Election Theft

It's another "wait, what?" moment from this Administration. We learn that

Attorney General Pam Bondi on Saturday outlined terms to “restore the rule of law” in Minnesota, just hours after a second person was fatally shot by federal immigration officers in Minneapolis.

“You and your office must restore the rule of law, support ICE officers, and bring an end to the chaos in Minnesota,” Bondi wrote in a letter to Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D) obtained by multiple outlets. “Fortunately, there are common sense solutions to these problems that I hope we can accomplish together.”

In the letter, Bondi pressed Walz to hand over information about the state’s welfare programs amid mounting scrutiny over a massive fraud scandal, and she asked that he get rid of immigration sanctuary policies and let the Department of Justice see voter rolls “to confirm that Minnesota’s voter registration practices comply with federal law.”

“I am confident that these simple steps will help bring back law and order to Minnesota and improve the lives of Americans,” Bondi said in the letter.

One of the three steps the Attorney General proposed is for Minnesota to

allow the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice to accesss voter rolls to confirm that Minnesota's voter registration practices comply with federal law as authorized by the Civil Rights Act of 1960. Fulfilling this common sense request will beteter guarantee free and fair elections and boost confidence in the rule of law.

You might wonder what in the world voter rolls have to do with the "chaos in Minnesota."  Allow Connecticult's junior senator to make sense of this:

 

Pam Bondi just sent a letter to Minnesota officials saying ICE will leave if the state turns over its voter database to Trump.

Guess what? This has never been about safety or immigration. It’s a pretext for Trump to take over elections in swing states. pic.twitter.com/BHrQJUECJY

— Chris Murphy 🟧 (@ChrisMurphyCT) January 25, 2026

One of those stipulations, Murphy remarks, was

that the state turn over its voter rolls to the federal government. This has never been about public saety. Minneapolis is a much less safe place today because ICE is there. this is likely bout trying to rig and steal the election. Donald Trump is wildly unpopular. He's not committed to democracy and knows the only way his movement is to retain power, the only way that his corporate allies retain power, his billioner allies retain power this November, is for Trump to steal the election and so he's saying to Minneapolis "if you don't give me control of the voter rolls, then ICE isn't leaving and you can see if he gets away with it in Minnesota, he's likely going to try it in places like Philadelphia and Pheoenix, other key cities in swing states.... the underlying game here may be to steal the 2026 election.

Actually, Murphy was being overly generous to the Attorney General. She offered no quid pro quo and no olive branch at all, avoiding a promise, even a wish, that Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents could under any circumstances be withdrwn. She concluded by commenting "Whether state and local politicians stand in the way or not, we will work every day to protect Americans and make Minnesota Safe Again. I request that you joinus in this effort."

Heads we win, tails you lose. However, the Senator correctly identified the Administration's goal as retaining power and its means the acquisitition of voter rolls. In The Guardian, Austin Sarat, a professor jurisprudence and political science, recently explained 

Donald Trump touted his accomplishments and suggested that they were so great that “we shouldn’t even have an election” in November. Not surprisingly, that comment made headlines.

But it is at best a distraction from the real threat: the United States will have elections this year, but they will not be free and fair.

Far more important than his musings about calling off the midterms was what the president told the New York Times in another Oval Office interview. As the Times noted, he said that “he regretted not ordering the National Guard to seize voting machines in swing states after his loss in the 2020 election.”

Talking about the capacity of the national guard to execute that plan, he explained: “I don’t know that they are sophisticated enough … I’m not sure that they’re sophisticated enough in the ways of crooked Democrats, and the way they cheat, to figure that out.”

As the Times observed, “Mr. Trump’s expression of regret … was ... a warning sign that he had not given up on the idea that voting machines were dangerous or that they could be seized in an effort to curb fraud.” We should take that warning seriously.

Sarat pointed out that Robert Kagan, a historian and senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, maintains

“There’s no chance in the world that Donald Trump is going to allow himself to lose in the 2026 elections, because that would be the end of his ability to wield total power. Unless they got up on the rooftop and said: ‘We are going to subvert the 2026 election,’ they could not be more obvious about what their intention is"

The administration’s “wide-ranging efforts seek to expand on some of the strategies he and his advisers and allies used to try to reverse the 2020 results”. Moreover, Trump and his allies are much better prepared to rig the 2026 election or discredit the results than they were in 2020.

