Trump threatens Congressional Democrats with "imprisonment" for planning to investigate corruption -- in other words, for doing their jobs

(The Jamia Times, Facebook)

Voters who thought the midterm wipeout might inject a dose of sanity into Donald Trump's cranium can toss that notion into the dumpster. In fact, Trump showed signs over the weekend that he might be developing a form of mental illness that merits attention. We are not suggesting Trump is insane; after all, insanity has become a legal term, more than a diagnosable medical condition. With that in mind, we will just say that Trump, in the past few days, has made statements and suggested actions that are more than a little "nutty." We should note that Trump's words involve legal concepts, and it has been clear for months that Trump has virtually zero understanding of ideas such as "the rule of law" or "constitutional rights." You might think it would be helpful for a man serving as U.S. president to possess at least an elemental grasp of these concepts. But Trump has shown over and over that his cluelessness on such matters is profound. 

The most recent example came when newly elected Democratic lawmakers said the robust corruption that has marked Trump's second term should be investigated. That prompted Trump, in one of his over-the-top snits, to state that said Democrats should face "imprisonment." We can think of at least two reasons this is  unsettling stuff: (1) Trump did not, and could not, point to any fact or law that would suggest investigating his administration amounted to a crime; (2) The Department of Justice Manual clearly states that the DOJ "will not advise the White House concerning pending or contemplated criminal or civil law enforcement investigations or cases unless doing so is important for the performance of the President’s duties and appropriate from a law enforcement perspective.

In short, Trump's DOJ cannot prosecute anyone just because the president wants them to do it. We spelled this out in a post dated 2/17/25, under the headline "Clueless about the law and hungry for revenge, Donald Trump drives the DOJ toward a cliff we haven't seen since the days of Richard Nixon and Watergate." 

How did Trump come to give Americans a new reason to wonder about his mental health? The International Business Times (IBT) provides an excellent overview under the headline "Donald Trump reportedly wants to imprison Democrats for doing their jobs as experts say 'this will end poorly'; a presidential demand for imprisonment puts congressional oversight and political accountability at the centre of a new constitutional confrontation." 

As the IBTimes headline suggests, the Democrats in question are simply doing their jobs. There is nothing criminal about members of Congress conducting a Congressional investigation. If Trump did not want to be subject to such scrutiny, he shouldn't have created a corrupt administration. Better yet, he could have done us all a favor and never run for president. Fernando writes:

In a Truth Social post, Trump said Democrats had threatened Attorney General Todd Blanche and other administration officials with impeachment. He maintained that those officials had committed no impeachable offences. He further claimed Dems were committing "extortion" by announcing plans to investigate Republicans, and in some cases, their supporters.

How does Trump know those officials "had committed no impeachable offences? He couldn't. How does Trump know the elements of extortion? He doesn't. Here is more about Trump's statement from the IBT report, as Rhealene Fernando writes:

Trump singled out Michigan's Elissa Slotkin. At a University of Chicago event in October, Slotkin discussed congressional investigations into possible misconduct by administration officials. She said the prospect of scrutiny might discourage graduates from accepting administration jobs. Republican Senator Mike Lee criticised her remarks, while Slotkin said critics had misrepresented them.

As often is the case when Trump makes a public statement, it is mostly bluster.

 In this In this instance, here is the key question: Are members of Congress subject to punishment for official legislative acts, such as conducting investigations, holding hearings, and preparing committee reports?  For the most part, the answer is no. Consider these words from Congress.gov:

Members of Congress enjoy a constitutionally explicit form of legal immunity. The Speech or Debate Clause ensures that, "for any Speech or Debate in either House," Members of Congress "shall not be questioned in any other Place." The Court has interpreted the Clause to promote legislative independence and restrict executive or judicial intrusions into the legislative sphere. Under this broad reading, the Clause provides Members (and staff) with various forms of immunity that extend well beyond "speeches" or "debates" undertaken in the halls of Congress, and instead protects Members from liability for any "legislative act"—which the Court has defined as conduct that is an "integral part of the deliberative and communicative processes" through which Congress implements "matters which the Constitution places within the jurisdiction of either House." The immunity that the Clause provides is absolute, applies in civil, criminal, and administrative proceedings, and, at least in some circuits, protects Members from compelled disclosures in various forms of investigations. . . . 

The bottom line? There are a number of qualifiers in all of this at Congress.gov., but the DOJ almost certainly cannot prosecute members of Congress for conducting investigations -- and Trump cannot order members to be investigated for doing their jobs.

With its rejection of knowledge and expertise, Trump's MAGA movement was built on a self-defeating foundation -- one that shows signs of failing in the wake of a midterm wipeout

(NTD News, Facebook)

Donald Trump's MAGA movement has been flailing for some time, and it finally imploded and collapsed in a heap after being swamped by a Blue Wave in Tuesday's midterm elections. I was hopeful going into the election, based on polls that seemed promising, but I remain stunned by the thoroughness of the Democrats' beatdown. In a new piece at The New Republic (TNR), Matt Ford says many of us should have seen it coming. Why? Mainly because Trump constructed his base on a shaky foundation, appealing to his followers' worst impulses (backward views on matters of race, women's rights, LGBT issues, and more) while taking advantage of their lack of intellectual depth and willingness to overlook rampant Republican corruption -- maybe because they simply were not well-informed enough to recognize it.

