Estimated Reading Time: 4 minutes

Editors’ Note: We thought Molly Ball’s piece was quite instructive when it first appeared in print and commented on its significance. Click on the link to read. While Republicans are a bit more alert to violations of election integrity this election cycle, we fear Conservatives don’t possess the networks of government agencies, non-profits, hidden billionaires, media moguls, and on-the-ground operatives that Democrats have. Republicans tend to emphasize political arguments, while Democrats have learned that the number of ballots, not necessarily the number of voters or what they think, determines the election outcome.

The Secret History of the Shadow Campaign That “Saved the 2020 Election”: Where Are They Now?

Summary: In February 2021, Molly Ball of Time magazine published an article titled “The Secret History of the Shadow Campaign That Saved the 2020 Election” that took both sides of the aisle by storm. Depending on the reader’s perspective, the story was a tell-all confession or a story of epic heroism about a massive, multi-faceted, and secret campaign to “save” the 2020 election by helping President Joseph Biden win and defend his win from legal challenges by President Donald Trump and his allies. Now, as the 2024 election seems destined to be something like a rematch, it’s time to revisit the old article and see what the conspirators—or heroes, depending on one’s view—are doing now.

In February 2021, as the Biden Administration began, the nation was still grappling with the results of the 2020 election and the ensuing disputes and theories surrounding it. During that time journalist Molly Ball of Time magazine published an article titled “The Secret History of the Shadow Campaign That Saved the 2020 Election” that took both sides of the aisle by storm. Depending on the reader’s perspective, the story was a tell-all confession or a story of epic heroism about a massive, multi-faceted, and secret campaign to “save” the 2020 election by helping President Joseph Biden win and defend his win from legal challenges by President Donald Trump and his allies. Ms. Ball, undoubtedly aware of the opposite ways readers might interpret her article, concluded the introduction with the following lines:

That’s why the participants want the secret history of the 2020 election told, even though it sounds like a paranoid fever dream—a well-funded cabal of powerful people, ranging across industries and ideologies, working together behind the scenes to influence perceptions, change rules and laws, steer media coverage and control the flow of information. They were not rigging the election; they were fortifying it. And they believe the public needs to understand the system’s fragility in order to ensure that democracy in America endures.

The last two sentences became infamous within days. Many on the Right viewed them as the paper-thin rationalizations of a guilty conscience and as proof of suspicions that the 2020 election and the narratives surrounding it were being unfairly manipulated by powerful and organized forces on the Left and in the media and government. Many on the Left viewed them as a heroic mission statement and as a harrowing reminder that Donald Trump was a dangerous man who had to be stopped at all costs.

Now, as the 2024 election seems destined to be something like a rematch, it’s time to revisit the old article and see what the conspirators—or heroes, depending on one’s view—are doing now

The Stars of the Roster

Witnessing the controversy the article created at the time, the Capital Research Center published a list of the people and organizations named in the article, providing useful commentary and context for each, in an attempt to explain the funding and forces at work behind the “shadow campaign” in 2020. Reviewing that list today and observing where its major players stand now paints an interesting picture of the state of the “shadow campaign” in 2024, showing where the Left’s power has accumulated and where power vacuums have emerged that will be filled by new leaders and groups.

“The Architect”

The Time article leaves no room for interpretation regarding the ringleader of the “shadow campaign” to “save” 2020. Ball named Michael Podhorzer, senior advisor to the president of the AFL-CIO, the nation’s largest labor union, as the leader and mentioned him 27 times throughout the article. She calls Podhorzer “The Architect” and recounts how the veteran Democrat strategist studied the 2016 election hard, gathered an army about himself, and launched the whole operation with a memo titled “Threats to the 2020 Election,” which laid out a strategy to beat Donald Trump and accurately predicted that he would cast doubt on the integrity of the 2020 election if he did not win. Podhorzer created both the Analyst Institute, which uses data to measure the impact of and assist left-wing campaigns in the PAC and nonprofit worlds, and Catalist, which remains the largest of most powerful database of left-leaning voter information in the world.

