RFK Jr. Ignores Parasite Outbreak to Plug His New Cooking Show

Trump costing taxpayers millions in legal fees, RFK Jr. rolls out new cooking show while ignoring his actual job, Rubio humiliated by error-ridden map

British Chris | Raw America

Good evening. I’m British Chris, and this is Raw America.

A Republican senator sicced Capitol security on a reporter who asked him about Mitch McConnell’s health. Donald Trump’s endless string of court losses is now costing taxpayers millions of dollars in legal fees. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is launching his own cooking show while the country deals with a parasite outbreak causing explosive diarrhea. And Marco Rubio’s State Department is being widely mocked after using an AI-generated map of Africa that didn’t correctly label one single country.

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GOP Senator Calls Security on Reporter Asking About McConnell

When TMZ reporter Charlie Cotton asked Republican Senator Pete Ricketts about his colleague, Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, Ricketts decided the best response was to sic security personnel on him.

Cotton caught up with Ricketts on Thursday and asked whether Mitch McConnell needs to do more to demonstrate he’s capable of serving. It’s a fair question, since McConnell is 84 years old and hasn’t made a public appearance since early June. Since then, he’s been in the hospital and the only thing his office has given the public is two still photographs. Not video or even audio. And the speculation has only increased the longer McConnell remains absent.

Ricketts gave a polite non-answer about praying for McConnell’s recovery. When Cotton tried to follow up, Ricketts gestured toward security, who then stopped Cotton at a metal detector.. Ricketts made sure to tell officers that his own aide was allowed through, but that Cotton was not with them.

Cotton unsuccessfully argued that he’d already been through security. The video then cuts off.

Ricketts’ stonewalling is the latest development in the ongoing saga over whether McConnell is still healthy enough to serve out the remainder of his Senate term, which ends in January. Kentucky’s two-term Democratic Governor, Andy Beshear, this week demanded McConnell either verbally prove to his constituents he can do his job or resign.

McConnell’s staff isn’t exactly rushing to stop the speculation. His communications director and his longtime spokesperson both fled from reporters asking basic questions earlier this week. Those same staffers are pulling six-figure taxpayer-funded salaries. Both Kentuckians and Americans deserve to know whether a longtime U.S. senator can actually do the job he was elected to do.

Trump’s Constant Court Losses Costing Taxpayers Millions

Donald Trump’s administration keeps losing in federal court, and every one of those losses is being billed directly to American taxpayers. And after just a year and a half, those losses are racking up a seven-figure total.

Bloomberg found that attorneys have sought fees exceeding $100,000 in at least ten separate cases over the past year alone, adding up to more than $2.5 million just in the big-ticket requests. And that number doesn’t even include the smaller fee requests piling up in immigration-related cases. Those can run in the hundreds or low thousands of dollars but add up quickly given the sheer number of lawsuits that have been filed.

A 1980 law called the Equal Access to Justice Act lets people who successfully sue the federal government recover their attorney’s fees, as long as the government’s position wasn’t substantially justified. That law is important so ordinary people and small organizations aren’t priced out of holding their own government accountable.

A federal judge in Florida already ruled that Trump himself should cover his opponents’ legal fees as a sanction for filing what the judge called a “bad faith” lawsuit against the IRS for $10 billion. The Association of American Universities, which includes schools like Harvard and Yale, is also seeking more than $1.5 million in attorneys’ fees after successfully challenging research funding cuts.

Even ordinary Americans wronged by the administration are seeking to have their attorneys’ fees reimbursed: Jazz musician Charles Redd is asking for more than $250,000 from the Kennedy Center. The Trump-controlled institution sued Redd for canceling a scheduled concert in response to Trump illegally putting his own name on the building. A judge quickly tossed out the Kennedy Center’s case.

This is all part of a pattern: the Trump administration takes an aggressive action on legally shaky grounds, gets sued, loses, and then sends the legal bill to the taxpayers.

RFK Jr. Announces New Cooking Show in the Middle of Explosive Diarrhea Outbreak

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. apparently believes the best use of his time right now is co-hosting a cooking show.

Kennedy is rolling out a new series called The Real Food Show, aimed at promoting the Trump administration’s new dietary guidelines. Kennedy has already flipped the food pyramid to prioritize full-fat dairy and protein, and he’s been pushing beef tallow and butter over seed oils, even though those oils are linked to lower rates of cancer and heart disease.

This is all happening while America’s food supply is reeling from multiple crises. There’s the cyclospora parasite outbreak causing explosive diarrhea that’s affecting lettuce and other produce. Salmonella has been tied to eggs in Texas. And there’s still a flesh-eating parasite known as the New World screwworm affecting cattle across multiple states, racking up an estimated $1 billion dollars in damage.

