Missouri Supreme Court rules new GOP-drawn map can’t be used for November elections

The court said a referendum seeking to put the map up for a vote must be placed on the ballot, meaning the state’s elections this fall will take place under its old congressional lines.

The Missouri Supreme Court ruled Thursday that the state’s redrawn congressional map cannot be used in this year’s midterm elections, dealing a blow to Republicans.

The court ruled that a referendum on whether the state can use the map going forward must be included on the November ballot, meaning Missouri’s fall elections will take place under its previous district lines.

The new map was designed to draw one of the two Missouri Democrats in Congress, longtime Rep. Emanuel Cleaver, out of his seat.

“More than 305,000 Missourians demanded a say in who will represent them in the halls of Congress. Despite the cynical and deeply shameful attempt to silence many of our neighbors, the people fought back and won,” Cleaver said in a post on X following the ruling, adding that “democracy prevails.”

The ruling comes after a protracted battle between advocacy group People Not Politicians Missouri, which sought to block the Republican redistricting effort, and the state GOP leaders who defended it.

Missouri redrew its congressional map in 2025 at the behest of President Donald Trump. In response, People Not Politicians Missouri gathered more than 300,000 signatures to force a veto referendum. And while the group exceeded the signature requirements for getting on the ballot, Missouri Secretary of State Denny Hoskins refused to certify it, saying that it was unconstitutional. The group appealed to the state Supreme Court, which heard arguments on the matter on Wednesday.

The ruling comes just days before the state’s Sept. 8 deadline to finalize its ballot for the general election. The state ran its August primary election using the Republican-drawn map.

Judge Ginger K. Gooch wrote in her ruling that Hoskins and those acting with him “are restrained and enjoined from implementing, using, or mandating the use of the congressional redistricting in HB 1 for the November 2026 general election or at any other time thereafter unless and until HB 1 is approved by the voters at the November 2026 general election and takes effect 30 days thereafter.”

The court’s decision means Cleaver will now be seeking re-election for his old seat, which skews heavily Democratic. He won by almost 24 percentage points in 2024.

The redesigned 5th District, which was struck down by Thursday’s ruling, was drawn so that Trump would have won by more than 17 points in 2024.

Missouri Attorney General Catherine Hanaway vowed in a statement following the ruling to appeal the decision to the U.S. Supreme Court.

“Never before in American history has a court overturned a congressional map after a primary and before a general election. This unprecedented decision clearly violates federal law and has thrust our state into a full‑fledged constitutional crisis,” Hanaway wrote. “We are confident that the federal courts will not allow every Missouri voter to be disenfranchised—which is what today’s decision does.”

House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., also weighed in, celebrating the decision and referencing the U.S. Supreme Court’s May decision to uphold a Virginia Supreme Court decision that did away with a voter-approved congressional map that would have expanded Democratic-leaning districts.

“We are watching closely to determine if they apply the same standard here, or choose to do the bidding of the Republican Party again,” Jeffries wrote.

People Not Politicians executive director Richard von Glahn celebrated the ruling.

“This victory reaches beyond Missouri. In a year when map-drawing has become a national weapon, courts across the country are watching what happens here. A Missouri win for the referendum is a signal that the people still hold the power,” von Glahn said in a statement.

Missouri is one of a handful of Republican-led states that took up mid-decade redistricting efforts at Trump’s urging to shore up the party’s narrow House majority.

Trump criticized the ruling in a Truth Social post, calling the ruling “horrible, ridiculous, and unConstitutional.”

“The Election Process, as usual, is being disturbed in America! Missouri must be able to use the map that was in effect just a couple of months ago, in the Primary,” Trump wrote.

The Republican National Committee also blasted the ruling in a statement.

“The RNC is evaluating every option to challenge this decision, and we will not stop fighting for Missouri voters,” said Ally Triolo, the RNC’s Election Integrity Communications Director.

The last time one of the state’s maps was considered by a voter referendum was in 1922, after the Republican-led state Legislature redrew the districts. Voters at the time rejected the new map.

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2026-election/missouri-supreme-court-rules-gop-drawn-map-cant-used-november-election-rcna595688

Virginia Mom Gets 6-Month Suspended Jail Sentence for Letting 5-Year-Old Walk to the Pond

The government also placed Karyann Parkinson on its child abuse and neglect registry, where she will remain for seven years.

