#politics

President Trump told a conservative podcaster this week that he wants Republicans to "take over the voting" in 15 states in order to "nationalize" the 2026 midterm elections, raising concerns that he may try to defy the Constitution and interfere in ways that would benefit his party.

"The Republicans should say, 'We want to take over,'" Trump declared in an interview with Dan Bongino, his former deputy F.B.I. director, on Monday. "We should take over the voting, the voting in at least many — 15 places. The Republicans ought to nationalize the voting."

The president did not explain what he meant by 'nationalizing the voting," nor did he say which states he had in mind. But he went on to claim that it was necessary for the GOP to seize control because "people were brought to our country to vote, and they vote illegally."

"We have states that are so crooked," he said. "We have states that I won that show I didn't win."

All of Trump's allegations of widespread, result-altering election fraud — claims he has been making since he lost the popular vote to Hillary Clinton in 2016 — have been conclusively debunked, both in court and by GOP election officials. A 2024 audit by Georgia's Republican secretary of state, for instance, found that just 20 of the 8.2 million people registered to vote there were not citizens. Only nine of them had ever cast ballots.

Even an ongoing review of the 2024 election by Trump's Department of Homeland Security has so far "found little evidence of widespread voting fraud by noncitizens," according to the New York Times.

Yet a series of recent moves — including last week's FBI raid on an election center in Fulton County, Ga. — suggest that Trump's call to nationalize the 2026 midterms may be more than mere rhetoric.

"I don't know why the federal government doesn't do [elections] anyway," Trump added at an Oval Office event on Tuesday. "The federal government should get involved."

Trump then vowed to sign "an EXECUTIVE ORDER" to that effect. (For the record, only about four out of every 10 million mail votes is found to be fraudulent; the vast majority of Americans use paper ballots already; and voting machines are a faster, cheaper and more accurate way of tabulating those ballots than counting by hand.)

Donald Trump set off alarm bells earlier this week with comments that his administration should “take over the voting” in some states in the run-up to the 2026 midterms, which followed an unprecedented FBI raid on an election office in Georgia. Although election experts say it’s clear the president doesn’t have authority over elections, they warn the president’s corrosive rhetoric leaves little doubt about his intent.

For months, the Trump administration has stoked doubts about the integrity of American elections largely through lawsuits designed to create the impression states aren’t doing enough to keep ineligible voters off the rolls. That effort escalated significantly last week when the FBI raided the election office in Fulton county, Georgia and seized ballots, along with other materials, related to the 2020 election. Shortly after the raid, Trump escalated his attack even further, saying the federal government should take over elections.

“The Republicans should say, ‘We want to take over,’” he said during a recent interview with Dan Bongino, the former deputy FBI director who has returned to hosting a podcast. “We should take over the voting, the voting in at least many – 15 places. The Republicans ought to nationalize the voting.”

This latest version of the SAVE Act would effectively require every American to produce a passport or birth certificate each time they register or re-register to vote. More than 21 million American citizens do not have those documents readily available. Roughly half of Americans do not even have a passport. Millions lack easy access to a paper copy of their birth certificate. Millions more women whose married names are not on their birth certificates or passports would face extra steps just to make their voices heard.

In addition, the SAVE America Act would eliminate or upend most methods of registering to vote. Mail and online registration would be essentially abolished, as would voter registration drives that add hundreds of thousands of citizens to the rolls every election cycle.

It would also direct states to send their voter rolls to the Department of Homeland Security for inspection via the agency’s flawed citizenship verification tool. For months, Democratic and Republican states alike have been refusing similar requests from the Trump administration because of well-founded concerns about misuse of sensitive, private voter data.

The bill would also impose an unfunded mandate on election officials, saddling them with the responsibility of hashing out the practical details, leaving them to cover the costs, and threatening them with criminal and civil penalties if they get things wrong. It would also go into effect immediately, wreaking havoc on election administration.

There are already checks in place to ensure that only eligible citizens can vote. All available evidence, including from the Trump administration itself, indicates that only American citizens vote and the exceptions are vanishingly rare. States that have combed through their voter rolls looking for illegally cast votes – as Louisiana and Utah just did – have repeatedly confirmed that fact.

Cutting costs by cutting benefits is difficult, but the program can also achieve substantial economies of scale in the prices it pays for health care and administrative expenses—and, as a result, private insurers' costs have grown almost 60% more than Medicare's since 1970.[citation needed][106][original research?][107] Medicare's cost growth is now the same as GDP growth and expected to stay well below private insurance's for the next decade.

