Alexandria Jacobson, Investigative Reporter

For more than a year, Captain Katie Benn has been on administrative absence from the U.S. Army, pulled from her deployment after President Donald Trump signed an executive order banning transgender individuals from serving in the military.

When faced with the decision last spring to voluntarily leave the military with an honorable discharge and about $60,000 in separation pay, Benn, a decorated air defense artillery officer and honor graduate of captain’s training, decided to fight to keep serving in the military, inspired by the “Warrior Ethos” of “never quit.”

“It's been a bumpy road,” Benn, 41, told Raw Story. “I struggled with a lot of loneliness because the Army has been my family since I enlisted, and being separated from my Army family was a difficult thing for me.”

Benn, who enlisted in 2012 and became a commissioned officer in 2021, applied for a waiver to stay in the military before the ban took effect, but said she has had no response in the past year.

Now, “it’s a moot issue,” Benn said, as she’s entering into what she says is an involuntary medical retirement come October.

“I did not want to end my career yet,” Benn said. “I would have much preferred to have kept going. I love the Army. I love my country. I love serving. I love my soldiers.”

While on leave, Benn has been living in Clarksville, Tennessee, near where she’s been stationed in Fort Campbell, Kentucky, and has received medical treatment for a combat-related injury.

“I probably would not be ending my career this year if it had not been for the ban,” Benn said.

The Pentagon estimated that 4,200 transgender service members were serving in the military as of last year, which reflects the number of transgender service members diagnosed with gender dysphoria and excludes “thousands that are stealth, in the closet or non-binary," said Kara Corcoran, executive director of SPARTA Pride, a nonpartisan nonprofit supporting transgender service members and veterans.

Transgender service members who chose to stay and fight the ban were typically placed on administrative absences as continuing to serve would require them to be assigned the wrong gender marker, Corcoran said.

“The rarity is the people who have not been put on administrative absence,” said Corcoran, a transgender Army Infantry Major who began the involuntarily separation process from the military last year after 18 years of service.

"It's just an unfortunate situation.”

‘Stabbed in the back’

A federal court recently granted a motion to extend to all transgender service members protections granted in a June 1 ruling to plaintiffs in Talbott v. USA that declared the Pentagon’s transgender military ban to be unconstitutional.

But Corcoran has encouraged transgender service members to remember that the Talbott case is still ongoing and to not make “rash” decisions given various unknowns about how the policies will play out.

“I, much like everyone else, feel stabbed in the back and a sense of betrayal by my country when we go through being banned when we didn't do anything wrong,” Corcoran said.

“A significant portion of service members will definitely feel this distress and pain that we're going through, and everyone has different ways to cope with it and go through it.”

Benn said she fought the medical retirement as she did not want to stop serving, but the Talbott ruling is too late to help her.

Captain Katie Benn passing the guidon, meaning leaving Command, at the end of her tour (Credit: 12th Missile Defense Battery)

“She's the kind of person that would have served for 19, 20, 25 years with broken knees, broken back, broken mind,” said Priya Rashid, Benn’s attorney, the legal director of the Trans Representation Project at the National Institute of Military Justice and a military reservist.

“When we deploy, we deploy when we're younger. We get injuries when we're younger. Our body gets beaten up, but we want to serve, so they forced her into the medical retirement because she would have just kept on serving injured, and that's what you'll see with a lot of the transgender service members like Logan Ireland.”

Ireland, an Air Force master sergeant, was kicked out of the military after getting a diagnosis of gender dysphoria, now a medical condition that the Pentagon says disqualifies people from military service, NPR reported.

Service members — transgender or not — often still serve with injuries, Benn said.

“There's sort of this idea of like suck it up and drive on,” Benn said. “There’s this idea of like ‘I'm hurt, but there's a job, and there's a mission. I have people counting on me, and I'm going to charge ahead and keep doing the job.’”

Benn has come to terms with the medical retirement related to the injuries sustained in a combat zone between June 2023 and October 2024.

“At the end of the day, the doctors make the choice, and the doctor said, 'It's time to hang up your boots,’” Benn said. “If the doctors step in and say, ‘Hey, you've done your job, and it's time to move on,’ then it's time to move on.”

‘Permanent detrimental effect’

Secretary of War Pete Hegseth announced Wednesday a new screening program to test the testosterone levels of all service members 30 and over, offering voluntary hormone treatment for those with low testosterone.

“The foundation of that new policy is to optimize performance and make sure that people are mentally and physically fit to serve. That is all that the transgender service members ever wanted to do through their transition, and that's what we did,” Corcoran said.

“We went through the process to live authentically, optimize our performance to continue to serve as the most effective and lethal warfighter that we can be to our country, and to see the new policy … goes to further reinforce the point that the ban on transgender service members has no evidence and is fully rooted in nothing but discrimination towards the transgender community who have honorably served for the past decade.”

Last week Hegseth was reported to have blocked promotions for female officers, marking the first time in more than a decade that no female active-duty naval officers will likely receive promotions to admiral this year.

After returning from overseas and completing the Captain’s Career Course, Benn said she volunteered to join a deploying battalion, becoming the first soldier to get medically cleared to go.

But, then she got pulled from deployment, causing her to miss a year of fighting, training and command experience.

“That meant I wasn't going over there with my soldiers. It meant I was not going to take command again, and it meant that what I have spent years of my career building towards, suddenly just isn't there,” Benn said.

“This would have had a permanent detrimental effect on my career.”

Katie Benn in uniform (Photo courtesy of Katie Benn)

Ideally, the military “should be a meritocracy where we look at you and say you will be promoted, or not, based off of your accomplishments, capabilities and potential,” Benn said.

“Any time decisions are made for reasons other than that, it harms the military.”

Benn has been recognized as one of the first transgender military officers to command in a combat zone and is “proud” of her decision not to voluntarily leave the Army.

“A transgender military officer went overseas, commanded in a combat zone, did the job well. Her team saved lives, and I'm proud of that, and nobody and nothing can take that away,” Benn said. “I sincerely believe that there will be a day when somebody else can come along and pick up the torch and keep going.”

While the environment in the military has become “inhospitable” for transgender service members at times, Benn said she hopes opportunities will open back up again.

“We just want to live our lives. We want to serve. We want to be part of American society. We want to be accepted. We want to live and work and pursue life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, just like everybody else. It really is that simple,” Benn said.

“I just hope to demystify it a little bit and help people see us just like any other American.”

The Pentagon declined to comment on ongoing litigation and referred Raw Story to the Army.

The Army acknowledged Raw Story's questions but did not respond by the time of publication.

In the immediate aftermath of Charlie Kirk’s assassination last September, Rudy Giuliani unleashed a flood of X posts calling for the firings of teachers and other workers who shared critical posts about the murdered right-wing activist.

Giuliani, former New York City mayor and President Donald Trump’s former personal attorney disbarred for false statements made about the 2020 election, posted phone numbers for schools where such teachers worked and dedicated an episode of his show “America’s Mayor Live” to “Exposing Every ‘Teacher’ Celebrating the Assassination of Charlie Kirk.”

When Giuliani shared a repost about a suburban Chicago teacher who replied to Facebook comments and posted about Kirk’s assassination, conservative websites wrote about it and right-wing commentators and groups lit up X, celebrating her “packing up” from the middle school where she works.

But Carolyn Pinta, who lives in Buffalo Grove, Illinois, and has taught for 27 years, said she didn’t lose her job as a Spanish teacher after the school investigated and is carrying on with her work leading the local Pride parade and LGBTQ+ support nonprofit, the Pinta Pride Project, which her family started in 2018 when her daughter came out as bisexual.

“Since I started this work, I've definitely been the object of some real nastiness from a very tiny sect of the community,” Pinta told Raw Story.

Carolyn Pinta (Photo by Annette Leibovitz)

Conservative groups like Moms4Liberty pushed to get Pinta fired after Kirk was killed at Utah Valley University in Orem, Utah, on September 10. A preliminary hearing for the suspected killer, Tyler Robinson, took place last week.

Moms4Liberty — Lake County shared numerous screenshots of Pinta’s social media posts and comments, along with a letter from “concerned parents” requesting a response from the White House about Pinta’s “inflammatory, anti-Trump and anti-conservative comments on social media.”

The national group republished a local news article which highlighted Pinta’s Facebook post that said, “I DESPISE Charlie Kirk and all he stands for, BUT I believe he has the right to live. It’s the guns…”

Pinta also came under fire for Facebook comments, including one that said, “Listen, the irony is THICK, right? All of Charlie’s quotes floating around because one thing they are saying is true. He did have a massive influence over young people. He believed in the sacrificing of a few souls each year to keep his 2A rights.”

More than 100 people packed into a Sept. 16 district school board meeting to demand Pinta’s firing after Moms4Liberty — Lake County put up a Facebook post about the meeting and shared contact information for the district’s superintendent and board.

“Moms4Liberty don't bother me so much because I'm used to being attacked, and they're an organizational group that is higher up. They don't know me personally. They don't bother me,” Pinta said. “The harder part is having people that I serve in the community get worked up in that way.”