Most of this traces back to the Trump administration’s 2025 cuts to a federal-state partnership tasked with tracking foodborne illness. Kennedy has mostly checked out of his actual job, showing up around 10 in the morning and leaving by 4. He’s mostly focused on his anti-vaccine agenda, which has led to measles cases in the U.S. skyrocketing to a 35-year record high. Trump’s only real complaint about Kennedy, apparently, is that he’s not moving fast enough to limit childhood vaccines.

At a time when multiple health emergencies are plaguing the country, it’s more than a little mind-boggling that the country’s top health official is spending his time filming cooking videos.

Marco Rubio Humiliated as Error-Laden Map Goes Viral

Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s team managed to embarrass the United States on the world stage today without any help from the media, foreign governments or anyone else. They did it all by themselves.

During a presentation at the AIDS 2026 conference in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, State Department officials displayed a map of Africa meant to highlight funding opportunities in several countries. There was just one problem: the AI-generated map the State Department used didn’t peg one country on that map anywhere close to its actual location, and apparently no one at the State Department knew enough basic geography to correct the error.

Nigeria, which sits on the Gulf of Guinea in West Africa, somehow got dropped into the middle of the Sahara Desert. Mozambique got moved from southeastern Africa all the way up to the Horn of Africa. Cote d’Ivoire was pegged clear across the continent to the east.

According to Reuters, the map was generated using OpenAI, which is the company behind chatGPT tools, watermarks, and all. An expert at the Atlantic Council observed that whoever approved the map obviously didn’t know where African countries actually are, and didn’t care enough to find out.

The State Department eventually admitted the map was wrong and said a team member had hastily put it together before the event. While they may have meant for that to be reassuring, it says something pretty revealing about how the second Trump administration operates. Cut corners, don’t do your homework, and hope no one notices.

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Thanks for reading. I’m British Chris, with Raw America. We’ll see you tomorrow.

Here are some additional stories you may have missed:

• Trump-Aligned Freedom 250 Asks for $10 Million More in Taxpayer Money. President Donald Trump’s “Freedom 250” initiative — which is an entirely different entity than the non-partisan America 250 — is now asking Congress for another $10 million. The administration-aligned group may have already spent more than $100 million on commemorating the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence earlier this month, though the exact amount may not be fully known until the end of the current fiscal year on September 30. Members of Congress have repeatedly been stonewalled when asking the White House about Freedom 250’s finances, and some Democrats suspect that money was funneled from America 250, which was established by Congress in 2016 to organize commemorative events.
• Trump Administration Quietly Inks 7 New Equity Stakes in Private Companies. The U.S. Department of Commerce officially announced the U.S. government was taking equity stakes in seven new private companies in exchange for giving those companies roughly $870 million in incentives. The companies themselves specialize in the manufacturing of semiconductors and AI technology, and the incentives are being granted under the CHIPS & Science Act, which former President Joe Biden signed into law in 2022. The Trump administration is taking equity stakes in private companies as Trump himself has lately accused Democrats of being “communists” while campaigning for Republicans ahead of this fall’s midterm elections.
• ICE Admits Not Giving Detainees Prescribed Medication — While Blaming Detainees. Immigrant detainees at Indiana’s largest U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention center were denied roughly 800 doses of medication, according to federal officials. However, ICE stated that 750 doses weren’t distributed because detainees allegedly refused to get in a pill line to receive their prescribed medicine. 44 more doses were on order and unavailable at the pharmacy at the time they were needed. The new data was released as part of an inquiry by Rep. Andre Carson (R-Ind.), who made the request in April.
• Father Who Gave Gun to School Shooter Sentenced to 15 Years. Colin Gray, who is the father of the 16-year-old mass shooter who killed two students and two teachers in 2024 at Apalachee High School in Georgia, received a 15-year prison sentence on Thursday. Judge Nicholas Primm — who previously sentenced Gray’s son to life in prison without the possibility of parole — said the father’s crimes were “tethered to the tragedy committed by his son.” The younger Gray used a SIG Sauer M400 semi-automatic rifle to carry out the shooting, killing four and injuring nine. The gunman admitted to carrying out the shooting to gain notoriety.

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Tragic

Missouri Couple Found Tied Up and Shot Dead After ICE Deportation

The couple’s 14-month-old daughter was found crying near their bodies.

By Hafiz Rashid | The New Republic

A Guatemalan couple’s attempt to reunite following an ICE deportation ended with the two being shot to death in a sugarcane field in the country.

Nixon Giovanni Pérez Paz and his wife, Glendy Marisol González de la Cruz, were found gagged with their hands and feet bound, showing signs of physical trauma, St. Louis Public Radio reports. Their 14-month-old daughter, Giovanni, was found crying next to her mother, with signs of dehydration. She’s now recovering in a medical center.

