Supreme Court Hands Trump Huge Loss in Voter Suppression Scheme

President Donald Trump’s attempt to mess with California’s elections has been shot down by the Supreme Court. In a one-sentence rejection with no explanation, the court ruled on Monday evening against the Trump administration’s emergency request that California separate 20,000 ballots that the White House claims were cast by noncitizens. There do not appear to have been any dissents. Election officials in California and Los Angeles County said that the administration’s list was unreliable, pointing to their own findings that many on the list were actually U.S.-born citizens. The Trump administration even admitted that the list contained inaccuracies but still insisted that California comply with its demands. Late last month, the DOJ sued to force California to separate those 20,000 ballots.Last week, U.S. District Judge David Carter issued a blistering ruling castigating the White House for acting like a monarchy. “Never before in American history has the federal government, on the eve of an election, sought to coerce a state and local government to abandon their own Constitutional elections procedures and bend to the will of the Executive Branch,” Carter wrote at the time. “In bringing this lawsuit, the Executive would have this Court believe that it reigns as a sole sovereign. But California and its people are sovereign, too.”Now, the Supreme Court has affirmed Carter’s ruling and protected California’s ballots from Trump’s interference. That hasn’t stopped the Trump administration from arresting people based on the error-ridden list, though. Republican Michigan Senate candidate Mike Rogers made $420,000 as a board member for a consultancy firm that is now helping Elon Musk and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth run “Project Meridian.” Drop Site News reported Monday that Rogers—who is running against Democratic nominee Dr. Abdul El-Sayed—held a position on the MITRE Corporation’s board from 2017 to 2023. He brought his “vast national security expertise” in exchange for the $420,000. Hegseth announced Project Meridian in late September, a study on the “future of warfare” led by Musk, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, and right-wing entrepreneur Palmer Luckey. It aims to “creatively look to the future and identify the domains that we must conquer,” Hegseth said. This ominous effort will be headed by the MITRE Corporation—which was paying Rogers just a few years ago. Rogers left the corporation’s board during his failed Senate run in 2024, though he has been a vocal supporter of Trump’s Iran war since then. Despite Rogers’s departure, it’s all but guaranteed that a Rogers midterm victory will lead to more warmongering, more suffering, and continued high fuel costs. The Iran war has not developed according to the U.S. president’s plan, and now he’s looking for someone to blame.Donald Trump is reportedly examining his Cabinet for a potential fall guy, according to a report published Monday by The Atlantic. At the top of the list are two of Trump’s chief advisers on the war effort: Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman General Dan Caine.Hegseth’s saving grace—amid his tanking favor—is his ability to butter Trump up. “Hegseth is good at telling the president what he wants to hear,” an outside adviser told the magazine.Sean Parnell, a Pentagon spokesperson, refuted the characterization, telling The Atlantic in a statement that “Secretary Hegseth always provides the President and White House senior leaders the full operational picture” and that any suggestion otherwise was “dead wrong.”In an apparent attempt to redirect blame, Hegseth has made mincemeat out of his own stable of advisers, targeting top generals for leaking details to the press—an unforgivable transgression among the MAGA elite.Last week, Hegseth suddenly fired Army Lt. Gen. Brett Sylvia from the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Sylvia was the director of the Directorate for Strategy, Plans, and Policy, effectively serving as the Pentagon’s chief war planner, and a vital liaison between America’s armed forces and the White House. Sylvia is at least the fifth general that Hegseth either forced out or fired since he was appointed to oversee America’s military. But the timing could not be worse, particularly as Trump weighs renewed combat against Iran after the midterms.Hegseth, however, is not the only Cabinet official to be graced by Trump’s evil eye as the president’s popularity plummets. Last month, as Trump attempted to get out ahead of a predicted midterm bust, he reportedly called several close confidants to assess the job performance of White House chief of staff Susie Wiles, Trump’s former campaign manager and famed “Ice Maiden.” President Trump’s attempt to shake down Harvard University for its admissions data was thrown out by a federal judge Monday. U.S. District Judge Myong J. Joun in Boston dismissed the White House’s lawsuit against the university, saying that the Department of Justice did not follow all legally required steps to get a court order compelling the university to comply with its demands. “The ruling does not determine whether Harvard has discriminated, whether the agencies may lawfully seek appropriately defined applicant-level data, or whether Harvard may ultimately be required to provide such data,” Joun wrote in his ruling. In its lawsuit, the Trump administration claimed that Harvard wasn’t cooperating with a government review of its admissions policies, and “slow-walked the pace of production” of relevant documents and refused to hand over others. Those documents included application essays.Harvard said the DOJ’s demands were excessive, calling the administration’s lawsuit “part of the Trump administration’s ongoing campaign against Harvard.” The institution said its admissions process was in full accordance with federal law.Trump demanded $1 billion from the university earlier this year after it refused to sign his “compact” on education policy and send millions of dollars to the U.S. Treasury. The administration also sued Harvard for allegedly fostering a “hostile educational environment” for Jewish and Israeli students, but that lawsuit was thrown out in August. Trump and his far-right allies have sought to fight “far-left” influence at U.S. universities, using cuts to federal education funding and accusations of antisemitism to force these institutions to comply with right-wing policies and ideology. Harvard is the highest-profile university to be targeted and seems to be successfully fighting back. Vice President JD Vance is once again spreading racist lies for attention.At a midterm elections rally for Republican gubernatorial nominee Vivek Ramaswamy in Swanton, Ohio, on Monday, Vance baselessly claimed that undocumented immigrants were engaged in a plot to steal the state’s election.“Now, I saw a story, just in the last couple of days, that there are illegal communities of illegal immigrant Somalis who are coordinating to flood the polls and drown out your vote,” Vance said. “Well, I happen to believe that we want American elections to belong to American citizens. Send a message by voting for Vivek for governor!”Vance: I saw a story that there are illegal communities of illegal immigrant Somalis who are coordinating to flood the polls and drown out your vote. We want American elections to belong to American citizens. Send a message by voting for Vivek for governor. https://t.co/PsTT7ScDQI— Acyn (@Acyn) November 2, 2026 There is no evidence to support Vance’s claim, and it’s unclear what “story” he is supposedly referring to. If you’re feeling a sense of déjà vu, that’s because this isn’t the first time the vice president has indulged in this kind of grotesque gossip. While campaigning with President Donald Trump ahead of the 2024 presidential election, Vance spread false rumors that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, were eating their neighbors’ cats and dogs. Later, he admitted that he had absolutely no evidence to support his claims. “If I have to create stories so that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people then that’s what I’m going to do,” he said at the time. With just hours until Election Day, it seems that Vance may be back to his old tricks, turning his attention to another immigrant community that Trump has attacked with racist smears. And unlike the Somali community in Minnesota, which has broad support from the state’s Democratic-led government, right-wing lawmakers have repeatedly targeted Ohio’s Somali American community. Read more about the Ramaswamy race: