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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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It is a crime to send federal troops or armed federal law enforcement agents to any polling place

With the mid-term elections approaching, questions have arisen over whether the Trump administration might attempt to station federal troops at polling places. As the Brennan Center and many others have pointed out, this would be clearly illegal: Section 592 of Title 18 of the United States Code criminalizes deploying federal troops or armed federal law enforcement agents to any polling place, and multiple other federal criminal and civil laws bar military interference in an election, reported Just Security. Such laws buttress the Posse Comitatus Act, which generally prohibits federal military participation in civilian law enforcement except where Congress has expressly authorized it. 

These laws, most of which have been in force for more than 150 years, unmistakably convey Congress’s intent to bar any kind of military interference in American elections. Even so, in 1968, the Office of Legal Counsel asserted in a short, conclusory memo that Section 592’s prohibition on troops at the polls does not apply if the president has invoked the Insurrection Act. The Insurrection Act is the most important statutory exception to the Posse Comitatus Act, allowing the president to use federal military forces to execute the law in certain emergency situations. 

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Autocracy Watch: USPS ordered not to deliver mail-in ballots in Democrat states

State election officials could soon face a stark choice: Hand over voter lists to the Trump administration or risk losing Postal Service delivery for mail-in ballots, reported CNN.

That dilemma stems from newly proposed USPS rules that seek to comply with an executive order President Donald Trump signed this spring to crack down on mail-in voting. If courts let the order stand, it would give the federal government an unprecedented role in elections — and could put even more voter data in the hands of Trump officials searching for supposed election fraud.

The proposed rules lay out new conditions that states would have to meet to send ballots through the mail, including giving the agency lists of all voters set to receive mail ballots.

So far, 23 Democratic-led states and the District of Columbia are suing, as are Democratic Party leaders and non-partisan voter advocacy groups, setting up a potentially active summer of high-stakes judicial rulings.

The Trump administration cleared an initial legal hurdle last month, when a federal judge in Washington, DC, who is overseeing one set of the cases, declined to block Trump’s executive order, allowing the Postal Service to begin implementing it.

The Democratic Party groups are asking an appeals court to speed up its review of that decision, warning that voters around the country could be disenfranchised in this year’s midterm elections if the proposal is not blocked.

In an interview with CNN, Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows, a Democrat whose state is part of the coalition that filed a legal challenge in Boston, said that if courts rule for the Trump administration, “Then you will see a virtual elimination of mail-in voting, unless the states supply voter lists to the federal government.”

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Meet one of the leading candidates to become the next Attorney General

Here is an introduction by The Bulwark to Senator Mike Lee of Utah, a short-lister for the position of United State Attorney General:

Public confidence in elections is a foundational requirement for a constitutional republic. Now, more than ever, we must have confidence and trust in Utah’s elections. . . .

The election systems we built here in Utah work well because of a core tenant [sic] of the U.S. Constitution: federalism. When appropriately applied, the division of power between the federal and state governments means decisions that directly impact us are made by people closest to us in state and local government.

United States Senator Mike Lee coauthored the above for Deseret News on October 5, 2022.

Stephen Richer writes, I agree wholeheartedly with the senator’s argument: Utah has reasonable election laws and competent election officials, and the public can trust its election results. Mass interference in Utah’s vote is indeed “virtually impossible,” as Lee put it a bit lower in the piece. And if you don’t like the results of a particular election, you can always work harder to win the next one.

But Lee is now making somewhat different arguments than he did in 2022. He regularly posts that non-citizens will steal our elections if we don’t require voters to provide documented proof of citizenship—something Utah didn’t require for Lee’s 2010, 2016, or 2022 elections.1 He also now says that secure elections require photo identification—but the vast majority of Utah ballots are verified by signature matching, not photo ID. He tells us to be suspicious of mail ballots. But Utah is an all-mail state. And he is suspicious of states that don’t finish counting ballots within forty-eight hours of Election Day—a deadline that Utah failed to hit in 2024.

