BACKGROUND:  Trump’s Department of Justice is sending letters to states that vote Democratic.  The letters include lists of people who DOJ alleges are non-citizens who are not eligible to vote.  Up to this point, every list sent has been bullshit — filled with errors — and when the states check the names, they find the people who DOJ claims are not eligible to vote are, IN FACT, US citizens and are eligible to vote.

The Secretary of State of Washington (state) received such a letter.  He told DOJ to take their list and shove it up their ass.  And to get the correct date for the election.

Read the entire response.

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Dear Mr. Floyd and Mr. Serrano,

I am in receipt of your letter dated October 26, 2026. Your letter claims to provide a list of persons who “are or were noncitizens” and “who are registered to vote” in Washington and requests I instruct election officials to not count ballots from those registered voters.

A preliminary investigation confirms what your letter acknowledges: This list includes United States citizens and is not reliable. Without individualized proof of ineligibility, it would be both irresponsible and illegal for election officials to decline to process a registered voter’s ballot. If you have individualized proof, I invite you to provide it so election officials can take appropriate steps that are consistent with federal and state law.

The timing of your letter is profoundly disappointing. As your letter makes clear, you are aware Washington mailed ballots to all active registered voters no later than October 16. Despite that, you sent your letter well after that date and barely one week before Election Day. As you know, my office holds regular consultations with your office in the months leading up to elections. If you had valid concerns about voter registrations, the time to raise them was months ago. Your decision to wait until the eve of an election and announce those concerns at a press conference instead of timely providing the list and any corroborating evidence to my office is not a sign of good faith to ensure a free, fair, and accurate election.

The information you provided contains several glaring deficiencies. You provide no information about how the information was collected or what sources were used. Nor do you provide any backup documentation supporting your assertions. Given the Department of Justice’s recent acts of election interference in California, Alaska, and now in Washington, it would be particularly inappropriate for Washington to simply assume the Department’s unsupported allegations here are credible.

I would also note the manner in which you provided your list was not designed to facilitate the prompt review you request. Rather than provide an electronic spreadsheet, you provided a PDF document with a printed spreadsheet. That spreadsheet lacked publicly available fields that would facilitate review, such as the Voter ID number or the person’s address. The absence of these fields makes it difficult—if not impossible—to confirm whether an entry on the list matches a voter registration. And the list provided includes some duplicate entries, which indicates the list was created in a rushed manner. The rushed manner is confirmed by your incorrect statement that the election is “November 2, 2026.” Election Day—as you should well know—is November 3. Basic factual errors like this are unacceptable and risk confusing voters.

Despite the deficiencies in the information you provided, my office was able to conduct a preliminary analysis. That analysis reflects a significant number of people on your list who are not currently registered to vote or are on inactive status, contradicting your representations that all the individuals included in the list will receive a ballot in this year’s election. In addition, even the cursory review that was possible on the unreasonably short timeline you provided revealed that many of the persons on your list are United States citizens based on information of which Washington is aware. It is almost certain more people named on this list are also United States citizens; those already identified may just be the “tip of the iceberg” of individuals that would be wrongfully disenfranchised by the actions you request.

These discrepancies come as no surprise. Time and time again, DHS claims about noncitizen voter registration turn out to be greatly exaggerated or false:

In light of that unreliability, it would likely be unlawful to decline to count ballots simply because a person’s name appears on the unverified list. The right to vote is a sacred right, and federal and state law provide strong protections against wrongful disenfranchisement. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 provides that election officials may not “willfully fail or refuse to tabulate, count, or report” a qualified voter’s vote. 52 U.S.C. § 10307(a). Absent proof anyone on the list is not qualified, your request “to not . . . tabulate the ballot” would appear to violate this federal law. Under Washington law, each registered voter provides the proof of citizenship that Congress required. See 52 U.S.C. § 20508(b)(2). In addition, your letter fails to provide any information establishing the provided list is exempt from the National Voter Registration Act’s 90-day quiet period before a federal election. 52 U.S.C. § 20507(c)(2).

To be clear, I am committed to ensuring only eligible persons are registered to vote in Washington. State law limits voting to United States citizens, RCW 29A.08.010(1), and includes multiple safeguards to prevent noncitizens from registering. The Washington State Voter Registration Form repeatedly advises applicants that only United States citizens may register to vote and that knowingly providing false information is a class C felony. WAC 434- 324-026. Voters must re-attest to United States citizenship, under penalty of perjury, each time they sign a return ballot envelope. RCW 29A.40.091(2).

