Politics

This would be a lot more tinfoilesque were a court case on the matter not already underway in New York.

The missing votes uncovered in Smart Elections’ legal case in Rockland County, New York, are just the tip of the iceberg—an iceberg that extends across the swing states and into Texas.

On Monday, an investigator’s story finally hit the news cycle: Pro V&V, one of only two federally accredited testing labs, approved sweeping last-minute updates to ES&S voting machines in the months leading up to the 2024 election—without independent testing, public disclosure, or full certification review.

These changes were labeled “de minimis”—a term meant for trivial tweaks. But they touched ballot scanners, altered reporting software, and modified audit files—yet were all rubber-stamped with no oversight.

That revelation is a shock to the public.

But for those who’ve been digging into the bizarre election data since November, this isn’t the headline—it’s the final piece to the puzzle. While Pro V&V was quietly updating equipment in plain sight, a parallel operation was unfolding behind the curtain—between tech giants and Donald Trump.

On Thursday, the Supreme Court delivered a decision that could be a death knell for Planned Parenthood health centers across the nation.

In a 6-3 decision authored by Justice Neil Gorsuch, the court’s conservative supermajority decided that the federal Medicaid Act does not give an individual the right to bring a civil rights lawsuit challenging the termination of a specific Medicaid provider from that state’s network.

The Supreme Court’s ruling in Medina v. Planned Parenthood South Atlantic is its latest assault on reproductive health care. The case also marks another victory for the Alliance Defending Freedom, the Christian conservative litigation shop behind the Dobbs decision, in which the high court reversed Roe v. Wade and ended the federal right to an abortion. (ADF lawyers represented the South Carolina Department of Health and Human Services in Medina.)

Protests against Trump’s immigration policies sprung up in a variety of cities and towns over the weekend.

• Hundreds of anti-ICE protesters marched through downtown Albuquerque, New Mexico, on Friday. “The sound of strumming guitars and chants for change filled the air as downtown Albuquerque was packed with protesters expressing their anger toward the federal government,” reported KRQE TV.
• In Lawrenceville, Georgia, hundreds of people gathered to peacefully protest ICE raids and the arrest of local journalist Mario Guevara, who was taken into ICE custody while covering another Atlanta-area immigration protest a week earlier. Guevara, who is from El Salvador, built a big social media following by documenting immigration raids, and now faces deportation himself. “We see how this is an attempt to stop people from using their First Amendment rights to righteously speak out against these attacks on immigrants,” a protest organizer told WSB TV.
• A spontaneous protest erupted in Pasadena, California, on Saturday, after community members learned that armed officers who drove unmarked vehicles and lacked clear agency identification had detained several people that morning – including four men who were buying tamales from a street cart. Pasadena Now reported that about 200 to 300 people gathered for an evening march and vigil, where Pasadena Mayor Victor M. Gordo and other local officials called for unity and protection of immigrant residents.
• Friends and neighbors of a much-beloved bagel shop manager in Port Washington, Long Island, protested his detention on Saturday. Fernando Mejia, 40, was picked up by ICE agents on June 12, reportedly for overstaying a visa 20 years ago. The protest took place at the Port Washington train station, right across the street from the Schmear Bagel & Cafe where Mejia worked, reported News 12 Long Island.
• Hundreds of angry residents in southeast Los Angeles County faced off against masked men in fatigues Friday evening after federal agents raided a car wash in the city of Bell, the Los Angeles Times reported. “In one video shared with The Times, a protester sprays white paint on a silver SUV and a voice can be heard saying, ‘Get the ... out of here!’ while others jeer. People can be seen hitting the vehicle,” the Times reported. “One woman with a bullhorn hurled obscenities at the agents and President Trump; others waved a Mexican flag and an upside-down U.S. flag, traditionally a symbol of protest or distress.”

Following Democratic Socialist Zohran Mamdani’s decisive victory in New York City’s Democratic mayoral primary on Tuesday, most New Yorkers are rejoicing over the sound walloping he dished out to former governor and accused sex pest Andrew Cuomo. Outside of the city, right-wing lawmakers and influencers have seized on Mamdani’s Muslim identity and responded to his win with a degree of Islamophobic hysteria not directed towards New York since the so-called “Ground-Zero Mosque” caused nuclear meltdowns on Fox News in 2010.

