WASHINGTON — A rebel House Republican openly questioned top Trump administration officials on Thursday about their handling of the Jeffrey Epstein files after House Democrats released dozens of new photos from Epstein's estate, amid anticipation for a Justice Department file dump on Friday.
These images included disturbing quotes from Vladimir Nabokov's "Lolita" written on a woman's body, alongside other unclear-context photos of Epstein and redacted women. The novel contains the theme of an adult man's obsession with a 12-year-old girl, mirroring allegations against Epstein.
Reps. Thomas Massie (R-KY) and Robert Garcia spoke to reporters on Thursday about the case.
"I think they will be [released]. We'll see," he said of the files expected to be released by the Justice Department on Friday. "It'll be interesting if they're not."
Fifteen days after Friday's release, the Justice Department must fork over a report to lawmakers with a list of the politicians and government officials in the files.
When asked if he thought there would be a cover-up, Massie noted that the officials appointed to review the Epstein files — namely, FBI Director Kash Patel and Attorney General Pam Bondi — are not implicated in them. As such, he said there's no reason for them to be reluctant about releasing them.
"Why would they be reluctant?" he asked.
Massie warned that this is a law that "lasts forever."
"So the next attorney general will prosecute this attorney general or this FBI director if they do become involved in a cover-up by not being in compliance with this law," he said.
Massie also accused House Speaker Mike Johnson of lying about the law.
"Three federal judges cite the Transparency Act, but, more importantly, they cite that they're going to redact the victims' names, which was a lie that was told about this bill by the Speaker himself. He said that victims would be exposed by this bill… but all three judges said no, there are sufficient protections," said Massie.
When asked if Mike Johnson would remain in power long term, Massie said Johnson would remain in place as long as President Donald Trump wants him there.
"As long as he's on his good side, he's still the Speaker," said Massie.
Garcia repeated his call to reporters on Thursday to release all the files, and also put Bondi on notice.
"Let's be very clear that the Department of Justice has to release all of the files tomorrow, and I also want to remind the attorney general that she cannot use any excuse that somehow the law says that 'if there's an investigation happening, we can, you know, partially not release everything.' The subpoena that's in place, that's essentially with the law that Oversight passed, does not include that provision. They have to release everything."
Garcia threatened that Democrats will use every tool available to them, including going to the courts and taking legal action to get the files released.
"We're prepared to do that, but we're gonna see what happens tomorrow," he said.
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump's handpicked board of trustees voted on Thursday to add Trump's name to the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, while allegedly muting the objections of Democratic members of the board and likely in violation of federal law that named the Kennedy Center by statute.
Democratic lawmakers reacted to the news with disgust and dismissal, telling Raw Story the rename will not stick and will be reversed swiftly when they retake power in Washington.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) had one of the most forceful reactions, speculating MAGA allies will eventually try to rebrand the White House.
"Well, I mean, he appointed all the sycophants to the board," she said. "So I mean, they're going to name the White House — they're going to try to name the White House after him before we're done with this, and then we're going to take the White House back and we're going to fix it all. Enjoy having two years of that."
Asked for comment, Rep. Brendan Boyle (D-PA) mockingly claimed that the Longworth House Office Building will have his name added to it because he says so.
Boyle added, "Everything's about him, the plaques that he actually put up, plaques with his, with his nonsense" — a reference to a series of juvenile plaques installed below various former presidents' pictures written by Trump himself.
Rep. Don Beyer (D-VA) took a similar position to Ocasio-Cortez.
"An infinite ego. You know, I mean, I just, it makes Stalin look humble. The board that he handpicked, it's embarrassing and, and it won't last very long."
Two Alabama Black Lives Matter activists accused of setting a shopping cart on fire as part of a protest against the fatal police shooting of a young Black man have been charged with conspiracy to provide material support to terrorists, in what one supporter calls a “railroading.”
The federal charge unveiled as part of a superseding indictment against Mercutio Southall, 41, and Lillian Colburn, 26, alleges that the pair committed terrorism through an arson at a Walmart Supercenter in Homewood, a Birmingham suburb, on Aug. 22.
“They’ve been trying to label Black Lives Matter a terrorist movement,” RaShaun Whetstone, a friend of Southall and Colburn, told Raw Story. “This is a railroading.”
The indictments come as President Donald Trump attempts to paint left-wing activism as “domestic terrorism,” through a national security memorandum that accuses activists of undermining “support for law enforcement” in order “to justify and encourage acts of violent revolution.”
This month, Attorney General Pam Bondi issued a memo instructing the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Forces, which include local law enforcement partners, to prioritize investigations of antifascist groups.
Echoing Trump’s national security memo, Bondi claimed: “These domestic terrorists use violence or the threat of violence to advance political and social agendas, including opposition to law and immigration enforcement; extreme views in favor of mass migration and open borders; adherence to radical gender ideology, anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, or anti-Christianity.”
‘Not even Mercutio’s MO’
Luke Baumgartner, a research fellow at the Program on Extremism at George Washington University, told Raw Story the Alabama case is, as far as he knows, the first time the federal government has applied the material support to terrorists charge to Black Lives Matter protesters.
Southall and Colburn pleaded not guilty.
Whetstone told Raw Story he believes Southall and Colburn to be falsely accused. He said the alleged crime was completely out of character for Southall, who as an early leader of Black Lives Matter became one of the most high-profile racial justice activists in the Birmingham area.
Whetstone added that Colburn doesn’t match the person seen in store surveillance video.
Homewood has seen protests since June, when an 18-year-old Black man, Jabari Peoples, was fatally shot by an unidentified police officer at a city park. Police said the shooting followed a struggle, after which Peoples attempted to retrieve a handgun from his car, according to WVTM 13. Peoples’ family and a young woman who was with him say he was unarmed.
Community members have held several protests resulting in multiple arrests, WVTM 13 reported. The news station quoted a leader of the Birmingham chapter of Black Lives Matter as saying they planned to disrupt businesses until their demands, including the release of police body camera video, were met.
Homewood police said in a press release shortly after Southall’s arrest on state charges that detectives obtained evidence he attended a protest at the park on the day of the alleged arson.
The police allege Southall traveled from the protest to Walmart, and accuse him of filling “a shopping cart full of rags, blankets, charcoal bags, small engine fuel, and paint thinner,” then pre-positioning “the shopping cart in a clothing aisle,” before returning to the protest.
Southall was charged in state court with arson and first-degree criminal mischief.
The police said at the time they were working with the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms “on pursuing federal arson charges.”
Colburn was arrested on identical charges.
AL.com reported that detectives testified that Colburn accompanied Southall from the protest to Walmart and the two loaded the cart together, then left in a car that investigators determined was registered to Colburn.
Later, investigators said, a woman wearing a blond wig, identified as Colburn, returned to the store and ignited the cart.
Whetstone told Raw Story he doesn’t buy prosecutors’ claims.
“It’s not even Mercutio’s MO,” he said. “Never has he done anything like that. Being who he is, he’s going to set a shopping cart on fire? What the hell kind of sense does that make?”
Federal prosecutors obtained an indictment for arson in late October. A month later, a grand jury returned a superseding indictment adding the charge of material support to terrorists.
Southall and Colburn could not be reached for comment.
