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.

A Texas Energy Company, Dr Phil & Trump’s ‘Golden Dome’ Friends

President Trump made one key motivation of his imperialistic ambitions in Greenland clear in a Truth Social post early this morning, claiming that a “massive oil, gas and mineral exploration” was set to begin in “our new and beautiful Greenland!”

He is referencing the paltry-for-the-U.S. security deal that he was able to eke out of Greenland and Denmark last month, which Trump has hailed as some sort of victory for his longtime vision of the U.S. taking Greenland under its control. In reality, Denmark, the U.S. and Greenland signed an agreement in September that allows the U.S. to expand its military presence on the semi-autonomous territory of Denmark. It appears as though the deal has, for now, quieted Trump’s broader ambitions to take the island by force.

The deal does not give the U.S. any new mining or drilling rights and Greenland banned all future oil drilling back in 2021. Greenland officials have already combatted Trump’s statement, according to CNN:

While Greenland’s deputy mining minister Jørgen Hammeken-Holm acknowledged that “there are activities by US companies,” he told CNN that “we are very far away from ‘massive’ exploration.”

“There are many smaller explorations underway but these could take years to become operational,” he added, echoing researchers who have pointed out the difficulties and enormous expense involved in extracting resources from Greenland.

I haven’t really seen anyone mention this in their coverage so I wanted to elevate some reporting I did a few months back about a Trump-linked Dr. Phil drilling project that is in the works in Greenland — and almost certainly what Trump is referring to here (Reuters does mention the project in passing in its coverage of Trump’s remarks). The connection becomes more explicit in this line of Trump’s Truth Social post:

There are Experts that are saying that the amount of easily available Oil is far greater than that of almost any land, anywhere in the World and, even more importantly, from a Security Purpose in the Defense and Offense of both the United States of America, and Europe, is second to none.

Trump is likely referring to the project that a Texas-based firm, Greenland Energy, is trying to embark on in Greenland’s remote Nunap Qeqqa, or Jameson Land. Greenland Energy executives have claimed they have reason to believe that $1 trillion worth of crude oil may lie beneath the surface of Jameson Land. 

Reports surfaced in August suggesting the company was readying resources to begin drilling in the region, even though it did not yet have permission from local officials or the Greenland government to do so. The government is currently still reviewing whether Greenland Energy has the right to drill in the area due to its partnership with a UK company that secured the rights to drill in Jameson Land before the 2021 ban.

I wrote about the whole thing extensively here. But in essence, the Texas-based Greenland Energy project had Trump’s finger-prints all over it before he made things so explicit in this post. Executives for the company have mentioned “disruptions to key shipping corridors, particularly around the Strait of Hormuz” as a motivating factor for embarking on the project and Dr. Phil’s media company has partnered with Greenland Energy to make a docu-series about the drilling venture.

Add to the fact that Greenland Energy personnel have close and obvious ties to Trump and his hegemonic salivating over Greenland, per my piece back in August:

The signs were all there before Trump shouted about them on Truth Social just after midnight last night.

— Nicole LaFond

Trump Doesn’t Like When Women Act Corrupt in Public

President Trump stood by his Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem while she weathered the blanketgate news cycle (when she reportedly screamed at a Coast Guard pilot after her blankie went missing); as she faced affair allegations; as she fashioned herself into the face of his administration’s ruthless immigration crackdown with her social media cosplaying; throughout the entire, disastrous Minneapolis operation.

It wasn’t until reports surfaced suggesting she had inappropriately doled out contracts to friends and spent millions of the department’s budget on advertisements that mostly featured her riding horseback near American landmarks — and Republicans began asking questions about it — that Trump pulled the rug out from under her. During a hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee back in March, Noem claimed Trump had signed off on the ads — the death knell to her career atop the agency carrying out the most barbaric aspects of Trump’s second term agenda.

While former Fox News darling-turned Trump family member-turned ambassador to Greece Kimberly Guilfoyle officially accepted her ousting from Trump world in a post on Twitter Tuesday afternoon, her tale is similar. She faced the president’s wrath only because she did not hide her corruption well enough.

