Raw Story Investigate

Maybe Michael Bloomberg wasn’t as awful as he looked

Call me crazy, but the media could have it wrong about Michael Bloomberg. The latest Democratic debate post-mortem came fast and furious – and from a prominent Op-Ed in The New York Times to the cover of The New York Post –and the verdict was almost unanimous. Bloomberg was “disastrous.” His campaign had “imploded.” He […]

Trump abruptly opens a new front in his vengeance campaign with a fusillade of self-serving pardons

I’ll grant you that Donald Trump, as president, has legal and constitutional right to pardon or commute sentences for whomever he wants. Still, we should be able to understand what the message is that is being delivered. Are we curtailing the excesses of prosecution? Are we dealing with unfair sentencing? Or is this favored treatment […]

Trump just declared war on the Chesapeake Bay

Trump once again is trying to cut most of the funding to clean up the polluted Chesapeake Bay even as the Trump EPA undermines the cleanup with legal footnotes and inaction. Trump’s latest sabotage, for the 2021 budget, would cut more than 91% of the funding for the Chesapeake Bay Program created under President Ronald […]

Trump meddled in a lot more than just the Stone case — he’s also using his DOJ to play favorites among corporations

Trump’s effort to influence the outcome of the prosecution of his buddy Roger Stone represents another threat to the rule of law in the United States. Yet it is not just the rule of criminal law that is endangered. The Trump Administration has also been meddling with civil law, particularly in the area of antitrust. […]

How Pelosi is forcing Trump and the GOP over a cliff

Who’s looking smart this President’s Day now that Senate Republicans held a show trial with no witnesses before acquitting Donald Trump on two impeachment charges? Nancy Pelosi. The Speaker held off those in her party who wanted to impeach Trump right after her party took control of the House of Representatives, annoying many of her […]

Your tax dollars at work: Trump admin’s new policies more alarming than president’s vengeance campaign against perceived enemies

So, while Donald Trump has been parading his vengeance campaign against perceived enemies, what’s his actual government been doing? Inquiring skeptics want to know. Mostly, once we set aside the pomp of awarding undeserved medals to Rush Limbaugh and continuing to irritate foreign leaders who had considered themselves allies, the answer is that the government […]

Here’s why Trump and the radical Republicans are out for revenge

The disturbing, divisive undercurrents of the impeachment continue to ripple through our political, investigative and legal systems. Even as voters were going to primary polls in New Hampshire, Team Trump was in overdrive. It was pushing the powers of the Donald Trump presidency exactly into the kind of abuse that drove efforts to unseat him. […]

Republicans open all channels for revenge as America sinks into Trump-induced confusion

The disturbing, divisive undercurrents of the impeachment continue to ripple through our political, investigative and legal systems. Even as voters were going to primary polls in New Hampshire, Team Trump was in overdrive to push the powers of the Donald Trump presidency exactly into the kind of abuse that has driven the efforts to unseat […]

Donald Trump’s new budget proposal is a map to what divides America

Sometimes government documents are hard to read, filled as they are with legalese and veined with political deals. Sometimes, of course, they are easy, as in Donald Trump’s proposed 2021 budget proposal to Congress. It is a plain political document that outlines the president’s reelection campaign points and that runs afoul of his own State […]

US, Britain and France act tough on yet another Airbus bribery case

Given all the talk about the globalization of supply chains and other business activities, it is encouraging to see that international coordination can also occur when it comes to the investigation of corporate misconduct. That is part of the story in the recent announcement that law enforcement agencies in the United States, Britain and France […]

It’s not just Iowa: The Democrats’ entire nomination process is dumb and needs to be blown up

It’s a myth that the Chinese use the same word for crisis and opportunity, but it’s nonetheless sound advice to never let a crisis go to waste…and Democrats are surely experiencing a major crisis right now in their presidential nominating process. It is imperative that they take advantage of it to make some fundamental changes. This is not about […]

A ticking time bomb from the big banks could cause the next recession — but ‘King of Debt’ Trump doesn’t care

The art of hiding multi-trillions of dollars of debt has found an eager accomplice, the businessman who once proudly proclaimed, “I love debt”: Donald J. Trump. The King of Debt is now in control of an obscure federal watchdog agency intended to prevent derivatives—complicate financial instruments that billionaire businessman Warren Buffett once described as “Weapons […]

Pure fiction: Investigative journalist destroys Trump’s new ‘happy go magic land’ budget

