American Doom

Justin Glawe
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  • Politics
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I’m Justin Glawe, writer and journalist, and I’ve spent my career chronicling the violence, unrest and chaos of American life. On this podcast, I’ll discuss the events roiling this complex and troubling country, and speak with some of the people trying to make sense of the madness that pervades our world. This is American Doom. www.american-doom.com

  1. 4d ago

    The DOJ is already interfering in the election

    Things are going to start moving very quickly now and this is one of the best places to stay on top of it all. To support our work, access a discounted subscription to American Doom for $3.60 a month or throw a few dollars in the Coffee Fund. There’s going to be a lot of late nights coming up. Help us get through… - jg There is a reason that it has been longstanding Justice Department practice to avoid major investigative steps regarding elected officials right around an election. That’s because doing something like arresting someone who is running for office just before an election would be perceived by most people as interfering in that election — even if that person was obviously guilty of a crime. But this Justice Department is unlike any other since at least the time of Nixon, and so it’s no surprise that it is placing itself directly in the November midterms by issuing subpoenas for Rep. Ilhan Omar and members of her family. Investigations of public officials are tricky, especially if the people running those investigations are from a rival political party. That’s why the DOJ has long sought to avoid any perception of political motivation behind its investigations. Not so with this DOJ. Right-wing media is noting that the investigation into Omar — which deals with immigration paperwork her father filled out when she was a child — began during the Biden administration. It’s only natural, then, that it’s coming to fruition now! That’s the apparent argument — that mere weeks before an election, Donald Trump’s DOJ has made a break in the case. Even many Republicans surely won’t buy this. When you see something this obvious it is, well, obvious. All of this bodes darkly for November. That the DOJ is willing to interfere this overtly in an election that is 19 days from now means the agency is probably willing to do it in November. That agency, by the way, is increasingly run by people who are inexperienced, Trump sycophants, or both. What will the DOJ and other federal agencies like the Department of Homeland Security do to further interfere with the midterms? We’re not sure, but we do have some ideas. The ACLU and other organizations are preparing robustly for possible seizure of ballots and other records by the Trump administration. Voting machines are also a target, as we saw with recent demands from the Georgia State Election Board to have the DOJ and DHS step in to effectively prohibit the use of the state’s voting machines in November. So far, it doesn’t appear that either agency has responded to the request. But the prospect of federal interference in Georgia and elsewhere looms just as — if not more — important than the results of the election itself. Today we’re talking about all of this with Sara Tindall-Ghazal, the lone Democratic member of the Georgia state election board. Listen to our conversation above, on Apple and Spotify podcasts, or at Doom’s home on YouTube. *** Doom social: * Bluesky - @americandoom.bsky.social * TikTok - @americandoom_ * YouTube - @americandoom_ * Instagram - @americandoom_ * Facebook This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.american-doom.com/subscribe