The most challenging experience was seeing parents bring to the meeting their children whom Pinta was teaching, she said.

“To know that I was going to have those students sitting in my classroom. I'm an adult, it's easy for me to overlook that and do my job as I do every day — but for them, I can imagine that that was a really interesting experience,” Pinta said.

'Right side of history'

Since then, the backlash has “quieted down,” Pinta said. She also decided to remove herself from Facebook.

When asked in June if she would change any of the social media comments she made, Pinta said, “I had no idea that my feelings would be of interest… above all, the saddest thing is that this young man died and that his children lost their father.”

“The most important piece is that it's really tragic that this continues to happen in our country with gun violence,” Pinta said.

Pinta said an experience she had meeting a transgender military officer who unexpectedly came to her house to thank her for correspondence received through a card campaign from the Pinta Pride Project changed her perspective on the Kirk situation, which had happened 10 months prior.

“Meeting this incredible human being, I would do everything I do again and again and again because it is just worth it,” Pinta said. “It saves lives.”

What started in 2022 as a holiday card campaign sharing messages of support for members of the LGBTQ+ community who might be estranged from their families, the now-yearlong program, Cards for Allies, has grown significantly, sending more than 50,000 cards throughout 2025.

“Her letter writing campaign certainly had a very positive effect on me, was very meaningful in my life at a very impactful period of time, and I am so very grateful for that,” Katie Benn, a transgender military officer who is a captain in the United States Army, told Raw Story.

Benn visited Pinta’s home while in Chicago last week to tell her how the letters the Pinta Pride Project sends reach people like her and to encourage Pinta to continue doing that work.

“I sincerely do believe that what she's doing is a life-saving endeavor,” Benn said.

“I just wanted to reassure her that there are real human beings on the other end of this who are getting messages of support, messages of love and care and kindness at times that really matter.”

Cards for Allies has grown to be the Pinta Pride Project’s “most important work we do,” Pinta said. The group also hosts a National Coming Out Day celebration and has put on eight Pride parades.

The 2026 parade involved 2,000 participants and 4,000 to 5,000 attendees, Pinta said.

Buffalo Grove Pride Parade balloons (Photo by Ally Frank)

Pinta said being a teacher while Trump is president is “very difficult,” but she has hope that “the tide is really turning.”

“The more of us that stand together, the closer we get to getting back to love and decency,” Pinta said.

As the subject of a public campaign calling for her termination, Pinta shared advice with others experiencing social media targeting.

“Know that you are on the right side of history — there are so many more people with you than are not — and that you're protecting democracy, speaking up and sharing your feelings,” Pinta said.

Moms4Liberty — Lake County did not respond to Raw Story's request for comment.

A Haitian nurse heralded as a hero during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic is living in fear in Florida as she waits to hear if she will get another work authorization extension to remain with her terminally ill mother and 18-month-old son in the United States — her home for more than 30 years.

Harlaine, a 38-year-old nurse in Coral Springs, Florida, worked on the frontlines from New York to California treating severely ill COVID-19 patients who were on critical care drips and breathing machines.

Now, she faces an uncertain future in the U.S. after the Supreme Court sided with the Trump administration on June 25, allowing the Department of Homeland Security to proceed with the termination of Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for Haitian and Syrian immigrants like her.

Harlaine, who requested Raw Story only use her first name due to employment concerns, said she received a nine-day work extension that ends on Friday.

The Supreme Court’s decision in Mullin v. Doe allows the Trump administration to end work authorizations and deportation protections for immigrants who are TPS holders, meaning they were granted protection to live and work in the U.S. due to humanitarian concerns, natural disasters or other crises in their birth countries.

“I’m on pins and needles waiting to see if we will get another extension or July 10th is it for us,” Harlaine told Raw Story via text message Tuesday.

“My anxiety is through the roof with not knowing when I will have to start worrying about my next paycheck.”

Harlaine said she is in the middle of a custody battle for her son, a U.S. citizen, whose father would fight to keep him in the U.S. if she were to be deported.

“I could relocate, and I would survive, but it comes at a cost, and that cost is separation from my son,” Harlaine told Raw Story via a phone interview.

“Even if these people are not looking at me as an individual or as a human being, think of my young son, who's innocent, who needs his mother.”

Even immigrants with TPS from countries besides Haiti and Syria are facing family separation or life-or-death situations, advocates told Raw Story.

Anil Shahi, a Nepali TPS holder and founding coordinator of United for TPS Nepal, said he recently spoke on the phone with a mother of two young children whose father was deported after being detained twice this year. He heard one of the children in the background.

“He was a toddler, but he could make out it was a man's voice, and he was constantly going “baba, baba, baba,” meaning “daddy, daddy, daddy” in Nepali,” Shahi said.

“That made me cry right there. How could you do this to a family?”

The mother faces the decision to go back to Nepal with the children, a “country where they're total aliens,” Shahi said.

Shahi, 57, himself came to the U.S. about 37 years ago and has had TPS since 2015. He said he is protected to work in the U.S. until September 9.

“Home is where your heart is, and my heart is always in New York,” Shahi said while getting choked up.

“We are through-and-through American.”

Another advocate, José Palma, a coordinator with the National TPS Alliance, said he knows a family of a Honduran man on life support who were hoping for a favorable Supreme Court ruling around TPS in order to regain work authorization and access to insurance to keep him on a machine.

“It's a death sentence for many people,” said Palma, 49, who lives in Katy, Texas and came to the U.S. from El Salvador in 1998. He has had TPS protection since 2001.

Harlaine said she hasn't been back to Haiti since she left when she was around 5 years old.

“This has been my country for the past 30-something years, so I don't know any other country. I don't know the living situation in Haiti,” Harlaine said.

“I don't even have any imagination to imagine what it is over there. I don't even know what the air smells like. I don't know what the wind feels like … I know nothing of the country. I even struggle to speak the language.”

‘Legal and moral question’

TPS allows immigrants from designated countries facing unsafe conditions and humanitarian crises, such as wars or natural disasters, to legally stay and work in the United States.

TPS does not allow a direct pathway for citizenship or a green card for lawful permanent residency.

Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin has told TPS holders to return home or apply for permanent status, but that oversimplifies the process, which requires applicants to have a legal basis for a green card such as a family member who files a petition on their behalf, an employer sponsorship or granted asylum, Harlaine said.

“It is not like after so many times of doing the right thing, you can just apply for permanent residence — so not even talking about citizenship because there is no way for somebody to become U.S. citizens before being a permanent resident,” Palma said.

José Palma (provided photo)

TPS status for countries and individual holders are evaluated at least every 18 months. TPS holders undergo criminal background checks, Shahi said.

“There are people that have been in the U.S., TPS recipients, for decades, doing an application every year, going into [a] background check and behaving because if people commit [a] crime, they lose their immigration status,” Palma said.

“This segment of the population with TPS has been in the U.S. for decades, has been neighbors, coworker[s] and doing everything they have been asked, so I think it's a community that I believe deserves the opportunity to continue living in the United States and are people who have been vetted and doing everything the government has been asking for.”

Some TPS holders have maintained status for several decades due to continued unsafe conditions or lack of recovery after natural disasters such as Hurricane Mitch, which devastated Central American countries like Nicaragua and Honduras in 1998, or the 7.0 magnitude earthquake that struck Haiti in 2010, Palma said.

“It is unfortunate, but those countries have never recuperated, not only from the earthquake, but they also suffer more earthquakes, and then countries have gone into circumstances that haven't been safe for people to return, and the United States every year-and-a-half review[s] their country conditions, and the government at those at moments — Democrats and Republicans — agree that the protection needed to continue, and that's how we have people who have been protected by TPS for the last 27 years,” Palma said.

“So, it is a legal and moral question for the United States society. You have allowed people who build families, who are now not only the TPS recipients, but their family who are U.S. citizens. Now you want to break those families that you have allowed to be built without paying attention about the impact for those people from the community and for the U.S. citizens?”

‘Completely blindsided’

Harlaine said the Supreme Court’s decision “completely blindsided” her and her fellow community members who were “counting on continuing with our life.”

“No one expected this decision. We all assumed the best. No one thought of the worst, so we weren't prepared,” Harlaine said.

Families are facing decisions of leaving the United States with their U.S. citizen children, if they lose their work authorizations, and others are living off their savings or trying to find under-the-table jobs, Shahi said.

“They're broke, and they're tired, and now this, there’s even more reasons to be fearful,” Shahi said.

Anil Shahi (provided photo)

Families of TPS holders also have to consider leaving the homes and businesses they built in the United States, Shahi said.

“All this time we built our lives here. We built our families here. Some of us are business owners that employ American citizens. We are homeowners. We have mortgages to pay, so our lives have become American. We have integrated into the society so much,” Shahi said.

Since “people are suffering right now,” TPS holders are looking for any form of relief, Shahi said, which is why United for TPS Nepal endorsed the Dignity Act, sponsored by Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar (R-FL), which doesn’t provide a pathway to citizenship or legal residency but allows legal permits to work and live in the United States.

