays the costs of tariffs and trade wars: American small businesses and consumers. The goal here is to keep engaging those people who show an active interest in the tariff issue, to emphasize who ends up paying the costs of tariffs and to de-bunk widespread lies.”
MORRISVILLE, N.C. — When the Department of Homeland Security surged federal agents into North Carolina last November, they pledged to “target criminal aliens” and go after “the worst of the worst — including murderers, rapists, and pedophiles.”
But in one case reviewed by Raw Story, federal immigration authorities received a tip about a 24-year-old Guatemalan national suspected of involvement in the kidnapping and rape of a 16-year-old girl — and they repeatedly missed the opportunity to detain him, despite him being in police custody.
Federal immigration authorities appear to have learned about Maynor Godinez-Mendez when a detective with the Fuquay-Varina Police Department contacted the FBI’s Human Trafficking Division. When Godinez-Mendez was interviewed following his arrest on suspicion of contributing to the delinquency of a minor, a federal Homeland Security Investigations agent was present and translated.
Even after Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, received a notification from a detention officer that he was in a local jail, they still failed to take Godinez-Mendez into custody, and he was released on his own recognizance four hours later.
The day after Godinez-Mendez’s release from jail, the Department of Homeland Security announced “Operation Charlotte’s Web.” Border Patrol “stormed” North Carolina’s largest city “in unmarked SUVs and masks, sweeping up hundreds of people,” as described in the Charlotte Observer. In the midst of the five-day blitz, the operation briefly expanded into the booming area about 150 miles to the northeast surrounding the state capitol of Raleigh, which includes Fuquay-Varina.
Chafed by the agency’s fumbled response involving Godinez-Mendez, an ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations supervisor tasked a team with apprehending the suspect. But based on faulty intelligence, ICE staked out the wrong house.
During an arrest operation on Dec. 2, 2025, agents in unmarked SUVs converged on a different man and blocked him at the entrance of a shopping center in Morrisville. When the man tried to back up and drive away, an agent rammed his car through a hedgerow, spun the vehicle around, and pushed it into a parked car.
The driver was not Godinez-Mendez, but rather another Guatemalan. His name was Milton Roblero.
When the agents took Roblero into custody, they determined that he had an outstanding order for deportation. Federal prosecutors charged him with forcibly assaulting a federal officer with a deadly weapon and willfully damaging government property.
Roblero’s lawyer filed a motion to dismiss, while questioning whether the agent who rammed his vehicle “violated ICE’s own policy and regulations restricting offensive driving techniques.” The shopping center includes a daycare, and the motion contends that ICE policy prohibits using offensive driving techniques “in school zones where children are present or going to or from school or where the danger to the public outweighs the enforcement benefit.”
Surveillance video shows ICE ramming Milton Roblero's vehicle during his arrest in Morrisville, N.C. on Dec. 2, 2025. (federal courts) roar-assets-auto.rbl.ms
The government did not directly address the question of whether ICE violated its policies, only saying in a court filing that the agents’ use of a vehicle for an administrative arrest was “appropriate.” But a filing in federal court on Monday indicates the government agreed to plead down the charges to a misdemeanor for impeding federal immigration officers’ traffic interdiction efforts. The agreement notes that Roblero will be removed to Guatemala following resolution of federal charges.
Andreina Malki, the defense manager for the immigrant advocacy group Siembra NC, told Raw Story Roblero’s arrest fits a pattern of unsafe activity by ICE.
“They used unmarked vehicles that don’t have any indication that they might be ICE,” she said. “If you’re a person driving, and unmarked cars try to block you in, you would probably try to leave. The fact that he got rammed and then got a charge for using his vehicle as a weapon — the story doesn’t add up. It’s not clear to the people being stopped who’s stopping them.”
Lindsay Williams, an ICE spokesperson, told Raw Story he couldn’t speak to the specifics of Roblero’s arrest.
A missing person case leads to a call to the FBI’s Human Trafficking Division
The circumstances that led to Roblero’s arrest began three weeks earlier with a missing person case that developed into a kidnapping and rape investigation.
