A little-known loophole could help Trump halt the midterms with one firing

Democrats have been speculating about and prepping for the numerous ways in which President Donald Trump could meddle with forthcoming midterms, but according to a new piece from The New York Times, there is one person he could fire that would completely upend the results — and it is completely legal.Writing on Monday for the Times, veteran reporter Jeffrey Toobin stressed that Trump's "obsession" with preventing a GOP wipeout in the midterms remains a very live threat, even as his efforts to spread claims about election fraud have fallen flat so far. Toobin spoke with Rep. Joe Morelle, a New York Democrat, about his efforts to game out various scenarios, including ways that the president could try to block the certification of certain results after the elections, an idea that has gotten less attention recently as Trump has focused on efforts to control who is allowed to vote."The process for installing a new House of Representatives begins when the states certify the results in each of the 435 races. The rules vary by state, but most require election officials to certify by late November or early December," Toobin explained. "In recent years, Trump-aligned local officials have frequently used false claims of fraud or noncitizens voting as justification to decline to certify election results. Since 2020, more than 30 local officials in Arizona, Colorado, Georgia, Michigan, New Mexico, North Carolina and Pennsylvania have refused to certify election results, many in hopes of forestalling Democratic victories."Morelle said that the plan for this possibility is to take Trump to court over it, something the "Democrats have had success" with recently, using courts to force local officials to certify results.Still, there is another person that Trump could potentially target as a way to halt the process of swearing in a new Democratic-majority: the House of Representatives Clerk, who has "the job of assembling the 'roll' of new members to be sworn in on Jan. 3, 2027." The current clerk, Kevin McCumber, is widely considered to be a "nonpartisan" figure, and would be unlikely to go along with demands from Trump to interfere with the swearing-in process."One disaster scenario, according to Mr. Morelle, would be this: After results show the Democrats winning a majority in the House, the president declares that the election is full of fraud and the winners don’t need to be certified," Toobin explained. "Mr. Trump could then demand that Speaker Mike Johnson fire Mr. McCumber, which Mr. Johnson has the legal right to do. Under the procedures of the House, the speaker can install a more compliant successor — that is, a G.O.P. toady. In this scenario, Speaker Johnson’s designee, at Mr. Trump’s instigation, would produce a roll of new House members that included Republicans in races that Democrats believed they had won."He added: "While the speaker does have the unilateral power to remove the clerk, his choice for a permanent replacement would have to be approved by a vote of House members. Mr. Morelle said that in that case, Speaker Johnson might not be able to persuade his slim Republican majority to replace Mr. McCumber."“You’d have a number of members who are retiring, who I think would no longer be beholden to Johnson or the president, who I think would take a very, very dim view of efforts to overturn the election," Morelle said.

DHS admission suggests sham emergency will justify ICE arrests at midterm polls

ICE won’t rule out making arrests at polling places during the November midterm elections in the event of “an active public safety threat,” the Department of Homeland Security admitted to Raw Story.The details of what would constitute such a threat were left vague.The statement comes as U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement faces an Aug. 7 deadline to begin turning over some 11,000 documents in response to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by the Democratic Party, and Secretary Markwayne Mullin is threatening prison time for election officials who refuse to go along with a demand by the Trump administration that states purge alleged noncitizens from the voter rolls.“ICE is not planning operations targeting polling locations,” the department said in an email to Raw Story last week that was attributed to a “DHS official.” “ICE conducts intelligence-driven targeted enforcement and if an active public safety threat endangered a polling location, they may be arrested as a result of that targeted enforcement action.”The statement from DHS is the strongest signal yet of the administration’s intentions to potentially deploy federal agents or soldiers to polling places — an intimidation tactic promoted by Trump ally Steve Bannon that has raised alarms among Democrats and democracy advocates.ICE had previously told the Democratic National Committee, or DNC, it had no records in response to its FOIA Lawsuit seeking documents from DHS, the Department of Justice and Department of Defense on potential deployment of federal forces to voting sites and other election locations.But the agency was forced to take a second look after the DNC pointed to media reports on ICE agents showing up at voting sites during primary elections in Texas and California, and entering a polling place in New York state to question a poll worker about a social media post she made that was critical of the agent who fatally shot Renee Good in Minneapolis.Separately, the government disclosed that the Department of Justice’s FOIA office is consulting with “other DOJ components and Executive Branch agencies,” suggesting a high-level review of 55 pages of “potentially responsive records,” according to the government’s report to a federal judge overseeing the case. The government has committed only to “issuing a response” on those documents by Saturday.While Democrats brace for the presence of ICE agents and other federal officers at polling places in November, the Trump administration is making wide-ranging claims about supposed foreign interference in U.S. elections and trumpeting a claim that DHS found 250,000 noncitizens on voter rolls in four states — California, Nevada, New Jersey and Pennsylvania.David Becker, executive director of the pro-democracy group Center for Election Innovation & Research, cast doubt on that claim.“The public voter files used by the federal government do not have any unique identifiers, so no matter what list they compare to, there’s no methodologically sound way to get valid voter registration matches,” he said, adding that it’s impossible to accurately match names from public voter lists with commercial data if either is missing a Social Security number.“All you would get — and this may have been the intent — is a boatload of false positives,” Becker continued. “I suspect this is why DHS is hiding the ball, refusing to share its list with the states or even disclose in detail its methodology, even as they threaten the states. This number has no bearing on reality and may just as well have been made up.”DHS’s statement to Raw Story about ICE potentially making arrests at polling places echoes Mullins’ comments during an interview last month with CNN’s “State of the Union.”“ICE agents are there to flex, if we need to,” Mullin said. “You saw ICE at TSA lines, not processing, but in the soft areas. If a threat were to arise, for whatever reason, at a polling station — say a bomb threat would be called in — our ICE agents are more than just immigration customs enforcement; they’re also trained to have SRT, which means that we can have an emergency team respond quickly.”Mullin added that agents would not engage in “voter identification.”Todd Blanche, who is up for confirmation as attorney general, has also expressed support for deploying ICE agents to polling places.“Why is there objection to sending ICE officers to polling places?” Blanche asked during an appearance at the Conservative Political Action Conference in March. “Illegals can’t vote.”The White House did not respond on the record to an inquiry about whether Trump or other White House officials have held discussions with Mullin, Blanche or other leaders about the possibility of deploying federal agents to voting sites during the midterm elections.During his July 17 press briefing, Mullin invoked “national security” as a component of election administration, moving the midterm elections into a realm in which courts have historically granted the...

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