Today, after a long career, Podhorzer has taken a step back from his leadership roles. Most significantly, Podhorzer is no longer working at the AFL-CIO and is not listed as a co-chair of the board of managers at Catalist. While stepping into retirement, or something close to it, Podhorzer has taken to writing a substack and working as a senior fellow for advocacy and outreach at the Center for American Progress, the Left’s most well-known think tank. Even though he is no longer working at the AFL-CIO, most of Podhorzer’s work still focuses on helping Democrats win elections.

In the wake of President Biden’s withdrawal from the 2024 election, Podhorzer published “Election 2024: The Path Forward” a full-spectrum article laying out his ideas for the Democratic Party and how it could win the 2024 elections. Podhorzer seems to agree that Biden’s withdrawal was necessary, admitting that his polling numbers were abysmal and calling the choice “the right and patriotic choice” that would improve the Democrat’s chances of beating Trump. In the article, Porhorzer claims that if voters think of the election as a referendum on “normal” things like the economy and crime rates then Democrats will lose, but if they go to the ballot box thinking of it as a referendum on “MAGA,” then Democrats will win. Specifically, Podhorzer says that it will become a winnable “MAGA Election” if voters are reflecting on “what Trump will do if he is returned to the White House, and how his MAGA allies on the Supreme Court and Project 2025 will help him do it.”

It seems unlikely to be a coincidence that, since this article was published, the Democratic campaign messaging strategy has revolved almost entirely around attacking the Supreme Court and Project 2025 and trying to draw a line between “weird” “MAGA Republicans” and ordinary people. Mr. Podhorzer, “the architect,” might not be as retired as many people think.

*****

This article was published by Capital Research and is reproduced with permission.

Estimated Reading Time: 4 minutes

Democrats are counting on greatly expanded, no excuse mail-in voting in swing states to win the 2024 presidential election.

The most striking feature of the contentious 2020 election was the sudden explosion of mass mail-in voting in states that had little experience with it, and the unprecedented levels of election interference that occurred as left-leaning nonprofit organizations such as The Center for Tech and Civic Life (which was behind “Zuckbucks”) and Democrat “lawfare” experts tried to make the best of this chaotic, mail-in ballot free-for-all.

The mail-in ballot election of 2020 created the template for the Democrats’ new “Blue Wall” election strategy, as a deluge of mail-in ballots propelled Joe Biden to victory, especially in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. The rate of mail-in voting rose to above 50 percent in Michigan and Wisconsin, and almost 40 percent in Pennsylvania.

The old “Blue Wall” was an impregnable fortress of safely Democrat states because of large blocs of blue-collar voters — mainly in the Rust Belt of the upper Midwest — that could be relied upon to get Democrats an electoral college victory in a close election. The old “Blue Wall,” however, dramatically failed to protect Hillary Clinton’s candidacy, as an unexpectedly large number of formerly Democrat, working-class voters in Rust Belt states became Donald Trump voters.

Democrats have countered the defection of working-class voters by going all in on no-excuse mail-in voting, first as a temporary, emergency measure during the Covid-19 pandemic, and now as a natural and inevitable evolution of the election landscape, according to partisan media propaganda. States that adopted extremely liberal mail-in voting regimes during Covid are being counted on to function as a new “Blue Wall,” where it is hoped that mountains of mail-in ballots will provide Democrats with an insurmountable electoral advantage.

How the New ‘Blue Wall’ Works, and How It Changes the Election System

Even with a more credible candidate than Kamala Harris, it is doubtful that today’s Democrat Party could win an electoral college victory in a close election in the absence of the current, expanded mail-in voting regime in the swing states.

This is because mass mail-in voting increases the political power of the geographically concentrated urban and university voters who are key parts of the Democratic coalition. It also damages election integrity in ways that are only now beginning to be understood.

Heavily funded mass mail-in “ballot harvesting” and ballot canvassing at a scale that is likely to have a significant impact on election results will not be successful outside of densely populated areas where homogeneous, highly partisan voting blocs can be identified. Deep-blue urban areas and large universities, with their heavy concentrations of Democrat voters, are perfect settings for successful ballot harvesting and canvassing efforts based on mail-in voting.

Vast new powers flow to the process-oriented election activists, nonprofit organizations, and liberal nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) that propagandize for expanded mail-in voting, and plan and administer the mail-in ballot regimes behind the new “Blue Wall.”