There’s nothing novel about a flip-flopping politician. Lee is already famous for making a habit of turnabout, including on Trump’s morals (“If anyone spoke to my wife, or my daughter, or my mother, or any of my five sisters the way Mr. Trump has spoken to women, I wouldn’t hire that person”), Trump’s lies (“We can get into the fact that he accused my best friend’s father of conspiring to kill JFK”), and Trump’s disregard for basic law (“I’d like some assurances that he is going to be a vigorous defender for the U.S. Constitution”).

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Federal government usurps state authority in violation of the 10th Amendment

On Jan. 12, one particularly crucial case was filed by the state of Minnesota and the cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul, arguing that the federal Metro Surge operation—deploying thousands of ICE and other federal agents to the Twin Cities—violates the 10th Amendment, writes IIya Somin at Lawfare. That amendment states that “powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.” In a series of decisions supported primarily by conservative justices, such as Printz v. United States (1997) (written by conservative icon Justice Antonin Scalia), the Supreme Court has held that the federal government cannot “commandeer” state and local officials to do the federal government’s bidding, or to help enforce federal laws.

Control over state and local government personnel is one of the powers reserved to the states by the 10th Amendment. In addition, as legal scholar Michael Rappaport has shown, the original meaning of the Constitution indicates that such control is a basic element of the sovereignty inherent in being a state in the first place.

Minnesota and the two Twin Cities are among the jurisdictions that have “sanctuary policies” restricting state and local law enforcement assistance to federal immigration enforcement operations. Sanctuary jurisdictions have, for good reason, concluded that their law enforcement resources are better used to combat violent and property crime, rather than helping deport undocumented immigrants. As Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey puts it, “The job of our police is to keep people safe, not enforce fed immigration laws. I want them preventing homicides, not hunting down a working dad who contributes to [Minneapolis] & is from Ecuador.” The latter actually have much lower crime rates than native-born citizens, and many of those the administration seeks to deport have no criminal records at all. Local and state participation in deportation efforts also makes it more difficult to combat crime by poisoning relations between law enforcement agencies and minority communities.

Part of the purpose of the federal “surge” is to coerce Minnesota jurisdictions into giving up their sanctuary policies and using their resources to assist federal deportation efforts. As federal District Judge Katherine Menendez noted in a hearing in the case on Jan. 26, Trump administration officials have repeatedly indicated that this is one of their objectives. Attorney General Pam Bondi suggested as much in a Jan. 24 letter to Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz. A Jan. 16 White House statement explicitly indicates that Minnesota’s “sanctuary defiance” is “responsibl[e] for the enhanced enforcement operations in Minnesota.” A recent statement by Trump “border czar” Tom Homan indicates that the administration will not withdraw immigration enforcement officers from Minnesota unless state and local governments curb sanctuary policies and extend “cooperation” to federal immigration enforcers.

In addition, Bondi’s letter demands access to Minnesota’s voter rolls, linking those to the surge. That demand constitutes additional intrusion onto state autonomy in violation of the 10th Amendment. The Elections Clause of the Constitution explicitly gives states primary control over elections. While Congress can enact legislation imposing restrictions on state autonomy, no such legislation authorizes Bondi’s demands here, and courts have repeatedly rejected the administration’s demands for voter data from state governments, which one recent ruling described as “unprecedented and illegal.” With the notable exception of Homan’s comments, these and other statements fall short of demanding an explicit quid pro quo. But they provide strong evidence that the operations in Minnesota are intended to coerce the state into surrendering its autonomy on immigration and other issues.

The Minnesota case is not exactly analogous to previous anti-commandeering rulings by federal courts. But that is in part because it represents an even more blatant violation of the 10th Amendment. In Printz and other cases, such as New York v. United States (1992) and Murphy v. NCAA, the Supreme Court struck down congressional legislation requiring states to help enforce various types of federal laws, or to enact legislation of their own. In a series of decisions during the first Trump administration, and continuing in the second, numerous lower federal courts ruled that the president cannot order states to aid in immigration enforcement actions, and cannot withhold federal funds from sanctuary jurisdictions in cases where doing so would be “coercive” or Congress had not authorized immigration-related conditions on recipients.

