Tag: 2026 elections

Elon Musk PAC Steps Up with Big Bucks to Fund Key Swing-State Races

With the midterm elections less than two months away, Elon Musk’s America PAC is funneling money into Maine congressional races to help maintain GOP control.

Musk’s PAC has dedicated $170,000 to ads, phone calls, mailers, and text messages supporting GOP Sen. Susan Collins, who is running against Democrat Troy Jackson, according to The Center Square.

Collins’ seat is crucial for Republicans and could determine which party controls the upper chamber for the final two years of Trump’s presidency. Republicans currently hold a 53-47 seat majority but have little room for error, given the Senate map.

Initially, Collins’ seat was thought to be safe after her original challenger Graham Platner was marred by scandal.

When he dropped out of the race in July, however, Jackson took his place and gave Democrats a fighting chance.

Platner was initially hailed as a populist hero and was able to survive revelations about a Nazi tattoo on his chest, offensive social media posts, infidelity, and allegations of abuse against former girlfriends.

The straw that broke the camel’s back came when he was accused of rape by Maine Democrat Jenny Racicot.

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Democrat Nominee for GA Governor Keisha Lance Bottoms: Black Women Conditioned into ‘Post-Traumatic Slave Mentality’

Black women are conditioned into a “post-traumatic slave mentality,” Democratic nominee for Georgia governor Keisha Lance Bottoms claims.

Speaking during the women’s event Radiant Conversations, Bottoms said, “As black women, we are conditioned. Girl, you can’t depend on anybody else. If you don’t do it for yourself, ain’t nobody else gonna do it for you.”

“And in many ways, that is a post-traumatic slave mentality,” Bottoms claimed. “That it is – it is not just on our backs. That this is a burden that we can all carry. It’s a win for all of us. And so it is just remembering that this is a sisterhood, that this is about community. It’s not about going fast.”

Bottoms continued: “It’s about taking others with you, and I’m just – I’m so grateful to have learned those lessons and to be able to apply them in this season.”

Bottoms, the former mayor of Atlanta and former senior advisor to former President Joe Biden, is hoping to become the Peach State’s next governor and has stated she will put President Donald Trump up to Biden’s record, asserting the former president “delivered” for Georgia.

“I will put Biden up against Trump’s record any day of the week, especially in the way he delivered for Georgia,” she said during an appearance on CNN’s OutFront.

She continued, adding, “The people of Georgia are talking about the cost of living. They’re talking about grocery costs. They’re talking about healthcare costs, 500,000 people in this state opted not to get healthcare after the big, ugly bill. Those are the things that people care about.”

Notably, Bottoms made her anti-Trump position abundantly clear when she announced her intention to run for governor in Georgia, deeming the commander-in-chief a “disaster for our economy and our country — from his failure to address rising prices to giving an unelected billionaire the power to cut Medicare and Social Security.”

“Donald Trump is no laughing matter,” she said. “Well, My grandmama taught me, no matter how hard they swing you never stay down. You fight back. That’s why I’m running for governor, because Georgia families deserve far better than what Donald Trump and Republicans are giving us.”

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Woodbury Republican Registrar Alleges Democrat Counterpart Altered Election System Results, Leading To “Hostile Workplace” Dispute

Woodbury’s Republican registrar says she will not run another election with her Democrat counterpart after he allegedly altered official returns in the state’s election system right before the window to fix them closed.

Lisa Amatruda, Woodbury’s Republican Registrar of Voters, put the allegations in writing on September 11. Her letter to Republican Town Committee (RTC) Chairman Paul Luchetti and the Woodbury RTC details a chain-of-custody complaint regarding the Democrat Registrar of Voters, Daniel Lonegan.

On August 11, Woodbury ran two primaries. Amatruda wrote that when they left the Senior Community Center that night, candidate totals on both ballots had been counted, reviewed, and verified as correct. Democrat Registrar Daniel Lonegan and the head moderator then entered those results into the Secretary of the State’s Elections Management System (EMS). However, Amatruda spotted one problem: absentee totals were placed in the wrong column. Because the return had already been submitted, the Secretary of the State (SOTS) had to unlock the system before a correction could be made. That did not happen that night.

On August 12, Lonegan and the moderator filed an amendment for each primary and fixed the absentee columns. Amatruda checked the four candidate totals again and confirmed everything was correct. She assumed the rest of the process was just standard housekeeping.

