Democratic Party representatives are calling out Donald Trump and his administration for their flippant style of dealing with the war in Iran.
Trump's admin approved strikes on the Middle Eastern country as part of a joint operation with Israel on February 28. Since then, the president has threatened further strikes and carried out such actions, but he and his cabinet have offered a multitude of different excuses for waging the war.
These excuses have come to a head in Congress, with Sens. Christopher Coons (D-DE) and Tim Kaine (D-VA) calling out Trump for the rhetoric around the war. Coons, speaking with Raw Story Friday, blasted Trump for distancing the US from NATO — especially given the last time the world organization acted on an Article 5 order.
Article 5 states that if a NATO Ally sustains an armed attack, every other member of the Alliance will consider this as an armed attack against all members, and will take the actions it deems necessary to assist the attacked Ally.
Coons ridiculed Trump for claiming, "NATO has never stood with us and that we can't count on them."
"Trump repeated the obscenity yesterday," he said, before explaining how the intergovernmental organization had sprung to action in favor of the US. He said, "The only time NATO has actually invoked Article 5 and deployed to war was in defense of us in Afghanistan. A third of the combat deaths [in Afghanistan] were NATO troops.
"I led a bipartisan delegation to Denmark during the same week Trump gave that speech about how NATO had never stood by us, and Senator Tillis and I laid a memorial wreath at the site that remembers the 52 names of those who died in combat in Afghanistan and Iraq.
"But the president keeps disrespecting our NATO allies this way, which leads to the unsurprising result that when he didn't consult them before launching a war of choice with Iran, they didn't feel willing to but in to open the Strait of Hormuz."
Kaine added, "The problem with his argument is, he's been non-stop screwing around with NATO allies during his whole time in office. Imposing tariffs on them, threatening to invade a NATO ally, and you know, it is unilateral relations 101 that after you've kicked people around when you suddenly ask people to help when you've kicked them around, they're not going to be that interested.
"So he should stop kicking them around, and then he might get more cooperation. If the president were full-throated in his support of Ukraine, that might be a more parallel argument, but the Europeans are looking and going, 'Well, wait a minute'. Biden was really supportive of Ukraine. What have you done about it? It's not an argument where the president is really standing on solid ground."
A neo-Nazi who embraces terrorism has been ordered held in pre-trial detention as a danger to the community by a federal magistrate judge following his arrest for illegally possessing a firearm.
Mathew David Bair, a leader of the neo-Nazi accelerationist group Injekt Division, was arrested in Pennsylvania by the FBI last week.
A former Marine who was court-martialed out of the service for larceny and sale of classified materials, Bair joined the riot at the U.S. Capitol as a member of First Capitol Proud Boys, as Trump supporters attempted to overturn the 2020 election on Jan. 6.
From his time as a Proud Boy, Bair increasingly gravitated to a violent brand of white supremacist extremism. He toldRaw Storyin 2024 that “the fascist pipeline is very real,” and that he had been “in a direct pipeline chapter.”
Bair’s radicalization led him to Injekt Division, a neo-Nazi accelerationist group whose former leader was arrested in May 2021 for allegedly plotting to carry out a mass shooting at a Texas Walmart.
“I would say they’re very much in line with the Terrorgram milieu,” Hannah Gais, a senior researcher and journalist at the Southern Poverty Law Center, told Raw Story. “I think obviously given their origin, they have clear ties to violence.”
Terrorgram Collective is a global network that has encouraged mass shootings, political assassinations and infrastructure attacks through online propaganda, which inspired a deadly school shooting spree in Brazil, a fatal mass shooting at an LGBTQ+ bar in Slovakia and a mass stabbing in Turkey, as well as assassination attempts and thwarted attacks on electrical substations. Dallas Humber, one of the group’s leaders, is currently serving a 30-year prison sentence after pleading guilty to soliciting hate crimes and murder.
In 2023, Bair posted a video depicting a flyer reading, “Shoot your local judge.” Asked about the flyer by Raw Story, Bair brought up an incident in which an extremist went to the home of U.S. District Court Judge Esther Salas and fatally shot her son. Salas has frequently spoken out against threats directed at judges who cross President Trump over the past year.
Extremist researchers and antifascist activists have closely monitored Bair due, in part, to his provocative online presence. They include a Telegram message showing members posing in tactical gear and skull masks outside what appears to be a power plant while displaying firearms and their group flag.
Another Telegram message linked to Bair shows a ballistic vest, flags and pistols draped over a car seat accompanied by text indicating the author was traveling to Washington, DC on Jan. 24, 2025, a date that coincides with the March for Life. The annual event typically draws both far-right extremists and left-wing counterprotesters. Carrying firearms is prohibited in Washington, D.C., with a few exceptions that include law enforcement.
An indictment returned on March 4 alleges that Bair possessed an Aero Precision rifle and Ruger pistol while knowing that he had been convicted of a crime punishable by imprisonment for more than a year. Bair pleaded not guilty following his arrest on March 11.
A magistrate judge in Harrisburg, Pa. ordered Bair to be held in pre-trial detention, partly on the basis that his release poses serious danger to a person or the community. The magistrate also cited Bair’s prior criminal history, prior parole violations, prior failures to appear in court, and the strength of evidence supporting the gun charge.
Dawn Clark, a public affairs officer with the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Middle District of Pennsylvania, declined to comment in response to questions about why the government argued that Bair is a danger to a person or the community, or whether the government is concerned that Bair has attempted to intimidate judges.
Beatrice Diehl, an assistant federal public defender assigned to represent Bair, also declined to comment.
An undated photo of Mathew Bair from an Injekt Division Telegram chatVia Telegram
While becoming increasingly immersed in violent neo-Nazi activity, Bair remained committed to Trump. In July 2024, shortly after Trump accepted the nomination at the Republican National Convention, an Injekt Division Telegram channel linked to Bair posted video of a rally in Michigan in which neo-Nazis chanted, “We love Hitler, we love Trump.”
In late 2023, Bair joined 2119, a teenage neo-Nazi gang, after four of its members, ages 15 to 18, were arrested in Pensacola, Fla. for a hate-fueled vandalism spree that included brick attacks on two synagogues. 2-1-19 is an alphanumeric code that stands for Blood and Soil, with 2 representing B for “Blood,” 1 representing A for “And” and 19 representing “S.” for “Soil.” Blood and Soil is the English translation for Blut und Boden, a popular phrase during the Third Reich that suggests a mystical bond between a racialized ideal and the land of Germany.
The group previously went by the moniker Revolutionary White Brotherhood, or RWB.
Then 34, Bair was by far the oldest member of 2119, which was the focus of a February 2024 investigation by Raw Story. Bair posted a photo on the social media platform Telegram that showed his 4-year-old son posing next to 2119 graffiti.
In March 2024, the [2119] Sons of Pennsylvania Telegram channel, likely operated by Bair, posted a video of two men driving a pickup truck to the Pennsylvania State Police barracks in York, and depositing a brick inscribed with the letters R-W-B at the front door, declaring as they departed: “White f------ power.”
2119 went into decline following the Raw Story investigation. By mid-2014, the group had disbanded as its leader lowered his profile and members found themselves caught in the middle of intra-movement rivalries between larger white nationalist organizations. Injekt Division likely contributed to 2119’s demise by doxxing a leader of 2119’s California chapter after he admitted to “snitch[ing] on” another member.
Bair is not the only associate of 2119 who has faced arrest in recent months.
Aiden Cuevas, an Alabama neo-Nazi who enthusiastically promoted 2119, was indicted alongside Andrew Nary for conspiracy to traffic firearms after allegedly buying machine guns from an undercover FBI employee while planning to start a paramilitary and requesting training to “take out” so-called “high-value targets.
Cuevas and Nary both entered not guilty pleas before a federal magistrate judge in Huntsville, Ala. last week.
Last month, David William Fair, a probationary member of the racist skinhead group Vinlanders Social Club, was indicted in North Carolina for felony soliciting gang activity and contributing the delinquency of a minor.
