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Ric Grenell

Disgraced Former Kennedy Center Chief Makes An Embarrassing Confession

Richard Grenell, who left President Donald Trump's Kennedy Center under a cloud of controversy, has suffered another public embarrassment after admitting that he lost another Trump administration job — and not even recently.

"A high-profile 'special envoy' for Donald Trump has admitted to the Daily Beast that his role secretly ended months ago," reported The Daily Beast's Julia Ornedo on Monday. "Ric Grenell, 60, is no longer the U.S. Special Presidential Envoy for Special Missions, he told the Daily Beast on Monday. A State Department official also confirmed that he is no longer employed by the agency."

Ornedo added, "Grenell said that his time had ended in February of this year and claimed his appointment as special envoy was always meant to expire when it did. The Daily Beast could find no previous public statement giving such an expiry date."

The journalist continued, "Grenell, a prolific social media poster, had never acknowledged the end of his role until now—when he finds himself in the middle of a growing scandal over allegations that cash vanished from a donation to the Kennedy Center, which he also ran under Trump."

Grenell actually left his position as president and executive director of the Kennedy Center after his foreign policy stint ended. He departed the Kennedy Center amid a Trump-ordered investigation into whether he had misused millions of dollars donated to the performing arts institution during his tenure. He also struggled as Kennedy Center head to improve ticket sales, which flagged once Trump took over the center and tried to name it after himself.

Grenell reported exploded after The Athletic reported on those lagging sales, disputing claims that they had seen a 50 percent drop and that the international soccer federation FIFA (Federation Internationale de Football Association) was "paying the Kennedy Center more than $7 million to do their world-wide event FIFA draw" in December 2025 through various "sponsorship opportunities" and a $2.4 million donation.

"The bloggers quoted a failed dance programmer who wasn’t able to pay for the ideas she came up with at the KC - and who traveled the world watching other dance programs - expecting her salary and travel expenses to still be paid by someone," Grenell claimed. "We fired her for being unable to lead with fiscal responsibility. What these far left radical reporters never grasp is how responsible leaders must pay the bills."

The longtime politician and Republican insider, who also served as Trump's ambassador to Germany during his first term, has suffered other recent embarrassments in his career with Trump. Even though Grenell is reported to have advised against the decision, Trump chose Katherine "Katie" Zacharia to be his press secretary. Zacharia was quickly forced to resign after her sole press conference performance was widely panned as amateurish and it came out she misled the public about going to law school.

Reprinted with permission from AlterNet

Top Analyst: Trump's 'Explosion Of Greed' Is 'Moving The Needle' With Disgusted Voters

Top Analyst: Trump's 'Explosion Of Greed' Is 'Moving The Needle' With Disgusted Voters

President Donald Trump's myriad corruption scandals are now having tangible political consequences — that is, according to one politics expert, they are costing him loads of votes.

"Corruption is moving the needle whenever voters are focused on the explosion of greed and self-enrichment by Trump and his family—easily the worst in presidential history," Larry Sabato, a political scientist and political analyst, posted on X on Sunday.

Speaking with AlterNet about the 2026 midterm elections, polling expert Kyle Kondik from Larry Sabato's Crystal Ball explained why Trump and his Republican Party are at a structural disadvantage."It's primarily the president's weak approval rating combined with the usual difficulty that the presidential party has in a midterm," Kondik explained. "I also think there may be even more for voters to react to in 2026 compared to even 2018, because Trump has acted as more of an imperial president and there is more dissatisfaction both with the economy as well as the president's foreign policy choices."

Even longtime trump supporters like right-wing podcaster Joe Rogan have turned against Trump, at least when it comes to issues like his corruption. Rogan in particular criticized Trump for earning more than $2 billion since beginning his second term, much of it in cryptocurrency.

"I think part of what's going on here, Nicole, is, number one, the scale andobvious nature of this corruption is much simpler of a story to tell than some of the more bank-shot corruption of the first term," Ben Rhodes, a former Obama administration national security staffer, told MS NOW's Nicolle Wallace on Sunday. "You know, Saudis paying a lot of money to stay in Trump hotel rooms or something like that. The scale [this time] is billions of dollars, and it's pretty clear when you juice, like, a meme coin, and then it collapses in value, and you walk away with a lot of money and all the people that you convinced to invest in it walk away losing a lot of money. Well, that's an easy story to tell. So that's the first thing: the scale of it and how clear it is."

Speaking to AlterNet in September, Dr. Justin Wolfers — a non-resident senior fellow at Brookings and the Peterson Institute and a University of Michigan professor of economics and public policy — explained how Trump's corruption hurts ordinary Americans economically.

"The problem with the Trump family corruption — and not all of it's the legal definition of corruption, by the way; some of it meets the standard English-language definition, if not a legal definition — is what you do is you change the nexus of competition," Wolfers told AlterNet. "If the best way for me to get ahead is to go to the White House bearing gifts, and then they pass a rule and they ban you from competing against me, then that means the basic dynamics of competition and markets delivering good outcomes for regular folks just gets broken."

He added, "That in turn means that if I'm the CEO of a company, I spend less time trying to create products at lower prices, trying to outcompete, or less time creating new or better products. And I spend more time and energy at Mar-a-Lago trying to win over the favor of the president. That means bad products will win. That means expensive products will win. And the way I tell the story, compare Tim Cook's job at Apple to Steve Jobs' job at Apple."

Reprinted with permission from AlterNet

David Jolly

Shock Poll Shows Democrat Jumping Ahead In Florida Governor's Race

Even though Florida has been a solidly Republican state for years. there have been early indicators that the gubernatorial election between Democrat David Jolly and Republican Byron Donalds could be closer than pundits initially expected.

New surveys reinforce that initial inkling.

"A recent poll shows Democratic front-runner David Jolly overperforming on a hypothetical General Election ballot against Republican front-runner Byron Donalds," reported Janelle Irwin Taylor of The Miami Times on Thursday. "The Change Research poll, taken June 11-14 among 1,273 voters (1,015 of whom said they are likely to vote in this year’s elections), found Jolly with a 5-percentage-point advantage after offering biographical information about both candidates."

The journalist added, "The poll doesn’t necessarily reflect a final vote, assuming the General Election ballot for Governor includes Donalds and Jolly. Its numbers rely on first providing respondents with information about each candidate that, even though the information is pulled from public talking points, could skew perception.""

Donalds has been a controversial candidate from the beginning, and not merely because of his far right positions. In August a Florida voter admitted to CNN's Steve Cotorno that he could not bring himself to back Donalds because of his refusal to participate in the gubernatorial debates.

