Heather, what do you personally believe is the likelihood that Trump can either prevent a free election or keep the midterms from happening at all?
Side note from Minneapolis. ICE is still here, and still terrible. For anyone tracking the news, I live right by the Columbia Heights school where the 5 year old was taken. At least 25 parents have been detained, and many of the kids have to do online learning. All Columbia Heights schools were closed on Monday due to a bomb threat. Apparently Jake Lang is back in town as he recently went viral for getting thrown out of a St Paul bar, and is trying to hold another rally this weekend.
Thanks to all in Minnesota who have stepped up to oppose ICE and Trump’s uncalled for removals of Americans and immigrants who have done nothing wrong. I can tell there’s at least one place where ICE won’t keep people from the polls in November! If they try it, I’m betting it will increase turnout!
Minnesota has among the highest voter turnout rates in the US. Election results have shown that the greater the turnout the more likely it is that Democrats will win the elections. You don't see ICE going into the Confederate states for the most part.
Have you seen the meme?
Replacing Greg Bovino with Tom Homan is like changing your shirt when you sh*t your pants.
As Leonard Leo is to Republican right wing religious extremist plutocrat court capture, and Steven Miller is to Republican white supremacist deportation policy, Hans von Spakovsky is to Republican racist voter suppression based on lies of voter fraud lies. Ironically, von Spakovsky got his start on the Fulton County Georgia elections board before rising to the heights of authoring the Project 2025 chapter on Elections. Read Marc Elias below to see how Republicans are enacting von Spakovsky's agenda - particularly the role of DOJ and DHS. (Interesting that Miller gets the spotlight, while Leo and von Spakovsky - who've done and are doing more long term damage - get to work in the shadows.)
Project 2025 Contributor Outlines How Trump Can Roll Back Voting Rights - Marc Elias, Democracy Docket
"Now, in a recent op-ed for the conservative outlet The Daily Signal, von Spakovsky outlinesin further detail what Trump should do to roll back voting rights — specifically he explains what steps several federal agencies, like the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) should take and how it could potentially disenfranchise millions of voters.
The first suggestion von Spakovsky details is removing the DHS’s roadblocks for states to access citizenship data to verify the eligibility of voters on their voter rolls."
Von Spakovsky got his first serious exposure to elections administration when he was nominated to the Fulton county, Georgia board of registration and elections by the county Republican party in 1996, when he was working as an attorney in the private sector.
"But he [von Spakovsky] cited a 2000 investigation, by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, of voting records in Georgia over the previous two decades; the paper reported that it had turned up fifty-four hundred instances of dead people being recorded as having voted. “That seems pretty substantial to me,” he said. He did not mention that the article’s findings were later revised. The Journal-Constitution ran a follow-up article after the Georgia Secretary of State’s office indicated that the vast majority of the cases appeared to reflect clerical errors. Upon closer inspection, the paper admitted, its only specific example of a deceased voter casting a ballot didn’t hold up. The ballot of a living voter had been attributed to a dead man whose name was nearly identical."
"In committee, substantial and justifiable concerns were raised with respect to Mr. von
Spakovsky’s record of using federal government office to promote an agenda adverse to American voters. Documents that Mr. von Spakovsky has acknowledged drafting
or signed as his own, as Counsel to the Assistant Attorney General for the Civil
Rights Division, demonstrate that he repeatedly advanced policies that closed poll sites and courthouse doors to eligible American voters. For example, Mr. von Spakovsky claimed that states need not provide “fail-safe” provisional ballots to certain voters, despite a new federal law demanding “fail-safe” ballots to avert the demonstrated
disenfranchisement that occurred in elections when no such ballots were available.
He also enthusiastically promoted registration policies keeping new registrants off the
voter rolls if their registration information did not “match” that in another government
database, effectively disenfranchising voters in the event of a typographical error."
My god ---- do other nations have this problem? Are Americans truly prone to plotting to vote illegally; can we not even trust our local governments to count ballots honestly; can we replace human counters with AI to ensure a valid outcome during elections; can these cabals and propaganda, perpetrated, seemingly by Republicans, ever be resolved; are we really a country of criminality at every level of government and business???????????
Stephanie, here is Oregon, we have long voted by mail with few problems. Because once a R voting worker tried to cheat, there are now two people, one of each, who open ballots. As we have to use black or blue ink, I imagine counting is done by machine, but not the actual voting. So here in Oregon, we do not have the problem of people in lines, etc. Some "observers", I think, have tried to intimidate election workers at times. We had a county clerk in Clackamus (Clackistan)County who tried to gum up the works for a long time, but she is now gone. Here in Marion County, I am informed that my ballot is on the way. Then when it has cleared and ready to be counted, I am notified of that too. People here in Oregon have no excuse for not voting. They do not even need a stamp.
Similarly here in Maryland with our mail in ballots. But I live in a blue state, blue county and I trust the integrity of the system here. Unfortunately, if states control their own elections, is there room, then, for tampering and cheating? Is there any standardization from state to state? Of course, as Heather once wrote, we need to get rid of the electoral college, which is a relic.
Maybe they need to change their platform then engage in extreme reform. But how to change a party who has believed forever that government should only be responsible for protecting our borders, maintaining a military and printing money? Their mantra (which is a cold moral structure) is "it will hurt, but it will be good for you."
I guess I was referring to "democratic" countries like France, Sweden, Norway, etc.? Those we wouldn't want to live in, I presume, you mean Russia, Turkey, Hungary....
Yes other nations have this problem at this time (Russia, Venezuela) as well as throughout history (Germany, Philippines).Tampering with elections is a tried and true fascist, dictatorial scheme. This is neither a new tactic here nor unique to our country, as Heather points out in this Letter and others. What may be unique to our country is a belief in American exceptionalism, that it can’t happen here and surprise when it does. May the shock spur more people into action to prevent it.
No Stephanie: not at this time. However, republicans seem to be most certainly working on it. We the people are the final.backstop to make sure they don’t succeed.
extremely interesting article in the Guardian re: von Spakovsky. Thanks for linking that. I'll be reading The Myth of Voter Fraud, mentioned in the article. And I'll be working as a poll worker in rural WI for the first time ever in November.
Dead people voting? Another of the lies. Sure there are ballots cast (mail in) by people that may die before election day, but once again the actual numbers do not reflect any significant impact.
If we got to single day voting like we had to do before. ballot box stuffing is much easier. Ask the Russians that watch the ballot stuffing in their elections. This stuffing was a common practice in the 1800s when the industrialists had poll watchers at the polls seeing how was voting and what ballot box the voters were using.
Rocky, we have to accept that facts hold no sway with right-wing racists. They will always conjure some twisted rationalization to justify their bigotry—they always have and always will. Racism is deeply embedded in their psyche.
My favorite was the Trump voter who got caught voting for Trump on his own ballot and that of his recently deceased mother. He did get prosecuted and convicted for this.
Eh, I remember that one and thought it was JUST as silly as worrying about people voting multiple times for Democrats. It certainly DOES happen but maybe 25, 50 even 100 times each election across the entire country?! Not enough to even change on precinct let alone the outcome of the entire national election.
Bannon says, “You’re damn right, we’re going to have ICE surround the polls come November." Democrats in Congress need to bear this in mind as they negotiate funding for ICE!
In fact, the ChristoNazis are (already) stealing our elections. Here in a vital Thom Hartmann exclusive is how the thievery is done, including credible statistical evidence showing that the ChristoNazis' purging of Blacks, Hispanics and white progressives from the 2024 voter rolls put Trump in the White House. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L-q1lWsnlhg&t=5s (Election discussion starts at 9:09)
Sorry, you need to do better than this. Thom Hartmann is just as much of a left-wing whack job as Steve Bannon and Greg Bovino are for the right-wing Trumpists. His "analysis" of the 2024 election is so filled with assumption holes, you could drive an entire mobilized army through it. It hurts our side just as much to conjure up conspiracies as it should hurt their side. We need to STOP doing this and start worrying about winning the next election.
Harris lost and probably for all the reasons we should have expected. NOT because of election fraud.
They want to allow ICE to intimidate churchgoers and disrupt services, but protesters cannot! Bondi and company clutch their pearls in horror at protesters daring to disrupt a religious service, but ICE…go ahead ….drag people out, beat and arrest them…that will be allowed??
States should prosecute Bannon for fomenting election interference NOW!:
"Trump ally Steve Bannon said yesterday on his podcast: 'You’re damn right, we’re going to have ICE surround the polls come November. We’re not going to sit here and allow you to steal the country again. And you can whine and cry and throw your toys out of the pram all you want, but we will never again allow an election to be stolen.'
Is Steve Bannon fomenting voter intimidation? - RevGeorge - First Imagine Church
ChatGP:
Yes — that statement is very likely fomenting voter intimidation and potentially criminal election interference, not just protected speech.
Steve Bannon said:
“We’re going to have ICE surround the polls come November… we will never again allow an election to be stolen.”
This is not abstract rhetoric. Legally, it has four red-flag elements that courts and prosecutors look for.
Why this crosses the legal line
1. Explicit threat tied to voting
This is not a policy opinion. It’s a promise of coercive state force (“ICE surround the polls”) explicitly tied to Election Day.
Courts have consistently held:
Threats of law-enforcement presence at polling places = voter intimidation, even if no arrests occur.
The threat itself is the harm.
2. Targeting a protected class
ICE enforcement is inherently tied to:
Immigration status
Ethnicity and national origin
Mixed-status families (including citizens)
Courts recognize that immigration enforcement threats uniquely chill lawful voters, including U.S. citizens who reasonably fear collateral detention.
That matters enormously in intimidation cases.
3. Intent to deter voting is evident
Intent doesn’t require a confession. It can be inferred from:
Language (“surround the polls”)
Framing (“we’re not going to allow you… again”)
False premise (the election was “stolen”)
This is textbook intent to suppress turnout under the guise of fraud prevention — a pattern courts already understand well.
4. False assertion of authority
Steve Bannon has:
No authority over ICE
No lawful role in election security
Claiming or implying control over federal law enforcement at polling places can itself be criminal, because it:
Creates fear through deception
Mimics official power
Exacerbates intimidation
You do not need ICE to actually show up. The false claim alone can violate the law.
What laws this implicates
Depending on jurisdiction, this statement could support:
Federal voter intimidation statutes
State election interference laws
Conspiracy or solicitation, if coordination exists
Civil enforcement by DOJ or state AGs
Injunctions barring further statements
Importantly: Speech does not have to instruct a specific illegal act to lose protection.
Threatening lawful voters with coercive force is not protected by the First Amendment.
Key legal takeaway
This is not “just talk.”
It is a public threat of law-enforcement intimidation at polling places, aimed at deterring lawful voters.
That squarely fits the legal meaning of fomenting election obstruction.
Whether it results in charges depends on:
Jurisdiction
Follow-up conduct
Evidence of coordination
Prosecutorial judgment
But as a matter of law?
Yes — this statement is firmly in prosecutable territory.
We should recognize the sexual victimization of terrorized children by the Trumpstein Cult is the immediate predecessor, perhaps even a test run, of the terror the MAGAstapo is now unleashing on anyone who refuses to kowtow to the ChristoNazi theocracy. Thus the vital, know-our-enemy relevance of the full text of the Jane Doe lawsuit against Trump and Epstein -- later withdrawn in response to credible death threats against the plaintiff: https://cdn.factcheck.org/UploadedFiles/Johnson_TrumpEpstein_Lawsuit.pdf Please let us ensure this text is linked early (and therefore prominently) on as many Resistance sites as possible every day until the traitorous regime of ecogenocidal ChristoNazi pedophiles is no more. (I'll do my best to be responsible for this posting, but I am 85 years old and terminally ill, which means others need be ready to pick up the torch on days I am absent and after I am no more.)
As I'm told by sources there, Tennessee has a large and fiercely activist LGBTQ community; it and peoples of color are apparently the largest demographic groups within state's Democratic voters. Thus under Oberstgruppenführer Miller the "immigration" agenda will undoubtedly include ridding the state of non-RepubliKlan voters.
After 80+ years of listening to Republicans whine, I truly marvel that women and persons of color ever got the right to vote! I only hope that American voters will respond by voting in even greater numbers next fall and 2028.
How about every Democrat change their registration to Republican now while there's still time and vote democratic when they're at the polls. That'll confuse the hell out of them. They won't be able to tell who's vote to cancel.
Homan isn't just replacing Bovino; Homan is taking over for Noam.
That is significant. whether we agree with Homan's policies, at least he has law enforcement experience, doesn't need to cosplay, and has already moved to tone down the tactics.
Trump and Miller keep talking about "sanctuary cities." That's like DEI. What is the definition of "sanctuary city?" or for "DEI". And why is that a bad thing?
MAGAs eat this BS up because they are non-thinking people driven by the wealthiest sociopaths in the US.
They are currently in Indianapolis, IN. I understand they were invited by our ignorant governor, Braun. Our Republican jail was increased in size during the first Trump administration and has been filled...(I understand we are bringing in lots of dollars) with immigrants that are on hold....the newspaper is filled with names in every paper....I used to count the names...but have given up. We protested the jail increase before they began construction. They same horrid Republicans get elected to the county offices year after year....currently we have no Democrats in any office. I tried 4 years ago. Four years makes a difference in a body...I can't do it this year. Our city mayor is Democrat. He is looking worn so I am not sure how much longer he will be mayor.
That is so worrying. Not that it's OK in any way, but in spite of that, the DFLer won with 95.3% of the the vote (in the contested election--there was another who ran unopposed). If that's the model, they can't keep enough people away, and they are turning other voters emphatically against them.
That is wrong to intimidate a voter out of the right to vote. DeSantis sent his police goons to threaten men who had done time and voted after the parole and probation authorities had assured them they had a legal right to vote. The son of one of the men harassed by DeSantis’s goons expressed the opinion that he wouldn’t want to vote any more even though he has no felony record. That is how voter suppression works, and we have to stop it.
Hello Ricardo... DJT, who is Dim-Witted, and Delusional, as well as literally Stinking, only Succeeds by Cheating... DJT has done this essentially his whole Life with no Significant Consequences.... Of Course DJT will try to Steal the '26 Mid-Terms... DJT Greatly Fears Being Impeached For The 3rd Time... DJT is Ferociously Feral when it comes to DJT's Survival....
We all think he’s dimwitted. As a very short-term tactical thinker, however, he is extremely clever. We have so many times found ourselves in trouble by underestimating Trump - and the damage he can do!
Calling Trump clever is definitely a leap. Imagine a 2 year old throwing a tennis ball at a target 20 feet away. By pure luck, he will hit the target once in a blue moon.
Recall that during Trump 1, that he would get many of his bizarro ideas from Fox and Friends morning show. And now he has surrounded himself with 30 of the losers from Fox including the dim-witted Kegsbreath.
I didn't watch Him much during 1.0. I now subscribe to several YouTubers who post daily how deranged He is. Sadly, when I see their clips I see someone who is shrewd even if his hands appear to be rotting and the room is abruptly cleared due to a possible "brown alert". In my opinion, we under estimate him at our peril.
Gregory, no one will ever convince me that Donald is "clever." His niece doesn't think so, and neither do I. Donald's lifetime of failures prove it. You have to be a special kind of stupid to bankrupt a casino, where "the house always wins."
When Donald became active in the family business, his father handed him millions of dollars to get started. He lost all of it and plunged the company into debt so deep U.S. banks wouldn't touch him. Russian oligarchs stepped in and bailed him out – with strings. Those strings tie him directly to Putin, who knows Donald is a vain dumbf*ck and exploits that weakness daily.
We are in trouble because about 77 million voters OVERestimated Donald, believing is he is the successful tycoon portrayed in The Apprentice game show.
In addition, Congress refuses to rein in him; the Supreme Court has gifted him with immunity; his dangerous impulses are stronger than our laws and courts can handle; who is boisterously scandalous, famous for his insults, invective and sarcastic humor. His poisonous tongue and pen are embraced from the pulpits and by his charmed inner circle of sycophants, both inside government and among the maga public. How long until someone breaks the spell????
Under-estimation has come because those of us who oppose tRump try to play by the rules-laws while the tRump and his ilk openly flaunt breaking laws. Only recently has the judicial system (finally) acted to stop many of those illegal actions.
tRump has always been a conniving racist weasel (apologies to weasels everywhere).
Please do not use "DJT." He is not among the initials crowd: FDR, LBJ, JFK, RFK. They try it with others in hope to be fondly remembered but it fails to hold with people like Richard M. Nixon (RMN ) and Gerald R. Ford (GRF ). I get it that we do need to make up a name for this child who calls everyone else names. For example, Manchild (MC).
I would never honor the manchild by using capital letters. I use "djt" or "trump" as a form of subtle disrespect to the psychotic narcissist. I hate when my auto correct changes it to a capital "T".
Cheating! What a wake-up years ago when I watched a 60 Minutes interview with his golf coach, who reported on the ways he cheated. Amazing what happens in plain sight that he gets away with.
So ICE will be out under the guise of "security for the vote" - when we all know it is voter suppression. I wonder if there could be security - the real kind - for people who want to vote -- the same way escorts used to take women for their appointments at abortion clinics that were under attack.
Thank you Marj! Everyone who is reading this, those who can vote in US elections, can work the polls. Volunteer now! Hundreds of people are needed to fill the slots.
An antidemocratic trick as old as the Republic, even when, like Lincoln, you take the Declaration of Independence literally. It seem to me that it is voting is a fundamental human right, and patently essential to a full and just democracy. The founders flubbed by failing to nail that down.
Thank you for sharing this. I’m 74, grew up in Texas. I recall the Reconstruction Era being taught in American History. But I’m willing to bet it was barely a few pages and certainly did not include what happened in Wilmington, or in Tulsa for that matter.
Great book Willington's Lies. Something I never knew, but found heartbreaking. There are a number of other instances of this happening. Louisiana had several communities where something similar occurred.
I grew up in North Carolina about 100 miles north of Wilmington. I graduated from high school in 1972. Nothing about the Wilmington coup was ever taught in my history classes. Not even my Chicago born college history professor mentioned that vicious riot. That man’s specialty was US history after the Civil War, mainly Reconstruction. I learned about the Wilmington coup after I moved to Wilmington in 2009. I wasn’t taught about the destruction of “Black Wall Street” in Tulsa either. Or Axe Handle Saturday in Jacksonville, Florida.
After the Wilmington coup, NC disenfranchised Black voters with poll taxes and literacy tests in spite of the 15th Amendment. This ICE lawlessness is as old as the hills.
