DHS failed to provide records supporting Trump’s allegations of noncitizen voting, watchdog says

No receipts to back claims

By Alexandra Hutzler

Key federal agencies failed to provide any records to back up President Donald Trump’s allegations that tens of thousands of noncitizens are registered to vote in various blue states, a nonpartisan government watchdog said in a new lawsuit. 

Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, or CREW, told a federal court in Washington, D.C., that the administration is violating an open records law by failing to hand over information on its methodology and data sources on the matter.

Trump claimed without evidence during a primetime address to the nation in July that 278,000 noncitizens were registered to vote in federal elections. The unfounded allegation is part of a pattern of Trump spreading misinformation about voting fraud since losing the 2020 presidential race as he pushes Congress to pass onerous new restrictions on voting.

CREW filed several Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests asking how the administration determined that 278,000 figure.

Trump declares victory over Greenland

But what really happened?

Brett Wilkins for Common Dreams

An image posted by Donald J. Trump on his Truth Social account
on 20 January 2026 during the Greenland crisis, showing him planting
a US flag on Greenlandic soil with JD Vance and Marco Rubio

Danish and international commentators dismissed President Donald Trump’s claim that the deal he announced on September 18 gives the United States “permanent control” over Greenland’s security as what one journalist called a “repackaging” of long-standing agreements spun as a foreign policy win.

Trump—who has repeatedly threatened to gain control of the autonomous Danish territory, including by military force—said on his Truth Social network: “I am pleased to announce that the United States of America has entered into an Agreement with The Kingdom of Denmark, and Greenland, that gives the United States permanent control over security, and all other needs, in Greenland, completely addressing ALL of our many US concerns. There will be NO COST to the United States!”

“Additionally, from now on, no US adversary can EVER have a base in Greenland, have a military presence in Greenland, or make sensitive investments in Greenland, without our express written approval,” the president continued. “This is an ‘Infinite Life’ Agreement, there is no end!”

“We look forward to working with the wonderful people of Denmark and Greenland toward a magnificent future with respect to this large, and highly strategic, parcel of land,” Trump added. “We will be very protective of it! This is a dream come true for the United States of America, one that is very important, historic, and special.”

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio hailed what he called a “historic deal” and “a huge win for the United States and the American people.”

A joint statement released by the office of Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen and Jens-Frederik Nielsen, who chairs the Naalakkersuisut—Greenland’s governing body—confirmed that “Greenland, Denmark, and the United States are expected to sign an agreement on strengthened security in the Arctic and the North Atlantic area next week” at the United Nations General Assembly in New York.

Frederiksen stressed that the agreement “recognizes the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the Kingdom [of Denmark] and the Greenlandic people’s right to self-determination,” while Nielsen said the pact “is to the benefit of us all.”

The muted response to Trump 9/11 fantasy is a media failure

Failure to call out Trump on his 9/11 lies

Lisa Needham

Trump snaps at a reporter after Trumpapalooza. (Andrew Harnik/Getty)

When it comes to 9/11, Donald Trump has always had a problem with the truth. Now that he’s increasingly detached from reality and completely surrounded by sycophants, his lies have gotten downright bizarre.

The absolute weirdest of these has to be Trump’s fantasy that he was literally pulled to safety by brave firefighters as he stood … Inside? Near? Under? … the US Steel Building, now One Liberty Plaza.

There was significant fear that the US Steel Building might collapse, fear that turned out to be wrong. But on both September 12, 2001, and September 14, 2001, rescue workers were evacuated and rushed from the building.

Which, apparently, is where Trump comes in: “The United States Steel Building was creaking. Really creaking. And we thought it was going to fall down. The truth is it creaked a lot. It creaked. It still creaks, but it never came down. And I’ll never forget two firemen. We thought it was coming down on top of us. And two firemen, big strong guys, and I’m not the smallest guy in the world. They grabbed me under the arm, said, ‘Got to get out of here.’ And they literally lifted me up. This is not easy to do. I’m big. They lifted me up and they started running with me. I said, ‘Fellas, I can run myself.’ But they were amazing.”

To hear Trump tell it, he’s also some sort of air traffic savant, heavily implying that as he watched the second plane on 9/11, he knew it was going to hit the Twin Towers:

“I saw the second plane hit and you saw that come and you’re watching it and it’s because I watched the air patterns for years and you know where the planes are. They go up right up the Hudson River. This thing was coming right into the second building and I said, ‘Wow.” So I watched that happen and I said, “Wow, we are now in a different time.”

