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UltraViolet Says Rep. Paul Gosar's Violent Tweets Against Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Warrant Expulsion from Congress, Permanent Twitter Ban
Gender advocacy group calls on Speaker Pelosi to begin Rep. Gosar’s removal from Congress, urges Twitter to ban Gosar
WASHINGTON
Statement from Bridget Todd, communications director at UltraViolet, a leading national gender justice organization, in response to Rep. Paul Gosar's (R-AZ) recent tweet, which depicts an animated video of Gosart killing Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and swinging swords at President Joe Biden:
"In any other workplace, a person would be fired immediately for sharing content threatening violence and murdering a coworker. There should be no difference in Congress.
"Rep. Gosar's tweets depicting the murder of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and violence against President Biden are horrific. That's why we're calling on Speaker Pelosi to begin removal proceedings against Gosar from Congress without delay.
"While it's no secret that social media platforms can be toxic places for women of color, Gosar's perpetuation violence against Rep. Ocasio-Cortez on Twitter is completely unacceptable.
"Paul Gosar has used Twitter to spread lies, misinformation, and retweet neo-Nazis. The reality is that he should have been banned from Twitter a long time ago. If this doesn't encourage Twitter to take action and protect its users, what will?"
UltraViolet is a powerful and rapidly growing community of people mobilized to fight sexism and create a more inclusive world that accurately represents all women, from politics and government to media and pop culture.
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'Beyond Crazy': FBI Summons State Election Officials to Secretive Meeting After Trump Threat to ‘Nationalize’ Midterms
Nevada Secretary of State Cisco Aguilar, who received the invite, said that what the president is "trying to do is really disrupt the midterm election.”
Feb 06, 2026
State election officials were left unnerved after being summoned by the FBI to a mysterious conference to discuss "preparations" for this year's midterm elections, which President Donald Trump has recently called for Republicans to "nationalize" in violation of the Constitution.
On Tuesday, election officials in all 50 states received an email from Kellie M. Hardiman, who identified herself as an “FBI Election Executive.”
Hardiman said the officials were invited to a call on February 25 with “your election partners” at the FBI, the Department of Justice (DOJ), the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the US Postal Inspection Service (USPIS), and the Election Assistance Commission (EAC).
The email, obtained via a public records request by Matt Berg of Crooked Media, did not specify the purpose of the meeting other than to say it was "to prepare for the 2026 US midterm elections."
Hardiman added that the FBI and other agencies "would like to invite you to a call where we can discuss our preparations for the cycle, as well as updates and resources we can provide to you and your staff.”
At the end of the email, she reiterated, "We look forward to speaking with you in support of the 2026 midterm elections."
Berg said he contacted the FBI for comment, to which a spokesperson responded: "Thank you for reaching out. The FBI has no comment.”
The email has heightened fears that the Trump administration is meddling in the midterms or planning to do so; he has suggested on multiple occasions that the elections should be “canceled” outright. Republican strategists are reportedly increasingly worried that the GOP could lose control of both the US Senate and the House.
Although the Constitution plainly states that elections are to be run by state governments, Trump earlier this week said Republicans should "nationalize" elections and “take control of the voting in at least 15 places" led by Democrats.
Nevada Secretary of State Cisco Aguilar told Berg he'd never heard of a conference call like this. He said he wrote back to Hardiman: “Is this real? Given what’s occurred over the last two weeks, I am concerned.”
“I was just like, ‘What is this?’ It’s the strangest thing in the world that the FBI is reaching out to us and trying to coordinate election security,” Aguilar said. "It's never happened in the past. The casualness which they did… it was just beyond crazy.”
A former DOJ official told Berg that while it is normal for the department to monitor elections, the email and conference call were highly unusual: “I can’t imagine why it would be coordinated in that way," he said.
Another official who received the email told NBC News that the message was “unusual and unexpected."
Speaking of Hardiman, the official said, “No one has heard of this person—and we’re all wondering what an 'FBI Election Executive' is." NBC reported that a LinkedIn page for Hardiman showed she was appointed to the position seven months ago.
The inclusion of the Department of Homeland Security as one of the election "partners" is also noteworthy, given the recent suggestion by Trump ally Steve Bannon that the president will "have ICE surround the polls," referring to Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
The agency has increasingly acted as a sort of paramilitary force for Trump in the localities where it's been deployed, most recently in Minnesota.
After federal agents killed three US citizens and provoked furious protests, Trump offered to withdraw agents from the state, but only if it turned over its voting rolls to the federal government.
At Trump's apparent direction, the FBI raided an election hub in Atlanta last week to seize materials from the 2020 election to further his already disproven claims that his loss to former President Joe Biden was the result of fraud.
And earlier this week, it was reported that back in May, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard sent a team to Puerto Rico to seize voting machines in an effort to investigate another outlandish Trump claim that they were hacked by Venezuela. Sources with knowledge of the investigation told Reuters that no evidence of that conspiracy was uncovered.
