California is hitting back at President Donald Trump's plan to flood the blue state with election monitors — by having those monitors watched.
The Trump administration last week said it would send federal election monitors to California and New Jersey for the upcoming Nov. 4 elections. The move was to be carried out by the Justice Department, which said it would deploy observers to several counties in the states following requests from Republican officials who reported irregularities.
The move comes after the president has repeatedly pushed baseless claims of rampant voter fraud. In California, affected counties include Los Angeles, Orange, Kern, Riverside, and Fresno.
On Monday, California officials vowed to deploy their own monitors as voters hit the polls to weigh in on a measure that would allow the state to use Democratic-backed congressional maps that they hope will add up to five blue seats to Congress in an effort to counteract a similar move from Texas.
California Attorney General Rob Bonta (D) told reporters Monday, “They’re not going to be allowed to interfere in ways that the law prohibits. We cannot be naive. The Republican Party asked for the U.S. DOJ to come in."
MAGA allies melted down over the news.
Harmeet Dhillon, Trump's U.S. assistant attorney general for the Civil Rights Division, wrote on X, "I thought this was a joke, so I didn’t comment…. But apparently irony is dead …"
Eric Daugherty, assistant news director at Florida’s Voice, wrote on X, "BREAKING: A furious Gavin Newsom will be deploying his OWN 'observers' to monitor the DOJ and Harmeet Dhillon's election monitors during California's November 4th election. He's that concerned about not being able to cheat. Absolutely pathetic."
The X account CA - No on 50! wrote on X, "This is almost comical. @CAgovernor is such a paid shill."