Ford refers to MAGAs as "the new Know-Nothings" and says their shallowness likely will cause them to  fade rather quickly into history's dustbin. Under the headline "Trumpism is failing because it is very, very stupid; the MAGA movement is fully rooted in the promotion of ignorance and demonization of knowledge. That's why it is failing now. That's why it will fail in the future," Ford writes: 

The 2026 midterms are over, which means that the 2028 presidential election is now underway. President Donald Trump occasionally jokes that he would run for a third term despite the Constitution’s two-term limit. The reality is that Republicans will need to find a new front-runner over the next two years.

This will be a fraught moment for their coalition. Trump’s approval ratings are in the low 30s. The Iran war remains insoluble. Trump cannot achieve victory through conventional strength of arms. He lacks the credibility and temperament to reach a permanent agreement with Tehran. The Iranian government, for its part, seems content to watch high oil prices choke the life out of the American economy.

It's worth noting Trump's behavior in his almost six years as America's president. He has made it clear that he has little regard for the U.S. Constitution or the rule of law. Just yesterday, Trump admitted that he ignored a court order to begin building his "triumphal arch." What kind of president would act with such arrogance and ignorance. John Adams, our second president and one of the Founding Fathers, famously said, "We are a nation of laws, not of men." Is Trump clueless about that concept, about our history? His conduct suggests the answer is yes, so why would such a person even seek the presidency? Was anyone begging him to run? If so, it escapes my memory. Matt Ford provides a brief history lesson on how Trumpism came to exist:

There will be a temptation for Republicans to propose doing Trumpism the right way, to achieve their goals without the errors that beset Trump’s second term. This is a fool’s errand. Trump’s mistakes were not a deviation from Trumpism; they were Trumpism. His political movement is, at its core, based on a rejection of knowledge and expertise. As a result, it is inherently self-destructive.

The problem began in 2016. Trump’s first term was a fluke. The president and his allies were not expecting to win the election. Trump repeatedly cast doubt on the integrity of the results before Election Day to soften the ground for his anticipated defeat. His team was reportedly shocked that they narrowly won enough votes in key states to eke out a narrow victory in the Electoral College.

As a result, Trump and his team put minimal effort into mapping out what his first term would look like until it was necessary. The president was still a relative newcomer to the party infrastructure and had to rely on more experienced Republicans who shared his policy beliefs—though not necessarily his ideological vision of governance. 

In other words, enough "adults were in the room" during the first term to rein in Trump at least a little. At the urging of the Heritage Foundation's Project 2025, Trump decided to solve that problem by replacing the adults with sycophantic loyalists. A cursory look at his cabinet -- Todd Blanche, RFK Jr., Kristi Noem, Pete Hegseth, Scott Bessent, Howard Lutnick, Tulsi Gabbard, etc. -- reveals how that philosophy created a disaster. Is it any wonder Amerricans were fed up with such raging incompetence and decided to fight back in the midterms? Matt Ford describes how a few seasoned professionals helped keep Trump's first term from being the kind of clusterf**k it might have been:

What did [the presence of experienced Republicans] mean in practice? Basically, when Trump wanted to do self-destructive things, he was often either sidestepped or talked out of it by people who knew better. Special counsel Robert Muller’s report on the Russia investigation is a catalog of incidents where Trump asked aides to commit obstruction of justice or some other crime and they essentially ignored him. Trump threatened to close the U.S. border with Mexico to all trade at one point in 2019, only to back down after advisers warned him of the calamitous economic repercussions that would follow.

Other reversals foreshadowed his second-term mistakes. He constantly claimed that he would soon impose tariffs on all goods from China and from other countries as a negotiating cudgel, only to back down before doing so. After Iran shot down an unmanned U.S. drone in 2019, Trump threatened to “obliterate” Iran while his top aides pushed for diplomacy. “The United States is not looking to go to war with Iran,” then–Secretary of Defense Mark Esper said at the time. 

Trump chafed at these restrictions, especially the ones that prevented him from exerting any direct control over the Justice Department. He fired Attorney General Jeff Sessions, his most ardent Cabinet supporter on anti-immigration policies, for recusing himself from the Russia investigation, which eventually led to the appointment of Mueller as special counsel. The president repeatedly pressured DOJ officials to cast doubt on the 2020 election results, which they refused to do. Those entreaties became part of the criminal case against Trump in 2023. (The Supreme Court had to invent new parts of the Constitution to save him from it.)

After Trump was out of office for four years, a sizable number of misguided voters decided it would be a good idea to return him to the White House -- although reports now are surfacing that the 2024 election was rigged in Trump's favor, costing Democrat Kamala Harris a win she actually earned. (More on that in upcoming posts.) From the TNR report:

At least some voters cast ballots for Trump in 2024 hoping that electing him would magically make it February 2020 again, with no pandemic-driven inflation but everything operating more or less the same. They drastically misread the political situation. Trump and his allies had spent the four-year wilderness crafting governance plans that would cut loose many of the restraints that bound the president during his first term. There would be no more deep-state bureaucrats undermining Trump’s agenda at federal agencies, they thought, or weak-willed warfighters who wouldn’t intimidate foreign adversaries. Only fervent loyalists would carry out the president’s will.

