How Trump Is Trying to Influence the Midterm Elections

An elections expert warned Vox Monday that the “nightmare scenario” for the upcoming midterms is one step closer to being realized in the wake of Donald Trump’s raid on a Georgia election office.

The recent raid at the Fulton County election office demonstrated that the Trump administration is capable of gaining judicial support for its efforts to confiscate ballots. The FBI was able to obtain a search warrant even though the allegations on which the investigation hinges have been repeatedly disproven in court. 

If the Trump administration is able to seize ballots, then come November, the government could confiscate ballots from precincts where mail-in ballots are determining close races before the results are actually tallied—and bring American democracy crashing down.   

Derek Clinger, senior counsel at Wisconsin University Law School’s State Democracy Research Initiative, warned Vox that the raid was a test run for legitimizing this tactic.

“The nightmare scenario used to be that Trump would invoke the Insurrection Act and have the military seize ballots and machines from a swing state on election night,” Clinger told Vox. “But Fulton County suggests a much more plausible scenario: one where the seizure of ballots is conducted with the appearance of a legal process. I think that approach is both more likely to happen and also harder to challenge in real time.”

Trump already laid the groundwork for seizing ballots last spring by issuing an executive order asserting that states cannot count mail-in ballots after Election Day and that the government needed to decertify and recertify all voting machines. While these two elements of that order were challenged in courts, and many states still allow votes postmarked before Election Day to be counted, the Trump administration has created a rationale for discounting the results of state elections because, by the White House’s standard, many would be illegal.

Another possibility that feels more real than ever is the likelihood that Trump will use federal immigration forces to chill voter turnout by deploying the president’s extrajudicial hit squads in specific cities.

Justin Levitt, a former DOJ official and professor at Loyola Law School, told Vox: “I think it is, tragically, an unfortunate possibility that ICE paramilitary forces will be misused in an attempt to deter people from participating in elections.”

President Trump and his supporters have been attacking American Olympians for expressing even the slightest criticism of the Trump administration while competing at the Winter Olympics in Milan.

“It brings up mixed emotions to represent the U.S. right now I think,” freestyle skier Hunter Hess said at a Friday press conference. “It’s a little hard; there’s obviously a lot going on that I’m not the biggest fan of, and I think a lot of people aren’t. I think for me it’s more I’m representing my friends and family back home … all the things I believe are good about the U.S.

“If it aligns with my moral values, I feel like I’m representing it,” Hess continued. “Just because I’m wearing the flag doesn’t mean I represent everything that’s going on in the U.S.”

His teammate Chris Lillis was even more specific.

“I feel heartbroken about what’s happened in the United States. I’m pretty sure you’re referencing ICE and some of the protests,” Lillis said. “I think that, as a country, we need to focus on respecting everybody’s rights and making sure that we’re treating our citizens as well as anybody, with love and respect.… I hope that when people look at athletes [competing] in the Olympics, they realize that that’s the America that we’re trying to represent.”

These comments were very triggering for the MAGAverse.

“U.S. Olympic Skier, Hunter Hess, a real Loser, says he doesn’t represent his Country in the current Winter Olympics. If that’s the case, he shouldn’t have tried out for the Team, and it’s too bad he’s on it,” Trump wrote on Truth Social Sunday evening. “Very hard to root for someone like this. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”

“Wow pls shut the fuck up. From all true Americans,” boxer and right-wing content creator Jake Paul said. “If you don’t want to represent this country go live somewhere else.”

“Chris Lillis and Hunter Hess have now had their 15 minutes of grandstanding fame,” a smaller account wrote. “It is now my wish that they do horribly in their events and disappear.”

Figure skater Amber Glenn also received MAGA backlash for saying that the LGBTQ community had had a “hard time” under the Trump administration—even after winning a gold medal.

“I hope I can use my platform and my voice throughout these games to try to encourage people to stay strong.… I know that a lot of people say you’re just an athlete, stick to your job, shut up about politics. But politics affect us all. It is something that I will not just be quiet about.”

“The little woke skater didn’t perform her best. Guess she should have focused on practicing and not being a wokie,” one right-wing account wrote incorrectly. “Karma got her.”

Then there was Alpine skier Mikaela Shiffrin, who quoted former South African President Nelson Mandela at a press conference: “Peace is not just the absence of conflict; peace is the creation of an environment where we can all flourish, regardless of race, color, creed, religion, gender, class, caste, or any other social markers of difference.”

“Criticize policies at home. Debate. Vote. Protest if you want,” one detractor commented. “But if you step onto the Olympic stage under the American flag, show some basic respect for the country that gave you that opportunity.”

None of these people would have any issue if Olympians were getting onstage and fawning over Trump. But they’re doing the opposite, and now MAGA is trying to pretend that the most political sporting event in history should somehow be devoid of politics.

Members of Congress are calling on Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick to resign after the government’s latest release of Jeffrey Epstein files show that the pair had a close relationship, contradicting Lutnick’s earlier denials.

Lutnick, who lived next door to Epstein in New York, claimed last year on the conservative Pod Force One podcast that after he met the convicted sex offender in 2005, he swore off future interactions with Epstein. But revelations late last month show that Lutnick’s financial services firm, Cantor Fitzgerald, was making deals with Epstein long after that, with Lutnick traveling to Epstein’s private Caribbean island and continuing to correspond with the billionaire via email.

Republican Representative Thomas Massie and several Democrats over the weekend called for Lutnick to step down, with the Kentucky congressmen telling CNN’s Inside Politics on Sunday that Lutnick “should just resign.”

“Howard Lutnick clearly went to the island, if we believe what’s in these files; he was in business with Jeffrey Epstein, and this was many years after Jeffrey Epstein was convicted,” Massie said. “He’s got a lot to answer for, but really, he should make life easier on the president, frankly, and just resign.”

Democratic Representative Sydney Kamlager-Dove posted Sunday afternoon, “In between gaslighting Americans about the economy & sucking up to Trump, Lutnick took up TV air time to lie about his relationship with Epstein. He visited Epstein’s island in 2012 yet claimed he cut ties with Epstein years earlier. What else is he hiding? He must resign.”

Representative Robert Garcia later said, “It’s now clear that Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick has been lying about his relationship with Epstein. He said he had no interactions with Epstein after 2005, yet we now know they were in business together. Lutnick must resign or be fired. And he must answer our questions.”

Representative Ted Lieu called out Lutnick for having gone “on national TV and lied to the American people.”

“You were despicable then for planning a visit to Epstein island, and you are despicable now for brazenly lying. You should resign,” Lieu posted Sunday.

“He has no business being our Commerce Secretary. He should resign,” Senator Adam Schiff also posted Sunday, calling out Lutnick for lying about his business ties with Epstein.

On Monday, Representative Melanie Stansbury called for Lutnick to appear before the House Oversight Committee and said, “I personally believe that Mr. Lutnick needs to step down immediately.”

The U.S. health secretary’s motivation for ending childhood obesity apparently rests on military recruitment.

Speaking at a Heritage Foundation event Monday morning, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. claimed that America’s fat kids need to lose weight so they can go to war, lest we “lose” the country.

“Seventy-seven percent of our children can no longer qualify for military service and most of that is diet-related,” Kennedy said. “We need to change what we’re feeding these children or we’re going to lose our country.”

The Pentagon’s 2020 Qualified Military Available Study found that just 77 percent of young Americans would qualify for service without a medical waiver due to reasons such as obesity, drug use, and mental or physical health disorders. The report noted, however, that just 11 percent of America’s youth would be disqualified from service for obesity. Kennedy appears to have his numbers backward.

But the U.S. does have a severe obesity problem. Federal administrations dating back to the 1970s have attempted to address it, though seemingly to no avail, as rates are higher than ever. Roughly two in five Americans are obese, according to data from the National Institutes of Health. Meanwhile, one in five children are affected by obesity, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

For all the political noise Republicans made when former first lady Michelle Obama decided to tackle childhood obesity rates, Kennedy’s efforts are totally cool with conservatives—even, or perhaps especially, if his end goal is to use children’s bodies for America’s militaristic aims.