Fair had administered a Telegram chat that Bair joined in 2023. That same year, following the Pensacola arrests, Fair counseled Cuevas in another Telegram chat that 2119 should exercise more discretion to avoid criminal prosecution.
The story previously stated that Bair and a second man deposited a brick outside the York Police Department. The story has been corrected to reflect that they deposited the brick outside a Pennsylvania State Police barracks in York.
Mar-a-Lago — President Donald Trump’s luxury “winter White House” private club and residence — sits in a narrowly drawn Florida state house district hugging the Palm Beach coast.
That strip represents one of the target districts where Democrats are hoping to send their latest message to Republicans and Trump, who faces a tanked approval rating, through a small business owner they hope can flip the seat in Florida House District 87.
The Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee (DLCC) boasts 28 state-level flips so far – and none for Republicans — since Trump was elected.
“This is a stark reminder that Democrats are not just winning in blue states or even in competitive districts. We are winning in red communities, and we're putting up a fight right in the president's backyard,” Heather Williams, DLCC president, told Raw Story.
“There's some groundswell opportunity there. This is also in the kind of district that we've been winning. We have been marching into Republican territory. We've been flipping seats, and we're leaving no stone unturned when it comes to that.”
The March 24 special election squares off Democrat Emily Gregory, a public health expert and Fit4Mom Palm Beach owner, against Jon Maples, a financial adviser and former All-American college athlete endorsed by Trump.
Emily Gregory (Photo courtesy of Emily Gregory for Florida)
“When people are given the option of a very extreme, far right-wing option or a pragmatic Democrat, I think they will choose the pragmatic Democrat,” Gregory told Raw Story.
“When we will win, it will send an incredibly powerful message to Democrats statewide and nationally.”
Maples and the Republican State Leadership Committee did not respond to Raw Story’s request for comment.
'Outcry and outrage'
After Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis appointed Mike Caruso, the incumbent Republican state representative for the district, to serve as Palm Beach County Clerk in August 2025, he failed to call a special election for months until after Gregory filed a lawsuit alleging the governor did not follow state law.
Without representation for an entire legislative session, “people are really understandably outraged,” Gregory said.
Gregory said she’s campaigning on “pragmatic solutions” to address the affordability crisis and state housing issues.
When she knocks on doors, Gregory said voters talk about skyrocketing property insurance rates, access to affordable health care and funding public schools.
“More recently, we've really been hearing this outcry and outrage at democracy in peril,” Gregory said.
Residents in the district are concerned about the Trump administration’s aggressive handling of immigration enforcement that left protesters dead when U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) sent thousands of federal agents to Minnesota.
“No one is okay with armed thugs being out in the streets, shooting American citizens,” Gregory said.
“No one is okay with the unregulated militia that is ICE.”
Emily Gregory (Photo courtesy of Emily Gregory for Florida)
State legislators are in charge of the drawing of congressional maps, and at least one-third of states have proposed redrawing maps since Republicans started a mid-decade gerrymandering war at the urging of Trump.
The winner of the Florida House District 87 race will participate in Florida’s April special session on congressional redistricting, said Gregory, who is against mid-decade redistricting.
“There's a lot to be fearful of in this power grab,” Gregory said.
“We have to maintain our civic duty and our decade pattern, and I think trying to do it halfway through the decade just shows how desperate the current administration is, and the implications of losing those congressional seats would be profound.”
Democrats hope their successes at the state-level are a bellwether for the November midterm elections when they look to take back control of the U.S. House of Representatives and even possibly the U.S. Senate.
The major super PAC for Senate Republicans skyrocketed their dark money contributions in order to protect their GOP majority, Raw Story first reported.
“If I were Republicans, I'd be deeply concerned about this. They benefited from this kind of environment in 2010, and we're knocking on the same door, only in the opposite direction this time, where we've got this incredible opportunity and we are ready to show up and meet the needs of voters across the country,” Williams said.
“Regardless of what the national narrative is like, Democrats can win elections, and we can win elections when we meet voters where they are and with a D behind our name.
“I think that's incredibly important as we think about officially now, transitioning into primary season, and how we think about winning up and down the ballot.”
Lawyers for a Black man serving life in prison in Alabama are seeking to overturn his conviction for the murder of a white woman, citing evidence his state-provided attorney was active in the Ku Klux Klan.
“Was he well positioned to represent a Black man?” one investigator asked.
“I think the answer is no.”
‘Enough questions’
Robin “Rocky” Myers, who has an intellectual disability,was convicted of stabbing to death Ludie Mae Tucker, 69, at her home in Decatur in 1991. Now 64, Myers has always claimed to be innocent.
Sentenced to death in 1994, Myers spent more than 30 years on death row. He was due to be executed using nitrogen gas before, last March, Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey commuted the sentence to life, observing that the case was “riddled with conflicting evidence from seemingly everyone involved.”
Robin Myers.
Saying she “had enough questions about Mr. Myers’ guilt that I cannot move forward with executing him,” the Republican governor also noted that the jury in Myers’ case recommended a life sentence only to be overridden by the judge, a step allowed under Alabama law until 2017.
Incredibly, it was known in 1994 that John E. Mays, the lawyer who represented Myers during his trial in Decatur, was a lawyer for United Klans of America.
Mays’ public work for the Klan included representing Imperial Wizard Robert Shelton in a civil lawsuit brought by the mother of Michael Donald, a Black teenager who was strangled and stabbed to death by three UKA members in Mobile, his body hung from a tree.
But what was not known about Mays until now — having been unearthed thanks to newspaper archive research by the legal team seeking to overturn Myers’ conviction — is that the lawyer was actively involved in the United Klans of America, giving speeches at rallies in six states and counseling parents on how to resist public school desegregation.
Mays even received credit as a contributor to the Klan newspaper, The Fiery Cross.
‘Exhorted Caucasians to band together’
According to a new filing, last July, Mays told investigators for Myers’ legal team Shelton asked him to write an article “about the risks of the Klan being infiltrated by the FBI.”
But the filing by Myers' legal team also cites contemporaneous reporting alleging that Mays traveled with Shelton to Lakeland, Fla. in 1977, “to teach parents who opposed desegregation how to file habeas suits on behalf of their children.”
According to a Virginia newspaper, meanwhile, Mays stood alongside Shelton at a 1977 Klan rally in Richmond, Va, and said: “You hear a lot about civil rights of n-----s and civil rights of murderers and every kind of pervert known to humanity.
“But what about the civil rights of the decent law-abiding white man or the law-abiding Black man, for that matter.”
Following Donald’s murder in Mobile, a Tennessee newspaper reported that at a 1981 Klan rally, Mays “exhorted Caucasians to band together in the face of an oncoming race war.”
Mays could not be reached for comment. But investigators for Myers’ legal team said that when they met Mays last year, he denied ever being a member of the Klan.
Leah Nelson, one of the investigators, told Raw Storyshe was confident that Mays “aligned with Klan goals” when he represented Myers.
“I believe the contemporaneous newspaper accounts over what he says now,” she said. “I think you really have to look at his actions, and ask: ‘Was he well positioned to represent a Black man?’
“I think the answer is, no.”
‘Unwaivable conflict of interest’
Myers’ motion requesting that the court vacate his conviction argues that no forensic evidence tied him to the crime. At least one witness for the state has recanted, saying he falsely implicated Myers in exchange for a police detective not charging him with auto theft.
The motion also argues that Myers’ conviction should be overturned on the basis of his lawyer’s failure to provide effective assistance.
Mays, the motion argues, “acted under an unwaivable conflict of interest: his racism, which ran so deep that there is no plausible way it did not impact his representation of Mr. Myers, a poor Black man.”
During his opening statement in 1994, Mays described the place where Myers lived as “the very pit of hell” while characterizing his client as a “transiate” [sic] despite the fact that he lived with his wife and family.
In a response filed late on Thursday, Assistant District Attorney Courtney Schellack asked the court to dismiss Myers' petition, arguing that it is "wholly without merit" and denying "any material allegation" in the filing.
Myers' legal team will have the opportunity to file a reply before a judge decides whether to grant the motion to vacate his sentence.
