California Reveals Plan to Fight Trump’s “Election Monitors”

California will send election observers to counter the “election monitors” that Trump plans on sending to multiple deep blue districts in the state ahead of next week’s special election.

“They’re not going to be allowed to interfere in ways that the law prohibits,” California Attorney General Rob Bonta said Monday. “We cannot be naïve. The Republican Party asked for the U.S. DOJ to come in.”

“[Trump] is laying the groundwork. He is socializing an idea that is very dangerous,” Bonta added, noting that Trump still claims to have won the 2020 presidential election. “All indications, all arrows show that this is a tee up for something more dangerous in the 2026 midterms—and maybe beyond.”

Trump’s Justice Department last week announced it would send federal election monitors to several blue districts in California and New Jersey. In California, the Trump administration is likely well aware of Proposition 50, a ballot measure that would redraw the state’s congressional districts to help Democrats gain more seats in the U.S. House.

Trump’s DOJ monitoring a crucial election in California is a recipe for basic voting rights to be blatantly violated. Governor Gavin Newsom on Friday called it a “deliberate attempt to scare off voters and undermine a fair election.”

“They have no business doing that. They have no basis to do that,” he said in a video posted on X. “We have a statewide election for a statewide constitution. This is about voter intimidation, this is about voter suppression. Period, full stop.”

The Irish have had enough of Donald Trump.

McCormack’s Irish Pub in Richmond, Virginia, made waves earlier this month when its owner, William “Mac” McCormack, released some hot merchandise: a load of “Fuck Trump” black T-shirts, retailing for $11 a pop.

The shirts proudly display the pub’s logo: an antifascist emblem superimposed over a shamrock. A printed phrase circles around the icon, reading: “Fuck ICE, Fuck Nazis, Fuck Trump,” according to McCormack’s Facebook.

But the top did not resonate with those on the ideological right, who consumed the comment section before spilling over to the pub’s review pages on Yelp and Google. Some commenters scorned the pub’s self-advertised ideology as “disgusting,” deriding the shirts as a stunt that would “alienate half of [McCormack’s] clientele.”

One Yelp user, who goes by Marge and lives nearly 3,000 miles away in San Francisco, wrote that the service was “terrible” and the “food is almost as bad.”

“Save your time and money. This place sucks. Not a true Irish Pub,” the account wrote, leaving a one-star review on Saturday. “Liberals who think we care where they stand politically.”

But any regular would know that the shirt—and its message—are nothing unusual for McCormack’s.

“I was just making T-shirts that align with most of my customers, with the pub’s beliefs,” McCormack told RVA Magazine.

The shirt is really nothing new. There’s always been some variation of the shirt, according to its owner. “It used to just say, ‘Fuck Nazis.’ We just clarified who the Nazis were,” McCormack said.

McCormack’s is one of Richmond’s oldest dive bars. The successful institution has since expanded into two whiskey restaurants—McCormack’s Big Whisky Grill and McCormack’s Whisky Grill—but the original establishment has been proud to be punk since the 1990s, according to RVA.

“I’ve never hidden my politics there,” McCormack told the publication. “It’s bigger than just the bar, it’s what you believe. And it’s what I believe one hundred percent.”

Despite the backlash, there’s nothing illegal about voicing dissent against the government. Protesting the government is a protected right under the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, as established by the Founding Fathers. Comparing MAGA politics to Nazi Germany, McCormack told RVA that small-business owners should stick by their principles. “I don’t think we should be silent,” he said.

Voicing his disdain for the current administration has actually turned out to be a positive business decision for McCormack, who told RVA that the shirts have since sold out and that “all three locations have been busier than normal.”

New customers, attracted by the firm political stance, are going out of their way to share a drink at McCormack’s. Some Facebook users said they would travel from as far as New Jersey to grab a pint at the bar if it meant supporting the cause.

McCormack’s advice to other small-business owners: “Don’t be scared to have an opinion.”

“You don’t have to do it like I did,” McCormack told RVA. “You can be more subtle, but if we don’t speak up then we’re just the same as those people in Germany who still live with three generations of regret.”

Indiana Governor Mike Braun is pushing President Donald Trump’s gerrymandering scheme forward in the Hoosier State—but Republicans still aren’t getting on the bandwagon.

Braun announced Monday that he was calling a special legislative session to vote on new congressional districts, ensuring Republicans maintain control of Congress in the 2026 midterm elections.

“I am calling a special legislative session to protect Hoosiers from efforts in other states that seek to diminish their voice in Washington and ensure their representation in Congress is fair,” he wrote in a statement.

But Molly Sigart, spokesperson for Rodric Bray, the Indiana Senate’s president pro tempore, told The New Republic Monday that the votes “still aren’t there for redistricting.” The 50-member Senate has only 10 Democrat members, meaning that more than a dozen of the remaining members also opposed the plan.