While it isn’t ideal, Shahi said the group’s members are looking for “anything that saves us from being detained and deported and allows us to live and work here legally.” He encouraged TPS holders to not let their frustration and sadness about the Supreme Court’s decision deter them from organizing and fighting for civil rights.

“We are humans, not a political agenda,” Harlaine said. “This is a country that has shown humanitarian efforts for decades, for centuries. Don't make an example out of us to prove a point. Think about us as human beings. Think about our young children, our American-born children.”

As the Supreme Court issued a slew of decisions before its summer recess, a legal expert sounded the alarm on how corporate influence prevailed in swaying the latest decisions.

Led by Chief Justice John Roberts, the Supreme Court has ruled in favor of President Donald Trump 84 percent of the time, according to analysis from legal watchdog Court Accountability, and when it doesn’t side with Trump, the court sides with corporate interests on Wall Street, said Lisa Graves, Court Accountability's co-founder and executive director of public policy watchdog group True North Research.

“John Roberts is a political player, and in a couple of rare instances where he has not gone along with the White House, … that is not because of a principled position but because of a long-time affinity for the corporate community,” said Graves, who is the author of “Without Precedent: How Chief Justice Roberts and His Accomplices Rewrote the Constitution and Dismantled Our Rights.”

“What I see in John Roberts' record is that he is someone who, in rare instances, where there's a conflict between the president or what the Republicans want … and what Wall Street wants, he chooses Wall Street, but for the most part, he chooses his party overwhelmingly," Graves said.

On Monday last week, the conservative supermajority led the Supreme Court in a 6-3 ruling that determined Trump lawfully fired Federal Trade Commissioner Rebecca Slaughter, giving the president the power to remove independent agency heads at-will.

In the case of the Federal Trade Commission, which oversees investigations of business fraud and reviews mergers and acquisitions of companies, that ruling allows the president to appoint commissioners favorable to his business interests and "creates really inappropriate conditions for the undue influence of Donald Trump on these policies, on how our antitrust laws, for example, are going to be implemented.”

“It also feeds into the sort of pay-to-play approach that Donald Trump has taken to the office of the White House, which is to reward people who have helped him win power or supported his pet projects like the ballroom and his inauguration, and try to punish corporations or law firms or universities that he considers his enemy,” Graves said.

While the Supreme Court conversely decided in a narrow 5-4 ruling to maintain the independence of the Federal Reserve and rejected Trump’s attempts to fire Federal Reserve governor Lisa Cook, that was a decision in line with what the business interests wanted, said Graves, who was chief counsel for nominations with the Senate Judiciary Committee from 2002 to 2005.

“The murmurs from Wall Street, in general, were that they did not want to have Trump have total control over the Fed,” Graves said.

“Wall Street in general did not want Trump to collapse the economy due to arbitrary and capricious edicts or demands about raising the interest rate or lowering the interest rate to serve his political purposes.”

'Fueling the corruption'

In recent weeks, the Supreme Court issued another handful of decisions where justices sided with corporations or issued decisions beneficial to corporate interests, Graves said.

In Wolford v. Lopez the justices voted 6-3 to strike down a Hawaii law requiring gun owners to get permission to bring firearms onto private property accessible to the public.

The gun lobby and trade groups filed numerous amicus briefs, which are “friend of the court” briefs submitted by organizations and individuals — not parties to the lawsuit — seeking to influence a case’s outcome by providing relevant perspectives, research and expertise for consideration.

That decision is representative of the “allegiance with the desires of the gun industry in limiting gun regulations” that has been indicative of the court, Graves said.

“This is an area where there's alignment, in essence, between the extreme ideological agenda of the Roberts Court, of the Republican appointees to the court, and the gun industry, which is a multi-billion dollar industry in the United States and globally,” Graves said.

A Raw Story investigation found that MAGA groups and conservative nonprofits connected to far-right megadonors who filed briefs in support of weakening the Voting Rights Act in Louisiana v. Callais took in record-breaking amounts of dark money.

In Monsanto Co. v. Durnell, the Supreme Court overturned a $1.25 million verdict against the agrochemical company, determining federal pesticide law preempted state lawsuits involving the company’s failure to put a cancer warning on Roundup weed killer.

Justice Clarence Thomas worked for Monsanto as an attorney in the 1970s.

This decision “is making it harder for ordinary people to get their day in court” and “is closing the courthouse door to ordinary consumers” who might bring disability or other liability lawsuits against corporations, Graves said.

“This Roberts Court is loyal or aligned with corporate interests over our interests, over ordinary people's interests in most cases, and the statistics prove how often business interests prevail before this court, even if they lost in decisions below, and this is part of that continuing trend,” Graves said.

FILE PHOTO: Supreme Court justices pose for their group portrait at the Supreme Court in Washington, U.S., October 7, 2022. REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein/File Photo

A study from economists at Yale and Columbia Universities released in January found that the Supreme Court increasingly favors the rich, with the Republican appointees ruling in favor of the wealthier side 70 percent of the time in 2022.

Since Roberts became the chief justice in 2005, the court ruled in favor of businesses 63 percent of the time, according to a study from researchers at Washington University in St. Louis and the University of Virginia.

By comparison, the court ruled in favor of businesses only 41 percent of the time between 1921 and 2021, and businesses won 29 percent of the time under Chief Justice Earl Warren from 1953 to 1969, the study said.

The Supreme Court’s recent rulings, particularly in Trump v. Slaughter, “represent another instance of the destructiveness of John Roberts himself in destroying longstanding precedents in order to aggrandize presidential power in ways that has that, in my view, is fueling the corruption and pay-to-play practices we've seen thrive under Donald Trump, where industries or CEOs pay tribute to him and numerous cases that were in process are dismissed or concluded,” Graves said.

President Donald Trump rang in the new year at his Mar-a-Lago winter home featuring a multimillion dollar painting auction and high-profile members of his Cabinet dancing and singing along to rap songs, according to a newly released book about Trump’s second term in office.

New York Times journalists Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan open their highly anticipated book, “Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump,” by painting a picture of the opulent 2026 New Year’s celebration, just days before the U.S. would capture Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro.

Rapper Vanilla Ice took the stage to perform his 1990 breakout hit, “Ice Ice Baby,” to a range of reactions from Trump’s Cabinet members and top advisers, the authors wrote.

Kristi Noem, then-Homeland Security Secretary who was frequently called “ICE Barbie” by critics, “threw herself” into the song “with relish, dancing for the cameras, arms pumping,” Swan and Haberman wrote.

In contrast, Stephen Miller, White House deputy chief of staff for policy and homeland security adviser, “mouthed along to the lyrics, looking stiff and faintly pained, as if caught doing something undignified,” the book said.

Secretary of State and anticipated 2028 presidential candidate Marco Rubio “put on a show for whoever had their phones out, singing along and dancing in his chair” to the house band's rendition of Pitbull’s hit “Fireball,” according to the book.

The “highlight” of the evening was a speed painter who created a depiction of Jesus Christ on a canvas. As Trump played auctioneer and signed the painting, it would end up being sold for $2.75 million to benefit St. Jude Children's Research Hospital and the local sheriff’s department, Haberman and Swan wrote.

The evening at Mar-a-Lago where Trump “behaved as though no force could touch him” was just foreshadowing of what was to come throughout the first half of 2026, said the book, which revealed the “norm-shattering” efforts from the “most powerful president of our lifetimes.”

Charlie Kirk, the late right-wing activist and ally of President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance, privately expressed concerns about how the president was handling Middle East affairs amid fractures in the MAGA base, according to a highly anticipated book released Tuesday.

In “Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump,” New York Times journalists Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan revealed how Kirk privately questioned Trump’s handling of relations with Israel during ongoing conflict in Gaza, prior to his assassination at a college event in Utah in September.

Kirk publicly complimented Trump by saying, “Thank God we have a president who is working every day, and sometimes in the middle of the night, fighting to keep America out of yet another Middle East quagmire,” the authors wrote.

Behind the scenes, Kirk was singing a different tune.

“Privately, Kirk would tell associates that he was far more worried about what Trump might do than he was letting on in public, but recognized that airing those concerns could only backfire, reducing his ability to influence the President,” Haberman and Swan wrote.

As co-founder and executive director of the national conservative student group, Turning Point USA, Kirk was “constantly in touch with college-aged Republicans, and he could see that many of them were turning against Israel,” the authors wrote.

“A rift was opening up inside MAGA,” the authors said.

“While older Republicans still overwhelmingly supported Israel, a sizable cohort of younger MAGA adherents were asking questions at Turning Point events that sounded remarkably similar to the types of questions floating at gatherings of young leftists.”

These young voters were questioning “why America was supporting Israel’s ‘genocide’ in Gaza,” and in some extremes, factions of the party were becoming overtly “antisemitic and conspiratorial” about Benjamin Netanyahu, Prime Minister of Israel, according to the book.

“Regime Change” presents a variety of other revelations about Trump and his associates, from Republican lawmakers proposing “lavish” tributes to the president to how Cabinet members and advisers acted at Trump’s extravagant Mar-a-Lago New Year’s bash.

