Trump DOJ Orders Disturbing Reshuffling on Elections

Donald Trump has completely gutted the Department of Justice section charged with securing elections, The Guardian reported Monday.

In January, there were seven top career managers overseeing the voting section of the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division, which is charged with enforcing federal laws protecting voter registration. As of this week, all of them are gone.

Last week, five of them were reassigned to the complaint adjudication office, which handles employee complaints, alongside Tamar Hagler, who had served as the chief of the voting section office, and another career attorney. Of the two remaining managers, one was reassigned to an antisemitism task force, and the other retired.

These removals are part of a wider reshuffling in the Justice Department, as experienced career officials are reassigned to low-level duties, shifted toward the priorities of the Trump administration, or elect to take buyouts.

Trump appointees at the DOJ also instructed career employees in the voting section to dismiss all remaining active cases, but did not provide a rationale for their dismissal and did not meet with the attorneys. The section’s final active case was dismissed last Monday.

“This is what you do when you don’t really know what the section does and just want to create chaos in the simplest way possible that doesn’t involve you reading anything,” one former voting section attorney told The Guardian. “It is extremely clear that the intent is to get absolutely nothing done. And the effect will be that absolutely nothing gets done.”

The moves come just weeks after Harmeet Dhillon was confirmed to lead the civil rights division. A staunch Trump ally, Dhillon defended several election deniers in court and was widely expected to go after civil rights and diversity achievements.

Trump’s demolition of the DOJ’s voting section represents a victory for election deniers and far-right groups.

Cleta Mitchell, a far-right activist with the ear of the president, called for “every lawyer in the Voting Section” to be “terminated” in a post on X after Trump was elected in November.

“They are not supportive of Pres Trump or MAGA. There has to be a reckoning. These are leftwing activists who have come from and should return to their leftwing organizations,” she wrote.

The American Accountability Foundation, a dark-money witch-hunting cadre, sent a letter to then–attorney general nominee Pam Bondi in December specifically asking her to gut the DOJ’s voting section.

“These people are woke radical leftists and donors who have no place in the Department of Justice,” the group wrote in the letter signed by Thomas Jones, AAF’s president. “In order to restore the American people’s trust in election integrity and a neutral civil service, they must be fired and replaced with America-first attorneys who will execute on the agenda the American People voted for in November.”

The Trump administration’s meddling at the Department of Justice is part of a wider scheme to undermine any election he is likely to lose. A federal judge ruled Thursday to block parts of Trump’s executive order last month attempting to overhaul elections and voting processes.

President Trump is expected to sign an executive order requiring all truck drivers to speak English, according to White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt.

“President Trump believes that English is a non-negotiable safety requirement for professional drivers, as they should be able to read and understand traffic signs, communicate with traffic safety officers, border patrol, agricultural checkpoints, and cargo weight-limit station personnel, and provide and receive feedback and directions in English,” a document given to Breitbart by the Trump administration reads.

The order directs Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy to “rescind and replace guidance to strengthen inspection procedures for compliance with English proficiency requirements.”

“To promote unity, cultivate a shared American culture for all citizens, ensure consistency in government operations, and create a pathway to civic engagement, it is in America’s best interest for the Federal Government to designate one—and only one—official language,” the order continues. “Establishing English as the official language will not only streamline communication but also reinforce shared national values, and create a more cohesive and efficient society.”

Trump is expected to sign the order at 5 p.m. on Monday.

This comes days after Oklahoma advanced and Arkansas passed similar acts targeting non-English speaking drivers. This act, a clear shot at immigrant truck workers inspired by a MAGA conspiracy theory about an influx of foreign truck drivers, could very well have adverse effects on an industry that is the lifeblood of the country’s domestic shipping industry.

Trump supporters are freaking out after Illinois Governor JB Pritzker called for mass mobilization to resist Donald Trump.

Pritzker told guests at a New Hampshire dinner full of Democratic activists, officials, and donors on Sunday, “It’s time to fight everywhere and all at once.”

“Never before in my life have I called for mass protests, for mobilization, for disruption. But I am now. These Republicans cannot know a moment of peace,” the Democratic governor said, drawing applause and even standing ovations from those in attendance. 