The logistical difficulties and expense of a mass mail-in ballot mobilization in less densely populated areas with politically diverse populations would be prohibitive. This reduces the impact of conventional, in-person voters who live in rural and exurban areas.

This explains the inherent partisan advantage of mail-in voting for the Democrat coalition, but it doesn’t explain the damage that mass mail-in voting inflicts on the election system. 

The problem is, when the emphasis in elections shifts from turning out conventional voters to chasing mail-in ballots, as it has for the Democrats in swing states like Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, we have entered a qualitatively different electoral world than the one we inhabited before.

Elections won on the basis of mail-in voting and ballot harvesting tell us far more about the ingenuity and logistical efficiency of ballot harvesters, community organizers, and the election activists of the liberal nonprofit world than about voter enthusiasm, voter policy preferences, and whether voters are satisfied with the performance of their elected representatives.

An electoral consensus reached through mail-in voting is certain to be a “manufactured” consensus, imposed on the election by the partisan media, and by the powerful nonprofits and NGOs that have financed and promoted the expansion of the current mail-in voting regime. This is in contrast to the role that free and fair elections have always played in providing a public affirmation of a specific candidate or governing agenda, and in checking abuses of government power.

What Will Happen Behind the New ‘Blue Wall’ in 2024

Corporate media has transformed Kamala Harris from a has-been, far-left presidential contender and generally awful vice president into an unbeatable presidential candidate, appearing to ride an unstoppable wave of organic popular support among a majority of voters.

It is all an illusion. This obviously manufactured enthusiasm for Harris as a presidential candidate is analogous to the manufactured wave of electoral support for a Harris-Walz ticket that will take shape behind the new “Blue Wall,” as Democratic mail-in votes will likely swell to at least 50 percent of total Democratic votes cast in the key swing states, if 2020 is any indication.

For better or worse, this means that the success of a Harris-Walz ticket will be more reflective of the efficiency of the Democrats’ mail-in ballot mobilization machine, and the political fetishes of the inhabitants of the left’s nonprofit and NGO world, than of rational citizens engaged in public acts of self-governance.

Republicans should therefore take some comfort in the fact that a Harris-Walz victory, if it occurs, will not be the result of a widespread repudiation of a Trump-Vance ticket, or a Republican policy agenda, but rather will reflect the peculiar dynamic of mass, mail-in voting, and the way it enables the rabidly partisan outside influencers who manage mail-in ballots in deep-blue urban areas and college towns to have an outsized influence on election results.

As long as what were sold to us as temporary emergency voting measures associated with the pandemic are allowed to remain in place, Republicans will be working against an implacable force that far outweighs the mythical “margin of fraud” that Republicans always took as an electoral fact of life as a result of urban government corruption.

Republicans who have thrown up their hands and adopted an “if you can’t beat them, join them” stance toward mass mail-in voting and ballot harvesting are likely to be dissuaded by the 2024 election results, which will be far more favorable to Democrats than they otherwise would be if voting norms returned to their pre-pandemic status.

The decadent accouterments of the pandemic, such as face masks, social distancing, lockdowns, and vaccine mandates have disappeared just as rapidly as they originally burst on the scene, and with little resistance at this point.

The mass mail-in voting era deserves to be as short-lived as the draconian Covid-19 lockdown and vaccine mandate era, and Republicans should fight tooth and nail to dismantle the current mail-in voting regime.

*****

This article was published in The Federalist and is reproduced with permission.

Estimated Reading Time: 6 minutes

SPRINGFIELD, Ohio — Residents of a southwestern, suburban Ohio town did not hesitate to blame the Biden-Harris administration and officials all the way down to City Hall for their community’s ongoing migrant crisis.

The people living in Springfield, Ohio, have been subject to extensive national media attention after salacious allegations of Haitian migrants eating pet animals went viral. While locals who spoke to the Daily Caller News Foundation in Springfield this week say they have not witnessed such acts taking place, they do say there is a serious migrant crisis in their community, and they are faulting a slate of political leaders for their woes. (RELATED: Biden Admin Preparing Deportation Protection For Hundreds Of Thousands Of Haitians In The US)

The enormous wave of media attention on Springfield began several days ago when a local social media post claimed a pet cat was found hanging on a tree branch near a Haitian immigrant’s house, and being butchered for consumption. Allegations of Haitians eating pet animals was further amplified when President Donald Trump mentioned the situation during the presidential debate on Tuesday.