Schellack's response waved aside revelations about Mays' involvement with the Klan.
The only new information in the affidavit filed to support Myers' claim "is that Mr. Mays said he wrote an article at some point for the Klan publication," Schellack said, adding: "Mr. Mays specifically denied being a member of the Klan or attending Klan rallies."
The archived newspaper articles cannot be considered "newly discovered" information, Schellack said.
‘A certificate or trophy’
Nelson told Raw Story the extent to which other members of the legal community in Morgan County were aware of Mays’ involvement in the Klan in the 1970s and 1980s remains unclear.
Noting that Mays’ speaking engagements took place at rallies outside Alabama, Nelson said he may have taken care to reduce his visibility in his own community.
But one clue suggests Mays’ colleagues in the legal profession may have known more than they let on.
Based on a tip, J. Mitchell McGuire, Myers’ lawyer, filed an emergency motion last month expressing the belief that a “material artifact such as a certificate or trophy commending attorney Mays for his service to the Ku Klux Klan” is stashed in the evidence room or basement of the Morgan County Courthouse.
McGuire signaled that he intends to request discovery of May’s alleged Klan activity, and expressed concern that potential evidence could be misplaced or destroyed during renovations at the courthouse, which began in mid-February.
Judge Charles B. Elliot denied the motion — without explanation.
WASHINGTON — A Republican U.S. senator used insulting and sexist language to demand European countries join America and Israel’s war against Iran, saying NATO allies should “take their skirts off, maybe put some boots on and help the rest of the world out.”
“I gave up on Europe helping us years ago,” Sen. Roger Marshall (R-KS) told reporters at the U.S. Capitol on Thursday.
“They're all talking,” Marshall continued, citing President Donald Trump’s long-held grievance over defense spending levels among the NATO alliance.
“They told us they would get to 2 percent of GDP, and they never did. Half of them never did. Now they're probably 5 percent. They're all talk.”
While the U.S. clearly contributes most, analysts contest claims that NATO countries don’t pay their fair share, especially after most European nations increased spending since Trump threatened the fate of NATO at the start of his second term in the White House.
Since the U.S. and Israel attacked Iran late last month, British Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer and leaders of other traditional U.S. allies have grappled with how to deal with the Trump administration's demands that they support a war that remains unpopular across the globe.
On Thursday, Sen. Marshall reached back into 20th-century history to dismiss the Marshall Plan under which U.S. aid helped revive and rebuild Europe in the aftermath of World War Two.
“You know, World War II is over with,” Marshall said. “The Marshall Plan is over with.
“It's time for Europe to put some jeans on, take their skirts off, maybe put some boots on and help the rest of the world out.”
Marshall’s committee assignments do not include roles on panels dealing with foreign or military affairs.
His official Senate website highlights the seven years he served in the Army Reserves, while also painting him as a traditional conservative family man, “a physician, devoted father, [and] grandfather” and OB/GYN who “delivered more than 5,000 babies.”
'I was wrong'
Marshall already made news this week over errant Iran comments.
Appearing on CNN on Tuesday, the senator was asked whether, with seven Americans dead and 140 wounded, and a climbing death toll in Iran, he stood by comments to Fox News last June about U.S. airstrikes on Iran’s nuclear program.
“I think it will take them years to restart their nuclear program,” Marshall said then.
“I think that they can’t control their airspace; they don’t have the will to do it. From what I’ve seen, I’m in shock and awe. You know, it’s just, it’s shocking how much damage we did to their facilities.”
Back then, Trump claimed Iran’s nuclear program had been obliterated, even as he says new strikes were necessary to stop work on nuclear weapons.
Asked if he had seen intelligence to back up the president’s change of tune, Marshall told CNN: “Look, I was wrong. They were restarting their nuclear program.”
Marshall also said, “I hate war,” and saluted U.S. service members killed or injured.
Pressed on why he had changed his view about the effect of last summer’s strikes, the senator said: “I believe that we obliterated those particular nuclear facilities, but now they were starting nuclear programs in other places.
“And just their willingness to do that was just thumbing their nose at us.”
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump’s threat to derail his party’s agenda until Republicans ram through new voting restrictions in an expanded SAVE America Act has some key GOP lawmakers scratching their heads.
“It's his priority. I don't know how many others share it,” Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-ND) told Raw Story at the Capitol. “It's hard to see it being a top 10 issue for people. It almost never comes up, and I talk to thousands of North Dakotans.”
Even so, the president’s far-right allies are all-in on his new calls to expand the SAVE Act beyond requiring proof of citizenship and an ID to vote federally.
With the midterms approaching, Trump is demanding that the measure also include ruby red cultural issues, like restricting gender-affirming care for children and outlawing transgender women from participating in female sports, along with a federal ban on mail-in-voting.
“Oh, it's over if we don't get the SAVE Act passed, you know, for people running right now, because we're getting the blame for everything,” Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) told Raw Story.
“It's all the things the Democrats don't believe in, so you might as well get all of 'em at the same time so we don't have to walk over here and get it voted down four or five times, you know?”
But with Trump calling to federalize elections, Democrats are braced for battle.
“He is adamant about controlling our elections and steering them to the benefit of himself and his party,” Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-NV) told Raw Story. “That's a concern.”
‘A hard enough lift’
Last month, the House passed the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act — aka the SAVE America Act — along party lines, with just one Democrat supporting it.
Since then, the SAVE Act has, like most House-passed measures, sat untouched in the Senate. That’s angered Trump, who’s pressured Republican leaders to blow up the 60-vote filibuster, so Democrats would have to physically take to the Senate floor to derail bills they oppose.
While rank-and-file Republicans have felt the White House-induced pressure, GOP leaders — from Senate Majority Leader John Thune down — say there just aren’t the votes to overhaul the rules and institute a talking filibuster, let alone to heed the president’s new call to lard the SAVE Act with Republican red meat.
“This is a hard enough lift, to be honest,” Cramer told Raw Story. “I support every single policy that's in the SAVE America Act. I think some of it's unnecessary, and almost all of it's going to be difficult to pass, to say the least.”
Like many Republicans, Cramer’s ready to back a talking filibuster but questions the gains, if any, of the gambit.
“If somebody wants to do a talking filibuster, I'm ready to lock myself up for a few months,” Cramer said. “So we do a talking filibuster, you hand the floor over to the Democrats for as long as they want to hold it. It just doesn't seem like a high priority.
“And furthermore, for me, I look at the 2024 election and think, ‘I don't know if it gets much better than this.’”
Cramer questions Trump’s new call to eradicate most mail-in voting.
“At least half of North Dakota's counties are mail-in counties. That's how they vote. It's not an exception, it's what they do — it's what we do,” Cramer said. “I've never loved mail-in-voting. I think a ban on mail-in-voting altogether is probably not passable, particularly in rural America, which is Trump country.”
While Cramer’s a reliable Trump ally, he’s also worried about expanding the federal government’s role in local elections.
“I'm not crazy about so much federal oversight of our elections at all,” Cramer said.
“But I, again, I support all those same principles. I supported them in the state legislature, I'll support them in this, but I just think, as the pragmatic person that I am, it seems like it's a lot of time being burned up. And the most valuable commodity we have is our time.”
The last remaining moderates in the GOP fear time is dwindling as Election Day approaches.
‘Far-flung places’
Other Republicans agree with Cramer that mail-in-voting is just a part of life for their voters.
“We have a huge military population that, you know, is scattered all over, and we have people in far-flung places where you never know what's going to happen on Election Day,” Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) told Raw Story.
Upending mail-in ballots would punish the president’s base in parts of Murkowski’s state. In the 2024 general election, 51,212 Alaskans voted by mail — a whopping 23 percent of the vote — while 9,504 mail-in ballots were cast in the primary, according to the Alaska Division of Elections.
“So what happens with early voting, what happens with voting by mail, this is how we have allowed for access to voting,” Murkowski said.
“So no, I am not good with the SAVE Act as is currently written, because implementation in a rural state like Alaska is pretty close to impossible for some people, and I'm not willing to disenfranchise those folks.”
