Of Course a 2020 Fake Elector Is Involved in This Saga

As key members of the Trump administration refuse to give straight answers about whether they intend to send armed federal agents to polling places in a few weeks — which is against federal law — Wisconsin election officials are grappling with the vacuum that that ambiguity has created.

For more than a year, we’ve been covering the wishy-washy responses from Trump administration officials like Department of Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin, FBI Director Kash Patel and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to serious questions about the matter. President Trump has remained vague on the issue as well. The reason executive branch officials are facing questions about whether this is something they’re considering is twofold. The Trump administration has made it clear it has every intention of pulling out all the stops to interfere in states’ rights to administer their own elections, and Trump’s election denying allies outside the administration (e.g. Steve Bannon) are agitating around the idea. Trump himself has also expressed profound regret about not enlisting members of the military to seize voting equipment in 2020.

Hegseth has creatively dodged on the matter repeatedly in public, telling the Senate Armed Services Committee back in April that he has “never been ordered to do anything illegal, and I won’t” when questioned about deploying service members to voting sites. Patel and Mullin have been a bit less slimy about it by essentially admitting its something they’ve thought about doing. Patel recently told the Senate Judiciary Committee that he plans to have agents and intelligence analysts stationed at FBI field offices during the election in case there are any election security-related issues that need to be investigated. And Mullin has walked a similar line that leaves the door open for armed officers at polling places in particular (if far-fetched) circumstances.

“The only reason why we would be at polling places is if there is a threat to that polling place or we’re serving a warrant on someone that we have been actively tracking down,” he said last month.

Election officials are now being forced to step in and address the potential for disruption should the administration concoct some sort of emergency justification for sending armed federal officers to key precincts. Federal law prevents the government from sending any armed troops, agents or officers to polling place unless it is to “repel armed enemies of the United States.”

Members of the bipartisan Wisconsin Elections Commission voted on Thursday to sign off on guidance that will be sent to local election officials to help them navigate such a situation. Here’s what the guidance says, according to the Associated Press:

The memo tells Wisconsin’s roughly 1,800 clerks who administer elections what to do if U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers, Department of Homeland Security officials, FBI agents or local law enforcement shows up at the polls.

If officers arrive, the guidance says the head of the polling site should inform the municipal clerk, who should then tell the county clerk and the state elections commission. If the agents are there to observe, they must check in like any other observer and be subject to rules governing them, the guidance says.

Only one member of the board, a Republican, reportedly voted against sending out the guidance, in comments that actively diminished the threat and potential for major disenfranchisement in key parts of the country.

“I personally think this guidance is unnecessary because we have not seemed to need it the past 201 years,” Republican Commissioner Bob Spindell said, per the AP.

It may not surprise you to learn that Spindell was one of Trump’s fake electors in Wisconsin during the 2020 election.

‘Shockingly Corrupt’ PSAs

House and Senate Democratic appropriators are unleashing on the Trump administration and confirming reports that the Trump White House moved taxpayer money out of Customs and Border Patrol to fund midterms advertisements running on major broadcast airwaves that promote President Trump.

While the White House is trying to describe the ads as “public service announcements” similar to what previous administrations have run about COVID-19 or Obamacare, at least one of the ads appears to be a literal rerun from Trump’s 2024 campaign.

Congress’ top Democratic appropriators demanded answers from the Department of Homeland Security and threatened investigations Tuesday as more details of the egregious shuffling of taxpayer dollars surfaced. The move appears to be, at best, a major violation of the Hatch Act (a 1930s-era federal law that places limits on the political activities of federal executive branch employees — and a law that Trump officials ignored throughout his first term in the White House).

The Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday that the Trump administration used congressionally appropriated federal funds from the Department of Homeland Security to bankroll the recent spate of pro-Trump ads that have appeared on Fox, Newsmax, MS NOW, and CBS — some of which even aired during at least two NFL games on Sunday. Specifically, the money was moved from U.S. Customs and Border Protection, people familiar with the matter told the WSJ. Both the WSJ and CNN have reported that Trump personally pushed for the ads and was involved in their creation.

While the White House refers to the ads as PSAs — “These public-service announcements are about reminding Americans to love their country and understand what makes it worth defending, at home, at our borders, and abroad,” the White House told the WSJ — each has run with the alarming disclaimer: “paid for by the U.S. government.”