  2. Oct 7

    What Georgia’s demand for federal intervention in elections is really about

    While an obscure body like the Georgia State Election Board may not seem terribly important, last week’s news shows that it could play a pivotal role in interference efforts in the coming weeks and months. I’ve been reporting on the SEB for years now, and I’m one of the only reporters paying this close of attention. To support my work, from now until Election Day you can get 40 percent off Doom subscriptions, or drop a few dollars in our Coffee Fund. Programming note: Head to Georgia Public Broadcasting’s Narrative Edge to hear my conversation about my book, If I am Coming to Your Town, Something Terrible Has Happened, with hosts Orlando Montoya and Peter Biello. Later this week, I’ll have more to share from the episode. For anyone interested, you can purchase the book here. If you choose to become a founding member of American Doom, I’ll send you a signed copy. Now, on to the news… - jg *** It was a big week last week for displays of unfounded election skepticism here in Georgia, and it’s important to know what it’s really all about. Last week, the Georgia State Election Board (SEB) approved a resolution aimed at giving federal law enforcement access to the state’s voting machines and elections systems. First, this resolution was not legally binding in any way. It was a display on the part of the SEB, a way for them to signal to the election denial community, ‘Hey, we’re doing something about all this.’ Secondly, Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger will ignore the resolution and proceed with his election administration plan, which includes use of the state’s current voting machines. By Friday, the board had apparently decided that the resolution wasn’t enough and sent a formal letter asking the Justice Department and Homeland Security to investigate. Except, it wasn’t even the whole board that made this decision. Instead, it was executive director James Mills, a lifelong Republican who has no experience in election administration and has a background as a state legislator and the owner of mini-storage businesses. It’s Mills who is leading the charge on behalf of Georgia’s election denial movement — whose highest goals are seeing Raffensperger arrested for perceived crimes and forcing every Georgian to vote in every election with hand-marked, hand-counted paper ballots. In other words, completely doing away with the state’s voting machines. It’s the machines, operated by Dominion Voting, that last week’s resolution and letter are aimed at. (Elsewhere, election deniers have taken aim at another voting machine company, Smartmatic.) Both documents seek to get Trump administration lackeys at the DOJ and DHS under the hood of voting machines so they can look for any scintilla of evidence that the machines could be hacked or manipulated. How do I know this? Because this was the exact rationale for the Trump administration’s accessing of voting machines in Puerto Rico, as Reuters reported in great detail last week. Those efforts were led by Kurt Olsen, a leader in the national election denial movement who was given special government employee status to carry out his hunt for widespread voter fraud. Olsen was the driving force behind the already-adjudicated election fraud claims that led to the FBI raid on a Fulton County elections warehouse in January. “Olsen wanted to search for traces of Smartmatic code that, under his theory, would show how Venezuela or another foreign actor such as China could manipulate Dominion machines,” according to Reuters. In the end, Olsen’s team told the White House that they didn’t find any evidence that the machines had been accessed or fraud had occurred. In fact, they didn’t even find any evidence that the machines could have been hacked or votes manipulated. I’ve been reporting on the Georgia State Election’s board efforts to intefere in elections here for the last five years. Support this work with a paid subscription. But that possibility remains the obsession of election deniers like Mills, and it’s why he is now asking the Trump administration to send lawyers and investigators to Georgia. *** In the last year, Mills has emerged as a bulldog on the board on behalf of the election denial movement. He is particularly adept in raising questions and concerns about things that he has seen people post about on Facebook, and then acting as if those issues are real threats to election security. This pattern became apparent when, a few months back, Mills saw someone comment about long polling lines in a heavily-Republican county and sent the SEB’s new investigator out to look into things. Mills has allies in three of the board’s four other Republicans: Salleigh Grubbs, Janelle King, and the newly-appointed Carolyn Roddy. That’s why it was so interesting to see that Mills didn’t even wait for Grubbs to approve the letter to the DOJ and DHS — which she certainly would have, considering she is such a vociferous believer in election conspiracies that she once chased a garbage truck that she incorrectly believed contained paper ballots. Instead, he sent the letter on his own, drawing a vocal rebuke from SEB chair and fellow Republican John Fervier, who is unflappable in the face of constant vitriol from Mills and election deniers, and rarely speaks to the press. “We have no control over our executive director, and he does whatever the hell he wants to,” Fervier told Votebeat. That much is certainly clear. It’s hard to tell who is actually manning the strings above Mills’ head. It could Lt. Gov. Burt Jones, a hardcore Trump supporter who illegally tried to give away Georgia’s electoral college votes to the president in 2020. It could be election deniers in the Georgia legislature, like Sen. Max Burns or Sen. Greg Dolezal. Mills often boasts of his contact with legislators — relationships that have yet to provide the increased legal powers for the SEB that board members like Grubbs have been demanding. Maybe Mills himself, who in the last year has emerged from the obscurity of his longtime position on the state’s parole board to become the face of the election denial movement on the SEB, is calling the shots. Regardless, the loud display of last week’s resolution and letter is as much about trying to give the Trump administration (very flimsy) legal pretext to seize or access voting machines in Georgia as it is about making wild claims that the state’s election systems could be manipulated. Under Mills’ apparent theory, if the machines aren’t entirely secure, then lots of fraud is probably being committed. And if there’s lots of fraud, then the Democratic wins that are likely to come from November’s midterms shouldn’t count. *** Doom social: * Bluesky - @americandoom.bsky.social * TikTok - @americandoom_ * YouTube - @americandoom_ * Instagram - @americandoom_ * Facebook This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.american-doom.com/subscribe

  3. Oct 5

    What the hell is going on in North Carolina?

    Today we’re talking with Jeremy Borden, executive director of Beacon Media, a non-partisan non-profit focused on giving voice to North Carolinians working to strengthen democracy in the Tarheel State. As in Georgia, many of North Carolina’s county election boards are run by Republican election deniers. As part of my conversation with Borden I took a look at some of those board members and have updated my list of local election officials who support Trump’s lies about election fraud. I’ve also removed the paywall from the list so that new subscribers can access it. View the list here. American Doom is one of the only publications with a complete list of local election denial officials across the country. To support this work, please choose a paid subscription or drop a few dollars in our Coffee Fund. Through Election Day, you can get 40 percent off subscriptions to American Doom. Now, on to the news… - jg Since 2020, Republicans across the country have set out to remake how elections are run, ballots are cast, and votes are tabulated. They’ve done this in support of Donald Trump’s lies about widespread election fraud, and in some places, have been wildly successful in ensuring that Republicans have an advantage in elections. There is perhaps no state where this scheme has been more successful than North Carolina. In the wake of Trump’s loss in 2020, Republicans in the Tarheel State began work on remaking the state’s election administration laws, rules and practices. As a result, Republicans now control all manner of election administration — ripping away power from the state’s Democratic governor — and ensuring that election deniers in place across the state have the power to close polling locations in Black and brown areas, and throw out mail-in ballots. North Carolina is a test-case for what election administration looks like when it’s dominated by Republicans. So far, the results of this have been as expected: Republicans have closed polling locations in areas with a high percentage of Black, largely Democratic voters, making it more difficult for them to cast their ballots. Republicans have also made it easier to throw out mail-in ballots based on highly partisan challenges from election denial activists throughout the state. Perhaps as a result of anticipated ballot challenges, requests for absentee ballots are down 30 percent compared to the 2022 midterms. This means that many North Carolinians are planning to vote in-person, and possibly at early voting locations to avoid having their votes cancelled by new mail-in ballot rules and challenges that favor Republicans. It was Republican gerrymandering in North Carolina that helped to give the GOP a majority in the U.S. House of Representatives. The legality of that redistricting could be on the table if Democrat Justice Anita Earls holds off her Republican opponent to retain her seat on the state’s Supreme Court. Despite these efforts, voters in North Carolina have rebuffed Republicans. They elected a Democratic governor last year. Now, Republicans are pulling funding from North Carolina as U.S. senate candidate Michael Whatley trails in the latest polls by 12 points to his Democratic opponent, former governor Roy Cooper. Listen to our full conversation, watch the discussion on American Doom’s YouTube or Apple and Spotify podcasts. *** Doom social: * Bluesky - @americandoom.bsky.social * TikTok - @americandoom_ * YouTube - @americandoom_ * Instagram - @americandoom_ * Facebook This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.american-doom.com/subscribe

