Raw Story

States are being pressured into rewriting their election rules to receive terrorism grants, according to a New York Times report.

The Trump administration is demanding that states overhaul how they run elections, a few months before the midterms, or forfeit tens of millions in federal counterterrorism funding, The Times reported.

The changes include transitioning to hand-marked paper ballots, verifying the citizenship of voters, and conducting manual audits of 5 percent of ballots, which is "likely to cause significant delays in counting, cost millions of dollars and, in some cases, fall far short of what would be considered an adequate audit for races with narrow margins," The Times noted.

The measures demanded by the Trump administration "will actually harm election security," David Becker, who directs the Center for Election Innovation and Research, told The Times.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), which is part of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), wants states to provide "proof of compliance" to receive counterterrorism funding, The Times reported. FEMA is threatening to withhold 20 percent of certain terrorism-preparedness grants, totaling roughly $1 billion a year. Those grants pay for security barriers, cybersecurity protections, planning, and drills, The Times reported.

According to the Times, the grants largely flow to populous states, and New York is slated to receive about $204 million through those grants in fiscal year 2026. Gov. Kathy Hochul (D-NY) accused the Trump administration of putting residents at risk to advance a political agenda, The Times reported.

Courts have repeatedly blocked similar attempts, ruling that the Constitution gives the executive branch no authority over elections, which states run and Congress oversees. The Times noted, pointing out that two Trump executive orders seeking sweeping election changes have largely been struck down.

Becker told The Times that he expects the election rules the Trump administration is pushing to collapse in court. DHS said in an unsigned statement that election security was a top priority, according to The Times.

First, full disclosure: I’m not a soccer fan. I'm a football fan, and a diehard Pittsburgh Steelers fan. So, having said that, let’s start with a hypothetical.

Say the Steelers are heading into a playoff game and their best defensive player just got suspended for a hit the league ruled illegal.

Team owner Art Rooney doesn't like the call. So he picks up the phone, calls NFL commissioner Roger Goodell directly, and leans on him to “take another look.” Two days later, the league reverses course. The suspension is lifted. The player suits up. The Steelers win.

If that happened, I'd be thrilled, and I would not be asking a single question about how it all went down. Because Art Rooney owns the Steelers. Roger Goodell runs Rooney's league. That's a phone call between people inside the same house, playing by rules (well, I would hope they are) that belong to them.

Nobody outside that room would have any right to be outraged, except, of course, if you were a Baltimore Ravens fan. But I digress.

Now here's a real story about how another phone call went down.

Last Thursday, U.S. striker Folarin Balogun picked up a red card during Team USA's win over Bosnia and Herzegovina. It was a foul serious enough to draw an automatic one-match ban, which would have kept him out of tonight’s knockout match against Belgium.

Balogun is the team's leading scorer at this World Cup. Losing him for a win-or-go-home game felt, to a lot of American fans, like a gut punch. Donald Trump decided to meddle. He called FIFA president Gianni Infantino and asked him to "review" the card. My bet? Trump didn’t say the word "review."

On Sunday, FIFA announced the suspension was being set aside, not overturned outright, mind you, but "suspended for a probationary period," a wobbly phrase that bounces off the head and goes out of bounds. It all screams corruption, which America, and the world now knows, is Donald Trump’s middle name.

In the Oval Office on Monday, Trump bragged about what he did. Balogun will start against Belgium tonight, and the world is seething with anger — or at least most of the world.

Now, here's the difference from my Steelers story: Donald Trump doesn't own Team USA. He isn't its coach, its federation president, or anyone with legitimate standing to intervene in a disciplinary process.

I highly doubt Trump is even a soccer fan because it’s not bloody and gory like a UFC match.

He's, gallingly, the President of the United States, and he’s calling the head of an independent global sports body four days before his own country's must-win game. It reeks of favoritism, stacking the deck, and dissing every other team in the tournament.

Let’s do another hypothetical.

What if Belgium's star goalkeeper, Thibaut Courtois, received a red card during the team’s win over Senegal, and Belgium’s Prime Minister, Bart De Wever, called Infantino and asked him to review Courtois’ red card? That request would stand a snowball's chance in hell.

The last time something like this happened, when a red card suspension was famously bypassed following presidential intervention, was during the 1962 World Cup, when Brazilian star winger Garrincha was cleared to play in the final after political pressure.

There is a reason the last time this happened was 64 years ago, and I don’t think I need to explain why.

Once the suspension was lifted, all hell broke loose.

This time, Belgium's football federation called the reversal "unprecedented, incomprehensible and unjustifiable." They appealed the decision, but guess what? They were denied. Go figure!