Now the Trump administration can’t seem to do anything right. The USS Abraham Lincoln spent so long stationed in the Persian Gulf this year that basic ship amenities began to fall apart and multiple sailors reportedly attempted suicide. The administration’s cuts to food safety inspections led to a nationwide cyclospora outbreak over the summer; Taylor Farms executives reportedly tried to delay a recall of its contaminated lettuce by calling the White House directly to ask for the president to intervene. That, apparently, is how the country works right now. 

By far the worst thing that could happen to the Trump administration was also its greatest success. In early January, U.S. military forces extracted Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro from his palace in Caracas in a nighttime raid with no American casualties. He currently awaits trial for alleged narco-terrorism crimes, in New York City. The raid, from which Trump would have been dissuaded by more conscientious advisers, went better than anyone could have hoped. When Iranian protesters rose up against the government in Tehran the following spring, the administration—pushed by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu—saw an opportunity to do the same thing in the Middle East. 

How did that Middle East adventure work out? Not so well, given that a number of polls and analyses indicate the Iran War -- and its resulting inflation -- motivated many voters to turn Congress over to Democrats, apparently hoping that would provide much-needed oversight of the Trump White House. Ford writes:  

A more sober set of national security advisers would have warned Trump that attacking Iran would likely consolidate public support around that country’s beleaguered government. They might have pointed out that, if the attack didn’t succeed at overthrowing the government, the surviving leaders would be even more hard-line than their predecessors. They might even retaliate by attacking U.S. military bases in the region or U.S. civilians overseas. They could even try to cut off oil shipments through the Strait of Hormuz and destroy neighboring countries’ infrastructure.

Unfortunately for the world, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth was at the helm of the Pentagon instead. Hegseth, a former Fox News host who was confirmed despite multiple allegations of sexual misconduct, had promised to end “wokeness” in the American military. This meant purging Black soldiers, firing a disproportionate number of women and minority generals and admirals, and blocking promotions for qualified officers who happened to not be white men. He also exonerated U.S. soldiers who committed war crimes against Native Americans in the nineteenth century and renamed military bases after Confederate leaders.

In between these adventures, Hegseth and Trump failed to overthrow the Iranian government by force, blew through most of the U.S. military’s stockpile of advanced munitions, and retreated from the constellation of military bases in the Persian Gulf to escape Iranian retaliation. Tehran now has its hand on the jugular vein of the global economy, and it shows no sign of relenting. In deference to how incredibly unpopular a new war in the Middle East landed among American voters, Trump has held off on major strikes until after Election Day.

Can Democratic control of Congress help turn around a nation under stress? The answer will begin to unfold when a new Congress is seated in January. Meanwhile, we are hearing rumblings that Democrats might want to oust their congressional leaders -- Hakeem Jeffries in the House and Chuck Schumer in the Senate, who are seen by some as too timid and conflicted to seek major change and demand accountability for Trump and his enablers. Matt Ford takes a look ahead:

More than a few Trump voters in 2024 hoped that returning him to power would bring down the cost of groceries. It did not, and it could not. Trump began his second term by imposing hundreds of billions of dollars in tariffs on America’s top trading partners, ranging from China to the European Union. The president evinced no knowledge of how tariffs actually work. He consistently lied about who pays them—it’s American businesses and customers, not foreign governments—and how a trade deficit works.

Trumpism is not a protest against how the world works. It is a rejection of the very concept of knowing how the world works. Ignorance is a virtue, and knowledge is a vice. All that matters is what Trump thinks, regardless of whether it can be independently verified or held accountable. By electing Trump, many of his movement’s adherents hoped to prove that their lack of expertise was as good as any credential that some liberal egghead could obtain from a woke, biased university. 

Now we are living through their dreams come true. Trump has waged war against the nation’s universities, with some close allies openly calling for the de-intellectualization of Americans because it would be beneficial for the GOP’s electoral chances. He has laid waste to our nation’s scientific and technological research infrastructure out of some obscene desire by apparatchiks like Russell Vought to wield ideological control over it. His administration has purged thousands of scientists, experts, and lawyers from the federal civil service because they refused to unfailingly carry out the president’s whims. An anti-vaxxer who has espoused eugenic sentiments now sits atop the nation’s public health infrastructure. It has been a two-year triumph for people who love to be wrong and can make themselves rich by doing it. 

These actions have a dire cost for ordinary Americans, who are now on track to be poorer, sicker, and less educated at the end of Trump’s second term than they were before it. Even their “successes” are failures. In September, top Trump adviser Stephen Miller shared a graph on Twitter claiming that the country’s foreign-born population had dropped by 2.9 million over the past 18 months. “The first sustained negative migration in 100 years, and picking up speed,” he crowed. The graph also showed that the overall number of immigrants in the U.S. hadn’t dropped below the levels they were at in January 2024. In other words, the Trump administration has wrought all this damage and destroyed tens of thousands of immigrants’ lives to bring the number down to … Biden-era levels. They can’t even do mass deportations right.