While a recording of a phone call to police about Haitians in the town allegedly carrying dead geese has surfaced, Springfield police did issue a statement that they have received no reports of pet animals being eaten. Locals who spoke with the DCNF said they have not witnessed anyone eating pet dogs or cats, but they were quick to say that the arrival of roughly 20,000 Haitian nationals in a few short years has created logistical nightmares for a town of just under 60,000 residents.

‘No Rhyme Or Reason’

“They opened up our borders and are flying them here,” Daryl Summers, a local of Springfield, said of the Biden-Harris administration and his belief that the White House is largely to blame for the crisis his town is experiencing.

Summers noted media reports of around 20,000 Haitians in the town, but he says he personally believes the real number to be substantially higher. He also said he is working on forming a group with other locals to help make sure vulnerable individuals feel more safe when they are out in public.

A local woman who spoke to the DCNF said she now, as a matter of policy, never goes out into the local grocery store without her husband, and she wished not to be identified for fear of any retribution for speaking out about Springfield’s problems.

“What’s going on in our town is being allowed and I think it’s from the governor on down, and I think there’s money involved,” the woman stated. “There’s no rhyme or reason for all this to be happening and for all these people to be brought here without any infrastructure put in place to help them.”

“I believe the [Haitian migrants] are being used just like the citizens are being used,” she continued.

Another resident was more direct in naming who in the Biden-Harris administration is responsible for Springfield’s woes.

“Obviously Biden, Mayorkas and Harris,” Mark Sanders told the DCNF, referring to President Joe Biden, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and Vice President Kamala Harris.

“The border is wide open,” Sanders continued. “Many of the executive orders that were in place when [Biden] took his oath he undid within hours, so he swung the doors open. He created the pathway.”

City Stonewalling

The DCNF first reached out to Springfield’s city manager and the city commissioners on Tuesday via email in order to get answers on the town’s current crisis, but none of them have personally responded, nor have any other public representatives followed up, despite pledges to do so.

“I am responding on behalf of Commissioner Estrop,” Regina Jeffers, the clerk of the city commission, wrote in response to a DCNF media inquiry for City Commissioner David Estrop. “All media requests are being funneled through our Strategic Engagement Manager Karen Graves. I have copied her in this email to provide the statement being issued.”

When asked when exactly Graves would have an opportunity to get in touch, Jeffers said she would “respond as she is able.” However, after several days, there has yet to be a response.

A similar situation occurred when the DCNF attempted to speak to a public representative for the Springfield Police Department. When asked over the phone if the police could confirm whether there has been an uptick in car crashes, an employee again directed the DCNF to Karen Graves. (RELATED: KJP Says Reports Of Haitians Eating Pets In Springfield Are Putting People’s ‘Lives In Danger’)

A follow-up email to Graves about car wreck statistics in the city also went unanswered.

The DCNF visited City Hall in an attempt to find answers in person on Wednesday. However, no elected officials appeared to be present in the building, except for one city employee who wished not to be identified. That individual took the DCNF’s contact information and promised someone would be getting in touch.

The DCNF has not heard back since that visit to City Hall.

“Because they’re guilty of things!” Barron Seelig, a local pastor and longtime community activist for the homeless, told the DCNF on Friday when asked about lack of communication from city leaders. “At this point, I think they are criminally liable.”

‘Taking The Jobs And The Houses’

Seelig and numerous other locals who spoke to the DCNF said transportation and economic issues have followed the steep rise in immigration, with housing growing scarce and claims of repeated wrecks — allegedly by Haitian drivers with no licenses.

The local pastor also said the migrant influx has also resulted in economic consequences, affecting him personally.

“I was let go from a company in October,” he said. “They eliminated my position and that company was actively hiring Haitians for temporary services.”

“Haitians are taking the jobs and the houses here,” Seelig continued.

