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LetMyPeopleVote
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December 6, 2025
Trump now wants to rename the NFL and the sport of Football in America to something else
https://x.com/EdKrassen/status/1997006577413292403
December 6, 2025
Trump now wants to rename the NFL and the sport of Football in America to something else
https://x.com/EdKrassen/status/1997006577413292403
December 6, 2025
https://www.ms.now/rachel-maddow-show/maddowblog/gops-bill-cassidy-criticizes-kennedys-vaccine-panel-but-the-senator-isnt-prepared-to-act
MaddowBlog-GOP's Bill Cassidy criticizes Kennedy's vaccine panel, but the senator isn't prepared to act
In a brutal week for public health, the chairman on the Senate health committee could act. So why doesn’t he?
As Trump hires another ballroom architect for his White House vanity project, a question hangs overhead: Will he ever devote this much attention to governing and policymaking?
— Steve Benen (@stevebenen.com) 2025-12-05T14:04:30.667Z
I think we know the answer. www.ms.now/rachel-maddo...
https://www.ms.now/rachel-maddow-show/maddowblog/gops-bill-cassidy-criticizes-kennedys-vaccine-panel-but-the-senator-isnt-prepared-to-act
On Friday morning, things continued their slide from bad to worse. MS NOW reported:
....Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, a former physician who chairs the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, which has oversight of the Department of Health and Human Services, has raised related concerns. The day before the vote, the senator said online, “The ACIP is totally discredited. They are not protecting children.”
A day later, Cassidy published a follow-up online statement:
https://x.com/SenBillCassidy/status/1996974038413971766
.....The latter half of the quote, however, wasn’t quite right. Cassidy, in a position of real power and influence on Capitol Hill, has plenty of other options. He could concede publicly that confirming Kennedy was a tragic mistake; he could call for Kennedy’s resignation; he could even schedule hearings and haul officials from HHS, CDC and the FDA to Capitol Hill to demand answers and changes.
Cassidy isn’t doing any of these things. He’s instead publishing a couple of tweets, criticizing radical and dangerous public health moves in the mildest of ways.
I can’t ready the senator’s mind. Maybe he’s worried about the GOP primary challenge he’s facing in Louisiana next year? Maybe he’s letting partisan considerations hold him back? Maybe he’s under pressure from Republican leaders not to do anything more consequential?
Whatever his motivation, Cassidy can’t escape responsibility for the damage Kennedy and his cohorts are doing to the nation’s public health, and while he could take meaningful actions in response, the senator is choosing not to, seemingly indifferent to the consequences of his inaction.
Without data to support their decision and defying warnings from doctors, medical associations and public health groups, a federal advisory panel stocked with loyalists to Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has voted to stop recommending a life-saving vaccine to infants at birth.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will stop recommending the hepatitis B birth dose for infants — specifically those born to mothers who test negative for the virus — until they’re at least 2 months old, following a vote on Friday morning by the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP). Eight panel members voted to stop the recommendation, with three dissenting.
....Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, a former physician who chairs the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, which has oversight of the Department of Health and Human Services, has raised related concerns. The day before the vote, the senator said online, “The ACIP is totally discredited. They are not protecting children.”
A day later, Cassidy published a follow-up online statement:
https://x.com/SenBillCassidy/status/1996974038413971766
.....The latter half of the quote, however, wasn’t quite right. Cassidy, in a position of real power and influence on Capitol Hill, has plenty of other options. He could concede publicly that confirming Kennedy was a tragic mistake; he could call for Kennedy’s resignation; he could even schedule hearings and haul officials from HHS, CDC and the FDA to Capitol Hill to demand answers and changes.
Cassidy isn’t doing any of these things. He’s instead publishing a couple of tweets, criticizing radical and dangerous public health moves in the mildest of ways.
I can’t ready the senator’s mind. Maybe he’s worried about the GOP primary challenge he’s facing in Louisiana next year? Maybe he’s letting partisan considerations hold him back? Maybe he’s under pressure from Republican leaders not to do anything more consequential?
Whatever his motivation, Cassidy can’t escape responsibility for the damage Kennedy and his cohorts are doing to the nation’s public health, and while he could take meaningful actions in response, the senator is choosing not to, seemingly indifferent to the consequences of his inaction.
December 6, 2025
https://www.ms.now/rachel-maddow-show/maddowblog/suspected-pipe-bomber-told-fbi-he-backed-trump-believed-2020-election-conspiracies
MaddowBlog-Suspected pipe bomber told FBI he backed Trump, believed 2020 election conspiracies
There’s no shortage of questions about Brian Cole Jr. and his actions, but some new details are coming to the fore.
Some on the right seemed eager to suggest yesterday that the suspected pipe bomber was somehow aligned with the left.
— Steve Benen (@stevebenen.com) 2025-12-05T16:32:38.427Z
That was before Brian Cole Jr. told the FBI he backed Trump and believed 2020 election conspiracy theories. www.ms.now/rachel-maddo...
https://www.ms.now/rachel-maddow-show/maddowblog/suspected-pipe-bomber-told-fbi-he-backed-trump-believed-2020-election-conspiracies
Federal agents arrested a suspect Thursday morning, taking Brian Cole Jr. into custody. The Virginia man, who lives roughly 23 miles south of Capitol Hill, has been charged with transporting an explosive device and attempted malicious destruction by means of explosive materials, according to charging documents filed in court.
There’s no shortage of questions about the suspect and his actions, but some new details are coming to the fore. NBC News reported that Cole is cooperating with the FBI and has already shared important insights. From the report:
This dovetails with a related account from MS NOW’s Carol Leonnig and Ken Dilanian, who reported that the suspect confessed to agents Thursday that he planted the bombs near the Capitol — and indicated he supported Donald Trump, according to two people familiar with his interview.
These developments are obviously new, and as the investigation continues, officials will likely get a clearer sense of the suspect’s motivations.