Moreso, when it comes to Trump’s calls for filibuster reform, Murkowski says the 60-vote threshold is a vital backstop for tiny, if expansive, land-wise states like hers.
“We've heard bluster about the filibuster, and he's going to keep it up,” Murkowski said. “But there are certain institutional safeguards in this body that I'm going to stand firm on.”
‘Expect him to abuse his power’
Internal Senate politics aside, Democrats say Trump’s demand to expand the SAVE Act to ban mail-in-voting is part of a troubling trend.
“It is him attempting in various ways and opportunities to control our future elections,” Sen. Cortez Masto of Nevada told Raw Story.
Catherine Cortez Masto. Picture: Shutterstock
Coupled with recent FBI raids on election offices in battleground states that Cortez Masto said were “looking for records from the 2020 election that we know the courts have all said was not stolen,” there’s a full court press from Trump to manipulate this year’s midterms.
Cortez Masto fears the administration is readying to deploy federal assets — whether the National Guard or Immigration and Customs Enforcement — to local voting precincts.
“My other biggest concern is, he's got now a police force that is a deportation force, but I can see him sending in that same police force around the elections to try to do something,” Cortez Masto said.
“It is a concern, and people should be aware he is trying to control our future elections to his benefit.”
Cortez Masto is far from alone in such fears.
“The president tried to cling to power last time he lost an election, and we would be naive not to expect him to abuse his power to try to foil the will of the people this time,” Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-GA) told Raw Story.
Ossoff’s up for reelection in Georgia, where the last U.S. Senate contest, in 2022, saw upwards of $515 million in campaign spending.
He’s banking on Trump’s ploy backfiring this time around.
“In Georgia, with the history of voting rights struggle, attacks on voting rights only galvanize the will of the people to make their voices heard,” Ossoff said.
“I hear serious concerns about attacks on elections and determination to answer them with unprecedented mobilization and turnout.”
The Republican candidate for governor of New York was scheduled to speak at an event headlined by far-right extremists and rioters convicted over the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol, according to a Raw Storyinvestigation.
Bruce Blakeman, the Nassau County executive running against incumbent Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul, was featured on promotional materials for a January event associated with retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, President Donald Trump’s former national security adviser.
🇺🇸 Stay Awake America National Tour THIS WEEKEND 🇺🇸 Mission: Unite, engage, activate local action for national impact!
Join 17+ nationally recognized experts in health, civics, faith, education, and more, including Bruce Blakeman, Treniss Evans, Dr. Judy Mikovits, Amir… pic.twitter.com/M4thJBBUjy — The America First Warehouse (@americafirstwh) January 7, 2026
The Stay Awake America event took place at the Trump-themed America First Warehouse in Ronkonkoma on Long Island from Jan. 10-11, though ultimately Blakeman did not attend, said Teresa Helfrich, director of operations for the America First Warehouse.
“He didn't end up showing up,” Helfrich said.
“Apparently, he was really busy, but unfortunately, he did not come, and people were a bit disappointed, but we tried our best.”
Helfrich said she was under the impression Blakeman was unable to attend because he was preparing for his inauguration the following day, for his second term as county executive.
In a statement to Raw Story, Blakeman attempted to distance himself from the event.
“Kathy Hochul told 5.4 million Republicans to leave New York,” Blakeman said through a campaign spokesperson, referring to 2022 remarks in which the governor named GOP figures including Trump, rather than every Republican in the state.
“Now she’s inventing distractions about events I never attended and people I’ve never spoken to because she can’t defend her tax hikes and soaring utility bills. She’s so bothered by her record she’s becoming delusional. I’m trying to make New York affordable.”
A poster for the event circulated by the America First Warehouse and Stay Awake America organizer prominently featured Blakeman as a speaker.
Flynn shared an X post promoting the event, which referenced Blakeman.
Long Island will be the focus on January 10–11 as the Stay Awake America Tour comes to the America First Warehouse in Ronkonkoma. This two-day gathering brings together powerful speakers, live music from the Caspar McCloud Band, and a special tribute honoring Tina Peters. It is a… pic.twitter.com/aRkvt5D0Cw — General Mike Flynn (@GenFlynn) January 2, 2026
Also featured were Stewart Rhodes, the Oath Keepers militia leader whose 18-year sentence for sedition was commuted by President Trump; Treniss Jewell Evans III, who pleaded guilty to entering the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021; and Ivan Raiklin, a Flynn associate who campaigns to punish Trump’s enemies.
The event was advertised as a tribute to Tina Peters, a Colorado county clerk sentenced to nine years in prison for her role in the effort to overturn the 2020 election. Trump is pressuring Democratic Colorado Gov. Jared Polis to grant Peters clemency.
Blakeman did recently speak at the Queens Village Republican Club’s Lincoln Dinner, on March 1. That event honored John Eastman, a now-disbarred attorney who advised Trump and played a central role in the effort to overturn the 2020 election, Politico reported.
In a statement, Blakeman denied knowing “who John Eastman is or what he stands for.”
Jacob Neiheisel, an associate professor of political science at the University of Buffalo, told Raw Story “association means a lot in politics,” and candidates make calculations about the costs and benefits of being linked with individuals or groups.
“You can distance yourself quite a bit. Trump's been effective at it,” Neiheisel said.
“It works for Trump. It can work for other people.”
Amy Young, director and organizer of Stay Awake America, did not respond to requests for comment.
The January event at which he was advertised to speak promised more than 17 “nationally known expert speakers in health, civics, faith, education, threat of Islam in America and child sex trafficking.”
Being associated with far-right figures doesn’t help Blakeman’s chances of winning in the blue state, Neiheisel said, adding that Republican gubernatorial candidates in New York “have to at least outwardly appear centrist to the bulk of voters, but that's not where the energy in the party is. The energy is typically on the far right.”
But such associations do “make you viable for other positions elsewhere, and put you on the radar of other people in the party, particularly if MAGA is able to continue beyond Trump,” Neiheisel said.
“I think that this also might be a play [by Blakeman] to stay relevant and stay in some of those circles even after he loses.”
Trump endorsed Blakeman in December after Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY), dropped out of the Republican primary.
Larry Levy, a former political journalist and associate vice president and executive dean of the National Center for Suburban Studies at Hofstra University, said “at some point, Blakeman will have to pivot to the middle — there just aren’t enough Republican voters in the state for him to win without a goodly number of moderate independents and soft Democrats — and Gen. Flynn certainly wouldn’t help him build bridges to them."
Flynn was briefly national security adviser to Trump in his first term before being fired for lying about contacts with Russian officials.
The Stay Awake America Tour is inspired and endorsed by Flynn and grew out of an earlier roadshow, the ReAwaken America Tour, that prominently featured his work as a far-right campaigner and promoted conspiracy theories and Christian nationalism.
On a recent podcast, Young said the tour came about as a result of a conversation between Flynn and Caspar McCloud, an English musician who performs at the events, about the need to mobilize support for Trump.
‘Secretary of Retribution’
Rhodes, whose name was originally listed at the bottom of the January event poster but whose photo is the first featured for a Stay Awake America event on March 20, founded the Oath Keepers, an anti-government group that recruited military veterans and retired law enforcement during the Obama administration.
The Oath Keepers, alongside the Proud Boys, provided the engine for the attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6.
Rhodes was freed from prison after Trump’s second inauguration but did not receive a pardon.
Raiklin, then an Army Reserve lieutenant colonel, promoted the so-called “Pence Card” argument, holding that Vice President Mike Pence possessed the authority to set aside the results of the 2020 election.
The expectation that Pence would comply inflamed Trump’s supporters and helped fuel the riot at the Capitol on Jan. 6, when the former vice president refused to bend to pressure.
As Trump mounted his 2024 election bid, Raiklin launched a campaign as self-appointed “secretary of retribution,” featuring veiled threats of violence against perceived enemies.