“It’s unconstitutional for the president to do what he wants to do,” Aguilar said. “We understand that what he’s trying to do is really disrupt the midterm election, because the ‘26 election is critical to the ‘28 election.”
Aguilar said officials in Nevada are “constantly preparing and strategizing" for whatever Trump might attempt and said, “We have to prepare for that litigation at a moment’s notice, and we will be prepared in Nevada to push back."
Danny Miller, an attorney who has worked for Renew Democracy and Democracy Forward, expressed fear about Trump's coordination of federal law enforcement agencies to patrol elections, given that he has already supported one violent attempt to overturn his loss in 2020.
"Trump will try to do something far worse than January 6th before all is said and done," Miller said. "It’s up to civil society to use all the tools of democracy to stop him."
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Demonstrators Rally in Milan to Say 'FCK ICE' as Winter Olympics Kick Off
One Olympic athlete, a skier representing Britain, registered his disgust with US immigration enforcement agents by urinating the message "Fuck ICE" in the snow.
Feb 06, 2026
Hundreds of protesters gathered in the streets of Milan, Italy on Friday to protest the presence of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents at the 2026 Winter Olympics, with protesters waving "FCK ICE" signs and condemning Trump administration officials—including Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
Reuters reported that demonstrators rallying ahead of the opening ceremony could be heard "blowing plastic whistles, which have become a symbol of anti-ICE rallies in the US." The Trump administration said a small group of ICE officers would be traveling to Milan to help provide security for Vance and Rubio, who arrived in the city on Thursday.
One demonstrator, a Minnesotan currently studying in Europe, told the outlet that she "thought that this was a good opportunity to show that the rest of the world is not okay with what's happening in Minnesota."
"It's not okay to just acquiesce and go with the status quo," the protester said.
Demonstrators take part in a protest against US Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Milan, Italy on February 6, 2026. (Photo by Mattia Rinaldi/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
The protests came a day after Gus Kenworthy, a skier representing Britain, urinated the message "Fuck ICE" in the snow ahead of the winter games' opening festivities and urged Americans to pressure their representatives to rein in the agency.
"Innocent people have been murdered, and enough is enough," Kenworthy wrote on social media. "We can’t wait around while ICE continues to operate with unchecked power."
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Gallego Says ‘Grind the Country to a Halt’ With National Strike If Trump Tries to Rig Midterms
"If you take away our democratic stability, we will take away the economic stability."
Feb 06, 2026
A centrist Democratic US senator is now talking about taking drastic measures to protect democracy from President Donald Trump.
Speaking with the Court of History podcast on Thursday, Sen. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.) outlined a plan to stop Trump in case he tries to follow through on his threat to "nationalize the vote" ahead of the 2026 midterm elections or if he tried to enact ally Steve Bannon's proposal to "surround the polls" with US Immigration and Custom Enforcement (ICE) agents.
"We have to prepare for the outmost scenario, the worst scenario," said Gallego, "which is they try to either capture the ballot box as ballots are being counted, they try to stop the count, they try to surround polling places, whatever it is."
Getting more specific, Gallego said that something like a general strike along the lines of the one that took place in Minneapolis last month to protest ICE deployment in the city would be justified.
"We need to make sure that we have an ultimate response to that which, I believe, has to be a true national strike," he said, "in the sense that, if they do this, if they try to overthrow our democracy, if you are allied with democracy, do not go to work. If you’re a pilot, do not show up. If you drive a train, do not show up. If you’re a teacher, do not show up. We grind the country to a halt."
Gallego acknowledged the damage that this would do to the US economy, but said that "if we have to destroy the stock market to save democracy, we need to accept that."
He also said such an action would send an unmistakeable message to the billionaires who have given Trump their full-throated backing during his second term.
"The richest and the most powerful people in the world and in this country need to understand that that is a real possibility," he emphasized. "There is no economic stability without democratic stability. If you take away our democratic stability, we will take away the economic stability."
Gallego isn't alone in saying that concrete steps may have to be taken to protect US democracy from the president this year.
Elections expert Rick Hasen, a law professor at the University of California, said in an interview published by the New Republic on Friday that both state and city governments, as well as individual citizens, may be needed to ensure the integrity of the 2026 midterms.
"I think states and local governments need to be prepared for this," he said. "I would suggest trying to get injunctions against the federal government to keep them away. I would suggest that lawyers for voting rights groups and Democrats be prepared to go to court."
Failing that, he said that citizens must be prepared to get involved on the ground.
"I mean, it may take people in the streets protecting the offices where ballots are being tabulated," he said. "To take the Brooks Brothers riot—from the 2000 disputed election where some people were trying to storm an office where they were recounting ballots in Bush v. Gore—that would look very tame compared to what, you know, we might see in 2026."
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