There’s no shortage of questions about the suspect and his actions, but some new details are coming to the fore. NBC News reported that Cole is cooperating with the FBI and has already shared important insights. From the report:
The man charged with planting two pipe bombs near the Democratic and Republican party headquarters on the eve of the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol told the FBI he believed conspiracy theories about the 2020 election, according to two people familiar with the matter.
This dovetails with a related account from MS NOW’s Carol Leonnig and Ken Dilanian, who reported that the suspect confessed to agents Thursday that he planted the bombs near the Capitol — and indicated he supported Donald Trump, according to two people familiar with his interview.
These developments are obviously new, and as the investigation continues, officials will likely get a clearer sense of the suspect’s motivations.
December 5, 2025
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2025/12/your-private-data-is-building-trumps-voter-purge-machine/
I have been volunteering on voter protection for a while and I have been following the DOJ lawsuits to try to force states to turn over voter data. The above article details these efforts.
Your Private Data Is Building Trump's Voter Purge Machine
trump's DOJ has several lawsuits pending against Democratic states demanding unredacted voter information. It seems that the trump DOJ wants to build a nationwide voter database to use to contest elections. The trump DOJ has brought in a number of voter suppressors such as Christian Adams and Hans von Spakovsky. Harmeet Dhillon, is now the assistant attorney general for civil rights at the DOJ; and the Public Interest Legal Foundation (PILF), a conservative legal group whose former counsel, Maureen Riordan, now leads the DOJ’s voting section. The trump DOJ is trying to develop a nationwide data base of voters including "party affiliation, voting history, Social Security numbers, driver’s license information, even physical characteristics." This database scares me.
Your Private Data Is Building Trump’s Voter Purge Machine.
— Radio Free America (@radiofreeamerica.online) 2025-12-05T12:36:59.124Z
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2025/12/your-private-data-is-building-trumps-voter-purge-machine/
The September legal complaint was an escalation of a yearslong coordinated effort by conservatives to obtain voter roll data from numerous states, compare it to incomplete datasets they’d found on the commercial market, then attest that mismatches between the two are clear evidence of people illegally voting. The apparent goal: buttressing decadeslong, though still unproven, claims of rampant voter fraud and removing allegedly ineligible voters from the rolls, with potentially dire consequences for future elections.
In the past, these sorts of legal gambits came from right-wing groups like the America First Policy Institute, a Trump-aligned think tank co-founded by Brooke Rollins, now the secretary of agriculture; the Dhillon Law Group, whose founder, Harmeet Dhillon, is now the assistant attorney general for civil rights at the DOJ; and the Public Interest Legal Foundation (PILF), a conservative legal group whose former counsel, Maureen Riordan, now leads the DOJ’s voting section,. Riordan and Dhillon remain in the same line of business, citing familiar statutes in their barrage of new lawsuits against state election officials like Bellows; the key difference now is that they are promoting their routinely debunked theories from within the US government. Specifically, from the highest law enforcement agency in the country.....
Maine isn’t the only state the DOJ contacted. Over the last six months, it has demanded full, unredacted voter rolls from dozens of states in an effort to create the federal government’s first-ever national database of registered voters, accompanied by their private information: party affiliation, voting history, Social Security numbers, driver’s license information, even physical characteristics. The DOJ has formally sued 14 states for the data so far, 12 of which are led by Democrats. (The sole exceptions are Vermont, which has a Republican governor but is otherwise deeply blue, and New Hampshire, where Republican Gov. Kelly Ayotte has publicly disagreed with President Donald Trump’s plan to redraw congressional maps in advance of the midterms to give Republicans more seats.) Bellows believes Maine was among the first two states to be sued “because of animus”—also known as old-fashioned retribution.....
.......After claiming with no proof that he lost the popular vote in 2016 because 3 million people voted illegally, Trump brought back veterans of the Bush Justice Department, including Adams and von Spakovsky, as members of his Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity. Von Spakovsky advised the commission to reprise the Schlozman-era playbook and exclude Democrats and “mainstream Republican officials and/or academics” from serving on it. He and Adams secretly advised Vice Chair Kris Kobach, then–Kansas secretary of state, on the commission’s first major action: a sweeping request for sensitive voter data from all 50 states, including party affiliation, voter history, and Social Security numbers. Kobach wrote that it would be “very helpful in the Commission’s work identifying fraudulent registrations and other forms of voter fraud.”......
At least 40 states have received written requests from the Justice Department for their voter files, according to the Brennan Center for Justice. DOJ officials have said they eventually want the data from every state. So far, only two—Indiana and Wyoming—have complied, though the administration has adopted a harder stance in recent weeks. As of early December, the department has filed lawsuits against 14 states, beginning with Maine and Oregon.
“On the surface, it may seem like regular oversight, but it’s not,” Nevada Secretary of State Cisco Aguilar argued during a September press briefing with the States United Democracy Center, a group devoted to fair and secure elections. “The DOJ has the backing of the federal government. They’re trying to use the immense power to intimidate states into complying.”....
Administration officials have yet to explain their reasons for trying to create a national voter roll, but the DOJ confirmed to States Newsroom that the data was “being screened for ineligible voter entries.”
The agency is working with the Department of Homeland Security to run voter information through Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements, or SAVE, an online platform that provides access to various government databases in one place. Since its inception in 1987, the tool has been used to verify the citizenship of people applying for government benefits by checking alien identification numbers assigned to them by DHS. The Trump administration has dramatically expanded the tool in recent months, adding Social Security numbers and passport information to the system. As Mother Jones reported last month, DHS is also trying to connect every state’s driver’s license database to SAVE, so states can run their entire voter rolls through the database at one time. (A spokesperson for US Citizenship and Immigration Services, which administers SAVE, says states will need to ensure they are using the platform lawfully.)......
In November, a federal judge agreed that the new use of SAVE was concerning: “The Court is troubled by the recent changes to SAVE and doubts the lawfulness of the Government’s actions,” wrote Judge Sparkle Sooknanan. However, she declined to block the administration from using it because the plaintiffs hadn’t yet identified someone who had been directly harmed.
Even if the DOJ doesn’t find any legitimate evidence of noncitizen voting, false matches would produce sensational headlines across the MAGA-verse, giving the administration more ammunition to undermine trust in elections.
