The Biden-Harris Justice Department is wrong in claiming that federal law bars Virginia and other states from removing illegal aliens from their voter rolls. And if the law DOJ cites is misinterpreted by a court to agree with the agency’s erroneous claim, then the law likely would be unconstitutional.
The Justice Department sued Virginia after it removed
the names of 6,303 aliens and Alabama after it moved
3,251 aliens to an “inactive” list.
Keep in mind that it’s a felony under several federal statutes for an alien to claim fraudulently to be a citizen so he or she may register to vote or vote in U.S. elections, including 18 U.S.C. §§ 611, 911, and 1015(f). The Justice Department has a duty to enforce these statutes, something the agency apparently has no interest in doing under President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris.
The federal voter registration form
established by the National Voter Registration Act, or NVRA, not only asks applicants whether they are U.S. citizens, it requires them to attest under penalty of perjury that they are citizens.
The form has a strict warning that if the would-be voter provides false information, he or she may “be fined, imprisoned, or(if not a U.S. citizen) deported from or refused entry to the United States.”
However, the Justice Department claims that Virginia and Alabama violated the law’s 90-day preelection deadline for “systematic” list maintenance programs. This, according to the DOJ led by Attorney General Merrick Garland, prevents all “systematic” removals from a voter registration list within 90 days of an election.
What the Justice Department fails to point out is that the 90-day deadline is in the second part of a section of the National Voter Registration Act that deals only with the removal of the names of registered voters who have moved.
The first part outlines the rule for removing the names of individuals who have moved to a different residence either within the state or another state. The second part then applies the 90-day deadline for such removals.
That section of the law also says that the deadline doesn’t apply to “correction of registration records” or to removal of names of voters who have requested it or who have died or become ineligible due to a criminal conviction or mental incapacity.
The common factor in all of those exceptions is that each deals with individuals who were eligible to vote when they registered but subsequently became ineligible.
The 90-day deadline obviously doesn’t apply to an illegal alien who wasn’t eligible to register to vote in the first place and, in fact, was committing a felony violation of federal criminal law by registering.
Critics, including the Justice Department, have claimed that those exceptions are the “exclusive” reasons that a state may remove the names of registered individuals from the voter rolls.
In 2012, in Arcia v. Detzner
, a federal case out of the Southern District of Florida, Judge William Zloch said that claim would “produce an absurd result.”
Zloch ruled that would mean a state couldn’t “remove from its voting rolls minors, fictitious individuals, individuals who misrepresent their residence in the state, and non-citizens.”
The 90-day deadline, the judge decided, “simply does not apply to an improperly registered noncitizen.”
In another 2012 federal case, U.S. v. Florida
, Judge Robert Hinkle of the Northern District of Florida concluded that Congress drafted these provisions of the law to deal with the removal of names of registered voters “on grounds that typically arise after an initial proper registration.” The provisions don’t apply to “revocation of an improperly granted registration of a noncitizen,” Hinkle ruled.
In fact, the judge wrote, “the NVRA does not require a state to allow a noncitizen to vote just because the state did not catch the error more than 90 days in advance.”
Moreover, the Justice Department is also wrong in claiming that the law bars all “systematic” removals of voters’ names.
As Hinkle ruled, during the 90-day period “a state may pursue a program to systematically remove registrants on request or based on a criminal conviction, mental incapacity, or death but not based on a change of residence.”
What “matters here,” the federal judge added, “is this: none of this applies to removing noncitizens who were never properly registered in the first place.”
It is true that in a deeply flawed, cursory analysis, a divided panel of the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals overturned the Southern District of Florida decision and held that the 90-day deadline did apply to the removal of aliens’ names from voter rolls.
But Florida didn’t appeal this obviously wrong decision by two appeals court judges to the entire 11th Circuit or to the Supreme Court. The 11th Circuit panel’s decision not only is wrong based on the text of the statute, but any interpretation of the National Voter Registration Act that would force a state to allow an ineligible alien who violated criminal law by registering to remain registered so he may cast a ballot in an upcoming election likely would render the law unconstitutional.
In 2019, in Bellito v. Snipes
, another case arising out of Florida, a different 11th Circuit panel held that in applying the NVRA, “Congress would not have mandated that the state register” an individual who “is not eligible to vote.”
If the NVRA does not require a state to register an ineligible alien to vote, it cannot be construed to require a state to maintain and continue the registration of an ineligible alien.
Alabama and Virginia should fight the Justice Department and be willing to take these cases all the way to the Supreme Court. Maintaining the security and integrity of the American election process and protecting voters against foreign interference that voids their votes requires no less.
MSNBC senior national security analyst John Brennan questioned voters’ support of former President Trump after retired Gen. John Kelly alleged that Trump praised Adolf Hitler’s generals
, confirming previous reports
from Peter Baker and Susan Glasser.
“We have seen this continuous pattern over the course of many years of Donald Trump endorsing individuals such as a Hitler, disparaging the U.S. military, advocating for fascism, which is what John Kelly said, that he is fascist,” Brennan said during his Wednesday morning appearance on the network.