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What's on the agenda for U.S. Supreme Court in 2026

Here are the Supreme Court cases to watch in 2026, according to Axios:

Birthright citizenship

The Supreme Court will likely decide Trump's executive order ending birthright citizenship in early 2026 in Trump v. Barbara.

Driving the news: Upholding Trump's order, which seeks to bar children of undocumented immigrants born in the U.S. from citizenship, would overturn a right guaranteed by the 14th Amendment and upheld by the court for more than a century.

Trump's order was quickly met with legal challenges, and several courts temporarily halted its implementation.

Flashback: The administration argues birthright citizenship applies only to formerly enslaved people who were granted citizenship under the 14th Amendment after the Civil War.

Michael LeRoy, an immigration law expert at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, previously told Axios' Avery Lotz that it's impossible to predict how SCOTUS will rule — but a decision in Trump's favor could have sweeping implications for other constitutional protections.

Trump's tariff case

SCOTUS will decide the legality of Trump declaring a national emergency to impose sweeping tariffs on foreign goods without congressional approval, in what he has called the "most important case ever" in Learning Resources v. Trump.

State of play: A ruling against Trump could force the government to refund more than $100 billion in tariffs already collected and curtail his ability to use declared emergencies to enact his economic agenda.

Trump has repeatedly claimed tariff revenue will help pay down the national debt, bankroll aid to farmers and cover the cost of his new "warrior dividend" — a one-time $1,776 bonus for roughly 1.45 million service members — even though the bonus is actually being paid out of previously approved Pentagon housing funds, not tariffs.

Yes, but: The president has argued his far-reaching tariffs create jobs and boost U.S. manufacturing, claims many economists dispute. Economists also worry the government might ultimately have to return the tariff revenue.

In recent weeks, companies including Costco, Revlon, Bumble Bee Foods and the maker of Ray-Ban have sued, seeking refunds if the justices ultimately strike down the tariffs.

What Trump's saying: "Evil, American hating Forces are fighting us at the United States Supreme Court," Trump said in Truth Social post in November.

"Pray to God that our Nine Justices will show great wisdom, and do the right thing for America!"

Banning conversion therapy

SCOTUS is expected to rule on a case challenging bans on LGBTQ+ conversion therapy for minors — a discredited practice aimed at changing young people's sexual orientations or gender identities in Chiles v. Salazar.

Zoom out: The justices will decide whether therapists' conversations with patients are protected by the First Amendment or considered medical treatment that states can regulate.

LGBTQ+ advocates, major medical and mental health organizations have condemned conversion therapy as harmful, discriminatory and ineffective.

Worth noting: Twenty-three states had full bans on conversion therapy as of late 2025, with five states imposing a partial ban. Five states prohibit such bans, while 18 have no restrictions.

Trans athletes in women's sports

SCOTUS will hear arguments in two major cases — one from Idaho and another from West Virginia — where states banned transgender athletes from participating in girls' sports in West Virginia v. B.P.J. and Little v. Hecox.

Zoom in: The court could decide Title IX, which prohibits sex discrimination in education programs, does not protect transgender athletes competing in sports consistent with their gender identity.

A decision against the athletes would mark a major setback for the LGBTQ+ community, adding to Trump's other 2025 actions to limit protections for transgender individuals.

The Voting Rights Act

The high court appears poised to severely curtail Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act in a decision that would reshape how legislative and congressional maps are drawn nationwide and potentially reduce minority representation by significant margins in Louisiana v. Callais.

Why it matters: The case challenges a core provision of the Voting Rights Act that has created maps that allow minority voters to elect their candidates of choice. Overturning it could allow Republicans to lock in additional congressional and legislative seats across the country.

The ruling could make it significantly harder for minority voters to secure or maintain electoral representation.