Someday soon, a Republican presidential candidate will campaign on the premise that he can deliver the “good” parts of Trumpism without the collateral damage of its namesake’s mistakes. They will be lying. All of this damage flows naturally from an exaltation of ignorance and the demonization of expertise. They will merely be promising easy solutions to make a quick buck and hoping to outrun the harms they cause. Hopefully, future generations of Americans will see through the con more easily than past electorates. 

Trump seems convinced Democrats will not attempt to impeach him because he's conducted a successful admin; will Dem officials and their supporters agree?

(Daily Mail, Tik Tok)

Donald Trump seems confident Democrats will not attempt to impeach him in the wake of their wipeout victory in the midterm elections. Is Trump's confidence well-founded? As a matter of justice, absolutely not. As a matter of political will, do Democrats have the right stuff to hold the President accountable? That seems doubtful. The list of Trump's impeachable crimes surely is long. What if Democratic leaders decide to look the other way? My guess is they might be in for an unpleasant response from their supporters, including your humble blogger.

The New Republic (TNR) addresses the issue of accountability for Trump under the headline "Trump says there's no way Democrats are going to impeach him." This eye-opening subhead follows: "It's time for Democrats to prove him wrong."

I agree with the subhead sentiment so strongly that it almost made me choke on my morning oatmeal. I suspect many other Democrats who went to the polls on Tuesday to produce a historic "Blue Tidal Wave" also agree. Let's check out TNR's take on the issue, as Malcolm Ferguson writes: 

President Trump couldn’t seem to care less about Republicans losing control of the House and Senate to Democrats on Tuesday night.

The president offered brief remarks on the GOP carnage following a baffling ceremony at the construction site of his controversial White House ballroom.

Trump seems convinced that Democrats won't touch him because he has presided over such a successful administration -- one he says, unsurprisingly, that is the most successful in history. Trump says these words with a straight face, but does he believe Democrats agree with his appraisal? Apparently so. Ferguson writes about the president's interaction with reporters on the subject:

“Sir, you held 30 rallies across the country, gave your final speech in front of the Reflecting Pool,” a reporter asked, referencing the way Trump centered himself in so many of the failed House and Senate campaigns. “Do you have any regrets about the way you closed out the campaign?”

“No, look if I were on the ballot we would’ve won. You saw the people, they were packed. Thousands and thousands of people at every rally. And if I was on the ballot, we would’ve won.… There was such love at those rallies, it was incredible. We weren’t able to transfer the love to candidates.”

Imagine how badly Republicans would have gotten trounced in the midterms if Americans did not hold such enduring love for Trump. In short order, Trump's responses got even more bizarre, Ferguson writes:

When asked if he was concerned about the prospect of impeachment from a Democratic-controlled Congress, the president replied, “Not even a little bit.”

“I think it would destroy the Democrat Party if they did that. It’s impeachment for no reason. What, for having a successful country? Our country is more successful now than at any time in its history.”

“Watch the beam go up,” he suddenly declared, before pointing to a large piece of metal being hoisted into the air over the construction site.

Based on those responses, one might wonder if a beam had fallen on Trump's head. We have, however, no reports of that happening. We do have a bit more nonsense though:

The president also said he would’ve “done nothing different” regarding the Iran war—despite acknowledging it lost Republicans the election, as Vice President JD Vance noted. He also said that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s job was safe for the moment, even as other reports reveal Trump has been considering firing him and blaming him for the Iran war. 

Polls show that the Iran War and its repercussions -- such as inflation -- played a major role in Trump and his party getting trounced at the polls. Yet Trump says he would not do anything different regarding the war? It looks like we have a slow learner in the White House -- and that's not good for anyone.

Democrats unleash a Blue Tsunami on Trumpism in the midterm elections, perhaps marking a return to competent government that can actually govern in the U.S.

(Getty Images, The Week)

When reports early this week (including here at Legal Schnauzer) showed that Democrats -- according to the final poll of the 2026 cycle -- were leading U.S. Senate races in seven swing states, many Americans who yearn to be free from the chaos of our nightmarish experience under the narcissistic reign of Donald Trump likely started seeing reason to hope. Perhaps they even started forming headlines in their heads that signaled a possible escape from a distinctly ugly and corrupt form of Republicanism that has controlled much of our government over the past 10 years.

If hopeful headlines were to become a reality, they likely would begin to appear this morning, on the day after the midterm elections. Well, that day is here and so are the headlines, such as this one at Raw Story -- "Breaking: Shocker as a red-state revolt hands Democrats the Senate and full control of Congress." For good measure, a similar story, published jointly at Rolling Stone and Yahoo! News, carried this headline: "Democrats win total control of Congress." It includes this passage about what lies ahead:

With a majority in the Senate and House, Democrats are now free to pursue an ambitious legislative agenda during Trump's final two years in office. Trump is entering his lame-duck period as a deeply unpopular president beset by scandal and crises of his own making. While he will likely use his presidential veto to keep many of a Democratic Congress' bills from passing, control over both Houses will give the Democrats a powerful platform to both investigate Trump's actions in the first half of his second term and set the tone for their agenda going into the next open presidential election in 2028.

The Republicans are well aware of this.