This unsurprisingly reflects proposals of Project 2025, of which

One was to transfer the responsibility for investigating and prosecuting election crimes to the Department of Justice’s criminal division. Liza Gordon-Rogers, a research associate at the Center for Science and Democracy, argues that his shift would “significantly jeopardize the United States’ multi-racial democracy by changing the focus from interference with voting rights to criminalizing the act of voting itself”.

Project 2025 also called for the federal government to withdraw from arrangements that in the past have helped election officials do their jobs. It recommended what Gordon-Rogers calls “substantive cuts to the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), which has provided essential cyber and physical security support to election offices across the country to make sure our elections are secure”.

Sarat wrote prior to the killing of Minnesota's Alex Pretti to argue that the Democratic Party has been complacent, evidently confident that the mid-term elections will be business as usual. That may change with the continuing assault on Minneapolis. Senator Murphy concludes

I have been arguing all weekend that the Senate should not pass funding for the Deparment of Homeland Security, first and foremost because this is a rogue agency that's operating outside of the law and it'ss killing American citizens but also because the underlying aim here may be to steal the 202 election. And no Senator, but in particular no Democratic senator, should play a part in that.  

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Peculiar Perspective for a President

President Donald Trump is an authoritarian- that we all can see. Yet, aside from acknowledging the obvious, we would benefit from pinpointing his underlying motive (s).

Donald Trump's guiding philosophy is zero-sum. In his approach to tariffs, to Ukraine, personal financial dealings, and to other matters, it is clear that he believes that he, his family, or his fellow plutocrats benefit only to the extent that an individual or a group suffers.

But to what end does Trump apply this philosophy? There probably are two and, fortunately for Democrats contemplating a strategy to checkmate or neuter this man of evil, they are in harmony and compatible with each other.

Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy has been promoting one dominant feature of the Trump presidency, here posted on Reddit in graphic form:

A week ago today

Democratic strategist James Carville ripped into President Trump’s recent moves on Ukraine and tariffs, accusing the president of deliberately hurting the country. 

“He’s actually trying to harm the United States,” Carville charged in a video released Tuesday, pointing to the president’s 25 percent tariffs on imports from Canada and Mexico as well as his explosive Oval Office meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky last week. 

Carville, a longtime vocal critic of Trump’s, compared the president’s actions to that of other past Republican leaders he has strongly criticized, such as George W. Bush during the Iraq War. 

“However, I never would for one minute thought George W. Bush wanted to harm the United States,” Carville said. “I don’t think Trump likes the United States. I honestly believe that the most compelling answer to all of this is he doesn’t like this country.” 

The Democratic strategist ticked through his various criticisms of Trump, asserting the GOP president “doesn’t like the Constitution,” international alliances that have existed for decades or the separation of powers within the U.S. federal government.  

Carville may have been referring in part to Trump's Truth Social post of December 3, 2022 when the then ex-President (his emphasis, obviously) wrote

Do you throw the Presidential Election Results of 2020 OUT and declare the RIGHTFUL WINNER, or do you have a NEW ELECTION? A Massive Fraud of this type and magnitude allows for the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution. Our great 'Founders' did not want, and would not condone, False & Fraudulent Elections!

Additionally, Carville noted

We know he believes that we’re a terrible country, we’re terrible people … we know that. We know, like many people, he didn’t want to serve in armed forces, but we know that. We know that he is trying to destroy the military by getting rid of every competent person he could find, we know that. We know today that he doesn’t care about high prices. 

“What could explain all that?” he continued. “I think the simplest and most direct explanation is the president of the United States hates the United States.” 

On December 3, 2022

“Do you throw the Presidential Election Results of 2020 OUT and declare the RIGHTFUL WINNER, or do you have a NEW ELECTION? A Massive Fraud of this type and magnitude allows for the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution,” Trump wrote in a post on the social network Truth Social and accused “Big Tech” of working closely with Democrats. “Our great ‘Founders’ did not want, and would not condone, False & Fraudulent Elections!”

KISS: Keep it Simple, Stupid. Sometimes (though not usually) the simplest explanation is most accurate. I hate to be repetitive, but not enough to avoid being repetitive. And this simply must mean something: That was over two years ago, when Joe Biden was President, and so it is even more telling that at his first Cabinet meeting, on February 26, the once and current President stated "this country has gotten bloated, fat, and disgusting. I think we had the worst President in the history of our country. He just left office."

