FBI Escalates Trump’s “Voter Fraud” Crusade With Disturbing Move
https://newrepublic.com/post/213812/fbi-escalates-trump-voter-fraud-crusade-ip-address
FBI Escalates Trump’s “Voter Fraud” Crusade With Disturbing Move
The Trump administration is getting new voter data from states in its attempt to take over elections.
FBI Director Kash Patel wants to know where you are.
Patel’s FBI has taken a new and dangerous step in its quest to root out alleged voter fraud—tracking down the IP addresses of people who register to vote online.
According to a new report from Axios, the FBI recently requested and obtained the IP address of someone who went online to register to vote in South Carolina. This move is a massive overreach by the Trump administration into local election processes.
“It’s not typical for the FBI to be calling state election officials … and conducting a fishing expedition to see private voter data,” a former senior Justice Department official told Axios. “It’s not typical and it’s not appropriate.”
Although an IP address cannot reveal a person’s exact identity, it does show the user’s geographic location, service provider, and the network they’re using. In the context of voting, an IP address could indicate the state and country a person is registering from.
Axios also spoke with longtime election official in York County, South Carolina, Alan Helms, who said he had never seen this kind of election interference before.
“It is not common” to get a request like this, Helms said. “In my tenure as an election official, going on 20 years, that is the first interaction with law enforcement.”
If the FBI continues pursuing voters’ IP addresses, the fallout could extend far beyond any one state—42 states, plus Washington, D.C., currently allow some form of online voter registration.
The move to track down voter IP addresses is just the latest in President Trump’s ongoing mission to make it harder for Americans to vote ahead of the upcoming midterm elections. Trump has sued 30 states and D.C. in an attempt to obtain state voter rolls. In the past month alone, the president has attacked mail-in voting, repeated his ridiculous claims that the 2020 election was “stolen” in a primetime national address, and attempted to shove his signature voter suppression bill, the SAVE America Act, through Congress. Since the start of his second term, he has mobilized government agencies—including the Department of Justice, the Department of Homeland Security, and now the FBI—to request voter registration lists, ballots from previous elections, and access to voting equipment.
Vivek Ramaswamy Booed Off Stage After Being Called “Political Cretin”
Ohio Republicans’ gubernatorial nominee is struggling to gain any traction.
Ohio’s Republican nominee for governor, Vivek Ramaswamy, got booed off the stage Wednesday in Cleveland while speaking to the Young Americans for Liberty.
Ramaswamy was supposed to speak for half an hour at the libertarian student group’s national convention but had to end his remarks after only 14 minutes due to backlash from the crowd. The heckling started the moment he took the stage and continued as Ramaswamy was pressed on issues like Israel, and as he took shots at the less than friendly audience.
“The truth of the matter is, you know no matter what happens in whichever direction we go, people in my generation have already made it. We’re gonna be fine. It’s going to be your generation that pays the price. That choice belongs to you,” Ramaswamy said, nearly being drowned out by boos.
“We don’t want to hear your bullshit talking points. You’re a political cretin, and you need to get the fuck out of here,” one audience member yelled to Ramaswamy at one point.
Ramaswamy also said that the real divide in America was not between Democrats and Republicans but “winners and whiners.” He responded to one heckler by saying, “You want to give a speech? … Well, you can get on when they give you a slot, alright? So, until they do, you can sit down.”
It’s not the first time the former presidential candidate has drawn a backlash from his own party’s base. In December 2024, he caught MAGA’s ire after saying that companies prefer the work ethic of foreign employees over the laziness of American ones.
While the speech was part of the YAL national convention, and not necessarily representative of all of Ohio, Ramaswamy is not polling well in the governor’s race. A New York Times/Siena University poll has him dead even with Democratic nominee Amy Acton. This speech is certainly not going to help him, even when presented in full.
Fetterman Helps Republicans Block Effort to End Trump’s Iran War
Democratic Senator John Fetterman joined Republicans to sink the Iran war powers resolution.