Police in Fuquay-Varina, a town on the southwestern fringe of Raleigh, received a frantic phone call from a woman who reported that her 16-year-old daughter was missing (Raw Story is withholding the girl’s name because she is a juvenile). According to the police investigative report obtained through federal court filings, the daughter had texted: “Mommy and Daddy, I’m sorry for doing this to you, and well, I’m not coming home. I love you all very much.” The mother’s calls went straight to voicemail.
After interviewing the girl’s younger cousins, the police were able to get the name of a former boyfriend, then a residential address, and ultimately a description of a vehicle registered to the address. Using a law enforcement database, the police determined that the vehicle, a 2012 Hyundai Accent, had been repeatedly observed at an apartment complex in Cary, a nearby city.
Two Fuquay-Varina police officers went to the apartment complex the day after the 16-year-old girl had disappeared. As the officers were speaking with two females, the 16-year-old girl walked out of the apartment. She told the officers that the owner of the Hyundai was “Maynor,” and that he was in the car with another man named “William” when they picked her up.
Initially, the 16-year-old girl told the police that she had run away because of problems at home, and that nothing happened to her at the apartment. She said she had only watched TV and slept.
But on Nov. 13, two days after the 16-year-old girl was returned to her family, she told Cpl. Cassaundra Sullivan that William Godinez-Ramirez had called her and told her to go to an Indian grocery store. When she got into the car, according to Sullivan’s notes, Godinez-Ramirez told the 16-year-old girl to throw her phone out the window. She refused, and Godinez-Ramirez reportedly got out of the car, opened her door, grabbed the phone and threw it away. The girl told the officer that another man, Maynor Godinez-Mendez, and his wife were also in the car. They drove to a car wash, switched cars, and drove on to the apartment in Cary.
Summarizing what Sullivan learned from her interview, Detective Salvatore Fundaro wrote that the 16-year-old girl “reported that Godinez-Ramirez raped her” and “also reported that Godinez-Ramirez told her that he was going to kill her family if she didn’t leave with him.”
Fundaro consulted with the Wake County District Attorney’s Office, and he said he was advised to keep investigating before charging with rape and kidnapping, but he swore out warrants for contributing to the delinquency of a minor for both Godinez-Ramirez and Godinez-Mendez.
The federal authorities appear to have learned about the investigation of the two men on Nov. 12. That day, Fundaro wrote, he contacted the FBI’s Human Trafficking Division for assistance with the case. What raised his suspicions was that the 16-year-old girl had told her parents that she was going to a job, but her employer told the detective she hadn’t shown up for work for the past three months.
On the same day, a federal immigration officer signed a Department of Homeland Security administrative arrest warrant for Godinez-Mendez.
Accompanied by the Homeland Security Investigations agent, Fundaro interviewed Godinez-Mendez at the Morrisville Police Department. Godinez-Mendez “could not offer a logical reason as to why they switched vehicles,” Fundaro wrote. The detective asked if the reason was “because they knew they had committed a crime and wanted to avoid apprehension,” but Godinez-Mendez denied that.
Susan Weis, a spokesperson for the town of Fuquay-Varina said she was unable to comment because the case remains under investigation. The town also cannot “comment on another agency’s procedures,” she said.
Godinez-Mendez wound up spending six hours in the Wake County Detention Center, but ICE did not respond to a detainer inquiry from the jail or take the opportunity to place him in custody.
“Immigration warrants take a back seat to criminal charges,” Williams, the ICE spokesman, told Raw Story. “If he was arrested for something serious, we would let that process play out.”
Williams’ statement appears to be at odds with the bellicose language in the DHS press release, issued the day after Godinez-Mendez’s release, that takes aim at “criminal aliens” and “sanctuary politicians.”
“Americans should be able to live without fear of violent criminal illegal aliens hurting them, their families, or their neighbors,” then-Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said. “We are surging law enforcement to Charlotte to ensure Americans are safe and public safety threats are removed. There have been too many victims of criminal illegal aliens. President Trump and [former] Secretary [Kristi] Noem will step up to protect Americans when sanctuary politicians won’t.”