Despite his situation, he says he has absolutely no ill will toward those trying to make a better life and wants to see them thrive — pointing to how he has dedicated his life to helping the homeless in Springfield and serving as a pastor. The argument he made is that a town of fewer than 60,000 simply can’t take in that many migrants in a short amount of time.

He says this outlook has caused racist actors who are not local to the town to call him a “race traitor.” Those individuals, known as Blood Tribe, have been used by others to claim that criticism of the migrant situation to be racist in nature.

After losing his job, Seelig now operates his own business, Mr. Barron’s Super Sandwich, which cooks gourmet soups and sandwiches, and caters big events. The pastor says the mobile food business is now his “sole source of income.”

Local Leaders Call For Aid

Before Springfield became nationally known, City Manager Bryan Heck had appealed to the federal government for help on the fledgling housing crisis. The city manager sent a letter to Sens. Sherrod Brown of Ohio and Tim Scott of South Carolina, asking the lawmakers for assistance.

The median rental price in Springfield spiked by nearly 44% in September compared to 2023, according to the latest Zillow data. The town’s median rental price was $900 in September 2024, but has since skyrocketed to $1,295, marking a sharp increase as Haitian migrants have chosen to take residence there.

While local government leaders haven’t appeared to present a specific plan of action, Republican officials at the state level have pledged to assist.

Although he made clear that he does not oppose the Temporary Protected Status (TPS) that’s given to Haitian nationals in the U.S., GOP Gov. DeWine announced that he would be supporting Springfield with $2.5 million to help alleviate financial pressures the town is facing. Additionally, Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost announced that his office is investigating how to stop the Biden-Harris administration from continuing to settle the migrants into the state.

There have been local elected officials placing blame on the federal government.

During a Clark County Commissioners meeting in July, Commissioner Sasha L. Rittenhouse said that while the local government hears complaints of the Haitian migrant situation, these complaints need to also be directed at Washington, D.C. While everyone sees what’s going on, the “people allowing this to happen are in” the nation’s capital, Rittenhouse said according to county meeting minutes.

In the meantime, Springfield residents like Sanders say the only place where real change can happen is at the ballot box.

“Every town is a border town,” Sanders told the DCNF. “If that’s what you want, then that’s how you should vote in November.”

“The only way we can fix what’s obviously broken is to get the people out of office who’ve been there in the last three-and-a-half years who’ve turned this country upside down,” Sanders warned.

*****

This article was published by The Daily Caller News Foundation and is reproduced with permission.

Estimated Reading Time: 6 minutes

With massive leftist voter registration efforts in play, election integrity advocates warn of many more noncitizens on voter rolls.

The leftist election integrity deniers at the Brennan Center for Justice will tell you that “noncitizens are not voting in federal or state elections.” They are wrong. So are the like-minded leftists at Time Magazine, who in 2017 arrogantly and falsely claimed, “Donald Trump is Wrong — Noncitzens Don’t Vote.”

Some do. They’re not allowed to vote in federal elections. It’s a felony. But they have  — in red states, blue states, and purple states. With the flood of illegal immigrants that has poured into the United States on the Biden-Harris administration’s watch, there are more foreign nationals showing up on the nation’s voter rolls. That means there will be more opportunities for noncitizens to slip through the Maginot Line of U.S. election security.

It’s happening enough that the left’s messaging has been, let’s just say, nuanced of late.

“We have seen the change of rhetoric from the left. From, ‘There are no cases’ to, ‘It’s so rare,’” Wisconsin state Sen. Dan Knodl, who has raised red flags about potentially thousands of noncitizens on the Badger State’s voter rolls, recently told me. “The prosecutions have proven that it’s certainly not nonexistent.”

As Knodl and others note, however, the real rarity is law enforcement investigation and prosecution of voter fraud allegations, particularly incidents of foreign nationals casting ballots. So a true gauge of the problem is anything but definitive, despite what the usual suspects at the Associated Press and other members of the accomplice media feverishly insist.

It’s No Myth

Last week, Angelica Maria Francisco, 42, of Russellville, Ala. was charged in U.S. District Court on false claims of citizenship in connection with voting, among a host of other fraud charges, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Alabama. She has filed a plea agreement indicating that she will plead guilty to all of the charges, U.S. Attorney Prim F. Escalona noted in a press release.