"They will turn every committee of Congress into an investigative body, and they'll go after the president's family, the Cabinet, his donors and friends," Speaker of the House Mike Johnson told a room of Christian conservatives earlier this year. "Half of you in this room will be targeted. I run the protection program. I'll take care of you," he added.

Johnson probably never dreamed a Blue Wave would cost him his speakership. But come January, he will turn over the gravel to Democrat Hakeem Jeffries. That might mean Johnson won't be able to protect anyone. The Republican indignities, after tying their fortunes almost 100 percent to Trump, probably will not end there. How dominating were the Democrats on election day? A look at a scorecard from our preview story shows the leads Dems held in the final New York Times/Siena poll:

• Michigan: Abdul El-Sayed +11 (53–42)

• Texas: James Talarico +7 (50–43)

• Maine: Troy Jackson +6 (51–45)

• Ohio: Sherrod Brown +5 (49–44)

• Kansas: Adam Hamilton +5 (49–44)

•  Alaska: Mary Peltola +2 (48–46)

• Iowa: Josh Turek +1 (48–47)

Now, let's look at how things turned out last night:

* In Michigan, Abdul El-Sayed led Republican Mike Rogers 51.9% to 46.1% when Associated Press (AP) called the race;

* In Texas, James Talarico, at 59.4%, led Republican Ken Paxton when AP called the race;

* In Maine, Troy Jackson, led 53.9% to 46.0% when Republican Susan Collins conceded;

* In Ohio, Sherrod Brown defeated Republican Jon Husted, 49.6% to 45.5%;

* In Kansas, Adam Hamilton defeated Republican Roger Marshall, 51.1% to 45.9%;

* In Alaska, Republican incumbent Dan Sullivan led Democrat Mary Peltola, 48.7% to 47.5%. That was at 2:20 a.m. CT, and the race had not been called;

*In Iowa, Josh Turek defeated Republican Ashley Hinson, 50.5% to 46.4%

Significant Senate races that did not make the Times/Siena top seven also were held yesterday. Here is how they turned out:

* In Georgia, Jon Ossoff handily defeated Republican Mike Collins, 58.9% to 41.1%

* In South Carolina, Dr. Annie Andrews pulled perhaps the biggest surprise of the day, defeating Republican Darline Graham, 51.1% to 46.7%

* In North Carolina, Roy Cooper defeated Republican Michael Whatley, 58.7 % to 39.1%

* Mississippi produced the closest Senate race of the day, with Scott Colom leading Republican incumbent Cindy Hyde-Smith, 48.95% to 48.94%. AP had not called the race as of 2;50 a.m. CT.

How do the final poll numbers compare to yesterday's results? The poll had Democrats leading in seven races, and they won six of them, with no losses -- and the Alaska race too close to call. In the other four races we spotlighted, -- in traditionally deep red territory across the South (stretching from North Carolina to Mississippi) -- Democrats performed remarkably well. They won handily in North Carolina and Georgia, pulled a stunning upset in South Carolina, and hanging tight in a Mississippi race that was too close to call. Raw Story, in an article posted at 10:38 CT,  provides an overview of what yesterday's results mean, so let's take a look:

Democrats have won control of the U.S. Senate, ending the Republican majority and dealing a major blow to President Donald Trump’s agenda.

NBC News and Decision Desk HQ projected Tuesday night that Democrats will hold at least 51 seats, enough to overturn the GOP’s 53-47 majority. Democrats needed a net gain of four seats and have flipped six so far. Because Vice President JD Vance breaks ties, Democrats needed 51 seats rather than 50 to take control.

Democrats flipped Republican-held seats in Iowa, Kansas, Ohio, North Carolina, South Carolina and Texas, according to NBC’s results tracker, several of them in states Trump carried by double digits in 2024.

The win hands Democrats both chambers of Congress, after they were projected to take the House earlier Tuesday. When the new Congress convenes in January, they’ll control the Senate agenda and committee gavels, along with the power to block Trump’s judicial and executive branch nominees. Trump still holds a veto, which he has promised to use against Democratic legislation.

Trump and his Republican enablers have blazed a trail of destruction and dysfunction, but the road to recovery begins today if Dems can take control of the House and Senate

(Dr. Ahmad Rehan Kahn, X)

America's democracy is in dire need of repair, as the result of probably the most damaging presidency in U.S. history, certainly the worst in our lifetimes. The process of recovery begins today as Americans head to the polls for the 2026 midterm elections. Donald Trump, contrary to his efforts to convince MAGA cultists of his ubiquity, is not on the ballot. Getting rid of him will have to come later. But the process of ridding Congress of his GOP enablers begins today. And make no mistake, Trump is a miserable failure as president -- ignorant, incompetent, short-sighted, uncaring, and an embarrassment on the world stage. But congressional Republicans have abdicated their oversight authority over the executive branch, allowing Trump to do whatever he wants; it's like letting a toddler loose in china shop with a baseball bat. The problem is not just Trump; it's also the GOPers who have sat on their hands while Trump engages in one flawed, shortsighted effort at another. In other words, Republicans created this mess, so they are not likely to be part of the solution. In what has become a common theme in American politics over the past 30 years or so, GOPers are wallowing in a mess of their own making, and it's imperative that voters put Democrats in charge of both houses of Congress so they can clean up after the GOP and start America on the road to recovery from our horribly failed experiment in Trumpisim.

