No joke. On Tuesday, President Donald J. Trump issued an extraordinary Executive Order that would give “the DOGE Administrator,” that is, Elon Musk, access to the voter files of every state for the purpose of purging millions of Americans from voter rolls as suspected “non-citizens.”

Billionaire Elon Musk's unprecedented efforts to bolster the conservative candidate in next week's hotly contested Wisconsin Supreme Court race ran into legal hot water Friday amid accusations that he had broken state election law.

The Trump administration continues to push us toward a constitutional crisis, leaving our democracy at a breaking point. President Donald Trump signed an executive order attempting to tighten rules for U.S. elections and threatened funding cuts to states that do not comply. The order will be challenged in court by voting rights groups.

From Ray Lutz:

I have a number of new data analyses to present in upcoming editions on this channel, but first, I want to build a foundation of the full range of scams that are possible, which ones are truly illegal, and which ones are not illegal but bad nevertheless.

"The changes at CISA unravel a long-established partnership between the federal government and the states, which have long relied on the agency to help secure their electronic and physical infrastructure.
Election officials say the EI-ISAC, which was established in 2018 during Trump’s first term following an investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election, will not be easy to replace..”

Slate:  “...the acting director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency sent a memo to all agency staff notifying them that “all election security activities” would be paused pending the results of an internal investigation. The memo also stated that the administration was cutting off all funds to the Election Infrastructure Information Sharing and Analysis Center—a Department of Homeland Security–funded organization that helps state and local officials monitor, analyze, and respond to cyberattacks targeting the nation’s election hardware and software."

The Republican plan is to win next year’s election this year. Yes, the voting will be bent, jacked and hammered this year, 2025, one year before the official voting. Because this is the year of The Great Purge.

And if The Great Purge doesn’t do the trick, Republicans are ramping up other vote suppression tactics they rolled out to win 2024, including a private army of MAGA-nauts who challenged over a million voters’ ballots in 2024 and plan on way more by the 2026 midterm.

Suffolk County is moving forward with the 34 million dollar purchase of ExpressVote XL voting machines despite the fact that there has been no competitive bidding process as they promised there would be. 

The vote is Tuesday. Please call Suffolk County and urge them to vote no on Appropriations 1026. The general number is 631-853-4070.

NYTimes:  "Experts are alarmed that the cuts could leave the United States defenseless against covert foreign influence operations and embolden foreign adversaries seeking to disrupt democratic governments."

Stateline: "“The administration is shuttering the FBI’s Foreign Influence Task Force and last week cut more than 100 positions at the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency…"Trump is making it easier for foreign adversaries to attack our elections and our democracy,” Griswold said in an interview. “He incites all this violence, he has attacked our election system, and now he is using the federal government to weaken us.””

APNews: "The actions send a message that securing U.S. elections against interference from countries such as Russia, China and Iran is no longer a federal government priority, said Larry Norden, an election expert with the Brennan Center for Justice.“I think we would be naive to think that the bad guys don’t get that message, too, that there’s going to be less of a cop on the beat to protect our elections,” he said.”

The Hartmann Report: “.. since the Dobbs decision striking down Roe v Wade protections for women’s right to abortion ..., the blowback against Republicans by women has concerned the party’s elders.,,In response, they’ve put forward the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act which would specifically outlaw voter registration by an estimated third (and perhaps two-thirds) of all American women...every  married woman in America who’s taken her husband’s name without going through a formal court process to legalize the name change, will have to go through that cumbersome and expensive process to get a certificate that will allow her to vote. And living in a Blue state won’t help; this is federal legislation….The Republican assault on women's voting rights isn’t just a threat — it’s already underway. Stand up, speak out, and fight back: call your representatives, rally your community, and make sure they know we will not allow women’s voices or votes to be erased."

VoteBeat: "Last week, the Trump administration placed at least seven CISA employees who work on combating foreign disinformation within the election security arm of the agency on administrative leave...Cohen, the NASED director, said that cyber and physical security remains a top concern for election officials….“It is concerning that they are not here,” she said.”

USAToday ""You can't eradicate an intelligence or law enforcement or security agency and then just stand it up again immediately," Becker said. "It takes years to build expertise. It takes years to train agents. And it takes far less time to tear that all down.””

Ray Lutz: “...we must ASSUME that any central tabulators can be subverted, and thus audits are essential….Audits are absolutely necessary. Election experts agree that such manipulation is possible and stress the need for paper records to verify machine counts. However, these records are effective only if thoroughly reviewed.”

COMMENT:  Paper ballots to verify machine counts are now used in New York, but many New Yorkers (including New York City)  will soon be voting on the touchscreen ES&S Expressvote XL if the New York State legislature doesn’t act to preserve our right to vote on paper ballots. Demand that  your state legislator support  the Voting Integrity and Verification Act of NY (VIVA NY). Even with paper ballots, our audits are woefully inadequate to find fraud or machine malfunction.  Support the  COUNT EVERY VOTE ACT (CEVA) to close loopholes in the close vote margin bill.

The Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act has been reintroduced in the U.S. House of Representatives. This legislation would require all Americans to prove their citizenship status by presenting documentation—in person—when registering to vote or updating their voter registration information. Specifically, the legislation would require the vast majority of Americans to rely on a passport or birth certificate to prove their citizenship.

While this may sound easy for many Americans, the reality is that more than 140 million American citizens do not possess a passport and as many as 69 million women who have taken their spouse’s name do not have a birth certificate matching their legal name.

Times Union:  NY Voting Rights Act doesn't violate Constitution, appellate court rules “Race-based districting is only one of the possible remedies under (the law),” the decision said. “The (law) also contemplates remedies that do not sort voters based on race, such as ranked-choice voting, cumulative voting, limited voting and the elimination of staggered terms.”

In the run up to the 2024 election, amid all the noise of the horse race, there was almost no coverage of the condition of the track.  Who owns the voting machine companies?  Are the Russian hackers still in the voter rolls? Did Dominion patch its security holes after MAGA operatives stole their election systems software and equipment in GA and MI?  And the big question, why did the media go silent on election security in the run up to this all important election?   And why are Democrats and opinion leaders so adamant in saying how “free, fair, and secure” the 2024 elections were?  Where’s the evidence?

Greg Palest: “...vote suppression cost Kamala Harris no fewer than 3,565,000 votes. Harris would have topped Trump’s official total by 1.2 million. Most important, this 2.3% suppression factor undoubtedly cost Harris the states of Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Georgia. If not for the wholesale attack on votes and voters, Harris would have won the election with 286 Electoral votes.”

COMMENT: This is a long dense article from 2018, but is one of the few examinations of ownership of the computerized voting machine companies. 

Update: shortly after the sale of Dominion to Staple Street (manager Hootan Yaghoobzadeh previously of Cerberus Capital), Stephen Feinberg of Cerberus Capital became chair of the Presidents Advisory Board and is now slated to become the second in charge at the Pentagon.