Wow. Wow, we are now in a different time. What soaring and stirring rhetoric, right?

There’s another big problem with this make-believe, which is that Trump Tower is some four miles away from Ground Zero, so the chance Trump was keenly watching the air patterns over the Twin Towers is pretty much zero.

With Trump, it’s always tempting to try to determine whether he knows he’s lying or believes his own lies. Before his second term, that approach still made some sort of sense, because his lies were at least reality-shaped, more about puffery than outright fantasy.

But you could see the outlines of full fabulism starting to ramp up.

Can't see the difference

Why did no one challenge this?

Watch out!

Marco Rubio uses AI to make the US look stupid

US State Department map used at international AIDS conference mislabeled every African nations

Isn't geography something the State Department should know?

Jessica Corbett for Common Dreams

“AI use gone wrong.” “Utter embarrassment.” “Stupid empire.” “Idiot Reich.”

Those were just some of the responses to Thursday reporting on a US Department of State map presented at a global conference in Brazil that mislabeled every African country it included.

“Reuters viewed a video of the presentation given at the AIDS 2026 conference in Rio de Janeiro, which shows the errant map displayed halfway during a presentation about the State Department’s new health agreements,” the news agency reported.

“A Reuters analysis found the image of the map included in the presentation contained an artificial intelligence watermark that ⁠signals it was made with OpenAI tools,” the outlet noted. “The company said it was investigating the report.”

"Like no one has ever seen before"

How vaccine skeptics use storytelling effectively to create powerful but medically inaccurate messaging

Vaccine stupidity has a long history

A drawing published by the London Society for
the Abolition of Compulsory Vaccination in the late 1800s.
Historical Medical Library of The College of Physicians of Philadelphia

Katherine Shwetz, Rice University; University of Toronto

As long as there have been vaccines, there have been people who doubted their science and safety.

Back in 19th-century England, people rioted against a mandatory smallpox vaccine, claiming that it violated civil rights and was an affront to human bodily integrity. In the United States, organizations dedicated to resisting vaccines have existed since the Anti-Compulsory Vaccination League of Brooklyn was established in 1894.

Researchers generally refer to people who do not follow the standard advice of health professionals about vaccines, by either refusing or delaying some or all vaccines, as vaccine hesitant. Today, vaccine hesitancy is most famously associated with the Make America Healthy Again movement and its standard-bearer, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Public health advocates and science communicators have largely tried to counter these ideas by offering accurate, factual information. But as a medical humanities researcher studying how groups that embrace vaccine hesitancy craft their message, I’ve learned that part of why vaccine hesitancy is so hard to combat is how these groups use storytelling to spread their views.

Vaccine-hesitant groups have fewer limitations than pro-vaccine groups on the kinds of stories they can tell about the development and impact of vaccines. While science-driven messaging that encourages vaccination has to be faithful to the complex and often uneventful reality of science, vaccine-skeptic stories tend to make more dynamic claims.

The antifa terrorism threat the Trump administration describes does not exist

But since when is being imaginary not a feature in Trump's rants?

Jason M. Blazakis, Middlebury College

The State Department on July 16, 2026, hosted what officials billed as a ministerial on the resurgence of left-wing political terrorism.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio invited representatives from more than 60 countries to Washington to hear an argument that many of them appear not to believe: that a transnational far-left terrorist movement called antifa threatens the democratic world. 

At the event, allies were asked to mobilize against that enemy despite nations like the Netherlands and Germany politely noting to their host that they cannot find evidence of any such group.

Some intelligence analysts have declined to brief on antifa at interagency meetings because they do not regard it as a serious counterterrorism threat.

As a terrorism scholar who spent a decade running the State Department office that designates terrorist organizations, I understand their confusion. The threat the administration describes does not exist in the form the administration describes it.

Antifa is not a group

Jan. 6 insurrectionist and former Republican state
Rep. Justin Price claims Antifa and not him stormed the Capitol

As I and others have written before, antifa is not a group. It is a movement and an ideology, a loose commitment to opposing fascism. In its most organized form, it amounts to scattered local collectives like Rose City Antifa in Portland, Oregon.

There is no membership roll, no command hierarchy and no funding structure. There is no leader of antifa – the Trump administration has not named one – and there is no record of deadly attacks attributed to a U.S.-based organization called antifa.

Groups like the Islamic State group and al-Qaida have killed tens of thousands of people and have a documented chain of command. Antifa does not. You cannot decapitate a movement with no head, and you cannot sanction an organization that does not exist.

