Raw Story

Democratic governors are quietly sharing worries that President Donald Trump intends to disrupt next year's congressional elections, according to a political insider.

The president told U.S. troops this week that he was prepared to send "more than the National Guard" into American cities as he escalates a confrontation with Democratic-led local governments, and MSNBC's John Heilemann told "Morning Joe" that high-ranking officials are growing concerned about whether free and fair elections would take place in 2026.

"Trump has essentially taken the attitude and pursued policies in line with the attitude of, 'I'm the president, I can do whatever I want," Heilemann said. "You know, we've talked for years about the expanding purview of executive power in America, but Trump is so far at the extreme of that. This is clearly one of the largest areas where that's the case."

"You know, when Trump decided to nationalize the National Guard, to federalize the National Guard in California, in Los Angeles, the first of these moves, it was the first time that a president had overridden the wishes of a governor of a state since back in the civil rights era, when troops were federalized to try to integrate some of the schools in Alabama and other states in the South. So there is a not in our lifetimes precedent for this, and Trump has not just done it once, but is now doing it pretty much everywhere."

Those aggressive moves against Democratic-led states and cities have provoked some dark fears among the president's political opponents, Heilemann said.

"That is raising the specter you're talking about, which is, in the medium term, is this part of a strategy to try to steal, effectively, or at least put your thumb very, very firmly on the scale of the 2026 midterm elections, but also with the normalization project," Heilemann said. "We're not even a year in, and we've had multiple cities where we've seen this happen.

"In the course of the next three years, is the longer term objective to get to a place where troops on American streets have become so normalized that not only have the 2026 midterms been affected, but that the 2028 presidential election could be affected, with Trump basically saying, 'The whole country is in a state of emergency and I'm going to declare martial law and not have the 2028 presidential election.'"

"That is the fear of a lot of people in the progressive camp, that this is where it's going," he added, "and I don't mean just wild-eyed progressives, I mean a lot of Democratic governors are already starting to whisper that and say that to reporters, that that's where they think this is really headed over the course of the next three years."

Host Jonathan Lemire said he's been hearing the same concerns in his own reporting.

"That sentiment is out there, a terrifying one, and one that will be worth obviously keeping an eye on in the months and years ahead," Lemire said.

- YouTube youtu.be

Progressive Democratic congressional candidate Kat Abughazaleh spoke out against President Donald Trump's administration for prosecuting her after she participated in a protest against an immigration raid in her home state of Illinois.

The indictment, which was filed on Oct. 23, accuses Abughazaleh of one count of conspiracy and one count of forcibly impeding an officer. Abughazaleh told NBC News that she plans to self-surrender to authorities next Wednesday and described the incident as "political prosecution."

Abughazaleh joined Jon Lovett, a former Obama administration staffer, on a new episode of the "Pod Save America" podcast on Thursday, and further discussed the prosecution.

"It's scary. It's surreal, and it's also totally expected," she said. "This is what this administration does. They go after people who disagree with them, and this case is an attempt to criminalize protest, to criminalize freedom of speech, and to criminalize freedom of association."

"This is what authoritarians do," she added. "They try to find any excuse to punish their political enemies, to punish populations they deem as enemies. We've seen that a lot in how ICE is functioning."

Abughazaleh noted that the Trump administration has admitted to catching very few criminals during its immigration raids. She suggested that reveals something more sinister about the raids.

"That is one of the best examples to show that this has never been about crime," she said. "This has never even been about immigration. This is about securing and cementing power for the Trump administration."

Former Republican Tim Miller, who hosts a podcast for the conservative anti-Trump news outlet The Bulwark, discussed with MSNBC host and former Republican Nicolle Wallace that the GOP is stiffing its own voters with slashes to food stamp benefits.

"I know food stamps is like a 90s era right-wing racist smear, but SNAP, which is sort of the new EBT — this is food assistance. [It] knows no partisan affiliation. If anything, it disproportionately benefits households in Trump voting counties and districts," said Wallace. "And it feeds a whole lot of kids who don't have any responsibility for any of the political decisions that adults make."

Miller noted that the GOP's rhetoric has clearly shifted from the days of Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) and Mitt Romney (R-UT).

"But the policies are harmful to them. And this ... the expiration of SNAP — or the fact that they're not going to continue funding SNAP during this shutdown, beginning this weekend, I think is the most acute example of this, where, you know, if the party had fully switched to being a multiracial, multiethnic, working class party like they pay lip service to, this would be an emergency right now," said Miller.

The situation would involve Republican lawmakers fearful "our own voters are literally going to go hungry beginning this weekend. You know, we need to serve to service them. And meanwhile, Donald Trump's in China or in Korea getting a, you know, Burger King happy meal crown from the head of South Korea. And Congress isn't even in session, right? Like they're not doing anything."

He called it a catastrophe and a tragedy if the problem isn't fixed in the coming days.

"But it's also a very stark demonstration of just how this kind of MAGA populism is a lot of lip service and not a lot of action," Miller continued. "And you're seeing it in real time also in the states where, you know, in Colorado, Jared Polis and some other states, governors, mostly Democratic governors, are working to try to patch this right now. And in some of the red states, it's not going to get patched."

