More: "What we're seeing now is the federal government is inserting itself into the state process for verifying their voter roles in an unprecedented way," said Jessica Marsden, a lawyer for Protect Democracy, a left-leaning advocacy group that is suing the federal agency over the door-knocking campaign. "And they are doing it in a way that seems maximally designed to scare lawful voters from participating."

The home visits ramped up in September, in the thick of the midterm campaign season, and continued over the past weekend. The Justice Department announced Monday that Homeland Security agents in California arrested more than 20 people, all of them green card holders, on allegations they had illegally registered or cast a vote.

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Eric Balliet, a former Homeland Security Investigations agent, said the door-knocking operation is a significant departure from traditional law enforcement activities.

"In my 23 years with HSI, I never engaged in or was aware of any incident or initiative that sent Special Agents to private residences to verify the eligibility of voters," Balliet said, who served in the federal government under multiple administrations.

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For civil rights advocates, the show of force has sparked concerns about the chilling effect it could have on legal voters.

"It is sending the signal to a much broader community, do not show up at the polls. Do not vote," said Dr. Carol Anderson, a professor of African American Studies at Emory University.

"And so if you are somebody who has registered to vote and you're a naturalized citizen, what you see in that community is that " because this is not a regime that makes those discernments " that you're gonna stay away from the voting booth."

More: Democrats are seeing far better turnout than they did at this point in the 2022 midterms, which went terribly for their party in North Carolina. But they're also doing better compared to the 2018 midterms, which ended up being a blue wave nationally. G. Elliott Morris, formerly of FiveThirtyEight, noted in his newsletter that Democrats haven't held this much of an advantage at this point in early voting since at least 2006.

Zachary Donnini, head of data science at the election data and analytics site VoteHub, said that the start of early voting has shown positive signs for Democrats nationwide, but most of all in North Carolina.

"I've been telling other people that it doesn't look like it's going great for Republicans right now, but it's not as bad as North Carolina," Donnini said Tuesday. "This is the strongest data for Democrats right now in the entire country."

Of course, there's a big caveat: we don't know for sure who these people are voting for, and we don't know what the final electorate will look like. Republicans are expected to narrow the gap throughout the rest of early voting and on Election Day. The outcome also will depend on unaffiliated voters, who have also shown an increase in turnout and make up a third of all voters so far. Polling suggests that unaffiliated voters as a whole are breaking for Democrats right now, but the split may be different among those who actually show up.

Did they also try to sell the reporter a bridge in NY City?

What a load of crap.

The original.

This modern day reimagining of Gil Scott-Heron's classic 'Whitey On the Moon' poem really say it all.

More: A federal judge ruled late Monday to uphold North Carolina's strict GOP-championed absentee ballot rules on the eve of the state's mail ballot request deadline.

Gov. Josh Stein (D) warned about the high rejection rate in a Tuesday evening social media post.

"The State Board of Elections' last-minute changes to voting by mail are leading to thousands more absentee ballots being rejected this election " at a rejection rate twice as high as in 2022," Stein wrote. "It's infuriating. North Carolinians, please make a plan to vote this year, in person if possible. And if you're voting by mail, make sure you seal both envelopes on your ballot. Don't let them take away your vote."

Common Cause North Carolina, working with the Southern Coalition for Social Justice, compiled data from 27 of the state's 100 counties, using absentee review monitors " everyday voters and volunteer advocates " as well as attorneys.

The data reveals ballots are so far being rejected at a rate of around 3% in the wake of the new GOP-backed rules.

Some of those rejections were likely not down to the new rules " ballots can be rejected for numerous reasons. But the 3% total rejection rate is double the rejection rate the state saw in its 2022 election, strongly suggesting that the new rules are having a major impact.

What kind of pay cut did he take to help fix this?

Was there supposed to be an article link for this?

Dementia patients often hallucinate.

As if Trumps DOJ will respond to a letter from Senate Dems with anything other than scorn.

More: O'Donnell tore into the comment and what he thought it implied:

"No wartime president of the United States has ever said, As soon as I want the war to end, it will end.' And so what Donald Trump told American voters last night is, I don't want the war to end. I don't want the war to end today. I don't want the war to end tomorrow. I don't want the war to end next week.' Donald Trump is saying, It's my war, and it will end whenever I want it to end. And because I'm not out there fighting it myself, I do not want it to end.'"

This really isn't anything new. We were doing the same thing in the late 90s when I was still in the Marine Corps. I had a buddy who was in a river assault boat unit that got sent to South America a few different times.

Watley never stood a chance against Cooper. Cooper was an excellent Governor and is extremely popular here. Watley is one of those yankee transplants Boaz loves to scream about.

Trump was in Alaska doing a rally with Sullivan two days ago. I don't buy what this article is selling.