"I think Byron Donalds is going to win," the man said. "I think he's going to make a good governor. But I had to go with my gut." Yet he added that Donalds ducking the debate "just, it just bugged me."

He has also been accused of unethical behavior in terms of engaging in stock trading, according to the Campaign Legal Center.

"Today, Campaign Legal Center (CLC), a nonpartisan group, filed a complaint with the Office of Congressional Ethics (OCE), urging it to investigate Representative Byron Donalds of Florida for failing to disclose over 100 stock trades he made that totaled up to $1.6 million, which represents a violation of the Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge (STOCK) Act," the Campaign Legal Center reported in 2024. "This egregious violation emphasizes the urgent need for Congress to pass the bipartisan Ending Trading and Holdings in Congressional Stocks (ETHICS) Act to further limit violations of this nature."

They added, "Lawmakers must file Periodic Transaction Reports (PTRs) within 45 days of trading any stock that exceeds $1,000 or risk facing penalties. While Rep. Donalds and his spouse made 108 stock trades between 2022 and 2023 valued up to $1.6 million, he failed to file PTRs for any of these transactions. CLC has previously filed complaints against other Members of Congress for committing similar infractions."

Reprinted with permission from AlterNet

Joe Gruters

Gay Dating App Grindr Goes Down In Dallas During GOP 'Trump-a-Palooza'

The fact that a queer dating app collapsed in Dallas at the onset of the Republican Midterm Convention there was not lost on critics on X.

“Of course ... of course,” posted podcaster Wajahat Ali.

Downdetecter, which logs and maps user problems on websites recorded the collapse of the dating and hook-up service Grindr Wednesday evening, just as the Republican National Committee was hosting its first-ever Midterm Convention in Dallas, Texas, at the American Airlines Center.It also mapped the biggest red splotch indicating an outage in and around Dallas.

“Man, I should become a Republican,” said another heckler on X, in response to a post indicating the outage.“Well, they say it’s a big tent,” posted another X user in response.

“Is this for real?” asked another critic. “It’s all so predictable, if so.”

Other X users suggested Grindr had inflated the outage and accused the site of “being cheeky,” but another user called it the classic indicator for “an average MAGA gathering.”

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported in 2024 that the Grindr app in Milwaukee had crashed during the Republican National Convention in that city, despite Republicans kicking off the 2024 Republican National Convention with attacks on LGBTQ Americans, at times invoking religion, to raucous applause and approval from the GOP delegates.

“If that's the case, it aligns with Grindr activity during previous national conventions,” reported the Milwaukee daily.

After the 2016 Republican National Convention in Cleveland, a Vice article that cited sources from Grindr said the area around the 2016 convention's main hub saw user traffic increase by 66 percent. Other Grindr hotspots like Times Square; Capitol Hill; Disneyland; and South Beach, Florida, saw no comparable increase in user traffic at the time, the article said.The recurrent phenomenon underscores a long-standing political paradox.

While the official GOP platform frequently mirrors conservative stances on LGBTQ+ issues, behind-the-scenes digital traffic repeatedly tells a vastly different story. Observers note that these data spikes expose a stark disconnect between public partisan rhetoric and private individual behavior.

For decades, critics and tech analysts alike have tracked how large conservative gatherings correlate with a surge in localized activity on queer dating platforms. Data from past events suggests these outages are rarely random technical glitches, but rather the result of an unprecedented, hyper-localized strain on server bandwidth. When thousands of out-of-town delegates, staffers, and media personnel flood a single convention hub, the sudden data influx routinely overwhelms local cellular towers and app infrastructure.

As social media continues to roast the latest Dallas outage, the pattern serves as a viral reminder that what happens on the convention floor rarely reflects the full reality of what happens behind closed doors.

Reprinted with permission from AlterNet

Pete Hegseth

Classified Leak Reveals 'Growing Turmoil' In Military Over Hegseth And Iran

President Donald Trump's war in Iran has become increasingly unpopular, not only among independents and Democrats but even his own Republican base. Now a new report reveals that the war is worrying America's top military officials about whether they can do their jobs in their assigned regions of the world.

"A remarkable story in Monday’s Washington Post dramatizes how deeply the Iran war has degraded the U.S. military’s ability to fend off attacks by adversaries elsewhere in the world," reported Slate's Fred Kaplan on Monday. "The story is based on the leak of a little-known classified document, which itself signifies that we’ve reached a new stage in the growing turmoil among the senior officer corps over the chaotic reign of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth."

Kaplan added, "The leaked document reveals that the three four-star commanders in charge of U.S. military operations in Europe, the Pacific,and South America, as well as the Navy’s top admiral, all informed Hegseth that because so many of their planes, ships and other weapons systems have been diverted to the war in Iran, they could no longer perform their tasks if a war broke out in their part of the world."

The journalist also contextualized the current concerns in the broader paradigm of American military history, noting that it is highly unusual for so many top military officials to express the same concern.

"The story is remarkable partially because of the scope," Kaplan wrote. "A former senior Navy officer and a retired Navy operations officer told me that past commanders have occasionally filed statements warning of risk — similar to the non-concur notes. But it is unusual for so many commanders to file such notes all at once in the middle of a combat operation. And it is still more unusual, perhaps unprecedented, for such reports to be filed by these commanders, who have been chosen — or allowed to remain in their top slots — for their loyalty to Donald Trump and Hegseth."

He added, "As several news agencies have reported, Hegseth has thrown much of the defense establishment — officers, enlisted personnel, and civilians — into disarray through his loyalty tests and other quirky demands. He has blocked the promotion of at least 45 officers, reversing the military services’ peer-review boards, whose decisions are very rarely challenged."

In addition to the supply issues, Trump has also struggled with his military because he often fires senior officers to replace them with personal loyalists.

“A series of firings and feuds initiated by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has left the Army essentially rudderless as it struggles to deal with the threat posed by cheap, deadly drones and missiles that have pounded U.S. bases in the Middle East,” reported The New York Times' Greg Jaffe, Eric Schmitt, Helene Cooper and Adam Entous earlier in August. “The Army has not had a chief of staff, the service’s top officer, since Mr. Hegseth fired Gen. Randy George without explanation in April, and there are no signs that he is close to filling the position, said current and former officials speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive personnel matters.”

