Texas Has Suspended More Than 1 Million Voters Ahead of Senate Race

Six percent of Texas’s voters—over 1.2 million people—have had their voter registrations suspended, and many might not even know about it.

The designation, which means that the voter’s county doesn’t know their address or thinks they’ve moved, doesn’t stop people from voting in November’s midterm elections, but it does make the process more difficult. If a voter shows up on Election Day and their registration is suspended, they have to fill out a “statement of residence” form, and if they’ve moved to a new county, they’ll either be required to vote in their old one or be given a provisional ballot, The Dallas Morning News reported.

The suspended registrations span the whole state, but also some of Texas’s largest counties, including Dallas County, where more than 129,000 voters are suspended; 56,000 voters in both Collin and Denton counties; and over 73,000 voters in Tarrant County.

Voters have until October 5 to update their registrations and can check their status on the Texas secretary of state’s website, at a county election office, or by mail. But with a number as high as 1.2 million people, the message may not reach many voters in time—especially if they haven’t moved and it’s the fault of a clerical error.

That margin could also be pivotal in a state where polls are close in multiple races, especially the Senate, where Democratic state Senator James Talarico has a narrow edge over Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton. Texas is also cooperating with the Trump administration’s attempts to take control of elections by handing over its voter rolls. If a significant number of Texans are blocked from voting on Election Day, that could make all the difference in what the Senate looks like the next four years.

Need any more proof that Donald Trump’s pettiness knows no bounds? The president signed an executive order Thursday to rename Lake Ontario as “Lake America.”

After sparking a trade war with Canada last week, Trump turned his attention to the incredibly important issue: changing the name of a lake.

The executive order directs Interior Secretary Doug Burgum to update the geographic names to reflect the new name of the Great Lake that shares a border with Canada.

The move is reminiscent of his first act as president, which was to change the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the “Gulf of America.” This is what happens when a president can’t actually govern: he’s forced to revert to trolling.

“So, if you think about it, we have a gulf, and we have a lake, now all we need is an ocean. So maybe we’ll have to change the name of the Atlantic and or Pacific,” Trump said at the signing.

Trump admitted Wednesday that he’d been behind the detonated trade negotiations last week.

American negotiators reportedly revealed at the last minute that they planned to exclude medium- and heavy-duty trucks from their promise to drop tariffs on Canadian automobiles, and tried to restrict Canada’s ability to strike trade deals with other countries. Another reason that Canadian negotiators walked away was reportedly because the U.S. made what were, in their view, unreasonable demands restricting French-language product documentation.

Since then, Trump has threatened to double tariffs to 50 percent on roughly $28 billion worth of products starting on January 1. In response, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney announced a slate of retaliatory tariffs on about 700 products of up to 50 percent that will go into effect on September 8.

Earlier this week, Trump joked that he’d change the name of Lake Ontario, observing that “we don’t expect to [be] doing much business with Ontario any longer.” That’s one of the many problems with this administration: they take their jokes way too far.

But if Trump’s latest approval numbers are any indication, Americans just aren’t impressed by rage bait—not as prices continue to rise thanks to Trump’s months-long war in the Middle East.

This story has been updated.

An ICE agent accused of shooting a Venezuelan immigrant in Minneapolis in January has been released from a Texas jail with no clear indication as to the future of his charges.

Christian Castro was one of thousands of agents that descended upon Minnesota during Donald Trump’s Operation Metro Surge. On January 14, Castro allegedly chased Alfredo Alejandro Aljorna, a DoorDash driver, to the entryway of his home. Upon arriving at the residence, Castro shot Aljorna’s roommate, Julio Cesar Sosa-Celis, in the leg. Castro claimed at the time that he shot Sosa-Celis in self-defense, purporting that the Venezuelan national had attacked him with a snow shovel.

But even Trump’s Justice Department had a difficult time proving that one. In a rare reversal, the DOJ moved to dismiss charges against Sosa-Celis and Aljorna relating to the assault, and Castro was the one left facing criminal consequences. Surveillance footage of the encounter released in April showed Sosa-Celis tossing the shovel early into his exchange with the ICE agent, and Castro firing shots into the home.

