Raw Story

The way President Donald Trump honored late Sen. Lindsey Graham's coffin left onlookers disgusted online.

Sen. Lindsey Graham was mourned at his Washington, D.C., funeral on Tuesday after he died unexpectedly at the age of 71 earlier this month. Trump created plenty of noteworthy moments at the occasion, including by apparently falling asleep and by delivering a stunning ad-lib during the tribute.

However, he also drew online criticism by tapping Graham's casket as he passed. In a post on X, journalist and policy consultant Adam Cochran called Trump a "performative jack—" who "thinks he's testing a watermelon."

"Biggest narcissist ever," posted New York Times opinion writer Elizabeth Spiers on Bluesky. "Has Trump ever felt sad for someone else ever? If he has, it has never come up in any profile or coverage of him — going back to the mid 80s."

"Press F to pay respect," joked writer Aidan Moher.

"It's called the Narcissist's Knock, reserved for moments when a person incapable of giving a crap about another human being pretends to give a crap about another human being and fails spectacularly," posted writer Rex Huppke.

"One last pat on the head of the loyal senator who gave up his dignity for TV hits and free hats," mocked journalist Mike Rothschild.

"This is the sort of thing you do when you're the only one at the funeral who knows that the deceased is actually still alive in the coffin and you want to taunt them once more before the first shovel of dirt lands," wrote historian Charles Louis Richter.

"Biggest narcissist ever. (Not that Graham deserves an outpouring of feeling.)," Elizabeth Spiers, an opinion writer for the New York Times, posted on Bluesky. "Has Trump ever felt sad for someone else, ever? If he has, it has never come up in any profile or coverage of him — going back to the mid 80s."

President Donald Trump couldn't even stay on topic during one of the simplest moments of his eulogy for the late Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) on Tuesday.

Graham was almost always a loyal supporter of the president — yet despite this, he went out of his way to argue with the pre-prepared remarks about how great Graham was.

"Virtually everyone liked Lindsey," said Trump. "Well, not everybody. But it sounds good. I have to be honest. I have to veer from this for a second."

This comment earned instant mockery from commenters on social media.

"I love how @realDonaldTrump is such a stickler for accuracy," wrote conservative lawyer turned anti-Trump activist and former congressional candidate George Conway.

"Trump objecting to the work of his speechwriters again," wrote Vanity Fair Washington correspondent Aidan McLaughlin.

"All those years of Lindsey sucking up to this psycho, and this is the thanks he gets," wrote podcaster and political personality Jo Carducci, better known as "JoJoFromJerz."

"He cared so much about Lindsey he didn’t read his prepared remarks before the funeral," wrote Democratic strategist Adam Parkhomenko.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s controversial plan to test service members’ testosterone levels may end up having an ironic side effect on male soldiers, two medical experts said in a new report.

Dr. Adrian Dobs, a professor of medicine and oncology at John Hopkins University School of Medicine explained the issue to The Intercept Friday.

“We’re sort of creating a dependency on testosterone,” Dobs said. “Men who take testosterone will have a reduction in their sperm counts.”

Last week, Hegseth announced a new policy that would see all U.S. service members over the age of 30 be tested annually for testosterone levels, boasting about his efforts to transform the Defense Department into the “High-T Department of War.”

The policy is already facing legal challenges, with a federal judge on Wednesday ordering the Trump administration to explain how the new testing policy squares with its existing ban on hormone treatment for transgender service members.

Per the policy, testosterone screening will be mandatory for all service members over 30, though service members under 30 may voluntarily get screened as well.

The concern among medical experts, such as Dr. Alvin Matsumoto, a professor emeritus at the University of Washington School of Medicine, is that mandatory screening may produce unreliable results given that a person’s testosterone levels can vary widely depending on a number of factors, including the time of day and recent meals.

“That creates a risk under a program that will routinely screen otherwise healthy troops and make testosterone therapy available to those subsequently diagnosed with a deficiency,” The Intercept’s report reads.

Furthermore, the policy would almost certainly result in some service members being given testosterone replacement therapy when not medically necessary.

“Here we have men who are in their prime of reproduction, and we’re causing a drop in their sperm counts when there really may not be sufficient benefit,” Dobs said.

The Trump administration's newly launched "mega master" court system has quickly devolved into mass chaos that leaves defendants, guards, lawyers and judges "terrified," according to a new report.

"Attorneys and former judges say mega master hearings serve as the latest tool for the Trump administration to deport large numbers of people," the Chicago Sun-Times reported Friday. "This time by causing chaos and confusion in the courts."

Courtroom 11 at Chicago's immigration court barely seats 25 people — but one July morning saw 60 people, mostly unrepresented asylum seekers, crammed in wall-to-wall by 9:10 a.m., the Sun-Times reported.

This is a "mega master" calendar hearing, a new procedural format instituted by the Trump administration at the end of May that packs between 100 and 185 people into a single judge's morning docket — up from an average of just 30 before the change.

Chicago's courthouse at 55 E. Monroe has logged more of these mass hearings than any other immigration court in the country, according to immigration scholar Austin Kocher.

The scale has created conditions former immigration judges call dangerous.

On days when multiple mega hearings are scheduled simultaneously, hundreds of people — including families with strollers — spill into hallways narrower than an adult's arm span, waiting for hours to be called.