"Since January 2025," New York University law professor Michael N. Schmitt recently wrote, "the Defense Department has removed, replaced, or forced the early retirement of a remarkable concentration of operationally experienced senior officers. Among them are the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, the chief of naval operations, the chief of staff of the Army, and the commander of U.S. Cyber Command, who concurrently serves as director of the National Security Agency. Most recently, Gen. Christopher Donahue, one of the most decorated and combat-experienced officers of his generation, has been forced out as commander of U.S. Army Europe and Africa and, in his NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) role, as commander of Allied Land Command. Public explanations have been sparse and, to the extent they have been offered, largely general."

Schmitt added, "The question regarding these departures is not whether the president and secretary of defense have broad lawful authority to reshape the senior officer corps. They unequivocally do. Nor is it a question of whether personnel decisions of this kind are ever warranted. Sometimes, they certainly are. Instead, at its core, a central question is their impact on the combat effectiveness, indeed the lethality, of our armed forces."

Reprinted with permission from AlterNet

Wall Street Blaming Bessent And Warsh For Trump's Economic Chaos

Wall Street Blaming Bessent And Warsh For Trump's Economic Chaos

President Donald Trump's ongoing war on the Federal Reserve has been so persistent, it has started negatively impacting the economy. Now the economic editor of a conservative website is warning that Trump's economic policies are so erratic, two officials who otherwise were regarded as reliable are being met with unease on Wall Street.

"Within days of Mr. Bessent’s confirmation, at least, it was obvious this was a misjudgment," The Bulwark's economics editor Catherine Rampell wrote for The New York Times on Thursday. "One of his earliest actions as secretary was giving DOGE access to the sensitive Treasury payments system, which disburses some $6 trillion in payments annually. This was supposedly to investigate “fraud,” but it also was an attempt to help the Trump administration unilaterally freeze payments required by Congress. (A federal judge restricted DOGE’s access before this happened.)"

She added, "Soon after, Mr. Bessent also allowed the I.R.S. to share confidential tax data with immigration enforcement — undermining decades of work to convince immigrants that if they paid their taxes honestly, the payments wouldn’t be weaponized against them. (Federal judges have blocked that, too.)"

Rampell continued, "Now, after criticizing his predecessor for allegedly trying to juice the economy ahead of an election, Mr. Bessent appears to have attempted exactly that. Last week, he announced that the U.S. Treasury would ramp up repurchases of its long-term government bonds, a move intended to reduce their interest rates (which could in turn reduce the cost of mortgages and other financial products). Midterms are looming, and looser money tends to make for happier voters. Mr. Bessent’s plan backfired. Instead, after a brief dip, bond rates rose."

In short, the market realized that Bessent's plan would do nothing to address rising inflation, the dangerous national debt and the ongoing economic problems posed by AI.

"If anything, Mr. Bessent’s buyback play (announced along with comments insisting we can grow out way out of debt) only deepened those suspicions. It made Treasury leadership look feckless," Rampell wrote. She had similar reporting on how the markets are responding to Trump's Federal Reserve pick, Kevin Warsh.

"Mr. Warsh, like Mr. Bessent, has had a wobbly start to his tenure," Rampell wrote. "His most recent news conference was something of a disaster; Mr. Warsh either would not or could not articulate what the Fed’s plan was for tackling inflation, or why that plan did not appear to include interest rate increases. (Mr. Trump is demanding rates be lowered.) At one point Mr. Warsh seemed to suggest the Fed might switch its main yardstick for measuring inflation, raising concerns about backdoor attempts to soften the central bank’s commitment to reducing inflation."

She continued, "To make matters worse, Mr. Trump himself weighed in. He insisted that Mr. Warsh really truly wanted to reduce interest rates, but couldn’t because 'he’s got a board, and it’s a political board.' Days later Mr. Trump renewed his efforts to fire one of the members of that Fed board, which the Supreme Court had prevented him from doing. Markets were not happy about any of this."Rampell is not alone in her assessment of Warsh. Speaking with AlterNet earlier this week, an economic adviser to Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama broke down the problems with Warsh.

"My own guess is that he'll wait until right before or right after the election to raise rates, because he doesn't set policy alone — interest rate policy is made by a committee at the Federal Reserve comprising the seven members of the Board plus five of the regional bank presidents, and there's increasing pressure among them to raise rates," Dr. Robert J. Shapiro explained. "They're letting him put it off a little while longer, but there's no good news on inflation. Just this week, Trump announced 50 percent tariffs on our largest trading partner, Canada, which will further increase inflation. The markets don't have much confidence in Warsh anymore, so they're pricing in a higher-than-normal likelihood that he'll cut rates — even though I don't think he will — and in anticipation of the inflation that would result, they're raising long-term rates."

Reprinted with permission from AlterNet

Hakeem Jeffries

Report: Kushner Met With Jeffries As White House Braces For Democratic Congress

As President Donald Trump continues to claim he will only lose the 2026 midterms if they are rigged against him, Republicans are by contrast starting to distance themselves from him politically, as if anticipating defeat. Now a new report in The New York Times offers another clue into the GOP reading the writing on the wall — namely, a private meeting between Trump’s son-in-law and the Democrat poised to be House Speaker if Democrats retake that legislative chamber.

“Representative Hakeem Jeffries, Democrat of New York and the minority leader, met privately in recent weeks with Jared Kushner, President Trump’s son-in-law and top outside adviser, and discussed potential areas of common ground, according to five people with knowledge of the meeting,” reported The New York Times' Maggie Haberman and Annie Karni on Sunday. “The rare engagement was held in a private space in New York City, offered up by a mutual friend of the two men, according to two people with knowledge of the meeting and a third who was briefed on it. They and others were granted anonymity to discuss a meeting about which they were not authorized to speak publicly.”

Haberman and Karni added, “Through aides, neither man would comment on the session, which was described by one person with knowledge of it as a broad conversation on a range of topics. Still, its timing underscored that those around Mr. Trump were well aware of the likelihood of a Democratic-led House, and trying to foster as much of a working relationship as possible before any change. Mr. Jeffries is in line to be the speaker, were Democrats to win the majority.”

Jeffries and Kushner reportedly discussed a wide range of issues including the cost of living, housing and immigration. Both apparently believe that Trump’s chief of staff, Susie Wiles, is the MAGA insider most amenable to compromising with the other party.

“Throughout this Congress, Republicans have adopted a my-way-or-the-highway approach to governing that has failed the American people,” Jeffries told the Times in a statement that did not explicitly confirm the Kushner meeting.

He added, “In every conversation that we have with the Trump administration, we will continue to make it explicitly clear that the affordability crisis is not a hoax, and nothing short of transformational policy change is acceptable. We are fighting for an affordable America. The question is whether Republicans will join us.”