Senate Republicans Thursday blocked a resolution directing President Trump to end the war in Iran. Again.
Only three Republicans—Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, and Rand Paul of Kentucky—crossed the aisle to vote with Democrats to advance the measure. Again. Mitch McConnell didn’t show. Again. And Democratic Senator John Fetterman of Pennsylvania voted with Republicans against the measure.
Again.
The final vote was 49–50 to vanquish a resolution out of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that would have instructed the president to withdraw U.S. troops from Iran, blocking him from military action in Iran without congressional approval. The resolution only needed a simple majority to pass, but Fetterman tanked it.
Although Fetterman initially ran his 2022 campaign for a Senate seat with a progressive mask, his M.O. since entering office has been the exact opposite. He is one of the most outspoken supporters of Israel in Congress, he supports the deadly and expensive campaigns against Iran and Lebanon, he voted with Republicans to confirm Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin, and he has become increasingly aligned with President Trump on a host of other issues.
The House of Representatives has now passed two separate war powers resolutions, and for a moment there it looked like the upper chamber might join them, but the Senate (and one senator, in particular) continues to hold out. This was its thirteenth vote on a resolution to end the Iran war this year.
These resolutions are only growing in importance as the war spreads, with the U.S. resuming airstrikes and Iran launching missiles at targets across the Middle East. Just Wednesday night, U.S. Central Command struck dozens of Iranian targets for the first time in days, following Iran’s attacks on American military sites earlier this week.
Trump Suffers Back-to-Back Losses in Less Than Four Hours Over ICE
Two judges have rejected ICE’s mandatory detention policy, marking Donald Trump’s fifth and sixth consecutive losses on the case.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s mass immigration detention policy was struck down twice in a single day on Thursday, in a brutal loss for President Donald Trump.
Two separate federal appeals courts rejected the Trump administration’s bid to detain immigrants—many of whom have lived in the U.S. for years without a criminal record—without a hearing. The rulings mark the administration’s fifth and sixth consecutive losses on the case.
In a 2–1 ruling by the Wisconsin-based Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals, the majority found that the government could not refuse bond hearings to undocumented immigrants who were already living in the U.S. In executing its mass detention policy, the government had been improperly applying a rule meant to apply to immigrants “seeking admission” at the U.S. border.
Earlier Thursday, there was a 2–1 ruling by the California-based Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, which similarly found that the government had misconstrued decades-old immigration laws to justify its actions. The majority opinion was written by Trump appointee Judge Daniel Bress.
These rulings follow the same logic as decisions from the Atlanta-based Eleventh Circuit, the New York–based Second Circuit, the Colorado-based Tenth Circuit, and the Ohio-based Sixth Circuit. Only two federal appeals courts have sided with the Trump administration’s mass detention policy as it inevitably makes its way to the Supreme Court.
Mass detention isn’t merely a step along the way to achieving Trump’s goal of mass deportation: It’s also the goal.
ABC Accuses Trump’s FCC of Trying to Censor the Whole Media Industry
ABC fired back at the Federal Communications Commission, accusing the agency of “attempted censorship” and “retaliation.”
ABC accused the Federal Communications Commission Thursday of “attempted censorship” and a clear “retaliation” effort meant to send a message to every other media company in the country.
“The Administration has openly and repeatedly called for the revocation of ABC’s licenses, because it dislikes the content and viewpoints expressed on ABC network programs,” ABC wrote in a fiery 119-page regulatory filing to the agency.
The filing is the latest in a legal battle between the television network and the FCC, which abruptly moved to review the licenses of eight ABC-owned television stations in April. The agency initially claimed that the review was related to ABC’s diversity and inclusion hiring policies, though it came shortly after Jimmy Kimmel made a joke about President Trump that Trump didn’t like. The federal government had never before demanded such a vast review of a major television network’s licenses.