As Donald Trump entered the Oval Office for a second term, Republican legislators bent over backward with “tributes” to the president that would "shock students of history,” according to a newly released book from New York Times authors.

In stark contrast to Republicans’ turn away from Trump after he lost the 2020 election — and was impeached for a second time, a move supported by more members of his own party than any other impeachment in history — all House Republicans endorsed Trump’s 2024 reelection and some proposed various new laws in tribute to him, according to “Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump,” a new book by New York Times journalists Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan.

“By the time he returned to the White House, Trump was received as a godlike figure on Capitol Hill and members competed to see who could pay him the most lavish respect,” the authors wrote.

That included a litany of legislation honoring Trump, from Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-FL) proposing Trump’s face be carved into Mount Rushmore to Rep. Claudia Tenney (R-NY) proposing officially changing Flag Day on June 14 to “Trump’s Birthday and Flag Day,” according to the book.

Other introduced legislation included changing Washington Dulles International Airport to “Donald J. Trump International Airport” and cutting federal funding to the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority unless it was renamed the “Washington Metropolitan Authority for Greater Access (WMAGA)” and the DC Metro renamed the “Trump Train,” the authors wrote.

Rep. Warren Davidson (R-OH) proposed that the National Institutes of Health study “Trump Derangement Syndrome” and Reps. Brandon Gill (R-TX) and Joe Wilson (R-SC) introduced bills to put Trump’s face on the $100 bill and a newly created $250 bill, respectively.

The book had other revelations that Trump reveled in tech leaders ingratiating themselves to him and that Trump compared himself to dictators such as Hitler, Mao, and Stalin.

In the wake of a fourth death at a U.S. Postal Service megafacility in Georgia, a union leader blasted the government agency for its inadequate emergency response procedures.

Jonathan Smith, president of the American Postal Workers Union, called out a lack of emergency phones at a 1-million-square-foot USPS warehouse in Palmetto, Georgia, where an employee, Demarcus Little, Sr., 45, died earlier this month.

This marks the fourth death at the distribution facility since it opened in 2024.

“The emergency phones were not hooked up,” Smith exclusively told Raw Story.

“I'm not blaming [USPS] for the death, but I'm blaming them for their response because the quicker we can get an individual help, the better their chances are of survival, and what they have in place right now for a facility that's over a million square feet, in my opinion, is unacceptable.”

Jonathan Smith (Photo provided by American Postal Workers Union)

USPS has not confirmed the cause of death, but 911 calls indicate that Little suffered a medical emergency, with CPR engaged 18 minutes after the call.

“We are deeply saddened by the tragic loss of a postal family member on June 3. Our thoughts are with their family, friends, and colleagues during this difficult time,” said Albert Ruiz, a USPS spokesperson in an emailed statement.

“Due to privacy concerns, the Postal Service does not publicly comment on matters involving its personnel. We are providing counseling services to our employees at the Palmetto Regional Distribution Center.”

Current procedure requires security personnel to respond before emergency services are contacted, which can take a long time to travel across the building that has no cell phone service, Smith said.

“The total response time is a major concern for me because of the procedures that they have in place,” Smith said.

“That's why I asked for them to put emergency phones all over the building, so if something happens, you can get a more immediate response to get people help when they need it. That has not been put into place, so I am really p----- off at the Postal Service because this is not a major ask.”

Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-GA) sent a letter expressing “grave concern” to Postmaster General David Steiner on Friday to launch an inquiry into the deaths at the Palmetto facility.

A report from the USPS Office of Inspector General last year cited “insufficient supervision and a poor employee work culture” at the Palmetto facility.

Smith said he asked the Postal Service to install emergency phones in November 2025 and was told they would be installed in January. Nearly six months later, they weren’t, and Smith said he was told the IT team received approval to install the phones after Little’s death.

”They promised that they were going to put emergency phones out there because that facility — and this is supposed to be their starship facility. This was supposed to be their shining beacon for America, how great a post office could be — yet they have no cell phone service, so what's important is that we put emergency phones out there,” Smith said.

'Unconscionable and unacceptable'

The Palmetto regional distribution facility is part of Delivering for America, a 10-year plan for financial sustainability from former Postmaster General Louis DeJoy as USPS has registered billions of dollars of losses annually in recent years and has now run out of money.

“This facility was supposed to be the shining star of the Delivering for America plan. This was supposed to be the facility of all facilities to show you the greatness of the Postal Service, and if this is showing what the greatness of the Postal Service is, then we have a long way to go,” Smith said.

“People have a right to come to work, and go home the same way they came. Alive. The people have a right to have a fighting chance at survival if an incident happens in an industrial environment where we know these things can happen. The Postal Service has an obligation — not just a responsibility, an obligation — to give the workers that work for them every protection that they can to give them every chance they can to survive any incident that may happen.”

Previous deaths at the facility involved Russell Scruggs, Jr., a mail handler assistant who died in November, Eric Smith, a 59-year-old electric technician who died in June 2025 and Sharon Barnes, 48, who died in August 2024.

A postal worker transports boxes at a USPS Processing & Distribution Center in Los Angeles on December 2. (REUTERS/Daniel Cole/File Photo)

Smith said during one of the previous deaths “they put cardboard around the individual and had his coworkers walk around them.”

“Do you know what kind of traumatic incident that is?” Smith said.

“Then you’ve got to go back to work and work that same facility where you feel unprotected.”

In another instance, a woman working an afternoon shift did not find out her house burned down until after she was done with work because she couldn’t be reached in the facility, Smith said.

“That is unconscionable and unacceptable in any form, whether it be a post office or any place else,” Smith said.

While Little was not a member of the American Postal Workers Union, rather represented by the National Postal Mail Handlers Union, Smith said it was important to speak out because “the safety issue for me is to protect all postal workers.”

The National Postal Mail Handlers Union did not respond to Raw Story’s request for comment.

For months, Smith said he’s been advocating for other safety measures such as CPR training and defibrillators on the workroom floor but said there was pushback about the cost.

“I'm very disgusted at what's going out there at the post office response,” Smith said.

“Nobody says that they are to blame for these tragedies, but they can be held responsible for their response because what happens is when someone gets hurt, our response needs to be we need to put things in place, so this never happens to somebody again. Four deaths later, I'm still waiting for the position of the post office to protect everybody else from this happening to them.”

One of Donald Trump's personal lawyers in the E. Jean Carroll case is days away from a lifetime seat on a powerful federal appeals court, and legal experts say his written confirmation responses are riddled with "disturbing" red flags that can't be ignored.

Justin D. Smith serves as the counsel of record in Trump v. Carroll, where the president has asked the Supreme Court to overturn the civil judgment that found him liable for sexual abuse and defamation of Carroll. Trump has consistently denied Carroll's allegations, calling them a "hoax" and "politically motivated." He has continued to appeal both civil verdicts.

Smith was nominated by Trump as an "America First Fighter" in February to serve as a judge for the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis. The Senate advanced Smith by a unanimous consent agreement on Thursday and is set to vote on Monday.

But Smith’s written responses to the Senate Judiciary Committee’s questions are “disturbing” and present “a whole host of red flags,” said Nora Demleitner, a legal scholar and former president of St. John's College in Annapolis, Maryland.

Notably, Smith continues to misrepresent details about Carroll’s case relating to a “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit” episode in his responses to questions from Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL), ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

That includes misattributing to Carroll a quote from Trump’s former lawyer Joe Tacopina about an “amazing coincidence” involving a less-than-one-minute plot point from the “Law & Order” episode.

Smith's cert petition to the Supreme Court attributes the phrase "amazing coincidence" to Carroll herself — language Carroll never used.

The phrase was coined by Tacopina, Trump's lawyer at the time, during cross-examination. Carroll used "amazing" to praise the "Law & Order" writers for "keying in to the psyche of their viewers." When Tacopina rephrased her response as "amazing coincidence," Carroll pointedly substituted "astonishing" and immediately denied basing her allegation on the show.

Durbin asked Smith about how he “misrepresented” the details of a “Law & Order” episode in his written questions, which gave Smith “a chance to clear the record,” said Harold Krent, law professor and interim dean at the Chicago-Kent College of Law.

“The fact that he would have a misstatement again would be either he's very lazy, stubborn or very careless — or it's material,” Krent said.

Since Smith likely wasn’t under oath answering the Senate Judiciary questions, misstatements in the responses wouldn’t be perjury, but “it would be considered a false statement to Congress if he would ever be investigated and charged with that,” Krent said.

Lawyers can also “get punished under attorney disciplinary rules if you exaggerate too much,” Krent said.

“If you flat out lie, then it is presumably some kind of false statement to an official authority, almost never prosecuted,” Krent said.

The Trump administration “is not going to investigate [Smith], but a subsequent administration could investigate and have to decide whether that was a material misstatement or again just a careless or maddening exaggeration.”

Instead, the Trump administration announced investigations related to the case last month, looking into whether Carroll herself committed perjury, along with investigations into the nonprofit of Democratic billionaire and LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, who helped fund Carroll’s litigation against Trump.