Campaign finance

SCOTUS will rule on a Republican-backed challenge that aims to overturn decades-old limits on how much political parties can spend in coordination with candidates in NRSC v. FEC.

What we're watching: Election watchdogs warn that removing these limits would destroy the few remaining firewalls between big money and candidates.

The case would further remove campaign finance restrictions on how much an individual or group can donate directly to a candidate, which provides a safeguard against bribery or suspected corruption.

How it works: Under current law, political action committees can raise unlimited funds, but they can't coordinate with candidates.

Parties, on the other hand, are limited in how much they can raise, but they are able to cooperate with candidates.

Republicans argue those limits violate the First Amendment by preventing parties from supporting their nominees.

Firing independent agency heads

The Supreme Court will decide whether Trump has the unilateral authority to fire leaders of independent agencies in Trump v. Cook and Trump v. Slaughter.

The bottom line: A ruling for Trump would overturn a 90-year-old precedent that shielded independent agency commissioners from political firings.

Catch up quick: The cases stem from Trump's attempted firing of Federal Reserve governor Lisa Cook and his firings of FTC officials Rebecca Slaughter and Alvaro Bedoya, who later resigned.

Trump said their service at the agency was "inconsistent with my Administration's policies," in a letter announcing the terminations.

Hawaii law prohibiting guns

SCOTUS will rule on the legality of a Hawaii law that prohibits individuals from carrying guns onto private property unless the owner gives explicit consent in Wolford v. Lopez.

Hawaii's list of "sensitive places," where firearms are banned, includes more than 15 categories — places such as bars, beaches and banks — which plaintiffs argue violates their 2nd Amendment rights.

Context: Hawaii enacted the new restrictions in 2023 after the Supreme Court's Bruen decision, which held that the 2nd Amendment included the right to carry in public.

California has faced similar legal challenges after passing laws aimed at tightening firearm restrictions on private property.

The justices have agreed to consider only Hawaii's burden flipping provision, which the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld, finding that the state's law "falls well within the historical tradition," and not the broader sensitive places restrictions as a whole.

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Texas governor and AG want to remove political opponents by fiat, to bolster GOP chances in the 2026 midterm

Why did Texas legislators flee?

According to The New York Times, Democrats left the state to block an effort by President Trump and Gov. Abbott to redraw the state’s U.S. House maps to swing five of Texas’s 38 districts from Democratic to Republican ahead of the 2026 midterm elections. Dozens of Democratic members of the Texas House used a tactic called “breaking quorum,” denying Republican State House leaders the 100 members they need to convene.

“Breaking quorum,” has been used before. Texas lawmakers staged similar walkouts in 1870, 1979, 2003, and 2021. The 1979 effort, which was meant to block a proposed change in the date of the presidential primary, is the only one of the four walkouts that ultimately succeeded. Oregon and Indiana, two other states that require a two-thirds legislative majority for a quorum, have also had walkouts.

What have Republicans done in response?

On Monday, after the speaker of the Texas House issued civil arrest warrants for the runaway Democrats, Mr. Abbott ordered the Texas Department of Public Safety to track them down.

Senator John Cornyn, Republican of Texas, asked the F.B.I. to assist Texas authorities in their “efforts to locate or arrest” the Democratic lawmakers.

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Mr. Abbott has also filed a lawsuit asking the Texas Supreme Court to remove Mr. Wu from office, arguing that his “willful refusal to appear” should be construed as a “deliberate abandonment of office.” Under state law, the court can remove legislators from office using a legal instrument called a writ of quo warranto if it finds they have “forfeited his or her office by abandonment.”

Protected speech or dereliction of duty?

Despite the history of breaking quorum, the federal courts have never conclusively answered one key question: Is it protected by the First Amendment’s guarantee to free speech and free assembly, and perhaps other constitutional rights?

In a 2021 federal lawsuit, a group of Texas legislators argued that it was, but the federal court dropped the case without ruling after the plaintiffs failed to pursue it. In the state courts that same year, a county judge issued a restraining order barring the arrest of lawmakers who broke quorum, but that order was quickly blocked by the Texas supreme court.

