Big Lie 2026 Gets Underway
It was already burbling up in various venues toward the end of last week, but it officially got underway over the weekend: the long-expected 2026 midterm election disinfo bonanza.
At its core, the extremely predictable claim is this: That as we all watch California slowly, slowly tally its millions of mail-in ballots, we are in fact watching a Democratic plot to steal the election unfold in real time.
Though Trump asserted as early as election night that this fantastical scheme was underway — and spilled the beans that his DOJ was investigating — the conspiracy theory ripened on Friday and through the weekend, as DSA-backed City Councilmember Nithya Raman surpassed conservative cause célèbre Spencer Pratt in the LA mayor race, quashing Pratt’s hope of ousting incumbent mayor and first-place winner Karen Bass in November. It was an outcome many trained election analysts predicted way back on the evening of primary day, but that has still prompted deranged reactions among the full spectrum of conservative and reactionary influencers.
The particularly Trumpy top federal prosecutor in Los Angeles, Bill Essayli, made his entrance into the fever swamps on Friday, noting that his office has “multiple election fraud investigations underway” — though he did, in a separate social media post late that night, attempt to debunk a specific, absurd claim circulating online: that Pratt got “zero votes” in one ballot drop.
On Sunday, Trump leaned hard into the conspiracy theory before storming off Meet the Press. “The election was rigged,” he declared of 2020. “It was a dirty election. And it’s happening again right now in California.” That claim only further inflamed the various self-appointed election administration experts dismayed about Pratt. And on Monday, Speaker of the House Mike Johnson opined that the election “stinks to high heaven.”
“Some of these efforts are so diabolical and so far upstream that it’s impossible to prove, but I think everybody knows instinctively, something is wrong here, and that’s a concern,” he said.
California officials are quick to point out that their state processes a huge number of mail-in ballots, and their ambling process of reporting election returns is a byproduct of the fact that they must ensure the accurate, secure tally that MAGA activists profess to want. The state mails a ballot to everyone registered, and election workers must carefully inspect each one returned, the envelope it comes in, and the voter’s signature. Because Republicans tend to vote in greater numbers on Election Day, the days- or weeks-long tallying of mail-in ballots tends to see a shift toward Democrats in the state’s top-two primary system, dismaying Republicans and, in recent years, prompting conspiracy theories.
Bill Pulte’s Big, New, Retribution Job Derails Another Congressional Vote
Renewing Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act — the warrantless wiretapping program — is one of those rare votes of Congress, these days, that doesn’t fall neatly along party lines. Some Republicans and some Democrats support it, some Republicans and some Democrats oppose it.
But, last week, after Trump nominated his buddy, Bill Pulte, as acting Director of National Intelligence — a job Pulte seemingly got by combing through the mortgages of people Trump doesn’t like and accusing them of crimes — Section 702 lost its bipartisan sheen. Democrats came together to oppose it, saying they would not let the program move forward until Pulte was removed. Some Republicans voted with them for reasons unrelated to Pulte.
Today, Democrats are standing their ground. “Reversing the Bill Pulte appointment is a starting point, not an ending point,” Hakeem Jeffries told reporters Monday.
Schrödinger’s War and Schrödinger’s Ceasefire
As Emine Yücel and Josh Kovensky have been chronicling for TPM, the administration has insisted that it doesn’t need Congress’ green light for its war in Iran because there is no war. And, if there is in fact found to be a war, White House lawyers further insist, it was “terminated” by a ceasefire that began this spring.
Now, its not so clear there even is a ceasefire. Iran lobbed missiles at Israel over the weekend. Israel lobbed them back. Trump — at first, largely unsuccessfully — sought to constrain Israel’s response. It seems the exchange of fire has quieted, for now.
Regardless, the situation means that the White House’s claim that it doesn’t need Congress’ sign-off for this war is looking more absurd than ever. On Monday, 36 Democrats in the Senate sent a letter to the White House observing that its reasoning “stands in sharp contrast with the text of the War Powers Resolution, the relevant legislative history, domestic and international law, and past interpretations made by the Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) and the State Department under Administrations of both parties.” They demanded to see the OLC reasoning that informed this questionable perspective. (TPM scooped last week that this letter was in the works.)
The deteriorating situation in the Middle East, and the deteriorating relationship between Trump and Senate Republicans, will almost certainly will give rise to further votes of the sort we have now seen in the House and the Senate, attempting to force Trump to end the war. Because these War Powers Act bills would be subject to Trump’s veto, they’re unlikely to do much in the short term — but they highlight a growing divide in the Republican Party and channel American’s frustration with Trump’s most sweeping (so far) misguided intervention abroad as voters get ready to cast ballots in the midterms.
In Case You Missed It
Today’s deep dive: ‘Ugly Language’ and Nervous Funders: Inside the Trump Administration’s Attack on Harm Reduction
TPM Cafe: How the Right Captured State Power as a Weapon in Its Anti-Government Crusade
Rough Edges: From Sonic Booms to Mystery Drones: How Science-Based Panics Take Hold
Morning Memo: DOJ to Courts: Don’t You Dare Touch the Already-Dead Slush Fund
From the Editor’s Blog: Gordon Wood Dies at 92
Yesterday’s Most Read Story
The Worst Advice for Democrats on How to Win Elections — Allegra Kirkland and Derick Dirmaier
What We Are Reading
The Substackist politics of Nick Bilton and the AI-bootleg crisis — Max Read, Read Max
Bot web traffic has overtaken human web traffic, data shows — Samantha Elkins, NBC
Graham Platner is a Type of Guy — John Ganz, Unpopular Front
I wonder. At what point did we start expecting election results on election day? At no point in history Has it been possible to definitively have all of the election results on election day, so I’m curious as to at what point did we start having the expectation, and why?
We’ve slowly started to unlearn that in Washington State. We all know it’s going to take time to count the votes, and that’s because we have to wait for the damn post office to deliver them all, and we have to count them. It’s work. We could count them faster, but that would cost more, and is it really worth it? Is it really worth it to get results a few days earlier if it cost millions of dollars? Those are my millions of dollars, and I’d rather they get invested in things that help people of my state, not things that just make people feel better on election day.
Anyway, I hope someone with more perspective than me can help me understand where this historical trend came from, because maybe we can start unwinding it, and start getting people to demand fair elections, not fast elections.
Good food, not fast food.
Republicans have been pushing hand counting since 2020 - but now they don’t like it?
They’ll troll you if you do and troll you if you don’t. None of it is sincere,
I would not feel so all alone; everybody must get trolled.
“And on Monday, Speaker of the House Mike Johnson opined that the election “stinks to high heaven.”
There are born Nazis and made Nazis. Trump and Hegseth, born. Johnson, made. Of course, this is a distinction without a difference.