‘So much lying’

The “Law & Order: SVU” episode called “Theatre Tricks” discusses a consensual “roleplay” with a New York judge and a woman “that took place in the dressing room at Bergdorf’s while she was trying on lingerie,” according to the episode viewed by Raw Story.

Smith’s certiorari petition to the Supreme Court incorrectly describes the episode where “a business mogul fantasizes about raping a victim in a Bergdorf Goodman dressing room '[w]hile she was trying on lingerie.'”

Carroll accused Trump of sexually assaulting her in a dressing room at the Bergdorf Goodman department store in the 1990s. Carroll testified at trial that she had not seen the episode and did not make up the allegation based on the show.

A federal jury found Trump liable for sexual abuse and defamation in May 2023, awarding Carroll $5 million. In January 2024, a second jury found Trump liable for $83.3 million in damages for Carroll’s defamation claims.

The inaccuracies are not likely to rise to the level of stopping Smith’s confirmation, Krent and Demleitner agreed.

“We've seen so much lying — I think perjury — by officials and the administration, and this just doesn't seem to be of the same caliber,” Krent said.

Even the Supreme Court justices themselves are “not quoting accurately anymore,” Demleitner said. Justice Samuel Alito recently came under fire for citing a misleading brief in the Louisiana v. Callais decision, which gutted Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act.

“There'll be enough of an argument for a GOP senator to make to confirm him, despite those misrepresentations,” Demleitner said.

Lori A. Ringhand, a professor at the University of Georgia School of Law, has authored several books about judicial confirmations.

“Lawyers sitting before the Senate Judiciary Committee are usually pretty careful about their words and good at walking a fine line that prevents outright lying. Instead, they hedge, they add fudge words, or they answer a slightly different question than they were asked,” Ringhand told Raw Story via email.

‘Truly disturbing’

Demleitner said Smith’s impending confirmation is “really troublesome” for his other written responses to Senate Judiciary questions.

When asked if Trump lost the 2020 election, Smith responded by saying President Joe Biden was certified as the winner. The topic of the election was a contentious point in Smith’s hearing last month, where he would not answer the same yes-or-no question.

“The 2020 election question should generally be a red flag to everybody. I think these nominees apparently are trying to strike a balance between staying in the good favor and graces of the person who nominated them, the president, and, on the other hand, obviously trying to get confirmed by the Senate, which is a tightrope to run for some of them,” Demleitner said.

Demleitner was also concerned about Smith’s written responses about Supreme Court precedents. In only two cases — the landmark civil rights cases Brown v. Board of Education and Loving v. Virginia — he explicitly said “Yes” that the Supreme Court correctly decided cases.

“I thought it truly disturbing to make that kind of distinction between Supreme Court cases, and also only that kind of the most iconic cases that would never be reconsidered … cases that have become a fabric of our society,” Demleitner said.

Advocacy groups have expressed concerns about Smith’s anti-abortion record, and during the confirmation hearing, Durbin questioned Smith about his involvement in political groups.

Demleitner said Smith’s advocacy to the Supreme Court makes her “worry about the claim of unbiased decision-making.”

“We should all be concerned about these types of lawyers being on the federal bench. I think we've certainly seen a number of Trump nominees turning out to be excellent lawyers [who] really weigh the facts and weigh the law and have ruled against the president as much as in favor of the president or the administration, whenever different questions arose,” she said.

“On the other hand, we have seen some, especially appellate court nominees, who do not seem to understand that they're not the advocates for the government, but instead that they are impartial judges.”

Smith did not immediately respond to Raw Story’s request for comment.

The mayor of a Pennsylvania borough defended his use of the N-word during a confrontation with children and young adults at a local park — despite outrage from local parents.

Daniel Berard, a registered Republican and mayor of Northumberland, Pennsylvania, told Raw Story via a phone call about an April 17 incident at the Second Street Playground where he said he gave the group a “lawful order” to leave the park.

In a video of the incident viewed by Raw Story, Berard uses the N-word after the parkgoers repeatedly called him the N-word and other insults.

“Didn't you hear the disrespect and sour treatment that these juveniles treated me with?” Berard asked Raw Story.

“It's self-explanatory, and when they called me N—, they called me on the film at least four times, and off the film in the beginning they called me that multiple times. Multiple times. And my response to them is, ‘I'm not your N—.’”

Berard used the racial slur again while speaking with Raw Story.

“It's a despicable, despiteful (sic), disrespectful word to say to anyone, and these kids didn't know me, and they were swinging that word … like it's part of their vocabulary, and my response to them was, ‘I'm not your N-word.’ That's what I said,” Berard said.

Tara Phelan, a mother of a 13-year-old biracial son who was present during the incident, said her son told her the mayor said to the group, “You N— have been told you are not allowed to be at this park once it's dark.”

Phelan, a 46-year-old full-time caretaker in Northumberland, said Berard made the comment unprompted and “was using the hard ‘R,’” causing her son to come home upset.

He was a mess,” Phelan, who is white, said of her son, who is half-Black. “He just was in disbelief. There was a lot of fear there.”

Tara Phelan (second from right), one of the parents speaking out against the mayor of Northumberland, Pennsylvania, with her family (Photo courtesy of Tara Phelan)

Berard told Raw Story the claim that he was unprovoked was a "lie." The beginning of the incident was not captured on video.

"I used the hard 'R.' They used the 'ga,'" Berard said.

"Same word, just spoken a different way, and they can claim all they want I said this awful word to them unprovoked, but that’s simply not true."

Berard said he "did not know what color they were — did not matter to me" about the parkgoers he interacted with on April 17.

Phelan and other residents addressed the incident at a Northumberland Borough Council meeting on May 5 but were disappointed by the mayor’s response, which Phelan called “very smug.”

“I was hoping that the response would be that he would issue some kind of a public apology and try and do better, or step down if he's not going to serve all of the members of this community,” Phelan said.

Angela Jodon, a 31-year-old Northumberland mother who works in human services, attended the Council meeting and spoke up about the incident after she said her 13-year-old daughter was chased the day before by a man calling her the N-word.

“There's some words that you're just not allowed to say, and it's pretty well universally understood that is not a word people say, and [the mayor] was saying it with a hard ‘er’,” Jodon, who is Black, told Raw Story after she saw the video of the incident.

“There is a version of the word we all know with the ‘A’ at the end, and it is used amongst people of color towards each other, but that is a word that is not allowed with the hard ‘er.’

“Everybody knows that. Socially, it's unacceptable anymore, and it has been unacceptable for a very long time, and I believe because he's in a position of power, he felt like he could say it … it doesn't matter what context you're using it. It's offensive, and it's terrifying for people of color to hear the people that's representing them in the community saying that as well.”

‘Unconscionable’

Phelan said her son was on his way out of the park around 8:18 p.m. when the exchange with Berard happened. Her 20-year-old daughter was waiting to pick him up before his 8:30 p.m. curfew, and the children know “they have to be out of there by the time it gets dark,” she said.

Jeramee Clark, a 20-year-old construction laborer from Sunbury, was present during the incident. He estimated about 20 people were present at the park, ages 13 to 20.

Clark, who is Black, said he spoke with a police officer who “did tell us, as long as we're not disturbing the peace or anything, whatsoever, we're fine being there,” even after the park lights were on.

Second Street Playground in Northumberland, Pennsylvania (Photo courtesy of Tara Phelan)

Berard said part of his job is “to uphold the ordinances of the borough” and that the group told him they would still return after he asked them to leave.

Berard said the parkgoers came back to play basketball, prompting him to call the police to tell them to leave.

Clark disputed Berard’s account, noting that the mayor was in the alleyway during the exchange. Clark said he did not leave the park and return.

“Not once did he come up and tell us to leave at all,” Clark said.

The video shows Berard speaking to the group from a car.

“Their disrespect to me is unconscionable, and these are juveniles, so, what I say to them is to their parents: get your kids under control,” Berard said.

The next day the park was full of trash with “squirrels crawling in the bags that they left,” Berard said.

“They were so disrespectful to me that anything that I may have said to them in response to their disrespect to me pales to what they said to me,” Berard said. “I was embarrassed for them.”

‘Shocked’

The NAACP calls the N-word “derogatory, degrading, dehumanizing and is one of the most offensive words in history” in an official resolution. The Anti-Defamation League calls it “a racist and offensive slur, has been used throughout history to demean, humiliate and degrade Black people.”

The use of the N-word by Black people in music and conversationally has been studied by scholars.

"Black people have successfully divested the N-word of its original offense and in our struggle to survive the devastation it occasions, gave it new meaning, made it approachable, survivable," said Jacqui Stanford, a race expert, in a BBC article.

When asked if he understood why people of color specifically find the N-word disrespectful, Berard said, “You can say it, but I can't? On its face, that's racist."

“If you can say it to me, but I can't say it back to you, that's racist," Berard said.

“It makes them feel uncomfortable. It makes them feel disrespected. How do you think it makes me feel? No one cares about what the adult thinks and feels. Nobody cares about the white man, which I find outrageous.”