Allegations about Guilfoyle’s conduct while serving as the U.S. Ambassador to Greece — a position she was given around the time Don Jr. broke off their engagement and moved on to a Miami socialite — began surfacing in the Wall Street Journal in September. The reported conduct included allegedly threatening a Greek official, reportedly trying to bribe a Trump donor with influence in exchange for paying a credit card bill, and allegedly accepting improper gifts. Guilfoyle has denied the allegations and continued to deny them as she announced she’d leave the post Tuesday. But Trump began hinting on Monday that the hammer might soon drop. That’s potentially because the latest reporting from the WSJ on the Guilfoyle allegations included damning quotes from Guilfoyle doing the corruption, on a recording.

“Well, we’re looking at it,” Trump told reporters Monday when asked about the allegations. “We’re not happy.”

By Tuesday morning, Trump’s new press secretary confirmed her departure during the White House press briefing, and Guilfoyle posted a long message on X about her devotion to Trump world — despite the brutal and public sacking.

Serving as the United States Ambassador to Greece has been the honor of a lifetime. I will forever be grateful to President Donald J. Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio for entrusting me with the extraordinary privilege of representing the greatest country in the history of…

— Kimberly Guilfoyle (@kimguilfoyle) October 13, 2026

About That New Press Secretary

‘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.

‘I Will Challenge Anybody Who Gets in My Way’

My colleagues and I have been tracking the creative ways in which vulnerable Republicans up for reelection in November have been distancing themselves from President Trump in recent weeks, as his approval rating craters — due to his war in Iran and rising gas prices, the ongoing affordability crisis generally, his inhumane immigration crackdown, and the role he’s played in ushering in a new Big Tech oligarchy, among other reasons.

This has taken different forms. Only half of the Republican candidates running for office or up for reelection this fall showed up to his Trumped-up party convention in Dallas earlier this month. Others have edited or scrubbed language from their campaign sites to put some daylight between themselves and Trump’s political toxicity. Others have tried to walk a very narrow line between backing the president’s agenda, while distancing themselves from his most unpopular actions this term. This has taken its most colorful, entertaining form in the data center dance some Republicans are performing.

We’ve got a new example of a vulnerable Republican contorting himself to distance himself from Trump this weekend that also converges on a theme that TPM has been focused on during Trump’s second term, as he weaponizes the executive branch for his own political aims. Condemning Trump’s retribution crusade, both against his perceived political enemies and blue states and municipalities as a whole, has been a regular talking point for Democrats the last two years. You don’t really catch Republicans talking about it — or acknowledging it for that matter. And while Rep. Tom Kean (R-NJ) did not directly criticize the retribution campaign the Trump administration has waged against New Jersey, he distanced himself from it during a debate on Sunday night.

Kean, you may recall, was absent from Congress for months earlier this year as his office cryptically attempted to keep his hospitalization due to depression under wraps. He acknowledged his situation bravely and publicly when he returned to Congress after missing more than 100 votes, and was roundly mocked for his honesty by the far-right, rage baiting congresswoman, Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) and others.

Kean is facing a tough reelection challenge from Democrat Rebecca Bennett, a former Navy helicopter pilot, in a race rating that Cook Political Report recently switched from a “toss up” to “lean Democratic.”

During the debate on Sunday evening, Kean broke with Trump on the Lake America drama, and some key issues, including announcing his opposition to the Trump administration’s plan to open an Immigration and Customs Enforcement immigrant detention center in his district. He also vowed to fight the administration’s blockade on funding for the Gateway rail tunnel project — a $16 billion infrastructure revamp to build a new train rail tunnel beneath the Hudson River and to make repairs to the 100-year-old tunnel that currently connects New Jersey to Manhattan.

In February, the Gateway Development Commission sued the Trump administration for withholding funding for the project, and in June a federal judge permanently blocked the Trump administration from freezing the funding.

But it is all tied to an early-in-Trump-II endeavor by Trump’s Office of Management and Budget Director Russ Vought to punish New York City — and specifically, the Democrats who represent the city’s constituents. Officially, Vought announced in September 2025 that the Trump administration would withhold “roughly $18 billion” in federal funding from New York City for infrastructure projects, claiming “unconstitutional DEI principles” followed by the construction companies completing the projects. Per a Politico report from October 2025:

The Department of Transportation had written New York to inform the state the two projects were under administrative review to determine whether the state was subsidizing infrastructure contracts with taxpayer money based on discriminatory principles, referring to DOT’s Disadvantaged Business Enterprise Program.

However, it was around this time that the government shut down for the first time in Trump’s second term, primarily because Republicans refused to negotiate with Democrats on how to address the unfolding health care crisis spurred by then-expiring Affordable Care Act (ACA) subsidies. It would later become the longest government shutdown in modern history. Trump administration officials quickly found a way to show their cards — revealing that the frozen funds for the project was less about some amorphous use of woke DEI hiring practices and more about punishing Democrats and the people they represent.