In addition, Washington law includes specific provisions for addressing allegations that a person is ineligible to register to vote. This includes both a robust voter registration challenge process, RCW 29A.08.810—.850, and specific provisions regarding instances where a noncitizen becomes registered to vote, RCW 29A.08.370(3). But these processes require proof, not just allegations. If the federal government possesses individualized proof that certain registered voters in Washington are ineligible, my office welcomes the opportunity to review that direct evidence. It cannot rely on the mere absence of a name from the SAVE database or the Department’s assertions based on the vague and untested methodology described in the lawsuit against California.

State and local election officials in Washington work tirelessly to administer free and fair elections. They are truly heroes of democracy. As you might imagine, the days leading up to Election Day are incredibly busy, as election officials assist voters seeking to exercise their fundamental right to vote. Rather than distract these dedicated public servants from their important work at this late hour with a meritless lawsuit, I strongly encourage you to re-visit the deeply flawed data you provided earlier this week, identify any actual proof, and work collaboratively with my office in the weeks or months to come.

Sincerely,
Steve R. Hobbs,
Washington Secretary of State

Donald the Dove apparently plans to escalate his unnecessary,  indefensible war after the midterms:

The U.S. and Israeli militaries have developed specific plans for renewed strikes against Iran after the American midterm elections, according to U.S. officials and other people briefed on the deliberations.

As planning for a short but intensive operation progresses, the U.S. and Israeli militaries have stepped up exercises, flying planes over Iraq to practice strike maneuvers. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth met with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Israel this week to discuss new strikes, U.S. officials said.

The targets would likely include Iran’s energy infrastructure, nuclear facilities, and missile and drone arsenal. Some officials say one more big round of attacks could push Iran’s economy over the brink and force the country to make diplomatic concessions after nearly eight months of conflict.

Still, there are reasons to be skeptical that a renewed war would be any more successful than the first phase of intense U.S.-Israeli strikes between February and April. Those rounds of fighting drove up energy prices and inflation around the world, eroded security in the Middle East and severely strained the Pentagon’s supply of missile interceptors.

You shall not crucify mankind on a cross of gold. Diamonds are another matter

Julio Herrera Velutini really wanted a pardon.

A billionaire banker from a prominent Venezuelan family, Mr. Herrera faced felony bribery charges in the United States and struck an unusually lenient plea deal in August 2025 for a misdemeanor campaign finance violation. But he felt that reduced charge was still a stain on his record.

So Mr. Herrera deployed his lawyer, Christopher M. Kise, the former Florida solicitor general who was on Mr. Trump’s personal legal team, to help with a plea for clemency. His 27-year-old daughter, Isabela Herrera, who is an American citizen, donated $3.5 million to a super PAC tied to Mr. Trump. But as of last fall, the pardon remained elusive.

Then the Herrera family hired Alina Habba, who had been one of Mr. Trump’s personal lawyers and at the time was an adviser at the Justice Department. They offered her $10 million a year for four years along with a range of bonuses. In total, including bonuses, she was guaranteed more than $50 million over four years, according to interviews and documents obtained by The New York Times.

Under the agreement, Ms. Habba would become general counsel at Concord Partners, a company that Ms. Herrera set up in late October 2025 in Florida. The company has no public profile and its business remains unclear even to some people associated with the Herrera business empire. Ms. Habba finalized her deal days after the company was registered.

At the time, Ms. Habba was also a senior adviser to Attorney General Pam Bondi, overseeing U.S. attorneys. She had an office at the Justice Department and a protective detail from the U.S. Marshals, a holdover from her time serving as the U.S. attorney in New Jersey.

She formally began her work for Concord Partners on Jan. 1. Weeks later, Mr. Trump granted Mr. Herrera a full and unconditional pardon.

The sequence of events raises questions about how Mr. Herrera secured the pardon and who might have helped him. People familiar with Ms. Habba’s contract said they believed that she was brought in to help with Mr. Herrera’s push for a pardon and expressed surprise at the scale of the compensation.

Ms. Habba denied any role in the pardon.

“Any insinuation that my employment — all of which has been vetted and disclosed to the D.O.J. — had anything to do with securing a pardon is false,” she said in a statement.

NO, of course, $50 million had nothing to do with it.

Here is an explanation.

The child pictured in the rainbow T-shirt is one of the children killed in the shooting at a school in Bend, Oregon.

The comment that attacks this beautiful, innocent child came from an asshole named Chris Dobbins, who owns a lawn care service in Memphis, TN.

If you or anyone you know does business with Robbins, drop this asshole right now.  Piss on him.