ABC’s latest filing called out FCC Chair Brendan Carr by name and made clear that this fight isn’t just about the Disney-owned network: “The retaliation against ABC is a signal to every media company in the country: accommodate the Administration’s view of what news coverage should look like or pay the price.”
“Across the government, regulatory and contracting carrots and sticks have been trained on other disfavored speakers,” the filing continued. “The tools vary; the objective does not: a media industry too fearful of official reprisal to report the news freely.”
Carr has rejected accusations of censorship, despite the sledgehammer he’s taken to the free press since the start of Trump’s second term.
“Look at the results so far,” Carr bragged at the Conservative Political Action Conference in March. “PBS, defunded. NPR, defunded. Joy Reid, gone from MSNBC. Sleepy-eyes Chuck Todd, gone. Jim Acosta, gone. John Dickerson, gone. Stephen Colbert is leaving. CBS is under new ownership, and soon enough, CNN is going to have new ownership, as well.”
Still, despite it all, Carr claims he doesn’t view the FCC as “the speech police.”
Luckily, as ABC outlined in its filing, the network has received a massive outpouring of support from viewers, current and former FCC officials, advocacy groups, and political leaders on both sides of the aisle—including warnings from conservative Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch and Senator Ted Cruz. The FCC’s website has been buried in public comments supporting ABC and offering passionate defenses of the First Amendment and local television.
This latest filing may not change Carr’s approach, but it could rally the rest of the industry—and the public—before the FCC makes its next move.
Trump Hates Immigrants So Much He’s Going to Make Roads More Dangerous
Trump wants veterans to take immigrant truckers’ jobs—by letting them skip required steps for their license. What could go wrong?
The White House formally announced a program to have veterans skip certain certifications to get commercial drivers’ licenses and become truck drivers.
The program is called “Freedom Haulers” and promises to cover training costs and offer signing bonuses to veterans who sign up. In a post on X Thursday, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy claimed that trucking jobs paid up to six figures, leading with “🚨ILLEGALS OUT, VETERANS IN🚨” and a flashy patriotic video.
Veterans who recently drove large military vehicles as part of their duties can skip the normally required skills test for a commercial driver’s license. Others who are still on active duty can attend a commercial driving school for their final six months of service. The GI Bill will also fully cover commercial driver’s license training, and will even pay for a housing allowance during this training in some cases.
Trump spoke about the plan two weeks ago at a Pennsylvania rally, railing against “illegal alien truck drivers who are just killing a lot of people—they can’t read signs, a lot of them are on drugs or alcohol, and they shouldn’t be driving these things.”
About 20 percent of all truck drivers in the U.S. are immigrants, according to the AP, but only 5 percent, or 200,000, have what are called non-domiciled licenses, which are issued by states to people who are legally authorized to work in the U.S. but do not have a permanent legal residence or domicile in that state.
Roughly 200,000 immigrants had their commercial licenses revoked in March, preventing them from driving semi-trucks, buses, and tractor-trailers despite passing tests and meeting the legal requirements to drive. Immigrant groups believe that many truck drivers are being targeted because of their ethnic backgrounds, such as Sikhs, who often wear turbans as part of their faith and make up a large portion of the trucking industry.
Meanwhile, operating a military vehicle is different from operating a commercial vehicle, and some veterans may breeze to a CDL job without having the necessary skills, posing a danger on the road.
MAGA Candidate Ends Event When Asked About White Nationalist Relative
Representative Mike Collins has bragged about his close relationship with his son-in-law, who happens to be a white nationalist influencer.
MAGA Senate candidate Mike Collins fled his own press conference Thursday when faced with a question about his son-in-law’s social media posts promoting white nationalism.
During the outdoor event, Collins was asked to respond to reports that David Alan Scheer II, his son-in-law, has shared Nazi and antisemitic material online, including posts from the white nationalist hate group Patriot Front.
“You know, we’ve fully addressed that,” Collins said. “But Jon Ossoff refuses to disavow these Democrat socialist movements in our country—as a matter of fact he embraces them.”