In its 2021 ruling, the Texas supreme court offered a split decision, seemingly upholding the legality of quorum breaks under the state constitution, as well as civil warrants to end them. “Just as article III, section 10 enables ‘quorum-breaking’ by a minority faction of the legislature, it likewise authorizes ‘quorum-forcing’ by the remaining members,” the court wrote.

 

So the ruling appears to support both the Democrats’ argument that breaking quorum is not the same thing as abandoning their office, but also the Republicans’ argument that the quorum breakers can be subject to arrest.

“Simply denying a quorum is something that has been used for 200 years on and off throughout government,” said Joe Jaworski, the former mayor of Galveston and a Democratic candidate for Texas Attorney General next year.

If the quorum breakers hold fast and the fight ends up in the courts, the judicial terrain might afford Mr. Abbott some advantages. At the state level, all nine justices on the Texas supreme court are Republicans, and six were initially chosen by Mr. Abbott. In the federal courts, Texas falls under the jurisdiction of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, the most conservative appeals court in the country, where six of the 17 judges are Mr. Trump’s nominees.

Can Democrats be arrested?

Under most circumstances, the F.B.I. lacks the authority to enforce state or local laws.

David Froomkin, a law professor at the University of Houston, said that it would be “highly inappropriate” for federal law enforcement, such as the F.B.I., to get involved when no federal law has been broken.

“As far as I’m aware, there’s no allegation of a violation of a federal crime,” he said. “They should not be involved in resolving what is a dispute about state law and the state constitution.”

But Daniel Richman, a professor at Columbia Law School and former federal prosecutor, said it was possible that the F.B.I. could argue it had some basis for investigating or even arresting the legislators under a federal law that bars interstate travel to avoid legal process. Any arrests under that law would then be scrutinized by federal judges in the district where the arrest occurred, Mr. Richman said.

The case is clearer for state police acting within Texas. The Texas high court said in 2021, “Although arrest of absent members may seem an extreme step to some observers, the fact remains that if the absent members are sufficiently motivated to resist, the quorum-forcing authority given by the constitution to the present members can only be effectuated by physical compulsion.”

Can state politicians be removed from office by fiat?

The legal actions being pursued by Mr. Abbott and Texas’s attorney general, Ken Paxton, to remove Democratic state representatives from office have little legal precedent, something Mr. Paxton has conceded.

“It’s never been done,” he said in an interview on Newsmax on Wednesday.

Mr. Froomkin of the University of Houston said the Texas Constitution makes clear that the State House makes its own procedural rules and has authority to impose penalties. The involvement of the executive and the judicial branch in trying to remove members would raise serious separation of powers issues.

“I have no reason to believe that the supreme court would give any credence to these outlandish theories,” he said.

“The stakes are really grave here,” he added, referring to the effort by Mr. Abbott to remove the leader of the walkout, Mr. Wu. “We have a chief executive challenging the legitimacy of his political opponents in the legislature simply because they’re making use of legislative rules to delay his agenda.”

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Senate confirms Fox News host as U.S. Attorney for DC

Jeannine Pirro has been among the most prominent and fiercest allies of Trump, including denying the outcome of the 2020 election

The U.S. Senate voted to confirm former Fox News host and prosecutor Jeanine Pirro as U.S. attorney for Washington, D.C., reported NBC News.

The vote was along party lines, 50-45, with Sens. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., Roger Wicker, R-Miss., Tim Scott, R-S.C., Peter Welch, D-Vt., and Ruben Gallego, D-Ariz., not voting.

Pirro had been serving as interim U.S. attorney for D.C. since May, after Trump appointed her to replace conservative activist Ed Martin as the top federal prosecutor in Washington.

In a Truth Social post announcing Pirro’s appointment, Trump lauded the former prosecutor as a “powerful crusader for victims of crime" and "incredibly well qualified for the position."