Also, I don't think it's officially dead.

It's just going to likely take more than a single election.

Going to take a generation or two.

More: "She has been a wonderful asset to the team, and we wish her well," Zacharia said of Guilfoyle, whose status has come under an avalanche of scrutiny following multiple critical articles about her conduct before and after becoming an ambassador.

More: Donald Trump has shrugged off overwhelming evidence that his dictator pals are helping out the very country he's been at war with for the past seven and a half months.

"I see so many comments from the Radical Left Morons and Lunatics that China and Russia are helping the wonderful' Islamic Republic of Iran," the president wrote in a late-night Truth Social post on Monday.

"If they are, it's at a very low level, but I don't believe they are at all," he went on. "They have too much to lose, and we would know about it, and know about it very fast!"

"You know why I'm furious right now? I was hearing from everybody on plaintiffs' side that this was going to happen and I said repeatedly, no, I trust the government," Judge Ana Reyes told the DOJ. "I trusted you all not to do precisely what you have done."

Reyes imposed a temporary pause on the Justice Department's tree removal at the golf course until Tuesday morning, demanding to know who ordered the weekend removal and how long government attorneys knew of the plan. She said that if her current order is violated by "even two seconds" that there will be contempt proceedings, and flatly rejected the administration's claims they had done all they could.

"Do you have email accounts? Do you have cell phones? Do you have regular phones? Do you have the ability to get into a car and go to where plaintiffs are and tell them?" she asked of their efforts.

"You did not do your best. You did your absolute worst."

This twitter thread gives an excellent play-by-play of the judge's reactions to the Trump administration's lies.

This is what we've sunk to here in "The Land of the Free." Public executions for sport.

The America we grew up in is gone and will never return. We live in its festering corpse now.

It's an unlocked gift article.

More: If Democrats make big gains in the midterm elections in four weeks, it may not only be because their most loyal voters come out in force, or because their candidates have converted Republican voters to their cause.

Instead, the Democrats' dream blue wave could come from Republicans who sour on President Trump and stay home. It already has a name: the red undertow.

Across the country, signs are emerging of an enthusiasm gap between Democrats and Republicans, even among those who consider themselves likely to vote. A stretch of rural southwest Michigan " long a Republican stronghold " illustrates the point, with more signs for blueberries and eggs than for political candidates. Volunteers are not showing up to door-knock. And many voters say they are tuning this election out.

More: The Department of Transportation is aiming to water down longstanding passenger protections, pushing, for example, to change how prominently airlines display prices in advertising and to clamp down on compensation for disrupted flights.

These recent steps have alarmed consumer groups and elected officials, with some saying that the proposals tilt the scales in favor of the airline industry. In addition, they say, the department is steadily taking a more hands-off approach to policing airlines, and that could end up hurting passengers.

More: In late March, at the height of the Iran war, Israel quietly approved more settlements in the Israeli-occupied West Bank than it ever had at one time.

Staff members at the United States Embassy in Jerusalem saw the move as potentially flouting one of President Trump's explicit red lines for Israel " no annexation of the West Bank " and drafted an urgent report intended for policy makers in Washington.

That memo never reached Washington. It was quashed by David Milstein, a top aide to Ambassador Mike Huckabee, according to three U.S. officials briefed on the process.

This was no isolated incident.

Since taking up his post in April 2025, Mr. Milstein, 36, has repeatedly suppressed or significantly revised embassy reporting on Israeli activities to present the Netanyahu government in a favorable light, according to a dozen people who work with or interact with Mr. Milstein in both Jerusalem and Washington:

As settler violence in the West Bank surged in the spring, for instance, he stymied embassy reporting suggesting that the Israeli government was failing to take action, according to the three officials. Instead the embassy sent a cable to Washington, viewed by The New York Times, praising Israel for "cracking down" on the attacks.

When members of Congress pushed for accountability over the killings of nine Palestinian Americans by Israeli settlers and security forces, he suppressed a detailed report that the embassy staff had written, effectively stonewalling lawmakers' efforts to gain information, according to multiple officials briefed on the matter.

Soon after arriving in Jerusalem, Mr. Milstein began insisting on approving communications from the embassy section that handles Palestinian affairs, multiple officials with direct knowledge of the process said. The flow of cables plummeted from several a week to a few a month, as some staffers refrained from writing reports for fear that Mr. Milstein would block or rewrite them, these officials said.

Mr. Milstein's interventions go far beyond those of any recent predecessor, several officials said. They and others said they were speaking out of concern that officials in Washington were getting a distorted view of Israeli actions through core diplomatic channels.

Mr. Milstein's efforts have helped insulate Israel's right-wing government against potential blowback from a Trump Administration that has been its closest ally.