Former English soccer star and BBC analyst Wayne Rooney called it "an absolute disgrace." Another English former star and current NBC Sports analyst Gary Neville said it "absolutely stinks."

Once politics — or, in this case, the sleazy Trump — gets involved, who knows where or how it stops?

None of this should surprise anyone who's watched Infantino suck up to Trump. He slavishly and ridiculously handed Trump the tournament's first-ever "Peace Prize" last December and has spent months building political cover for him. Infantino runs a federation about to post record profits hosting the biggest live sports event on earth, and Trump is his money ticket because the games are happening here in the U.S.

If Infantino said no to Trump, would Trump sic FCC Chair Brendon Carr on him and threaten the cash cow of broadcasting rights? Maybe that’s a bit of an exaggeration, but who knows what the impulsive Trump would do?

It’s a wash, though, since Infantino would change Trump’s diaper if he were asked to.

What makes this so combustible is that it's split fans into three camps. So once again, Donald Trump sows unparalleled division.

American fans who just want their team to win are thrilled because Balogun is irreplaceable, and losing him felt like getting robbed.

Other American fans, the ones who think the undisciplined Trump has no business anywhere near a disciplinary ruling, are embarrassed, and plenty of them are openly rooting for Belgium tonight because Donald Trump inserted himself, again, into a situation where he does not belong.

And fans overseas, many already furious at what Trump's tariffs and uncalled-for Iran war have done to their economies, see this as one more example of the evil Trump being the loathsome Trump. They hate America and Americans because they voted for Trump.

Tonight, they're not just rooting against a soccer team. They're rooting against Trump and against a country they feel put him back in office.

We have now drifted so far away from whether the original red card was the right call. If the U.S. wins tonight, plenty of people around the world will say it wasn't earned, and that with Trump’s intervention, the U.S. cheated.

The U.S. will be the team the whole world roots against.

If the U.S. loses, just as many will call it karma. Either way, the team can't win without controversy. Trump made sure of that, then made it worse by bragging about it afterward, thanking FIFA for "reversing a great injustice."

Whatever the final score says tonight in Seattle, it won't tell the real story. The real story is that once again, everything Donald Trump touches ends up poisoned by Donald Trump, and a tournament that was supposed to belong to the world now has his dirty fingerprints all over it.

If anyone deserves a red card — a permanent one — it’s Donald Trump.

A sluggish elevator forced Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) into an awkward confrontation with a local TV reporter seeking answers about her gubernatorial campaign.

The MAGA senator is the frontrunner in the Republican primary for Tennessee governor, but she's refusing to debate her GOP rivals and has refused to give interviews with reporters, so the delayed elevator at an event in Nashville forced her into a tight spot with WTVF-TV's Ben Hall.

"Senator, can we ask you about your run for governor?" Hall said.

An aide told the reporter Blackburn didn't have time for questions, but Hall said reporters were told she would speak with the media.

"Well, we were told you were going to answer some questions," Hall said. "Why don't you have time to talk? Should you talk to voters about what you plan to do as governor?"

Blackburn glared at the reporter as she waited for the elevator, and Hall asked why she would not debate her GOP opponents.

"We're talking to Tennesseans every single day, every single day," Blackburn replied.

Hall asked whether voters had a right to hear about her plans if elected governor, and she retreated to her talking point.

"We are talking to individuals every single day," she repeated.

Hall continued pressing the senator for answers about taxpayer subsidies to lure the Starbucks headquarters to Tennessee and other campaign issues, and Blackburn continued repeating her talking point as she continued to wait for the elevator to arrive.

"Are you uncomfortable talking about issues surrounding the campaign?" Hall asked, and Blackburn insisted she wasn't. "Then why won't you sit down and do interviews? We've asked you for interviews multiple times."

Blackburn turned to her talking point once again before the elevator finally ended her stalemate.

"She's running out the clock, and it may be a political strategy," said longtime conservative commentator Steve Gill, publisher of the TriStar Daily. "I'm not sure it's a policy strategy, and she may pay a price for it down the road because voters won't know what she really stands for."

Early voting starts in three weeks, and the winner of the GOP primary will be a heavy favorite to win the November election.

"That is not the look that you want from someone who's asking to be the chief executive officer of the state of Tennessee, who ought to be able to fully discuss issues," Gill said.

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Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth suffered yet another loss in his legal fight to control the Pentagon press corps.

In a brief order issued on Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Paul Friedman issued a preliminary injunction in favor of The New York Times, barring Hegseth from enforcing a policy that effectively requires members of the press to be led around by an escort in the Pentagon unless they agree to an onerous set of restrictions on their activities that include not publishing any leaks they might receive.