Jolon called Berard’s response to Raw Story “childish” and said the mayor used racist “dog whistles,” or coded language, such as calling the parkgoers “juveniles.”

Angela Jolon with her family (Photo courtesey of Angela Jolon)

“They said a word you're not allowed to say. Wow. That's in every culture,” Jolon said.

“Cultures have things that they're allowed to do and say that other people are not allowed to be a part of. That is in every culture, and that doesn't make other cultures racist.”

Clark said he was “shocked” by the mayor’s response to Raw Story and had “no words.”

“He's the grown-up. He was the adult. He was the superior in that situation,” Jolon said.

“If he felt like they were disrespecting him, instead of rising above in that moment as an adult should, as a leader should, when they went to his supposed low — that's how he felt — he went lower. He took it to hell … it's like, where's your accountability?”

Phelan said Northumberland has recently seen an increase in its Hispanic, Asian and Black populations, who have expressed issues with being “profiled” and “slurred.”

“Since we've had an influx of people of color, the racial things have been just an ongoing issue,” Phelan said.

“I think it starts [with] leadership like the mayor. You're a leader. You need to be able to serve everybody in this community,”

Berard said of racial tensions and profiling in the borough, “I think it's a manufactured problem, and if the Black kids want to talk to white people like they talked to me, then they're going to get [it] back.

“There was absolutely no reason for them to treat me with the disrespect that they did.”

'Case is closed'

Berard said he and his family members, including grandchildren, have been "harassed and threatened" since the incident. He said his Facebook was scoured, looking for "something to point toward racism."

A repost about Carnival Cruise Line that Berard shared about "Blacks on weekend cruises getting drunk and starting fights" was found and sent to a councilwoman, Berard said.

His 18-year-old grandson and college-age granddaughter were harassed by "anonymous posters," but another grandson who is Black was not harassed, Berard said.

When asked on Thursday if he would apologize to the families, Berard said "absolutely not — as a matter of fact they should apologize to me for their terrible actions, not only to mayor of the town, to an adult who did not want that kind of disrespect."

Berard said he considered the story to be "over."

"This is their drama, not mine, and I don’t want to any part of their drama," Berard said.

"The case is closed as far as I’m concerned. I've already forgiven them for how nasty they are to me."

Denise Guilbault, Borough Council president, did not respond to Raw Story’s request for comment.

As the U.S. Supreme Court prepared to determine the fate of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act in the landmark case, Louisiana v. Callais, MAGA groups and conservative nonprofits connected to far-right megadonors that filed briefs in support of weakening the historic civil rights law took in record-breaking amounts of dark money, according to new research.

Seven nonprofits with various ties to President Donald Trump, conservative megadonor Leonard Leo or other wealthy right-wing figures who filed briefs in the Callais case took in nearly $105 million through donor-advised funds, a dark money vehicle, between 2021 and 2024, according to new analysis from progressive watchdog group, True North Research.

That’s seven times the donor-advised funding those groups received in the previous three-year period, according to the research. Of those nonprofits, the Trump-aligned America First Legal Foundation took in by far the most money from donor-advised funds — more than $58 million since it was co-founded in 2021 by Stephen Miller, White House deputy chief of staff; Mark Meadows, former White House chief of staff during Trump’s first term; and Gene Hamilton, former deputy White House counsel in Trump’s first presidency.

White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller speaks during a roundtable on anti-fraud initiatives with Republican state attorneys general on May 26, . REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein

“It's disturbing that the same far-right funders and political agents who built the far-right faction of the [Supreme] Court to impose their agenda on us all are continuing to spend big now to change even the contours of elections, and it's making it harder for people to cast their votes and easier to get their politicians in power to do their bidding and impose their agenda,” said Alyssa Bowen, deputy executive director at True North Research.

“The courts wasn't the end game. The courts are one powerful, powerful means to get their agenda done in other ways.”

Ultimately, the Court sided with Callais, determining that the Louisiana congressional map redrawn in 2024 to create a second Black-majority district was an unconstitutional racial gerrymander.

The map was originally redrawn because a federal court determined in 2022 that a new congressional map based on the 2020 census was not representative of Louisiana’s one-third Black population and a potential violation of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which prohibits racial discrimination. The 2022 map had only one in six districts reflecting a Black majority.

Scholars, legislators and voting rights advocates have called the April decision a “gutting” and “indefensible evisceration” of the Voting Rights Act.

'Impose their agenda'

True North analyzed seven conservative groups who filed amicus curiae briefs questioning Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, including the America First Legal Foundation, California Policy Center, Judicial Watch, Landmark Legal Foundation, Pacific Legal Foundation, Project on Fair Representation and Public Interest Legal Foundation.

Amicus curiae translates to “friend of the court,” and such briefs are submitted by organizations and individuals — not parties to the lawsuit — seeking to influence a case’s outcome by providing relevant perspectives, research and expertise relevant for consideration.

But, sometimes those briefs are inaccurate. Justice Samuel Alito recently came under fire for citing a misleading brief in the Callais case.

"It's not just that the these dark money groups are indicating to the Court that the case is important, but oftentimes, the far-right justices on their court are drawing information and citations from these these groups that are, if not incorrect, then factually misleading," Bowen said.

The majority of the nonprofits did not immediately respond to Raw Story's email request for comment.

“MAGA is obviously super interested in this case because of the election element," Bowen said. “Leonard Leo is because of likely hoping that they can help elect far-right candidates that will impose their agenda on people through participatory politics.”

Other landmark and hot button cases such as Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health, which overturned the federal right to abortion, and United States v. Skrmetti, which upheld Tennessee's ban on gender-affirming care for transgender minors, saw a flood of amicus curiae filings, Bowen said.

“When there's big money involved, we do generally tend to see a huge influx of filings from the far-right,” Bowen said.

Some of these nonprofits have various ties to the Trump administration, conservative megadonors and voter suppression efforts.

For instance, the Public Interest Legal Foundation was condemned by civil rights groups for alleged “deceptive tactics promoting voter suppression” and was chaired by Cleta Mitchell, who has pushed false claims of voter fraud and was part of Trump’s call to Georgia’s secretary of state to “find” more than 11,000 votes in the 2020 election.

The group has received at least $2.4 million from DonorsTrust, a donor-advised fund with ties to Leo’s network, and the Bradley Foundation, a conservative charitable foundation which has awarded over $1 billion in grants.

The 85 Fund, a Leo organization which includes the Honest Elections Project, gave $400,000 directly to the Public Interest Legal Foundation.

In response to questions from Raw Story, the Public Interest Legal Foundation shared a statement applauding the Callais decision.

“The now defunct map was drawn for one purpose only – race,” said J. Christian Adams, president of the Public Interest Legal Foundation in the statement.

“The Constitution prohibits discrimination on the basis of race,” Adams continued. “This opinion should be placed alongside other great moments of courage from the high court – Brown v. Board, Loving v. Virginiaand Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard.”

Judicial Watch, which extensively directs public records requests at federal courts, leading to the release of then-Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton's emails, has been frequently cited by Trump in relation to election fraud claims.

After the Callais decision, Judicial Watch and the Allied Educational Foundation filed a new amici curiae brief "asking the court to eliminate woke, race-based congressional districting and ban the use racial preferences in drawing up 'majority-minority' congressional districts," according to a Judicial Watch press release sent in response to Raw Story's questions.

The Pacific Legal Foundation, founded by Ed Meese, former U.S. attorney general under President Ronald Reagan, frequently challenges diversity, equity and inclusion policies. The nonprofit applauded the Callais decision as it "reinforces the fundamental principle that the Constitution defends individuals, not racial groups," said Christopher Kieser, Pacific Legal Foundation senior attorney, in a statement.

"States cannot draw voting districts based on race, and by rejecting group-based rights, the Court has strengthened both the rule of law and democratic accountability," Kieser said. "All voters’ rights are equally important, and this ruling makes certain that elections are about individuals—not racial blocs.”

As for donations, Pacific Legal Foundation said it "welcomes support from anyone who supports our mission to protect the rights guaranteed by the Constitution," said Kyle Griesinger, Pacific Legal Foundation media relations director, via email.

"Our contributions have increased across the board in recent years; it's not unique to donor-advised funds," Griesinger said. "As we have grown through the support of our donors, we’ve been able to do more to defend the individual rights of everyday Americans."

'Evade the spotlight'

Donor-advised funds are considered a dark money vehicle as they allow donors to make anonymous contributions. Donors benefit from immediate tax deductions even if funds are distributed at a later time.

“Donor-advised funds enable wealthy individuals to influence policy, including arguments before the Supreme Court, without being in the spotlight themselves. These are vehicles that are very powerful, moving huge sums of money into advocacy efforts without the public really being able to understand who's bankrolling them in the first place,” said Michael Beckel, money in politics reform director at Issue One, a nonpartisan nonprofit focused on reducing the influence of money in politics.