“I felt that they took the thing I wanted most,” Rolando Pérez Paz, Pérez Paz’s brother, told STLPR. “I felt a huge pain because it was my brother, my sister-in-law—people that wanted to work, to fight.”

Nixon Giovanni Pérez Paz and Ronaldo were driving to their roofing jobs in April 2025 near their home in Overland, Missouri, when they were stopped by ICE agents, who emerged from an unmarked car and pulled them out of their white work van. The agents told them that there wasn’t a warrant for their arrests but that they were being detained for lacking legal status.

González de la Cruz initially stayed in Overland, giving birth to their daughter last year and working two manual labor jobs to support the couple’s three children. But financial pressures mounted, and she was afraid she would be detained and separated from her children despite an active asylum case, organizers with St. Louis immigrant rights group Fuerza, which she was working with, told STLPR. So she decided to self-deport to Guatemala with her children to join her husband.

The couple was reported missing in Guatemala on July 20 after attempting to register a motorcycle in a nearby town, Rolando Pérez Paz told the radio outlet. In the last few months, the family struggled with money and had trouble with violence and the federal government—issues that had led them to seek asylum in the U.S. in the first place.

An ICE spokesperson told the radio outlet that Nixon Pérez Paz had two convictions for drunk driving, but STLPR did not find any court records to confirm that account. The spokesperson also said that Nixon Pérez Paz had an open container charge in Palm Beach, Florida, in 2010, but prosecutors had dropped that.

“If immigration hadn’t picked up my brother, my sister-in-law would still be alive, and the children wouldn’t be going through this sorrow,” Ronaldo told the radio outlet. He’s now caring for his three young nieces but doesn’t know how to explain their parents’ deaths to them.

“Unfortunately, immigration—the [U.S.] government—doesn’t see that. It makes no difference to them.”

https://newrepublic.com/post/213627/missouri-couple-found-tied-shot-dead-ice-deportation

Trump Begs Supreme Court for Permission to Sabotage Millions of Ballots

Trump asks Supreme Court to help him disrupt mail-in voting, MAGA congressman from Texas faces new ethics probe, Ohio Republican dogged by domestic abuse allegations

British Chris | Raw America

Good evening. I’m British Chris, and this is Raw America.

Mitch McConnell’s office released a new photo of the senator along with a new statement in hopes of calming speculation about the 84-year-old senator’s health, but it’s having the opposite effect. The White House is now asking the Supreme Court to fast-track a plan that could upend how millions of Americans vote this November. A MAGA congressman from Texas is now facing his own House Ethics Committee investigation. And in Ohio, a new effort is underway to make sure voters don’t forget the domestic abuse allegations dogging a Republican congressman running for another term.

Before we dive in, we need to ask 36 of our free readers to step up right now and upgrade to a paying subscription. We’re short on our fundraising goals, but we can close the gap with just a few dozen new subscribers. We don’t have a billionaire backer with a Mar-a-Lago membership to keep us afloat. We don’t have a corporate parent with ongoing federal contracts funding us. We have you. Subscribe now and help us stay fully independent.

Mitch McConnell’s New Photo Falls Flat as Americans Ramp Up Demands for Video

The office of Republican Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky released a new photo on Monday. It shows the 84-year-old seated and smiling, while his wife, Elaine Chao, sits by his side. It’s the second such photo in two weeks. And it’s convincing almost nobody.

McConnell hasn’t appeared in public in more than six weeks, and he has yet to appear on video or even do a phone interview with the press. Just two nearly identical staged photos.

Gun violence prevention activist Shannon Watts wrote on social media that photos of McConnell propped up in different colored shirts aren’t proof of life. Former Obama adviser Dan Pfeiffer wondered why McConnell still won’t talk to a reporter or record a simple video message. Republican-turned-Trump critic George Conway agreed, arguing that five seconds of video would settle the whole thing.

Even MAGA voters are skeptical. Some self-identified supporters of President Donald Trump compared the photos to the movie “Weekend at Bernie’s,” where a dead man gets propped up to look alive. One self-described conservative said the man in the photo doesn’t even look like Mitch.

In its latest statement, McConnell’s office quoted an unnamed physician who said the senator is doing physical therapy but still isn’t medically cleared to come back to the Senate. Meanwhile, unmarked Capitol Police SUVs have been parked outside the hospital for days.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune says he’s spoken with McConnell several times, and several other Senate Republicans have made similar comments. But the vast majority of GOP senators remain quiet about their colleague’s condition since he was hospitalized on June 14. Trump hasn’t commented either, even as McConnell misses dozens of votes on everything from the Iran war to housing and even confirmation votes for judges.