Check out Wilmington Lies. Also check out Cape Fear Rising.
I recall mention of "poll tax" and repression of black voting in my US history classes, but as something of a side note. Most of the most egregious stuff was glossed over, as Trump would wish it. I was in middle age before, one by one, some of the most disturbing events of US black history were mentioned by mainstream journalists stories I encountered, one by one.
You are holding up the sky for us tonight, Minneapolis. We remain in awe of your integrity and courage. All we can say right at this juncture is: “thank you.” 🙏
The Democrats have their 2-week CR. Cutting the small amount of funding outside of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act isn't enough to make a dent in operations, and "reforms" will not be adhered to.
ICE operations are essential and agents would have to work with deferred pay even during the shutdown. They are considered like the military.
You are 100% correct. That is why the organization has to be deep-sixed. CBP has the long institutional history. Dems offer to have CBP take in pre-2025 ICE agents, so the "professionals" and all the newbie's have to be re-vetted and re-trained. Most likely will not meet the standards.
Republicans have to feel they are getting something.
Getting rid of the ICE organization moots most of the funding in the one Big Beautiful Bill Act , so it would have to be renegotiated as well.
These are sensible proposals. If there's a blue tsunami in November (if free elections are allowed to be held) there might be hope for some of them to be enacted.
One way to pound on the law: DA's and prosecutors around the country have formed an organization - FAFO - that will go after ICE agents. FAFO, Fight Against Federal Overreach.
I agree James' big if is an issue. That's why the Dems have to do it NOW. Don't call it abolishing ICE. Call it an exercise in cost cutting and government efficiency and improved coordination. But get rid of the organization so the One Big Beautiful Bill Act has to be amended and the outrageous amount of money in that multiyear ICE allocation has to be re-deployed, and the sadists can be weeded out under an agency which currently has a career civil servant in charge in a position that requires Senate confirmation. Reforms like mandatory body cams are more likely to be accepted in CBP which traditionally did not carry guns and wear body armor.
I've seen proposals to unmask ICE personnel, have them wear body cams, present identification and require them to have judicial warrants, but none yet to disarm them, which seems to me to be essential. If they think they will need armed backup, let that be provided by local law enforcement.
But many of us can help make their lives as uncomfortable as possible. Boycott each of the hotels, motels where ICE is staying. Picket the hotels with sign like "welcome ICE" so that regular guests don't stay there. If you were visiting Chicago or Minneapolis and saw signs that said, "Welcome ICE" would you want to stay there? We know they are staying at some Marriott hotels as well as some Hilton hotels and we are all paying their expenses.
Force them to eat in their hotel rooms or vehicles by dissing them when they are eating. I'm guessing they aren't going out to very many bars or eating in restaurants in Minneapolis or Chicago, but if you do see a group of them call them out and ask the manager to not serve them.
These guys and gals are thugs who deserve to be treated badly. They beat up elderly people, arrest kids, kill American citizens, damage personal property, break down doors without a legal search warrant.
We need to treat them like they treat us, only non-violently just like the protestors have done in every city they've terrorized.
At this point, we can't trust ANY of them to make a legal arrest so we have no choice but to assume they are all thugs and bullies, just like we have to assume anyone that still supports any Republican politician is a lost cause.
Do we have a choice? Just saying "Abolish it" won't fly without the leverage the other funding package had. The plan has to curb it to the max while giving Republicans in both chambers cover. And combining it with CBP does that.
The one thing that CANNOT BE ALLOWED TO HAPPEN is to have the combination go the other way--CBP subsumed under ICE. Then the sadists and the crazies are in charge, and the CBP traditionalists will be purged, and they will have that sh*t ton of money to spend building the camps.
I am not sure that Jeffries and Schumer are capable of pulling this off.
The primaries are critical in many Congressional districts and perhaps even a few Senate primaries. Once the Republican Congressmen are lame ducks, perhaps they will vote against the administration.
Critical too for Democrats where some districts like mine, NJ07, currently have 7 Democrats running in the primary. This is nuts. It would be one thing if there was rank choice voting, but currently there is not. This likely ensures that the person with the most funding will win due to name recognition.
In my county in ME, there are 3 state legislative seats where there are no Democrats running, adjacent to a district where Democrats have held the seat for decades in spite of term limits.
Sadly, the two agents who murdered Alex Pretti and the one who murdered Renee Good are all 10 or so year veterans of the agency, and one (Ross) is a firearms instructor.
That is disgusting news. At least there are tapes.
Do you see any other way to claw back the money from OBBBA and get ICE shut down? Abolishing it won’t fly—Trump would veto it. So he needs to think its a win for him.
I would put it to fixing immigration courts first to minimize time in the deportation camps. Unfortunately, if the rest went to education, I think it would go to red state charter schools, and that would wind up gutting public schools.
The only reason why he wants to build the enormous camps is for a sick display of power. Put the money into the immigration courts, and people get their decision and get on with their lives instead of being in limbo for years.
The Dean Blundell claims about Trump in the Epstein files release have freaked me out. The thought of him being brutally violent far beyond the E. Jean level of violence adds a whole new set of nightmares.
Georgia, Trump gets off on violence. Remember how he egged on his MAGA crowds against reporters, disabled people, etc., and laughed when MAGAts cheered? Remember how long he took to stop his mob on Jan.6, and was watching on TV? He’s so sick.
I see what you are saying, but I have always thought that unless it’s against women, it’s at a distance or on TV because of germophobia. He is so weird, it’s hard to know.
Yes. The guy is eroding our democratic elections in any way he can. I see him also seizing election ballots like he just did in Georgia, like a dry run.
ICE has plenty of money and more coming in. While they'd be happy to have the funding from this bill, they don't really need it. And Bannon is right, they will surround the polling places with armed, masked thugs. Unfortunately, many voters will back down when they see the gauntlet they have to run. And vote by mail? remember, Trump's lackey is running the post office. What chance does a ballot have of making it through that?
We need to organize volunteers to escort voters through the gauntlet, like they do for women attending appointments at reproductive healthcare clinics to manage the anti-abortion zealots. I would definitely sign up to do that, and I'm over 70, 5'2" on a tall day.
Not only do we have the gauntlet of the thugs, but married women who no longer have their birth certificate name have to go through hoops under the SAVE act to be able to vote. And registrations for certain people have to be done every six months, it’s going to take an army of us to be sure the paperwork is completed for everyone who wants to vote. Aside from the onerous paperwork requirements, keeping track of all of the details is such a burden.
What about white people working together to pick up absentee ballots from voters who are nervous to go to the polls? We could just drop them off at the polls for them. I was an urban public high school teacher for 20 years… I don’t scare easily!
I think it would be playing into MAGA's hands. Remember that movie "1000 Mules"? Sure it's been debunked but that hasn't stopped them in the past, and probably never will.
As a U.S. citizen voting by mail from Canada, I can fax my ballot to Florida. In my case, because my last U.S. residence was in Lee County, Florida, that's where my polling place is and that county allows submitting ballots by fax.
I'm a U.S. citizen living in Japan. I vote absentee in NY over the internet. Vote.org seems to work well as they connected me with the proper NY websites and let me track my ballot.
Post Office workers will sabotage. Their jobs depend on the survival of the USPS, so they will deliver ballots.The ballots only boxes will be problematical
This is why I have been saying we need to harden the polling place. We need election protection lawyers at every polling place. We need poll workers inside the polling place, and yes, we need escorts for vulnerable voters. And they may need to be armed. That's where we are, folks.
There is some need to perform certain fictions in relation to immigration and borders, but ICE was created in the Bush II "All we have to fear as not fearing enough" reaction to 9/11. Yes, be vigilant (Bush wasn't when initially warned that something was up) but got along with outcha before before I metcha, and can get along without you now.
That is a great idea: cut ICE's size and fold it into CBP, arguing that CBP is the appropriate organization and that this will reduce government spending by increasing efficiency.
Add in the reforms to CBP.
Then impeach Noem. The current head of CBP is a career civil servant. It is a position that has to be confirmed by the Senate.
It would have been so much easier to do this if Democrats had stalled on the 5 Department funding bill so they still had that leverage.
ICE and CBP have a lot of overlapping functions so you could make this argument. But I really think ICE is culturally flawed at the fundamental level - it has always been rooted in intimidation, racism, and violence. For a long time, “abolish ICE” was seen as radical. But those calling for it years ago knew, while the rest of us in our places of privilege didn't see it. All that has changed, because what little guardrails existed around ICE before are now long gone. But the rot was always there. ICE has to go.
To non-Rs, of course. But when negotiating with R’s, I would be respectful of their delusions. And that is why I would also rely on and laud the hallowed tenets in their mantra of cost-cutting and government efficiency.
And the names of the ICE personnel who violated the human and civil rights of civilians retained for future prosecution.
ICE as it is functioning now is a personal military police force for Trump and Miller. It is illegal on its face. Gestapo/Stasi/BrownShirts/BlackShirts/Nazi/KKK/KGB/Taliban on a mission from mad men.
ICE already has $75 billion to torture America with. That money must be withdrawn and redirected. How about more asylum judges? How about more classes to help hard working immigrants legally navigate a path to permanent residency and possibly citizenship?
Americans are not having babies. We NEED immigrants. Lots of them for all manner of jobs that are not being filled. From roofers to health care to education to science to manufacturing - we don't have enough "working age" people to support an aging population. Not enough taxes to assist the disabled - who with support can contribute as well. Not enough taxes and people to provide child care so both parents can work!
The othering and deporting of a vital work force is beyond stupid and cruel. It is incompetence on steroids.
And the Climate Crisis has only begun. Millions more will need to leave their unlivable countries - they are headed for Europe and North America. It's not a matter of choice. It will be a matter of life or death. They need new homes. We need them. Basic logic. Basic humanity. Welcome them. They commit way less crime than native born Americans. They work wicked hard! Because they value the opportunity! Because they don't want to jeopardize their chance to thrive and provide for their families.
Immigrants are what made America. Immigrants are what America is made of. Immigrants are GOOD! SAY IT!
Sounds almost "Christiany", too. Or were they lying to me in "Sunday School"...?
Thank you, Bill Alstrom. Climate change is engraved in my head. It is not being mentioned anywhere these days. Find McKibben daily? Between the Hyde Act and climate change, we bear responsibility for many of those arriving at our southern border and the merciless persecution of these people (may I never hear “illegal aliens” again—I just did; the ICE ad came on as I wrote “illegal aliens”) are not only cruel, but also uncivilized. We must get the mafia out before we get blacklisted.
I met a friendly cop Tuesday who said his bodycam was recording me and so it was protecting him. It was a joke, of course, but a reminder that body cams can be used in various ways, such as recording protestors.
Georgia- I would argue that ICE operations are not essential at all. We got along without them from 1776 to 2003. Their appropriate mandate if they have one at all, is to enforce civil immigration laws.
It’s important for the public to understand that being in the US without proper documentation is not a crime. It’s a civil misdemeanor. For context, a parking ticket is a civil misdemeanor.
Why on earth would we need an armed, masked secret police force larger than the armies of all but two countries in the world to enforce parking ticket level infractions?
Don’t forget that during his election celebration in December 2024, Trump made a statement that, i guess, went over everyone’s head. He said something like: you’ll never need, or have, another election — ever!
Even before the election while on the campaign trail, Donold's exact words were: "Christians, get out and vote, just this time. "You won't have to do it anymore. Four more years, you know what, it will be fixed, it will be fine, you won't have to vote anymore, my beautiful Christians."
He added, "I love you Christians. I'm a Christian. I love you, get out, you gotta get out and vote. In four years, you don't have to vote again, we'll have it fixed so good you're not going to have to vote"...
Trump was speaking at an event organized by the conservative group Turning Point Action in West Palm Beach, Florida back on July 26, 2024. It might sound strangely familiar since Turning Point Action happens to have been founded in 2019 by Charlie Kirk as the sister organization and political advocacy arm of the 501(c)(3) Turning Point USA.
I always knew this was intent to be in our lives forever. We should never forget January 6. We need show up for those who don’t he should never win again. Retire him.
If the Dems do win the House majority, trump and the GOP will surely claim voter fraud as they have been doing since 1994.
They will try to foment another insurrection. With 37% of the population supporting them, I wonder how many will actually participate in an insurrection and will trump call out the National Guard?
Before J6 trump said he wanted the Guard to intervene in support of his people.
There is no doubt they will stop at nothing to rig the elections, and if it looks like they might fail, he will implement Martial law.
A vote for a right-winger in any race, is a vote for Fascism.
At long last, American democracy has revealed its fatal flaw. Sometimes voters vote wrong.
This shocking discovery came after a special election in Texas, where a Democrat committed the ultimate offense by winning a Republican seat that had been safely Republican since the early 1990s. Even worse, he won it by a lot. In a district Trump carried comfortably. Math itself appeared to malfunction. Panic ensued.
Faced with this crisis, Donald Trump proposed the obvious solution. The federal government should take over elections. Not to improve access, security, or confidence. No. To make sure the right people feel nervous enough to stay home.
Steve Bannon helpfully clarified the plan. ICE should surround polling places. Democracy, after all, works best when voters feel they might be detained, questioned, or deported for attempting to participate. Nothing says civic pride like flashing lights and tactical vests.
Critics claim this sounds like voter intimidation. Supporters insist it is merely “election integrity,” which is different because it sounds better on cable news.
The logic is airtight. If Republicans lose, the election was stolen. If Republicans win, the system worked beautifully. This framework has the added benefit of requiring no evidence, no policy reform, and no self-reflection. It also spares party leaders the humiliation of asking why voters might be abandoning them in the first place.
To understand how we got here, it helps to know that voter fraud has been just about to destroy America for roughly thirty years now. Since the mid 1990s, Republicans have warned that undocumented immigrants are flooding polling places, voting multiple times, and possibly voting while eating tacos. Each investigation has found almost nothing, but that only proves how sneaky the fraud is.
In 2016, Trump insisted that millions of undocumented immigrants voted illegally. Officials checked. They found about thirty questionable votes out of more than twenty-three million. This was obviously devastating, assuming you believe democracy collapses when one ten-thousandth of one percent of ballots might be imperfect.
Still, the story persists because it is not about accuracy. It is about permission. Permission to say that certain voters do not count. Permission to say that losing elections is illegitimate. Permission to replace persuasion with force.
House Speaker Mike Johnson recently explained the situation perfectly. Elections look fraudulent, he said, even though he cannot prove it. This is the gold standard of modern governance. Intuition over evidence. Vibes over facts. Feelings, but make them constitutional.
Meanwhile, Trump allies insist that only about twenty percent of “real” voters choose Democrats. This raises an interesting question. If eighty percent of real voters support Republicans, and Republicans keep losing elections, where are these people? Are they shy? Invisible? Busy? Possibly trapped in a very large, very quiet room somewhere?
The answer, according to MAGA theology, is simple. Democrats are cheating. Immigrants are voting. Cities are suspicious. Mail is evil. Ballots appear “magically.” Democracy itself is deeply untrustworthy unless it produces the correct outcome.
This is where the humor gets dark, because the strategy is old. Very old.
In the late nineteenth century, when biracial coalitions threatened entrenched power in the South, white supremacists decided elections were dangerous. Voters were intimidated. Ballots were manipulated. Governments were overthrown. All of it was justified with lofty language about intelligence, order, and protecting society from the wrong people having a say.
The message was clear then, as it is now. If you vote the wrong way, you are not really a voter.
What MAGA leaders are proposing today is not especially creative. It is just updated for modern branding. Instead of shotguns, you use federal agencies. Instead of openly saying certain races should not vote, you say certain voters are illegal. Instead of admitting fear of losing power, you accuse others of stealing it.
The truly satirical part is the insistence that this is being done to protect freedom.
Freedom, apparently, is best preserved by surrounding polling places with law enforcement. Freedom thrives when citizens must weigh their civic duty against the possibility of harassment. Freedom flourishes when elections are treated like crime scenes.
And yet, for all the bluster, there is something deeply insecure about this posture. Confident movements do not threaten voters. Popular ideas do not need armed backup. Parties that believe in democracy do not preemptively reject election results.
The Texas election exposed a simple truth. Voters are not moving right. They are moving away. Latino voters, young voters, suburban voters, and exhausted voters are responding to cruelty, corruption, and economic looting by doing the unthinkable. They are voting differently.
That terrifies a movement built on grievance and permanence. So the answer is not to change policies. It is to change the rules. Or better yet, to scare people so badly that rules become irrelevant.
The irony is that this strategy admits failure. When you say elections must be controlled because voters cannot be trusted, you are confessing that democracy no longer works for you. Not because it is broken, but because it is doing exactly what it is supposed to do.
Voters are deciding.
The rest of us now face a choice. We can laugh at the absurdity of calling intimidation “integrity,” or we can recognize the danger beneath the joke. Satire helps us see the truth clearly, but only if we stop laughing long enough to act.
Democracy does not need to be saved from voters. It needs to be saved from those who are afraid of them.
Thanks for the heads up. We live in northern MN and have shared way too much of our cold weather with Columbia Heights this month. That makes us even more proud of you in the Minneapolis area being outside protesting with so much energy and effectiveness. From your “handle” it appears you’re a transplant. Welcome!
Living in St Louis Park I see yellow vested volunteers standing outside schools as parents drop their kids off in the morning. It is clear who the enemy is. It is our government.
I regret to have to say this but everyone should be prepared to see the president and Republicans continue with the lies and fear mongering throughout 2026. We should accept that reality as our motivating and energizing source to fight like hell. We can and will win this fight with constant and hard work.
Daniel NYC2TC and all Minneapolis residents: our hearts and feet and words travel with you. Everywhere in these United States, people are shoving their heels into the ground and shouting "ENOUGH!."
My county was covered on Rachel Maddow this week. I live in Maryland and our county executive, Calvin Ball, introduced emergency legislation to prevent a secret ICE concentration camp, er, detention facility, from being completed by an outsourced private firm. The location is right near two schools and a church, ensuring maximum trauma to our children and our families. I attended the first two public hearings on this legislation, and I am overwhelmed with gratitude that I live in this county. The testimony, which ranged from high school students to white-haired ministers, was deep, thoughtful, personal, historically and legally grounded, and heart-rending. Our county council is standing with us - the vote, tonight, is likely to be unanimous.
Never thought it was over. Admiring Minneapolis with all the energy I can put into GOTV postcard writing. Praying for the mother of Samantha Guthrie (courts protect journalists, so kidnap their mothers) and drive the rest of US nuts with stupid rhetoric. We are all in Minneapolis whether we know it or not.