Ana Novarro, a Nicaraguan-American political strategist and commentator who once was an ardent Republican but has been highly critical of Donald Turmp, addressed this issue the other day. Speaking on The View's Behind the Table podcast, Navarro lambasted Republicans for abandoning their responsibility to hold the president accountable:

“They have completely ceded their duty to be a check and balance on the executive,” she declared. “They're just rubber stamps.”

Navarro pointed to Trump's tariffs, the cost of living and what she called “the absolute cruelty” of his attacks on diversity programs, including those affecting Black and brown Americans, women and gay service members. 

She was particularly scathing about Trump's expensive architectural ambitions.

His fixation with “the Kennedy Center and the reflecting pool and the arch and the ballroom” has continued, she said, “while people can't make ends meet.”

The good news is that yesterday's final poll before the midterms indicates Democrats are in a solid position to take control of both the House and Senate.That's from a Substack post from independent progressive commentator Brian Tyler Cohen, who writes under the headline "An 11th hour midterm nightmare for Trump and Republicans; the final NYT/Siena poll suggests that a blue wave is heading for our shores":

The New York Times/Siena College just released its final poll of the cycle, and for Republicans, “cataclysmic” is the word I’d use. Democrats lead in all seven key Senate races:

• Michigan: Abdul El-Sayed +11 (53–42)

• Texas: James Talarico +7 (50–43)

• Maine: Troy Jackson +6 (51–45)

• Ohio: Sherrod Brown +5 (49–44)

• Kansas: Adam Hamilton +5 (49–44)

• Alaska: Mary Peltola +2 (48–46)

• Iowa: Josh Turek +1 (48–47)

To summarize, Democrats have leads of 5 points or more in Michigan, Texas, Maine, Ohio, and Kansas -- with leads of 2 points or less in Alaska and Iowa. The good news does not end there, as Cohen writes:

As for North Carolina, per the NYT: “The surveys did not include North Carolina, where polls have long found the Democrat leading and Republicans have pared back their campaign spending.”

If this holds, Democrats flip seven Republican seats and take the Senate by a margin of 54–46. (And not to put the cart about 10,000 yards before the horse, but in 2028, Republicans will be defending North Carolina and Wisconsin. Win both, and there is a universe where Democrats head toward 2030 with 55 seats).

But wishcasting aside, let’s get through the 2026 midterm cycle first. 

Cohen provides some important warnings, starting with this one: The Democrats are fighting an adversary that is rundamentally dishonest -- and has been on the wrong side of history for roughly 65 years. To find a Republican president who was a big enough person for the job, you have to go back to Dwight Eisenhower (1953-61), who was thoughtful (he donated his farm to the National Park Service), intelligent (he was president of Columbia University), tough (he was chief of staff of the U.S. Army), and forward-thinking (he gave us the U.S. Interstate Highway System). Will Eisenhower be the last admirable Republican president we ever have?

Let's consider what the GOP has given us since "Ike's" second term ended: In 1960, Barry Goldwater openly fought against civil rights; In 1969-70, Richard Nixon picked up where Goldwater left off by playing the race card with development of his "Southern Strategy," famously championed by aide Pat Buchanan, who said, "Nixon should cut the Democratic Party and the country in half. In my view, we would have the far larger half." Nixon's term ended with Watergate, which was the very embodiment of presidential corruption until Trump came along.

In 1980, Ronald Reagan began the destruction of the American middle class by instituting "trickle-down economics," which lessened the tax burden on the wealthy, while dumping more on the shoulders of those who could least afford it -- exacerbating income inequality, which has continued to this day. To top it off, Reagan embraced the notion of an all-powerful executive (which Trump has taken to new levels) by openly defying Congress (and a law that Reagan himself had signed) and launching the Iran-Contra scandal. 

George H.W. Bush took over in 1989 and violated his "no new taxes" campaign pledge, raising taxes and leading to the economic recession of 1990-91. In 2000, George W. Bush lost the popular vote, but the U.S. Supreme Court gifted him an electoral-college win over Democrat Al Gore. Officials with the Bill Clinton administration warned Bush that Al-Qaeda would be the No. 1 national-security threat they would face. But the Bush team seemed unprepared for the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Although terrorists from Saudi Arabia planned and launched the 9/11 attacks, Bush proceeded to start a war with Iraq, largely due to flawed intelligence and pressure from his own cabinet and Congress. The war proved to be a massive drain on U.S. resources and caused our international goodwill to take a hit.

Today's elections can be viewed, not as a showdown about individuals, but parties -- and that reminds us of a Feb. 2024 survey of historians and experts that found the worst president in U.S. history is Donald Trump (No. 45) and George W. Bush is a lowly No. 32. Meanwhile, our most recent Democratic president, Joe Biden, is ranked No. 14. Perhaps voters should keep that survey in mind as they approach polling places today. Let's return to the piece by Brian Tyler Cohen, who offers intriguing advice for progressive voters:

These poll numbers are not self-executing. Vote, and then get your friends and family to vote. Remember— we are entitled to nothing. And also remember— Republicans will lie, cheat, and steal to hold on to power, so we don’t just need to win, we need to run up the margins. That’s how this poll becomes reality.

