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election denial
'Simply Disgusting': Netanyahu's Likud Baselessly Claims Arab Parties Stole Israeli Election
"If they don't want to let us vote, they should say so," said the mayor of one Bedouin town.
Oct 28, 2026
With Israel’s governing coalition projected to lose its majority in the Knesset following Tuesday’s vote, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud Party made the unsubstantiated claim Wednesday that Arab parties “stole” the election.
“The elections in the state of Israel were stolen by Arab parties that support terrorism and the elimination of the Jewish state through serious criminal offenses of bribery, threats, violence, forgeries, and the use of prohibited software to mobilize voters,” the party said in a statement that was shared by Netanyahu on social media.
Without going into detail, the party said it was handing “hundreds of testimonies and pieces of evidence regarding election theft in many Arab polling stations" to investigators, including what it claimed were “thousands of envelopes” containing cash and ballot slips for Ra’am, one of two Arab factions that saw surging support Tuesday.
Three Ra’am activists were arrested before polls opened Tuesday in connection with an alleged vote-buying scheme; around 24,000 shekels were recovered in envelopes containing ballot papers. Netanyahu has claimed without evidence that the men were “senior officials” in the party. It remains unclear whether investigators have found any evidence that votes were changed as a result.
Likud also said Wednesday that it had provided the police and Shin Bet with evidence of “threats and violence against polling station members” in predominantly Arab communities, as well as “multiple voting behind the curtain, voting with double identities, discrepancies between the number of envelopes and the number of voters, the use of prohibited mobilization software, and more.” The post did not include specific evidence of the claims.
"Law enforcement agencies must act with an iron fist and in an immediate manner," the party said.
Israel’s Central Elections Committee said Tuesday that it had seen no indications of systematic tampering with ballot papers and was addressing individual complaints as they arose.
Talal al-Krenawi, the mayor of the Bedouin town of Rahat, rejected Likud’s fraud allegations Wednesday, calling them “disgusting… lies and falsehoods” and accusing Netanyahu of “incitement against the Bedouins.”
"We voted properly, with the ballot papers and identity cards," he said. "I have never seen elections as clean as these. It is a disgrace and a shame."
Voters wait to cast their ballots at a polling station in the predominantly Arab city of Tayibe during Israel’s legislative election on October 27, 2026. (Photo by Ahmad Gharabli/AFP via Getty Images)
Alongside the far-right Jewish Power party led by National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, Likud tried to ban the two main Arab factions from participating in the elections, but the Supreme Court ultimately reversed that move earlier this month.
"Now that we have exercised our democratic right, we have stolen the elections? If they don't want to let us vote, they should say so," al-Krenawi said. "What they are doing is ugly. They are portraying us as thieves and cheats. It is simply disgusting."
Before voting even began, Israeli outlets reported that Likud had planned to declare the result fraudulent if Netanyahu did not emerge victorious. Likud dispatched thousands of right-wing activists to monitor polling places and undertook a program to surveil Arab voters. Haaretz reported that the party "may use the footage as false evidence for a conspiracy theory that the election was rigged."
The Yashar party, led by Gadi Eisenkot, warned Tuesday that Netanyahu was “panicking and has begun making up stories and claiming that the election is being stolen.”
Arab voters turned out in unprecedented numbers Tuesday despite reports of delays and intimidation at polling sites. Ra’am Leader Mansour Abbas accused Netanyahu of “lying and inciting against” his voters, using strong Arab turnout as a “scare tactic” to mobilize his own anti-Arab voters.
The two Arab-majority factions, Ra’am and the Joint List, were projected to win 19 seats in the 120-seat Knesset on Tuesday, potentially giving them leverage in determining whether the Jewish anti-Netanyahu opposition can form a coalition government to oust him from power.
Netanyahu’s allegations bear an eerie resemblance to US President Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn his defeat in the 2020 presidential election and to right-wing Brazilian candidate Flávio Bolsonaro’s attempt earlier this week to claim that the reelection of Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva was the result of fraud.
“What a disgusting terrorist and war criminal this close Trump family friend is,” remarked author and political analyst Seth Abramson, who has noted how other right-wing populists have copied the US president’s election denial strategy.
"You have to know nothing about complex government investigations to think... the Netanyahu regime—which hates all Arabs and wants them erased—was magically able to get credible evidence of a historic nationwide criminal conspiracy in hours," he wrote on social media.
"I hear those who say Netanyahu's replacements aren't much better," he said, "but at least—unlike Netanyahu—they're not facing years in prison on corruption charges... in most cases haven't (yet) ordered genocidal attacks, and aren't (yet) proven sociopaths."
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Election-Denying Trump Judges Preside Over Nearly Every Battleground Midterm Race: Analysis
"We must vote in numbers so overwhelming that no Trump judge could deny the truth."