Only slightly more than half the people detained by federal immigration agents during “Operation Charlotte’s Web” had a criminal record, according to data recently released by the Deportation Data Project.
Asked to reconcile the seeming contradiction between the administration’s rhetoric about targeting the most serious criminals and the imperative to let charges play out in state courts, Williams said: “We’re going to deport him, whether it’s now or seven years from now. We ideally want folks to be held accountable for their crimes. The deportation order doesn’t expire. The system will take effect.”
‘I want to get hands on him’
The morning of Godinez-Mendez’s release from the Wake County Detention Center, an immigration agent identified in emails obtained by Raw Story by the initials “CD” forwarded the detainer inquiry to an ICE supervisor.
“Here is the lead you forwarded to us but not in custody,” the agent wrote.
The supervisor, identified only by the initials “SC,” forwarded the message to another agent.
“Biometrics did not hit as expected,” the supervisor wrote. “I wish we had a heads up. Magistrate bonded him out last night. He was there for 6 hours. They only charged him with contributing to the delinquency of a minor.
“I want to get hands on him,” the message continued. “What can you provide to assist? His booking record has an address in Morrisville. Work location? Vehicle info?”
An email shows an ICE supervisor expressing disappointment that they did not take Maynor Godinez-Mendez into custody before he was released from the Wake County Detention Center on Nov. 14, 2025.Federal courts
On Nov 29, an ICE agent conducted surveillance on the house in Morrisville, observing through binoculars from a distance of 200 yards away. The agent watched an individual identified as “Target 1” leave the house and drive away in a red Honda Civic, and also leave the house and get into a white truck. It’s unclear who the agent actually saw.
After the ICE agent witnessed a man leave the house and drive away in a red Honda Civic on Dec. 2, he radioed the arrest team — eight agents, including three on loan from Homeland Security Investigations. Given Godinez-Mendez’s “pattern of life,” the agents anticipated that he would drive to the nearby shopping center.
But the man they arrested was not Godinez-Mendez.
ICE ageents rammed Milton Roblero's red Honda through a hedgerow and spun it around before arresting him in Morrisville, N.C. on Dec. 2, 2025.Federal courts
None of the federal court documents or local police investigative reports reviewed by Raw Story implicate Milton Roblero, the man arrested by ICE on Dec. 2, in the kidnapping and rape investigation
About three weeks later, the real suspect was arrested on state criminal charges of felony conspiracy and felonious restraint. On the same day he was booked, for the second time, in the Wake County Detention Center, a magistrate issued a 48-hour hold to allow ICE to take him into custody.
ICE did not respond. On Dec. 28, he was released on a $25,000 bond.
Following his indictment in February, Godinez-Mendez was finally deported by Homeland Security Investigations, Melanie Shekita, a Wake County prosecutor, told Raw Story.
When federal agents unexpectedly detained a Chicago teen and his mother last month, outraged community members rallied to support them while they were separated, traversed across the country and subjected to alleged harsh treatment while in detention, Raw Story first reported.
Community advocates called the arrest of Ricardo Hernandez-Navarrete, 18, and his mother, Martha Liliana Navarrete-Capazan, 46, at a check-in with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) a “trap” and reached out to their congresswoman, Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-IL) for help.
“Ricardo, a now 18-year-old high school senior, and his mother Martha came to this country three years ago seeking a better life. They represent what all Americans should strive for, and the way the Trump administration has treated them is horrific, unacceptable and un-American,” she said.
“Donald Trump and this gang of thugs think that cruelty and bigotry make America strong. They are mistaken. Immigrants are and always have been what makes our country great. My office is in communication with the family’s attorney, and we will do everything possible to bring them home and secure justice for them.”
