New horrors in military detailed as insiders tell all: 'Every unit has a Hegseth'
When news broke that a Navy officer’s sexual assault claim was dismissed as a workman’s compensation issue, Dawn, a retired Marine, took a bat to a tree in rage.
Dawn is one of the survivors of military sexual trauma (MST) who is fed up with the direction of the armed forces under Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, who has rolled back numerous initiatives to protect and promote women and minorities.
“I don't think people understand that this trauma never stops. You just learn how to deal with it. I still don't know all my triggers, but that story sent me into a trigger that I haven't had for a long time,” said Dawn, who requested use of her first name only out of fear of losing her disability benefits and retaliation from the Trump administration.
“All I could do was scream and cry.”
Dawn has taken to showing up at recruitment offices to discourage women from enlisting in the military while President Donald Trump is in office and Hegseth still leads the Department of Defense.
“I would sit there and tell women, ‘Do not go in,’” Dawn said.
“After this regime came in, don't go into the military. If you value your safety and your mental health, do not go into the military … I'm not going to allow another woman to enter the military so she can have what happened to me happen to her.”
Dawn said she was gang-raped in her barracks room while overseas and ended up getting pregnant from the assault, which happened more than 35 years ago.
The attack left Dawn “scared to death,” and no investigation occurred. Dawn said she “shut the hell up, and I didn't say anything” due to concerns for her career.
“We did not have a way to report anything. We did not have any confidentiality where we could go and talk to anybody and say what was going on, so I was just by myself,” Dawn said.
Katy Eilers, a veteran advocate, said she was assaulted by four military police officers while deployed as an Army medic at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq when she was 18 years old.
Katy Eilers in uniform (provided photo)
Seeing a judge dismiss the multi-year attempt for justice by Elsie Dominguez who said she was raped in her bed on a Navy transport ship, as a “workman's comp thing is just wild to me,” Eilers said.
“Every time I see another safety thing that Pete Hegseth took away for women in the military, it's like reliving that trauma all over again,” said Eilers, now 38.
To promote a “no more walking on eggshells” policy,” Hegseth has engaged in an effort to overhaul military equal and civilian opportunity programs, speeding up investigations and calling them “weaponized,” Federal News Network reported.
Earlier this month, Hegseth blocked dozens of promotions for women and minorities in the Army, and he previously intervened to remove female candidates from promotion lists, leading to no promotions of active-duty female Navy officers to one-star admirals — the first time that's happened in more than a decade.
“Under Trump, I still have a lot of active-duty friends, and they're messaging me, and they said all their protections are essentially gone,” Eilers said. “We always joke that every unit has a Hegseth, and we all warn the rest of the female soldiers about the Hegseth in that unit, just as a type of vibe. Active duty women are scared right now.”
Hegseth faced intense questioning during his confirmation hearing about a sexual assault claim against him from 2017 when he was then a Fox News host, which Hegseth vehemently denied.
“When I say a Hegseth … it's just like somebody [who] grabs you or touches you, and then says, ‘Oh, you're just being a pain in the butt,’ when you report it,” Eilers said. “It's a Hegseth, a jerk.”
The Pentagon responded to Raw Story's questions with an August press release about its Fiscal Year 2025 Sexual Assault in the Military report.
The report said an estimated 20,492 service members experienced unwanted sexual contact in 2025, which represented a decrease in rates since the last report in Fiscal Year 2023.
Reporting of active-duty sexual assault incidents increased from 25 percent to 33 percent in that same time period, according to the press release.
"Dignity, respect, and discipline are foundational to the warrior ethos and the overall preparedness of the force. Sexual assault and sexual harassment undermine these values, eroding trust and threatening the mission," said Anthony J. Tata., Under Secretary of War for Personnel and Readiness, in the press release.
"The FY 2025 report underscores our ongoing commitment to maintaining high standards, protecting our people, and building a unified, ready, and lethal fighting force."
‘They destroyed me’
As an advocate in Omaha, Nebraska, Eilers is working to shine a light on issues for women veterans. The common experience she hears from MST survivors is “nothing believed and nothing happening to them, and having to work with the person that raped you,” Eilers said.
Eilers said her own assault wasn’t “handled.”
“They didn't get in trouble. Nothing happened to them,” Eilers said. “I got moved though, and I just didn't speak about it again for a really long time. There was no therapy provided. There were no resources.”
A March report from the Department of Veterans Affairs said one in three women and one in 40 men report experiencing MST when screened by their VA provider.
MST survivors often say “I need therapy for the way they treated me after I was raped” regarding how military leadership responded to their attacks, Eilers said.
“The way I was treated after is what hurt the most,” she said.
Katy Eilers (provided photo)
MST victims have the opportunity to do an unrestricted report, where there’s a police investigation and medical treatment allowed outside of a military base, Eilers said. Restricted reporting can only be done with military medical personnel, and there’s no investigation, Eilers said.
“I did a restricted report because I was scared that the [military police] were gonna be mad,” Eilers said.
Dawn said she continued to be sexually harassed when she re-enlisted in the Marines when a leader frequently touched her butt. Women were treated as “less than” and called “walking mattresses,” she said.
“At that point, you become very numb. Your head is always on a swivel, and you can become very numb to things,” Dawn said.
Dawn said she got a hysterectomy at 26 years old after her cervix was damaged due to the assault.