“New York City has fallen,” Donald Trump Jr., the eldest child of President Donald Trump, wrote on Wednesday, quoting a post from another user claiming they were “old enough to remember when New Yorkers endured 9/11 instead of voting for it.”

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) posted an AI-generated image depicting the Statue of Liberty wearing a black burka with the caption: “This hits hard.”

Greene’s fellow congressional stunt artist Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) posted a photo of Mamdani dressed in a kurta — a garment worn by men in Southeast Asia — while attending an Eid service at the Parkchester Islamic Center in the Bronx. “After 9/11 we said ‘Never Forget.’ I think we sadly have forgotten,” Mace wrote.

Is it February? Because there are an awful lot of snowflakes around.

It didn’t take long for conservatives to lose their minds after Zohran Mamdani’s apparent upset over Andrew Cuomo in the Tuesday night Democratic primary in the New York City mayoral race.

Why? He’s a 33-year-old democratic socialist who has promised free buses and free child care, and to freeze the rent. But the fact that seems to most trigger some on the right is that he is Muslim, and would be the first Muslim ever elected the city’s mayor if he wins in November.

Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.), Laura Loomer, and Charlie Kirk were among the right-wingers who fired off Islamophobic smears about Mamdani and Muslim New Yorkers to their millions of followers after Cuomo’s surprising concession. The posts come days after reports that Mamdani has faced threats and attacks prompting an investigation by the NYPD Hate Crimes Task Force.

What a bunch of loser bigots.

Murkowski is seemingly keeping a door open to potentially caucusing with Democrats moving forward, or at the very least in a more independent mode to avoid the current hardened partisan divide, according to an interview being released in full on Tuesday.

Galen Druke, host of the GD Politics podcast, asked a hypothetical question about Murkowski being open to caucusing outside of the GOP if Democrats were to pick up three Senate seats in next year's elections, and if she had more opportunities to help her Alaskan constituents.

"There may be a possibility," Murkowski said, later adding, "There is some openness to exploring something different than the status quo."

It's an open question whether this being couched as a hypothetical allowed that response. It seems plausible that this is a gambit for other reasons.

Nothing to see here ...

This was never an issue before, but it’s suddenly an issue now that ICE has gone full Gestapo to keep up with Trump’s mass deportation demands. ICE’s tactics — unmarked vehicles, masked officers, and untargeted raids of any place that might contain foreigners — have earned it all the criticism and hatred it now faces.

The DHS is trotting out fake stats to justify ICE officers’ actions and President Trump has gotten busy sending military troops to police city streets. ICE has decided to join the general lawlessness of Trump’s second term by not only refusing to allow US lawmakers to perform their oversight duties, but serving up arrests and bogus criminal charges when members of Congress demand access to detention facilities.

These intimidation tactics haven’t worked. In fact, they’ve backfired. So, in an effort to snatch victory from defeat, ICE has decided it no longer needs to respect the law when it comes to Congressional oversight.

Is he just trying to be in charge of more things than Elon?

Here’s a fun corporate governance puzzle for you. Suppose you’re a foreign company trying to buy an American steel producer. The previous administration blocked your deal. The current president promised during his campaign to block it too, saying he’d stop it “instantaneously. Absolutely.” How do you get the deal approved?

If you guessed “write the president’s name directly into your corporate charter and give him personal veto power over your business decisions,” congratulations! You understand modern American capitalism.

That is, more or less, what happened with Nippon Steel’s acquisition of US Steel. The company has filed amended corporate documents with the SEC that contain what might be the most extraordinary governance provision in corporate history: a section that literally names “Donald J. Trump” and grants him veto power over everything from plant closures to pricing strategies to executive compensation.

A recent report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) confirms what immigrant advocates have long warned: ICE has deported American citizens.

Between 2015 and 2020, ICE deported at least 70 people who were U.S. citizens, according to the GAO. That’s not just a bureaucratic mistake — it’s a constitutional violation.

U.S. citizens cannot be deported under civil immigration law. Yet GAO found that ICE and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) lack the records to even know how many people they may have deported in error.

In total, the watchdog found that ICE arrested 674 potential U.S. citizens, detained 121, and deported 70 — all of whom may have been legally untouchable by immigration enforcement.

And the actual number could be much higher.

“ICE does not know the extent to which its officers are taking enforcement actions against individuals who could be U.S. citizens,” the GAO concluded.