The Times added that nothing from the meeting is yet official.

“Should Democrats win the House, Mr. Jeffries would have to balance the need to keep the government funded with Democratic calls to defy Mr. Trump at every turn, and possible pleas to impeach him for a third time,” the Times wrote.

The reporters added, “Mr. Jeffries and Mr. Trump have danced around questions about what their relationship could look like next year should Democrats take control.”

Reprinted with permission from AlterNet

trump and max miller

Republicans Look Away As Trump Expresses Sympathy For Alleged Abuser Miller

While Rep. Max Miller (R-OH) grapples with the fallout of accusations that he brutally beat two former romantic partners and his own two-year-old child, his fellow Republican lawmakers are publicly waffling on their position about Miller’s political future -- even as some privately urge him to resign.

“Trump and some White House aides are said to privately want Miller out of the race, according to a person familiar with the situation,” wrote Semafor's Shelby Talcott and Burgess Everett on Monday. “Miller ‘clearly only cares about himself,’ a second person close to the White House said. ‘He’s down by 6 in the latest poll. If he cared about the president and the party, he’d drop out.’”

They added, “Most GOP senators, who are still in town for the summer, declined comment. Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) said, ‘I don’t have any observations.’” They similarly quoted Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-AL), who said, “I haven’t seen it. I don’t deal with them people over there [in the House]; there are too many of them.” Similarly Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA) said that “it’s not good … It’s none of my business, but it doesn’t help. It just gives people one more reason to be disgusted with Congress.”

Semafor reported that, because of Miller’s presence on the Republican ticket, the GOP is now more vulnerable in Ohio.

The scandal could drag down Republicans in his state, including the reelection campaign of Sen. Jon Husted, who declined to comment about Miller on Monday,” Semafor reported. “Husted and GOP gubernatorial candidate Vivek Ramaswamy are both in difficult races in red-leaning Ohio, where they’re fighting to hold off former Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown and Democratic gubernatorial nominee Dr. Amy Acton, respectively.”

They later added, “At this point, there’s just one thing that could change Miller’s mind about reelection: a direct demand from Trump. Barring that, which seems unlikely as of now, and this is a real debacle for Republicans — who can’t afford one in such a tight election season.”

Miller is accused of abusing his ex-wife Emily Moreno, the daughter of Sen. Bernie Moreno (R-OH), by beating her in front of their 2-year-old daughter in February, bruising her arm, elbow and torso in the process; throwing a pot of boiling water on Moreno, which left visible injuries on her chest; holding a gun to Moreno’s head; and breaking his daughter’s collar bone. Former Trump press secretary Stephanie Grisham also accused Miller of being abusive during their relationship.Despite these accusations, Trump expressed sympathy for Miller.

“It's a very sad thing; I know Max,” Trump told reporters during an Oval Office press conference on Monday. “He's a good person. I mean, I always thought he was a very good person. And I'm going to let the families figure that out. You know, those families, I know they're working on it. It's a very sad thing, but it's accusations, and I'm going to let them figure that out.”

By contrast, Sen. Bernie Moreno (R-OH) released a statement on X on Sunday saying that his son-in-law should resign, saying that he “holds his breath” every time his grandchild is left alone with Miller. By Monday, Moreno said he was done answering questions.“I hope you never have to go through this situation, because you wouldn’t ask that kind of f----- question,” Moreno told one reporter as to why he took so long to issue a statement. He added that reporters would need to ask Miller why he has not resigned yet, adding that the situation is "pretty grotesque" and a "personal family situation."

In his original statement, Sen. Moreno said that “our priority has always been protecting our daughter and our granddaughter. Out of concern for the safety of my family, I hoped to keep this matter private but Max Miller’s increasingly erratic and dangerous behavior has made that impossible.”

He added, “As he has admitted privately, Max Miller needs serious psychological help. He is a danger to my daughter, and I hold my breath every minute he has custody of my granddaughter.”

Reprinted with permission from AlterNet

Stephanie Grisham and Max Miller

Report: Trumps Kept Silent About Max Miller's Alleged Abuse of White House Aide

President Donald Trump and his first lady, Melania, are accused of having long known that one of their staffers had beaten his then-girlfriend and their then-press secretary — and doing nothing about it.

That staffer, Rep. Max Miller (R-OH), is now facing renewed accusations of domestic violence.

“Miller's represented Ohio's heavily Republican Seventh District since 2023, after first holding several jobs in Donald Trump's first administration,” Nikki McCann Ramirez, a reporter from Rolling Stone who has long covered the Miller case, told MS NOW’s Chris Hayes on Tuesday. “Trump called him a great guy, supported his campaign for Congress. But multiple sources at the time told Politico that Miller's prior romantic relationship with former Trump press secretary Stephanie Grisham — remember her? — ended when he pushed her against a wall and slapped her in the face in his Washington apartment.”

Miller denied those allegations, but Ramirez drew attention to a long-overlooked column by Grisham in which she said that “she had told Donald and Melania Trump she was abused by a fellow White House staffer, and they didn't act on the information.” In that Washington Post op-ed, Grisham did not specify who the staffer was, yet Ramirez told Hayes that the staffer in question is believed to have been Miller.

“She wrote in this column, ‘Knowing what he knows, Trump has endorsed my ex's bid for Congress,’’” Ramirez told Hayes. “Now, as Miller runs for reelection, Republican lawmakers remain largely silent about these shocking allegations of violence.”

Earlier in the conversation, Hayes went into detail about new accusations against Miller.

“A child protection specialist reviewing the case said the bruising around the fracture resembled a handprint,” Hayes explained. Miller’s ex-wife Emily Moreno, the daughter of Sen. Bernie Moreno (R-OH), was the alleged victim.

“Moreno never filed a police report,” Hayes said. “Miller said the bruises might have come from a seatbelt. The investigation found insufficient evidence of a crime, but Moreno did tell detectives something. She said her daughter told her, quote, ‘Daddy's house is scary.’”

House Republicans have so far avoided speaking about the accusations against Miller. Ironically, Miller is considered to have been one of the prime movers and shakers behind opposing his colleague, Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL), when he was nominated to be Trump’s first attorneys general. Gaetz is accused of having inappropriate relationships with minors.

Reprinted with permission from AlterNet

GOP Candidate Vows To 'Shield' Musk From Probe Into Mass Deaths Caused By DOGE

GOP Candidate Vows To 'Shield' Musk From Probe Into Mass Deaths Caused By DOGE

A staunch MAGA Republican is begging Michigan voters to elect him senator by arguing that if they do not, one of President Donald Trump's billionaire allies might be investigated for allegedly illegal actions costing millions of lives.