  4. Oct 4

    This week's election chaos was a preview

    We’re fighting 10 states for information about the Trump administration’s role in interfering with the midterms. You can help cover those costs with a discounted subscription to Doom for $3.60 a month here. If you appreciate us staying on top of all this chaos, spread the word and choose a paid subscription, or drop a few bucks in the Coffee Fund. Now, on to the news… - jg Last week began with the Georgia State Election Board passing a desperate (and arguably unconstitutional) resolution demanding that the federal government access state election systems. The week ended with a more formal request that the Justice Department and Homeland Security effectively prohibit the use of voting machines and Georgia’s entire election system in November. The State Election Board’s (SEB) actions were largely for show, but they have darker implications for what is coming — widespread attempts by government officials and bodies loyal to Trump and Republicans to overturn November’s election results. The White House has no role in how states conduct their elections under the constitution, but federal law enforcement does have jurisdiction over some aspects of our elections. What the SEB did this week was allege that Georgia is violating federal election law and demand that the government step in. But none of them can be trusted, because officials at the SEB, the DOJ, the DHS and many, many other government bodies across federal, state and local governments now operate as apparatchiks in service of Trump’s dominant wing of the Republican party. The SEB’s actions matter not because they will actually result in the DOJ investigating or prosecuting Georgia election officials — although they might — or that Georgians will actually be prevented from using voting machines, but because of the message it sends. That message is being sent to Americans already primed to believe that elections are full of fraud or who don’t have enough time to understand that, while it may look important that state election officials in Georgia are asking the DOJ to step in, the SEB’s request for federal intervention is not credible because of who runs both the SEB and the DOJ. Here are some facts about who is laying the groundwork for attempts to question or overturn an election in November that Republicans are on pace to lose: * SEB executive director James Mills - A lifelong Republican who has no experience in election administration and has a background as a state legislator and the owner of mini-storage businesses * SEB vice-chair Janelle King - A former Atlanta-area conservative social media personality with no background in election administration, King was appointed to her position by Republicans in Georgia’s legislature. King’s husband recently ran and lost to become Georgia’s next Secretary of State. * SEB board member Salleigh Grubbs - An election denial activist who rose to fame for chasing a truck she incorrectly believed was filled with shredded ballots in the 2020 election, Grubbs has no experience in election administration and was appointed to her position by Lt. Gov. Burt Jones, who was indicted for his role in the fake electors scheme to illegally give Trump Georgia’s electoral college votes in 2020. * SEB board member Carolyn Roddy - Along with Mills, Roddy appears to be the driving force behind this week’s actions. Roddy was appointed to the SEB in July, has no experience in election administration, was an appointee under the first Trump administration, and began her career in politics working for Newt Gingrich. That’s on the SEB side of things. At the Justice Department, offices focused on voting rights and elections have been hollowed out of experienced staff, resulting in things like second-year lawyers representing the government in important cases like Democrats’ lawsuit seeking information about possible plans to seize ballots. One of those offices, the Civil Rights Division, is led by Trump sycophant Harmeet Dhillon, who is helping to lead the charge in the Trump administration’s attempts to amplify the statistically insignificant number of noncitizen voters. Dhillon is almost surely intimately involved what is Trump’s likely plans to seize ballots. At DHS, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin made the extraordinary claim this week that his agency is looking into 300,000 cases of noncitizen voting, or noncitizens who are registered to vote — it’s not entirely clear and Mullin hasn’t clarified exactly what he meant by the 300,000 number. Even if 300,000 votes were cast by noncitizens in federal elections since 2020, it would not have had an effect on the outcomes of any of those elections. That’s because 300,000 votes amount to .07% of the roughly 406 million votes cast in those contests. *** What the SEB did this week is attempt to exploit Americans’ somewhat natural belief that the actions of official government bodies are credible. But the SEB and the DOJ, as well as government agencies at the federal, state and local levels, are now overtly political institutions in service of one party, the Republicans, and more to the point, one man, Donald Trump. At no point in the next month and, indeed, until Trump is out of office, can any government agency run by Republicans be taken at its word that it is acting in good faith. It should also be noted why the SEB did what it did this week: If Republicans stood a good chance of winning in November, the apparatchiks at the SEB would not be calling to essentially shut down Georgia’s election systems in order to possibly cast all of the state’s 3-5 million votes by hand — their ultimate goal. But as apparatchiks, they recognize the warning signs of steep losses for their party in November, and are therefore required to do something about it. The same can be said for noncitizen voting claims and prosecutions being amplified by the DOJ and DHS. We are witnessing a Soviet-style, whole-of-government operation aimed at securing power for the Republican party, through claims of election fraud, election lawsuits, attempts at federal intervention, ballot seizures and arrests of election officials and, finally, the parliamentary maneuvers that Republicans will employ in January in an attempt to overturn the election victories of Democrats. And it’s all going to get much worse. *** This week’s developments were a preview of the chaos to come. The credibility that the SEB has lent to claims that Georgia’s election systems and voting machines are vulnerable to manipulation are just part of a much broader threat matrix that Republicans are employing to cast doubt in November’s results. Republican lawyers, public officials across the country, members of the Trump administration and federal law enforcement will use that doubt to try to throw out Democratic votes via mail-in ballot challenges, recount and audit demands and more. This is standard practice in the new, Trumpian era of highly-politicized elections, but the ensuing weeks will see these efforts ramped up to 11. The best way to combat this massive and coordinated effort to overturn the results of November’s elections is to vote for Democrats in such overwhelming numbers that no reasonable person could conclude that Republicans have even a remotely plausible argument that fraud was committed. This is what happened in Hungary, when voters ousted right-wing authoritarian leader Viktor Orban in an unimpeachable landslide. Americans must do the same in this election, or what happened this week will become the norm: Republicans claiming any election they lose was fraudulent, and therefore doesn’t count. *** Doom social: * Bluesky - @americandoom.bsky.social * TikTok - @americandoom_ * YouTube - @americandoom_ * Instagram - @americandoom_ * Facebook This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.american-doom.com/subscribe

