Trump’s Voter Fraud Quest Is Turning Illegal, Whistleblower Says

A whistleblower has alleged that federal investigators violated state law in a desperate attempt to find proof of President Trump’s baseless claims of voter fraud. 

Agents at the Department of Homeland Security have been posing as voters, entering people’s personal voting information (like Social Security number and date of birth) into public-facing state websites, and using that to determine if they are eligible to vote or note—all in about 12 minutes thanks to their 40-person-a-day quota. Many states have laws indicating that only the actual person voting may input their own information into said public-facing sites, making the agents’ actions potentially illegal. 

These questionable tactics make the  “Unlawful Voter Initiative” launched by Trump two weeks ago an extremely tenuous endeavor,

In the report, compiled by the government watchdog group the Democracy Defenders Fund, the whistleblower also alleges that the agents’ rushed data collections may be rife with inaccuracies. The “alien identification numbers” of people who entered the U.S. as noncitizens are still listed on their records—even if they became a full citizen years ago. The hasty nature of DHS’s efforts may result in people who are well within their right to vote as citizens are flagged as “unlawful voters.” The report also notes that some of the agents themselves began to grow concerned about using people’s personal data, and hesitated to identify individuals as unlawful  voters

DHS in a statement argued that it is well within its rights to peruse the intimate voter data of millions of Americans because “It’s not rocket science; it’s an easy step to secure our elections.”

“I do think the American people value keeping their personal information private,” said Senator Alex Padilla, whom the report was delivered to on Sunday. “The other thing that’s concerning here, that the American people who would be offended by, is the knowing inaccuracy of what they’re doing, whether it’s the data or their sham analysis. It’s going to produce false positives.”

While at a campaign rally in Kansas for incumbent Republican Senator Roger Marshall, Vice President JD Vance was interrupted by a heckler.

“He sues his patients!” the protester shouted while Vance spoke at the MAGA Inc. event in Olathe, Kansas, Monday. A New York Times report last week exposed Marshall for suing patients who couldn’t pay their bills while he was a practicing ob-gyn prior to his political career (and even during the first few years he was in Congress).

“I see we have, I see we have a guy who is protesting,” Vance said as the pro-Trump crowd chanted “USA” and the heckler was escorted off of the premises by security. “You know, the last time I gave a speech and we had a guy who was interrupting, he had the common courtesy to bring a Mexican flag so we knew where he stood.”

“Now this guy, this guy, I’m telling you, ladies and gentlemen, here’s what happened, is he decided to come in and lie about my very dear friend Doc Marshall, because the reality is that Doc Marshall has stood up for everyday Americans every single day he’s been in the United States Senate,” Vance continued.

Marshall was attacked by his Democratic opponent, pastor Adam Hamilton, during a debate at the Kansas State Fair on Saturday over the lawsuits.

“There are 2,000 verses in the Bible that speak to caring for the poor,” Hamilton said. “This is not happening under this man.”

Marshall struggled to speak over a loud and unfriendly crowd in the rest of the event, saying that he engaged in “common business practices” and claimed that his hospital “would go a year before we’d ever send somebody over” to litigation. However, the Times reporting found multiple instances of patients who were sued just months after their appointment.

While Kansas hasn’t elected a Democratic senator since 1932, they elected a Democratic governor, Laura Kelly, in 2018 and reelected her in 2022. In a year where the incumbent president and the Republican Party are historically unpopular, Marshall’s medical lawsuits could sink his chances.

Twenty-two states and the District of Columbia are filing lawsuits against the Trump administration to prevent the Department of Homeland Security from changing the “public charge” rule, increasing the power of federal immigration officials to deny green card and visa applicants based on their potential future participation in federal aid programs.

A separate lawsuit was filed the same day on behalf of Democratic cities including New York, Chicago, San Francisco, and Seattle.

Traditionally, immigration officers look at whether applicants relied on programs like Supplemental Security Income and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families. But the Trump administration now wants to expand that to penalize applicants who are enrolled in Medicaid or receive food stamps.

“Under @POTUS Trump, DHS is restoring the basic principle that immigrants must be able to support themselves,” DHS announced earlier this summer, before the lawsuit was filed. “We are reaffirming the requirement of self-reliance, protecting public resources, and ending policies that encouraged dependency on hard-working American taxpayers.”

New York Attorney General Letitia James zeroed in on that “self-reliance” bit during a press conference on Monday.

“The rule would allow immigration officers to consider use of critical benefits like Medicaid and SNAP (the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program), and even participation in school meal programs, as part of an applicant’s circumstance,” said James. “That means immigrant New Yorkers may be forced to ask themselves impossible questions: ‘Will getting health insurance hurt my chances of getting a green card? Will accepting food assistance when I fall on hard times be held against me?’”

“Cruelty is the point.... Having a chilling effect on immigrants is the point. Letting individuals know that they are not welcome here is the point. Immigration animus is the point,” James continued. “The fact that you’re going to deny individuals who are sick and hungry and homeless benefits just is beyond the pale. And that’s why we are seeking in the state of New York to vacate this rule,” she said.

This rule change, if accepted, will also incur a massive chilling effect, leading green card and visa applicants and their families to avoid engaging with federal programs at all, even if they’re legal and needed.

“No family should have to choose between accessing health care and nutrition assistance today—or protecting their pathway to a green card tomorrow,” California Attorney General Rob Bonta said. “The Trump Administration is seeking to rewrite more than 100 years of law with its expansive new definition of who is considered a ‘public charge.’ In doing so, it is providing individual immigration officers with the discretion and power to punish families for lawfully accessing certain public benefits programs during short-term periods of need. This administration’s cruelty continues to know no bounds. We’re going to court on behalf of the millions of immigrants who call this state home—and we will fight to get this unlawful rule undone.”