Ricardo Hernandez-Navarrete and his mother\u00a0Martha Liliana Navarrete-Capaza (Photo provided by Steven P.,Hernandez-Navarrete's brother)
One of the family’s lawyers, Kelli Fennell, said Hernandez-Navarrete and Navarrete-Capazan had accepted pending asylum applications as they faced fear of harm or persecution in their home country of Colombia. Neither the mother nor son has a criminal record, she said.
Raw Story’s investigation also prompted a response from the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Illinois.
“We’ve seen many asylum-seekers like them get detained for no reason, after being in the United States lawfully for many years,” said Samuel B. Cole, senior supervising attorney and chief immigration litigation counsel at the ACLU of Illinois.
“To make matters worse, the facilities where ICE is detaining them frequently do not comply with ICE’s own standards or even pass minimal constitutional muster.”
When Hernandez-Navarette spoke with Raw Story via a phone interview from the Kenton County Detention Center in Kentucky on Tuesday, he said he had been searched without clothes, required to sleep on the floor without blankets and unable to use the restroom due to too many people in one room.
The 18-year-old said he spent two days in solitary confinement and was unable to shower during that time.
His advocates said he’d been transferred at least eight times over the course of the month, traveling to Kansas, Oklahoma, Ohio, Louisiana, Indiana and Kentucky after leaving the Broadview ICE facility outside of Chicago.
In response to a series of questions from Raw Story, a spokesperson for ICE said U.S. Border Patrol agents apprehended the mother and son, "both illegal aliens from Colombia, for illegally entering the United States in 2022,"
“ICE Chicago took custody of Hernandez-Navarrete and Navarrete-Capazan [in] March 2026 for being unlawfully present in the United States. They remain in ICE custody pending further proceedings and will receive full due process," the spokesperson said.
ICE is encouraging immigrants to use the CBP Home App, "offering illegal aliens $2,600 and a free flight to self-deport now," the spokesperson said.
“Being in detention is a choice," the spokesperson said.
“We encourage every person here illegally to take advantage of this offer and reserve the chance to come back to the U.S. the right legal way to live the American dream. If not, you will be arrested and deported without a chance to return.”
After Donald Trump faced swift backlash for posting an AI depiction of himself as a Jesus-like figure aglow against a patriotic sky as he heals a sick man, the original source of the image came to light while the president explained away the now-deleted post as a misinterpretation of himself as a doctor.
Nick Adams, the alpha-male MAGA influencer recently appointed as Trump’s special presidential envoy for American tourism, exceptionalism and values, originally shared the since-deleted image on X back in February with a message about Trump “healing this nation.”
The controversial image that angered conservatives and liberals alike, and was deemed "blasphemous," is just one of many exaggerated AI images and posts about Trump — with sexist, manosphere and anti-“woke” posts scattered in between — from Adams, who for years prompted Reddit threads wondering if his accounts were actually satire or just another example of MAGA trolling.
For instance, there’s his image of Trump teaching Ronald McDonald how to make hamburgers.
Trump stylized as Mr. Clean, renamed “Mr. Tariff.”
“He makes no bones about the fact that he's a MAGA supporter, and he is hyper-masculine, but yes, the way he sometimes uses his account, can put it in the gray zone,” said Paromita Pain, an associate professor of global media at the University of Nevada, Reno, after being asked if Adams is actually laughing at MAGA.
“I can see why there is confusion.”
Adams is “100 percent” a troll, and his posts are “engagement bait,” intentionally up for interpretation to elicit a reaction — that’s the point — said Jamie Cohen, an associate professor at Queens College, CUNY, who specializes in memes and digital culture.
“Because we cannot be Nick Adams, we can't know fully whether or not he's playing an earnest role or a completely satirical role because when it comes to engagement [bait], the goal is always engagement, so it could be literally both,” said
Adams did not respond to Raw Story’s request for comment.
‘Over-the-top’
Adams’ posts may be “better understood as extreme performance” but are not necessarily satirical, “given that he is so unambiguous in the politics that he supports,” Pain said.
“His online style relies heavily on exaggeration,” she said.