On one recent Thursday, roughly 200 people queued in the heat outside courtrooms designed to hold a fraction of that number.

"This is not good," one guard was overheard saying. Former judges have raised concerns that the overcrowded hallways amount to a fire hazard.

Attorneys and former judges argue the hearings serve to discourage immigrants from showing up at all, then fast-tracking deportations for those who don't.

In June, for the first time since 2019, more immigrants missed their Chicago court dates than attended — 58 percent of the 10,370 people summoned nationwide in June were marked absent, according to data from the nonprofit Mobile Pathways. Missing court can trigger an automatic in absentia deportation order.

Compounding the pressure, notice periods have collapsed. Median lead time for a Chicago hearing fell to just 34 days in June, down from 229 days in May.

The Justice Department, which oversees immigration courts, says the expanded scheduling is meant to clear long-standing backlogs.

But former judge Elizabeth Treacy, who resigned in June after presiding over three mega hearings with up to 150 people each, said the volume makes errors — and injustice — nearly inevitable.

She noted that indigenous asylum seekers with limited Spanish fluency are especially unlikely to speak up when they don't understand proceedings in a crowded, intimidating room.

“It’s not a coincidence, but another tactic to facilitate deportations,” said Stephanie Spiro, an attorney with the National immigration Justice Center.

“It’s much more efficient for the government to deport people without even having to read any briefs, without having to have a full hearing, without having to schedule hundreds of people, and actually listen to their claims, and afford them due process.”

That fear caused Carolina, an immigrant from Venezuela who just gave birth, to question whether she should show up for her hearing.

She and her husband eventually decided to risk deportation and bring their three children to court.

“I was terrified," she said.

Pro-MAGA Sen. Roger Marshall (R-KS) complained about facing a "purity test" from angry Republican voters, including his own parents, who he says were indoctrinated by watching Fox News.

Marshall, a top backer of President Donald Trump, is a Kansas senator who voted to reject the 2020 election results and is seeking re-election this fall.

The senator made the confession about tension in his family during a recent interview on 13th & Park, a podcast produced by Ballard Partners, a pro-Trump lobbying firm with a history of alleged ethical breaches.

"Well, I think the number one I hear is the cost of gas, the cost of groceries," Marshall said, describing what Kansans tell him when he travels the state. "Homes are unaffordable."

"The anger runs deeper than economics," he added. "I've never seen people so mad."

"And if you think about it, the job of the national media — what they try to do is make my parents mad," Marshall told the podcast, blaming right-wing media. "They sit home, and they watch Fox News and Newsmax, and guess what? They're mad at me. They're mad at John Thune. They're mad at Mitch McConnell. They're mad at Donald."

"There's this purity test. I feel this anger," he lamented. "More than ever before... It's so easy to create hate."

Marshall's parents join a growing group of voters who are enraged at the senator.

In March 2025, Marshall walked out of a town hall in Oakley, Kansas — a rural community in a county where Trump won 85% of the vote — after constituents booed him and shouted "You're not done," according to local reporting.

"We don't have time for everyone to stand up. I do got two more commitments today. I appreciate everybody making the drive out and God bless America," Marshall told the crowd before walking out to boos and shouts.

"That is a damn shame," said Chuck Nunn, a local resident who raised concerns about Trump administration cuts to veterans' services, as the crowd applauded.

On his own Senate website, Marshall has declared, "We all want to make America great again."

State election records show he faces a Republican primary on Aug. 4 and a general election on Nov. 3.

President Donald Trump's "fix is in" rhetoric could compel his biggest fans to skip voting, a new analysis contends.

Miles Taylor, chief of staff in the Department of Homeland Security during the president's first term, argued Thursday that Trump's constant pushing on the SAVE America Act is fundamentally flawed.

That's terrible news for GOP candidates on the November ballot who are already looking at an uphill battle, Taylor said.

Trump's approval ratings have collapsed to disastrous levels, recent reports show.

A recent poll shows just 30 percent of Americans approve of his performance—catastrophic territory achievable only when millions of your own supporters have abandoned you. Most damaging: his economic approval ratings hit their worst marks of either his term.

With that in mind, Taylor argued Trump was making a big mistake.

"The real headline is that the president is sabotaging his own side’s turnout in the very act of seeking to meddle in the election," he wrote. "It’s like a burglary that’s backfiring in real time. Trump is trying mightily to break into democracy’s back door but making such a racket with his crowbar that he’s woken up the whole neighborhood."

Pointing to Trump's infamous 2024 claim he would fix elections "so good, you're not gonna have to vote," Taylor argued the president's boast will boost complacency when he should be pushing for his MAGA fans to get off the couch.

Meanwhile, Trump has motivated Democrats.

"Every lever he pulls to 'tilt' the playing field risks convincing his own voters they don’t need to show up at all," he wrote before predicting, "Again, each of these election-rigging maneuvers tells the MAGA base: relax, the fix is in! Unfortunately for the Republican Party, the data shows its voters are getting the message. They’re becoming more indifferent."

He then quipped, "The president wanted to mount the biggest midterm election operation in modern history. Well, congratulations, Mr. President. You did it. Your 'get out the vote' operation is massive. The only catch is that it’s inspiring the opposition, not your own team."