Trump Administration Fails to Substantiate Its Claims of Noncitizen Voting (Again)

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Propaganda Meets Reality

Ahead of President Trump’s big speech last month touting supposedly new information about election interference (there was little new info, and no new conclusions to draw from it), the Department of Homeland Security claimed to have uncovered “tens of thousands of non-citizens who are illegally on the states’ voter rolls.” That press release inspired credulous headlines in major news outlets, even as experts scrambled to explain that its conclusions appeared to be baseless, and likely founded on a database that would not allow the department to make such claims.

Now, despite DHS’ July assertion that it found “15,903 non-citizens registered to vote in Nevada,” the department has privately told state election administrators that it has identified on the voter rolls only a fraction of that number of “potential” noncitizens — 185, according to emails and recordings obtained by the New York Times.

Whats more, the administration has not given Nevada actionable information about who those 185 are — it hasn’t even provided names, per the Times. It also has apparently not alleged any of them voted. “In the virtual meeting, federal officials told Nevada that the nearly 16,000 they had originally identified represented ‘the ceiling’ of potential noncitizens,” the Times reports.

21-Year-Old Uses AI to ‘Test’ a ‘Theory.’ Chaos Ensues.

Following some impressive digital sleuthing, the Guardian identified and spoke with a 21-year-old who appears to be behind the website that put out fake polling data about California, Nevada and the gubernatorial primary in Wisconsin that saw David Crowley defeat Francesca Hong. The Hong polling, in particular — it showed her 20 points ahead, only for her to later lose her election — helped launch a thousand thinkpieces.

• Rahil Prakash, the guy the Guardian identified, told the newspaper the polling miss in the Michigan governor primary, when surveys showed Abdul El-Sayed with more of an advantage over Haley Stevens than he actually had on primary day, gave him the idea for the “experiment.” “This is what inspired me to test my theory,” said Prakash. “I was a bit shocked, perhaps at how fast this sort of information can spread.”
• Prakash said he used AI to create the fake polling results.
• Speculation has abounded that the whole operation was some kind of scheme to make money on betting sites such as Kalshi or Polymarket, even though “Median Strategies,” the outfit behind the “poll,” insisted the “project was not undertaken for financial gain or to influence the value of any financial or prediction-market position.” It has “all the earmarks” of a “pump-and-dump scheme,” American Prospect editor Dave Dayen wrote. “I think this falls into the category of hard to prove but very hard to think it’s anything else,” Corey Frayer, a former financial regulatory staffer in Congress now with the watchdog group Consumer Federation of America, told Dayen.
• Nonetheless, Prakash denied to the Guardian he placed bets on any prediction markets amid his scheme. “No, not at all,” he said.
• If this is the full story, it’s a wild cautionary tale about AI and our current media environment, where slop easily insinuates itself into our social media feeds, and even into coverage by major news outlets and statements by political campaigns. It also may not be the full story.

Tabs

• The Daily Beast has published what it says are two letters from Natalie Harp to Trump. They are bizarre!

• Mike Rogers, the candidate running for Senate against Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan, backed a one-year moratorium on data centers, The Detroit News reports — a clever finger to the wind amid widespread distrust of AI and the facilities needed to support it.
• Relatedly, a Reuters analysis of money in this year’s election finds that “Crypto companies, artificial intelligence firms and online betting have emerged as the biggest industries shaping the 2026 midterm races, driving a record amount of business spending on congressional contests, according to campaign finance watchdogs and interviews with more than a dozen political ​strategists from both parties.”

Man of the Hour

Its Barron Trump, the college sophomore who is worth $150 million. Much of that fortune comes from his family’s various cryptocurrency schemes, Forbes suggests.

Are We at War?

Oman and the UAE are thrilled that parts of their countries are now “U.S. Territory.”