A mom of five was convicted last week of contributing to the delinquency of a minor. Her offense: allowing her 5-year-old son to walk about a half-mile by himself in their gated community.

Until very recently, Karyann Parkinson lived in leafy Williamsburg, Virginia. She and her husband, Dallin, moved there from Utah so Parkinson could attend William and Mary Law School.

In June, when Parkinson was preparing for the bar—and also happened to be eight months pregnant with her fifth child—she and her then-youngest, Sam, went for a bike ride, as they often do. They stopped for her son's favorite activity: collecting goose feathers from the path near their community pond. When they got home, he asked if he could walk back and get some more.

Parkinson said yes. It's a short walk, along a sidewalk separated from the street by 10 feet of grass. Sam would have to cross two streets with crosswalks, which she'd seen him do safely hundreds of times—including six times that morning, she says. Off he went while she made lunch.

A passerby saw Sam and alerted security. One of the community's security guards escorted the boy back and gave Parkinson an earful. Pretty soon there were three cop cars, just as many cops, a security vehicle, and two Child Protective Services (CPS) workers at Parkinson's door.

CPS ended up investigating her for abuse and neglect.

The cops, meanwhile, charged her with contributing to the delinquency of a minor. CPS found the allegations substantiated and placed Parkinson on the state's child abuse and neglect registry. She will remain there for seven years.

The ordeal reached its nadir last week when a judge convicted Parkinson of the delinquency of a minor charge, a first-degree misdemeanor. This comes with a six-month jail sentence.

While the judge immediately suspended the sentence, pending good behavior and compliance with CPS' conditions, the conviction remains. Parkinson assumes this means she will not be able to volunteer in her kids' schools. She fears it could also mean she will not get her law license.

So let's look at how the events unfolded.

Parkinson is no newbie to parenting. She graduated Brigham Young University in 2012 with a degree in family science. She then became a family life educator and spent three years as a live-in behavioral specialist at a residential treatment center. There, she and her husband, a marriage and family therapist, oversaw the care of 35 girls.

In Virginia, Parkinson spent one summer interning at the Institute for Justice and another working in the law office of former Virginia state Sen. Jill Vogel (R–Winchester). Vogel was actually co-sponsor of the reasonable childhood independence law that passed in Virginia, unanimously, in 2023.

The bill says that neglect is only when you put your child in serious, obvious danger. So what happened?

When the security guard brought Sam back to Parkinson's house, he told the boy that his mom had done something she wasn't supposed to, and that bad people would want to take him if he was out alone. "This scared the crap out of him," Parkinson says now.

She admits she was upset with the guard and asked him where in the homeowners-association rules it says that a child can't walk by himself. The guard said it was against the law anyway and called the police.

When the first cop arrived, Parkinson told him, "I don't have any interest in talking to you." This did not make things go smoother. The cop called for backup and summoned CPS.

At that point, Parkinson asked her husband, who was having lunch with their daughter, to come home. "I told [the authorities] that kids need to be able to take reasonable risks," he says, "in order to grow up non-anxious." CPS responded, he recounts, that "a 5-year-old child can never be unsupervised."

Parkinson admits now that she is embarrassed by her confrontational demeanor. But of course, that was not the primary issue. The issue was whether her son could handle a walk in this community with 24-hour security, a 25-mph speed limit, and three golf courses.

CPS opened an investigation and found Parkinson guilty of a "Level 2 finding" for lack of supervision. That's what put her on the child abuse and neglect registry. The family immediately appealed.

As for the criminal charges: Parkinson believes the "delinquency of a minor" charge was an attempt to bypass Virginia's reasonable childhood independence law.

David DeLugas, founder and executive director of ParentsUSA, a nonprofit that provides pro bono legal help to parents wrongly accused of neglect, scoffed at the charge. "Delinquency?" he asks. "Is the kid going to rob banks at 14 because he collected feathers at age 5?"

At the trial, the security guard, his boss, and the police testified against Parkinson. The CPS worker testified that Sam seemed happy and healthy when she saw him that day. Parkinson's friend testified to Sam's maturity, and that he could be trusted to walk to the pond without going rogue.

