Tag: elections

Colombia: Presidential Transition Process Paused After Leftist Refuses to Accept Conservative Winner

Outgoing Marxist President of Colombia Gustavo Petro refused to acknowledge the victory of his successor, conservative President-elect Abelardo de la Espriella, on Monday because he allegedly “did not win” the election.

Petro claimed, without evidence, that “algorithmic fraud” with “foreign funding” was committed in the election and that his appointed successor, far-left Senator Iván Cepeda, is the “president of Colombia.” Despite Petro’s wild claims, local and international organizations have confirmed that de la Espriella is the legitimate winner of the free and fair election.

Gustavo Petro is Colombia’s first leftist president ever and a proud former member of the Marxist M19 terrorist group. Petro is presently in the final month of his four-year term, as he is set to leave office on August 7, 2026. On that day, President-elect de la Espriella will take office as the next head of state of the South American nation. Petro is term-limited and unable to run for president of Colombia, as the nation’s constitution strictly states that an elected president may only serve for one four-year term and cannot be reelected.

President-elect de la Espriella defeated Sen. Cepeda in the June 21 presidential runoff election. Electoral observers from international organizations such as the European Union and the Organization of American States (OAS) have endorsed the results and expressed that no irregularities were detected in the free and fair election. Colombia’s electoral system has been praised by international politicians — including American ones — for its transparency, efficacy, and expeditiousness, as it is capable of delivering rapid and precise vote counts within hours.

Despite the overwhelming endorsement of Colombia’s 2026 presidential election as a free and fair democratic event, President Petro has repeatedly claimed that “fraud” was committed in favor of de la Espriella during the process. Petro has also accused Israel of allegedly “compromising” the electoral results, based only on the dubious claim that it is “the only entity in the world capable of doing that.”

Most of Petro’s wild accusations — which he has yet to present evidence of at press time — target Thomas Greg & Sons, the private security company that administered the 2026 presidential election process. The company has an over six-decade-old presence in Colombia and has provided numerous services to the South American nation. Despite his refusal to acknowledge the defeat of his chosen far-left successor, Petro reluctantly announced the start of the transition process with the incoming de la Espriella administration in late June — an announcement he made in what is now known as one of his longest and most unhinged social media rants to date.

On Monday, however, Petro published a new diatribe claiming that “philosopher Iván Cepeda” was allegedly the actual “winner” of the June 21 runoff election and is thus the “President of Colombia according to the decision of the Colombians.”

Petro, who once again failed to present evidence to substantiate his “fraud” accusations, claimed to be in possession of information that, according to him, points to an “IP server located in Los Angeles, California, property of the Bautista brothers,” the owners of Thomas Greg & Sons. Said server, according to the outgoing president, was part of the vote-counting process and saw the use of “algorithms” that ” substantially skewed the vote in Abelardo’s favor.”

“The algorithms that rigged the election results were applied to the voter rolls by replacing voters who never vote with voters who could vote multiple times, or by leaving polling stations with homogeneous election committees without any voters at all,” Petro claimed in his rant.

“The polling stations in the area where Abelardo received 177,000 more votes than Cepeda have poll workers from Colombia who are not residents of the U.S. or Spain, which is illegal, as well as voters brought in for the World Cup who were able to cast seven votes at polling stations under the names of people who never vote,” he added.

“The same thing happened in several regions of Antioquia and Medellín, in Norte de Santander, and at polling stations in northern Bogotá. That’s why my son found out that someone had already voted in his name,” he continued.

“The president of Colombia does not recognize the legitimacy of the incoming government. Abelardo did not win the election,” Petro wrote, calling upon his supporters to “to raise the cry for national independence in all public squares” on July 20 — a date he had previously marked for his “early farewell” rally.

President-elect de la Espriella responded to Petro’s claims by ordering the suspension of the handover transition process between his team and Petro’s “corrupt government,” accusing the outgoing Petro administration of seeking to “destroy Colombia” with its actions. De la Espriella emphasized that his duty is to protect Colombia’s interests and guarantee a “serious, transparent transition at the service of Colombians, never to legitimize the disaster or the disregard for the constitutional order.”

“This [Tuesday] morning, I will address the Nation through my social media to explain to all Colombians the reasons for this decision and the measures I will take immediately,” he wrote in a Tuesday morning social media post.

De la Espriella has not publicly commented further on the matter at press time.

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Trump DOJ to Send Election Monitors Into Three Democrat-Run Michigan Cities

President Donald Trump’s Department of Justice has informed Michigan officials that it plans to send election monitors to Detroit, Lansing, and East Lansing in the upcoming primary elections.