Running up the margins serves another purpose, though. The difference between a Biden win and a Trump win in 2020 was about 42,000 votes across three states. Trump had no legitimate basis to cry fraud— but the razor thin margins certainly didn’t make things less ambiguous. But if we can deliver a blue tsunami on Election Day, then Trump’s inevitable post-election lawsuit hurricane will likely be reduced to a puddle. It’s one thing to litigate 42,000 ballots. It’s another thing entirely to sustain losses in Texas, Kansas, Ohio, North Carolina, Michigan, Maine, and so on— and yet still pretend that you were robbed.

There is merit to the idea that the election results can be “too big to rig.” Let’s aim for that.

While I stated up top that Trump is not on the ballot, Cohen does not buy that idea -- and he makes some strong points in the process:

You’ll hear “Trump isn’t on the ballot.” But he is. His party has handed him every ounce of its autonomy. They have said nothing as the tariffs sent costs surging, as the Iran war sent gas prices to record highs, and as the Epstein files have been buried. Republicans in Congress are supposed to be in a co-equal branch of government, a check on the executive, and yet they’re too chickenshit to lift a finger in opposition to the president.

Not only will Ken Paxton, Darline Graham, John James, Susan Collins, and Michael Whatley, among others, be rubber stamps for Trump, they are there expressly because they won’t stand up to him. The price of admission into today’s Republican Party is slavish devotion to one man. 

Cohen describes an unhealthy and dysfunctional form of governance, especially when you consider Trump already has proven to be a dismal failure as president -- and he's getting worse with time. Progressives, Independents, and conservatives who have come to their senses have the power to change that -- and it starts today. Cohen writes:

If you like how expensive everything is, if you like footing the bill for a war with Iran, if you like that the president is growing his fortune by billions in office while you choose between food and medicine, if you like that he was friends with Jeffrey Epstein and his DOJ is still sitting on the files, then the Republican Party will happily preserve the status quo.

But if you want a party that holds the powerful to account and focuses on working Americans instead of the billionaires who exploit them, vote. In every state, in every district. For those who think that politics doesn’t affect them, I should remind you: If you drive, eat, shop, heat or cool your home, need healthcare, or pay taxes, politics affects you. And you should ensure that your voice is heard.

We deserve so much better. Let’s make sure we get it.

Federal judge tosses Trump's Alaska lawsuit as an attempt to unlawfully interfere with a midterm election, while possibly taking another step toward authoritarian rule

(Newsweek, Facebook)

The Trump administration's attempt to interfere in Alaska's U.S. Senate election was not just designed to increase the chances that a Republican would win, thereby furthering White House hopes that it could continue dealing with a Congress where the GOP still controlled at least one chamber. It also was intended to move the United States closer to authoritarian rule. That is the conclusion of Adam Klasfeld who writes at All Rise News under the headline "Rising this week: the sacred, secret ballot":

Pro-democracy electorates have rejected authoritarian rulers this year in Hungary, Serbia, and Brazil.

Israel appears to be on the cusp of ending Benjamin Netanyahu’s more than 18-year tenure as prime minister, which he has used to consolidate power, weaken the country’s judiciary, and attempt to outrun growing domestic and international criminal liability. Opposition Jewish and Arab parties signaled a willingness to form a coalition, which — if finalized — would mark another blow to the global forces of illiberalism.

On Tuesday, it’s U.S. voters’ turn.

Will Americans follow suit and reject Trump's authoritarian overtures? If they don't, many observers (including yours truly) fear that our democracy might swirl down the drain, never to be seen again -- at least as we have come to know it. Klasfeld writes:

Critical to that effort will be the cornerstone of any free society: the sacred, secret ballot. No government with democratic legitimacy would ever propose asking a court to let agents of the state interrogate citizens about how they voted, but that is exactly what the Trump regime has asked a judge to allow it to do in Alaska.

On Sunday, a federal judge emphatically rejected that effort because the relief that it requested would violate a sacred right.

The Trump Justice Department asked U.S. District Judge Sharon L. Gleason to block any Alaska Senate election outcome that ends in the defeat of the Republican incumbent “pending an investigation to determine whether votes cast for Daniel J. Sullivan were meant to be cast for Senator Sullivan.”

Upon what did Judge Gleason base her ruling? Klasfeld addresses the legal particulars, and it's not a stretch to say she might have saved the rule of law and American democracy -- at least for now. Who knows what schemes the White House might be planning in the event Democrats wind up controlling the Senate? Klasfeld writes: 

Judge Gleason found that “requiring the segregation of ballots cast by voters for Daniel J. Sullivan so that these voters can be further investigated by law enforcement is not a remedy that this Court can or should order as it clearly violates Alaskans’ right to a secret ballot.”

To establish standing, a party must request relief that a judge has the power to grant: a concept known as “redressability,” but what Trump Justice Department lawyers asked for was anathema to a free society.

“More fundamentally, the United States provides no workable plan as to how it proposes to segregate ballots cast for Daniel J. Sullivan on Election Day and then conduct a court-ordered unspecified ‘investigation’ of those ballots in a manner that would preserve voter secrecy,” the ruling states. 

