Good evening. I’m British Chris, and this is Raw America. A quick ask before we get started: tap the ❤️ and click restack. That’s the best way to help us reach the people who really need to hear these stories.
Donald Trump nearly started World War III after a bogus AI-generated intelligence report almost triggered a military standoff with China. The White House just banned three major news outlets while the publisher of the New York Times published an editorial sounding the alarm over Trump’s war on the press. Pentagon insiders are now accusing the president of hiding the real death toll from his Iran war from the public. And Republican canvassers are finding that GOP voters have, quote, no enthusiasm ahead of the November midterms. Let’s dive in.
You’ll read more in a moment about Trump’s war on the press. Raw America has also been included in Trump’s blacklist of White House reporters, specifically singling out our very own Brian Karem. We plan on joining the media’s efforts to fight back against the White House’s unprecedented censorship, but we need your help to do it. And unlike CNN, MS NOW and Politico, we don’t have any corporate parent or billionaire bankrolling us. We have you. Become a paying subscriber for 22 cents a day and help us stay in the fight.
This spring, right as Trump’s war with Iran was intensifying, an intelligence report started circulating through the US military that claimed a Chinese ship in the Middle East was transporting parts for a nuclear weapons program.
The military immediately prepped armed troops to board the vessel by force. Planes were already in the air. But just as the operation was about to start, officials took a closer look at the origin of the report. As it turns out, an analyst had used an AI chatbot to draft it, and the bot completely misidentified the cargo.
One source described the report as entirely false. Another said Trump’s Pentagon “almost started a war” over the error-laden report.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s Pentagon is scrambling to plug AI into everything from targeting decisions to logistics. Hegseth famously rolled out an “AI Acceleration Strategy” in January of this year, pushing the tech on roughly three million military and civilian DOD personnel.
But there’s not yet any single agreed-upon standard for verifying what AI spits out. Different branches use different systems with different safety rules. To make matters worse, younger analysts have a tendency to trust what AI models put out without giving it much scrutiny.
One unnamed official confided to CNN what makes the rush to incorporate AI into military so dangerous: it “allows you to get to a bad idea faster.”
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On the same day CNN published its groundbreaking report on how Donald Trump almost started a war with China, Trump announced Friday that he’s banning CNN along with MS NOW and Politico from the White House effective immediately. Apparently, more bans are forthcoming.
In his Truth Social post announcing the bans, he claimed without evidence that MS NOW changed its name from MSNBC due to low ratings, when in actuality the rebrand happened because Comcast spun off its cable networks into a completely separate company. He also revived the repeatedly disproven claim that Politico got a supposed $8 million government payout. Fact-checkers already debunked that claim last year during the DOGE debacle.
This is just the latest salvo in Trump’s war on the free press. The White House has already pulled Reuters, the Associated Press and Bloomberg from the permanent press pool. Last fall, it closed off press access to the area near the press secretary’s office. And we just learned here at Raw America that our very own White House reporter, Brian Karem, has been blocked from accessing the White House grounds.
Trump’s new bans on media outlets came the same day that New York Times publisher A.G. Sulzberger marked the paper’s 175th anniversary with an editorial accusing Trump of treating journalists like criminals. Sulzberger noted that the administration has filed lawsuits, issued subpoenas and made very serious accusations of treason — a crime punishable by death — aimed at preventing reporters from doing their jobs.
Sulzberger wrote that while many presidents have clashed with the press in the past, none save for Trump have shown so much hostility to journalists before. He also said the longevity of journalism is threatened by AI companies scraping and plagiarizing news content that took real money and actual journalists to produce.
The White House continues to insist that Trump is the most transparent president in history. But given how this president keeps banning journalists and outlets he doesn’t like from covering his administration, that’s increasingly difficult to believe.
Raw America is planning to join legal efforts to fight the White House’s war on the free press. But unlike the major networks, we don’t have any wealthy owners or corporations backing us up. We have you. If you believe independent outlets have just as much of a right to cover the White House as CNN, help us stay in the fight by becoming a paying subscriber.
Six unnamed Pentagon officials told the Washington Post that more American service members have died in the Middle East during Donald Trump’s war with Iran than the government has publicly admitted.
The Pentagon’s public casualty database currently lists 18 deaths since the war began in February. But sources say the real number is at least twenty-two, and possibly as high as twenty-three, and that doesn’t even include three American contractors who also lost their lives in the Middle East since the war started.
Nobody’s saying who these additional service members were or how they died. That silence has frustrated those six officials, because these deaths aren’t showing up where they’re legally supposed to.
This isn’t the first time the Trump administration has undercounted deaths. Back in July, four troop deaths briefly disappeared from the official tally before reappearing under scrutiny.
More than 800 troops have been wounded since February, many with traumatic brain injuries from Iranian strikes on American bases throughout the region. And according to internal estimates, the war has already cost more than $43 billion
Public support for the war is now at a dismal 28 percent. Congress has taken notice too, with seven Republicans recently breaking with their party earlier this week to back a War Powers Act resolution aimed at reining in Trump’s ability to attack Iran.
Republican canvassers are finding out quickly that virtually no GOP voters are motivated to show up at the polls this November.
CNN’s Kristen Holmes said Republican staffers close to Trump are frustrated watching GOP candidates in swing districts try to distance themselves from the White House. Republican Congresswoman Maria Elvira Salazar, who represents a Florida district Trump won by 15 points in 2024, actually put out an ad this week slamming Trump’s ICE crackdown.
The numbers back up what GOP canvassers are hearing from voters on their doorsteps, who say there is “no enthusiasm” to keep Republicans in power. Trump’s approval is cratering thanks to his tariffs, his war with Iran, and ICE raids that keep embarrassing headlines in the news cycle.
Voter enthusiasm is just one part of the problem. In Maine, a canvasser working to reelect Republican Senator Susan Collins was recently caught on camera stealing a package from someone’s front porch. That’s not exactly the closing message Republicans were hoping for heading into November.
Trump has not only barred CNN, MS NOW and Politico from the White House, but he’s also banned our very own reporter Brian Karem from the White House grounds as well. We won’t allow this president to prevent us from doing our jobs, but because we have no corporate parent or billionaire behind us, we’re counting on readers like you to help us stay in this fight. Become a paying subscriber today and help independent media continue to hold this administration accountable.
Everything you read here today was made possible because readers who believe in the importance of independent journalism decided it was important enough to fund. We launched Raw America with the bet that readers would financially support journalism that didn’t take orders from a billionaire owner, or allow a corporation to dictate what gets covered and what gets buried. We’ll never compromise our coverage to please an advertiser or an owner, and we’ll never stop working for our readers to bring you the stories this administration and its allies in corporate boardrooms want to keep hidden.
I’m British Chris, with Raw America. Once again, click the ❤️ and restack this newsletter so we can reach the people who need to hear these stories the most. Thanks for reading, and thanks for supporting independent media. Have a great weekend.