The ads all have the brand of Trumpian flair that landed former DHS Secretary Kristi Noem in hot water. One features Trump talking while images of Mount Rushmore flash on the screen: “the United States of America is the most successful, most accomplished, most exceptional nation ever to exist in human history,” Trump says. Another is eerily similar to an ad that Trump’s campaign aired in 2024. Per the Associated Press:

The latest of the ads, a spot first aired over the weekend, is virtually identical to an ad for Trump’s Republican reelection campaign in 2024. It shows him walking down a hallway as his voice can be heard warning of a “final battle” against “globalists” and “warmongers.”

A third includes a bunch of photos of Trump at various White House events. “America will never be a communist country,” he declares. It’s in line with one of the only talking points he and other Republicans have been able to come up with to campaign on this fall, as they fear-monger about a communist takeover of America because a handful of Democratic socialist candidates won primaries in New York City, Michigan and Colorado.

Dems to Mullin: This Is ‘Illegal Propaganda’

A few Republicans have mildly criticized the White House over what appears to be a blatant misuse of taxpayer funds.

“It’s a great message. I like the message, but it shouldn’t be paid for with taxpayer dollars,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) told reporters earlier this week.

Democrats are, however, aggressively sounding the alarm about the matter, arguing it is not just the usual Trump corruption but likely “illegal propaganda.” Sens. Patty Murray (D-WA) and Chris Murphy (D-CT), the top Dem appropriators in the Senate, wrote a letter to Department of Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin today, saying the $20 million that was shifted to pay for the ads used taxpayer dollars allocated for CBP from Republicans’ “Big Beautiful Bill” last year. They said the money was intended for “for commemorative events relating to border security.” They demanded the ads be taken off air and sent Mullin a list of questions about the arrangement.

Agents Instructed To ‘Misrepresent Themselves’

Hello, and welcome back to The Franchise!

Democrats released another damning whistleblower disclosure this week. This one alleges some disturbing, and potentially illegal, activity from the Department of Homeland Security’s ongoing effort to access state voter rolls as part of the Trump administration’s relentless campaign to unearth proof of President Trump’s conspiracy theories about noncitizens voters. 

Hello, and welcome back to The Franchise!

Democrats are sounding the alarm and demanding investigations in the wake of  a recent whistleblower complaint released by the office of Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) earlier this week. The report warns that the Postal Service’s new mail-in ballot policies that are being implemented to comply with President Trump’s March executive order to restrict mail-in voting, were made hastily and have been through very little testing. The whistleblower’s report, which my colleague John Light unpacks in depth here, warns that the new USPS rules could be disastrous for the midterms. 

 It goes on to say that the planned changes to the verification process for mailing a ballot are “rushed, chaotic, and fundamentally flawed,” and will pose serious issues if implemented ahead of the upcoming midterm elections. One former election official has even estimated that it could take more than four years in some major counties for each ballot to be verified and sent out under the new USPS rule. 

The whistleblower alleged that the new ballot mailing system was, at times, produced in violation of court orders. 

“The whistleblower’s allegations make clear that USPS lacks the technical or operational capability needed to effectively implement the EO’s provisions in a way that safeguards every citizen’s right to vote in the upcoming midterm elections,” Blumenthal wrote in a letter to Postmaster General David Steiner on Monday. 

Democratic leadership and other congressional Democrats are joining Blumenthal in righteous outrage over the report’s very ominous warnings. 

House Oversight Committee Ranking Member Robert Garcia (D-CA) in a statement this week said the “new secret tracking system at the US Postal Service is faulty, untested, and threatens to totally disrupt ballot delivery for millions of American citizens.”

“We are fighting in court to protect the right to vote by mail for all and will continue to investigate. This unconstitutional and dangerous power grab must be permanently and immediately blocked,” he added. 

“A whistleblower is warning of a ‘catastrophic failure’ in our mail-ballot system—all because Trump is turning USPS into a voter suppression machine,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) similarly said in a post on X. “Vote-by-mail is safe and secure. Trump himself voted by mail just last month. He knows he’s failing the American people, so he’s doing everything he can to rig the midterms.”

House Democrats sent a letter to USPS Inspector General Tammy Hull this week demanding an investigation into what they described as “the Postal Service’s reckless actions, which undermine the foundation of our nation’s democracy and violate the basic principle that all citizens have the right to have their vote counted.”

