Team Trump Gets Major Win With Georgia Elections Board Case

Democrats won’t be able to prevent recently altered election rules designed to benefit Donald Trump, per a Wednesday ruling dismissing an effort by private citizens to force Georgia Governor Brian Kemp to open an investigation into the committee that crafted the regulations.

“It would seem to me, that for formal charges, there’s some investigation comes in before that,” Superior Court Judge Ural Glanville said, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “There needs to be some investigation ... then trigger the governor to do something in that respect, not just a letter from the citizens.”

Three Democrats, including state Senator Nabilah Islam Parkes, sued Kemp after he refused to act on their concerns regarding the Georgia State Election Board, which in August voted to make it easier for county election officials to delay or refuse certification of election results. Democrats argued that letters they had obtained constituted “formal charges” worthy of spurring an investigation.

“They’re going rogue, and there’s no accountability,” Islam Parkes told the Journal-Constitution. “They need to be held accountable because we need to have fair elections.”

Internal emails obtained by Rolling Stone and American Doom after the 3–2 election board vote along MAGA lines revealed that the board’s actions were fueled by a “wishlist” of documents from conservative county election officials.

“As an American and native Georgian, I’m outraged Governor Brian Kemp is allowing law-violating, last minute election rule changes,” wrote one of the co-plaintiffs, former Fulton County Board of Registration and Elections Chair Cathy Woolard, in an op-ed for Newsweek on Monday, decrying Kemp’s inaction as “foul play.”

Kemp’s attorneys argued that complaints by private citizens could not compel the governor to open an ethics investigation.

“That is an extraordinary position to take,” Deputy Attorney General Logan Winkles said. “The court can imagine the chaos that would cause.”

The plaintiffs told the Journal-Constitution that they intend to appeal the decision.

The new election certification rules set the stage for bedlam come November, especially considering that at least 70 election officials across 16 counties in key swing states, including Georgia, have been identified as pro-Trump election deniers.

Trump praised the MAGA members of Georgia’s board days before the August vote, describing Janice Johnston, Rick Jeffares, and Janelle King as “pit bulls fighting for victory.”

According to the State Election Board’s website, the body is “entrusted with a variety of responsibilities and authority to protect all Georgians’ right to cast a ballot.”

Georgia has had the largest number of certification refusals since 2020 of anywhere in the country. The five-person board has been accused of other ethics violations, including one instance in which its Trump-friendly majority failed to give proper notice to their Democratic colleagues about a meeting that they used to advance changes to state election rules.

House Republicans are threatening to punish colleges and universities that allow pro-Palestine protests.

The Guardian reported Wednesday that House Majority Leader Steve Scalise met with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, a pro-Israel lobbying group, on October 1 and declared he plans to take action against higher education institutions by revoking their accreditation if Donald Trump wins in November, jeopardizing their federal funding.

“Your accreditation is on the line,” Scalise said. “You’re not playing games any more, or else you’re not a school any more.”

The publication obtained video of the meeting, which was also attended by Republican Representative Pat Fallon from Texas. It began as a discussion about antisemitism spreading in the U.S. after Hamas’s attack on Israel on October 7 last year. But the topic quickly changed to squashing criticism of Israel’s war, which has killed nearly 42,000 Palestinians in Gaza, including more than 16,000 children.

Fallon applauded AIPAC’s targeting of progressive critics of Israel, praising the organization for spending $23 million to intervene in congressional primaries.

“I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart for firing Jamaal Bowman, and even more so, Miss Cori Bush. Great work,” Fallon said.

Scalise concurred and invoked an antisemitic trope, commending the organization for having “tentacles throughout the Republican and Democrat circles in 435 districts. You can see how people are voting—just put the pressure on those who are voting the wrong way.”

Scalise promised that a second Trump administration would use federal funding to target schools that don’t crush pro-Palestinian protests.

“We’re looking at federal money, the federal grants that go through the science committee, student loans. You have a lot of jurisdiction as president, with all of these different agencies that are involving billions of dollars, some cases a billion alone going to one school,” said Scalise. He singled out Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania, and Columbia University as examples.

Scalise then criticized Jewish students who participate in the protests, saying they “just feel guilty that they’re alive. I don’t know how you’re brought up to where you feel, ‘I’m a Jewish student, and I’m on the side with terrorists who want to kill me.’”