Retired Lt. Col. Ivan Raiklin and self-styled "secretary of retribution" Ivan Raiklin at the Republican National Convention (Jordan Green/Raw Story)
Evans pleaded guilty to entering the Capitol and drinking Fireball whisky in a congressional conference room.
During the 2024 campaign, he joined Raiklin for a press conference, calling for “live-streamed swatting raids” against Trump’s enemies.
Raiklin met with law enforcement officials in Texas to detail his plans for recruiting sheriffs to arrest Trump’s enemies, Raw Story reported.
As Nassau county executive, Blakeman has hired armed citizens as special deputy sheriffs — what critics have called an unlawful personal militia, the New York Timesreported.
In January, Rhodes and Raiklin held a press conference at the White House calling on Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act to stop Democrats winning the 2026 midterm elections and retaking Congress.
Raiklin has worked closely with Flynn, serving on the board of America’s Future, an organization led by Flynn and his sister. Raiklin took part in a 2024 tour to promote a documentary about Flynn.
Trump supporters storm the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. Kent Nishimura/Los Angeles Times/TNS
Helfrich told Raw Story the America First Warehouse supports those who participated in the riot at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, and she said she believes “the real insurrection happened on November 3 of 2020 when the deep state and the powers that be tried to overthrow a US presidential election.”
“We are 100 percent behind our fellow Patriot brothers and sisters who took a First Amendment stand that day to let Congress know that they didn't want a stolen election to be certified,” she said.
“We are extremely supportive advocates of the J6 community, and we do not see them as felons. We see them as politically persecuted patriots.”
Conspiracy theories
Stay Awake America’s “sizzle reel” to promote upcoming events features Cathy O’Brien, a conspiracy theorist who claims to be the victim of government mind control, and Judy Mikovits, a controversial virologist who equates vaccination with "extermination and sterilization.”
Mikovits was billed on the event where Blakeman was scheduled to appear.
Flynn appeared in the promotional video encouraging people to participate in the Stay Awake America movement.
Helfrich told Raw Story, “We love the people at the Stay Awake American tour,” and the warehouse has “the same mission.”
“The reason why we love their work is because we do believe that there's a lot that America is facing right now,” Helfrich said.
“Obviously, all of us are big President Trump supporters, and we love what he's doing, but he's only in office for another three years, and we do believe, a lot of us, that the country needs to stay awake and keep fighting beyond this term.”
Young’s X posts promoting the Stay Awake America tour frequently include the phrase “blitz 2026 midterms.”
Young frequently reshares posts from X accounts that promote the QAnon conspiracy theory, including one that in January revived the Pizzagate conspiracy theory, which falsely claimed that Democrats ran a child sex trafficking operation in the basement of a DC pizzeria.
Q the Plan video 2018 then Out of Shadows film & Fall of the Cabal series exposed everything. This was & is the wake up call. 🎥🎞️☎️ Stay Awake America ⚔️🇺🇸 the battles have just begun. Unite, Engage and activate local action for national impact. This is how we Take Back our… https://t.co/PvLG8jgyHd — 4everYoung (@4everAYoung17) February 2, 2026
Young shares QAnon beliefs with staff at the America First Warehouse, the Trump-themed event space in Ronkonkoma.
Speaking in January on the podcast she co-hosts at the America First Warehouse, Helfrich said she decided to go to Washington, D.C. on Jan. 6 after a friend admonished her: “Where we go one, we go all.” Helfrich said she and her co-host, “Angie the Patriette,” have that QAnon slogan “tattooed on our bodies.”
Young has also re-shared posts on X that promote election denialism, celebrate Russian President Vladimir Putin, and push Islamophobia and antisemitism.
One post from QAnon promoter Liz Crokin that Young re-shared less than a week before the Ronkonkoma event insinuates that illegal tunnels discovered underneath the Chabad-Lubavitch world headquarters in Brooklyn link Jews to child exploitation.
The tunnels were reportedly built by a radical offshoot of the Hasidic Jewish movement seeking to expand the site. There is no evidence of human trafficking at the site.
The main super PAC supporting Senate Republicans saw a “huge spike” in dark money contributions in 2025, a sign of the massive arsenal the GOP is building to protect its hold on Congress in November’s midterm elections, according to a new report from political reform group Issue One first reported by Raw Story.
As Democrats aim to capitalize on the growing unpopularity of President Donald Trump and his Republican party and regain control of Congress, the Republican-aligned Senate Leadership Fund skyrocketed dark money contributions by 581 percent in 2025 compared to 2023.
Michael Beckel, money in politics reform director at Issue One, said: “When you see an infusion of money like this, that usually means that these big money groups want to make sure that they have all of the resources they can muster to defend seats, to defend candidates, to defend their majority.”
At the same time, Senate Democrats saw a drop in dark money donations, Issue One said.
According to Issue One's analysis of campaign finance reports, in 2025 the Republican-aligned Senate Leadership Fund super PAC brought in $35 million from its affiliated dark money group, One Nation, representing $1 out of every $3 raised.
In 2023, that number was $5.18 million, Beckel said.
Four major super PACs increased 2025 dark money contributions by 65 percent, according to a new report. Graphic: Issue One)
This indicates “just a surge of dark money coming into the main super PAC supporting Senate Republicans at a time when, clearly, there's a lot of political winds blowing that say Democrats have a fighting chance to win the U.S. House of Representatives and maybe even pick up seats in the Senate,” Beckel said.
The four main super PACs focused on electing Democrats and Republicans in the House and Senate raised a combined $71 million from dark money sources in 2025: up 65 percent on the same point in the 2022 and 2024 election cycles, Issue One said.
“Both sides see this as an arms race where they don't want to put down any weapon, and when you see just huge sums of money coming in to influence elections from unknown donors, that raises serious questions about who's trying to buy access and influence in Washington,” Beckel said.
Republican and Democratic super PACs focused on the House maintained steady growth in dark money contributions, while the Senate Majority PAC, benefitting Democrats, received fewer dark money contributions in 2025, according to the report.
For every $4 raised for the Republican-aligned Congressional Leadership Fund, nearly $1 came from dark money group American Action Network, which totaled $17 million in 2025, according to Issue One.
On the Democratic side, about $1 of every $6 raised by the House Majority PAC and about $1 out of every $7 raised for Senate Majority PAC came from dark money group Majority Forward, totaling $11 million and $8 million in 2025.
“We continue to see this escalating arms race, and it's deeply concerning when you've got so much money from unknown donors coming in on both sides of the aisle,” Beckel said.
All four super PACs did not respond to Raw Story’s interview requests or declined to comment.
‘Massive war chest’
Beckel said he anticipates seeing significant amounts of dark money continuing to flow into these super PACs, especially around Senate races.
“There's going to be a huge battle over control of not just the House but the Senate, and wealthy donors who are evading the spotlight are helping Senate Republicans raise a massive war chest through their super PAC to defend those seats,” Beckel said.
Super PACs received massive dark money contributions ahead of 2024 election. Graphic: Issue One.
Among Senate seats not up for re-election this year, Democrats hold 34 and Republicans 31.
Two Democratic seats, held by Sen. Jon Ossoff in Georgia and in Michigan by retiring Sen. Gary Peters, and two Republican seats, held by Sen. Susan Collins in Maine and the North Carolina seat held by retiring Sen. Thom Tillis, are true toss-ups, according to the Cook Political Report.
Democrats’ narrow path to regain the Senate majority would require picking up seats in Alaska, North Carolina, Ohio and Maine, according to Cook.
During the 2023-24 election cycle, the four super PACs raised about $1 of every $5 from dark money groups. Dark money accounted for 21 percent of contributions to both parties’ Senate-focused PACs for the 2024 election, according to Issue One.
Issue One supports the DISCLOSE Act, legislation focused on increasing transparency and curbing the influence of dark money, which House and Senate Democrats reintroduced on Wednesday.
But with such a deeply divided Congress, Beckel said Issue One is focused on state-level reforms to reel in unlimited spending on elections by corporations and outside groups enabled by Citizens United.
“The warning here is that money from anonymous sources continues to play a major role in our elections, and I think voters all across the political spectrum are … deeply concerned and fed up about the amount of dark money that they're seeing in elections,” Beckel said.