In a fundraising appeal sent on Saturday and reported by the Detroit Metro Times on Wednesday, former Rep. Mike Rogers (R-MI) told voters that he would oppose any investigation of Trump's close ally and the world's richest man, X CEO Elon Musk. Rogers is the presumptive Republican nominee for that state's Senate race this year.

“When you stand with my Senate campaign today, you are directly shielding Elon Musk,” Rogers wrote. Begging for an “immediate, urgent contribution right now to protect Elon and save America," the Michigander described rumored Democratic plans to investigate the billionaire as a “socialist retaliation plot” that reminded him of “Soviet Russia and communist Cuba.” He argued that "they cannot control Elon, so they want to destroy him."

Democrats like Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) are calling for Musk to be investigated in large part because of his work with the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which implemented sweeping spending cuts that experts point out weakened America's national security apparatus and capacity to fight infectious diseases.

DOGE particularly targeted the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), which was founded by President John F. Kennedy in 1961 to provide foreign aid to impoverished nations in the form of assistance with global health, environmental protection, education and cultivating democratic institutions. The Trump administration has even tried to eliminate USAID entirely, although they cannot legally do so without congressional approval.Experts who spoke exclusively to AlterNet described Musk's USAID cuts as extremely costly from a humanitarian standpoint.

"Elon Musk, singularly, as head of DOGE at the beginning of this administration, through his cuts has led to the deaths of millions," Dr. Monica Gandhi, an infectious disease doctor and professor of medicine at the University of California–San Francisco, told AlterNet. "He was the executor of really dismantling USAID — essentially, the work to help the world's poorest children has been decimated by the world's richest man."

Gandhi added, "I have a project in South Africa, and I can stand absolutely firsthand witness since he also executed the cuts to South Africa — meaning on February 7th, the Trump administration put out an executive order that said we will give no assistance to South Africa because of their 'egregious actions,' like supporting the ICC [International Criminal Court] case against Israel, or they think South Africa is committing a white genocide – all of that means that there's no funding going toward South Africa, even his home country. And I have seen firsthand the effects on deaths, on advanced HIV, people dying of tuberculosis, not able to get HIV medications or preventative medications. Elon Musk is singularly responsible for the deaths of millions."

AlterNet also spoke with Sarah Nichols, a former implementing partner with USAID (pre-DOGE cuts) who worked on projects from Liberia in Africa to Guatemala in South America to the Pacific island nation of Indonesia (specifically the region Timor West). She witnessed firsthand the devastating human toll of Trump's and Musk's USAID cuts.

Like Gandhi, Nichols believes Musk should be investigated for his role in those cuts.

"He absolutely should, and that's just standard government protocol," Nichols told AlterNet. "I was actually in the audience of one of the recent hearings with a House committee and [Office of Management and Budget director] Russell Vought, and I think it was a Republican congressman who asked Russell Vought if there would be an after-action report on DOGE so that they could see what DOGE had accomplished and whether there was any cost savings. And Russell Vought said that they would not be doing any after-action report. And that is bizarre to me, as someone who used to work with the government, because every project always had an after-action report so that you could see whether there was improvement."

Reaching out to AlterNet after the article's publication, White House spokesperson Anna Kelly said that “all Trump administration reforms across the executive branch have eliminated red tape while making our government more efficient and responsive to the agenda the President was elected to implement.”

Rogers' cling to Musk appears counter to good campaign tactics considering Musk's growing role as a political pariah among the voting public. Last year, Musk landed a ‘blowout’ loss, in a Wisconsin Supreme Court race that gave Democrats a court majority with a 4-3 lead -- which has only expanded in followup state elections.

Since 2025, Musk appeared to have pulled away from directly intervening in politics after voters' negative reaction in Wisconsin.

Reprinted with permission from AlterNet

Flamingo Fiasco: Property Dispute Shadows Ivanka's Albanian Resort

Flamingo Fiasco: Property Dispute Shadows Ivanka's Albanian Resort

President Donald Trump and his children have long faced accusations of corruption, as the Republican leader openly and his progeny openly do business with foreign countries despite the appearance of conflicts of interest. Now one of those controversial business deals — a planned resort in Albania that would destroy an ecologically-protected flamingo sanctuary — just saw a plot twist that left a conservative commentator literally laughing out loud.

“Should we talk about the Albania resort?” The Bulwark’s Will Sommer asked his colleague Tim Miller. Sommer was referring to the attempts by Trump’s daughter Ivanka and son-in-law Jared Kushner to purchase islands in Albania from an alleged mob-linked figure, prompting widespread protests that have threatened Prime Minister Edi Rama’s regime. After reviewing the history of the fight over the Albanian 1,400 hectares, Sommer and Miller described the latest news report: that Artur Shehu, the businessman who sold them the land, never actually owned it in the first place.

“I think these are the highs and lows of doing business in a country like Albania, you know,” Sommer told Miller. “On one hand, maybe you can get them very quickly, the deeds.”Laughing, Miller told Sommer he “almost spit out my coffee” at the comment “highs and lows of Albania,” then allowed his colleague to continue with his point.

“But on the other, those deeds might not be real,” Sommer warned Miller. “So basically what's going on here is that there is a village, as I understand it — there's a village involved here, and the villagers say, ‘Well, no, actually this is our land, you can tell because we all have houses and we live here.’ But he claims, ‘No, I have the deed.’ And so the allegation is that he basically forged the deeds and sold — then he said, ‘Okay, Jared and Ivanka and various Gulf sheikhs, you give me the money and here's your deed, and now you can build your resort.’”

After Miller expressed disbelief that the Rama administration did not do more to weed out any potential legal issues with the deal, Sommer characterized it as a dispute in which “Jared and Ivanka say, ‘I will enter that on the side of the cocaine trafficker.’” He also pointed out that the issue has harmed Albania’s standing with the European Union, which it wishes to join, both because it threatens wildlife and because security forces beat up a Greek citizen protesting the resort.

“I don't think it's worth it, Albania,” Sommer said, with Miller adding “you gotta feel for the flamingos. Innocent bystanders, all this — they just want their land.”

In June, the UK-based Independent ran a story covered by reporter Zana Cimili about how Albania became involved with the Trump children."Albania's government champions the Adriatic Coast development as a transformative venture for the nation, aiming to boost its high-end tourism sector and support its bid for European Union membership," Cimili said. "However, the project, which encompasses an abandoned island and a stretch of seafront on Albania's southern coast, has sparked criticism from environmental groups and detractors of the long-serving Socialist Prime Minister, Edi Rama."