Hegseth has lost several cases over this issue.

In April, Friedman slammed Hegseth for trying to circumvent prior rulings and sneak the same illegal press rules that had already been blocked back into effect.

The Pentagon press rules had already forced almost every legacy press outlet, including right-leaning ones, to pull out, allowing in a mix of far-right bloggers and social media influencers who only have positive messages to say about the administration.

All of this comes as Hegseth is separately under fire for denying military promotions in a suspicious pattern against well-qualified female and minority officers — though some experts have suggested the real motive is even darker than racial or gender bias.

Less than an hour after the Supreme Court dealt the Trump administration a devastating blow by rejecting its attempt to eliminate birthright citizenship, President Donald Trump began plotting a legislative workaround.

On Truth Social, Trump wrote, “The Supreme Court upheld Birthright Citizenship, which is too bad for our Country, but we can easily make it up in Congress through Legislation, with the support of the President, that has now been determined during this process.”

He urged Congress to "start TODAY" on ending birthright citizenship, pledging his "Complete and Total Support."

Birthright citizenship, enshrined in the 14th Amendment, grants full U.S. citizenship to all people born in the United States or its territories regardless of parental citizenship status.

Trump, supported by White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, has long targeted birthright citizenship as part of his immigration crackdown agenda, according to Bulwark Media.

Trump has repeatedly and falsely claimed the U.S. is the only country with such rights, despite dozens of nations, including Canada and Mexico, having identical protections, according to The Washington Post.

Watch the video below.

TOPEKA — U.S. Sen. Roger Marshall vowed to be on the Kansas general election ballot in November and to decline administrative appointment from President Donald Trump during the next two years.

Marshall, a Kansas Republican seeking reelection to a second term in the U.S. Senate, made the declaration Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

“I will be on the ballot on Election Day (and) will be honored to represent the people of Kansas for the next six years going forward. It’s been the honor of my lifetime,” Marshall said before shifting the conversation to Trump’s economic performance.

“Meet the Press” host Ryan Nobles brought Marshall back to the potential he could resign from the Senate: “So, that means you’re ruling out any sort of an appointment in the Trump administration, just to button it up.”

“I am ruling out any appointment in the Trump administration at least through the next two or two or three years,” the GOP senator said. “Who knows what would happen four years from now, OK?”

Marshall’s status as a candidate in the 2026 election and as a possible Trump appointee have been the source of controversy after questions were raised about implementation of a 2025 Kansas law that guarantees a Republican would replace Marshall if he resigned. In addition, the state law says filling a U.S. Senate vacancy in Kansas because of a resignation after May 1 and before Oct. 2 in an election year would allow the replacement to avoid a Senate election for two years.

“I got so much more work to do as a United States senator,” Marshall said. “But, America is back. And I’m just proud to keep serving in this position.”

Adam Hamilton, among 11 candidates for the Democratic nomination for U.S. Senate, has sought to propel his candidacy ahead of the Aug. 4 primary election by questioning potential reliance on the state law by the Kansas Republican Party.

“Kansans know Rev. Adam Hamilton is the best candidate to take on Roger Marshall and win,” said Tyson Brody, spokesman for the Hamilton campaign. “The Kansas GOP is so worried they’re trying to jettison Marshall, cancel the election and even talking about taking away Kansans’ right to elect senators.”

In the television interview, Nobles asked Marshall about the Save America Act advocated by Trump and passed by the U.S. House. The bill, which is tied up in the U.S. Senate, includes a provision requiring people to show a passport or birth certificate to register to vote. In addition, the legislation would require people to present a photo ID to vote.

“Federal law already prohibits noncitizens from voting. There’s no evidence that fraudulent votes have changed any election outcomes. Are you trying to solve a problem that doesn’t exist?” Nobles asked Marshall.

“The issue right now is again that Americans don’t feel that the elections are trustworthy. No one wants their vote canceled … by an ‘illegal alien’ or by a dead person,” Marshall said.

In response, Nobles said the Heritage Foundation conducted a study that found 100 instances of noncitizens voting in U.S. elections since the 1980s. He said Trump’s claim of sweeping election fraud didn’t hold up to scrutiny.

“I guess we just look at this differently,” Marshall said. “What are Democrats running from? Why are they afraid? If what you’re saying is true, then why are you worried about this? Why not have voter ID? Why not have some type of proof of citizenship.”

In 2018, a federal judge struck down a Kansas law that required new voters to prove their citizenship. The law had prevented more than 30,000 lawful voters from registering, and then-Secretary of State Kris Kobach, who is now the attorney general, failed to prove his claims of widespread voter fraud.