Back in September, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth made clear that his version of the U.S. military would have no room for “fat troops.” Speaking before hundreds of America’s top military commanders at a mandatory in-person meeting in Quantico, Hegseth unveiled his efforts to de-wokify the country’s armed forces, including resetting military combat requirements to the “highest male standard only” and updating the branches’ height and weight requirements. He not-so-subtly admitted he wanted to force women out of service, as well as Black men by way of a ban on military beard waivers.

But it’s not clear if Kennedy’s MAHA agenda—which was generated by AI—will work. Last month, the health secretary unveiled the outcome of his department’s monthslong project to reimagine the food pyramid. The result: an upside-down triangle, in which butter, steak, and cheese play a leading role.

Furthermore, a fraction of Americans volunteer for military service, raising questions about whether obesity rates actually have an effect on recruitment efforts. Less than one half of one percent of the general public is active duty, according to the Council on Foreign Relations. Only roughly 6 percent of the population has ever served in the military, representing some 18 million veterans.

Donald Trump’s Department of Justice blocked prosecutors in Minnesota from investigating Renee Good’s killing, several people told The New York Times.

Before he resigned from his role last month, former acting U.S. Attorney Joseph H. Thompson emailed colleagues at the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, which reviews police shootings, indicating they would team up with the FBI to launch a civil rights investigation into Good’s death. But as soon as FBI agents received a signed search warrant to examine the blood splatter and bullet holes in Good’s vehicle, they received orders to stop their investigation, according to several who spoke anonymously with the Times.

The orders came from senior DOJ officials, including FBI Director Kash Patel, who were apparently concerned the investigation could undermine the administration’s claims that Good was a violent insurrectionist who had attempted to mow down a federal agent, according to the Times.

The Bureau of Criminal Apprehension previously claimed that the FBI had outright refused to cooperate with its investigation into Good’s killing, forcing it to withdraw its efforts entirely. In late January, Department of Homeland Security officers also blocked BCA access to the scene of Alex Pretti’s brutal killing.

In the days following Good’s death, DOJ officials suggested that prosecutors launch a criminal investigation into whether Good had assaulted Jonathan Ross, the ICE agent who shot and killed her. DOJ officials also suggested that prosecutors investigate Good’s widow, Becca, who had been present at the incident and whom Trump smeared as a “professional agitator.” Rather than engage in their frivolous investigations, Thompson and three other senior prosecutors resigned.

Attorney General Pam Bondi told Fox News at the time that the prosecutors had resigned because they “suddenly decided they didn’t want to support the men and women at ICE.”

Anti-abortion demonstrators at the March for Life may have helped spread a potentially fatal disease.

The march and concert, held on January 23 in Washington, D.C., draw thousands to the National Mall each year. This time, though, the D.C. Department of Health says that multiple cases of measles have been reported following the event.

“DC Health was notified of multiple confirmed cases of measles whose carriers visited multiple locations in the District while contagious,” the department said in a press release Sunday. “DC Health is informing people who were at these locations that they may have been exposed.”

D.C. health officials said that the disease could have easily spread at major transit points, including Ronald Reagan National Airport and Union Station. Infected people also visited Catholic University of America and the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception.

The march is a big event for religious conservatives, this year attracting politicians such as Vice President JD Vance, Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, and Republican Representative Chris Smith. Many on the right oppose vaccination, with some citing religious reasons, making the march a possible hotbed of measles infections. The two major outbreaks in the U.S. right now are in South Carolina, which is facing the largest outbreak in the U.S. since 2000, and Texas, where an ICE family detention center had to go on lockdown last week.

Both of these states are Republican-run and home to countless anti-vaxxers. The March for Life gathers people from right-wing areas all over America in one city, and it’s not shocking that an outbreak was the result. What is shocking is how much the Republicans in power right now are still undermining a return to widespread vaccination, leaving other public officials begging people to get vaccinated.