Since late May, Cimili added, "excavators and other heavy machinery have entered the area, opening access routes, digging into the sand, clearing land among pine trees and installing fencing, Environmental groups from Albania and elsewhere in Europe condemned the work, with one prominent local group charging that long-protected habitats are being 'irreversibly destroyed'…. Albania's state anti-corruption agency has confirmed it opened an investigation related to the project but has not disclosed details."

Cimili continued, "The government says the land earmarked for the project is privately owned. But competing claims have emerged questioning the privatization — a common type of legal dispute."

Reprinted with permission from Alternet

'He's Gonna Flip!' Democrats Predict Fetterman Switch As Weird New PAC Debuts

'He's Gonna Flip!' Democrats Predict Fetterman Switch As Weird New PAC Debuts

Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA) is widely regarded as one of the most conservative Democrats in the Senate, frequently abandoning his party during key votes to align himself with President Donald Trump.

Now some political analysts believe Fetterman may ditch the Democrats altogether.

“He's gonna flip,” anti-Trump Republican strategist Rick Wilson posted on X on Thursday. Similarly former Rep. Conor Lamb (D-PA) posted on X that there was “another betrayal from Fetterman but look on the bright side, we’ll get Republicans to burn their money before Pennsylvania fires him.”

Both men cited a recent article from a publication that specializes in local news and pointed out that Fetterman recently created joint fundraising committees with a Republican from his own state, Sen. Dave McCormick (R-PA).

“First spotted by Politico on Wednesday, Common Ground PA was announced as a new joint fundraising committee,” wrote The Center Square's John Cole on Thursday. “Common Ground PA filed with the Federal Election Commission, known as the FEC, on Monday. They list four joint fundraising participants: Every Vote PAC, Pennsylvania Honor, Fetterman for PA, and Friends of Dave McCormick.”

Cole added, “Fetterman is listed as the leadership PAC sponsor for Every Vote PAC, while McCormick is named as the leadership PAC sponsor for Pennsylvania Honor.”

One Republican political consultant explained that it is highly unusual for senators from opposite parties to form joint fundraising committees.

“This would seem to be a very intriguing development, and a further sign of the close coordination on not just policy, but now political issues between Senators McCormick and Fetterman,” Christopher Nicholas, who also published the PA Political Digest, told Cole.. “What most is of interest to me now is who do they want to support through this new joint fundraising committee?”

This is not the first sign Fetterman may leave Democrats altogether. Earlier this month he defended the president who called him his “favorite Democrat” on a podcast with Logan Paul, who also identifies as a Trump supporter.

"Some Democrats now are actually running on the ‘f—— Trump' — I mean literally, that's in some of their commercials, you know, honestly," Fetterman told Paul. "And this idea — and if you call someone on their side as, like, ‘they're fascists,’ then that means that people that I know, and I love that voted for him, you know, that must be — they are fascists. And they are not. These are good people. They love our country no less than they do. It's just having different views and, you know, trying to find a way forward in a deeply divided country... I refuse to do that. People forgot that we're all Americans, and we actually need each other."

By contrast, in June Fetterman parted ways with Trump over the president’s then-negotiation with Iran. Fetterman, a staunch supporter of Israel, has supported American military action against the Middle Eastern country.

"Nuclear dust, that’s the reason why we’re here. This is why I was reasoned and OK with setting myself politically on fire to be the only Democrat for the last 90 days voting against these war powers acts. Presidents always talk about their legacy. At this point, if you cave just for political convenience, what kind of legacy is that?" Fetterman told Emily Jacobs at The Jewish Insider.

Reprinted with permission from Alternet


Enraged By Supreme Court Mail Ballot Decision, Trump Blames Amy Coney Barrett

Enraged By Supreme Court Mail Ballot Decision, Trump Blames Amy Coney Barrett

President Donald Trump is reportedly “livid” at a Supreme Court judge he appointed for not siding with him in his desire to force states to not count mail-in ballots when they arrive after Election Day.

“He is completely livid over the mail-in ballot ruling,” CNN senior White House correspondent Kristen Holmes said on Monday. “And of course, part of this is about the justices who decided to rule against him in this case. Just a reminder — this was the Republican National Committee challenging a Mississippi law that allowed mail-in ballots that came in after Election Day to still be counted.”

She added that “if you look at the justices who voted against Donald Trump and the Republican National Committee, one of them sticks out in particular, and that is Amy Coney Barrett — whom President Trump himself appointed to the bench. Trump has been growing increasingly frustrated. We've reported multiple times that behind closed doors he has slammed Amy Coney Barrett, saying that she has not stepped up and has not done basically what he put her in place to do.”

Trump has particularly focused on reducing the influence of mail-in ballots and on passing the SAVE America Act because, as he has admitted, he hopes to disenfranchise enough Democratic voters that Republicans can retain control of the House of Representatives and Senate.

“We have heard from senators up and down that they just don't have the votes to get it through, that there aren't enough Republicans who support it,” Holmes said. “And now we're hearing that the White House as well as Speaker Johnson are putting a lot of pressure on members, working the phones, to try to get this through whatever way they possibly can. You heard President Trump saying this is now more important than ever.”

She added, “And I will tell you, Erin — I'm told by a White House official that President Trump is unlikely to sign that bipartisan housing bill. He'll just let it go into law. He's not going to veto it, but right now he views actually signing it as a betrayal to his base. He has promised to get the Save America Act through before he signs any major legislation, so he's willing to potentially not sign this very widely supported housing bill in order to try to push the Save America Act forward.”

Speaker to AlterNet earlier this month Dan Vicuña, the senior policy director for voting and fair representation at the good government nonprofit Common Cause, accused Trump of attempting to suppress mail-in voting, demand stricter voter ID laws, obtain access to voter rules to conduct mass purges and threaten to install ICE at polling places in order to rig the 2026 midterm elections in his favor.

“What they all add up to is a desire to avoid any accountability to the voters in the midterm elections — to ensure, to preordain the outcome of a midterm that he thinks is going to go badly for him,” Vicuña told AlterNet. “We know, from the Big Lie of the 2020 election to spurring on a violent revolt to overthrow a free and fair election, that he has no respect for democratic norms, for the voice of the people. This is entirely about his own power and his own ego. He will even invest in protecting that ego and protecting his power at the expense of the needs of the public. People are suffering with high gas prices and affordability issues, and he does not care. All that matters is protecting his power, and he has no interest in whether he does that through democratic means.”