“My guess is they want the voter files to be able to say we have the voter files, and we know there are X or Y fraudulent people on it,” says Justin Levitt, who served as deputy assistant attorney general in the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division under President Barack Obama. “It will be fiction, but now they’ll say it because they have them. Even if they find an infinitesimal number of wrong people on the rolls, they will lie about the numbers.”.....
Normally, the DOJ’s voting section would work to prevent these kinds of efforts from affecting Americans’ ability to vote. Now, the voting section itself is in on the effort. “The main activity the section seems to be engaged in at this point,” says Levitt, the former deputy assistant attorney general, “is something illegal.”
In the past, these sorts of legal gambits came from right-wing groups like the America First Policy Institute, a Trump-aligned think tank co-founded by Brooke Rollins, now the secretary of agriculture; the Dhillon Law Group, whose founder, Harmeet Dhillon, is now the assistant attorney general for civil rights at the DOJ; and the Public Interest Legal Foundation (PILF), a conservative legal group whose former counsel, Maureen Riordan, now leads the DOJ’s voting section,. Riordan and Dhillon remain in the same line of business, citing familiar statutes in their barrage of new lawsuits against state election officials like Bellows; the key difference now is that they are promoting their routinely debunked theories from within the US government. Specifically, from the highest law enforcement agency in the country.....
Maine isn’t the only state the DOJ contacted. Over the last six months, it has demanded full, unredacted voter rolls from dozens of states in an effort to create the federal government’s first-ever national database of registered voters, accompanied by their private information: party affiliation, voting history, Social Security numbers, driver’s license information, even physical characteristics. The DOJ has formally sued 14 states for the data so far, 12 of which are led by Democrats. (The sole exceptions are Vermont, which has a Republican governor but is otherwise deeply blue, and New Hampshire, where Republican Gov. Kelly Ayotte has publicly disagreed with President Donald Trump’s plan to redraw congressional maps in advance of the midterms to give Republicans more seats.) Bellows believes Maine was among the first two states to be sued “because of animus”—also known as old-fashioned retribution.....
.......After claiming with no proof that he lost the popular vote in 2016 because 3 million people voted illegally, Trump brought back veterans of the Bush Justice Department, including Adams and von Spakovsky, as members of his Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity. Von Spakovsky advised the commission to reprise the Schlozman-era playbook and exclude Democrats and “mainstream Republican officials and/or academics” from serving on it. He and Adams secretly advised Vice Chair Kris Kobach, then–Kansas secretary of state, on the commission’s first major action: a sweeping request for sensitive voter data from all 50 states, including party affiliation, voter history, and Social Security numbers. Kobach wrote that it would be “very helpful in the Commission’s work identifying fraudulent registrations and other forms of voter fraud.”......
At least 40 states have received written requests from the Justice Department for their voter files, according to the Brennan Center for Justice. DOJ officials have said they eventually want the data from every state. So far, only two—Indiana and Wyoming—have complied, though the administration has adopted a harder stance in recent weeks. As of early December, the department has filed lawsuits against 14 states, beginning with Maine and Oregon.
“On the surface, it may seem like regular oversight, but it’s not,” Nevada Secretary of State Cisco Aguilar argued during a September press briefing with the States United Democracy Center, a group devoted to fair and secure elections. “The DOJ has the backing of the federal government. They’re trying to use the immense power to intimidate states into complying.”....
Administration officials have yet to explain their reasons for trying to create a national voter roll, but the DOJ confirmed to States Newsroom that the data was “being screened for ineligible voter entries.”
The agency is working with the Department of Homeland Security to run voter information through Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements, or SAVE, an online platform that provides access to various government databases in one place. Since its inception in 1987, the tool has been used to verify the citizenship of people applying for government benefits by checking alien identification numbers assigned to them by DHS. The Trump administration has dramatically expanded the tool in recent months, adding Social Security numbers and passport information to the system. As Mother Jones reported last month, DHS is also trying to connect every state’s driver’s license database to SAVE, so states can run their entire voter rolls through the database at one time. (A spokesperson for US Citizenship and Immigration Services, which administers SAVE, says states will need to ensure they are using the platform lawfully.)......
In November, a federal judge agreed that the new use of SAVE was concerning: “The Court is troubled by the recent changes to SAVE and doubts the lawfulness of the Government’s actions,” wrote Judge Sparkle Sooknanan. However, she declined to block the administration from using it because the plaintiffs hadn’t yet identified someone who had been directly harmed.
Even if the DOJ doesn’t find any legitimate evidence of noncitizen voting, false matches would produce sensational headlines across the MAGA-verse, giving the administration more ammunition to undermine trust in elections.
“My guess is they want the voter files to be able to say we have the voter files, and we know there are X or Y fraudulent people on it,” says Justin Levitt, who served as deputy assistant attorney general in the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division under President Barack Obama. “It will be fiction, but now they’ll say it because they have them. Even if they find an infinitesimal number of wrong people on the rolls, they will lie about the numbers.”.....
Normally, the DOJ’s voting section would work to prevent these kinds of efforts from affecting Americans’ ability to vote. Now, the voting section itself is in on the effort. “The main activity the section seems to be engaged in at this point,” says Levitt, the former deputy assistant attorney general, “is something illegal.”
I have been volunteering on voter protection for a while and I have been following the DOJ lawsuits to try to force states to turn over voter data. The above article details these efforts.
December 5, 2025
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2025/12/your-private-data-is-building-trumps-voter-purge-machine/
I have been volunteering on voter protection for a while and I have been following the DOJ lawsuits to try to force states to turn over voter data. The above article details these efforts.
Your Private Data Is Building Trump's Voter Purge Machine
trump's DOJ has several lawsuits pending against Democratic states demanding unredacted voter information. It seems that the trump DOJ wants to build a nationwide voter database to use to contest elections. The trump DOJ has brought in a number of voter suppressors such as Christian Adams and Hans von Spakovsky. Harmeet Dhillon, is now the assistant attorney general for civil rights at the DOJ; and the Public Interest Legal Foundation (PILF), a conservative legal group whose former counsel, Maureen Riordan, now leads the DOJ’s voting section. The trump DOJ is trying to develop a nationwide data base of voters including "party affiliation, voting history, Social Security numbers, driver’s license information, even physical characteristics." This database scares me.