In a letter obtained by Detroit News, Timothy Mellett, deputy chief of the DOJ’s Voting Section, informed Lansing City Clerk Chris Swope of their plans.

“As part of our assessment of your administration of the federal primary election, we plan to have election monitors at your 2026 primary election,” he wrote.

“We will contact you a week prior to election monitoring to discuss the particulars of the monitoring effort.”

Election monitors observe polling places and other aspects of the voting process to assess compliance with federal voting laws.

While they do not administer elections or handle ballots, they monitor election procedures, document potential irregularities, and report their findings to the Department of Justice.

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Ken Paxton Vowed to Crack Down on “Illegal Voting.” He May Have Violated Texas Election Law.

Two weeks before this year’s primary elections, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton announced the creation of a tip line for the public to report people or groups suspected of voter fraud.

“Free and fair elections are a cornerstone of a thriving republic, and with the authority granted to my office by the Legislature, we will stop at nothing to uncover and stop any illegal voting activity,” Paxton said in a February news release announcing the tip line.

The announcement linked to guidance from his office about election laws in Texas, which included a requirement to be a U.S. citizen, a prohibition on collecting mail ballots on behalf of others and a warning that “it is illegal to misrepresent your residence on election records or to establish a residence for the purpose of influencing the outcome of an election.”

“You must register to vote using the address where you reside,” the attorney general’s guidance stated.

Despite his own warnings, Paxton appears to have used an address where he did not live while voting in six elections in the past two years, including in May’s runoff that made him the Republican nominee for U.S. senator, according to records obtained by ProPublica and The Texas Tribune.

State Sen. Angela Paxton said in a 2025 divorce filing that Paxton, whom she accused of adultery, moved out of their Collin County home a year earlier. But Paxton continues to list the home’s address in the northern Dallas suburb on his voter registration. Angela Paxton declined to be interviewed. A source close to the Paxtons said the attorney general has not moved back into the home since leaving.

It is unclear where Paxton has lived for the past two years, but reporting by ProPublica and the Tribune has linked him to a home in neighboring Denton County since February.

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Tyrant Gavin Newsom Panics: Threatens to Prosecute Anyone Helping President Trump Secure Fair Elections – Pushes New Felony Law to Criminalize Ballot Scrutiny Before Certification

In yet another desperate power grab, radical Democrat Governor Gavin Newsom is warning that anyone who dares help President Trump protect election integrity in California will be prosecuted.

He’s now moving forward with legislation to make it a FELONY to seize ballots before they’ve been certified by his hand-picked state and county officials.

This is the same Gavin Newsom who has spent years resisting basic election security while California’s system remains wide open to abuse.

In a video statement posted on social media, Newsom warned that anyone who assists President Donald Trump in what he described as interference with California’s elections would face prosecution under state law.

Newsom: Let me speak directly to anyone considering helping President Trump interfere with our election or our count: If you violate California’s laws, if you interfere with our voters, tamper with our ballots, or meddle in our election, you will be prosecuted. It doesn’t matter who gave the order.

That’s why I’m moving forward with new legislation that would make it a felony to seize ballots before the vote has been certified by state and county officials.

We will be the wall he cannot get past because we believe that, once an election is decided, the winner governs for everyone. That’s the architecture of American liberty.

Donald Trump—he doesn’t believe in that architecture.

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LA City Council tried to hide details of noncitizen voting — and failed

Ten days ago, the LA City Council voted to start moving noncitizen voting toward the ballot.

This week, the council ran away from it unanimously.

What happened in between? The proposal had to be written down.

Supporters said critics were overreacting. This was just the beginning of a conversation, they argued. The details would come later.

Well, the details came later.

And the details killed it.

Last week, city staff returned with the actual language needed to move the measure forward. That is when the wheels came off the car.

On Tuesday afternoon, the City Council unanimously voted to pull the proposal from the 2026 ballot and send it back for further study.

This is how bad policy gets laundered through City Hall. Politicians vote for a vague concept wrapped in moral language. They tell voters not to worry because the details will be worked out later. Then, once the authority has been granted, the real policy is written by the same politicians and activists who avoided spelling it out before the election.

That was the plan.

It just did not survive contact with paper.

The original council vote did not create noncitizen voting in LA, and it did not put noncitizen voting itself before voters. It started a process requiring city staff to come back with ballot language and a clearer explanation of what voters would be asked to approve.

