Commentary Culture Investigations

Pete Buttigieg adopted fairly radical positions during his first bid for the presidency, feeling he had to match the radical energy stewing on the left at the time. For instance, you would have expected Bernie Sanders to be the one leading a rally of Uber and Lyft drivers in support of California’s Assembly Bill 5, but no, that was Pete Buttigieg.
But now, on the cusp of his second bid for the presidency — and holding third position in a recent New York Times poll — Buttigieg is going even more radical. First on his agenda? Making transformative changes to the U.S.’s constitutional system. (RELATED: Tim Walz Turns Against Kamala and Embraces This Candidate)
What he means is that he wants to “fight the affordability crisis” by amending the Constitution in Democrats’ favor.
Buttigieg trotted out his new agenda earlier this month while delivering a speech at the New Hampshire Democratic Party’s annual Eleanor Roosevelt Dinner. The appearance was part of his effort to criss-cross the country to vouch for other candidates for the purpose of laying the groundwork for his future presidential campaign. Buttigieg has been able to pursue these endless political rallies because of his lack of a day job. Democrats had urged Buttigieg to run for governor or senator of Michigan, but he declined, noting that he had only just shown up to the state in 2020.
“Things have to change,” said Buttigieg at the dinner. “We’ve got to deliver reform because we’ve got to do something about a political system that keeps kicking the legs out from under the kitchen table.”
What he means is that he wants to “fight the affordability crisis” by amending the Constitution in Democrats’ favor.
There is, he said, a “connection” between “kitchen table issues and the brokenness of our system.”
So, to ostensibly fix the affordability crisis, he wants to pack the Supreme Court, end the Electoral College system, “ban gerrymandering,” and more.
“We have to build something that is not just better than what we have now, but better than what we had before,” he said at that dinner in New Hampshire.
Buttigieg’s structural overhaul of the U.S. constitutional system is supposed to combat the affordability crisis because it will entrench progressive priorities in the U.S. system. In August, he appeared on the Diary of a CEO podcast to chronicle how his proposed constitutional reforms will enact a liberal policy paradise. (RELATED: 2028 Begins!)
“We shouldn’t be afraid to use maybe the most elegant feature of the entire Constitution, which is that it has a process to change it. We should use it,” he said. “All of the things I’ve mentioned are these kinds of system reforms. They’re about the engine.”
“Then the policies — what comes out of the engine — like whether we get paid family leave in this country, whether we have fair taxes and whether there is a healthcare system that gives everybody healthcare, are decided by a government that works better.”
So, make the Supreme Court permanently left-wing, make the House of Representatives permanently left-wing, and make the presidency permanently left-wing, and there you have it, a perfect system: Medicare for All and higher taxes.
Buttigieg is not fooling anyone into thinking that his attempt at rebalancing the Supreme Court is anything other than tilting it to the left. But on his Diary of a CEO appearance, he went through the motions of presenting it as a “fair” rebalancing.
“I would have term limits, more justices, and some process that makes it less partisan who the justices are,” he said. “There are some different ways to do that. The one I think is most interesting is called the balanced-bench proposal.”
Buttigieg also wants to entirely reconstitute how the House of Representatives is made up, reapportioning districts into larger ones that all have a metro area from which to draw out more Democratic votes.
“For school board or city council, sometimes you get more than one vote and more than one person wins, we could do that for Congress. The people who get the top three votes, not just one, get to go to Congress,” he said. “You’d have bigger districts, fewer districts and it would be harder to gerrymander.”
So there you have it: “banning gerrymandering” leads to a progressive policy paradise because it is in reality a giant effort of Democratic gerrymandering at the national level.
Buttigieg also wants to entirely ban money from politics by canceling out Citizens United via constitutional amendment. This fits with the Democrat conspiracy theory that Republican political hopes are kept alive by big-moneyed interests, but in reality it’s unclear if eliminating money from the political process would favor one party over the other.
In an interview with the Atlantic last month, Buttigieg criticized any Democrats who aren’t on board with his plan of political transformation, telling them to get with the program.
“This idea that it is somehow beyond our power to use what is probably the single most elegant feature of the Constitution, which is its capacity to be amended — right? — is a complete failure of ambition and imagination,” he said.
Buttigieg is pursuing this radical plan of transformation while claiming that it is anything but.
“I still can’t believe that anybody considers this radical,” Buttigieg said of his plan to eliminate the Electoral College.
But of course, basing your presidential campaign on dramatic constitutional reform is, in fact, quite radical.
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Who would have predicted a fictional bald Frenchman with an English accent would be an intergenerational model of living well?

Wednesday’s PBS News Hour addressed the New York Times’ bombshell story about the crucial Alaska U.S. Senate race pitting Democrat Mary Peltola against two candidates named Dan Sullivan: Dan S. Sullivan, the incumbent Republican senator, and fraudulent candidate Dan J. Sullivan, handpicked by the Democratic Party to steal votes away from the Republican incumbent. But Wednesday’s News Hour didn’t even bother with a full story on the scandal, relegating it to a portion of a discussion among partisan party strategists, Democrat Mo Elleithee and Republican Doug Heye.