The public charge policy change is scheduled to take effect on Friday.

America’s billionaire president is preaching to his followers that the threat of artificial intelligence is a “hoax.”

“Concerning AI, when, in the History of Business, did anyone see the Leaders of an Industry call for Regulation that, if strongly implemented, will drive them into oblivion and bankruptcy?” Donald Trump wrote on Truth Social Monday afternoon. “AI taking over the World, destroying Humanity, and all other things bad, is a HOAX.”

Trump compared the latest national furor over AI (sparked by industry insiders) to several other controversies that have plagued his presidency, including the investigation into Russian collusion in his 2016 presidential campaign, the Ukraine war, and both impeachment efforts against him.

The AI uproar is “no different from RUSSIA, RUSSIA, RUSSIA—UKRAINE, UKRAINE, UKRAINE—IMPEACHMENT HOAX #1—IMPEACHMENT HOAX #2—and all of the other HOAXES and SCAMS that America was forced to endure through the Destructionists’ and Deviants’ foul play and illegal conduct,” Trump wrote.

He added that he is “not happy” about the backlash, which he suggested has placed America in a backseat position amid the global race to dominate the burgeoning technology. He cited Google’s €13 billion deal with Finland to build out the company’s AI infrastructure, as well as Beijing’s recent dismissal of Silicon Valley’s urgent warnings to develop and implement AI safeguards (former Anthropic employee Jacob Coxon cautioned last week that, in private, the people building large language models have expressed it could be capable of killing all humans by the end of the decade.)

“AI, and Data Centers, will be the Greatest Economic Development Engine in History—Bigger than Oil, Gold, Diamonds, or even the Internet. It will not be stopped by brilliantly run Destructive Forces during the Term of President DONALD J. TRUMP!” he concluded.

Trump has a lot to politically—and personally—gain from championing AI. Days into his second term, the president unveiled a $500 billion public-private venture to support AI development. The project was dubbed Stargate and backed by OpenAI, SoftBank, Oracle, and MGX, an AI investment firm owned by the United Arab Emirates.

The president’s 2026 financial disclosures also reveal that he’s invested a sizable sum in tech companies pursuing AI projects, spending millions of dollars on stock purchases for Oracle, Microsoft, Nvidia, Meta, Amazon, Apple, and Alphabet.

But Trump’s opinion on the matter is seriously at odds with that of the American public. Recent polling indicates that the vast majority of Americans, including Republicans, have no interest in permitting the tech industry to build AI facilities in their backyards. An August survey published by Heatmap revealed that 75 percent of the public opposes data center development in their communities.

The growing divide between the president’s sentiments and the reality lived by the American public should serve as a reminder that Trump—who is worth an estimated $6.5 billion and owns hundreds of business entities and properties around the world—has almost nothing in common with the rest of the country. Trump will never be hard pressed to find drinking water like the residents of Flint, Michigan; he apparently doesn’t have to buy (or even pronounce) America’s increasingly expensive “groceries”; and will never experience the crushing toll of the housing crisis (a “big yawn,” he called it in June, while profiting off it), or need to split the cost at the gas pump between credit cards.

Last month, Trump even went so far as to claim that anyone who opposes data center development is “backwards and poor,” a sobering reminder that Trump simply does not care about the average American.

Staff at Alligator Alcatraz called them “calming areas.” They were really cages.

A new report Monday revealed that the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of the Inspector General discovered two metal cages, roughly the size of a phone booth, where immigrant detainees were kept at Alligator Alcatraz, the Trump administration’s soft-sided concentration camp in the Florida Everglades.

Between the camp’s hasty construction in July 2025 and its official closure in January 2026, at least 79 detainees were held in these small outdoor cages, according to the report. Immigrant detainees would spend between seven minutes and two hours in the enclosures, each four feet three inches wide and seven feet nine inches tall.

Staff claimed that detainees would request time in these so-called “calming areas,” and that they were never even locked. Both cages, however, included locking mechanisms.

The OIG found one instance in which a “calming area” may have been used as a disciplinary tool. Documentation provided to the OIG noted that one detainee who spent 26 minutes in a small metal enclosure had “failed to comply with a lawful command.” Immigration and Customs Enforcement confirmed that the cages were used for “disciplinary issues, crisis intervention, housing changes, and conflicts among detainees,” according to the report.

In March, Democratic Senators Jon Ossoff and Dick Durbin wrote a letter to DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin and then–ICE Director Todd Lyons over concerns that immigrants were being kept in a small structure called “the box,” where they were “held in stress positions with hands and feet tightly shackled for hours at a time, in direct sunlight with no access to food or water.”

The OIG could not confirm these claims, but stated that the use of these cages was “highly unconventional” and did not align with the standards for humane treatment.

“Use of these small metal enclosures for any reason is unprecedented among ICE facilities inspected by OIG,” the report stated. “Confining individuals in small metal enclosures for any reason presents significant risks to detainee health and well-being.”

Alligator Alcatraz has been the source of dozens of disturbing reports of inhumane treatment. Detainees at the soft-sided facility reported flooding in the tents, worm-infested food, behemoth bugs, no access to running water, and widespread violations of immigrants’ legal rights.

A former corrections officer at Alligator Alcatraz previously claimed that detainees were being kept in a “human-sized kennel.” One detainee told CBS News: “We’re human beings; we’re not dogs. We’re like rats in an experiment.”