  5. Oct 2

    EXCLU: Meet the second-year lawyer defending Trump’s plans to seize ballots

    Things are really heating up. Have you seen all the news this week? If not, take a minute to go back and check out all of our reporting. There’s more coming later today. For now, you know what I’m going to ask: Choose a paid subscription (with a 40 percent discount here) or buy us a coffee to support our work reporting on election interference efforts across the country. You’ll be glad you did because you’ll be supporting reporting that finds troubling stories like this one. Thanks. - jg *** On Sept. 20, the Justice Department responded to allegations contained in a Democratic National Committee lawsuit that the agency was planning to seize ballots in November. The DOJ then said it would need until just a few days before Election Day to respond. A federal judge apparently told the DOJ their request was denied, and gave the agency a much tighter deadline. On Monday, the DOJ filed its response to the DNC lawsuit. In non-lawyer terms, the DOJ’s response can be summed up in three words: Go f**k yourself. The DNC had provided several examples that gave background to their demands for information regarding ballot seizures — information that is behind the closed doors of the agency, and that the DNC is trying to obtain via Freedom of Information Act requests. The DNC noted that Donald Trump said in January that he regretted not seizing voting machines in the immediate aftermath of the 2020 election. Also noted were routine threats of arrests of state and local election officials from members of the Trump administration. Finally, the DNC went into great detail describing the dismissal of “guardrails against ballot seizures,” as the DOJ itself termed the guidelines regarding election investigations that it had removed from its website some time in the last several months. The DOJ didn’t even bother to deny the DNC’s allegation that the agency had purposefully removed the guidance, which for decades has warned agents against “overt criminal investigative matters” like seizing ballots or arresting candidates and officials “until the election in question has been concluded, its results certified, and all recounts and election contests concluded.” In paragraph after paragraph, the DOJ argued that all of that background material — Trump wishing he had seized voting machines, endless threats to arrest election officials, the removal of the DOJ guidelines for active elections — was “impertinent” to the FOIA requests demanding information about ballot seizure plans. That’s certainly one interpretation. Another is that all of that background is entirely pertinent to the issue of whether records regarding ballot seizure plans exist, and whether the DOJ has to release them under FOIA. The response was simply remarkable, I thought. Who wrote it? I wondered. The response was signed by Devin Iorio, Assistant U.S. Attorney for the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia. (That’s former Fox News host Janine Pirro’s office.) So, I looked Iorio up and quickly found his LinkedIn page. Immediately, I couldn’t help but notice something. *** Sorry but…. That’s a kid, right? This couldn’t be him. So I looked up his bar license. Then, I gave the number a call. He answered. He said he couldn’t comment and apologized if that made him sound rude. It was the most polite “no comment” I’ve had in my life. But I had to confirm it was him. Yes, he just graduated from law school two years ago, he told me. And how long had he been at the DOJ? Within the last month, he said. Here’s our full conversation. Iorio has a pretty impressive resume for someone his age. He has interned at the DOJ before, as well as the SEC. He also served as a law clerk in D.C. Superior Court and U.S. District Judge Beryl A. Howell, according to his LinkedIn. But he’s only been out of law school for two years, and the DNC’s lawsuit contains very serious allegations on a very serious matter. If the agency follows Trump’s orders and seizes ballots or voting machines in November, it would be the first time in American history that the federal government intervened so forcefully in an election. Is that the type of case you send a second-year law school grad out to? It’s not just that case but more than a dozen others. Iorio is listed as an attorney of record on about 20 lawsuits that have been filed since the start of the second Trump administration — litigation that also deals with very serious matters like national security, the environment, prosecutorial misconduct, and more. Devin Iorio, the baby-faced recent law school grad, is now indeed the attorney tasked with fighting the DNC’s attempt to find out whether Donald Trump will seize ballots in the most unprecedented federal election intervention in U.S. history. This story is another example of a story that you’ll only find here at American Doom. If you appreciate our aggressive, adversarial reporting, support us with a paid subscription. *** For the past two years, I’ve heard rumblings of major problems inside the Justice Department. They began back when I was reporting on DOGE’s ravaging of the Social Security Administration for Rolling Stone. At some point in the course of my reporting I recall speaking to a high-ranking Democratic election official in the South who told that the DOJ had tried to coax one of their lawyers to Washington. The lawyer, who had previously worked for the ACLU, was being recruited by a DOJ office focused on elections, probably the Civil Rights Division. The election official chuckled as they recalled the story: Here was Trump’s DOJ, which was already well on its way to perverting the mission of the Civil Rights Division to focus on voter suppression instead of voting rights, for some strange reason recruiting their natural enemy: an ACLU lawyer. The anecdote told me two things: One, the rumors about the DOJ being emptied out from the inside as competent, experienced lawyers left under pressure to pursue bogus, politically-motivated investigations, was true. And two, the Trump sycophants who were left had no idea what they were doing. They couldn’t even do basic homework on prospective staff to weed out folks like former ACLU lawyers who wouldn’t take a job in the Trump DOJ if their life depended on it. In the time since that conversation there has been much reporting on the exodus at the DOJ and other massive government agencies, and how the people who have filled those empty desks are either incompetent, Trump sycophants, hyper-online conservative social media addicts, or all three. I don’t know hat category, if any, Iorio falls into. But I bet he’ll never answer a call from a phone number with a Peoria, Illinois area code ever again. *** Doom social: * Bluesky - @americandoom.bsky.social * TikTok - @americandoom_ * YouTube - @americandoom_ * Instagram - @americandoom_ * Facebook This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.american-doom.com/subscribe