Screenshot from Snapstream/PBS

Co-anchor Amna Nawaz: Well, you mentioned Alaska, and I want to put to you another big headline today related to that Senate race, more reporting from The New York Times that Democrats actively recruited a spoiler candidate in Dan J. Sullivan to join the Senate race to boost the Democratic candidate, Mary Peltola. He, of course, has virtually the same name as the Republican incumbent Dan S. Sullivan. Late today at Joint Base Andrews, President Trump called on Peltola to resign from the race. He also said this to reporters. Take a listen.Donald Trump, President of the United States: It`s a fraud, and they said they didn`t do it, and they did do it and they got caught. And, in fact, it was the plot by the Democrat Party. And, frankly, they should be — I think they should be prosecuted. To me, that`s voter fraud at the highest level.Nawaz: Mo, how do you look at this? Is this unethical but legal? What happened here?Mo Elleithee: It’s boneheaded but legal. It’s dumb but legal….Heye said it gave Trump a “silver bullet.”Thursday’s News Hour follow-up on Alaska from Liz Landers was headlined with the “Republicans pounce” media trope: “Republicans seize on controversy in Alaska’s closely watched Senate race.”Before the Times broke the Peltola campaign’s deep involvement and dirty details of the phony Sullivan, PBS found the Alaska doings hilarious, treating it on the June 29 show not as a Democratic Party scandal, but as an amusing example of campaign shenanigans. Note: Video is from the June 29, 2026 News Hour:From June 29: PBS laughs off Senate “shenanigans” in Alaska. Geoff Bennett: “Are you following this race out of Alaska, the two Sullivans? This is my favorite political story….I would think Alaska voters would be able to discern between a Dan S. Sullivan and a Dan J. Sullivan.” https://t.co/R90mKFsiCZ— Clay Waters 🇮🇱 (@claywaters44) October 30, 2026Co-anchor Geoff Bennett: And, Tam, are you following this race out of Alaska, the two Sullivans? This is my favorite political story. (LAUGHTER) And I will set it up. I will set it up so folks know what we`re talking about. So this judge in Alaska has ruled that Democrat Dan J. Sullivan can appear on the ballot alongside incumbent Republican Senator Dan S. Sullivan. So we have seen ballot confusion before. I would posit, though, that this is probably less of an issue in Alaska, where Murkowski voters had to know not just who she was, they had to know how to spell her name and write it in on a ballot. So I would think that Alaska voters would be able to discern between a Dan S. Sullivan and a Dan J. Sullivan. How do you see this?Tamara Keith, NPR: However, middle names are very different than Murkowski as a full name. And so it`s a top four primary, so it`s possible that both Dans Sullivan, I think that might be the plural, make it out of this primary. Certainly, I think you can get confusion when you`re trying to figure out well, what is the middle name of the guy who I voted for before? Also their logos are oddly similar as well. So it`s not clear exactly what`s happening here, but the word shenanigans does come to mind.Amy Walter, Cook Political Report: Well, and the fact that the RNC filed a lawsuit tells you that, yes, they are concerned about voter confusion.On August 17, it was fellow anchor Amna Nawaz’s time for an unworried examination of the Alaska scandal.Co-anchor Amna Nawaz: Meanwhile, on the Republican side, Tam, I know you`re following this drama around the Dans Sullivan. This is a phrase I believe you coined here. Two Republicans, one is, of course, the incumbent Senator Dan Sullivan, both are on the ballot….Keith again reduced the election to campaign “shenanigans”: “….There`s actually been all kinds of interesting shenanigans in this race with outside super PACs….”

Jasmine Crockett’s pastor called U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement “the new KKK” at a boisterous campaign rally for Texas Senate candidate James Talarico on Thursday. Talarico thanked him for the “kind words” and congratulated him on his expected accession to Crockett’s congressional seat.
Frederick Haynes, who serves as Rep. Jasmine Crockett’s pastor and is running to replace her in Texas’s 30th Congressional District, also called to “abolish” the immigration agency at a stump speech for Talarico during an event in Dallas for his “Clear Eyes, Full Hearts” campaign tour.
“You transformed ICE into the new KKK and brought about terror in this nation,” Haynes said of President Trump and Republican Senate candidate Ken Paxton. “It’s time to melt ICE. It’s time to abolish ICE.”
“James Talarico, I stand with you,” he added.
Talarico, who has said he opposes the abolition of ICE, praised Haynes in his speech, urging the Dallas crowd to “give it up for your next congressman.”

“Thank you, Dr. Haynes, for those kind words and your service to this community,” said Talarico. Haynes, the pastor of the majority-black Friendship-West Baptist Church in Dallas, is expected to coast to victory in his deep blue district. Crockett abandoned the seat to seek the Senate nomination, which she lost to Talarico.
Haynes’s rhetoric, while it could help Talarico with voters in Dallas, may undercut the Senate candidate with other voters across traditionally conservative Texas.
Haynes is also notorious for referring to Karmelo Anthony—a black teenager convicted in the murder of a white athlete, Austin Metcalf, at a high school track meet, when both boys were 17—as “our friend.” The pastor and Talarico campaigning together may remind voters of Talarico’s own controversial position on Anthony, who was sentenced to 35 years in prison.
Talarico stoked criticism in August for stating in an interview that Anthony’s conviction showed the criminal justice system “is not working for black Texans.”
“Right now we’ve got a system that doesn’t serve all Americans equally, and, and we know that black Texans have been, um, have not gotten the justice they deserve,” said Talarico in a clip uncovered by the Washington Free Beacon.
Talarico suggested that Anthony was either wrongfully convicted or over-sentenced because he is black.
“I’m not an expert on this particular case, but I know that there were no black members of the jury, and to me, that’s, that’s the only evidence you need to, to really prove this system is not working for black Texans.” Talarico said that if elected to the U.S. Senate, he will continue his work in the Texas State House to “reform this system.”
Haynes, who has referred to antisemitic preacher Louis Farrakhan as a “great man,” has gone even farther in defending Anthony.
“This boy, our friend, can’t even defend himself. We are not safe,” Haynes said in a sermon at his Friendship-West Baptist church this summer.
Haynes, who attended the Anthony trial, said Anthony was a defenseless “little boy” who was railroaded by an “all non-black jury.” Haynes said he was “disgusted” that prosecutors in the case painted Anthony as “a monster of a man.”
Witnesses testified that Anthony, who was 17 at the time of the murder, threatened Metcalf and other students before brandishing a large knife and stabbing Metcalf in the heart.
Anthony’s family raised $630,000 for his legal defense through GoFundMe, though they reportedly spent the money on moving costs and living expenses.
Talarico’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment.
The post At Talarico Rally, Jasmine Crockett’s Pastor Calls ICE ‘the New KKK’: Talarico Thanks Him for His ‘Kind Words’ appeared first on .