Convicted sex trafficker and Jeffrey Epstein accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell refused to answer a single question during her virtual deposition with the House Oversight Committee on Monday.

“Unfortunately, she had an opportunity today to answer questions that every American has, questions that would be very important in this investigation, and she chose to invoke her Fifth Amendment,” House Oversight Chairman James Comer said.

This is a departure from the norm for Maxwell, as she was quite talkative in her July interview with Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, and in a more recent habeas petition claimed that 29 of Epstein’s friends had been “protected” by the Justice Department by way of “secret settlements.”

“After months of defying our subpoena, Ghislaine Maxwell finally appeared before the Oversight Committee and said nothing,” Democratic Oversight Committee member Robert Garcia said. “She answered no questions and provided no information about the men who raped and trafficked women and girls.”

Maxwell’s lawyer, David Oscar Markus, later explained why his client was staying mum: She’s holding out for a Trump pardon.

“She must remain silent because Ms. Maxwell has a habeas petition currently pending that demonstrates that her conviction rests on a fundamentally unfair trial,” Markus wrote. He then claimed that jurors “lied during voir dire” and that the government broke a promise to grant Maxwell immunity.

“If this Committee and the American public truly want to hear the unfiltered truth about what happened, there is a straightforward path. Ms. Maxwell is prepared to speak fully and honestly if granted clemency by President Trump,” he continued. “Only she can provide the complete account. Some may not like what they hear, but the truth matters. For example, both President Trump and President Clinton are innocent of any wrongdoing. Ms. Maxwell alone can explain why, and the public is entitled to that explanation.”

This is nothing more than an attempt to get a convicted, infamous sex trafficker out of prison.

Maxwell continues to serve out her 20-year sentence while members of Congress begin viewing unredacted files on Monday—and while Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton prepare for their own private depositions.

This story has been updated.

Shock YouTuber turned professional boxer Jake Paul did some Olympic-level backpedaling after he was dragged through the digital trenches for writing online that Puerto Rican singer Bad Bunny was a “fake American.”

“Guys i love bad bunny idk what happened on my twitter last night ?? wtf,” Paul posted on X Monday morning in a post that mustered fewer than 5,000 likes.

Paul also changed his X bio to read: “Benito #1 fan,” referring to the Spanish-speaking global superstar by his first name.

The previous evening, Paul sparked enormous backlash after he put out a statement claiming he was going to be “turning off” Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl halftime show.

“Let’s rally together and show big corporations they can’t just do whatever they want without consequences,” Paul wrote. “Turn off this halftime. A fake American citizen performing who publicly hates America. I cannot support that.”

Ultimately, the Boricua’s performance was an ode to love and unity, rhapsodizing about the significance of family and cultural heritage while elevating the myriad talents of the island’s inhabitants to the national stage.

X users were quick to vilify Paul for his insulting take on the heartwarming set, reminding him that Puerto Rico is a part of America, a detail he should be well aware of considering that he lives there.

Even Paul’s brother Jake, who infamously trekked to Japan’s “suicide forest” to make content with dead bodies, had more class than his younger sibling.

“​​I love my brother but I don’t agree with this,” the elder Paul brother wrote. “Puerto Ricans are Americans & I’m happy they were given the opportunity to showcase the talent that comes from the island.”

Both Paul brothers have admitted in interviews that they relocated to Puerto Rico in 2021 in order to avoid paying U.S. taxes.

Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez—a New Yorker of Puerto Rican descent—also condemned Paul’s comments, arguing that Bad Bunny’s profound success makes Paul “look small.”

“Benito actually funds low income kids’ access to arts and sports programs, while you defund them,” she posted on X Monday morning.

Jake Paul attempted to clarify his stance on the issue in a follow-up tweet Monday, writing that he “wasn’t calling anyone a ‘fake citizen’ because they’re from Puerto Rico.”

