DOJ Admits List of Noncitizen Voters Is Faulty as It Begins Arrests

Eleven people with lawful permanent resident status were arrested in California Monday for alleged voter fraud. Hours later, First Assistant Attorney for California Bill Essayli admitted that they may not have even voted.

The arrests were announced in a Department of Justice press release, which lauded the capture of California residents as part of “Operation Protect the Vote”—an effort to purge voting rolls of alleged “noncitizens” ahead of November’s midterm elections. On October 14, the Trump administration gave the Golden State a flash drive of nearly 200,000 “likely noncitizen” voters it had identified. The method used to identify them remains unclear.

The administration then demanded that the state take “immediate action to ensure that noncitizens do not vote in the upcoming federal election.” If California refused, the administration said it would have “no choice but to seek emergency relief.

In reality, noncitizen voting remains incredibly marginal, and “Operation Protect the Vote” in California is a thinly veiled attempt to target immigrants, spread fear, and restrict voting access in a Democratic stronghold.

“Every illegal vote cancels out the vote of a lawful American citizen,” said acting Deputy Attorney General Trent McCotter. “Each of the 28 defendants charged today appears on the list of more than 20,000 likely noncitizen registrants we provided to California election officials last week. California refused to look at that list. Today’s charges show exactly what that refusal puts at risk. California must verify the citizenship of those more than 20,000 registrants before mail-in ballots are counted.”

“I think the majority did cast a vote in a prior election. Not all, but most did,” Essayli said in a press conference following the arrests, admitting that the DOJ’s “high confidence” list of fraudulent noncitizen voters is not at all foolproof.

These indefensible arrests are the latest chapter in the DOJ’s quest to weaponize voter registration data and throw due process to the wind, using “voter fraud” as a blanket accusation for anyone the Trump administration doesn’t like.

President Donald Trump nearly berated a reporter—until he realized they were with a right-wing blog.

While speaking to the press outside of the White House Monday, a reporter asked Trump to respond to French President Emmanuel Macron, who’d blamed his country’s growing protests on elevated fuel prices caused by military activity in the Persian Gulf.

“Emmanuel Macron is blaming the Iran war and you, essentially, for the rioting in France right now—” one reporter said, suggesting that Macron had made a dig at Trump. The president didn’t let her finish.

“I don’t think he is, no I think that’s fake news. Who are you with?” Trump said.

“No sir, I’m Mary Margaret [Olohan] with the Daily Wire,” the reporter said, identifying herself.

“Oh, Daily Wire’s good. Sorry, Daily Wire’s good,” Trump said, suddenly apologetic.

Trump’s obstinacy is reserved only for mainstream media outlets—the same ones the president has illegally exiled from the White House and lashed out against time and time again.

It’s no secret that Trump’s meddling in the Strait of Hormuz has spiraled into a regional conflict. The president’s supposedly “six-week war” has nearly reached its eighth month, continuing to hurt U.S. and global economies. Trump’s continued unwillingness to acknowledge his own shoddy execution—or seriously address the economic impact that it’s having—shows that the president has no intention of taking responsibility for what’s happening in his own country, let alone France.

Vice President JD Vance called a brown man at his rally an “illegal immigrant” because he interrupted his rally to demand the release of the Epstein files.

“[The] corrupt, far-left cartel has subjected this country—” Vance was saying at his North Carolina rally, before the protester stood up directly behind him.

“God bless our children!” the man in the crowd yelled. “Release the Epstein files!”

Chants of “USA” began to drown him out as he was removed from the rally by security.

“Ladies and gentlemen, I’m gonna have to amend something I said earlier. I said that we have had zero illegal border crossings in the United States of America,” Vance said with a smile, implying that the protester was not a U.S. citizen. “But one isn’t bad, right?”

Vance’s response was lambasted by those to his left, as many saw his response to another call to release the Epstein files—something Trump himself campaigned on—as contradictory.

“They’re kicking people out of Republican rallies for shouting the same things they’ve been shouting at Republican rallies for years,” Puerto Rican journalist Benjamín Torres Gotay wrote on X.

“It’s insulting to suggest only ‘illegal immigrants’ care about justice for victims and accountability for perpetrators,” California Governor Gavin Newsom’s press office posted. “Most American citizens do too!”