This did not sit well in Trumpworld. The president’s supporters immediately started clutching their pearls and acting as if Pritzker called for mass anarchy. Tech oligarch and fascism enthusiast Elon Musk called the remarks “crazy” on his X account, reposting video from the “End Wokeness” account, which is likely run by right-wing influencer Jack Posobiec.

Fellow MAGA influencer Benny Johnson accused Pritzker of inciting violence.  

Douglass Mackey, who went to prison for interfering in the 2016 election, went even further, claiming that Pritzker was “essentially calling for civil war against MAGA.”

Catturd, a well-known MAGA online troll whose real name is Phillip Buchanan, called Pritzker “scum.” 

This public freakout over a simple call to activism shows how the right is frightened of even the smallest bit of protest and seeks to criminalize any dissenting speech. MAGA personalities, such as Kari Lake, regularly call for and celebrate political violence, especially when a court case or election doesn’t go their way (and even when it does).  Even Republicans have admitted they’re terrified of the MAGA base’s threats of violence.

Pritzker’s words are much tamer than what conservatives say on a regular basis and are what Democratic voters are looking to hear from their leaders. It seems that the real conservative freakout might be fear over a coming wave of opposition in this country that could result in a loss of power and influence. 

On Canada’s Election Day, the leader of the United States urged the nation’s neighbors to vote for an especially odd third option: choosing Donald J. Trump as their leader.

“Good luck to the Great people of Canada. Elect the man who has the strength and wisdom to cut your taxes in half, increase your military power, for free, to the highest level in the World, have your Car, Steel, Aluminum, Lumber, Energy, and all other businesses, QUADRUPLE in size, WITH ZERO TARIFFS OR TAXES, if Canada becomes the cherished 51st State of the United States of America,” Trump posted on Truth Social Monday.

“No more artificially drawn line from many years ago,” he continued, apparently referring to borders—an issue that he used in three elections to divide Americans while scapegoating immigration as the root cause of America’s social disorder. “Look how beautiful this land mass would be. Free access with NO BORDER. ALL POSITIVES WITH NO NEGATIVES. IT WAS MEANT TO BE!”

“America can no longer subsidize Canada with the Hundreds of Billions of Dollars a year that we have been spending in the past. It makes no sense unless Canada is a State!” he added.

Trump has repeatedly claimed that Mexico’s and Canada’s trade deficits with the United States are “subsidies,” rather than indicators that America’s neighbors are purchasing more of its goods than they were selling in return. In 2023, that differential—or deficit—was nearly $41 billion with Canada and $162 billion with Mexico, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

The president has also vastly overinflated the reality of the deficits, wrongly asserting that the U.S. is “subsidizing” its neighbors to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars each. The obvious solution to that problem, per Trump, is to take Canada and its independence, folding it into his increasingly centralized government.

But if Canada did enter the United States (hypothetically), it likely would not bode well for Trump’s ongoing quest for power. An analysis by legal experts who spoke with The Washington Post found that the introduction of Canada into the U.S. government would be a “nightmare” for Trump, adding an additional 53 seats in the U.S. House of Representatives—the vast majority of which would identify as Democrats.

But the likelihood that Canada would allow itself to be annexed as an afterthought to U.S. dominance is practically zilch. Earlier this month, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney announced that his country’s cozy relationship with the U.S. had come to an end, and that they would wean themselves off American products and services “at speeds we haven’t seen in generations.”

“Our old relationship of steadily deepening integration with the United States is over,” Carney said, shortly after replacing former Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau as Canada’s leader. “The 80-year period when the United States embraced the mantle of global economic leadership, when it forged alliances rooted in trust and mutual respect, and championed the free and open exchange of goods and services, is over.”

Carney is facing off against conservative lawmaker Pierre Poilievre, who appears to have modeled himself on Trump, for the prime minister’s office.

Republican Representative Mike Lawler wanted to impose order during his town hall Sunday, but no amount of rule-setting could have spared him from the fury of his constituents.

The New York Republican displayed a list of guidelines outside Clarkstown South High School in West Nyack, New York, where he was hosting his first town hall of the year.

