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In my first year in what was once called “the newspaper business,” the city editor of the paper gave me my weekend assignment.

I was an intern, and weekend assignments were always pretty bad — some fluff story about a local Boy Scout troop raising money, or a casserole cook-off. It was not the type of stuff a youngish, hungover reporter with a Nelson Algren complex wanted to spend a Saturday writing about. If anyone under the age of 25 is reading this, I know it must make me sound pretty old, but this was only 16 years ago, and this was the way it had been for a long time.

So, on one of those warm-but-crisp Midwest autumn mornings, I drove my grumpy, hungover ass out to Canton, Illinois for a September 11 memorial event at a local church. The editor — who I think would call himself a Reagan Republican but was also a committed truth-telling journalist with Hunter Thompson quotes on his wall — had joked with me about the event, which featured a monster truck and dirt bike jumping.

“Ask the pastor what dirt bikes have to do with 9/11,” he told me. I thought he was joking. Maybe he was not.

At the entrance to the event was a mangled piece of steel from the World Trade Center that, during its demise, had formed into the shape of a cross. People solemnly looked at it as they entered a field near the church.

We billed the event as a “unique” 9/11 memorial. I took the pastor’s words about how the historic attacks that had occurred just nine years earlier were part of the reason that Americans should accept Jesus Christ as their lord and savior, and folks who picked up their Sunday paper had a nice little story to read.

But the strange and, to me, troublesome blending of church and state — not to mention the religious iconography of what was, again, to me, a horrific tragedy that was nonetheless a historic event that had absolutely nothing to do with God and everything to do with U.S. foreign policy and its impact — was not lost on me. The attacks of September 11, 2001 were a terrible, violent shock to Americans. But they did not come completely out of nowhere. And on that day at the church in Canton in 2010, we knew that. By then, we had come to understand why the 9/11 attackers did what they did, as wrong and evil as it was.

Many Americans had also created a Christian-nationalist legend out of the attacks — a story that resulted in otherwise reasonable, perhaps more secular people, supporting or accepting a variety of authoritarian themes that continue to shape our society. Out of fear and anger, many Americans — for a time, myself included — went along with the nationalist fervor that followed 9/11, having little or no idea of its grave repercussions.

It wasn’t my job that day to explore these haughty topics, so I wrote up something that avoided any of that potential controversy and instead described the scene, got some quotes, and framed the event as one community’s way of remembering the fallen. We used to joke in the newsroom that anniversaries of events only really mattered when there was a five or a zero at the end of them. No one cared about the 59th anniversary of D-Day, for instance. But you better make a big splash on the front page when the 60th rolled around.

That muscle memory still resides in me, which is why I’m remembering that day in Canton on the 25th anniversary of 9/11, and thinking a bit more about what it means.

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By now, we know that the surveillance state that came in the wake of the attacks has become a daily part of our lives. The expansion of federal government and executive power has grown to a point that it seems there’s no going back. On September 11, 2001, the Department of Homeland Security didn’t even exist. Now, it’s the largest federal law enforcement agency, with unbelievably sweeping powers to spy on and apprehend citizens and noncitizens alike. Under Trump, the vast powers initially granted to DHS out of our desire to never allow an attack like 9/11 to happen again have reached their inevitable, authoritarian scope.

DHS is now a fully-fascist paramilitary organization that answers only to Trump and Christian nationalist forces in our government. Even under Democratic presidents, its power has expanded well beyond its original intent. Left unchecked, the agency will continue to expand its presence in everyday American lives, further threatening the liberties of even native-born men and women.

But DHS isn’t the only example of the authoritarian shift in American society. That shift was relatively slow at first and threatened primarily those here from Muslim countries, but has expanded to focus on anyone who doesn’t fit a narrow definition of patriotism that has now expanded to anyone who doesn’t subscribe to a white, Christian-nationalist vision of American life. Under Trump, this dynamic has only accelerated.

Following 9/11, the nation developed what I call the automatic hero complex. Under this framework, we collectively agreed to grant all first-responders the title and stance of heroes. It didn’t matter whether they were firefighters who responded to the World Trade Center or a paramedic in Peoria. They were heroes. But that designation began to apply more to police than anyone else. With this granting of hero status, we also gave away some of our collective skepticism of the power of police.

American law enforcement has used this permission structure to collect more and more funding from cities and states, and more acquire surveillance and investigative powers. Perhaps most obviously — because we can see it with our own eyes in the gear and dress of the average police officer — American law enforcement has become almost absurdly militarized.

The attacks of September 11 helped to shift the public’s perception of being a cop, which data shows is less fatal than being a roofer, to men and women who are risking their lives on the frontlines of wars against evil in their own communities. In reality, they’re often just writing traffic tickets.

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The great irony of 9/11 is that what began as a response to a war against us has become our own war against ourselves. Yes, 9/11 has been used as justification for our forever wars across the globe. But twenty-five years on, one of the unavoidable realities of our response to the attacks is that the American right has decided that as much as half the country is fundamentally anti-American for being skeptical or critical of the powers of law enforcement and right-wing government that have grown since that day.

Those who question or criticize the American right’s vision for the nation are effectively viewed as enemy combatants in this war.

At times, our post-9/11 war against ourselves has mostly been a culture war in which Republicans and conservatives decide who is, at heart, an American and who is not. But increasingly under Republican governments, the war is entering the physical realm, turning hotter.

Without a societal shift away from the authoritarianism of the American right — sweeping election wins for moderates, significant policy changes at the national, state and local levels, a rebuke of authoritarian belief systems and behavior at the community level — this war is only going to get hotter, and our decline will accelerate.

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Among the many threats to the midterm elections is a system being created by the USPS that will result in chaos for tens of millions of voters across the country who will vote by mail in November.

Many of those voters might not even receive their ballots if the Supreme Court allows the system to be fully implemented. Now, a USPS whistleblower says those inside the agency working on the system have called it a “shit show.”

The system requires states to provide a list of all people receiving mail-in ballots to the USPS. That list is checked against a second list of ballots — called a “manifest” — that contains voter information required to send the ballot: first and last name, address, etc. Only when the voter list and manifest match — perfectly — are election officials allowed to bring the ballots to a USPS facility to send them.

Then, there is a second check. If the scanning and processing system currently being created by the USPS flags any discrepancies between the list of voters receiving ballots and the corresponding information on the actual ballots — like an address change, or someone who has changed their name because they were married — then the ballot is flagged for rejection. But not just that ballot — every single other ballot in that batch, which can number in the tens of thousands of ballots.

This means that any minor technical discrepancy between a voters’ information on lists provided by states and their actual ballot would result not just in that individual ballot’s rejection, but every other ballot in the batch. In this way, tens of thousands of ballots at a time would have to go back to state election officials, who would then have to fix the lone error, and then re-submit the entire batch of ballots.

“As designed, the process is entirely unforgiving,” a USPS whistleblower wrote to Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) on Aug. 31. “It could delay ballots by the thousands in repeated verification cycles — and thus prevent states from mailing enormous numbers of ballots.”

Trump’s attempt to effectively stop millions of ballots from being sent to voters is just one of a dizzying number of ways that the president is directly interfering in November’s midterms on behalf of Republicans. Not on the ballot himself, Trump is nonetheless aggressively working to prevent Democrats from taking power in Congress, likely motivated by his fear of being impeached or otherwise held accountable for his and his administration’s rampant corruption and incompetence.

The Supreme Court has thus far avoided having to decide on the system at the center of the whistleblower’s letter, which stems from one of Trump’s executive orders on elections. But the court will likely decide on the matter before November. If the court approves Trump’s order and the USPS mail-in ballot system, it will throw the midterms further into chaos as states scramble to comply with the new system, and get ballots to voters on time. (In fact, some ballots like those to members of the military and overseas voters are already being sent out.)

The court may also choose to decide on a case being brought by the Republican National Committee that seeks to purge voters within the 90-day “quiet period” of the National Voter Registration Act. This 90-day window provided by the NVRA was created to ensure that large-scale voter purges — which are often the result of challenges brought by political parties and highly-partisan Republican activists — don’t disenfranchise voters close to an election. The RNC is arguing that because it believes (highly questionably) noncitizens are registered to vote in Arizona, the 90-day quiet period shouldn’t apply. If the Supreme Court decides in the RNC’s favor, it would pave the way for voter purges of voters with Hispanic last names in Arizona within months or weeks of the midterms.

These pending decisions by the Supreme Court are just two of the many, many ways that Trump and Republicans are seeking to interfere in the midterms. Here are a few other issues we’re tracking and ways to ensure your vote counts:

• Not only is the DNC’s lawsuit against the Justice Department over plans to seize ballots a warning that Trump clearly plans to do just that, but it’s also an important move to thwart those efforts: The DOJ could try to seize ballots, even without a warrant, according to a retired federal judge who spoke to The American Prospect, but states couldn’t proactively obtain court injunctions against such actions unless we know that such a policy currently exists. The existence of that policy is exactly what the DNC lawsuit seeks to reveal. As of today, the DOJ has been served and has yet to respond.

• It’s still entirely unclear what the Justice Department is doing with the thousands of ballots it took during an FBI raid of a Fulton County elections warehouse in Georgia in January. Speculation remains that the Trump administration will use the ballots to make further unfounded claims of fraud in the 2020 election, perhaps as pretext to declare a national emergency or invoke the Insurrection Act to take greater control of election administration in November.

• After the Trump administration threatened to withhold federal election security funding to Democratic states that refused to implement Trump’s demands on election administration, Democrats are asking the Department of Homeland Security to explain a delay in funds to states involved with the Elections Infrastructure Information Sharing and Analysis Center (EI-ISAC).

• Concerned over the pending USPS mail-in ballot chaos, Oregon will use more ballot drop boxes to allow voters to return their ballots.