I keep thinking of the line from “Hamilton”: Rise up!“ (91, Chicago with ICE sirens 24/7)
Nothing new. The Repbulicans have for decades come up with some dirty trick to win elections. Their guilt is revealed in their accusaitons that the Democrats can only win by cheating.
Do the Democrats ever argue that if a Republican wins an election that it was stolen? It would be the height of scandal if it were proven that there was widespread, unchecked, voter fraud in as many jurisdictions - even in Republican states - during every election since the beginning of time.
I would like an answer to your question. What do you think? I think the R's are in full panic mode and all stops will be pulled out. As "they" say, "All options are on the table."
That Texas seat flip rekindled so much hope in humanity for me! And yet, we need to continue to be loud. Our voices, as a collective, can make a difference.
Be LOUD. These are unprecedented times 💔🤍💙
Use/share this spreadsheet (bit.ly/Goodtrouble) to contact members of Congress, the Cabinet and news organizations. Call. Write. Email. Protest. Unrelentingly.
Reach out (beyond your own) to as many in the Senate and House as you can. All of this is bigger than “I only represent my constituents” issues.
I can’t even think when a Texas voting district — far larger than a congressional one — blue-shifted 32 points. In ruby-red Ft. Worth, no less.
The Republican went out of her way to print “Trump Endorsed” on every one of her campaign yard signs and outspent her Democratic opponent 20 to 1. She was sure that would do the trick.
Years ago, when the late great Ann Richards was Governor, the ACLU brought a lawsuit against the Texas legislature for allowing a crèche to be displayed on the floor of the Rotunda in Austin at Christmas. Governor Richards was asked to weigh in.
“Well,” she mused. “Look at it this way. It’s probably the closest three wise men have ever gotten to the Legislature. Why don’t we let ‘em stay just a bit longer? See if any of it rubs off.”
My favorite Ann Richards story, from when I heard her speak at a convention long ago: The TX legislature was debating whether or not to make English the "State Language" in TX. An elderly White statesman rose and proclaimed, "The Bible is written in English, and if it's good enough for God, it's good enough for Texas!"
In 1967, Arlo Guthrie came out with a song against the Vietnam War, entitled the "Alice's Restaurant Massacree." One of the lines in the song was, "If you want to end war and stuff, you gotta sing LOUD."
Song continues ... "I went over to the sergeant, said, "Sergeant, you got a lot a ____ gall to
ask me if I've rehabilitated myself, I mean, I mean ... I'm sittin here on the Group W bench 'cause you want to know if I'm moral enough join the army, burn women,
kids, houses and villages after bein' a litterbug." He looked at me and
said, "Kid, we don't like your kind, and we're gonna send your fingerprints
Given the misinformation going around Megan, reach out not just to as many Senate and House members as you can but also to your neighbors, people on the street and everyone you have a chance to interact with. We have to pound on the truth and yes, we should be LOUDER than them.
How? I spoke to a likeable ( retired nurse) 77 year old woman who told me she would vote for him again bc he is getting rid of the immigrants. I was left dumbfounded.
Marj, if you were left dumbfounded it's because she was one of those genetically unable to reason, have emphaty or make any sense of anything being her a nurse or not. I come across them every so often and I don't waste my time trying to reason with them because they are not capable. Remember that "only" about 40% of Americans still support the regime. Figure out how many millions we are talking about. Keep the fight and the faith. 😃 .
Calmly explain how hurtful that is to human beings and start with some light facts about how they’re going about immigration. Explain how people have actually deported more people for way less money and fear and ask if she’s up for some research together 🤷♀️❤️🩹
States should prosecute Bannon for fomenting election interference NOW!:
"Trump ally Steve Bannon said yesterday on his podcast: 'You’re damn right, we’re going to have ICE surround the polls come November. We’re not going to sit here and allow you to steal the country again. And you can whine and cry and throw your toys out of the pram all you want, but we will never again allow an election to be stolen.'
Is Steve Bannon fomenting voter intimidation? - RevGeorge - First Imagine Church
ChatGP:
Yes — that statement is very likely fomenting voter intimidation and potentially criminal election interference, not just protected speech.
Steve Bannon said:
“We’re going to have ICE surround the polls come November… we will never again allow an election to be stolen.”
This is not abstract rhetoric. Legally, it has four red-flag elements that courts and prosecutors look for.
Why this crosses the legal line
1. Explicit threat tied to voting
This is not a policy opinion. It’s a promise of coercive state force (“ICE surround the polls”) explicitly tied to Election Day.
Courts have consistently held:
Threats of law-enforcement presence at polling places = voter intimidation, even if no arrests occur.
The threat itself is the harm.
2. Targeting a protected class
ICE enforcement is inherently tied to:
Immigration status
Ethnicity and national origin
Mixed-status families (including citizens)
Courts recognize that immigration enforcement threats uniquely chill lawful voters, including U.S. citizens who reasonably fear collateral detention.
That matters enormously in intimidation cases.
3. Intent to deter voting is evident
Intent doesn’t require a confession. It can be inferred from:
Language (“surround the polls”)
Framing (“we’re not going to allow you… again”)
False premise (the election was “stolen”)
This is textbook intent to suppress turnout under the guise of fraud prevention — a pattern courts already understand well.
4. False assertion of authority
Steve Bannon has:
No authority over ICE
No lawful role in election security
Claiming or implying control over federal law enforcement at polling places can itself be criminal, because it:
Creates fear through deception
Mimics official power
Exacerbates intimidation
You do not need ICE to actually show up. The false claim alone can violate the law.
What laws this implicates
Depending on jurisdiction, this statement could support:
Federal voter intimidation statutes
State election interference laws
Conspiracy or solicitation, if coordination exists
Civil enforcement by DOJ or state AGs
Injunctions barring further statements
Importantly: Speech does not have to instruct a specific illegal act to lose protection.
Threatening lawful voters with coercive force is not protected by the First Amendment.
Key legal takeaway
This is not “just talk.”
It is a public threat of law-enforcement intimidation at polling places, aimed at deterring lawful voters.
That squarely fits the legal meaning of fomenting election obstruction.
Whether it results in charges depends on:
Jurisdiction
Follow-up conduct
Evidence of coordination
Prosecutorial judgment
But as a matter of law?
Yes — this statement is firmly in prosecutable territory.
GO Texas! Also, their little redistricting shenanigan likely will backfire since they assumed Latinos for Trump in 2024 would stay with him. They are NOT staying with him! Woo Hoo!
It seems to me that the FBI agents who were in Atlanta to seize the ballots should have been prevented from doing so by Georgia law enforcement personnel with guns drawn, regardless of warrants of any type presented by the FBI. The legality of the seizure must be argued all the way to SCOTUS before any ballots are turned over to the federal government. After the feds have the ballots in their possession, the integrity of the ballots can never be reëstablished. All states must have immediately put armed law enforcement in place to prevent seizure of ballots prior to final decisions about legality of seizures. Without steps such as these, the Trump junta will be counting the ballots in November, and as Stalin famously said, it doesn’t matter who votes. It only matters who count the votes.
True, Gary, but they have value as propaganda. No sensible person believes a thing that comes out of this Administration anymore, but such propaganda is not aimed at sensible persons.
Agreed. My guess: Trump will claim that (at least) 11,780 votes were invalid because they were "illegal immigrant votes." This message is a propaganda Hydra: cast himself as a "proven" victim, fire up his base and get the "sympathy vote" from poorly educated, white working class independent voters.
Yes Rex, after all they need to make disappear little bit more than 11,000 votes, a few boxes here and there, to "proof" the scumbag had won Georgia in 2024 to justify taking over the electoral system all over the US or at least in those states tending to vote blue. Thanks for the advice Putin.
Hello Ricardo.... Regarding Putin, and Jeffrey Epstein... The Simplest is 'Follow The Money'... Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon has been following the Money Trail for Epstein... Millions of Transactions... Seems that Epstein was operating a 'Honey Pot' to accrue Russian Compromat... Indeed Epstein bailed out DJT at one point... The Russians have been operating in Palm Beach for Decades... Unnamed Opportunistic Middle-Eastern Countries are allegedly involved as well... As Eric Trump said, the Trump Organization has all the Russian Money that it needs... Indeed, Truth-Social is floated by Russian Money... Notice that Jeffrey Epstein died under DJT's Watch?...
Same could be said re allowing Musk and his nerds access to computer data with private SS info on everybody! All these illegal activities happened, were not blocked by court order at the time. As for confiscated ballots in Fulton County, Georgia, they were already counted and recounted. After awhile, trying to convince people you are right and everybody else wrong becomes a moot point. Especially where tRump is concerned. Majority so fed up with this admin right now, Repubs, no matter how much money they have or that tRump backs them, their constituents don't.
True, but the nefarious activities of Musk and others of the Trump junta are not direct threats to election integrity. We need election integrity to have any hope of stopping the coup.
Not sure that computer access by Musk and others not a threat to election integrity. This entire admin is a threat to election integrity. We need independent, international oversight of our upcoming elections if necessary. Just as in the past, U.S. participated in election oversight in other countries.
Okay, my fantasy is Canada++ (Canada + West Coast + Mexico under Canada’s political system). Your fantasy is outside oversight of our elections. Both are far beyond the realm of possibility.
States should prosecute Bannon for fomenting election interference NOW!:
"Trump ally Steve Bannon said yesterday on his podcast: 'You’re damn right, we’re going to have ICE surround the polls come November. We’re not going to sit here and allow you to steal the country again. And you can whine and cry and throw your toys out of the pram all you want, but we will never again allow an election to be stolen.'
Is Steve Bannon fomenting voter intimidation? - RevGeorge - First Imagine Church
ChatGP:
Yes — that statement is very likely fomenting voter intimidation and potentially criminal election interference, not just protected speech.
Steve Bannon said:
“We’re going to have ICE surround the polls come November… we will never again allow an election to be stolen.”
This is not abstract rhetoric. Legally, it has four red-flag elements that courts and prosecutors look for.
Why this crosses the legal line
1. Explicit threat tied to voting
This is not a policy opinion. It’s a promise of coercive state force (“ICE surround the polls”) explicitly tied to Election Day.
Courts have consistently held:
Threats of law-enforcement presence at polling places = voter intimidation, even if no arrests occur.
The threat itself is the harm.
2. Targeting a protected class
ICE enforcement is inherently tied to:
Immigration status
Ethnicity and national origin
Mixed-status families (including citizens)
Courts recognize that immigration enforcement threats uniquely chill lawful voters, including U.S. citizens who reasonably fear collateral detention.
That matters enormously in intimidation cases.
3. Intent to deter voting is evident
Intent doesn’t require a confession. It can be inferred from:
Language (“surround the polls”)
Framing (“we’re not going to allow you… again”)
False premise (the election was “stolen”)
This is textbook intent to suppress turnout under the guise of fraud prevention — a pattern courts already understand well.
4. False assertion of authority
Steve Bannon has:
No authority over ICE
No lawful role in election security
Claiming or implying control over federal law enforcement at polling places can itself be criminal, because it:
Creates fear through deception
Mimics official power
Exacerbates intimidation
You do not need ICE to actually show up. The false claim alone can violate the law.
What laws this implicates
Depending on jurisdiction, this statement could support:
Federal voter intimidation statutes
State election interference laws
Conspiracy or solicitation, if coordination exists
Civil enforcement by DOJ or state AGs
Injunctions barring further statements
Importantly: Speech does not have to instruct a specific illegal act to lose protection.
Threatening lawful voters with coercive force is not protected by the First Amendment.
Key legal takeaway
This is not “just talk.”
It is a public threat of law-enforcement intimidation at polling places, aimed at deterring lawful voters.
That squarely fits the legal meaning of fomenting election obstruction.
Whether it results in charges depends on:
Jurisdiction
Follow-up conduct
Evidence of coordination
Prosecutorial judgment
But as a matter of law?
Yes — this statement is firmly in prosecutable territory.
“You’re damn right, we’re going to have ICE surround the polls come November." may be the most chilling thing I have read all week. That said, the possibility of reclaiming the house by special elections and attrition gives me a hope that we may still avoid a civil war.
The good news Annabel is that little fat boy in the trenchcoat pretending to be Lenin has the opposite effect on real Americans which is universally accepted. He is one of the major losers of trp support. Even in Idaho we all wish him a safe trip back to jail. The GOP will eventually come to understand he is a liability, but probably not until too late. The cabinet such as Gnome and company are rapidly pooping too close to the house as well. Speaking of pooping did trp really mess his britches or is that just internet Bs?
The GOP always loves them their Titanic, even after they’re all covered in ICE and they can all hear the “Jack! Jack! There’s a boat, Jack!” call from a raft somewhere.
where mail in ballots are still legal we must encourage people to get their ballots hand stamped at time of mailing so they can't be held back and then dismissed as being too late.
The USPS may be throwing up a stumbling block but mail in voting is still viable. Ballots come early. Return that ballot early and track it. Plus, as Lauriemcf suggests, have USPS hand stamp your ballot.
If you think voting lines are long, try to contemplate standing in line for hand stamping at your local PO. And, if the ballot mysteriously still gets delayed/lost, how many people are going to know it is their ballot that wasn’t counted? They could check their voting precinct online (perhaps), and then could go to the polling place to cast a provisional ballot, which means they would end up in a polling line anyway, and with the confusion of “multiple” ballots, the Regime would surely twist the facts to suggest voter fraud — facts be damned. This is all part of the Regime’s overall deterrence architecture, to exhaust citizens from voting. It’s not just jackboots and sniper rifles.
That will not be all. At the last minute, Trump will declare that voting machines in Black and Democrat areas are corrupt, so vote locations will be disrupted. He may also capture some mail ballots for “investigation” before they reach the official site.
Correct Craig, they will use every trick at their disposal and any last minute suggestion coming from Putin. Sad state of affairs in this exemplary country 😢
Steve Bannon had zero power over us. He’s like Megyn Kelly, saying increasing outrageous things to stay in the news. To stay relevant. MSM falls for it every time or, at least, they don’t question it. My response to Bannon: quiet, piggy!
States should prosecute Bannon for fomenting election interference NOW!:
"Trump ally Steve Bannon said yesterday on his podcast: 'You’re damn right, we’re going to have ICE surround the polls come November. We’re not going to sit here and allow you to steal the country again. And you can whine and cry and throw your toys out of the pram all you want, but we will never again allow an election to be stolen.'
Is Steve Bannon fomenting voter intimidation? - RevGeorge - First Imagine Church
ChatGP:
Yes — that statement is very likely fomenting voter intimidation and potentially criminal election interference, not just protected speech.
Steve Bannon said:
“We’re going to have ICE surround the polls come November… we will never again allow an election to be stolen.”
This is not abstract rhetoric. Legally, it has four red-flag elements that courts and prosecutors look for.
Why this crosses the legal line
1. Explicit threat tied to voting
This is not a policy opinion. It’s a promise of coercive state force (“ICE surround the polls”) explicitly tied to Election Day.
Courts have consistently held:
Threats of law-enforcement presence at polling places = voter intimidation, even if no arrests occur.
The threat itself is the harm.
2. Targeting a protected class
ICE enforcement is inherently tied to:
Immigration status
Ethnicity and national origin
Mixed-status families (including citizens)
Courts recognize that immigration enforcement threats uniquely chill lawful voters, including U.S. citizens who reasonably fear collateral detention.
That matters enormously in intimidation cases.
3. Intent to deter voting is evident
Intent doesn’t require a confession. It can be inferred from:
Language (“surround the polls”)
Framing (“we’re not going to allow you… again”)
False premise (the election was “stolen”)
This is textbook intent to suppress turnout under the guise of fraud prevention — a pattern courts already understand well.
4. False assertion of authority
Steve Bannon has:
No authority over ICE
No lawful role in election security
Claiming or implying control over federal law enforcement at polling places can itself be criminal, because it:
Creates fear through deception
Mimics official power
Exacerbates intimidation
You do not need ICE to actually show up. The false claim alone can violate the law.
What laws this implicates
Depending on jurisdiction, this statement could support:
Federal voter intimidation statutes
State election interference laws
Conspiracy or solicitation, if coordination exists
Civil enforcement by DOJ or state AGs
Injunctions barring further statements
Importantly: Speech does not have to instruct a specific illegal act to lose protection.
Threatening lawful voters with coercive force is not protected by the First Amendment.
Key legal takeaway
This is not “just talk.”
It is a public threat of law-enforcement intimidation at polling places, aimed at deterring lawful voters.
That squarely fits the legal meaning of fomenting election obstruction.
Whether it results in charges depends on:
Jurisdiction
Follow-up conduct
Evidence of coordination
Prosecutorial judgment
But as a matter of law?
Yes — this statement is firmly in prosecutable territory.
Little Speaker Bibble-Bobblehead is simply the cleaned-up version of Steve Bannon — a town drunk lying face down in the gutter after a major bender, moaning and muttering, lost in his own hallucinations.
One and the same — the same and one. It really doesn’t matter which one’s the angry drunk armed with a podcast and imaginary grievances, or which one’s the fake Christian babbling reasonable-sounding chickenshit-on-a-stick to reporters who know better.
Here’s what we do know, no matter what cleaned-up babble-bibble or dirtied-down bibble-babble claim to the contrary:
—Donald Trump lost the 2020 election by over 7 million votes, including Georgia. There never were 11,780 more votes there, there still aren’t, there never will be. Period. There was no steal.
—Donald Trump led and inspired an insurrection of whackos who beat up hundreds of police officers on January 6, 2021. 7 people died or committed suicide as a result. No amount of trying to pretend it didn’t happen will ever alter that.
—California’s Proposition 50 is now legal and constitutional. Texas’s stupidity has already bitten itself in the ass — expect more bites to follow.
—Elections remain under the control of 51 state/local Secretaries of State, not the federal government. There is no such thing as “nationalizing” elections — the Constitution forbids it.
—JD Wanker is still a pissant wormtongue and Twitter troll who flees from danger faster than Josh Hawley. And yes, he still slathers his beady little eyes in Maybelline. God alone knows why.
Now let’s all get back to work on that November Blue Tsunami.
An even worse way to run a country is the intention to manipulate minds. Sadly so many minds are manipulable.
Perhaps slow motion, frame by frame, video captured of cold blooded murder, seen by millions, all while the lying regime repeats their exposed lies over and over will seed doubt in some of those minds??