“Not only did they destroy me mentally and emotionally, but they destroyed me physically,” Dawn said.
To improve support for MST victims, Eilers said restricted reporting should be ended, and more robust programs should be offered where victims can safely report assaults.
Dawn and Eilers support the Military Sexual Trauma Accountability Act, introduced in June, which would allow service members and veterans to file civil lawsuits against the government for cases of military sexual trauma and negligence.
But, ultimately, Hegseth needs to be fired, Dawn said.
“He's got to go. He's destroying our military. He doesn't want women in it,” Dawn said.
Vulnerable Trump hit with crippling threat as new book unleashes little-known strategies
Six months into the planning of an in-person fundraiser with Rock and Roll Hall of Famers Bonnie Raitt and David Crosby, the COVID-19 pandemic derailed the event.
The goal had been to raise $150,000 for Democrats in 2020. But the California East Bay chapter of Indivisible was forced to pivot to a more low-key, and fully virtual, events it called “Parties for Democracy” — and ended up raising $450,000, helping to flip seven California districts blue.
Averaging $10,000 per fundraising event, “Parties for Democracy” are just one of the strategies now being rolled out to fuel a blue wave in the midterms, said Gary Lucks, attorney and founder of the Resistance Action East Bay, a chapter of the anti-Donald Trump group Indivisible that's fighting against authoritarianism.
In his book, “We Are the Power To Win the Future: Mobilize to Defend Democracy,” Lucks offers a “roadmap” for how Democrats can take back control from Trump in November, “the most consequential election of our lifetime,” he said.
“We need to win this election, in my personal opinion, by significant margins, which is how we will be able to avoid a contested election,” Lucks said.
“With [now-former Hungarian President] Viktor Orbán losing by substantial margins, he couldn't contest the election.”
Trump repeatedly praised and backed Orbán, who led Hungary as a far-right prime minister for 16 years under what he called an "illiberal democracy," before losing re-election in April.
Experts called Orbán’s loss a “cautionary tale” for Trump, which he appears to have heeded. As November approaches, Trump has ratcheted up his efforts to sow doubts about “election integrity.”
This week, the Trump administration asked the Supreme Court to rule on limiting mail-in ballots.
Lucks book is designed to be a guide to fighting back.
“We Are the Power” intends to inspire everyone to take action, “whether it's the lapsed activist who's demoralized after 2024 or someone new,” including one of the estimated 89 million people who chose to stay home rather than vote in the last general election, Lucks said.
Lucks hosted a training open to the leaders of Indivisible’s 300 California chapters Wednesday and said there’s potential for strategies in his book to be shared with leaders of all 2,600 Indivisible chapters around the country.
“The book is designed as an accessible tool for no matter where you live, whether you live in a blue state or district, red or purple, no matter what your skill set is, your relationships, your money It's how everyone can step into action,” Lucks said.
“It's really designed to engage, activate people, give them hope, and so many people are demoralized, feeling powerless and deeply concerned.”
Indivisible declined to comment.
Being based in California, Lucks thinks about how those living in Democratic states can back left-leaning candidates in swing or red states.
“Here in the blue part of the country, the idea is how do we export our resources of our talent, lots of money in California,” Lucks said.
His Indivisible group creates handouts on a different issue or election race across the country and hands them out at farmers markets and near public transit — what Lucks calls an "underutilized technique.”
“It connects people who are in a blue-oriented environment,” Lucks said.
“We get them to the next step, and they're busy, and we give them the two-minute ask, and they thank us all the time, and we're the trusted advisors in the community, so I'd love to see this advance across the country.”
Gary Lucks (provided photo)
To support potentially disenfranchised voters worried about intimidation at the polls, Lucks encourages taking off Election Day, Nov. 3, “to protect the vote” as witnesses.
When asked if he's worried about Republicans stealing his strategies for Democrats to take back control of Congress in November, Lucks said, “I don't think we have any choice” but to publicize his tactics.
“They're more focused on big donors,” Lucks said. “We are able to compete with them because of small donor contributions … I think they don't really focus on the ground game like we do.”
Lucks said his book is a companion to “The American Oath Project: Protecting the Backbone of Democracy,” a book by attorney Kevin K. Johnson, which presents novel legal strategies to remove Trump from office.
Both books, published by the “pro-democracy” publishing house, Writers Integrity Network, emphasize peaceful protest, Johnson said.
“That's going to become extra, extra important as we roll into the midterms because what Trump is going to do is going to p— a lot of people off, and there's a good chance there'll be a lot of people in the streets,” Johnson said.
“We have to be peaceful because Trump wants us to get violent.”
Former Trump die-hard blowtorches MAGA after violent 'breaking point' that pushed her out
Once a teenage MAGA follower and self-identified conspiracy theorist, Addy Leugers, 24, now finds herself supporting Democratic Socialist candidates.
When she was just 14 years old, Leugers said she was primed to back Trump and his Make America Great Again movement during the 2016 presidential election.
“I was working, so I did have that exposure to other thought processes, but it really wasn't enough to pull what was essentially the foundation that primarily my dad laid for me to become infatuated with Donald Trump and with the thoughts and ideologies that he was putting out into the world around his first election in 2016,” Leugers told Raw Story.
Leugers grew up in a wealthy suburban Kansas City household with “very authoritarian-style parenting” and was homeschooled for religious reasons.