Vicuña added that Trump’s attempts to national elections could also be illegal.

“I think some of these attempts to federalize, to nationalize elections are clearly illegal,” Vicuña said. “You've seen some of that overreach already struck down — attempts to order independent agencies to force a strict voter ID requirement on people. That has been rejected. Common Cause is in court challenging the latest executive order to turn the United States Postal Service into some election administration agency and to create a further bureaucratic layer to make it more difficult to vote by mail. In terms of the president's authority to order around USPS, it's illegal. In terms of USPS's authority to become some sort of national election administration agency, it far exceeds the legal authority that Congress gave to the postal service. The statute describing what kind of work the postal service would do is about postal service work — processing mail and selling stamps. It has nothing to do with election administration.”

Republican lawmakers have reportedly complained that Trump has given them an “impossible task” by demanding that they pass the unpopular SAVE America Act. Trump has recently said that he views a popular bipartisan bill to create affordable housing as a “yawn” and that he cares about the SAVE America Act more than that.

“I do think, though, he is focused on making sure that our elections have some semblance of faith, trust and confidence, which they have been losing in this country for decades,” former White House deputy press secretary Hogan Gidley told MS NOW on Monday. “You'll remember around 65 percent of Republicans did not believe that Joe Biden won the election.”

When anchor Kasie Hunt pointed out that the only reason so many Republicans doubt the election is because Trump has repeatedly spread misinformation about it, Gidley tried to deflect, inspiring laughter. Gidley later claimed Trump is “not obsessed” with stopping voters, eliciting more laughter from inside the studio.

Reprinted with permission from Alternet


New Reporting Shatters Trump Narrative On Reflecting Pool 'Vandalism'

New Reporting Shatters Trump Narrative On Reflecting Pool 'Vandalism'

President Donald Trump claims that his Reflecting Pool renovations failed because third-parties vandalized the institution — but a new story based on internal documents provides a different version of events.

“President Trump says the peeling blue coating and algae blooms that mar his $16.4 million renovation of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool are the fault of vandals working with ‘knives’ in the ‘dark of night,’” in a story broken by The New York Times’ Maxine Joselow and David A. Fahrenthold on Tuesday. “But government documents obtained by the Times show that while National Park Service workers found two cuts in sections of foam between the pool’s expansion joints, those were not directly related to the ‘American flag blue’ coating that is now peeling, or to the algae that has turned the pool a bright shade of green.”

They added that the documents show workers struggling to deal with problems in their renovations even as officials in the Trump administration insisted the pool was in excellent condition.

“The pool had been drained, resealed and then refilled by June 5,” the Times reported. “Four days later, Park Service workers discovered holes, cracks and peeling caulking in parts of the pool, along with cuts in sections of the foam, according to the documents.”

Yet there is no evidence the cuts were put there by saboteurs. Instead their provenance is “unclear.”

“While a June 9 report by the U.S. Park Police described the cuts as ‘razor blade slashes’ made along a 20-foot-long stretch of the foam, the administration has yet to present evidence supporting that assertion,” the Times reported. “The documents reviewed by The Times described them as two 171-foot blade cuts but did not address how they were made.”

He added, “By June 16, workers had noticed that chunks of blue sealant that covered the pool’s bottom were peeling and floating to the surface, the documents show. That sealant was separate from the foam in the pool’s expansion joints, which allow its concrete slabs to expand and contract.”

Additionally, the workers found that they could not succeed in killing the algae that was blooming in the pool, and turning it swamp green instead of clear blue, despite installing devices for that purpose.

It was also recently reported by Politico/E&E reporters Kinnia Cheuk and Heather Richards that the Reflecting Pool will not be ready by the 4th of July celebrations as Trump promised.

"President Donald Trump's beloved Reflecting Pool liner — now peeling and cracked — won't be fixed before Independence Day celebrations, according to the California company that supplied the waterproof coating,” Cheuk and Richards reported. “That news will sink Trump's wish to have the pool looking pristine for celebrations of the nation's 250th birthday."

Reprinted with permission from Alternet

MAGA Extremist Just Won GOP Primary To Serve As Nevada's Top Election Official

MAGA Extremist Just Won GOP Primary To Serve As Nevada's Top Election Official

Former state lawmaker Jim Marchant just won the Republican primary for Nevada Secretary of State, according to a report by The Answer Detroit. Marchant’s victory will set him up to oppose the incumbent, Democratic Secretary of State Cisco Aguilar, where he can potentially try to overturn the results of the 2028 presidential election on either Trump’s behalf or that of one of his supporters.

Marchant has spent his recent career baselessly questioning Nevada’s voting security and promulgating the debunked claim that he and Trump were victims of election fraud in 2020. In that year, when Marchant was defeated in his race for Nevada’s 4th Congressional District by Democratic Rep. Steven Horsford, while Trump lost to then-Vice President Joe Biden.

In 2020, Biden defeated Trump in the popular vote by 81.3 million to 74.2 million and by the same Electoral College margin (306-232) by which Trump defeated former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in 2016. As conservative columnist George F. Will wrote in The Washington Post in February, Trump’s claims of being robbed have been indisputably disproved.

“Someone should read to him ‘Lost, Not Stolen,’ a 2022 report by eight conservatives (two former Republican senators, three former federal appellate judges, a former Republican solicitor general, and two Republican election law specialists),” Will explained. “They examined all 187 counts in the 64 court challenges filed in multiple states by Trump and his supporters. Twenty cases were dismissed before hearings on their merits, 14 were voluntarily dismissed by Trump and his supporters before hearings. Of the 30 that reached hearings on the merits, Trump’s side prevailed in only one, Pennsylvania, involving far too few votes to change the state’s result.”

Will added, “Trump’s batting average? .016. In Arizona, the most exhaustively scrutinized state, a private firm selected by Trump’s advocates confirmed Trump’s loss, finding 99 additional Biden votes and 261 fewer Trump votes.” Therefore he wrote of Trump, “The man who never alters his opinion is like standing water, and breeds reptiles of the mind.”

“Someone should read to him ‘Lost, Not Stolen,’ a 2022 report by eight conservatives (two former Republican senators, three former federal appellate judges, a former Republican solicitor general, and two Republican election law specialists),” Will explained. “They examined all 187 counts in the 64 court challenges filed in multiple states by Trump and his supporters. Twenty cases were dismissed before hearings on their merits, 14 were voluntarily dismissed by Trump and his supporters before hearings. Of the 30 that reached hearings on the merits, Trump’s side prevailed in only one, Pennsylvania, involving far too few votes to change the state’s result.”