Collins launched into a rant about all the things he felt Ossoff needed to answer for, without holding himself to the same standard. The Republican representative indicated he would take another question, but then abruptly excused himself.
“Listen, thank you. I appreciate y’all’s time. I appreciate you coming out this morning. Thank you very much,” Collins said, before he quickly departed.
Although
Collins claims to have “fully addressed” his son-in-law’s actions, his
prior response was far from a condemnation. “Nobody speaks for me, and I
don’t speak for anybody else,” Collins told reporters last week. He also removed a photograph featuring Scheer from his campaign’s website.
Speaking of Collins’s website, the candidate found himself in hot water earlier this year after he published fake endorsements from several local officials.
Trump Gives Away the Game on His $1.8 Billion Slush Fund Plans
Trump is ready to dismiss Todd Blanche if it means he gets to keep his slush fund.
President Trump doesn’t want to put in writing that his slush fund is dead, and he’s prepared to sacrifice acting Attorney General Todd Blanche for it.
After the Senate Judiciary Committee postponed its scheduled vote on whether to advance Blanche’s nomination for attorney general Thursday morning, due to Republican opposition, the president made it clear that he cares a whole lot more about his $1.776 billion “Anti-Weaponization Fund” than Blanche’s future.
“Todd Blanche is a STAR, and everyone knows it! He has the potential to go down as one of the Greatest Attorney Generals of All Time,” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post Thursday. “I have no objection to temporarily withdrawing Todd’s name, if they do not do the right thing, and putting him back after Cornyn and Tillis are out of office.”
The vote was postponed thanks to Senators John Cornyn of Texas and Thom Tillis of North Carolina, who have refused to vote “yes” on Blanche’s nomination over concerns about the status of Trump’s settlement with the IRS, which gave an IRS audit immunity deal to Trump and his family and created the nearly $1.8 billion slush fund for aggrieved Trump allies who feel that they’ve been attacked for supporting the president. Although Blanche testified publicly that the fund is not “moving forward,” staffers in the Justice Department and White House continued to promise Trump allies some form of payment after the fact.
Cornyn has repeatedly requested written confirmation from the Justice Department that the fund is dead. Without a statement in writing—as well as limits on Trump’s IRS audit immunity deal—he and Tillis are sticking with “no.”
But rather than kill the fund for good, Trump says he’ll wait them out. Blanche can be replaced. The slush fund, apparently, cannot.
“I thought we were pretty close to landing the plane last night, but this morning there’s been some more complications,” Cornyn told reporters Thursday. “I think if this were just between me and Todd Blanche, we would have worked this out. But apparently he’s getting some pushback from higher ups at the White House. I don’t know who, but this doesn’t need to be this hard.”
“We want to make sure that it remains dead, and that the president isn’t given any immunity from future audits that the ordinary taxpayer would not enjoy,” Cornyn clarified to CBS News.
Although both Cornyn and Tillis are set to leave office in January, their outspoken pushback serves as further evidence of the growing cracks in Trump’s grip on congressional Republicans.
“POTUS is mistaken if he believes concerns about the provisions in his tax lawsuit settlement are limited to me and Senator Tillis,” Cornyn posted after Trump moved to sideline Blanche.
FIFA Hit WIth Boycott Over Trump-Linked Plan to Sell World Cup Shares
FIFA President Gianni Infantino has a scheme to tie the World Cup to Donald Trump and Jared Kushner.
The Union of European Football Associations, or UEFA, is pulling out of future World Cups over FIFA’s plan to sell shares to the highest bidder, including members of President Donald Trump’s inner circle.
UEFA announced Thursday that the organization of 55 national associations “will not participate in FIFA competitions” going forward. The decision comes shortly after FIFA President Gianni Infantino threatened to cut funding from teams that don’t get behind his moneymaking scheme.
“We unanimously and unequivocally reject FIFA’s proposal to transfer ownership interests in the World Cup and other FIFA competitions to private investors,” the statement said.