MS NOW vis SnapStream

MS NOW once again warned viewers about Trump’s efforts to manipulate elections. During Wednesday’s The Weeknight, the panel’s discussion of alleged Republican election “cheating” left out some significant history from the Democratic Party’s own redistricting battles.Co-host Luke Russert claimed Republicans were moving toward “malfeasance” because they were “getting clobbered at the polls.”Followed with a profanity-laced dismissal of President Donald Trump, co-host Michael Steele called out how Americans “cannot be disenchanted from the act that we are called upon by the Constitution in this moment to do,” “despite whatever hiccup or roadblock or BS Donald Trump wants to put in front of us…”President of the National Democratic Redistricting Committee John Bisognano then joined the discussion to accuse Republicans of manipulating congressional districts, and declared “I think the through line on all of it is cheating, right?”Bisognano proceeded to accuse Trump of launching a redistricting effort after signing the One Big Beautiful Bill, suggesting Republicans anticipated the legislation’s economic consequences and wanted to manipulate electoral maps in response (Click “expand”):And that’s a scary thing to look back. They knew, they knew what they were doing to the economy then. They went back to a moment and said, “what we did is going to be really damaging and only going to get worse, so we better start cheating now.”And they did. He stood there and said, “we’re going to redraw Texas and we’re going to redraw more states.” And the only thing he didn’t count on, to your point, was the American people fighting back. And luckily for us, you know, we had Attorney General Holder and leader Jeffries in the mix to make sure that we were fighting back as hard as we could. And we fought this back so that this redistricting gambit is going to have backfired. But I’ll tell you right now, everyone needs to get out and vote, and they need to do it in mass and in every possible region and, and district and state needs to get out and vote. And that’s what I’ve spent most of my career working on. I think it’s the most important thing.But Bisognano’s criticism conveniently overlooked Democrats’ own redistricting history, particularly in New York.In February of 2022, Hochul signed a congressional map drawn by the Democrat-controlled Legislature that sought to improve her party’s position in the state’s congressional delegation, leaving Republicans with as few seats as possible. The map was challenged in court, and New York’s Court of Appeals ultimately invalidated it in April of 2022. Democrats weren’t finished, however. In February 2024, following the 2022 midterms, Hochul signed another Democrat-drawn congressional map ahead of the presidential election. The new boundaries gave Democrats a slight advantage in several competitive districts, and held the potential to improve their position in the battle for control of the House. While Bisognano was accusing Republicans of “cheating,” his own party had a recent history of pursuing partisan advantages through congressional redistricting, including an earlier attempt that was actually ruled unconstitutional.The 2024 Iowa poll is another striking example of politicians’ use of polling numbers to suggest an election is decided. The Des Moines Iowa Poll showed Kamala Harris leading Trump, yet Trump won the state by approximately 13 points (an almost 16 point polling error).  Polling errors were also found by The American Association for Public Opinion Research in the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections. The 2016 poll contained errors to many battleground states, and suggested a totally different picture of the country. The 2020 polls overstated the Biden-Trump margin by an average of 3.9 percentage points nationally, and 4.3 points in state level polling.There’s a reason Democratic campaigns tell supporters to not put trust in the polls, not to rest on their laurels, and to run through the tape. It’s basic political strategy: keep voters motivated, avoid complacency, and get out the vote. Encouraging turnout is not evidence for election cheating.The circumstances surrounding the Trump administration’s current election-related legal disputes are not identical to state-level redistricting, and each deserves examination on its own merits. But Democrats’ record is certainly relevant when their representatives make sweeping accusations about the other party’s motives.If partisan redistricting is a threat to election fairness, that standard should apply regardless of which party benefits. Apparently, that was a piece of history The Weeknight panel wasn’t particularly interested in discussing.The transcript is below: Click “expand” to read:MS NOW’s The WeeknightOctober 28, 202607:03:20 p.m. Eastern(…)LUKE RUSSERT: It feels as if the preemptive meddling is out there very interested in this ruling from the judge in California on what will happen regarding those ballots. But I think what’s very clear now is we see and we’ve talked about on this show for quite a long time, that the GOP is going to try and go into the direction of malfeasance because they are getting clobbered at the polls.07:05:27(…)MICHAEL STEELE: We cannot be disenchanted from the act that we are called upon by the Constitution in this moment to do. And despite whatever hiccup or roadblock or BS Donald Trump wants to put in front of us if he wants to go out and you know, back that you know what up, he can go ahead and do that right all day long if that’s what you’re if that that that’s you Trump doing.07:06:42(…)JOHN BISOGNANO (NAT’L DEMOCRATIC REDISTRICTING COMMITTEE PRESIDENT): I think the through line on all of it is cheating, right? And this is– I’ll take you even further back than Louisiana. Let’s go back to Donald Trump standing in front of Marine One in talking about Texas, when he said he took a moment immediately after they passed the Big Beautiful Bill. And that’s a scary thing to look back. They knew, they knew what they were doing to the economy then. They went back to a moment and said, “what we did is going to be really damaging and only going to get worse, so we better start cheating now.”And they did. He stood there and said, “we’re going to redraw Texas and we’re going to redraw more states.” And the only thing he didn’t count on, to your point, was the American people fighting back. And luckily for us, you know, we had Attorney General Holder and leader Jeffries in the mix to make sure that we were fighting back as hard as we could. And we fought this back so that this redistricting gambit is going to have backfired. But I’ll tell you right now, everyone needs to get out and vote, and they need to do it in mass and in every possible region and, and district and state needs to get out and vote. And that’s what I’ve spent most of my career working on. I think it’s the most important thing.(…)

The final GDP figures before the 2026 midterms completely upended the marathon-running media narrative that the Trump economy was headed for the proverbial iceberg. Predictably, two major newscasts chose to leave voters in the dark just before they head to the polls.