Your Private Data Is Building Trump’s Voter Purge Machine.
— Radio Free America (@radiofreeamerica.online) 2025-12-05T12:36:59.124Z
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2025/12/your-private-data-is-building-trumps-voter-purge-machine/
The September legal complaint was an escalation of a yearslong coordinated effort by conservatives to obtain voter roll data from numerous states, compare it to incomplete datasets they’d found on the commercial market, then attest that mismatches between the two are clear evidence of people illegally voting. The apparent goal: buttressing decadeslong, though still unproven, claims of rampant voter fraud and removing allegedly ineligible voters from the rolls, with potentially dire consequences for future elections.
In the past, these sorts of legal gambits came from right-wing groups like the America First Policy Institute, a Trump-aligned think tank co-founded by Brooke Rollins, now the secretary of agriculture; the Dhillon Law Group, whose founder, Harmeet Dhillon, is now the assistant attorney general for civil rights at the DOJ; and the Public Interest Legal Foundation (PILF), a conservative legal group whose former counsel, Maureen Riordan, now leads the DOJ’s voting section,. Riordan and Dhillon remain in the same line of business, citing familiar statutes in their barrage of new lawsuits against state election officials like Bellows; the key difference now is that they are promoting their routinely debunked theories from within the US government. Specifically, from the highest law enforcement agency in the country.....
Maine isn’t the only state the DOJ contacted. Over the last six months, it has demanded full, unredacted voter rolls from dozens of states in an effort to create the federal government’s first-ever national database of registered voters, accompanied by their private information: party affiliation, voting history, Social Security numbers, driver’s license information, even physical characteristics. The DOJ has formally sued 14 states for the data so far, 12 of which are led by Democrats. (The sole exceptions are Vermont, which has a Republican governor but is otherwise deeply blue, and New Hampshire, where Republican Gov. Kelly Ayotte has publicly disagreed with President Donald Trump’s plan to redraw congressional maps in advance of the midterms to give Republicans more seats.) Bellows believes Maine was among the first two states to be sued “because of animus”—also known as old-fashioned retribution.....
.......After claiming with no proof that he lost the popular vote in 2016 because 3 million people voted illegally, Trump brought back veterans of the Bush Justice Department, including Adams and von Spakovsky, as members of his Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity. Von Spakovsky advised the commission to reprise the Schlozman-era playbook and exclude Democrats and “mainstream Republican officials and/or academics” from serving on it. He and Adams secretly advised Vice Chair Kris Kobach, then–Kansas secretary of state, on the commission’s first major action: a sweeping request for sensitive voter data from all 50 states, including party affiliation, voter history, and Social Security numbers. Kobach wrote that it would be “very helpful in the Commission’s work identifying fraudulent registrations and other forms of voter fraud.”......
At least 40 states have received written requests from the Justice Department for their voter files, according to the Brennan Center for Justice. DOJ officials have said they eventually want the data from every state. So far, only two—Indiana and Wyoming—have complied, though the administration has adopted a harder stance in recent weeks. As of early December, the department has filed lawsuits against 14 states, beginning with Maine and Oregon.
“On the surface, it may seem like regular oversight, but it’s not,” Nevada Secretary of State Cisco Aguilar argued during a September press briefing with the States United Democracy Center, a group devoted to fair and secure elections. “The DOJ has the backing of the federal government. They’re trying to use the immense power to intimidate states into complying.”....
Administration officials have yet to explain their reasons for trying to create a national voter roll, but the DOJ confirmed to States Newsroom that the data was “being screened for ineligible voter entries.”
The agency is working with the Department of Homeland Security to run voter information through Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements, or SAVE, an online platform that provides access to various government databases in one place. Since its inception in 1987, the tool has been used to verify the citizenship of people applying for government benefits by checking alien identification numbers assigned to them by DHS. The Trump administration has dramatically expanded the tool in recent months, adding Social Security numbers and passport information to the system. As Mother Jones reported last month, DHS is also trying to connect every state’s driver’s license database to SAVE, so states can run their entire voter rolls through the database at one time. (A spokesperson for US Citizenship and Immigration Services, which administers SAVE, says states will need to ensure they are using the platform lawfully.)......
In November, a federal judge agreed that the new use of SAVE was concerning: “The Court is troubled by the recent changes to SAVE and doubts the lawfulness of the Government’s actions,” wrote Judge Sparkle Sooknanan. However, she declined to block the administration from using it because the plaintiffs hadn’t yet identified someone who had been directly harmed.
Even if the DOJ doesn’t find any legitimate evidence of noncitizen voting, false matches would produce sensational headlines across the MAGA-verse, giving the administration more ammunition to undermine trust in elections.
“My guess is they want the voter files to be able to say we have the voter files, and we know there are X or Y fraudulent people on it,” says Justin Levitt, who served as deputy assistant attorney general in the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division under President Barack Obama. “It will be fiction, but now they’ll say it because they have them. Even if they find an infinitesimal number of wrong people on the rolls, they will lie about the numbers.”.....
Normally, the DOJ’s voting section would work to prevent these kinds of efforts from affecting Americans’ ability to vote. Now, the voting section itself is in on the effort. “The main activity the section seems to be engaged in at this point,” says Levitt, the former deputy assistant attorney general, “is something illegal.”
In the past, these sorts of legal gambits came from right-wing groups like the America First Policy Institute, a Trump-aligned think tank co-founded by Brooke Rollins, now the secretary of agriculture; the Dhillon Law Group, whose founder, Harmeet Dhillon, is now the assistant attorney general for civil rights at the DOJ; and the Public Interest Legal Foundation (PILF), a conservative legal group whose former counsel, Maureen Riordan, now leads the DOJ’s voting section,. Riordan and Dhillon remain in the same line of business, citing familiar statutes in their barrage of new lawsuits against state election officials like Bellows; the key difference now is that they are promoting their routinely debunked theories from within the US government. Specifically, from the highest law enforcement agency in the country.....