Oct 27, 2026
If the Trump administration decides to challenge the outcome of any of the dozens of battleground contests in next week's midterms, there's a significant chance that one of the president's handpicked, election-denying judges will oversee the case.
That's according to a report published Tuesday by the advocacy group Demand Justice, which found that 53 of 60 battleground races for US House and Senate that will be held on November 3 "are in districts or states presided over by at least one Trump-appointed federal judge who, under oath, refused to admit that Donald Trump lost the 2020 election."
“If these judges couldn’t tell the truth about 2020, we can’t count on them to do so in 2026," said Josh Orton, president of Demand Justice. "We must vote in numbers so overwhelming that no Trump judge could deny the truth."
The report defines battleground races as Senate and House contests that analysts currently rate as either a toss up, lean Republican, or lean Democratic.
Demand Justice emphasizes that federal courts "look very different" today than they did in 2020, when the judiciary "halted Trump’s attempt to challenge the 2020 election results."
"Since then, Trump appointed Emil Bove and Jennifer Mascott to the Third Circuit, Rebecca Taibleson to the Seventh, Michael Martin to the Eastern District of Michigan, and Eric Tung to the Ninth Circuit, which hears appeals from Arizona," the report notes, pointing to courts that previously weighed 2020-related cases.
During their confirmation hearings, each of those Trump-picked judges—along with dozens of others—refused to explicitly say that Trump lost the 2020 election. As Demand Justice observed in an earlier report, Trump's judicial picks used virtually identical phrasing to evade senators' questions about the 2020 election results, saying that former President Joe Biden "was certified as the winner."
The report comes amid mounting concerns that the Trump administration could try to intervene in the midterms if the outcome is unfavorable to Trump and his Republican Party, which is seeking to maintain control of both chambers of Congress.
Demand Justice cited as an alarming example the Justice Department's lawsuit aiming at blocking certification of Alaska's US Senate election if Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan loses. Trump told reporters late last week that he ordered the DOJ to file the lawsuit, which Democratic nominee Mary Peltola is seeking to dismiss before Election Day.
“Trump's attempt to interfere in Alaska’s Senate race is a wake-up call," said Orton. "His administration will not accept election results unless the Republicans win."
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Intimidation Feared as Trump DOJ Boosts Its Own Election Monitors While Rejecting International Observers
The president also met with election denier and former county clerk Tina Peters and discussed "plans" for the election on Monday.
Oct 06, 2026
International election observers who have monitored US federal elections since 2002, in line with the practices of the vast majority of countries across North America, Europe, and Asia, said Tuesday that President Donald Trump's refusal to invite the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe to observe the November midterms was "regrettable" and "not in line" with the United States' commitments.
The decision was announced as the US Department of Justice defended the administration's plans to send its own election monitors to the polls, with Attorney General Todd Blanche insisting in an interview with Fox News on Sunday that Trump "is doing the same thing that every single administration has done in our generation and in multiple generations."
In a letter to Blanche and Harmeet K. Dhillon, the assistant attorney general for civil rights, US Reps. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) and Joe Morelle (D-NY) wrote last week that Congress authorized federal election observers in 1965 under the Voting Rights Act, with observers determining "whether persons who are entitled to vote are being permitted to vote” and “whether votes cast by persons entitled to vote are being properly tabulated."
The DOJ's Civil Rights Division also sends its attorneys to monitor elections, with observers required to remain outside polling places and notify local authorities of their presence.
But the DOJ deployed monitors to eight states over the summer to observe primary elections, and Wyoming Gov. Mark Gordon, a Republican, complained of "aggressive" and "disruptive" behavior, including demands to interview voters and attempts to access voting machines.
"In light of the DOJ’s announcement that it intends to deploy an unprecedented 1,000 monitors to polling places throughout the
country for the general election," wrote Raskin and Morelle, "the DOJ must demonstrate that it is not misusing its election monitoring program in any way and that its monitors are being used for appropriate purposes."
Some Republican officials have alluded to plans for US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to go to polling places during the midterms. The Department of Homeland Security has denied there is such a plan, but Trump, who has persistently claimed US elections are rife with so-called "voter fraud," has said he would "do anything necessary to make sure we have honest elections."
The news that the OSCE is not being invited to observe the midterms only heightened concerns that the administration may try to intimidate people who go to vote in elections that Republicans are widely expected to lose, as Trump's approval rate plummets to 32% and Americans express disdain for his war on Iran, soaring prices of everyday goods, and the violent mass deportation agenda that has turned communities upside down.
“The Trump administration’s decision not to invite international observers to the United States is deeply antithetical to the spirit of freedom, democracy, and transparency that defines our elections," said Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. “I was an official election monitor in the country of Georgia in 2012 and most recently in Bosnia and Herzegovina in 2022, so I know firsthand the importance of showing up for Allies and partners to improve the public’s confidence in election integrity. The OSCE does just that."