Pirro has been among the most prominent and fiercest allies of Trump, previously using her platform as a host of two Fox News programs to push conspiracy theories about voting in the aftermath of Trump's 2020 election loss. She was cited in a defamation lawsuit against Fox News by Dominion Voting Systems for her role spreading election disinformation. Fox News ultimately reached a $787.5 million settlement with Dominion in 2023.

Pirro previously served as an assistant district attorney for Westchester County, New York, ultimately becoming the first woman elected to serve as the Westchester County district attorney. During her tenure, Pirro started the first domestic violence unit in a prosecutor's office, an accomplishment Trump cited in his decision to appoint her as a U.S. attorney.

Following her judicial career, Pirro in 2005 launched an unsuccessful bid for the Republican nomination for Senate in New York, aiming to challenge then-incumbent Hillary Clinton. Soon after, she launched a campaign for New York attorney general, but the effort was ultimately derailed by a federal probe over a plot by Pirro to record her then-husband, Albert Pirro, who she suspected was having an affair.

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January 20, 2025: Trump Presidency 2.0 Begins

Donald J. Trump was inaugurated as the 47th president of the United States in Washington, D.C. Only Trump and Grover Cleveland have been elected to nonconsecutive terms (1885-1889 and 1893-1897).

Law & Crime--George Santos: A cautionary tale in an important election year

Matthew T. Mangino
Law & Crime News
August 22, 2024

 As we move toward Labor Day and the traditional start of the election season, the run-up to the 2024 election has not disappointed in its historic twists and turns. President Joe Biden is out, Vice President Kamala Harris is in, and former president Donald Trump survived an assassination attempt and is about as agitated as he has been since losing his reelection bid in 2020.

The recalibrated Democratic National Convention is underway in Chicago. It’s not quite the show we expected several weeks ago, when there was talk of an open convention to force out Biden. Instead, Biden magnanimously stepped down and is being exalted by Democrats far and wide.

While all this is going on, there is little mention of the guilty plea of George Santos – a cautionary tale for everything that is wrong, misleading and impossible to understand about modern American politics.

Santos, whose trial on 23 felony charges was scheduled to begin on Sept. 9, entered a guilty plea on Monday. He pleaded guilty to wire fraud and aggravated identity theft, and admitted he committed other crimes that could land him in prison for about seven years under the terms of a plea agreement, ABC News reported.

When Santos flipped New York’s Third Congressional District in 2022, he became the first openly gay non-incumbent Republican elected to Congress. Although his campaign biography said he lived in Long Island with his husband and four dogs, his husband never campaigned with Santos and there was no marriage license on record for a marriage to a man.

There was a marriage license to a woman in 2012 and a divorce in 2019.

That was only the beginning of the lies that Santos apparently told. He created a bio out of whole cloth. He was running for Congress, for the second time, in New York City. NYC may have one of the greatest newspapers in the world, The New York Times, and Santos’ deceit wasn’t exposed to the voters.

It wasn’t as though Santos had a sophisticated cover story that insulated him when he told mistruths. Santos apparently lied about everything. He lied about where he went to high school, where he went to college and where he worked.

This is the 21st Century — I can do a search to find out what Donald Trump had for breakfast this morning.

Santos said his mom was at the World Trade Center on 9/11. She was not.

He said his grandmother died during the Holocaust. She didn’t.

He said four of his employees died as a result of the Pulse Nightclub mass shooting. Not true.

Don’t forget this guy got elected to Congress! Then he used campaign money for Botox, travel and clothes. He deposited campaign contributions into private accounts. He used donor credit card information to make unauthorized charges.

He lied to Congress, and became only the sixth member of the House of Representatives to be expelled — although 114 members of Congress voted not to expel him.

Then, he was indicted.

He showed up for Biden’s State of the Union this year and announced he would be running for Congress in 2024, but that did not happen — and now he is more than likely headed to prison.

