"We want to take over ... Republicans ought to nationalize the voting."

Our new book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The first year of the second Trump administration has been full of ominous developments.  There are hints that Trumpists will try to tamper with the election.

Jane C. Timm at NBC:

President Donald Trump on Monday said Republicans should nationalize elections and take them over from the states as he repeated his disproven claims of voter fraud.

“The Republicans should say, 'We want to take over. We should take over the voting in at least — many, 15 places.' The Republicans ought to nationalize the voting,” Trump said during an appearance on former Deputy FBI Director Dan Bongino’s podcast.

The statement marks a dramatic escalation of Trump's stance on election administration, advancing a position that Democrats had warned he could stake out with his calls for stricter voting rules and investigations into alleged fraud.

Article 1 of the U.S. Constitution states that “the times, places, and manner of holding elections for senators and representatives, shall be prescribed in each state by the legislature thereof,” though Congress can pass federal regulations, too.

But ...

1. DICE and CBP agents are attacking citizens with brown skin and Spanish accents in broad daylight, hiding their faces but not their brutality.

2. “They’re petrified over at MSNBC and CNN that, hey, since we’re taking control of the cities, there’s going to be ICE officers near polling places,” former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon said during his show last August. “You’re damn right. … We’re not going to allow any illegal aliens to vote.”  With the images of the beatings in everyone's mind, the presence of masked goons would deer many Hispanics from coming to the polls.

3.But could they vote by mail?  In March 2025, Trump issued an executive order to require voters to provide proof of citizenship. It also aimed to hamper voting by mail. Judges have ruled against it, but the administration is appealing.

In the "House Divided" speech, Lincoln said:

We cannot absolutely know that all these exact adaptations are the result of preconcert. But when we see a lot of framed timbers, different potions of which we know have been gotten out at different times and places and by different workmen...and we see these timbers joined together, and see they exactly make the frame of a house or a mill ... we find it impossible not to believe that [they] all understood one another from the beginning, and all worked upon a common plan or draft drawn up before the first lick was struck.

 

Trump Corruption Update

Our new book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The first year of the second Trump administration has been full of ominous developments. Scandals persist. 

Sam Kessler et al. at WSJ:

Four days before Donald Trump’s inauguration last year, lieutenants to an Abu Dhabi royal secretly signed a deal with the Trump family to purchase a 49% stake in their fledgling cryptocurrency venture for half a billion dollars, according to company documents and people familiar with the matter. The buyers would pay half up front, steering $187 million to Trump family entities.

The deal with World Liberty Financial, which hasn’t previously been reported, was signed by Eric Trump, the president’s son. At least $31 million was also slated to flow to entities affiliated with the family of Steve Witkoff, a World Liberty co-founder who weeks earlier had been named U.S. envoy to the Middle East, the documents said.

The investment was backed by Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan, an Abu Dhabi royal who has been pushing the U.S. for access to tightly guarded artificial intelligence chips, according to people familiar with the matter. Tahnoon—sometimes referred to as the “spy sheikh”—is brother to the United Arab Emirates’ president, the government’s national security adviser, as well as the leader of the oil-rich country’s largest wealth fund. He oversees a more than $1.3 trillion empire funded by his personal fortune and state money that spans from fish farms to AI to surveillance, making him one of the most powerful single investors in the world.

The deal marked something unprecedented in American politics: a foreign government official taking a major ownership stake in an incoming U.S. president’s company.

Under the Biden administration, Tahnoon’s efforts to get AI hardware had been largely stymied over fears that the sensitive technology could be diverted to China. Of particular concern was one of Tahnoon’s own companies, the AI firm G42, which had stoked alarm among intelligence officials and lawmakers over its close ties to the sanctioned tech giant Huawei and other Chinese firms. The company said it severed ties with China in late 2023, but concerns persisted.

Trump’s election reopened the door for him. In the months that followed, Tahnoon met multiple times with Trump, Witkoff and other U.S. officials, including in a March visit to the White House where the sheikh told officials he was eager to work with the U.S. on AI and other issues, according to people familiar with the matter.

Two months after the March meeting, the administration committed to give the tiny Gulf monarchy access to around 500,000 of the most advanced AI chips a year—enough to build one of the world’s biggest AI data center clusters. The framework agreement called for roughly one-fifth of the chips to go to G42, The Wall Street Journal previously reported.

Texas Special Elections

Our most recent book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics.  Despite D weakness in some polls, off-year and special elections have turned out badly for the GOP.

Brianna Tucker at WP:

Democrats narrowed Republicans’ U.S. House majority and flipped a state Senate seat on conservative terrain in a pair of Saturday special election runoffs with national implications.