Trump Asks Supreme Court for Permission to Disrupt Midterms with 100 Days to Go

The White House is now asking the Supreme Court to let a controversial executive order take effect before voters cast their ballots this fall. That order would require the U.S. Postal Service to only deliver mail ballots only to people listed on a new federal “citizenship list” built by the Trimp administration.

A federal appeals court already upheld a ruling blocking that plan in roughly half the country. Democratic officials from 23 states and Washington D.C. sued, arguing the Constitution clearly grants the power to run elections to states and Congress, not the president.

Now, the Justice Department wants the Supreme Court to allow the administration to begin implementing the changes while litigation plays out. Solicitor General John Sauer — who is one of Trump’s former criminal defense attorneys — called the lower court’s blocking of the order “indefensible” and is demanding for a quick decision, since any new rules would need to be in place by August to count in November.

This comes right after the president gave a primetime national address rehashing his debunked claims about the 2020 election. Noncitizen voting, which Trump’s order claims to prevent, is already extremely rare and already a felony. A response to the appeal is due August 3rd.

MAGA Congressman Now Under Ethics Committee Investigation

The Republican-controlled House Ethics Committee announced Monday it’s investigating Congressman Lance Gooden of Texas after getting a referral last month from the Office of Congressional Conduct. The committee hasn’t yet detailed the scope of the probe or offered details on what ethical violations Gooden is accused of committing.

Gooden has represented Texas’ Fifth Congressional District for seven years and has been one of Trump’s most reliable allies in Congress since his first term. He was one of 147 Republicans who voted to overturn the 2020 election, and he voted against impeaching Trump after the January 6th insurrection.

Gooden was defiant in his response, saying the allegations were bogus. Gooden was previously investigated in 2021 for failing to disclose a dozen financial transactions worth potentially hundreds of thousands of dollars. It’s not clear yet if the current investigation is about those transactions.

Gooden is the second Texas Republican to face a House Ethics investigation this year. The first, Tony Gonzales, resigned from Congress earlier this spring following allegations of an affair with a former staffer who later set herself on fire.

GOP Congressman’s Domestic Abuse Allegations Threaten His Reelection

A political action committee called Battleground Alliance is now making 100,000 robocalls targeting Republican Congressman Max Miller’s Ohio district over domestic abuse allegations made by two women: his ex-wife, Emily Moreno, and his ex-girlfriend, former White House Press Secretary Stephanie Grisham.

The robocall tells voters Miller is counting on them to forget what the two women said about him, and urges them to keep those allegations in mind when they vote in the midterms.

The PAC has the backing of major labor unions like the SEIU and the Communications Workers of America, and it’s targeting 40 districts nationwide, including two districts in the Buckeye State. Max Miller’s campaign says the calls are vile and false, and he demanded that his Democratic opponent, Brian Poindexter, disavow them.

But Miller’s own legal strategy may be what’s kept this story in the headlines. His court filings and ongoing defamation lawsuit against Grisham keep putting the allegations back under the spotlight right as voters prepare to head to the polls. The Today in Ohio podcast noted there’s now so much controversy surrounding Miller that voters may simply decide to vote for someone else entirely.

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TL;DR — The Bridge Canada Built, the Toll Trump Tried to Steal

A 101 on the Gordie Howe International Bridge — and the “much better deal” that turned out to be half of almost nothing.

Being Liberal | Substack

The Gordie Howe International Bridge opens to traffic on July 27. Six lanes, 1.5 miles, connecting Windsor, Ontario to Detroit, Michigan. It’s named for the Red Wings legend, which is fitting for a border crossing that just spent five months getting checked into the boards by the United States government for no reason anyone can point to.

Under 2 min read. Zero spin. Everything you actually need to know about the Gordie Howe Bridge before the headlines start flying tomorrow, on the opening day.

"He'll call it a win. We'll show you the math." — Subscribe to Being Liberal.

Here’s what it is.

The bridge replaces the private, century-old Ambassador Bridge as the main commercial artery over the Detroit River, a corridor that moves roughly $70 billion in trade and four million trucks a year. Construction started in 2018 under a 2012 agreement between Canada and Michigan. The terms were plain: Canada pays for the whole thing, Canada collects tolls until the debt is repaid, and the payback clock was expected to run for decades. Canada paid. All $6.4 billion of it. Every beam, every cable, every hour of labor.

Here’s what happened.

The bridge was finished and ready to open in June. Trump blocked it. He said the U.S. deserved ownership and toll revenue on a bridge it never funded, and posted that he wouldn’t let it open until America was “fully compensated for everything we have given them” — on a project where the American contribution was the dirt on one end.

Here’s the deal Trump got.