“Until USDOT’s quick administrative review is complete, project reimbursements cannot be processed, including a $300 million disbursement for the 2nd Avenue Subway. The remaining federal funding for these projects totals nearly $18 billion,” a Department of Transportation spokesperson told Politico at the time. “Thanks to the Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jefferies shutdown, however, USDOT’s review of New York’s unconstitutional practices will take more time. Without a budget, the Department has been forced to furlough the civil rights staff responsible for conducting this review.”

And so, on Sunday, when he was asked about the funding freeze, Kean did not, of course, get into the Trump administration’s broader retribution assault, but he did try to plow some middle ground in defending the project and breaking with the president.

“I will challenge anybody who gets in my way, including this president,” Kean said.

Trump Manages to Silence Himself

The news outlets that make up the TV pool that covers the White House and the president’s schedule joined together on Monday to announce that they would not be “designated as pool coverage of the president” until further notice after President Trump banned CNN from the White House.

“This is to advise that, effective today, the TV pool will not be covering events designated as pool coverage of the President,” Fox News Washington bureau chief Bryan Boughton, who is also the chair of the TV pool, wrote in a memo to journalists in the White House press corps. The memo was obtained by the Washington Post and others on Monday.

“There will be no replacement pool put in place. All other pool coverage will continue as normal, including Congress, VIPs, and selected events in Washington and around the country,” it said.

The news comes after President Trump announced last week that CNN, MS NOW and Politico were banned from the White House — and journalists from those outlets were turned away from the White House grounds. Lawyers for the banned news outlets and individual journalists filed a lawsuit in federal court in Washington, D.C. on Monday, alleging violations of the news organizations’ First Amendment rights.

“This morning, we notified the government that we are filing a lawsuit today to protect our First Amendment rights and defend the principle that the government does not decide what the press reports or publishes,” the three news organizations said in a statement on Monday, per CNN.

“Without notice or process, the White House revoked our journalists’ credentials because it objected to our reporting,” they said. “Left unchallenged, this threatens press freedom and the public’s right to independent journalism free from government interference.”

The members of the TV pool news organizations announced their boycott on Monday morning as well.

“The public has a vital interest in receiving accurate, independent information about its government. No administration should restrict a news organization because it objects to its reporting,” ABC News, CBS News, CNN, Fox News Media and NBC News, the five cable networks that make up the rotating White House TV pool, wrote in a statement on X Monday.

The pool is a system that news outlets have been using for decades to help split the cost of having cameras follow the president’s moves on a daily basis. Per WaPo:

The assigned network records and distributes a live feed that other news outlets can use. Without a TV pooler, there will be scant video coverage of Trump unless news outlets take their own video or use feeds provided by the White House.

The Washington Post also announced it would not publish any photos of any presidential events on Monday until midnight ET.

There are legitimate concerns about the vacuum created by the news outlets’ absence — and what this White House might do to fill the void. A year ago, Trump’s White House blocked the White House Correspondents’ Association from choosing members of the White House press pool, effectively taking control over which news outlets could send reporters to cover White House events.

But for today, at least, Trump managed to silence himself. His attempt to unveil his new White House helipad was not televised live on the usual cable news channels Monday. Here’s footage from Newsmax of the event. You can’t hear him.

LMFAO — Trump is holding an event at the White House right now but there's no audio because the press pool isn't there. The Newsmax host notes that this is an example of Trump's attacks on the press "backfiring just a little bit"

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) 2026-09-21T17:51:50.189Z

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, Where Things Stand readers! Starting today, while you will still be able to read most of the newsletter, only TPM members will be able to read the entire thing.

But … If you love reading WTS every night and can’t imagine living without the whole thing, you should sign up to become a TPM member today ☺️ WTS readers are getting a special 50% off discount. Click here to join the TPM community! This means you will never miss anything in WTS and you also get full-access to everything else TPM publishes.

Thanks for reading and we hope you’ll consider becoming a member!

‘The $5,000 Is Gonna Happen. 100%’

President Trump’s Republican allies in Congress and his own vice president have been spent the past week attempting to sane-wash President Trump’s midterms election bribe.

