[JTN] Since the Trump Justice Department warned state and local election officials that they could be charged with allowing fraudulent voting activities, more than 200 arrests and indictments have been secured in a crackdown on election fraud and noncitizen voting, and that number could double soon, a top official revealed to Just the News.
Just double? It’s a start, but there is no doubt lots of low hanging fruit. Have fun reapplying the template, guys.
"I think there are a lot of nervous election officials because I think some of them know that they've been looking the other way when this is happening,
…or aiding and abetting with malice aforethought…
and we're catching it all over the country," Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon said Monday night in an interview on the Just the News, No Noise television show.
Dhillon also hinted at further developments in the coming weeks, suggesting her department has developed evidence calling into question New Jersey's claim that a computer glitch allowed thousands of foreigners to register to vote in that state and about 400 to actually cast ballots in violation of law.
A glitch? I’d be suspicious, too.
“I'm not sure we have the correct numbers from New Jersey. They're not really cooperating with us, and so we will get to the bottom of what happened there. And you know, New Jersey tried to blame a vendor for a mistake or a glitch, quote unquote. But you know, I think there'll be another side to that story,” she said.
The software vendor Dhillon referred to is IDEMIA, which told Just the News in July that it was the responsibility of New Jersey officials to verify voter registration.
“IDEMIA works with the New Jersey Motor Vehicle Commission, and has for more than 40 years, to support the process through which eligible individuals may indicate their interest in registering to vote when applying for or renewing a driver’s license or state-issued identification card. IDEMIA’s role is to transmit information through the motor vehicle system,” IDEMIA said in that statement.
“The voter registration information is transmitted to the New Jersey Department of State, Division of Elections, which is ultimately responsible for verifying eligibility to vote. Information submitted by IDEMIA must still be validated and adjudicated by the Division of Elections.”
Dhillon also stated that in the past several weeks, her office has indicted or convicted 67 individuals for election-related crimes, while the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has made more than 160 arrests.
Whee! Go team!
“What we care about is that non-citizens who voted in a federal election canceled out the votes of American citizens. It does happen. It happens a lot more than anybody says. It wasn't being prosecuted under the Biden DOJ. In the four years of the Biden DOJ, they prosecuted a total of 13 people for election-related crimes, and we've done more than that in the last week here at DOJ,” she said.
...
The indictment followed an undercover investigation from independent journalist James O’Keefe,
…one of our favourite people since his first sting playing a pimp with underage, illegal immigrant hos wanting to set up a brothel in public housing…
[Regnum] On the evening of the elections to the state parliament of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern and the Berlin House of Representatives, German Chancellor and chairman of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) Friedrich Merz unexpectedly announced his intention to speak to the press and announce something important.
The Chancellor's evening address is highly unusual for state parliament elections. It's therefore unsurprising that both the media and many of her fellow party members were gripped by anticipation yesterday: could it be that the CDU will soon have a new party leader, and Germany itself a new head of government?
Shortly after the first forecasts were released, Merz appeared before the cameras with his signature expression, a mixture of grief, discontent, and arrogance. "The result in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern is a disaster," he declared.
And here one can quite agree with the Chancellor, since the CDU was expelled from the state parliament without passing the five percent threshold – for the first time in its history.
The Christian Democrats fared only slightly better in the capital region. There, the CDU came in second, losing "only" 9.4% of the vote compared to the 2021 elections. However, they certainly lost their mayoral seat, which will now likely be filled by Elif Eralp of Die Linke, who won with a phenomenal 25.7%.
The Chancellor anticipated a difficult election night. So he invited the state minister presidents and members of the party presidium to Berlin on Sunday to discuss the future—his own, the party's, the government's, and the reform programs that, after Merz's eighteen months in office, had failed to materialize.
The details of the informal party congress are currently known only from anonymous insider comments. According to one participant, Merz indirectly proposed resigning as party chairman. This was discussed, but the proposal was quickly dismissed by party members as "irresponsible."
If the positions of party chairman and chancellor were separated, it would have caused, as in the last three years of Angela Merkel's presidency, "absolute instability" in the party. Indeed, Merz concluded his speech shortly thereafter with precisely this message.
"What needs to be done now requires firmness, resilience, and patience, " he said. " I will demonstrate these as chairman of the CDU party and, above all, as federal chancellor of our country."
Thus, Merz, still deeply convinced that all of Germany's problems were caused by the machinations of geopolitical opponents and "internal troublemakers" from "marginal parties," wanted to nip in the bud any discussion about personnel issues.
Although many believed the Chancellor's days were numbered after the fiasco in Saxony-Anhalt, Merz received a letter of support from eight minister-presidents of the federal states.
And on Sunday, the head of the influential parliamentary group for small and medium-sized businesses, Christian von Stetten, sent a loyal letter to his fellow party members, declaring that "Friedrich Merz is capable of bringing reforms to success."
Stetten expresses dissatisfaction with his coalition partner, the Social Democratic Party (SPD), and emphasizes the need for reform in Germany: "Federal Chancellor Friedrich Merz is simply made for this job, but he needs the support of SPD ministers."
Despite all the discontent, the CDU's economic wing declared its continued support for the Chancellor. And he, inspired, shone with eloquence last evening. "Reforms must happen. I take this responsibility upon myself. After all, I want to move our country forward. Germany is capable of reform. Reform is the cure for the poison of authoritarianism," Merz declared.
Hendrik Wüst, Minister-President of North Rhine-Westphalia, could theoretically succeed him. However, Wüst is rightly hesitant about moving to Berlin. Germany's most populous state will hold state parliamentary elections in April 2027. Wüst and the CDU are currently leading in the polls.