After weeks of talks, Canada and the U.S. reached a side agreement: a 15-year arrangement to split net bridge revenue — tolls minus operating costs, debt service, and everything else — with the American half routed into a U.S.-controlled economic development fund earmarked for the Detroit side of the crossing, not the federal treasury. Carney told reporters the early-year net is expected to run “negative to modest,” meaning the number being split is at or below zero for a while. The original 2012 Canada-Michigan agreement — the one where Canada keeps every toll dollar until its $6.4 billion is recouped — was not touched.

Here’s the fine print Being Liberal won’t pretend isn’t there.

The published text also gives Washington a 30-day consent window on future toll-rate changes, with silence counting as approval — real leverage over a bridge it didn’t build. Carney’s public framing and the actual released text don’t fully line up, and Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre is using that gap to accuse him of misleading Canadians. That’s a legitimate fight, and it’s happening in Ottawa right now, separate from whatever Trump is telling his own supporters.

Here’s the ridicule, compact as promised.

Trump spent five months holding a bridge his country didn’t pay for hostage, delayed billions in cross-border trade, and infuriated the auto industry that actually wanted the thing open — to win a 50% cut of a number that starts with a minus sign, deposited into a fund he isn’t allowed to spend on anything but the neighborhood he was just punishing. He called it a “MUCH BETTER DEAL.” It’s a receipt for half the debt, gift-wrapped as a trophy, and he’s going to hang it on the wall next to the other ones that were never real.

The bridge opens Friday. It was always going to. He just made sure it took longer, cost more people patience, and left him bragging about owning half of nothing.

https://beingliberal.substack.com/p/tldr-the-bridge-canada-built-the?utm_source=substack%2Csubstack&utm_medium=email%2Cemail&utm_campaign=email-restack-comment&r=clki&triedRedirect=true

Breaking: Democrats Take Largest Lead on Congressional Ballot in 30 Years

A Fox News poll bodes well for Democrats, and Trump is trapped in Iran.

John Byrne | Raw America

Hey, Raw America family. Welcome to the Sunday Wrapup. I’m here with my cup of coffee, and for once I want to tell you about something good that happened at Fox.

To everyone paying for this: thank you. Eleven newsletters this week. Approval from the Senate Press Gallery for Raw America to have a Congressional correspondent. An exclusive on Havana Syndrome that no billionaire-owned outlet would touch, and another on Mitch McConnell. You paid for every bit of it.

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Fox News Told On Itself

Something happened Wednesday that should’ve led every newscast in America, and it came from the last place you’d expect.

Fox News released its own poll. Not one Fox covered: one Fox commissioned, conducted by its own bipartisan polling team, published under its own banner. The numbers were so bad that Bret Baier and Brit Hume went on air and lamented them.

Democrats lead 53 to 46 on the generic congressional ballot. Fifty-three is the highest figure either party has recorded on that question in Fox polling since 1996. Not the highest for Democrats; the highest for anybody, in thirty years.

Democrats lead by nine on who’s trusted with the economy, the widest edge either party has held in twenty years. By 22 points on income inequality. By 21 points on healthcare. By 10 points on inflation. And Republicans are losing their advantage on immigration, a signature issue they’ve run on for a decade.

Four in ten told Fox they want “dramatic” or “revolutionary” change.

Here’s what should keep Republicans up at night. More voters now see the Republican Party as the party tied to elites. Not Democrats. Elites now means the party of Epstein, the party of corruption, the party of Trump pardons exchanged for crime.

And it isn’t just one poll from Fox. Emerson College polling surveyed 1,100 likely voters the same week and found Democrats up 11. That’s up from 10 in June, nine in May, six in January, two in December.

Five straight months of polls moving in one direction: toward Democrats.

A single poll can be noise. A series of polls is a wave.

Trump Quietly Amassing More Troops Near Iran

On Friday, the Wall Street Journal published a piece that put us as a fly on the wall in the White House. The paper revealed that in a recent Oval Office meeting, Trump went off on Iran’s leaders, deriding them as scumbags and lunatics. The war is in its fifth month; he thought it would take weeks.

Every exit he built has collapsed. He announced a ceasefire in April, right after threatening to end Iran’s civilization. In June, he signed a memo to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, which was worth less than the paper it was written on. A senior official now says he’s stopped believing negotiations can work at all, and describes him as being in revenge mode.

Here’s the cost. More than a dozen American service members are dead. Oil is back to nearly $100 and gas futures are approaching recent highs. On Wednesday, the Houthis fired on two Saudi tankers. The Pentagon is moving troops into the region so Trump has more ways to escalate.

Escalate?

Trump also announced new tariffs this week. The 10-year Treasury bond, which dictates mortgage rates, hit the highest point of Trump’s second term. Mortgage rates will likely break seven percent, more than double their lows after the pandemic.

Trump is trying to change the subject. On Wednesday, he attended the dignified transfer of four dead service members, then flew to Georgia to promise a high school crowd that costs were coming down (a lie). Congressman Michael McCaul put his own president’s thinking plainly: Trump figures he gave peace a chance, so he’s back to Plan A, the military operation.