SnapStream

The Bureau of Economic Analysis released new data October 29 finding that U.S. GDP growth spiked 3.4 percent in Q3 of 2026, beating expectations of a 3.1 percent increase and far surpassing the 2.2 percent clip in Q2. FwdBonds chief economist Chris Rupkey told CNBC that on net, “economic growth is powering ahead despite the uncertainty of geopolitical risks and the damage posed to many sectors of the economy by higher energy costs.” That’s significant, especially as voters make decisions about who should control the levers of power in Washington D.C. and multiple states. But did CBS Evening News or PBS News Hour bother to mention the news during their October 29 broadcasts? Of course not!PBS did discuss the economy in a segment on House races around the country. Anchor Geoff Bennett asked: “And on the substance of all these races, the economy is the top issue, per usual. But how and where is that playing out?” Reporter Lisa Desjardins talked about housing, tariffs, and gas prices…not GDP.What makes their burial of a very important data point about the current state of the economy even more brazen is that ABC and NBC touched it, but only in passing. World News Tonight anchor David Muir waited until 17 minutes into the program: On Thursday, ABC anchor David Muir gave good news about EIGHT seconds. “Tonight, the American economy. The U.S. Commerce Department says the economy grew 3.4% in the last quarter, helped by a surge in spending on artificial intelligence.” https://t.co/2tkC06H5Al— Tim Graham (@TimJGraham) October 30, 2026 NBC Nightly News folded in a sentence and a Trump-boasting soundbite that together lasted 14 seconds, and then a Democrat candidate talked about how Washington is doing nothing about inflation. NBC gave GDP growth 14 seconds. GARRETT HAAKE: The president touting a new report showing the economy’s growth surpassing expectations, GDP rising to 3.4% last quarter. TRUMP: This is the most successful our country has ever been, by far. And you haven’t seen anything yet. https://t.co/8BNEMGTvrB— Tim Graham (@TimJGraham) October 30, 2026 The upshot is that for all the media blather about how the Iran War was going to destroy the U.S. economy and send inflation to the moon, none of it materialized. In fact, as a recent MRC Business analysis found, average inflation under President Trump averaged just 3.6 percent for the entirety of the Iran War to date, while the same period under President Joe Biden in 2022 hovered at a whopping 8.5 percent, and voters during both election years were treated to the media salivating over Bidenomics, while they later tried to pin the economy under Trump to the wall when the politics shifted. The end goal, of course, is to sway votes according to what’s politically expedient for the media at the time. So it’s no wonder that two of the Big Three decided to spike the news, given that the doomism replete in the economic coverage didn’t really pan out.After all, liberal TV networks have been pulling election-manipulating shenanigans like this for months.When the BEA reported September 30 that Q2 GDP had been revised up to a robust 2.2 percent from the initial anemic 1.5 percent, the ABC, CBS and NBC evening news shows all pretended that it didn’t exist across two days of coverage. The Wall Street Journal editorial board emphasized in a September 30 editorial that “the economy as a whole looks to be on a stronger footing than during the Biden years when growth was driven by government handouts,” further undercutting Armageddon-like scenarios stemming from the conflict over the Strait of Hormuz.Oh, but there’s more. On September 15, the Census Bureau released an eye-popping report finding that the official poverty rate fell 0.5 percentage points to 10.2 percent, which is the lowest on record. In an adjacent report released the same day, the Bureau estimated that median household income in 2025 “was $87,460, an increase of 2.6 percent from the 2024 estimate of $85,210” and the “highest on record dating back to 1967.” ABC, CBS and NBC’s evening newscasts also ignored the news across three days of coverage (September 15 — September 17).  The inflated hubris of the media in treating American voters like they’re too ignorant to see through their blatant omissions is truly astonishing.

Illinois’ Democrat Governor, JB Pritzker, spoke out Thursday against a fellow Democrat’s proposal to inflict a so-called “head tax” on employers in Chicago.At an unrelated press event, Gov. Pritzker took the opportunity to warn that the head tax Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson slipped into his spending package will discourage employers from hiring – and cost the city revenue in the process:“I do not think that is a great way to provide revenue for the city, and here’s why: It sends a signal. It’s just the most direct signal to employers: Don’t hire more people.”Mayor Johnson’s head tax would impose a $25 monthly tax on each employee of companies with at least 125 workers.“What we really want is to make sure that more people get hired and then, by the way, that provides tax revenue, that very thing,” Gov. Pritzker explained. “We have income taxes in the state, and people will move to Illinois or live in Chicago.”Johnson’s proposal also seeks to coerce employers to relocate to areas that the city deems to be “economically disadvantaged,” The Chicago Tribune reports:“Companies would get a tax credit if the jobs are located within economically disadvantaged regions designated by a city formula that mostly covers the South, Southwest and West sides. A copy of the revenue ordinance says the employee must spend ‘the majority of scheduled work hours in any given calendar month’ at those locations for the company to get the full $25 rebate.”Gov. Pritzker hasn’t always been so tax-adverse, however. During his two terms in office, the Democrat governor has doubled the state’s gas tax and approved at least 63 tax and fee increases.And, earlier this year, Gov. Pritzker paused data center tax incentives that had been in place as part of bipartisan legislation he signed during his first year in office. As a result, the state’s data centers lost nearly $200 million of annual tax benefits, or more than $7 million per center.Notably, Gov. Pritzker is running for reelection this year.Mayor Johnson is not.

Judicial Watch Sues FBI for Records on Chinese Election Interference Report/a>
Judicial Watch Sues FBI for Aldrich Ames Spy Files
Drunk Illegal Immigrant Killed Illinois Woman While on Probation for Felony DUI
Mexican Charged in Iwo Jima Memorial Vandalism Was Protected Under Obama Amnesty