"I urge the Trump administration to respect the role of independent election observers and ensure that the United States holds itself to the same standards that we would expect of any other democracy," said Shaheen.
The decision to keep the OSCE from observing the elections makes the US one of only three countries in the organization, along with Russia and Belarus, to do so.
“Refusing election observers is usually something that countries in a position of weakness do, when they know that they have corrupt or unfair elections,” said Dan Baer, a former US ambassador to the OSCE during the Obama administration, told MS NOW on Tuesday. “It’s very strange for the United States, which has been historically a standard setter in free and fair elections, to refuse observers.”
On Monday, Trump also met with former Mesa County, Colorado clerk Tina Peters, who was convicted on charges of trying to breach the state's voting machines in a search for evidence that election had been committed in the 2020 election Trump lost. Democratic Gov. Jared Polis granted Peters clemency after repeated calls from Trump.
Former acting US Attorney Ed Martin told Real America's Voice that Trump and Peters were "talking about the plans" for the elections, and claimed voting machines are "compromised" because parts of them are manufactured in China and Russia.
Ed Martin says that Tina Peters met with Trump in the Oval Office today to discuss election integrity and “the plans” for the upcoming midterms elections. https://t.co/NsGuZ4UNSO
— Anna Bower (@AnnaBower) October 6, 2026
"If she's meeting with Trump to talk about the midterms," said journalist Pedro L. Gonzalez, "then there is a real non-zero chance that Trump is going to try or wants to try to do something to upend them."
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Susan Collins Votes to Advance Trump Lackey Jay Clayton for US Intelligence Chief
Hundreds of former officials warned that Clayton "has consistently shown an unwillingness to draw clear lines between the interests of the intelligence community and the political interests of the president."
Jul 28, 2026
Sen. Susan Collins, widely seen as the most vulnerable Republican senator up for reelection in November, voted on Monday to advance President Donald Trump's pick to lead the US intelligence community as he faced opposition from former national security officials and press freedom organizations.
Monday's 51-43 vote along party lines all but guarantees that Jay Clayton, currently the US attorney for the Southern District of New York, will be confirmed as director of national intelligence on Tuesday.
Collins (R-Maine), who is commonly portrayed as a moderate despite almost always voting with Trump, waved away Clayton's election denial during his Senate confirmation hearing earlier this month, when he refused to say Trump lost in 2020.
"The Office of the Director of National Intelligence does not certify elections, and he made very clear over and over again that Joe Biden had been certified as the winner of the election," Collins told reporters after the hearing. (When facing questions under oath, Trump nominees and officials often say Biden was "certified" as the 2020 winner to avoid directly contradicting the president's false claim that the election was stolen.)
Collins, who is running for a sixth Senate term, went on to say she believes Clayton "brings the experience" to the role and "did a good job" during his confirmation hearing.
Asked Susan Collins about Jay Clayton’s refusal to say Biden won in 2020.
The DNI “does not certify elections, and he made very clear over and over again that Joe Biden had been certified as the winner of the election. I'm not sure what my colleagues were seeking further.” pic.twitter.com/dlZxVS8LwY
— Manu Raju (@mkraju) July 16, 2026
Monday's procedural vote came as hundreds of former US national security and intelligence officials issued an open letter opposing Clayton's nomination, warning that he "has consistently shown an unwillingness to draw clear lines between the interests of the intelligence community and the political interests of the president who nominated him."
"Equally troubling is Mr. Clayton’s defense, during his hearing, of subpoenas issued to four journalists at The New York Times while he served as United States attorney for the Southern District of New York," the letter states. "The director of national intelligence sits at the intersection of secrecy and accountability, deciding what the public may know about the government’s most sensitive activities. A nominee who justifies forcing journalists to testify, instead of recognizing the First Amendment’s protections for a free press, does not demonstrate the sound judgment required for the office."
The Freedom of the Press Foundation (FPF), which also opposes Clayton's nomination, argued Monday that Clayton appears to have lied to lawmakers during his testimony about the subpoenas for Times journalists. The subpoenas targeted journalists who reported on the new Air Force One, a $400 million luxury jet donated by Qatar.
During his Senate testimony, Clayton insisted that he followed "the procedures we have in place to protect the First Amendment and protect the freedom of the press" prior to signing the subpoenas. But Trevor Timm, FPF's executive director, wrote Monday that "this was likely impossible."
"Given the Times’ story came out on a Wednesday and the subpoenas were issued on a Friday (after an hourslong White House meeting discussing the case with FBI Director Kash Patel), there was almost no way 'all reasonable attempts' were made before the subpoenas were issued. These investigations usually take months," Timm wrote. "It sure seemed like false testimony to us."