Scalise, along with other politicians in both the GOP and the Democratic Party, are going against constitutional principles of free speech to demonize protesters who are opposed to Israel’s widespread killing and destruction of Gaza the past year. They see their job as supporting Israel’s actions with no limits, regardless of the humanitarian toll and the prospects of the U.S. being drawn into a wide and deadly war.

Vice President Kamala Harris has raised a record-breaking $1 billion in cash in less than 80 days on the campaign trail, according to three people familiar with the matter who spoke with The New York Times.

That total includes fundraising from both her campaign and party committees such as the Democratic National Committee, and does not include money donated to aligned super PACs.

The record $1 billion figure is far more than what Trump has raised in a whole year of campaigning. Trump has raised around $853 million in 2024 according to public statements tabulated by the Times.

Harris also outpaced Trump threefold in cash over the summer, raising $361 million in August to his $130 million. Three-quarters of the more than one million new donors to Harris in August did not contribute in the previous presidential election, according to her campaign.

Failed businessman Trump has reason to be scared. No candidate has ever raised more than $1 billion in less than three months.

In the meantime, as the donations to Harris keep coming in, Trump will keep shilling watches, Bibles, or NFTs, in a desperate attempt to try to keep pace.

President Biden on Wednesday called out the “onslaught of lies” from the right regarding relief efforts over Hurricane Helene and Hurricane Milton, particularly from Donald Trump and Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene.

“Assertions have been made that property was being confiscated. That’s simply not true. They’re saying people impacted by these storms will receive $750 in cash and no more. That’s simply not true. They’re saying the money needed for this crisis is being diverted to migrants. What a ridiculous thing to say; it’s not true,” an outraged Biden said in a briefing from the White House.

Biden also addressed Greene’s wild claim that the federal government controls the weather and is sending hurricanes to Republican areas, calling it “beyond ridiculous,” and urging Republicans to put politics aside for relief efforts.

“It’s got to stop. In moments like this, there are no red or blue states. There’s one United States of America, where neighbors are helping neighbors,” Biden said. “Volunteers and first responders are risking everything, including their own lives, to help their fellow Americans.”

Later in the briefing, Biden thanked the Republican governors who have addressed disinformation about hurricane relief efforts, and further expressed his incredulity over the wild conspiracies.

“This stuff is off the wall. It’s like out of a comic book,” Biden said.

Meanwhile, Hurricane Milton is predicted to cause immense damage when it makes landfall in Florida, shaking the composure of even one of the state’s most experienced meteorologists. While some Republican politicians are dismissing the conspiracies and trying to do their jobs, others are demanding federal aid that they voted against or are missing in action. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis doesn’t even see the point in speaking to Kamala Harris, even as the vice president pledges to protect hurricane victims from illegal fraud and price gouging.

As a whole, Republicans still are refusing to acknowledge the role of climate change in the increased frequency and severity of these storms, and their attempt to politicize them hurts their constituents. Perhaps these hurricanes need to be politicized in a different way to make sure that people are actually helped instead of being used by their leaders.

As Election Day looms, Donald Trump is finalizing his speaking schedule for the next several weeks. One surprising stop, according to sources familiar with the Republican candidate’s schedule, is a hometown visit to New York City.

The New York Post first reported that Trump will hold a rally at Madison Square Garden later this month. New York State Senator Brad Hoylman-Sigal, who represents the district, confirmed that the event will be held October 27 at 3 p.m.

In a solidly blue New York City, one might ask why Trump is bothering to campaign so close to the election in the city at all.

Online critics were quick to point out that the event bears a striking resemblance to a Nazi rally that took place in Madison Square Garden in 1939 during the reign of Adolf Hitler. At the time, Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia was criticized for allowing the event to take place, but it proceeded anyway. Many also questioned the motivations of a Trump rally in a state that hasn’t voted for a Republican candidate for president since Ronald Reagan.

Hoylman-Sigal called the rally a “disastrous decision” by the venue “that will endanger the public safety of New Yorkers and has the potential to incite widespread violence.” Like many, he also called upon Madison Square Garden to cancel the event.

Donald Trump’s underlying reasons for supporting the state of Israel might have something to do with lining his own pockets.

