How much lower can these trashy corrupt scumbags drag the reputation of our country?

 

NYT editorial board warns that Trump is preparing to rig the Midterms

 

'Code red': NYT editorial board warns that Trump is preparing to rig the Midterms

What Trump’s own words reveal about his intentions for 2026.

UnPresidented Jan 31

The New York Times’ Editorial Board effectively hit the alarm button this weekend and declared that the 2026 midterm elections are now in serious danger, not from voter fraud, but from the president of the United States.

In a stark warning published Saturday, the Times said Americans “cannot be complacent” as Donald Trump and his allies escalate efforts that could undermine the basic mechanics of democratic elections.

The editorial was prompted in part by a recent FBI operation in Georgia, described by the paper as a “swoop,” targeting election infrastructure over baseless allegations tied to Trump’s long-debunked claims that the 2020 election was stolen.

The Times reminded readers of something election experts have been repeating for years, often to a wall of MAGA denial: “Voter fraud is extremely rare,” the editors wrote, noting that election officials across the country “painstakingly update voter rolls, mail information to households, train poll workers, oversee voting and transport ballots with a documented chain of custody.”

In other words, the system works unless someone in power decides to sabotage it. And Trump, the Times argued, has already shown he’s willing to do exactly that.

Since entering politics, Trump has treated elections as legitimate “only if his side wins,” the editors wrote, a pattern that culminated in his attempt to overturn the 2020 results through what they described as a “sprawling conspiracy.”

When courts, state officials, and even Republican administrators refused to go along, Trump escalated, encouraging supporters to march on Congress and later celebrating the January 6 attack. What’s different now, the Times warned, is that Trump is back in power and armed with the lessons he’s learned.

The editorial points to a growing list of actions that, taken together, amount to a sinister playbook. Trump has pushed for extreme gerrymandering outside the normal redistricting cycle, openly discussed weaponizing federal agencies, and — most chillingly — told the Times he regretted not deploying the National Guard to seize voting machines after the 2020 election.

That is not the language of someone committed to democratic restraint. That is the language of someone angry he didn’t go far enough.

The recent FBI activity in Georgia, the Times wrote, fits squarely into that pattern. Agents searched an election center in Atlanta’s metro area over claims experts say have no factual basis, with Trump’s director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, accompanying them. Analysts cited by the paper warned the move could be used to justify a forced federal takeover of local election operations in one of the country’s most politically consequential states.

Tulsi Gabbard was spotted outside the Fulton County, GA Election Center during the raid.

“To look at this pattern and conclude that the 2026 midterm elections are safe is to leave American democracy exposed,” the editors wrote bluntly.

This isn’t just editorial speculation. Independent watchdogs, legal scholars, and civil-rights groups have raised similar alarms. The Brennan Center for Justice has documented a surge in partisan interference with election administration since 2020, while organizations like the Campaign Legal Center are actively fighting Trump administration demands for voter data and proposed executive orders that would force states to rewrite ID rules and ballot deadlines midstream.

The Times editorial also underscored a reality often missed in casual political discourse: elections don’t have to be “rigged” nationwide to be compromised. In a divided country where control of Congress may hinge on a handful of races, even localized disruptions, such as targeted investigations, intimidation of poll workers, confusion over voter eligibility, could have national consequences.

During a speech earlier this month, Trump said that if Republicans don’t win the Midterms, “I’ll get impeached.”

If all of this sounds familiar, that’s because it is. Political scientists have long noted that democratic backsliding in modern states rarely begins with the abolition of elections. It begins with leaders casting doubt on outcomes, pressuring administrators, and selectively deploying law enforcement under the guise of “integrity.”

The Times ended with a call to action: volunteer as poll workers, support election-defense organizations, resist disinformation — but the subtext was unmistakable. The paper that once treated Trump’s norm-shattering as a spectacle is now openly acknowledging that the threat is structural, ongoing, and accelerating.

When the New York Times declares a “code red” for American democracy, it’s a sign that the guardrails Trump already tested once are being leaned on again, this time by a president who knows exactly how close they came to breaking.

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Trump's pick to replace Fed chair Jerome Powell pops up in Epstein files hours after his nomination

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SIMON ROSENBERG

 

The Senate Advances 2 Week Funding Bill For DHS. Now To The House. We Are Now Having The Debate About DHS/ICE We Simply Must Have

Need to be very, very loud this week everyone!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Simon Rosenberg Jan 31

Morning all. Last night the Senate passed a two week extension (Continuing Resolution) of funding for DHS and 5 separate appropriations bills. Funding has run out for a great deal of the US government as of this morning, for Mike Johnson, The Cowardly Speaker, once again choose to keep his Members home rather than let them do their jobs. House Members return late Monday when they are expected to take up both packages.

In my late morning post yesterday we reviewed some of the the ideas Congressional Dems are proposing to rein in ICE. Taken together they would make meaningful reforms to DHS, CPB, and ICE. Our highest priority these next few weeks is to fight alongside our Dem leaders to get as good a package of reforms as we can.