In Santos’ wake of lies and crimes, we are reminded of a couple important failures. As newspapers struggle to sustain their important role in American politics — remember Watergate? — failure to vet candidates opens the door to charlatans like Santos.

Social media has blurred the line between truth and fiction. Trump has reminded us, time and time again, that it does not matter what the media says about you as long as they keep talking about you.

Voters need to demand answers. There are red flags when things seem too good to be true. In the case of Santos, the red flags were revealed long before his election — but simply ignored. As former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy told reporters in January 2023, “I always had a few questions” about Santos’ resume.

However, McCarthy needed every vote he could get to become Speaker of the House, including Santos’ vote. McCarthy was apparently willing to overlook, downplay or hide the truth about Santos – and in politics, acts of omission can be as dangerous as the commission of mistruth, lies or deceit.

Voters — as the 2024 election approaches, keep up your guard.

Matthew T. Mangino is of counsel with Luxenberg, Garbett, Kelly and George P.C. His book, “The Executioner’s Toll,” was released in 2010 by McFarland Publishing. You can reach him at www.mattmangino.com and follow him on Twitter @MatthewTMangino.

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Felons can't vote in Florida but ...Trump will be able to cast a ballot

Thousands of Florida residents lose their right to vote every year when they are convicted of a felony. But by a quirk of the law, Florida resident Donald Trump likely will be able to cast a ballot in November despite his convictions this week, reported the Washington Post.

If the former president had been convicted in Republican-dominated Florida or most other states, he would not be allowed to vote this fall as he seeks to unseat President Biden. But Trump was convicted in New York, a Democrat-run state where felon voting laws are more lenient, and that makes all the difference for his ability to keep his right to vote.

Under Florida law, residents convicted of crimes in other states lose their ability to vote in Florida only if they are barred from voting in the state where they committed their offenses, according to the U.S. Vote Foundation. In New York, where Trump was convicted, felons are barred from voting only while they are incarcerated, according to the foundation and Loyola Law School professor Justin Levitt.

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Judge in Jan. 6 cases warns of future violent attacks after 2024 election

 A federal judge who has overseen numerous criminal cases against Donald Trump supporters who viciously assaulted police officers during the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol expressed concern during a sentencing hearing that the former president could trigger another violent attack in the lead-up to or aftermath of the 2024 presidential election, reported NBC News.

U.S. District Judge Rudy Contreras voiced those concerns while sentencing Jeffrey Sabol, a Colorado geophysicist, to 63 months, or more than five years, in federal prison. Sabol had told the FBI that he believed there was no question the election was stolen and that Dominion voting machines had been tampered with. Sabol also told the FBI he was filled with “patriotic rage” on Jan. 6, that a “call to battle was announced” and that he “answered the call because he was a patriot warrior.”

Contreras said that Trump and his allies had “spurred” the attack on the Capitol, saying he was worried that Sabol would respond once again if a similar “call” was issued.

"It doesn't take much imagination to imagine a similar call coming out in the coming months," Contreras said Thursday.

Sabol, who repeatedly assaulted officers at the lower west tunnel during the Capitol attack, was one of a fraction of the Jan. 6 defendants who had been held pretrial, so he's already served the majority of his sentence. He was arrested on Jan. 11, 2021, just five days after the attack. Sabol destroyed his laptop in a microwave oven, dropped his cellphone in a body of water and tried to board a flight to Zurich, Switzerland, prior to his arrest, prosecutors said.

Contreras on Thursday also ordered Sabol to pay $32,165.65 in restitution and serve three years of supervised release.Jeffrey Sabol, center, seen during the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia

In the lead-up to the Capitol attack, many Trump supporters saw the former president's Dec. 19, 2020 "will be wild" tweet encouraging people to come to Washington on Jan. 6 as a "call to arms." As criminal cases against hundreds of Trump supporters have made their way through federal court, Jan. 6 defendants have said time and time again that they took the actions they did because they believed the former president's baseless lies about the 2020 election.