Her home was a “Fox News 24/7 household,” and she came to believe in far-right conspiracy theories like QAnon, which promotes lies that Trump waged a secret war against cannibalistic pedophiles among Democrats, Hollywood elites and the so-called “deep-state.”
“I was raised, ‘You respect the military. You respect the police. You respect the president. These are the people that God put in power. You listen to them because it's your moral obligation, basically,’” Leugers said.
“I feel like that's kind of where things started to go downhill for me.”
Addy Leugers (provided photo)
But when Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin murdered George Floyd in May 2020 and sparked a national racial reckoning, Leugers began to depart from the MAGA movement.
“I was one of those people that was like, ‘Well, because I haven't experienced it, and everyone else says that racism died when we ended slavery, racism isn't real,’ and people were like, ‘Addy, you're stupid,’” Leugers said.
‘My breaking point was that because I did have friends that I knew closely that were trying to correct me and trying to be kind and helpful, and I was just being nasty, and I doubled down, and they were like, ‘OK, well, I'm not gonna be your friend anymore because you're not being open-minded, and I'm trying to help you, and you're just being ignorant on purpose.’”
Leugers, a registered behavior tech who works with children who have autism spectrum disorder, has now joined dozens of others in Leaving MAGA, a growing online community of former Trump supporters whose allegiance to Trump led them to lose friends, family relationships and marriages, commit crimes in Trump’s name, embrace Christian nationalism, and believe conspiracies.
‘Echo chamber’
Leugers, who now lives in the Honolulu area, said she primarily votes for Democrats these days and is very supportive of younger representation in politics.
“I'm no longer a Republican,” she said.
Her time in MAGA gave Leugers insight into the drastic ways the direction of the movement has changed since Trump’s first election, when MAGA was more about “regular people” whose “support for our president is unmatched,” she said.
Now “MAGA [is] taking such a hit in the last couple of years because of what the president has been doing,” Leugers said.
“The MAGA movement itself is very shallow, but it's based in this sense of community and banding together, almost of ‘Oh, they hate us. They hate our president, but we have each other, and we have God, and everything's gonna be OK because this is God's will,’” Leugers said.
“It does turn into this little echo chamber of everyone believing all the same things and no one challenging anything.”
Leugers said she believes MAGA started with good intentions with people seeking community, but “it lacks nuance, and it lacks education, and that is what turns into this slippery slope, because it's like the hills they choose to die on.”
MAGA’s anti-abortion stance is one example, she said.
“You have the anti-abortion on one hand. They also have like ICE is killing people in the streets right now, so it's like it becomes very closed-minded, narrow, blinders-on type of thinking that ignores a broader picture,” Leugers said.
The second Trump administration’s policies have been of particular concern to Leugers and her roommate, especially the aggressive actions of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which has led to “people getting killed in the streets, shot in the streets, kidnapped in the streets, U.S. citizens being taken into detention centers without due process," she said.
At least 52 people in ICE custody have died since January 2025, and at least 23 people have been shot by ICE in that time, six of them fatally.
Other concerns include food contamination and recalls alongside the historic lows of food inspections by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and "propaganda" coming out of White House, Leugers said.
“We kind of laugh it off every day … but it kind of is getting to feel pretty dystopic,” Leugers said.
Leugers said she knows firsthand “admitting you're wrong sucks,” but she hopes that sharing her story will help others who are considering deconstructing their MAGA beliefs.
“If I can be one person to do my little part in this grand scheme of what is 2026 politics, then that's enough for me, and maybe even one person will see it and be like, 'Well, if she can change, I can change.’”
As the midterms approach, Leugers hopes for historic voter turnout in November.
“I hope that we, the American people, decide to get stuff done, and we decide that enough is enough,” Leugers said.
Trump smacked by severe snub in famed historian's best presidents book: 'Abject disaster'
Dubbed the "Nostradamus" of predicting presidential election results by using his famous “Keys to the White House,” historian Allan Lichtman will debut a different set of keys focused on evaluating presidential greatness in a new book coming out next month.
“Great American Presidents: The Twelve Who Transformed the Nation” will be on shelves Sept. 22, and the distinguished history professor at American University is already working on the natural follow-up book — “Worst American Presidents.”
He says that will certainly feature the current president.
“Donald Trump will definitively be making an appearance in my worst presidents book, along with a rogues gallery of presidents like James Buchanan, Andrew Johnson, Herbert Hoover,” Lichtman told Raw Story.
In “Great American Presidents,” Lichtman includes a preliminary ranking of modern presidents since Ronald Reagan, putting Trump at the very bottom.
“We have never seen a president who so fundamentally threatens American democracy. He has openly said, ‘As president, I can do anything I want.’ Not surprisingly, he cozies up to the dictators of the world,” Lichtman said.
“He seems to be bringing this dictatorial, authoritarian approach to American politics. We've also seen the fact that he bases his presidency on blatant lies ... Not to mention the fact that his policies have been an abject disaster."
Lichtman presents in the book 10 keys to presidential greatness, focused on “the consequences of the president, not necessarily whether you agree with everything they've done.” Types of keys range from how presidents handled crises to their moral vision and narrative abilities.
Allan Lichtman (Photo Credit: Sam Lichtman, used with permission)
Franklin D. Roosevelt tops Lichtman’s list, followed by Abraham Lincoln.