The Trump administration promised its supporters a full release of the Epstein files that would expose the “deep state” and bring justice to survivors. Instead it has continued to obscure information and avoid transparency, with Attorney General Todd Blanche refusing to seriously meet with survivors, survivors getting kicked out of the GOP midterm convention, and now Vance’s assumption that a nonwhite individual calling for justice must be some kind of illegal alien.

President Trump now wants New Mexico to change its name to something that doesn’t offend him. 

Just like with the Gulf of Mexico, Trump wants the state to be called “New America” instead, he wrote in a Truth Social post on Monday. 

“New Mexico should immediately change its name to New America. We are not Mexico, we are the United States of America! The name would add great value and prestige to the State! Home Values and Incomes would rise, and you would be even prouder while saluting our beautiful American Flag! Maybe even the Crooked Elections, that New Mexico is known for, would become honest again! President DONALD J. TRUMP,” the president ranted. 

Trump’s attacks on New Mexico are almost certainly because the state has voted Democratic in eight of the last nine presidential elections and has always voted against him. Its entire congressional delegation is Democratic, as well as all of its statewide elected officials. Democrats also control both houses of its state legislature.  

But aside from Trump’s normal attacks on Democrats, he has fixated on unilaterally changing place names in his second term, possibly out of cognitive decline. He’s signed executive orders to change the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America, and Lake Ontario to Lake America. His latest renaming is “artificial intelligence” to “super intelligence,” which isn’t sticking even in his own Cabinet. 

The people of New Mexico won’t take kindly to Trump’s suggestion, and the move will just invite mockery. Meanwhile, the midterms are approaching, and the president is supposed to be spending his time campaigning to save Republicans from getting shellacked in two weeks. It’s highly unlikely that changing a state’s name is going to win any votes. 

And the scandals keep coming: President Donald Trump’s close ally Ric Grenell, who has recently served as both special envoy to Venezuela and acting director of the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, came under fire Monday for new evidence that he offered a pay-to-play scheme with wealthy Turkish businessman Turhan Mildon. Mildon recently married former Trump attorney Alina Habba.

The accusations came to light on October 9, after Habba stormed into the Oval Office to tell the president that Grenell had never deposited a nearly $6 million donation her husband made to the Kennedy Center in 2025. Grenell and Mildon were in touch in early 2025, before Mildon and Habba met, because Mildon had business contracts in Venezuela and had also expressed interest in the Kennedy Center. According to documents from Mildon’s lawyers, Grenell offered to support Mildon in Venezuela, including making him the “American face down in V.”

Mildon eventually transferred $17.6 million to an account supplied by Grenell, purportedly for a deal involving a private Texas defense company and the Democratic Republic of Congo, with the understanding that $5.6 million of that sum would end up at the Kennedy Center. But according to Habba, the $5.6 million never made it there.

White House counsel Will Scharf is now investigating the donation, including texts from Grenell supplied by Mildon’s lawyers.

“Once the money comes to the company here, I will arrange the donation to Kennedy Centre, and you’ll be joining the VIP events and get close with the administration, even with POTUS,” a May 3, 2025, text from Grenell to Mildon allegedly said.

Grenell has vehemently denied the accusations. “I’ve never asked for one cent to be sent somewhere else pretending it was for the Kennedy Center, and I’ve never received any payment from him at all,” Grenell told Axios, referring to Mildon. “Make him give proof to what he is saying, not make these absurd allegations.”

“There’s no way this is true. This is crazy,” Grenell allegedly told the president.

A source told Axios that Grenell claimed he would never use the British English spelling “centre,” rather than “center,” so the text could not be legitimate.

Kennedy Center staff went looking for Mildon’s donation last year but never found it. Instead, financial staffer Lisa Dale found that Mildon actually owed the center a pledged donation of $270,000. “There was nothing about $6 million,” Dale told Axios. “I would have heard about that.”

“POTUS doesn’t want to deal with this. Of course, he’s concerned, but if there is missing money, this is a big, big problem,” said another official with knowledge of the conflict.

“Nobody wants to get in the middle of Alina Habba and Ric Grenell going to war,” a different official said.