An announcement by the FBI’s Birmingham office last week did not mention the defendants’ ties to Black Lives Matter, but characterized them as “violent actors.”
“Let it be clear: While peaceful protesting is a protected right, arson and destruction of property are violent crimes that will not be tolerated in our community,” Special Agent in Charge Dave Fitzgibbons said.
Baumgartner told Raw Story: “It’s not surprising they would levy this charge given that their focus has shifted [to the left]. They’re focusing on these left-wing or anarchist groups. Coming at them with all the tools in their toolkits is definitely in line with their stated strategy.”
The U.S. Attorney’s Office for Northern Alabama did not respond to a question about whether AG Bondi played any role in the decision to charge the defendants with terrorism. A spokesperson said the office did not comment on ongoing litigation.
‘Federal crime of terrorism’
Federal statute makes it a crime to act in support of “an offense identified as a federal crime of terrorism.”
Federal prosecutors have applied the material support to terrorists charge to white supremacist groups and activists, recently including Dallas Erin Humber, the leader of Terrorgram Collective, who is linked to a mass shooting targeting LGBTQ+ people in Slovakia and a deadly school shooting in Brazil, in addition to plots to assassinate politicians and attack the power grid.
In another case, in 2022, four white supremacists pleaded guilty to material support to terrorists, for plotting to carry out coordinated attacks on the power grid in an attempt to instigate race war.
The charge is also being used to pursue violent nihilist groups.
Writing with Barry Jonas, Baumgartner noted in the journal Just Security that in October, for the first time, federal prosecutors indicted a leader of 764, a nihilist network, for conspiracy to provide material support to terrorists.
The government alleges that 764 leader Baron Martin manipulated child victims to self-harm.
Baumgartner and Jonas wrote: “By charging Martin with conspiring to provide material support for terrorists, the shift represents a long-overdue recognition that such conduct is not just depraved — it is terrorism.”
Last week, Canadabecame the first country to list 764 as a terrorist entity.
A closely related and better-known statute making it a crime to knowingly support “a foreign terrorist organization” has been used frequently since the Sept. 11 attacks to prosecute American citizens who attempted to join jihadist groups such as al-Qaida and ISIS.
Baumgartner said federal prosecutors now appear to be utilizing the material support charge with increasing frequency against defendants across the ideological spectrum.
Last month, prosecutors in Texas obtained an indictment against eight defendants for providing material support for terrorists, regarding an attack on an ICE facility.
The government has named one defendant as firing a weapon at law enforcement, while alleging others ignited fireworks, destroyed a surveillance camera, and vandalized vehicles and a shed.
‘Cause of justice’
Birmingham is a Southern city known as a cradle of the Civil Rights movement, where the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. launched a massive desegregation campaign in 1963, in which child marchers were met with police dogs and firehoses.
In his famous “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” King excoriated “the white moderate” and called himself an “extremist for the cause of justice.”
Martin Luther King, Jr. (Wikimedia Commons)
Of the two activists now facing federal charges, Southall has a long history of activism — which has seen him singled out by Trump for verbal abuse.
In November 2015, the activist was forcibly ejected from a Trump rally in Birmingham.
After Southall disrupted the event by chanting, “Black lives matter,” the Washington Post reported that video showed him falling amid a throng of white men who appeared to kick and punch him.
A Post reporter observed a man put his hands on Southall’s neck and a female onlooker shout, “Don’t choke him!”
Speaking to Fox News, Trump reportedly said: “Maybe he should have been roughed up, because it was absolutely disgusting what he was doing.
“I have a lot of fans, and they were not happy about it. And this was a very obnoxious guy who was a troublemaker who was looking to make trouble.”
‘Untethered from reality’
Despite Trump’s hostility, conservative efforts to get Black Lives Matter designated as a terrorist group did not gain traction in his first term.
In 2017, the FBI drew criticism for an internal assessment that appeared to classify BLM activists as “Black Identity Extremists” who posed a threat of lethal violence.
It also drew rebuke, one advocate for police reform calling the characterization “untethered from reality” and worrying that it could lead “to people dying unnecessarily.”
In the South, the Ku Klux Klan long waged a campaign of terror which succeeded in intimidating Black people from exercising their right to vote and ousting multiracial governments. Whetstone noted that the U.S. government has never designated the Klan as a terrorist organization.
“Black Lives Matter ruffles a few feathers, and they want to call us terrorists,” he said. “This is just one small step in how they normalize punishing anyone who is associated with any liberation movement. They’re trying to criminalize it.”
WASHINGTON — Even as Democrats accuse the Trump administration of misleading Congress in the wake of the president’s announcement of an oil tanker blockade on Venezuela, Republicans are dismissing Democrats’ — and some Republicans’ — fears.
At the Capitol on Wednesday, one senior GOP senator went so far as to mock Democrats for speaking up.
“Poor babies,” Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) told Raw Story.
Asked if he had been surprised by Trump’s announcement on Tuesday night, as senior Democrats complain they were, Cornyn said: “Not really.
“I mean [Venezuelan oil] is the lifeline for Iran and to some extent, for China, and an outlet for Russia to continue to be able to sell oil and finance its war machine against Ukraine. So I think it's not a surprise from that standpoint.”
Cornyn is a member of the Senate Intelligence and Foreign Relations committees.
Raw Story said, “Your Democratic colleagues are saying they wish [Secretary of Defense Pete] Hegseth and [Secretary of State Marco] Rubio would have focused on this yesterday, and they kind of feel deceived or misled a little bit.”
Rubio and Hegseth briefed both chambers of Congress during the day on Tuesday about controversial U.S. strikes on boats alleged to be carrying drugs in the Caribbean Sea.
“Well,” Cornyn said. “I was in this briefing and [Democrats] were asking questions about the strikes. They weren't asking about” the blockade.
Raw Story suggested that was because the Democrats didn’t know the blockade was coming.
“Poor babies,” Cornyn said. “They just need to open their eyes.”
Most Democrats’ eyes have long been wide open to President Trump’s moves to secure regime change in Venezuela.
The administration has implemented boat strikes that have now killed nearly 100, while Trump’s regular statements on the matter have accompanied reports of both a major U.S. military buildup in the Caribbean and CIA covert action in Venezuela itself.
Most Democrats and some Republicans maintain Trump needs congressional approval for any action against the regime in Caracas, led by the left-wing authoritarian Nicolás Maduro.
On the House side of the Capitol on Wednesday, Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-NY), the ranking Democrat on the Foreign Affairs Committee, told Raw Story: “We heard it again from the Chief of Staff, who said that these bombings won't stop until Maduro is out” — a reference to remarks from White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles in a bombshell Vanity Fair profile.
After Trump’s blockade announcement, Meeks said, it was clear Venezuela was “about oil. It's not about drugs. It's about taking oil.
“You know, I'm a former special narcotics prosecutor. If you really try to stop drugs, you don't take the little guy, kill them and then pardon the top guys and don't go after them at all.”
That was a reference to Trump’s recent pardon of a former Honduran president convicted of drug trafficking.
“You try to get the little guys to get you all the information that you can so that you can go after the big guys,” Meeks said, going on to condemn the “double tap killing” of two men on a boat hit by the U.S. on Sept. 2.
The two men survived the original strike but were killed with a second missile — by most observers’ standards, a war crime or plain murder.
