A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo.
DOJ Election Monitors Cross the Line
At least two DOJ election monitors allegedly tried to interview voters and access voting machines in Cheyenne during last week’s primary election in violation of Wyoming law, Republican Gov. Mark Gordon said.
“I feel very strongly about the federal government coming in and taking our guns — I don’t like that,” the governor said at a meeting with state elections officials. “And I don’t like the federal government coming in and taking our votes, either.”
The DOJ monitors’ requests were denied by local election officials. The Trump DOJ has not denied the allegations that the monitors tried to interview voters and access voting machines.
While DOJ election monitors have had an important role historically in protecting the right to vote, especially for Black Americans, the Trump DOJ’s Civil Rights Division under Harmeet Dhillon has threatened to expand the use of monitors to make sure only eligible people vote — in what would be a serious federal incursion into state-run elections.
The governor’s account of what happened last week in Wyoming suggests monitors potentially violated the rules in multiple ways, based on a summary of guidelines for election monitoring Campaign Legal Center:
No Notice: The DOJ put out a statement the day of the primary that it was dispatching monitors to Wyoming, and claims it gave notice to the Wyoming U.S. attorney — but state and local election officials do not appear to have been notified directly.
Laramie County Clerk Debra Lee said that she had no advance notice that DOJ monitors would be present. “Shortly after learning of their presence, I spoke with a DOJ official in Washington who informed me that the decision to deploy monitors to Wyoming was made on short notice, and an email had been sent to me, but it may have gone to the wrong address,” she told NBC News (emphasis added).
Accessing machines: Monitors are tasked with observing and reporting on compliance with federal law. They are not there to enforce federal law. Lee said the requests went well beyond the scope of federal civil rights and voting law: “They included questions about the nature, length and timing of poll worker training,” Lee said. “Monitors requested training guides, asked how our new election equipment was acquired and wanted to examine our tabulators.”
Examining tabulators on Election Day is particularly egregious and well outside the bounds of election monitoring.
Interviewing voters: Generally, federal monitors may interview voters leaving a polling place but only after they have voted. They may not intimidate voters or seek to determine their identity or eligibility to vote. The exact circumstances of the request to interview voters was not clear from the accounts provided by the governor or Laramie County clerk.
However, monitors must also abide by state laws that govern election monitoring. “But as ‘monitors,’ as per Wyoming state law, they weren’t allowed to go interview voters; they weren’t allowed to check the tabulators,” the governor told Cowboy State Daily.
No credentials: Election monitors are supposed to identify themselves as such when at a polling place, but Lee said two monitors didn’t show their credentials at first.
The governor has asked the state attorney general to investigate the episode. “Sounds like the behavior of the observers was a bit aggressive,” Gordon said. “It was just irregular, and I have asked the attorney general to start looking into the nature of all this.”
It’s not clear if this was a Keystone Cops affair, a dry run for highly aggressive and invasive election “monitoring” in key states during the general election — or, in classic Trumpian fashion, both.
Just In …
The 11 Circuit Court of Appeals is questioning whether it has jurisdiction to hear President Trump’s appeal of the sanctions imposed for his collusive lawsuit against the IRS.
In a letter to counsel today, the appeals court on its own asked for additional briefing from the parties within 14 days on the jurisdictional question. The appeals court appears particularly focused on whether the sanctions order by U.S. District Judge Kathleen M. Williams is final for purposes of appeal since she has not yet determined the amount of of attorney fees to be awarded to amici who challenged the bogus settlement between Trump personally and the Trump administration.
Second-Class Citizenship
The rise of New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani has prompted Republican lawmakers across the country and in Congress to push legislation limiting the right of naturalized U.S. citizens to serve in public office, The Atlantic reports.
Quote of the Day
“The empty invocation of national security is not a blank check to punish and retaliate against government critics.”—U.S. District Judge Rita Lin of San Francisco, in ruling that the Trump administration illegally imposed sanctions on AI giant Anthropic as retaliation for publicly criticizing the Pentagon
Course Correction
Big tech companies who contributed lavishly to Trump are bracing for subpoenas from Democrats if the House flips, the WSJ reports.
Sign of the Times
The Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation declined to allow the use of an iconic 1981 Mapplethorpe photograph of Roy Cohn on the cover of the upcoming Kai Bird biography of the Joe McCarthy mentee turned Donald Trump mentor because it feared retaliation from Trump, the NYT reports.
Trump Attack on Higher Ed: Loser Edition
Twenty-one Canadian universities announced that they have poached 48 top-flight American academic researchers using funding from a new Canadian government initiative.
Landmark Day for the Word ‘Hydronym’
With President Trump absurdly purporting to rename Lake Ontario as “Lake America,” Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney rolls out his rhetorical canon and fires “hydronym” across the border: “We know that America is changing. Their trading relationships, their foreign policies, their national monuments, their hydronyms.”
See Ya Back Here Monday
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FRIST!
Following an issue from the previous MM.
Another wild day in Trumpmerica.
SO MUCH WINNING!
Today’s nitpick: DO NOT use the word “mentee”. The proper word is “protege”