Francisco, according to the charges, assumed the identity of a U.S. citizen in 2011, using the false identity to obtain a U.S. passport.

“She subsequently used the United States passport to travel to and from her native country of Guatemala in 2012, 2015, and 2018,” the press release states. “Using the same false identity, Francisco also registered to vote in Alabama in 2016 and voted in the 2016 and 2020 primary and general elections.”

In noting the charges, the Alabama Political Reporter dutifully declared that “research shows noncitizen voting is rare and overstated.”

“Research” likes to ignore the 19 foreign nationals charged in 2020 in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of North Carolina. They were indicted on charges of voting in the 2016 federal elections, the result of a “years-long federal criminal investigation being conducted by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) Raleigh office,” ICE announced in a September 2020 press release.

In a related North Carolina case in 2018, 19 other foreign nationals were charged with voting in the 2016 election. A 20th defendant was charged with “aiding and abetting a fellow defendant in falsely claiming United States citizenship in order to register to vote,” according to a 2018 press release for the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of North Carolina.

Per usual, corporate media outlets attempted to write off the charges and convictions as a misunderstanding. The Donald Trump-hating Washington Post went so far as to blame the president and other Republicans, charging that they were using the case and others “to portray illegal voting as a widespread phenomenon that threatens the integrity of American elections.”

“A Washington Post examination of the effort in North Carolina found a complicated portrait of who is voting illegally and why — and exposed systemic problems that allowed noncitizens to register and cast ballots, in some cases without knowing they were breaking the law,” the Post reported.

Said systemic problems have only gotten worse amid leftist groups working alongside federal agencies to register predominantly left-leaning voters.

As Knodl noted, noncitizens voting in Wisconsin elections isn’t unheard of. Most recently, Ozaukee County prosecutors charged a Ukrainian woman late last year with election fraud after she voted in a local school board election. The woman admitted to the crime but claimed she didn’t understand the forms, according to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

In April, Miami-Dade State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle charged noncitizen Lazaro Valle-Villar with four voting-related felonies. Records show Villar illegally voted in the November 2, 2021 election despite, the prosecutor’s office announced.

“Lazaro Valle-Villar could have become a citizen and voted legally if he had just made the effort. However, he did not,” the prosecutor stated in a press release.

Busy and Disinterested

Corporate media have filled their publications and airwaves breathlessly defending the narrative that foreign nationals voting in federal and state elections is somewhere between “extremely rare” and “nonexistent.” They’ve stepped up the coverage as congressional Republicans have pushed for passage of the Safeguarding American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act, a bill that would require documented proof of citizenship to vote in federal elections. But the media outlets rarely note that law enforcement officials have shown relatively little interest in investigating and prosecuting allegations of noncitizens voting.

As my Federalist colleague Breccan F. Thies reported this week, the federal government prosecuted just 35 criminal cases of aliens voting in U.S. elections between 2001 and 2021. With the Department of Justice having flagged at least hundreds of foreign nationals casting ballots and reportedly thousands upon thousands more on the voter rolls, the dearth of prosecutions isn’t for lack of material.

“I spent four years at the Justice Department as a career lawyer, and I can tell you that the career ranks of the Justice Department are filled with left-wing ideologues, and they just had no interest — they have no interest in going after aliens to prosecute them,” Hans von Spakovsky, manager of the Election Law Reform Initiative at The Heritage Foundation, told The Federalist in an interview.

Sens. Mike Rounds, R-S.D. and Bill Hagerty, R-Tenn.,  joined Rep. Andy Biggs, R-Ariz., in a letter this summer to U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland demanding answers for the lack of prosecutions of noncitizens casting ballots.

“Plainly, there are opportunities for and instances of non-citizen voter registration, and so the critical question is whether the laws against doing so are being enforced by your Department,” the lawmakers wrote. “There appear to have been few prosecutions by your Department under these laws, and there is no indication that you have been pursuing cases in places like Georgia and Ohio where aliens have been caught registering or voting.”

