Battle in Mar-a-Lago's backyard threatens brutal wake-up call for Trump
Mar-a-Lago — President Donald Trump’s luxury “winter White House” private club and residence — sits in a narrowly drawn Florida state house district hugging the Palm Beach coast.
That strip represents one of the target districts where Democrats are hoping to send their latest message to Republicans and Trump, who faces a tanked approval rating, through a small business owner they hope can flip the seat in Florida House District 87.
The Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee (DLCC) boasts 28 state-level flips so far – and none for Republicans — since Trump was elected.
“This is a stark reminder that Democrats are not just winning in blue states or even in competitive districts. We are winning in red communities, and we're putting up a fight right in the president's backyard,” Heather Williams, DLCC president, told Raw Story.
“There's some groundswell opportunity there. This is also in the kind of district that we've been winning. We have been marching into Republican territory. We've been flipping seats, and we're leaving no stone unturned when it comes to that.”
The March 24 special election squares off Democrat Emily Gregory, a public health expert and Fit4Mom Palm Beach owner, against Jon Maples, a financial adviser and former All-American college athlete endorsed by Trump.
Emily Gregory (Photo courtesy of Emily Gregory for Florida)
“When people are given the option of a very extreme, far right-wing option or a pragmatic Democrat, I think they will choose the pragmatic Democrat,” Gregory told Raw Story.
“When we will win, it will send an incredibly powerful message to Democrats statewide and nationally.”
Maples and the Republican State Leadership Committee did not respond to Raw Story’s request for comment.
'Outcry and outrage'
After Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis appointed Mike Caruso, the incumbent Republican state representative for the district, to serve as Palm Beach County Clerk in August 2025, he failed to call a special election for months until after Gregory filed a lawsuit alleging the governor did not follow state law.
Without representation for an entire legislative session, “people are really understandably outraged,” Gregory said.
Gregory said she’s campaigning on “pragmatic solutions” to address the affordability crisis and state housing issues.
When she knocks on doors, Gregory said voters talk about skyrocketing property insurance rates, access to affordable health care and funding public schools.
“More recently, we've really been hearing this outcry and outrage at democracy in peril,” Gregory said.
Residents in the district are concerned about the Trump administration’s aggressive handling of immigration enforcement that left protesters dead when U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) sent thousands of federal agents to Minnesota.
“No one is okay with armed thugs being out in the streets, shooting American citizens,” Gregory said.
“No one is okay with the unregulated militia that is ICE.”
Emily Gregory (Photo courtesy of Emily Gregory for Florida)
State legislators are in charge of the drawing of congressional maps, and at least one-third of states have proposed redrawing maps since Republicans started a mid-decade gerrymandering war at the urging of Trump.
The winner of the Florida House District 87 race will participate in Florida’s April special session on congressional redistricting, said Gregory, who is against mid-decade redistricting.
“There's a lot to be fearful of in this power grab,” Gregory said.
“We have to maintain our civic duty and our decade pattern, and I think trying to do it halfway through the decade just shows how desperate the current administration is, and the implications of losing those congressional seats would be profound.”
Democrats hope their successes at the state-level are a bellwether for the November midterm elections when they look to take back control of the U.S. House of Representatives and even possibly the U.S. Senate.
The major super PAC for Senate Republicans skyrocketed their dark money contributions in order to protect their GOP majority, Raw Story first reported.
“If I were Republicans, I'd be deeply concerned about this. They benefited from this kind of environment in 2010, and we're knocking on the same door, only in the opposite direction this time, where we've got this incredible opportunity and we are ready to show up and meet the needs of voters across the country,” Williams said.
“Regardless of what the national narrative is like, Democrats can win elections, and we can win elections when we meet voters where they are and with a D behind our name.
“I think that's incredibly important as we think about officially now, transitioning into primary season, and how we think about winning up and down the ballot.”
GOP NY gov pick runs from link to J6ers and Trump ‘secretary of retribution’
The Republican candidate for governor of New York was scheduled to speak at an event headlined by far-right extremists and rioters convicted over the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol, according to a Raw Story investigation.
Bruce Blakeman, the Nassau County executive running against incumbent Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul, was featured on promotional materials for a January event associated with retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, President Donald Trump’s former national security adviser.
The Stay Awake America event took place at the Trump-themed America First Warehouse in Ronkonkoma on Long Island from Jan. 10-11, though ultimately Blakeman did not attend, said Teresa Helfrich, director of operations for the America First Warehouse.
“He didn't end up showing up,” Helfrich said.
“Apparently, he was really busy, but unfortunately, he did not come, and people were a bit disappointed, but we tried our best.”
Helfrich said she was under the impression Blakeman was unable to attend because he was preparing for his inauguration the following day, for his second term as county executive.
In a statement to Raw Story, Blakeman attempted to distance himself from the event.
“Kathy Hochul told 5.4 million Republicans to leave New York,” Blakeman said through a campaign spokesperson, referring to 2022 remarks in which the governor named GOP figures including Trump, rather than every Republican in the state.
“Now she’s inventing distractions about events I never attended and people I’ve never spoken to because she can’t defend her tax hikes and soaring utility bills. She’s so bothered by her record she’s becoming delusional. I’m trying to make New York affordable.”
A poster for the event circulated by the America First Warehouse and Stay Awake America organizer prominently featured Blakeman as a speaker.
Flynn shared an X post promoting the event, which referenced Blakeman.
Also featured were Stewart Rhodes, the Oath Keepers militia leader whose 18-year sentence for sedition was commuted by President Trump; Treniss Jewell Evans III, who pleaded guilty to entering the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021; and Ivan Raiklin, a Flynn associate who campaigns to punish Trump’s enemies.
The event was advertised as a tribute to Tina Peters, a Colorado county clerk sentenced to nine years in prison for her role in the effort to overturn the 2020 election. Trump is pressuring Democratic Colorado Gov. Jared Polis to grant Peters clemency.
Blakeman did recently speak at the Queens Village Republican Club’s Lincoln Dinner, on March 1. That event honored John Eastman, a now-disbarred attorney who advised Trump and played a central role in the effort to overturn the 2020 election, Politico reported.
Lara Logan, a journalist who has spread far-right conspiracy theories, accepted an award and spoke at that event.
In a statement, Blakeman denied knowing “who John Eastman is or what he stands for.”
Jacob Neiheisel, an associate professor of political science at the University of Buffalo, told Raw Story “association means a lot in politics,” and candidates make calculations about the costs and benefits of being linked with individuals or groups.
“You can distance yourself quite a bit. Trump's been effective at it,” Neiheisel said.
“It works for Trump. It can work for other people.”
Amy Young, director and organizer of Stay Awake America, did not respond to requests for comment.
‘Threat of Islam’
Blakeman’s biography appears on the Stay Awake America website’s “past and present speaker list.”
The January event at which he was advertised to speak promised more than 17 “nationally known expert speakers in health, civics, faith, education, threat of Islam in America and child sex trafficking.”
Being associated with far-right figures doesn’t help Blakeman’s chances of winning in the blue state, Neiheisel said, adding that Republican gubernatorial candidates in New York “have to at least outwardly appear centrist to the bulk of voters, but that's not where the energy in the party is. The energy is typically on the far right.”
But such associations do “make you viable for other positions elsewhere, and put you on the radar of other people in the party, particularly if MAGA is able to continue beyond Trump,” Neiheisel said.
“I think that this also might be a play [by Blakeman] to stay relevant and stay in some of those circles even after he loses.”
Trump endorsed Blakeman in December after Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY), dropped out of the Republican primary.
Larry Levy, a former political journalist and associate vice president and executive dean of the National Center for Suburban Studies at Hofstra University, said “at some point, Blakeman will have to pivot to the middle — there just aren’t enough Republican voters in the state for him to win without a goodly number of moderate independents and soft Democrats — and Gen. Flynn certainly wouldn’t help him build bridges to them."
Flynn was briefly national security adviser to Trump in his first term before being fired for lying about contacts with Russian officials.
The Stay Awake America Tour is inspired and endorsed by Flynn and grew out of an earlier roadshow, the ReAwaken America Tour, that prominently featured his work as a far-right campaigner and promoted conspiracy theories and Christian nationalism.