 

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In a 2017 piece in The New York Times, voting expert Ari Berman wrote, “The Voting Rights Act of 1965 outlawed tactics that prevented blacks, Hispanics and other minority groups from voting. But for decades, Republicans have fought to circumvent the law by describing their proposed restrictions — requiring specific forms of identification to vote, preventing early voting, purging voting rolls — as colorblind security measures, even though there is little evidence of any individual voter fraud in the United States.”

How did that approach to denying Black voters their hard-fought rights get on Donald Trump’s radar screen? Berman had a plausible answer: Kris Kobach, the Kansas Secretary of State, who had been on a crusade to use the kind of fake voting fraud allegations that were pervasive in the South to justify measures that could be used to keep the wrong kind of people—Kobach is a Republican—from voting. Kobach was the force behind Arizona’s 2010 “show me your papers” law, which, among other things, required proof of citizenship in order to register to vote and strict voter ID requirements (We discussed that Arizona law as the origin story for one of this year’s voting rights cases on the Supreme Court calendar.) Kobach was also one of the primary drafters of Alabama’s HB56, the law my office successfully challenged in court. It too combined anti-immigrant measures with anti-voting measures.

You’re probably starting to sense the theme. False claims that noncitizen voting influences who wins our elections have been around for a long time. But in Donald Trump’s hands, it has morphed into something even Kobach may not have envisioned.

Another key player in Trump’s camp, his first Attorney General, Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions, distanced himself from HB56 when he was facing a confirmation battle in 2016, saying he had nothing to do with it—and that’s plausible, since it was a state law and he was a U.S. senator. But Sessions too perpetuated the false litany of voter fraud claims as an excuse for restrictive measures. Just ahead of the midterm elections in 2018, Sessions, who was still on Trump’s good side then, echoed the president’s fake claims. AL.com said that Trump and Sessions “issued strong warnings about the threat of voter fraud in Tuesday’s elections, echoing the president’s baseless claims that massive voter fraud marred his 2016 election and prompting accusations that his administration is trying to intimidate voters.”

One more data point about Sessions and Kobach. Kobach, who didn’t land a position in the first Trump administration, did take an appointment, the May after Trump first took office, as the vice chairman of Trump’s Advisory Commission on Election Integrity. The commission’s mandate was to look for “improper voter registrations and improper voting.” “Issues that Kobach,” Berman wrote, “with his high-profile efforts in Kansas, almost single-handedly put on the Trump administration’s radar.” Sessions was there too, as Attorney General. And he had some history with the issue as well.

As U.S. Attorney in the Southern District of Alabama (he was appointed by Reagan), Sessions “used his vast power as the chief federal prosecutor in the state to selectively open investigations into ‘voter fraud’ with a singular focus on African-American activists and civil rights workers. In subsequent testimony to Congress, Alabama State Senator Hank Sanders observed a discernible pattern that emerged from Sessions’ efforts — clear targeting of those communities where Blacks were gaining newfound political power. During his tenure as U.S. Attorney, Sessions called for the interrogation of hundreds of witnesses about their experiences voting, understandably frightening some who later vowed never to vote again after the experience.”

One of the hallmarks of Sessions’ tenure as U.S. Attorney in Mobile was a case he lost, a voting rights case. The Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights explained it like this: the case “involved baseless charges levied upon three prominent African-American activists for promoting voter engagement in poor parts of the state’s rural Black Belt.” A conservative federal district judge, Emmett Cox, dismissed 50 charges in Sessions’ case before it went to trial due to a lack of evidence to sustain the charges. A jury in Selma, Alabama, acquitted the three defendants on every remaining charge. But the prosecution still had a significant impact, making Black and elderly voters afraid to exercise their rights because they too might be caught up in whatever Sessions and his cronies had planned next. In 1985, when President Reagan nominated Sessions to be a federal judge, there was an outcry over his history and particularly the prosecution based on unsupported claims of voter fraud. Allegations of racism were raised by multiple witnesses, and the nomination was ultimately pulled. One of the Assistant United States Attorneys in Sessions’ office, Thomas Figures, said Sessions had repeatedly addressed him as “boy.” (Thomas Figures’ nephew, Rep SC ) Shomari Figures, represents Alabama’s second district. He’s fighting an uphill battle in the district, which was redrawn to be majority Republican, after Callais, but his fundraising has been strong.)

The use of fake claims of voter fraud to justify restrictive laws, like voter ID and proof of citizenship, that make it more difficult for eligible Americans to vote predates Donald Trump. But Trump has not hesitated to take advantage of our history of voter intimidation. The Election Integrity Commission Kobach was appointed to lead was forced to fold, just months into its work. The Brennan Center explained, “For years, claims of fraud have been used to justify unwarranted voting restrictions. There is strong reason to suspect this commission was not a legitimate attempt to study elections, but rather a tool for enabling voter suppression.”