Well, no, he's still in office. With contempt for the country and unparalleled corruption, Donald Trump is an easy target. Some may take the low road and mock and lampoon him, a la Tim Walz. Others, such as Senator Murphy, can use social media and pictorial representations to make it clear to the country that the man is a crook and con man. By all means draw a line from hatred of the country to looting the country. All the evidence is available- only willingness, effort, and a little creativity are necessary.

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Menacing

In what should be alarming news, Qatar-owned Al Jazeera reports

Saudi Arabia’s Kingdom Holding Company (KHC), along with the private office of Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, will continue their ownership of Twitter shares valued at $1.89bn after Elon Musk’s takeover of the social media company, making them jointly the second largest investors, according to a statement released by the Saudi prince.

Bin Talal, who shared the statement on his Twitter account on Friday, and made reference to Musk as “Chief Twit”, stated that the deal was in line with the long-term strategy of KHC.

The company was founded by bin Talal, and is 16.9 percent owned by the Saudi Arabian sovereign wealth fund.

As of January 2022, Saudi Arabia, with a population of 34.8 million, had the eighth most Twitter users of any country in the world, with more than 12 million users.

But auspiciously:

Today I am requesting the Committee on Foreign Investment — which reviews acquisitions of U.S. businesses by foreign buyers — to conduct an investigation into the national security implications of Saudi Arabia's purchase of Twitter.https://t.co/IDwnKGaxt7

— Chris Murphy (@ChrisMurphyCT) October 31, 2022

And in further good news

BRAVO: Our 🇨🇦 Ambassador @BobRae just took the floor at the UN today on behalf of 50 nations to call out China's “arbitrary and discriminatory detention of Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in Xinjiang” which “may constitute crimes against humanity.” /1 https://t.co/A6KgZvQCXb pic.twitter.com/HUh3KEoLOj

— Hillel Neuer (@HillelNeuer) October 31, 2022

Forty-nine nations joined Canada in its statement. Among those notably absent was the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.  So now the regime is supporting mainland China, cutting OPEC+ oil production to aid Russia, continuing its stake in Twitter, and is once again buying arms from the USA. It's a national security threat we'll need to acknowledge, preferably sooner rather than later. 

 

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Mental Health Dodge

At a news conference on Wednesday headlined by Texas governor Greg Abbott (without Costello)

"The gunman was 18 years old and reportedly a high-school dropout. Reportedly, there has been no criminal history identified yet," Abbott said. "He may have had a juvenile record, but that is yet to be determined."

He added: "There is no known mental-health history of the gunman."

But minutes later, when asked a question about the role that Texas gun laws might have played in the gunman's ability to purchase the weapons he used in the massacre, Abbott pivoted the conversation away from guns and back to mental health.

The Republican governor began by emphasizing that the ability of an 18-year-old to purchase a long gun had been a Texas law for more than 60 years.

"Why is it for the majority of those 60 years, we did not have school shootings? And why is it that we do now?" Abbott said.

Despite acknowledging that he didn't have any easy answers, Abbott continued, offering an explanation.

"What I do know, in talking to the leaders here, as well as leaders around the state, one thing that has substantially changed is the status of mental health in our communities," he said. "We, as a state, we, as a society, need to do a better job with mental health."

He added: "Anybody who shoots somebody else has a mental-health challenge, period."

Well, no. And no. And did I mention "no?" Fortunately for Texans, Greg Abbott, who presides over "the worst state in the U.S. for access to mental health care," doesn't believe what he said.

Neither does Sunny Hostin of The View, who on Thursday applauded the interruption of that news conference by the  state's Democratic gubernatorial nominee, Beto O'Rourke, by noting (at 3:09) in part

They're trying to blame it on mental illness. Let's remember that people that have mental illness are ten times more likely to be the victims of crime, not the perpetrators of crime. I am so sick of this freakin' narrative about mental illness....

The assailant was so mentally ill and so impulsive that he knew to wear a tactical vest, evidently in an (unsuccessful) effort to avoid being shot.  The per capita firearm ownership in this nation is almost twice as high as in any other, No evidence suggests that mental health problems are far greater in the USA than in any other. But, it must be mental illness.  Abandoning tact for truth, Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy explained

Spare me the bullshit about mental illness. We don’t have any more mental illness than any other country in the world. You cannot explain this through a prism of mental illness, because we don’t — we’re not an outlier on mental illness. We’re an outlier when it comes to access to firearms and the ability of criminals and very sick people to get their hands on firearms. That’s what makes America different.