• Democrats across the country are urging voters to check their voter registration to ensure it’s up-to-date, with some saying it’s crucial that voters vote early and even in-person. Early in-person voting in Rhode Island’s primaries is already double what it was during the 2022 midterms.

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It takes a lot of reading between the lines to fully understand the threats to elections and other anti-democratic behavior by Trump and Republicans. Much of what they do is obvious for a simple reason: they need credit from the election denial movement (which is indistinguishable from the MAGA base) for saying that elections are rigged and that people like Trump are doing something about it. Hence the SAVE Act, the seizure of ballots in Georgia, executive orders, Trump’s primetime speech, withholding of federal funds to force election rule changes, threats to arrest election officials, and on and on.

But a careful examination of these statements and actions is required in order to try to anticipate what’s coming next, and how it could impact Americans’ right to choose their own leaders. This guess work is at the center of a lawsuit filed by the Democratic National Committee last week that seeks to further expose the Trump administration’s plans to interfere in the midterms.

On Aug. 20, the DNC filed a fairly routine lawsuit alleging that the Justice Department and Homeland Security violated the Freedom of Information Act by not responding to requests for records about plans to seize ballots and other election materials in November. (Federal agencies often fail to comply with the statutory deadlines of FOIA, and suing those agencies in order to get records is a common way to force their hand.)

While holding the Trump administration accountable for not complying with FOIA is the important, technical reason for the lawsuit, its context is perhaps even more important. The lawsuit is the DNC saying, We think you’re going to seize ballots, so show us in court why and how you’re actually not going to do this. In other words, the DNC is saying it is reasonably foreseeable that Trump will seize ballots and other materials under the guise of a national emergency, to be declared at some point between now and November, as has long been expected by election observers and demanded by the election denial movement.

In its lawsuit, the DNC noted that Trump’s Justice Department has been threatening to arrest election officials in all 50 states if they allow ineligible voters to cast ballots in November. The threat comes under the overblown and outright false claims of widespread voting by noncitizens.

“These preemptive threats suggest that federal law enforcement may have already opened initial assessments, laying the groundwork for potential seizures of election materials prior to certification of the 2026 midterm election,” the lawsuit states.

The DNC also notes that the Justice Department has taken down guidance that stresses “non-interference” in ongoing elections — even if there is evidence of fraud — by federal law enforcement.

Threats to arrest election officials and the removal of the “non-interference” guidance are clues, according to the DNC lawsuit, that the Trump administration plans to seize ballots in November.

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We’re already in uncharted territory

Of course, federal law enforcement seizing ballots is not supposed to happen — and in fact prior to January, when the FBI raided a Fulton County elections warehouse, the seizure of ballots by the federal government from local authorities had not occurred in all of American history. (I’ve scoured articles and spoken to many legal experts to confirm this fact, which is also noted in this important Loyola Law School article from former Justice Department election lawyers Justin Levitt and John Keller.) Federal law enforcement shouldn’t be seizing ballots because the Justice Department is an extension of the executive branch, which has no constitutional role in administering elections.

The DOJ does, however, have a role in enforcing election law. That’s why we saw the raid in January: under the theory that election rules and laws had been violated during the 2020 election, an FBI agent in Atlanta applied for a search warrant from a magistrate judge. The judge approved the warrant even though it was based on exaggerated or outright false claims of fraud perpetuated by a variety of pro-Trump election denial activists, including three public officials in Georgia. American Doom filed a motion in court demanding that the DOJ reveal the names of some of the witnesses relied upon for the FBI agent’s affidavit, and won.

The judge probably shouldn’t have approved the warrant — it was based on claims of fraud that had already been investigated and largely dismissed by state authorities — but did so anyway, in part because judges are taught to have a “presumption of regularity” when considering requests from the Justice Department. This “presumption of regularity” means that judges are to assume that the Justice Department is acting in good faith, and has a good reason to be asking for whatever it’s asking for. Under the Trump administration, this quasi-legal precedent can no longer be relied upon, as has been well documented, particularly in relation to ICE tactics.

The judge in Georgia also would have considered the harm that seizing ballots from an election that had occurred more than five years ago would do to the local governments — Fulton County and the State of Georgia — that were the targets of the investigation. Considering that the ballots were from the 2020 election and not one that was occurring in 2026, the judge appears to have decided that seizing the ballots would not do significant harm to the ability of Fulton County and Georgia to carry out an election that had already occurred, as Levitt and Keller note.

But judges being asked by the Justice Department in November for search warrants to seize ballots in an ongoing election is an entirely different matter, Levitt and Keller point out. Theoretically, those judges should immediately deny these requests — seizing ballots in an election that has just occurred and has yet to be legally certified would directly interfere with an election process in which the executive branch has no role under the constitution.

Whether the Justice Department attempts to seize ballots is question number one. Question number two is whether judges will allow the Justice Department or other federal law enforcement to do so.

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A ‘national emergency’ to seize ballots

Clearly, the DNC believes it is likely that the Trump administration will attempt to seize ballots in November. If magistrate judges refuse to sign off on warrants for ballots and other election materials, the DNC anticipates that DOJ lawyers will try to go around those refusals by asking federal district court judges to approve the warrants, likely under the guise of some sort of national emergency.

The DNC anticipates this action because it has already occurred.

In January, as ICE agents swarmed Minneapolis, causing chaos, arresting thousands, and killing Alex Pretti and Renee Good, protesters took to the streets. In one infamous incident, former CNN anchor Don Lemon and independent journalist Georgia Fort accompanied protesters who entered a church led by a pastor who was also an ICE official. The Justice Department arrested Lemon and Fort along with two dozen protesters, charging them with various crimes.

But before agents could arrest some of those involved with the protest at the church, they had to obtain warrants for some of those arrests. Early in the case, a magistrate judge approved warrants for three people sought in connection with the event, but denied warrants for five others. The Justice Department then asked for a district judge to review the magistrate judge’s denial of the five warrants — a situation that, according to one judge in the Eighth District, had never occurred.

“I have surveyed all of our judges — some of whom have been judges in our District for over 40 years — and no one can remember the government asking a district judge to review a magistrate judge’s denial of an arrest warrant,” wrote Chief Judge Patrick Schiltz, who was appointed by George W. Bush and clerked for former conservative judicial icon and Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. “The reason why this never happens is likely that, if the government does not like the magistrate judge’s decision, it can either improve the affidavit and present it again to the same magistrate judge or it can present its case to a grand jury and seek an indictment.”

Instead, the Justice Department appears to have believed it could simply get around the magistrate judge’s refusal to issue warrants by having a district judge sign off on the warrants under the guise of a “national emergency,” according to Schiltz.

The Justice Department argued that, if the five warrants weren’t issued, “copycats” would invade other churches as part of growing protests in the Twin Cities at the time.

“Apparently, the government believes that the arrests of the leaders of the Cities Church invasion — whose arrests have received widespread international attention — will not deter copycats, but arresting five additional suspects will,” Schiltz wrote in a January 23, 2026 letter to a judge at the Eight Circuit Court of Appeals. “The government has also argued that I must accept this as true because they said it, and they are the government.”

The Justice Department claimed that there was a “national-security emergency” that required Schiltz to reconsider the magistrate judge’s refusal to sign off on warrants for five protesters. Schiltz dismissed this claim from the DOJ as “frivolous.”

Justice Department lawyers will likely attempt to obtain search warrants for ballots and other election materials in November. Hopefully, the judges determining whether to issue the warrants will be up to speed on the case in Fulton County, as well as the DOJ’s questionable seizures of materials and investigations in at least five other locations across the country.

If magistrate judges refuse to issue warrants, the Justice Department will try to appeal to judges like Schiltz. Regardless, if any judge issues warrants for ballots and allows the Trump administration to seize them before results are certified, we’ll be — once again — in a full-blown constitutional crisis.

By seizing ballots before certification of results, the Trump administration can effectively kneecap Democrats’ chances of winning the House of Representatives and the Senate. Trump’s DOJ won’t seize ballots from Republican strongholds; instead, they’ll take ballots from places like Fulton County, where large swaths of Black voters largely cast ballots for Democrats.

Then, we’ll truly be in banana republic territory. In those less-free parts of the world, elections aren’t decided by how people vote, but on the people controlling what votes are counted — and how.

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Aliaksei Scharbaechenia described the ICE agents who he says beat him unconscious in a Turkish airport as having a “dog collar.” Scharbaechenia, 37, says he “braced” for what was about to come. One agent allegedly beat him over the head before another put him in a chokehold.

“I blacked out for a while,” Scharbaechenia wrote in June with the help of Free Them All VA, an immigrant advocacy organization. The collar was then used to restrain Scharbaechenia as his “body was placed on a cart” and loaded onto a plane back to Washington D.C., the subject of a “failed deportation.”

“Everytime I close my eyes, it still comes back to me when they were beating me, squeezing my neck,” Shcharbachenia told American Doom. “I couldn’t breathe.”

Scharbaechenia fled his native Belarus in the spring of 2025 after he said he was targeted by government authorities for speaking out about corruption. He wound up in Florida where, in August 2025, he was arrested by U.S. immigration authorities and taken to the Farmville Detention Center in central Virginia.

Scharbaechenia languished at Farmville for nine months before ICE put him on a plane to send him back to Belarus — without having even seen an immigration judge, Scharbaechenia told American Doom. But Scharbaechenia refused to board a plane from Turkey to Belarus, for fear that he would again be targeted by government authorities. So, U.S. immigration agents took Scharbaechenia back to Farmville, where his case has been classified as a “failed deportation,” and his future is uncertain.

Scharbaechenia is now one of an undetermined number of “stateless” detainees inside the U.S. immigration detention network. While the number of stateless people living in the U.S. — roughly 218,000 — is known, it’s not clear how many stateless people are currently in ICE detention. While Scharbaechenia may be among a relatively small number of these stateless detainees, he is far from alone in criticizing conditions inside ICE facilities, which are expanding as President Donald Trump’s administration arrests and deports more immigrants than ever before.