On a recent podcast, Young said the tour came about as a result of a conversation between Flynn and Caspar McCloud, an English musician who performs at the events, about the need to mobilize support for Trump.
‘Secretary of Retribution’
Rhodes, whose name was originally listed at the bottom of the January event poster but whose photo is the first featured for a Stay Awake America event on March 20, founded the Oath Keepers, an anti-government group that recruited military veterans and retired law enforcement during the Obama administration.
The Oath Keepers, alongside the Proud Boys, provided the engine for the attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6.
Rhodes was freed from prison after Trump’s second inauguration but did not receive a pardon.
Raiklin, then an Army Reserve lieutenant colonel, promoted the so-called “Pence Card” argument, holding that Vice President Mike Pence possessed the authority to set aside the results of the 2020 election.
The expectation that Pence would comply inflamed Trump’s supporters and helped fuel the riot at the Capitol on Jan. 6, when the former vice president refused to bend to pressure.
As Trump mounted his 2024 election bid, Raiklin launched a campaign as self-appointed “secretary of retribution,” featuring veiled threats of violence against perceived enemies.
Retired Lt. Col. Ivan Raiklin and self-styled "secretary of retribution" Ivan Raiklin at the Republican National Convention (Jordan Green/Raw Story)
Evans pleaded guilty to entering the Capitol and drinking Fireball whisky in a congressional conference room.
During the 2024 campaign, he joined Raiklin for a press conference, calling for “live-streamed swatting raids” against Trump’s enemies.
Raiklin met with law enforcement officials in Texas to detail his plans for recruiting sheriffs to arrest Trump’s enemies, Raw Story reported.
As Nassau county executive, Blakeman has hired armed citizens as special deputy sheriffs — what critics have called an unlawful personal militia, the New York Times reported.
In January, Rhodes and Raiklin held a press conference at the White House calling on Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act to stop Democrats winning the 2026 midterm elections and retaking Congress.
Raiklin has worked closely with Flynn, serving on the board of America’s Future, an organization led by Flynn and his sister. Raiklin took part in a 2024 tour to promote a documentary about Flynn.
Trump supporters storm the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. Kent Nishimura/Los Angeles Times/TNS
Helfrich told Raw Story the America First Warehouse supports those who participated in the riot at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, and she said she believes “the real insurrection happened on November 3 of 2020 when the deep state and the powers that be tried to overthrow a US presidential election.”
“We are 100 percent behind our fellow Patriot brothers and sisters who took a First Amendment stand that day to let Congress know that they didn't want a stolen election to be certified,” she said.
“We are extremely supportive advocates of the J6 community, and we do not see them as felons. We see them as politically persecuted patriots.”
Conspiracy theories
Stay Awake America’s “sizzle reel” to promote upcoming events features Cathy O’Brien, a conspiracy theorist who claims to be the victim of government mind control, and Judy Mikovits, a controversial virologist who equates vaccination with "extermination and sterilization.”
Mikovits was billed on the event where Blakeman was scheduled to appear.
Flynn appeared in the promotional video encouraging people to participate in the Stay Awake America movement.
Helfrich told Raw Story, “We love the people at the Stay Awake American tour,” and the warehouse has “the same mission.”
“The reason why we love their work is because we do believe that there's a lot that America is facing right now,” Helfrich said.
“Obviously, all of us are big President Trump supporters, and we love what he's doing, but he's only in office for another three years, and we do believe, a lot of us, that the country needs to stay awake and keep fighting beyond this term.”
Young’s X posts promoting the Stay Awake America tour frequently include the phrase “blitz 2026 midterms.”
Young frequently reshares posts from X accounts that promote the QAnon conspiracy theory, including one that in January revived the Pizzagate conspiracy theory, which falsely claimed that Democrats ran a child sex trafficking operation in the basement of a DC pizzeria.
Young shares QAnon beliefs with staff at the America First Warehouse, the Trump-themed event space in Ronkonkoma.
Speaking in January on the podcast she co-hosts at the America First Warehouse, Helfrich said she decided to go to Washington, D.C. on Jan. 6 after a friend admonished her: “Where we go one, we go all.” Helfrich said she and her co-host, “Angie the Patriette,” have that QAnon slogan “tattooed on our bodies.”
Young has also re-shared posts on X that promote election denialism, celebrate Russian President Vladimir Putin, and push Islamophobia and antisemitism.
One post from QAnon promoter Liz Crokin that Young re-shared less than a week before the Ronkonkoma event insinuates that illegal tunnels discovered underneath the Chabad-Lubavitch world headquarters in Brooklyn link Jews to child exploitation.
The tunnels were reportedly built by a radical offshoot of the Hasidic Jewish movement seeking to expand the site. There is no evidence of human trafficking at the site.
Exclusive: Republicans get staggering boost from mystery donors as 'arms race' heats up
The main super PAC supporting Senate Republicans saw a “huge spike” in dark money contributions in 2025, a sign of the massive arsenal the GOP is building to protect its hold on Congress in November’s midterm elections, according to a new report from political reform group Issue One first reported by Raw Story.
As Democrats aim to capitalize on the growing unpopularity of President Donald Trump and his Republican party and regain control of Congress, the Republican-aligned Senate Leadership Fund skyrocketed dark money contributions by 581 percent in 2025 compared to 2023.
Michael Beckel, money in politics reform director at Issue One, said: “When you see an infusion of money like this, that usually means that these big money groups want to make sure that they have all of the resources they can muster to defend seats, to defend candidates, to defend their majority.”
At the same time, Senate Democrats saw a drop in dark money donations, Issue One said.
‘Arms race’
Dark money is money donated to political groups without disclosure of the source, as enabled by Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, a controversial Supreme Court decision from 2010.
According to Issue One's analysis of campaign finance reports, in 2025 the Republican-aligned Senate Leadership Fund super PAC brought in $35 million from its affiliated dark money group, One Nation, representing $1 out of every $3 raised.
In 2023, that number was $5.18 million, Beckel said.
Four major super PACs increased 2025 dark money contributions by 65 percent, according to a new report. Graphic: Issue One)
This indicates “just a surge of dark money coming into the main super PAC supporting Senate Republicans at a time when, clearly, there's a lot of political winds blowing that say Democrats have a fighting chance to win the U.S. House of Representatives and maybe even pick up seats in the Senate,” Beckel said.
The four main super PACs focused on electing Democrats and Republicans in the House and Senate raised a combined $71 million from dark money sources in 2025: up 65 percent on the same point in the 2022 and 2024 election cycles, Issue One said.
“Both sides see this as an arms race where they don't want to put down any weapon, and when you see just huge sums of money coming in to influence elections from unknown donors, that raises serious questions about who's trying to buy access and influence in Washington,” Beckel said.
Republican and Democratic super PACs focused on the House maintained steady growth in dark money contributions, while the Senate Majority PAC, benefitting Democrats, received fewer dark money contributions in 2025, according to the report.
For every $4 raised for the Republican-aligned Congressional Leadership Fund, nearly $1 came from dark money group American Action Network, which totaled $17 million in 2025, according to Issue One.
On the Democratic side, about $1 of every $6 raised by the House Majority PAC and about $1 out of every $7 raised for Senate Majority PAC came from dark money group Majority Forward, totaling $11 million and $8 million in 2025.
“We continue to see this escalating arms race, and it's deeply concerning when you've got so much money from unknown donors coming in on both sides of the aisle,” Beckel said.
All four super PACs did not respond to Raw Story’s interview requests or declined to comment.
‘Massive war chest’
Beckel said he anticipates seeing significant amounts of dark money continuing to flow into these super PACs, especially around Senate races.
“There's going to be a huge battle over control of not just the House but the Senate, and wealthy donors who are evading the spotlight are helping Senate Republicans raise a massive war chest through their super PAC to defend those seats,” Beckel said.
Super PACs received massive dark money contributions ahead of 2024 election. Graphic: Issue One.
Among Senate seats not up for re-election this year, Democrats hold 34 and Republicans 31.
Two Democratic seats, held by Sen. Jon Ossoff in Georgia and in Michigan by retiring Sen. Gary Peters, and two Republican seats, held by Sen. Susan Collins in Maine and the North Carolina seat held by retiring Sen. Thom Tillis, are true toss-ups, according to the Cook Political Report.