As such, the Trump administration created one.

Sociopathic Trump Delivers Absurd—and Terrifying—Address to the Nation

Trump's latest efforts to end democracy

Robert Reich for Inequality Media

The real message to be drawn from Trump’s address to the nation is that he will call into question the votes of every state and city that chooses a Democratic senator or representative in the 2026 midterm elections. He’ll push Republican governors and mayors not to certify the results. He’ll demand recounts and audits.

We’ve been here before, but this time he’s even less restrained than he was in 2020 and is surrounded by people who will do his bidding.

His address to the nation was absurd. It was riddled with so many lies that I’m reluctant to dignify them with rebuttals, but you should have them.

He mentioned a newly-declassified investigation into a voter registration group in Muskegon, Michigan that apparently had invited fraudulent registrations in 2020—but Trump didn’t mention that the applications had been caught and none of them had resulted in any ballots being sent out incorrectly. 

The FBI closed the investigation, stating “the investigation to date did not identify a criminal violation or a priority threat to national security.”

He alleged, once again, that foreign powers have hijacked votes, or that federal or state officials plotted to rig either the 2020 election. But no evidence has ever emerged showing that vote counts have been manipulated or corrupted. Intelligence reports, state audits of vote tallies and lawsuits have repeatedly affirmed official results in 2020 and other years. 

Nothing suggests China manipulated votes. Instead, US intelligence assessment says China “probably also continued longstanding efforts” to gather information on US voters and public opinion and to use that information to influence US policy “as it has during all election cycles since at least 2008.”

The most significant foreign influence operations occurred in the 2016 presidential election and were conducted by Russia, in favor of Trump, according to the Mueller report. To the extent that this and other reports appeared to cast doubt on the legitimacy of Trump’s victory, they have had the effect of fueling his distrust of US intelligence agencies.

Despite his repeated assertions that US elections are not secure, Trump during his second term has significantly cut the budget of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, including its election work. That’s because Trump grew contemptuous of the agency, and the government’s election security work generally, after it validated the integrity of the 2020 election.

So the entire performance was fake—an extension of his Big Lie that the 2020 election was “stolen” from him.

Leading climate scientist accuses Trump Energy Dept. of misusing his research

Climate scientist who “proved” humanity is warming Earth says government report got it wrong

University of East Anglia

A pioneering climate scientist is challenging a U.S. government report that cited his research while reaching what he says is the exact opposite conclusion. 

Benjamin Santer and his colleagues say decades of satellite data clearly reveal the atmospheric “fingerprint” of human-caused climate change. Their new peer-reviewed analysis argues the report contains major scientific errors and should not be relied upon in climate policy decisions.

A leading climate scientist is pushing back against what he describes as "demonstrably incorrect" claims in a major US government climate report, arguing that it misrepresented his research and understated the role of human activity in global warming.

Media relations

Why 40 per cent of people are avoiding the news, according to a psychologist

Coping by not looking

Ali Jasemi, Wilfrid Laurier University

During several recent conversations, people have told me that they’ve stopped checking their phones in the morning. Not because nothing was happening, but because everything was. They described the feeling as standing under a waterfall of perpetual bad news.

This experience is far from an isolated one. According to Reuters Institute’s 2025 Digital News Report, 69 per cent of Canadians at least occasionally avoid the news now.

Globally, 40 per cent report they at least sometimes or often do the same, the highest figure ever recorded. People shared consistent reasons for this: the news put them in a bad mood, they felt overwhelmed and powerless to act.

As a researcher in developmental psychology, focusing on social development and psychological well-being, I argue that news fatigue is not laziness, weakness or a generational decline in civic interest. It’s the predictable response of a human brain meeting an environment it was never designed to navigate.

Wired for bad news

Long before smartphones or even the printing press, our cognitive architecture was shaped by a single problem: stay alive long enough to reproduce. Our ancestors whose attention drifted past the rustle in the grass left fewer descendants than those who froze, looked and listened.

The brain that paid attention to threats was the brain that survived.

This is the foundation of what psychologists call the negativity bias, one of the most replicated findings in cognitive science. Across decades of research, the human mind has been shown to weigh negative information more heavily than positive, attend to it faster and remember it longer.

A predator nearby mattered more than a beautiful sunset. The cost of missing a real threat was death, while the cost of overreacting was a few minutes of wasted vigilance. The asymmetry made this bias adaptive.