“By any conceivable definition, goodness must require exercising at least minimal resistance—at little or no cost to oneself—against the normalization of brutality and hate. At the very least, it must include the critical judgment to see through the con of an imbecilic and barely literate reality-show huckster as he spews bigotry and bile directly from your television. And when you do see it, to do what little you can to keep him from ascending to the most powerful office in the world. It requires only the merest modicum of intellect and fellow feeling.”
Christy, A Republican 77 yo woman told me she saw the video of Renee Good trying to run the ICE officer down and deserved what she got. How do you respond to that? I tried the truth and it did not penetrate.
They have to see it for themselves. There is absolutely no point to try to help them to see it. If they present to you in that way they don’t want to see it. I don’t try to convince others I’m just very clear about what I see and don’t engage beyond that. The video doesn’t lie. Their brains grew a rut in the neural pathway of lying to themselves.
You can fool some of the people all of the time, and some will take big lies to their grave. That said, I think that one of the drivers of effective protest is to keep injustice in the public's face long enough to penetrate penetrable denial, and some events, especially when underlined in public conversation, such as the Triangle Shirtwaist fire or the show trial of Emmett Tills assassins penetrates public indifference enough to make a difference. I think we are seeing some of this in Trump's poll rankings. It is shocking that this regime has any following at all, but it is declining. Not to say it is not still very dangerous.
Cult thinking is a security hole in human wisdom and empathy and is often deliberately crafted as a tool of tyrants. It is an exploit like a computer virus that blocks our own tools of reality checking. Orwell and Hannah Arendt have articulated how it works. I thought the "Republicans" would lose all credibility after excusing the behavior of the Jan 6th rioters, which we all saw on television, but no, the Instigator in Chief was elected president. In "1984" “The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and of your ears. It was their final, most essential command.” Those who refuse are shunned and otherwise persecuted.
I think we all have a degree of vulnerability for wanting to believe what we want to believe, and/or a degree of paranoia. There is a whole science built around that (advertising for one) to misinform the public.
When they shout “voter fraud” we should shout “hacking.”
The evidence of voter fraud is slim, not enough to change the outcome of a race for dog catcher. The evidence of hacking - messing with the software that tallies the results- is mighty. It includes the DODO’s boast at his Jan 19 2025 rally thanking Musk for being “good with computers, the vote-counting computers, and we won Pennsylvania.” See https://www.rev.com/transcripts/trump-rally-ahead-of-inaguration timestamp 28:03.
The non corrupt states had better be making sure their software hasn’t been compromised already, correcting it if it has, and keeping it safe til all the votes are counted. And prosecuting whoever has been doing the hacking.
ICCT, your second paragraph caused me to guffaw, spitting coffee on my keyboard and disrupting the cat that is sleeping on my chest and occasionally scrolling the mousepad with her back paws.
In the 2024 election in North Carolina the Governor, Lt. Governor and Attorney General, all Democrats were elected but Trump won the Presidency? I don’t understand how that can be possible.
Even though I’m a fairly recent NC resident, I do know that one year Obama won NC, but the R candidate (McCrory)won the governor’s race. I believe trump won NC all three times, but the Dem candidate won the governor’s race all three times. It appears to be that NC residents do split their votes, which in the past wasn’t necessarily bad.
I love Heather's noting how, in power, Republicans stole from the poor to enrich the rich.
So, we can ask: does Anand Giridharadas’ insights into Epstein’s particular rich and powerful still hold?
His view, having spent nearly a full week in the Epstein estate’s release of e-mail files, concluded one particular mindset emerging there.
They all know how to discern anyone’s vulnerability to human hurt – and then totally to avoid that person thence.
In other words, the poison of the rich and powerful resembles the interior of all standardized testing and of all the corporate packaged textbooks as Diane Ravitch accounted for in her 2003’s “The Language Police.”
All equip themselves in neutered language only. All keep the personal at arms’ length or more. All align strictly with the linear conceits such as cohere all the corporate world and all business relationships from among the world’s dictators.
And they encourage lies such as Donald gave in his interview recorded today for the Super Bowl: that those ICE agents feel worse than anybody about the murders they committed. Their online texts show them bragging of those murders – so many of these police state thugs as dehumanized as J.D. Vance and all others at the top.
Totally perverse, how the dehumanized steal from the working classes over and over to float Epstein's cold-hearted but relentless rapists.
Eve notice how the economy always seems to be worse when the Republicans are in charge? There are few new jobs in the US right now b/c of ecodnomic uncertainty, but ICE is hiring! They are staffing ICE the same way they've been staffing the volunteer armed services ever since Viet Nam, make it financially attractive to the lowers classes and it's easy to find plenty of candidates willing to take up arms and rain violence down on their brothers and sisters.
I agree that dehumanization can take many forms. It is difficult to keep that human channel open consistently, but it can maximize our humanity, the breadth and depth of our experience of awareness; and what is death but loss of awareness? Indifference is anesthetizing, a deadening, and predation is evil.
It's also funny, J L, the virtue-signaling that always accompanies dehumanization.
Some have noted my disposition to post things very soon here -- as if by getting in early I'm but eager for collecting more multiples of "like."
But note, too, how when I cite anything about testing, anything about our schools all hollowed out from having voided humanities -- any time I do this -- I know, too, that those clicking "like" on whatever I say will reduce by 9/10ths.
So I added that bit today to what Anand Giridharadas said of our elites' amorality -- which our schools have been feeding.
And my numbers of those clicking "like" just craters.
Readers hate the suggestion that they are at all touched by anything from the habits our schools have normalized.
Hello Phil... For the Mar-a-Lago Crowd, only Money Matters.... The more that you have, the more that you matter.... Their Corruption is Killing this Country....
Something else matters to the Epstein class -- along with, inseparable from money. That's impunity. Being indifferent to human pain.
That's why elites have turned schools into testing machinery, all of it cold, dehumanized, all keyed only to the gamesmanship of how one's points on tests place one above others.
Doesn’t help by being a pompous stuffed-shirt throwing around obscure names to impress people and demanding everybody and their grandmother agree with you all the time, does it?
No, Phil. I do not disagree with your position on the intentional dismembering of our educational system(s) nor that the absence of any sort of the humanities from philosophy, literature, art, poetry is profoundly altering how people see the world.
By the time I have read the same thing on 80% of the days that I peruse the Comments section, I stop acknowledging it, and frankly skim past most of the time.
What is the best way to support Georgia’s case against the FBI to restore election materials and set the precedent that such seizures are illegal. That case must proceed quickly and expertly.
Those voting machines may have been corrupted during the raid. They will at least need recertification. If Dems win on those machines, Trump will still claim they were corrupt.
So if Trump believes something, we can’t accuse him of lying?? How about “mentally confused”?
We need a law that prohibits spreading misinformation about prior election DATA in order to incite mistrust in coming elections. I really don't understand why we can't have specific repercussions for spreading false factual DATA.
By careful analysis of the facts, the false hypotheses generated by the fiction should be exposed. If immigrant voters overwhelmed the 1994 election, we would expect to see a clear and unmistakable bounce in the number of total votes, well beyond the trends of population growth. If that bounce is there, the immigrant hypothesis would be supported. If no clear bounce is found, that thypothesis is demonstrated to be false.
Reading these Letters every day is like opening a gift. Even when the content is somber, there is always something new to be learned or a new perspective to be gained. Today's is no exception. While I knew something about the 1898 election and the subsequent overthrow of the Wilmington, NC government (possibly from reading an earlier Letter) I was not familiar with the connection of these events with the famous/notorious D.W. Griffith film. Dr. Richardson connects all the dots. What a telling point it is that this was the first motion picture to be screened at the White House. I suppose it is, in a way, a reflection of the history of our country -- from TR hosting Booker T. Washington in 1901 to the thoroughly racist (yet heroically idealistic and conflicted) Wilson screening that film fourteen years later.
If we are to keep bending the arc of our country's history toward justice, it is imperative that we as citizens take whatever action we can to preserve our right to vote. It is no longer just a privilege that we exercise. We must see it as a patriotic obligation.
Free and fair elections have been my drumbeat forever. It sounds so fluffy- yet every time I walk into the polls to vote I feel such a big sense of pride that I 'get to vote'. This feeling has compelled me this season to volunteer at the polls. I am scared and will do my duties afraid.
Diabolical. You connect the dots so well. It’s like the Empire Strikes Back. The same evil coming back and trying to dominate. As they said, “may the Force be with us” 😀
Folks often ask what other types of peaceful protest to tell the federal Republican’s that this is not the economy we voted for. Scott Galloway can show how the number of Billionaires Subscriptions can really change big numbers. Start canceling some of your lifestyle subscriptions, and it will move the needle and make a difference.
The president will feel this': Prof G's case for a strike against big tech #subscriptions
LIAR FRAUD, CONVICTED-FELON TRUMP, TRUMP’s MAGAts and TRUMP’s REPUBLICAN SYCOPHANTS ARE PLANNING TO INTERFERE IN THE UPCOMING NOVEMBER ELECTIONS. THIS (please excuse the French) SHIT MUST NOT BE ALLOWED TO HAPPEN!
We ALL know (in fact, EVERYONE knows) that NO NON-US CITIZENS will show up at the polls this coming November.
We ALL must be aware that, on election day, Trump will send his ICE and CBP goons to every polling place in Blue States and to every heavily-populated minority voting district polling place in Red States. ICE and CBP will not be there to arrest/detain non-US citizens, they will be there to INITIMIDATE – and to (excuse the French) FUCK with US citizens who came to cast their votes. As we’ve already seen across the U.S., ICE and CBP goons are racial profiling and are stopping and demanding proof of citizenship from US citizens. This will seriously delay people casting their votes. This will seriously delay the voting process to the point where polls might close before citizens have had the opportunity to cast their votes. This will also deter US citizens from showing up at the polls, simply because they do not want to go through the hassle, the annoyance of being stopped by ICE and CBP. FED GOV interference at polling places cannot be allowed to take place! We must – WE MUST – do EVERYTHING we can to prevent election interference from taking place. We must get an injunction from the courts to prevent this from taking place.
Please DO NOT WAIT. Time is of the essence. Contact your Senators and Representatives. Demand that they take action to prevent ICE and CBP (as well as all other FED GOV agents) from disrupting and interfering with the election. Also send letters to SCOTUS Justices. Put them on notice that WE THE PEOPLE will not tolerate election interference and that WE THE PEOPLE will hold them accountable and will do so by any means necessary. Please also send a copy of this post to every reporter you have an email address for.
Drop boxes have been reduced to one per country in Ohio as I recall. That would make them so easy to surround and the gauntlet so intimidating as to render them nearly useless. Ohio has already made it very hard to comply with mail in voting requirements.
The violent fascist regime kidnap brown people (US citizens-voters) when they come out of their homes. Fascists changed the way mail gets postmarked so ballots will be lost in their corrupted mail service.
Heather, what do you personally believe is the likelihood that Trump can either prevent a free election or keep the midterms from happening at all?
Side note from Minneapolis. ICE is still here, and still terrible. For anyone tracking the news, I live right by the Columbia Heights school where the 5 year old was taken. At least 25 parents have been detained, and many of the kids have to do online learning. All Columbia Heights schools were closed on Monday due to a bomb threat. Apparently Jake Lang is back in town as he recently went viral for getting thrown out of a St Paul bar, and is trying to hold another rally this weekend.
Anyone thinking this is over for us, it’s not.
Thanks to all in Minnesota who have stepped up to oppose ICE and Trump’s uncalled for removals of Americans and immigrants who have done nothing wrong. I can tell there’s at least one place where ICE won’t keep people from the polls in November! If they try it, I’m betting it will increase turnout!
Minnesota has among the highest voter turnout rates in the US. Election results have shown that the greater the turnout the more likely it is that Democrats will win the elections. You don't see ICE going into the Confederate states for the most part.
Have you seen the meme?
Replacing Greg Bovino with Tom Homan is like changing your shirt when you sh*t your pants.
As Leonard Leo is to Republican right wing religious extremist plutocrat court capture, and Steven Miller is to Republican white supremacist deportation policy, Hans von Spakovsky is to Republican racist voter suppression based on lies of voter fraud lies. Ironically, von Spakovsky got his start on the Fulton County Georgia elections board before rising to the heights of authoring the Project 2025 chapter on Elections. Read Marc Elias below to see how Republicans are enacting von Spakovsky's agenda - particularly the role of DOJ and DHS. (Interesting that Miller gets the spotlight, while Leo and von Spakovsky - who've done and are doing more long term damage - get to work in the shadows.)
Project 2025 Contributor Outlines How Trump Can Roll Back Voting Rights - Marc Elias, Democracy Docket
"Now, in a recent op-ed for the conservative outlet The Daily Signal, von Spakovsky outlinesin further detail what Trump should do to roll back voting rights — specifically he explains what steps several federal agencies, like the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) should take and how it could potentially disenfranchise millions of voters.
The first suggestion von Spakovsky details is removing the DHS’s roadblocks for states to access citizenship data to verify the eligibility of voters on their voter rolls."
.https://www.democracydocket.com/news-alerts/project-2025-contributor-outlines-how-trump-can-roll-back-voting-rights/.
Von Spakovsky got his first serious exposure to elections administration when he was nominated to the Fulton county, Georgia board of registration and elections by the county Republican party in 1996, when he was working as an attorney in the private sector.
.https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2024/jul/10/voter-fraud-hans-von-spakovsky-project-2025.
"But he [von Spakovsky] cited a 2000 investigation, by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, of voting records in Georgia over the previous two decades; the paper reported that it had turned up fifty-four hundred instances of dead people being recorded as having voted. “That seems pretty substantial to me,” he said. He did not mention that the article’s findings were later revised. The Journal-Constitution ran a follow-up article after the Georgia Secretary of State’s office indicated that the vast majority of the cases appeared to reflect clerical errors. Upon closer inspection, the paper admitted, its only specific example of a deceased voter casting a ballot didn’t hold up. The ballot of a living voter had been attributed to a dead man whose name was nearly identical."
.https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2012/10/29/the-voter-fraud-myth.
"In committee, substantial and justifiable concerns were raised with respect to Mr. von
Spakovsky’s record of using federal government office to promote an agenda adverse to American voters. Documents that Mr. von Spakovsky has acknowledged drafting
or signed as his own, as Counsel to the Assistant Attorney General for the Civil
Rights Division, demonstrate that he repeatedly advanced policies that closed poll sites and courthouse doors to eligible American voters. For example, Mr. von Spakovsky claimed that states need not provide “fail-safe” provisional ballots to certain voters, despite a new federal law demanding “fail-safe” ballots to avert the demonstrated
disenfranchisement that occurred in elections when no such ballots were available.
He also enthusiastically promoted registration policies keeping new registrants off the
voter rolls if their registration information did not “match” that in another government
database, effectively disenfranchising voters in the event of a typographical error."
Hans von Spakovsky | Brennan Center for Justice
.https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/hans-von-spakovsky.
My god ---- do other nations have this problem? Are Americans truly prone to plotting to vote illegally; can we not even trust our local governments to count ballots honestly; can we replace human counters with AI to ensure a valid outcome during elections; can these cabals and propaganda, perpetrated, seemingly by Republicans, ever be resolved; are we really a country of criminality at every level of government and business???????????
Since the tech Bros control most of the AI, I wouldn’t want the AI to be counting ballots.
Just throwing out suggestions until, someone like yourself, corrects the notion. You're probably right.
It would be a battle of AIs.
Stephanie, here is Oregon, we have long voted by mail with few problems. Because once a R voting worker tried to cheat, there are now two people, one of each, who open ballots. As we have to use black or blue ink, I imagine counting is done by machine, but not the actual voting. So here in Oregon, we do not have the problem of people in lines, etc. Some "observers", I think, have tried to intimidate election workers at times. We had a county clerk in Clackamus (Clackistan)County who tried to gum up the works for a long time, but she is now gone. Here in Marion County, I am informed that my ballot is on the way. Then when it has cleared and ready to be counted, I am notified of that too. People here in Oregon have no excuse for not voting. They do not even need a stamp.
Similarly here in Maryland with our mail in ballots. But I live in a blue state, blue county and I trust the integrity of the system here. Unfortunately, if states control their own elections, is there room, then, for tampering and cheating? Is there any standardization from state to state? Of course, as Heather once wrote, we need to get rid of the electoral college, which is a relic.
Thank you for spotlighting this process. I moved to Oregon a few years ago and was impressed and delighted at the process.
I very much like that idea, Michele. We don’t have any protocols like yours.
"This problem" is that Republicans have a long history of undermining elections because they can't win free and fair elections.
Maybe they need to change their platform then engage in extreme reform. But how to change a party who has believed forever that government should only be responsible for protecting our borders, maintaining a military and printing money? Their mantra (which is a cold moral structure) is "it will hurt, but it will be good for you."
Yes, other countries have these problems.
Yet we wouldn't want to live in any of them either.
I guess I was referring to "democratic" countries like France, Sweden, Norway, etc.? Those we wouldn't want to live in, I presume, you mean Russia, Turkey, Hungary....
Indeed. Those are the "sh*thole" countries, right? Like Russia, Belarus and China. :-)
Yes other nations have this problem at this time (Russia, Venezuela) as well as throughout history (Germany, Philippines).Tampering with elections is a tried and true fascist, dictatorial scheme. This is neither a new tactic here nor unique to our country, as Heather points out in this Letter and others. What may be unique to our country is a belief in American exceptionalism, that it can’t happen here and surprise when it does. May the shock spur more people into action to prevent it.
Hatred is a powerful motivator!!
Short answer- it seems so.
No Stephanie: not at this time. However, republicans seem to be most certainly working on it. We the people are the final.backstop to make sure they don’t succeed.
Call all representatives about the SAVE Act, like many bad laws, it’s name gives away how terrible it is. Eg. Big Beautiful Bill.
extremely interesting article in the Guardian re: von Spakovsky. Thanks for linking that. I'll be reading The Myth of Voter Fraud, mentioned in the article. And I'll be working as a poll worker in rural WI for the first time ever in November.
Dead people voting? Another of the lies. Sure there are ballots cast (mail in) by people that may die before election day, but once again the actual numbers do not reflect any significant impact.
If we got to single day voting like we had to do before. ballot box stuffing is much easier. Ask the Russians that watch the ballot stuffing in their elections. This stuffing was a common practice in the 1800s when the industrialists had poll watchers at the polls seeing how was voting and what ballot box the voters were using.
Rocky, we have to accept that facts hold no sway with right-wing racists. They will always conjure some twisted rationalization to justify their bigotry—they always have and always will. Racism is deeply embedded in their psyche.