Some Jan. 6 defendants have said they were duped and manipulated and expressed retroactive embarrassment about their lack of critical thinking skills, with some defendants even calling themselves idiots.

In the court gallery for Sabol’s sentencing was Micki Witthoeft, the mother of Jan. 6 rioter Ashli Babbit, who was shot and killed by a Capitol Police officer as she jumped through a broken window leading into the House Speaker’s Lobby. Witthoeft attended a vigil for Jan. 6 defendants outside a jail in Washington this week, which was livestreamed, saying that she had spoken with Trump on the phone earlier in the day and that the former president “talked about setting these guys free when he gets in,” a message he asked to be passed along to Jan. 6 defendants.

The former president was supposed to be currently standing trial in connection with his efforts to overturn his election loss. Instead, the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments on Trump's claims of total presidential immunity from criminal charges next month, and it is unclear if he will face trial before Election Day 2024.

Numerous members of the federal judiciary in Washington have indicated that they believe Trump is responsible for the events of Jan. 6. Contreras said at a prior sentencing against a Jan. 6 rioter that Trump and his allies “bear responsibility for what occurred that day.”

Judge Amy Berman Jackson, at a prior Jan. 6 sentencing, said that the Republican Party was "actively shunning the few who think standing up for principle is more important than power and have stepped forward to educate the public and to speak the truth." The threat to democracy, Berman Jackson said, did not evaporate or dissipate just because the 2020 election results were certified.

"The lie that the election was stolen or illegitimate is still being propagated. Indeed, it’s being amplified, not only on extremist social media sites, but on mainstream news outlets," she said. "And worse, it’s become heresy for a member of the former president’s party to say otherwise."

More recently, Senior U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth expressed astonishment that Republican politicians had so readily latched onto "preposterous" claims about the events of Jan. 6 itself. He cited claims that criminals convicted in a court of law or ordered held until trial by federal judges because of their danger to the community or risk of flight were "hostages," a term Trump and his supporters like Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y., have used.

“The Court is accustomed to defendants who refuse to accept that they did anything wrong. But in my thirty-seven years on the bench, I cannot recall a time when such meritless justifications of criminal activity have gone mainstream,” Lamberth, who was appointed by former President Ronald Reagan in 1987, said.

“I have been dismayed to see distortions and outright falsehoods seep into the public consciousness,” Lamberth continued. “The Court fears that such destructive, misguided rhetoric could presage further danger to our country.”

House vacancies and control of the U.S. House of Representatives

 As the control of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives potentially swings with every vacancy it is worth while to think of the U.S. House in the years immediately before the election of FDR.

The 72nd Congress (1931–1933) convened as Clerk William Tyler Page called the House to order at noon on opening day. The proceedings were historic. Elections in the fall of 1930 had provided Republicans with a slim majority in the chamber—218 Republicans, 216 Democrats, and one Farmer–Laborer. But between Election Day 1930 and the opening of the new Congress 13 months later, 14 Representatives-elect died, according to The History of the U.S. House of Representatives.

In the subsequent special elections to fill those vacancies, Democrats gained a majority advantage as voters registered their displeasure with the deepening Great Depression and the response to it by the Herbert Hoover administration.

The new, and unexpected, Democrat majority in the house laid the ground work for the very early stage of what would become known as Franklin Roosevelt's 'New Deal.'

On opening day, Democrats organized the chamber with a 219 to 213 advantage, with one Member from a third party. Among the late-Members mourned was popular Republican Speaker Nicholas Longworth, who had passed away on April 9, 1931. House Chaplain James Shera Montgomery eulogized Longworth in the opening prayer, motioning toward a portrait of the late Speaker at the foot of the rostrum. “Before us is an image of our most notable one.

A sad and mournful yesterday dictates our sorrow. Through the years he camped with us in the embrace of a sweet and beautiful fraternity.” Moments later, Longworth’s longtime friend, Democrat John Nance Garner of Texas, was elected Speaker of the House and sworn in by the dean of the House, Edward Pou of North Carolina.

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