Why has the secret ballot come to be seen as "sacred" by those who value and defend election integrity? A case styled McIntyre v. Ohio Elections Commission, 514 U.S. 334 (1995) provides insight. Consider these words from the opinion . . .

The term "liberty" in the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution makes the First Amendment applicable to the States. The Fourteenth Amendment reads, in relevant part: "No State shall . . . deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law . . . ." U. S. Const., Amdt. 14, §1. Referring to that Clause in his separate opinion in Whitney v. California, 274 U.S. 357 (1927), Justice Brandeis stated that "all fundamental rights comprised within the term liberty are protected by the Federal Constitution from invasion by the States. The right of free speech, the right to teach and the right of assembly are, of course, fundamental rights." Id., at 373 (Brandeis, J., concurring). Although the text of the First Amendment provides only that "Congress shall make no law . . . abridging the freedom of speech . . . ," Justice Brandeis' view has been embedded in our law ever since. See First Nat. Bank of Boston v. Bellotti, 435 U.S. 765, 779-780 (1978); see also Stevens, The Bill of Rights: A Century of Progress, 59 U. Chi. L. Rev. 13, 20, 25-26 (1992).

In short, the right to a secret ballot is derived from the fundamental "liberty" rights associated with the First and Fourteenth Amendments -- and it is perhaps most closely related to freedom of speech. The ACLU, a plaintiff in the Alaska case, seemed to be thinking along those lines in its brief, as Klasfeld reports:

“Imagine if the federal executive could pluck a few words like ‘election integrity’ from some statutory preamble and, on that basis alone, bend the machinery of state elections to his will, preemptively blocking certification of a U.S. Senate election to protect his preferred candidate from defeat and then subjecting voters to a law-enforcement-led inquest about who they ‘really’ supported,” ACLU attorney Ari J. Savitzky wrote in a blistering filing. “Imagine that world and ask whether it is what the framers wanted or precisely what they most feared.”

On Oct. 30, Alaska’s top federal prosecutor Michael Heyman signaled at a press conference that he was willing to do just that.

“Federal and state law enforcement, including both the Alaska State Troopers on my right and the FBI on my left, are working to make sure that your vote counts in a way that you meant and intended it to count,” U.S. Attorney Heyman declared at a press conference.

The Trump Justice Department liked that plan so much that it publicized his comments online.  

Unfortunately for the White House, Heyman's view did not carry the day. It did, however, capture the attention of the ACLU and Judge Gleason, as Klasfeld notes:

Citing these remarks, the ACLU’s motion states: “Chillingly, the United States also does not deny that the relief it seeks here would eviscerate voters’ constitutional right to a secret ballot.”

Judge Gleason agreed, quoting Heyman’s remarks at the press conference and making ballot secrecy a central part of her ruling. She said that, because of this defect, any attempt to revise the complaint would be “futile.”

The New York Times has uncovered powerful evidence that top aides for Democratic candidate Mary Peltola and lawyers for the DSCC engaged in a ballot-stacking scheme apparently designed to sow confusion among voters regarding two Republican candidates named Dan Sullivan. While calling the move "wrong and strategically boneheaded," Klasfeld also stated, "It’s a legal and common ploy in U.S. politics, being exploited by Trump toward authoritarian ends." Klasfeld provides additional reasons the Trump argument fails as a matter of law, while pointing out hypocrisy emanating from the White House and the GOP:

As a legal matter, the state of Alaska points out that the revelations “add nothing.” That’s because the Supreme Court of Alaska decided that it doesn’t matter whether Dan J. Sullivan was a “good faith” candidate or a spoiler dreamed up in campaign war rooms in Anchorage or Washington, D.C. A candidate who meets the legal and constitutional requirements is allowed to run, end stop, and Republicans have run the same disreputable playbook numerous times across the country — including against Peltola recently by supporting a fringe candidate who was incarcerated in New York.

“Countless similarly questionable candidacies surely exist throughout the country in every election,” Alaska Assistant Attorney General Margaret Paton Walsh noted in a legal brief.

In Florida, Republicans successfully won an election by backing a candidate with the same surname as then-Democratic state Sen. Jose Javier Rodriguez, who lost by 32 votes to his GOP opponent. The results stood. What’s more, the scheme was legal and only led to a successful prosecution because of the illegal campaign contribution that came with it.

Until now, no federal government has suggested that a race could be nullified because of that common practice. 

“Pursuing ‘election integrity’ by sending armed government agents to question voters about how they chose to mark their ballots would be Orwellian and, indeed, illegal,” the ACLU told the judge. “Congress has forbidden such interference with voting many times over.” 

The Trump administration reportedly has already filed a notice of appeal with the Ninth Circuit. That should not get very far, but perhaps it will cause a post-election delay that might work in the White House's favor. In Klasfeld's view, this is just another example of our current president (and his party) acting in ways that run contrary to American norms:

Whatever the justifications, democracies do not propose, conduct, or tenaciously seek investigations of how voters intended to cast their ballots. Dictatorships do, but their requests typically come before captured judiciaries and controlled populations. That is not currently the case in the United States.

From polls to early voting records to humiliating courtroom defeats, the architects of the latest election interference scheme appear to be heading for a strong rebuke on Tuesday — in the courts and the ballot box.