By mid-May, a Minneapolis state court charged Castro with four counts of assault and one count of falsely reporting a crime, issuing a nationwide warrant for his arrest. Days later, Texas Rangers cuffed Castro in Cameron County. He remained in jail until Thursday.

But the ensuing extradition process would prove to be a tumultuous one. Defying historical precedent, Texas Governor Greg Abbott opted not to comply with the warrant and hand Castro over to Minnesotan authorities. Abbott questioned whether the agent qualified as a fugitive since Castro had not technically fled Minnesota but had rather been transferred to work in Texas by the Department of Homeland Security.

On Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Fernando Rodriguez Jr. refused to force the extradition, despite fears that Castro would evade further capture by fleeing to Mexico.

“Governor Abbott still has the ability to prevent Christian Castro from walking out of jail. He can choose to stop harboring a fugitive by simply signing the extradition paperwork today,” Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty said in a statement following the decision. “If Castro walks out of jail tomorrow and disappears into Mexico, it will be the fault of one person—Greg Abbott.”

By 7 a.m. on Thursday, Castro’s detention had hit the maximum limit for a pending extradition as set by Texas law, and he was released.

Donald Trump Jr., the president’s son, wants Republican state leaders to stay away from any regulation of prediction markets. 

The New York Times reports that Trump told a gathering of GOP state attorneys general in New Orleans this spring that gambling businesses were attacking prediction markets such as Polymarket and Kalshi to protect their own “monopolies.” Prediction markets already have oversight from the federal government, Trump said, according to four anonymous sources cited by the Times. 

The message appeared clear: Back off the idea of regulating any prediction markets.

Trump was hired by Kalshi in January last year as an adviser and is on the board of Polymarket, which he has a stake in through his investment firm 1789 Capital.  

Both Republican and Democratic state governments are pursuing legal action against prediction markets, with 20 states in litigation over whether prediction markets fall under sports gambling laws. In July, 44 states signed a letter calling prediction markets a “new form of casino” endangering young people. In March, Arizona became the first state to criminally charge Kalshi for allowing people to bet on elections and “operating an illegal gambling business.”  

States are trying to recoup state tax revenue, estimated to be at least $2 billion a year, according to the research group the Tax Foundation. The president, meanwhile, is encouraging prediction markets, touting the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, a small agency that oversees derivatives, as being enough to regulate them. 

Since its founding in 1974, the CFTC had never sued a state government over regulations until this year, when it sued nine of them, all with Democratic governors. In two instances, the CFTC has told prediction markets to go around court orders by invoking emergency powers. 

The issue of prediction markets will likely reach the Supreme Court, with the White House highly likely to back the businesses from facing any legal restrictions. The fact that they involve betting on political and international events has already proven to be a major problem, but that doesn’t seem to deter the Trump administration. 

President Donald Trump wants you to pretend that he’s on the ballot in the midterm elections.

Speaking in an interview aired on Fox News’s Hannity Wednesday night, Trump explained his latest strategy to get out the vote in November.

“There’s a theory that I get the vote,” Trump said. “You know, I see it all the time. ‘When Trump’s on the ballot, they win. When he’s not on the ballot, the people don’t go to vote.’ And I’m asking the people through your brilliant show, number one show, I’m asking the people to get out and vote, pretend I’m on the ballot.”

Trump’s remarks come as he’s directed MAGA Inc. to spend his $400 million elections war chest on ads that focus not on the Republican candidates who are running for the House and Senate, but on the president himself.

But Trump’s new approach to the midterm elections only works if people actually like him—and right now, they don’t.

In recent days, Trump’s approval rating has held at 33 percent, the lowest of his presidency. A poll from Reuters/Ipsos found that Trump’s war with Iran—a conflict that has come to define the first half of his second term—is even less popular, with an approval rating of just 31 percent.

Trump may have been a boost on a ballot before, but this time around, voters are watching his record fall apart. A recent poll published by Strength in Numbers/Verasight found that Trump was underwater on all issues across the board—including border security, which is historically his best issue.

Democrats were hoping to malign Republican candidates for the House and Senate by linking them to Trump—and now those candidates won’t be able to escape him. If this is seriously the president’s best strategy, Democrats may be in for a treat come November.