Lyndon B. Johnson might surprise some with the third highest ranking, but Lichtman argues Johnson’s “extraordinary depth and breadth of domestic accomplishment … merits the designation as a great president, despite the tragedy of Vietnam.”
That legacy includes the development of the Voting Rights Act, the Civil Rights Act and Medicare and Medicaid programs during his presidency.
Another surprise among great American presidents might be the lesser known James K. Polk, Lichtman said, who ranked him 11th in the top 12.
“Although a one-term president, a racist, an imperialist, James K. Polk transformed the nation,” Lichtman said.
“He basically doubled the size of the continental United States.
While Lichtman’s book looks at more than 200 years of American presidents, he argues this type of book is needed today “to show that we can achieve great leadership,” particularly as polled Americans overwhelmingly express disapproval with the direction of the country.
On Monday, Trump’s approval rating hit its lowest point at 33 percent, according to new Reuters/Ipsos polling.
“We can put into place presidents who transform and redeem the nation,” Lichtman said. “'Great American Presidents’ is, I think, the needed antidote to the despair that so many Americans seem to be showing right now. It shows what our nation can become.”
'Pivotal'
Lichtman’s keys indicate that the U.S. has lacked a great president since Reagan due to “the increasing complexity and difficulty of the office, the increasing polarization of our politics.”
The midterms will be “pivotal” as the policy achievements of some of Lichtman’s greatest presidents are at stake under Trump's leadership, he said.
“This is the biggest backlash against voting rights that we've seen since the end of Reconstruction and the adoption of Jim Crow in the South,” Lichtman said.
“We're also seeing the undermining of other great initiatives of Lyndon Johnson. For example, the so-called Big Beautiful Bill — I call it the Big Ugly Bill — gives huge tax breaks to big corporations and the rich.”
Lichtman agrees with the prediction of a much-discussed blue wave in the November elections, giving Democrats control of the House again. Senate control shifting to Democrats seems to be about a “50-50” chance, and the "gerrymandering war that Trump started" might backfire, Lichtman said.
“Are we going to redeem the domestic legacy of Franklin Roosevelt, Johnson, or are we going to move into a new era in which public policy favors the wealthy and undermines support for the more marginal and less affluent peoples in this country?”
However, the blue wave in the midterms relies on the elections being “free and fair,” which is of particular concern to Lichtman as Trump continues to push lies about election fraud since 2020.
“When Trump talks about election integrity, that's just code word for his interfering in elections,” Lichtman said.
The Justice Department announced on Tuesday last week plans to deploy 1,000 federal monitors to polling places for the midterms.
“In my view, it is a direct attempt at election interference and rigging,” Lichtman said.
‘Come out of the darkness’
“Great American Presidents” attempts to “codify historical judgment” in a similar way to how Lichtman’s “Keys to the White House” applied mathematical models used to predict earthquakes to election prediction.
“Like the ‘Keys to the White House,’ which were the world's only do-it-yourself presidential prediction system, the ‘10 Keys’ enables anyone to be a do-it-yourself evaluator of presidents,” Lichtman said.
Book cover (Credit: Christine Van Bree Design)
Lichtman had a near-perfect presidential election prediction record for more than 40 years using the model until Kamala Harris lost the 2024 presidential election.
Unprecedented disruptions of the Democrats publicly “trashing” their nominee in incumbent President Joe Biden before replacing him with Harris and the prevalence of misinformation during that election caused a break in the model, Lichtman said.
Misinformation will continue to be a concern in elections going forward, but Lichtman remains hopeful for other great presidents after Trump’s term ends.
“After a period of weak and failed presidencies, you often get a great president,” Lichtman said.
“I'm always the optimist. One thing I've learned from the study of history: at times when things have seemed most bleak for the country, somehow we've turned the corner and come out of the darkness.”
Natalie Harp's brother gets death threat as he calls out 'meaningless' Trump praise
This story has been updated with comment from the White House.
After President Donald Trump escaped Turkey in a catering cart alongside his close aide, Natalie Harp, the 35-year-old captured the attention of a senator and sparked a media frenzy.
That prompted her own estranged brother to speak out about what he called her “unhealthy obsession” with Trump, telling Raw Story he took particular issue with his sister’s public proclamations that Trump saved her life when she battled cancer.
“Donald Trump wouldn't save your life if you didn't have insurance," said Preston Harp, 38, in a phone interview from Masaya, Nicaragua, where he now lives.
"To me, it's a meaningless statement. He didn't save her life. He just changed the law that happened to work in her advantage, and that's great.
“I literally see people's lives getting saved every time that I come to the hospital here [in Nicaragua], and it's all for free, and I don't see anybody sleeping outside the hospital. I don't see anybody dying outside the hospital like I literally did in L.A.”
Natalie spoke at the Republican National Convention in 2020 about being “the victim of a notoriously deadly medical error,” only to then be diagnosed with a rare terminal bone cancer.
“I wouldn't be alive today if it wasn't for you,” Natalie said, addressing Trump and saying his signing of the Right to Try law gave her access to experimental drugs that beat her cancer.
She compared him to George Bailey, the hero of “It’s a Wonderful Life.”
“They didn't give me the right to try experimental treatments, Mr. President, you did, and without you, I'd have died waiting for them to be approved.”