"But on Friday, the Department of Justice itself seems to have confirmed that Clayton lied to Congress," Timm noted. "In a court hearing in the Times subpoena case, a federal judge castigated government lawyers for an hour for making a multitude of errors when issuing the subpoenas, misleading the court, and not following the law... The DOJ didn’t even attempt to argue they took any investigative steps before issuing the subpoenas. Instead, they claimed there was an “exception” to that rule that allowed them to bypass it entirely, which left the judge flabbergasted."
"Clayton should be immediately called back to the Senate to answer for his seemingly false statement," he added.
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'Trump Is Trying to End Our Democracy': Alarm as President Attacks Elections Ahead of Midterms
"He’s reviving conspiracy theories about mail voting, pushing voter suppression, and laying the groundwork for an unprecedented federal takeover of our elections."
Jul 17, 2026
Four months out from the critical November midterms, President Donald Trump delivered a primetime address on Thursday night attempting to sow doubt about the integrity of US elections, repeating well-worn lies about the 2020 contest that he lost and claiming to have uncovered a sprawling Chinese plot to meddle in the voting process.
Trump, who has said his administration should "take over" US elections that are currently run by states, asserted in his speech that the American voting system was "left vulnerable to being rigged and stolen" by his political enemies and accused China of "illicit acquisition of 220 million US voter files" in an effort to undermine him. Trump's speech coincided with the declassification of intelligence purportedly revealing China's "sinister" scheme to disrupt US elections as well as attempts by "members of the Deep State" to "suppress and downplay" the scheme.
Experts and critics of the president said his speech cherrypicked intelligence agency findings to concoct a false, self-serving narrative about the vulnerability of US elections and the need for legislation such as the SAVE America Act, a voter suppression bill that Trump has obsessively worked to push through Congress.
Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-Ill.), a senior member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, said in a statement that Trump "selectively declassified intelligence to try to rewrite the history of an election he lost."
"Even his own document release does not support his claim that the 2020 election was stolen. It confirms what we’ve long known: Foreign adversaries targeted our democracy, but there is no evidence they changed a single vote or altered the casting or counting of ballots," said Krishnamoorthi. "President Trump lost the 2020 election fair and square. If he cared about election security, he wouldn’t be putting unqualified political loyalists in charge of our intelligence agencies or weakening the agencies responsible for protecting our elections from foreign threats."
"Instead," Krishnamoorthi added, "he’s reviving conspiracy theories about mail voting, pushing voter suppression, and laying the groundwork for an unprecedented federal takeover of our elections—all while ignoring the real challenges facing American families.”
During his speech, Trump lashed out at major TV news networks for declining to broadcast his speech live and in full, accusing media outlets of being "part of the plot" and calling for the "revocation" of NBC and ABC's broadcast licenses.
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) called Trump's threat "insane."
"At a time when millions of Americans are finding it harder to pay for groceries, housing, and healthcare, when the climate crisis is causing record heatwaves and forest fires, Donald Trump felt it appropriate tonight to spew conspiracy theories about the 2020 election," said Sanders. "Pathetically, in true authoritarian fashion, he even threatened to revoke the licenses of ABC and NBC because they would not cover his speech."
"All of us, regardless of our political views, must stand together against this dangerous president who is seeking to undermine our Constitution and our basic freedoms," Sanders added.
"Trump is laying the groundwork to dismantle our elections, overturn results he does not like, cancel the will of the people, and hold onto power by any means necessary."
Trump's address cited "raw intelligence" that he said shows an attempt by China "to manufacture illegal ballots" for former President Joe Biden. The president claimed, without evidence, that the intelligence was maliciously "buried by rogue bureaucrats."
But, as The Washington Post observed, "raw intelligence reports are often wrong, incomplete, or contradictory, and spy agencies rely on judgments by expert analysts to vet and piece together the information to make conclusions with different levels of confidence."
"Officials in 2020 disagreed about whether China wanted Trump to lose and about whether Beijing took any steps to undermine him—a controversy noted in a declassified 2021 report. That report described consensus on the conclusion that neither China nor any other foreign actors had tampered with any votes," the Post noted. "The hundreds of pages of documents released online by the White House during Trump’s speech did not appear to support Trump’s contention that China interfered in the 2020 election to try to defeat him or that US intelligence officials deliberately hid information about Beijing’s intentions from him."
Robert Weissman, co-president of the advocacy group Public Citizen, characterized Trump's speech as an attempt to divert public attention from his administration's "catastrophic policy failures and plummeting approval ratings."
"Trump is waging an illegal, unconstitutional, and utterly pointless war that continues to put American and Iranian lives in jeopardy and drive up gas prices. Corporations are setting prices out of reach for people being paid too little," said Weissman. "Trump rammed through tax cuts for the rich, paid for by cutting healthcare and food assistance for millions and millions of people. An out-of-control paramilitary force is kidnapping people off our streets and killing them at shocking rates. Trump’s delusional rantings tonight are a transparent effort to distract from these realities."