Maine isn’t the only state the DOJ contacted. Over the last six months, it has demanded full, unredacted voter rolls from dozens of states in an effort to create the federal government’s first-ever national database of registered voters, accompanied by their private information: party affiliation, voting history, Social Security numbers, driver’s license information, even physical characteristics. The DOJ has formally sued 14 states for the data so far, 12 of which are led by Democrats. (The sole exceptions are Vermont, which has a Republican governor but is otherwise deeply blue, and New Hampshire, where Republican Gov. Kelly Ayotte has publicly disagreed with President Donald Trump’s plan to redraw congressional maps in advance of the midterms to give Republicans more seats.) Bellows believes Maine was among the first two states to be sued “because of animus”—also known as old-fashioned retribution.....
.......After claiming with no proof that he lost the popular vote in 2016 because 3 million people voted illegally, Trump brought back veterans of the Bush Justice Department, including Adams and von Spakovsky, as members of his Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity. Von Spakovsky advised the commission to reprise the Schlozman-era playbook and exclude Democrats and “mainstream Republican officials and/or academics” from serving on it. He and Adams secretly advised Vice Chair Kris Kobach, then–Kansas secretary of state, on the commission’s first major action: a sweeping request for sensitive voter data from all 50 states, including party affiliation, voter history, and Social Security numbers. Kobach wrote that it would be “very helpful in the Commission’s work identifying fraudulent registrations and other forms of voter fraud.”......
At least 40 states have received written requests from the Justice Department for their voter files, according to the Brennan Center for Justice. DOJ officials have said they eventually want the data from every state. So far, only two—Indiana and Wyoming—have complied, though the administration has adopted a harder stance in recent weeks. As of early December, the department has filed lawsuits against 14 states, beginning with Maine and Oregon.
“On the surface, it may seem like regular oversight, but it’s not,” Nevada Secretary of State Cisco Aguilar argued during a September press briefing with the States United Democracy Center, a group devoted to fair and secure elections. “The DOJ has the backing of the federal government. They’re trying to use the immense power to intimidate states into complying.”....
Administration officials have yet to explain their reasons for trying to create a national voter roll, but the DOJ confirmed to States Newsroom that the data was “being screened for ineligible voter entries.”
The agency is working with the Department of Homeland Security to run voter information through Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements, or SAVE, an online platform that provides access to various government databases in one place. Since its inception in 1987, the tool has been used to verify the citizenship of people applying for government benefits by checking alien identification numbers assigned to them by DHS. The Trump administration has dramatically expanded the tool in recent months, adding Social Security numbers and passport information to the system. As Mother Jones reported last month, DHS is also trying to connect every state’s driver’s license database to SAVE, so states can run their entire voter rolls through the database at one time. (A spokesperson for US Citizenship and Immigration Services, which administers SAVE, says states will need to ensure they are using the platform lawfully.)......
In November, a federal judge agreed that the new use of SAVE was concerning: “The Court is troubled by the recent changes to SAVE and doubts the lawfulness of the Government’s actions,” wrote Judge Sparkle Sooknanan. However, she declined to block the administration from using it because the plaintiffs hadn’t yet identified someone who had been directly harmed.
Even if the DOJ doesn’t find any legitimate evidence of noncitizen voting, false matches would produce sensational headlines across the MAGA-verse, giving the administration more ammunition to undermine trust in elections.
“My guess is they want the voter files to be able to say we have the voter files, and we know there are X or Y fraudulent people on it,” says Justin Levitt, who served as deputy assistant attorney general in the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division under President Barack Obama. “It will be fiction, but now they’ll say it because they have them. Even if they find an infinitesimal number of wrong people on the rolls, they will lie about the numbers.”.....
Normally, the DOJ’s voting section would work to prevent these kinds of efforts from affecting Americans’ ability to vote. Now, the voting section itself is in on the effort. “The main activity the section seems to be engaged in at this point,” says Levitt, the former deputy assistant attorney general, “is something illegal.”
I have been volunteering on voter protection for a while and I have been following the DOJ lawsuits to try to force states to turn over voter data. The above article details these efforts.
December 5, 2025
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2025/12/your-private-data-is-building-trumps-voter-purge-machine/
I have been volunteering on voter protection for a while and I have been following the DOJ lawsuits to try to force states to turn over voter data. The above article details these efforts.
Your Private Data Is Building Trump's Voter Purge Machine
trump's DOJ has several lawsuits pending against Democratic states demanding unredacted voter information. It seems that the trump DOJ wants to build a nationwide voter database to use to contest elections. The trump DOJ has brought in a number of voter suppressors such as Christian Adams and Hans von Spakovsky. Harmeet Dhillon, is now the assistant attorney general for civil rights at the DOJ; and the Public Interest Legal Foundation (PILF), a conservative legal group whose former counsel, Maureen Riordan, now leads the DOJ’s voting section. The trump DOJ is trying to develop a nationwide data base of voters including "party affiliation, voting history, Social Security numbers, driver’s license information, even physical characteristics." This database scares me.
Your Private Data Is Building Trump’s Voter Purge Machine.
— Radio Free America (@radiofreeamerica.online) 2025-12-05T12:36:59.124Z
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2025/12/your-private-data-is-building-trumps-voter-purge-machine/
The September legal complaint was an escalation of a yearslong coordinated effort by conservatives to obtain voter roll data from numerous states, compare it to incomplete datasets they’d found on the commercial market, then attest that mismatches between the two are clear evidence of people illegally voting. The apparent goal: buttressing decadeslong, though still unproven, claims of rampant voter fraud and removing allegedly ineligible voters from the rolls, with potentially dire consequences for future elections.