Last week, Bray’s office said that the Republican plan lacked the necessary support, raising red flags for Braun’s redistricting efforts. Meanwhile, Braun’s spokesperson claimed the governor was “confident” that he could secure a majority of state Senate Republicans’ support.

Braun initially floated the idea last month of calling legislators back and warned that there would be “consequences” for not keeping pace with the White House’s requests for redistricting, which have already been passed in Texas, Missouri, and most recently, North Carolina. The special session Braun called Monday, which will occur before lawmakers are set to return in January, will likely cost taxpayers a pretty penny.

In Indiana, things have gotten heated. Both Trump and Vice President JD Vance have personally connected with state Republicans about supporting a new congressional map. Last month, Indiana state Senator Jim Banks suggested that podcaster Charlie Kirk’s death was reason enough to do it. “They killed Charlie Kirk—the least that we can do is go through a legal process and redistrict Indiana into a nine to zero map,” Banks said.

Indiana state Senator Liz Brown, an assistant majority floor leader, published a statement supporting the move Monday.

“Redistricting isn’t a technical exercise. It’s power drawn on a map. And Democrats have been wielding it for decades,” wrote Brown on X. “Conservative voices have been thwarted for far too long by liberal states like Massachusetts who refuse to create competitive congressional districts.”

“Gov. Braun’s decision to call our legislature into session to address redistricting is welcome news,” she wrote.

Exxon is trying to claim that California’s climate laws infringe on its freedom of speech.

The oil company filed a lawsuit against the state Friday over two laws, passed in 2023, that require companies doing business in California to disclose carbon emissions and climate-related financial risks, with penalties if they don’t comply. Exxon claims that the laws, known as the California Climate Accountability Package, would force the company to “serve as a mouthpiece for ideas with which it disagrees.”

A spokesperson for California Governor Gavin Newsom, Tara Gallegos, told The New York Times, seemingly tongue in cheek, that it was “truly shocking that one of the biggest polluters on the planet would be opposed to transparency.”

The laws, which will be enforced beginning next year, “have already been upheld in court and we continue to have confidence in them,” Gallegos added.

Exxon said in the lawsuit that it already reports its carbon emissions and climate risks voluntarily but that the state laws would force it to change its framework to one it finds “misleading and counterproductive.”

Right now, Exxon uses a methodology to calculate its emissions developed by an oil and gas industry group, but would have to change to the Greenhouse Gas Protocol, developed by the research group World Resources Institute and business network World Business Council for Sustainable Development.

The company claims this framework would send “the counterproductive message that large companies are uniquely responsible for climate change no matter how efficiently they satisfy societal demand for energy, goods, and services.” Exxon additionally argues that the legal requirement to report its global emissions should only be focused on the company’s emissions in the state.

Exxon is also fighting against a provision in one law that requires companies to disclose how climate change threatens their business operations and what they plan to do about it. Exxon claims the law requires speculation “about unknowable future developments” and conflicts with securities laws.

There is another pending lawsuit against the laws from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the California Chamber of Commerce, and the American Farm Bureau Federation, with a trial expected next year.

The oil company is trying to dodge transparency about its operations, perhaps concerned about how bad these disclosures would make it look. It may also be hoping for the law to be struck down by conservative judges, or even the Supreme Court. President Trump is loudly dismissive of climate change and the threats it poses, and may take further action against California on his own.

Ontario Premier Doug Ford thinks that the Ronald Reagan anti-tariff commercial that set President Trump off was “the best ad I ever ran.” 

The TV ad featured an edited 1987 radio address from President Reagan, in which he stated that tariffs only serve to “hurt every American.” Trump was so bothered by the ad using someone he likes to compare himself to against him that he started another trade war with Canada, announcing an additional 10 percent tariff on its products over the weekend.

“Canada was caught, red handed, putting up a fraudulent advertisement on Ronald Reagan’s Speech on Tariffs,” Trump posted to Truth Social to justify the tariff hike. “The Reagan Foundation said that they, ‘created an ad campaign using selective audio and video of President Ronald Reagan. The ad misrepresents the Presidential Radio Address,’ and ‘did not seek nor receive permission to use and edit the remarks. The Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and Institute is reviewing its legal options in this matter.’”

But the premier of Ontario, which produced the ad in the first place, isn’t bothered.

“You know why President Trump is so upset right now? It was because it was effective,” Ford said on Monday. “The only people that win in a tariff war are the people around the world that don’t necessarily see eye to eye with us and with the United States.”  

Ford says the ad has received over “a billion impressions around the world.” 

This shared animosity underscores the schisms that Trump’s retaliatory tariffs have caused with some of America’s closest allies. 

“We can’t control the trade policy of the United States. We recognize that that policy has fundamentally changed from the policy in the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s, and it’s a situation where the United States has tariffs against every one of their trading partners,” Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney told reporters last Friday, when Trump first began fuming about the ad. “What we can control, absolutely, is how we build here at home.… What we can also control, or at least heavily influence, is developing new partnerships and opportunities, including with the economic giants of Asia, which is the focus of this trip.”