Living United for Change in Arizona, a pro-democracy organization, warned that "Trump is trying to end our democracy in front of our very eyes."
"Tonight Donald Trump stood before the nation and attempted to rewrite history, erase the will of the voters, and prepare the country for his next assault on American democracy," the group said. "We must call this what it is. Donald Trump is laying the groundwork to dismantle our elections, overturn results he does not like, cancel the will of the people, and hold onto power by any means necessary."
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Analysis Identifies 50+ Election Deniers Vying to Oversee Voting Across US
The threat of election-denying candidates is particularly acute in Arizona, where they are running for governor, secretary of state, and attorney general.
May 04, 2026
As President Donald Trump continues to push Republicans to aggressively gerrymander ahead of the 2026 midterm elections, a new analysis has found more than 50 candidates running for key offices who have in the past engaged in efforts to nullify election results.
As reported by NPR on Monday, election watchdog States United Action has released a report showing that election-denying candidates are running for offices in 23 states where, if victorious, they would have a direct role in certifying future elections.
States United classifies election deniers as candidates who meet one of five criteria: Falsely claiming that Trump won the 2020 election, spreading conspiracy theories about the election results, refusing to certify the 2020 election, supporting litigation to overturn election results, and refusing to concede a race after being defeated.
In total, States United found at least 53 such candidates running for positions this year, including secretaries of state and governorships, that would put them in position to try to block or impede the certification of elections.
The threat is particularly acute in Arizona, where election deniers are running for governor, secretary of state, and attorney general.
This prospective Arizona election denial ticket is headlined by MAGA hardliner Andy Biggs, who voted against certification of the 2020 election results as a US congressman and who is running to unseat incumbent Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs.
States United CEO Joanna Lydgate told NPR that her organization is tracking election deniers running for office to "provide voters with the most accurate information possible" and "understand exactly what these candidates stand for and whether they fundamentally believe in free and fair elections in this country."
As election deniers are trying to win key offices throughout the US, the Trump administration is working to get more directly involved in purging voter rolls ahead of the midterms.
According to a Monday report from CNN, "Republicans and the Trump administration are now testing the scope of the federal law that imposes that ban on 'systematic' removal programs within three months of an election, as President Donald Trump pushes for more aggressive reviews of voter rolls for non-citizens and other ineligible voters."
What this means is that states could in theory purge voter rolls just weeks ahead of elections, giving people removed from the rolls almost no time to file challenges.
Wren Orey, director of the Bipartisan Policy Center’s Elections Project, told CNN that purging voter rolls less than three months before an election means there's a high risk that "voters won’t have adequate time or notice to be able to provide the documents that they’ll need ahead of the election."
"Maybe their birth certificate doesn’t meet the requirements," Orey explained. "Maybe they don’t have one handy, maybe they don’t have a passport. That could take months to get."
Brent Ferguson, the senior director of strategic litigation at Campaign Legal Center, told CNN that he was particularly disturbed by the Trump White House's involvement in this effort to manage voter rolls.
"It sets up a situation where the federal government itself is the actor trying to purge voters from the rolls in the days before the election," Ferguson said, "which is clearly illegal."
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Officials Plot to Have Trump Declare National Emergency in 2026, Raising Fears He May 'Hijack' the Next Election
"It's a federal strategy to control elections and rig our democracy," said a spokesperson for Fair Fight Action.
Oct 23, 2025
Voting rights advocates are raising fears that the Trump administration may attempt to "hijack" the 2026 election after a new report revealed that a top election integrity official suggested invoking a "national emergency" to justify a federal takeover of state-run election processes.
The New York Times reported on Wednesday that during a call in March with right-wing activists, the woman who has since been appointed to President Donald Trump's newly created "election integrity" position within the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) had suggested that the president could declare a "national emergency" to give his government new authority to dictate election rules typically decided by state and local governments.
Heather Honey, formerly a Pennsylvania-based private investigator who came to prominence as a leading proponent of Trump's efforts to overturn his 2020 loss to former President Joe Biden, said this authority would come from "an actual investigation" of the loss, which she has baselessly argued was marred by widespread fraud.
In the US, elections are administered by states, with the president having no legal authority over how they are carried out. But Honey suggested that the Trump administration has "some additional powers that don't exist right now," and that by using the investigation as a pretext, "we can take these other steps without Congress and we can mandate that states do things and so on."
Seeming to recognize the extreme step she was proposing, Honey added: "I don't know if that's really feasible and if the people around the president would let him test that theory."
The 2020 election was subject to numerous state-level recounts and audits and over 60 failed court challenges in state and federal jurisdictions—many of which were dismissed by Republican and Trump-appointed judges for lack of merit and credible evidence.
An investigation by the Associated Press last year found that across the six battleground states Trump claimed were beset by widespread fraud, only 475 individual ballots out of millions of votes cast were flagged by election officials as "potentially" affected by fraud. Even if every single one of the ballots had been proven fraudulent, it would not have been nearly enough to swing the election result in Trump's favor.