The James City County family services specialist assigned to Parkinson's case declined to comment, citing confidentiality requirements. The prosecutor in the Commonwealth Attorney's Office for James City County said the same.

Parkinson's attorney, Andrew Gordon, took the case pro bono and argued that the only real "evidence" against the mom was that Sam was 5, and that, hypothetically, a host of horrible things could have happened.

But of course, a host of horrible things can happen at home or in a car or anywhere. We don't arrest moms for driving their kids to the store, even though they could be hit by someone running a stop sign. Hypothetical dangers are not reason enough to condemn a person. And neither is hypothetical immaturity. No one proved that the boy was incapable of walking a few blocks safely by himself. After all, that would have been difficult to do, seeing as he had already done it without issue.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/us/articles/virginia-mom-gets-6-month-113005821.html

Chevron announces plans to more than double its oil production in Venezuela over the next five years through a $7 billion investment

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FtqvQKwC0JM

Bartiromo gossip

Dylan Byers

@DylanByers

NEW: The Maria Bartiromo backstory, per multiple sources familiar….

Maria Bartiromo wanted to pursue a story related to China and 2020 election voting conspiracies… a major sensitivity for the network given its Dominion and Smartmatic lawsuits.

A Fox Business executive sent a text to Fox Business producers informing them that that story could not go to air.

Bartiromo took a screen shot of the guidance and sent it to senior White House officials.

Fox News leadership learned about that after receiving a call from the White House, which they viewed as a fireable offense.

Fox pulled Bartiromo from air after Aug. 9. She was fired today. I have also learned that her executive producer Patrick Ignozzi was also fired after the annoucnement.

Maria had resigned her contract with Fox last February.

https://x.com/DylanByers/status/2095632406292386184

Construction to begin on Triumphal Arch within 2 weeks

The federal government plans to start excavation over the next two weeks on a massive triumphal arch across the Potomac River from Washington, D.C., Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum said Thursday, launching a controversial project championed by President Trump.

Construction at the site is expected to take two to three years, with an intense 20-hour-a-day, year-round work schedule, the National Park Service has said, meaning the project could wrap up toward the end of Mr. Trump's second term.

The 250-foot-tall arch — which will be clad in granite and topped by three golden statues plus an observation deck — is slated for a traffic circle near Arlington Memorial Cemetery and across the river from the Lincoln Memorial. The administration has said the arch will recognize the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence this year, and has argued that previous architectural plans for the site have called for a monument to be built.

"This will be one of the Great Pieces of American Architecture, honoring the history and significance of Arlington Cemetery and befitting the most powerful Capital in the World," Burgum wrote Thursday in a post on X.

The project is part of a broader effort by Mr. Trump to put his architectural stamp on the nation's capital, with sweeping changes planned for the White House campus, the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool and the Kennedy Center.

The president has taken a personal interest in the project, showing off three-dimensional renderings of the arch at White House events. Mr. Trump told donors to his White House ballroom project last fall that he was given a choice between building a "small, medium and large" arch, but concluded: "I happen to think the large looks by far the best."

But the arch has drawn pushback from Democrats, preservation groups and veterans who argue the arch — at more than double the height of the Lincoln Memorial — could interfere with sightlines between major D.C. monuments and Arlington National Cemetery. Critics have also warned about its position just north of Ronald Reagan Washington International Airport.

Democratic Rep. Don Beyer of Virginia, whose district abuts the site of the arch, called the project "not even close to being ready for prime time" in a statement Thursday.

"Burgum and the Trump Administration are disregarding the risks and rushing this towering monument to Trump's vanity because they believe Republicans will get crushed in November," Beyer said. "They believe, I hope correctly, that the project will be endangered by a new Democratic majority that actually stands up to Trump."

One group of veterans sued over the arch earlier this year, arguing the Trump administration lacks congressional approval to build it. The Justice Department asked a judge to toss out the suit, which remains pending in federal court.

The National Park Service acknowledged last month the project could have some adverse impacts on the landscape, but said "the same characteristics that make Memorial Circle sensitive from a preservation perspective are also the characteristics that make it the historically appropriate location for the undertaking."