In my post yesterday I argued there is one important piece missing from the emerging Congressional proposals, and that’s clarifying ICE’s mission and targets. The NYT has reporting that shows how important this is - ICE is arresting and shackling legal immigrants to the US without warning, detaining them for weeks in Texas, and then releasing them without facilitating their trips back home. Just read this excerpt from a NYT article, They ‘Had Done Everything Right.’ ICE Detained Them Anyway. It’s harrowing:

Selamawit Mehari, an Eritrean single mother of three, was starting her day when federal agents showed up at her apartment in St. Paul, Minn., on a recent morning. As her 13-year-old son wailed and her older daughter produced paperwork proving her mother was in the United States lawfully, the agents shackled Ms. Mehari and took her away.

“They didn’t explain anything,” recalled her daughter, Yosan, 21, who described the encounter to The New York Times. “We didn’t understand. We had done everything right.”

The next day, chained at the wrists, waist and ankles, Ms. Mehari, 38, was shuffling up the steps of a plane bound for Texas, tears streaming down her face in the frigid wind.

More than 100 refugees with no criminal record from about a dozen countries have been arrested in Minnesota by immigration agents in recent weeks and flown to detention centers in Texas for interviews, according to lawyers, family members and faith leaders. At least some, including Ms. Mehari, were eventually released in Texas, leaving them to find their own way home.

Late Wednesday, a federal judge blocked the government from continuing to detain refugees until a lawsuit against the policy has been decided on the merits. But the ruling has done little to quell the fear gripping refugee communities, especially in the Twin Cities, where agents have arrested thousands of immigrants as part of President Trump’s mass deportation campaign.

The Trump administration has signaled it will appeal the court order and aggressively defend its policy. “We look forward to being vindicated in court,” the Homeland Security Department said in a statement in response to a request for comment.

It described the decision as “an activist order from the federal judiciary.”

Before being approved for resettlement in the United States, refugees often wait years in camps and undergo extensive vetting by the Department of Homeland Security and other federal agencies. They arrive on flights coordinated with the U.S. government. The process is radically different from that of asylum seekers who have shown up at the border and been allowed to remain in the United States only if they win their cases in immigration court.

The Trump administration announced early this month that it would “re-examine thousands of refugee cases through new background checks.” Officials said they would focus on people who had arrived in the United States in recent years and were yet to obtain green cards, or legal permanent residency, starting with 5,600 refugees in Minnesota.

The announcement, by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, did not say that refugees would be rounded up and jailed for the review to take place.

Last night DHS failed to comply with a judge’s order to provide a list of these refugees to the court:

In the last few days 5 journalists in the US have also been arrested, detained and then released by a judge. The process for legal immigrants and citizens - not criminal migrants - is now becoming the same - arrest, detain, humiliate, disrupt, terrorize, release. This ain’t and never been about “criminal migrants.”

Another way Trump-Vance-Miller are targeting legal migrants - not criminal migrants - is by abruptly ending what’s called TPS - Temporary Protected Status - for millions who’ve fled countries like Afghanistan, Haiti, and Venezuela. I am going to do another long excerpt from a new NYT article for it’s important to understand the gravity and inhumanity of what’s happening here. On Tuesday the regime is ending TPS for 330,000 Haitians living in the US:

Vilbrun Dorsainvil was a physician in his native Haiti, but after fleeing his troubled country he couldn’t practice when he arrived in the United States. Determined to stay in medicine, he retrained as a registered nurse and now works in the cardiac unit of the only hospital in Springfield, Ohio, a city grappling with a shortage of health care workers.

He monitors patients after procedures, administers medication and comforts families during difficult moments. “Being in health care was my dream,” said Mr. Dorsainvil, 35, who came to the United States five years ago. “It hurt a little not to practice as a physician, but I was blessed that I could stay in health care.”

That blessing has an expiration date. On Feb. 3, Mr. Dorsainvil and more than 330,000 other Haitians in the United States could lose their right to work here, potentially destabilizing the health care industry in places like Springfield, where a large influx of Haitian immigrants has settled in recent years and helped fill critical health care roles.

Mr. Dorsainvil lives in the United States under a legal designation called Temporary Protected Status, which can be provided by the U.S. government to people from countries experiencing armed conflict or natural disasters. The protection allows those already in the United States to remain for a specific period of time, and it can be renewed if the U.S. government considers conditions in the country unsafe for people to return.

Haitians have been eligible for T.P.S. since an earthquake devastated the country in 2010, and the protection has been renewed because of other crises. But the Trump administration announced last year that it was terminating the status for several countries, including Afghanistan, Venezuela and Haiti.

By seeking to end T.P.S. for Haitians and many other foreign nationals, the Department of Homeland Security is vastly expanding the number of people who could be expelled from the country as part of the Trump administration’s mass deportation campaign. Officials have argued that T.P.S. was intended to offer only temporary relief but has become an indefinite benefit for tens of thousands of people.