WASHINGTON — Republicans are happy to criticize President Donald Trump’s war on Iran behind closed doors but “willing to give up congressional power” when given chances to actually rein him in, a prominent Democrat charged, shortly before the House of Representatives rejected a bipartisan attempt to assert its constitutional powers.
“There is an incredible sense in the Congress in the last year that so many Republicans have been willing to give up congressional power,” Rep. Becca Balint (D-VT) told Raw Story at the Capitol.
Republicans, Balint said, “all tell you behind closed doors a whole variety of things they don't like about what's happening.
“If you pick your head up and all of a sudden your power is gone, don't whine about it because you gave it away.”
In reality, presidents have long ignored such strictures.
Balint was speaking shortly before the House considered a war powers resolution that would have forced the Trump administration to pause strikes on Iran.
“I'm not stupid,” Balint, a member of the House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution and Limited Government, said.
“I can count. I don't think we're going to have the votes, but I think in every opportunity we have to assert our Article I powers, we have to keep doing these actions that show that we understand that every time we don't stand up to [Trump], legislative powers are slipping away.”
Another Democrat, Rep. Stephen Lynch (D-MA), said such votes were important, to “get people on the record.”
The record for the ensuing vote showed the resolution was rejected 219-212, with Republican Reps. Thomas Massie (R-KY) and Warren Davidson (R-OH) voting yes, while four Democrats voted no.
Massie co-sponsored the resolution with Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA), his partner in pressuring the Trump administration over the late financier and sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and his links to powerful figures, prominently including the president himself.
Davidson, a former military officer, is usually a loyal supporter of the Republican line.
On the floor of the House, he said, “Make no mistake, Iran is an enemy of the United States. As our military engages them, they do so justly. Unfortunately, they are not yet doing so constitutionally.
“For some, this debate will be about whether we should even be fighting in Iran. For me, the debate is more fundamental: is the president of the United States, regardless of the person holding the office, empowered to do whatever he wants?
“That’s not what our constitution says.”
‘Whatever it takes to win’
Amid continued confusion over Trump’s aims in attacking Iran — currently by air and at sea and at the cost of six American lives and more than 1,000 Iranians killed — it was reported on Thursday that strikes could extend until September.
Raw Story asked one senior Republican if that bothered him.
“Not worried at all,”Rep. Ralph Norman (R-SC) replied “Trump knows what he’s doing.”
Raw Story pressed: Was Norman really saying he would be okay with such a lengthy campaign, with all its attendant dangers for wider conflict through the Middle East and the world?
“Whatever it takes to win,” Norman said.
'Spiraling out of control'
Balint considered another pressing issue: Republicans’ reluctance to even say Trump has taken America to war, despite the president’s own use of the word.
“You can't call it a ‘military action,’ that it has a very short timeline, when this is the chatter,” Balint said, of the reports of a possible September end date.
“We knew that it's spiraling out of control … and again, like, where's the opposition within his own party?”
WASHINGTON — A debate’s raging within the Republican Party over whether or not America’s at war with Iran.
"We're in a bombing," Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL) told Raw Story. "We're bombing the hell out of them."
Despite the 2,000 targets reportedly hit, 17 naval ships allegedly destroyed and ongoing “24/7 strikes into Iran” — according to Adm. Brad Cooper, commander of U.S. Central Command — some of the more MAGA members of the Senate GOP refuse to use the “w” word.
“No. This regime was the one that was at war with us,” Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-OK) told Raw Story.
The Constitution and the War Powers Act of 1973 say Congress, not the president, has the power to declare war. On Wednesday, Senate Democrats were due to force a vote on a war powers resolution. Many Republicans say that’s unnecessary.
“This is not a war, this is a conflict now,” Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) told Raw Story.
“War is when you put people on the ground going in there and fight for months and months. This is not going to last that long.”
“You think it'll be easy?” Raw Story asked.
“It's not gonna be easy,” Tuberville said. “It's just gonna be.”
“Some people in MAGA are saying, ‘This ain't what we signed up for,’” Raw Story pushed.
“That's a different type of MAGA than I deal with,” Tuberville said.
“That's exactly what I signed up for, making our country first again, protecting our citizens, doing everything they possibly can to make us the number one country in the world again, militarily and financially.”
‘Undeclared state of war’
Debate over the “w” word would be news to President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who have both referred to the ongoing campaign as a “war.” The same could be said of the neocon wing of the GOP, which has been calling for war with Iran for decades.
“We’re in an undeclared state of war,” one such Republican, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), told Raw Story. “Six dead soldiers, you're at war. So we're in an undeclared state of war that's been going on since 1979.”
Others in the GOP shrug off the semantic debate.
“Who cares what you call it?” Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) told Raw Story. “Bombs are dropping, bad people are dying. Unfortunately, some good people are dying too.”
To Democrats, there’s no debate, which is why in the Senate the party is forcing its eighth vote on war powers resolutions on Wednesday afternoon.
“I take the president at his own words. He calls it a war," Senate Intelligence Committee Vice-chair Mark Warner (D-VA) told Raw Story.
“They're all over the map. Don't take my word for it, look at the four different answers that have come from the President and the senior leadership.”
‘No exit plan’
While the administration says it’s at war, Democrats aren’t convinced it’s prepared.
“There was no planning. The best you can say is haphazard,” Sen. John Hickenlooper (D-CO) told Raw Story. “There's no exit plan. There's no strategy. The risks are so enormous.”
“A lot of your [Republican] colleagues are telling me, ‘No, there's no fear of mission creep,’” Raw Story said. “I'm like, ‘Have you guys read any history?’”
“I mean, it's, I don't know. I regret, I mean …” Hickenlooper said, then stopped himself.
“I'm not often very speechless,” he said.
After a moment to gather his thoughts, the former Colorado governor found words.
“I guess I'd say that it's something you're going to have to be very, very careful as we disengage,” Hickenlooper told Raw Story.
“I don't think anybody wants a real war at scale, but they didn't want that in World War I either.”
The federal judge presiding over the trial of nine “antifa” defendants charged with terrorism and attempted murder in relation to a protest at an ICE detention facility in Texas last summer on Tuesday granted a request by the Department of Justice to bar self-defense claims in response to the shooting of a local police officer.
The order by Judge Mark Pittman during a hearing in Fort Worth, Texas — made in light of a ruling arising from the deadly Waco siege of 1993 — forbids defendants from presenting further evidence and argument to claim that one acted in self-defense or in defense of others when he allegedly shot Alvarado Police Lt. Thomas Gross.
The government’s motion asserted that such claims were “legally invalid.”
‘Apparently unarmed’
The new order, only the most recent in a tumultuous series of developments in the Trump administration’s first “antifa” prosecution, came after one defendant alleged that Gross pointed a pistol at a fleeing protester before he was shot.
Pittman’s written order was not immediately available, but his decision from the bench was reported by the defendants’ support committee, which is closely monitoring the trial.
Patrick McLain, an attorney for defendant Zachary Evetts, wrote in a filing on Monday that testimony by Gross and other government witnesses indicates “evidence of self-defense and defense of another.
“Lt. Gross noticed someone running away from him, dressed in black and apparently unarmed,” McLain wrote.
Some testimony has raised questions about whether the protester was armed.
McLain continued: “In that instant, Lt. Gross thought the person running away from him may have had something to do with the words spray-painted on an unoccupied guard shack he had also seen at that moment. Lt. Gross testified he pointed his pistol, loaded with a round in the chamber, at the back of the fleeing person.”
But on Tuesday, setting aside McLain’s argument that Gross’s actions were not a reasonable use of force, Pittman sided with the government’s position that the defendants are precluded from asserting that Song acted in defense of another because they cannot claim they were without fault in the events that led to the shooting.
In remarks from the bench, Pittman echoed the government’s citation of a legal precedent set in the prosecution of members of the Branch Davidian sect during the deadly 1993 siege by the FBI at Waco, Texas, according to the support committee.
