Tag: elections

House Republicans Subpoena New Jersey Over 6,600 Noncitizen Voter Registrations

House Republicans have subpoenaed New Jersey’s top election official, demanding to know how roughly 6,600 noncitizens ended up registered to vote. According to a House Judiciary Committee press release published last Wednesday, four Republican committee leaders subpoenaed Acting Secretary of State Shirley Emehelu after her department failed to turn over adequate records.

Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), who chairs the House Judiciary Committee, led the effort alongside House Administration Committee Chairman Bryan Steil of Wisconsin. Rep. Jeff Van Drew (R-N.J.), who chairs the Judiciary Subcommittee on Oversight, and Rep. Laurel Lee (R-Fla.), who heads the Administration Subcommittee on Elections, also signed on.

The investigation centers on New Jersey’s registration of about 6,600 noncitizens to vote between June 2023 and June 2024. The Committees argue these improper registrations raise serious questions about whether New Jersey follows federal law requiring accurate voter rolls. They also contend that the state’s failure to find and remove noncitizens threatens the civil liberties of American voters and weakens their ability to choose their representatives.

The lawmakers first requested documents on August 3, 2026, seeking information about the Department of State’s compliance with federal voting laws. The Department has since produced only 12 documents. None of them explain how officials discovered the alleged software error that registered the noncitizens or why those registrants stayed on the rolls until 2026. The Committees had specifically asked about both issues, and those 2 questions sit at the heart of the inquiry.

The Committees say the records offered no real insight into how the problem came to light or why New Jersey waited until 2026 to begin fixing it. Lawmakers made clear they tried to cooperate with state officials before resorting to compulsory process. They note they spent 79 days trying to accommodate the Department, yet its response still falls short. That failure, they argue, has hampered their oversight work and stalled their consideration of legislative reforms.

The subpoena marks a sharp escalation in a dispute that began as a routine oversight request. Emehelu now faces a legal demand to hand over the records lawmakers have sought since August. Readers can review the full subpoena cover letter sent to the Acting Secretary of State.

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“THE NEW YORK TIMES GOT CAUGHT!” – Trump Nukes the New York Times After Admitting to Getting Duped by Fake Pollster With Completely Fabricated Numbers

President Trump on Thursday lit up the New York Times, slamming the outlet for using bogus numbers from a “totally fake” pollster while speaking to reporters, then later warning that his defamation lawsuit is growing stronger by the day.

As The Gateway Pundit reported, a fake pollster called Wedgewood, which admitted to being an “entirely fabricated polling firm,” duped mainstream media outlets with bogus polls across multiple swing states as part of a social experiment. It was “far too easy,” Wedgewood said.

“Despite having no history, formal credentials, or real data behind the vast majority of our releases, Wedgewood Polling was added to major polling aggregators, including The New York Times, FiftyPlusOne, and VoteHub, and repeatedly treated as a legitimate data source,” the fake polling outfit, self-described as an “experimental project,” said in a statement.

“Our fabricated numbers were given instant credibility across national media platforms – including being cited on air and in reporting by outlets such as MS NOW. The ease with which unverified figures were absorbed into mainstream political narratives highlights a systemic breakdown in media vetting and data aggregation.”

The Times admitted to removing 15 polls from the firm after it “acknowledged that almost all of its work was fake.”

President Trump responded on Thursday when a reporter asked him why Democrats are doing “so well” in the polls.

“I don’t know if they’re close. I mean, I just saw that the New York Times used the poll numbers of a totally fake, you know, a group that said there were fake numbers against me,” Trump said.

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Hillary Clinton Slams Matthew McConaughey Over “Really Unfortunate” Calls to Support Independent Candidates

Failed Presidential Candidate and former First Lady Hillary Clinton appeared on a liberal podcast yesterday, where she slammed actor Matthew McConaughey over recent comments he made, innocently reminding people that they have the right to vote for whoever they want this election cycle.

McConaughey posted a social media video this week, reminding people that they don’t need to vote just Republican or Democrat this November, arguing that “Independents belong in the fight,” while noting, “I’m not telling you who to vote for.”

“They’ve been telling us for years that an independent vote is a wasted vote. Well, a great question for our times is: has that unwasted vote been working out for you?” he said.

“I’m telling you to look at your ballot, study up, see if they represent you, what you believe in, check if they can be that voice of reason in the middle for you, and if they can, treat them like a potential winner because they can be.”