More than 580,000 people have been arrested by ICE and other immigration agencies since the start of Trump’s second term. The Trump administration has deported more than 590,000 people and over 65,000 remain in detention centers across the U.S. Meanwhile, more immigrants have died in custody during the first two years of the Trump administration than any similar time period since ICE and its parent agency, the Department of Homeland Security, were created in 2003.

Meanwhile, at least 51 people have died in immigration custody or local jails under Trump, including several whose deaths remain deeply questionable, were the result of poor medical care, or have been declared homicides by local authorities, as American Doom previously reported. Another six people have died during ICE raids or stops — three were shot by ICE officers and three were injured while attempting to evade the agent.

Now, Scharbaechenia is back at Farmville, where he says access to medical care is lacking, and he and other detainees are punished with solitary confinement for speaking out about poor conditions.

“Nothing has changed,” Scharbaechenia told American Doom. “They refused to let me see the doctor. Things are not getting better.”

Beaten by U.S. agents in a foreign airport

On May 20, ICE escorted Scharbaechenia on a flight to Turkey, then to Azerbaijan, where he was supposed to transfer to a plane to his native Belarus — the final stop in his deportation. But Scharbaechenia refused to return to Belarus, saying that he had been targeted and followed while living there, and said people close to him had been targeted for speaking out about government corruption. Because of his participation in protests and criticisms of the government, returning to Belarus could result in persecution and potential death, he said.

In Azerbaijan, local authorities came to Scharbaechenia’s aid and stopped ICE from forcing him onto the plane to Belarus, he said. With help from the Azerbaijanis, Scharbaechenia boarded a plane back to Turkey.

After refusing to board a plane back to Washington D.C., Scharbaechenia was eventually taken to a holding cell in the Turkish airport, where U.S. immigration agents arrived. Scharbaechenia says the agents hit him over the head and placed him in a chokehold, causing him to lose consciousness.

“The ICE agents entered the room; I screamed for them not to touch me, but no one listened to me,” Scharbaechenia wrote. “I thrashed around like a cornered animal in the cage for 5–10 minutes until one of the ICE agents came up from behind and hit me on the back of the head; the next moment I was on the floor, and one of the ICE agents was choking me with both hands using a chokehold; I blacked out for a while, I couldn’t get enough air; I was suffocating. A second ICE agent put plastic ties on me, and my legs and arms were bound. I thought I was going to die; I couldn’t breathe, and my whole body felt weak.”

After the beating, Scharbaechenia was put on a plane to Washington D.C.

“Then a 9-hour flight,” Shcharbaechenia wrote. “Beaten, humiliated, sitting on the plane with my hands and feet bound, I thought for the first time in my life about how nice it would be if the plane crashed right now — this is torture.”

ICE and DHS did not respond to questions about Shcharbaechenia’s alleged beating, his treatment at Farmville, or the conditions there.

Now, it’s not clear what will happen to Shcharbaechenia. Failed deportations like his are rare but not uncommon, said Jeff Migliozzi of Freedom for Immigrants, an advocacy organization. Currently without a lawyer, the status of Shcharbaechenia’s immigration case is not known, according to a spokesperson for Free Them All VA.

But cases like Shcharbaechenia’s are the inevitable result of Trump’s mass deportation operation, in which agencies like ICE and others make “every shortcut possible” with “every guardrail eliminated,” Migliozzi told American Doom.

Isolation and poor conditions

Even before Shcharbaechenia’s traumatizing experience in Turkey, he faced poor conditions and punishment at Farmville, he says.

In March, Scharbaechenia wrote a letter to the ICE officials overseeing Farmville, describing dismal conditions there, including ill-equipped medical staff, lack of translation and legal resources, unavailability of kosher food, and freezing sleeping conditions.

Shcharbachenia blamed the conditions at Farmville for “serious and worsening ailments,” including a tumor on his right arm that went mostly untreated for months upon his arrival at the facility. Suffering from panic attacks, Shcharbachenia has been unable to access mental health treatment; without Russian translators, he has struggled to understand legal documents presented to him. Shcharbachenia says his panic attacks have been exacerbated by frigid temperatures in the facility, the result of air conditioning staying on even in the winter months.

In the close quarters of the rooms, Shcharbaechenia noted that many of the people coming in are sick, and even something as simple as covering his mouth gets him “called out by officers.” Shcharbachenia says he has been “punished for trying to bring attention to the crowded conditions.”

After sending his letter to ICE officials, Shcharbachenia was inexplicably taken to solitary confinement. Detainees at other facilities have complained of being punished by being placed in solitary, and the use of solitary confinement continues to grow under the Trump administration.

Shcharbaechenia’s complaints of poor conditions and lack of medical care at Farmville echo those made in ICE facilities nationwide abound. In May, 300 detainees launched hunger and labor strikes at the Delaney Hall detention centeri n Newark, New Jersey. The detainees complained of moldy and spoiled food and inadequate medical care. An attorney representing detainees there said her clients had been given “expired food and meals with worms in them.”

Some of the detainees who carried out the strike at Delaney Hall have alleged they were “beaten by ICE agents.”

Throughout Shcharbaechenia’s detainment at Farmville, he claims that the facility has had poor medical care. He has been denied mental health assistance multiple times, he said, In December, he developed “egg-sized tumors” on his arm, which he alleged have not been treated, causing him to lose sensation in his right pinky, Shcharbaechenia told American Doom.

After his alleged beating at the hands of ICE agents in Turkey, Shcharbachenia said that he had not been allowed to document the bruises or swelling he sustained from the incident or even see a doctor once he returned to Farmville. He complained of lumps on his head and recurring headaches.

“I think those two officers need to be punished,” Shcharbachenia said. “They have to take responsibility and abide by the law and should not act like that and treat people that way.”

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The amount of money Donald Trump, his family and friends are making off the presidency is historic. The conflicts of interest in his administration are unprecedented. The taxpayer dollars he is spending on vanity construction projects is unheard of. His handling of the Iran war is catastrophic. The economy is a house of cards built on rampant speculation over artificial intelligence and crypto, which Trump and his cronies are profiting from. The scale of Trump and others’ efforts to sow distrust in and likely try to overturn the midterm elections has no comparison in all of American history.

Such is the state of the nation less than 100 days from the midterm elections. Republicans across the country are aware of the grim realities facing Americans, even as they continue to pretend as if everything is going splendidly.

Those Republican voters who aren’t simply tired of the daily drumbeat of scandal, failure and corruption are probably checking out. Now, Republicans running for re-election face the most difficult battle in all of politics: convincing an unmotivated base to choose between the polls and the couch.

Depending on how bad things get between now and November, some of those Republican voters might even go as far as voting for a Democrat. They might even vote for some of those candidates who are — despite the best efforts of Republicans and their right-wing media allies doing their best to scare the folks about “communists” — speaking to working class voters.

When was the last time you heard Donald Trump say the words “working class?” Mike Johnson?

That’s why Republicans are scrambling to concoct new enemies for their base of voters to rally against. With more immigrants than ever before locked up or deported, communities across the country have been emptied out of the people that Trump and Republicans have used as scapegoats to climb to power. Now, it’s Democratic Socialists, “communists,” “jihadists,” as Trump said this week, transgender athletes, and Dr. Anthony Fauci that Republicans say their voters must show up in November to save America from.

The list of the enemies that Republicans hope will convince their voters to pay attention to instead of all of the very obvious corruption, incompetence, greed and waste of the Trump administration changes and grows with each passing day. And it is likely not working.

The American right’s dependence on grievance politics has been going on for much longer than Trump has been around, but in the last 10 years, the party has become almost completely reliant on it. Will it work again in November? Here are the facts of life that those culture war talking points and new enemies conceived by Republicans are up against.

Fiscal responsibility? Gone. No new endless wars in the Middle East? Gone. A return to a robust manufacturing economy? Oh whoops, we actually meant data centers. More and better jobs once we kick all the immigrants out? Not materializing. Locking up the “Epstein class” of liberal pedophiles? Shoot, it turns out that Trump and an awful lot of his friends were involved with the guy, and oh by the way no one is getting locked up anyway.

A “golden age” of winning? We’re getting knocked around by what amounts to a guerilla resistance in Iran, who have effectively duped us into depleting our arms supply on a pointless war that has no end. We have a top-heavy economy that caters — more than ever before, thanks to Trump’s open, rampant corruption — to the wealthiest people and the biggest corporations. Our diplomatic and military failures in Iran (and elsewhere, like Ukraine, not to mention all the allies we’ve isolated ourselves from over the last two long years), combined with our complete folding to giant global tech companies and some the world’s wealthiest people — Bezos, Musk, Zuckerberg — have made us look weak and feckless not just to the world, but to the generation of Americans actually consuming reputable news. They do exist, and they are watching.

There is only so much lying and distracting you can do before even the biggest MAGA chuckleheads start recognizing the reality around them. Unless I am very, very much mistaken, that reality check is happening right now in cities large and small across the country.

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For more than a year now, I’ve been picking the brains of many sources throughout election administration, legal nonprofit and Democratic political circles to see what they’re doing about final move that Republicans will try to pull if and when they lose the midterms.

Some folks are prepared; others are not. Probably many more just aren’t talking about their preparations to me, or maybe any reporters. Bottom line: the lawyers who’ll end up fighting Republican challenges to elections — which are explained in great detail today at Zeteo with my colleague Asawin Suebaeng — are probably ready to go. I think they’ll have to be, because I don’t think there’s any way we get out of January, when the House forms itself, without Republicans trying to pull some bullshit like they did on January 6, 2021.

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‘Doomsday Scenario’: How Trump and Republicans Could Steal Power – Even If They Lose

Note from our Editor-in-Chief…

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a month ago · 61 likes · 1 comment · Justin Glawe and Asawin Suebsaeng

Election challenges have been fairly common in our history, with more than 600 of them occurring since the 1st Congress convened in the spring of 1789. When the 120th forms next year, I think we’ll see more challenges.

