Flailing and Failing Election Interference

Smells of desperation

This past week has seen a bevy of what Kate Riga and Khaya Himmelman at Talking Points Memo characterize as lobbing a “Half-Hearted Hail Mary in Effort to Coerce States to Overhaul Elections.”

“The Trump Justice Department has, after a month’s delay, revived its attempt to bully states into changing how they administer elections under threat of withheld FEMA funds. It’s just one of many efforts by Trump’s DOJ to try to exert federal control over election administration.”

Jonathan Shorman reports for News from the States on the “blizzard of lawsuits” that have been unleashed:

“A federal judge in Washington, D.C., ordered the U.S. Department of Justice to either reveal by midday Friday all states where it has demanded election officials pull aside or not count ballots …

“On the West Coast, an appeals court appeared skeptical of a Trump administration request to allow the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to resume election-related field operations that could sweep up U.S. citizens.

“In California, the Justice Department vowed to keep fighting to require election officials there to set aside the ballots of some 20,000 voters …

“And in Alaska, the DOJ kept up pressure on election officials over its U.S. Senate race.”

Both reports provide useful summaries of what we know of the DOJ’s last-ditch efforts so far.

Sara Wilson reports in the Colorado Newsline:

“The U.S. Justice Department on Thursday declined terms set by Colorado officials that would have restricted federal election monitor activities inside Adams County election buildings, and the department said the monitors would deploy to election sites but not enter them.

“One of the conditions was that monitors would need to be accompanied by observers from the Colorado secretary of state’s office inside any polling location.

“‘My office provided reasonable restrictions on DOJ monitors, which they refused to accept,’ Secretary of State Jena Griswold said in a statement. ‘As a result, the DOJ will not be allowed to enter voter centers in Adams County.’”

Makes you wonder why they wouldn’t be willing to be accompanied by observers, doesn’t it? But the fact that this back and forth was occurring, when Colorado’s early voting is well underway, is a good sign that in Colorado at least, the odds of direct interference from these agents is low.

In a final, amusing election interference note, Alyssa Chen reports in the Minnesota Reformer:

“Right-wing influencers James O’Keefe and Cam Higby have been charged by Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty for unlawful voting and identity theft after they pulled a dress-up stunt during the Aug. 11 statewide primary election, unsuccessfully trying to show that Minnesota’s defense against voter fraud is insufficient.

“The men posted videos in August in which they went into different Minnesota polling places to attempt to register to vote using Minnesota’s vouching process, through which a registered voter can confirm up to eight voters’ addresses so that they can also be registered to vote. The two donned clothes traditionally worn by Muslims—Higby wore a niqab, a garment traditionally worn by Muslim women—and put on fake foreign accents.”

Masterful gambit, gentlemen.

The ad with Amy Acton’s mother goes off the air

We have discussed at some length the despicable ad that Vivek Ramaswamy’s campaign put up with Amy Acton’s pedophile-protector mother, who has not spoken with Acton since the 1970s, calling Acton a liar that cannot be trusted in office. Last week, Ramaswamy, Trump, Vance, and MAGA all doubled down on defending the ad.

Yesterday, Ramaswamy said that the ad was no longer airing. Yet even here he cannot manage to do so in anything but the most disgraceful way imaginable. Robert Mackey reports in the Guardian:

“Asked by a reporter in Vandalia, Ohio if his campaign had stopped running the ad, Ramaswamy said: ‘It ran to completion and we put up four other ads.’

“‘But what I will say is that for all of the discussion around 30-second ads, I would love, even for this final close, for this campaign to really be about policy,’ Ramaswamy added, before criticizing his opponent for not debating him. …

“In an interview with the anti-abortion group Operation Rescue in 2020, when Acton was leading Ohio’s response to the Covid pandemic, Acton’s mother said that she was aware that, before she married him, Cledith Arthur had previously been accused of raping his own daughter.

“Ramaswamy’s reference to ‘30-second ads’ referred to the length of the ad after his campaign edited the original 60-second version, to remove the allegation from Acton’s mother that her daughter had lied about the family having lived in a tent with Arthur when she was a child.

“Court records from the time indicated that Cledith Arthur had, indeed, lived in a tent at the time of his arrest on rape charges.”

Of course, if a report by Alex Isenstadt in Axios is to be believed, the ad did not in fact run “to completion” but was pulled because internal Ramaswamy campaign polls showed that it was hurting him.

Has Ramaswamy shown a shred of contrition for producing and broadcasting the most repulsive political ad in American history, or at least issued a correction about the tent claim? No, and I’m not holding my breath that he ever will. Of all the races going on right now, this is the one I most hope the polls have understated a Democrat’s advantage in. I hope he is buried and has to disappear from public life in disgrace. Our republic cannot survive men like this constantly moving the ratchet downwards.

It really is that simple

“Donald Trump is an idiot” - Abdul El-Sayed
— Hasan Minhaj (@hasanminhaj.com) 2026-10-28T21:27:02.225Z

Russian censorship intensifies

AFP reports:

“The closure of Novaya Gazeta—one of the last outlets to openly criticise Russia's offensive—marks a new low in Moscow's campaign against dissenting voices that gained speed after the Kremlin sent troops into its neighbour in 2022.

“Since then, the newspaper, long considered a bastion of independent journalism, has seen its media license revoked, while its journalists and editors have been questioned, detained and had their homes searched.

“It was also branded a ‘foreign agent’ – a label reminiscent of Soviet-era repression used to stifle dissent.”

Just another reminder about what the Russian government is, and who Vladimir Putin is.

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