Health care spending in the United States, as a proportion of gross domestic product, is significantly higher than in other high-income countries, yet health outcomes are far worse. For example, average life expectancy is lower than in peer countries, while avoidable death rates are higher.

Systemic inequities lead to pronounced disparities in care and outcomes for many racial and ethnic minority groups, low-income families, and rural populations.

Health system challenges include rapidly rising costs caused in part by market consolidation, inconsistent access to primary and specialty care, and administrative complexity.

Healthcare in the United States is largely provided by private sector healthcare facilities, and paid for by a combination of public programs, county indigent health care programs, private insurance, and out-of-pocket payments.

The U.S. is the only developed country without a system of universal healthcare, with around 92% of the population covered under some kind of health insurance for some, or all of the year.

The United States spends more on healthcare than any other country, both in absolute terms and as a percentage of GDP;

In 2022, the United States spent approximately 17.8% of its Gross Domestic Product (GDP) on healthcare, significantly higher than the average of 11.5% among other high-income countries.[

The Department of Justice intervened in a lawsuit over xAI’s gas turbines on Monday. In a filing, the agency sided with Elon Musk’s company, saying attempts to stop xAI from running the natural gas turbines “threatens American national, economic, and energy security by seeking to shut off the power supply for artificial-intelligence innovation that supports the Department of War’s military operations.”

The NAACP alleges xAI isn’t following the Clean Air Act and is endangering public health by running unpermitted natural gas turbines at the site of its second data center in Southaven, Mississippi, dubbed Colossus 2. In May, the NAACP filed a request for a preliminary injunction to stop xAI from running the turbines, alleging that their continued use without a permit “increases risks of asthma attacks and heart disease” in communities with an already heavy pollution burden.

According to the DOJ memorandum, there are only four artificial intelligence models, including Grok, that “support mission-critical operations across Secret and Top-Secret classified networks.” A separate declaration filed by Cameron Stanley, the chief digital and artificial intelligence officer at the Department of Defense, details how the military relies on Grok’s Gov model to “support vital national security missions.” That includes using the model as part of recent strikes against Iran. Forcing xAI to stop running the gas turbines powering Colossus 2, Stanley says, “directly threatens ongoing national security interests.”

The original lawsuit filed by the NAACP identified 27 turbines operating without a permit at its site in Southaven. But emails between xAI and state regulators obtained by the Southern Environmental Law Center (SELC), a partner in the NAACP lawsuit, show that as of mid-May, there were 57 turbines operating without permits at the Colossus 2 site. Many of those turbines, the emails show, were added weeks after the NAACP filed its lawsuit.

The growth of Colossus 2’s turbines from 27 to 57 means, according to the SELC, that the site has seen a 111 percent increase in nitrogen oxide emissions, an 83 percent increase in PM2.5 emissions, and an 88 percent increase in formaldehyde emissions since April.

The video by right-wing YouTuber Nick Shirley posted on December 26 purports to show that various Minneapolis day cares run by Somali Americans are not providing services to children despite receiving public funding. Although the video has already been debunked by investigators, the Trump administration and Republicans in Congress have seized on it. Vice President JD Vance said Shirley “has done far more useful journalism than any of the winners of the 2024 [Pulitzer Prizes].”

The fallout has been massive. In the past week, the Trump administration has frozen child care payments to five Democratic-run states and ramped up reporting requirements for all states receiving child care funds to cover services for the lowest-income kids. Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, a Democrat, has suspended his reelection campaign over it.

What does Nick Shirley uncover in his video? 

Nothing conclusive. The video shows Shirley visiting day cares run by Somali Americans, sometimes under the false pretense of trying to enroll a child.

Because some of the sites appear closed and Shirley doesn’t see any children, he declares this as proof of fraud at these facilities. 

Most child care centers are locked and have obscured doors or windows for children’s safety. Children are also kept in classrooms and would not likely be visible from a reception area. One of the day cares in the video told several news outlets that it did not grant Shirley entrance because he showed up with a handful of masked men, which raised suspicions that the men were agents with Immigration and Customs Enforcement. At least one of the centers was closed at the time Shirley arrived because it opens later in the day to serve the children of second-shift workers.

Is there a history of child care fraud in the state? 

Yes, but it’s not as widespread as Shirley claims.

By 2019, state prosecutors had charged at least a dozen Minnesotans and centers with defrauding the state’s child care program in the prior five years. 