“There is often rather over-the-top praise of Trump, which can sometimes make his content appear ironic or like parody at first glance. Now what we as an audience must be aware of is that this is not parody. This is not satire. Nick Adams is very clear about his politics.“
The Trump-as-Jesus image “mimics the absurdity typical of satire, but it also functions as pretty important symbolic political messaging,” Pain said.
Adams’s X account with more than 635,000 followers and a prolific 55,600 posts, “seems like a fan page,” Cohen said.
“But, when it's reposted by the president, it takes on a whole additional meaning.”
‘Sycophantic’
The audience might mistake Adams’ posts “as satire because it seems so unbelievable,” but “whether you think it's satire or you do not, it is effective media,” Cohen said.
“Nick Adams is part of a cadre of Trump-supporting engagement baiters, who basically are people that are not just sycophantic but are very good at riding Trump's coattails to their own success,” Cohen said.
Trump nominated Adams to serve as ambassador to Malaysia last summer, but Adams faced backlash for his “divisive rhetoric" through alpha-male and Islamophobic posts. Trump dropped the nomination before appointing him as senior adviser and special envoy.
Adams calls himself “President Trump’s favorite author” on his website after Trump called him "one of his favorite authors and also one of my favorite speakers” in the foreword to his book, “Alpha Kings.” Some of the other books Adams authored include “From Mar-a-Lago to Mars: President Trump's Great American Comeback” and "Green Card Warrior: My Quest for Legal Immigration in an Illegals' System," which Trump promoted.
The Trump administration’s backing of an internet provocateur like Adams and posting the “blasphemous” AI image is concerning, Cohen said.
“The Internet is everywhere at once, so we should take this very seriously,” he said.
WASHINGTON — Viktor Orbán’s stunning defeat after 16 years leading Hungary with an iron fist has elicited cheers in some corners of the nation’s capital this week, even as many Republicans would rather discuss anything but the strongman President Donald Trump and the MAGA movement counted as their own for the past decade.
“I was glad to see the people of Hungary stand up and send them packing,” Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-GA) told Raw Story. “And we hope to do the same thing for the Trump administration's congressional enablers in 2026.”
The blow to what has been the steady march of the global far-right has Warnock and other political watchers praying the tides are finally turning back in democracy’s favor.
“Many of the repressive, authoritarian movements that we saw in the 20th Century come back like the mutant strain of an ugly virus in the 21st Century,” Warnock said. “So I’m happy to see the people of Hungary stand up in the way that they did.”
While the political left is cheering, many on the American right are now distancing themselves from, arguably, the Trump White House’s favorite authoritarian abroad.
“Sad”
After traveling to Hungary and campaigning with Orbán during the final days of the election, Vice President JD Vance told reporters he was “sad” after the wannabe dictator lost to Péter Magyar and his Tisza Party.
But in some corners of Capitol Hill, Republican leaders don’t even want to speak Orbán’s name.
“Were you following Viktor Orbán’s race at all?” Raw Story asked Sen. James Risch (R-ID), the Republican chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
“No,” Risch told Raw Story.
“Were you surprised to see Vice President Vance go over there?” Raw Story inquired.
“No,” Risch replied.
“Is it bad for Trump's brand that he lost?” Raw Story pressed.
“I've gone as far as I want to go in this interview,” Risch said.
Risch was far from alone.
“Was the [Hungarian election] on your radar?” Raw Story asked Sen. Roger Marshall (R-KS).
“Oh boy,” Marshall said as the doors on a senators-only elevator pulled shut on him and Raw Story. “You know, I read on it.”
“Because JD Vance went over there…?” Raw Story pressed.
“Yeah, I know,” Marshall said before deflecting. “I'm locked in on things I can impact and things I can do.”
Orbán left a permanent impression on some of the last remaining moderates in Washington, including Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME), when the Hungarian strongman snubbed the senior U.S. senator and other American policymakers on a taxpayer-funded CODEL — or official Congressional Delegation fact-finding trip.
“Was it on my radar? Yes,” Collins told Raw Story. “Because, I guess it was last year or the year before, a CODEL on which I was a participant, went to Hungary, and he refused to meet with us.”