“I live in Puerto Rico, and I love Puerto Rico,” he wrote. “But if you’re publicly criticizing ICE who are doing their job and openly hating on America, I’m going to speak on it. Period.

“If you benefit from a country and the platform it gives you, but publicly disrespect it at the same time, that’s what I mean by being a fake citizen,” Paul added.

A legal immigrant with a valid work permit who has lived in the U.S. for over 20 years has been held in ICE custody since September.

Seamus Culleton has no criminal record, “not even a parking ticket,” is married to a U.S. citizen, and owns a plastering business near Boston. Culleton said he was pulled over by ICE agents while driving home from work five months ago, and had his Massachusetts driver’s license and work permit with him.

He was then detained and held in a cell with several other immigrants before being flown to an Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Buffalo, New York, where he was asked to sign papers agreeing to his deportation. Culleton said he refused and checked a box that he was contesting his deportation on the grounds that his wife is a U.S. citizen and that he has a valid work permit, thanks to his pending application for permanent resident status filed last April.

But from there, he was taken to another ICE detention center in El Paso, Texas. Culleton said conditions there are “like a concentration camp, absolute hell,” in a phone interview with The Irish Times, as he shares a large, cold, and damp room with over 70 men. Meals are small child-size portions served in the center of the room, and detainees often fight over the food.

Culleton said that he has only left the room for fresh air and exercise less than 12 times in his nearly five-month detention, and is stuck lying on a bed most days. His wife paid a $4,000 bond for his release in November, but nothing happened, and days later, they found that Culleton’s bond had been denied, unlike in most other cases.

Culleton’s attorney appealed the case to federal court, where ICE agents claimed that he had signed documents agreeing to his own deportation, which he adamantly denies, saying that the signatures can’t be his.

“My whole life is here [in the U.S.]. I worked so hard to build my business. My wife is here,” Culleton said. A federal judge noted irregularities in the documents but still sided with ICE.

Legally, Culleton can’t appeal further, but believes that video of his interview with ICE in Buffalo would show that he refused to agree to his own deportation in writing. Any signatures, he said, would not match his. He added that ICE agents tried again to get him to sign a deportation order.

“You have one section of the government trying to deport me, and another trying to give me a green card,” Culleton said.

Conservative America launched its own musical performance Sunday evening to compete with Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl halftime show—but their star performer, Kid Rock, couldn’t have been more of a dud.

The country music rapper opened his portion of Turning Point USA’s “All American Halftime Show” with his hit “Bawitdaba,” but within minutes, it was crystal clear that Rock’s blaring voice wasn’t coming from his mouth.

The musician’s lips were closed during some portions of his obviously prerecorded vocal performance but open during moments of silence on the mic, eliciting scorn from viewers online, who likened his vocal talent to famed fakers Ashlee Simpson and Millie Vanilli. Others claimed that Rock’s set was “worse” than one of Frankie Valli’s cashed-out 2024 performances, in which the “Sherry” singer hardly moved his mouth at all.

As Rock’s set ended, large screens surrounding the stage flashed a tribute, noting that the entirety of the show was in remembrance of Turning Point USA’s founder Charlie Kirk, who was killed in September.

But the country singer’s questionable performance barely mattered, considering that basically no one watched the far-right halftime alternative. While a whopping 128 million people tuned in to watch global superstar Bad Bunny rap in Spanish about culture, beauty, and unity, just four million clocked in for Turning Point’s divisive, initial airing of its 25-minute broadcast, reported The Independent.

Even the president—whose administration said he would watch it—couldn’t be bothered to tune in for TPUSA. Instead, Donald Trump was glued to the Puerto Rican singer’s performance, which aired on all screens during a Super Bowl party at his Mar-a-Lago golf club, according to clips taken by attendees of the event.

Trump eventually confirmed he had watched Bad Bunny’s set instead of Kid Rock’s, though the news came by way of a classic Trump rant on Truth Social, in which he complained that he doesn’t understand Spanish and claimed that the dancing—which included reggaeton, salsa, bomba, and merengue—was “disgusting.”