“The Postal Service’s current actions are putting clear obstacles in the way of exercising that right,” the letter adds. “Therefore, to protect the sanctity of our elections, and ensure that every American’s vote is counted, you must immediately investigate this whistleblower’s allegations, report any attempt to block your investigation, and disclose whatever wrongdoing you discover.”

As always, there is a lot more to catch up on this week. Let’s dive in. 

Another Lawsuit Challenging Trump’s Dystopian Citizenship Lists

The nonprofit Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) filed a lawsuit this week challenging the Trump administration’s attempts to create a national voter database. In the same March executive order I mentioned above, President Trump directed the Department of Homeland Security, the State Department and the Social Security Administration to use private data from their agencies to create citizenship lists for each state. The supposed citizenship lists would then be sent to each state and the Trump administration executive order demands that states cross reference their voter rolls with the “State Citizenship Lists” to, presumably, determine who can and can’t vote. The order also seeks to restrict mail-in voting and calls for the USPS to police who is and is not permitted to receive a ballot. The executive order, and the rules being written to implement it, have been challenged repeatedly in court. 

Last month, the Supreme Court sided with the Trump administration temporarily in an unsigned order that allowed the administration to, for now, move forward with implementing new rules to carry out Trump’s executive order. SCOTUS did not rule on the merit of the executive order itself, but may do so before the midterms, once the case makes its way back to the high court.

In a press release on Tuesday, EPIC described the executive order as an “unprecedented and illegal effort to interfere in the 2026 midterms by using unreliable databases for reasons totally unrelated to their intended purpose to create lists of ‘citizens’ in every state for determining who can and cannot vote.”

In its lawsuit this week, EPIC argues that the administration’s attempts to centralize private data from multiple federal agencies in order to create the citizenship lists violates federal privacy laws, and is an attempt to disenfranchise eligible voters. 

“No statute authorizes Defendants to share and centralize vast volumes of Americans’ sensitive personal data across government agencies to create and disclose the ‘State Citizenship Lists,” the complaint says. “And in doing so, Defendants are running roughshod over critical safeguards of the Social Security Act, the Privacy Act, and the Administrative Procedure Act (“APA”), and the constitutional separation of powers.”

“Building a database containing the identities, social security numbers, addresses, and citizenship information of every U.S. citizen is an extraordinary illegal overreach by the federal government,” John Davisson, deputy director and director of enforcement at EPIC said in a statement this week. “This is precisely the nightmare ‘Big Brother’ scenario that the Privacy Act exists to prevent. We hope the court will block this effort immediately and protect every American’s fundamental right to privacy.”

Another Roadblock for Maryland’s Redistricting Proposal

The Democratic-led Maryland redistricting proposal faces another roadblock as a second judge blocked the measure from appearing on November’s ballot. The proposal, which was introduced as a way to counteract the Trump administration’s ongoing gerrymandering blitz, was approved during a special session earlier this month. 

Republicans, however, immediately challenged the ballot proposal, and on Friday, a Dorchester County Circuit Court, S. James Sarbanes, sided with Republicans, ruling that the lawmakers failed to follow proper procedures. The judge specifically noted there were issues with the ballot language and the process, saying voters did not get proper notice and that the language of the proposal is confusing for voters. 

“The practical effect of HB 2100 is to remove all Maryland Constitutional standards and protections from congressional districting plans,” Sarbanes said in his ruling. “That is not clear from the ballot question.”

“The Court finds that the ballot language and the General Assembly’s failure to abide by the Election Law Article has resulted in voters not being provided with adequate notice of the purpose and effect of the ballot question so they can make an informed vote,” he added. 

Sabanes paused the effect of the ruling until the state Supreme Court rules on the matter on Thursday. 

In a statement earlier this month, Democratic Gov. Wes Moore defended the proposal. 

“For over a year, I have warned that Donald Trump and Republicans across the country are working to rig the system, weaken voting rights, and make this pain permanent.” he said. “I am proud that today we united and took action. I continue to believe that our country needs national redistricting reform.”

In Other Election News

The New York Times: More Mail Ballots Are Arriving Late This Cycle, and They’re Getting Tossed

CNN: DHS plans to launch voter fraud investigation surge Tuesday

Politico: Florida Republicans worry they won’t capture big redistricting gains

NOTUS: Democrats Cry Foul at Texas County’s Plan to Slash Polling Sites