Judicial Watch Sues FBI for Records on Chinese Election Interference Report
We are suing the FBI for records on its recall of a September 2020 intelligence report about China’s manufacture and export of fake U.S. driver’s licenses in an alleged effort to help Chinese nationals cast mail-in votes for Joe Biden. Internal FBI emails released by Sen. Chuck Grassley raise questions about FBI headquarters’ handling of the report and whether then-Director Christopher Wray was shielded from political fallout.
We filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Justice for records about the FBI’s recall of a September 2020 intelligence report alleging that China manufactured and exported fake U.S. driver’s licenses to help Chinese nationals cast fraudulent mail-in votes for then-presidential candidate Joe Biden (Judicial Watch Inc. v. U.S. Department of Justice (Case 1:26-cv-03774)).
We sued after the FBI failed to respond to our July 10, 2025, FOIA request for the communications of former FBI Deputy Assistant Directors Nikki Floris and Tonya Ugoretz about the report’s dissemination and recall, the FBI’s efforts to assess the accuracy of its contents, and any subsequent investigative activity.
In October 2026 Floris, who served as deputy assistant director of the FBI’s Counterintelligence Division, was charged with lying to Congress about Hunter Biden investigations. Ugoretz served as deputy assistant director of the Cyber Division.
According to internal FBI emails released in July 2025 by Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-IA), the FBI’s Albany Field Office issued an Intelligence Information Report (IIR) on September 25, 2020, concerning allegations that the Chinese government was producing and exporting fraudulent U.S. driver’s licenses as part of an effort to generate tens of thousands of fraudulent mail-in votes for Biden.
The released emails indicate that officials raised concerns that the intelligence would contradict testimony given by then-FBI Director Christopher Wray, who told the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee one day earlier, on September 24, 2020, that the FBI had not historically seen a coordinated national voter-fraud effort in a major election.
The report was recalled following intervention by FBI headquarters.
An Albany intelligence analyst subsequently warned, “I found this troubling because it implied to me that one of the reasons we aren’t putting this out is for a political reason, which goes directly against our organization’s mission to remain apolitical …”
Grassley’s office also reported:
On October 8, 2020, an official with the FBI’s Foreign Influence Task Force (FITF)-China division confirmed FITF-China had still not approved a reissue of the IIR. Despite FITF-China offering to “discuss next steps” for the IIR, the FBI on June 27, 2025, confirmed to Grassley that they had “found no information to indicate that FITF-China aggressively investigated the reported information, despite corroborating intergovernmental reporting and logical investigative leads.”
The FBI appears to have put politics ahead of its duty to investigate potential Chinese election interference. The American people deserve to know what the report revealed and who ordered it buried.
We are a national leader in voting integrity and voting rights. As part of our work, we assembled a team of highly experienced election law attorneys who stopped discriminatory elections in Hawaii, and cleaned up voter rolls in California, Ohio, Indiana, and Kentucky, among other achievements.
Our lawsuits and legal actions have caused the removal of six million ineligible names from voter lists nationwide.
In October 2026 we filed an amici curiae (friends of the court) brief with the Allied Educational Foundation (AEF) urging the Supreme Court of the United States to reverse a U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruling restricting Arizona’s authority to require documentary proof of citizenship for voter registration and remove noncitizens from the registration list.
In August 2026 we filed an amicus curiae brief to the Supreme Court supporting the Public Interest Legal Foundation’s petition for review of a Ninth Circuit decision that allows Hawaii to shield its statewide voter registration list from public disclosure. We are urging the Supreme Court to take up a challenge to the Ninth Circuit ruling and overturn the decision, citing federal law designed to foster transparency that allows the use of voting rolls to uncover fraud and errors.
In July 2026 we forced the release of records from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) in a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit that show that an ODNI task force stated that the Intelligence Community identified election-system vulnerabilities that could be exploited by U.S. adversaries and withheld information about those vulnerabilities from the American people.
In July 2026 we announced that records from the Virginia Department of Elections showed the commonwealth cancelled 6,531 “declared noncitizen” voter registrations between June 2024 and June 2026.
Also in July the Justice Department filed a motion to intervene in our federal lawsuit filed on behalf of a California political candidate and a state political party against the State of California due to its failure to maintain accurate voter rolls as required by the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA).
In January 2026, in a historic case we filed, the Supreme Court decided 7-2 in favor of Congressman Mike Bost and two presidential electors who were before the court to vindicate their standing to challenge an Illinois law allowing the counting of ballots received up to 14 days after Election Day.
A federal court in Illinois ruled that our lawsuit to force the cleaning of voter rolls may proceed in that state.
In July 2020, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit adopted the argument put forth by Judicial Watch and Allied Educational Foundation (AEF) in their amici curiae brief when it upheld Alabama’s 2011 Photo Voter Identification Law.

Judicial Watch Sues FBI for Aldrich Ames Spy Files
We’re suing the FBI for records on Aldrich Ames, the CIA officer who spied for the Soviet Union and Russia for nearly nine years, compromising U.S. intelligence operations and exposing American intelligence sources. We want to know how the FBI handled the investigation—and what failures allowed his espionage to go undetected for years.
The lawsuit was filed after the FBI failed to respond to Judicial Watch’s January 2026 FOIA request for all records concerning any FBI investigation of Ames (Judicial Watch Inc. v. U.S. Department of Justice (Case 1:26-cv-03818)).
In April 1997, the Justice Department’s Office of Inspector General (OIG) produced a report titled “A Review of the FBI’s Performance in Uncovering the Espionage Activities of Aldrich Hazen Ames,” which is summarized here. The summary details failures by the FBI and CIA to investigate the loss of American intelligence sources, which allowed Ames’ espionage to go undetected for years:
The story of the Ames case begins with a catastrophic and unprecedented loss of Soviet intelligence sources suffered by the CIA and the FBI in 1985 and 1986. Both agencies initially mounted efforts aimed at determining the cause of these losses (which stemmed from Ames’ collaboration with the KGB) but as time passed, the level of attention devoted to this issue by the FBI and the CIA sharply declined.
***
The failure of the CIA and the FBI to pursue a joint investigation of the lost assets issue prior to 1991 significantly delayed the detection of Ames’ espionage. Neither internal CIA and FBI records concerning Ames’ 1985-86 unreported meetings with a Soviet diplomat, nor bank records showing Ames’ subsequent large cash deposits, were examined. Moreover, potentially incriminating information concerning Ames that became available at the CIA at this time was not properly referred to the FBI for investigation.
By late 1989, CIA personnel began to receive highly disturbing information concerning Ames’ finances. A CIA colleague of Ames reported to CIA counterintelligence personnel that Ames, who had been experiencing financial difficulties prior to 1986, experienced a sudden, unexplained improvement in his finances. This CIA employee reported that Ames had purchased a $540,000 house in 1989 and engaged in lavish spending, all on a Government salary of $40,000 to $50,000 a year. The CIA employee’s tip also specifically linked Ames’ sudden wealth to his knowledge of the cases compromised in 1985 and 1986.
The CIA’s investigation of this lead regarding Ames quickly revealed more disturbing information, including the fact that Ames had purchased his $540,000 home in 1989 for cash, i.e., with no mortgage, and that he had engaged in three substantial cash transactions, totaling more than $50,000, between 1985 and 1989. Despite these facts and the existence of a 1988 FBI/CIA Memorandum of Understanding stating that the CIA would provide timely notice to the FBI of any conduct by CIA officers that raised counterintelligence concerns, no information concerning Ames was provided to the FBI prior to mid-1991.
The FBI opened its investigation in May 1993. Ames and his wife both pled guilty to federal charges related to espionage and tax evasion in 1994.
Ames died in January 2026 at age 84 while serving a life sentence at the Federal Correctional Institution in Cumberland, Maryland.
“The Aldrich Ames espionage case exposed serious failures in our intelligence and law enforcement agencies,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. “The American people deserve to know the facts about this disturbing chapter in our nation’s intelligence history.”