Hegseth has vehemently denied the strike was illegal, while shifting responsibility to a senior military commander.
Meeks and other Democrats said they were not satisfied with Rubio and Hegseth’s briefings.
“That wasn’t a classified session,” Meeks said.
Rep. Mike Quigley (D-IL), a House Intelligence Committee member, said: “No one has gotten an intel briefing. So that's what we're owed.”
On the other side of the Capitol, Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) also lamented the absence of comprehensive briefings, telling Raw Story: “That just reflects the attitude [the Trump administration has] with Congress.
“If the Republican majority in Congress will allow it, they will continue to follow their agenda regardless.”
Among that Republican majority, not all opinions were as dismissive, or harsh, as Cornyn’s.
Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) voiced his continuing concern about the “double tap” boat strike.
Two months after the Sept. 2 killing, Paul said, when U.S. forces “saw people in the water, they're like, ‘Oh, you know what? Maybe we shouldn't kill helpless people in the water.’ And they plucked them out. And did they prosecute them? No, they sent them back to their country.
“There's so much that's inconsistent and wrong about this. With the video, every American should be able to see it. We should continue talking about it.”
Raw Story asked Paul for his view on Trump’s surprise announcement of an oil blockade.
In comments to Raw Story, Sanders cited major tech figures such as Elon Musk in noting that industry leaders openly predict an ominous future in which traditional work becomes obsolete. According to Sanders, the U.S. faces the prospect of widespread unemployment, particularly among young people already grappling with a dearth of entry‑level jobs.
"He tells us that the concept of work itself, your job, may be obsolete. That means mass unemployment," Sanders warned. "Is Congress dealing with that issue?"
Sanders emphasized that while AI offers potential benefits, the nation must ensure that tech serves the broader public rather than a tiny group of billionaires. To that end, Sanders demanded a temporary "moratorium" on new data centers until lawmakers can figure out how to integrate AI responsibly and protect workers from economic ruin.
The senator also cast doubt on the motivations of tech elites, including Musk, Larry Ellison, Jeff Bezos, and Mark Zuckerberg, suggesting that their priorities don't align with the needs of the working class.
He called President Donald Trump an "oligarch" who is "working with other oligarchs."
"Do you think he's staying up nights worrying about the working class of this country? I don't think so," said Sanders.
WASHINGTON — Turns out, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth aren’t very good actors.
Congress doesn’t agree on much, but when it comes to Venezuela and U.S. military strikes on purported drug smugglers, on Tuesday Congress was basically all questions, even after receiving classified briefings from the two members of the Trump cabinet.
Only after President Donald Trump took to Truth Social in the evening, to announce "a total and complete" blockade of oil tankers entering and leaving Venezuela, did Congress finally get the clarity lawmakers had demanded.
Now members of Congress say they know the real goal of U.S. intervention in Venezuela — and lawmakers on both sides of the Capitol are vowing to hold President Trump accountable.
‘More questions than answers’
Rubio and Hegseth, along with a phalanx of aides and security, traversed the U.S. Capitol, trying to sell Congress on President Trump’s war footing in the waters off Venezuela.
“This briefing left me with more questions than answers,” Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) told reporters after a classified briefing.
It was the same on the other side of the Capitol, where lawmakers complained the two powerful secretaries provided “no real answers about whether or not what we’re about to enter into is a war in Venezuela,” Rep. Gregory W. Meeks (D-NY), the ranking member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, told reporters after his own chamber’s briefing.
“If this is about regime change, it seems to me that the administration should say that’s what it is, and should come to Congress to ask for that authorization, which has not taken place.”
It wasn’t just Democrats who were left confused as to what the Trump administration is trying to accomplish with regards to Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.
“Most Americans want to know what’s gonna happen next. I want to know what’s gonna happen next. Is it the policy to take Maduro down? It should be,” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) told reporters.
“If it’s not, and if he goes, what’s gonna happen next? I’d like a better answer as to what happens when Maduro goes.”
For his part, Secretary Rubio told the congressional press corps the briefings were on the “counter-drug mission” that is “killing Americans, poisoning Americans.”
For his part, Secretary Hegseth tried to tamp down criticism as he promised to let members of the House and Senate Armed Services Committees view a controversial video of a second missile strike on alleged drug smugglers in the Caribbean Sea, on Sept. 2.
“This is the 22nd bipartisan briefing on a highly successful mission to counter designated terrorist organizations, cartels, bringing weapons — weapons meaning drugs — to the American people and poisoning the American people for far too long,” Hegseth told reporters.
But last night, when President Trump announced a blockade of Venezuelan oil — arguing the South American nation is “completely surrounded by the largest Armada ever assembled in the History of South America” — lawmakers got the clarity they’d been seeking.
And many weren’t happy.
‘Unquestionably an act of war’
While Congress is demanding answers to more questions, many members also feel lied to, if not duped.
“Trump is threatening a naval blockade of Venezuelan oil, an act of War,” Rep. Nydia Velazquez (D-NY) wrote on X.
“We have seen this playbook before. This is not about drugs or making America safer; it’s about regime change.
“Americans do not want war with Venezuela. Congress must act now and stop this.”
While the administration likened targeting alleged drug smugglers to going after pirates of old — thus evoking all the lenient maritime laws regarding marauders on the high seas — Democrats say the gig is up.
They’re demanding the administration halt intervention unless Congress explicitly grants the president war powers.
“A naval blockade is unquestionably an act of war,” Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-TX) wrote. “A war that the Congress never authorized and the American people do not want.
“On Thursday, the House will vote on Rep. Jim McGovern (D-MA), Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY), and my resolution directing the President to end hostilities with Venezuela.
“Every member of the House of Representatives will have the opportunity to decide if they support sending Americans into yet another regime change war.”
The Supreme Court is poised to overturn a 90-year-old decision protecting the heads of independent federal agencies from firing by the president — a move more significant in the court’s rightward march than the 2022 decision to overturn the right to abortion in Roe v. Wade, alarmed legal experts tellRaw Story.
“This is the most important case of the decade,” said Seth Chandler, professor at the University of Houston Law Center.
Following oral arguments in Trump v. Slaughter last week, most observers predict the Court will side with President Donald Trump in his firing of Federal Trade Commissioner Rebecca Slaughter.
Trump v. Slaughter revisits a 1935 case, Humphrey's Executor v. United States, which concerned President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s firing of an FTC commissioner over disagreements about New Deal policies.
The Supreme Court ruled that Congress could enact laws limiting the president’s ability to fire independent agency officials.
Now, Dec. 8 arguments in front of the current, right-wing-dominated Court made it clear there’s likely no “path for Humphrey's Executor to survive,” Chandler said.
“You're really changing the structure of government and a precept of law on which Congress has relied for 90 years and delegated immense power to these so-called independent agencies, and if these independent agencies are no longer independent, but are basically subject to loyalty tests from the president, that really changes the way that our government functions.”
Harold Krent, professor at the Chicago-Kent College of Law at the Illinois Institute of Technology, agreed that “Humphrey’s Executor is mostly dead.”
“For the most part the idea of an independent-expert-type agency will be over,” Krent said. “It's incredibly significant. It gives the president even more powerful control over these agencies.”
Along with the FTC, agencies likely to be affected are the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), Krent said.