After the 2019 report was issued, the state tightened oversight, including creating the Department of Children, Youth and Families (DCYF) to take over child care licensing, oversight and auditing. Last year, Minnesota passed a law to criminalize kickbacks for child care program enrollment referrals.

2025 report by the federal Department of Health and Human Services Office of the Inspector General found that issues with overpayments continue in the state. The OIG sampled 1,155 child care centers and found that 11 percent of the payments made to those centers in 2023 had errors. 

But that doesn’t necessarily mean there was fraud. Improper payments is an umbrella term that could include fraud. 

For example, “an improper payment is a child was present for 40 hours and somehow the state paid only for 30 hours. Fraud is when you’re charging for kids that were never enrolled,” explained Danielle Ewen, a national child care expert.

An 11 percent rate puts Minnesota above the permissible 10 percent threshold established by the federal government, Ewen said. On average nationwide, the rate is 4 percent.

Most of the centers in the video did have numerous state licensing violations against them regarding cleanliness, staff supervision and some recordkeeping around immunizations and allergies. But none of the violations against the centers were regarding fraud, according to state enforcement records.

Why was the Somali community targeted? 

David Hoch, the lobbyist and former right-wing candidate for Minnesota attorney general who serves as the main source in Shirley’s video, received information on the centers from Republican staffers in Minnesota. 

Hoch has had a particular focus on the Somali community and fraud for some time. In a now-deleted Instagram account, Hoch posted almost exclusively about the Somali community, according to reporting in The Intercept.

“EVERY Somali in MN is engaged in fraud. ALL of them,” Hoch posted.  “Even the Blacks have had enough of the demon Muslims,” he said in November.

Quality Learning Center’s most recent inspection – which state officials say are done unannounced – was on June 23, the facility’s licensing record shows.

“There have been ongoing investigations involving several of those centers. None of those investigations uncovered findings of fraud,” state Department of Children, Youth, and Families Commissioner Tikki Brown said Monday of centers covered in Shirley’s video, adding that new site visits would be conducted this week. The department did not respond to multiple requests from CNN for whether those additional visits have been completed and what the results were.

State DHS records show Quality Learning Center was cited for 121 violations from May 2022 to June 2025, including 10 in the most recent inspection, listed as a licensing review. Citations included having an unqualified substitute and failing to have proper documentation for children’s medicine. None of the violations suggest that the building was empty.

The state records also show correction documents were submitted and approved in response to the violations.

The citation focused on a lack of documentation for many children. “There were several children present who did not have files,” the letter says, adding that “staff were unable to provide the first and last names for most of the children present.”

Although it remained on conditional status for two years, Quality Learning Center was never suspended, according to state records. It has twice been fined $200 for allowing the background check on an employee to expire.

On Tuesday afternoon, the sidewalk in front of the facility had become a hive of activity – including the return of Nick Shirley – as media and Shirley supporters watched adults escorting children in and out. A CNN crew was kept back from the property, told by an unidentified person that being in the parking lot would be considered trespassing.

Determining exactly how many children are served by Quality Learning Center – now, or in the past – is difficult from state records. The facility is licensed to provide care for a maximum of 99 children, but Ali, the center’s manager, told KARE it serves anywhere from 50 to 80 children on an average day.

And as for that missing letter “n”? Ali told KARE it was a mistake by the graphic designer. By Tuesday, work on a fix was underway.

In the summer of 2025, Congressional Republicans passed a reconciliation bill providing $170.7 billion dollars to the Department of Homeland Security for immigration enforcement related activities. According to Office of Management and Budget, of the $75 billion specifically for ICE, $63 billion remains unspent while of the $65 billion for CBP, $37 billion remains unspent.

Or, to put it another way, ICE and CBP, despite receiving no annual appropriations this year, still have $100 billion dollars in funding to spend.

So, obviously, what Congress needs to do this year is appropriate still more money to ICE and CBP (another $70 billion to ICE and CBP together through 2029). Last night, in a 52-47 vote, that’s just what the Senate did.

Deficits are large by historical standards. The deficit totals $1.9 trillion in fiscal year 2026 and grows to $3.1 trillion in 2036. Relative to the size of the economy, the deficit is 5.8 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) in 2026 and increases to 6.7 percent in 2036. Deficits averaged 3.8 percent of GDP over the last 50 years (see Chapter 1).

Debt held by the public rises from 101 percent of GDP in 2026 to 120 percent in 2036, well above the previous record of 106 percent just after World War II.