Kara Swisher played the clip and asked Hillary Clinton for her thoughts on her “High Stakes” podcast yesterday.

It was basically a thought crime for Clinton, who suggested that it was irresponsible for McConaughey to use his platform in such a way, “two weeks before a midterm.”

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Supreme Court Says New Hampshire Can Ban Voters from Using Student IDs at Polls in Midterms – Ketanji Brown Jackson Dissents

The Supreme Court on Thursday ruled 7-1 that New Hampshire can indeed stop voters from using student IDs at polls during the midterm elections.

The high court paused a lower court’s ruling that allowed student IDs to be using as a form of voter identification.

Liberal Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented.

“I respectfully dissent because—even, and perhaps especially, when an election is looming—I would not disturb a clearly justifiable federal-court order issued to ensure that the public receives accurate information about a State’s electoral processes,” Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote in her dissent.

The Hill reported:

The Supreme Court on Thursday ruled New Hampshire’s top election official can fully stop voters from using their student IDs when showing up to the polls in the midterms — a request backed by the Republican National Committee (RNC).

A lower judge ruled officials had improperly gone further than a new state law placing restrictions on student IDs to get a ballot.

The judge said the state still needed to consider student IDs alongside other evidence when a voter lacks other ways to prove their identity.

The Supreme Court chastised the judge for intervening too close to November’s contests.

The high court has said such orders can cause voter confusion, known as the Purcell principle. The opinion points to the recent legal whiplash over Missouri’s redistricting as one recent example.

“Here, the District Court did not point to anything that would justify deviating from that principle,” the majority wrote in its unsigned, one-paragraph opinion.

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Increasingly Toxic To Candidates, Pro-Israel AIPAC Retreats From Endorsements And Direct Donations

In the latest indication that a sea change is underway where US support of Israel is concerned, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) on Wednesday announced it will stop endorsing political candidates and directly contributing to their campaigns and PACs. The move reflects a new political environment in which the receipt of AIPAC money and endorsements is now being exploited as a major political liability.

AIPAC isn’t abandoning the political battlefield, but is choosing to emphasize stealthy means of influencing election outcomes. AIPAC will continue operating its cryptically-named United Democracy Project independent super PAC. That entity is prohibited from coordinating with candidates or giving them money, but can spend a limitless amount to promote favored candidates or undermine their opponents. 

First reported by Jewish Insider, the major policy shift was disclosed in a letter to AIPAC members. “[The current election cycle is] one of the most challenging environments in recent memory,” wrote the group’s president, Bernie Kaminetsky, and three other officials. “We assess that the challenges we are confronting will continue to grow in the years ahead.”

Earlier this year, AIPAC suffered an expensive, high-profile loss in the Michigan Democratic Senate primary. The group’s super PAC spent more than $30 million on Rep. Haley Stevens, only to see her lose to Abdul El-Sayed, a fierce critic of the US-Israel relationship. In recent days, El-Sayed said that, contrary to the long-running characterization, “It’s time for us to realize that Israel is not actually our friend...an ally that takes your money to push you into wars you shouldn’t be fighting is not an ally.” Recent polls show El-Sayed with a 2-point lead over GOP nominee and former Rep. Mike Rogers.

On the other hand, AIPAC also participated in an important victory, as the group helped oust Kentucky Republican Rep. Thomas Massie in the GOP primary. Thanks to money spent by AIPAC’s United Democracy Project, the Republican Jewish Coalition, and the MAGA Kentucky PAC — which was created solely to oust Massie and funded by non-Kentuckian Jewish billionaires Miriam Adelson, Paul Singer and John Paulsen — the contest was the most expensive primary in US House history. Massie earned the Israel lobby’s wrath by opposing foreign aid to any country, voting against pro-Israel legislation and condemning Trump’s wars on Iran.

AIPAC has been increasingly perceived as a villainous participant in US politics, and social media has helped put the group in an unwanted spotlight. One key contributor to that reputational decline is Track AIPAC, which was launched in 2024. Tapping federal disclosures, Track AIPAC’s website and social media accounts publicize the extent to which candidates are taking money from AIPAC and other pro-Israeli political forces. It also publicizes how legislators vote on Israel-related legislation.