The Commission didn’t find evidence of voter fraud to support its mission, but Kobach’s requests for sensitive voter data from all 50 states, including partial Social Security numbers, resulted in bipartisan pushback. More than a dozen states refused his requests, including deep red Mississippi, where Republican Secretary of State Delbert Hosemann said his response would be: “‘They can go jump in the Gulf of Mexico, and Mississippi is a great State to launch from.’ He cited the need to protect the privacy of state citizens ‘by conducting our own electoral processes.’”

The administration was more subtle in 2017, but even Republican officials saw the effort for what it was: an attempt to interfere with state administration of elections. Then, as now, the Trump Administration sought voter information it could use to challenge voters’ eligibility. “Challenge” is the key word here. It’s not essential to actually find ineligible people on the rolls, just to claim that you have. Look at Nevada, where an outrageous initial claim about thousands of noncitizens voting collapsed under challenge until the final number proved to be …. zero.

But the damage was done. The myth of massive noncitizen voting continues to circulate in the wake of the administration’s claims there and elsewhere. It’s not about actually finding voter fraud, and it never has been. It’s about making claims in advance of an election, like Sessions did in 2017, that are designed to intimidate, to prevent people who are entitled to from voting, and try to impact the outcome of the election with dirty tricks, including building a narrative to reject a big loss at the polls.

As Attorney General, Jeff Sessions called on his U.S. Attorneys to bring voter fraud cases. But they proved hard to find. That’s not surprising. In North Alabama, where Republicans always lodged claims that voter fraud was rampant, my George W. Bush predecessor as U.S. Attorney looked for cases for eight years but never found one to prosecute. During my tenure, we looked hard every time allegations were made, but agents never found evidence to back up the claims, and my Trump successors also came up empty-handed when it came to voting fraud cases. But during Sessions’ time in office, one of the North Carolina U.S. Attorneys did find some cases to bring. He rounded up about 20 people, all immigrants. One was a man from Italy who had passed the citizenship test but had not yet been sworn in. He voted, mistakenly thinking he was eligible. Others were permanent residents who were told by campaign workers or election volunteers they were eligible and didn’t know they were breaking the law when they voted. It wasn’t exactly a flood of criminal aliens trying to influence the outcome of our elections. In fact, it had no impact on outcomes at all, and the criminal justice system proved more than capable of finding and punishing them. Local news reported that “The five defendants who have been sentenced received minimal fines, misdemeanor convictions and no jail time.” That’s the horror Republicans claim justifies laws that will disenfranchise thousands of eligible American voters.

Now, with early voting in the midterm elections underway, everything old is new again. Federal prosecutors are announcing immigrant voter fraud cases. There have been arrests in California, where the LA Times reports that people are confused by the charges, like one family, where a relative said “the family was rushing to figure out what happened, including whether Muñoz [the individual who was arrested] could have been confused with younger relatives of the same name, including a U.S.-born son who is a registered voter.”

DOJ officials have been quick to defend these indictments, with Harmeet Dhillon, the Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division, tweeting “Oh look, noncitizens voting,” even though these are only charges, not convictions, and we all know how spotty DOJ’s record is in this regard. When you bring cases to execute a political agenda instead of based on the evidence and the law, a lot of them turn out to be meritless.

DOJ’s number two acknowledged that yesterday

Trent McCotter, the acting Deputy Attorney General, in a press conference announcing criminal charges against 28 lawful permanent residents in California accused of illegal voter registration or voting, conceded that the cases might not all hold up. “There may be some names on there who it turns out ultimately are citizens,” he said. “We’re not perfect.” But DOJ guidelines require prosecutors to believe there is sufficient evidence to obtain and sustain a conviction before obtaining an indictment. This DOJ seems more interested in making a pre-election splash and scaring off voters than it does in doing justice.

Do not let them make you afraid to vote. Vote proudly and fearlessly. Help friends and neighbors who need it exercise their rights, too. We must all do whatever it takes right now. Donald Trump and his buddies don’t get to decide who serves in Congress and other elected offices. We do. It’s up to us. They have tried this before, bringing baseless charges and making untrue claims right before an election to try and snatch victory from the proverbial jaws of defeat. Don’t believe the noise. And don’t let them intimidate you. We’ve got this.

Then, there are really, seriously stupid people.

Finally, at the top of the pile, we find people who are this stupid:

 

 

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OH, BUT WAIT — THERE’S MORE!!