The list required attendees to provide proof of residency in New York’s 17th district, prohibited “shouting, screaming, yelling or standing,” and encouraged them to “be respectful of one another, of staff, and of the congressman.”

But in the end, Lawler still faced tough criticism over his deference to President Donald Trump—often in the form of shouting and insults.

“What are you doing to stand in opposition to this administration? And what specifically are you doing that warrants the label ‘moderate?’” asked one constituent, a video on X showed, as the crowd of roughly 700 people erupted into cheers.

“My record speaks for itself—” Lawler began, sending the audience into raucous laughter and jeers. As Lawler continued to limply defend his supposedly moderate record—ProPublica has found that he voted in line with MAGA Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene 81 percent of the time—his constituents refused to quiet their anger.

“Folks, if you want me to answer the questions, let the question be asked, and then listen to the answer,” Lawler said. “If you’re just going to yell back and forth, the time is gonna run pretty quick.”

Lawler told his constituents who had expressed concern about Trump’s escalating trade war and “reciprocal tariff” policy that the president was simply responding to an “affordability crisis.”

“What caused record inflation? Five trillion dollars in new spending in the first two years of the Biden administration is what gave us record inflation,” Lawler said, drowned out by the sounds of booing from the crowd.

Constituents also expressed anger about the president’s inhumane deportations and his attacks on U.S. universities and colleges, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s mounting scandals, and concerns that Republicans were planning to make major cuts to Social Security and Medicaid.

“We’re not cutting Social Security or Medicaid. That is a lie—period!” Lawler insisted, and promised not to support efforts to strip benefits from eligible recipients. But the Republican Party has other plans to drastically shrink the federal match rate for the ACA expansion and shift more financial responsibility to states, and make it easier to gut the SSA.

While the audience was rowdy, they also appeared united. At one point, as Lawler explained that Trump’s tariffs were a response to higher tariffs from other countries and things such as European “price controls” on prescription medications, the audience began speaking in unison.

“Blah, blah, blah,” they chanted, according to a video posted on X.

Lawler was reelected to his seat in November with a whopping 57 percent of the vote. Voters in his district supported the moderate Republican over Democrat Mondaire Jones, but backed Kamala Harris rather than Trump.

The Trump administration is open to arresting Supreme Court judges, as White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told it on Monday morning.

“You guys arrested a Milwaukee County Circuit judge for allegedly helping illegal immigrants get away,” Fox News’s Peter Doocy asked Leavitt. “As you guys look at other judges, would you ever arrest somebody higher up on the judicial food chain, like a federal judge or even a Supreme Court justice?”

“That’s a hypothetical question, again I defer you to the Department of Justice for individuals that they are looking at or individual cases. But let’s be clear about what this judge did: She obstructed federal law enforcement who were looking for an illegal alien in her courthouse. She showed that illegal alien the door to evade law enforcement officials. That is a clear-cut case of obstruction,” Leavitt replied.

“And so anyone who is breaking the law or obstructing federal law enforcement officials from doing their jobs is putting theirselvses at risk of being prosecuted, absolutely.”

The Department of Justice on Friday arrested Milwaukee Judge Hannah Dugan, on charges of obstruction after she allegedly “intentionally misdirected federal agents away” from Eduardo Flores Ruiz, an undocumented immigrant. He was later arrested outside the courthouse.

The Trump administration is showing open and direct hostility toward the judicial branch, identifying any judge who dares to defy them as an “activist judge.” The arrest of Judge Dugan, the numerous court orders ignored by the administration, the eight immigration judges who have now been fired or put on leave, and now, Leavitt’s alarming answer are all clear indications that Trump has no plans to reel back his abuse of executive power.

A sprawling network of Signal group chats involving hundreds of top business executives, Silicon Valley leaders, and journalists, as well as legal and economic analysts, has massively reshaped national politics since the pandemic—in large part thanks to the platform’s disappearing-message function.

“Group chats are now where everything important and interesting happens,” Substack author Noah Smith wrote.