What??!! Racism??!! Embedded in the psyche of Trumpers??!!
Surely you jest!
ROTFLMAO! :-).
Rickey, Here in Marion County, the clerk's office receives the death notice and the person is removed from the rolls.
My favorite was the Trump voter who got caught voting for Trump on his own ballot and that of his recently deceased mother. He did get prosecuted and convicted for this.
Eh, I remember that one and thought it was JUST as silly as worrying about people voting multiple times for Democrats. It certainly DOES happen but maybe 25, 50 even 100 times each election across the entire country?! Not enough to even change on precinct let alone the outcome of the entire national election.
Hard to like this one lin•
Thanks for the info, as always.
AI🟰AR (Artificial Results) 🫥
Bannon says, “You’re damn right, we’re going to have ICE surround the polls come November." Democrats in Congress need to bear this in mind as they negotiate funding for ICE!
In fact, the ChristoNazis are (already) stealing our elections. Here in a vital Thom Hartmann exclusive is how the thievery is done, including credible statistical evidence showing that the ChristoNazis' purging of Blacks, Hispanics and white progressives from the 2024 voter rolls put Trump in the White House. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L-q1lWsnlhg&t=5s (Election discussion starts at 9:09)
Sorry, you need to do better than this. Thom Hartmann is just as much of a left-wing whack job as Steve Bannon and Greg Bovino are for the right-wing Trumpists. His "analysis" of the 2024 election is so filled with assumption holes, you could drive an entire mobilized army through it. It hurts our side just as much to conjure up conspiracies as it should hurt their side. We need to STOP doing this and start worrying about winning the next election.
Harris lost and probably for all the reasons we should have expected. NOT because of election fraud.
The Ds have a list of demands to secure ICE, including keeping ICE away from polling places, churches, etc. Thune said no. Shutdown coming.
The Ds are standing firm. Time for the voters that have Rs in charge to get their representatives in Congress to stop being ICE enablers.
They want to allow ICE to intimidate churchgoers and disrupt services, but protesters cannot! Bondi and company clutch their pearls in horror at protesters daring to disrupt a religious service, but ICE…go ahead ….drag people out, beat and arrest them…that will be allowed??
States should prosecute Bannon for fomenting election interference NOW!:
"Trump ally Steve Bannon said yesterday on his podcast: 'You’re damn right, we’re going to have ICE surround the polls come November. We’re not going to sit here and allow you to steal the country again. And you can whine and cry and throw your toys out of the pram all you want, but we will never again allow an election to be stolen.'
Is Steve Bannon fomenting voter intimidation? - RevGeorge - First Imagine Church
ChatGP:
Yes — that statement is very likely fomenting voter intimidation and potentially criminal election interference, not just protected speech.
Steve Bannon said:
“We’re going to have ICE surround the polls come November… we will never again allow an election to be stolen.”
This is not abstract rhetoric. Legally, it has four red-flag elements that courts and prosecutors look for.
Why this crosses the legal line
1. Explicit threat tied to voting
This is not a policy opinion. It’s a promise of coercive state force (“ICE surround the polls”) explicitly tied to Election Day.
Courts have consistently held:
Threats of law-enforcement presence at polling places = voter intimidation, even if no arrests occur.
The threat itself is the harm.
2. Targeting a protected class
ICE enforcement is inherently tied to:
Immigration status
Ethnicity and national origin
Mixed-status families (including citizens)
Courts recognize that immigration enforcement threats uniquely chill lawful voters, including U.S. citizens who reasonably fear collateral detention.
That matters enormously in intimidation cases.
3. Intent to deter voting is evident
Intent doesn’t require a confession. It can be inferred from:
Language (“surround the polls”)
Framing (“we’re not going to allow you… again”)
False premise (the election was “stolen”)
This is textbook intent to suppress turnout under the guise of fraud prevention — a pattern courts already understand well.
4. False assertion of authority
Steve Bannon has:
No authority over ICE
No lawful role in election security
Claiming or implying control over federal law enforcement at polling places can itself be criminal, because it:
Creates fear through deception
Mimics official power
Exacerbates intimidation
You do not need ICE to actually show up. The false claim alone can violate the law.
What laws this implicates
Depending on jurisdiction, this statement could support:
Federal voter intimidation statutes
State election interference laws
Conspiracy or solicitation, if coordination exists
Civil enforcement by DOJ or state AGs
Injunctions barring further statements
Importantly: Speech does not have to instruct a specific illegal act to lose protection.
Threatening lawful voters with coercive force is not protected by the First Amendment.
Key legal takeaway
This is not “just talk.”
It is a public threat of law-enforcement intimidation at polling places, aimed at deterring lawful voters.
That squarely fits the legal meaning of fomenting election obstruction.
Whether it results in charges depends on:
Jurisdiction
Follow-up conduct
Evidence of coordination
Prosecutorial judgment
But as a matter of law?
Yes — this statement is firmly in prosecutable territory.
And on top of all that Steve Bannon is a documented fan-boy of Jeffery Epstein.
Bannon is a fascist.
Tell us something we don't know Kathy 😀
🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
lin-, thank you for the work. This is for the history books if we survive to write them. (We must.)
We should recognize the sexual victimization of terrorized children by the Trumpstein Cult is the immediate predecessor, perhaps even a test run, of the terror the MAGAstapo is now unleashing on anyone who refuses to kowtow to the ChristoNazi theocracy. Thus the vital, know-our-enemy relevance of the full text of the Jane Doe lawsuit against Trump and Epstein -- later withdrawn in response to credible death threats against the plaintiff: https://cdn.factcheck.org/UploadedFiles/Johnson_TrumpEpstein_Lawsuit.pdf Please let us ensure this text is linked early (and therefore prominently) on as many Resistance sites as possible every day until the traitorous regime of ecogenocidal ChristoNazi pedophiles is no more. (I'll do my best to be responsible for this posting, but I am 85 years old and terminally ill, which means others need be ready to pick up the torch on days I am absent and after I am no more.)
ICE has been invited to TN, as the state “leadership” has decided to work with Stephen Miller to implement Trump’s (Miller’s) immigration agenda. 🤯
As I'm told by sources there, Tennessee has a large and fiercely activist LGBTQ community; it and peoples of color are apparently the largest demographic groups within state's Democratic voters. Thus under Oberstgruppenführer Miller the "immigration" agenda will undoubtedly include ridding the state of non-RepubliKlan voters.
Did Burchett throw a party? 😡
After 80+ years of listening to Republicans whine, I truly marvel that women and persons of color ever got the right to vote! I only hope that American voters will respond by voting in even greater numbers next fall and 2028.
I’m going to use that quote, it’s perfect.
How about every Democrat change their registration to Republican now while there's still time and vote democratic when they're at the polls. That'll confuse the hell out of them. They won't be able to tell who's vote to cancel.
Homan isn't just replacing Bovino; Homan is taking over for Noam.
That is significant. whether we agree with Homan's policies, at least he has law enforcement experience, doesn't need to cosplay, and has already moved to tone down the tactics.
He’s toning down tactics but he still has the same goals.
In hopes no more citizens get shot.
Trump and Miller keep talking about "sanctuary cities." That's like DEI. What is the definition of "sanctuary city?" or for "DEI". And why is that a bad thing?
MAGAs eat this BS up because they are non-thinking people driven by the wealthiest sociopaths in the US.
His thugs & goons are still using the same tactics. Still spewing to their base.
They are currently in Indianapolis, IN. I understand they were invited by our ignorant governor, Braun. Our Republican jail was increased in size during the first Trump administration and has been filled...(I understand we are bringing in lots of dollars) with immigrants that are on hold....the newspaper is filled with names in every paper....I used to count the names...but have given up. We protested the jail increase before they began construction. They same horrid Republicans get elected to the county offices year after year....currently we have no Democrats in any office. I tried 4 years ago. Four years makes a difference in a body...I can't do it this year. Our city mayor is Democrat. He is looking worn so I am not sure how much longer he will be mayor.
🤣🤣🤣
A bit more graphic--putting the dog outside and leaving the dogshit on the kitchen floor
Apt comparison!
They already have. I know someone - a US citizen who is Latino- who was afraid to vote in the special election in St.Paul about 2 weeks ago.
That is so worrying. Not that it's OK in any way, but in spite of that, the DFLer won with 95.3% of the the vote (in the contested election--there was another who ran unopposed). If that's the model, they can't keep enough people away, and they are turning other voters emphatically against them.
That is wrong to intimidate a voter out of the right to vote. DeSantis sent his police goons to threaten men who had done time and voted after the parole and probation authorities had assured them they had a legal right to vote. The son of one of the men harassed by DeSantis’s goons expressed the opinion that he wouldn’t want to vote any more even though he has no felony record. That is how voter suppression works, and we have to stop it.
They will intimidate some, which is the whole point.
The point J L is to intimidate as many voters on the Democratic Party as possible. That's the only way they can winn.
Hello Ricardo... DJT, who is Dim-Witted, and Delusional, as well as literally Stinking, only Succeeds by Cheating... DJT has done this essentially his whole Life with no Significant Consequences.... Of Course DJT will try to Steal the '26 Mid-Terms... DJT Greatly Fears Being Impeached For The 3rd Time... DJT is Ferociously Feral when it comes to DJT's Survival....
He's easily manipulated as Stephen Miller and Vladimir Putin know well.
Miller needs to go. It's one of the things I say when I call Congress.
We all think he’s dimwitted. As a very short-term tactical thinker, however, he is extremely clever. We have so many times found ourselves in trouble by underestimating Trump - and the damage he can do!
Calling Trump clever is definitely a leap. Imagine a 2 year old throwing a tennis ball at a target 20 feet away. By pure luck, he will hit the target once in a blue moon.
Recall that during Trump 1, that he would get many of his bizarro ideas from Fox and Friends morning show. And now he has surrounded himself with 30 of the losers from Fox including the dim-witted Kegsbreath.
I didn't watch Him much during 1.0. I now subscribe to several YouTubers who post daily how deranged He is. Sadly, when I see their clips I see someone who is shrewd even if his hands appear to be rotting and the room is abruptly cleared due to a possible "brown alert". In my opinion, we under estimate him at our peril.
No, it is not the Manchild. He has never done a damn thing in his life but for crying while saying "Wha, Wha, I want XYZ. Whahahahha."
Gregory, no one will ever convince me that Donald is "clever." His niece doesn't think so, and neither do I. Donald's lifetime of failures prove it. You have to be a special kind of stupid to bankrupt a casino, where "the house always wins."
When Donald became active in the family business, his father handed him millions of dollars to get started. He lost all of it and plunged the company into debt so deep U.S. banks wouldn't touch him. Russian oligarchs stepped in and bailed him out – with strings. Those strings tie him directly to Putin, who knows Donald is a vain dumbf*ck and exploits that weakness daily.
We are in trouble because about 77 million voters OVERestimated Donald, believing is he is the successful tycoon portrayed in The Apprentice game show.
In addition, Congress refuses to rein in him; the Supreme Court has gifted him with immunity; his dangerous impulses are stronger than our laws and courts can handle; who is boisterously scandalous, famous for his insults, invective and sarcastic humor. His poisonous tongue and pen are embraced from the pulpits and by his charmed inner circle of sycophants, both inside government and among the maga public. How long until someone breaks the spell????
Under-estimation has come because those of us who oppose tRump try to play by the rules-laws while the tRump and his ilk openly flaunt breaking laws. Only recently has the judicial system (finally) acted to stop many of those illegal actions.
tRump has always been a conniving racist weasel (apologies to weasels everywhere).
Please do not use "DJT." He is not among the initials crowd: FDR, LBJ, JFK, RFK. They try it with others in hope to be fondly remembered but it fails to hold with people like Richard M. Nixon (RMN ) and Gerald R. Ford (GRF ). I get it that we do need to make up a name for this child who calls everyone else names. For example, Manchild (MC).
Or DODO, the acronym for *D*ictator *O*n *D*ay *O*ne, which is what he said he planned to be during the 2924 campaign.
FPFOTUS
F'ing Pedophilic Felon of the US
omit the first F if you prefer a cleaner version, but that subhuman deserves no respect, ever.
Wow, Albert, I never thought of that! (I'd add MLK to your list).
Busk Jr was just "W"
I have plenty of "nicknames" for him, but I'm reallllllyyy trying to not use those bad words! 😉
I use 'pos' to identify him.
I would never honor the manchild by using capital letters. I use "djt" or "trump" as a form of subtle disrespect to the psychotic narcissist. I hate when my auto correct changes it to a capital "T".
The trouble with manchild (MC) is he would probably like hearing folks calling him what he would hear as”emcee.”
Cheating! What a wake-up years ago when I watched a 60 Minutes interview with his golf coach, who reported on the ways he cheated. Amazing what happens in plain sight that he gets away with.
Respectfully, only proper nouns are capitalized. ❤️
Names of specific people, places, organizations, and things are capitalized.
Example: She moved from Delhi to Melbourne for work.
While proper, I refuse to capitalize trump.
When moving nearly $80 trillion from the bottom 90% to the top 1% from 1975 to 2023 isn't playing to the crowd, yuh kinda gotta cheat to win.
So ICE will be out under the guise of "security for the vote" - when we all know it is voter suppression. I wonder if there could be security - the real kind - for people who want to vote -- the same way escorts used to take women for their appointments at abortion clinics that were under attack.
I'll let you know! I volunteered to work the polls in my little white homogenized community.
Thank you Marj! Everyone who is reading this, those who can vote in US elections, can work the polls. Volunteer now! Hundreds of people are needed to fill the slots.
Yup, up is down, good is evil, and voter suppression is "security for the vote."
Depress the vote. Best strategy besides cancellation
And that's why it is so concerning to the MAGAs that keep seeing Democrats win these special elections especially in the deep red states.
The Dems are winning or at least closing the huge gaps in places they haven't won since the turn of the 19th century.
If the MAGAs don't get the funding to keep ICE in place they are in bigly trouble even in the reddest of states.
Makes the magats more bold and more dangerous
An antidemocratic trick as old as the Republic, even when, like Lincoln, you take the Declaration of Independence literally. It seem to me that it is voting is a fundamental human right, and patently essential to a full and just democracy. The founders flubbed by failing to nail that down.
I used this video of the Wilmington, NC massacre in my history class.
It's very good, and certainly a historical event worth knowing about.
https://www.pbs.org/video/american-coup-wilmington-1898-u9qwb9/
Thank you for sharing this. I’m 74, grew up in Texas. I recall the Reconstruction Era being taught in American History. But I’m willing to bet it was barely a few pages and certainly did not include what happened in Wilmington, or in Tulsa for that matter.
Great book Willington's Lies. Something I never knew, but found heartbreaking. There are a number of other instances of this happening. Louisiana had several communities where something similar occurred.
I grew up in North Carolina about 100 miles north of Wilmington. I graduated from high school in 1972. Nothing about the Wilmington coup was ever taught in my history classes. Not even my Chicago born college history professor mentioned that vicious riot. That man’s specialty was US history after the Civil War, mainly Reconstruction. I learned about the Wilmington coup after I moved to Wilmington in 2009. I wasn’t taught about the destruction of “Black Wall Street” in Tulsa either. Or Axe Handle Saturday in Jacksonville, Florida.
After the Wilmington coup, NC disenfranchised Black voters with poll taxes and literacy tests in spite of the 15th Amendment. This ICE lawlessness is as old as the hills.
Check out Wilmington Lies. Also check out Cape Fear Rising.
I recall mention of "poll tax" and repression of black voting in my US history classes, but as something of a side note. Most of the most egregious stuff was glossed over, as Trump would wish it. I was in middle age before, one by one, some of the most disturbing events of US black history were mentioned by mainstream journalists stories I encountered, one by one.
The'ACLU"on "Immigrant's Rights":
"IF AN ICE AGENT SHOWS UP ATYOUR DOOR:"
1. You do not have to open the door [& get a Bull Rush]
2. Ask what ICE is there for ( and ask for an interpreter if you need one)."
3. IF they ask to enter your home, ask if they have a WARRANT signed by a Judge and, if so ask to have ( ... slipped under the door).
4. IF thy do not have a warrant signed by a JUDGE, you may refuse to let them in ...".
5. "Tell everyone you have [constitutional] right to remain SILENT".
6. "Remain silent ...' until you speak with a lawyer".
**************************************************
Full Disclosure: I have been an ACLU Member since 2023.🗽
Let Minnesotans be our model of protest - let not the subzero temperatures keep us from standing up for what is right!!
I remember how important “states rights”were to Republicans:)!
You are holding up the sky for us tonight, Minneapolis. We remain in awe of your integrity and courage. All we can say right at this juncture is: “thank you.” 🙏
ICE has to be abolished.
The Democrats have their 2-week CR. Cutting the small amount of funding outside of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act isn't enough to make a dent in operations, and "reforms" will not be adhered to.
ICE operations are essential and agents would have to work with deferred pay even during the shutdown. They are considered like the military.
ICE is now a mercenary army.
You are 100% correct. That is why the organization has to be deep-sixed. CBP has the long institutional history. Dems offer to have CBP take in pre-2025 ICE agents, so the "professionals" and all the newbie's have to be re-vetted and re-trained. Most likely will not meet the standards.
Republicans have to feel they are getting something.
Getting rid of the ICE organization moots most of the funding in the one Big Beautiful Bill Act , so it would have to be renegotiated as well.
These are sensible proposals. If there's a blue tsunami in November (if free elections are allowed to be held) there might be hope for some of them to be enacted.
Its a big "if" the one you mentioned James. As HCR, posted yesterday, pound on the truth, pound on the law as loud as possible 😀
One way to pound on the law: DA's and prosecutors around the country have formed an organization - FAFO - that will go after ICE agents. FAFO, Fight Against Federal Overreach.
This article by Miles Taylor explains:
https://www.defiance.news/p/exclusive-americas-prosecutors-are?utm_campaign=
Ricardo, speaking about a newspaper that was once once very loud telling the truth -- The Washington Post (WAPO).
But, WAPO died in the darkness yesterday although ASHLEY PARKER over at TheAtlantic wrote it was "The Murder of the Washington Post."
I am posting an all points bulletin for Jeff Bezos.
I agree James' big if is an issue. That's why the Dems have to do it NOW. Don't call it abolishing ICE. Call it an exercise in cost cutting and government efficiency and improved coordination. But get rid of the organization so the One Big Beautiful Bill Act has to be amended and the outrageous amount of money in that multiyear ICE allocation has to be re-deployed, and the sadists can be weeded out under an agency which currently has a career civil servant in charge in a position that requires Senate confirmation. Reforms like mandatory body cams are more likely to be accepted in CBP which traditionally did not carry guns and wear body armor.
