Donald Trump’s unhinged newest as he says the quiet half out loud in election plot

Trump is not just trying to make sure fewer people can vote – he’s trying to find excuses to throw out votes that have already been cast. Here’s a round up of the last 24 hours in Trumpworld

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If you only pay attention to one thing Donald Trump does in the next few months, it should probably be the lengths he’s going to undermine trust in American elections.

Not that he’s been shy of doing that publicly before – he’s been falsely claiming the 2020 election was rigged for the last six years.

But now he’s looking to the future – specifically November’s midterm elections. On paper, Trump’s Republican Party is predicted to get pummelled – losing control of the House, and maybe the Senate. All of which could, theoretically, put a spanner in the works of the rest of his term.

So he’s looking for ways to prevent that happening – and one of those ways is the SAVE Act. The bill, currently before Congress, would among other nefarious things, require people to have photo ID to prove eligibility when they register to vote. It would also ban postal votes for all but a handful of Americans.

Some say those inconveniences are a small price to pay for election security. Others note that something like 7 million Americans with the right to vote – largely young people – don’t have any photo ID, and photo ID costs money. They also note that after a year of Americans of colour being bundled into vans by ICE, regardless of whether or not they’re in the country legally, many don’t feel great about risking their safety by voting in person. They’ll also point out that the vast majority of people who vote by post – either by choice or necessity – tend to vote Democrat.

These are all valid arguments to have, but they’re a distraction. Republicans have been doing vote suppression for decades, and the fact that they sometimes lose illustrates it’s a pretty blunt instrument.

What the Trump administration wants is more excuses to reject ballots that have already been cast. More hoops for people to jump through and more ways for people to fail in their biennial engagement with Democracy. And moreover, they want more excuses to declare an election they’re almost certain to lose to have been crooked, so they can declare the results null and void.

Let’s not pretend Trump and his enablers are going to respect the result of the midterms. If Democrats win, they’ll almost certainly never be allowed to be sworn in.

Meanwhile, in Trumpworld

• Trump says the quiet part out loud
• Noem says the quiet part even louder
• She also allegedly fired a pilot for leaving her blanket on a plane
• Golfers turn on Trump
• ICE to spend $38 billion building detention camps for migrants

Here’s what you need to know

1. Trump said the quiet part out loud again…and also something very weird

I keep having conversations with people where they say surely Trump can’t do x, y, or z, because “it’s against the constitution” or “the courts will stop him”.

To which I say, bless. As if Trump, a year into his second term, cares about any of that.

In fact, he said as much in a Truth Social post last night.

“The Democrats refuse to vote for Voter I.D., or Citizenship. The reason is very simple — They want to continue to cheat in Elections,” he wrote. “This was not what our Founders desired.”

Let’s pause for a moment and consider that one for a second. The founders didn’t define who was eligible to vote in the Constitution, leaving such decisions to the states. The states, in general, mostly just wanted white men who owned property to vote. But I digress.

Then Trump said something exceptionally weird: “I have searched the depths of Legal Arguments not yet articulated or vetted on this subject, and will be presenting an irrefutable one in the very near future.”

Trump, I’m almost certain, did not write that sentence. And if anyone can explain what it means, do send me a tweet.

Then he came to the chilling part: “There will be Voter I.D. for the Midterm Elections, whether approved by Congress or not!”

So if Congress votes the SAVE Act down, Trump seems to be saying his administration will declare any election that doesn’t require voter ID to be void. Which, given how the midterms are likely to go, is probably his preferred outcome.

2. Kristi Noem said the quiet part even louder

Kristi Noem, who is desperate for everyone to know she’s still in charge of the Department for Homeland Security, gave an even less subtle indication of what the SAVE Act is designed to do.

She told a press conference yesterday: “When it gets to Election Day, we’ve been proactive to make sure we have the right people voting, electing the right leaders to lead this country.”

Yikes.

3. Noem ‘had a pilot fired’ for leaving her blanket on a plane…then had to rehire him

According to an absolutely savage dismantling from the Wall Street Journal, Kristi Noem’s top advisor – with whom she has a close relationship – Corey Lewandowski, fired a Coast Guard pilot after Noem’s blanket was left behind on a plane. It was left aboard one jet when Noem had to switch to another plane over a maintenance issue.

The pilot was allegedly told to take a commercial flight home – but was eventually reinstated because nobody else was available to fly Noem and Lewandowski back.

4. Lewandowski wanted a badge and a gun

The aforementioned Lewandowski also allegedly told top ICE officials he wanted to be issued a law enforcement badge and a gun.

This request was declined first by an official Lewandowski was considering bringing on board for the top job at ICE. He was passed over for the role.

They he went to the department’s legal office, and a top lawyer also said no. He was demoted and moved to another department.

He eventually got different lawyers to sign off on it, but the move to get a gun staled after newspapers started asking questions. He does have a badge tho.

5. Marco Rubio was pretty chill at the Munich Security Conference

After JD Vance’s brash and unfriendly speech to the Munich Security Conference last year, where he lashed out at European allies over a number of spurious issues, there were deep breaths ahead of Marco Rubio’s speech there this morning.

But he was pretty chill by comparison. He denounced a “climate cult” and an “unprecedented wave of mass migration that threatens the cohesion of our societies.”

And he demanded more “reciprocity” from European friends. But he said that an end of the trans-Atlantic era “is neither our goal nor our wish,” adding that “our home may be in the Western hemisphere, but we will always be a child of Europe.”

6. Golfers turn on Trump

Trump has found himself the subject of a lawsuit from some of his favourite people – golfers.

Two enthusiasts of the game, which is not a proper sport no matter how many people watch it, from Washington DC, sued the federal government to try and prevent Trump’s administration from taking over and overhauling a 100-year-old public golf course in the capital.

the administration of violating environmental laws and polluting a park that is on the National Register of Historic Places.

The suit is the latest in a series of legal battles challenging President Donald Trump’s extraordinary efforts to put his mark on public spaces in the nation’s capital, including shuttering the Kennedy Center.

At the end of last year, a group of preservationists filed a similar lawsuit seeking to prevent the administration from demolishing the East Wing of the White House in order to build a ballroom — a project slated to cost $400.

Trump, who is an avid golfer himself, also plans on renovating a military golf course just outside of Washington that has been used by past presidents going back decades.

The complaint filed against the Department of the Interior on Friday says that the Trump administration’s reconstruction of East Potomac Park — which includes the East Potomac Golf Course — would violate the congressional act that created the park in 1897. The roughly 130-year-old act established the park for the “recreation and the pleasure of the people.”

The golf course, which has since been recognised on the National Register of Historic Places in part for its efforts to racially integrate in the 1940s. Municipal golf courses make up only 18% of courses in America.

7. Trump spends $38.3 billion on immigration detention camps

The US government is quietly buying up warehouses across America to turn into immigration detention and processing camps – with space to imprison more than 92,000 more people.

ICE is planning to open 16 regional processing centres with a population of 1,000 to 1,500 detainees, whose stays would average three to seven days.

Another eight large-scale detention centres would be capable of housing 7,000 to 10,000 detainees for periods averaging less than 60 days.

More than 75,000 immigrants were being detained by ICE as of mid-January, up from 40,000 when Trump took office a year earlier, according to federal data released last week.

The newly released document refers to “non-traditional facilities” and comes as ICE has quietly bought at least seven warehouses — some larger than 1 million square feet (92,900 square meters) — in the past few weeks in Arizona, Georgia, Maryland, Pennsylvania and Texas.

Warehouse purchases in six cities were scuttled when buyers decided not to sell under pressure from activists. Several other deals in places like New York are imminent, however.