Shortly after Trump announced that he would give $5,000 checks to every American adult if enough people vote Republican in the midterms to help the party keep the House and the Senate, Vice President JD Vance went on Fox News to place some (relatively) down-to-earth guardrails on the proposal. Vance suggested that the money would come from new tariff revenue and the administration would place income barriers on who can receive it — meaning only working- and middle-class Americans would be the recipients of the political bribe. Experts have pointed out that the $1.25 trillion it would cost to give $5,000 checks to every adult American through tariff refunds is more or less the equivalent of the revenue that the new tariffs are projected to bring in over the next decade.

“What the president is talking about is ultimately a dividend for American workers. We’re taking in an extraordinary amount of revenue because the president of the United States is actually standing up to both foreign companies but also foreign countries who have been taking advantage of America’s workers for pretty much my entire life,” Vance said, doing clean-up just moments after Trump made the remarks at the faux Republican National Convention last week in Dallas. “What the president’s just saying is, if you keep it going to the American people, if you keep us in power and allow us to continue to do these things, then you’re going to share in some of the benefit of this incredible wealth that we’re creating in the United States of America.”

Some Republicans in Congress like Sen. Bernie Moreno (R-OH) are really taking Trump’s promise and running with it. Other Republicans in Congress were reportedly caught off guard by Trump’s cash pledge, specifically because he tied the payout to the election results. It’s not as if Trump has not promised checks to Americans before. During the height of the Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency’s rampage through the federal government, Trump and Musk promised they’d cut checks to Americans once all the awesome, epic slashing was over. That not happen, and DOGE end up cutting more than $110 billion in federal spending — a far cry from $2 trillion in cuts Musk promised.

Nevertheless, Trump doubled down while speaking to reporters in Ireland on Monday.

“The $5,000 is gonna happen. 100%. And the reason is because our country has taken in trillions and trillions of dollars,” he said. “And it’s gonna happen. And the people deserve it, they’ve been treated so badly by the Democrats and by Biden.”

— Nicole LaFond

Dem Has Questions About Russian Oligarch Paying for Don Jr. Wedding

The ranking member of the House Oversight Committee is sounding the alarm about the new report in ProPublica you may have seen today, that found that Russian oligarch Umar Kremlev funded a portion of Donald Trump Jr.’s wedding in May. Kremlev has ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Hello, and welcome back to The Franchise!

Despite the fact that the U.S. has entered the “quiet period” — the 90 day window before an election during which state election officials are federally barred from “systematically” removing people from voter rolls — the Trump administration is going full steam ahead in its crusade to control election administration and try to purge voters from the voter rolls. 

Rethinking a Deal With the Devil

State officials and elected leaders who once championed tax exemption deals with the executives of companies like Amazon, Google and Meta for the development of data centers in their states are now having second thoughts — and some states are taking steps toward making those deals a thing of the past.

It’s a sign that elected officials are belatedly taking notice of voters’ fears about data centers, unregulated AI advancement and the broader agenda of the tech industry. Rampant construction of new data centers around the U.S. has prompted panic about spikes in the cost of electricity, drained water supplies, pollution and artificial intelligence stealing human jobs. It’s underscored by the extreme economic uncertainty that everyone is facing — except, maybe, tech executives and the people who design their messaging.

The Wall Street Journal has a new report out this week examining 10 different states that had previously granted tech companies sales tax exemptions for the equipment needed to run data centers. In each of those states, officials are now having second thoughts. The piece focuses especially closely on Ohio and the work that state legislators did more than 10 years ago to encourage Big Tech investment in the state by offering the sales tax exemption, and the ways in which the artificial intelligence surge of the last four years has resulted in over $1.5 billion in savings for tech companies developing data centers there.

After substantial public pushback, Republican Gov. Mike DeWine back in May placed a pause on new applications for sales-tax exemptions, and some state lawmakers are pushing for the sales-tax exemption to be repealed. Several other states are considering similar actions to end or pause these ongoing tax breaks for tech companies, which “seem to have more money than God,” as one Ohio lawmaker, state Rep. Tristan Rader (D-OH), put it to WSJ.

Elected officials and politicians across the political spectrum are grappling with how to address the sweeping and righteous outrage against data center construction in rural and urban communities across the country. The notable exception is President Trump, who has maintained his allegiance to his big tech friends — who are funding his ballroom, and who donated to his inauguration, among other things. He memorably told Americans that only communities who want to be “backwards and poor” should oppose the new construction. His Environmental Protection Agency, meanwhile, is proposing a federal policy change that will make it easier for data center construction to move forward without input from the public.