Drunk Illegal Immigrant Killed Illinois Woman While on Probation for Felony DUI
Federal records show that the illegal immigrant responsible for a fatal 2025 Illinois crash was heavily intoxicated, had a lengthy criminal record and was on probation for felony DUI when he drove head-on into a 61-year-old woman. Our Corruption Chronicles blog relates the horrible story.
The heavily intoxicated illegal immigrant who killed a woman last summer in a head-on crash in Illinois had a disturbing history of drunk driving and a lengthy rap sheet but was protected by the state’s sanctuary policies, federal records obtained by Judicial Watch confirm. Days after the collision in early August of last year Judicial Watch submitted a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) for information involving the Guatemalan migrant, Rolando Ico-Choc, who was 30 years old at the time. A little past noon on August 9, 2025, the illegal alien drove southbound in the northbound lanes of a rural Illinois highway, colliding head-on with a vehicle driven by 61-year-old Darcy Connolly-Brunner. Both drivers were pronounced deceased at the scene, according to law enforcement officials where the incident occurred in Stephenson County, which is in the northwestern part of the state near the Wisconsin border.
Weeks later the toxicology report revealed Ico-Choc had a blood alcohol level of .244, more than three times the legal limit in Illinois, and that no alcohol was detected in Connolly-Brunner’s system. The crime received more media attention than usual because the victim was the mother of a former professional basketball star, Sophie Brunner, an All-American forward at Arizona State University who played for the U.S. national team and the Phoenix Mercury in the Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA). Few bothered to question or report the illegal immigrant’s extensive criminal history even after ICE issued a scathing statement just days after the crash trashing “reckless sanctuary laws” that prevented local authorities from transferring the “dangerous alien at least seven separate times” in the three years before the deadly crash despite a “longstanding criminal record.” The Homeland Security agency charged with enforcing immigration laws revealed at the time that Ico-Choc had been arrested repeatedly for driving under the influence and other serious offenses, including endangering the life of a child, domestic battery, and resisting law enforcement.
Specific details were not offered at the time, and ICE took nearly a year to provide Judicial Watch with records that shed more light on the vast criminal history of an offender repeatedly shielded from deportation by one state’s sanctuary law. Nearly a decade ago Illinois enacted the TRUST Act, known as the gold standard of broad statewide protection against deportation even for illegal aliens that commit felonies like Ico-Choc. The measure prohibits all law enforcement agencies in the Prairie State from participating in federal civil immigration enforcement or cooperating with federal authorities. It also bans police from stopping, arresting, or detaining individuals based on immigration status or honoring ICE detainers. The radical statewide sanctuary policies ensure criminal aliens are free to reoffend, even after committing brutal crimes against Americans, a recently published congressional probe claims. In 2024 and 2025 alone, the Illinois Department of Corrections (IDOC) released nearly 100 criminal aliens back onto the streets instead of cooperating with ICE, according to the investigation conducted by the House Judiciary Committee. The Cook County Sheriff’s Office was the biggest offender releasing 408 criminal aliens from its custody in 2025 instead of honoring active ICE detainers, including those with pending charges for domestic battery with bodily harm, domestic violence, and firearms offenses.
The federal records obtained by Judicial Watch, 29 pages in total, document multiple exchanges involving Ico-Choc’s encounters with law enforcement dating back to 2022 between ICE, the Stephenson County Sheriff’s Office, and the Freeport Police Department in Stephenson County’s largest city. They also show that the illegal immigrant was on probation for a previous felony drunk-driving conviction when he killed Connolly-Brunner. Beginning in the spring of 2022 Ico-Choc was arrested and charged three times in a little over a year for driving under the influence (DUI) and his license was revoked. In 2023 he was convicted of domestic battery against his wife and received two years’ probation, the records show. In most of the cases ICE issued a detainer to take custody and deport the Guatemalan, but local authorities refused and released him instead. The last ICE detainer, which could have saved an innocent woman’s life, was issued on January 18, 2025, with the Stephenson County Jail and listed Ico-Choc’s three convictions for felony aggravated DUI, domestic battery, and DUI. The jail released him early the next morning, the records obtained by Judicial Watch reveal. Months later he got drunk and drove head on into Connolly-Brunner.