Democrat Christian Menefee won the special election runoff Saturday for Texas’s 18th Congressional District, paring House Republicans’ slim advantage by securing a long-vacant seat in a heavily Democratic area. In a second election runoff in Tarrant County, which includes Fort Worth, Democrats won a notable upset, with Taylor Rehmet defeating Republican Leigh Wambsganss in a district where President Donald Trump won by 17 points in 2024.

In special elections and other local races over the past year, Democrats have largely outperformed Republicans. National Democratic leaders have pointed to the results, including Rehmet’s win, along with sweeping victories in last fall’s elections, as reasons for optimism headed into this fall’s midterms. Democrats are hoping in November to capitalize on anger at Trump’s agenda. Republicans will try to defy recent political trends and hold on to their control of Congress.

J. David Goodman at NYT:

Republican leaders, concerned that a defeat could bring an influx of Democratic investment into Texas races in 2026, tried to rally support for Ms. Wambsganss. She received an endorsement from President Trump and the backing of prominent conservative leaders in Texas, including Gov. Greg Abbott and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick. The chairman of the Republican National Committee met with Ms. Wambsganss last week.

The unusually timed election attracted low turnout in a district of Tarrant County that includes portions of Fort Worth and its northern suburbs. Mr. Patrick, in the run up to the race, pleaded with Republicans to vote in the special election, which fell on a Saturday. Mr. Trump also urged voters to vote in a social media post on Friday.

“You can win this election for Leigh, who has my complete and total endorsement,” Mr. Trump wrote. 

Sometimes it's easy to dismiss upsets in state legislative elections because the constituencies are tiny.  Not so here: with 940k residents apiece, Texas State Senate districts are more populous than US House districts and even some states. About 94k people voted in this one, a decent turnout for a special in January. 

See Ballotpedia on 2025 and 2026 specials. 

Epstein Files Release

Our new book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The first year of the second Trump administration has been full of ominous developments. Scandals persist.  Especially Epstein.

Aaron Blake at CNN:

President Donald Trump’s name shows up a lot in the latest batch of files, which includes material ranging from investigative documents to emails to news clips. A few of the mentions stand out so far.

First is an email chain from August 2025 in which an apparent FBI employee displays a list of apparently unsubstantiated tips involving Trump and Epstein – many of them quite salacious.

“Yellow highlighting is for the salacious piece,” one official writes to explain how the allegations were being sorted.

Trump has never been accused by law enforcement of Epstein-related wrongdoing, and he has denied engaging in any.

The allegations appear to be unverified, and the officials note that some are secondhand information. The document notes that in many instances, there was no contact made with the individuals who sent in the allegations, or no contact information was provided.

Some of the allegations were followed up on. One was sent to the FBI’s Washington field office to conduct an interview, and another was deemed not credible, according to the document.

There are also allegations made in the document against former President Bill Clinton, who has denied wrongdoing related to Epstein.


Two files featuring that particular email were later removed temporarily from DOJ’s website then restored. A DOJ official said the document had gone down “due to overload.”

It’s not clear why officials created the list of allegations related to Trump last year. But the political sensitivities of Trump’s proximity to Epstein – with whom he associated for years before Trump said he ended their relationship in the mid-2000s – were made abundantly clear last year when Trump at one point falsely denied having been told his name was in the files.

A Burst of Fascism

Our most recent book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The second Trump administration has been full of ominous developments.The DHS killing of a disarmed man is among the worst.

April Rubin at Axios:

Journalist Don Lemon was arrested by federal agents on Thursday night following backlash over his coverage of an anti-ICE protest in a Minnesota church, his lawyer said Friday morning.

Why it matters: The former CNN anchor's arrest comes after a magistrate judge rejected the DOJ's initial attempt to bring a case against him last week, citing insufficient evidence that he violated any law.

His charges were not immediately known.

Lemon was targeted by conservative influencers and politicians after interviewing protesters, congregants and a pastor during the protest earlier this month.

...

Zoom out: Georgia Fort, an independent journalist, was also arrested for her coverage at the church protest, she announced during a livestream."It's hard to understand how we have a Constitution, Constitutional rights, when you can be arrested for being a member of the press," Fort said.

The president of the United States says, “ARREST OBAMA NOW!” May I ask you: To whom is he speaking? Is it a command? Does anyone care? pic.twitter.com/d2xKgIAKlZ

— Jay Nordlinger (@jaynordlinger) January 30, 2026

Josh Dawsey,  Dustin Volz and Sadie Gurman at WSJ: 

Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, has spent months investigating the results of the 2020 election that Donald Trump lost, according to White House officials, a role that took her to a related FBI search of an election center in Georgia on Wednesday.

Gabbard is leading the administration’s effort to re-examine the election and look for potential crimes, a priority for the president, the officials said.

The national intelligence director is usually focused on ensuring the president has the best intelligence available to make national-security decisions. Gabbard has been sidelined from some of those deliberations, including the Venezuela operation earlier this month, The Wall Street Journal has reported.

