Happy Saturday! I’m John Byrne. Before we get going, tap that ❤️ and restack this edition. The algorithm is built to bury reporting like this, and your share is what drags it back to the surface.
A conservative former federal judge is warning that the real threat to democracy isn’t November 3 but January 3, when House Republicans could simply refuse to seat the Democrats who beat them. The New York Times has catalogued how Trump is using the FBI, the FCC and the Pentagon to strangle the press, and the numbers are grim. Mitch McConnell hasn’t set foot in the Capitol since June, and nobody will say when he’s coming back. And George W. Bush spent the 25th anniversary of 9/11 unveiling a painting of himself.
Here’s something worth sitting with for a second. You’re reading this newsletter right now. That means independent media is still alive. But the window is closing faster than most people realize. Newsrooms are being gutted. Local papers are disappearing. The outlets that are still standing are getting bought up by the same billionaires whose names appear in this morning’s stories. The journalism that holds power accountable does not pay for itself. It gets paid for by people who decide it matters. If that is you — if you believe the country needs reporting that does not answer to a billionaire — then Raw America needs you to act on that belief today. Not next week. Today. Subscribe or upgrade your membership right now.
Former federal appeals judge Michael Luttig isn’t a Democratic operative. He’s a Reagan conservative, and the man Mike Pence leaned on when Trump tried to strong-arm him on January 6.
Now he’s writing in The New Republic that the next constitutional crisis has a date: January 3, 2027, the day the 120th Congress is sworn in.
Luttig’s argument is simple. Even if Democrats win the House decisively in November, that doesn’t guarantee they get seated. Trump has spent the year prejudging the midterms as rigged, and House Republicans have gone along with him.
Luttig points to Trump telling Dan Bongino in February that Republicans should “nationalize the voting.” He points to a prime-time “election integrity” address eight weeks ago that blamed Democrats and noncitizens for fraud that hasn’t happened.
Here’s how it goes. Before noon on January 3, Speaker Mike Johnson fires House Clerk Kevin McCumber, a Republican who’s respected for refusing to do things he considers unconstitutional. Johnson installs a loyalist. That loyalist leaves Democratic members-elect off the roll that determines who gets to organize the new Congress.
From there, it’s writs of mandamus, emergency appeals, and weeks or months of a country without a functioning House while the Supreme Court decides whether America is still a democracy.
Luttig thinks the Constitution is clear: the House can’t refuse to seat someone who won a free and fair election on a pretext. But he’s honest about the court that would decide it, the same one that handed Trump immunity and ducked the Fourteenth Amendment question entirely.
His plea is to Republicans, before November 3: say publicly that you won’t play along. He isn’t optimistic anyone will.
“The writing is already on the wall,” he writes. We’d add that it’s been there since 2021. Some people just refuse to read it.
Sponsored Kalshi Prediction: Blue wave this year?
The Times published a sprawling analysis Saturday of how Trump is wielding federal power against speech. What stands out is the sheer breadth of it.
FBI agents have shown up at reporters’ homes to serve subpoenas. In one case, they flashed a warrant and seized a Washington Post reporter’s devices. The Pentagon fired the editor and publisher of Stars and Stripes, its historically independent newspaper. Public broadcasting has been defunded. The White House seized control of the press pool and banned the Associated Press from the Oval Office over the words “Gulf of Mexico.”
Reporters Without Borders now ranks the United States 64th in the world for press freedom, its lowest ever, just above Panama and just below Botswana.
The point man is FCC Chairman Brendan Carr. Carr scored a “bias monitor” from CBS as the price of the Skydance merger. After Trump and Melania demanded ABC fire Jimmy Kimmel over a joke, Carr opened an unprecedented review of every ABC station license in the country.
ABC now says in court papers that it self-censored, carrying Trump’s election-security speech live and pulling bookings from The View out of fear of retaliation.
Trump described Carr in April as “the most powerful man in the world.”
The Federal Trade Commission, meanwhile, went after Media Matters and NewsGuard, groups that track disinformation. A judge called the Media Matters probe “a straightforward First Amendment violation.” It didn’t matter. The group says it killed stories to avoid further scrutiny.
That’s the model. Trump typically loses in court. But losing is expensive, and fear is free.
Longtime First Amendment lawyer Floyd Abrams put it plainly: the threats are so grave that we now live in “a different world.”
If you believe in a free press, now’s the moment to live your values. Just 22 cents a day scores you a subscription for a full year. That’s less than a cup of coffee.
The Senate returns Monday from a five-week recess. Whether Mitch McConnell will be there is anybody’s guess.
McConnell was taken from his home by ambulance on June 14. His office wouldn’t say why. It took until July for him to admit he’d fallen, been unconscious, and gotten pneumonia. He then allegedly spent weeks in a rehab center before announcing in August that he’d finish recovering at home.
As of Friday, his spokesperson says there are “no scheduling announcements at this time.”
Regular readers know Raw America’s Brian Karem reported here in July that Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear was working to find out the truth about McConnell’s condition. Two months later, we don’t know much more.
Kentucky Republican James Comer says McConnell’s staff told him they’re “hoping” the senator returns Monday. Comer hasn’t actually spoken to McConnell.
Republicans are grumbling. Sen. John Cornyn said he wished McConnell’s team had shared more.
Transparency, apparently, is for other people.
And then there’s George W. Bush, who marked the 25th anniversary of the attacks in a crazy fashion: with oil paint.
Bush posted four paintings to Instagram on Friday. One shows smoke over Lower Manhattan. One shows a hand holding a badge. One recreates the giant flag draped over the Pentagon on September 12.
The final painting depicts his chief of staff Andy Card leaning in to whisper in his ear inside that Florida classroom, the exact moment he learned a second plane had hit the towers.
Yes. He painted that. (You can see the painting here.)
Ryan Broderick of Garbage Day summed up the internet’s reaction: “The absolute mad man. He actually did it.”
Semafor’s Josh Billinson noted that after the nude self-portraits, you’d think nothing Bush painted could surprise you anymore. And yet.
Bush wrote that the paintings are “my reflections of this solemn anniversary.” They’ll hang at his presidential center all month, per Raw Story.
Twenty-five years later, the man who was president that morning is still trying to process it with a brush. Which, to be fair, is more introspection than the current occupant has managed about anything.
Independent journalism does not run on goodwill. It runs on people who decide it is worth paying for. This morning you read about a judge warning that Republicans may refuse to seat the Democrats who beat them, a government using the FBI to frighten the press into silence, and a senator who has been missing for three months. Those stories exist because Raw America exists. And Raw America exists because readers like you fund it. If you have been getting this newsletter for free, it is time to put something in. Subscribe or upgrade your membership right now.
One more thing before you go: hit the ❤️ and restack this edition. It’s what pushes these stories past the algorithm and into the feeds of people who’d never otherwise see them. Thank you.
I’m John Byrne. Thanks for reading, and I’ll see you tomorrow.