Preston, who hasn’t spoken with Natalie since their dad died in July 2020, said he couldn’t afford insurance while living in the United States and previously flew to Nicaragua for medical treatments before moving there. Last year he suffered a serious motorcycle accident, and his physical therapy treatment at the public hospital has been free.
“Think about how large the military budget is, and how that money could be used for the public good with public hospitals,” Preston said. “That would be Donald Trump saving people's lives if he made a public health system and cut the military budget.”
Preston Harp (provided photo)
Preston said he became a registered member of the Peace and Freedom Party, a socialist group, when he was about 18 years old after reading “A People's History of the United States” by Howard Zinn.
Preston said he and Natalie “weren't allowed to” talk politics by their mother, with whom he also hasn’t spoken since his father’s death.
“She didn't want my point of view ever to be shared with Natalie,” Preston said.
He said his mother was “extremely conservative” and his father supported Republicans like Bush and Ronald Reagan, but “when he saw the level of depravity that is Trump’s that he started changing.”
Preston recalled Natalie writing letters to Trump and President George W. Bush growing up.
As Trump’s son Eric Trump and MAGA supporters blasted CNN and other media outlets for speaking with Preston, he said he’s heard from some critics.
“I got a death threat in my email, but I just laughed it off,” Preston said.
The White House responded to Raw Story's questions with a statement.
"Natalie Harp is one of the most loyal and hardest-working aides on President Trump's team," said Davis Ingle, White House spokesman. "The Fake News’s continued attacks on President Trump and his Administration prove exactly why trust in media is at historic lows. The media should get back to reporting real news and stop regurgitating Trump-Deranged liberal talking points.”
'God's money': White House enrages with vow that public cash belongs to evangelicals
This story has been updated with comment from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.
A White House official called $4 billion in taxpayer funds being spent to address homelessness “God’s money — a move experts call an escalation of evangelical religious rhetoric coming from the Trump administration.
Dave Donaldson, special assistant to President Donald Trump in the White House Faith Office, spoke at a webinar inviting faith communities to apply for funds through the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Continuum of Care program, the largest federal assistance initiative to combat homelessness that provides funding to states, American Indian tribes, nonprofits, and housing entities.
Organizations can apply through the end of August for a share of more than the $4 billion, with more than a quarter — a “historic” amount — available to new organizations, according to the webinar.
“I heard the other day, a faith leader said to me, ‘We shouldn't touch that government money,’ but how many know ultimately it's not the government's money? It's God's money, and it's your tax dollars,” Donaldson said.
“If we do not compete with this HUD Continuum of Care, these funds by default are going to go to perhaps organizations that have values that you do not share, and so I cannot urge you enough to do whatever it takes to compete.”
A HUD spokesperson replied to Raw Story's questions via an emailed statement.
"HUD is welcoming faith-based organizations back to the table on a level playing field after the Biden administration spent years funding the same set of organizations and mandating exclusive adherence to Housing First and other harmful ideologies. Faith-based organizations will be evaluated on the same competitive basis as all other applicants," the spokesperson said.
Ryan Burge, a professor at Washington University in St. Louis, who studies the impact of religion on American life and politics and hosts a popular Substack, “Graphs about Religion,” called the “God’s money” comment "very odd.”
The second Trump administration has embraced evangelical language, evoking religion more so than previous presidential administrations who tended to reference religion more “generically,” Burge said.
“Trump 2.0 is a decidedly more evangelical administration than even Trump 1.0. Guys like Pete Hegseth are a great example of that, of being very evangelical in their approach,” Burge said.
“It's like ‘God owns everything. God's providence is over all of us’. That kind of language is very evangelical."
'Combativeness is so much more evident'
Donaldson isn’t the only Trump administration leader who has recently pushed evangelical language.
Paula White-Cain, a White House faith adviser, in a recent webinar for the National Faith Advisory Board, called on evangelical Christians as “the body of Christ, just the church” to register to vote to ensure “we would never have an election problem again.”
That type of language is “very old evangelical rhetoric,” Burge said.
“This is a constant in the Trump administration. They're always fighting against the Deep State. ‘If we don't take this money, then they're going to take it and use it for priorities that we don't like,’” Burge said.
“That combativeness is so much more evident in this administration than prior ones.”
In the webinar, White-Cain called the election of Zohran Mamdani, a Democratic Socialist and Muslim, as a mayor of New York City “a very scary time.”
The Rev. Paula White in Grapevine, Texas on June 11, 2021 (Gage Skidmore) The Rev. Paula White in Grapevine, Texas on June 11, 2021 (Gage Skidmore)
“You’re not just talking Socialism … you are talking straight up Marxism, and if you don’t think that has consequences, most of your churches got shut down during COVID,” White-Cain said.
Burge called that language “couched anti-Muslim rhetoric,” promoting the idea that “Muslims are taking over America, and they're the real threat facing the country.”
“It's sort of an anti-Muslim in a way that I think is very unique today, that wasn't true even three or five years ago, and it seems like almost like a return to the post-9/11 Islamophobia stuff is coming back,” Burge said.
The Religious Landscape Study from the Pew Research Center shows that 62 percent of Americans identify as Christian, 29 percent are religiously unaffiliated and 7 percent identify with other religions. Muslims make up 1 percent of Americans, according to the study.
While nearly 80 percent of Americans do not want churches involved in politics, Americans are more open to politicians using religious language, particularly related to Christianity, according to Pew reports.