A longtime former employee at one of President Donald Trump's golf clubs was mistakenly deported to Mexico, The New York Times reported — sending U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement into a mad scramble to correct the error and bring him home.

"Alejandro Juarez stepped off a plane in Texas and stood on a bridge over the Rio Grande, staring at the same border that he had crossed illegally from Mexico 22 years earlier," reported Luis Ferré-Sadurní and Hamed Aleaziz. "As U.S. immigration officials unshackled restraints bound to his arms and legs, Mr. Juarez, 39, pleaded with them. He told them he was never given a chance to contest his deportation in front of an immigration judge after being detained in New York City five days before."

As it turned out, the Department of Homeland Security had mistakenly put him on a deportation flight instead of sending him to a detention facility in Arizona ahead of his immigration hearing, to which he was entitled.

"Their actions probably violated federal immigration laws, which entitle most immigrants facing deportation to a hearing before a judge — a hearing Mr. Juarez never had," said the report. "ICE officials raced to decipher his whereabouts, exchanging bewildered emails and contacting detention facilities to pinpoint his location, according to internal ICE documents obtained by The New York Times. It is unclear how many other immigrants like Mr. Juarez have been erroneously removed, in part because ICE has not in the past tracked such cases."

Juarez "had worked for more than a decade at a Trump Organization golf club in New York," noted the report, and suddenly found himself expelled from the United States.

Similar administrative mistakes have happened on other occasions, most notably with Salvadoran migrant Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who was deported from his family in Maryland to the infamous CECOT megaprison in his home country, despite a court order prohibiting his removal there. After months of denying they had jurisdiction to repatriate him, the Trump administration finally did so, but then immediately hit him with flimsy gang charges, and started shopping around for any other country that would accept him, including several in Africa.

A pair of extreme new Trump administration rules aimed at functionally banning gender-affirming healthcare for transgender youth could force even more hospitals to close down.

NPR reported Thursday that the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) drafted a proposed rule that would prohibit federal Medicaid reimbursement for medical care provided to transgender patients younger than 18 and prohibit the same from the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) for patients under 19.

Another proposed rule goes even further, blocking all Medicaid and Medicare funding to hospitals that provide gender-affirming care to youth.

As Erin Reed, an independent journalist who reports on LGBTQ+ rights, explained, this “would effectively eliminate access to such care nationwide, except at the few private clinics able to forgo Medicaid entirely, a rarity in transgender youth medicine.”

The policies are of a piece with the Trump administration and the broader Republican Party’s efforts to eliminate transgender healthcare for youth across the country.

Bans on gender-affirming care for those under 18 have already been passed in 27 states, despite evidence that early access to treatments like puberty blockers and hormones can save lives.

As Reed pointed out, a Cornell University review of more than 51 studies shows that access to such care dramatically reduces the risk of suicide and the rates of anxiety and depression among transgender adolescents.

The new HHS rules are being prepared for public release in November and would not be finalized for several more months.

But if passed, the ramifications could extend far beyond transgender people, impacting the entire healthcare system, for which federal funding from Medicare and Medicaid is a load-bearing piece. According to a report last year from the American Hospital Association, 96% of hospitals in the US have more than half their inpatient days paid for by Medicare and Medicaid.

It is already becoming apparent what happens when even some of that funding is taken away. As a result of the massive GOP budget law passed in July, an estimated $1 trillion is expected to be cut from Medicaid over the next decade. According to an analysis released Thursday by Protect Our Care, which maintains a Hospital Crisis Watch database, more than 500 healthcare providers across the country are already at risk of shutting down due to the budget cuts.

Tyler Hack, the executive director of the Christopher Street Project, a transgender rights organization, said that the newly proposed HHS rule would be “forcing hospitals to choose between providing lifesaving care for trans people or maintaining the ability to serve patients through Medicare and Medicaid.”

“Today’s news marks a dangerous overreach by the executive branch, pitting trans people, low-income families, disabled people, and seniors against each other and making hospitals choose which vulnerable populations to serve,” Hack said. “If these rules become law, it will kill people.”

President Donald Trump's federal prosecutor in Washington, D.C., refused to answer questions from reporters on why the Justice Department whitewashed a sentencing memo for a violent Jan. 6 rioter who was charged for an incident in which he livestreamed himself near former President Barack Obama's house with a stash of illegal guns and ammunition.

Tyler Taranto, during his heavily armed stream in 2023, also made a fake bomb threat against a government building. He separately received a pardon for his involvement in the attack on the U.S. Capitol.

"US Atty Jeanine Pirro was just asked about the scrubbing of sentencing memo (of Jan 6 references) in Taylor Taranto case. Why did it happen? She wouldn't answer directly... and said the 'papers speak for themselves,'" stated CBS News' Scott MacFarlane on Thursday.

Additionally, Pirro, a former far-right Fox News personality who has pushed election conspiracy theories, would not comment on why a pair of prosecutors who worked on the memo were placed on leave.

The redoing of the sentencing memo, which argued Taranto receive 27 months in prison, raised alarm bells among legal experts, as not only did the new version remove all references to him being a January 6 rioter, it also removed references to the fact that Trump posted the location of Obama's home on Truth Social shortly before Taranto's threatening stunt.

On Thursday, a judge sentenced Taranto to 21 months, which works out to "time served," as well as three years' supervised release.