Judge’s Ruling Is a Devastating Setback for MAGA Election Meddling

A judge dismissed a lawsuit Tuesday from a member of the Fulton County, Georgia, elections board who refused to certify the results of the state’s primary election.

In May, board official Julie Adams launched a lawsuit against the county, arguing that she could not certify the results of the primary election without having access to all information about the voting procedures. Elections Board director Nadine Williams had barred her from seeing some information.

Adams also sought a court ruling on whether her duty to certify election results is “discretionary, not ministerial, in nature,” according to the suit.

Judge Robert C.I. McBurney dismissed the case without prejudice, meaning that Georgia election officials will continue to have a mandatory duty to certify the election results, scrambling Adams’s attempt to upend years of precedent and Georgia state law.

An amendment to Georgia’s state constitution allows for plaintiffs to seek declaratory relief from the government, which could determine Adams’s obligations in her role as an election superintendent. However, the law required that any complaint seeking relief must be brought against the state or local government only, and no other forms of relief can be included in the complaint.

“Failure to comply with either requirement is fatal: the non-compliant complaint ‘shall be dismissed,’” McBurney wrote in his order.

Adams’s first complaint in May was brought against the Fulton County Board of Registration and Elections, as well as Williams. According to the judge, “Neither is a proper party for such a suit.” The complaint also requested injunctive relief, which would prohibit Williams from denying Adams access to election materials and processes.

In July, the defendants argued a motion to dismiss using this argument, and Adams amended her original complaint, bringing her case solely against Fulton County. “That was too little, too late; the fatal pleading flaw cannot be undone,” wrote the judge.

Adams, a staunch election denier, was backed by the America First Policy Institute, a pro-Trump think tank.

McBurney made clear that Adams can refile her claim, this time listing the proper party, and that if she “moves with alacrity,” her claim “can be considered alongside” a challenge to the Georgia election board’s new rule requiring a “reasonable inquiry” before certifying election results. The rule, which was passed in August, would make it significantly easier for county election officials to delay or refuse certification of election results in populous Democratic strongholds such as Fulton or DeKalb counties in November.

At Tuesday’s night’s presidential debate, Kamala Harris is sure to get under Donald Trump’s skin. But just to be extra sure, she’s bringing two of his old administration staffers along.

Former Trump White House director of communications Anthony Scaramucci and former Trump national security official Olivia Troye will be attending the debate in Philadelphia as guests and surrogates of the vice president. Trump campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung quickly tried to dismiss the news.

“Nobody is going to listen to someone who was a low-level staffer who didn’t even work for President Trump and someone who barely lasted more time than an expired ham sandwich as White House communications director,” Cheung said in a statement, referring to Scaramucci’s infamously short 10-day tenure.

Scaramucci has not held back on criticizing Trump and his campaign, warning about the repercussions of another Trump presidency and even offering predictions on how long J.D. Vance would last as Trump’s running mate. Troye has called out Trump’s mental fitness, alluding to multiple worrying instances during his time in office, and made a speech at the Democratic National Convention calling for her fellow Republicans to reject Trump and support democracy.

In 2016, Trump brought Bill Clinton sexual harassment accusers Paula Jones, Kathleen Willey, and Juanita Broaddrick to one of his debates with Hillary Clinton in an attempt to abuse and humiliate his opponent. Harris’s aim appears to be different: to show viewers that people who used to work for Trump now see the dangers of him returning to office. Bringing Troye and Scaramucci also offers the side benefit of getting Trump rattled.

The debate promises to be an interesting contest, especially since Trump has tried to get out of it and his campaign has argued over the rules, trying to keep microphones muted when it isn’t Trump or Harris’s turn to speak. The Trump campaign seems to be worried that the former president and convicted felon won’t be able to keep himself from interrupting or resorting to petty insults, and Harris’s campaign wants him to be able to hurt his own cause. Having guests at the debate who Trump can’t stand may allow Harris to get inside his head.

With less than three weeks to avert a government shutdown, House Speaker Mike Johnson is back to begging his caucus to keep the money flowing.

The Louisiana politico has vowed to bring a continuing resolution to the floor “as soon as possible.” In a meeting with House Republicans on Tuesday, Johnson reportedly encouraged his fellow conservatives to back the six-month funding bill, claiming that Americans around the country had been enthusiastic about the measure when he shopped it around in August, reported Politico’s Olivia Beavers.

Johnson can only afford to lose four House Republican votes on the continuing resolution, which has been integrally tied to the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility—or SAVE—Act, a piece of legislation that would require proof of citizenship in order to vote. So far, he’s got six “nos,” including Representatives Tim Burchett, Jim Banks, Mike Rogers, Cory Mills, Thomas Massie, and Matt Rosendale.

Five House Democrats voted for the SAVE Act before it was rolled into the continuing resolution, which would extend government funding until March. Republicans have warned that any opposition from those five, who include Representatives Henry Cuellar, Don Davis, Jared Golden, Vicente Gonzalez, and Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, would be “pure politics.”

