Trump attacks the integrity of elections in build-up to midterms

Ahead of the midterm elections, President Donald Trump has systematically demolished institutional guardrails that prevented him from overturning the 2020 presidential election, ProPublica’s reporting has shown.

Trump has empowered his loyalists to try to transform the voting process. He launched an unprecedented — and largely unsuccessful — effort to find noncitizen voters. And he tried to restrict mail-in voting.

The reporters at ProPublica have spent much of this year covering Trump’s efforts to exert more federal control over elections. Here are five takeaways from their reporting.

1. The Trump administration has sought greater federal control over elections.

In April, Doug Bock Clark and Jen Fifield reported on Trump’s efforts to “take over” the midterm elections, detailing how the administration has discarded or diminished endeavors across the federal government to protect the voting process or block foreign interference. Those efforts have included cutting staff on election-related teams at federal law enforcement agencies and finding ways to exert greater federal control over voting. 

Our reporting led by Peter Elkind revealed that the Trump administration harnessed Homeland Security Investigations’ personnel, technology and legal authority to try to back up Trump’s unproven claim that illegal voting by noncitizens is tilting elections toward Democrats. Administration officials insisted the effort spearheaded by HSI was producing meaningful results. Our analysis of Justice Department data found, as of May, 41 alleged noncitizens were charged with voting illegally or other election-related crimes. Earlier this month, CBS reported 156 people have been charged since the beginning of the second Trump administration.

2. Trump has pushed out career officials — and is coordinating with a conservative grassroots organization to transform elections.

At least 75 nonpartisan career officials who’d held roles at federal agencies related to election integrity and safety have been fired or left the government.

Two dozen Trump appointees — including many from the election-denial movement — have been hired. Ahead of the midterms, current and former government officials and election security experts have expressed concerns that once-fringe actors who’ve espoused debunked conspiracy theories about elections are now in positions to control the narrative around the voting process. (A DHS spokesperson said it hires “experts with diverse backgrounds who go through a rigorous vetting process.”)

3. Trump officials asked a cybersecurity agency to secretly acquire a voting machine — and hack it.

A few months into Trump’s second term, political appointees at DHS asked its Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency to procure a voting machine, hack it and report the findings so they could be given to the White House, two former administration officials with knowledge of the request told Clark and Andy Mannix.

4. The White House floated an idea that would’ve shut down virtually all mail-in voting.

The White House initially proposed a change for the Postal Service that would’ve been even more disruptive than the rule the Supreme Court rejected in September.

As Fifield and Elkind reported, the Trump administration suggested all ballots be delivered through certified mail, meaning voters would need to be home to sign for delivery of their ballots. The Trump administration dropped this plan after the USPS said it would be too difficult to execute. It instead proceeded with the executive order that would’ve forced postal workers to serve as gatekeepers, deciding which ballots would be delivered and which wouldn’t.

To read more CLICK HERE

Voters in Virginia will decide if former felons right to vote will be restored automatically

More than 200,000 Virginians who regained their voting rights after a court ruled earlier this year they never should have lost them based on a Reconstruction-era law. 

In addition to that case, Gov. Abigail Spanberger restored about 60,000 others’ rights over the summer, reported The Virginia Mercury.  

But the third in a slate of constitutional amendments on Election Day ballots will determine if voting restoration will become automatic after incarceration, or remain a petition-based system. 

Proposed Constitutional Amendment Question 3

Question: Should the Constitution of Virginia be amended (i) to provide for the fundamental right to vote in the Commonwealth, (ii) to revise the qualifications of voters so that a person convicted of a felony is not entitled to vote during his period of incarceration but is automatically invested with the right to vote upon release from incarceration, and (iii) to update the existing prohibition on voting by persons found to be mentally incompetent to instead apply to persons who have been found to lack the capacity to understand the act of voting?

Virginia’s constitution permanently disenfranchises people with felonies unless a governor pardons them or they successfully petition a governor to restore their voting rights. That process is subjective and not always transparent.

To read more CLICK HERE

ICE agent indicted in Houston for aggravated assault

 A grand jury in Texas on Friday indicted an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent who struck and injured a Mexican construction worker with a vehicle in Houston this month, reported The New York Times.

The agent, Mario Alberto Morales, 33, is facing state charges of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, said Sean Teare, the district attorney in Harris County, which includes Houston. He added that Mr. Morales has not turned himself in. It was unclear whether the defendant had legal representation.

The worker, Miguel Parra Hernandez, 48, an undocumented immigrant, was driving to his job on the morning of Oct. 10 when federal immigration authorities tried to pull him over in unmarked vehicles, according to Houston immigration advocates.

When Mr. Parra Hernandez stopped the car, he and a passenger tried to flee. ICE has said that Mr. Parra Hernandez had run in front of one of the agency’s vehicles and was struck. But surveillance video from a nearby business appeared to show Mr. Parra Hernandez and another man running away as an ICE vehicle veered around the corner and appeared to hit Mr. Parra Hernandez from behind.

To rad more CLICK HERE

Trump's cabinet hits the campaign trial violating the law at every stop

This summer, Attorney General Todd Blanche boasted about the drop in federal crime while stumping for the Republican candidate for New York governor at a rally headlined by President Trump.

In Michigan, Sean Duffy, the transportation secretary, personally endorsed Mike Rogers, the Republican Senate candidate, arguing that Mr. Rogers would help advance his department’s work.

And in Alaska this month, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick stood with the president at a rally in which he noted the role of Senator Dan Sullivan, a Republican, in securing a natural gas pipeline.

Such appearances have become commonplace as nearly all of Mr. Trump’s top deputies fanned out to promote Republican candidates facing difficult election odds. But they have alarmed government ethics experts who say administration officials are running afoul of the Hatch Act, an 87-year-old law that limits how executive branch employees can participate in political activity, reported The New York Times.