While Republicans pound on the table. And we do our best to keep the fascists from pounding on us.
The Dems have to at least try to do this during the CR. The focus has to be on neutering ICE to the greatest extent possible BEFORE the midterms.
I've seen proposals to unmask ICE personnel, have them wear body cams, present identification and require them to have judicial warrants, but none yet to disarm them, which seems to me to be essential. If they think they will need armed backup, let that be provided by local law enforcement.
But many of us can help make their lives as uncomfortable as possible. Boycott each of the hotels, motels where ICE is staying. Picket the hotels with sign like "welcome ICE" so that regular guests don't stay there. If you were visiting Chicago or Minneapolis and saw signs that said, "Welcome ICE" would you want to stay there? We know they are staying at some Marriott hotels as well as some Hilton hotels and we are all paying their expenses.
Force them to eat in their hotel rooms or vehicles by dissing them when they are eating. I'm guessing they aren't going out to very many bars or eating in restaurants in Minneapolis or Chicago, but if you do see a group of them call them out and ask the manager to not serve them.
These guys and gals are thugs who deserve to be treated badly. They beat up elderly people, arrest kids, kill American citizens, damage personal property, break down doors without a legal search warrant.
We need to treat them like they treat us, only non-violently just like the protestors have done in every city they've terrorized.
At this point, we can't trust ANY of them to make a legal arrest so we have no choice but to assume they are all thugs and bullies, just like we have to assume anyone that still supports any Republican politician is a lost cause.
James, do check out the article "Strength in Numbers" that Heather put in her footnotes.
Thanks, Miselle. I did that. Not enough strength; not enough numbers, but midterms are a long way off. If they’re held as scheduled 🙏
Negotiating with this fascist regime it's not easy Georgia but its worth it. Thanks for your reply 👍
It's pretty hard to negotiate w ppl who only lie, threaten and go back on their word.
Do we have a choice? Just saying "Abolish it" won't fly without the leverage the other funding package had. The plan has to curb it to the max while giving Republicans in both chambers cover. And combining it with CBP does that.
The one thing that CANNOT BE ALLOWED TO HAPPEN is to have the combination go the other way--CBP subsumed under ICE. Then the sadists and the crazies are in charge, and the CBP traditionalists will be purged, and they will have that sh*t ton of money to spend building the camps.
I am not sure that Jeffries and Schumer are capable of pulling this off.
But again, do we have a choice?
The primaries are critical in many Congressional districts and perhaps even a few Senate primaries. Once the Republican Congressmen are lame ducks, perhaps they will vote against the administration.
Critical too for Democrats where some districts like mine, NJ07, currently have 7 Democrats running in the primary. This is nuts. It would be one thing if there was rank choice voting, but currently there is not. This likely ensures that the person with the most funding will win due to name recognition.
In my county in ME, there are 3 state legislative seats where there are no Democrats running, adjacent to a district where Democrats have held the seat for decades in spite of term limits.
Sadly, the two agents who murdered Alex Pretti and the one who murdered Renee Good are all 10 or so year veterans of the agency, and one (Ross) is a firearms instructor.
That is disgusting news. At least there are tapes.
Do you see any other way to claw back the money from OBBBA and get ICE shut down? Abolishing it won’t fly—Trump would veto it. So he needs to think its a win for him.
I wish I did. Admittedly I haven't given it much thought.
I am so completely disgusted by the degree to which my former work cohort supports all the ICE actions.
Georgia, just think how much that $170billion in ICE funding could do if redirected to our schools!
I would put it to fixing immigration courts first to minimize time in the deportation camps. Unfortunately, if the rest went to education, I think it would go to red state charter schools, and that would wind up gutting public schools.
The only reason why he wants to build the enormous camps is for a sick display of power. Put the money into the immigration courts, and people get their decision and get on with their lives instead of being in limbo for years.
If -- as I increasingly suspect -- the Regime's long-range intent is to re-impose legalized slavery, the camps are a perfect, ready-made slave market.
And Trump is their mercenary overlord.
The Dean Blundell claims about Trump in the Epstein files release have freaked me out. The thought of him being brutally violent far beyond the E. Jean level of violence adds a whole new set of nightmares.
Georgia, Trump gets off on violence. Remember how he egged on his MAGA crowds against reporters, disabled people, etc., and laughed when MAGAts cheered? Remember how long he took to stop his mob on Jan.6, and was watching on TV? He’s so sick.
I see what you are saying, but I have always thought that unless it’s against women, it’s at a distance or on TV because of germophobia. He is so weird, it’s hard to know.
Right??
Trump & the Rev Speaker don't like waiting 1 day to count the votes of Troops overseas or expatriates abroad much less Dems in Germany (DAG).
Yes. The guy is eroding our democratic elections in any way he can. I see him also seizing election ballots like he just did in Georgia, like a dry run.
ICE was never anything but a mercenary army.
That was the plan all along Ricardo.
ICE has plenty of money and more coming in. While they'd be happy to have the funding from this bill, they don't really need it. And Bannon is right, they will surround the polling places with armed, masked thugs. Unfortunately, many voters will back down when they see the gauntlet they have to run. And vote by mail? remember, Trump's lackey is running the post office. What chance does a ballot have of making it through that?
We need to organize volunteers to escort voters through the gauntlet, like they do for women attending appointments at reproductive healthcare clinics to manage the anti-abortion zealots. I would definitely sign up to do that, and I'm over 70, 5'2" on a tall day.
What a great idea. I’m 79 but I’m over 6’ which gives me an advantage. Escorting people is an idea I could get behind. Thanks, Signe K.
At 5’2” I’m with you! Signe + Gail= Elizabeth C!
Small but mighty! And feisty.
Not only do we have the gauntlet of the thugs, but married women who no longer have their birth certificate name have to go through hoops under the SAVE act to be able to vote. And registrations for certain people have to be done every six months, it’s going to take an army of us to be sure the paperwork is completed for everyone who wants to vote. Aside from the onerous paperwork requirements, keeping track of all of the details is such a burden.
Actually Louis DeJoy is gone now. The new Postmaster General David Steiner, was appointed in May, 2025.
Yes, I know. Like I said, "Trump's lackey..."
But the USPS service still sucks. Another of Trump's fuck-ups.
If USPS just went to Monday-Friday delivery and closed the post office on Saturdays they wouldn't have to have thousands of swing route drivers.
What about white people working together to pick up absentee ballots from voters who are nervous to go to the polls? We could just drop them off at the polls for them. I was an urban public high school teacher for 20 years… I don’t scare easily!
Would work in the blue states. Many Red states have outlawed this.
Neither do I.
I Reactivated my CA Bar License back in May 2025
I think it would be playing into MAGA's hands. Remember that movie "1000 Mules"? Sure it's been debunked but that hasn't stopped them in the past, and probably never will.
As a U.S. citizen voting by mail from Canada, I can fax my ballot to Florida. In my case, because my last U.S. residence was in Lee County, Florida, that's where my polling place is and that county allows submitting ballots by fax.
I'm a U.S. citizen living in Japan. I vote absentee in NY over the internet. Vote.org seems to work well as they connected me with the proper NY websites and let me track my ballot.
Marc Elias’ take on Ice at the polls
https://www.democracydocket.com/news-alerts/steve-bannon-says-ice-will-surround-the-polls-as-trump-doubles-down-on-taking-over-elections/
Couldn't read it without a subscription and I have more than enough subscriptions as it is.
Post Office workers will sabotage. Their jobs depend on the survival of the USPS, so they will deliver ballots.The ballots only boxes will be problematical
however.
Check out the latest iterations on the idea in the thread -I think it answers most of your very valid concerns.
This is why I have been saying we need to harden the polling place. We need election protection lawyers at every polling place. We need poll workers inside the polling place, and yes, we need escorts for vulnerable voters. And they may need to be armed. That's where we are, folks.
There is some need to perform certain fictions in relation to immigration and borders, but ICE was created in the Bush II "All we have to fear as not fearing enough" reaction to 9/11. Yes, be vigilant (Bush wasn't when initially warned that something was up) but got along with outcha before before I metcha, and can get along without you now.
That is a great idea: cut ICE's size and fold it into CBP, arguing that CBP is the appropriate organization and that this will reduce government spending by increasing efficiency.
Add in the reforms to CBP.
Then impeach Noem. The current head of CBP is a career civil servant. It is a position that has to be confirmed by the Senate.
It would have been so much easier to do this if Democrats had stalled on the 5 Department funding bill so they still had that leverage.
Looks good to me.
ICE and CBP have a lot of overlapping functions so you could make this argument. But I really think ICE is culturally flawed at the fundamental level - it has always been rooted in intimidation, racism, and violence. For a long time, “abolish ICE” was seen as radical. But those calling for it years ago knew, while the rest of us in our places of privilege didn't see it. All that has changed, because what little guardrails existed around ICE before are now long gone. But the rot was always there. ICE has to go.
Please call it the One Big Boondoggle
To non-Rs, of course. But when negotiating with R’s, I would be respectful of their delusions. And that is why I would also rely on and laud the hallowed tenets in their mantra of cost-cutting and government efficiency.
Even though their fiscal pronouncements stink like the bullschittery they are trying to sell us
The one big bigot bill.
Even better
Abolished. Yes!
And the names of the ICE personnel who violated the human and civil rights of civilians retained for future prosecution.
ICE as it is functioning now is a personal military police force for Trump and Miller. It is illegal on its face. Gestapo/Stasi/BrownShirts/BlackShirts/Nazi/KKK/KGB/Taliban on a mission from mad men.
ICE already has $75 billion to torture America with. That money must be withdrawn and redirected. How about more asylum judges? How about more classes to help hard working immigrants legally navigate a path to permanent residency and possibly citizenship?
Americans are not having babies. We NEED immigrants. Lots of them for all manner of jobs that are not being filled. From roofers to health care to education to science to manufacturing - we don't have enough "working age" people to support an aging population. Not enough taxes to assist the disabled - who with support can contribute as well. Not enough taxes and people to provide child care so both parents can work!
The othering and deporting of a vital work force is beyond stupid and cruel. It is incompetence on steroids.
And the Climate Crisis has only begun. Millions more will need to leave their unlivable countries - they are headed for Europe and North America. It's not a matter of choice. It will be a matter of life or death. They need new homes. We need them. Basic logic. Basic humanity. Welcome them. They commit way less crime than native born Americans. They work wicked hard! Because they value the opportunity! Because they don't want to jeopardize their chance to thrive and provide for their families.
Immigrants are what made America. Immigrants are what America is made of. Immigrants are GOOD! SAY IT!
Sounds almost "Christiany", too. Or were they lying to me in "Sunday School"...?
Thank you, Bill Alstrom. Climate change is engraved in my head. It is not being mentioned anywhere these days. Find McKibben daily? Between the Hyde Act and climate change, we bear responsibility for many of those arriving at our southern border and the merciless persecution of these people (may I never hear “illegal aliens” again—I just did; the ICE ad came on as I wrote “illegal aliens”) are not only cruel, but also uncivilized. We must get the mafia out before we get blacklisted.
I met a friendly cop Tuesday who said his bodycam was recording me and so it was protecting him. It was a joke, of course, but a reminder that body cams can be used in various ways, such as recording protestors.
Georgia- I would argue that ICE operations are not essential at all. We got along without them from 1776 to 2003. Their appropriate mandate if they have one at all, is to enforce civil immigration laws.
It’s important for the public to understand that being in the US without proper documentation is not a crime. It’s a civil misdemeanor. For context, a parking ticket is a civil misdemeanor.
Why on earth would we need an armed, masked secret police force larger than the armies of all but two countries in the world to enforce parking ticket level infractions?
Don’t forget that during his election celebration in December 2024, Trump made a statement that, i guess, went over everyone’s head. He said something like: you’ll never need, or have, another election — ever!
Even before the election while on the campaign trail, Donold's exact words were: "Christians, get out and vote, just this time. "You won't have to do it anymore. Four more years, you know what, it will be fixed, it will be fine, you won't have to vote anymore, my beautiful Christians."
He added, "I love you Christians. I'm a Christian. I love you, get out, you gotta get out and vote. In four years, you don't have to vote again, we'll have it fixed so good you're not going to have to vote"...
Trump was speaking at an event organized by the conservative group Turning Point Action in West Palm Beach, Florida back on July 26, 2024. It might sound strangely familiar since Turning Point Action happens to have been founded in 2019 by Charlie Kirk as the sister organization and political advocacy arm of the 501(c)(3) Turning Point USA.
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-tells-christians-they-wont-have-vote-after-this-election-2024-07-27/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turning_Point_Action
I remember that so well-I got a cold chill down my spine when I heard him say those words.
Likewise.
"Christany" it most assuredly is. Be warned; see: https://andrawatkins.substack.com/p/christian-nationalists-forced-church?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
Of course it is.
I think he was referring to the Jewish vote and it was something like you won't have to vote again, but yes, Project 2025 was certainly what he meant.
I always knew this was intent to be in our lives forever. We should never forget January 6. We need show up for those who don’t he should never win again. Retire him.
If the Dems do win the House majority, trump and the GOP will surely claim voter fraud as they have been doing since 1994.
They will try to foment another insurrection. With 37% of the population supporting them, I wonder how many will actually participate in an insurrection and will trump call out the National Guard?
Before J6 trump said he wanted the Guard to intervene in support of his people.
There is no doubt they will stop at nothing to rig the elections, and if it looks like they might fail, he will implement Martial law.
A vote for a right-winger in any race, is a vote for Fascism.
All of my admiration and then some for the wonderful people of Minneapolis. Thank you for standing strong day after day and for all you are doing.
How to Save Democracy by Terrifying Voters
At long last, American democracy has revealed its fatal flaw. Sometimes voters vote wrong.
This shocking discovery came after a special election in Texas, where a Democrat committed the ultimate offense by winning a Republican seat that had been safely Republican since the early 1990s. Even worse, he won it by a lot. In a district Trump carried comfortably. Math itself appeared to malfunction. Panic ensued.
Faced with this crisis, Donald Trump proposed the obvious solution. The federal government should take over elections. Not to improve access, security, or confidence. No. To make sure the right people feel nervous enough to stay home.
Steve Bannon helpfully clarified the plan. ICE should surround polling places. Democracy, after all, works best when voters feel they might be detained, questioned, or deported for attempting to participate. Nothing says civic pride like flashing lights and tactical vests.
Critics claim this sounds like voter intimidation. Supporters insist it is merely “election integrity,” which is different because it sounds better on cable news.
The logic is airtight. If Republicans lose, the election was stolen. If Republicans win, the system worked beautifully. This framework has the added benefit of requiring no evidence, no policy reform, and no self-reflection. It also spares party leaders the humiliation of asking why voters might be abandoning them in the first place.
To understand how we got here, it helps to know that voter fraud has been just about to destroy America for roughly thirty years now. Since the mid 1990s, Republicans have warned that undocumented immigrants are flooding polling places, voting multiple times, and possibly voting while eating tacos. Each investigation has found almost nothing, but that only proves how sneaky the fraud is.
In 2016, Trump insisted that millions of undocumented immigrants voted illegally. Officials checked. They found about thirty questionable votes out of more than twenty-three million. This was obviously devastating, assuming you believe democracy collapses when one ten-thousandth of one percent of ballots might be imperfect.
Still, the story persists because it is not about accuracy. It is about permission. Permission to say that certain voters do not count. Permission to say that losing elections is illegitimate. Permission to replace persuasion with force.
House Speaker Mike Johnson recently explained the situation perfectly. Elections look fraudulent, he said, even though he cannot prove it. This is the gold standard of modern governance. Intuition over evidence. Vibes over facts. Feelings, but make them constitutional.
Meanwhile, Trump allies insist that only about twenty percent of “real” voters choose Democrats. This raises an interesting question. If eighty percent of real voters support Republicans, and Republicans keep losing elections, where are these people? Are they shy? Invisible? Busy? Possibly trapped in a very large, very quiet room somewhere?
The answer, according to MAGA theology, is simple. Democrats are cheating. Immigrants are voting. Cities are suspicious. Mail is evil. Ballots appear “magically.” Democracy itself is deeply untrustworthy unless it produces the correct outcome.
This is where the humor gets dark, because the strategy is old. Very old.
In the late nineteenth century, when biracial coalitions threatened entrenched power in the South, white supremacists decided elections were dangerous. Voters were intimidated. Ballots were manipulated. Governments were overthrown. All of it was justified with lofty language about intelligence, order, and protecting society from the wrong people having a say.
The message was clear then, as it is now. If you vote the wrong way, you are not really a voter.
What MAGA leaders are proposing today is not especially creative. It is just updated for modern branding. Instead of shotguns, you use federal agencies. Instead of openly saying certain races should not vote, you say certain voters are illegal. Instead of admitting fear of losing power, you accuse others of stealing it.
The truly satirical part is the insistence that this is being done to protect freedom.
Freedom, apparently, is best preserved by surrounding polling places with law enforcement. Freedom thrives when citizens must weigh their civic duty against the possibility of harassment. Freedom flourishes when elections are treated like crime scenes.
And yet, for all the bluster, there is something deeply insecure about this posture. Confident movements do not threaten voters. Popular ideas do not need armed backup. Parties that believe in democracy do not preemptively reject election results.
The Texas election exposed a simple truth. Voters are not moving right. They are moving away. Latino voters, young voters, suburban voters, and exhausted voters are responding to cruelty, corruption, and economic looting by doing the unthinkable. They are voting differently.
That terrifies a movement built on grievance and permanence. So the answer is not to change policies. It is to change the rules. Or better yet, to scare people so badly that rules become irrelevant.
The irony is that this strategy admits failure. When you say elections must be controlled because voters cannot be trusted, you are confessing that democracy no longer works for you. Not because it is broken, but because it is doing exactly what it is supposed to do.
Voters are deciding.
The rest of us now face a choice. We can laugh at the absurdity of calling intimidation “integrity,” or we can recognize the danger beneath the joke. Satire helps us see the truth clearly, but only if we stop laughing long enough to act.
Democracy does not need to be saved from voters. It needs to be saved from those who are afraid of them.
https://essayx.substack.com/
Great analysis of republican/maga “logic”, Michael.
LOL Michael Cortell! Thanks! Hilarious! Oh, maybe it isn’t so funny.