But there are other, fiscal reasons why the continuing resolution has a rocky future in the House, including fears that such a measure would have a negative impact on the Pentagon.

And even if the stopgap bill does manage to scrape by the House, its chances of passing through the Senate are slim to none, setting the stage for an ominously familiar experience to the one that preceded former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s exit.

“As we have said repeatedly, avoiding a government shutdown requires bipartisanship, not a bill drawn up by one party. Speaker Johnson is making the same mistake as former Speaker McCarthy did a year ago, by wasting precious time catering to the hard MAGA right,” Senate Democratic leaders said in a statement issued last week. “This tactic didn’t work last September, and it will not work this year either. The House Republican funding proposal is an ominous case of déjà vu.

“If Speaker Johnson drives House Republicans down this highly partisan path, the odds of a shutdown go way up,” they continued. “Americans will know that the responsibility of a shutdown will be on the House Republicans’ hands.”

Kamala Harris’s campaign is doubling down on mocking Donald Trump for his “weird obsession with crowd sizes.”

A new advertisement released Tuesday by the Harris campaign used video of Barack Obama’s speech at the Democratic National Convention, during which he ribbed Trump over his endless—and often baseless—bragging about how the crowds he draws are so much bigger than Harris’s.

Spliced into Obama’s brutal roast was the sound of crickets on top of footage of Trump’s half-empty arenas, with rallygoers yawning and looking bored. Ahead of Tuesday night’s presidential debate, the advertisement aired on Fox News, CNN, and MSNBC.

After Obama’s remarks at the DNC, Trump complained that the former president had “taken loose shots” and that he should be allowed to get personal too, amid his campaign’s desperate attempts to get him to “stick to policy.” Clearly, Obama’s comment had gotten under Trump’s skin, and that’s exactly what the Harris campaign is attempting to do with its new ad spot.

When it comes to Trump’s reliance on lame personal attacks, however, the Republican nominee is certainly compensating for something—whether it be deteriorating public speaking skills or his dearth of workable policy ideas.

Donald Trump’s shady new crypto venture is primed to make him and his family millions should he make it to the White House.

World Liberty Financial, or WLFI, a decentralized finance platform, promises to “put the power of finance back in the hands of the people,” but it’s actually looking a lot more like a get-rich-quick scheme for Trump and his sons, according to Judd Legum’s Public Information Substack.

The Republican nominee is the company’s “Chief Crypto Advocate,” while Eric and Don Jr. are both Web 3 Ambassadors. Barron Trump, a freshman at New York University, is a “DeFi Visionary.” The company has gone to great lengths to disassociate from the Trump family in any formal capacity, according to a draft of the white papers obtained by CoinDesk, but it’s apparent that Trump’s family is a major part of WLFI’s inception—and most certainly its promotion.

Late last month, Trump posted the link to World Liberty Financial alongside a blurry edit of himself, with audio from one of his campaign speeches, promising to make the U.S. the “crypto capital of the planet.” Wedged between their typical anti-immigrant slime, racist memes, and posts gushing over their father’s bravery, Eric and Don Jr. have repeatedly boosted WLFI’s posts announcing new additions to its team.

WLFI even appears to have adopted some of Trump’s rhetoric. Its mission, according to a recent post on X, is to “make crypto and America great by driving the mass adoption of stablecoins and decentralized finance.”

While WLFI purports to be a solution to the “rigged” finance system, it seems the Trump boys are the ones who stand to make a buck.

Seventy percent of WLFI’s governance tokens, which grant holders voting powers, will be reserved for “insiders,” according to the company’s draft white papers, leaving only 30 percent available for public purchase. Typically, governance tokens are used to fund a venture’s growth, but this abnormal distribution suggests that it could be a cash grab by the Trump family, according to CoinDesk.

WLFI’s tokenomics plans have not yet been finalized, one person close to the project told CoinDesk.

WLFI is already trying to get around strict Securities and Exchange Commission scrutiny by making its tokens “locked indefinitely,” or nontransferable. This is where Trump’s political ambitions turn WLFI into a blatant moneymaking scheme. Should Trump win the presidential election, he could install a new SEC chair who is far more friendly to cryptocurrencies than Gary Gensler, whom Trump has already pledged to fire. This would allow Trump and his family to “unlock” their shares without incurring the wrath of regulators.

Already, WLFI has given the Trump family some trouble. Last week, Lara and Tiffany Trump’s X accounts were hacked and used to promote a crypto scam designed to look like World Liberty Financial.

There are some concerns that WLFI itself could be vulnerable to hacks. The owner of World Liberty Finance LLC is Zak Folkman, who previously ran Dough Finance, a lending app that was hacked in July, losing its customers more than $2 million. It appears that some of WLFI’s code was lifted directly from the defunct Dough Finance.