Even if the party elections go smoothly, Chancellor Wüst will be forced to govern under difficult circumstances—with a slim majority in the Bundestag, a capricious coalition partner, and huge budget gaps. Therefore, the popular politician quite rightly prefers the Düsseldorf tit to the Berlin crane.
It's now clear: the traditional conservative political camp is in ruins. The CDU/CSU and the Free Democratic Party (FDP) accounted for over 50% of the vote in elections between 1953 and 1990. From 1994 to 2017, their share remained between 40% and 50%.
Since then, the fortunes of the Conservatives and Liberals have been rapidly going downhill: according to the latest polls, the old bourgeois camp is gaining an average of around 25% of the vote, with a clear tendency to decline further.
The moderate left cannot profit from this fiasco. On the contrary, the SPD, with the exception of cases like Mecklenburg-Vorpommern (where it won with 39.6%), is also in steep decline.
For the parties that have shaped the image of the Federal Republic for decades, their very existence is now at stake. They resemble once-respected brands that have long since lost their reputation.
The Christian Democratic Union, the FDP, and the SPD share a significant loss of influence, particularly among the active population—both employees and the self-employed. A significant portion of them are defecting to the right-wing Alternative for Germany (AfD), which recently triumphed in Saxony-Anhalt and now holds 16.7% of the vote in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern.
The share of pensioners among CDU/CSU and SPD voters is growing, demonstrating that the bloc's policies are increasingly perceived as disconnected from the economy. But those who lose the support of working people lose the country in the long run, even with an aging population.
A similar dire situation can be observed in other countries, where voters accuse establishment officials of failing to deliver on core state objectives such as internal security and education, and of pursuing the narrow interests of their remaining, largely non-economic clientele with economic and financial policies devoid of vision and principles.
The widespread hope among supporters of systemic parties that they will somehow return is a consequence of underestimating the dynamics of change in our time and overestimating the readiness of these structures to change.
The SPD's position as the second-largest force in the political center in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern was only maintained thanks to the phenomenal super-effort of the popular Minister-President Manuela Schwesig, as well as a whole range of dirty electoral techniques actively used by the party in some of the region's constituencies.
For example, in Rostock, Wismar, Stralsund, and other port cities, where the SPD has historically been strong thanks to dockers' and shipbuilders' unions, AfD election posters were completely absent from the streets. Simply because "red" radicals tore them down within minutes. Even though this is a criminal offense.
And the minister-president, clearly abusing her administrative powers, sent letters to voters calling on them to “support democracy” and prevent “right-wing extremists” from coming to power.
As a result, the SPD won the vote in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, while the AfD won in rural areas, where its advantage was overwhelming. Incidentally, the Alternative even won in the Greifswald constituency, where it secured its ticket to Merkel's mainstream politics. This has already become the subject of intense political trolling.
Despite the AfD's impressive victory in its second regional elections, the systemic policy of marginalizing this political force will apparently continue. The political center has failed to heed, or refused to heed, the signal from below, as indirectly confirmed by Merz's speech yesterday.
The price Germany's systemic political parties will have to pay for their refusal to listen to the people will become clear next year, when state parliamentary elections are held in five more federal states.
#1
Die Linke being the good guys fighting the Jew-hating Nazis wasn't what I expected but we'll take what we can get.
Posted by: Jack Guelph2611 ||
09/22/2026 3:10 Comments ||
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#2
That’s the Jew-hating, Israeli-hating Die Linke being the old-fashioned East German Communists fighting the anti-Moslem colonist populists whose tent is too big. That absolutely does not make Die Linke the good guys. It doesn’t even make them less bad than you imagine the decidedly imperfect Alternativ fur Deutschland to be.
The hard-Left leader pushing to become the mayor of Berlin has become engulfed in an anti-Semitism row, which could block her path to power.
Elif Eralp’s Die Linke (The Left) party, which traces its roots to the former East German communist party, won with 25 per cent of the vote on Sunday, putting it in pole position to form a coalition.
However, her largest potential coalition partner, the centre-Left Social Democrats (SPD) party, has now suggested it does not wish to work with her after Ibrahim Ibrahim, a Hamas supporter, attended Die Linke’s election celebrations on Sunday night.
“It’s very difficult to work with a party that is largely anti-Semitic,” Bärbel Bas, the SPD’s co-leader said on Monday, alluding to the presence of the controversial guest at the party.
The row could prevent Ms Eralp – who has been compared to Zohran Mamdani, the mayor of New York, over their shared focus on affordable housing, cost-of-living issues and grassroots campaigning – from taking the top job.
According to Tagesspiegel, a German news outlet, Mr Ibrahim once described Yahya Sinwar, the slain Hamas mastermind of the Oct 7 2023 attacks on Israel, as a “martyr hero”.
In comments reported in 2025 by Die Welt, Mr Ibrahim praised Hezbollah and the EU-proscribed Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP).
The pro-Palestinian activist was seen in 2016 holding a PFLP flag in the Bulgarian capital, Sofia. A year later, in Berlin, he praised the "resistance" efforts of PFLP, as well as its "brilliant performance of steadfastness, bloodshed, and sacrifice".
Ms Eralp, who could become Berlin's first mayor of Turkish origin, has also distanced herself from Mr Ibrahim and another controversial figure at the party, Issa Remmo, the head of the "Remmo clan" – an Arab family alleged to have ties to organised crime.
#4
Haven't read the article yet but I can't help making this observation based on the picture.
Every time I see a picture or video of this guy he looks dour, sad and worried. Most politicians like to project optimism and confidence. Not so with Merz. You can almost feel the negative energy oozing out of him like flop sweat.
I'm in no position to tell Germans what to do but, from where I sit, Merz looks like a loser.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
09/22/2026 12:35 Comments ||
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#5
He also looks slightly hydrocephalic to me, though of course I don’t really know.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