Pew’s research shows that since Trump has taken office again, Americans perceive that religion is having a greater influence on society, and 55 percent of those surveyed view religion’s role in American life positively.
The number of Americans who think Christianity should be the U.S.’s official religion grew slightly to 17% in 2026, up from 13% in 2024.
“Even though people don't really want to see partisan politics happening at the church level, there's definitely a clear sense that religion, and particularly Christianity, is part of the fabric of American culture,” said Chip Rotolo, senior researcher at Pew.
“People would like to see Christian moral values promoted, and even if they don't support things like Christian nationalism on the whole or the ending of church-state separation, something like the general presence of Christian values in society is pretty well supported.”
Evangelical Protestants are the largest group of Christians in the U.S., making up 23 percent, and are the group most likely to approve of Trump, according to Pew.
“We've seen support for Trump generally go down among all religious and non-religious groups, but it's still worth noting that some of the more devout religious groups, groups like white evangelical Protestants, support for Trump overall is very high, and Trump acknowledges that sometimes," Rotolo said.
"Sometimes you see this reciprocal thing when politicians use certain religious language these religious communities value that.”
The White House and National Faith Advisory Board did not respond to Raw Story’s request for comment.
Scheme hatched to haul Trump out of office as top lawyers zero in on under-the-radar law
After two impeachments and 34 criminal convictions did not stop Donald Trump from becoming president for the second time, a new legal strategy could be used to remove him from office, according to a civil trial lawyer who's successfully sued major corporations and the government.
Kevin K. Johnson, a civil and appellate trial lawyer in California, argues that contract and employment law could be used to remove Trump based on violations of his oath of office.
Johnson consulted with top legal scholars on the theory and discussed the strategy he presents in a book, “The American Oath Project: Protecting the Backbone of Democracy,” with the California Attorney General’s Office.
“As I understand the history of the creation of the Constitution, the founders intended the document to be a living, breathing document … so they didn't intend that the only remedy you would have if you had a lawless president would be to impeach and convict,” Johnson told Raw Story.
“They never intended that the document would be basically read as a suicide pact where you can't do anything under the circumstances that we're presented with today.”
Johnson argues that the Constitution is a “contract between the states and the federal government for the benefit of the public,” and Article II, which establishes the executive branch, serves as a contract for the president’s employment.
“[Trump is] an employee, and if employees are lying, cheating, stealing, doing things that are contrary to their obligations, then they're subject to discipline, including termination,” Johnson said.
Johnson said Trump has violated his oath of office “thousands of times” when considering lies told to the public and the billions in profits Trump gained using his office.
A Washington Post count found Trump lied more than 30,000 times in his first term alone, and he made more than $2 billion in 2025, according to his financial disclosure.
Other violations include denying due process rights to immigrants and infringing on free speech rights under the First Amendment in cases where Trump has sued or defamed citizens, journalists, political opponents and “anyone who comes to his attention as having spoken out against his policies,” Johnson said.
“The founders never intended that we would be helpless in this kind of a situation, and we need to look at the Constitution and the agreement of Trump to comply with the duties in Article II as contracts,” Johnson said.
“He breached them, and we need to go after him on the offense in terms of having him declared no longer president by the courts.”
Under employment and contract law, a lawyer could also bring a case against Trump as an employee of the United States, making him prove via independent examinations that he is physically and mentally healthy enough to serve in his job, Johnson said.
Trump, 80, has boasted about his cognitive test scores proving his “extreme intelligence,” even though medical experts say the test just screens for cognitive impairment.
“You can put up a really strong prima facie case in a civil filing on this in terms of all the reasons to believe that this guy is mentally degrading and is seriously degraded now,” said Johnson, referring to the legal term meaning a claim brought to court has merit on its face.
The California Attorney General’s Office did not respond to Raw Story’s request for comment.
‘Tremendous symbolic blow’
Oliver Houck, emeritus chair in public interest law at Tulane Law School in New Orleans, endorsed the book and called the evidence that Trump violated his oath of office "overwhelming."
“That he's breached his oath is, I think, unarguable. Of course he has, and in very serious ways,” Houck told Raw Story.
While the breach of contract approach is theoretically correct, Houck said finding a lawyer to take on the case is a challenge, as doing so would expose them to “incredible personal liability, just out of revenge.”
“[Trump] can wear out anybody who sues him for money or sues him in any way,” Houck said.
Plus, it’s "inevitable" such a case would end up at the Supreme Court, which would most likely take the case on its emergency docket, which doesn’t require full briefings or public arguments, Houck said.
“The problem is the Supreme Court has virtually immunized [Trump] in recent decisions and has approved, or at least refused to review, some pretty patent violations of the Constitution,” said Houck, who authored a book, “The Most Dangerous Branch: The Supreme Court's Dark Journey Through Environmental Law.”
“It's a very, very pro-Trump court and a very racist court, so I think the chances of getting it to penalize Trump with a lawsuit is beyond reach.”
Johnson argued that Justices Amy Coney Barrett and Brett Kavanaugh, along with Chief Justice John Roberts, might join with progressive justices in ruling on such a case, pointing to some of the recent decisions where the court has ruled against Trump, including on birthright citizenship and tariffs.
“There's no evidence that any of them have been closet monarchists or authoritarian enablers,” Johnson said. “None of them want to go down in history as justices that served up democracy to an authoritarian who seized control and never let it go.”