That’s because perhaps that biggest part of being a Republican in the Year of Our Lord 2026 is refusing to say that Donald Trump lost the 2020 election. As such, if and when Democrats win enough races in November to take control of the House, Trump cultists in the House GOP caucus will effectively have no choice but to say Democrats stole the election.

They’ll follow Trump’s lead in saying the election was stolen, which he’ll have to claim in order to help Republicans cling to power in the House — and perhaps the Senate, which Democrats may have a shot at taking.

Why does Trump, firmly in his lame duck years and clearly more concerned with his many renovation projects than anything remotely related to policy, care who controls Congress? Because if Democrats win the House, they’ll provide a modicum of checks on Trump’s runaway executive power. Hell, they might even impeach him again, or otherwise hold him accountable for the many and obvious crimes and impeachable offenses he and his cabinet commit on a near-daily basis.

I encourage you to read today’s report on the doomsday scenario at Zeteo, which is the first in a series of stories we’re cranking out called Start the Steal. Later today, we’ll lay out the many, many ways that Trump and Republicans are trying to interfere in the midterms — and overturn the will of the American people in order to cling to the power they need to protect an out-of-control president.

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On May 19, a real estate agent and small-time political operative in Cherokee County, Georgia took to his Facebook page to warn his friends and followers of long lines at a polling location there during the primary.

“Problems in Cherokee,” Bryan Laurens wrote, saying that “combined precincts in a single location create almost 2 hour wait time.”

While there were long lines that day, it wasn’t because polling precincts had been “combined.” Instead, the lines were the result of the owners of a building declining to offer it as a polling location, causing election officials to have to use just one polling location in that district. Laurens did not report this nuance to his followers.

“TWO OF THE MOST REPUBLICAN PRECINCTS IN STATE OF GEORGIA. PEOPLE ARE LEAVING — NOT VOTING,” he wrote. “Reports now of similar happenings around the county in at least four different combined precincts.”

Not long after his post, Laurens was contacted by the executive director of the Georgia State Election Board, James Mills. Mills then filed an official complaint with his own board against Cherokee County based on Laurens’ Facebook post, and sent a newly-hired private investigator to question county election officials about long lines during the May 19 primary.

Then, in June the investigator, a Trump-supporting believer in election conspiracies named Larry Duckworth, sat down with Cherokee elections director Anne Dover, a 19-year veteran in the office, as well as the county’s attorney. Dover was aware of Laurens’ post, which was screenshotted and served as the genesis of Duckworth’s investigation.

Dover noted that “this was the first time we’ve had any kind of complaint about lines in the 19 years I’ve been here.”

“I want to know who made those screenshots and submitted the social media post,” Dover said, according to audio of the meeting obtained by American Doom.

Duckworth then told Dover that Mills had taken the screenshots as a result of his regular monitoring of election keywords on Facebook.

“The executive director has a flag for social media issues… what trigger words they have, I don’t know, but I received those from him,” Duckworth said. “As executive director, he’s got his eye out for issues.”

Prior to being appointed to the State Election Board by Republican legislators, Mills served on the state’s parole board and was a member of the state legislature. Before entering government, he was a Baptist minister and owned storage facilities. He has no experience in election administration.

Dover then asked if Mills looked at Facebook posts for complaints of long lines in any other counties. Clearly, he did not, although Duckworth wouldn’t admit this. The reason this question is important is because it shows that Mills — along with the other Trump-supporting election skeptics on the SEB — is prioritizing even the most minor complaints from Republican strongholds.

Long lines at polling locations are a regular occurrence throughout Georgia — and especially in cities like Atlanta, where voters skew Democratic.

But the SEB isn’t concerned with ballot access issues in places where voters elect Democrats; they’re only concerned with making sure that voters in places like Cherokee — which is overwhelmingly Republican — have as smooth an election experience as possible.

Duckworth’s haphazard “investigation” and his unserious questioning of Dover are evidence of this pattern. That his probe began because Mills saw a Facebook comment from a fellow, rural Georgia Republican is just the icing on the cake.

Mills and Duckworth even went to the trouble of blacking out Laurens’ name on the screenshots that formed the backbone of this strange and wasteful investigation. (Duckworth is paid by taxpayer dollars, as is the county attorney and Dover who had to take time out of their day to answer his questions.)

“Well, we decided to make those names redacted, etc., so there’d be no retaliation,” Duckworth said.

But Dover had already seen the posts. She knew Laurens, as well as others who had commented about the long lines that day. In fact, the posts are still up, and Laurens’ Facebook page is largely open to the public with few, if any, privacy settings.

For his part, Duckworth insisted that Cherokee was not “targeted” as a result of Laurens’ post, and that his investigation was above board. But Dover already knew that it was apparently the case that Laurens’ Facebook post had prompted the investigation.

Prior to meeting Duckworth, Dover asked a statewide group of election officials if any other counties had received official SEB complaints as a result of social media posts regarding long lines. Not a single one of Georgia’s other 158 counties responded that they had.

“I have asked other counties that have been targeted via social media for cases to be opened — there are zero,” Dover told Duckworth.

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The era of Start the Steal has begun. I’ll have some more exclusive findings tomorrow about election interference efforts in Georgia. For now, a rundown of Trump’s address last night. Subscribe, support and share. - jg

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Last night, President Donald Trump spoke to the nation in an address in which he hyped overblown claims of fraud in the 2020 election as he kicked off Republican attempts to overturn the results of November’s mid-terms.

The speech will be looked back upon as one the strangest and most obvious threats to American democracy from an elected official in the country’s history.

The only real new developments the president mentioned were an error-filled DHS estimate that 278,000 undocumented immigrants are registered to vote across the country, and that China accessed the voter registration information of 200 million Americans back in 2020.

First, the estimate that 278,000 undocumented immigrants are registered to vote isn’t even correct according to the documents released by the White House itself. Those documents show that a little more than 10,000 noncitizens were found on voter rolls nationwide. The only way to reach the 278,000 number is by adding dead voters to that number of noncitizens.

I can’t stress enough how incompetent this is. Prior to Trump’s address, DHS leaked the 278,000 claim to Politico as if were a major finding — but DHS’ own findings don’t show that. Trump nor DHS claimed that any of these 10,000 noncitizens actually voted.

The China claim is interesting — but comes from 2016, not 2020, according to the documents release last night. Alos, voter registration information is largely public and not hard to come by. Political parties, individual candidates, non-profit organizations, lawyers and many more regularly access the type of information that China is accused of obtaining. What China allegedly did in 2020 may not even have been illegal.

So, Trump had no smoking gun because he never has — and because it doesn’t exist. But that wasn’t really the point of the address. The reason that the people around Trump and Republicans in Congress are letting this madness go on as we approach the mid-terms is that it’s good for them politically. Frightening and angering their base of voters increases the odds that Republicans might be able to hold onto power in Congress.

Led by a historically unpopular president, those odds are long.

The second reason most Republicans are willing to go along with Trump’s election lies is because they will help them claim the mid-terms were stolen from them when they lose. From there, Republicans in Congress and elsewhere will attempt to legally maneuver Democrats out of their wins, a story I’ll have coming out in the next few weeks.

Simply put: unable and unwilling to appeal to voters — or really anyone not named Donald Trump — Republicans in Washington and across the country are engaged in an organized and sweeping plot to undo the will of American voters in November.

For his part, Trump has to do everything he can to help Republicans win in November so that a Democrat-controlled Congress won’t hold him accountable for the crimes and impeachable offenses he and his administration commit on a weekly basis.

Last night, Trump simply provided specific talking points to be used in efforts to reverse the outcome of an election that Republicans are favored to lose.

Zeteo

A Pro-Trump Private Investigator Is Investigating Elections in Georgia

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2 months ago · 117 likes · 9 comments · Justin Glawe

But let’s be clear about the fundamental reason this is all happening — again. Trump cannot accept that the American people told him “no” in 2020. A civilly-convicted rapist, Trump simply cannot stand that he was told “no” by voters, just as he wouldn’t accept the word “no” from the woman he raped, or the two dozen some-odd women who have credibly accused him of assaulting them. We don’t have to take their word for it — Trump himself said he can simply grab women “by the pussy” if he feels like it.

Trump couldn’t stand being told “no” in 2016 when he said Ted Cruz “illegally stole” the Iowa caucuses that showed Cruz winning there. Trump couldn’t stand it when he barely beat Hillary Clinton in 2016, and then formed a task force on election integrity that was quickly disbanded after finding no evidence of widespread voter fraud. And Trump still can’t stand that the American people told him “no” in 2020.

He especially can’t stand that it happened thanks in large part to Black voters in Fulton County, Georgia.

If Trump’s address actually contained damning information about the 2020 election, it would have come in the form of a court filing — a DOJ affidavit against foreign powers or domestic officials who took part in the fraud — but that was not the case. In the world of U.S. elections over the last six years, we often talk about press releases that are disguised as affidavits and lawsuits — legal filings making bombshell allegations that then never see their day in court for, you know, lack of actual evidence. This wasn’t even that — if Trump had the smoking gun, his DOJ would be filing as such in court. It’s not, and there’s a reason for that.

Trump’s address covered a wide variety of areas that have been the obsession of the election denial movement for years. All of this is also probably aimed at creating some sort of legal mechanism that would allow Trump to declare a national emergency, force passage of the SAVE Act — which will help to prevent millions from voting — and do things like call in immigration agents or the military to polling locations in order to intimidate voters and seize ballots, voting machines and other materials in places where Republicans lost. You know, like the FBI has already done right here in Georgia.

But even Trump stopped short of that emergency declaration last night. That doesn’t mean it’s not coming, but I think it’s an important distinction to make.