Will added, “Trump’s batting average? .016. In Arizona, the most exhaustively scrutinized state, a private firm selected by Trump’s advocates confirmed Trump’s loss, finding 99 additional Biden votes and 261 fewer Trump votes.” Therefore he wrote of Trump, “The man who never alters his opinion is like standing water, and breeds reptiles of the mind.”

Reprinted with permission from Alternet

Trump Pressuring House Republicans To 'Expunge' Both Impeachments Of Him

Trump Pressuring House Republicans To 'Expunge' Both Impeachments Of Him

President Donald Trump is planning to hassle Congress to expunge his impeachments.

The president is trying to get Republican lawmakers to remove his impeachments from the record even though legally such a move is impossible, reported The Wall Street Journal’s Annie Linskey, Olivia Beavers and Natalie Andrews on Thursday.

“It should be done because I did nothing wrong,” Trump told the Journal. “It was a rigged deal—it was a whole rigged situation.”

The Journal noted that this could backfire, saying “Any move to attempt to erase the two impeachments, in 2019 and 2021, would open up a debate about Trump’s past behavior in office, forcing GOP lawmakers to relitigate charges of abuse of power, obstruction of Congress and inciting an insurrection. Facing the prospect of losing their majority in the House, Republicans are trying to shift focus to the economy and high costs, the issues that voters care about most.”

Yet even though “the measure likely wouldn’t be considered until after the November election,” the issue could still become a political lightning rod. “Trump has posted news clips about voiding the impeachments on his Truth Social account,” the Journal reported. “But this week, he played down his own role in the effort. ‘If they want to do it, I’m honored by it,’ the president said.”

The Journal added that House Speaker Mike Johnson (R—LA) has discussed the resolution with Trump. He has also discussed it with Harvard law professor emeritus Alan Dershowitz

“I think it makes a lot of sense the more the evidence comes out, the more we know they really were sham impeachments,” Johnson told the Journal, later adding that “we were saying it at the time, now we know. And they make a very compelling case that it should be expunged from the record, because it was a hyperpartisan attack job.”

Speaking with this journalist for Salon in 2019, Dershowitz — who later defended Trump during one of his impeachment trials — denied that he would ever refuse to step down if he lost an election, which is what prompted the impeachment at which Dershowitz did not represent Trump.

No president will refuse to step down if his opponent is elected in his place,” Dershowitz told Salon. “It just will not happen, and the American public would never tolerate it.”

Discussing the Wall Street Journal story, CNN correspondents agreed that Trump’s attempt to scrub the impeachment is both purely symbolic and likely to resurrect the Ukraine coercion and election-denying scandals that prompted those impeachments in the first place.

Reprinted with permission from Alternet


'Rigged!' Trump And MAGA Furious Over Pratt's Defeat In Los Angeles Primary

'Rigged!' Trump And MAGA Furious Over Pratt's Defeat In Los Angeles Primary

President Donald Trump and his movement of MAGA Republicans are venting their rage online after Republican reality TV star Spencer Pratt lost to two Democrats, Mayor Karen Bass and Councilmember Nithya Raman, in the Los Angeles mayoral race.

Because Trump has accused all of the politicians he opposes of cheating, tracing all the way back to the 2016 Republican Iowa caucus, he naturally has accused Bass and Raman of cheating Pratt. MAGA Republicans online are taking notice.

"I'm at the rare intersection of: - Was rooting for Pratt - Thought he was good for the LA political conversation - Dislike California's election administration laws and policies - But understand how the process works,” posted an X user named Stephen Richer.

Similarly Republican pollster Frank Luntz observed "reality TV star Spencer Pratt says he ‘will be done with trying to live in LA’ if he doesn't win the mayoral election. Yesterday, he was surpassed in the Los Angeles mayoral primary for the second run-off spot in November."

Another Republican wrote going by Dr. Terry Simpson on X wrote that "I'm a Republican. Los Angeles is roughly 50% Democratic and about 10% Republican. Any candidate who wants to lead this city must win support well beyond the Republican base. Spencer Pratt didn't lose because voters didn't understand he was independent. He lost.”

Other Republicans reacted with the outrage that Trump is trying to stir up, even though there is no evidence that anything illicit is occurring in the California election.

"A 43,000-vote swing just handed Nithya Raman the edge over Spencer Pratt in LA,” an X user who goes by jay plemons posted. “The exact size of the city's homeless population. Ballot harvesting from shelters, universal mail ballots, and late drops made it happen. Coincidence?"

Similarly X user Mark Mendlovitz wrote, "The large variance of Pratt and Raman but not Bass should be setting off screaming alarm bells."

Even House Speaker Mike Johnson suggested there might be fraud in California, despite the fact that he also acknowledged there is no proof. Instead he cited the absence of evidence as being in itself suspicious.

“I'm not saying it's rigged,” Johnson told CNN’s Manu Raju on Monday. “I'm saying it stinks to high heaven. And everybody knows that. Let's remove the appearance of impropriety. Let's have, what a concept, let's have votes on an election the day of the election. That's what many states are able to do. I think California is playing around with this.”

After Raju asked Johnson if he had proof the election was improper, he admitted that “I don't — some of these efforts are so diabolical and so far upstream that it is impossible to prove. But I think everybody knows instinctively something is wrong here. And that's a concern. We need people to believe in the integrity of our election system.”

Trump, who attempted a coup after he lost the 2020 presidential election to then-Vice President Joe Biden, is reportedly falsely accusing the California election of being stolen as a preparation for denying the results of the 2026 midterms, which are also expected to swing against him.

“By baselessly framing Ms. Raman’s rise as a Democratic scam, Mr. Trump extended his long-running project to erode public faith in elections — and gave an unusually clear preview of how he could greet any disappointing results for his party in November, when control of Congress is at stake,” wrote The New York Times' Jonathan Swan and Maggie Haberman on Monday. “He has been anything but subtle about his desire to limit the ability of Democrats to vote by mail, implying, with no evidence, that simply choosing that widely used means of casting a ballot is inherently suspect.”

Swan and Haberman added, “Addressing a gathering of Republican lawmakers in March, he said the way to hold their majority was to pass a strict voter identification law cracking down on mail ballots. ‘It’ll guarantee the midterms,’ he told them, warning that failure would bring ‘big trouble.’”

Reprinted with permission from Alternet