Rather than use contract or employment law, an alternative legal approach could be bringing a declaratory judgment, which is a binding court order that could declare the a government’s actions illegal but not necessarily order a remedy, Houck said
Landmark Supreme Court cases Brown v. Board of Education and Roe v. Wade are examples of declaratory judgments.
“This is a lawsuit waiting for a lawyer willing to put his livelihood on the line to bring it because it is going to be a countersuit that the Department of Justice will bring, and it'll be hellacious,” Houck said.
“I think a declaratory judgment is the way to do it. It's the softest way to approach it. Even a declaration … would be a tremendous symbolic blow to [Trump] and to his adherents.”
‘Perfect plaintiffs’
To bring a case against Trump, Johnson proposed a variety of potential plaintiffs, such as victims of Jeffrey Epstein, who “have constitutional rights to petition their government for redress of grievances, and the Trump administration has been one big conspiracy to stop them from getting documents that they need,” he said.
Other ideas for plaintiff include Sens. Mark Kelly (D-AZ) and Elissa Slotkin (D-MI), who were the subjects of an investigation by the Department of Justice over a video made with other Democratic lawmakers urging service members to reject unlawful military orders.
“This is in retaliation for them exercising their First Amendment rights, so they would be perfect plaintiffs in terms of bringing this lawsuit against Trump,” Johnson said.
Kevin Johnson (provided photo)
States or a coalition of lawmakers could bring a lawsuit saying Trump failed to perform duties he agreed to under his oath of office, Houck said.
If “any color of Republican” joined such a suit, it would be a much stronger case, he said.
Republican lawmakers who have strained relations with Trump such as Sens. Bill Cassidy (R-LA), Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), Susan Collins (R-ME) or Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) would be ideal candidates to be involved in bringing a lawsuit against Trump, Houck said.
'He's going to do anything'
While Trump faced four criminal indictments and his administration currently faces more than 300 lawsuits, Johnson said the issue is “everybody's being defensive.”
“It's not stopping Trump. He just keeps going forward,” Johnson said.
If legal action isn’t taken offensively, Johnson fears Trump will declare “a national emergency and just takes everything over,” especially with the midterm elections, which some experts argue he has already made moves to undermine, particularly in relation to mail-in ballots,
“He can't afford to lose power, nor can he afford to leave the presidency in light of all of his activities,” Johnson said.
“An authoritarian puts themselves in a position where, you know, they've been so corrupt, and they've been so brutal and all that, they can't step down from power. They can't let it go, otherwise they're at major risk, so it's naive to think that he's going to do anything other than do what he feels he needs to do to stay in power.”
Scholars have expressed concerns that this legal strategy could be used on a Democratic president in the future, but Johnson said it’s imperative to attempt to remove Trump from office immediately.
“There should never be a president again, if elected, that has a scope of lawlessness and cruelty that Trump has exhibited and continues to exhibit, and it's the cumulative impacts of everything that he's done that makes it essential that he be declared out of office," he said.
Crucial deadline in Mitch McConnell saga set to trigger never-before-tested law
Under a never-before-tested Kentucky law, Monday could be the last chance to call a special election before the midterms to fill the seat widely believed to have been effectively left vacant by Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) for more than a month.
As an apparent insurance policy for this exact situation, Kentucky Republicans passed a law in 2024 preventing Democratic Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear from recruiting an interim senator to fill a vacant seat — as happens in most states. Instead, it requires a special election if the vacancy comes at least three months before the upcoming election.
If it comes less than three months before, it will remain vacant until the scheduled vote.
The midterm election is on November 3 — exactly three months from today.
That means Beshear would need to call a special election by the end of Monday if he intended to fill McConnell's U.S. Senate seat that's been the center of controversy since mid-June when he fell unconscious at his home and was subsequently hospitalized.
He hasn’t returned to Congress since then, nor been seen — though some colleagues claimed to have spoken him. Beshear's demands to be given proof the the seat is not empty have not been successful.
Beshear called on McConnell to verbally address the American people to prove his ability to continue serving until his term expires in January, when he plans to retire.
McConnell’s congressional office has provided scant updates on the senator, prompting rampant speculation about the 84 year old’s health.
If a special election is not called Monday, then it would not be challenged until the November election — even if it was announced that McConnell is unable to continue as Kentucky's representative. The November election would see Democrat Charles Booker face off against Republican Andy Barr.
Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) sits with his wife, former United States secretary of labor Elaine Chao, while holding what appears to be the July 12 sports section of the Washington Post in a photograph released by his office in Washington, D.C., U.S. July 12, 2026. Office of Senator Mitch McConnell/Handout via REUTERS. THIS IMAGE HAS BEEN SUPPLIED BY A THIRD PARTY TPX IMAGES OF THE DAY
“The people of Kentucky will not be represented, and this really is one piece of a larger pattern where elected leaders act like the rules that apply to everybody else don't apply to them,” Carol Evans, vice president of policy at democracy watchdog Common Cause, told Raw Story.
“Lack of transparency is a symptom, but the disease is really impunity. The question really is: Is he serving his constituents, or is he treating his office as something that he's owed? And I think that's a broader question that applies beyond Sen. McConnell.”
In 45 states, the governor fills a Senate vacancy with their appointment until a new senator is elected.
The 2024 law is the second time in five years Kentucky Republicans limited the appointment power of the state’s governor. A 2021 law required the outgoing senator's party to present three names for a potential successor.