It was not.

On August 27, a friend sent Amatruda a Facebook screenshot indicating that she and the moderator were being sued.

During meetings on August 28 and 29, Amatruda learned for the first time that Lonegan had logged back into the EMS by himself on August 13 and August 20. They discovered at least 13 amendments to the moderator’s returns, affecting both results pages and statistics pages. These statistics cover how ballots were cast—including poll tabulators, early voting, and absentee hand counts—which are kept in fields separate from candidate totals. Amatruda stated that Lonegan admitted to the changes, explaining that he had signed in using the head moderator’s credentials, called it a mistake, and could not explain why the results themselves were touched instead of only completing the statistics fields.

By then, Amatruda wrote, what the EMS showed—and therefore what appeared on the Secretary of the State’s website—was no longer correct. Lonegan asked the SOTS to unlock the return on August 29. On August 31, elections officials stated that they were past the open window, and follow-up communications confirmed the returns could no longer be changed.

Amatruda’s core point is one she believes Hartford will try to bury: she is not claiming the winners flipped. Instead, she is claiming that official, state-facing returns were altered after the fact by a single registrar working alone under another official’s login, and those records were left uncorrected.

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Trump-Appointed D.C. Judge Blocks President Trump’s USPS Mail-In Ballot Safeguards After Democrat Lawsuit — Claims Postal Service “Lacked Authority”

A Trump-appointed federal judge in Washington, D.C. on Sunday blocked the U.S. Postal Service’s new mail-in ballot rule, the one designed to stop untracked, unverified absentee ballots from flooding the midterms, after Democrat committees, Chuck Schumer, Hakeem Jeffries, LULAC, and the NAACP sued to kill it.

As reported right here on The Gateway Pundit back in May, Judge Nichols originally smashed the Democrats’ desperate, multi-headed lawsuits, brought by Chuck Schumer, Hakeem Jeffries, and left-wing activist groups, ruling they had absolutely zero standing to challenge President Trump’s March 31 Executive Order.

We celebrated this as a massive win for basic ballot security. Now, with the election breathing down our necks, Nichols has completely reversed course and sided with the very same activists he previously dismissed.

U.S. District Judge Carl J. Nichols granted preliminary injunctions against the Postal Service’s Final Rule on “Ballot Mail for Federal Elections.”

He ruled that key parts of the rule were ultra vires: Congress never gave USPS the power to force states to enroll mail voters in a federal portal, build state-specific absentee lists, and refuse outbound ballots that don’t match the list.

According to the court’s memorandum opinion, the rule created a Federal Ballot Mail Portal, required state and local election officials to submit voter and ballot information to USPS, established state-specific participation lists, and allowed the Postal Service to reject outbound federal ballot mail that failed to meet the new requirements.

Judge Nichols wrote that the Postal Reorganization Act authorizes USPS to collect, handle, transport, and deliver mail.

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PA Dem Candidate Condemns Voter ID, Then Demands It at His Own Campaign Event

Pennsylvania Democrat congressional nominee Bob Brooks opposes voter identification requirements for elections, but his campaign apparently has a different standard when controlling admission to its own events.

Brooks required attendees to present identification, and campaign staff reportedly denied entry to at least one person seeking to attend.

The episode offers voters another striking example of Democrat hypocrisy surrounding basic election security.

Identification is portrayed as sinister when citizens cast ballots, yet it suddenly becomes reasonable when Democrat campaigns want to know exactly who is entering the room.

Brooks is running in Pennsylvania’s 7th Congressional District, where he hopes to unseat Republican Rep. Ryan Mackenzie.

The district is expected to host one of the most closely watched and competitive House contests of the 2026 election cycle.

The Democrat nominee has collected endorsements from Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont and former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg.

Those endorsements place Brooks firmly inside the national progressive operation, even as he attempts to appeal to Pennsylvania voters concerned about costs, public safety, and election integrity.

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They Said This Never Happens: Mexican Illegal Charged for Alleged Illegal Voting in Swing State

The Department of Justice announced charges against a 30-year-old Mexican national who allegedly voted illegally in the 2024 election.

Katya Rodriguez, 30, who lives in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, has been charged with “false statement of citizenship in order to vote, fraudulent registration, and voting as an alien,” per a news release from the agency.

“The integrity of our elections, which are fundamental to democracy, should be of utmost importance to every American,” Attorney General Todd Blanche said.