Much of Trump’s claims dealt with vulnerabilities in online election systems, including voter registration databases. During his second administration, Trump has gutted government agencies tasked with protecting these systems and data.

Nothing in last night’s address included new claims that actual votes were manipulated in 2020. Instead, Trump just repeated a bunch of things that were already known, exaggerated some others, made some stuff up, and claimed that all of this means someone could manipulate actual votes (they can’t).

The address was a nothingburger — boring, dumb, overblown, but harmful nonetheless. Millions of Americans will now even more fervently believe lies that elections aren’t secure, priming them to believe more lies when Republicans lose fair and square in November.

In the wake of his loss in 2020, Trump’s own intelligence community — led by then-DNI John Ratcliffe, who Trump still likes enough to employ as director of the CIA — found no credible evidence that any foreign power was able to manipulate votes.

“We have no indications that any foreign actor attempted to alter any technical aspect of the voting process in the 2020 US elections, including voter registration, casting ballots, vote tabulation, or reporting results,” the first finding of Ratcliffe’s report made clear.

So what has changed between then and now? Two impeachments, to start. Now, Republicans are likely to lose the House of Representatives in November, and possibly the Senate as well. Trump expects to be impeached if and when that happens for the many and obvious crimes he has and continues to commit. That’s why he’s so desperate for Republicans to win in November, regardless of who Americans actually choose to elect.

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We’ve got an exclusive here today at Doom and Zeteo that details Georgia’s newest election “investigator.” Larry Duckworth is a private investigator who has been hired by the State Election Board to look into election complaints across the state. While that may sound above board, in practice what it means is that Duckworth is being directed by the SEB’s Trump-supporting, election-denying majority to drag up anything that they think can help convince people that November’s mid-term elections are rife with fraud.

Duckworth is joined in these efforts by Jason Frazier, who the board is also now paying with taxpayer dollars to act as an investigator. We’ve reported on Frazier a lot here — he’s a hardcore election denier and conspiracy theorist who, like Duckworth, should be nowhere near the election process. Alas, this is the world in which we now live.

Anyway, Chloe here at Doom found Duckworth’s Facebook page which contained enough evidence of support for election lies and Trump to prompt me to give him a call to talk about his beliefs. (This reminds me of the time I called former SEB member Rick Jeffares to ask him if he had sought a position in the Trump administration in exchange for help with pursuing election fraud claims in Georgia, and Jeffares just admitted to it outright.)

Because I know that the SEB, Georgia’s election denial movement and perhaps even powerful state Republican lawmakers are likely to say I somehow spun Duckworth’s comments and beliefs, I’m providing the entire recording of my conversation with him here. You can read a transcript of our discussion below if you like.

I’ve also got a breakdown at Doom’s home on YouTube of Duckworth’s posts, what he’s looking into in places like Cherokee County, and some other news about what the SEB is doing to challenge the eligibility of voters in Democratic strongholds like Chatham County, where I live.

There’s a lot more where all of this came from so stay tuned, spread the word, and support our work if you can.

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Interview conducted July 13, 2026. LD - Larry Duckworth, JG - Justin Glawe

JG: Larry, this is Justin Glawe, reporter in Savannah, and I’m working on a couple of lines of reporting that I was hoping to talk with you about if you have a couple of minutes.

LD: Yeah but for comment, we have a chain of command… You’ll need to talk to (SEB executive director) James Mills in Atlanta.

JG: OK. Sure, yeah, I’m happy to do that. I mean, the reason I wanted to talk to you about it is because they deal specifically with some things that you’ve posted on Facebook about, you know, election matters, and so I figured it would be best to go straight to the source.

LD: I have not posted anything on Facebook about election matters.

JG: Well, I’m looking at a post right here that’s, there’s multiple posts here that are on a, on a profile with your name and the same photo that’s on your CV. So are you saying this is not your Facebook page … On April 1st, 2023? You’ve got a thing about time to get serious for your family’s future. Uh, there’s multiple posts on here and they all have your name and your face as the profile picture.

LD: Why don’t you send it to me, I don’t remember doing those. That’s fine, I’m a bipartisan guy.

JG: Well, one of them says we must counter these Liberal dishonesties to destroy elections by citizens. Only is that bipartisan in your mind?

LD: Well, I don’t ever do that.

JG: Well, this was March 11th, 2024.

LD: Okay, maybe they were some specific things, good, so, I understand what you’re trying to do in style so, send me those cause I disavow those right now till I see them.

JG: What do you, what do you mean that I mean it’s clearly you it’s the same photo that’s on your CV that’s online. Like it’s clearly you and it’s clearly your page. I mean, in one of these posts, which was 2024, you say that…

LD: OK, so I’m talking. It’s clearly me to you, it’s not clearly me to me.

JG: I need if you’re gonna disavow this and claim that this is not you, sure I guess, but like, you know, this is you it says ‘the cheat is on,’ but I’m happy to send them to you. And if you would like to refute this and claim that you did not say these things, you know, then I guess I’ll just have to take that into consideration. But, I mea…

LD: Well, send them to me.

JG: you don’t recall posting any of these multiple things about

LD: Did you not listen to me? I don’t recall…

JG: no, it’s not that I’m not listening to you, Larry, it’s that I don’t believe you.

LD: That’s alright. Ok, ok…

JG: So I think, I think you’re lying and I think you’re a committed Trump supporter who is now probing elections under the guise that there is widespread election fraud when there is not. That’s what I think.

LD: I’m not committed to anybody, I’m committed to the rule of law

JG: Well, one of your posts directly says right here that you are committed to Trump and that you should vote for Trump.

LD: Well, send those to me because I don’t remember doing that.

JG: So, okay, and what happens then when I don’t get a response from you?

LD: I don’t know.

JG: Okay, so what I’m gonna do is I’m gonna write a story that we’re gonna publish that says that you’re a Trump supporter and an election denier. And if you wanna go ahead and refute that and say that these are not your posts, I’ll, I’ll, you know, okay, maybe I won’t write the story then, but, I mean, I just, it’s it’s clearly you, so, yeah,

LD: I am not anti-Trump. I’m not a MAGA person. I’m not an election denier.

JG: So then, so then what does it mean when you say the cheat is on?

LD: I don’t know, I don’t remember doing that. I don’t know what the context is.

JG: Context is another reason we need to turn out the vote. The cheat is on, on August 9th, 2024.

LD: What cheat is on? What cheat are we talking about?

JG: I assumed it would be something related to elections. Larry, I mean, you’ve got another post here that says ‘only Republicans voting in large numbers can stop this typical Dem Liberal madness.’

LD: I don’t remember doing that.

JG: Okay, you got another one here that says we must counter these Liberal dishonesties to destroy elections by citizens, only they hate normal America.

LD: I don’t want an election destroyed by anyone.

JG: Yeah, but this is, but this is directly and then it’s like got a Fox News, uh, uh, story here about attempting to register undocumented immigrants to vote and you say ‘Dangerous! They hate normal America because it sees through their lives.’ Are you saying that you don’t agree with that post that you wrote?

LD: Say that again. That doesn’t register. Say that again.

JG: Yeah, it says you said we must counter these Liberal dishonesties to destroy elections by citizens only. And then in reference to Democrats, you say ‘they hate normal America because it sees through the lies. Dangerous.

LD: I don’t remember that at all. That’s all BS.

JG: Okay, this is your post on your Facebook page.

LD: Well, it wasn’t by me.

JG: So then are you saying that your Facebook page was hacked?

LD: I don’t know. This is stuff out of the blue to me. I’ve asked you to send it to me. I can tell you what, I’m an American. Um, I’m not a MAGA person. I’m not against the MAGA people. Matter of fact, I was a Democrat for 34 years. So the issue is, I’m trying to be very… I very much believe in election integrity. I very much believe in self responsibility, honesty. I believe in … principle. I believe, today, a certain party [unintelligible] better, but when I do this job, which is all that counts, I’m very non-partisan.

JG: So when I’m looking at your CV here, it says licensed professional investigator and security president related bio. And it’s got, like, detect Excel,it’s got private investigator agency president, and then, like, some numbers here that look like registration numbers PSC…

LD: Yeah, that’d be correct.

JG: Yeah, so this is you, and it’s got a link to your Primordial Leadership [book]. So the same photo that is on this bio for you is also the exact, is the exact same photo that’s on this Facebook page that has all of these.

LD: I don’t want to say it for the fourth time. Send it to me. You know, to the degree that that is there, I don’t know, but I’ll comment when I see it.

JG: I mean, you’ve got, you’ve got a post on here from January 12, where you share a video that comes directly from Donald Trump’s Facebook page.

LD: OK, I don’t remember doing that, send it to me. How many times do I need to ask you to do that?

JG: All right, I’ll send it to you, but I just, here’s the thing. I don’t think, I think that when you see this you’re going to be like, oh, no comment. So while I have you on the phone here, I wanna get your comment on, if you say you’re not a Trump supporter, why are you sharing a reel from the president’s page on January 12?

LD: I said I am not a MAGA person. Who I voted for is my business and my business only.

JG: Well, it is your business until you’re hired by the state election board to investigate.

LD: It is my business. I have no obligation to say who I voted for…

JG: I’m not asking who you voted for. I’m asking you to speak to whether or not you think that the 2020 election was stolen, and whether your investigations are seeking to confirm that, or whether you think that your power granted by the SEB is going to help you to be able to prove those disproven allegations.

LD: I am not investigating the 2020 election at all.

JG: Okay. What are you doing? What are you doing in Cherokee and Cobb County? Then what are you looking into in those places?

LD: In both cases, those are complaints that came to the SEBs from individuals, um, about specific … I won’t get into specifics. And I’m investigating those, and I’m doing so with a very professional manner like the decorated detective I was and am, and a licensed detective, and it’s done in a very non-partisan way. That’s the core issue.

JG: Actually you’ve got another post here on September 23rd or September 2024 where you directly advocate voting for Donald Trump and JD Vance.