The government motion cited a 1996 decision by a panel of judges in the Fifth Circuit finding that a Branch Davidian sect member could not claim self-defense when officers of the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) came to the group’s compound to serve arrest warrants for stockpiling weapons.
“A member of a conspiracy to murder federal agents, who dresses for combat, retrieves an assault rifle, and proceeds to the front door to confront government agents executing a lawful warrant, is not entitled to claim the benefit of self-defense when the hoped-for confrontation with the agents occurs,” the judges wrote.
Xavier de Janon, the director of mass defense at the National Lawyers Guild, saidthe new order could weaken the rights of people attempting to protect themselves against law enforcement aggression.
“I am concerned that the ability to defend oneself against law enforcement when they draw their weapon at you has been placed in danger,” de Janon told Raw Story.
“And some people would say you should not have the ability to self-defend against law enforcement. But there is case law that says people have the right to resist unlawful arrest and unlawful law enforcement conduct.”
De Janon represents Elizabeth Soto, one of the federal defendants, in a separate state prosecution.
The FBI siege at Waco is widely considered to have been a galvanizing event for the U.S far-right, feeding a narrative of government overreach that would inspire conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, the Oath Keepers and the Three Percenters, all of whom were involved in the 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol.
President Donald Trump, on whose behalf the Capitol attack was staged, held his first rally of the 2024 presidential campaign in Waco.
Now, with Trump making “antifa” the focal point of his effort to criminalize political opposition through a national security memorandum that broadly condemns views counter to his agenda, DOJ prosecutors are arguing that Song’s actions are analogous to those of the Branch Davidians.
Four ATF agents were among the 86 people killed at Waco. Most sect members died in a massive fire after federal agents attacked.
Outside the Texas ICE facility last July 4, Lt. Gross was reportedly shot in the neck, with the bullet exiting through his back. He was treated at a local hospital and released after four hours.
‘Get to the rifles’
In its motion, the DOJ cited testimony by two corrections officers “that after the defendants were told to leave and that the police had been called, Song remained in place armed with an AR-15 near the roadway from which any law enforcement response would arrive.”
Citing evidence from police body-worn camera footage that Song shouted “get to the rifles” and almost immediately opened fire on Gross, the government argued he could not claim self-defense, while directly quoting the Fifth Circuit ruling on the Branch Davidians.
De Janon said Judge Pittman’s order shouldn’t affect the other defendants. With or without self-defense, there are numerous ways to challenge the government’s accusation, he said.
And while the order hurts Song’s defense, the government still has a burden to overcome to prove its case.
“This is an attempted murder charge,” de Janon said. “They will have to prove malice aforethought. They will have to prove premeditation. Not all is lost. They will have to prove every single element of attempted murder. It’s everything — identity of the shooter, that an intent was formed not just to hurt, but to kill.
“The sequence of events could still weaken the state’s theory given the fact it was Gross who drew his firearm first.”
The government argued that allowing defendants to claim self-defense “can only serve as a thinly veiled attempt to encourage the jury to nullify any verdict in this case.”
The judge’s order to bar evidence of self-defense comes only a week after he declared a mistrial after interrupting a defense attorney questioning prospective jurors about whether they believed it was appropriate to bring guns to a protest.
Prospective jurors had spoken against ICE operations and expressed broad disapproval of the Trump administration.
Defendants on trial in Texas in the Trump administration’s first “antifa” prosecution are claiming self-defense, in answer to attempted murder and terrorism charges stemming from a chaotic confrontation outside an ICE detention facility that culminated with the shooting of a local police officer.
After defense lawyers cross-examined Alvarado police Lt. Thomas Gross, who suffered minor injuries after allegedly being shot by one of the nine defendants, the government last Friday filed a motion in court in Fort Worth, seeking to bar defendants from making a self-defense claim.
The government argues that because any claim of self-defense or defense of others was “legally unsupportable,” introducing evidence or arguments that raise that defense would amount to “a thinly veiled attempt to encourage the jury to nullify any verdict in this case.”
Benjamin Song, the alleged shooter, and four other defendants could face life imprisonment if convicted of attempted murder of law enforcement officers.
The issue of self-defense in the actions of the nine defendants accused of carrying out a “coordinated attack” on the Prairieland ICE facility arises amid a lingering national outcry over the January killing of Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old protester, by two Border Patrol agents in Minneapolis.
When he was shot, Pretti was carrying a handgun in accordance with Minnesota law. He did not draw the weapon before being shot multiple times.
Claims by administration members including President Donald Trump himself that Pretti should not have brought his gun to a protest met with bipartisan scorn, including among hardline gun rights groups.
While polling shows that ICE’s actions are widely unpopular, the government could face an additional hurdle with jurors in the Prairieland case, given that Texas is a state with broad support for gun rights.
“Our law is that you can open carry,” Greg Abbott, the state’s conservative Republican governor who is in the middle of a reelection campaign, declared at a January event following Pretti’s death.
“There are protests and other activities that occur all the time when people are carrying guns and doing so lawfully.”
Protest or attack?
Federal prosecutors and investigators have strenuously objected to the defendants’ description of events at the Prairieland Detention Center outside Fort Worth on July 4, 2025 as a “protest,” insisting it was an “attack.”
The defendants said they shot off fireworks to cheer up immigrants inside the facility. Prosecutors argue they fired “explosives” and vandalized government vehicles and a guard shack, in a ploy to draw law enforcement into an ambush.
The original indictment in the case came only three weeks after President Trump issued an executive order designating “antifa” as a domestic terrorist organization while describing the amorphous left-wing movement as “a militarist, anarchist enterprise that explicitly calls for the overthrow of the United States government.”
When the government unveiled the final indictment last November, Robert Cerna, acting director for the ICE Dallas Field Office, described the July 4 incident as a “coordinated attack” carried out “to sow anarchy and to undermine the rule of law.”
A response filed on Monday by the lawyer for one defendant charged with attempted murder directly challenges the government’s theory of the case.
Patrick McLain, who represents Zachary Evetts, wrote that testimony by government witnesses indicates “evidence of self-defense and defense of another.”
Citing Gross’ testimony, McLain wrote that the officer emerged from his squad car “with pistol raised in one hand” after receiving a report of a lone person attempting to enter the ICE facility.
“Lt. Gross noticed someone running away from him, dressed in black and apparently unarmed,” McLain wrote.
“In that instant, Lieutenant Gross thought the person running away from him may have had something to do with the words spray-painted on an unoccupied guard shack he had also seen at that moment. Lt. Gross testified that he pointed his pistol, loaded with a round in the chamber, at the back of the fleeing person.”
Video presented in court last week showed that within six seconds of Gross’s arrival on the scene, Song fired a rifle at Gross, and Gross fired back, McLain wrote.
The lawyer went on to say testimony from another officer that a bullet struck the magazine of Song’s rifle suggests Gross pointed his pistol at Song.
The government argued in its motion that “any assertion of self-defense or defense of others is legally unsupportable,” in part because defendants cannot legally show that Gross’s “display of force in pointing his weapon at a non-compliant defendant” was unreasonable.
McLain countered that Gross’s actions were “objectively unreasonable,” citing a 1985 Supreme Court decision, Tennessee v. Garner, which ruled “that deadly force is only allowed to apprehend felons who the police officer has probable cause to believe pose a ‘significant threat of death or serious physical injury’ to them or to the public.”
In Garner, McLain wrote, the high court ruled that the officer “violated the Fourth Amendment by shooting a fleeing burglary suspect, who did not appear to be armed, in the back of the head.
“Here, Lt. Gross was presented with a situation that, in the moment, he had no reason to believe involved a felony at all, let alone one in which a personal already running away from him was likely to present a ‘significant threat of death or serious physical injury,’” McLain wrote in his stinging retort.
“Even if someone ‘trying to get in’ to PDC could have warranted Lt. Gross’s response, the individual at whom he took aim was running in the opposite direction. Lt. Gross’s act of aiming his firearm at the back of an unarmed fleeing person, a misdemeanant at best and nonviolent felon at worst, was objectively unreasonable under the Fourth Amendment.”