“It is a cherished right for eligible American citizens, and only eligible American citizens, to vote for their representatives in government,” he added.

“Election fraud is a serious crime, and it is the duty of the Department of Justice to treat it as such.”

Rodriguez faces up to 11 years in prison, as well as a fine and a term of supervised release after her sentence.

Homeland Security Investigations led the investigation into the case.

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Husted Campaign Fires Political Director Over Nazi, Rhodesia Posts

Sen. Jon Husted’s campaign fired its political director Friday after The Washington Post asked about the director’s social media accounts, which included a Facebook profile photo of Nazi SS troops and a Spotify playlist devoted to white-ruled Rhodesia.

Stephen Woytek, 25, had been hired by the Ohio Republican’s campaign in August.

“Steve serves our country honorably as a lieutenant in the U.S. Army and is a proud graduate of The Citadel. He studies military history and routinely reenacts historical battles. While he denies negative intent, his social media activity displays a complete lack of judgement and disregard for its impact on others,” a spokesperson said.

“Sen. Husted demands better of those who represent him.

“Upon learning about the social media posts today, Sen. Husted made the immediate decision to part ways.”

The Post reported that Woytek changed his Facebook profile photo in 2018 to an image of soldiers from the Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler division holding captured Soviet banners. The photo was still publicly visible Friday.

His Spotify account included a public playlist titled “Tales From Rhodesia,” described as “homesick for a place that no longer exists,” with tracks including “Rhodesians Never Die.” Songs were added as recently as August. The playlist was made private Friday.

Woytek said his interest in the period was historical.

“I want to be unequivocal: I reject the racist and antisemitic ideology the SS and Nazi Germany represented,” he said in a statement to the newspaper.

Woytek said he takes part in historical reenactments because “I believe it is important to educate our younger generations,” and acknowledged he should have “exercised better judgment when posting about my activities online.”

He did not answer the newspaper’s questions about the Rhodesia playlist. The campaign did not say whether it had reviewed his accounts before hiring him.

Rhodesia, the white-minority government that ruled what is now Zimbabwe until 1980, has become a symbol among white supremacists, according to the Anti-Defamation League, which cautions that its imagery alone is not evidence of extremist beliefs.

The gunman who killed nine Black churchgoers in Charleston, South Carolina, in 2015 called himself “the last Rhodesian.”

Woytek graduated from The Citadel in 2024 and serves in the National Guard. He previously worked as a legislative aide to state Rep. Haraz Ghanbari, a Perrysburg Republican.

It was the second departure from the campaign in two months.

Andrew Havas, Husted’s volunteer Franklin County chair, resigned in July after NBC News asked about a 2008 charge of sexual misconduct with a minor that was reduced to misdemeanor assault under a plea deal.

Husted, appointed by Gov. Mike DeWine in January 2025 to the seat Vice President JD Vance gave up, faces former Sen. Sherrod Brown in the Nov. 3 special election. The contest is widely considered a toss-up.

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Germany: Top CDU Politician Floats Banning AfD Days After Its Landslide Win

Barely after the ballots were counted in Saxony-Anhalt, Germany’s political establishment began discussing possible legal action against the election winner.

After the AfD captured 43.8% of the vote, senior CDU politician Hendrik Wüst called for the first structured federal-state examination that could eventually open the door to a party-ban proceeding, the German press reports.

The move comes at an extraordinary moment. Voters handed the AfD its strongest result in the state’s history while Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s CDU crashed to just 17.2%, leaving Germany’s governing conservatives facing uncomfortable questions about why so many voters have walked away.

Instead of brushing aside the ban debate, Wüst wants to formalize it. The North Rhine-Westphalia premier has proposed a working group bringing together federal and state officials, constitutional lawyers, intelligence authorities and other experts to examine the AfD and possible legal consequences.

Wüst insists the outcome mustn’t be decided beforehand. The group, he says, could recommend a prohibition proceeding, some other legal response or ultimately something short of either.

Even so, the timing has poured gas on an increasingly heated argument. A party that had just received the backing of nearly 44% of Saxony-Anhalt voters now finds itself at the center of renewed discussions over whether Germany’s institutions should explore removing it from electoral politics altogether.

Wüst says constitutional protection, not electoral arithmetic, should determine the issue. If investigators conclude that the legal conditions for banning the AfD have been satisfied, he argues, Germany’s constitutional institutions would have a duty to pursue the matter.

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