“It’s just a wide array of agencies which would almost for sure fall in the wake of the Slaughter case,” he said.
“It just means that there's more of a political edge to all agency investigations and policymaking, and so there is less of a check.”
Chandler said Justice Elena Kagan, a liberal appointed by President Barack Obama, questioned whether “Congress would ever have given so much power to the agencies if it knew that they were going to be subject to the political control of the president.”
“In a post-Humphreys Executor world where Congress felt the people who took leadership positions in these agencies were immune from political firings by the president, they were willing to grant enormous powers to these agencies and basically make them a fourth branch of government,” Chandler said.
“But, now we have half of the deal being taken away. We have that the agencies are now subject to the political desires of the president, but they still have all the power that they did originally.”
‘Out of control’
Legal experts predict that the Court will rule 6-3 in Trump’s favor in Slaughter, along ideological lines.
“I think the majority is going to say Humphrey’s Executor was very dubious when it was enacted and that the agencies look quite different from the way they were conceived,” Chandler said.
Seth Chandler (Photo credit: University of Houston Law Center)
The process of weakening Humphrey’s Executor was already in motion, Chandler said, pointing to a 2020 decision, Seila Law LLC v. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which allows the president to remove the leader of a single-headed agency at will.
It’s likely the same logic will apply to a multi-person commission, Chandler said.
“I think they're going to say that in some sense the die has already been cast, that Humphrey's Executor has been on life support for a decade, and that it's now time to pull the plug,” Chandler said.
Humphrey’s Executor was an explicit target of Project 2025, the hard-right leadership plan from the Heritage Foundation, Graves said.
Noting that the Court had already “chipped away” at Humphrey’s Executor, Project 2025 said: “The next conservative Administration should formally take the position that Humphrey's Executor violates the Constitution's separation of powers.”
Trump’s claim on the campaign trail that he had no involvement with Project 2025 “misled the American people grossly,” Graves said, adding that the Court has since matched Trump’s “aggression in trying to destroy long-standing rules.”
“That the Supreme Court is playing along with this and actually eagerly embracing it is a sign of how out of control and arrogant the Roberts Court is, because the easiest thing for this Court to do would be to uphold the lower courts that are following those long-standing precedents,” Graves said.
“Instead, it has sought to combine its counter-constitutional edict, giving Donald Trump immunity from criminal prosecution, which swept him back into the White House.
“It's been seeking to combine that ruling, giving Trump extraordinary, unprecedented and unwise powers, with a whole series of rulings through the shadow docket, and now through the primary docket, that further expand presidential power, and I would say so, expand it recklessly.”
‘Loyalty pledges’
After Trump v. Slaughter, Chandler said, he anticipates Trump will seek to extend his firing power to lower-level agency employees, because if the Supreme Court determines “the Constitution vests all executive power in the president, and you take that literally, then it's hard to see why the decision wouldn't extend all the way down the federal bureaucracy.
“President Trump has not been shy about insisting that loyalty to him, personally and to his ideas, is extraordinarily important in government … even with Humphrey's Executor on life support, so I don't see why he would show any restraint once it's killed off,” he said.
“Could he require, essentially, loyalty pledges from mid-level clerks at the NLRB? Why couldn't he insist that they're part of the executive branch and that they are just acting as his delegates, and if they're unwilling to commit to him, why should they have a job?”
FILE PHOTO: A view of the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, U.S. June 29, 2024. REUTERS/Kevin Mohatt/File Photo
Krent agreed.
“The Heritage Foundation, that's what they had recommended in terms of giving the president absolute power over all federal employees, and there is the extreme version of the unitary executive.
“I don't think the Court's going to go there in this particular case, but that's certainly within the goals of the Trump administration, and so it's something the Court may have to face at a future date.”
Graves called giving the president the power to fire independent agency heads at will “a recipe for corruption.”
“The corruption that Trump is engaged in is manifesting on a daily or weekly basis,” she said.
“The idea that the president would be controlling the decisions of the FTC, which relate to an array of matters about corporate conglomeration, as he's basically trying to orchestrate who gets control of a major swath of media, including CNN — it’s extraordinary.”
Warner Bros. Discovery, the parent company of CNN, is preparing to undergo a merger with Netflix or Paramount. Trump has called for selling CNN to new owners.
‘Rampant corruption’
Commissions leading federal agencies typically have split-party representation — which could also disappear following a ruling for Trump in Slaughter, Krent said.
“This whole idea of a balanced independent agency thinking about energy policy or labor policy, banking policy, consumer relations policy, that seems to be done,” Krent said.
That would allow Trump to enact his policies, such as tariffs, as he pleases.
“If he wants to just start changing even tax policy or energy policy or labor policy, he'll be able to do it by saying, ‘This is what I want you to do, or I fire you,’” Krent said.
“It would have all sorts of ramifications across the economy.”
Congress could theoretically limit the power of agencies by defunding them, “but not in reality,” Chandler said.
“It's just something that we took for granted, that you could have, in effect, a fourth branch of government in which immense power had been vested, and when you take that away, and you say it's all subject to the president's control, and you don't undo the prior delegations of power, that is a huge deal,” Chandler said.
A ruling in Trump’s favor will give him “far more power than the founders ever anticipated,” Chandler said.
Krent said overturning Humprey’s Executor “cuts against not only history, but precedence.”
“That could lead to the end of the civil service,” he said.
Graves said: “This would be yet another instance of the Roberts Court handing Donald Trump extraordinary powers that no president should have, and the presidents before him did not.
“This would return, in some ways, the United States to a previous era, which was really disreputable, where civil service appointments … were handed out as a part of a political spoils system, which was rampant with corruption.
“That's why the modern civil service system came to be over 100 years ago, to try to make sure that we would have people serving us at all levels of federal agencies who were well-qualified for those positions and not merely supplicants to the president.”
Krent said overturning Humphrey’ Executor would lead to “increasing politicization of policymaking across the government,” to “the detriment of the American people.”
“It may mean that you're going to have less expertise in government, less political party balance in terms of how these agencies work, and ultimately, that's against the congressional design.
“Regulation and policymaking will just be infused with the president's brand of whatever is politically convenient at the moment.”
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump spoke the “unvarnished truth” when he openly complained about immigrants from “sh–hole” countries, one senior U.S. House Republican told Raw Story, amid outcry over the president’s spate of racist remarks.
“Trump tells the truth,” Rep. Ralph Norman (R-SC) said at the Capitol. “He tells unvarnished truth. I have no problem with what he's saying. He rallies the troops like no other.”
Asked what he thought about Trump being accused of being racist, Norman, 72, was unabashed: “People say what they want. This man has brought this country back in less than 11-and-a-half months.”
In a cabinet meeting last week, Trump, 79, attacked Somalian Americans in virulent terms, including calling Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN), a leading progressive, “garbage.”
This week, in a speech in Pennsylvania, Trump attacked Omar again. He also said he had “announced a permanent pause on third-world migration, including from hellholes like Afghanistan, Haiti, Somalia, and many other countries.”
Answering a supporter’s shout of “sh–hole”, the president said: “I didn't say sh–hole, you did.”
But referring to a scandal from 2018, in his first term, he admitted it: “Remember I said that to the senators, they came in, the Democrats, they wanted to be bipartisan.