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Trump DOJ Takes California to Task After State Admits in Court They Have No Way of Verifying Citizenship Beyond What Voters Attest – Newsom’s Office Responds

California admitted in federal court that the state has no way of verifying citizenship beyond what voters attest.

First Assistant US Attorney Bill Essayli took California to task on Tuesday afternoon following the damning admission.

Via Bill Essayli: Massive concession: Los Angeles election officials just told a federal court they have no independent way to verify citizenship beyond what voters attest. (They simply take their word for it.) Under federal law, only citizens may vote in federal elections. Yet California has not acted on the list of 20,000 suspected noncitizens or agreed to set aside their ballots. American citizens’ votes are being diluted in California.

Newsom’s office responded to Bill Essayli and mocked his position as the First Assistant US Attorney.

Bill Essayli hit back at Newsom’s office by citing federal law.

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‘Operation Protect The Vote’: Feds Arrest 28 Foreign Nationals In California Monday For Illegal Voting

Federal agents arrested more than two dozen foreign nationals across California on Monday, for fraudulently registering and voting in U.S. elections.

Specifically, the 28 suspects are being charged with a combination of illegal voting, making a false claim of U.S. citizenship in order to vote, and “knowingly depriving the residents of California of a fair and impartial election process,” Acting Deputy Attorney General Trent McCotter announced at a news conference in Los Angeles.

The statewide sweep was executed by Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) and other federal law enforcement agencies as part of “Operation Protect the Vote.”

“This operation marks an important step in ongoing efforts to investigate election-related crimes. HSI will continue to investigate alleged voter fraud and hold those responsible accountable under the law,” HSI stated on X.

Operation Protect the Vote spans all four federal judicial districts in the state, with Homeland Security Investigations leading the coordinated arrests. One prominent case involves Alexander Muñoz, a 72-year-old Belizean national in Commerce, CA, who allegedly claimed U.S. citizenship in 2019 to register and subsequently voted in 2020, 2022, and 2024.

The crackdown follows a DOJ lawsuit filed against California on October 15 after state officials refused to review a list of over 20,000 suspected noncitizens on voter rolls within a 48-hour deadline. While federal prosecutors assert these arrests confirm widespread noncitizen voting, California Governor Gavin Newsom and state election officials dispute the scale of the issue, characterizing the federal intervention as an attempt to bully and suppress voters ahead of the November 3 midterm election.

Bill Essayli, the First Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Central District of California, warned last week that California election workers could face criminal liability under federal aiding-and-abetting laws if they knowingly process unlawful ballots, asserting that the state would be facilitating a violation of federal law.

President Donald Trump issued his own warning on Friday, advising California election officials they could face lengthy prison sentences if they count ballots cast by suspected illegal aliens and noncitizens in the upcoming midterm elections.

“They will all go to jail for a long period of time!!!” Trump declared Friday on Truth Social, sharing a DOJ letter warning to Los Angeles County officials.

During the press conference Monday, McCotter announced that that the Justice Department had just filed a motion for emergency relief in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, asking  the Court to grant its motion for a temporary restraining order (TRO) and a preliminary injunction and set aside and segregate the ballots of the 20,000+ individuals until it can be determined that they are U.S. citizens.

“They are on California’s voter roll, and therefore already have, or soon will receive a mail-in ballot,” McCotter told reporters.

Essayli stated that Monday’s arrests confirm federal suspicions that noncitizens are voting in California elections, which he noted is  “unconstitutional and illegal.

“In the last seven weeks alone, the Department of Justice has charged 113 aliens across twenty states with illegal voting and registration offenses,” Essayli said. “Since the beginning of the Trump administration, the DOJ has charged 156 people with voter fraud-related offenses.”

Essayli said the Justice Department is “investigating thousands more similar cases throughout the nation.”

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Wisconsin Elections Commission Sparks Uproar After Banning ALL Municipal Clerks from Checking If Voters are U.S. Citizens – Ruling Comes Days Before Critical Gubernatorial Election

The steal is apparently underway in Wisconsin as Badger State voters are about to decide who their next governor will be.

As the Wisconsin State Journal reported, the Wisconsin Elections Commission ruled Friday that the state’s 1,800 municipal clerks are barred from using President Donald Trump’s federal voter database intended to flag noncitizen voters.

The commission, which is made up of both Republicans and Democrats, claimed that using Trump’s Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements database would be “impossible” because state law bars clerks from sharing voters’ personal information.