  6. Oct 1

    More proof of ballot seizures, support for troops at the polls

    I’ve got some information you won’t find anywhere else today a DOJ lawyer fresh out of law school who is fighting for Trump on election interference efforts. Also, many signs are pointing to ballot seizures and arrests of election officials as a major part of the Trump administration’s game plan to interfere in the November elections, which I also reported today at Zeteo. More on that below. Finally, we’re fighting states to release information about their contact with the Justice Department and Homeland Security regarding Trump’s election interference. We’ll have to pay for those records, so I’m asking for your help to cover the costs. Get a 40 percent discount on Doom subscriptions — $3.60 a month — or drop a few dollars in our Coffee Fund to help out. Now, on to the news… -jg It is becoming increasingly clear that Donald Trump and his underlings at the departments of Justice and Homeland Security plan to seize ballots in November. Both the DOJ and DHS are spending an inordinate amount of time and resources to hunt down an insignificant number of noncitizens who have voted in recent elections. Finding these cases won’t fix the problem of the extremely rare occurrences of noncitizen voting, but removing suspected noncitizen voters from voter rolls could alleviate the issue, as conservative groups have argued for years. But states are prohibited from federal law from removing the many thousands of people who the Trump administration says are improperly registered to vote, or who have allegedly voted illegally. That’s because, since early August, we’ve been in what’s known as the 90-day “quiet period” of the National Voter Registration Act. The law prohibits states from removing voters — even those who are ineligible — from voter rolls within 90 days of an election. So, if states can’t legally remove these voters, why is the Trump administration pursuing these cases so aggressively, while also threatening to arrest election officials if any noncitizens are found on voter rolls? Because the Justice Department is likely planning to use claims of noncitizens on voter rolls as probable cause in affidavits asking judges for search warrants to seize ballots. The Democratic National Committee has filed a lawsuit to try to get to the bottom of the Trump administration’s plans to seize ballots. In the DOJ’s response on Monday, a 2024 law school graduate who was hired by the DOJ within the last month completely dismissed every question and allegations regarding plans to seize ballots. The attorney, Devin Iorio, claimed that guidance that is missing from the DOJ’s website advising attorneys to not actively interfere in ongoing elections, which is part of the DNC’s lawsuit, is not pertinent to the DNC’s requests under the Freedom of Information Act for records related to ballot seizures. Iorio asked the court to dismiss the lawsuit entirely. The DNC has yet to respond. American Doom reached out to Iorio and spoke briefly to him. He declined to comment on plans to seize ballots, deferring to this 13 page filing on Monday. “I don’t mean to be rude, but I do believe I’m going to have to refer you to the response itself because that’s office policy,” Iorio said. Even if the DOJ doesn’t use claims of noncitizen voting as pretext to seize ballots, the Trump administration, in coordination with groups like the Republican National Committee and America First Legal, will surely file scores of lawsuits challenging election results. We saw this in 2024 — the RNC and aligned election denial groups like America First and the Public Interest Legal Foundation filed dozens of specious lawsuits over noncitizen voters and other ineligibility claims related to voter rolls. We’ll likely see that again, in addition to the many lawsuits that are likely to result from the RNC’s plans to train poll watchers to grab information from voting machines. CNN reports that those plans include photographing serial numbers and other information on voting machines — which is illegal in many states — in order to challenge the security of those machines in lawsuits. The next month will be chaos and include the following: * Much, much more amplification from the DOJ and DHS of the scant number of arrests of noncitizens who have voted in recent elections. * More attempts from election denial officials like those at the Georgia State Election Board to coordinate with the Trump administration in interfering with and challenging the validity of elections. * Lawsuits and fear-mongering over voting machines — on Wednesday DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin, made strange and troubling comments about his agency’s apparent monitoring of issues related to voting machines. Reminder: executive branch agencies like DHS have no role in elections that the constitution dictates must be run by the states. * A possible Supreme Court decision that would allow for last-minute voter purges of tens of thousands of (likely Latino) voters. * Further calls for troops or federal law enforcement at the polls as the Trump administration attempts to claim that U.S. elections are beset with widespread fraud. *** With the RNC attempting to deploy thousands of poll monitors to aid in election challenge lawsuits, the Justice Department will also send its own observers. One of those observers may be David Michael Levin, a Florida lawyer who was arrested and pleaded guilty for hacking into state and county election websites in 2016 as part of a bizarre attempt to “advance” the campaign of a candidate for local election supervisor. It’s quite the promotion for Levin, who was spotted in Minneapolis in August while the Justice Department monitored primaries there. Prior to joining the DOJ, Levin was apparently making a living as a conservative social media influencer under the persona of “Dave the Lawyer,” where he hawked products like organic beef jerky and cures for low testosterone from a brand called “Barlowe’s Herbal Elixirs.” “Barlowe’s probably saved my marriage…” Levin posted in July 2025, apparently referencing his issues with low testosterone. “And let’s just say, Mrs. Dave the Lawyer noticed,” Levin said in a video for the elixirs. “You know what they say, ‘Happy wife, happy life.’” It’s not clear what experience Levin has that would be applicable to being a DOJ election observer. He does not appear to hold an active law license in Florida, American Doom found. If you appreciate the digging we’ve done on Levin and other election deniers, plus staying on top of election interference developments, support our work with a paid subscription. Levin is a near-perfect example of what has happened to federal law enforcement during the second Trump administration. Agencies like the Justice Department and Homeland Security have become official government arms of the extremist right-wing groups who have pushed harsher policies in the areas of election administration and voting rights, and immigration. The Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division has been especially hard hit, and is now a de facto government arm of the election denial movement. Some 300 attorneys have left under the leadership of Harmeet Dhillon, who has perverted the division’s mission to focus on white grievance claims of reverse racism, especially in higher education, and hunting for noncitizen voters. That’s in contrast with the office’s mission since its founding: protect the rights of minorities at the polls, in education, and in the workforce. Homeland Security, now a de facto paramilitary force for right-wing anti-immigrant groups, has also been dragged into the Trump administration’s growing hunt for noncitizen voters and proof of nonexistent widespread election fraud. Hundreds of DHS agents have been reassigned to work on election fraud cases, as ProPublica has reported. Whether at the Civil Rights Division or other DOJ offices, or DHS, everyone working on election fraud investigations is being directed from the top — Trump, Susie Wiles and Stephen Miller at the White House, Reuters reports. *** The DOJ and DHS are touting recent arrests of noncitizens who have allegedly voted in recent elections, but the numbers are scant. Since the start of the second Trump administration’s this whole-of-government effort to stamp out the supposed scourge of noncitizen voting has resulted in less than 200 arrests. The arrests have comes as the DOJ and DHS have made spectacular claims in virtually every state about the number of noncitizens registered to vote, which are often completely incorrect. It’s possible that the growing clamor over noncitizen voting is not meant to actually solve the problem by removing ineligible voters from rolls, but instead to lay the groundwork to seize ballots, arrest election officials, and challenge election results based on these cases. Meanwhile, Latino groups remain on alert about the prospect of ICE agents at polling locations in November. Mullin and others have refused to rule out the possibility of deploying ICE or the National Guard to the polls. Here in Georgia, two candidates have expressed their support for the completely unprecedented move to deploy federal law enforcement or active duty military to polling locations — such a development would mark a first in American history. U.S. Rep. Mike Collins, the Republican running to replace Sen. Jon Ossoff, and Rick Jackson, the GOP gubernatorial candidate, are not just unconcerned by the remarkable federal overreach that the Trump administration refuses to rule out, but are supportive of it. In August, Jackson responded to a town hall question by assuring voters that “we’ll get the National Guard,” saying that current Gov. Brian Kemp “is going to watch it for us.” Jackson never fully clarified what he meant by tying Kemp to the possible presence of the Guard at polls in November. Last week, Collins r