Mexican Charged in Iwo Jima Memorial Vandalism Was Protected Under Obama Amnesty
The Mexican national charged with using a sledgehammer to destroy portions of the historic Iwo Jima Memorial outside Marine Corps Base Quantico was an illegal immigrant protected for more than a decade under an Obama-era amnesty program, as our Corruption Chronicles blog reports.
The Mexican national who desecrated a World War II monument in Quantico, Virginia, last week is an illegal immigrant protected for over a decade under an Obama amnesty program for adults who came to the United States illegally as children. His name is Miguel Alonso Maldonado Soriano, and on October 21 Prince William County Police caught him actively destroying the Iwo Jima Memorial outside Marine Corps Base Quantico with a sledgehammer. “The damage to the memorial included the complete removal of one of the heads of the individual Marine statues, removal of multiple rifle barrels on the monument, and the defacing and disfiguring of other parts of the monument,” according to the Department of Justice (DOJ), which announced this week that Soriano faces federal charges of willfully injuring or committing a depredation against property of the United States and willfully injuring or destroying a monument on public property commemorating the service of persons in the armed forces. If convicted, he faces up to a decade in prison.
Soriano was originally charged in Virginia with state crimes of felony destruction of property, trespassing with intent to damage property and felony injury to a monument, and this week a Prince William County Circuit Court judge granted him a $2,500 bond. Authorities estimate he caused hundreds of thousands of dollars in damage to the historic statue, which is located at the entrance of Marine Corps Base Quantico, around 36 miles south of Washington DC. The limestone monument depicts six U.S. Marines raising the American flag on Japan’s Iwo Jima Island during World War II and is based on a Pulitzer Prize-winning photo taken in 1945 by Associated Press photojournalist Joe Rosenthal. The statue is a smaller replica of the original bronze monument outside of Arlington National Cemetery which stands about 78 feet tall with 32-foot high figures raising a 60-foot flagpole on a rock slope above a granite base. The flag flies 24 hours a day, 365 days a year by presidential proclamation. “This hateful illegal alien attacked a memorial to our brave Marines, decapitating one of the statues with a sledgehammer,” Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Markwayne Mullin said this week, confirming what much of the establishment media has failed to report, that Soriano benefitted from Obama’s special amnesty.
Soriano entered the U.S. illegally at an unknown date and location in 1999, according to DHS, and was granted Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) status in October 2014 by the Obama administration. Under the controversial initiative over 800,000 illegal immigrants under the age of 31 have been shielded from deportation and allowed to obtain work permits and drivers’ licenses. Although the Trump administration has cracked down on DACA there are still over 436,000 illegal aliens in the program, according to government figures. A sizable chunk of DACA applicants have arrest records, according to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), the DHS agency that administers the nation’s lawful immigration system. Years ago, the agency disclosed that nearly 110,000 illegal aliens who requested the special Obama-era reprieve for adults who came to the U.S. as children “through no fault of their own” have criminal records that include assault, battery, rape, murder and driving under the influence. Tens of thousands of DACA recipients were found to have over 10 arrests, according to USCIS.
Those protected by DACA include rioters and looters arrested and charged with crimes during a Black Lives Matter “Justice for George Floyd” protest in downtown Phoenix, Arizona. This includes a then 30-year-old Mexican national, Maxima Guerrero, who was a community organizer with a Phoenix-based grassroots migrant justice organization called Puente Movement. During the riots, Guerrero and her fellow DACA friends occupied a vehicle “loaded with incendiary devices,” a high-level Phoenix Police source told Judicial Watch. Soriano, who since childhood has lived in the quaint Virginia town of Stafford, about two dozen miles south of the nation’s capital, was arrested for trespassing there in 2022. By then he was already protected under DACA, which expires every few years and was renewed by the Biden administration. His DACA has since expired, and a renewal request was denied earlier this month.
Until next week,
 
 
 
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Florida Democratic Senate nominee Angie Nixon said she can’t be held accountable for any laws that her charitable black-power-themed Cafe Resistance bookstore may have violated because she secretly resigned from the nonprofit nearly a year ago. Nixon’s prior statements tell a different story.
A watchdog group accused Nixon on Tuesday of violating myriad federal and state laws through her Moxie Group charity. The alleged violations stem from her failure to report to the IRS what her charity did with the $270,000 it raised in 2024, ostensibly to support her café-bookstore, as well as the charity’s overlap with her for-profit LLC, its continued solicitation of charitable funds after the charity’s supposed disbandment, and the free services it has provided to her Senate campaign. The Washington Free Beacon first reported the alleged issues in September, just before Nixon began distancing herself from her charity.
The bookstore has become a major campaign issue after a Free Beacon reporter visited the Jacksonville establishment and photographed an interior shrine to black power militants, including several convicted of murdering police officers. Nixon defended the shrine, asking, “Do you want me to ban history?”
In August, Nixon identified herself as the active director of her Moxie Group charity when she filed her Senate financial disclosure, which stated she held the role from “Jun 2019 to present.” Fast-forward to Wednesday, Nixon told Fox News she secretly resigned from her charity in December 2025 just before the nonprofit dissolved itself, a maneuver that wasn’t reported to the Florida secretary of state until nearly a year later in October.
It’s unclear why Nixon’s charity waited nearly a year to report its dissolution, and the Florida Democrat has not provided any contemporaneous records confirming she tendered her resignation from the nonprofit in December 2025. Nixon and her campaign did not return a request for comment.
Nixon’s shifting timeline on her association with her Moxie Group charity comes after the National Legal and Policy Center watchdog group filed a complaint Tuesday with six federal and state agencies alleging Nixon violated federal wire fraud laws through her charity’s fundraising solicitations. “Ms. Nixon and any of her accomplices should be criminally prosecuted for committing this fraudulent solicitation scheme,” the complaint states.
The Florida Department of Agriculture, which regulates charities in the state, launched an investigation in September into whether Nixon’s charity raised charitable funds throughout 2026 with an expired solicitation license. The charity’s license expired in January, but records reported by the Free Beacon show she continued accepting donations and offering receipts for tax deductions to donors through late September.
Florida Department of Agriculture spokesman Aaron Keller told the Free Beacon the agency had received the National Legal and Policy Center’s complaint and is reviewing it.
The watchdog group also alleged Nixon violated federal election laws by allowing her Cafe Resistance bookstore to provide her Senate campaign with unfettered access throughout 2026 to host campaign rallies, phonebanks, and fundraising events at the shop, all at no cost to the campaign. Federal laws generally prohibit corporations and charities from providing free services to political campaigns.
Nixon’s campaign told Fox News on Wednesday it “has used only the [café’s] parking lot” in what appears to be another attempt to sidestep the allegations. The campaign, however, used the inside of Cafe Resistance for its first event since Nixon secured her party’s nomination, a rally and phonebank on Aug. 26, 2026.
Prior to the event, Danielle Wilkerson, the campaign’s northeast Florida regional director, emailed those registered to attend and informed them that after the rally, they would “move indoors for a phonebank.”
A Free Beacon reporter attended the event and witnessed campaign workers and volunteers making signs and distributing other paraphernalia, such as buttons, inside the shop prior to the rally.
The rally was then held outside in the store’s parking lot. During her fiery speech at the rally, Nixon implored those in attendance to purchase campaign merchandise being sold at the event and to participate in the phonebank inside the shop afterwards.
“I need you all to donate to our campaign. As a matter of fact, you can buy some nice cool shirts today before you leave. They are $25. We need you all to knock on doors for this campaign and make phone calls for this campaign so that we can reach every single corner of the state,” she remarked.
Immediately after her speech, many in the crowd reconvened inside the shop to coordinate the phonebank, where they called dozens of Floridians to solicit donations and ask for their vote. A webpage identifying the event as a “rally & phonebank” remains live.
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Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed continues to double down on his public associations with antisemites, campaigning Thursday alongside a Nation of Islam “student minister” and acolyte of the antisemitic group’s longtime leader, Louis Farrakhan, who has referred to Jews as “termites” and praised Adolf Hitler.
The left-wing Democrat appeared with Marcus Muhammad at a get-out-the-vote rally in Benton Harbor, where Muhammad serves as mayor. “Allow me to introduce the next United States Senator representing the State of Michigan,” Muhammad wrote in a caption of a photo with a much shorter El-Sayed.
Muhammad, despite his mayoral responsibilities, has not shied away from promoting Farrakhan’s virulently antisemitic conspiracy theories. He recently promoted a video of Farrakhan discussing The Secret Relationship Between Blacks and Jews Vol. 2, a pseudoscientific Nation of Islam work that claims Jews controlled the transatlantic slave trade.
It comes as El-Sayed faces mounting criticism from moderate and Jewish Democrats in the closing days of the pivotal Senate race over his anti-Israel remarks and what former Michigan Democratic Party chairman Lon Johnson recently called “his reluctance to unequivocally condemn dangerous rhetoric” against Jews.
Rep. Haley Stevens, who narrowly lost to El-Sayed in the Democratic primary in August, issued a remarkable statement on Friday saying she had accepted an invitation from her mentor, Rep. Jim Clyburn (D., S.C.), to appear alongside El-Sayed given his “expected condemnation” of an antisemitic ad produced on his behalf by Cenk Uygur, Hasan Piker’s uncle, that blamed Jews for rising grocery prices. But she assailed El-Sayed for his response to the ad thus far and suggested that she is conditioning her appearance at the Sunday event on his public disavowal of the ad.
“For days, Abdul’s only answer to the Rebellion PAC advertisement produced by Hasan Piker’s uncle, Cenk Uygur, was that his campaign was ‘not affiliated’ with it. … I have learned from Democratic Party leaders and emissaries, as reported in the news media, that Dr. El-Sayed has heard the deep concerns of the Jewish community and is now, for the first time in his campaign, formally condemning that ad for what it is.”