Thanks for the heads up. We live in northern MN and have shared way too much of our cold weather with Columbia Heights this month. That makes us even more proud of you in the Minneapolis area being outside protesting with so much energy and effectiveness. From your “handle” it appears you’re a transplant. Welcome!
Living in St Louis Park I see yellow vested volunteers standing outside schools as parents drop their kids off in the morning. It is clear who the enemy is. It is our government.
I regret to have to say this but everyone should be prepared to see the president and Republicans continue with the lies and fear mongering throughout 2026. We should accept that reality as our motivating and energizing source to fight like hell. We can and will win this fight with constant and hard work.
Daniel NYC2TC and all Minneapolis residents: our hearts and feet and words travel with you. Everywhere in these United States, people are shoving their heels into the ground and shouting "ENOUGH!."
My county was covered on Rachel Maddow this week. I live in Maryland and our county executive, Calvin Ball, introduced emergency legislation to prevent a secret ICE concentration camp, er, detention facility, from being completed by an outsourced private firm. The location is right near two schools and a church, ensuring maximum trauma to our children and our families. I attended the first two public hearings on this legislation, and I am overwhelmed with gratitude that I live in this county. The testimony, which ranged from high school students to white-haired ministers, was deep, thoughtful, personal, historically and legally grounded, and heart-rending. Our county council is standing with us - the vote, tonight, is likely to be unanimous.
People, pray with your feet!!
Never thought it was over. Admiring Minneapolis with all the energy I can put into GOTV postcard writing. Praying for the mother of Samantha Guthrie (courts protect journalists, so kidnap their mothers) and drive the rest of US nuts with stupid rhetoric. We are all in Minneapolis whether we know it or not.
I keep thinking of the line from “Hamilton”: Rise up!“ (91, Chicago with ICE sirens 24/7)
Nothing new. The Repbulicans have for decades come up with some dirty trick to win elections. Their guilt is revealed in their accusaitons that the Democrats can only win by cheating.
Minnesota! Minnesotans! Woohoo! Showing us how it is done! ❤️💕
It's unconscionable that your lives are upended by this megalomaniac.
Do the Democrats ever argue that if a Republican wins an election that it was stolen? It would be the height of scandal if it were proven that there was widespread, unchecked, voter fraud in as many jurisdictions - even in Republican states - during every election since the beginning of time.
I would like an answer to your question. What do you think? I think the R's are in full panic mode and all stops will be pulled out. As "they" say, "All options are on the table."
That Texas seat flip rekindled so much hope in humanity for me! And yet, we need to continue to be loud. Our voices, as a collective, can make a difference.
Be LOUD. These are unprecedented times 💔🤍💙
Use/share this spreadsheet (bit.ly/Goodtrouble) to contact members of Congress, the Cabinet and news organizations. Call. Write. Email. Protest. Unrelentingly.
Reach out (beyond your own) to as many in the Senate and House as you can. All of this is bigger than “I only represent my constituents” issues.
Comments/reactions help keep this bumped ✊
I can’t even think when a Texas voting district — far larger than a congressional one — blue-shifted 32 points. In ruby-red Ft. Worth, no less.
The Republican went out of her way to print “Trump Endorsed” on every one of her campaign yard signs and outspent her Democratic opponent 20 to 1. She was sure that would do the trick.
Apparently, It did.
Told ya them Texans have decency!
Though often not much sense.
Years ago, when the late great Ann Richards was Governor, the ACLU brought a lawsuit against the Texas legislature for allowing a crèche to be displayed on the floor of the Rotunda in Austin at Christmas. Governor Richards was asked to weigh in.
“Well,” she mused. “Look at it this way. It’s probably the closest three wise men have ever gotten to the Legislature. Why don’t we let ‘em stay just a bit longer? See if any of it rubs off.”
My favorite Ann Richards story, from when I heard her speak at a convention long ago: The TX legislature was debating whether or not to make English the "State Language" in TX. An elderly White statesman rose and proclaimed, "The Bible is written in English, and if it's good enough for God, it's good enough for Texas!"
🤣
Miss Governor Ann Richards Muchly! Thanks for the memory, ICTT!!
Molly Ivens as well.
Ft Worth purple. Parker County, not so much.
In 1967, Arlo Guthrie came out with a song against the Vietnam War, entitled the "Alice's Restaurant Massacree." One of the lines in the song was, "If you want to end war and stuff, you gotta sing LOUD."
My favorite song from then was The Vietnam Song or “I-Feel-Like-I’m-Fixin-to-Die “ by Country Joe and the Fish (Woodstock).
And it’s one, two, three what are we fighting for?
Don’t tell me I don’t give a damn.
Next stop is Vietnam.
And it’s five, six , seven open up the pearly gate.
There ain’t no time to wonder why.
We all gonna die.
Hey Mike.... You Are 'Dating' Yourself... ;-) ...
I’m so old I have to carbon date myself.
It was a great song! Bruce Springsteen was a good start, but IMO we need a lot more modern protest songs.
🎶 Here is a list of current protest songs for you! 🎶
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICE_protest_songs#List
Yup, if I used a dating App, it would have to be called Carbon Dating :)
Hello Mike.... I'm So Old, I'm Jurassic!!!
me too! I loved that Country Joe song too.
Mike, check out some of the songs coming out of Minneapolis…inspiring and catchy ☺️🎶💕
https://www.facebook.com/share/r/17qAAgA3Ui/?mibextid=wwXIfr
https://youtube.com/shorts/s7N4fwSf-ww?si=zspI0YN2BQnswnlo
CNN reported on a group writing protest songs inspired by Renee Good.
https://youtube.com/shorts/tp3ABvXXEsE?si=MM0R5yrXfQvlT4Ju
Song continues ... "I went over to the sergeant, said, "Sergeant, you got a lot a ____ gall to
ask me if I've rehabilitated myself, I mean, I mean ... I'm sittin here on the Group W bench 'cause you want to know if I'm moral enough join the army, burn women,
kids, houses and villages after bein' a litterbug." He looked at me and
said, "Kid, we don't like your kind, and we're gonna send your fingerprints
off to Washington."
I love that song.
Given the misinformation going around Megan, reach out not just to as many Senate and House members as you can but also to your neighbors, people on the street and everyone you have a chance to interact with. We have to pound on the truth and yes, we should be LOUDER than them.
How? I spoke to a likeable ( retired nurse) 77 year old woman who told me she would vote for him again bc he is getting rid of the immigrants. I was left dumbfounded.
Marj, if you were left dumbfounded it's because she was one of those genetically unable to reason, have emphaty or make any sense of anything being her a nurse or not. I come across them every so often and I don't waste my time trying to reason with them because they are not capable. Remember that "only" about 40% of Americans still support the regime. Figure out how many millions we are talking about. Keep the fight and the faith. 😃 .
Calmly explain how hurtful that is to human beings and start with some light facts about how they’re going about immigration. Explain how people have actually deported more people for way less money and fear and ask if she’s up for some research together 🤷♀️❤️🩹
Yes. 100% - I use Card Campaign (on Facebook) and print their cards to leave in random public places :)
States should prosecute Bannon for fomenting election interference NOW!:
"Trump ally Steve Bannon said yesterday on his podcast: 'You’re damn right, we’re going to have ICE surround the polls come November. We’re not going to sit here and allow you to steal the country again. And you can whine and cry and throw your toys out of the pram all you want, but we will never again allow an election to be stolen.'
Is Steve Bannon fomenting voter intimidation? - RevGeorge - First Imagine Church
ChatGP:
Yes — that statement is very likely fomenting voter intimidation and potentially criminal election interference, not just protected speech.
Steve Bannon said:
“We’re going to have ICE surround the polls come November… we will never again allow an election to be stolen.”
This is not abstract rhetoric. Legally, it has four red-flag elements that courts and prosecutors look for.
Why this crosses the legal line
1. Explicit threat tied to voting
This is not a policy opinion. It’s a promise of coercive state force (“ICE surround the polls”) explicitly tied to Election Day.
Courts have consistently held:
Threats of law-enforcement presence at polling places = voter intimidation, even if no arrests occur.
The threat itself is the harm.
2. Targeting a protected class
ICE enforcement is inherently tied to:
Immigration status
Ethnicity and national origin
Mixed-status families (including citizens)
Courts recognize that immigration enforcement threats uniquely chill lawful voters, including U.S. citizens who reasonably fear collateral detention.
That matters enormously in intimidation cases.
3. Intent to deter voting is evident
Intent doesn’t require a confession. It can be inferred from:
Language (“surround the polls”)
Framing (“we’re not going to allow you… again”)
False premise (the election was “stolen”)
This is textbook intent to suppress turnout under the guise of fraud prevention — a pattern courts already understand well.
4. False assertion of authority
Steve Bannon has:
No authority over ICE
No lawful role in election security
Claiming or implying control over federal law enforcement at polling places can itself be criminal, because it:
Creates fear through deception
Mimics official power
Exacerbates intimidation
You do not need ICE to actually show up. The false claim alone can violate the law.
What laws this implicates
Depending on jurisdiction, this statement could support:
Federal voter intimidation statutes
State election interference laws
Conspiracy or solicitation, if coordination exists
Civil enforcement by DOJ or state AGs
Injunctions barring further statements
Importantly: Speech does not have to instruct a specific illegal act to lose protection.
Threatening lawful voters with coercive force is not protected by the First Amendment.
Key legal takeaway
This is not “just talk.”
It is a public threat of law-enforcement intimidation at polling places, aimed at deterring lawful voters.
That squarely fits the legal meaning of fomenting election obstruction.
Whether it results in charges depends on:
Jurisdiction
Follow-up conduct
Evidence of coordination
Prosecutorial judgment
But as a matter of law?
Yes — this statement is firmly in prosecutable territory.
GO Texas! Also, their little redistricting shenanigan likely will backfire since they assumed Latinos for Trump in 2024 would stay with him. They are NOT staying with him! Woo Hoo!
We need the senate and the state of Georgia to sue the federal Government regarding Fulton County.
It seems to me that the FBI agents who were in Atlanta to seize the ballots should have been prevented from doing so by Georgia law enforcement personnel with guns drawn, regardless of warrants of any type presented by the FBI. The legality of the seizure must be argued all the way to SCOTUS before any ballots are turned over to the federal government. After the feds have the ballots in their possession, the integrity of the ballots can never be reëstablished. All states must have immediately put armed law enforcement in place to prevent seizure of ballots prior to final decisions about legality of seizures. Without steps such as these, the Trump junta will be counting the ballots in November, and as Stalin famously said, it doesn’t matter who votes. It only matters who count the votes.
Rex: The group that made off with the Georgia ballots broke the chain of custody. Those ballots are worthless now.
True, Gary, but they have value as propaganda. No sensible person believes a thing that comes out of this Administration anymore, but such propaganda is not aimed at sensible persons.
Agreed. My guess: Trump will claim that (at least) 11,780 votes were invalid because they were "illegal immigrant votes." This message is a propaganda Hydra: cast himself as a "proven" victim, fire up his base and get the "sympathy vote" from poorly educated, white working class independent voters.
And then, there those who know **nothing** about the law. I’m not a lawyer; however, I do try to keep up. They’re aiming at ignorance.
It’s all about the Sharpie vote count now.
Hello Gary.. Absolutely Right...
Worthless to rational citizens. Gold to thugs like the orange ding-dong and his sycophants.
I agree. We must challenge Trump's outrageous statement that the states are just "agents of the federal government" when it comes to elections.
Interesting how the “states rights” people change their spots on a dime. This should put people like Graham or Nancy Mace all a twitter.
Yes Rex, after all they need to make disappear little bit more than 11,000 votes, a few boxes here and there, to "proof" the scumbag had won Georgia in 2024 to justify taking over the electoral system all over the US or at least in those states tending to vote blue. Thanks for the advice Putin.
Hello Ricardo.... Regarding Putin, and Jeffrey Epstein... The Simplest is 'Follow The Money'... Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon has been following the Money Trail for Epstein... Millions of Transactions... Seems that Epstein was operating a 'Honey Pot' to accrue Russian Compromat... Indeed Epstein bailed out DJT at one point... The Russians have been operating in Palm Beach for Decades... Unnamed Opportunistic Middle-Eastern Countries are allegedly involved as well... As Eric Trump said, the Trump Organization has all the Russian Money that it needs... Indeed, Truth-Social is floated by Russian Money... Notice that Jeffrey Epstein died under DJT's Watch?...
Ah, now it all makes (tragic) sense.
So noted, Apache.
Eye bull Apache 🎯. Thanks
It happens when I post too early Apache. Correction: Bull's Eye. Feeling better now 😌
Hello Ricardo... Okay, I Understand... I Usually Post Waaay Too Late... ;-)
Thanks for the Stalin quote. It is relevant here
Knock knock.
"Who's there?"
"Trotsky."
"Trotsky Who?"
"Very good, comrade"
Same could be said re allowing Musk and his nerds access to computer data with private SS info on everybody! All these illegal activities happened, were not blocked by court order at the time. As for confiscated ballots in Fulton County, Georgia, they were already counted and recounted. After awhile, trying to convince people you are right and everybody else wrong becomes a moot point. Especially where tRump is concerned. Majority so fed up with this admin right now, Repubs, no matter how much money they have or that tRump backs them, their constituents don't.
True, but the nefarious activities of Musk and others of the Trump junta are not direct threats to election integrity. We need election integrity to have any hope of stopping the coup.
Not sure that computer access by Musk and others not a threat to election integrity. This entire admin is a threat to election integrity. We need independent, international oversight of our upcoming elections if necessary. Just as in the past, U.S. participated in election oversight in other countries.
Okay, my fantasy is Canada++ (Canada + West Coast + Mexico under Canada’s political system). Your fantasy is outside oversight of our elections. Both are far beyond the realm of possibility.
States should prosecute Bannon for fomenting election interference NOW!:
"Trump ally Steve Bannon said yesterday on his podcast: 'You’re damn right, we’re going to have ICE surround the polls come November. We’re not going to sit here and allow you to steal the country again. And you can whine and cry and throw your toys out of the pram all you want, but we will never again allow an election to be stolen.'
Is Steve Bannon fomenting voter intimidation? - RevGeorge - First Imagine Church
ChatGP:
Yes — that statement is very likely fomenting voter intimidation and potentially criminal election interference, not just protected speech.
Steve Bannon said:
“We’re going to have ICE surround the polls come November… we will never again allow an election to be stolen.”
This is not abstract rhetoric. Legally, it has four red-flag elements that courts and prosecutors look for.
Why this crosses the legal line
1. Explicit threat tied to voting
This is not a policy opinion. It’s a promise of coercive state force (“ICE surround the polls”) explicitly tied to Election Day.
Courts have consistently held:
Threats of law-enforcement presence at polling places = voter intimidation, even if no arrests occur.
The threat itself is the harm.
2. Targeting a protected class
ICE enforcement is inherently tied to:
Immigration status
Ethnicity and national origin
Mixed-status families (including citizens)
Courts recognize that immigration enforcement threats uniquely chill lawful voters, including U.S. citizens who reasonably fear collateral detention.
That matters enormously in intimidation cases.
3. Intent to deter voting is evident
Intent doesn’t require a confession. It can be inferred from:
Language (“surround the polls”)
Framing (“we’re not going to allow you… again”)
False premise (the election was “stolen”)
This is textbook intent to suppress turnout under the guise of fraud prevention — a pattern courts already understand well.
4. False assertion of authority
Steve Bannon has:
No authority over ICE
No lawful role in election security
Claiming or implying control over federal law enforcement at polling places can itself be criminal, because it:
Creates fear through deception
Mimics official power
Exacerbates intimidation
You do not need ICE to actually show up. The false claim alone can violate the law.
What laws this implicates
Depending on jurisdiction, this statement could support:
Federal voter intimidation statutes
State election interference laws
Conspiracy or solicitation, if coordination exists
Civil enforcement by DOJ or state AGs
Injunctions barring further statements
Importantly: Speech does not have to instruct a specific illegal act to lose protection.
Threatening lawful voters with coercive force is not protected by the First Amendment.
Key legal takeaway
This is not “just talk.”
It is a public threat of law-enforcement intimidation at polling places, aimed at deterring lawful voters.
That squarely fits the legal meaning of fomenting election obstruction.
Whether it results in charges depends on:
Jurisdiction
Follow-up conduct
Evidence of coordination
Prosecutorial judgment
But as a matter of law?
Yes — this statement is firmly in prosecutable territory.
A favorite quote from Coretta Scott King comes to mind:
"Struggle is a never-ending process. Freedom is never really won, You earn it and win it in every generation."
Very apt, Steve. And it seems this is something each generation needs to learn again.
So true! I think many of us took our democracy for granted, and so we've nearly lost her. It requires careful tending, day after day. Now we know.
Theoretically, we should have known after the Civil War. We knew for about 10 years and then stopped paying attention. Can’t let that happen again.
This is the lesson I learned, for sure, Signe.
“You’re damn right, we’re going to have ICE surround the polls come November." may be the most chilling thing I have read all week. That said, the possibility of reclaiming the house by special elections and attrition gives me a hope that we may still avoid a civil war.
The good news Annabel is that little fat boy in the trenchcoat pretending to be Lenin has the opposite effect on real Americans which is universally accepted. He is one of the major losers of trp support. Even in Idaho we all wish him a safe trip back to jail. The GOP will eventually come to understand he is a liability, but probably not until too late. The cabinet such as Gnome and company are rapidly pooping too close to the house as well. Speaking of pooping did trp really mess his britches or is that just internet Bs?
The GOP always loves them their Titanic, even after they’re all covered in ICE and they can all hear the “Jack! Jack! There’s a boat, Jack!” call from a raft somewhere.
where mail in ballots are still legal we must encourage people to get their ballots hand stamped at time of mailing so they can't be held back and then dismissed as being too late.
The PO is being weaponized to ensure that mail-in ballots are withheld past voting deadlines — mail-in voting is no longer a viable option.
Why do you repeat this?
The USPS may be throwing up a stumbling block but mail in voting is still viable. Ballots come early. Return that ballot early and track it. Plus, as Lauriemcf suggests, have USPS hand stamp your ballot.
You can also get a USPS receipt hand cancelled at the counter to prove timely voting.
Courts can take "judicial notice" of the Proof which means the document is ADMISSIBLE.