Two panels led by Trump appointees that oversee construction in the D.C. area have offered support for the project. The U.S. Commission of Fine Arts granted final approval in May, and the National Capital Planning Commission voted for preliminary approval in July, though it requested some changes.

The Federal Aviation Administration is still studying the project's impact on the congested D.C.-area airspace and collecting public comments. An earlier study by the FAA found it would not have an adverse effect on the nearby airport, but would need to be topped by red obstruction lights.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-triumphal-arch-washington-dc-excavation-burgum/

Federal judge blocks Trump’s latest order limiting birthright citizenship – Blanche says it’s headed back to Supreme Court

A federal judge reinforced the constitutional right to birthright citizenship Wednesday, blocking President Donald Trump’s latest executive order to limit it.

U.S. District Judge Deborah Boardman wrote in a 35-page ruling that Trump’s August order seeking to limit which people born in the U.S. can become American citizens “is almost certainly unconstitutional.”

Boardman cited the U.S. Supreme Court’s June ruling that Trump could not go forward with a separate 2025 executive order that sought to limit citizenship at birth.

“This Court must, once again, preliminarily enjoin enforcement of the President’s most recent attempt to strip the right to citizenship from them,” Boardman wrote.

Last week, Boardman had denied a request from the plaintiff in the case, CASA Inc., a nonprofit organization in Maryland, to block Trump’s executive order, though she noted that her denial was only due to a technicality: The original complaint cited Trump’s 2025 order, rather than the recent August order.

“This is different,” Boardman said Friday, comparing the August order to the first order. “This is unprecedented.”

Boardman also indicated that she would rule in favor of CASA Inc. after the complaint was updated, saying that she believed Trump is “trying to rewrite the carve-outs to birthright citizenship with the stroke of a pen.”

In Wednesday’s ruling, the judge reiterated that sentiment, writing: “Since his second term in office began on January 20, 2025, the President has tried, through Executive Order, to upend our country’s longstanding tradition of birthright citizenship and eliminate, for large swaths of Americans, the right to citizenship by birth, a right enshrined in the Citizenship Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.”

Reached for comment, White House spokesperson Lauren Bis referred to Boardman as an “activist judge.”

“This is just another ruling from an activist judge appointed by Biden attempting to thwart President Trump’s commonsense agenda,” she said in a statement. “The birthright citizenship executive order is consistent with the holdings and analysis set forth by the Supreme Court.”

Attorney General Todd Blanche said in an interview on Fox News Wednesday evening that the ruling “is not something that is a surprise to us.”

“We crafted the EO around, and in concurrence, and understanding what the Supreme Court said in their decision. And so we expected— we didn’t expect this judge to say we were right,” Blanche said.

The attorney general added that the administration will “continue to fight as President Trump has talked about for many years” and “if we have to go back to the Supreme Court, we will.”

Trump signed an executive order Aug. 6 to limit who could become U.S. citizens after being born in the country. The order was more narrow than the one the president signed on his first day of his second term, which sought to widely end birthright citizenship.

That 2025 order faced immediate legal action, as opponents wrote that it went against the 14th Amendment, which states: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States.”

After the Supreme Court blocked that order, Trump signed the August order that focused on restricting giving birthright citizenship to certain groups of people, including those who are born to parents who are considered an “alien enemy” of the United States or who work for foreign embassies.

The State Department has proposed requiring parents to provide proof of their own citizenship or immigration status when applying for passports for their children.

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/federal-judge-blocks-trumps-latest-order-limiting-birthright-citizensh-rcna595794

Norway seizes Russian ship in Svalbard to compensate Ukraine

Authorities in Norway have seized a Russian ship, the Professor Molchanov, on a court order sought and obtained by Naftogaz in Ukraine. Russia has protested the move, which stems from its refusal to pay Naftogaz damages.

Norwegian courts have ordered the seizure of a Russian ship in the Arctic to enforce part of a $4.22 billion (roughly €3.6 billion) compensation claim won by Ukrainian state energy firm Naftogaz after Moscow's seizure of its assets in Crimea, which Russia illegally annexed in 2014.