Mr. Dorsainvil is one of several health care workers named as plaintiffs in a lawsuit seeking to preserve the protected status for Haitians.

Rulings are expected in a matter of days in two lawsuits, including Mr. Dorsainvil’s, contesting the termination of T.P.S. for Haitians. Yet, even a favorable decision may offer little relief; the Trump administration is expected to appeal immediately, prolonging the uncertainty for both Haitian workers and their employers.

At least 50,000 migrants with protected status work in health care, an industry struggling to fill positions in small cities and rural areas as an aging America requires more long-term care. The industry also continues to recover from the strains created by the coronavirus pandemic, when nursing homes and senior residential facilities shed more than 400,000 employees.

People from Haiti are a particularly familiar presence in hospitals, clinics and nursing homes in states with large Haitian communities, including Florida, New York and Massachusetts. Haitians filled about 111,000 health care positions in the United States in 2023, according to an analysis of census data by the Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan think tank.

“In a health care system facing so many disruptions, it’s shortsighted to make such policy changes” that further erode care, said Leah Masselink, an associate professor of health policy management at George Washington University. “These immigrants are highly qualified, and in positions that are hard to fill.”

Rachel Blumberg, who runs a senior care center in Boca Raton, Fla., said she was bracing for the loss of 30 Haitian employees with Temporary Protected Status who would have to be let go and could be immediately deported.

“These are individuals who have been with us five, six, seven, 10 years,” said Ms. Blumberg, chief executive of Toby & Leon Cooperman Mount Sinai Residences. “They do work that many Americans won’t do.”

It is critical that Democrats force the regime, and their Republican in allies, to make clear what the real plan is here. For here is a list of the potential targets for a super-charged ICE and what Greg Sargent has called their ethnic cleansing campaign:

That’s 60 million people, or 18% of the current total population of the United States.

Of the 34 million immigrants who are not citizens, estimates are that between 500,000 and 1 million people have criminal records. We should be able to, with existing capacity, remove all those people in a few years without terrorizing communities and legal immigrants. So what is ICE doing exactly, and why does it need all this additional money?

We need to level set here for a moment. Miller’s goal this past year has been 3,000 deportations a day, or about a million a year. If the regime is in reality targeting, let’s say, all undocumented immigrants, TPS holders, and others legally here today but not yet green card holders that’s between 15 and 18 million people. At a million a year that means they are planning on having this terror regime in place across American cities for at least 15 years. Yes, at least 15 years.

Not only does the public not support ICE’s current brutal tactics, there is no public support for mass deportation beyond criminal migrants. In this poll, and it is consistent with public opinion going back 20 years, Americans oppose deporting long settled undocumented immigrants by 65%-22%, making it among the least popular policies Trump has pursued in the past year:

This is why in the coming debate about DHS and ICE we must force the regime to explain what their “mass deportation” strategy is. They’ve been lying again and again claiming this is all about pursuing criminals. It is a false, outrageous, malevolent cover story they keep repeating to mask their true intent, which I think is two fold - 1) to deport tens and tens of millions of immigrants, as many as they can, over a decade or more 2) build ICE into a government-backed militia loyal to the regime to attack and degrade their domestic political opponents, including journalists, similar to the Revolutionary Guard in Iran.

In the coming debate we must force the regime to explain why DHS needs all this extra money. Why we must spend for example $40b - $40 billion! - on detention centers (USAID’s annual budget was $30b)? Who is going to be detained there? Criminals? Long settled undocumented immigrants? Refugees? Green card holders? Democrats? Journalists like Don Lemon? Why do people have to be detained at all? Why did ICE arrest and fly those hundreds of legal refugees from Minnesota to Texas, or the young child we’ve seen? Why the expense of the flights and detention?

Yesterday we learned that ICE has already begun spending that enhanced detention money and is buying warehouse - yes warehouse - space across the US:

Yesterday Bernie Sanders introduced an amendment to the Senate package to claw back the $75b DHS received from the big ugly bill this past summer. It failed, 49-51, but two Republicans - Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski - did vote with us. Every Democrat in the Senate voted to claw back this money.

The ground has shifted on these issues in recent weeks. Approval for ICE and Trump’s mass deportation policies has plummeted. Look at this level of opposition YouGov found in its polling this week:

The Senate Democrats were successful in forcing the regime and Congressional Republicans into a sustained debate now about these incredibly dangerous, inhumane, and unpopular policies. We need to approach these next few weeks with confidence that we have the country behind us and must do everything we can to stop where we all know this is headed. We must rein in DHS and ICE, but we must also work to roll back the additional DHS funding from the big ugly bill - it is an extraordinary waste of money, equal to two years - yes two years of the ACA subsidies that Republicans refused to extend. For as I’ve been saying 2026 is a year for us to win the mid-terms but also a year for us to become far more effective at reining in Trump-Vance-Miller and stopping our accelerating slide into autocracy.