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Is the Justice Department Building a Secret National Voter List Behind Your Back?
A coalition of voting rights groups dropped a lawsuit on the Trump Justice Department this week to stop what they’re calling a massive federal voter surveillance operation. Since last fall, the DOJ has been demanding voter rolls from every state in the country. We’re talking names, addresses, partial Social Security numbers, party affiliation. Twelve Republican-led states have already handed it all over. Alaska, Arkansas, Indiana, Louisiana, Mississippi, Nebraska, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, and Wyoming. The DOJ has sued thirty more states and DC for refusing. Common Cause, the ACLU, CREW, Protect Democracy, and Harvard Law’s Democracy Clinic filed suit Tuesday in federal court in Washington. They say no federal statute authorizes this sprawling voter surveillance operation, and they want every file deleted. Meanwhile, Homeland Security has quietly rebuilt a database called SAVE so states can run their entire voter rolls through it. Folks, this is the federal government quietly building a national voter list outside the Constitution. It’s how you purge voters. It’s how you intimidate them. And it’s how democracies die in broad daylight.
Did Texas Border Voters Just Turn on Trump?
Down in the Rio Grande Valley, in Texas’s 15th Congressional District, the mood is shifting fast. That’s one of the poorest districts in the state, heavily Latino, and it flipped hard for Trump in 2024. Now folks there are saying something powerful. Latin Grammy winner Bobby Pulido is running for the seat as a Democrat, and he’s listening. Pulido told The New York Times that Democrats have to stop lecturing and start talking economics in the language people actually use. People down there don’t call themselves poor, he said. They call themselves broke. Because broke means tomorrow we make it. Michelle Renee Rangel, who owns a restaurant called Falfurrias, cheered Trump’s election night victory. She and her husband voted for him. Now she’s hosting meet-and-greets for the Democrat. Her exact words? We made a mistake. Pulido predicts the backlash is going to be, in his words, very, very big. This is what happens when working families finally realize they got conned by a billionaire who promised prosperity and delivered tariffs, raids, and rising prices.
Gerrymandering for Me but Not for Thee
Texas Republican Chip Roy and Florida Republican Byron Donalds are losing their minds. Why? Virginia voters just approved a ballot measure letting state Democrats redraw the congressional map to favor their own party. Roy went on Fox Business and called Democrats Marxists who want to destroy the country. He’s begging the Virginia Supreme Court to ride in and save the Republican Party from losing seats. Byron Donalds went on Newsmax and cried about insanity, complaining that Democrats are stripping suburban precincts out to flip seats. Here’s the joke. The whole gerrymandering arms race started in Roy’s own Texas, where Republicans rigged their mid-decade map to hand themselves extra House seats out of thin air. Florida’s trying to do the exact same thing right now. Both states twisted their districts into Republican pretzels after 2020. For two solid decades Republicans rigged maps while Democrats played nice and lost seat after seat. Those days are finally over. Democracy doesn’t die when one side fights back. It dies when the other side keeps cheating alone and calls it patriotism.
Will the Senate Ever Stop Trump’s Endless War?
For the fifth time, Senate Republicans blocked a resolution to rein in Donald Trump’s war on Iran. Wednesday’s vote was 46 to 51. The resolution, sponsored by Wisconsin Democrat Tammy Baldwin, would’ve forced Trump to pull American forces out of Iran unless Congress explicitly authorized the war. Rand Paul was the only Republican with the guts to vote yes. John Fetterman was the only Democrat to vote no. The war started February 28, when the US, alongside Israel, launched strikes that killed Iran’s supreme leader and top commanders. That’s eight weeks of American bombs, American dollars, and American troops in harm’s way, with zero authorization from Congress. Baldwin compared it to the Iraq war, which started fast and dragged on eight long years. The fight over the Strait of Hormuz is keeping energy prices sky-high. Tens of billions of dollars already burned. Chuck Schumer says Democrats will force these votes every single week until the war ends. This is exactly what the founders feared. One man, no checks, picking which country to bomb next. That’s not a republic. That’s an empire running on autopilot.
Remember When Trump Told America to Inject Bleach?
Six years ago today, on April 23, 2020, Donald Trump stood at a White House podium and suggested Americans could fight COVID by somehow injecting disinfectant into their bodies and shining UV light inside themselves. Dr. Deborah Birx sat behind him looking like she wanted the floor to swallow her whole. Poison control calls spiked across multiple states within hours. Trump later claimed he was being sarcastic. He wasn’t. The country was shut down. Hospitals were overwhelmed. Refrigerator trucks served as morgues outside New York hospitals. Mass graves were dug on Hart Island. And the President of the United States was musing about Lysol as medicine on live television. Apparently a whole lot of conservative voters forgot exactly who this man was before they put him back in the White House. Because the one lesson Trump took from that catastrophe wasn’t humility. It wasn’t science. It was this. If you just lie loud enough and long enough, half the country will forget it ever happened. And now he’s running the whole government that way.
Will the Old “Chicken in Every Pot” Scam Be Heard by California?
And finally, a story so absurd you couldn’t make it up. At California’s first gubernatorial debate Wednesday night, Trump-endorsed candidate Steve Hilton, the former Fox News host, took the stage alongside Riverside Sheriff Chad Bianco and Democrats Katie Porter, billionaire Tom Steyer, ex-HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra, and San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan. Eric Swalwell dropped out under a cloud of sexual misconduct allegations. Moderator Frank Buckley asked Hilton why Californians should trust him when 62 percent of them disapprove of Trump. Hilton’s big answer? He and Donald Trump together are going to lower gas prices. In California. You know, the state Trump loves to attack on Truth Social at three in the morning. Folks, this is the oldest snake oil in American politics. In 1928 Herbert Hoover promised a chicken in every pot and a car in every garage. Six months later the stock market crashed. Trump promised cheap gas, cheap eggs, cheap everything. Gas is up. Eggs are up. Groceries are up. And now Hilton wants to sell Californians that same tired lie by holding Trump’s hand on stage. It would be funny if it weren’t so sad. Sad because millions of families are getting squeezed every single day. Funny because Hilton seriously thinks voters will fall for it twice. Here’s a thought, Steve. Maybe just promise them a pony while you’re at it.
And that’s the way it is, Today Thursday April 23, 2026. I’m Thom Hartmann.