Democrats’ narrow path to regain the Senate majority would require picking up seats in Alaska, North Carolina, Ohio and Maine, according to Cook.
During the 2023-24 election cycle, the four super PACs raised about $1 of every $5 from dark money groups. Dark money accounted for 21 percent of contributions to both parties’ Senate-focused PACs for the 2024 election, according to Issue One.
Issue One supports the DISCLOSE Act, legislation focused on increasing transparency and curbing the influence of dark money, which House and Senate Democrats reintroduced on Wednesday.
But with such a deeply divided Congress, Beckel said Issue One is focused on state-level reforms to reel in unlimited spending on elections by corporations and outside groups enabled by Citizens United.
“The warning here is that money from anonymous sources continues to play a major role in our elections, and I think voters all across the political spectrum are … deeply concerned and fed up about the amount of dark money that they're seeing in elections,” Beckel said.
'MAGA lost its luster': MTG’s old seat may flip as Trump and GOP 'made a lot of enemies'
When Republican firebrand Marjorie Taylor Greene resigned from Congress in January, as many as 22 candidates lined up to vie for her U.S. House seat in Georgia’s 14th District.
The vast majority were Republican. As of Monday, 12 remained in the March 10 special election race, giving Democrats hope that a split Republican vote might mean the seat can actually be flipped — despite its solid red rating and Greene’s definitive victories since 2020, when the high-profile, hard-right, conspiracy-theory-espousing politician was first elected.
Raw Story spoke with the three Democrats competing for the seat. With poor Republican polling under President Donald Trump and recent wins for Democrats in other red states, they presented different paths to victory.
Shawn Harris, a retired brigadier general and cattle producer, lost to Greene in 2024 and declared his 2026 candidacy prior to Greene’s surprise resignation announcement in November.
A Democratic win “is 100 percent realistic because this race here is completely switched,” Harris told Raw Story.
“Gotta keep in mind, whoever wins this race has never served in Congress before. Period.
“So now it goes back to people are actually looking at our résumés and looking at our background. They [are] looking at what we did before, and if I put my background up against anybody … people understand that, ‘Hey, this is the right guy.’”
Shawn Harris on his cattle farm in Rockmart, Ga. (Photo by Alexandria Jacobson/Raw Story)
Democrats have been chipping away at Greene’s domination in GA-14 since 2020, when she won with 75 percent of the vote.
In 2022, after two years of Greene’s far-right antics on Capitol Hill, Democrat Marcus Flowers cut her share of votes by nearly 10 percent, capturing more than 88,000 of his own.
While Greene won about 64 percent of the vote against Harris in 2024, nearly 135,000 voters, a record, picked the Democrat.
“We're taking everything that we learned from the last race and brought it to this race,” Harris said.
“I just want to make sure that everybody in northwest Georgia understands that Shawn Harris is going to go to Washington, D.C., and the people that I'm working for, the hardworking people here in northwest Georgia … I don't care if you're a Democrat or Republican, my focus is you.”
Harris is far-and-away the biggest fundraiser in the race, having raised more than $2.2 million through the end of 2025, according to Federal Election Commission (FEC) filings.
He has brought in more than $2.4 million in 2026, Renee Schaeffer, his campaign manager, told Raw Story.
The next closest fundraiser is Republican Clay Fuller, endorsed by President Trump, who raised more than $786,000 as of Feb. 18, according to FEC filings.
‘Anything can happen’
Clarence Blalock, a Democratic consultant running for Georgia commissioner of labor, faced Harris in a runoff in the 2024 primary.
Withdrawing his 2026 candidacy, Blalock endorsed Harris.
“Shawn has a chance to clear,” Blalock told Raw Story.
“At some point all that spending matters. He's going to be able to reach more people, reach low propensity voters.
“If he can resonate with some Republicans, or just basically get out every Democrat — because it's a special election, because it's going to be low turnout — if you turn out a higher percentage of your people, you can close that gap.”
Clarence Blalock in front of a restaurant in Rockmart, Ga. (Photo by Alexandria Jacobson/Raw Story)
That happened in Georgia last year when Democrat Eric Gisler flipped a state House seat in a special election.
The Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee (DLCC) counts Gisler’s victory in a Trump 12-point advantage seat as one of its biggest wins among the 26 seats the party has flipped since Trump’s re-election, said Sam Paisley, a spokesperson for the DLCC.
In Texas in February, Democrat Taylor Rehmet flipped a Republican state Senate district that favored Trump by 17 points — the DLCC’s first flip of 2026, a startling success that made national headlines.
“There actually probably are enough votes to win in these types of things, and in these specials, there's always a high level of chaoticness where anything can happen, too,” Blalock said.
In another state-level race, Blalock worked with Peter Hubbard, one of two Democrats to upset incumbent Republicans to win seats on the Georgia Public Service Commission, the first non-federal statewide wins for Democrats in Georgia in 19 years.
Even Minnesota gubernatorial candidate Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) celebrated the victories, calling them “a rejection of Trump-era policies.”
Towards the end of her time in Congress, Greene did the same — turning particularly fiercely against Trump over his handling of the Jeffrey Epstein scandal. Now, Democrats in GA-14 are hopeful that frustration with Trump and his party, particularly around hardline federal immigration enforcement and the Epstein files, will result in more switched votes.
“MAGA’s lost a lot of luster,” Blalock said.
“Who wants to be associated with pedophilia? I don't. I just think people are getting tired of it.”
Harris said 5 percent of GA-14 voters who backed Trump in 2024 also voted for him.
He is distributing “Republicans for Shawn” signs and said he expects many more to back him this time.
“We're very confident that we're going to be able to get our Democrats out, the independents out and those Republicans that feel that the Republican Party has left them,” Harris said.
“They [are] still Republicans, but the current Republican Party has left them with MAGA, and they're going to come out and vote for me.”
‘Times change’
Harris said he has resonated with some conservatives who consider themselves Ronald Reagan or Bush-era Republicans, focused on the economy.
Another Democratic candidate, patent lawyer Jonathan Hobbs, said the working-class district leaned Democratic in the 1970s and 1980s, so voters fed up with the GOP could flip back.
Jonathan Hobbs (provided photo)
“History tells us the future,” Hobbs said.
“Times change, and Trump [and] Republicans have made a lot of enemies … Everything changes, and especially with the handling of the immigration issue, where people are getting shot, that's not good. This is totally mishandled.”
Jim Davis, an author and political scientist who worked on Ross Perot’s independent 1992 presidential campaign, is also running as a Democrat — and is less confident of success.
Jim Davis (provided photo)
He created a computer model that showed a path to victory if only two Democrats were in the race and Republicans split their votes.
But Davis said Democrats were “very, very unfriendly toward my candidacy,” and with three candidates, “I don't think there's as much hope for any of us as there once was.”
While all three Democrats agreed affordability is one of the largest issues in GA-14, Davis said Democrats have lacked “winning issues” and clear messaging about “What do you stand for?”
“Welfare is very hard for people to accept down here in our district, because their backs are already to the wall,” he said. “They feel like they don't want to contribute to anybody else.
“They're hard people because they've had a hard time, and until Democrats get something in front of that, they're not going anywhere. They've lost all the people. They've lost their voting base.”
To win, Democrats need to demonstrate their stances in a concrete way, such as proposing subsidized daycare, Davis said.
“You've got to do something to break out,” he said.
'It's chaos — we are in limbo': Supreme Court rebuke can’t stop Trump hurting heartland
President Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs policy brought Ohio farmer Chris Gibbs into the national spotlight in Trump's first term, when he sent a message asking Trump to consider how his global trade war hurt American agriculture.
After Trump returned to the White House last year and enacted a stream of even more aggressive — if fluctuating — tariffs on global trade, Gibbs felt the need to speak out again.
“It’s such a déjà vu moment,” Gibbs said, “because we're right back in the same situation, right back there, right now, the same doggone thing as 2018.”
Gibbs was then a Republican but told Raw Story he came out “swinging pretty hard” in Trump’s first term when retaliatory tariffs caused the value of his soybeans to plummet 20 percent overnight.
“The party didn't want to stand behind that. They wanted to stand behind the president. I said, ‘No, I gotta protect my business,’ so I ended up leaving the party,” Gibbs said.
Chris Gibbs (provided photo)
Last Friday, after the U.S. Supreme Court issued a 6-3 decision striking down Trump’s attempt to justify his tariffs under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, Trump proceeded to announce a new global tariff of 10 percent, then 15 percent, under different legislation.
After blasting the Supreme Court justices who ruled against him in virulent terms, Trump seems certain to focus on the issue again in his State of the Union address, to Congress at the Capitol on Tuesday night.
Gibbs said: “The one thing I agree with Trump, and that is the Supreme Court got it all wrong, and what I mean by that is it should have been 9-0, not 6-3 because the president … never had that authority, and why there were still three Supreme Court justices that couldn't see that is disconcerting to me.”
‘I’m not going back’
Now chair of the Ohio Democratic Party Rural Caucus, Gibbs is continuing to speak out against tariffs, featuring in a new $5 million ad campaign from the Small Businesses Against Tariffs, a project from Defending Democracy Together Institute, an advocacy group formed by anti-Trump conservatives.
“I'm justified,” Gibbs said. “I'm not going back. I am where I'm going to be. I'm in the Democratic Party. I can make a difference here.
“I'm a Democrat because I want to be part of a party that looks for solutions for people, not retribution or revenge against individuals. It's just that simple.”
Gibbs has farmed in Maplewood, Ohio, for nearly 50 years, growing soybeans, corn and wheat and raising cattle. He said tariffs raise the prices of steel, lumber, machinery and other materials used on his farm.
Uncertainty fostered by Trump’s tariffs also strains relations with overseas trading partners, which in turn hurts the grains and agriculture industry in the U.S., Gibbs said.
“We’re on the verge of not becoming the first choice for agricultural supplies. We're now in an agricultural deficit, a trade deficit, which is very odd,” he said.
“The whole time that I've been in farming we were always proud of the trade surplus that agriculture had, and now we’ve moved that back to a trade deficit, so when we have adverse relationships with trading partners, that's how that backs up to me.”
Undeterred by the Supreme Court’s decision, on Monday, Trump said countries who “play games” over U.S. trade deals will face even higher tariffs under different laws.
“This has thrown the whole supply chain, trading sector, trading partners into absolute chaos,” Gibbs said.
Small businesses especially suffer under “ad hoc” and “unpredictable” trade policies, he added.
For the past four years, Gibbs said, his farm’s cost of production has been higher than his income.
“We don't know where we're at, as a farmer, number one for things that we use that come from overseas, but what about the crops that we want to sell into these other countries based on these handshake deals?” Gibbs said.
“It's chaos, and we are in limbo.”
‘Worst thing you can do’
Even as an established farmer with other sources of income such as a federal retirement account from working with the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Gibbs said he is struggling to pay his monthly bills.
Thinking about farmers with less cash flow who might need to rely on government assistance “makes me wake up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat,” he said.
“That's the worst thing you can do for an independent rancher is to put the government in a place where it's their only choice to seek relief is the taxpayer.
“There is nothing more demeaning, nothing more heart-wrenching. I call it the silent killer of the soul. That's what's happened before our eyes, to our nation's farmers.”
'All I've been doing is crying': ICE's grip decimates Minneapolis' small businesses
As Minneapolis residents face clashes with federal immigration enforcement agents that have resulted in the killings of two people in the past month, small business owners like Shontay Evans say federal agents’ presence in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul is threatening their financial survival.
Citing declining sales in an atmosphere of fear and distrust, Evans, 41, said she was considering closing Tay’s Secret Garden, a plant nursery she has operated out of her home in St. Paul for seven years.
“Everybody's saving their money because they're scared,” Evans told Raw Story. “It's been pretty rough lately.”
Her experience, and those of other small business owners like her, point to the stress President Donald Trump’s hardline immigration crackdown is placing on entrepreneurs in Minneapolis-St. Paul and other urban areas, even as they struggle to cope with a national surge in the cost of living.
‘Stressed’
In Minneapolis on Jan. 7, an ICE agent fatally shot Renee Good, a 37-year-old mother of three, as she drove her car away from an immigration raid in a residential neighborhood.
On Jan. 24, Border Patrol agents killed Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old intensive care nurse for veterans who was filming a confrontation between protestors and federal agents.
Agents pepper sprayed Pretti before shoving him to the ground and firing at least 10 shots in five seconds.
Such traumatic events, as well as continued confrontations between agents and protestors, have left residents increasingly “stressed,” Evans said.
Amid it all, Evans said she “barely made anything” in sales for January.
As February began, the Department of Homeland Security said it was removing from Minneapolis 700 federal agents with U.S. Immigration and Customs and Enforcement (ICE) and Border Patrol.
But 2,000 agents still remain on the ground.
‘Hit me hard’
Following the death of Good, Ronn Easton, a Vietnam veteran who lives in Little Canada, Minnesota, told Raw Story tension in the area was “palpable” — and reminiscent of the period of civil unrest in the Twin Cities that followed the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin in May 2020.
Evans said such tension has led to public events across Minneapolis-St. Paul being canceled — cutting directly into her revenue.
Shontay Evans at a booth selling her plants through Tay's Secret Garden (provided photo)
Evans sells house plants locally, offering delivery and pick-up. She also teaches plant education.
“My business was already struggling, so it really hit me hard,” Evans said.
Ever since Trump returned to the White House last year and began sending the National Guard and federal agents to Democratic cities, people have been scared, Evans said.
Business has been “bad since Trump's been in office,” Evans added, noting that she recorded her worst year of sales in 2025.
Coffee shops, bookstores and bakeries across the Minneapolis area have reported struggling since Trump’s immigration crackdown began, according to Time.
In a survey by tourism group Meet Minneapolis, 90 percent of businesses reported experiencing fear and stress from the presence of immigration agents, negatively affecting their businesses.’
Eighty percent of such businesses reported canceled, postponed or reduced bookings and sales, according to the survey.
‘Not right’
Despite the pressure on her business, Evans said she had been out to join protests at least five times, even in freezing temperatures.
She said she protested the day Pretti was killed and also attended protests at the Bishop Henry Whipple Federal Building in Fort Snelling, which is serving as an ICE command center.
Shontay Evans at a protest at the Bishop Henry Whipple Federal Building on Jan. 21 (provided photo)
A friend gave her money to buy pizza and snacks for fellow protestors, Evans said.
“I was sitting at home watching it on TV, and it was just making me so sad,” Evans said.
“I'm like, ‘I gotta do something.’”
Evans recently spoke out in a video produced by Home of the Brave, a nonprofit highlighting what it calls the “catastrophic harm” to ordinary Americans under Trump’s second administration.
Nonetheless, Evans said she was growing discouraged, as she had seen “selective outrage” expressed by fellow residents while the federal government simply continued its aggression.
“I'm just over it because they [are] still gonna let people do whatever they want to do,” Evans said, of the federal government.
“No one's coming to help us. It's just really sad. All I've been doing is crying a lot lately, really.”
Evans said people should “get up and stand up … it's a humanity thing.”
Choking up, she added: “It’s just not right, what's going on out here.”
Judge whose son was killed: Trump-fueled threats must stop or more will die
While a judicial coalition applauded a federal appeals court decision this week to dismiss a complaint against a judge who stopped the Trump administration deporting Venezuelan migrants to El Salvador, the group is continuing to sound the alarm on threats to and attacks on judges they say the president is fueling.
Paul Kiesel, founder of Speak Up for Justice, a nonpartisan group advocating for judicial independence and protection, told Raw Story attacks from President Donald Trump and the Department of Justice, such as those directed at Judge James Boasberg in the District of Columbia, can have life-and-death consequences.
Just last month in Indiana, a superior court judge and his wife were shot at their home, allegedly in an attempt to derail a domestic abuse case involving a motorcycle club member.
Between 2021 and 2024, amid a wave of political violence, serious threats to federal judges more than doubled, Reuters reported.
“It's coming to the very top,” said Kiesel, a trial attorney in California.
“We've never, ever, ever had a president who has directly threatened and encouraged others to, in some ways, go after these judges.”
