Good morning. 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.
Reporters from CNN and MS NOW showed up at the White House this morning and found their badges switched off, a week after the same thing happened to Raw America’s own Brian Karem. A sworn complaint filed with the House alleges Lauren Boebert carried on sexual relationships with three of her own staffers, and that roughly $200,000 changed hands when one of them threatened to talk. Thousands of people turned out Friday night to form a human chain around the Kennedy Center, days after Trump threatened to rip it down. And the Democrat in line to run House oversight says his top target is the “Trump crime family.”
One thing before the news. Facebook and X have effectively shut down our distribution. Meta throttled our posts after we called Mark Zuckerberg out for being Trump’s lackey, so our own followers no longer see what we publish, and X plays down our content while Elon Musk pours money into Republican campaigns to stop the blue wave. These are two of the largest information systems on earth, both controlled by billionaires who have decided what you are allowed to see before November. Becoming a paid subscriber is the most direct way to fight back against them, because it moves this reporting out of their hands and into your inbox where no algorithm can touch it, and it funds the work that made them want to bury us in the first place. We’re halfway through September and behind on our paid subscriber goal. Subscribe or upgrade right now for 22 cents a day.
On Friday afternoon, Trump announced from the Oval Office that he was banning CNN, MS NOW and Politico from the White House. On Saturday morning, he did it.
Akayla Gardner, a White House correspondent for MS NOW, swiped her badge at the security gate near the West Wing. It didn’t work.
“The officer asked me to hand over my badge; he said that it was disabled,” Gardner said on air. “I asked why I could not get inside; he said it was above him.”
About an hour later, CNN’s Betsy Klein got the same treatment from a security officer she’s known for years.
Regular readers will recognize the playbook. Raw America’s Brian Karem, who’s covered the White House since Reagan, was turned away at that same gate on September 11. No reason was given. The Secret Service told his lawyer the block came from the White House itself.
Brian’s been here before. Trump yanked his pass in 2019. Brian sued, won, and won again on appeal, in a ruling that says the White House can’t pull a reporter’s access without due process.
Trump didn’t bother dressing up his reasoning. “There’s something wrong with a country that can allow people to write purposely negative stories,” he told reporters Friday.
“Now, if they want to write them, that’s fine, but I don’t have to let them into my — into the people’s house.”
He caught himself halfway through the sentence. Almost.
CNN calls the new ban “illegal.” MS NOW says it’ll take “any and all steps necessary.” Raw America is also planning a court challenge.
Trump keeps losing these cases. He keeps doing it anyway, because every day a reporter spends outside the gate is a day nobody’s asking him questions.
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The complaint that landed at the House Ethics Committee on Thursday is explosive.
It says Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) carried on a sexual relationship with her district director, Clarice Navarro Ratzlaff, from 2021 through January 2025. It also alleges this took place on the taxpayer dime.
Further, it alleges Boebert met up with Navarro Ratzlaff in the district office, in a car for which Navarro Ratzlaff collected mileage reimbursements, and in hotel rooms paid for by Boebert’s campaign.
It makes similar allegations about two other aides.
Then comes the money. According to the complaint, after Navarro Ratzlaff left the office and told Boebert she planned to file an ethics complaint of her own, a payment of about $200,000 followed in March 2025.
The author says he doesn’t know where the money came from. The passage explaining how he verified the payment is redacted.
Now the caveats, because they matter. The complaint was filed by David Wheeler, who runs American Muckrakers, a PAC that’s been after Boebert for years. The evidence rests on unnamed sources, and Raw Story, which reported the filing, hasn’t independently verified the figures.
Boebert’s office didn’t respond. Her ex-husband, Jayson, did: “I think it is all a fairy tale made up propaganda.”
Here’s what isn’t in dispute. House rules flatly bar members from sexual relationships with employees they supervise. Consent isn’t a defense.
And it was Boebert herself who, signing the Epstein files discharge petition last year, demanded to know why members who’d paid off staffers were still serving.
“What were they covering up? What were they paying off?” she asked.
Good questions, congresswoman. The Ethics Committee now has them in writing.
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They came up out of the Foggy Bottom Metro station by the hundreds, then by the thousands, carrying signs and shutting down traffic as they walked.
By sunset Friday, the crowd outside the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts had linked arms and wrapped as much of the fenced-off marble building as it could reach.
The chant, per the Washington Post: “Hands off!”
Actress Lynda Carter addressed the crowd. The demand was simple: remove Donald Trump as chairman of the center’s board.
One local arts worker set up a chalkboard with Trump’s name scrawled across it hundreds of times. Protesters lined up to erase the names and draw hearts in their place.
How did it come to this? On Tuesday, a federal judge again blocked Trump’s hand-picked board from putting his name on the building. The board responded by voting to close it, citing storm damage.
A day later, Trump warned the center “will end up being ripped down” if he isn’t properly recognized, and was photographed aboard Air Force One studying a printout that appears to read “Kennedy Center DEMOLISHED.”
A judge has since ordered 30 days’ notice before anyone touches the structure.
Trump spent Friday insisting he’s the hero of the story. “No, no, I came there to save it,” he said.
The people on the pavement weren’t buying it.
“This may be the line that no one expected,” one protester told the AP, “but this is where the line is going to be.”
Trump tore down the East Wing and barely anyone got there in time. This time, thousands of people are standing in the way.
Rep. Robert Garcia isn’t being subtle about what happens if Democrats win the House in November.
“The single biggest part of our work is going to be focused on the Trump crime family,” the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee told the Financial Times.
And to the corporations that’ve spent two years cozying up: “If you are involved in any way with the Trumps, and if you’re part of an American business, you’re going to respond to the Congress.”
Garcia, who’d chair the committee and hold its subpoena power, says he believes Trump has “committed crimes” and “impeachable offences.”
He has questions for Don Jr. Why did companies backed by his firm, 1789 Capital, land Pentagon money, including a $620 million loan to a rare earths startup shortly after 1789 invested? Why did a Russian businessman spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on his wedding festivities in the Bahamas?
Don Jr.’s spokesperson says he’s had no involvement in any government negotiations. The White House says there are “no conflicts of interest.”
Sure.
Also on Garcia’s list: Jared Kushner, Steve Witkoff, Howard Lutnick, Elon Musk’s DOGE, the crypto deals that’ve made the Trump family at least $1 billion, and who’s paying for Trump’s ballroom. That donor list alone runs through Amazon, Apple, Google and Palantir.
“We will get the information, whether it’s directly from the Trumps or through those that engage with them,” he said.
“The scale and the scope of it is so outrageous,” he added. Nobody who’s been paying attention would argue.
If this morning’s edition told you something the billionaire-owned outlets would rather keep quiet, that is exactly the point. A president who disabled reporters’ badges because he didn’t like their stories. A congresswoman accused of paying to keep a staffer quiet. Thousands of Americans linking arms around a national memorial to protect it from the man running it. And a family business the next Congress wants to put under oath. Facebook and X have effectively shut down our distribution, because two billionaires decided what you get to see before November, and becoming a paid subscriber is the most direct way to fight back against them. It puts this in your inbox where no algorithm can touch it. We’re halfway through September and behind on our goal, so subscribe or upgrade right now for about 22 cents a day. Share this newsletter with someone who needs to see it. Every subscriber makes it harder for them to shout this down. Become a paid subscriber right now to make your support go even further.
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.
I’m John Byrne. Thanks for fighting, and I’ll see you tomorrow.