“Just like Mark Milley, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who said that Donald Trump is fascist to the core, it just demonstrates that Donald Trump is not interested in promoting our democratic system and our values as Americans,” he added.
Brennan condemned the former president’s followers and their affinity for the Republican nominee by calling them “absurd.”
“I find it absurd and appalling that so many Americans are willing to just dismiss these comments,” Brennan said.
“And the undecided voters that are still out there, I think they really need to take this into account when you have individuals such as John Kelly and Mark Milley saying this about Donald Trump. Is this the country that you want your children and grandchildren to grow up in?” the commentator asked. “I certainly hope not.”
Trump campaign adviser Alex Pfeiffer dismissed the claims as false.
“This is absolutely false. President Trump never said this,” Pfeiffer said in a statement.
Despite the Trump campaign’s denial of such statements, Brennan said he has “no doubt” Kelly’s claims are true.
Kelly, according to a book
from CNN’s Jim Sciutto earlier this year, quoted Trump saying, “Hitler did some good things.”
Additional reports from The Atlantic Editor-in-Chief Jeffrey Goldberg noted the former president stating he needed “the kind of generals that Hitler had” during a private conversation in the White House overheard by “two people.”
With less than 13 days until the November election, Trump is looking to refute recent accusations that he aspires to be a fascist
and allegations about him using potential power to seek retribution
after the 2024 election.
His opponent, Vice President Harris, harped on Trump’s comments
during unscheduled remarks at her Naval Observatory residence in D.C.
“Donald Trump is increasingly unhinged and unstable, and in a second term people like John Kelly would not be there to be the guardrails against his propensities and his actions,” Harris said. “Those who once tried to stop him from pursuing his worst impulses would no longer be there and no longer be there to reign him in.”
“So the bottom line is this, we know what Donald Trump wants, he wants unchecked power. The question in 13 days will be what do the American people want.”
Former President Obama briefly “lost” himself while rapping Eminem lyrics at a rally in Detroit while campaigning for Vice President Harris in the battleground state
.
The superstar rapper made brief remarks on Tuesday, offering support for the vice president and arguing she would protect freedom of speech, before introducing the former Democratic president.
“I gotta say, you know, I’ve done one a lot of rallies, so I don’t usually get nervous, but I was feeling some kind of way following Eminem,” Obama said as the crowd cheered.
Obama then started rapping the lyrics from Eminem’s hit song “Lose Yourself” from the 2002 movie “8 Mile.”
“I notice my palms are sweaty, knees weak, arms are heavy, vomit on my sweater already, mom’s spaghetti, I’m nervous but on the surface, I look calm and ready to drop bombs but I keep on forgetting,” the former president rapped in first person as the crowd got louder.
“I thought Eminem was gonna be performing, I was gonna jump out,” Obama later quipped.
“Love, love me some Eminem,” he said.
Obama has enjoyed Eminem’s hit song on the campaign trail before. In 2016, he was seen bopping
to “Lose Yourself” in a video released by Hillary Clinton’s campaign.
Eminem, who endorsed Harris, has gone after Republican politicians in the past. The Detroit-native rapper has previously criticized
former President Trump and led
a profane chant against the then-president at a music festival in the United Kingdom in late August 2017.
Eminem also asked former Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy last year to stop
using his music at campaign events. Ramaswamy is a long-time fan of the rapper.
“I did not grow up in the circumstances he did, but the idea of being an underdog, people having low expectations of you, that part speaks to me,” Ramaswamy told
The New York Times in an August 2023 interview.
But while Obama at least managed to get a law passed, the Biden-Harris administration
has tried to transform the automotive industry without even persuading Congress.
To be sure, while serving in the U.S. Senate in 2019, Harris enthusiastically cosponsored legislation
mandating that all new car sales be electric by 2040. But as vice president, she has given up on lawmaking and opted instead to pursue a “whole-of-government
” effort that relies on a series of interlocking agency rulemakings.
The Environmental Protection Agency
and Harris’ home state of California are at the heart of this effort. For its part, the EPA’s new nationwide vehicle rules reverse-engineer an electric vehicle mandate by setting standards so stringent that no conventional vehicles—even hybrids—can meet them.
As those standards ramp up, the only way automakers can comply is to make and sell more plug-in battery vehicles or to buy regulatory “credits” from competitors that do. EPA projects automakers will need to make 68%
of their new vehicles battery models by model year 2032—roughly seven years from now.
That, of course, means that automakers must also rapidly phase out the production of gas-powered cars and trucks.
At the same time, climate bureaucrats in California
are not only banning conventional vehicles within the decade, but have also imposed new purchase mandates. The so-called “Advanced Clean Fleet
” rules require truck drivers to replace their diesel trucks with vastly inferior (and much more expensive) electric models starting in January. And the Biden-Harris EPA is poised to give its blessing to California’s electrification programs … just as soon as the election is over.