Trump has posted screeds directed at Boasberg and other judges. Last Memorial Day, he accused judges of being “on a mission to keep murderers, drug dealers, rapists, gang members and released prisoners from all over the world, in our country, so they can rob, murder and rape again.”
In the Truth Social post, he called out “USA hating judges” and called them “monsters who want our country to go to Hell.”
Trump posted about Boasberg, accusing him of suffering from “Massive Trump Derangement Syndrome,” labeling him a “Radical Left Lunatic of a Judge, a troublemaker and agitator,” and calling for his impeachment.
In a recent Senate hearing, Boasberg was one of two judges Republicans said should be impeached and removed.
Under Attorney General Pam Bondi, the Department of Justice filed the judicial misconduct complaint against Boasberg, based on comments about the Trump administration allegedly made in a closed-door meeting. The complaint was dismissed, due to insufficient evidence.
Esther Salas, a U.S. district judge in New Jersey, told Raw Story: “To call judges monsters, to accuse judges of being corrupt, without any basis for that wild assertion, to declare war on judges, coming out of the Department of Justice of all places? This is no longer apples to apples. It's just not.”
Such language, particularly from the Trump administration and Republican leaders, is “the kind of stuff that's going to get someone killed,” Salas said.
‘Dangerous, irresponsible rhetoric’
Salas knows how threats to judges can turn deadly.
In July 2020 her son, Daniel Anderl, was fatally shot when a gunman disguised as a deliveryman came to the family’s New Jersey home, seeking Salas.
U.S. District Court Judge Esther Salas with her son, Daniel Anderl, who was murdered in 2020 Courtesy Judge Salas
Salas’ husband, Mark Anderl, was seriously wounded.
The gunman, who authorities said also killed California attorney Marc Angelucci before killing himself, was identified as Roy Den Hollander, a lawyer with a history of anti-feminist writings.
Den Hollander reportedly had a target list of female judges, half of whom were Latina and including Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, according to PBS.
After her son’s death, Salas said she hesitated to speculate on the role of politics in increased attacks and threats to judges.
But now, Salas told Raw Story, “I don't see any other possible explanation, other than this rhetoric, this dangerous, irresponsible rhetoric that comes from our political leaders from the top down.
“We have seen just a doubling down by this administration, and the attacks are far more than I had ever seen.”
Salas started publicly speaking out against threats to judges last year, after she learned that in at least 20 cases, pizzas were being delivered to judges’ homes in her son’s name, as a form of doxxing.
In July, she first spoke to Raw Story about the issue.
“Clearly that's a form of intimidation at its highest level. ‘You want to end up like Judge Salas? You want to end up like her murdered son, Daniel?’” she said.
‘Serious stuff’
Threats to federal judges spiked in fiscal year 2023, with 630 threats, according to data from the U.S. Marshals Service, which protects the federal judiciary.
By comparison, in fiscal year 2019 the Marshals Service investigated just 179 threats, Reuters reported.
Citing an “alarming rise” in threats, Salas said threats remain an “unaddressed form of intimidation that has yet to be really denounced by the Department of Justice.”
Through Jan. 30, the Marshals Service has conducted 230 investigations for 176 threats to judges in fiscal year 2026.
“We’re under attack,” Salas said. “I feel like we're getting it from every possible angle.”
The Daniel Anderl Judicial Security and Privacy Act, making it harder to find federal judges’ addresses, passed Congress and was signed by then-President Joe Biden in December 2022.
However, 30,000 state-level judges lack the protections federal judges receive — despite their own exposure to threats and violence.
Speak Up for Justice is advocating for passage of the bipartisan Countering Threats and Attacks on Our Judges Act, which would monitor threats and provide security for state judges. It passed the Senate in June 2024 but is stalled in the House.
“The work of being a judge has become much more challenging today because of the threats they're facing from so many external sources,” Kiesel said.
Attorney and Speak Up for Justice founder Paul Kiesel (provided photo)
While it’s common for people to disagree with a judge’s ruling, appeals courts exist for that reason, Kiesel said, and personal attacks directed at judges set the stage for bad actors to “bring retribution,” thereby raising anxiety.
Salas said: “Judges are fine with people criticizing our opinions, people appealing us.
“But it's this new brand of attack that is so personal that really is having what, I fear, will be an everlasting impact on the justice system, on America's perception of the justice system, and on judges and the threats to judges, not only their security, but our independence moving forward.
“This is pretty serious stuff.”
Alarm over Trump-fueled election threats as 'under siege' officials leave in droves
In the first election Amy Burgans fully oversaw as clerk-treasurer for Douglas County, Nevada, she received a death threat.
It was 2022. Someone returned their mail-in ballot with “crazy talk” written all over it, including the threat to Burgans. That same year, law enforcement got involved over a stalker’s texts.
“It's almost par for the course, which is horrible, but you have to know that those types of things can come in with the heightened political environment that we live in when elections are involved at this point,” Burgans told Raw Story.
Last month, speaking at the Davos World Economic Forum, President Donald Trump said people would be “prosecuted” over the 2020 election, which he lost to Joe Biden and which, in Switzerland, he yet again falsely said was “rigged.”
Just last week, the FBI raided the Fulton County Elections Hub in Georgia, seizing ballots, voter rolls and other 2020 records. It was reported this week that Trump spoke to agents who conducted the raid.
“A raid like we saw in Georgia isn't helping take down the temperature, isn't helping build trust, isn't helping rebuild bridges,” said Michael Beckel, senior research director at nonpartisan reform group Issue One and co-author of a new report, Turning the Tide on Turnover, which reveals how election officials are leaving their jobs in droves.
“It's making people in other jurisdictions worried that they could be next. Election officials are feeling under siege, and actions like that can usher in more harassment, more threats, more stress, more challenges for election officials who are already juggling with so many challenges.”
Published Tuesday, the new report from Issue One reveals that 50 percent of chief local election officials in the western U.S. have left their jobs since November 2020 — the vast majority voluntarily, and increasingly due to threats, intimidation and harassment.
A new report revealed that 76% of local election officials in the Western U.S. left of personal reasons (Infographic from Issue One)
What’s happening in the 11-state western region is an "illustrative microcosm of the nation as a whole,” Beckel told Raw Story.
‘Unsung heroes’
Burgans, a registered Republican, stepped up in December 2020 when the previous clerk resigned, in part due to “disheartening” community reaction to Trump’s loss to Biden.
Even though Trump won Douglas County, which is 50 percent Republican, Burgans said that as Trump and his allies spread the lie that the election was stolen, the previous clerk was the subject of harassment using internet memes and questions about her ability.
“You've got people in some places who've been doing this for a number of years — in some places a number of decades — who are deciding to hang up their spurs and say, ‘Why do I need this type of stress in my life?’” Beckel said.
“‘Why do I put up with this? I've given a lot of my time. I've given a lot of public service.’”
Carly Koppes, clerk and recorder for Weld County, Colorado since 2014, told Raw Story she got her first threat a couple days after the November 2020 election, when voters said they wanted to come to her office, fueled by election fraud lies from Arizona that were “bleeding over into Colorado.”
“If you stand up and tell the truth, you could be hit with different levels of potential harassment or threats. That has definitely been a challenge,” said Koppes, who has since received an array of email, voicemail and social media threats.
More than 250 chief election officials out of 430 in the western region stepped down between November 2020 and November 2025, according to Issue One.
Among battleground states, Arizona experienced 100 percent turnover of county election officials, Nevada 65 percent.
Beckel said: “They take with them invaluable amounts of expertise, experience and institutional knowledge, and it is incumbent on lawmakers and policy makers to take steps now to work to stem the tide of troubling election official turnover.
“Election officials are the unsung heroes of our democracy, and they need additional support now more than ever.”
Of Colorado’s 64 counties, 44 percent have experienced turnover in the past five years — 66 percent so voluntarily, the report said.
Koppes said the turnover is “alarming.”
Carly Koppes (provided photo)
“The historical knowledge that we lose and trying to bring people up to speed and trying to train them and get them to feel comfortable in this type of atmosphere is challenging,” Koppes said.
Within two years, Burgans said, she was among the most senior election officials in her state.