Meanwhile, several aides and officials who served Trump during the waning days of his first administration testified before the January 6 commission that the president was well aware he'd lost the election, but continued to push false claims of fraud in an effort to cling to power.
Matt Crane, a former Republican election official who served until earlier this year as a consultant for the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA)—which Trump recently purged of election experts—told the Times that officials who have proposed relitigating the 2020 election "are not coming with an objective frame of mind to say, 'Let's look at the facts and see where that takes us.'"
"They have their destination in mind and cherry-pick facts to help stand up their crazy theories, so there's nothing objective about it," he said.
Last week, the Wall Street Journal reported that the administration had begun this effort to reboot the election fraud narrative, with Trump tapping former campaign lawyer and "Stop the Steal" proponent Kurt Olsen as a "special government employee" tasked with reinvestigating 2020. Olsen has reportedly already begun asking intelligence agencies for information about the 2020 election and has also suggested he wants to purge government employees who are disloyal to Trump.
Trump has also sought to implement many of the proposals from the "US Citizens Elections Bill of Rights," proposed by the Election Integrity Network (EIN), a group of pro-Trump election deniers, of which Honey is a member. The group has become deeply influential during Trump's second term, receiving a briefing from the DHS in June on how a database run by the department can be used to verify the citizenship status of registered voters, according to a report from Democracy Docket.
The group has called for new restrictions on mail-in ballots, early voting, and to make it easier for voter rolls to be scrubbed and for election results to be challenged. Many of these proposals have made it in some form or another into Trump's executive order on elections and the SAVE Act, which Republicans passed through the House earlier this year, that would require all voters to show passports or birth certificates in order to register to vote, which voting rights groups have denounced as a "modern-day poll tax."
As Max Flugrath, the communications director for the voting rights group Fair Fight Action, noted, "Judges have blocked Trump's March executive order on elections—a move courts called an overreach that belongs to the states, not the White House."
"Despite the rulings, Trump allies are pressing ahead," Flugrath said. "The DOJ is collecting massive voter roll data, DHS is pressuring states to upload files, and Honey is spreading false claims and framing the directives as 'best practices.' It's election disinformation rebranded as policy." Those actions, he said, are being urged on by the EIN, which has promoted Trump "pushing the limits of executive power."
Honey is just one of many EIN members with a direct line of communication to Trump.
Trump has also elevated a leading EIN operative, Marcy McCarthy—who also pushed debunked theories of widespread illegal voting in Georgia—to be CISA's director of public affairs.
EIN's founder, Cleta Mitchell, was notably one of the lawyers present on Trump's phone call in January 2021 in which he attempted to pressure Georgia election officials to "find" him enough votes to be declared the winner of the state, which resulted in him being indicted three years later.
On a podcast with a Christian nationalist influencer last month, Mitchell likewise pushed the idea that Trump could use emergency powers to assert control over the election.
"The president's authority is limited in his role with regard to elections except where there is a threat to the national sovereignty of the United States—as I think that we can establish with the porous system that we have," she said.
She seemed to suggest Trump was on board with the idea, saying, "I think maybe the president is thinking that he will exercise some emergency powers to protect the federal elections going forward."
Flugrath said these statements, and those reported by the Times, "should be a five-alarm fire," as they suggest Trump will use past false claims of voter fraud as "a cover to hijack elections" in the future.
He noted that in April, Trump himself seemed to echo EIN's theories of sweeping authority, saying during a speech that "we're gonna get good elections pretty soon" because "the states are just an agent of the federal government."
"Trump is embedding EIN operatives into the government to push his election takeover agenda, all built on lies about his 2020 loss," Flugrath said. "EIN seems to be using a playbook to decimate the independence and fairness of elections: Sow doubt in elections, install loyalists in government, use doubt sowed to push an 'emergency,' and change election rules."
"It's a federal strategy to control elections and rig our democracy," he continued. "Independent elections are the foundation of freedom. If Trump can control our elections, he can dismantle other checks on power. Protecting free, state-run elections is the firewall between democracy and authoritarianism."
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'Office-Peddling' Pam Bondi Grilled by Senate as Watchdogs Blast Trump AG Pick
"The U.S. Attorney General should be the American people's lawyer—not a corporate lobbyist with a closet full of conflicted clients," said the head of the watchdog Accountable.US.
Jan 15, 2025
As President-elect Donald Trump's attorney general pick Pam Bondi faced Senate questioning on Wednesday, progressive critics opposed to her nomination cited her record as a lobbyist, her role in amplifying Trump's claims of election fraud in 2020, and her history of catering to corporate interests to argue she is unfit to lead the U.S. Justice Department.