In the past, these sorts of legal gambits came from right-wing groups like the America First Policy Institute, a Trump-aligned think tank co-founded by Brooke Rollins, now the secretary of agriculture; the Dhillon Law Group, whose founder, Harmeet Dhillon, is now the assistant attorney general for civil rights at the DOJ; and the Public Interest Legal Foundation (PILF), a conservative legal group whose former counsel, Maureen Riordan, now leads the DOJ’s voting section,. Riordan and Dhillon remain in the same line of business, citing familiar statutes in their barrage of new lawsuits against state election officials like Bellows; the key difference now is that they are promoting their routinely debunked theories from within the US government. Specifically, from the highest law enforcement agency in the country.....
Maine isn’t the only state the DOJ contacted. Over the last six months, it has demanded full, unredacted voter rolls from dozens of states in an effort to create the federal government’s first-ever national database of registered voters, accompanied by their private information: party affiliation, voting history, Social Security numbers, driver’s license information, even physical characteristics. The DOJ has formally sued 14 states for the data so far, 12 of which are led by Democrats. (The sole exceptions are Vermont, which has a Republican governor but is otherwise deeply blue, and New Hampshire, where Republican Gov. Kelly Ayotte has publicly disagreed with President Donald Trump’s plan to redraw congressional maps in advance of the midterms to give Republicans more seats.) Bellows believes Maine was among the first two states to be sued “because of animus”—also known as old-fashioned retribution.....
.......After claiming with no proof that he lost the popular vote in 2016 because 3 million people voted illegally, Trump brought back veterans of the Bush Justice Department, including Adams and von Spakovsky, as members of his Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity. Von Spakovsky advised the commission to reprise the Schlozman-era playbook and exclude Democrats and “mainstream Republican officials and/or academics” from serving on it. He and Adams secretly advised Vice Chair Kris Kobach, then–Kansas secretary of state, on the commission’s first major action: a sweeping request for sensitive voter data from all 50 states, including party affiliation, voter history, and Social Security numbers. Kobach wrote that it would be “very helpful in the Commission’s work identifying fraudulent registrations and other forms of voter fraud.”......
At least 40 states have received written requests from the Justice Department for their voter files, according to the Brennan Center for Justice. DOJ officials have said they eventually want the data from every state. So far, only two—Indiana and Wyoming—have complied, though the administration has adopted a harder stance in recent weeks. As of early December, the department has filed lawsuits against 14 states, beginning with Maine and Oregon.
“On the surface, it may seem like regular oversight, but it’s not,” Nevada Secretary of State Cisco Aguilar argued during a September press briefing with the States United Democracy Center, a group devoted to fair and secure elections. “The DOJ has the backing of the federal government. They’re trying to use the immense power to intimidate states into complying.”....
Administration officials have yet to explain their reasons for trying to create a national voter roll, but the DOJ confirmed to States Newsroom that the data was “being screened for ineligible voter entries.”
The agency is working with the Department of Homeland Security to run voter information through Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements, or SAVE, an online platform that provides access to various government databases in one place. Since its inception in 1987, the tool has been used to verify the citizenship of people applying for government benefits by checking alien identification numbers assigned to them by DHS. The Trump administration has dramatically expanded the tool in recent months, adding Social Security numbers and passport information to the system. As Mother Jones reported last month, DHS is also trying to connect every state’s driver’s license database to SAVE, so states can run their entire voter rolls through the database at one time. (A spokesperson for US Citizenship and Immigration Services, which administers SAVE, says states will need to ensure they are using the platform lawfully.)......
In November, a federal judge agreed that the new use of SAVE was concerning: “The Court is troubled by the recent changes to SAVE and doubts the lawfulness of the Government’s actions,” wrote Judge Sparkle Sooknanan. However, she declined to block the administration from using it because the plaintiffs hadn’t yet identified someone who had been directly harmed.
Even if the DOJ doesn’t find any legitimate evidence of noncitizen voting, false matches would produce sensational headlines across the MAGA-verse, giving the administration more ammunition to undermine trust in elections.
“My guess is they want the voter files to be able to say we have the voter files, and we know there are X or Y fraudulent people on it,” says Justin Levitt, who served as deputy assistant attorney general in the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division under President Barack Obama. “It will be fiction, but now they’ll say it because they have them. Even if they find an infinitesimal number of wrong people on the rolls, they will lie about the numbers.”.....
Normally, the DOJ’s voting section would work to prevent these kinds of efforts from affecting Americans’ ability to vote. Now, the voting section itself is in on the effort. “The main activity the section seems to be engaged in at this point,” says Levitt, the former deputy assistant attorney general, “is something illegal.”
In the past, these sorts of legal gambits came from right-wing groups like the America First Policy Institute, a Trump-aligned think tank co-founded by Brooke Rollins, now the secretary of agriculture; the Dhillon Law Group, whose founder, Harmeet Dhillon, is now the assistant attorney general for civil rights at the DOJ; and the Public Interest Legal Foundation (PILF), a conservative legal group whose former counsel, Maureen Riordan, now leads the DOJ’s voting section,. Riordan and Dhillon remain in the same line of business, citing familiar statutes in their barrage of new lawsuits against state election officials like Bellows; the key difference now is that they are promoting their routinely debunked theories from within the US government. Specifically, from the highest law enforcement agency in the country.....
Maine isn’t the only state the DOJ contacted. Over the last six months, it has demanded full, unredacted voter rolls from dozens of states in an effort to create the federal government’s first-ever national database of registered voters, accompanied by their private information: party affiliation, voting history, Social Security numbers, driver’s license information, even physical characteristics. The DOJ has formally sued 14 states for the data so far, 12 of which are led by Democrats. (The sole exceptions are Vermont, which has a Republican governor but is otherwise deeply blue, and New Hampshire, where Republican Gov. Kelly Ayotte has publicly disagreed with President Donald Trump’s plan to redraw congressional maps in advance of the midterms to give Republicans more seats.) Bellows believes Maine was among the first two states to be sued “because of animus”—also known as old-fashioned retribution.....