“As a new clerk, I was learning things on my own because there was no one to get that information from, or there were very few left to pull from,” Burgans said.
To support officials who face threats, political leaders should focus on “doing more to bring down the rhetoric, bring down the temperature, instead of … sowing confusion or doubt or distrust about our free and fair and safe and secure elections,” Beckel said.
‘Fanning those flames’
Trump’s disproven claims of fraud in the 2020 election have led to massive settlements.
In April 2023, Fox News agreed to settle for $787.5 million a lawsuit from Dominion Voting Systems around the network’s promotion of lies about the 2020 election.
In December 2023, former Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani was ordered to pay $148 million to two Georgia election workers he falsely accused of engaging in ballot fraud.
But the issue has not gone away.
Correspondingly, election officials are enhancing safety measures as they face increasing threats, Beckel said, citing measures including changing commutes to work and installing bulletproof glass and panic buttons in elections offices.
Koppes said she takes different routes to work and home every day, shops at different grocery stores and changes in-office hours. She also works with law enforcement to monitor threats.
A 2024 survey by the Elections and Voting Information Center at Reed College in Portland, Oregon, found that about 70 percent of election officials experienced intimidation, 60 percent had been harassed and 30 percent were threatened.
It means officials are entering this year’s midterms “eyes wide open,” bracing for physical threats and cyber attacks, Beckel said.
“Nobody's being Pollyanna-ish about the potential concerns and potential safety issues, potential cyber attacks,” Beckel said.
Burgans said she was now more proactive with election worker training, providing protocols for how to de-escalate verbal threats or how to deal with situations like finding a powdery substance in a ballot.
That’s scared off many election workers, she said.
“We need 100 to 120 election workers every election cycle, and it's hard to get them to do that for $12 an hour if they think their life could be in jeopardy,” Burgans said.
Amy Burgans (provided photo)
Officials like Burgans, who is up for re-election, must fight a constant stream of misinformation.
Beckel said that becomes all the more challenging as leaders sow doubt in elections.
“Unfortunately, too many voices in the current administration are fanning those flames instead of doing more to reassure people about our safe and secure, free and fair elections in the United States,” Beckel said.
Summary execution: Does this legal theory hold hope of justice for ICE shooting victims?
Lawyers speaking to Raw Story said justice could still prevail in the cases of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, the two people shot dead by federal agents in Minneapolis this month, despite the Trump administration’s refusal to cooperate with state investigations.
Good, a 37-year-old mother of three, was fatally shot by a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officer as she drove her car on Jan. 7.
Pretti, also 37 and an intensive care nurse, was killed on Jan. 24, when agents used pepper spray, beat him, shoved him to the ground, disarmed him, then fired at least 10 shots.
“There were alternatives that did not endanger the lives of these protesters,” Todd Howland, professor at Vermont Law and Graduate School, told Raw Story.
“That's one absolute reason why it was outside the scope of [ICE agents’] duty, because they have a duty to protect the lives of the people of the United States.”
Todd Howland (provided photo)
Howland said both Pretti and Good’s deaths should be considered summary executions — a human rights law framework that says a person accused of a crime was killed without a fair trial.
In the immediate aftermath of both shootings, federal officials accused the victims of criminal intent.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem called Good a “domestic terrorist” and accused her of “stalking and impeding” ICE agents.
In the case of Pretti, Noem accused the deceased of attacking officers, while White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller said Pretti tried to “murder federal agents.”
Even were such accusations true, said Howland, a former United Nations official, ICE clearly “could have taken action through the normal justice procedures.
“The fact that then they took further initiative in an aggressive way indicates that they actually weren't, first and foremost, looking for the rights of the individuals, and secondly, there was no absolute necessity, and it was just totally out of proportion in terms of what the officers were doing.”
Minnesota Protocol
Howland pointed to an aptly named United Nations mechanism for investigating summary executions: the Minnesota Protocol, so-called because it was drafted by lawyers in the state, and which is meant to be used to deal with potentially unlawful deaths, such as political or state-involved killings, sometimes involving law enforcement.
Good and Pretti “were looking for and contributing to creating a better world, and so it is so important to keep their vision alive and to utilize the summary execution framework to avoid this happening to anybody else,” Howland said.
A summary execution case in regard to Good’s death might have prevented the Pretti shooting, Howland said, because the protocol emphasizes preventing killings from happening again.
“That's why it's important to look a little bit beyond just the more typical forms of justice to a justice that includes that non-reoccurrence or non-repetition.”
‘A very uphill battle’
Daniel Pi, an assistant professor at the University of New Hampshire School of Law, said the summary execution framework “tends to be relatively toothless in practice” because "international law is very flexibly interpreted.”
But even without cooperation from the U.S. federal government, which holds key evidence in Good’s death, such as the vehicle and testimony of Jonathan Ross, the 10-year ICE veteran accused of killing her, the State of Minnesota “can get to beyond a reasonable doubt using the autopsy report and the video,” Pi said.
Daniel Pi (provided photo)
Drew Evans, superintendent of the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, said the state has also been “blocked” in conducting its investigation of the shooting of Pretti.
That makes it “a very uphill battle,” to secure justice, Pi said, though he also said that while the odds of prosecution are low — less than 10 percent — it does remain possible.
Civil damages would be challenging to obtain but possibly easier than criminal charges, Howland said.
Matthew Mangino, a defense attorney and former district attorney in Pennsylvania, said the State of Minnesota could still use video and interviews with witnesses to bring charges against the agents who killed Good and Pretti.
Matthew Mangino (provided photo)
“You should be able to reconstruct what happened as a state investigator or prosecutor, and pursue your own criminal prosecution if, in fact, you believe a crime has been committed,” Mangino said.
‘Unfathomable’
After the Good shooting, Vice President J.D. Vance, a Yale law grad, falsely claimed that Ross, the shooter, had “absolute immunity.”
In fact, law enforcement and government officials have “qualified immunity” from personal civil liability, if they are found to have acted in good faith and with probable cause, as determined in a landmark 1967 Supreme Court case, Pierson v. Ray.
In order for agents to have immunity from state prosecution, Mangino said, a court would need to rule that the agents are indeed immune from being prosecuted for criminal conduct.
“That result is really unfathomable to me, because what it says then is, ‘Hey, if you're an ICE agent, or you're an FBI agent, or you're a DEA agent, you can shoot and kill people with impunity,’ and I don't think that's the direction that the courts are going to go,” Mangino said.
Mangino said victims’ families could also pursue a federal tort claim, which allows individuals to sue the U.S. government for injury and death due to the negligence of federal employees.
“You're suing the United States government because of their conduct,” Mangino said.
“There's avenues to pursue it. They're not easy, but I don't think it's as easy as saying, ‘Oh, ICE agents have immunity, and you can't sue them and you can't prosecute them.’”
Mangino said the government’s position of not investigating Good’s death was “preposterous,” but noted that political and public pressure led to the government to agreeing to an investigation into the death of Pretti.
“Although the Department of Justice said, ‘We will not bow to political pressure, or we will not bow to public pressure,’ they have, and that's where we are, at least with regard to the second homicide,” Mangino said.
Democratic Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz said President Donald Trump’s claim that he would personally oversee the Pretti investigation was “so wrong on so many levels.”
‘People won’t take it’
ICE has undergone a 120 percent hiring expansion as its budget has ballooned to $85 billion, the largest of any U.S. law enforcement agency.
At least 2,000 ICE officers and 1,000 Customs and Border Patrol agents were on the ground in Minneapolis as of Thursday, PBS reported.
“It's absolute incompetence that you're seeing because of the fact that they're expanding so fast,” Howland said.
The federal government, he added, is “putting politics and some ideology in front of actually protecting the lives of people, and that's unacceptable.”
With the public increasingly putting the blame at the feet of Trump and Noem, Howland said, accountability of a sort will be achieved.
“Even if there's problems with the criminal prosecution, even if there's complications with civil law,” Howland said, “eventually, I think that you'll see both through the ballot box and through a change in public opinion that these types of tactics are totally inappropriate, that they aren't based in law, and that you'll see a change or a shift because the people won't take it.”