Archive link

When President Trump ordered a military strike on Iran’s nuclear program, he was confronting a crisis that the United States unwittingly set in motion decades ago by providing Tehran with the seeds of nuclear technology.

Tucked into Tehran’s northern suburbs is a small nuclear reactor used for peaceful scientific purposes, which has so far not been a target of Israel’s campaign to eliminate Iran’s nuclear weapons capability.

The Tehran Research Reactor’s real significance is symbolic: It was shipped to Iran by the United States in the 1960s, part of President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s “Atoms for Peace” program that shared nuclear technology with U.S. allies eager to modernize their economies and move closer to Washington in a world divided by the Cold War.

Today, the reactor does not contribute to Iran’s enrichment of uranium, the arduous process that purifies the raw ingredient of nuclear bombs into a state that can sustain a massive chain reaction. It runs on nuclear fuel far too weak to power a bomb. Several other nations, including Pakistan, bear at least as much responsibility for Iran’s march to the threshold of nuclear weapons capability, experts say.

A pre-revolution Iran is nigh impossible to envision.

Looks like satire's back on the menu!

Who will stand up for our democracy? This question, fraught in even the most peaceful times, has only grown more pressing as our country approaches its 250th anniversary. Each passing day brings growing assaults on essential liberties like freedom of speech and due process. Meanwhile, our delicately assembled legal system faces a constant barrage of threats. Even as this issue reaches publication, the U.S. military has been deployed against peaceful protestors. We teeter on the brink of collapse into an authoritarian state. That is why, today, The Onion calls upon our lawmakers to sit back and do absolutely nothing.

Members of Congress—now, more than ever, our nation desperately needs your cowardice.

Trump initially sought to negotiate a new nuclear deal with Iran — one to replace the Obama-era agreement that he abandoned, despite Iran's apparent compliance, in 2018.

I feel like this doesnt get enough attention.

Dude threw away a winning hand and is now at the table naked.

The People’s Forum and Code Pink may be obligated to register as foreign agents due to Chinese Government funding and influence

BUTLER COUNTY, IOWA – Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) is urging the Department of Justice (DOJ) to assess whether The People’s Forum and Code Pink are obligated to register under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), due to the group’s reported Chinese Communist Party ties.

“Evidence suggests that The People’s Forum and Code Pink have been funded and influenced by Mr. [Neville Roy] Singham and the communist Chinese government, both of which are foreign principals. The evidence also suggests that The People’s Forum and Code Pink have engaged in covered political activities that directly advance the communist Chinese government’s political and policy interests,” Grassley wrote.

“Secretive foreign lobbying and public relations campaigns by China and other adversaries undermines the political will and interests of the American people. The People’s Forum and Code Pink’s reported role in advancing policies in favor of the communist Chinese government is more than alarming and their potential obligation to register as foreign agents for purposes of FARA ought to be investigated,” Grassley continued.

Read Grassley’s letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi and Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Director Kash Patel HERE.

Background:

Neville Roy Singham is a social activist and billionaire who reportedly “works closely with the Chinese government media machine and is financing its propaganda worldwide.” Singham has reportedly attended Communist Party workshops focused on “promoting the party internationally,” shares office space and staff with the Shanghai Maku Cultural Communication Company and co-produces a YouTube show that’s partially financed by China’s propaganda department.

The People’s Forum, self-described as a “political and cultural hub,” is also funded in large part by Singham – who reportedly donated over $20.4 million through a series of shell organizations and donor advisory groups. The People’s Forum offers courses titled, “Lenin and the Path to Revolution” and “China75 – When the People Stand Up.” The group joined Code Pink in hosting a conference moderated by the Qiao Collective, known as “a diaspora Chinese media collective.” Further, the Executive Director of the People’s Forum openly pedaled Chinese propaganda when appearing on CGTN, a Chinese state-owned media group. DOJ directed CGTN to register under FARA in 2019.

Code Pink, self-described as a “grassroots organization working to end U.S. warfare and imperialism,” was founded by Singham’s wife, Jodie Evans, and has reportedly received roughly a quarter of its donations from organizations with ties to Singham. Since marrying Singham in 2017, Evans and Code Pink have “stridently support[ed] China,” with Evans publicly describing the Uyghurs, an ethnically Muslim minority group, as “terrorists” and defending their mass detention. Further, Code Pink activists have met with the House Select Committee on China to directly advocate for Chinese interests, including denying evidence of forced labor in the Uyghurs’ native region of Xinjiang.