LD: OK, if I did do I not have that right to do that?

JG: No, you absolutely have the right to do that. But I, you, you have, you have already told me I’m not a MAGA person and I don’t support Trump. And here is a post in which you are directly advocating…

LD: I didn’t say I didn’t support Trump, I said I’m not a MAGA person….

JG: Okay, alright, so you, so you do support Trump then…

LD: I’m not going to tell you who I support.

JG: Alright, let me ask you a very simple question….

LD: It has no bearing on my investigating any cases that I’m doing…

JG: Okay, you can say that, but these posts allude to a pretty committed political ideology, so let me ask you a very simple question. Did Joe Biden win the 2020 election?

LD: He was certified, he won,

JG: I know I, okay, so he did win. Being certified is, as I’m sure you’re aware, as somebody who works for the State Election Board, being certified is different from saying he won the vote count. Did Joe Biden win the vote count? Did he beat Donald Trump fair and square in terms of who the voters chose? Not certified.

LD: I cannot say he did not.

JG: I’m sorry say that again,

LD: I cannot say he did not.

JG: I don’t even, that’s like a triple negative there. Did Joe Biden win the election or not?

LD: Then get smarter. I cannot say he did not win.

JG: All right. So, so what are we doing here, Larry? You’re gonna tell me I’m not a Trump guy, and then you’ve got Facebook post that show that you are a Trump guy.

LD: I never said I’m not a Trump…

JG: You’re to tell me that you’re not looking into 2020 election stuff, but,

LD: I’m not. I’m not.

JG: OK, what conversations have you had? How did… tell me a little bit about how James Mills came to find you? How do you know James Mills? How did the whole hiring thing go, go down?

LD: Well that’s, you’d have to call him…. I know but I’m not answering a question from…

JG: Well, he’s not gonna talk to the press because that’s just like how he operates. I’m happy to try to give him a call, but I got you on the phone right now. So maybe you can give me some insight into how it is that you got hired for this position.

LD: I don’t mind doing it personally, but I don’t think it’s the right protocol and you’ll have to ask him. And I … just because I believe in the chain of command.

JG: Well, it appears that you also believe that elections are inherently fraudulent. Would that be fair to say?

LD: No, I think they can be but I’m not saying they are.

JG: So then do you believe that the 2020 election was fraudulent?

LD: I don’t have any facts to say that it was.

JG: So do you believe that Democrats are trying to get undocumented immigrants to vote?

LD: I’ve heard reports of that but I don’t have factual proof of that,

JG: Are you looking into?

LD: I’m a cop. I’ve got to have the facts like Joe Friday, just the facts ma’am.

JG: Well, yeah, but so, but just the facts doesn’t then you share a story that makes those allegations on your Facebook page. Like those two things don’t line up. Like if you’re saying just the facts, then you don’t share a story or your opinion as you’ve done on your Facebook page that make these allegations. Do you see the difference there?

LD: No

JG: No, no, you don’t?

LD: I’m answering question about, do I know that it was wrong? I don’t know.

JG:

LD: I don’t know how they link up. I have no fact that Biden didn’t win, none. It may come out, but I have no facts that he didn’t win. I have no facts that Trump won.

JG: But you have no, you have no facts that, but you have no facts for the opposite of that. You have no facts that Biden did win. Is what you’re saying by saying that?

LD: That he was certified is a fact.

JG: actually.Oh, here’s a great post from you, Larry on March 28th, 2023. It says I stand with Trump.

LD: Okay.

JG: alright, so we started off this conversation by you saying you’re not a Trump supporter.

LD: No, I didn’t… You said that. I didn’t say that.

JG: No, you said I’m not, I’m not MAGA, I’m not a Trump supporter

LD: Well MAGA and Trump are different

JG: to you. Okay alright, sure, I’m telling you they’re not, they’re not gonna appear differently from … to the many many people who read this and go, ‘why is a guy who is this partisan involved with investigating election matters in Georgia?’

LD: Well listen I’ve got to get back to this meeting, but let me be very clear, I am a very non-partisan guy doing these investigations for the Cherokee, and then for the Chatham — they’re one of 12 [investigations] that I have, they’re very done very factually, very non-partisan, down the middle. I don’t have any bias one way or the other about what the facts are.

JG: So how are people to believe that when your Facebook page is riddled with claims of election fraud and falsehoods about undocumented immigrants voting and abject support for Trump? How do you expect members of the public to take you at your word?

LD: Well they’ll just have to look at the results. The results will be very non-partisan.

JG: [...4.1s]But the, the result, the result, but the point is, is that people who don’t trust you are going to say, this guy should never been hired in the first place, and now here he is, he’s been given [...0.6s] basically [...0.6s] power to be able to investigate things that he’s too partisan to be involved in to begin with. So by the time the results come down, [...0.8s] how’s anybody to trust those results considering your open partisanship?

LD: Well then that’d be defamation to me. ‘Cause it’s not true.

JG: What’s defamation?

LD: To claim that I’m doing things because of a bias. That’d definitely be defaming me.

JG: Are you accusing me of defaming you?

LD: Saying that or implying that…

JG: Oh, yeah, no, I think it’s … I think it’s 100%... It’s not my implication, but, I mean, I think it’s an implicitation. I think people are going to have very legitimate questions about how someone who has posted these things and started off this conversation by denying that they even posted them to begin with.

LD: I don’t… I said I don’t know, I’d have to see them. You’re putting words in my mouth. I’m smarter than you, don’t do that.

JG: Okay, well, this is your face, but you live in Suwanee, right?

LD: That’s correct, yes.

JG: Yeah, you got a family member named Doug Simmons.

LD: I’ve got a … yeah, well, I’m not saying who. The answer’s not ‘no.’

JG: Okay? And you’re from, initially, you’re from Cleveland, Ohio.

LD: Yes, that’s correct.

JG: Great. So this is your Facebook page. Here’s a picture of you smiling in front of a painted photo of an old ship with sails on it [...0.6s] from 2014. So this is your Facebook page. So are you gonna deny that these are your posts, or can we just?

LD: Until I see ‘em I can’t deny or confirm.

JG: [...3.2s]All right, here’s what I’m gonna do. I’m gonna text you right now, this, a link to this Facebook page. You do know how to use links and Facebook pages and things like that, right?

LD: I think I do.

JG: Okay, let’s hope so because you’re, because you’re an investigator and I assume you have to do like a lot of computer work and stuff like that. So let’s hope you’re able to navigate this. So I’m going to text this to you right now while I got you on the phone.

LD: OK, well I’ll be tied up until tomorrow but that’s fine.

JG: Well, sure, I’m sure it’ll take a long time to confirm whether or not this is the Facebook page that you started and belongs to you. So there it is right there

LD: My invitation to you is, for the case that I’m working on … non-partisan, do not try make things like they aren’t. I’m just giving you that.

JG: I’m not gonna make … I’m, I’m taking you at your own words here, and the words that are posted on your Facebook page, Larry, where you say you support Trump, where you claim that Democrats cheat in elections, where you claim that elections are full of fraud.

LD: Send it to me.

JG: I sent you the Facebook page.

LD: And what is your name?

JG: Justin Glawe. G-L-A-W-E.

LD: Glawe, OK thank you Justin. Ok, be an active reporter, but be honest.

JG: I’m putting your words out there, Larry, that’s why I need you to… OK, hung up.

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As a heat wave grips much of the country, conditions for conflict are ripening. This is a typical pattern for the American summer — acts of violence rise with temperatures — but the last week has been hotter than normal.

Combine this heat wave with a few other patterns of life under the reign of Donald Trump and the possibility of an explosive event only grows.

First, murders and violent crime are down across the country but police killings are on the rise. The downward trend in daily violence could change, but so far this year, 2026 looks to be one of the least violent in decades in cities and towns across America.

This year’s drop in violence reflects the general decline in violent crime since 2020, when the isolation and economic desperation of the pandemic was a major factor in a spike in acts of violence and homicides. The violence of that year played an undercard to the unrest over the killing of George Floyd and the contested presidential election.

Despite the decline in violence so far this year and since 2020, police continue to kill more and more Americans. So far this year, police have killed 646 people, on track for another year in which American law enforcement has killed more than 1,300 people nationwide. (A decade ago, this annual number stood around 1,000 police killings a year.)

Police killings are an important measuring stick for understanding excessive force by law enforcement, which disproportionately affects Black and Brown communities. It’s far from perfect, but police killings can be a relatively effective way to measure distrust between minority communities and the law enforcement agencies that occupy them.

American law enforcement agencies have done relatively little to address the distrust and animosity from minority communities since the pockets of unrest that shook the nation a decade ago (read my book that recounts all of that madness), and occasionally boil over in the aftermath of heinous police killings like that of Floyd.

An underclass of Americans who are overly policed and under-represented politically — even more so thanks to Republican redistricting efforts across the South that are diminishing Black voting power — continues to exist. This is a situation that will inevitably lead to unrest.

If the aggressive policing and open attempts to reduce or eliminate minority political power weren’t enough, the Trump administration has surged immigration agents and even the National Guard into Black and Brown communities. In Memphis last week, members of the National Guard killed Tyrin Johnson, who is Black. Two weeks ago, US Park Police in Washington DC — given new powers by the Trump administration — went on a chaotic and questionable police chase that resulted in the death of an innocent bystander, Nolberto Armando Sanabria Meza, who was from Venezuela.

On Tuesday, ICE agents in Houston shot and killed a Mexican man, Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, during a traffic stop. Araujo was apparently still alive when security footage from a nearby store captured him lying on the ground in handcuffs, when “a loud groaning sound could be heard,” an employee told the Washington Post. Another witness said Araujo could be heard saying, “You’re killing me!” ICE has said Araujo tried to ram agents with his car — a frequent excuse the agency has used for killing people, and one that is often directly contradicted by video evidence in cases like the killing of Renee Nicole Good in Minneapolis.