If you love more federal debt, endless wars using antiquated technology, and enjoy breathing dirty air then boy oh boy has Donald Trump got a budget for you. His new plan to spend $4.8 trillion in the 2021 budget year, which begins Oct. 1, continues his massive military spending with severe cuts to almost everything […]

Trump committed to reviving archaic combat technology that still kills more than 15,000 people per year in accidents

Here’s another topic that has never reached a political debate stage: The Trump administration has endorsed – and is developing – cluster bombs and antipersonnel landmines that have been banned by 160 countries. Amid endless questions about the details of health plans that may never make it through future Congresses, there are lots of values-laden […]

The Trump administration has launched a brazen assault on our public lands

Trump’s Bureau of Land Management, now run by attorney William Perry Pendley, wants to take our nation back to the days of the Dust Bowl when ranchers lorded over public land and their cattle grazed away the natural vegetation and destroyed the topsoil. The bureau has scheduled meetings this month in Montana, Nevada, New Mexico and […]

Critics blast ‘absurd’ plan to put ‘garish’ Trump in charge of architectural style for all new federal buildings

In a fascinating article, The New York Times shared the news that the Trump administration is proposing an executive White House order to decide on architectural style for all new federal buildings — to make them look akin to the classical style of the White House itself. It’s less the choice in architecture itself that is striking […]

Not just Trump: The ‘bully’ president is looking for ‘payback’ for his supporters too

OK, imagine for a moment that you are Donald Trump and you want to strike back at a Congress, at the FBI, at the Deep State and fully half the country for having the temerity to challenge you. I know, you don’t want to put yourself in that situation, but it seems necessary to try […]

America braces for Trump’s inevitable burst of vindictiveness after his Senate acquittal

Even as the Republican Senate majority finally was acquitting Donald Trump of impeachment charges, one could sense the country bracing for the retaliating boomerang to come. Trump is never gracious, even in would-be victory, and is sure to be boastful about beating the “witch hunt” of impeachment. The next step, naturally, will be vindication and […]

Trump’s mental deterioration threatens public health as much as the coronavirus: Yale psychiatrist

Fletcher Knebel’s novel, Night of Camp David, makes a mental health professional of our day envious. The U.S. secretary of defense says: “If anyone of the three [involved in the nuclear decision] blows his top, we’ve got a right and a duty to know it as soon as possible. Then we’ve got to insulate him from […]

Wells Fargo hit with a brutal 100-page notice as regulators finally crack down on the ‘lawless’ bank

It took three years but a leading U.S. regulator finally got tough with probably the most lawless large U.S. financial institution. The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, an arm of the Treasury Department, recently took action against a former chief executive of Wells Fargo. The action was in connection with the scandal in […]

The schizophrenic president: Which Trump will show up at the State of the Union?

It ought to be an interesting task for Donald Trump’s speechwriter – presuming that Trump decides to stick with a script for the State of the Union address tonight before the same Congress that is hearing his impeachment. With acquittal assured by the narrow Senate majority, it has got to prove an almost impossible lure […]

Manchester Divided: A political history in 3 New Hampshire primaries

If it is difficult to calculate the impact that a single primary can have on the trajectory of a nation, it was even harder to gauge a primary’s significance before the 1970s, when their results were so loosely tied to how candidates were nominated at party conventions. So it’s important to consider those old contests […]

Here are the hard numbers that show Trump’s economy is nothing to brag about

At Tuesday night’s State of the Union address, Donald Trump will surely claim he has created a great economy. Trump will try to lower expectations, hoping people forget his towering 2016 claims and promises. My spring 2019 analysis of Trump economic performance was a grade of C , average. Yet Team Trump claims it is […]

Militia groups spurn alt-right ‘trash’ at Virginia gun rally while establishing a dialogue with militant leftists

The hype surrounding the Jan. 20 Second Amendment rally in Richmond, Va. built it up as the potential spark for a second Civil War, with scary “antifas” preparing to bus in and attack “patriots,” and boogaloo-obsessed white supremacists looking for an opportunity to set off a race war. Instead, a quiet dialogue between militia leaders […]

Trump’s lawyers think Americans are dumb chumps

So, the impeachment process is all done but for the final, predictable votes. It has been a cringe-worthy process that almost certainly has deepened deep divisions in the country, and that has showcases a Republican Senate majority willing to follow party loyalty right out the window, throwing out a truckload of traditional American values. Do […]

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