Anti-ICE protesters warned of dire long-term effects of this brutal tactic
Following a second fatal shooting by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in Minneapolis, public health experts are sounding a stark warning about the immediate and long-term effects of the agency’s use of even non-lethal crowd control weapons like tear gas, pepper bombs and flash-bang grenades.
On Saturday, video evidence showed ICE agents pepper spraying Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old veterans intensive care unit nurse, before wrestling him to the ground, where he was shot. Pretti was declared dead at the scene. Forensic audio analysis revealed at least 10 shots fired in less than five seconds.
“The justification for the use of [crowd control weapons] is that they reduce these kind of violent clashes, escalations, and so should really only be used as kind of a last-ditch measure to prevent violence and death and injuries,” Ryan Marino, an emergency room physician and medical toxicologist in Cleveland told Raw Story.
“The inappropriate use leading up to escalating violence, I'm not surprised to see that is where it has gone, but I think that is the fault of ICE, using these agents inappropriately.”
Earlier this month, ICE fatally shot a 37-year-old mother of three, Renee Nicole Good, in her car. Later, a Venezuelan immigrant, Julio Cesar Sosa-Celia, was shot in the leg while allegedly fleeing a traffic stop by federal agents, according to a press release from the Department of Homeland Security.
Particularly at demonstrations in Minneapolis but also in other U.S. cities, protesters, journalists and bystanders have reported serious injuries resulting from ICE actions involving crowd control weapons.
“I'm very concerned,” Rohini J. Haar, an emergency room physician in Oakland, Calif., and faculty member in the University of California, Berkeley’s School of Public Health, told Raw Story, speaking before Pretti was killed on Saturday morning.
“I think this is reaching public health crisis levels when you [see] so many people injured.”
While commonly used chemical agents and projectiles are referred to as “less-lethal” weapons, “any one of them, if used improperly, could be very lethal, could be very harmful, could cause permanent disability,” Marino said.
Recent high-profile cases of serious injury include a Minneapolis area family whose six-month-old son had to be revived with CPR after an agent rolled a tear gas canister under their car, when they inadvertently got stuck amid a protest.
In cities including Portland, Ore. and Los Angeles, protesters hit with ICE projectiles and canisters have reported blindness and facial injuries.
“Calling [crowd control weapons] ‘less lethal’ is kind of a misnomer,” Haar said.
“The danger and the health risks are really related to how they are used and on whom, and when they're overused or misused, when they target individuals, or when they're used without a need, those harms rapidly escalate.”
ICE did not respond to a request for comment.
‘People can die’
Haar, who is also a medical adviser with Physicians for Human Rights, has long researched crowd control weapons and their impact on health and human rights. She co-authored a seminal report, Lethal in Disguise, published in 2016, then updated in 2023.
After much debate, a global group of medical professionals, lawyers and advocates concluded “there is no role for projectiles in crowd control — that they're just not safe,” Haar said.
Crowd control weapons containing any sort of metal, such as beanbag rounds, are considered among the most dangerous, as are weapons that fire multiple projectiles at once, Haar said.
“They're dense, and you can't aim them, so they can hit children, bystanders, the elderly,” Haar said.
Fired at close range, rubber bullets can “hit as hard as live ammunition and cause serious damage,” and the abnormal shape of the bullets makes them “very unpredictable in their pattern, leading to potential injury to bystanders,” Haar said.
Crowd control weapons are intended to “make a space undesirable to be in,” rather than be used as “physical weapons or ballistics, hitting people in their body, and particularly in the head,” Marino said.
Ryan Marino (provided photo)
ICE has been seen to shoot directly at individuals, particularly in front of its facility in Broadview, Illinois, outside Chicago.
“Even though these are called non-lethal ammunitions … people can die from the effects,” said Marino, who is also an assistant professor in the Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine.
‘Almost militaristic’
Health harms of exposure to crowd control weapons are not just physical. Research into the use of tear gas during 2020 Black Lives Matter protests in Portland, Oregon, revealed concerns about mental health issues following exposure to such chemical agents.
According to research published in the journal Spring Nature, 72 percent of respondents exposed to tear gas in Portland reported new mental health issues, such as anxiety, depression and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.
“There is a lot of evidence that many people who are exposed to these will have significant psychologic, psychiatric, emotional, mental effects,” Marino said.
“If we're causing trauma and inflicting trauma on people, what are the downstream effects of that? Who's gonna pay for that treatment? Who's gonna help those people?”
Combined use of weapons such as flash-bangs and tear gas can cause “chaos and stress”, Haar said.
“The experience of being … exposed to a lot of these weapons, can feel almost militaristic and really dangerous and scary,” Haar said.
Even watching the news and being aware of the use of these weapons at protests can have a “chilling effect," she said.
“You're afraid of going to a protest now or demonstration, really afraid of exercising your free speech and free assembly rights, and that's its own mental health impact, where you don't feel like going,” Haar said.
Haar is particularly concerned about ICE’s presence at hospitals in Minnesota.
“If there's federal agents in those facilities who are identifying folks … the willingness or the safety and seeking care is going to be limited, and I think that's going to be really dangerous if I see that continue,” Haar said.
“That kind of thing is both a violation of basic medical ethics and neutrality, as well as a concerning safety and public health trend.”
‘Scariest thing’
Marino said the use of crowd control agents brings up “a million concerns,” noting uncertainty around long-term health effects.
Lack of regulation around the concentration and age of substances in canisters, as well the challenge of tracking how many are fired at any given event is also a concern.
“Why are we using these on people when we don't know what the effects are?” Marino said.
“They aren't actually non-lethal, and we don't even really know what is being used on people, which is probably, I guess, the scariest thing to me.”
In an amicus brief in the case L.A. Press Club v. Kristi Noem, challenging use of force by Department of Homeland Security agents in Los Angeles, Physicians for Human Rights argued that ICE has misused crowd control agents.
“These weapons all have serious health risks,” Haar said, “and so they have to be used judiciously, which is not what we're seeing in the news right now.”
China bombards LinkedIn in 'astounding' effort to recruit US spies: experts
China is not recruiting its spies through meetings in dark alleys, nor by courtship over covert drinks. Rather, the intelligence agency and military of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) are using LinkedIn, the professional networking site, to send as many as 30,000 messages per hour to recruit spies, according to a new book, “The Great Heist: China’s Epic Campaign to Steal America’s Secrets.”
David R. Shedd, a former director of the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), called the book he co-wrote with Andrew Badger, a former DIA case officer, “a real, urgent call” to Americans, from corporations to government, to better respond to China’s success in stealing tech and defense innovations.
“I still don't think America has woken up on how serious the problem is,” Shedd told Raw Story.
“We’ve got to take this much more seriously, but also much more urgently, in terms of responding to the threats, because I don't see any let-up by China.”
David R. Shedd (provided photo)
From nanotechnology to chip manufacturing and artificial intelligence, Shedd said, China succeeded in accomplishing ahead of time eight of 10 objectives under “Made in China 2025,” a 10-year national strategic plan by President Xi Jinping to turn his country into a global technology and manufacturing powerhouse.
China is now the leader in 37 out of 44 emerging critical technologies, according to Shedd and Badger.
“They are on a trajectory to overtake us and have overtaken us already in a number of areas, and that's only going to get worse,” Shedd said.
‘An enormous behemoth’
Shedd and Badger interviewed William Evanina, former director of the U.S. National Counterintelligence and Security Center. He offered insight into the use of LinkedIn by China’s Ministry of State Security (MSS) and People’s Liberation Army (PLA) to contact intelligence targets.
Andrew Badger (photo provided by David Shedd)
“This astounding number — never before reported— showcases Beijing's commitment to mass recruitment that can be best described as a ‘flood the zone’ strategy,” the authors write.
“The MSS doesn't need all its targets to respond. Just a handful can be enough; a single successful recruit can make the entire endeavor worthwhile.”
Examples of LinkedIn outreach might include contacting an academic about writing a research paper or meeting a worker at a coffee shop to discuss their expertise, exchanges possibly unknowingly resulting in intelligence reported back to the MSS, the authors write.
“The MSS is the CIA, the FBI, the National Security Agency, Cyber Command and all other cyber components,” Shedd said.
“It is an enormous behemoth of internal or domestic and international security, and over the … last 13 years, it has become one, if not a premier, service in terms of its capabilities.”