Meanwhile, immigrants across the country are being deported and detained at historic rates. Last week, ICE arrested more than 10,000 people in five days. As Trump’s immigration forces capture more and more immigrants, the deaths of those inside the nation’s immigration detention centers continues to rise. Nearly 50 people have died while inside immigration facilities run by the Trump administration, or in local jails while in the custody of local law enforcement working with ICE. This is the highest number of immigrant deaths in custody ever recorded.

As I reported in March, many of those deaths came under questionable circumstances in which ICE either misled the public about the cases, or immigrants suffered under poor conditions inside facilities.

Trump’s immigration dragnet has had a traumatizing effect on Brown communities across the country. In just about every city and town, someone knows someone who went out for work one day and never came back. Some were simply sent back to the country from which they came. Others have been sent to distant nations with poor human rights records that they have no ties to as the Trump administration uses payments and threats to cajole nations in Africa and elsewhere to house immigrants picked up in the U.S.

The historically aggressive attempts by the Trump administration to completely rid the U.S. of tens of millions of undocumented immigrants have caused even right-wing Americans to question the efforts, especially those who rely on immigrant labor, like farmers.

Right here in Savannah, students who played baseball with Johan Efrain Sandoval Rodriguez, a 22-year old student at Savannah State University who was here on a visa from his native Dominican Republic, are questioning why he has been taken by ICE. The agency says Rodriguez failed to comply with requirements of the visa. Last week, the Savannah State campus was briefly put on lockdown as agents chased Rodriguez down and took him into custody.

With ICE enjoying another summer of acting with impunity in immigrant communities — thanks to the help of local law enforcement — the agency’s Office of Professional Responsibility has changed its mission from acting as a watchdog for misconduct amongst agents to hunting for anti-ICE protest and dissent online, Wired reported. Meanwhile, agents are harassing U.S. citizens who have criticized the agency, showing up at the home of a New York man who sent acting ICE director Todd Lyons an email that called Lyons a “monstrous human being.” ICE agents also showed up at a polling location to question a poll worker who had posted comments critical of the agency following the killing of Good in Minneapolis.

The signs of our growing police state are there if you look. As we inch closer to November, the question will become how this apparatus of local and federal law enforcement, immigration agencies, and the National Guard and the military could be used to overturn an election that Republicans are likely to lose. It’s possible that the hottest time will be the fall.

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If there is a single statement that sums up what American life can feel like under President Donald Trump’s second term, it may be this: “We control everything.”

That’s what Trump said Wednesday during a speech at the Teddy Roosevelt presidential library. Trump is correct in some ways — it certainly does feel like the president, his authoritarian regime, and its enablers possess vast control over the government, the economy, and the media. But like all fascist movements, this power is brittle. Trump and his people may feel like they control everything because they live in a hyper-curated echo chamber where even the remotest dissent from anyone within their ranks is not allowed, but their movement is broadly unpopular.

That’s because it’s obvious to anyone who is not a committed member of this movement that Trump and his people are no better than the corrupt Washington insiders they were elected to ostensibly replace. The Epstein stuff, the war in Iran, the constant self-dealing, the wasting of taxpayer dollars on frivolous construction projects to feed Trump’s ego — there remains a large swath of conservative American voters who look at all of this and, at minimum, will decide to stay home in November. Some of them may have even had enough of the corruption, waste and incompetence of Trump’s second term to go out and vote for Democrats.

This group of voters will doom Republicans for one very simple reason: it is becoming quite clear that Trump and his people are getting obscenely rich off the backs of everyday Americans. Deluded by the belief that the white rage that fuels their fascistic policies on immigration gives them a free pass to loot the government, Trump, his family, and his administration have developed a massive blind spot that is preventing them from seeing what’s coming.

But it’s coming, and that’s because of very clear and obvious things like this:

What you see here is the result of deep reporting from Reuters, showing that Trump and his family’s crypto ventures are nothing more than a scam that enriches those at the top. In a way, this graph perfectly illustrates American life under Trump because it shows the decline of the many — and the rising prosperity of the few.

Making gobs of cash is as American as apple pie, as they say. But this is something different than your run-of-the-mill, hyper-capitalist cash grab. As president, Trump has enacted policies that have helped the crypto industry gain a foothold in global markets. (He’s also directly helped other industries in which he is heavily invested.) The crypto company run by Trump’s sons, World Liberty Financial, has benefitted from investments from the United Arab Emirates, a regional ally, and the founder of Binance, who Trump pardoned.

These are the exact type of swampy, jet-setting conflicts of interests that fueled Trump’s political rise. Now they’ll help usher in his movement’s downfall.

Still, instead of this being a universally-accepted understanding of the perversion of American values that it is, a solid third of the country sees nothing wrong with the profits Trump, his family, and the world’s richest people have made directly as a result of Trump’s election to his second term.

But a recourse is probably coming — this time in the form of a sweeping rebuke of Republicans in November.

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Trump, the billionaires who populate his cabinet, the tech industry titans that have cozied up to Trump’s authoritarianism, and anyone and everyone who has access to the president and is cashing in on federal government contracts are the few who have gained massive profits since Trump took office. Americans making less than six figures a year are no better off — at best. There is simply no amount of immigrant fear-mongering that can make up for the fact that the lives of working class Americans look no better now than they did before Trump took office.

Of course, this should have been obvious to them from the very start, but we’ll have to take what we can get. The many millions of white, working class voters who will likely stay home in November will do so because they will have finally learned that Trump doesn’t actually give a solitary fuck about them. Between now and then, Trump will probably only make this dynamic worse.

The golden age is not already here and it is not coming because it never was. It’s here for Trump, his family, and the richest people in the world — but not for me, you, or any of the white working class masses who thought that kicking out immigrants would solve all their problems. By November, if deportation levels keep going the way they are, there will hardly be any undocumented immigrants left to blame.

That’s why, in recent days, you’ve seen Republicans shift to a new scapegoat: “communists” running for office against less left-wing Democrats. Trump has called these “communists” — also known as members of the Democratic Socialists of America, or just plain old Democrats — the “biggest” threat the United States has ever faced. Bigger than World War II, Pearl Harbor and 9/11, Trump has said.

This makes the leftists currently winning elections across the country just the latest “biggest threat” of the Trump era. China, Mexican immigrants, immigrants in general, the news media, Democrats in Congress, judges — all have had their turn as the biggest threat facing the nation. After 10 years of proclaiming whatever person or entity Trump was able to focus on for more than 10 consecutive minutes the “biggest threat,” what are Americans to actually believe?

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Even some of Trump’s supporters understand that, at a certain point, you can’t just keep claiming that everyone else is ruining things for the president you elected to make your life better. After 10 years of this, and with Republicans in control of “everything,” even some Trump voters will begin to question why it is that Trump can’t seem to make things better for the white working class. Then, those voters might catch a glimpse of some news that Fox or their algorithms aren’t feeding them. Something like, since taking office in 2024, Trump’s net worth has doubled, from $2.4 billion to $6 billion.

Even some Trump supporters who would otherwise brush this off with, “he’s a businessman” won’t be able to countenance the news of Trump’s obscene profits during his second term.

They elected him to make the country richer, to make them richer, not himself. Recall that, from the beginning, one of Trump’s biggest selling points was that he couldn’t be bought — he was already rich, so he wasn’t in it for the money. Tens of millions of Americans elected him on this very idea. Now, even with the powerful forces of right wing media and Trump-slanted social media algorithms, they won’t be able to avoid the truth that Trump has bilked his voters and everyone else to the tune of godly sums of money.

Some of these Trump supporters will feel lost and confused. And in that moment they’ll have to decide between what are really the only three choices in life: freeze, fight or flee. The ones who freeze simply won’t show up in November. The ones who fight will buy the new line about “communists.” The ones who flee will come to the other side or go farther to the right.

The MAGA movement will end because of its greed, hubris and brittleness. They don’t actually control everything — at least not yet. Trump and Republicans’ constant lies about election fraud are proof of this: they don’t have complete control over elections because that’s not how our founders set it up — but they sure do want that control, and are doing everything they can to try to get it.

That’s another reason they’ll lose in November. Not only will lots of Trump’s people stay home — bored with his nonsense, fed up with the corruption, the lies about Epstein, or the war he started — but many, many millions of Americans who aren’t particularly politically engaged will come out of the woodwork to stop what is the actual biggest threat to American freedom: Trump and Republicans themselves.

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How insane has all this Reflecting Pool nonsense gotten? Quite insane. At press time, the pool remained fenced off — either for the July 4 holiday or at Trump’s direction, depending on who you believe — and taxpayers will now be on the hook to repair… Trump’s repairs. Ava has a rundo…

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You’ll read lots of pieces today about last night’s election results but this is the only publication where you’ll learn about the following. To support our work, you can subscribe for $6 a month or throw a few dollars in our Coffee Fund.

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Georgia’s election denial network of public officials, unhinged online personalities and average citizens spent yesterday ricocheting between joy and despair — and it had nothing to do with the results that began to roll in last night.

Led by Trump allies on the State Election Board (SEB) and a handful of far-right state lawmakers and political candidates, election denial forces here have spent weeks fear mongering and successfully placing clips in right-wing media over the Secretary of State’s election night operation center that the election deniers have deemed a “secret bunker.”

In fact, the “Election Night Reporting Center,” as the Secretary of State’s Office calls it, is not, and never has been, a secret. Nor are any votes actually counted there, as SEB members and a pair of Republican candidates who filed a lawsuit to gain access to the “bunker” have alluded. Votes are counted at county offices of elections, which then send those totals to the Secretary of State. There, the totals are put online for the public to see.

But Georgia’s election denial wing of the Republican party does not trust Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger as part of their demands that all elections be administered and all votes be counted by those who pass a litmus test that includes abject support for Donald Trump and a fervent belief in lies and conspiracies about widespread election fraud. That wing includes the MAGA majority on the SEB and figures like Greg Dolezal, a state senator, and Christopher Mora, a candidate for one of Georgia’s U.S. House seats.