Outlays are large by historical standards—and growing. They total 23.3 percent of GDP in 2026, exceeding their 50-year average of 21.2 percent. After being adjusted for shifts in the timing of certain payments, outlays remain at about that level through 2028 but then grow steadily, boosted by rising spending on mandatory programs and increasing net interest costs. Outlays in 2036 are 24.4 percent of GDP (see Chapter 3).

the cumulative deficit over the 2026–2035 period is $1.4 trillion (or 6 percent) greater (see Chapter 5). Three major policy developments contribute to those changes: The 2025 reconciliation act (see Appendix A) increased deficits by an estimated $4.7 trillion; higher tariffs reduced deficits by an estimated $3.0 trillion; and administrative actions related to immigration increased deficits by an estimated $0.5 trillion.

The law’s most significant tax changes were those that extended certain provisions of the 2017 tax act (P.L. 115-97) that had expired or were scheduled to expire after 2025. The reconciliation act lowered statutory tax rates and changed the amount of individual income subject to tax, thus reducing individual income tax liabilities for most households and for pass-through businesses (that is, businesses for which income is taxed under the individual income tax system). It also accelerated deductions for business investment and thus reduced effective marginal tax rates on that investment. (The effective marginal tax rate measures the tax burden on returns from a marginal investment—that is, one that is expected to earn just enough, after taxes, to attract investors.) The reconciliation act modified eligibility and financing for Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and altered the terms of federal student loans, reducing federal spending on those programs. It also provided additional funding for defense, homeland security, and immigration-related activities.

The 2025 reconciliation act is estimated to increase total deficits over the 2025–2034 period by $4.2 trillion relative to CBO’s January 2025 baseline projections (see Table A-1).

To account for the effects of the 2025 reconciliation act, CBO increased its estimate of total deficits over the 2025–2034 period by $4.2 trillion relative to the agency’s January 2025 baseline projections (see Table A-1). That amount reflects CBO and JCT’s conventional estimate of the law’s effects on primary deficits (which exclude net outlays for interest) as well as effects of increased net outlays for interest and of budgetary feedback from macroeconomic changes. In total, the reconciliation act increases CBO’s estimate of federal debt as a percentage of GDP in 2034 by 9.0 percentage points, from 117.1 percent of GDP to 126.0 percent.

Judge Leo Sorokin decided those fees violated the Constitution and the Administrative Procedure Act. Twenty states filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration over the fees. The judge agreed with the states that the fee is a tax, which the president cannot levy on his own. “The tax can only be levied by Congress, and so he crossed the line when he entered into this area of charging $100,000 for a particular type of visa,” Hing said.

The Trump administration has already said they plan to appeal this ruling. The district court is the lowest-level court in the federal system, with the next stop likely to be the court of appeals.

In the meantime, companies are not required to pay the fee.

As for the companies that have already paid the fee, they will likely seek reimbursement from the government. However, any refunds will likely have to wait until the appeals process is completed, which will take some time.

On March 21, 2026, Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz announced that “all houses and villages near the Lebanese border will be destroyed, in accordance with the model used in Rafah and Beit Hanoun in Gaza.” That model, the systematic demolition of thousands of homes, including after the end of active hostilities and without discernible military justification, is being carried out using the D9 Armoured Bulldozer, manufactured by Caterpillar Inc. Within the Occupied Palestinian territories, the Palestinian population lives under military law, and the Israeli military utilizes Regulation 119, Defense (Emergency) Regulations (1945) which allows military commanders to order the demolition of any home or structure utilized by a convicted or suspected terrorist.

In 2002, B’tselem documented IDF D9s destroying 60 homes in the Rafah refugee camp, displacing over 600 Palestinians five years before Hamas took power.

Since October 2024, IDF D9 bulldozers, in controlled demolition, demolished 8,218 homes in Gaza, many after ceasefires and without military rationale.

A 2026 UN report documented the destruction as systematic, occurring in neighborhoods cleared of combatants and posing no ongoing military threat.

A New York Times report detailed 50 social media accounts of Israeli soldiers demolishing houses, schools and other civilian buildings.

September 2024: West Bank Raid

The IDF deployed D9s as collective punishment following the October 7th, 2023 attacks. In the West Bank IDF raids caused an estimated $135 million in damages: 20km of water, sewage, electricity, and communication networks were destroyed; 70% of the road network was demolished along with 40 residential buildings and 10 businesses being damaged.

Following the 2024 ceasefire in Lebanon, IDF D9s demolished entire villages and leveled cemeteries, obliterating headstones and burial markers.