Republicans are struggling with how to walk the line, but the backlash has been so severe back home that many are fully breaking with the Trump administration on the matter. Texas’ Republican Gov. Greg Abbott recently announced that he was placing a pause on the ability for new data center projects to be connected to the state’s power grid. Sen. John Thune (R-SD) and Vice President JD Vance have attempted to carve out a reasonable place for Republicans to stand should they not want to bow down whole hog to tech oligarchs, like Trump. The two have both independently suggested that states should look at mandates for tech companies to “be putting power back into the grid” as one way to address Americans’ concerns that the mammoth AI facilities are spiking electricity costs.

Related Reading

As Rader, the Ohio Democrat, said above …

WSJ: More Money Than They Ever Imagined—and No Clue How to Spend It

Bigger Than Politics

You may have seen by now the deadly warning from an Anthropic researcher who resigned from his job and warned that unregulated AI models had the potential to destroy humanity in the next four years.

“I resigned from Anthropic today. I spent the last three years doing pretraining research at both OpenAI and Anthropic,” Anthropic research Jason Coxon, who worked on training models, said on X. “Neither company is acting responsibly. They are racing straight to self-improving superintelligence and gambling with our lives.”

“The people building AI earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade. This is not a marketing stunt,” he continued.

Lawmakers across the political spectrum are calling on Congress to do something to prevent what Coxon and others from Anthropic have been forecasting.

The call is coming from inside the house.

Safety researchers are resigning, powerful AI models are breaking out of their labs, and companies are racing ahead anyway.

It's past time for Congress to get off the sidelines and do its job. We can start with my bipartisan FRONTIER… https://t.co/P32aesPI8V

— Lori Trahan (@RepLoriTrahan) September 9, 2026

Congress needs to convene a special session on AI and what the future of the U.S. looks like. There are very real impacts to society as we know it. Partisan politics aside, there are massive implications of a race towards super intelligence. This is not a doomer post, as some of…

— Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (@RepLuna) September 9, 2026

One Funny Thing

I’ll bring your attention to one matter in today’s edition of Where Things Stand that is less existential than the threat posed by America’s tech oligarchy. The White House apparently got involved in the recent mystery surrounding Fox News’ ousting of longtime Fox Business News host Maria Bartiromo.

Trump’s trade adviser Peter Navarro said during an interview with Newsmax Tuesday that the White House reached out to network executive to let them know they were dismayed by the decision.

“But suffice it to say that Suzanne Scott got a call, and basically the White House let her know that that kind of thing is totally unacceptable,” Navarro said, referencing the Fox News Media CEO.

Navarro went on to complain about how “out of control” Fox News is, suggesting that the network has become anti-Trump — a suggestion that flies in the face of how often the network bolsters the president’s agenda. After news of Bartiromo’s ouster broke, reports surfaced suggestion the longtime host reportedly shared details of internal editorial decisions with the White House.

“The bigger story here is, forget about anybody thinking that Fox is a conservative network that’s friendly to MAGA, that’s friendly to Trump,” he said. “They’ll feed you some red meat over there — the easy stuff, the trans stuff, stuff like that — but when it comes down to MAGA things, Suzanne Scott gets rid of everybody over there who wants to talk about MAGA issues.”

What to Read From TPM Today

Josh Kovensky and Layla A. Jones report on the Trump administration officially moving to exclude certain noncitizens from being counted in the upcoming Census, finding that the new, official policy is actually more extreme than the draft version that TPM was first to report on in August: Trump Admin Officially Moves to Reshape National Political Power With New Changes to 2030 Census

Kate Riga covered oral arguments today in the abortion pill mifepristone case before the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals: Appeals Court Skeptical That Louisiana Can Sue FDA Over Mifepristone Being Mailed into the State

John Light helps unpack the convoluted legal situation in Missouri regarding which maps to use in the upcoming election — and what it reveals about the Trump administration’s approach to sowing legal chaos in the election administration process this fall: Dueling Missouri Court Decisions Give Us a Preview of the Kind of Midterm We’re in For

Yesterday’s Top Story

Making Sense of That Big Story Saying Netanyahu Was Warned About Oct 7

What I’m Reading

Jeffries says Trump is too ‘corrupt’ to focus on Americans’ struggles

Trump says he’d consider pardoning Michael Cohen 

Associated Press will stick with Lake Ontario over Trump’s renamed ‘Lake America’  

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