Beshear has argued these limitations violate the 17th Amendment to the Constitution, which allows governors to appoint temporary replacements.
The new Kentucky law has never been put to the test, so it’s unclear how exactly it will play out with competing legal provisions and in the courts.
In an interview with Bloomberg, Beshear discussed the Monday deadline and the chances of a Democrat winning a special election, despite the solid-red rating of the state.
“There's an argument out there that that’s a date where I could not later call a special election,” Beshear said. “A lot of those that are pushing this are online and I think are under the impression that a Democrat in Kentucky might be able to win that election.”
McConnell and Beshear’s offices did not immediately respond to Raw Story’s questions.
'Crazy': Inside the 'frantic' chaos of CBS as Bari Weiss flip-flopped on Trump speech
CBS editor-in-chief Bari Weiss and network leadership left network stations across the country scrambling after reversing course at least three times about whether or not to air President Donald Trump’s speech about election interference last week, an employee told Raw Story.
The staffer of a CBS affiliate, who requested anonymity due to employment concerns, told Raw Story that the network came down to the wire, changing decisions multiple times and sending conflicting messages to producers about if it would broadcast Trump’s speech about election interference and his continued false claims that the 2020 election was stolen.
“We're panicking. CBS Evening News is about to be on in like 15 minutes, and they still haven't told us,” the employee said. “Finally, Network comes on the intercom and says everybody's been asking them, are they gonna carry the address? And the answer is no, they're not planning to, but they will have it on their streaming service.”
But then, 45 minutes before Trump’s speech began, affiliates pivoted again when an intercom announcement told them CBS was changing course, the employee said.
“The person who makes the announcement sounded super frantic and said actually they are going to be airing the address,” the employee said.
A third change came just a few minutes later when employees received an email that Trump’s speech would be a special report featuring “a segment of the address,” the employee said. The stations were told to plan for 20 to 30 minutes of remarks, according to an internal email viewed by Raw Story.
“They were jerking us back and forth, and it's very similar to what they did on the Fourth of July,” the employee said of Trump’s keynote address during the “Salute to America 250” event on the National Mall.
Trump’s July 16 speech ultimately aired on Fox News and MS NOW, in addition to CBS, where the 11th-hour reversals “surprised” staffers who largely opposed airing the remarks, Status reported.
CNN, ABC and NBC did not air the speech live, and Trump has since threatened to revoke the licenses of those networks because of it.
“Election interference is such a radioactive issue right now, so I can imagine in a newsroom, people really sitting down in a conference room and hashing this out,” said Kevin Mercuri, an executive-in-residence at Emerson College teaching public affairs and public relations.
“It's a damned if you do, damned if you don't scenario because if you carry the speech, then you’re platforming something that isn't true. You're platforming a lie, and if you do platform it, you're helping to perpetuate that lie.”
From watching the special report, the CBS employee said “there is clearly an argument going on,” and placed the blame on Weiss.
“I think she's incapable. This, to me, was an inability to make an executive decision. It's 100% Bari Weiss, and I'm sure she's worried about everybody else at CBS News quitting, so when they're arguing, I can see her waffling,” the employee said.
“To change your mind that many times that close up to the address was just crazy to us.”
CBS News editor-in-chief Bari Weiss and Michael Kives attend the annual Allen and Co. Sun Valley Media and Technology Conference at the Sun Valley Resort in Sun Valley, Idaho, U.S., July 8, 2026. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid CBS News editor-in-chief Bari Weiss and Michael Kives attend the annual Allen and Co. Sun Valley Media and Technology Conference at the Sun Valley Resort in Sun Valley, Idaho, U.S., July 8, 2026. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid
CBS has come under fire in recent months after letting go of top “60 Minutes” talent like Scott Pelley and after Weiss pulled a segment on deportees from the U.S. being held prisoner in Venezuela, a decision called “political” by the story’s correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi.
Numerous other high-profile CBS employees, from Alfonsi to Anderson Cooper and Cecilia Vega, have either been let go or have resigned from the network.
Last year Paramount, which owns CBS, agreed to a $16 million settlement for a lawsuit from Trump about the editing of a “60 Minutes” interview with his 2024 Democratic presidential opponent, then-Vice President Kamala Harris.
“I'm sure they were getting pressure, and they're scared of getting sued again, so I'm sure that was ultimately what got them, is we don't need Trump's ire anymore,” the employee said.
Mercuri, who is CEO of Propheta Communications, a New York City-based public relations firm, said CBS’s decision to ultimately air the speech was “a bitter pill” for the network to swallow in “avoiding additional scrutiny from the Trump administration.”
"Bari Weiss, for me, is the square peg in a round hole. She has an amazing résumé. It's just not suitable for CBS, especially at this time," Mercuri said.
The CBS employee said the on-air talent ultimately handled the pivots well and did a good job of fact-checking, but warned “this won't be the last time” the network vacillates while under Weiss’ leadership on whether or not to air Trump’s speeches.
CBS Television Stations did not respond to Raw Story’s request for comment.
Hell of Pete Hegseth's anti-trans crusade described by Army leaders: 'Stabbed in the back'
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.
Teacher targeted by vicious right-wing hate now hailed for 'saving lives'
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.
Nightmare scenario unlocked by Trump as hero nurse fears losing her toddler
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.”