If you think voting lines are long, try to contemplate standing in line for hand stamping at your local PO. And, if the ballot mysteriously still gets delayed/lost, how many people are going to know it is their ballot that wasn’t counted? They could check their voting precinct online (perhaps), and then could go to the polling place to cast a provisional ballot, which means they would end up in a polling line anyway, and with the confusion of “multiple” ballots, the Regime would surely twist the facts to suggest voter fraud — facts be damned. This is all part of the Regime’s overall deterrence architecture, to exhaust citizens from voting. It’s not just jackboots and sniper rifles.
I’m lucky to live in a small town. (Sorta) One person ahead at the USPS or DMV is a crowd. 😜
I refuse to think voters will throw up their hands and give up. Tracking your ballot isn’t difficult.
The mercenary army called ICE will be in full force around the polls from now on Annabel.
That will not be all. At the last minute, Trump will declare that voting machines in Black and Democrat areas are corrupt, so vote locations will be disrupted. He may also capture some mail ballots for “investigation” before they reach the official site.
Correct Craig, they will use every trick at their disposal and any last minute suggestion coming from Putin. Sad state of affairs in this exemplary country 😢
The PO is being weaponized to ensure that mail-in ballots are withheld past voting deadlines — mail-in voting is no longer a viable option.
The USPS may be throwing up a stumbling block but mail in voting is still viable. Ballots come early. Return that ballot early and track it.
They will try, and who is to stop them.
Steve Bannon had zero power over us. He’s like Megyn Kelly, saying increasing outrageous things to stay in the news. To stay relevant. MSM falls for it every time or, at least, they don’t question it. My response to Bannon: quiet, piggy!
IMO, we’re in a mostly cold civil war.
States should prosecute Bannon for fomenting election interference NOW!:
"Trump ally Steve Bannon said yesterday on his podcast: 'You’re damn right, we’re going to have ICE surround the polls come November. We’re not going to sit here and allow you to steal the country again. And you can whine and cry and throw your toys out of the pram all you want, but we will never again allow an election to be stolen.'
Is Steve Bannon fomenting voter intimidation? - RevGeorge - First Imagine Church
ChatGP:
Yes — that statement is very likely fomenting voter intimidation and potentially criminal election interference, not just protected speech.
Steve Bannon said:
“We’re going to have ICE surround the polls come November… we will never again allow an election to be stolen.”
This is not abstract rhetoric. Legally, it has four red-flag elements that courts and prosecutors look for.
Why this crosses the legal line
1. Explicit threat tied to voting
This is not a policy opinion. It’s a promise of coercive state force (“ICE surround the polls”) explicitly tied to Election Day.
Courts have consistently held:
Threats of law-enforcement presence at polling places = voter intimidation, even if no arrests occur.
The threat itself is the harm.
2. Targeting a protected class
ICE enforcement is inherently tied to:
Immigration status
Ethnicity and national origin
Mixed-status families (including citizens)
Courts recognize that immigration enforcement threats uniquely chill lawful voters, including U.S. citizens who reasonably fear collateral detention.
That matters enormously in intimidation cases.
3. Intent to deter voting is evident
Intent doesn’t require a confession. It can be inferred from:
Language (“surround the polls”)
Framing (“we’re not going to allow you… again”)
False premise (the election was “stolen”)
This is textbook intent to suppress turnout under the guise of fraud prevention — a pattern courts already understand well.
4. False assertion of authority
Steve Bannon has:
No authority over ICE
No lawful role in election security
Claiming or implying control over federal law enforcement at polling places can itself be criminal, because it:
Creates fear through deception
Mimics official power
Exacerbates intimidation
You do not need ICE to actually show up. The false claim alone can violate the law.
What laws this implicates
Depending on jurisdiction, this statement could support:
Federal voter intimidation statutes
State election interference laws
Conspiracy or solicitation, if coordination exists
Civil enforcement by DOJ or state AGs
Injunctions barring further statements
Importantly: Speech does not have to instruct a specific illegal act to lose protection.
Threatening lawful voters with coercive force is not protected by the First Amendment.
Key legal takeaway
This is not “just talk.”
It is a public threat of law-enforcement intimidation at polling places, aimed at deterring lawful voters.
That squarely fits the legal meaning of fomenting election obstruction.
Whether it results in charges depends on:
Jurisdiction
Follow-up conduct
Evidence of coordination
Prosecutorial judgment
But as a matter of law?
Yes — this statement is firmly in prosecutable territory.
Little Speaker Bibble-Bobblehead is simply the cleaned-up version of Steve Bannon — a town drunk lying face down in the gutter after a major bender, moaning and muttering, lost in his own hallucinations.
One and the same — the same and one. It really doesn’t matter which one’s the angry drunk armed with a podcast and imaginary grievances, or which one’s the fake Christian babbling reasonable-sounding chickenshit-on-a-stick to reporters who know better.
Here’s what we do know, no matter what cleaned-up babble-bibble or dirtied-down bibble-babble claim to the contrary:
—Donald Trump lost the 2020 election by over 7 million votes, including Georgia. There never were 11,780 more votes there, there still aren’t, there never will be. Period. There was no steal.
—Donald Trump led and inspired an insurrection of whackos who beat up hundreds of police officers on January 6, 2021. 7 people died or committed suicide as a result. No amount of trying to pretend it didn’t happen will ever alter that.
—California’s Proposition 50 is now legal and constitutional. Texas’s stupidity has already bitten itself in the ass — expect more bites to follow.
—Elections remain under the control of 51 state/local Secretaries of State, not the federal government. There is no such thing as “nationalizing” elections — the Constitution forbids it.
—JD Wanker is still a pissant wormtongue and Twitter troll who flees from danger faster than Josh Hawley. And yes, he still slathers his beady little eyes in Maybelline. God alone knows why.
Now let’s all get back to work on that November Blue Tsunami.
The prosecution rests:
“We all know, intuitively, that a lot of illegals are voting in federal elections.”... “Can I prove that? No."
(Helluva way to run a country.)
An even worse way to run a country is the intention to manipulate minds. Sadly so many minds are manipulable.
Perhaps slow motion, frame by frame, video captured of cold blooded murder, seen by millions, all while the lying regime repeats their exposed lies over and over will seed doubt in some of those minds??
“By any conceivable definition, goodness must require exercising at least minimal resistance—at little or no cost to oneself—against the normalization of brutality and hate. At the very least, it must include the critical judgment to see through the con of an imbecilic and barely literate reality-show huckster as he spews bigotry and bile directly from your television. And when you do see it, to do what little you can to keep him from ascending to the most powerful office in the world. It requires only the merest modicum of intellect and fellow feeling.”
https://forward.com/opinion/356956/the-banality-of-american-evil/
Christy, A Republican 77 yo woman told me she saw the video of Renee Good trying to run the ICE officer down and deserved what she got. How do you respond to that? I tried the truth and it did not penetrate.
They have to see it for themselves. There is absolutely no point to try to help them to see it. If they present to you in that way they don’t want to see it. I don’t try to convince others I’m just very clear about what I see and don’t engage beyond that. The video doesn’t lie. Their brains grew a rut in the neural pathway of lying to themselves.
You can fool some of the people all of the time, and some will take big lies to their grave. That said, I think that one of the drivers of effective protest is to keep injustice in the public's face long enough to penetrate penetrable denial, and some events, especially when underlined in public conversation, such as the Triangle Shirtwaist fire or the show trial of Emmett Tills assassins penetrates public indifference enough to make a difference. I think we are seeing some of this in Trump's poll rankings. It is shocking that this regime has any following at all, but it is declining. Not to say it is not still very dangerous.
Cult thinking is a security hole in human wisdom and empathy and is often deliberately crafted as a tool of tyrants. It is an exploit like a computer virus that blocks our own tools of reality checking. Orwell and Hannah Arendt have articulated how it works. I thought the "Republicans" would lose all credibility after excusing the behavior of the Jan 6th rioters, which we all saw on television, but no, the Instigator in Chief was elected president. In "1984" “The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and of your ears. It was their final, most essential command.” Those who refuse are shunned and otherwise persecuted.
I think we all have a degree of vulnerability for wanting to believe what we want to believe, and/or a degree of paranoia. There is a whole science built around that (advertising for one) to misinform the public.
When they shout “voter fraud” we should shout “hacking.”
The evidence of voter fraud is slim, not enough to change the outcome of a race for dog catcher. The evidence of hacking - messing with the software that tallies the results- is mighty. It includes the DODO’s boast at his Jan 19 2025 rally thanking Musk for being “good with computers, the vote-counting computers, and we won Pennsylvania.” See https://www.rev.com/transcripts/trump-rally-ahead-of-inaguration timestamp 28:03.
The non corrupt states had better be making sure their software hasn’t been compromised already, correcting it if it has, and keeping it safe til all the votes are counted. And prosecuting whoever has been doing the hacking.
Troubling.
Mikey and Stevie, the evil twins, two sides of the same coin.
Same 'ol serpent.
ICCT, your second paragraph caused me to guffaw, spitting coffee on my keyboard and disrupting the cat that is sleeping on my chest and occasionally scrolling the mousepad with her back paws.
Apologies to kitty! 🙀
Thank You ICTT!
Can Trump’s state-located boys declare that some voting machines are corrupt?
Amen!!!
Ever so grateful to read your ever so difficult to hear comments. Thank you Heather
Difficult to hear has (at least to potential) to help head off difficult to experience.
In the 2024 election in North Carolina the Governor, Lt. Governor and Attorney General, all Democrats were elected but Trump won the Presidency? I don’t understand how that can be possible.
Ticket-splitting is nothing new.
Read the real story:
https://thiswillhold.substack.com/p/the-election-whistleblowers-were
Even though I’m a fairly recent NC resident, I do know that one year Obama won NC, but the R candidate (McCrory)won the governor’s race. I believe trump won NC all three times, but the Dem candidate won the governor’s race all three times. It appears to be that NC residents do split their votes, which in the past wasn’t necessarily bad.
I love Heather's noting how, in power, Republicans stole from the poor to enrich the rich.
So, we can ask: does Anand Giridharadas’ insights into Epstein’s particular rich and powerful still hold?
His view, having spent nearly a full week in the Epstein estate’s release of e-mail files, concluded one particular mindset emerging there.
They all know how to discern anyone’s vulnerability to human hurt – and then totally to avoid that person thence.
In other words, the poison of the rich and powerful resembles the interior of all standardized testing and of all the corporate packaged textbooks as Diane Ravitch accounted for in her 2003’s “The Language Police.”
All equip themselves in neutered language only. All keep the personal at arms’ length or more. All align strictly with the linear conceits such as cohere all the corporate world and all business relationships from among the world’s dictators.
And they encourage lies such as Donald gave in his interview recorded today for the Super Bowl: that those ICE agents feel worse than anybody about the murders they committed. Their online texts show them bragging of those murders – so many of these police state thugs as dehumanized as J.D. Vance and all others at the top.
Totally perverse, how the dehumanized steal from the working classes over and over to float Epstein's cold-hearted but relentless rapists.
Eve notice how the economy always seems to be worse when the Republicans are in charge? There are few new jobs in the US right now b/c of ecodnomic uncertainty, but ICE is hiring! They are staffing ICE the same way they've been staffing the volunteer armed services ever since Viet Nam, make it financially attractive to the lowers classes and it's easy to find plenty of candidates willing to take up arms and rain violence down on their brothers and sisters.
I'm in my late 60s, and I can't remember a time where the GOP didn't mess up the economy.
I agree that dehumanization can take many forms. It is difficult to keep that human channel open consistently, but it can maximize our humanity, the breadth and depth of our experience of awareness; and what is death but loss of awareness? Indifference is anesthetizing, a deadening, and predation is evil.
It's also funny, J L, the virtue-signaling that always accompanies dehumanization.
Some have noted my disposition to post things very soon here -- as if by getting in early I'm but eager for collecting more multiples of "like."
But note, too, how when I cite anything about testing, anything about our schools all hollowed out from having voided humanities -- any time I do this -- I know, too, that those clicking "like" on whatever I say will reduce by 9/10ths.
So I added that bit today to what Anand Giridharadas said of our elites' amorality -- which our schools have been feeding.
And my numbers of those clicking "like" just craters.
Readers hate the suggestion that they are at all touched by anything from the habits our schools have normalized.
Hello Phil... For the Mar-a-Lago Crowd, only Money Matters.... The more that you have, the more that you matter.... Their Corruption is Killing this Country....
I'd stick with Anand Giridharadas, Apache.
Something else matters to the Epstein class -- along with, inseparable from money. That's impunity. Being indifferent to human pain.
That's why elites have turned schools into testing machinery, all of it cold, dehumanized, all keyed only to the gamesmanship of how one's points on tests place one above others.
Doesn’t help by being a pompous stuffed-shirt throwing around obscure names to impress people and demanding everybody and their grandmother agree with you all the time, does it?
No, Phil. I do not disagree with your position on the intentional dismembering of our educational system(s) nor that the absence of any sort of the humanities from philosophy, literature, art, poetry is profoundly altering how people see the world.
By the time I have read the same thing on 80% of the days that I peruse the Comments section, I stop acknowledging it, and frankly skim past most of the time.
Why do Readers hate the suggestion that they are at all touched by anything from the habits our schools have normalized?
I thought they were just tired of the fact you continue to mention humanities and the readers do not like this for some reason.
There are other villains, although none so ingrained.
What is the best way to support Georgia’s case against the FBI to restore election materials and set the precedent that such seizures are illegal. That case must proceed quickly and expertly.
Those voting machines may have been corrupted during the raid. They will at least need recertification. If Dems win on those machines, Trump will still claim they were corrupt.
So if Trump believes something, we can’t accuse him of lying?? How about “mentally confused”?
Under way with competent counsel.
We need a law that prohibits spreading misinformation about prior election DATA in order to incite mistrust in coming elections. I really don't understand why we can't have specific repercussions for spreading false factual DATA.
What if Trump believes his lies? Does he have freedom of speech? Freedom to lie? Will he sue media that fail to report his lies?
How do you prove fact from fiction?
By careful analysis of the facts, the false hypotheses generated by the fiction should be exposed. If immigrant voters overwhelmed the 1994 election, we would expect to see a clear and unmistakable bounce in the number of total votes, well beyond the trends of population growth. If that bounce is there, the immigrant hypothesis would be supported. If no clear bounce is found, that thypothesis is demonstrated to be false.
Reading these Letters every day is like opening a gift. Even when the content is somber, there is always something new to be learned or a new perspective to be gained. Today's is no exception. While I knew something about the 1898 election and the subsequent overthrow of the Wilmington, NC government (possibly from reading an earlier Letter) I was not familiar with the connection of these events with the famous/notorious D.W. Griffith film. Dr. Richardson connects all the dots. What a telling point it is that this was the first motion picture to be screened at the White House. I suppose it is, in a way, a reflection of the history of our country -- from TR hosting Booker T. Washington in 1901 to the thoroughly racist (yet heroically idealistic and conflicted) Wilson screening that film fourteen years later.
If we are to keep bending the arc of our country's history toward justice, it is imperative that we as citizens take whatever action we can to preserve our right to vote. It is no longer just a privilege that we exercise. We must see it as a patriotic obligation.
Free and fair elections have been my drumbeat forever. It sounds so fluffy- yet every time I walk into the polls to vote I feel such a big sense of pride that I 'get to vote'. This feeling has compelled me this season to volunteer at the polls. I am scared and will do my duties afraid.
Diabolical. You connect the dots so well. It’s like the Empire Strikes Back. The same evil coming back and trying to dominate. As they said, “may the Force be with us” 😀
Well, God knows the FARCE is with them!
Folks often ask what other types of peaceful protest to tell the federal Republican’s that this is not the economy we voted for. Scott Galloway can show how the number of Billionaires Subscriptions can really change big numbers. Start canceling some of your lifestyle subscriptions, and it will move the needle and make a difference.
The president will feel this': Prof G's case for a strike against big tech #subscriptions
https://youtu.be/vQ-PfRY64zM?si=7B5Tdvdl8jKJ0qL5
LIAR FRAUD, CONVICTED-FELON TRUMP, TRUMP’s MAGAts and TRUMP’s REPUBLICAN SYCOPHANTS ARE PLANNING TO INTERFERE IN THE UPCOMING NOVEMBER ELECTIONS. THIS (please excuse the French) SHIT MUST NOT BE ALLOWED TO HAPPEN!
We ALL know (in fact, EVERYONE knows) that NO NON-US CITIZENS will show up at the polls this coming November.
We ALL must be aware that, on election day, Trump will send his ICE and CBP goons to every polling place in Blue States and to every heavily-populated minority voting district polling place in Red States. ICE and CBP will not be there to arrest/detain non-US citizens, they will be there to INITIMIDATE – and to (excuse the French) FUCK with US citizens who came to cast their votes. As we’ve already seen across the U.S., ICE and CBP goons are racial profiling and are stopping and demanding proof of citizenship from US citizens. This will seriously delay people casting their votes. This will seriously delay the voting process to the point where polls might close before citizens have had the opportunity to cast their votes. This will also deter US citizens from showing up at the polls, simply because they do not want to go through the hassle, the annoyance of being stopped by ICE and CBP. FED GOV interference at polling places cannot be allowed to take place! We must – WE MUST – do EVERYTHING we can to prevent election interference from taking place. We must get an injunction from the courts to prevent this from taking place.
Please DO NOT WAIT. Time is of the essence. Contact your Senators and Representatives. Demand that they take action to prevent ICE and CBP (as well as all other FED GOV agents) from disrupting and interfering with the election. Also send letters to SCOTUS Justices. Put them on notice that WE THE PEOPLE will not tolerate election interference and that WE THE PEOPLE will hold them accountable and will do so by any means necessary. Please also send a copy of this post to every reporter you have an email address for.
No “agents” within 5 miles of a poll location or drop box.
Drop boxes have been reduced to one per country in Ohio as I recall. That would make them so easy to surround and the gauntlet so intimidating as to render them nearly useless. Ohio has already made it very hard to comply with mail in voting requirements.
The violent fascist regime kidnap brown people (US citizens-voters) when they come out of their homes. Fascists changed the way mail gets postmarked so ballots will be lost in their corrupted mail service.
Suppression of votes:
https://www.gregpalast.com/trump-lost-vote-suppression-won/
And if that’s not enough:
https://thecommoncoalition.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/TheCommonCoalitionReport_091725.pdf
Your urgency is noted, hopefully by someone with some answers
Joel we will stand proud, like Minnesotans and not be intimidated on election day. We will also volunteer to woman the polls like this lady will.
I like multiculturalism.
Life would be colorless without it.
Damn, if only we could figure out that albinos are boring. Especially those with no soul…
Diversity is inherently superior to uniformity....