Bondi, for her part, told senators in the first of two scheduled hearings that her Justice Department would not be used to target people based on their politics—though she stopped short of saying that the agency would not investigate foes of Trump. She also spent much of her confirmation answering questions about Kash Patel, Trump's controversial pick for FBI director whom she repeatedly defended, according to Politico.
Jon Golinger, democracy advocate for the watchdog group Public Citizen, was among Bondi's detractors who argued Wednesday that she is deeply unqualified to be the nation's top law enforcement officer.
"The U.S. Attorney General should be the American people's lawyer—not a corporate lobbyist with a closet full of conflicted clients, many of whom seek government contracts or are being investigated by the very Justice Department Bondi now seeks to lead," Golinger said in a statement.
After eight years as Florida's attorney general, Pam Bondi left that post in 2019 and joined Ballard Partners, a corporate lobbying firm that has also employed Trump's pick for White House chief of staff, Susie Wiles. At Ballard Partners, Bondi worked on behalf of numerous corporate clients, including the private prison firm the Geo Group, Uber, and Amazon.
Bondi also served as a lawyer for Trump during his first impeachment trial and pushed Trump's claims of election fraud in 2020.
Tony Carrk, the executive director of the watchdog Accountable.US, went after Bondi's time as Florida Attorney General, writing that she "frequently played favorites with big corporate donors and political insiders at the expense of everyday consumers, patients, and the public good" while she held that office and that "nothing indicates Bondi would change her office-peddling modus operandi as America's top justice official."
Public Citizen co-president Lisa Gilbert, who will testify as an outside witness Thursday at day two of Bondi's hearing, said Wednesday that Bondi's record could lead to a politicization of the agency and called her "unsuitable" for the role given her ties to powerful corporations.
Meanwhile, the civil rights coalition the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, joined the pile on in a statement submitted Wednesday to the Senate Judiciary Committee. "Ms. Bondi lacks the commitment to defending the core tenets of our democracy and the civil and human rights of all people. Indeed, her active participation in and support of Trump's efforts to overturn the 2020 election ought to be disqualifying in itself," the group wrote.
But Bondi—who "acquitted herself coolly," according to press account—appears on track for likely confirmation.
Raising the specter of the pressure Trump has placed on his Department of Justice in the past, Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.) asked, "let's imagine Trump issues a directive or order to you or to the FBI director that is outside the boundaries of ethics or law. What will you do?"
"I will never speak on a hypothetical, especially one saying that the president would do something illegal. What I can tell you is my duty, if confirmed as the Attorney General, will be to the Constitution and the United States," said Bondi.
Bondi would not answer directly when asked whether Trump lost the election in 2020 and also would not denounce some of the former president's extreme stances, like calling those arrested for participating in the January 6 insurrection "hostages" or "patriots."
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'That's What Demagogues Do': Sanders Warns Trump Will Prematurely Claim Victory
"That's how you move a country toward an authoritarian form of society," said Sen. Bernie Sanders.
Nov 05, 2024
U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders warned on the eve of Tuesday's presidential contest that no matter what the initial vote tallies show, Republican nominee Donald Trump will declare victory—just as he did four years ago—in an attempt to sow chaos and confusion as election workers tabulate the results of what's expected to be a razor-close race.
"Donald Trump, early on in the evening, will declare, 'Hey, I've won this election, and if there's any state that I lost, it's because of voter fraud,'" Sanders (I-Vt.), who has backed Democratic nominee Kamala Harris, predicted in a video message to the nation released on Monday.
"That's what demagogues do," the senator added, "and that's how you move a country toward an authoritarian form of society."
Watch:
Sanders' warning came after Trump and his GOP spent the months leading up to Election Day laying the groundwork to challenge the results of the presidential contest if it doesn't go their way, repeating baseless claims of voter fraud and preemptively suggesting a Trump loss is only possible if the contest is rigged.
"The only thing that can stop us is the cheating," the former president declared at a campaign rally in Arizona last week. "It's the only thing that can stop us."
One recent
analysis estimated that Trump loyalists have majority control of 15 county election boards in eight key swing states, a potential boon to far-right efforts to disrupt the vote-counting or certification process.
Anticipating premature victory claims from Trump, election observers are warning U.S. voters to be on the lookout for a "red mirage"—which refers to the misleading appearance of a significant Republican lead before mail-in ballots are counted. Around 75 million Americans cast ballots in the early voting period, according to state-level tallies.
Reuters reported last week that "Democrats are readying a rapid-fire response to flood social media and the airwaves with calls for calm and patience with vote-counting should Donald Trump try to prematurely claim election victory."
Former U.S. Labor Secretary Robert Reich warned in a blog post Tuesday that Trump is likely to exploit a potential "red mirage" just as he did in 2020.