In response to Raw Story’s questions about the use of LinkedIn by the MSS and PLA, Autumn Cobb, a LinkedIn spokesperson, shared links about verification and spotting scams.
‘Threatens lives’
When it comes to China stealing intellectual property from Americans, the stakes are high.
“American military technologies once considered strategic advantages — stealth aircraft, silent propulsion systems, hypersonic missile platforms – are now widely found in the inventories of China’s armed forces,” Shedd and Badger write.
“These thefts are not abstract; they represent the very real threats to the American warfighters who one day may have to face down such advanced technology. The theft of these assets doesn't just threaten markets; it threatens lives.”
Corporations are also threatened.
When Tesla became the first foreign-owned automaker in China, with CEO Elon Musk building a factory in Shanghai from 2019, concerns rose about theft of intellectual property.
The Great Heist (provided image)
Shedd and Badger quote a former senior Tesla staffer: “Elon always worried about the so-called billion-dollar thumb drive. A single USB stick with the Autopilot source code. That was the nightmare.”
Tesla did not respond to a request for comment.
‘National security at stake’
Since President Donald Trump returned to the White House, Shedd said, an apparent “diminishment” of U.S national security policies on China has been observable, compared to the first Trump administration, which took China more seriously.
Shedd speculated that the shift has to do with China’s control of the majority of rare earth minerals, which are used in magnets manufacturing and technology.
President Xi is definitely watching how Trump has made taking over Greenland a priority, as well as Trump’s decision to “run” Venezuela after capturing President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Shedd said.
“My fear is the administration has turned it into everything's transactional,” Shedd said.
“Our national security is at stake, and I … fully expect Xi Jinping to move on Taiwan next year.”
Taiwan is a major U.S. trading partner. In December, the Trump administration announced the largest-ever U.S. arms package for Taiwan, valued at $11 billion.
‘Great Heist’
Prior to Trump’s arrival in the White House, Chinese threats to American intelligence and national security were not a priority for the FBI or DIA, Shedd said.
During his tenure at DIA from 2010 to 2015, Shedd said, much of the agency’s focus was on wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, concerns which became “all consuming.”
“There was this almost fear of taking on China operationally, and to really focus in on it was viewed in the FBI counterintelligence as second-rate to Russia,” Shedd said.
“China, I won't say it was a total afterthought, but it certainly wasn't the main focus.”
Shedd and Badger’s book explains how China pulled off its theft of so many American ideas, tracing the effort back to when President Bill Clinton advocated for China to join the World Trade Organization (WTO).
When China joined the WTO in 2001, both Democrats and Republicans had a “naivety” that China would “play by the rules of international trade,” Shedd said.
That set the stage for a flood of Chinese-made, cheaper versions of other country’s products.
“It was framed as diplomacy, as engagement with a potential trading partner, possibly even a future ally,” Shedd and Badger write.
“In hindsight, it was the moment the proverbial virus entered the global trade system and the launching pad for the CCP’s Great Heist against America.”
In 2017, China’s National Intelligence Law legalized espionage, meaning citizens could be required to spy for the CCP.
‘Counter Heist’
To take on China, Shedd said, the U.S. must invest in research and development as well as Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) education, in which China is "leaping way ahead of us.”
Shedd and Badger also outline a seven-pillar “Counter Heist” strategy to put America on an “active counteroffensive” against China and disrupt the “Chinese espionage apparatus and to reassert America’s place as the world’s innovation superpower.”
If Washington doesn’t get ahead of Beijing’s spying, Shedd said, he fears China will beat the U.S. to a quantum computing breakthrough that will decode all cryptology.
“It will have enormous, dramatic implications for the United States and for the west more generally, and we won't ever have seen it coming,” Shedd said.
The Great Heist is out now'A rage inside of me': Vietnam vet who jabbed Trump joins protests after ICE killing
Ronn Easton was out for lunch in Minneapolis last Thursday when he drove by a federal building now serving as a command center for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), one of whose agents shot dead a 37-year-old mother, Renee Nicole Good, in the city on Wednesday.
Easton, 76, said he felt compelled to stop and participate in a protest outside the Bishop Henry Whipple Federal Building in Fort Snelling, Minn. Catching media attention, he ended up interviewed on national TV.
“You could tell by the way I was dressed that I did not intend to go there. I wasn't going to go there protesting in a f—- fur coat. That was not my intent,” Easton told Raw Story.
Yet, Easton said, “I had to. My brain would not settle down.”
On Friday, Easton again felt the urge to respond to “rage” that rose in him after an ICE agent shot Good dead, as she drove her Honda Pilot away from a scene where federal agents had performed an immigration enforcement operation.
Easton dropped flowers at the site where Good was killed by an agent identified as Jonathan Ross, a 10-year ICE veteran.
“I've never done that. Never. But I had to do it this time. For some reason there's something inside of me that's telling me to do this,” Easton said.
“To see people, the hate, the vitriol in this country is really starting to take an effect on me, because never mind that this was a mother that was killed, people are talking about her sexuality.”
Good’s wife said in a statement they were supporting neighbors when the confrontation with ICE took place on a street near their home.
Administration officials have not hesitated to vilify Good.
In a press conference Wednesday, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem accused Good of “stalking and impeding” ICE officers whose vehicles were stuck at the scene due to snow.
Noem also claimed Good “proceeded to weaponize her vehicle, and she attempted to run a law enforcement officer over.”
President Donald Trump used social media to blame Good for her own death.
Vice President JD Vance called the killing of Good “a tragedy of her own making.”
But as media analyses of video of the incident have undercut such readings, so local and state officials have strongly disputed such accounts.
Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz urged people not to “believe this propaganda machine.”
Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey called ICE’s characterization of the incident “bull—-.”
‘On a hair trigger’
On Tuesday, ICE said its “largest ever” operation was under way in Minneapolis, with as many as 2,000 agents deployed.
Easton, who lives in Little Canada, Minn., outside Minneapolis-St. Paul, said the ICE crackdown had affected businesses he frequents, including restaurants in St. Paul’s West Side neighborhood.
Ronn Easton (provided photo)
“There's a rage that is inside of me that I'm trying my damnedest to deal with, seeing people, families torn apart, businesses that I support terrorized by ICE, people that I love affected,” Easton said.
Easton became 100 percent disabled after serving in Vietnam.
Diagnoses of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, tinnitus, neuropathy and Type 2 diabetes were linked to exposure to Agent Orange, the cancer- and neurological disease-causing herbicide used to clear enemy hiding spots, Raw Story reported last month.
Raw Story first spoke to Easton about his engagement with Home of the Brave, a nonprofit focused on portraying what it calls “catastrophic harm” caused by the Trump administration.
Easton said ICE deployments near his home made him feel “on a hair trigger.”
“I have been purposefully avoiding confronting ICE or anybody else, for that matter, because I've been struggling,” he said.
“I'm trying to just maintain my sanity and keep a lid on my anger, and it's getting increasingly hard.”
But Easton said ICE targeting “the lowest hanging fruit,” including “mothers and children,” had made him want to speak up even more.
“This is my home,” he said.
“This backbiting bull— and everything that people have died and fought for being stripped away — oh, I can't handle this.”
‘Tension is as high’
Easton said tension on the streets of Minneapolis was “palpable” and “comparable” to that generated in summer 2020, after Derek Chauvin, then a Minneapolis police officer, killed George Floyd, a 46-year-old African American man, an incident that sparked a national racial reckoning amid the Black Lives Matter movement.
Now, Easton said, “The tension is as high, but it's different because then you had a lot of outside agitators coming into town trying to stir up people, and they did.”
Civil unrest following Floyd’s murder included arson and looting. Easton said he encourages peaceful protests, as violence “destroys your message.”
The Trump administration has deployed the National Guard in Democratic cities throughout the country. Easton said it was “trying to induce martial law.
“That is the reason why it is imperative that this be peaceful. No matter what you do, it has to be peaceful, but it has to be hard-hitting.”
Nonetheless, Easton said he expected violence from ICE only to get worse — particularly in light of events in Portland, Oregon on Thursday, where ICE agents shot two people.
“It already has,” Easton said.