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Don’t Be Fooled By The “Democratic Socialists”, More State Bureaucracy Won’t Fix Our Problems

In mainstream political discourse a big shift is currently taking place towards the favor of “Democratic socialism” as Americans are becoming more disenfranchised with the capitalist status quo. That is, the status quo of state-capitalism, otherwise known as corporatism, wherein government intervention in the form of corporate welfare on behalf of big business stifles the market in favor of monopoly, in direct opposition to the true free market principle of voluntary enterprise, as explained by economist Murray Rothbard some decades ago.

This swing of the pendulum from one side of the statist paradigm to the other is a subject we here at The Free Thought Project have discussed for years now, and it is one that the people should not be fooled by. Yet, with the permeating influence of old guard progressives the likes of Bernie Sanders, and in more recent years rising figures like Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, state-socialist sentiment has grown to influence the rise of a new wave of self identified democratic socialists, the most prominent among them being New York City’s recently elected mayor Zorhan Mamdani, along with a few other self styled democratic socialists making headway in their runs for office.

On the other side of the aisle, with midterms approaching, Republican talking heads have been ramping up their own fear mongering rhetoric akin to Cold War “Red Scare” propaganda in an attempt to drag their sullied reputation out of the mud enough to maintain some kind of political momentum. Such as with Speaker of the House Mike Johnson’s recent remarks deriding the Democratic Socialists of America’s platform, that unintentionally came off sounding more like an endorsement than genuine condemnation; Or President Trump doing his best Joseph Mccarthy impersonation when recently espousing that “communism is the greatest threat to our country”, despite the fact that to date there is no meaningful communist movement to be found anywhere in the United States.

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Insidious truth behind LA City Council’s push for noncitizen voting

Well, that was quick.

The LA City Council yanked its own ballot initiative proposal that, if passed in November, would have allowed noncitizens to vote in local elections.

There was nothing in the city’s proposal that would have prevented illegal immigrants from voting.

People with no right to be in the country would be making major decisions about the management and the future of one of America’s great cities.

What would prevent some future, federal administration from throwing the country’s borders open to tip the balance of power in LA toward one party or another — or, perhaps, toward socialism?

Nothing.

No one stopped to ask whether giving noncitizens the right to vote locally would even be constitutional. It is, at least, a complicated question.

Also, no one seemed to have given any thought to how the city would run such an election, and how noncitizens could appear on voter rolls for local elections while also being sequestered from state and federal elections.

It is telling that the initial vote to put noncitizen voting on the ballot was 10-5. It was framed as a way to give hard-working immigrants a voice. The subsequent vote to pull the ballot measure was 14-0.

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One-Third Of Americans Can Barely Read, But They Can Still Vote

As Americans gear up for our country’s 250th Independence Day, a shamefully small percentage of the rising generation truly understands what we’re celebrating. On the latest Nation’s Report Card, only 22 percent of eighth graders had a proficient understanding of civics. A measly 14 percent were proficient in U.S. history.

This cohort, which was tested as eighth graders in 2022, graduated from high school this year. In practice, this means that emerging adults are woefully unprepared to take on the responsibilities of citizenship.

Most of this cohort is now eligible to serve on juries; less than half knew that the Bill of Rights guarantees citizens the right to a jury trial. Almost all of them will be eligible to vote in this year’s midterm elections, yet only 34 percent knew the functions of the three branches of government. All of them will participate in civic life, whether as neighbors, citizens, taxpayers, parents, or perhaps all of those things. This makes it all the more concerning that 31 percent could not identify why freedom of expression is important for a healthy society.

Ten generations ago, a group of patriots – most of whom were young adults – laid the groundwork for the greatest country the world has ever known. They did a lot of writing, winning the war for public opinion through Common Sense and The Federalist Papers. There was no public school system at the time, but there was a public that was willing and eager to read these texts, which most young people cannot understand today.

Now, not only are the public schools failing to deliver a history and civics education, they are also failing to teach the reading skills students would need to educate themselves on these topics.

Thanks to decades of under-education, 28 percent of American adults rated at or below the lowest level of literacy on an international assessment. That number is likely to worsen over time. Long-term trend results released by the National Assessments Governing Board last month show that 42 percent of 13-year-olds cannot summarize main ideas of long passages, identify paraphrases of what they’ve read, or connect related ideas in longer texts.

Without these skills, they stand little chance of being able to understand or appreciate the genius of the founders in their own words. It is sad yet unsurprising that American pride has declined along with the quality of our education system. According to a recent survey by the Public Religion Research Institute, only 34 percent of young adults say they are proud to be an American. American pride increases by age group, topping out at 66 percent among Americans 65 and older.