Marc Andreessen, the co-founder of the tech venture capitalist firm a16z and onetime co-author of Mosaic, an early internet web browser, spends “half his life on 100” of these sorts of group chats at a time, one anonymous participant hyperbolized to Semafor’s Ben Smith.*

In a blog post announcing Erik Torenberg as one of a16z’s general partners, Andreessen described the private spaces as having produced a national “vibe shift.” That’s because powerful individuals are less afraid to share what they really think in the closed-circuit digital rooms, according to several sources that spoke with Semafor.

“People during 2020 felt that there was a monoculture on social media, and if they didn’t agree with something, group chats became a safe space to debate that, share that, build consensus, feel that you’re not alone,” Torenberg told the publication.

Andreessen agreed—telling Torenberg on a recent podcast that they’re having “all the private conversations because they weren’t allowed to have the public conversations,” blaming the public silence on a general air of censorship on major social platforms.

But some of those conversations have straggled away from friendly discourse and into the realm of political influence. Amid the network lies a vast web of right-wing chatrooms bent on keeping Donald Trump in power and vanquishing political dissent from the left.

“A lot of these technologists hoped that the centrist path was a viable one, because it would permit them in theory to change the culture without having to expose themselves to the risk of becoming partisans,” conservative culture warrior Christopher Rufo told Semafor. “By 2021, the smartest people in tech understood that these people were a dead end—so the group chats exploded and reformulated on more explicitly political lines.”

Rufo—who has risen to popularity on the right for inventing a fiction that the left has taken over America—had seen the opportunity within the Signal spaces to influence those in power all along.

“I looked at these chats as a good investment of my time to radicalize tech elites who I thought were the most likely and high-impact new coalition partners for the right,” Rufo said.

With time, dissenters were brandished as upstarts suffering from Trump Derangement Syndrome (sometimes shorthanded to TDS), spawning what are effectively echo chambers: smaller and tighter group chats that have nixed alternative perspectives.

“This group has become worthless since the loudest voices have TDS,” David Sacks wrote of the popular group chat Chatham House, informing Torenberg that he should “create a new one with just smart people.” Sacks left shortly after sending that message.

That spawned the exit of another three notable figures: Sequoia partner Shaun Maguire, bitcoin billionaire Tyler Winklevoss, and former Fox News host Tucker Carlson.

* This article previously mischaracterized Mosaic.

Donald Trump can’t help speculating about serving a third term as president—even as he claims, “It’s not something that I’m looking to do. And I think it would be a very hard thing to do.”

The president made the comments to The Atlantic in a new interview published Monday, laughing about the idea. He said, “That would be a big shattering, wouldn’t it? Well, maybe I’m just trying to shatter.”

In a startling sign, the Trump Organization has started selling “Trump 2028” hats for $50 each, and the president said last month that he was “not joking” about running for a third term. Such a move would violate the Twenty-Second Amendment to the Constitution, and would require a two-thirds majority vote in Congress and a three-fourths majority of state governments to change.

Even with that lofty path, Trump has talked about other plans for staying in office beyond 2028, including having JD Vance as the top of a presidential ticket with Trump as the vice president. Trump’s comments on that idea in March were not reassuring.

“Well, that’s one. But there are others too. There are others,” Trump said, refusing to elaborate on whatever plans and schemes he has to stay in office.

Even if he doesn’t have the majorities needed to make the constitutional changes, Trump does have his die-hard allies—Representative Andy Ogles filed legislation in January, only days into Trump’s second term, to amend the Twenty-Second Amendment. One of his top lawyers, Boris Epshteyn, has been floating the unfounded claim that Trump could run again in 2028 since at least October 2023.

There’s also the fact that Trump’s allies in the conservative movement, including on the Supreme Court, could support his attempts to stay in office beyond 2028. As with any half-baked or outrageous Trump statement, it’s only far-fetched until Trump tries to put it into action. The question is how strong resistance would be if and when the time comes.

President Trump woke up early and angry Monday morning after multiple polls showed he has the lowest first-100-days approval rating of any president in the last 80 years.

