AI-Assist

As early voting in the midterm elections gets underway, voting and immigrant rights organizers across the country are bracing for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement deployments at polling places.

In south Texas and Maine, organizers are mobilizing volunteers to accompany voters who might be worried about racial profiling or that they’ll be falsely accused of being non-citizens.

Clergy members in Georgia and New York state are volunteering to serve as de-escalators at polling places so they can mitigate disruption to voting in the event ICE agents try to make arrests....

The Virginia company that resurfaced the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool under a $14.7 million no-bid contract botched the job in at least 85 places, according to an inspection report the contractor commissioned.

The 75-page “failure analysis,” completed Aug. 6 by Atlantic Coating Inspection, which was obtained by the Washington Post, blames improper materials and a rush to finish in time for the nation’s 250th anniversary celebrations – but it makes no mention of vandalism to the liner, which is the explanation President Donald Trump has repeatedly given for the pool’s problems.

The report documents nearly 40 blisters caused by trapped moisture or chemical fumes, peeling in nearly two dozen spots, and buckling along eight of the pool’s 10 expansion joints....

Over the span of roughly three hours, President Donald Trump posted two dozen videos — and one rant about Greenland — on social media Tuesday night into early Wednesday morning, a late-night barrage that left onlookers questioning the president’s mental state.

The first of the two dozen videos Trump posted online was an AI-generated clip of himself chasing, tackling and then warmly embracing a tiger, a likely reference to the recent death of 23-year-old William Chapman, a British man who was killed by a tiger during an incident at the Yorkshire Wildlife Park on Saturday and who, according to his family, struggled with “significant mental illness.”

“Trump posted this video to his Truth Social, just days after a man was mauled to death by a tiger at the Yorkshire Wildlife Park,” wrote Patricia Eguino, a former commissioner in Washington, D.C., and political activist, in a social media post on X. “His brain is cooked.”...

CNN commentator Scott Jennings tried to throw a lifeline to President Donald Trump’s new White House press secretary on Tuesday night. Fellow Republican Ana Navarro used the moment to take a shot at him instead.

On “NewsNight,” host Abby Phillip asked Jennings what he thought of Katie Zacharia’s first briefing. White House officials themselves had described her performance as “awkward” and “stilted.”

“Everybody’s had, uh, tough days in whatever job they’ve had,” Jennings said. “She might have had one today, but there'll be better days.”...

In what marked an “unprecedented” and major “escalation” in the Trump administration’s campaign to exert more control over states’ voting processes, the Justice Department sent California a “password-protected thumb drive” and a 48-hour demand regarding the midterms, Reuters reported Tuesday night.

The DOJ sent its demand to California Secretary of State Shirley Weber in the form of a letter reviewed by Reuters, along with the aforementioned thumb drive, which contained the names of individuals the Trump administration believed to be noncitizens. In the letter, the DOJ demanded that California refuse to send ballots to the named individuals until state officials confirm their citizenship status.

The named individuals should have their ballots “segregated,” the DOJ demanded in the letter, should they have already received them, and not be counted until the voters’ citizenship had “been determined.” Furthermore, the DOJ gave California officials a 48-hour timeline to review its list of suspected noncitizens, and threatened the state with legal action should officials “not follow its instructions,” Reuters reported....

President Donald Trump once again claimed ownership of Greenland in a late-night Truth Social boast.

The post, at about 12:17 a.m. EDT Wednesday, described “Massive Oil, Gas, and Mineral Exploration” getting ready to begin in “our new and beautiful Greenland.” Greenland is a self-governing territory of Denmark, not a U.S. territory.

Trump’s message read in full:...

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) suggested over the weekend that a Trump administration official may have quietly contacted a federal appeals judge to stall a contempt inquiry, and the legal analyst interviewing him declared that if so, “people are going to jail.”

In a clip flagged by political video aggregator Acyn Torabi from the Legal AF podcast, Whitehouse laid out a hypothetical involving D.C. Circuit Judge Neomi Rao, a Trump appointee.

“If some MAGA official communicated to Judge Rao or her chambers and that resulted in the administrative stay that held the door open and kept the facts from the Senate Judiciary Committee for his confirmation and stalled investigation into misconduct by the DOJ,” Whitehouse began, “ask any judge how big a deal that is.”...

Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) bragged about a road salt win at a Maine Senate debate, and her challenger's comeback had observers cheering.

On Tuesday, Collins faced Democratic challenger Troy Jackson in a debate weeks before the midterms. Asked what she would do about President Donald Trump's tariffs on Canada, Collins pointed to a specific victory.

"I was successful at getting road salt removed from the tariff list," Collins said. Jackson responded by pouncing on the answer....

Former MLB superstar Roger Clemens fact-checked President Donald Trump during his Texas rally Wednesday night.

Trump traveled to San Antonio, Texas, to stump for Republicans like Tano Tijerina in his race against Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-TX), whom Trump attacked for what he considered to be a "disloyal act" by not becoming a Republican after Trump pardoned him. At the rally, Trump invited Clemens on stage to receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honor, because Clemens had not yet been elected to the Hall of Fame.

In typical Trump fashion, the president also rattled off a fact about Clemens that the former big league pitcher was quick to correct. ...