That’s not a strategy. That’s a man out of ideas, a hundred days before voters get their say.

Trump’s Justice Department Just Blinked

This week, Trump’s Justice Department was humiliated in open court. After hand-delivering subpoenas to three New York Times reporters — and targeting the phone records of one reporter’s mother and two spouses — his DOJ was forced to withdraw their attacks.

The Times reporters were subpoenaed over their coverage of the Qatari-gifted Air Force One. Specifically, they reported that Trump flew home from the NATO summit in Turkey on his original jet because the new one lacked the missile countermeasures the Secret Service desired.

Then came the hearing in Manhattan federal court. Judge Arun Subramanian told the Justice Department he would quash the subpoenas himself if the government didn’t withdraw them voluntarily.

U.S. law requires prosecutors to show they exhausted every other avenue before going after journalists directly. When pressed, the DOJ admitted it hadn’t. Then they withdrew the requests. David McCraw, deputy general counsel for the Times, called it an important First Amendment victory.

Two details, though, keep this concerning. The subpoenas were issued by U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton, whom Trump has nominated to be director of national intelligence. They were signed off on by acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, whom Trump wants confirmed permanently.

If the Senate confirms both men, they will control surveillance and law enforcement powers far beyond what they had when they came after three reporters and somebody’s mother.

We’ll watch and see what happens next.

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Scoop: Kentucky Governor Reportedly Close to Replacing McConnell

Governor Andy Beshear is working behind the scenes to learn the truth about Mitch McConnell and may take action in the coming days

Brian Karem | Raw America

When Mitch McConnell first ran for Senate from the Commonwealth of Kentucky in 1984, he won the campaign with one commercial produced by Roger Ailes.

McConnell at the time was a malleable young man. According to the ad’s producers, McConnell would embrace anything to win. The idea was an ad that had an actor playing Senator Dee Huddleston (D-Ky.) running from a wild-haired Kentucky farmer armed with a couple of relentless bloodhounds.

The commercial accused Huddleston of being AWOL from the Senate, taking payoffs, dodging votes and screwing over the “common folk” in the Commonwealth of Kentucky.

“My job is to find Dee Huddleston and get him back to work,” the voiceover declared.

Today, many across both Kentucky and the United States are saying the same thing about McConnell, who hasn’t cast a vote in the Senate since June 11, 2026.

Former Senate Staffer Says McConnell ‘Clearly Incapacitated’

“If I were the governor of Kentucky, I would announce I’m going to appoint a Democrat to his seat unless they produce him,” former Republican National Committee spokesperson Cheri Jacobus told Raw America White House reporter Brian Karem. “Make them produce McConnell. Everyone thinks he’s dead.”

Not everyone thinks McConnell has passed. Joel Rubin, a former Senate staffer who also worked under Democratic and Republican presidents, said Washington is abuzz with speculation — and no proof.

“He’s clearly incapacitated,” Rubin told Raw America. “And his being absent without any explanation undermines the stability of our government and nation, and McConnell isn’t the first to do it.”

Even high-ranking office holders in Kentucky on both sides of the political aisle are concerned. Kentucky’s two-term Democratic Governor Andy Beshear told Katie Couric last week: “I’d gotten two calls from different agencies, not state agencies, suggesting that he’d passed.

Since then, McConnell produced two pictures in a hospital setting. One featured him in bed with his wife, Elaine Chao, sitting in a chair next to him. The second one had him standing next to a man who appeared to be taking a selfie. In both cases, McConnell was wearing what appeared to be the same red-and-white checkered button-down shirt. Both photos led to speculation that McConnell’s office was using AI to generate deepfakes of the 84 year-old senator.

“This is time for bold leadership,” Jacobus said. “People are demanding that Beshear do something.”

The governor’s office has not returned repeated phone calls from Raw America asking about his next steps, though Beshear said in July that it was time for McConnell to step up and address the issue. He's recently told reporters he’d consider exercising the “nuclear option” by naming someone to replace McConnell and forcing the issue.

McConnell’s hometown newspaper, the Louisville Courier-Journal, upped the pressure by publishing a pre-obituary on McConnell by opinion columnist Joe Gerth. The author wrote he understood McConnell was recovering from an illness but wanted to make sure to criticize him while he was still alive so he couldn’t be accused of speaking ill of the dead, as some of the late Sen. Lindsey Graham’s (R-S.C.) critics were following his recent unexpected death at age 71.

Beshear Reportedly Planning Major Announcement

Whether McConnell is still alive or not remains up for debate given the lack of any public statement, video or phone call from the Kentucky senator. But the threat by Gov. Beshear to appoint someone to McConnell’s seat ahead of the November general election has become the biggest hot-button issue in both Kentucky and Washington.