“Oh, really?” Raw Story replied. “I bet that stings to this day.”
“But much more important than that, he was an autocratic anti-democratic authoritarian,” Collins, who sits on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said. “I’m delighted that he was defeated.”
“Are you disappointed that Vance went over there and campaigned for him?” Raw Story pressed.
“I was surprised,” Collins, who also chairs the powerful Senate Appropriations — or spending — Committee, told Raw Story as her aide hustled her away.
On the other side of the aisle, Democrats were more disgusted than surprised to see the vice president of the United States campaign abroad.
“It's ridiculous that any sitting vice president is actively engaged in the election of any country,” Warnock said. “But in this case, the sitting vice president of the United States, literally, campaigning for Viktor Orbán, calling him ‘Europe's only statesman’ — he's a strongman. He's an authoritarian.”
Still, other Democrats can’t help but smirk at Vance’s faux pas on the international stage.
“It seems to have backfired,” Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) told Raw Story. “So, you know, maybe it'll have some bearing on whether Republican candidates here want him campaigning.”
“Cozying up to Putin is not a winning political strategy”
While Democrats are focused on winning November’s midterm elections, many say they’re encouraged that the global march of the alt-right was dealt a major blow.
“It was an amazing outcome,” Murphy said. “I mean, it shows that no matter how badly broken a democracy seems, the people, you know, are still in charge.”
Murphy says there may be another takeaway that officials in the Trump White House should note.
“It shows cozying up to Putin is not a winning political strategy in Europe or the United States,” Murphy told Raw Story.
WASHINGTON — Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-FL) said Thursday she has been pushing Republican leaders to hold public hearings with Jeffrey Epstein survivors, throwing her support behind first lady Melania Trump's call for greater accountability in the case.
"I actually have been encouraging that," Luna told reporters outside the Capitol. "A lot of people are scared about coming forward and naming people — and there's also this aspect of settlements potentially being reached. If there's a settlement, people are then sometimes asked to sign NDAs and so they don't talk."
Luna didn't stop there, leveling sharp criticism at the Department of Justice over plea deals granted to Epstein associates.
"The Department of Justice gave plea deals to people that they knew were trafficking people," she emphasized. "There is no justice for the victims that were basically seeing these people get off. And Ghislaine Maxwell should not be the only one sitting in prison."
Luna's remarks echoed longstanding criticism of a 2008 non-prosecution agreement negotiated by then-U.S. Attorney Alex Acosta in Florida, which gave Epstein and his co-conspirators federal immunity in exchange for a state plea deal. The agreement was widely criticized as sweetheart treatment that shielded potential co-conspirators. Acosta later resigned as Trump's Labor Secretary in 2019 when the deal came back under scrutiny.
Luna also appeared to acknowledge that her push to expel Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA) from Congress was part of a broader strategy.
"I knew that when I brought the expulsion of Swalwell that it would set up a chain reaction event," she said. "And I frankly don't care."
Luna had introduced a resolution to expel Swalwell after a former staffer accused him of sexual assault and three other women alleged various kinds of sexual misconduct. Swalwell and Rep. Tony Gonzales (R-TX) both resigned from Congress this week, moments before their colleagues were prepared to set in motion their swift removal.
Luna called on members of both parties to follow through on accountability promises, adding: "Sometimes that means calling out your own party."
WASHINGTON — The Republican chairman of the committee grilling Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Thursday suggested Democrats weren't doing their jobs, while the panel's top Democrat delivered a one-word verdict on Kennedy's performance: "baloney."
"I really don't think that Democrats are asking strong questions," House Ways and Means Committee chair Jason Smith told Raw Story. "If I was in the minority, I think I'd be asking a different style. So it's kind of shocking."
Rep. Richard Neal (D-MA), the committee's ranking Democrat, had a one-word response when asked about Kennedy's claim that he had removed politics from the Department of Health and Human Services.
"That's baloney!" Neal declared.
Neal also pushed back on any suggestion that the Kennedy family's legacy on public health could be claimed by the Trump administration.