Muhammad is an influential figure in the Nation of Islam and a staunch defender of Farrakhan, who has hailed Adolf Hitler as a “great man” and compared Jews to “termites.”
Muhammad, who rose through the Nation of Islam’s ranks in Chicago, has repeatedly amplified the Nation’s and Farrakhan’s antisemitic rantings, the Washington Free Beacon reported. In addition to promoting the conspiracy video about Jews controlling the slave trade, Muhammad has also promoted a 2023 Farrakhan speech in which Farrakhan rationalized Hitler’s actions in Nazi Germany, stating that “Hitler went against usury and Hitler attacked pornography that the Jews had put on the Germans.”
Muhammad has invoked antisemitic conspiracy theories of his own.
In an interview with Nation of Islam members in May, Muhammad referred repeatedly to “the enemy”—a term the Nation of Islam often uses to refer to Jews—while discussing The Israel Lobby, a book that alleges Jews malignantly shape American foreign policy. “They have the muscle, they have the money, they have power, they have influence,” said Muhammad.
In 2020, Muhammad defended Farrakhan with a photo stating that, “Yet for fear of the Jews no one spoke openly of him.”
In 2021, Muhammad wrote of “the ongoing Jewish and Gentile Kristallnacht against Black Muslim businesses,” invoking the Holocaust-era Nazi pogrom against Jews. Muhammad has called the Nation of Islam’s “Muslim Program,” an influential treatise that calls for racial segregation and states that “intermarriage or race mixing should be prohibited,” the “ultimate solution” to America’s “race problem.”
Farrakhan has had significant influence on Muhammad’s political career and his views towards Israel. Muhammad has stated that Farrakhan pushed him to run for political office, and told him during a meeting that “I’m your cornerman.” In 2019, Muhammad said Farrakhan advised him to reject an invitation to visit Israel as part of a “peace mission” due to “the great dangers and hatred that exist.” He wrote that he declined the visit because of Israel’s “vitriolic disposition toward Muslims.”
Muhammad’s rhetoric and ties to the Nation of Islam have also drawn scrutiny from organizations that combat antisemitism.
The Combat Antisemitism Movement (CAM), a coalition of 700 groups that fight antisemitism, removed Muhammad from its mayoral advisory board earlier this year following a Free Beacon report about his remarks about Israel and Jews and his affiliation with the Nation of Islam.
“CAM was recently made aware of positions and affiliations held by Mayor Muhammad that are inconsistent with CAM’s mission. As a result, CAM decided he will no longer serve on the board, and he was notified accordingly,” a spokesperson said, citing the Nation’s “notorious record of antisemitism.”
CAM also called out El-Sayed for stoking vitriol against Jews.
“The conspiratorial rhetoric espoused by Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed has placed a target on the backs of Jews across Michigan and beyond,” the CAM spokesman said.
Other Nation of Islam leaders have rallied behind El-Sayed in the closing days of the campaign, though the Nation of Islam as a whole has not issued an endorsement in the race.
Troy X. Muhammad, the head of the Nation of Islam’s mosque in Detroit, attended an event in Dearborn on Thursday hosted by the Unity & Justice Fund, a PAC linked to the Council on American-Islamic Relations, that is backing El-Sayed.
Troy Muhammad, who appeared with El-Sayed at an event last year, has threatened Jews for criticizing Farrakhan.
“Those like the Jews who, like Goliath, they think that they’re big, but Farrakhan will bring them down,” he said in a 2018 video recording unearthed by the Free Beacon.
He also issued thinly veiled threats against Jewish groups who had criticized Farrakhan.
“Behind me is [sic] soldiers you see and some that you don’t see. And you might not see it until it’s too late, if you keep playing with the minister,” said Troy Muhammad, surrounded by dozens of Nation of Islam members. “So all of you who represent Satan, the ADL, and all your Negro imps … get off the track before you get ran over by a train.”
El-Sayed’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment.
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