  7. Sep 29

    Georgia tries to give Feds access to voting machines

    The Georgia State Election Board is trying to give the DOJ and DHS access to our election systems. Simultaneously, the board is charging me $134 for communications between Republican board members and those two agencies. Help me pay these costs with a discounted subscription to American Doom for $3.60 a month, or by dropping a few dollars in our Coffee Fund. Key points: * The MAGA-dominated Georgia State Election Board passed a resolution that likely has no legal authority to allow the Justice Department and Homeland Security unfettered access to the state’s voting machines and election systems. * Republicans on the board did this to enable the Trump administration to hunt for technical errors or other minor problems that will allow Trump to claim that the November elections were stolen from Republicans. * The move represents a new front in Republican efforts to insert control over elections by the federal government and Trump himself, in direct violation of the U.S. Constitution. *** The Georgia State Election Board took the unprecedented step today of attempting to give the Trump administration access to Georgia’s voting machines and election systems — a resolution that is likely to be ignored by Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, and is in direct violation of the U.S. Constitution. In a 3-2 vote carried by the MAGA majority of board members, the board passed a resolution that would give the departments of Justice and Homeland Security access to servers and hard drives in Georgia’s voting machines and election systems. The resolution was passed under the guise of election integrity — Republican board members and election skeptics claim that Georgia’s voting machines have not been properly maintained with software updates. Election denial forces in the state argue that the lack of updates has made Georgia’s voting machines vulnerable to manipulation, a contentious accusation that Raffensperger’s office has repeatedly rebuffed. But the real impetus behind Monday’s resolution is to grant federal law enforcement access to Georgia’s election system so that those agencies can go on a “phishing expedition” as part of Donald Trump’s increasingly aggressive hunt for proof of widespread voter fraud, according to a state election official with knowledge of the matter. Trump’s manic quest to prove widespread voter fraud is simply an effort to sow doubt in the November midterm elections, which Republicans are on pace to lose. Across the country, the DOJ and DHS have been threatening to arrest election officials from both parties for refusing to hand over voter rolls and remove tens of thousands of voters that the agencies questionably claim are ineligible to vote. In January, the FBI seized thousands of Fulton County, Georgia ballots from the 2020 election in order to prove Trump’s bogus fraud claims. The Justice Department and Homeland Security have also ramped up claims of noncitizen voting, arresting 16 people across the country who allegedly voted in presidential elections in recent years, and claiming that the agencies are pursuing hundreds of thousands of similar cases. In Nevada, DHS claimed it had found 185 noncitizens registered to vote on the state’s voter rolls only to have state election officials point out that all 185 people were citizens. It’s part of a pattern of DHS inflating numbers of noncitizens registered to vote as part of Trump’s efforts to sow doubt in the midterms. Monday’s resolution will almost surely be ignored by Raffensperger, the source with knowledge of the matter told American Doom. That’s because the State Election Board has no power to tell Raffensperger’s office how to conduct elections, or who is able to access voting machines and election systems. Additionally, there is the plain text of the constitution, which does not grant federal law enforcement agencies like the Justice Department or Homeland Security any role in election administration. Instead, those agencies have jurisdiction over investigations into election crimes, which the State Election Board does not allege have been committed. “I think this is a ‘Please pay attention to us, we can help you kind of thing,’” the source said. Under Trump, federal law enforcement is most certainly paying attention. Hundreds of agents within Homeland Security have been reassigned to hunt for noncitizen voters. Hundreds of lawyers have left the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, which has jurisdiction over election crimes, in protest of the Trump administration’s demands to find nonexistent widespread election fraud. The three Republicans on the State Election Board, which has been dominated by MAGA diehards for years, claimed that a “patch” of software on Georgia’s election systems could be updated in time for the November election, a claim that Democratic board member Sara Tindal-Ghazal said was “impossible.” “It is not a patch. It is an entirely new software system that would have to be loaded on, and it literally takes months,” Tindal-Ghazal said. “So what you are calling for is impossible to do before the midterm elections.” Republicans on the State Election Board did not respond to request for comment. For more than a year, American Doom has pressed GOP board members on their communications with Trump administration officials as well as the Justice Department. There has been no response. Carolyn Roddy, the board’s newest Republican who was appointed to her position by the Georgia GOP in July, said the purpose of the resolution “is to seek support from federal partners.” Congress is the only branch of the federal government that has any role in election administration under the constitution — not federal law enforcement agencies like the Justice Department and Homeland Security, which fall under the executive branch. “The Times, Places and Manner of Holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations, except as to the Places of choosing Senators,” Article I, Section 4 of the constitution dictates. Republican board member Janelle King, who last year bragged of her contact with DOJ officials in spreading exaggerated or outright false fraud claims in Georgia, noted that Trump had mentioned vulnerabilities in Georgia’s election systems. “For God’s sake our own president said that they found vulnerabilities,” King said. “No matter who is in office, I do not support federal intervention in state-run elections,” Tindal-Ghazal replied, noting that the constitution does not allow for federal involvement in elections, other than Congress. Roddy and her Republican colleagues dismissed or ignored concerns over the constitutional limits of the federal government’s involvement in elections. “I’m not asking the DOJ to come in and tell the state how to run their elections, what we’re asking the DOJ to do is to come in and support us in nudging our Secretary of State’s office, who is overseeing federal elections as well, to do their job,” King said. The word “nudging” does not appear in the constitution. *** Doom social: * Bluesky - @americandoom.bsky.social * TikTok - @americandoom_ * YouTube - @americandoom_ * Instagram - @americandoom_ * Facebook This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.american-doom.com/subscribe

