Today on BradCast: I don’t care what he says, no President has the power to cancel American elections. Period. Even if that definitive statement of fact is unlikely to be the end of that story. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]
Now, officially, one year into his final term as President, Donald Trump‘s “Golden Age for America” is a complete — if wholly predictable — failure. His approval ratings have tanked; he has terrorized a great American city by placing it under siege by his hapless, if deadly, militarized immigration goons from ICE and CBP (with some 1,500 U.S. military troops said to be standing by, should he decide to fraudulently invoke the Insurrection Act); NATO, the largest and most successful alliance in world history is now on the brink of collapse, thanks to his threats to steal the peaceful, semi-autonomous nation of Greenland from our ally Denmark; and, oh yeah, the stock market tanked today amid Trump’s new tariff trade war threats against our friendly European allies who disagree with him regarding Greenland.
The November midterm elections can’t come soon enough. But they will come, despite Trump’s various impotent threats or suggestions to the contrary. A President has no power — none, zero — to cancel elections in the approximately 10,000 jurisdictions around the country which run them independently of the federal government.
Nonetheless, his Administration’s fraudulent abuse of the legal system to try and make it more difficult for legal voters to vote continues. As does his Administration’s failures in court, where their attempted legal fraud is not going well — even in cases overseen by Trump-appointed judges.
Among today’s coverage…
- A federal Judge late last week dismissed the Dept. of Justice‘s pathetic lawsuit against California, seeking to force it to turn over state voter roll data. The Democratically-controlled Golden State is just one of 23 states and the District of Columbia being sued by the DOJ for refusal to turn over private voter information — including Social Security numbers, birth dates and Drivers License details — as part of the performative Trump campaign to ferret out supposed fraudulent voter registrations by millions of non-citizens. In tossing the case, the judge found DOJ has no basis, nor legal authority, to demand CA turn over its voter file. Similar DOJ suits against the other states who refused to violate their own voters privacy rights are likely to be similarly unsuccessful.
- At the same time, the New York Times reports that federal officials have been unable to find any evidence of widespread fraud or mass non-citizen registrations among nearly 50 million state records examined so far. The records, from mostly Republican jurisdictions, have been run though a Dept. of Homeland Security database which was not designed for this purpose, under the DOJ ruse of assuring that voter registration databases are “clean”. To date, just 0.02% of records checked have revealed even potential evidence of registration by non-citizens. That tiny number includes registrants who never voted or even knew they were registered, and/or naturalized citizens that triggered false positives in the DHS database.
- Of course, one of the reasons that 23 states are refusing to turn over state voter data to Trump’s federal government, is for fear that sensitive information (Social Security numbers, etc.) will be misused. As we’ve learned today, those states were right to be concerned. The DOJ admitted in a “Corrections” court filing last Friday, that members of Elon Musk‘s failed DOGE team stole and misused sensitive, personal data from the Social Security Administration. At least one of the DOGE Bros apparently discussed an agreement with a Republican voter fraud group to share personal SSA data with the aim of somehow overturning election results.
- But the Trump Administration fraud doesn’t stop there, of course, as even a Trump-appointed federal judge ruled today. In the Eastern District of Virginia, Judge David Novak ruled that Lindsey Halligan — Trump’s former tax lawyer — and the DOJ, were unlawfully identifying Halligan in court documents and elsewhere as the District’s U.S. Attorney. Back in November, a different judge in the District ruled that Halligan had been unlawfully appointed by Attorney General Pam Bondi. As such, the indictments Halligan secured against former FBI Director James Comey and NY A.G. Letitia James were dismissed. Judge Novak recently gave Halligan seven days to explain why she was still representing herself as USA after the court, last November, found her unlawfully appointed. He demanded to know why that didn’t represent a sanctionable fraud against the court. Last week, Halligan responded with an obnoxious, over-the-top, Fox “News”-like explanation (most likely written by Trump’s former defense attorney turned Deputy U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche, who signed the document along with Bondi and Halligan). Today, Novak called them all out in a blistering 18-page order [PDF], forcing them to strike Halligan’s use of USA in legal filings and elsewhere, while giving Halligan and the others fair warning that further ignoring orders from District judges may result in sanctions, including referral to the Bar Association.
- But wait, there is still more waste, fraud, abuse and court losses for the Trump Administration today, as we close with Desi Doyen and our latest Green News Report, detailing yet another court ruling that has blocked Trump’s attempt at shutting down construction of new off-shore wind farms — many of them nearly completed — set to offer clean, cheap, renewable energy for millions of Americans. Trump tried to shut down five such projects. Judges have, so far, restarted three of them. The other two are still being adjudicated…
“He” doesn’t have the “power” to do a lot of things “he” is doing and has done.
The government as it is constituted now has no power to stop
himthem.