She has begun studying information about voting machines, analyzed data from swing states and pursued theories that President Trump has promoted to claim the 2020 election was unfairly taken from him, the officials said, particularly on foreign government interference.

She has regularly briefed Trump and chief of staff Susie Wiles about her inquiry in recent months along with others involved in the investigation. Those include senior Justice Department officials, Trump’s outside ally and lawyer Cleta Mitchell and Kurt Olsen, a lawyer who pushed claims in 2020 that the election was stolen and joined the administration as a special government employee.

Democratic Problems

Our most recent book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics.  Democrats are gaining from Trump's problems --but remain weak among key elements of the electorate.

Thomas B. Edsall at NYT:

Four studies conducted in the second half of 2025 reveal the depth of the predicament Democrats face. Even as support for Trump deteriorated, each analysis found that the public, including many Democratic voters, had a dismal view of the Democratic Party.

“Many Democrats see their political party as ‘weak’ or ‘ineffective,’” The Associated Press reported based on a July poll by the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, which it said also found “considerable pessimism within Democratic ranks.”
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The A.P. quoted Cathia Krehbiel, a 48-year-old Democrat from Indianola, Iowa, who called her party “spineless,” adding that “they speak up a little bit and they roll right over.”

A Pew Research survey showed that in late September “67 percent of Democrats say their own party makes them feel frustrated.” Asked why, “the dominant pre-shutdown response of frustrated Democrats (41 percent) is that the party has not pushed back hard enough against the Trump administration.”

In October, the group behind the centrist Democratic WelcomePAC issued “Deciding to Win,” an analysis of “election results, hundreds of public polls and academic papers, dozens of case studies, and surveys of more than 500,000 voters” that found that “since 2012, highly educated staffers, donors, advocacy groups, pundits and elected officials have reshaped the Democratic Party’s agenda, decreasing our party’s focus on the economic issues that are the top concerns of the American people.”

The authors tracked key word usage in Democratic platforms from 2012 to 2024 and found the frequency of the word “hate” increasing by 1,323 percent; “white/Black/Latino/Latina” by 1,137 percent; “L.G.B.T./L.G.B.T.Q.I.+” by 1,044 percent; and “equity” by 766 percent.

Over the same period, usage of “father/fathers” fell 100 percent; “crime/criminal” by 30 percent; “responsibility” by 83 percent; “middle class” by 79 percent; and “veteran” by 31 percent.

Finally, in November, Politico’s Elena Schneider reported the findings of a 21-state research project funded by Democracy Matters involving polling, dozens of focus groups and message testing.

“Working-class voters see Democrats as ‘woke, weak and out of touch’ and six in 10 have a negative view of the party,” she wrote, later adding:

The initial feedback is grim: Working-class voters don’t see Democrats as strong or patriotic, while Republicans represent safety and strength for them. These voters “can’t name what Democrats stand for, other than being against [Donald] Trump,” according to the report.

Gun Politics and the Killing of Alex Pretti

Our most recent book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The second Trump administration has been full of ominous developments. The DHS killing of a disarmed man is among the worst.

Stef W. Kight and Kate Santaliz at Axios:

Republican lawmakers are caught between the powerful gun lobby and top Trump officials over the deadly shooting of Minneapolis ICU nurse Alex Pretti.

Why it matters: The GOP has a long, mutually beneficial history with influential Second Amendment rights groups. The tragedy in Minneapolis is complicating their political messaging.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) was asked Tuesday about Trump's latest comments on Pretti carrying a gun. "One. It's a constitutional right. Two. It's legal under the laws of the state of Minnesota," Thune said. "Perhaps he didn't have ID, but with that exception, he was in compliance with the laws. He has a constitutional right."

Between the lines: "You can't have guns. You can't walk in with guns," President Trump told reporters on Tuesday in response to questions about the fatal shooting in Minnesota."I don't like the fact that he was carrying a gun that was fully loaded," Trump told Fox News later Tuesday.

...

The big picture: The Gun Owners of America released a statement after Pretti's death emphasizing that "peaceful protests while armed isn't radical — it's American."The Gun Owners Caucus of Minnesota criticized statements by FBI director Kash Patel, saying he was "completely incorrect on Minnesota law. There is no prohibition on a permit holder carrying a firearm, loaded, with multiple magazines at a protest or rally in Minnesota."

The other side: "PRESIDENT TRUMP IS EXACTLY RIGHT," Rep. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.) told Axios on Tuesday. Norman said people shouldn't carry guns into situations where people are interfering with law enforcement operations.

The bottom line: The NRA has spent tens of millions of dollars on federal elections, primarily backing Republican candidates, according to data compiled by Open Secrets.That gives the gun rights group enormous leverage inside the party.

Norman urged "Marshall Law" as a way of overturning the 2020 election.