“Great Pollster John McLaughlin, one of the most highly respected in the industry, has just stated that The Failing New York Times Poll, and the ABC/Washington Post Poll, about a person named DONALD J. TRUMP, ME, are FAKE POLLS FROM FAKE NEWS ORGANIZATIONS,” the president posted on Truth Social at 5:24 a.m. “The New York Times has only 37% Trump 2024 voters, and the ABC/Washington Post Poll has only 34% Trump Voters, unheard of numbers unless looking for a negative result, which they are. These people should be investigated for ELECTION FRAUD, and add in the FoxNews Pollster while you’re at it.”

“They are Negative Criminals who apologize to their subscribers and readers after I WIN ELECTIONS BIG, much bigger than their polls showed I would win, loose a lot of credibility, and then go on cheating and lying for the next cycle, only worse. They suffer from Trump Derangement Syndrome, and there is nothing that anyone, or anything, can do about it. THEY ARE SICK, almost only write negative stories about me no matter how well I am doing (99.9% at the Border, BEST NUMBER EVER!), AND ARE TRULY THE ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE!”

Only 39 percent of respondents to the ABC News/Washington Post/Ipsos poll approved of how Trump was doing generally, a six-point drop from just two months ago. Fifty-five percent outright disapprove.

Respondents disapprove of Trump even more on the more specific issues. Seventy-two percent think it’s very or somewhat likely that his economic policies will cause a recession soon. Seventy-three percent said the economy is in “bad shape,” while 53 percent said it’s gotten worse since Trump took office—and 41 percent said their own finances have been hurt. Seventy-one percent think his tariffs are making inflation worse, 65 percent think Trump is actively ignoring federal court orders, and 64 percent think he’s going too far with his executive powers.

The New York Times poll was similarly bleak. Sixty-six percent of respondents thought “chaotic” accurately described Trump’s first 100 days. Fifty-four percent think Trump is exceeding his executive powers, and 50 percent already think he’s made the economy worse.

“We don’t have a Free and Fair ‘Press’ in this Country anymore. We have a Press that writes BAD STORIES, and CHEATS, BIG, ON POLLS,” Trump posted, just minutes after his first rant. “IT IS COMPROMISED AND CORRUPT. SAD!”

These polls indicate that voters think Trump has gone too far on essentially every key issue. And while the president is obviously very sensitive to negative press like this, it remains to be seen if it will actually cause him to change any of his positions. His posts above suggest that they won’t. Trump is operating outside the realm of anyone’s approval right now, much less the public’s. Whether he’ll be moved by these deeply negative results remains to be seen.

Donald Trump’s outlandish claim that he’d struck 200 trade deals was a complete fiction, according to members of his own Cabinet.

During an appearance on ABC News’s This Week Sunday, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent admitted the president’s statement that he’d “made 200 deals” during the first 13 days of his 90-day pause on his “reciprocal tariff” policy wasn’t referring to actual deals.

“Is there actually any deal at this point?” asked host Martha Raddatz.

“I believe that he is referring to subdeals within the negotiations we’re doing,” Bessent said.

“But those aren’t actual deals,” Raddatz noted.

“Martha, if there are 180 countries, there are 18 important trading partners—let’s put China to the side because that’s a special negoation—there’s 17 important trading partners, and we have a process in place over the next 90 days to negotiate with them. Some of those are moving along very well, especially with the Asian countries,” Bessent said.

Bessent’s response appears to be an attempt to move the goalposts on closing those deals, with only 17 deals being markedly different from trade adviser Peter Navarro’s prediction that Trump would make 90 trade deals in 90 days. Bessent has desperately tried to pull Trump back from the brink of a trade war, attempting to recast the president’s destructive “America First” trade policy as non-isolationist.

Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins also undercut the president’s claim of 200 trade deals, during an appearance on CNN’s State of the Union Sunday.

“We have 100 countries that are knocking on the door,” Rollins said. “I believe, I’m not in the room, I’m not negotiating the trade deals, but my understanding is we should have several this week that are coming forward that are very, very close.”

During a sweeping interview with Time magazine to mark his first 100 days in office, Trump said he would announce the supposed 200 trade deals in the “next three to four weeks,” but he seemed confused about whether the deals were actually done.