An email to the U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Texas seeking comment went unreturned.
‘Yet another questionable move’
The defendants’ supporters flagged the motion to bar a self-defense claim as a sign of desperation on the government’s part.
“This is yet another questionable move by federal prosecutors in this unprecedented case, with the potential of seriously eroding the defendants’ ability to have a fair trial and adequate defense,” said Xavier T. de Janon, a lawyer representing a federal defendant in a parallel state criminal case.
“The government seeks to take away crucial, fact-based issues out of the hands of the jury, in the middle of the trial, after the evidence has already been introduced.”
When Republican firebrand Marjorie Taylor Greene resigned from Congress in January, as many as 22 candidates lined up to vie for her U.S. House seat in Georgia’s 14th District.
The vast majority were Republican. As of Monday, 12 remained in the March 10 special election race, giving Democrats hope that a split Republican vote might mean the seat can actually be flipped — despite its solid red rating and Greene’s definitive victories since 2020, when the high-profile, hard-right, conspiracy-theory-espousing politician was first elected.
Raw Story spoke with the three Democrats competing for the seat. With poor Republican polling under President Donald Trump and recent wins for Democrats in other red states, they presented different paths to victory.
Shawn Harris, a retired brigadier general and cattle producer, lost to Greene in 2024 and declared his 2026 candidacy prior to Greene’s surprise resignation announcement in November.
A Democratic win “is 100 percent realistic because this race here is completely switched,” Harris told Raw Story.
“Gotta keep in mind, whoever wins this race has never served in Congress before. Period.
“So now it goes back to people are actually looking at our résumés and looking at our background. They [are] looking at what we did before, and if I put my background up against anybody … people understand that, ‘Hey, this is the right guy.’”
Shawn Harris on his cattle farm in Rockmart, Ga. (Photo by Alexandria Jacobson/Raw Story)
Democrats have been chipping away at Greene’s domination in GA-14 since 2020, when she won with 75 percent of the vote.
In 2022, after two years of Greene’s far-right antics on Capitol Hill, Democrat Marcus Flowers cut her share of votes by nearly 10 percent, capturing more than 88,000 of his own.
While Greene won about 64 percent of the vote against Harris in 2024, nearly 135,000 voters, a record, picked the Democrat.
“We're taking everything that we learned from the last race and brought it to this race,” Harris said.
“I just want to make sure that everybody in northwest Georgia understands that Shawn Harris is going to go to Washington, D.C., and the people that I'm working for, the hardworking people here in northwest Georgia … I don't care if you're a Democrat or Republican, my focus is you.”
Harris is far-and-away the biggest fundraiser in the race, having raised more than $2.2 million through the end of 2025, according to Federal Election Commission (FEC) filings.
He has brought in more than $2.4 million in 2026, Renee Schaeffer, his campaign manager, told Raw Story.
The next closest fundraiser is Republican Clay Fuller, endorsed by President Trump, who raised more than $786,000 as of Feb. 18, according to FEC filings.
‘Anything can happen’
Clarence Blalock, a Democratic consultant running for Georgia commissioner of labor, faced Harris in a runoff in the 2024 primary.
Withdrawing his 2026 candidacy, Blalock endorsed Harris.
“Shawn has a chance to clear,” Blalock told Raw Story.
“At some point all that spending matters. He's going to be able to reach more people, reach low propensity voters.
“If he can resonate with some Republicans, or just basically get out every Democrat — because it's a special election, because it's going to be low turnout — if you turn out a higher percentage of your people, you can close that gap.”
Clarence Blalock in front of a restaurant in Rockmart, Ga. (Photo by Alexandria Jacobson/Raw Story)
That happened in Georgia last year when Democrat Eric Gisler flipped a state House seat in a special election.
The Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee (DLCC) counts Gisler’s victory in a Trump 12-point advantage seat as one of its biggest wins among the 26 seats the party has flipped since Trump’s re-election, said Sam Paisley, a spokesperson for the DLCC.
In Texas in February, Democrat Taylor Rehmet flipped a Republican state Senate district that favored Trump by 17 points — the DLCC’s first flip of 2026, a startling success that made national headlines.
“There actually probably are enough votes to win in these types of things, and in these specials, there's always a high level of chaoticness where anything can happen, too,” Blalock said.
In another state-level race, Blalock worked with Peter Hubbard, one of two Democrats to upset incumbent Republicans to win seats on the Georgia Public Service Commission, the first non-federal statewide wins for Democrats in Georgia in 19 years.
Even Minnesota gubernatorial candidate Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) celebrated the victories, calling them “a rejection of Trump-era policies.”
Towards the end of her time in Congress, Greene did the same — turning particularly fiercely against Trump over his handling of the Jeffrey Epstein scandal. Now, Democrats in GA-14 are hopeful that frustration with Trump and his party, particularly around hardline federal immigration enforcement and the Epstein files, will result in more switched votes.
“MAGA’s lost a lot of luster,” Blalock said.
“Who wants to be associated with pedophilia? I don't. I just think people are getting tired of it.”
Harris said 5 percent of GA-14 voters who backed Trump in 2024 also voted for him.
He is distributing “Republicans for Shawn” signs and said he expects many more to back him this time.
“We're very confident that we're going to be able to get our Democrats out, the independents out and those Republicans that feel that the Republican Party has left them,” Harris said.
“They [are] still Republicans, but the current Republican Party has left them with MAGA, and they're going to come out and vote for me.”
‘Times change’
Harris said he has resonated with some conservatives who consider themselves Ronald Reagan or Bush-era Republicans, focused on the economy.
Another Democratic candidate, patent lawyer Jonathan Hobbs, said the working-class district leaned Democratic in the 1970s and 1980s, so voters fed up with the GOP could flip back.
Jonathan Hobbs (provided photo)
“History tells us the future,” Hobbs said.
“Times change, and Trump [and] Republicans have made a lot of enemies … Everything changes, and especially with the handling of the immigration issue, where people are getting shot, that's not good. This is totally mishandled.”
Jim Davis, an author and political scientist who worked on Ross Perot’s independent 1992 presidential campaign, is also running as a Democrat — and is less confident of success.
Jim Davis (provided photo)
He created a computer model that showed a path to victory if only two Democrats were in the race and Republicans split their votes.
But Davis said Democrats were “very, very unfriendly toward my candidacy,” and with three candidates, “I don't think there's as much hope for any of us as there once was.”
While all three Democrats agreed affordability is one of the largest issues in GA-14, Davis said Democrats have lacked “winning issues” and clear messaging about “What do you stand for?”
“Welfare is very hard for people to accept down here in our district, because their backs are already to the wall,” he said. “They feel like they don't want to contribute to anybody else.
“They're hard people because they've had a hard time, and until Democrats get something in front of that, they're not going anywhere. They've lost all the people. They've lost their voting base.”
To win, Democrats need to demonstrate their stances in a concrete way, such as proposing subsidized daycare, Davis said.
“You've got to do something to break out,” he said.
An undated photo of Mathew Bair from an Injekt Division Telegram chatVia Telegram
Emily Gregory (Photo courtesy of Emily Gregory for Florida)
Emily Gregory (Photo courtesy of Emily Gregory for Florida)
Robin Myers. 
Catherine Cortez Masto. Picture: Shutterstock 
Retired Lt. Col. Ivan Raiklin and self-styled "secretary of retribution" Ivan Raiklin at the Republican National Convention (Jordan Green/Raw Story) 
Trump supporters storm the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. Kent Nishimura/Los Angeles Times/TNS 
Four major super PACs increased 2025 dark money contributions by 65 percent, according to a new report. Graphic: Issue One)
Super PACs received massive dark money contributions ahead of 2024 election. Graphic: Issue One.
Shawn Harris on his cattle farm in Rockmart, Ga. (Photo by Alexandria Jacobson/Raw Story)
Clarence Blalock in front of a restaurant in Rockmart, Ga. (Photo by Alexandria Jacobson/Raw Story) 
Jonathan Hobbs (provided photo)
Jim Davis (provided photo)