  8. Sep 28

    The political toxicity of Trump in November is becoming too obvious to ignore

    *** Through Election Day I’m offering a 40 percent discount on all Doom subscriptions. Access the discount here. We need your support to pay for records from 10 states that will shed light on Trump’s election interference. The clues to this interference abound, but our records request will expose more. That’ll cost money, though. Your dollars will directly fund those efforts. *** Americans hate data centers but Donald Trump tells them they’re “backwards and poor” for opposing them. Democrats like Zohran Mamdani are an existential threat to the nation, Trump says, but he glad-hands with him in front of the cameras. Democrats running for Congress are “crazy” “radical” “lunatics” who are completely out of touch with the average American. Meanwhile, most of those Democrats are spending their time talking about the cost of groceries, gas, and healthcare. The economy is both somehow booming but Trump and Republicans will also bring costs down. Which is it? No one seems to know. Across the country and in Trump’s constant appearances on every platform imaginable — does this guy ever work, by the way? — Republicans are desperately trying to coalesce around a messaging platform of “we’ve done everything right so vote for us or else the bad, crazy Democrats will take it all away.” Trump, meanwhile, dismisses Americans’ concerns about the economy and data centers, spends more and more money on vanity projects, seems to be completely uninterested in ending the war he started in Iran, meets with Mamdani, starts trade wars with allies, and is now picking a fight with the White House press corps, something that even many Republican voters simply do not care about. None of this is helping Republicans’ chances in November. Democrats continue to lead generic ballot polls from every major pollster. Greg Abbott is now in danger, per the latest polls, of losing the governorship in Texas. Also in Texas, James Talarico continues his path to an upset over Ken Paxton to become the state’s first Democratic senator in 38 years. Abdul El Sayed maintains his narrow chance at an upset in Michigan. At least one poll has Democratic Socialist Angie Nixon tied in her race for one of Florida’s seats in the Senate. Republicans are in trouble, but their blind allegiance to Trump requires them to ignore the danger signs. Some have begun to distance themselves from Trump, but many more are clinging to the sinking ship. The first major problem with Republican messaging less than 40 days ahead of the election is its fundamental incoherence: things are going very well, but also anything that’s going badly — like inflation and the economy — is Biden’s fault. Telling Americans that the high prices they’re feeling with their own wallets simply aren’t real doesn’t seem like a particularly good messaging strategy considering the decline of consumer sentiment. Blaming rising prices on Biden might work for some, but not all. Appearing on Fox Business on Tuesday, RNC chair Joe Gruters was asked why recent polling from Fox shows voters preferring Democrats over Republicans on the economy. “Voters have a short memory,” Gruters said, claiming that “under Biden,” “gas prices were higher than they are now.” Sure, but that was then. While it might make some highly-motivated members of the Republican base feel better to hear that gas prices were technically higher (for a brief time) under Biden, it does nothing to motivate voters who are dealing with those prices now — under Trump. And that includes a record high on diesel that will probably continue to rise. So, Trump and Republicans ignore reality or blame Biden for it at their own peril. The president is polling at historic lows and those numbers continuing to drop. Democrats are polling higher than Republicans even on issues that used to be in the GOP’s wheelhouse — national security and the economy. Trump has said he wants Americans to imagine that he is on the ballot in November. Democrats would very much like that, too. Stop me if you’ve heard this before: Republicans don’t really have a plan and everything is sort of a mess because they have to do what Donald Trump decides on a whim each day. Help us fund public records requests to expose election interference efforts. Click below to get Doom for $3.60 a month, a 40 percent discount. Mixed messaging, desperate spending At the “Midterms Convention” in Dallas, Trump called Democrats “the most extreme and dangerous group of candidates for the House and Senate ever to seek office.” “In state after state, the Democrat establishment has been overthrown and replaced by crazed lunatics and radicals,” Trump went on. “They call themselves Democrat socialists, but actually they’re communists.” Among these radicals is Mamdani, who Trump called “a 100% Communist Lunatic.” Why, then, in the midst of a campaign that Trump and Republicans have billed as a fight for the survival of the nation, did Trump politely defer to Mamdani during their appearance together last week? Part of the reason is Trump’s fragile ego, which requires him to suck up to anyone who remotely looks like a winner. The other reason for this strategic misstep is that, just like their stewardship of the U.S. government, Trump