Levi Fuller, assistant attorney general in the Texas AG’s office and former prosecutor with the office’s Election Integrity Division, candidly opined earlier this year that election fraud cases in general are anything but a priority in a lot of prosecutor’s offices. Fuller wrote in a column for the Texas Public Policy Foundation that the problem has been compounded by an “infamous Texas Court of Criminal Appeal’s decision in State v. Stephens issued in December 2021″ which concluded that “prosecution was a function solely contained within the Judicial Branch (i.e., not the Attorney General’s Office).”

“… [D]istrict Attorney’s offices are busy, and in my experience, a lot of them did not have the manpower, expertise, or the interest, to pursue allegations of election fraud, or go through the public scrutiny if they tried,” the law enforcement official wrote.

‘Deeply Troubled’

A recent lawsuit filed in Waukesha County Court alleges the Wisconsin Department of Transportation is failing to work with the Wisconsin Elections Commission to verify the citizenship of applicants registering to vote. That includes matching “DOT’s citizenship information against [voter] registrant information in the WisVote list,” the state’s voter registration database. The lawsuit alleges thousands of foreign nationals may be on the swing state’s voter rolls. Knodl has demanded the DOT turn over the information to lawmakers and to elections officials.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton last month announced he was sending Lone Star State elections officials a “list of 95,000 registered voters” that should be vetted to confirm U.S. citizenship.

Paxton’s Election Integrity Unit confirmed various left-wing nonprofits are operating voter booths outside state driver’s license offices, raising suspicions about the potential of foreign nationals being registered to vote.

“Texans are deeply troubled by the possibility that organizations purporting to assist with voter registration are illegally registering noncitizens to vote in our elections,” Paxton said in a press release. “If eligible citizens can legally register to vote when conducting their business at a DPS office, why would they need a second opportunity to register with a booth outside? My office is investigating every credible report we receive regarding potential criminal activity that could compromise the integrity of our elections.”

Last month, my Federalist colleague Shawn Fleetwood reported Gov. Glen Youngkin, R-Va., announced that the commonwealth’s Department of Elections “removed more than 6,300 noncitizens from its voter rolls since his administration took office.”

Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose in recent months has asked local elections officials to remove hundreds of noncitizens from the Buckeye State’s voter rolls. Election integrity watchdog groups warn that there are thousands more in the database.

Knodl, the Wisconsin state senator, said he’s “100 percent confident that some noncitizens will obtain a ballot” this presidential election season.

“The history is there,” he said. “We’ve had prosecutions proving that it has happened, except in the counties that have ignored” the problem.

*****

This article was published by The Federalist and is reproduced with permission.

Estimated Reading Time: 5 minutes

We shared our own quick take on the Trump-Harris debate. In summary, we suggested that Trump did not give his best showing in that he did not unmask Harris sufficiently as the radical she is, seemed angry and defensive, that she was polished (coached by Hollywood or not), and on the offensive, which put Trump off stride.  We did not think Trump’s performance moved the needle to those who were uncommitted or independent at this juncture. She exceeded expectations because they were so low, while he did not do as well as expected.

Subsequent to the debate, “the debate over the debate” is turning out to be more critical and informative than the debate itself. We did not expect this, so it appears our earlier analysis was wrong insofar as to what the strategic impact of the debate would be.

This is one of those occasions when we are more than happy to be incorrect. While our initial impressions of the debate are still defensible, subsequent developments have changed the overall impact of the debate on the campaign.

A review of ABC News’s behavior makes the whole affair look increasingly like a trap. The head of ABC News turns out to be a close personal friend of Kamala, so close that she reportedly introduced Kamala to her husband.

The female “moderator,” Lindsey Davis, turns out to be Kamala’s sorority sister. It appears the moderators were determined not to let Trump get the upper hand, so they agreed to selectively “fact-check ” Trump while allowing Kamala to escape with lie after lie. Davis now seems to admit that was their predetermined goal.

Moreover, the so-called fact-checking, such as the crime rate committed by illegal immigrants, the negative impact of Haitian immigrants on a small Ohio town, and Harris’s position on taxpayer-funded sex changes for both prison inmates and illegal immigrants, turned out to be wrong.  The moderators tried to make Trump look bad but failed to check their own facts.  Additionally, they did not once fact-check Kamala Harris for any of her misstatements and lies.