Officials announced that the ship had been stopped from departing the port in the Russian coal mining settlement of Barentsburg in the Svalbard archipelago late on Wednesday.

Svalbard has been Norwegian territory since 1925 but is a demilitarized zone where people from dozens of countries, Russia included, can settle without visas under certain conditions.

Russia's ambassador to Norway said that Moscow would pursue the ship's release through legal channels.

The first group to announce the ship's seizure was Covington, the US law firm representing Naftogaz as it tries to secure the compensation awarded to it by the Permanent Court of Arbitration in the Hague in 2023.

Russia had refused to pay the fine plus legal fees and interest amid its ongoing war with Ukraine, and Naftogaz has since begun trying to secure the seizure and forced sale of Russian commercial assets via local courts instead.

"Russia cannot evade ​responsibility simply by refusing to comply with an international arbitral award," said Naftogaz acting CEO Sergii Fedorenko.

Covington said it had been tracking the ship, the Professor Molchanov, for months. It said its application was approved on Monday by the Nord-Troms and Senja District Court, which ordered Svalbard's governor to ensure the ship stayed in dock once it arrived.

The Svalbard governor's office later issued a statement confirming that the ship had been seized and would be held in Svalbard.

"The governor will take care of the crew and passengers on board the vessel in collaboration with Trust Arktikugol," it said, referring to the Russian enterprise (meaning "Arctic Coal") that administers the Barentsburg mining settlement.

Norway's Justice Ministry, meanwhile, said the issue did not directly concern the government in Oslo.

"Russia can demand that ​the district court reassess the case," the Justice ‌Ministry said.

Russia's ambassador to Norway, Nikolai Korchunov, said in a statement on Thursday that Moscow would pursue the ship's release through legal channels.

"We insist on the immediate release of the vessel and on ensuring the safety of its passengers and crew," he said.

The Kremlin also summoned Norway's ambassador in Moscow to lodge a formal complaint.

The Professor Molchanov, a repurposed research vessel, arrived in Barentsburg on Tuesday with a party of Russian scientists, according to a journalist who was accompanying them.

"The seizure has had no impact on the expedition participants or the ship's crew. No one has been arrested. We are all going about our business as usual," Andrei Gorbunov, editor-in-chief of Komsomolskaya Pravda (KP) radio wrote on KP's website.

He said that for the time being, "the Professor Molchanov is simply forbidden from leaving the port of Barentsburg," adding it was unclear how long this would remain the case.

Svalbard is an archipelago well to the north of mainland Norway in the Arctic Circle, sparsely populated and thought to be home to slightly fewer than 3,000 people.

It was a whaling base in the 17th and 18th centuries and became a coal mining site at the beginning of the 20th century.

The territory was recognized as part of Norway in 1925, but only after the 1920 establishment of an international treaty — which nowadays has dozens of signatories — designating the area a demilitarized zone where anybody from a signatory state was permitted to settle and work without a visa, provided they met certain conditions.

The Soviet Union eventually acquired three sites and developed them as company towns: Barentsburg, with a remnant population of around 300 mostly Russian nationals, the nearly-abandoned settlement of Pyramiden, and Grumant, which has been left as a ghost town for decades.

Tourism has become a growth industry on the stark but stunning polar archipelago.

https://www.dw.com/en/svalbad-russian-ship-professor-molchanov-seized/a-78889005

Bank of America VP murdered in Times Square

The Bank of America vice president murdered by a knife-wielding woman in Times Square was remembered as 'deeply devoted' to her family in a touching tribute.

Erin Piacenti, 32, of Chester in the Garden State, died after being stabbed in the stomach by Pamela Cisneros Lopez, 49, on Monday afternoon, officials said.

An online fundraiser has since emerged showing Piacenti beaming as she held onto her newborn baby daughter Madison alongside her husband Frank.

A tribute posted to the page said: 'Erin's life was defined not by the circumstances of her death, but instead by the way she lived.

'Erin was deeply devoted to her family and friends, exceptionally bright and accomplished, and was someone who brought warmth and energy to the people around her.

'Erin and Frank celebrated their second wedding anniversary this summer, had just returned from a family road trip upon her passing, and were preparing to build a life together with their new daughter. That life changed incomprehensibly in an instant.