A resurgence of patriotism will require the rising generation, and every generation after it, to read and understand our founding documents and their philosophical underpinnings that have propelled this country through a quarter millennium of innovation. This cannot happen without radical honesty about the dismal state of American education.

Right now, there is a culture of silence around the true status of our schools. According to Gallup, “nine in 10 parents believe their child is at or above grade level in reading and math.” It’s hard to blame them for this erroneous belief, given that “roughly eight in 10 students in the U.S. receive mostly B’s or better.”

America’s public schools are sites of educational malpractice, covered up by educational fraud. No one in the public school ecosystem has the incentive to be honest about what a student can and cannot do.

Governors don’t want to preside over falling graduation rates, which would naturally result from raising the standards needed to earn a diploma. Teachers don’t want to deal with parents angry that their kids are bringing home bad grades. Administrators don’t want to deal with teachers frustrated by angry students and parents. As a result, schools cover their own poor performance with good grades, which ultimately lead to diplomas that no longer signify readiness for the rights and responsibilities of citizenship.

The only adults in this equation with an incentive to ensure the children are educated are their parents – the same parents who are being lied to, en masse, by public school employees for their own convenience.

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Former Ukrainian Army Chief Valery Zaluzhny Decides To Run in Presidential Election Against Zelensky

Zaluzhny is considered the favorite in a post-war election.

We have been reporting here on TGP that, since May 20, 2024, when his mandate expired, Volodymyr Zelensky has been ruling Ukraine by force of Martial law, becoming illegitimate in the eyes of many.

And, for over two years, a figure has been raising its profile to become a challenger if and when presidential elections take place: former Ukrainian top general Valery Zaluzhny, currently ambassador to the UK.

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Judge Blocks USPS Ballot Rule Tied To Trump’s Election Integrity Order

A federal judge on Wednesday blocked the U.S. Postal Service from implementing a Trump administration proposal to boost election integrity by enhancing ballot tracking and verification, finding it conflicted with a 2021 settlement requiring the agency to prioritize the timely delivery of election mail.

U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan ruled on July 1 that USPS could not move forward with the proposed rule, which would have required states using the mail for federal absentee and mail-in voting to adopt standardized ballot envelopes with trackable barcodes and provide USPS with voter participation lists to make ballot verification easier. Ballot mailings that failed to comply would have been rejected.

One day after the proposed rule was published in early June, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) returned to court in a long-running lawsuit originally filed during the 2020 election, asking Sullivan to enforce a 2021 settlement that requires USPS to prioritize the monitoring and timely delivery of election mail through the 2028 election cycle.

The proposed rule stems from President Donald Trump’s March executive order directing USPS to develop new standards for handling federal ballot mail as part of a broader thrust to bolster election integrity.

The Justice Department, which represented USPS in the case, did not respond to a request for comment before publication.

Rule Boosts Election Integrity, DOJ Says

In opposing the NAACP’s motion, the Department of Justice (DOJ) argued in a court brief that the proposed rule was designed to improve—not hinder—the handling of election mail.

Attorneys representing the Trump administration wrote that requiring standardized Election Mail logos and Intelligent Mail barcodes would make ballots easier to identify throughout the postal network. They argued this would allow USPS to better monitor the movement of mail-in ballots and help implement the “extraordinary measures” USPS has traditionally used to expedite election mail before federal elections.

“Such requirements promote the ’monitoring and timely delivery of Election Mail’; they do not frustrate it,” they wrote in the brief. “And while the Postal Service has proposed requiring state and local election officials to identify the names and addresses of the persons to whom they send ballots and to provide the barcodes for the ballot envelopes, requiring this information—which officials already, by definition, have—would not compromise the lawful delivery of any mail.”

The administration stated in the proposal that the new rule would strengthen election integrity by creating a uniform ballot-tracking system while leaving decisions about voter eligibility entirely to the states.

Election officials—not USPS—would determine who is eligible to vote by mail and would submit lists of voters receiving mail ballots, together with unique barcode information, through a federal portal. The Postal Service would use that information only to verify ballot mailings and improve tracking, not to decide who could vote.

“State and local election officials would maintain full control over who they send ballots to,” government attorneys said in the brief.

“There are no plausible concerns, certainly at this stage, that the Proposed Rule would negatively impact USPS’s ability to timely and reliably deliver Election Mail. Rather, this provision would, again, assist USPS in better being able to track (and thus deliver) such important mail.”

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