Last week, FIFA announced the creation of the FIFA Forward Enterprise, or FFE, which is expected to raise up to $4.2 million in the next year by “carefully selecting long-term investors who will purchase minority, non-controlling interests in FFE.”
Critics immediately decried the decision to sell stakes in the World Cup, which is managed by FIFA, a nonprofit organization. The move could potentially earn Infantino tens of millions of dollars.
“This model has no place in the world of football,” UEFA said in its statement. The group said it would continue to boycott so long as Infantino’s proposal “stayed alive.”
Shortly after UEFA’s decision, the Confederation of North, Central America and Caribbean Association Football released a statement saying its 41 members had also rejected FIFA’s proposal.
CONCACAF membership had “expressed deep concerns about the lack of due process surrounding the proposal, the artificially short deadline imposed, and the absence of any review or approval by the relevant FIFA governance bodies,” the statement said.
“In addition, the need for private equity investment to fund new and existing FIFA Forward programs following the most profitable FIFA World Cup in history was questioned.”
Infantino reportedly held investor discussions with members of the Trump administration. The move came amid mounting concerns over Infantino’s relationship with Trump, after the U.S. president openly bullied FIFA into lifting a red card against a player on the U.S. men’s soccer team.
In addition, FIFA reportedly stated that once the approval was granted, the investor group would be led by Thrive Eternal, a venture capital firm run by Joshua Kushner, the brother of Trump’s son-in-law Jared who is under investigation for alleged corruption.
This story has been updated.
Republicans Kill Attempt to Stop Trump’s Corrupt IRS Immunity Deal
Even Senator John Cornyn, one of the biggest Republican critics of the IRS settlement, refused to vote to kill the immunity deal.
Republicans apparently have no problem with President Trump protecting himself and his family from any tax investigations ever again.
On Thursday, the Senate Finance Committee voted down an amendment to a tax procedure bill that would have prevented the IRS from making any tax audit immunity deals with a sitting president, their family, or any connected entities. It also would have effectively killed Trump’s IRS audit immunity deal and required the Treasury Department to report any related agreements to Congress.
Every Republican on the committee voted against the amendment, including Senators Bill Cassidy and John Cornyn, who will be leaving the Senate at the end of this year after being defeated in GOP primaries by Trump-backed challengers.
Cornyn and Cassidy have vocally opposed Trump’s settlement deal with the IRS, which not only would give the president, his family, and his businesses protection from audits from the IRS, but also calls for the creation of a nearly $1.8 billion slush fund for anyone who claims to have been victimized by “political weaponization” from the federal government. Cornyn in particular has vowed to vote against Todd Blanche’s nomination for attorney general until he gets a written agreement that the slush fund is dead and the IRS audit immunity deal is narrowed in scope (so as not to apply to future filings).
But their opposition to the settlement seems to end at actually taking any legislative action against it.
The amendment vote was forced by Democratic Senator Ron Wyden, the ranking member on the committee, and was supported by every Democrat on the committee. The amendment failed by a 14–13 vote.
“Our office has received more than 7000 messages from constituents expressing their opposition and anger,” Democratic Senator Maria Cantwell told Bloomberg Law. “We need to make clear to those law-abiding citizens that the well-connected are not above the law and they don’t get a free pass when it comes to compliance with our tax laws.”
Other Republicans on the committee claimed that approving the amendment would have doomed the bipartisan bill altogether. It’s a package of changes to tax procedures, including collections, processes, and administration. Republican Senator Mike Crapo, the committee’s chair, said “this is not the place” to resolve the settlement.
“If this bill were to become the vehicle where this issue is resolved, it would achieve basically making this bill a partisan bill,” and that “would turn this bill into a bill that has a much dimmer future for becoming law,” Crapo said. He and his fellow Republicans haven’t offered any other solutions to Trump’s unprecedented and outrageous IRS settlement, though.
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