Here is the problem: the human brain has not changed since then. We are the same species as we were thousands of years ago. What’s changed is the size of the world it’s asked to scan for threats.

It's time to boycott CBS

Right-wing media linked to vaccine refusal

Media habits tied to MMR vaccine hesitancy in US adults

Laine Bergeson

Where Americans get their news may play a significant role in shaping their attitudes toward the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine, according to a national study published in Vaccine. 

In the cross-sectional survey of nearly 3,000 US adults led by researchers at Johns Hopkins University, 17% of respondents said they believe the risks of the MMR vaccine outweigh its benefits, indicating vaccine hesitancy. 

The survey, conducted in August 2025, comes as measles cases have resurged across the country, with more than 2,000 infections reported by the end of 2025. 

That’s the highest number of annual cases since measles was declared eliminated in the United States in 2000.

Unfounded Health Concerns Are Powering a Solar Backlash

Does Trump think they cause cancer too?
by Anna Clark for ProPublica

Kevin Heath had hoped there would be solar panels by now on his family farm in southeastern Michigan, roughly 50 miles outside Detroit.

About six years ago, he agreed to lease part of his land for a solar project. It would help him pay off debt and keep the farm in the family, he said. But the opportunity was thwarted when, in 2023, following pushback from some local residents, his township passed an ordinance that banned large solar projects from land zoned for agriculture.

In the fight over solar development, Heath said he was bombarded by just about every argument from critics — including claims that solar fields are a health hazard. “I’ve heard them say that, but I’ve never heard anybody prove that,” Heath said.

“The health and safety issue,” he added, “that is just a joke.”

Michigan has big prospects in solar farming — measured by the expected growth in the capacity of its farms to add electricity directly to the grid. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, most of the nation’s new capacity from this type of solar farm is planned this year for four states, including Michigan. The others, with their hot deserts and big-sky plains, seem more obvious: Texas, Arizona and California.

To some, in Michigan and beyond, this growth feels dangerous. They pressure public officials to stop, stall or otherwise complicate new solar projects with an array of arguments that now go beyond just land use to include public health.

There is little reputable evidence to back their claims. But health concerns have helped power a solar backlash that undercuts efforts to broaden energy sources even as customer costs are rising.

Restrictions on solar development are proliferating nationwide, “often rooted in misinformation or unfounded fears,” including ones that involve “potential environmental and human safety risks,” according to an article published late last year in the Brigham Young University Law Review.

To generate electricity, solar projects harvest energy from the sun. “And that’s really not that different from what a field of corn or alfalfa does,” said Troy Rule, the Arizona State University law professor who authored the article. “In fact, arguably, it’s even more environmentally friendly.”

Jim Mageau critiqued for false information

Charlestown's leading Trumper strikes a nerve

Philip Eil

Some people know exactly why this mural was funded. (April 10, 2026)

By now, the Great Providence Mural Kerfuffle is mostly over.

The in-progress mural of Iryna Zarutska on a downtown building has been permanently discontinued. The owners of The Dark Lady, the LGBTQIA-friendly bar that greenlit the project, have said they are “deeply and sincerely sorry.” A smaller mural of Zarutska has been completed on the wall of Opa, a Lebanese restaurant on Atwells Ave. And some excellent reporting on the affair has been published by the Boston Art Review and The Providence Eye (where I’m a board member), among other outlets.

But there are still aftershocks reverberating in the local media. And one of them is worth mentioning.

Mageau (left) is Charlestown's most prominent Trumper

On April 25, the Providence Journal published a letter from a reader named James Mageau in Charlestown who expressed outrage at the way the first mural on the wall of The Dark Lady was halted. The letter – written in response to the Journal’s coverage of the brouhaha – made a lot of bad points, which is hardly noteworthy for Journal letters.

But it also included a significant error of fact. In the last lines of his letter, Mageau wrote:

I believe the controversy rests primarily among the left-wing socialist, communist and progressive community. They are having nervous fits over it because Elon Musk is helping to underwrite the costs of painting murals of victims attacked by undocumented immigrants. [Emphasis added]

This is not true.

EDITOR'S NOTE: That Jim Mageau twists the truth beyond recognition is no surprise to Charlestown residents who have been subjected to Mageau's bullshit for decades. We've cited Mageau's confabulations for much of that time, even giving him his own "Topics" tab (click HERE) that links to almost 200 Progressive Charlestown articles.  - Will Collette

The brilliance of their genius is simply dazzling

 

Says it all

On top of that, "Doordash Grannie" is a phony