The IDF demolished or heavily damaged at least 850 structures across refugee camps of Nur Shams, Jenin, and Tulkarem continuing acts of collective punishment. Resulting in the displacement of some 40,000 people in the largest mass displacement of Palestinians in the West Bank since the Israeli occupation began in 1967.

In November, it was reported that the Biden administration was holding up the sale of the D9 bulldozers due to the IDF’s use of them to raze homes in Gaza. The IDF has said the homes were used by Hamas and accuses the terror group of using civilians as human shields.

US President Donald Trump, upon entering office, walked back on several measures by the previous administration meant to curb arms sales to Israel.

Since the beginning of the war on October 7, 2023, the Defense Ministry says, 870 transport planes and 144 ships have delivered more than 100,000 tons of armaments and military equipment to Israel, mostly from the US.

For 2026, across 312 insurers participating in the ACA Marketplaces from the 50 states and the District of Columbia, this analysis shows a median proposed premium increase of 18%, which is about 11 percentage points higher than last year. This is the largest rate change insurers have requested since 2018, the last time that policy uncertainty contributed to sharp premium increases.

key factor driving costs in 2026. Insurers cite increasing cost and utilization of high-priced drugs as well as general market factors, such as increasing labor costs and inflation, as contributing to premium increases.

In addition to rising healthcare costs, the majority of insurers are also taking into account the potential expiration of enhanced premium tax credits in their premium rate increases for the next year. The expiration of enhanced tax credits will lead to out-of-pocket premiums for ACA marketplace enrollees increasing by an average of more than 75%, with insurers expecting healthier enrollees to drop coverage. That, in turn, increases underlying premiums. Other federal policy changes, like the implementation of tariffs and the ACA Marketplace Integrity and Affordability rule were also discussed, though to a lesser extent.

Enrollment in the Affordable Care Act continues to erode as some customers struggle to make premium payments, with the declining numbers churning market uncertainty for insurers. In response, insurers are likely to raise rates again next year, following this year’s larger-than-typical hikes.

A KFF analysis released May 19, for instance, found that the average ACA plan deductible saw the steepest increase in history — growing by 37%, or over $1,000, from $2,759 in 2025 to $3,786 in 2026 as enhanced premium tax credits expired.

Those rising costs pose a political challenge for President Donald Trump and the broader GOP, which has opposed enhanced subsidies to help people purchase Obamacare coverage. Republican lawmakers also passed a spending package last year — enacted as the One Big Beautiful Bill Act — that included provisions expected to reduce ACA enrollment and was cited among factors fueling higher premiums this year.

GDP, broadly speaking, is a measure of the value of an economy. Analyzing the debt in context of GDP makes it easier to track the debt alongside changes in economy and inflation, allowing for comparisons of the debt over time; it can also indicate a country's ability to repay its debt. When debt reaches 100% of a nation's GDP, it indicates that the country owes about as much as its economy generates annually.

How about you give me my share and let me invest it myself?

AIPAC used a complicated web of political committees to influence the Illinois primary elections in March. Whether or not it is using the same tactics in Michigan — the group did not respond to a request for comment — observers expect it to continue to hide its campaign spending in the months to come, as primary candidates battle over AIPAC’s influence.

A NEW YORK state oversight board raised ethics concerns about a trip by state Comptroller Tom DiNapoli to Israel that a local pro-Israel Jewish group sponsored.

The revelation comes amid renewed scrutiny of DiNapoli’s spending spree on Israel Bonds, a financial instrument that directly funds the state of Israel.

The trip was paid for by the Jewish Community Relations Council of New York, which has a financial relationship to Israel Bonds, the organization that issues Israeli government debt securities in the U.S.

On Sunday, DiNapoli and other state and local electeds marched in the parade again, joined by an array of extremist Israeli political figures including Bezalel Smotrich, the current finance minister and a far-right champion of illegal settlements.

In his 18 years as comptroller — and particularly in the months and years following October 7 and the launch of Israel’s genocide in Gaza — DiNapoli has turned the state’s pension fund into one of the largest holders of Israel Bonds nationwide. Since the February 2024 trip, Dinapoli has invested $120 million of the state’s common retirement fund in the instruments, bringing the total investment of state pension funds in Israel Bonds to $332.5 million.

Critics of the investments also point to a fiscally responsible argument against the bonds. Unlike traditional foreign-debt assets, Israel Bonds cannot be sold on a secondary market and instead must be held until they mature. That makes them a potentially unsound bet, especially considering the rapid decline of Israel’s credit rating in recent years.