A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo.
Open and Ongoing Ratfuckery
The Trump DOJ — corruptly deployed by the White House as an unprecedented election interference tool — sure is getting the headlines it wants from its campaign to prosecute alleged noncitizen voting while the midterm elections are already underway:
- NYT: Justice Dept. Charges 28 in California With Voting-Related Crimes
- AP: Justice Department arrests more than 2 dozen in California sweep targeting alleged noncitizen voters
- NPR: DOJ charges 28 in California with voting crimes as election tensions escalate
Even though those stories include the usual caveats — about the rarity of noncitizen voting, Trump’s track record of inflating the risks thereof, and the administration’s disinformation campaign targeting the election — the top-line news remains arrests and prosecutions.
DOJ says it has charged 113 people in 20 states with illegal voting and illegal registration offenses over the last seven weeks.
The timing is no accident, of course.
Rolling out alleged noncitizen voting prosecutions right before the election instills fear in Black and brown communities, may dampen voter turnout, provides a ready-made excuse for GOP losses, serves as a pretext for challenging/delegitimizing the election results, and generally is a brazen display of ratfuckery.
The DOJ has not been discreet or muted in its approach. It has issued press releases touting its noncitizen voting prosecutions that contain photos of the defendants (albeit with their faces digitally obscured). Yesterday, acting Deputy Attorney General Trent McCotter held a press conference in California — where mail-in voting is already underway — to announce the 28 new prosecutions there, which DOJ has dubbed “Operation Protect the Vote.”
The arrests weren’t low-key either. The wife of a 72-year-old man from Belize said federal agents showed up at their house before dawn in full tactical gear with guns drawn — along with camera crews and news helicopters. He later appeared in court still in his pajamas. He is reportedly a registered Republican.
The timing is especially glaring because some of the new alleged noncitizen voting cases go back years, to 2020 and earlier. A couple of the new California cases allege fraudulent voter registration as far back as 2002 and 2003. Some of the cases don’t even allege illegal voting per se, but rather making false statements on naturalization paperwork. One lawful permanent resident charged in North Carolina has been in the United States for so long that DOJ identifies her as a “national of former Yugoslavia.”
Why The Timing Is Extra Pernicious
But the timing isn’t accidental for another reason: Bringing these cases so late in the cycle leaves no time to test these allegations in court before the election. If the cases later fall apart, if they’re dismissed, if they result in acquittals, then … too bad, so sad.
The attempted prosecutions will have served their election disinformation purposes, and there’s no way to roll back the clock and undo the damage.
There are already early signs that some of the new prosecutions in California are flimsy. Some of the newly charged immigrants said they had no memory of ever registering to vote, the LA Times reported:
At the federal courthouse in downtown Los Angeles late Monday, several green card holders arrested in a crackdown on alleged California voter fraud expressed confusion over the charges — with some saying they had no recollection of registering to vote, as Trump administration officials accuse them of doing.
Among them was Ana Domínguez, 60, a native of El Salvador living in Long Beach as a lawful permanent resident. Federal authorities accused her Monday of fraudulently registering to vote in July 2006 and then lying about it in her naturalization paperwork in March 2026.
Domínguez said she did not have any memory of registering to vote.
Another man accused of the same crimes as Domínguez said the same: He wasn’t aware of ever registering to vote, as federal prosecutors claimed he had.
It’s not uncommon for noncitizens to end up being unknowingly registered to vote during previous interactions with the government. “There is only a crime if the government can prove willful violations of federal law,” election law expert Rich Hasen noted.
DOJ’s One-Two California Punch
The new round of criminal cases is happening in parallel with the Trump DOJ’s lawsuit against California trying to force it to segregate and not count alleged noncitizen mail-in ballots — again, while voting is already happening.
The administration continues to try to ratchet up pressure on California election officials. In a letter Friday, the DOJ reportedly warned that state election officials who knowingly process ballots cast by noncitizen voters are at risk of investigation.
In a striking admission, acting DAG McCotter, the DOJ’s No. 2, conceded yesterday that the list of some 20,000 alleged noncitizen voters that the administration is demanding California use to segregate ballots may contain some citizens:
Ultimately, the most pernicious aspect of this campaign against the phantom scourge of noncitizen voting is the risk that the administration’s sloppiness, indifference, and aggressiveness results in legally cast ballots from U.S. citizens not being counted.
In a 180-degree turn, the Justice Department has gone from its historic role of protecting and defending the individual right to vote to being the leading threat to free and fair elections.
Why California?
I remain puzzled why so much of the Trump administration’s election-interference and disinformation campaign is focused on California. The electoral math doesn’t add up. Thoughts?
Good Read
A few months into President Donald Trump’s second term, political appointees at the Department of Homeland Security made an unusual request of its agency focused on cybersecurity: Secretly acquire a voting machine and hack it.
The appointees wanted the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency to procure the machine, examine it and report back the findings so they could be given to the White House, according to two former administration officials with knowledge of the request.
This scheme appears to have never gotten off the ground.
Just In …
WaPo: A small group of about 10 current and former U.S. national security officials with DoD experience has been discreetly advising state governments and members of Congress on how to prepare for the possibility that the Trump administration will attempt to interfere in November’s midterm elections.
Quote of the Day
“Our number one risk at this point is the federal government.”—Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold (D) on the biggest threat to free and fair elections
Pure Unadulterated Racism
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FRIST!
The strongest El Niño on record is arriving just after the hottest summer in U.S. history. 2027 is likely to be the world’s hottest year yet. Extreme heat is already the deadliest weather hazard in America, and it is killing far more people than the official count admits. As the world warms, mosquitoes, flies, midges, fungi and pests are moving out of the tropics, sickening people, livestock and crops at the same time. The science of One Health treats all of these as one crisis, with one solution…
Heather, Paul and Tim on TACO Tuesday:
For years, the extraction industry has spent fortunes selling Americans a simple lie, that the laws protecting our land and water are the reason this country can’t build anything. It planted that lie in opinion pages across the political spectrum until it hardened into conventional wisdom, and this fall it finally paid off. Two of the Senate’s most prominent Democrats on public lands and climate have bought it whole, and they’re about to hand the results to Donald Trump.
Sheldon Whitehouse of all people should damn well know better.