‘Not In Favor’ Of That
The Senate Majority Leader offered a pretty watered-down defense of the Constitution Tuesday in response to President Trump’s ominous new threats to attempt to federalize elections. Trump had suggested in a recent interview with none other than Dan Bongino — out of the FBI and safely back to his conspiracy theory podcast — that Republicans should seize the mechanisms of elections in our country. Or, at least in 15 states, apparently.
“I’m not in favor of federalizing elections,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) told NBC News Tuesday. “That’s a constitutional issue.”
Thune added that he is “a big believer in decentralized and distributed power.”
“It’s harder to hack 50 election systems than it is to hack one,” he said. “So it, in my view, at least, that’s always a system that’s worked pretty well.”
As my colleague Khaya Himmelman reported today, Trump, during a Monday appearance on Bongino’s podcast, elevated conspiracy theories about the Somali community and supposedly “rigged” elections in the state of Minnesota. He’s been on a tear lately, resurrecting his conspiracy theories about the 2020 election and alluding to potential future prosecutions related to it in recent weeks. This all comes, not coincidentally, amid the FBI’s seizure last week of Fulton County’s election data.
The remarks to Bongino were insane for a couple of reasons. First, they made clear that Trump remains fixated on how Minnesota runs its elections. He has in recent weeks suggested that there is some sort of connection between the legitimate social services fraud investigations that have been ongoing in the state for some time and his repeatedly debunked conspiracy theories about widespread fraud in U.S. elections (specifically and conveniently in states and municipalities that Democrats often or sometimes win). Just last month his Attorney General Pam Bondi sent a letter to Democratic officials in Minnesota, implying that the “chaos” in the state would end if Minnesota officials bent the knee and handed over the sensitive voter data that the DOJ has been trying to seize from states across the country. Minnesota’s governor and secretary of state both quickly rejected the Bondi request.
But it was Trump’s later remarks on nationalizing voting in America that set off serious alarms Tuesday.
“The Republicans should say, ‘We want to take over,’” he told Bongino. “We should take over the voting, the voting in at least many — 15 places. The Republicans ought to nationalize the voting.”
It remains unclear what “15 places” Trump is talking about or how exactly he envisions Republicans taking over election administration there. But Republican congressional leadership at least rhetorically shot down the idea on Tuesday, which is, of course, not the same as legislatively safeguarding the sanctity of states’ rights to administer elections as outlined in Article 1 of the Constitution.
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) was even less definitive than Thune in his engagement with the question of Trump’s threats against Article 1. He did his usual pretzel twisting to avoid the appearance of disagreeing with Trump while also firmly agreeing with him on his wild beliefs about rampant widespread fraud (again, only in blue states, apparently).
Amid all that, however, he did note that running elections has “always been” left to the states.
“It’s always been the responsibility of the states to administer elections and it’s a system that works well, so long as the states make it a priority to ensure the integrity of our elections,” he said. “And we have real concerns about some of the blue states, frankly, that have not been doing that well.”
Hardly a full-throated defense of the Constitution.
— Nicole LaFond
9/11-Era Tools For Prosecuting Terrorists Get Aimed at the Left
My colleague, TPM investigative reporter Josh Kovensky, is out with a new piece this morning on a new Trump administration trend: federal prosecutors around the country are upgrading standard criminal prosecutions into terrorism cases if they involve Trump’s ideological enemies. This comes against the backdrop of the Trump administration’s directives to DOJ prosecutors last year to anyone who espouses such vague and common sentiments as “anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, and anti-Christianity.”
As a quick programming note, specifically for those of you who read Where Things Stand on Substack, tomorrow Josh will join TPM Executive Editor John Light for a live discussion of his reporting for this new story — and on Trump’s broader war on the “enemy within” — around 10:30 a.m. ET. You can join by following this link.
— Nicole LaFond
Election Administrators Still Reeling From Aftermath of 2020
A new report from Issue One, a non-profit that advocates against big money in politics, has found there’s been a significant uptick in the turnover rate for election administrators since the 2020 election. According to the report, 50 percent of top local election officials in an 11 state region, facing a deluge of threats and harassment in the aftermath of the 2020 election, left their roles between November 2020 and November 2025.
Here are some of the key findings from the report:
- Over 250 election administrators from that region have left their positions since November 2020, and 76% of this turnover can be attributed to these administrators leaving their roles voluntarily.
- -In the battleground state of Arizona, a major hotbed of election misinformation and threats to election workers, 100% of counties have had turnover in election administrators.
- In a single Arizona county, five different people have had the role of elections director since 2020.
- In Shasta County, three different people have been in the role of chief election administrator since 2020. As TPM has covered before, election denialism has been at the forefront of election administration decisions in this deep red northern California county since the 2020 election.
— Khaya Himmelman
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Josh Marshall: Thoughts on a Post-Trump, Non-Wilding Spree Immigration Policy
Khaya Himmelman: Trump Pushes ‘Rigged’ Conspiracy Theories About Minnesota, Threatens To ‘Nationalize’ Elections
Morning Memo: Judge Smacks Down Kristi Noem in Epic Ruling
New this morning from Josh Kovensky: Trump DOJ Files 9/11-Era Charges Against Leftists Across the Country
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Homeland Security is targeting Americans with this secretive legal weapon
This applies to literally every GOP hobby horse. If reality doesn’t conform to your bed of lies, hack off its legs until it fits.
Almost forgot about that elfin little dweeb. People like MJ are why the average person hates politicians. Stoking lies to placate his lord and spanker, donald. Holding on to his shitty do-nothing job for as long as he can, until he becomes minority leader and has to go back to doing the same exact nothing he does as speaker.