“So they came in and they said, ‘This is totally off the record. Nothing mentioned here. We want to be honest.’ Because our country was going to hell.
“And we had a meeting. And I said, ‘Why is it we only take people from sh–hole countries?’ Right? Why can't we have some people from Norway? Sweet and just a few. Let us have a few from Denmark, ‘Do you mind sending us a few people? Send us some nice people. Do you mind?’
“But we always take people from Somalia, places that are a disaster, right? Filthy, dirty, disgusting, ridden with crime. The only thing they're good at is going after ships.”
Rep. Derrick van Orden (R-WI) knows a thing or two about ships, having been a Navy Seal. Telling Raw Story he had lived in Africa, specifically Djibouti, he backed Trump too.
Asked to respond to Trump’s “sh––hole countries” remarks, Van Orden said: “Listen.
“The President of the United States is in charge of foreign policy. And the President of the United States has affected more positive changes in foreign policy than any president in my lifetime, with maybe the exception of Reagan…
“So I have the utmost confidence in the President of the United States and [Secretary of State] Marco Rubio getting foreign policy in a way when it's a benefit to America.”
It fell to Rep. Michael McCaul (R-TX), a former House Foreign Affairs Committee chair, to provide a more conventional GOP take on Trump’s “sh–hole countries” remarks.
“It's not a good message,” McCaul said, adding that “there are some who argue, ‘Hey, we did away with all of our soft diplomatic power’” thanks to Trump’s cost-cutting as well as his frequent racist invective.
McCaul said he was “briefed by Rubio's chief of staff yesterday about things we are doing to deal with soft power in a different model paradigm.”
“Is that hard when the president’s calling them ‘sh–hole nations’?” Raw Story pressed.
“He said that in the first term,” McCaul answered.
“But they denied it then and now he said it publicly,” Raw Story pressed again.
Choosing not to engage, McCaul continued to talk about ways to advance U.S. soft power despite crippling cuts to foreign aid via Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE.
‘Ignorance, racism, xenophobia’
Among Democrats, Rep. Omar lamented rising “ignorance, racism, xenophobia” and said Trump was more open in his second term about his use of racial invective because “he feels more comfortable being a racist.
“His base [is] basically raising money for a woman who gets fired for calling people the N word. What is there more to be surprised” about?
Rep. Ilhan Omar speaking in Las Vegas, Nevada. (Photo credit: Gage Skidmore / Flickr)
Omar was referring to a high-profile story from Wisconsin, in which a woman employed by Cinnabon was filmed subjecting a Somali couple to brutal racist abuse.
Crystal Wilsey, 43, was fired but has since benefited from crowd-funding efforts.
Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-MS) is one of the longest-serving Black members of Congress. That means that when it comes to Trump deploying racist language, he’s seen it all before.
“It's par for the course,” Thompson, 77, told Raw Story when asked about Trump’s “sh–hole countries” remark. “He lies on the regular.
“He has some kind of tendency to talk about countries and people of color … and he makes no bones about it. When he apologizes for insensitive statements, he comes right back and repeats.”
Raw Story cited a recent National Parks Service decision to drop free admission on holidays dedicated to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Juneteenth, but to provide it on Trump’s birthday.
“Why are you trying to erase things that people of color have contributed to just because you disagree with them?” Thompson asked, rhetorically.
‘It’s very frightening’
Unlike Thompson, first elected in 1993, Rep. Adelita Grijalva (D-AZ) is new to Congress, sworn in just last month.
“This can't be the new normal,” she said of Trump’s remarks. “That's what we're here for, fighting against it…
“I see it every day now, where people are openly discriminated against, people threatening their neighbors because they don’t like something that they're doing. It's very frightening.”
Proudly announcing herself as a “wife, daughter and sister of librarians,” Grijalva lamented “the dismantling of public education” through Republican attempts to ban books and change school courses to reflect a conservative view of U.S. history, particularly on grounds of race.
“Generations won't hear history,” Grijalva said, “because this administration is deciding that it hurts their feelings to talk about how oppressive they [white people] were and what we did too, right? Native American, indigenous people, I mean. We have to talk about that stuff.
“I'm very afraid, and I'm a mom with three kids. So [does] this country look like the one we grew up in? Right now it doesn't.”
Increased arrests by immigration enforcement agents under the second Trump administration have created a “chilling effect” on the child care industry, resulting in a decrease in workers and in turn less mothers in the workforce, according to a new report from New America, a progressive Washington think tank.
In 2025, mothers’ labor force participation declined by 3 percent, Herbst said.
In an industry where one in five workers are immigrants, there was a decrease of 39,000 foreign-born child care workers during the same time period.
“Because immigration enforcement has made it more difficult for foreign-born workers to do their jobs, their native-born counterparts who depend on their immigrant colleagues have suddenly found that it's more difficult to do their jobs as well,” Herbst said.
While the majority of foreign-born child care workers are in the United States legally, the increase in arrests by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has still created fear for those working in the industry — especially after widespread coverage of ICE detaining a Chicago daycare worker last month.
There’s been a “pretty big” reduction in the number of Hispanic or Mexican U.S.-born individuals in the child care industry as well, Herbst said.
“These are individuals who should not be afraid of ICE,” Herbst said.
“They are not eligible to be deported, and yet they are also leaving the child care sector, and I think for that reason, one of the potential explanations we have is that they've been chilled out of the labor force.”
‘Fear and confusion’
Herbst, a professor at Arizona State University, said the report provides “some of the very first empirical evidence on the labor market consequences of the recent escalation in immigration enforcement.”
“We think the time is right for this kind of report,” Herbst said, as employment figures for child care workers and mothers of preschool-age children are “particularly important in the context of immigration enforcement.”
“We think that mothers’ employment may be particularly vulnerable to immigration enforcement insofar as it causes disruptions in the child care industry,” Herbst said.
President Donald Trump notably rescinded a directive under former President Joe Biden that protected child care centers, nursery schools and preschools from ICE activity, Herbst said.
The report found that workers in child care centers, rather than private homes, were more likely to have their work affected by immigration enforcement.
“The center-based sector, this is the formal sector. These individuals, as a result, may feel more exposed,” Herbst said.
“Their wages are reported for tax purposes. Child-care centers are often visited unannounced by state child care regulators, and I think the sort of fear and confusion that the ICE has created may have been felt more deeply by those employed in the center-based sector, and they have maybe moved from centers to private households in an attempt to be less visible and feel more protected.”
Herbst said the report’s “estimates may understate the magnitude” of the effects of ICE arrests on child care workers and mothers.
“What I hope this report does is start a conversation about the potential tradeoffs associated with this kind of immigration policy,” Herbst said.
“The administration has talked a lot about the potential benefits. I don't think that we as a country have really started to reckon with the potential downsides of this kind of policy, and I hope what this report does is start a conversation about those downsides.”
With ICE receiving more than $170 billion over four years for increased enforcement activities, Herbst said, “we as researchers need to stay on the case in terms of uncovering what are the potential impacts of all of this new enforcement energy.”
“I would anticipate in the months and years ahead that we will begin to have kind of a full reckoning of the sort of trade-offs associated with this kind of policy.”
Over the coming months, Herbst said he expects the “disruptive effects” of increased immigration enforcement on mothers and child care workers to be “much greater.”