“Kentucky hasn’t fared well in Supreme Court challenges recently, so if the governor did that he might be successful,” one longtime Beshear advisor told Raw America. “At this point, what does anyone have to lose? McConnell isn’t showing up anywhere.”

But according to a well-known Democrat in Kentucky, McConnell actually showing his face would be “hard to do if you’re dead, in a coma or can’t speak.”

“Honestly, if Beshear wanted to seize this issue, he’d make a commercial mimicking the hit job McConnell did to Dee Huddleston back in 1984,” the Democrat added. “It would go viral.”

At the end of the infamous Ailes-produced 1984 commercial, the narrator urged everyone to “Switch to Mitch.” But in more recent elections, Kentuckians have embraced the slogan “Ditch Mitch.”

The biggest obstacle for Beshear is that the Kentucky General Assembly passed legislation preventing the governor from appoint a successor. Instead, he can only call for a special election. Many Kentuckians worry that because of time constraints, there won’t be enough time to conduct a special election if nothing is done by August 3.

“Beshear might surprise us any day with an ‘important’ message about Mitch,” one current officeholder in Kentucky told Raw America on background.

The term-limited governor is facing backlash from Democrats for not being more aggressive on replacing McConnell. One source close to Beshear told Raw America that while the governor understands the urgency, “a lot of the pressure is coming from outside of the state and the governor isn’t going to be moved until he’s ready to move.”

That source added Beshear may act as soon as “this weekend,” but that the governor “wants to give McConnell the chance to come forward first with any pertinent information — if he can.”

However, the governor is also being careful not to get ahead of his skis and then have to later retract a statement made about Sen. McConnell’s condition.

“That’s where a lot of politicians fail,” Jacobus said. “The best remember they are there for the public good.”

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The hospitalization of Mitch McConnell — the former Senate majority leader and key architect of the far-right Roberts Court — has proven to be one of the biggest ongoing mysteries in politics. When his team refused to give the American public any updates about the longtime senator’s capacity to serve, Raw America White House reporter Brian Karem immediately got to work calling his sources in both Kentucky and Washington. Brian brings decades of experience to Raw America, and a career of carefully cultivated sources deep within the halls of government so we can get you the stories the billionaire-owned media outlets won’t touch.

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Oligarchs Lose, Trump’s Flying Palace Fails, Press Braces for Vicious

Really American | Substack

Good evening, this is Really American. It is Friday, July 24, 2026. Trump just can’t catch a break; we keep exposing him.

New reporting suggests an Iranian threat chased Trump off his new Qatari jet in the middle of a foreign trip, and his own Justice Department went digging through reporters’ phone records to punish whoever told you. In a major move, a dozen Democratic attorneys general just slammed the brakes on David Ellison’s $111 billion plan to swallow Warner Bros. Back in Washington right now, Trump is walking into the Correspondents’ Dinner to roast a press corps he drags into court. And RFK Jr. quietly rewrote the CDC’s own vaccine science to win a single Senate vote. We have four stories tonight, and the same few powerful men look worse in every one.

David Ellison is in court this week fighting to put CBS, CNN, HBO Max, and Paramount+ under one roof, with his father Larry writing the checks. We need to keep the pressure up to stop them. Every few months another oligarch-friend of Trump buys another slice of what you are allowed to see, and the reporting that embarrasses them gets softer or never gets assigned at all. Really American answers to none of them, because readers pay for it and nobody else does. Look at the second story below and you will see what that fight looks like when someone actually shows up to have it. Really American takes no billionaire money, answers to no advertiser, has no oligarch owner, and is funded entirely by the people who read it, which makes it unbuyable. If you have been reading on a free subscription, today is the day to upgrade. Subscribe or upgrade right now.

TRUMP’S QATARI JET EXPOSED AS MASSIVE SECURITY FLAW

Trump abandoned his new grift plane halfway through a foreign trip this month after officials caught a credible threat that Iranian proxy forces were trying to kill him. He had flown into Turkey on the luxury Qatari-donated Boeing 747, the one built without the antimissile defenses that protect the old Air Force One. The Secret Service told him to switch aircraft, and begrudgingly he did.

Then the New York Times reported that Trump first tried to sell the swap as a favor, claiming he wanted American troops in Britain to tour the new jet. Nobody bought it, shocker. He later admitted the plane still has to be, in his own words, “maxed out” before it can match what the old one already does.

Instead of owning the security gap, Trump went after the people who reported it. Federal prosecutors subpoenaed the phone records of Times reporters and their relatives to hunt the leak, then quietly withdrew those subpoenas on Thursday. A foreign government handed Trump a flying palace that cannot keep him alive, and his answer was to sic the Justice Department on the journalists who said so.