The Trump Organization is reportedly looking to reopen talks about a lucrative hotel deal in Jerusalem, a discussion that began in earnest before the October 7 attack last year, The New York Times reported Wednesday. The organization was in talks to build a luxury property on the former site of Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, according to sources and documents reviewed by the Times.

But that’s not the only Trumpian real estate project in the works in Israel. In Tel Aviv, the Trump Organization eyed a rising skyscraper as a possible location for another Trump-branded hotel, a project that would create the most hotel rooms in a single building just steps away from the headquarters of the Israel Defense Forces.

“The deal absolutely would have gotten done if not for Oct. 7,” Eric Trump, who oversaw the deal, told the Times, adding that the real estate group would “definitely” finalize a deal with the country “when the current situation that we’re all witnessing on TV every day is resolved.”

Trump has been anything but shy about his unequivocal support for Israel. One of his biggest donors—and the recipient of one of Trump’s Presidential Medals of Freedom—Miriam Adelson, is also the richest Israeli in the world, and has worked for years to influence and lobby U.S. politicians to make decisions that benefit the Israeli state.

Speaking earlier this week with New York radio show Sid & Friends, Trump claimed that “nobody’s done more for the Jewish people than I have.” And in an interview with Hugh Hewitt, Trump insisted that the state of Israel—not necessarily Jewish Americans—needed to “get smart” about supporting his candidacy while speculating about the potential “waterfront property” real estate development possibilities in Gaza.

“I think that Israel has to do one thing,” Trump said. “They have to get smart about Trump, because they don’t back me. I did more for Israel than anybody. I did more for the Jewish people than anybody. And it’s not reciprocal.”

The Democratic ticket is working overtime to bury Minnesota Governor Tim Walz’s hot take on the Electoral College.

On Tuesday, the number two on the Democratic presidential ticket told a group of donors in Sacramento, California, that he no longer supported the Electoral College’s continued existence.

“I think all of us know, the Electoral College needs to go. We need a national popular vote,” Walz said to applause. “But that’s not the world we live in.”

“So we need to win Beaver County, Pennsylvania,” Walz continued. “We need to be able to go into York, Pennsylvania, and win. We need to be in western Wisconsin and win. We need to be in Reno, Nevada, and win. And the help that you give here today helps make that happen.”

But by Wednesday, Vice President Kamala Harris’s campaign was already working to distance her from Walz’s perspective, telling USA Today that ridding the nation of the Electoral College is not an official position.

The controversial institution has been a matter of contention in the United States since its inception at the Constitutional Convention in 1787. Critics have argued that the system—which almost singularly determines the outcome of presidential elections regardless of the popular vote—is wholly undemocratic, while offering outsize national influence to smaller, less densely populated, traditionally conservative regions of the country.

There have been at least two episodes in the last couple of decades in which Democratic candidates won the national popular vote but failed to win the White House due to the Electoral College: Al Gore in 2000 and Hillary Clinton in 2016.

“Governor Walz believes that every vote matters in the Electoral College and he is honored to be traveling the country and battleground states working to earn support for the Harris-Walz ticket,” a Harris campaign spokesperson said in a statement to USA Today. “He was commenting to a crowd of strong supporters about how the campaign is built to win 270 electoral votes. And, he was thanking them for their support that is helping fund those efforts.”

Donald Trump absolutely flailed during an appearance on a podcast where the hosts openly mocked the former president for his bullshit answers.

During an hour-and-a-half-long interview on Flagrant, a comedy podcast hosted by stand-up comedians Andrew Schulz and Akaash Singh, Trump spoke so incoherently that the hosts started to laugh at the Republican presidential nominee.

At one point, Singh asked Trump to speculate about who was responsible for his assassination attempt. As Trump embarked on his nonanswer, he became so blatantly incoherent he had to outright explain his own disjointed speech.

“You know, I do a thing called the weave,” Trump started to explain. “And there are those that are there fair that say, ‘This guy is so genius,’ and then others would say, ‘Oh he rambled.’ I don’t ramble.”

Trump claimed he actually needed an “extraordinary memory” to get so off topic.

“They don’t give you credit for that,” Schulz said, laughing, “that you can go all the way over here, and then get back.”

“I can go so far here, or there,” Trump said. “And I can come back to exactly where I started.”

As the interviewers cackled, it became clear that Trump—as ridiculous as his answers were—was being entirely serious about how impressive his “weaving” was.