Dolezal and Mora filed a lawsuit this week demanding that the SEB and Republican poll watchers be granted access to the reporting center at the Secretary of State’s Office. On Tuesday, a judge briefly ordered that that access should be granted before rescinding the order on a technicality, thus prompting the back-and-forth emotions on display by Georgia’s vast network of election denial officials and activists.

While much of the coverage of these developments has covered the lawsuit, opposing judicial orders and the reporting center under the both sides framework, key context has been absent: the SEB (and its MAGA “pitbulls,” as Trump has called them), Dolezal and Mora have had months — years, really — to make their claim that poll watchers and other observers should be legally allowed to oversee election night proceedings at the Secretary of State’s reporting center. The simple and obvious reason that they did not file their lawsuit until this week is that it would not have benefitted them from a political and media-savvy standpoint to do so.

By filing the lawsuit this week, Georgia’s election deniers took advantage of public interest in Tuesday’s primaries to gin up further distrust in elections. Raffensperger has a secret bunker where he could manipulate votes! He’s running in the very election that his office is charged with overseeing! He won’t let us into the bunker to ensure he isn’t stealing the election for himself and other people who are bad!

In the last 48 hours, these have been the stupefyingly insincere arguments that Dolezal, Mora, the SEB and others have made. Maybe many of them actually believe their own nonsense, but just as many understand that the best way to secure elections for MAGA candidates is to sow as much doubt as possible in all elections. By doing so, election deniers think they can convince the public that they, and only they, should be allowed to administer elections, make rules about voting and polling locations, and effectively control all levers of government in order to ensure that real Americans are in charge.

You see this mindset reflected in statements from Trump administration officials and Republican members of Congress every single day when they say things like how they want to pass the SAVE Act to ensure that “the right people” are voting. It’s part of a playbook that includes the aggressive redistricting of the South to dilute Black — and in turn mostly Democratic — voting power. From this week’s nonsense over the “secret bunker,” to efforts across the country to purge voters based on false and misleading claims about undocumented immigrants voting in elections — every policy and talking point about voting and elections pushed by the vast majority of Republicans is aimed at a singular goal: using the levers of power to ensure that they maintain their grip on it, regardless of what American voters say at the ballot box.

Other election night takeaways:

Massie vs. whoever

Rep. Thomas Massie lost to a man whose name most voters probably did not even know until they arrived at their polling locations in Kentucky yesterday. That’s because the majority of those voters were simply doing what Trump told them to do — get Massie out of office by voting for the other guy. Why was Trump so adamant that Massie had to go? Because Massie had the gall to be one of the only elected Republicans in the country to ask serious questions about the president’s ties to Jeffery Epstein. Just a few years ago, nailing politicians and powerful figures with Epstein ties was a huge deal for Republican voters! But what they actually meant was that they wanted to imprison people like Bill Clinton, not Donald Trump. It’s sort of like all the MAGA folks you see with the Gadsden flag. They don’t really mean Don’t tread on me; what they really mean is Tread on them. But don’t believe the hype Massie’s loss — it was a primary in a very Trumpy state. Considering Trump’s dismal approval ratings, this is like winning a preseason football game.

Jones (Trump) vs. Jackson (cash)

Lt. Gov. Burt Jones will head to a runoff with billionaire Rick Jackson to become the state’s next governor. If you’re not in Georgia, this race may not seem important but here’s why it matters: Jones has been instrumental in not just spreading Trump’s lies about election fraud but propagating rules and systems that have allowed the MAGA wing of his party more control over elections here. Considering Georgia’s role as something close to a swing state, Jones becoming governor stands to have an important effect on how elections and voting are run here — and how those rules will help and hurt Republicans and Democrats.

Jones was responsible for appointing Salleigh Grubbs to the SEB, where she has quickly become the most forceful and unhinged voice of Georgia’s election denial movement who has any position of power (albeit very little). You might remember Grubbs as the woman who chased a garbage truck in 2020 because she thought it contained shredded ballots. As this week’s madness over the “secret bunker” played out, Grubbs was out front on the issue, appearing on Mike Lindell’s “news” channel.

Jones is also one of Trump’s fake electors who was never fully punished for, you know, fraudulently trying to overturn the results of the 2020 election. Rick Jackson is just another loaded guy who thinks his billions entitles him to run things. Not great choices! One of the two will face former Atlanta mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms in the general.

Who will lose to Jon Ossoff?

A pair of MAGA backbenchers — Rep. Mike Collins and Derek Dooley — are headed to a runoff for the honor of probably losing to Sen. Jon Ossoff. Collins is most famous for his work on the Laken Riley Act, a classically regressive piece of legislation built, more than anything, to give him an “I hate immigrants more than most” talking point on the campaign trail. Dooley was once the head football coach for the University of Tennessee, so is therefore obviously qualified to join the United States Senate.

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Quick reminder that Doom was the only publication to nail the DOJ on its efforts to mess with elections here in Georgia. That work takes a lot of time and resources. If you want to support our hard-nosed, adversarial journalism, the best way to do so is through a paid subscription or dropping a few dollars in our Coffee Fund. Now, on to the news…

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In just the last few days, Republican threats to democracy have exploded.

Using legal, quasi-legal and legislative means, Republicans from Washington D.C. on down to state legislatures have enacted widespread measures to secure what they hope will be a permanent majority of American power, voters be damned. That’s because the goal of the election denial movement — which forms a major part of the Republican base of voters — has never been to “secure elections.” It’s always been about ensuring that only Republicans can win elections, as I explained on the Signal Fire podcast today. You can watch our conversation here.

With Republicans asking the Supreme Court to purge voters very close to the November midterms under the guise that scores of undocumented immigrants populate voter rolls (they do not), this plan to not just sow distrust in an election Republicans are set to lose, but to ensure that the rules prohibit anyone else from winning it, has become more clear. Not satisfied with these efforts — and helpfully backed by a Supreme Court decision two weeks ago — Republicans throughout the South have begun to legislate Black lawmakers out of their elected positions.

Quite literally, Republicans are using the tools of democracy to undo it. Already, several elections have been outright cancelled as Republicans draw new maps that will solidify their political power. Again, not satisfied with this historic power grab, Republicans in Tennessee have gone a step further, stripping Black lawmakers of legislative roles that allow them a say in how their state is run.

Helping Republican politicians along are their foot soldiers in the election denial movement, who continue to file voter roll challenges and harass election offices with lawsuits, demands for public records based on their conspiracies about election fraud and, in the case of someone here in the South this week, threaten election officials who refuse to tow President Donald Trump’s line on non-existent widespread election fraud.

Someone mailed a four-page manifesto threatening Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to a sheriff’s office in Mississippi, bizarrely. The letter preceded a bomb scare at a campaign event in Georgia on Monday, where Raffensperger was speaking to voters about his bid to become the state’s next governor. Raffensperger famously refused to help Trump overturn the 2020 election in Georgia, and as a result has been the target of constant harassment from his fellow Republicans.

Meanwhile, Trump is again floating the idea of sending the military to voting locations in November, just as he did in 2020 when he considered having the National Guard seize voting machines. (In December, Trump said he regretted not doing that.) Trump saying something random to a reporter is one thing, but there’s more than that: multiple federal agencies are involved with efforts to “secure” the midterms.

You might remember the inexplicable presence of Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard at the FBI raid of a Fulton County elections warehouse in January. Recent reporting makes clear that her presence there was part of an administration-wide effort to stay on top of false election fraud claims in order to exploit them for maximum benefit in November.

Department of Homeland Security officials have been reaching out to state- and county-level election officials throughout the country. The DHS officials have demanded, among other things, voter history and registration information from these officials, Reuters reported.

Keep in mind that counties are the frontlines of U.S. elections. It’s there that results are initially certified before being approved by state officials, which is why, as I reported on significantly back in 2024, Republicans tried to use their power at the county level to refuse to certify election results that showed Democrats winning.

To my knowledge, no state has reformed its certification rules in the wake of those attempts, and there is no indication that efforts by election denial officials in counties across the country aren’t just as robust as they were two years ago.

Meanwhile, those same county and state officials have fewer resources from the federal government to help them manage election threats and chaos this time around. That’s because the Trump administration has gutted agencies that provide help to state and local officials battling online threats, hacking attempts and other scenarios that states and counties might not have the tools to fight.

“Nearly every program and capability to stop bad actors and support election administrators has been dismantled,” a former Biden administration official at the National Security Council who worked on threats to elections told ProPublica last month.

Whatever agencies and programs haven’t been purposefully destroyed by the Trump administration have had their missions completely perverted with the hiring of election conspiracy theorists to lead them. Already, this has (partly) resulted in things like the seizure of voting machines in Puerto Rico and, of course, the FBI elections raid here in Georgia.

Seven months out from the midterms, the threats to Americans’ ability to actually elect who they prefer continues to rise. You hear a lot of hyperbole these days — and around the time of any election, really — but I don’t think it’s too alarmist to say that if Republicans succeed in their efforts to effectively gerrymander and rule-make their way into legislative majorities both in the states and the U.S. Congress, that’s power they’re never going to give up.

Trump has said as much, urging states to gerrymander their way into power and chastising them when they don’t. He’s doing this because he’s terrified of being impeached when Democrats take the House and, possibly, the Senate after November. Even in his current state of severe cognitive decline, even Trump knows that Republican chances in the midterms are bad. He’s certainly not helping by driving up costs with a clueless war in Iran, spending tons of money we don’t have on vanity construction projects and a missile defense system we don’t need, and just generally not giving a shit what everyday Americans are going through as daily life becomes more and more expensive.

There have always been two paths to power. The democratic one has always been more difficult. The authoritarian one is easier, if sometimes bloodier.

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