.......After claiming with no proof that he lost the popular vote in 2016 because 3 million people voted illegally, Trump brought back veterans of the Bush Justice Department, including Adams and von Spakovsky, as members of his Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity. Von Spakovsky advised the commission to reprise the Schlozman-era playbook and exclude Democrats and “mainstream Republican officials and/or academics” from serving on it. He and Adams secretly advised Vice Chair Kris Kobach, then–Kansas secretary of state, on the commission’s first major action: a sweeping request for sensitive voter data from all 50 states, including party affiliation, voter history, and Social Security numbers. Kobach wrote that it would be “very helpful in the Commission’s work identifying fraudulent registrations and other forms of voter fraud.”......
At least 40 states have received written requests from the Justice Department for their voter files, according to the Brennan Center for Justice. DOJ officials have said they eventually want the data from every state. So far, only two—Indiana and Wyoming—have complied, though the administration has adopted a harder stance in recent weeks. As of early December, the department has filed lawsuits against 14 states, beginning with Maine and Oregon.
“On the surface, it may seem like regular oversight, but it’s not,” Nevada Secretary of State Cisco Aguilar argued during a September press briefing with the States United Democracy Center, a group devoted to fair and secure elections. “The DOJ has the backing of the federal government. They’re trying to use the immense power to intimidate states into complying.”....
Administration officials have yet to explain their reasons for trying to create a national voter roll, but the DOJ confirmed to States Newsroom that the data was “being screened for ineligible voter entries.”
The agency is working with the Department of Homeland Security to run voter information through Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements, or SAVE, an online platform that provides access to various government databases in one place. Since its inception in 1987, the tool has been used to verify the citizenship of people applying for government benefits by checking alien identification numbers assigned to them by DHS. The Trump administration has dramatically expanded the tool in recent months, adding Social Security numbers and passport information to the system. As Mother Jones reported last month, DHS is also trying to connect every state’s driver’s license database to SAVE, so states can run their entire voter rolls through the database at one time. (A spokesperson for US Citizenship and Immigration Services, which administers SAVE, says states will need to ensure they are using the platform lawfully.)......
In November, a federal judge agreed that the new use of SAVE was concerning: “The Court is troubled by the recent changes to SAVE and doubts the lawfulness of the Government’s actions,” wrote Judge Sparkle Sooknanan. However, she declined to block the administration from using it because the plaintiffs hadn’t yet identified someone who had been directly harmed.
Even if the DOJ doesn’t find any legitimate evidence of noncitizen voting, false matches would produce sensational headlines across the MAGA-verse, giving the administration more ammunition to undermine trust in elections.
“My guess is they want the voter files to be able to say we have the voter files, and we know there are X or Y fraudulent people on it,” says Justin Levitt, who served as deputy assistant attorney general in the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division under President Barack Obama. “It will be fiction, but now they’ll say it because they have them. Even if they find an infinitesimal number of wrong people on the rolls, they will lie about the numbers.”.....
Normally, the DOJ’s voting section would work to prevent these kinds of efforts from affecting Americans’ ability to vote. Now, the voting section itself is in on the effort. “The main activity the section seems to be engaged in at this point,” says Levitt, the former deputy assistant attorney general, “is something illegal.”
I have been volunteering on voter protection for a while and I have been following the DOJ lawsuits to try to force states to turn over voter data. The above article details these efforts.
December 5, 2025
https://www.ms.now/rachel-maddow-show/maddowblog/fbis-bongino-tries-to-explain-his-discredited-conspiracy-theory-in-pipe-bombs-case
MaddowBlog-FBI's Bongino tries to explain his discredited conspiracy theory in pipe-bombs case
Why did the FBI deputy director get the pipe-bombs case wrong? He has an answer, but it isn’t a good one.
FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino now admits that when he peddled bogus conspiracy theories about the pipe-bombs case, he didn’t know what he was talking about.
— Steve Benen (@stevebenen.com) 2025-12-05T15:22:08.279Z
“I was paid in the past for my opinions,†he said.
I’m not sure if he’s fully thought this through. www.ms.now/rachel-maddo...
https://www.ms.now/rachel-maddow-show/maddowblog/fbis-bongino-tries-to-explain-his-discredited-conspiracy-theory-in-pipe-bombs-case
Eleven months later, Bongino helped lead a press conference to announce the arrest of a suspect in the case. If the FBI and the Justice Department have the right guy, then clearly this was not “an inside job” and those conspiracy theories were wrong.
How, pray tell, does the FBI deputy director explain peddling conspiratorial nonsense that his own agency appears to have debunked? As it turns out, Bongino was given an opportunity to explain himself during a Thursday night appearance on Fox News
https://x.com/Acyn/status/1996765992589185500
Host Sean Hannity noted Bongino’s earlier comments about the case, to which the FBI deputy director responded, “You know, listen, I was paid in the past, Sean, for my opinions. That’s clear. And one day, I’ll be back in that space, but that’s not what I’m paid for now.”
So let me see if I have this straight: Bongino was a far-right media personality who used his platform to tell the public, among other things, about his conspiratorial beliefs related to the pipe-bombs case. Two months after peddling these claims, the president tapped him to help lead the FBI.
And now, however, Bongino seems willing to acknowledge that he didn’t know what he was talking about (or that he embraced certain positions because they were more lucrative) — which naturally raises a whole bunch of questions about why he was hired for a key federal law enforcement position and why anyone should find him credible going forward.
How, pray tell, does the FBI deputy director explain peddling conspiratorial nonsense that his own agency appears to have debunked? As it turns out, Bongino was given an opportunity to explain himself during a Thursday night appearance on Fox News
https://x.com/Acyn/status/1996765992589185500
Host Sean Hannity noted Bongino’s earlier comments about the case, to which the FBI deputy director responded, “You know, listen, I was paid in the past, Sean, for my opinions. That’s clear. And one day, I’ll be back in that space, but that’s not what I’m paid for now.”
So let me see if I have this straight: Bongino was a far-right media personality who used his platform to tell the public, among other things, about his conspiratorial beliefs related to the pipe-bombs case. Two months after peddling these claims, the president tapped him to help lead the FBI.