Trump continued to explain the weave by repeating exactly what he had already said: “And some people think it’s so genius, but the bad people, what they say is, ‘You know, he was rambling.’”

“Yeah, you really weaved your way out of answering my question. Twice, ” Singh noted.

Later in the interview, Trump spoke so incoherently that the hosts started to openly laugh at the Republican presidential nominee’s “weave.”

“Dwight Eisenhower was sort of a moderate, General Eisenhower. Did you know that they had 8 percent generals president of the United States? Eight percent were generals, 92 percent were politicians, and then you had Trump,” Trump said. “You see, that’s a weave.”

As Trump tried to explain why he had even started to talk about Eisenhower, the hosts snickered, and Trump seemed to grow more and more confused.

“You gotta be sharp,” Trump said. “If you’re not sharp you’re dead.”

At another point, Schulz just couldn’t hold it together when Trump called himself “basically a truthful person.”

Trump’s disastrous appearance comes as his team launches criticism at Kamala Harris, attacking the vice president for appearing on a (far more popular) podcast in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene.

Here’s something no one asked for: sex and dating advice from Donald Trump’s ex-adviser Stephen Miller.

While appearing on Jesse Watters’s Fox News program, Miller, who was seen as “the true driving force” behind Trump’s racist agenda during his presidency, was asked to give relationship advice to the network’s viewers.

Watters claimed that Fox was “getting a lot of texts from women about Miller,” and that his audience sees him as a “sexual matador.”

“What do you have to say for yourself?” asked Watters.

Miller responded with advice for young men. (For context, according to a recent survey, only 10 percent of young people say they watch cable news daily, while 45 percent say they never watch.)

“The best thing you can do is to wear your Trump support on your sleeve,” said Miller. “Show that you are a real man, show that you are not a beta. Be a proud and loud Trump supporter and your dating life will be fantastic.”

Unfortunately, Miller may be espousing lies per usual. According to a 2020 YouGov-Economist poll, while more than half of men say they would date a member of the opposite party, only 35 percent of women say the same. With more young women than ever identifying as left of center, being an out Trump supporter may cut off a significant part of the dating pool.

Progressive Democrats are rallying around Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan amid reports that business executives supporting Kamala Harris want her dismissed.

Billionaire Mark Cuban told Semafor on Tuesday that “if it were me, I wouldn’t” keep Khan next year, criticizing the FTC chair for taking on technology firms over artificial intelligence.

“The bigger picture is, she’s hurting more than she’s helping,” Cuban said, even while acknowledging her admirable antitrust efforts to improve pharmacy benefits.

Cuban’s comments drew a sharp reply from Senator Bernie Sanders, who posted on X Tuesday afternoon that Cuban “is wrong. Lina Khan is the best FTC Chair in modern history.

“By taking on corporate greed & illegal monopolies, Lina is doing an exceptional job preventing large corporations from ripping-off consumers & exploiting workers,” Sanders said, thanking Khan “for what you are doing.”

Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez echoed Sanders’s show of support in her own post Wednesday morning. 

“Let me make this clear, since billionaires have been trying to play footsie with the ticket: Anyone goes near Lina Khan and there will be an out and out brawl. And that is a promise,” Ocasio-Cortez said in her post. “She proves this admin fights for working people. It would be terrible leadership to remove her.”

Ocasio-Cortez’s post alluded to Harris’s recent efforts to court business leaders and corporate executives and draw them away from Donald Trump. Several executives have pledged their financial support to the vice president, even forming a “Business Leaders for Harris” group to raise money. These include Cuban, LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, Netflix co-founder Reed Hastings, and Ken Chenault, the former CEO of American Express who now heads a private equity firm.

Two finance executives told the Financial Times last week that they expected Harris to make more business-friendly appointments to the FTC and the Securities and Exchange Commission. Both Khan and Gary Gensler, who heads the SEC, have directed their agencies to go after corporate consolidation and malfeasance, with Khan making pro-worker reforms and Gensler taking on the cryptocurrency industry. Hoffman has made no secret of his desire to see Khan dismissed, accusing her of “waging war on American business.”

Will Harris side with business executives and dismiss Khan, or will she listen to progressives like Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez and continue President Biden’s efforts to rein in corporate excess? It all depends on whose support the vice president thinks is more vital to defeating Trump.