The costs of these electric vehicle mandates fall on ordinary consumers, even those who don’t buy electric vehicles. Automakers lose tens of thousands of dollars per electric vehicle they sell, and they have to offset those losses by jacking up the price of conventional vehicles—a phenomenon economists call a “regulatory cross-subsidy,” or “the government’s hidden pocketbook
.”
The push to electrify trucking is even more unhinged. Electric trucks are very expensive to buy and have terrible payload capacity and range. That’s why the much vaunted Tesla Semi is used for little more than hauling Cheetos
bags, which are apparently more than half filled with air
.
Almost everything anyone buys gets shipped on a truck at some point, and the shipping industry will have no choice but to pass these enormous costs downstream. Look forward to tighter supply chains and higher prices for everything from auto parts to household items to medical supplies and other critical items that rely heavily on truck transportation.
If you thought grocery prices were bad now, just wait.
This will hit working-class Americans twice over, increasing costs on those already struggling to make ends meet while simultaneously lowering the demand for American labor. Electric vehicles require about 40 percent less labor than traditional cars, not because of productivity gains, but because the batteries are manufactured elsewhere—typically by entities controlled by China, which dominates the battery supply chain end to end.
What does the vice president hope to get from sacrificing our national security and the interests of poor Americans in this way? According to her bean counters at the EPA, not much. State electric vehicle mandates will lead “to little to no change
” in greenhouse-gas “emissions at a national level,” and will thus “result in an indistinguishable?change in global temperatures.”
EPA’s federal standards similarly will have at most a rounding-error’s worth of climate benefits.
As Americans are starting to realize, the Biden-Harris electric vehicle mandates are all pain and no gain. No wonder she’s trying to gaslight us as Election Day approaches. Indeed, Harris made her disingenuous claim that she “will never tell you what kind of car you have to drive” in the swing state of Michigan
.
But while Harris’ desire to run from her record is understandable, it’s just not credible. “There is not a thing that comes to mind,” Harris said
just a few days later on TV’s “The View” when asked if there was anything she would have handled differently from President Joe Biden.
Whether “the future is electric
”—and thus at odds with American consumers and workers—depends therefore in no small part on what happens in the next two weeks.
We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Daily Signal.
Veteran pollster Nate Silver said his “gut” right now is that former President Trump will win
the election in less than two weeks, but he cautioned against putting too much faith in anyone’s gut feeling.
Silver wrote in a guest essay, published Wednesday
by The New York Times, that calling the race a 50-50 toss-up
is the “only responsible forecast” with polls showing the race as razor-tight in all seven key battleground states that are likely to determine
the outcome. But, the FiveThirtyEight founder added, if people press him to give an answer on who is favored, he will say Trump.
“My gut says Donald Trump. And my guess is that it is true for many anxious Democrats,” Silver said. “But I don’t think you should put any value whatsoever on anyone’s gut — including mine.”
“Instead, you should resign yourself to the fact that a 50-50 forecast really does mean 50-50,” he continued. “And you should be open to the possibility that those forecasts are wrong, and that could be the case equally in the direction of Mr. Trump or Ms. Harris.”
While the race has remained mostly neck and neck between Trump and Vice President Harris, the GOP nominee’s chances have seemed to tick up
in recent days. He became slightly favored
in The Hill/Decision Desk HQ’s forecast
for the first time Sunday and has closed in on a polling deficit that he had in swing states like Wisconsin and Pennsylvania.
Silver noted, however, that polling errors could impact the result and predicting which way they will go is not easy. Trump memorably outperformed expectations in 2016 and even more so in 2020, but the pollster explained that in the 2012 election, then-President Obama won and outperformed in the polls.
He also laid out possible reasons why Trump or Harris may outperform what surveys have shown.
For the former president, Silver cast doubt against the theory of the “shy Trump voter” — or that his supporters don’t want to publicly admit they are backing him. Not much data exists to support
that phenomenon occurring in the past.
Instead, the difficulty was in not reaching Trump supporters enough to gain an accurate measure of his support, Silver added.
“Pollsters are attempting to correct for this problem with increasingly aggressive data-massaging techniques, like weighing by educational attainment (college-educated voters are more likely to respond to surveys) or even by how people say they voted in the past,” he said. “There’s no guarantee any of this will work.”
For the Democratic nominee, Silver said pollsters’ response to their misses in 2016 and 2020 could cause them to make certain assumptions that favor Trump and overcorrect for the past issue. He also notes that 2020 was a unique year with the COVID-19 pandemic in which Democrats were more likely to stay at home and be around to answer polls.
“If pollsters are correcting for what was a once-in-a-century occurrence, they may be overdoing it this time,” he said.
Silver added that a slight error could lead to a much more comfortable win for either candidate than expected.
“Don’t be surprised if a relatively decisive win for one of the candidates is in the cards — or if there are bigger shifts from 2020 than most people’s guts might tell them,” he wrote.