Mark Penn, a former pollster for the Clinton machine, also says he has affidavits from insiders at ABC News that say questions were leaked to Kamala Harris and that an agreement was hatched to not fact check her during the debate.  

Whether internal communications will ever be released to prove these allegations remains to be seen.  But Penn is a credible player in politics.

The bottom line is, whether deliberate or not, Trump was mistreated.

The American people have a good sense of rough justice, and they see that this was not fair and that ABC perverted a debate meant to inform the public into a public hanging without a trial.

The mysteries of public opinion are sometimes hard to understand. We have marveled for years that as a measure of quick impressions, sometimes the stock market can take the same story (let’s say the economy is slowing) as good news one day and bad news the next.

After the debate performance, polling and focus groups of independents seemed to break for Trump, even though his performance appeared subpar.  He perhaps lost the skirmish (the debate) but has won the war.

After being spied on, prosecuted on flimsy charges, accused of colluding with Russia, impeached twice, deliberately assigned the worst Secret Service agents, and then getting shot in the face, Trump is emerging after a rigged debate format with an aura that seems to suggest an almost superhuman quality about him.  A rare man of destiny and integrity, with incredible strength and resilience in the face of tremendous odds.  A wealthy man who does not need this grief.  He has the fame, the beautiful women, and the wealth.  He seems to be doing this for the good of America, while his opponents look like unprincipled power seekers who will stoop to any level of lying, break any law or convention, and violate any moral law to get him.

The public senses this is the kind of man who needs to be in the White House to talk to Putin and deal with Iran and China.  Only this kind of man can break up the corrupt cabal that has hijacked our government.

The American sense of fairness and admiration for leadership seems to be breaking through. In addition, the American sense of humor has a strange way of conveying beliefs, but it is obviously on display if you are at all active on social media. Liberals just are not getting it.

The story about Haitians eating pets, whether confirmed or not,  is a metaphor for the social upheaval caused by deliberately importing millions of people who have fundamentally different beliefs than most Americans. This anxiety manifests itself sometimes in gallows humor. Hundreds of amazingly clever self-produced videos of dogs reacting fearfully to Trump’s words, “They are eating the pets,” or memes that show kittens dressed in full combat regalia are flooding the internet.  One that stuck home was a meme of a kitten in a clear plastic bag labeled “Door Dash for Haitians.”

Kittens wearing MAGA hats that say,  “Make American Safe For Pets Again,” or videos of carloads of dogs leaving town are circulating everywhere.

Soon, cat ladies will have the status of ranchers.  Taylor Swift, are you listening?

ABC News says there are no problems in Springfield, Ohio, or other places with the flood of immigrants, but the people know otherwise, and they talk to each other in unconventional ways.

This social/psychological response via humor indicates a level and intensity of communication among the populace that is not familiar political dialogue. But it says the people are with Trump, and they share his concern of unrestricted, unregulated, unvetted, government-subsidized mass migration and the nonsensical programs of putting thousands from an alien culture into a small Ohio town.

So, despite ABC’s erroneous “fact-checking” and support of illegal immigration, the people are not buying what the Democrats and their media allies are selling; instead, they believe Trump.

It would be difficult to get a better debate result than that.

Late Note: Christopher Rufo, a respected scholar with the Manhattan Institute, just wrote on his substack confirming the rumors about migrants eating cats. This story is somewhat different from others in that it involves African migrants cooking kitties on the grill.  Still, ABC and liberals tended to see these stories as somehow racist and xenophobic reactions to migrants, when in truth, they are a reaction to reality on the ground.  The taking of geese and ducks by migrants from public parks had already been confirmed by police body cams and 911 calls. Harvesting the neighbor’s pets wasn’t firmly established. Rufo has now done so.  They are eating pets, as opposed to just poaching ducks from the local park,  and the memes are essentially correct, and so is Mr. Trump. Thus, our central point is that the debate over the debate has produced more truth than the debate itself and is breaking to Trump’s advantage.  It is also a striking example of how citizen journalism is often more accurate than “professional corporate” journalism, which fails to pursue stories that undermine the political narrative they want to pedal.

*****

Image Credit: Meme from X, creator unknown