 

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Nothing Doing

Politico reports

Democratic lawmakers called for swift congressional action in response to the Las Vegas shooting that left at least 59 dead — the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history — with Sen. Chris Murphy saying it is “time for Congress to get off its ass and do something” on gun control.

Murphy, who led a filibuster on the Senate floor last June in protest of legislative inaction following the Pulse club shooting, called it “cruelly hollow” for politicians to not back up their words of sympathy with a governmental response.

“This must stop,” Murphy said in a statement Monday morning. “It is positively infuriating that my colleagues in Congress are so afraid of the gun industry that they pretend there aren’t public policy responses to this epidemic.”

He added: “It’s time for Congress to get off its ass and do something.”

Well, that won't happen, and there are two reasons, one well understood and one not.

Both the GOP popular base and the most powerful lobby in the USA would militantly oppose any effort to control firearms. Jonathan Swan 

asked Steve Bannon whether he could imagine Trump pivoting to the left on guns after the Las Vegas massacre. "Impossible: will be the end of everything," Bannon texted. When asked whether Trump's base would react worse to this than they would if he supported an immigration amnesty bill, Bannon replied: "as hard as it is to believe actually worse."

Swan points out that both of the President's sons are very pro-gun and- unlike mainstream Republicans and organizations- the National Rifle Association stayed loyal to Trump throughout the campaign.

Oddly enough, Swan still believes Trump might oppose congressional Republicans' efforts to loosen restrictions on silencers. However, a more realistic (and cynical) Steve M. recognizes

It's hard to imagine a more Trump-like political organization than the NRA. Both are relentlessly on offense. Both threaten their friends (who'd better not show any disloyalty) while brutalizing their enemies (who are deemed less than human because they dare to put up a challenge). Both claim they're the only bulwark against the apocalypse, which both claim is amok in the streets as we speak. ..

Of course, Trump has tossed aside people whose eagerness for a brawl resonates with his own -- Bannon, Mike Flynn. But they embarrassed him, or failed him, or tried to steal his spotlight. The NRA doesn't do that. It stays in its corner, pumping out propaganda to its loyalists -- and remaining loyal to Trump.

And what would Trump gain by breaking ranks with an organization that's more popular than he is? 

That's America's real shame -- no matter what the NRA does, it still has a remarkably high level of support. 

All of that is sad, but true.  Less well understood- and rarely if ever acknowledged- is that there simply is no constituency for gun safety legislation.

Senator Murphy cares. But he is from Connecticut, and memory of the Sandy Hook massacre focuses the attention. Additionally, Murphy is a Democrat and Connecticut is one of the few states where worship of  the Second Amendment is not a prerequisite for political survival. And despite efforts by Gabby Gifford and husband Mark Kelly, or Michael Bloomberg, there is no organization on the gun left to rival the NRA.

There are few if any other states in which the need to keep firearms away from dangerous individuals or to restrict weapons with no legitimate purpose other than to law enforcement is a salient issue. There also are very few individuals for whom gun control is a defining issue.

In the wake of Hillary Clinton's  stunning defeat, two factions dominate the quarrel over Democratic Party policy.  One group wants to strengthen the appeal to people who in recent years have been most enthusiastic about, and most faithful to, the Party's candidates. Such as Barack Obama, Bill and Hillary Clinton, and the DNC emphasize the interests of blacks, hispanics, gays ("LGBT"), women without children, educated individuals in the knowledge/information sector, and others who have been traditionally disadvantaged in American society.

The other group, represented by the likes of Bernie Sanders, the Congressional Progressive Caucus, and Robert Reich, prefers an emphasis upon groups such as the lower middle class and working class (especially whites) whose support for the Democratic Party has been eroding for decades, as demonstrated by Donald Trump's dramatic victory.  These individuals generally have been left behind by privatization, outsourcing, "free" trade, and other hallmarks of globalization.

Except after a mass shooting, rarely does any prominent (or not prominent) member of either faction say anything about guns. Anything.  There is simply no Democratic interest group, whether organized labor, blacks, immigrants, women's rights  supporters, environmentalists, criminal justice reformers, students,or some other for whom the issue is dominant. None. Additionally, when someone such as Senator Joe Manchin invokes the interests of "rural" Americans, he's not talking about limiting access to dangerous weapons (a clueless Tom Perez avoiding the issue in April, below).

There are two obvious lessons. Chris Murphy is- courageousl-, spitting into the wind. And the best that can be expected of Donald Trump is nothing.









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