'Funds raised will be dedicated to supporting Madison as she grows up surrounded by the family, friends, stories, and memories that will allow her to know just how remarkable her mother was.'

Monday was the first day that Piacenti returned to the office after maternity leave, loved ones said.

She was standing on West 41st street in Midtown, Manhattan, when she was approached by Lopez and stabbed at random.

Lopez was finally stopped by officers after the random stabbing spree, in which she also injured 68-year-old Tak Kam by stabbing him in the stomach.

Footage emerged earlier this week showing officers firing a taser at Lopez, from Queens, as she refused to back down and waved the two kitchen knives at them.

Police then shot the woman, and she immediately fell to the ground where she was handcuffed and given first aid.

At a press conference alongside Mayor Zohran Mamdani, Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch said Lopez had told officers during a brief standoff: 'I'm not dropping anything, I would rather kill both of you.'

Tisch told reporters: 'This was an extraordinarily dangerous situation unfolding in the heart of Times Square, the crossroads of the world.

'At any given moment, there are thousands of New Yorkers, commuters, tourists, families, workers moving through these streets.'

She added that Lopez has a 'documented mental health history' with the department which included two incidents in 2018 and 2019 but she was never arrested.

Both Tisch and Mayor Mamdani praised the officers, saying more people could have been hurt or killed if not for their actions.

Lopez's brother, Patrick Peralta, 58, told the Daily Mail on Tuesday that she had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder about ten years ago, following a bout of postpartum depression after the birth of her second child around a decade before that.

Peralta spoke at their mother's home in Jackson Heights, Queens, where they grew up and where their relatives have gathered after hearing the news.

The 58-year-old said that they were a tight-knit family, and that Lopez was the youngest of six. She worked as an HR employee and was a daily church-goer.

Peralta said that Lopez had struggled with postpartum depression since her children's birth, and had tried to bring them up for years until she could no longer cope.

'I think she felt like she hadn't accomplished anything with her life because she was at home with the kids,' Peralta told the Daily Mail.

Lopez had also been 'going through a divorce for the past five to eight years,' and Peralta said he wasn't sure whether it had been finalized.

Peralta, who works as a surgical technician in the city, said Lopez's mental health reached a crisis point in March 2019, when she attempted suicide.

'She threw herself on the train tracks at Jamaica station,' he said. 'Somebody pulled her off the tracks.'

However, since then, Lopez had been turning her life around while taking medication for bipolar disorder and had seemed 'fine' for about six years, he said.

Peralta said he recognized his sister in footage of the stabbing on the news and called police.

'It was the worst thing I have ever watched,' he told the Daily Mail. 'I had a premonition that it was her and called the police.

'I don't know what was going through her head, but I think she wanted to get shot. I don't know where the rage came from. I was in shock because she was never violent. I'm still numb.'

'She seemed normal the last time I saw her - there were no signs that something like this could happen,' he added.

'She was taking medication - she gave herself injections every month. Maybe she didn't take the last one and started going off track after that.'

Police are investigating. Tisch said there was no evidence suggesting it was a terrorist attack.

https://www.dailymail.com/news/article-16101021/Bank-America-VP-Times-Square-murder-tribute-loving-mom-Erin-Piacenti.html

Eric Daugherty

@EricLDaugh

🚨 JUST IN: Sec. Scott Bessent reveals China will soon be INCAPABLE of purchasing Iranian oil

He's checkmating the regime 🔥

"The Chinese have been buying Iranian oil, but there are only about 30 million barrels of Iranian oil left on the water — that will run out."

https://x.com/EricLDaugh/status/2094939237468504129

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang and Hugging Face CEO Clément Delangue join 'Squawk Box' to discuss Nvidia's deal to acquire Hugging Face for for $12.9 billion

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZHXzNEFvO3A

ICE tabs millions for analytics help to comb through voter data

The Department of Homeland Security component plans to spend up to $5 million on procuring services to support its “fraud detection” and “data segmentation” efforts.

mmigration and Customs Enforcement is expecting to allocate between $2 million and $5 million to a contractor that will help it handle and analyze voter data amid increasing fraud detection efforts centered on elections, per an acquisition forecast document published Monday.