and Republicans don’t really have a plan other than that they would like to be in power so they can hurt people. Clearly, though, they don’t think they can win votes on the merits of their own policies. Vice President JD Vance said as much in a private meeting with House Republicans. At the meeting, Vance told Republicans running for re-election to simply mention El Sayed if their opponent wasn’t an outright radical, as Vance clearly believes El Sayed is. In response, El Sayed didn’t take the bait. “If the whole Republican caucus meeting is not about what we can do to actually make lives better but instead what we can talk about so that we can change the subject from what lives are because of their policies, fine, talk about me,” El Sayed said. “But you know what I’m going to talk about? Gas, groceries, how hard it is to see a doctor, the fact that our kids’ schools still look like they did 30 years ago.” Republicans are now dumping money into congressional races, including Senate contests that they thought they had locked up. They’ve given up in Georgia, refusing to significantly fund Mike Collins’ race against Sen. Jon Ossoff. So, El Sayed isn’t really a radical, as long as Americans can actually hear what he has to say and don’t simply listen to people like Vance. Mamdani must not be that much of a radical, either, if Trump is willing to meet and work with him. But this is just the second part of Republicans’ messaging problems a few weeks from Election Day. Data centers Across the country, Americans of all political stripes are rising up in opposition to data centers. Folks are showing up at local government meetings to oppose the projects, which have benefited from untold billions in tax breaks, are driving up utility costs, and polluting air and water. Much of this is in the service of tech companies trying to make breakthroughs on AI. Faced with this groundswell of real, on-the-ground voter sentiment, Republicans have largely failed to coalesce around consistent messaging over data centers. A handful of Republicans running for Congress have publicly opposed data centers. In Texas, Abbott finally succumbed to public pressure and halted permits for data centers, part of a growing trend of public opposition actually stopping the projects from being developed. House Republicans last week passed the initial version of a bill that would effectively protect Americans from paying increased utility rates if data centers are developed in their communities. Still, Republican candidates on the campaign trail can’t get their messaging straight on whether they oppose or support data centers that are increasingly unpopular among their own voters. In Ohio, Jon Husted is getting hammered in attack ads over his support for data centers. In Texas, Paxton talks a big game about his opposition to data centers but as attorney general fought to develop the facilities — and holds millions in investments in the projects, the Lever reported. In Iowa, Rep. Ashley Hinson’s exact position on data centers is unclear. In Alaska, Sen. Dan Sullivan has supported bringing data centers to the state. Last week Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry said that data centers use less water than golf courses — risking alienating another key constituency of the GOP. Byron Donalds, running to become Florida’s next governor, has come out in favor of them. He’s also removed references to Trump from his campaign website. Again, this is all very contradictory. Leading the charge against voters’ wishes is Trump himself, who has never met a development project that is opposed by working Americans that he didn’t like. Under the guise of national security, “beating China,” or just plain making the piles of cash that Trump and his tech billionaire buddies think AI is worth, the president has gone whole hog on data centers. Meanwhile, two-thirds of Americans oppose them. In response, Trump calls them poor bumpkins. Costly wars on trade and in Iran Trump’s trade wars and his attacks on Iran aren’t helping the inflation crisis. Both are causing costs to go up. The Federal Reserve has identified tariffs as a significant cause of inflation. Even Trump’s former Treasury Secretary has said that his constant fighting with other countries — including allies like Canada — and his impetuous tariff-levying aren’t good for the U.S. economy But many Republicans blindly stand by Trump. He’s the deal-maker, after all. Except these deals aren’t working out, and Americans know it. Republicans are also on the wrong side of Trump’s war in Iran. Just seven House Republicans and three GOP

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Ratings & Reviews

5
out of 5
5 Ratings

About

I’m Justin Glawe, writer and journalist, and I’ve spent my career chronicling the violence, unrest and chaos of American life. On this podcast, I’ll discuss the events roiling this complex and troubling country, and speak with some of the people trying to make sense of the madness that pervades our world. This is American Doom. www.american-doom.com

Information

  • Creator
    Justin Glawe
  • Years Active
    2024 - 2026
  • Episodes
    81
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © Justin Glawe
  • Show Website
    American Doom

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