“Even if you look at just sort of the chilling effects alone, I think people are feeling an unprecedented amount of fear and confusion in this new environment.”
WASHINGTON — Thursday is the long-awaited health-care day in the U.S. Senate, but that doesn’t mean Congress has a plan to avert massive spikes in health premiums in the New Year.
To counter Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer’s proposal to extend COVID-era Affordable Care Act (ACA) subsidies for three years — which most Republicans say is too long — on Tuesday, Majority Leader John Thune announced the GOP would offer a new measure to replace subsidies with health savings accounts.
“We need to fix it. It's broken. It's a piece of sh––,” Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) told Raw Story of the ACA, commonly known as Obamacare.
While many in the GOP are glad the party finally has an alternative to the ACA to rally behind, more middle-of-the-road Republicans are upset with the competing messaging bills at a time when Americans are desperate for a solution.
“How are you feeling about this [new GOP] health-care measure?” Raw Story asked Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), a rare moderate in GOP ranks.
“Bad,” said Murkowski. “We haven't resolved anything, so we're going to have votes? Good deal. What have you got? What are you going to get out of it?”
With no bipartisan solution in sight, the American people aren’t expected to get anything from Thursday’s dueling health-care measures — setting up a key battle in next year’s midterm elections.
‘Not a serious proposal’
This fall, throughout the longest government shutdown in U.S. history, Democrats demanded the GOP sit down and find a way to prevent the pending health insurance premium spikes.
The GOP refused, leaving rank-and-file Republicans scrambling to craft a counter offer.
“The 1.6 million people approximately that will lose their subsidy, I've got sympathy for those folks,” Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) told Raw Story. “They're going to be left paying enormous Obamacare premiums.”
“And your party might get blamed for that?” Raw Story asked
“Totally. We get blamed for everything,” Johnson said. “But Democrats should be blamed for destroying that individual insurance market with Obamacare.”
Democratic leaders say their three-year extension is essential for families struggling under the weight of inflation induced by President Donald Trump’s tariffs — but the measure is bound for defeat.
“That’s not a serious proposal, because they know there’s billions of dollars in fraud,” Sen. John Husted (R-OH) told Raw Story. “That’s not going to be tolerated.”
Earlier this year, under the guise of rooting out “fraud,” Republicans cut more than $1 trillion from Medicaid and SNAP benefits, or food stamps, in their “One Big Beautiful Bill.”
That’s something you only hear Democrats mention these days.
“Why not promote the changes you guys made to Medicaid in the ‘One Big, Beautiful Bill’ as Republican health reform?” Raw Story asked Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA). “You guys just did sweeping reform, just to Medicaid.”
“Well, it's a possibility,” Kennedy told Raw Story.
“It seems like you guys don't want to own that and make that a part of the debate?” Raw Story pressed.
“No, I think your conclusion is wrong,” Kennedy said.
While the GOP scrambles to save face on the Senate floor, Republicans continue to rally around unraveling Obamacare — but not much else.
“At the end of the day, we got to get the federal government out of it,” Sen. Tuberville said. “To do that, we got to have a lot of smart minds putting it together where it'll help everybody and not only just a few.”
With little to no guidance from party leaders, four competing GOP Senate measures have emerged, including a new proposal from Sens. Susan Collins (R-ME) and Bernie Moreno (R-OH), to extend ACA subsidies two years.
While that is likely to attract Democratic support, GOP leaders refuse to bring it to the floor and instead are promoting health savings accounts.
It’s almost as if GOP leaders don’t want to solve the pending health-care cost crisis, even as the party desperately tries to portray itself as serious about health care.
“We need to put something forward. We need to show America what we're for,” Sen. Roger Marshall (R-KS) told Raw Story.
“This is just a springboard. This bill that we're voting on now is a springboard to a hopefully bipartisan bill that truly addresses all of health care in January.”
But as the New Year quickly approaches, the clock is ticking.
“Nothing happens around here without a deadline,” Husted said.
So far, Republicans haven’t gotten much of any direction from President Trump.
“Would it be helpful for Trump to say: ‘This is the plan that I want, the one I prefer?” a reporter asked Sen. Kennedy.
“Sure,” Kennedy replied. “But I don't think the White House is going to do that, nor do I think that they're prepared to do that. I think the White House is concerned about what, if anything, the House would do, as am I.”
‘Get to 60’
Trump and House Speaker Mike Johnson remain mum, even as swing-state Republicans are freaking out.
At the same time, Minority Leader Schumer’s putting forward a three-year extension despite opposition from most all Republicans.
With a mere two legislative weeks before the end of the year, it seems as if the two parties are campaigning past each other instead of trying to find a path to a filibuster-proof majority of 60 senators.
“Is that all this week is,” Raw Story asked Sen. Murkowski, “just politics on both sides?”
“That’s what it seems like,” Murkowski replied. “It takes both sides. Sixty. Neither side has 60. We need to get to 60.”
Murkowski’s one of the few senators willing to cross the aisle. While she remains undecided as to how she’ll vote Thursday, she says she knows the outcome.
“See, the thing is, how I vote doesn't matter, because either one, the public gets nothing, right?” Murkowski said. “So I can say I support the Republican agenda. I can say I support the Democrat [bill]. I can say I support either, but the results are the same.”
WASHINGTON — Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-TX) finally settled weeks of speculation on Monday by announcing her candidacy for U.S. Senate — but for the time being, at least, Texas' two Republican senators do not feel threatened by her.
Asked for comment by Raw Story, Sen. John Cornyn, the senator currently seeking reelection, said, "I welcome her to the race."
Cornyn, who faces a serious threat in his own primary by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, added that he doesn't consider her a substantive candidate.
"No, are you kidding? Has she actually passed anything?" said Cornyn. "I think that's where the Democratic Party is today. Getting a guy like Colin Allred to bow out because he's afraid of losing the primary is all you really need to see."
Sen. Ted Cruz had a similar assessment of his colleague's competition.
"The Democrat Party has decided to be the party of crazy, and I can't think of a better frontman for the job," Cruz told Raw Story. "I don't think Texas is terribly eager to be represented by a hard-left radical. And [Zohran] Mamdani may be elected in Manhattan, but I don't think that Texas is going down the same road."
Crockett, one of President Donald Trump's most outspoken detractors in Congress, has said she wants to focus on driving Democratic base voter enthusiasm, but has also speculated in a recent interview she could compete for some lower-propensity Trump voters: "We are going to be able to get people that potentially have voted for Trump, even though I obviously am one of his loudest opponents, because at the end of the day, they vote for who they believe is fighting for them. It's about moving people, and I've got a track record of doing that."
With former Rep. Colin Allred (D-TX) bowing out of the Senate race to run for a congressional district in Dallas, Crockett's main primary opponent will be James Talarico, an Austin-area state representative and Presbyterian seminarian.
Growing up in an ultraconservative Mormon family, Jennie Gage said, she was primed to become a Christian nationalist and supporter of Donald Trump’s Make America Great Again movement — or MAGA.
But about two years ago, at 49, Gage had a reckoning, realizing she had been “literally a white supremacist from birth,” based on teachings from the Book of Mormon.
Gage said she came to see Mormonism as “the OG Christian nationalist church.”
So, she flipped her life upside down, leaving organized religion and the Republican party.