And now, however, Bongino seems willing to acknowledge that he didn’t know what he was talking about (or that he embraced certain positions because they were more lucrative) — which naturally raises a whole bunch of questions about why he was hired for a key federal law enforcement position and why anyone should find him credible going forward.
December 5, 2025
https://www.ms.now/rachel-maddow-show/maddowblog/fifa-rewards-trump-with-a-new-hastily-arranged-entirely-unwarranted-peace-prize
MaddowBlog-FIFA rewards Trump with a new, hastily arranged, entirely unwarranted 'peace' prize
FIFA rewards Trump with a new, hastily arranged, entirely unwarranted ‘peace’ prize
The fact that Trump put the ridiculous “FIFA Peace Prize†medal around his own neck added an unintentionally amusing — and oddly apt — twist on the award ceremony. www.ms.now/rachel-maddo...
— Steve Benen (@stevebenen.com) 2025-12-05T18:01:52.369Z
https://www.ms.now/rachel-maddow-show/maddowblog/fifa-rewards-trump-with-a-new-hastily-arranged-entirely-unwarranted-peace-prize
Donald Trump went to embarrassing lengths in his campaign for a Nobel Peace Prize — to no avail. Soon after, Gianni Infantino, who leads FIFA, soccer’s global governing body, got to work trying to make his friend in the White House feel better.
In fact, Infantino directed the international organization to create its own honor, called the “FIFA Peace Prize — Football Unites the World.” The New York Times reported that the effort “was so hastily arranged that it surprised several of the body’s most senior officials, including board members and vice presidents, according to four soccer executives briefed on the events.”
Take a wild guess who won the award.
https://x.com/Acyn/status/1996997128875659386
.......The obvious problem with these developments is that Trump doesn’t deserve a peace prize. The president is, after all, embroiled in an ongoing controversy surrounding his administration’s alleged war crimes, which dovetails with a series of related incidents that include Republicans’ threats targeting Latin American countries and Nigeria, preemptive military strikes on targets in Iran and a bombing campaign in Yemen.......
But there are other problems just below the surface of this new peace prize. What we have here is an example of a foreign businessman trying to curry favor with the White House, concocting a dubious prize that he knows Trump will appreciate.
Infantino isn’t alone. Axios recently reported that officials in Switzerland persuaded Trump to lower tariff rates by deploying a delegation of industry tycoons to the White House bearing gifts, including “a special Rolex desktop clock, a 1-kilogram personalized gold bar, and loads of flattery.”
The report added, “Trump loves such pampering, and the word’s out among nations and companies seeking his favor. Tributes fit for a king — especially gold — catch his eyes and his heart.” (The Swiss gold bar, which sounds a bit similar to the gift that helped land former Sen. Bob Menendez in prison, was stamped with “45” and “47” in homage to Trump’s presidential terms.)
And now FIFA has rewarded the American president with a gold honor of its own.
In fact, Infantino directed the international organization to create its own honor, called the “FIFA Peace Prize — Football Unites the World.” The New York Times reported that the effort “was so hastily arranged that it surprised several of the body’s most senior officials, including board members and vice presidents, according to four soccer executives briefed on the events.”
Take a wild guess who won the award.
https://x.com/Acyn/status/1996997128875659386
.......The obvious problem with these developments is that Trump doesn’t deserve a peace prize. The president is, after all, embroiled in an ongoing controversy surrounding his administration’s alleged war crimes, which dovetails with a series of related incidents that include Republicans’ threats targeting Latin American countries and Nigeria, preemptive military strikes on targets in Iran and a bombing campaign in Yemen.......
But there are other problems just below the surface of this new peace prize. What we have here is an example of a foreign businessman trying to curry favor with the White House, concocting a dubious prize that he knows Trump will appreciate.
Infantino isn’t alone. Axios recently reported that officials in Switzerland persuaded Trump to lower tariff rates by deploying a delegation of industry tycoons to the White House bearing gifts, including “a special Rolex desktop clock, a 1-kilogram personalized gold bar, and loads of flattery.”
The report added, “Trump loves such pampering, and the word’s out among nations and companies seeking his favor. Tributes fit for a king — especially gold — catch his eyes and his heart.” (The Swiss gold bar, which sounds a bit similar to the gift that helped land former Sen. Bob Menendez in prison, was stamped with “45” and “47” in homage to Trump’s presidential terms.)
And now FIFA has rewarded the American president with a gold honor of its own.
December 5, 2025
Kash Patel ordered FBI detail to give girlfriend's pal a lift home: sources
Source: NBC
FBI Director Kash Patel has — on more than one occasion — ordered that the security detail protecting his girlfriend escort one of her allegedly inebriated friends home after a night of partying in Nashville, according to three people with knowledge of the incidents.
Patel’s girlfriend, Alexis Wilkins, asked FBI agents on her security team at least two times, including once this spring, to drive her friend home, and agents objected to diverting from their assignment, said the sources, who were granted anonymity to discuss nonpublic matters. But Patel insisted they do as Wilkins requested and in one case called the leader of Wilkins’ security detail and yelled at him to do so.
News of the effort to deploy agents to provide security for a private citizen has spread through the bureau and beyond, as agents have grown increasingly concerned by Patel’s use of the bureau’s strapped resources, the people said. .....
At Patel’s direction, the FBI provides a separate security detail for Wilkins, 27, a country music performer who lives part time in Nashville for her work. The FBI security detail, first reported by MS NOW, is made up of members of an elite SWAT team based in the area. It has spurred concerns about Patel abusing FBI resources to essentially drive his girlfriend around for various events and appointments. The FBI has never before provided a separate security detail for a director’s girlfriend. Spouses of past directors typically received episodic security protection, but only when they were traveling with their spouse and the director’s detail.
Former FBI agents and senior law enforcement officials said it was already disturbing that Patel had pulled elite tactical agents away from their SWAT mission to drive his girlfriend around town. But they told MS NOW they were shocked that the director instructed tactical agents to use their time on yet another person the FBI had no reasonable duty to protect.
Read more: https://www.ms.now/news/kash-patel-girlfriend-fbi-detail-wilkins-ride-home
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