"Trump's nonsense claim that the votes counted earlier in the night were more legitimate than those counted later became the underpinning of his entire Big Lie, culminating in the January 6 attack on the Capitol," Reich wrote. "It looks as if the 2024 election will be close. Early tonight, Trump is likely to appear to be ahead and again use that early lead to falsely claim victory. Mirages can be confusing, but if you know what they are, you won't be fooled by them. Please help spread the word about the red mirage so people know what to expect tonight."
The Washington Post noted Tuesday that "finding out who won the presidency may take days," observing that "election officials in key swing states are urging Americans to be patient as they tally results, a process that varies from state to state because each has different vote-counting laws."
"Polls show an extremely tight presidential race, and the closer the results are, the longer it will take to know the outcome," the newspaper reported. "The swing states that took the longest then could again be slow this year: Pennsylvania, Arizona and Nevada. If the race is close, other states could join the list."
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On the 'Secret Plan' Trump and Mike Johnson Have to Overturn a Harris Victory
Think races for the U.S. House don't matter? Think again.
Nov 01, 2024
The scariest thing at Trump’s quasi-fascist Madison Square Garden rally was not the vulgar and offensive rhetoric by surrogates like unfunny comic Killer Tony’s comments about Puerto Rico being a “floating island of garbage” and Black Americans carving watermelons for Halloween, as disgusting as they were.
No, it was Trump’s threat that he and GOP House Speaker Mike Johnson have “a little secret” to upend the results of the election. As Rep. Dan Goldman warned, Trump and Johnson may try to go to the House and throw out the certification of the electoral vote and turn it over to the Republican House majority who would hand the election to Trump.
Here’s how it could go down: MAGA operatives in swing states could challenge the allocation of electoral votes with the goal of making it impossible for one or more counties or states to certify the electoral vote on time, block both candidates from receiving the necessary minimum of 270 electoral votes, and throw it into the House for a so-called “contingent election” where each state gets one vote and Republicans are likely to have the edge with a majority of 26 state delegations unless Democrats flip this in the upcoming election.
Faithless Electors
Although most states award their electoral votes to the candidate who received the most popular votes in their state, the Constitution does not require them to do so. According to Article II, Section 1 of the Constitution, each state has the right to decide how to appoint its electors. In many states, this would allow one or more electors (so-called “faithless electors”) to cast their vote for a candidate other than the one who received the most popular votes in their state. This has happened nearly 100 times in history, although so far it has not changed the ultimate results. It could be different this time.
According to various state laws in 15 states, a faithless elector’s vote isn’t counted and a replacement is named. But in 19 states, their votes would count. Some of these states have enforcement mechanisms, but others, including Pennsylvania, do not.
In July 2020, the U.S. Supreme Court held in Chiafalo v Washington that a State may "penalize an elector for breaking his pledge and voting for someone other than the presidential candidate who won his State's popular vote." But it doesn’t require them to do so.
Let’s say Harris carries all the safely Blue states plus only the swing states of Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. That would give her 270 electoral votes to Trump’s 268, the bare minimum for her to win. But let’s say there’s a faithless elector from one of the states that permit it, or a court challenge voids some electoral votes as discussed below. Then neither candidate would have an electoral college majority, which would throw the choice of the next president to the House of Representatives. Each state gets one vote and unless this election changes it, Republicans hold a majority of the states. So the House Republicans hands the election to Trump.
Court Cases that could flip the electoral vote from Harris to Trump
Meanwhile, there are several court cases that could flip the electoral college, particularly if the election is so close that it comes down to Pennsylvania.
In Republican National Committee v. Wetzel, the ultra-right wing 5th Circuit Court of Appeals just ruled that a state may not legally count a ballot mailed before election day that arrives for counting afterwards. As Mark Joseph Stern argued in Slate: “18 states and Washington, D.C., accept late-arriving ballots; the 5thCircuit’s reasoning would render all these laws illegitimate and void, nullifying hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of ballots.” SCOTUS could affirm or overturn the 5th Circuit. Although there’s probably no time to do so before election day, if it affirms the 5th Circuit between the election and the final certification of the electoral vote by Congress, it could disqualify the votes of countless Harris voters.
Meanwhile, in Genser v. Butler County Board of Elections the Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled that voters whose mail-in ballots contained a technical error (they were not placed in a second “security envelope”) would be permitted to submit a second provisional ballot that could be counted.
The Republican Party filed a motion for the U.S. Supreme Court to intervene and bar provisional ballots from being counted. If SCOTUS rules in their favor, it could disqualify thousands of Pennsylvania votes. Remember that in 2000, Bush defeated Gore by only 537 votes in Florida, when SCOTUS stopped the vote count.
With a 6-3 extreme right majority, SCOTUS could again hand the election to the Republican, Donald Trump.
Vote for a Democratic House
The only way to guarantee that the Trump/Rogers “secret plan” is to flip a couple of House delegation majorities from Red to Blue. That’s why it’s vitally important for Harris voters to vote in every state and cast their vote for the Democratic House candidate.
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