"We built a mecca, as you heard me say, in Massachusetts with his family — Republicans and Democrats. It's entirely bipartisan on our side and we're not giving it up," Neal said.
The hearing was Kennedy's first before the House Ways and Means Committee this year, as he sought to defend a proposed 12.5% cut to the HHS budget — nearly $16 billion — while dodging pointed Democratic criticism over measles outbreaks and his administration's rollback of vaccine recommendations.
Democrats pressed Kennedy hard on a measles-related child death in Texas last year, getting him to acknowledge the vaccine could have potentially saved the child's life. Republicans, meanwhile, largely praised Kennedy's tenure, with one member calling his work a "breath of fresh air."
"I want the Fourth Amendment to not be for sale," Boebert told reporters on Thursday. "The federal government should not be able to purchase American citizens' data from private companies. This is a complete violation — it's a workaround from any kind of warrants and looking into Americans' lives."
Boebert's comments come as the House debates reauthorizing Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which expires April 20 unless extended. The provision allows intelligence agencies to collect communications of foreign targets without a traditional warrant, but critics say it has been used to sweep up Americans' data, too.
The White House and House Speaker Mike Johnson have pushed for a clean 18-month extension with no reforms attached. The House Rules Committee approved a closed rule blocking a warrant amendment from even coming to a floor vote.
A key sticking point for Boebert and other reform-minded lawmakers is the so-called "data broker loophole," the ability of federal agencies to purchase Americans' location records and internet metadata from commercial data brokers, data that is normally protected under the Fourth Amendment.
More than 50 House Democrats joined the push to include Fourth Amendment protections in the reauthorization. The unusual left-right coalition puts Boebert in rare alignment with progressive lawmakers, including Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), who told reporters on Thursday FISA has been a "constitutional crisis since its drafting."
"We've had a huge amount of problems with warrantless surveillance wiretapping against American civilians," she said.
She accused Republicans of using national security as an "excuse to invade and violate the civil rights of everyday Americans."
President Donald Trump on Wednesday reiterated that he had reversed his stance on the surveillance tool and bill he long complained contributed to the "witch hunt" of him.
WASHINGTON — Congress erupted in skepticism, curiosity and outright disbelief on Wednesday as President Donald Trumppromised to release classified UFO files and the Pentagon blew past its April 14 deadline to respond to lawmakers' demands for disclosure.
The reactions ranged from cautious optimism to flat-out distrust and mockery, with Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) admitting he hadn't heard Trump planned to open up the government's UFO files.
Even so, Booker delivered a sharp verdict.
"I don't trust him at all," Booker told Raw Story. "And if you need an example of why I don't trust him, look at the Epstein file promises."
Rep. Tim Burchett (R-TN), co-chair of the House UAP Caucus, who has insinuated in recent days he's seen evidence of aliens, was equally blunt, but aimed his fire at the Pentagon rather than Trump.
"That's par for the course, dude. They're just gonna delay, delay, delay until they can get everything covered up," Burchett told Raw Story.
He said any bombshell release will have to "come from the top."
"I don't trust them as far as I can throw that dadgum dome off the Capitol," he said of the Pentagon's All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office, known as AARO. The agency is tasked with leading the U.S. government's efforts to address Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena, or UAP.
Rep. Jared Moskowitz (D-FL) noted that some of his colleagues have been talking to the White House and feel "encouraged that we might see some sort of release coming out."
"As you know, Representative Luna sent a letter to the Pentagon, and now the Pentagon says they lost the letter," he said, cracking a joke that that "makes sense" given the Department of Defense is missing trillions of dollars in its audits.
"It's time. I think it's time. I think the president needs to release it," he said, saying Americans know the U.S. government is withholding information from them on UAPs.
Moskowitz raised an alarming concern buried beneath the disclosure debate — noting that roughly 10 scientists connected to the Los Alamos nuclear program are unaccounted for or dead.
"I think the Pentagon needs to come clean," Moskowitz told Raw Story, calling for Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-FL) to hold a hearing on the disappearances.