The firm fixed price contract is expected to be awarded in the coming weeks following an estimated solicitation release next week. The work, which is in support of ICE’s Homeland Security Investigations unit, will run through the end of the month.

The contract forecast planning document follows a request for information that ICE posted last week. The Department of Homeland Security unit began the market research process to gather information about “handling and secure delivery of publicly available voter registration files and voter history files” to support HSI “fraud detection and data segmentation activities.” The comment period lasted just three days, closing Aug. 28.

In an attached statement of work draft, ICE said it planned to tap a contractor to acquire and document voter registration and history files from “government-identified U.S. jurisdictions,” which it described as up to all 50 U.S. states, the District of Columbia, and any American territory that it chooses.

Voter history files include data from general, primary, runoff and special federal elections. For states that restrict commercial data access, DHS plans to provide authorization letters, “clearing the legal hurdle,” the agency said in the documents.

Using the workaround will prove to be a detriment to public trust, according to Tim Harper, senior policy analyst and project lead for elections and democracy at the Center for Democracy and Technology.

“By acquiring data through commercial brokers, and finding loopholes in state restrictions on public voter data for commercial purposes, DHS’s efforts to evade voters’ privacy protections demonstrate that this mistrust is deserved,” Harper said via email. “Feeding voter registration data into HSI investigations would erode Americans’ privacy, expose them to undue scrutiny by government officials, and risk disenfranchising eligible voters as the midterms quickly approach.”

While ICE intends to restrict the collection of party affiliation data to some degree, per the draft document, the DHS unit can still request that the contractor retain and share that data.

The forthcoming contract will arrive amid an intensifying focus on voter fraud at DHS.

Earlier this summer, DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin sent letters to four states requesting they collaborate with the agency to prevent noncitizens from voting. The call to action came after DHS restricted access to federal funding opportunities for states that choose not to comply with several outlined provisions. The law enforcement agency has also said it will enforce stricter penalties on those who illegally vote.

The agency’s recently published webpage — titled “State Citizenship Lists Portal” — is expected to be up and running later this week.

The Department of Justice has lent a hand in the broader efforts. But even so, the federal government has hit roadblocks in its pursuit, with judges dismissing the agency’s attempts to make states comply.

Abigail Kunkler, law fellow at the Electronic Privacy Information Center, said ICE’s latest “data grab” proposal is unjustified.

“ICE has no legal authority to obtain voters’ personal data nor to construct a nationwide database to store it in,” Kunkler said in an email. “The agency’s proposal violates a number of laws, including the Privacy Act, and tramples on our critical rights to privacy and voting.”

EPIC, along with Protect Democracy and the Citizens for Ethics and Responsibility in Washington, filed a lawsuit Tuesday against the Trump administration for its efforts to compile American voter data.

“The White House claims this database is needed to stop noncitizens from voting, but noncitizen voting is already illegal and, by every credible measure, exceedingly rare,” Protect Democracy said in its announcement of the lawsuit.

While voter data is publicly available to some degree across the country, experts said the consolidation of the information and potential for abuse raises concern.

“Publicly available does not mean ‘fair game’ for unlimited government surveillance,” said J.B. Branch, director of federal AI governance and technology policy for Public Citizen’s Congress Watch division. “There is an enormous difference between a voter record sitting in a state database and the federal government aggregating millions of those records, cross-referencing them against other government and commercial databases, and using algorithms to generate investigative leads about individual Americans.”

Branch also warned of the staying power and stickiness of such a system.

“Once the government builds systems like this (connecting massive datasets, analytical tools, contractors, and law-enforcement databases) they are incredibly difficult to dismantle,” he said in an email. “That should concern every American, regardless of political affiliation.”

https://fedscoop.com/ice-voter-data-dhs-procurement-plan-fraud-detection/

Big dicks arrive to Thailand

USS Abraham Lincoln arrives in Thailand after extended Iran deployment.

https://www.nbcnews.com/world/asia/uss-abraham-lincoln-arrives-thailand-extended-iran-deployment-rcna595651

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman joins ‘The Claman Countdown’ to discuss the rollout of its GPT-6 Astra model

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dDfuAphaKLI