When the Justice Department is used to seek Trump’s revenge rather than justice, the US is not a strong democracy.
“The Justice Department has removed the career Miami federal prosecutor leading the investigation into John Brennan, after she resisted pressure to quickly bring charges against the former CIA director and prominent critic of President Donald Trump, according to people briefed on the matter.
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The investigation into Brennan is focused on one of the president’s longest standing political grievances — the 2017 intelligence assessment that found Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential election to help him.
Trump’s demands have taken on more urgency for the Justice Department after Trump fired former Attorney General Pam Bondi, in part because of dissatisfaction at the slow pace of cases he wants brought. Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche has redoubled efforts to satisfy the president’s demands as he seeks to keep the job after Bondi’s ouster.”
“NEW YORK (AP) — President Donald Trump’s administration this week acknowledged it made a significant error in figures it used to help justify a fraud probe into New York’s Medicaid program, a glaring mistake that undercuts a federal campaign to tackle waste, mostly in Democratic-led states.
The error, which the administration admitted first to The Associated Press, prompted health analysts to question how many of the Republican administration’s sweeping anti-fraud efforts around the country were based on faulty findings. One of a few mischaracterizations it made about New York’s Medicaid program, it also reflected a common criticism that’s been made of Trump’s second administration — that it tends to attack first and confirm the facts later.
“These numbers could have been cleared up in a phone call, so it’s really slapdash,” said Fiscal Policy Institute senior health policy adviser Michael Kinnucan, whose recent analysis called attention to the Trump administration’s inaccurate claim.”
The Vice President of the United States is actively campaigning for the authoritarian-leaning president of Hungary. Rather than spreading democracy, the US is actively trying to spread authoritarianism.
Orban has given himself the ability to rule by decree, restricted the media, manipulated the electoral and district system, taken over and abused with police NGOs and universities, redistributed wealth to loyalists rather than based on sound policy, and supported Russia invading its neighbor. He has bent a former democracy toward authoritarianism. The European Parliament has declared that Hungary is no longer a full democracy in a 433 to 123 vote.
The death of the West will be the end of Western values like free speech, free association, free press, and free and fair elections. Vice President Vance supports Orban’s authoritarian actions in Hungary just like he supports Trump’s, often illegal, authoritarian actions at home.
“Donald Trump’s signature will soon appear on US paper currency, the treasury department announced Thursday.
The move marks the first time a sitting US president’s signature will appear on legal tender. To accommodate this change, the treasurer’s signature will be removed for the first time since 1861.”
“In August 2025, President Trump vowed on social media to “lead a movement to get rid of MAIL-IN BALLOTS,” claiming, without proof, that “ELECTIONS CAN NEVER BE HONEST” if Americans cast their votes by mail.
Yet when the time came for Trump to cast his own vote in Tuesday’s special election in Palm Beach County, Fla., he chose to do it … by mail.
Just like he did in 2020.
The president hasn’t abandoned his outspoken opposition to mail-in voting — at least not for other people. “Mail-in voting means mail-in cheating,” he said during an appearance in Memphis on Monday. “I call it mail-in cheating, and we got to do something about it all.””
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In the 2024 general election, about 30% of all ballots were cast by mail. That’s 48 million votes. In the 2020 election — which occurred during the COVID-19 pandemic — the number was even higher: nearly 66 million votes. Since 2000, more than 250 million votes have been cast via mailed-out ballots in all 50 states.
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For decades, mail-in voting wasn’t seen as controversial — let alone partisan. In fact, Republicans were even more enthusiastic about the practice than Democrats.
Why? Because they saw it as a safe and efficient way to make voting easier for rural and older voters — a key part of their base.
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As polls began to show Trump trailing his Democratic challenger Joe Biden by a sizable margin, the incumbent seized on mail-in voting as a preemptive explanation for any unfavorable election outcome. “2020 will be the most INACCURATE & FRAUDULENT Election in history,” Trump wrote online that July. “Delay the Election until people can properly, securely and safely vote???” He described mail-in voting as the “biggest risk” to his reelection, and both his campaign and the GOP unsuccessfully sued to stop it.
Trump’s rhetoric effectively polarized the practice. Democrats (who were already more prone to avoid pandemic-era gatherings) embraced it; Republicans resisted. As a result, 58% of Democrats wound up voting by mail that year; only 29% of Republicans did the same.
Trump lost to Biden by more than 7 million votes, but he’s been blaming election “fraud” — including supposedly fraudulent mail ballots — ever since.
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In 2020, the president was particularly upset when he seemed to be “winning” early on election night — only to see Biden catch up and surpass him as the evening wore on. But that effect — known as a “red mirage” or a “blue shift” — is easily explained by the fact that if Republicans tend to vote in person and Democrats tend to vote by mail, Republican votes will tend to be counted before Democratic votes.
At times, Trump has also tried to distinguish between absentee voting and universal vote-by-mail. But the same multistep security and verification methods apply to both processes, and states that rely on universal vote-by-mail haven’t experienced more misconduct because of it. One election expert dismissed as “nonsensical” any “distinction” between the two forms of voting “in terms of the potential for fraud.”
In truth, fraudulent mail voting is vanishingly rare. According to a Nov. 2025 analysis by the Brookings Institution — which relied on an election fraud database compiled by the Heritage Foundation, a conservative group — there were only between six and 46 cases of mail voting fraud in each general election from 2016 to 2022.
That means just 0.000043% of mail ballots — four out of every 10 million cast — have been found to be fraudulent during the Trump era.
In general, all of Trump’s allegations of widespread, result-altering election fraud — claims he has been making since he lost the popular vote to Hillary Clinton in 2016 — have been conclusively debunked, both in court and by GOP election officials.
Much of America is enthralled by a demagogue who never had policy competency or decent character, and who has staffed his administration with many unqualified people and some who previously pretended like they stood for something but are now sycophantic enablers.
The government ignored late night shows for a long time as far as the equal time rules. The rule could be applied to comedy and talk shows, but the Trump administration is unlikely to apply it fairly, rather than based on who bends their speech to Trump’s will.
Trump falsely claimed the 2020 election was stolen, and then he tried to steal that election himself, and is now trying to steal future elections. US democracy is under threat.
If you are disenfranchising millions of Americans to stop a few dozen potential illegal voters, then your goals are to make it harder to vote, rather than to secure the election, unless you are just ignorant of the facts.
Kansas tried a documentary proof of citizenship law in 2011 and it blocked 31,000 citizens from voting–12% of first time registrants.
The founders intentionally did not give the president the power to regulate elections because they feared something like a king or a dictator. Yet, Trump is claiming such powers.
“The Department of Homeland Security has hindered internal investigations amid scrutiny for its handling of President Donald Trump’s aggressive crackdown on immigration, the agency’s official watchdog warned in a letter to Congress.
DHS has been “systematically obstructing” investigations by withholding records, Inspector General Joseph Cuffari said in a letter released Tuesday — hours after Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem faced withering bipartisan questioning at a Senate hearing.”