“I would have never said, ‘I'm white supremacist. I'm Christian nationalist,’” Gage told Raw Story. “I would have just said, ‘I'm traditional, and I'm conservative because I believe in church and family and America.’”
But when Trump ran for president in 2016, Gage embraced MAGA.
“I will never forget him on my big-screen TV, saying the words, ‘Make America Great Again,” Gage said.
“The first time I heard that, I literally started crying … and I pictured Norman Rockwell.”
What came to mind was the painter’s “Freedom from Want” — ”The grandma putting the turkey on the table, the Thanksgiving dinner, the beautiful home and just that American traditional family and conservatism," she said.
"Freedom from Want" by Norman Rockwell (Wikimedia Commons)
“Obviously, I hated brown people. I hated all the illegal immigrants. I hated that our country was being overrun with lesbians and feminists, women who worked instead of being in their proper place in the home, gay people — they are like the biggest sinners in Mormonism — and baby killers, all of that,” Gage said.
“When [Trump] said, ‘Make America Great Again,’ what I pictured was this businessman not only is going to save our economy, but he's also going to get rid of all of that stuff that people are doing that's destroying our country, and we're going to return to the 1950s where life was great and everything was simple, and he's going to make America great again.”
‘God’s president’
Gage’s family, she said, took Mormonism to “next-level insanity,” as much of her childhood revolved around The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
“It is a cult without walls,” Gage said.
She attended Brigham Young University, the flagship Mormon college, for two years, taking classes including early childhood development, as well as dating and marriage.
“Even going to Mormon college, I was just indoctrinated also,” Gage said.
As treasurer of the BYU Young Republicans, she canvassed for President George H.W. Bush when he ran against Bill Clinton in 1992.
“It was devastating to see this evil Democrat Bill Clinton get elected,” she said.
As Gage had children, she became less politically involved. Her interest revived when Mitt Romney ran for president.
Jennie Gage with her children when she said she was still a "Mormon trad wifey" (Photo provided by Jennie Gage)
She remembered thinking, “‘We're gonna have a Mormon boy,’ and then that's probably gonna usher in the Millennium, so it's gonna be Mitt Romney and then Jesus.”
Gage began watching Fox News, listening to conservative commentators and reading books by Republican politicians. When Trump announced his run, Gage was familiar with his reality TV show, The Apprentice, and his books, The Art of the Deal and The Art of theComeback.
“The Apprentice was actually my pipeline into MAGA. It was just really interesting, as we had a business and were really wealthy,” Gage said.
“That sucked me into … completely buying into it because NBC, The Apprentice and his ghost-written books, they showcased him as this really savvy entrepreneur, and that spoke to me because I was this conservative Christian wife of an entrepreneur.”
Gage said she liked the idea of a “businessman” running America, instead of “slimy politicians.”
She became more active on social media and engaged in arguments defending Trump. She recalls one verbal fight with her 10-year-old nephew.
She told him, “Donald Trump to America is going to be what Napoleon was to France. He is going to free us, and generations to come are going to thank God that Donald Trump was voted in office.”
When Trump beat Hillary Clinton in 2016, Gage thought: “President Trump is God's president.”
‘A major shift’
Gage began to upend her life in October 2018. One day at church, she “literally stopped believing.”
“I Googled my own religion for the first time,” she said. “I had never researched Mormonism outside of books that I would go to the Mormon bookstore and read. And so I resigned from the church.”
The church’s history of polygamy pushed her away. Simultaneously, she said, she ended her 24-year marriage, due to infidelity.
She “plunged pretty headlong into Christianity, and in a way, that kind of kept me stuck in that traditional conservative Americana,” she said.
But she continued “deconstructing” her beliefs, and by the time of the 2020 election had seen “a major shift” in her values.
She was prepared to vote for Trump, but on the way to the voting booth, Gage said, “my MAGA started to crack.
“I remember sitting there in the car, and I just felt sick thinking about Donald Trump because some of the debates that year, he started to seem a little bit unhinged, and the MAGA crowd was just no longer aligning with me.”
Gage and her partner decided not to vote for either Trump or Joe Biden.
Gage returned to her computer, to research political issues.
“I’m like ‘Oh s—. There's not one f—- thing that the Republicans are doing that I support. Not one. I'm a Democrat,” Gage said.
“I literally support everything that most of the Democratic leaders are currently doing, and the entire Democratic platform speaks to me so much.”
Gage said she began “really stepping into my true, authentic self.”
While it was “extremely unsettling” and “terrifying” to change her beliefs,” her life in Tucson, Ariz., now looks far different than her life in MAGA.
She has a diverse group of friends, is an atheist feminist, and calls herself an “anarchist” and “white apologist,” for her ancestors’ roles in massacres of Native Americans.
“I am moving farther and farther away from everything that originally made me lean into MAGA,” she said.
‘American Gestapo’
To Gage, Trump is now “f— reprehensible” and “so hateful.”
“Donald Trump is the president of only the people he gives a f— about,” Gage said.
“Everybody else is just out. He's more of a mob boss, and he is a president, and that's not the way that America is supposed to work.”
During the 2024 election, Trump accused Haitians in Springfield, Ohio, of eating cats and dogs. Gage called that the “a straw that broke the camel's back.”
“I wouldn't want him to be in charge of our PTA. I wouldn't vote for him for the president of our homeowners’ association,” Gage said.
“Listening to the debates and the hatred in some of the rallies, I felt like I was having an out-of-body experience, and it made me panic because I'm like, ‘Oh, now what? I hate Donald Trump, and the whole entire MAGA movement no longer aligns with who I am.’”
Gage now calls Trump administration immigration enforcement agents an “American Gestapo.”
“The whole point of the Gestapo was to be this police force out there terrorizing people,” Gage said.
“Sure, deport illegals if they're a threat, but to drag people down the street, the masks, the fear-mongering, the scare tactics, is absolutely reprehensible.”
‘It’s going to re-brand’
Gage is starkly concerned about Trump and the GOP’s quickening push toward Christian nationalism.
“I wasn't just Christian nationalist for logistical reasons,” she said. “It was part of my religion.
“I believed Jesus had written the Constitution and that the American government was just the interim government until Jesus came back, and then Jesus was going to rule America, and the rest of the world from America.
“The Charlie Kirk people … or Christian nationalists, honey, they ain't got nothing on the Mormons. We took Christian nationalism next-level. I believed all of that 100 percent.”
A college student wearing a “Make America Great Again” cap looks on at a Turning Point USA event, held at University of Florida in Gainesville, Florida on Nov. 13. REUTERS/Octavio Jones
Gage likens Christian nationalism to “a virus,” particularly as it gains a platform with Turning Point USA, the youth nonprofit founded by Kirk, who was killed in September.
“My worry is that these religious institutions and these political movements … are targeting the people that they need to target in a way that's effective enough that they are always going to be 10 steps ahead of us, and they're specifically targeting those emerging young adults,” Gage said.
“I'm afraid that conservative Christian nationalism will not die out, that just like a very smart virus, it's going to adapt. It's going to re-brand. It's going to emerge on the other side, maybe a little bit different than the 2020 MAGA movement, but it has a vested interest in protecting itself.
“They have the money, they have the power. They don't want to let that go, so they're going to fight to the death.”