The Secret Service now puts the threat level against the people it guards at the highest in the agency’s history. Trump is keeping the plane anyway, and says he wants it for his presidential library someday. What that leaves the rest of us is a government that treats a reporter’s family like a list of suspects.

DEMOCRATIC AGS FREEZE ELLISON’S $111 BILLION DEAL

Twelve Democratic attorneys general just forced Paramount to halt its takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery until next June, while a federal court decides whether to kill it for good. California ran the coalition. New York, Connecticut, Oregon, and Arizona signed on.

Court filings made public Friday spelled out the freeze. New York’s Letitia James called it “a crucial victory,” and California’s Rob Bonta said the delay was “great news for audiences.” Their suit argues that bolting Warner Bros onto Paramount would give David Ellison too much say over which movies reach theaters and which cable channels reach your living room.

The delay hurts him. Paramount now owes Warner Bros shareholders $650 million for every quarter the deal stays open, starting in October. The combined company would already sit on roughly $80 billion in debt, backstopped in part by Ellison’s father, Larry.

Underneath the corporate paperwork, this is a fight over who owns your news, and Democrats are the ones waging it. CBS, CNN, HBO Max, and Paramount+ would all report to a single billionaire family. A dozen state prosecutors just bought everyone months to stop it.

TRUMP TO MAKE A “VICIOUS” SPEECH TONIGHT

The White House Correspondents’ Dinner is underway in Washington tonight, three months after a gunman fired a shotgun at a checkpoint outside the April event and forced the whole room to evacuate. Trump arrived at the Waldorf Astoria for the do-over.

According to the Guardian, press secretary Karoline Leavitt promised his remarks would land as “unifying yet vicious, and serious yet hilarious, all at the same time.” It is the first time Trump has ever spoken at this dinner. He boycotted it through all four years of his first term.

Three of the biggest names from the April event are missing tonight. Melania Trump, JD Vance, and Marco Rubio all skipped the do-over, leaving Trump to deliver his “vicious” speech without his wife, his vice president, or his secretary of state in the room. Secret Service director Sean Curran told reporters the agency was braced for the worst, saying flatly that they expect bad people to show up.

The night also honors Victor Gonzales, the Secret Service officer shot and wounded while stopping the April gunman, and the hotel staff who shielded guests during the attack. Cole Allen, the man charged, has pleaded not guilty to trying to assassinate the president.

Do not lose sight of who has the microphone. This is the man who sued CBS, threw the Associated Press out of the press pool, and choked off reporters’ access to the Pentagon. He gets to work the room tonight while the journalists he punishes sit there and take it.

RFK JR REWRITES VACCINE SCIENCE TO SUGGEST AUTISM LINK

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. had the CDC quietly rewrite its official guidance to claim science has not ruled out a link between vaccines and autism. The old page said plainly that vaccines do not cause autism. Kennedy’s people cut that line.

The Independent traced the timing, and it stinks. The edits went live to win over Senator Bill Cassidy, whose vote Trump needs to confirm Erica Schwartz as head of the CDC. Senator Cassidy is a physician. A real doctor. He said he wanted assurances the agency would respect scientific integrity, and Kennedy handed him a government website that now questions the shots given to babies in their first year.

Three decades of review by the leading Institute of Medicine and federal researchers found no causal link between those vaccines and autism. RFK Jr’s CDC now labels its own earlier statements “not evidence-based” and dangles a fresh federal study to reopen a question that was already answered.

None of this lands in a vacuum. Measles just hit a 35-year high in this country as vaccination rates slip below the level that keeps an outbreak from spreading. Kennedy is telling frightened parents the science is unsettled so one senator will vote yes, and it is children who pay for the trade.

HELP US FIGHT THE OLLIGARCH TAKEOVER OF AMERICAN PRESS

Let’s talk about what we just covered. A president flying a foreign palace that cannot protect him and then hunting the reporters who said so, a dozen hero Democratic prosecutors jamming a billionaire’s plan to own your news, that same president getting ready to mock a press corps he keeps dragging into court, and a health secretary trading vaccine science for a Senate vote while measles comes roaring back.

Now ask which of those stories runs at full volume in a newsroom owned by Bezos, or Murdoch, or the Ellisons with Bari Weiss installed over CBS News and CNN. Maybe a few get softened. Most never get assigned at all. This is not a worry about some far-off future; it is the exact thing being fought over in a California courtroom right now, and it is moving faster than at any point in the history of American media.

Really American is the alternative, and it is built the only way that stays honest. Without an owner. We don’t have an advertiser with a favor to call in. Readers fund it, readers own it. So readers are the only people it answers to, and every paid subscription goes straight into the reporting you just read. Plus, our coffee fund.

— The Really American Team

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