“Donor-advised funds provide a shield for donors who want to evade the spotlight, and they are increasingly playing a major role in how money moves into advocacy campaigns on both the right and the left, and this is a very, very clear example of groups who are making arguments before the highest court in the land, and the public not really being able to connect the dots about who is making those arguments or why they are making those arguments."

True North’s analysis looked at a range of donor-advised funds, some associated with right-wing causes, and others through financial institutions.

The analysis included the Donors Capital Fund, DonorsTrust, Fidelity Charitable, Knights of Columbus Charitable Fund, National Christian Charitable Foundation, National Philanthropic Trust, Donor Advised Charitable Giving, Vanguard Charitable, the Servant Foundation (The Signatry), and the Bradley Impact Fund, aligned with the Bradley Foundation.

“Regardless of whether it is an ideologically coded donor-advised fund or a donor-advised fund connected to a financial institution, it’s still a mystery who is calling the shots, why they're investing so much money, what they might have as their own agenda,” Beckel said.

After voting for Donald Trump multiple times, longtime Republicans Ron and Chrissey Kelley turned on the president and his MAGA movement when his second administration’s policies threatened their livelihood.

Last October, Ron, a 55-year-old construction analyst for the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), was furloughed for 43 days as the Trump administration took a sledgehammer to federal agencies’ budgets under the Department of Government Efficiency, an initiative led by the world’s richest man, Elon Musk.

“We voted for Trump, not realizing that he was going to slam as hard as he did, but it was on day one when he sat down, right after inauguration, and started signing those executive orders and just trashed us federal employees, it was a kick in the teeth,” Ron said.

“That point was the beginning of my turning away from MAGA.”

Rather than leave the GOP quietly, the couple from Byron, Georgia, decided to publicly announce their decision to break with the party, and joined a growing community of former Trump supporters called Leaving MAGA.

“If people would just listen and research and do something other than just listen to Fox News, we may all be better off, but it's going to take an open mind and an ability to say, ‘I made a mistake,’ because once you say you made a mistake, you can turn the ship around,” said Chrissey Kelley, 50, a stay-at-home mom.

Speaking out against MAGA cost the Kelleys relationships with friends and family members who support Trump, but in sharing their story, they hope to inspire others having doubts about the GOP.

“It's okay to be wrong. You made a mistake, it was a bad choice, but it's not the end of the world. We can fix it. We just got to ride it out and hold strong and support each other through it,” Ron said.

“It widens the field for everyone so that they can feel comfortable coming out saying they supported this guy instead of being embarrassed and trying to hide it.”

‘Bought into the lie’

The Kelleys’ journey into MAGA took place over many years.

Chrissey said she became a Republican as soon as she started voting.

“You were just a conservative. There was no thought behind it. You listen to Fox News, and you listen to conservative outlets, and you're spoon-fed,” Chrissey said.

Ron and Chrissey Kelley (Photo courtesy of Chrissey Kelley)

When Trump ran the first time she remembered thinking, “He's gonna fix everything. He's a businessman. He's gonna help us.”

Ron, who served in the military for 25 years, said the 2008 housing market crash left him “really disillusioned with the Democratic Party.”

When he couldn’t find work in Detroit, he moved to Georgia. He supported Republicans because he associated them with bigger spending on defense.

Ron said he supported Trump with donations, bumper stickers and the “whole nine yards” of MAGA.

“I bought into the lie about the stolen election and all that, and I thought January 6 insurrectionists were actually patriots,” Ron said.

“I just remember being content with thinking that he was what we needed, and he was going to drain the swamp in Washington until he got into office this third [election], and realizing that I was dumb as a rock, and I believed everything that I was spoon fed.”

‘Lie after lie after lie’

Ron came to regret his vote when he said Trump's executive orders started to “destroy my life, which affects my family.”

Months later, Ron said DOGE is still complicating his work at HUD.

“They brought DOGE in and created a whole new layer of bureaucracy that we're still suffering from,” Ron said.

“They've created so much headache and so much overhead.”

In addition to Ron’s furlough, Chrissey said the Trump administration’s handling of the Epstein files and its treatment of immigrants pushed her away from MAGA.

“Just watching the policies of what's happening in our world today unfold one by one by one, I just started drawing up very different conclusions and found out that I was clueless, and most people are today, but now I'm awake and looking at it for what it is, and I cannot believe that he had my support,” Chrissey said.

“It's lie after lie after lie.”

Others in the Leaving MAGA community have been vocal about the extremes they went to while supporting Trump — from embracing Christian nationalism to believing conspiracies, losing friends and marriages and committing crimes in Trump’s name.

Ron said while there are some people in “deep, deep red MAGA that you're never going to convince that Trump is not who they think he is,” he thinks more people are turning away from MAGA quietly.

“I believe that the more that we share, the more of the fringe MAGA are dropping off,” Ron said.

“As you see in the polls that they keep taking, that Trump is dropping lower and lower and lower almost daily, so the only way that that could happen is that his base is leaving him, which means that MAGA is moving.”

Ron said he now votes for Democrats, and Chrissey said she considers herself an Independent but has voted for Democrats three times now, something she “never thought in my entire life” would happen.

“The road we're headed down now, if we don't turn this truck around, we're so close to going off the edge of the cliff that we need to stick together,” Ron said.

“We need to put our country back together. It might take decades, but don't give up. We need to be vocal. Stay strong, and follow our laws and Constitution, and hold strong with our values, not the values that the MAGA claims that we have, but the values that we've had in the past 250 years from the founding of the country til Joe Biden's era.”

A Chicago teen detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) for more than two months was released Tuesday in time to attend his high school graduation after pressure from legislators and community backlash.

Ricardo Hernandez-Navarrete, 18, and Martha Liliana Navarrete-Capazan, 46, were unexpectedly detained at an ICE check-in in March. They were separated and then transported to at least eight different facilities in seven states, Raw Story first reported.

Navarrete-Capazan was ordered immediately released on May 19 in response to her habeas corpus petition, and Hernandez-Navarrete was released by ICE on his own recognizance on Tuesday, said Kelli Fennell, the family’s lawyer.

Both reunited Tuesday at a gas station in Crown Point, Indiana, in front of a local media frenzy. Hernandez-Navarrette will attend his graduation at Mather High School in Chicago’s West Ridge neighborhood on Thursday, Fennell said.

Kristy Morrow, community organizer; Ricardo Hernandez-Navarette; Liliana Navarrete-Capazan; and Steven Navarrete reunite on Tuesday.

“It was just incredibly fortunate and so grateful that they're home now, where they should be, and we're going to continue doing things the right way, and keep fighting their cases,” Fennell told Raw Story Wednesday.

At a check-in with ICE on Wednesday, Hernandez-Navarrete was given a watch wrist monitor, Fennell said. While “no monitor and a selfie app on the phone would have been ideal,” Fennell said Hernandez-Navarrete was grateful to not have to wear an ankle monitor that would interfere with his soccer playing.

"It’s like a watch," Hernandez-Navarrete told Raw Story via phone on Wednesday. "It's okay. I prefer that than be there in jail."

"It was really good, see[ing] a lot of people, a lot of friends, and a lot of interviews," Hernandez-Navarrete said after being released.

Both the mother and son are still pursuing their asylum cases, Fennell said. The family faces fear of harm or persecution in Colombia, she said.

"I hope, and I have faith with God, and he's going to do everything," Hernandez-Navarrete said.

Lawmakers react

The family’s detention experience drew attention from national lawmakers.

In response to Raw Story’s investigation, Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-IL) called for the release of the mother and son.

“Donald Trump and this gang of thugs think that cruelty and bigotry make America strong. They are mistaken,” Schakowsky told Raw Story in a statement last month. “Immigrants are and always have been what makes our country great. My office is in communication with the family’s attorney, and we will do everything possible to bring them home and secure justice for them.”

Upon Hernandez-Navarrete’s release, Schakowsky posted a statement on X.

“I'm relieved that Ricardo and his mother Martha have finally been reunited and released. But what they endured should've never happened in the first place,” Schakowsky posted.

“The cruelty we're seeing in our immigration system must end. Immigrants make our communities stronger, and we must keep fighting for a system that reflects our values."

Hernandez-Navarrete told Raw Story via a phone interview from Kenton County Detention Center in Kentucky last month that he was subjected to strip searches, slept on the floor without blankets, was unable to use the restroom due to too many people in one room and spent two days in solitary confinement — he says without reason.

Fennell called the conditions “appalling” last month.

Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) called for the release of Hernandez-Navarrete on the Senate floor last week and celebrated his release in a post on Wednesday.

“I am very pleased that Ricardo has been released from ICE detention and is reunited with his mother. But he should never have been taken from his school and family in the first place,” Durbin posted on X Wednesday.

“We must end the Trump Administration’s mass deportation operation and stop these needlessly cruel attacks on immigrants and our communities.”

Kristy Morrow, a community organizer, teacher and parent whose son played soccer with Hernandez-Navarrete, organized a GoFundMe that raised nearly $60,000 to help the family with hiring lawyers and paying for living expenses while they were detained.

Morrow said the community response to the family's release has been overwhelming, and Fennell credited media coverage and community support with making a "huge difference" in the outcomes for the mother and son.