While awaiting sentencing in a county jail in the Sierra Nevada foothills, a 36-year-old woman described as a leader of a “transnational terrorist group” has “continued to coordinate” with members of her group “and other white supremacist attackers via letters, phone calls and video calls,” the U.S. government says.
Dallas Erin Humber, who led Terrorgram Collective alongside codefendant Matthew Robert Allison from July 2022 until her arrest in September 2024, is scheduled to be sentenced in federal court in Sacramento, Calif. on Dec. 17.
Humber pleaded guilty to multiple charges, including conspiracy, solicitation to murder federal officials, and distribution of information relating to explosives and destructive devices.
The U.S. Department of Justice accuses the 36-year-old of seeking to establish a white ethnostate by igniting a race war and “accelerating” the collapse of the federal government.
Humber, the DOJ says, aimed to achieve her goals by “targeting and radicalizing vulnerable teenagers; by grooming them to commit hate crimes; terrorist attacks on infrastructure, and assassinations; and by providing them technical, inspirational, and operational guidance to plan, prepare for, and successfully carry out those attacks.”
Humber describes herself as a “ruthless neo-Nazi terrorist” and “accelerationist martyr and icon,” according to a sealed presentence report cited in the government’s sentencing memorandum.
The report says that 15 months in pretrial detention “has only served to validate, reinforce and galvanize” Humber’s commitment to white supremacist accelerationism.
Citing the report, the government claims Humber is “proud of her ‘legacy’ of death and destruction, and her only regret is not personally murdering anyone before her arrest.”
Based on Humber’s personal history, the severity of her crimes, the need to protect the public and provide adequate deterrence, the report found that a 40-year sentence would be appropriate.
The government and Humber reached a plea agreement for a range of 25 to 30 years.
‘Ongoing security risk’
Federal prosecutors argue the court should accept the plea agreement to hasten Humber’s transfer to a federal facility where her ability to coordinate with fellow terrorists will be more constrained.
“Given the defendant’s history of radicalizing others and grooming them to commit attacks on her behalf, her continued pretrial detention at a county-run facility without adequate rules and resources to prevent her from doing so poses an ongoing security risk,” prosecutors wrote in the sentencing memorandum last week.
“This is another reason this court should accept the plea agreement and sentence the defendant: so she can be transferred to a secure [Bureau of Prisons] facility with restrictions in place to prevent her from continuing to engage in the same conduct that landed her there in the first place.”
Humber’s lawyer did not respond to requests for comment.
Since May, Humber has been a housing unit orderly at Wayne Brown Correctional Facility in Nevada City, Calif. The role involves cleaning microwaves, bathrooms and showers, vacuuming the day room, and occasionally cleaning up vomit and feces from other inmates’ cells.
In a letter submitted to the court, Jail Commander Bob Jakobs described Humber “as having a good attitude, being dependable, respectful, helpful,” and “one of the most reliable orderlies.”
“I appreciate Ms. Humber’s willingness to help my staff keep our facility clean and to take on tasks that other inmates aren’t always willing to do,” Jakobs said.
The government’s sentencing memorandum credits Humber’s “early and full acceptance of responsibility for her crimes,” and says her guilty pleas “allowed the government to focus its limited time and resources on bringing to justice other members of the Terrorgram Collective domestically and abroad.”
But Matt Kriner, executive director of the Institute for Countering Digital Extremism, told Raw Storyhe wasn’t surprised the government would be concerned about Humber coordinating with Terrorgram members.
Although the group is “dormant,” Kriner said, “The threat is only paused while the government goes through its criminal process against the leaders.”
‘Struggled with self-hate’
Humber’s lawyer is arguing for a sentence of 25 years, to account for her experience of “extreme physical, emotional, and verbal abuse.”
“Ms. Humber was groomed from a young age to get attention from men in a way that she has clung to throughout her life,” her sentencing memorandum reads.
“She has struggled with self-hate in myriad forms, including drug addiction, anorexia, suicide attempts and remaining in violent relationships.”
At 14, Humber operated a LiveJournal account presented as a forum for “the personal insights of a fascist dictator in training,” according to an exposé by Left Coast Right Watch in March 2023, 18 months before her arrest.
The government claims seven attacks or plots were “inspired or guided by” Humber’s leadership of Terrorgram.
An online relationship between Humber and a 19-year-old Slovak, Juraj Krajčík, is at the heart of the government’s case.
Krajčík was mentored by Pavol Beňadik, a prominent Terrorgram member known as “Slovakbro.”
Following Beňadik’s arrest in Slovakia in May 2022, the U.S. government alleges that Humber and Allison “continued to guide” Krajčík “down ‘the path of sainthood’” — a reference to efforts to sanctify white supremacist mass murder.
‘Dead targets or I don’t care’
Humber promised Krajčík that if he “became a saint,” she would narrate his manifesto, according to the government.
“That’s the cost of admission, so to speak,” Humber reportedly told Krajčík. “Dead targets or I don’t care.”
Humber’s sentencing memorandum indicates she disputes the claim that she “groomed” Krajčík.
On Oct. 12, 2022, outside an LGBTQ+ bar in Bratislava, Krajčík shot three people, killing two and injuring one. He fled, then killed himself.
The government also alleges Humber communicated directly with a Brazilian high-schooler, Gabriel Castiglioni, before he carried out a mass shooting in Aracruz in November 2022, the most lethal Terrorgram-inspired attack, with four students killed.
Humber created “saint cards” to “celebrate and commemorate the mass shootings committed by” Krajčík and Castiglioni, whom she considered “symbolically [her] kids,” the government says, adding that the evidence will be filed under seal for review by the court.
Other attacks or plots the U.S. government claims were “inspired and guided by” Humber’s leadership include:
A stabbing injuring five outside a mosque in Eskisehir, Turkey in August 2024.
Plots to attack electrical substations in New Jersey and Tennessee, disrupted by the FBI in July 2024 and November 2024.
A plot to assassinate an Australian lawmaker, disrupted in June 2024.
A double murder in Wisconsin in February 2025 by a 17-year-old boy against his mother and stepfather, allegedly motivated by his quest for financial resources and personal autonomy to pursue a plot to assassinate President Donald Trump.
Despite the arrests of its leaders more than a year ago, Terrorgram continues to inspire violence, Kriner told Raw Story.
“There’s always going to be individuals who retain influence or keep their adherence to the Terrorgram approach to accelerationism, or mobilize in part through the consumption of the Terrorgram propaganda and publications,” he said, “because they remain persistently available through various online ecosystems.”
Martin Luther King, Jr. (Wikimedia Commons) 
Seth Chandler (Photo credit: University of Houston Law Center)
FILE PHOTO: A view of the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, U.S. June 29, 2024. REUTERS/Kevin Mohatt/File Photo
Rep. Ilhan Omar speaking in Las Vegas, Nevada. (Photo credit: Gage Skidmore / Flickr) 
"Freedom from Want" by Norman Rockwell (Wikimedia Commons)
Jennie Gage with her children when she said she was still a "Mormon trad wifey" (Photo provided by Jennie Gage)
A college student wearing a “Make America Great Again” cap looks on at a Turning Point USA event, held at University of Florida in Gainesville, Florida on Nov. 13. REUTERS/Octavio Jones