Sen. Mike Rounds (R-SD), who co-authored the UAP Disclosure Act with Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY), told Raw Story he "hadn't heard a word" from the White House about the promised release and couldn't confirm whether he'd seen 46 classified UAP videos that the caucus is pushing to make public.
"I've never counted," he said, adding: "I suspect that the Air Force might very well have been using the UFO interest to hide a number of national security products that were being tested."
When asked about disgraced former Rep. Matt Gaetz's (R-FL) comments he'd been told of an alien hybrid breeding program, Rounds was dumbfounded.
"A what?!" he exclaimed with a laugh. "That's a new one on me. I don't think they're part of Congress anymore. Maybe there's a reason for that."
House Intelligence ranking member Rep. Jim Himes (D-CT) was characteristically dry, mocking claims that the U.S. could be hiding the existence of aliens.
"Discovered the aliens? Turns out they're crypto bros, and we've got them in formaldehyde at Area, not 51, Area 52," he quipped.
Himes expressed deep skepticism that the public will receive confirmation of alien existence anytime soon.
"I would love the public to see what I've seen," he deadpanned.
Sen. Andy Kim (D-NJ) noted he still hasn't gotten a straight answer about the mysterious drone incursions over New Jersey in 2024 — let alone classified UFO files.
"I personally have not gotten any satisfying response," he said.
Kim told Raw Story he received conflicting explanations from the Biden administration, which told him the incursions were "isolated" before they grew much larger. Then Trump said the drones were "something real" — before his administration reversed course and said they weren't. One briefing suggested a private company was responsible for some of the sightings, but Kim said he found even that explanation unsatisfying.
"I've never gotten a clear answer at all," Kim said. "Which — we're still pushing on it."
WASHINGTON — Catholic Democratic senators rallied behind Pope Leo XIV after President Donald Trump called the first American-born pontiff "weak on crime," blasting the president's broadside as a step too far — even by Trump's standards.
Sen. Peter Welch (D-VT) summed up the sentiment of his colleagues with characteristic simplicity.
"I'm with Team Pope," Welch told Raw Story on Wednesday. "What can you say?"
Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA) took a more pointed approach, noting the logical absurdity of Trump's attack.
"The Pope does not have a law enforcement agency under its control," Markey said. "The Pope only stands for justice and fairness to make sure that innocent people like Jesus Christ is not illegally prosecuted. And the same thing is true now for the illegal prosecution of immigrants in the United States."
Rep. Stephen Lynch (D-MA), a lifelong Catholic, was appalled by the president's comments.
"That's just sad. That's disgraceful," Lynch said. "It's crazy."
Trump's attack on Leo came after the pontiff criticized the administration's Iran war, calling the escalation of violence "unacceptable" and warning against the "delusion of omnipotence." Trump responded on Truth Social, calling Leo "weak on crime" and "terrible on foreign policy."
The feud marked an extraordinary moment in American political history.
Pope Leo, born Robert Prevost in Chicago, last year became the first American-born pope. Trump's attacks on him proved uniquely jarring for the roughly 20 percent of Americans who identify as Catholic, a voting bloc Trump carried by double digits in 2024.
Trump has also separately posted and deleted an AI-generated image depicting himself as Jesus Christ, drawing condemnation from Catholic bishops, evangelical leaders, and even some of his most loyal MAGA supporters.
Jennifer Bergman (provided photo)
Gabe Hagen at Brick Road Coffee's second location and roaster, Prism Coffee Lab (Photo provided by Brick Road Coffee)
An email shows an ICE supervisor expressing disappointment that they did not take Maynor Godinez-Mendez into custody before he was released from the Wake County Detention Center on Nov. 14, 2025.Federal courts
ICE ageents rammed Milton Roblero's red Honda through a hedgerow and spun it around before arresting him in Morrisville, N.C. on Dec. 2, 2025.Federal courts
Ricardo Hernandez-Navarrete and his mother\u00a0Martha Liliana Navarrete-Capaza (Photo provided by Steven P.,Hernandez-Navarrete's brother)