"People are so thankful, and I think it's brought a lot of awareness, even to our very blue city, that this is happening to 18 year olds," Morrow said.

Morrow coordinated hiring lawyers and organized communication with attorneys and family members over the past couple months. Volunteers drove to pick up the mother and son when they were each released from detention facilities in Kentucky, and Morrow picked them up from the drop-off point in Crown Point, Indiana, to drive them back to Chicago.

Helping the family navigate their detention experience, Morrow said she learned that the immigration system is "incredibly unfair" and "terrifying," but she's hopeful Hernandez-Navarette and Navarrete-Capazan will be successful in pursuing their asylum cases.

"We are obviously feeling a lot more optimistic about their chances of remaining in the United States for the rest of their lives, which is what they’d like to do," Morrow said.

"We feel like there will be a more compassionate outcome for them, hopefully."

When Ronn Easton, a Vietnam veteran, first learned of President Donald Trump’s plans to build a massive triumphal arch near Arlington National Cemetery he started losing sleep.

“The thought of that big, 250-foot monstrosity casting shadow on the graves of those heroes makes me sick to my stomach,” said Easton, who has visited Arlington 10 times.

As news came out in the lead up to Memorial Day that the Trump administration plans to proceed with building the arch without Congressional approval and has recently started surveying the proposed arch site, Easton called it “one big grift, another big con” hurting the American people.

“It's a slap in the face to veterans,” Easton said. “It's a slap in the face to the people who have made the ultimate sacrifice, so that [Trump] might be able to stand and grift and rip us off. That's how I see it.”

Ronn Easton (provided photo)

The arch’s proposed site is Memorial Circle, located between Arlington Memorial Bridge and Arlington National Cemetery. Its 250-foot height would make it the tallest triumphal arch in the world and tower above the 99-foot Lincoln Memorial.

The arch would feature gilded figures, including Lady Liberty and eagles, along with inscriptions of “One Nation Under God” and “Liberty and Justice for All.”

Easton started a petition last month, limited to veterans and their family members, calling to stop the arch and “protect Arlington’s sacred ground.” He collected nearly 3,500 signatures as of Thursday.

“I will sell my soul to stop this — that's how serious I am,” Easton said.

“I know the general public can't stand this, but this is about veterans. This is about the military, and that's the reason why I wanted the people who were affected the most by this [to sign].”

Easton has previously spoken out against the Trump administration’s cuts to the Department of Vetereans Affairs and killings by immigration enforcement agents in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area where he lives.

‘Infuriating’

Three other Vietnam veterans and an architectural historian sued in February to stop the “unlawful” construction of the arch. They are represented by Public Citizen Litigation Group, part of the government accountability and consumer advocacy nonprofit.

“It's very important to our clients, who all have a very strong personal connection with Arlington National Cemetery and the area around which the arch is planned to be constructed, and I think they are not alone,” said Nick Sansone, a lawyer with Public Citizen Litigation Group.

On Thursday, Sansone said the group is “certainly planning to move forward with the lawsuit as expeditiously as possible.”

Memorial Circle, the proposed site for President Donald Trump's "Triumphal Arch" on May 15. (Photo credit: REUTERS/Kylie Cooper)

Public Citizen filed an opposition to the Trump administration’s motion to dismiss on May 12, and the administration was granted an extension to respond, Sansone said.

“We don't want another ballroom situation. We don't want a situation where we don't get any kind of guarantee from the government that they're not going to start building, and then all of a sudden they start building, and before we know it, we've got the foundations laid for an arch in the middle of the capital city,” Sansone said.

Demolition began on the East Wing of the White House in October to build a new ballroom, which Trump initially promised would be privately funded. On Wednesday, Senate Republicans removed a $1 billion Secret Service funding request from its immigration enforcement bill, which included funding for the ballroom.

In previous negotiations with the government, Public Citizen agreed to drop a preliminary injunction motion barring the government from starting work on the arch while the lawsuit is pending.

It did so “without prejudice,” meaning it can be renewed at any time, and in exchange, the government must provide 14 days’ notice on the public docket prior to beginning construction, Sansone said.

The Trump administration’s claim it can proceed with building the arch without Congressional approval is “wrong” and “incorrect as a matter of law,” Sansone said.

“Feelings run deep about the proper way to tell our national story in the nation's capital and the proper way to use monuments and commemorative structures to create a national narrative,” Sansone said.

“We live in a democracy, and that's precisely why those sorts of disputes need to be hashed out in our legislative body, the body that's representative of the diversity of American opinion, Congress, and shouldn't be up to the sort of unilateral decision making of a single president.”

Watching Thursday’s meeting of the Commission of Fine Arts was “infuriating” as the agency led by Trump appointees gave final approval to the arch with minor modifications, despite approximately 1,600 negative public comments, Sansone said.

“Any kind of Commission of Fine Arts consideration or approval or process is premature until Congress has initiated the procedure by authorizing this arch in the first place,” Sansone said.

“Watching the arch fly through the approval process in the face of that consistent negative feedback from the public just reinforces why it's important to have democratic buy-in for a project like this in the first place and why congressional authorization is not only legally necessary but also advisable as a matter of public policy.”

Easton compared Trump to a “rabid dog” marking its territory as Trump has pursued numerous projects to leave his touch on the capital city from the ballroom to the arch and painting the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool blue.

“He's spending all this money, except for where it's really needed. People are starving. People need health care. People need help,” Easton said.

Hidden among a sea of blue campaign signs for Democrats off the side of a road in the Atlanta metro area lies a dark navy blue and green sign for a conservative candidate for governor.

The placard is for Brad Raffensperger, Georgia’s secretary of state, whom President Donald Trump famously called after the 2020 election loss, while asking Georgia officials to “find 11,000 plus votes.”

Among the eight Republicans running for governor of Georgia in Tuesday’s primary election, Raffensperger and others, such as Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr, have seemingly leaned away from Trump and the GOP in their campaign materials — in favor of branding centered around being “conservative” rather than “Republican.”

Some Democratic strategists view this type of campaign move as part of a national trend and a way for Republican candidates to distance themselves from the MAGA branch of the party and Trump himself, whose poll ratings have reached record lows.

The departure from the classic GOP branding might also appeal to more centrist voters as Democrats anticipate a blue wave come November, with the hope of flipping enough seats to take back the House — and possibly even the Senate.

“You're seeing some Republicans that are trying to separate conservative identity from the national Republican brand. For certain voters, especially suburban, college-educated, business-oriented voters, ‘conservative’ can feel values-based and familiar, while ‘Republican’ increasingly carries baggage tied to polarization, or Trump-era chaos, or national dysfunction,” said Adin Lenchner, founder of Carroll Street Campaigns, which works with Democrats.

“Georgia's particularly interesting for this because the state has become genuinely competitive, so candidates are really trying to thread that needle, so to speak, where they can still communicate ideological conservatism without fully wrapping themselves in the national GOP brand.”

The campaigns for Raffensperger and Carr did not respond to Raw Story’s request for comment.

'A departure'

Raffensperger and Carr’s campaign websites barely make any reference to the word “Republican,” which is “signaling independence from the national party brand,” particularly as some conservatives have grown uneasy with “Trump-era chaos, election denialism, the fallout in 2020,” said Jay Satterfield, a principal with political consultancy North Shore Strategies, who calls himself a “dirt road Democrat.”

On social media, Carr has called himself the “conservative alternative for governor.”

“There's still those voters who grew up Republican. but don't necessarily want to wear that MAGA label socially, politically, any more because it's hurting them nationally,” Satterfield said.

“Emphasizing conservatism over party identity, I think it can be a way to create distance without actually breaking from the coalition.”

Despite his long political career, voters who don’t know Raffensperger might think he’s an Independent, Green Party or even a Democratic candidate based on his green color campaign branding, said Joe Bonilla, co-founder of creative strategy firm, Relentless Awareness, who works mostly for Democrats but also for Republicans and Independents.

“It's definitely a departure from what you would think a dyed in the wool conservative would have,” Bonilla said.

“If I didn't know anything about him, I would think he would be definitely much more of a Democrat.”

In swing states like Georgia, candidates can be expected to “pivot to the center” as early as possible, which could lead to more neutral branding, said Keith Donner, president of The Donner Group and a Democratic-aligned consultant for more than 30 years.

“Georgia's a purple state, especially this year, which is going to be a very large, very pronounced blue wave year, so they're just looking at the most nondescript first impression of the campaigns you can get,” Donner said.

“Unlike the Democratic waves of 2006 and 2018, Republican candidates in tough, tough districts or tough states are doing everything they can before November to pivot to the center earlier and distance themselves from Trump.”

But breaking with Trump can backfire on Republicans, as seen in Louisiana last Saturday when Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy, who voted to convict Trump in his second impeachment, lost the GOP primary to a Trump-backed candidate who is headed to a runoff.

“Each of these primaries will be their own little test, and I have no doubt that Republican candidates across the country are watching them very, very closely to see what is permissible and what's a death sentence,” Lenchner said.