In the past few months, at least nine of 15 cabinet secretaries and several other senior Trump deputies have been formally accused of Hatch Act violations, such as using official government titles while engaging in campaign activities and using taxpayer funds to pay for political advertisements.

“We have not seen this level of violations in recent times,” said Kedric Payne, the head of ethics for the Campaign Legal Center, a nonpartisan watchdog group that recently filed a Hatch Act complaint against several White House and homeland security officials over three taxpayer-funded commercials promoting Mr. Trump. Its affiliated litigation arm, Campaign Legal Center Action, is one of the groups that is also suing the Trump administration over the ad campaign.

“Officials should not be using their titles or taxpayer resources to be involved in political campaigns, yet the Trump administration continues to increase activity that goes against the letter and the spirit of this principle,” Mr. Payne said. “Now it seems as though the administration can flood the zone with potential Hatch Act violations and not suffer any consequences until after the election.” 

Representatives for the White House and government agencies contend that the complaints are politically motivated to hurt Republicans and that officials’ activities comply with the law.

The Hatch Act was intended to be a buffer against partisan politics influencing government operations. While the president and the vice president are exempt, all other civil employees of the executive branch are subject to its restrictions. Over the years, both Republicans and Democrats have been accused and found guilty of breaching the Hatch Act.

But government watchdogs contend Trump officials have been lax about observing that firewall during the 2026 midterm elections.

At the Alaska rally, Mr. Trump introduced Mr. Lutnick and Doug Burgum, the interior secretary, by their official titles. Using those titles violates the Hatch Act, two nonprofit advocacy groups charged in a recent complaint. One of them, the Democracy Defenders Fund, was founded by a former Obama administration ethics official and Trump impeachment lawyer. The other is Reporters Without Borders, a press advocacy group. They stressed that the law forbids campaigning in an official capacity.

They also accused Brendan Carr, the Federal Communications Commission chairman, of violating the law by telling the same rally crowd how Mr. Sullivan would continue to advance the agency’s work, even though he began his remarks by saying he was speaking in a personal capacity.

To read more CLICK HERE

Tough-on-immigration replaces tough-on-crime on ballots across the country

Next week, America votes in the midterms. And as Election Day approaches, a new rhetoric of crime and illegality has emerged with familiar implications, reported Slate.

While the “tough-on-crime” era of the 1980s and 1990s may have passed, similar dialogue today is anchored in “tough-on-immigration” policies. For example, Republicans and allied groups spent $53 million on immigration ads across 27 states from January to June. And even old tough-on-crime era rhetoric has reemerged as campaign strategy, with “soft on crime” being a lead attack of the Republicans, and President Donald Trump invoking the notorious 1988 Willie Horton ad at a campaign rally against Democrats. The enforcement behind this rhetoric has also grown: The Department of Homeland Security says Immigration and Customs Enforcement hired 12,000 new officers and agents last year, ICE arrests have more than doubled in 15 states and D.C. this year, and many sheriffs are partnering with ICE to perform functions of federal immigration agents through the 287(g) Program.

It is worth noting that when the public supports such rhetoric in elected officials, that rhetoric becomes real—it affects lives. My new study of elected prosecutors, published in the Journal of Public Economics, provides evidence of exactly that.

District attorneys are among the most influential actors in the criminal legal system, with nearly unfettered authority over whether to charge people with crimes and which charges to file, and in the vast majority of districts they are elected. I set out to understand whether DAs were influenced by the desire to be viewed as tough on crime. My study suggests they were, finding that across nearly 40 states during the era of rising incarceration (from 1986 to 2006), the admissions rate to state prisons increased by 3 percent during election years for district attorneys. Over those two decades, this translates to 63,000 additional prison admissions, more than a sold-out Soldier Field. But this figure only measures the election year bump; it does not capture how political incentives may have affected criminal sentencing throughout the entire election cycle.

To read more CLICK HERE

Federal immigration agents investigating suspected voter fraud in Missouri

 Federal immigration agents are investigating suspected voter fraud in Missouri as part of a nationwide effort by the Trump administration in the weeks leading up to the midterm elections, reported St. Louis NPR.

In two social media posts on Sept. 3, the Kansas City office of Homeland Security Investigations said its agents were investigating suspected unlawful voting in St. Louis, citing the agency's commitment to “protecting election integrity and rooting out voter fraud wherever it occurs.”

HSI is Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s investigative arm, which typically deals with criminal matters such as human trafficking, weapons trade and financial fraud. The Department of Homeland Security is using the agency, CNN reports, in President Trump's hunt for widespread election fraud.

One photograph shows a federal agent walking in front of the St. Louis Board of Election Commissioners office. Another shows two HSI agents outside a residential building. The agency posted that agents were “on the ground in St. Louis investigating suspected unlawful voting”; the post does not say when the photographs were taken or how many people are under investigation.

To read more CLICK HERE

Court rejects Trump administration effort to strip due process from detained immigrants

A federal appeals court rejected a Trump administration argument that asserted the government could perpetually "reset" a six-month maximum limit on detentions for re-detained immigrants, making their rights "meaningless," reported Raw Story.

The 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Wednesday in the case of Kaveh Abedi, an Iranian man whom Immigration and Customs Enforcement locked up again in 2025.

Under the ruling, the interview requirement ICE failed to meet protects a detainee’s due process rights, which guarantee fair treatment before the government takes away someone’s freedom.

“[W]e hold that the Government violated its regulations by failing to ‘promptly’ provide Mr. Abedi with an informal interview and opportunity to be heard on its reasons for revoking his release,” Judge Carolyn McHugh wrote for the three-judge panel.

To read more CLICK HERE