Moreover, members of the commission say that Wisconsin’s law overrides the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling earlier this month, which allowed the Trump administration to create the database.

This ruling comes 18 days before Wisconsin voters decide whether they want to elect Republican Tom Tiffany or leftist Democrat David Crowley. The latest polls show Crowley with a small lead.

Americans were not buying the Commission’s reasoning and cried fraud.

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Groups Sue DHS, Alleging Effort To Compile Voter Data Is Illegal

Federal officials obtaining and compiling data on voters as part of an effort to combat voter fraud is illegal, three organizations said in an Oct. 15 lawsuit.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) compilation of the data from nearly every state violates the Privacy Act, which only lets agencies maintain information that is relevant and necessary for authorized purposes, the League of Women Voters, the Electronic Privacy Information Center, and the League of United Latin American Citizens said in the lawsuit, filed in federal court in the District of Columbia.

“Congress created DHS to prevent terrorism, secure the border, and address other specified threats – not to conduct a voter-fraud dragnet centered on the private voting information of millions of Americans and records reflecting the exercise of constitutional rights essential to democracy,” the plaintiffs said.

DHS did not respond to a request for comment by the time of publication.

Federal law requires states to keep lists of registered voters. The lists always have the names of all registered voters, and usually include other details such as their addresses, sex, date of birth, and partial or complete Social Security number.

Certain individuals can request the data from states, but there are restrictions on requesters and other restrictions on disclosure.

For instance, most states do not allow people who obtain the data to disclose Social Security numbers.

The Privacy Act states in part that for information concerning activity protected by the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment, agencies can “maintain no record describing how any individual exercises rights guaranteed by the First Amendment unless expressly authorized by statute or by the individual about whom the record is maintained or unless pertinent to and within the scope of an authorized law enforcement activity.”

The Department of Justice has been sharing voter lists it obtained with DHS, according to letters released by the government. DHS has obtained some version of voter registration lists from at least 47 states, according to the lawsuit.

The Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel said in a May legal opinion that the department “has authority to seek statewide voter lists and share them with the Department of Homeland Security as part of its effort to identify individuals who are ineligible to vote.”

The office also said that DHS is “authorized by law to investigate … voter fraud.”

DHS has since been reviewing the data, along with information it purchased from commercial sources, to try to identify people who are not eligible to vote. In litigation filed separately on Thursday, the government said an analysis of the list and federal data showed that more than 20,000 people registered to vote in California are likely noncitizens.

The lawsuit shows that DHS possesses voter files for California and is improperly using them for election administration purposes, the League of Women Voters and the other plaintiffs said in the District of Columbia filing.

They’re asking the court to declare the voter data collection policy violates federal law, enjoin government officials from carrying out the policy, and to order officials to delete information it has collected.

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Justice Department Vows to Prosecute California Election Officials Who Tabulate Unlawful Ballots

The Department of Justice has warned California election officials that they could face criminal prosecution if they knowingly count ballots cast by non-citizens, escalating a dispute over voter eligibility ahead of the 2026 midterm elections.

In an October 16 letter, Acting Deputy Attorney General R. Trent McCotter warned Los Angeles County officials that knowingly facilitating unlawful voting on Election Day, November 3, could expose election workers to federal criminal liability, according to The Associated Press, which obtained the letter. The warning followed a lawsuit the DOJ filed on October 15 seeking to block California from counting ballots associated with approximately 20,000 people whom federal authorities have identified as non-citizens.

“If persons knowingly tabulate ballots cast by individuals identified by federal agencies as noncitizens, they risk becoming aiders and abettors to a federal crime,” the DOJ warned.

First Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli reiterated the demand on October 16, urging California Secretary of State Shirley Weber and Los Angeles County officials to segregate the flagged ballots pending citizenship verification. President Donald Trump backed the DOJ’s warning on Truth Social, writing, “They will all go to jail for a long period of time!!!”

The DOJ’s lawsuit requests a federal judge to prevent California from tabulating the disputed ballots until federal officials verify the voters’ citizenship. According to the complaint, federal agencies compared voter-registration records with citizenship information to stop resident aliens from illegally voting in the midterms.

California’s automatic mail-ballot system facilitates unlawful voting by sending ballots to registered voters who may be ineligible to participate in federal elections.

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