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President Donald Trump’s refusal to regulate AI could put Americans at risk of attacks from biological weapons.

In an interview between CBS News contributor Chris Krebs and President Joe Biden’s former adviser Ben Buchanan (who now advises Anthropic), the two men discussed the implications for AI on biological weapons.

"I would look at these current models not as cyber models, but as generally capable models,” Buchanan told Krebs. “They can do expert tasks in a wide variety of areas, not just in cyber, also in bio and the like." As a result, the Biden administration prioritized AI regulation, arguing that “this was something that we were very alert to in the Biden administration. There's a long section on bio in the president's executive order in 2023. There's upside — AI can do a lot for medical discovery — but there also is legitimate concern that AI is outperforming PhD-level virologists on virology questions. And that could abet a bio weapons risk that is not hypothetical."

Krebs then told Buchanan that AI is being inserted into Americans’ lives so rapidly that “we're now entering this governance space where technology development is moving faster than democratic oversight and control can allow or provide."

Krebs added, "They don't really understand the technology. It's very complex, understanding how to meaningfully intervene. That's consistent with the American regulatory tradition — light touch, free markets, capital markets."

Buchanan explained that the Biden administration attempted to address this because they “built a capability at the AI Safety Institute to do quick, voluntary testing of AI systems, including for cyber risk and for bio risk. So I think the tests themselves can go quickly, but that doesn't mean the government is going to do that in a fulsome way. So the jury, I think, is still out on how the president chooses to implement this.”

Buchanan said that, despite Trump’s resistance to meaningful AI regulation, "you are seeing some interesting parallels in direction of travel that's consistent between the administration, the Congress, and Democrats and Republicans, that understands something needs to be done. We're just not quite sure what the mechanisms are just yet."

Despite this push to regulate AI, The Hill’s Miranda Nazzaro wrote that “while several tech leaders are making their relations — both good and bad — with the president public, [OpenAI CEO Sam] Altman has largely kept quiet about the president and the extent of his relationship with him. It comes as OpenAI prepares an initial public offering, and Altman faces his own blowback from the anti-AI movement.” Altman and the other AI executives are reportedly pushing to keep regulations from being applied to their business.

There have been some breaks between the Trump administration and Big AI. Anthropic co-founder Dario Amodei ended up in a rift with the Trump administration after they refused to comply with Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s demand that they violate their own code of ethics.

President Donald Trump is showing off a new portrait painted for his upcoming 80th birthday — and users are pointing out an obvious inaccuracy.

“‘Why are his eyes open? It’s not natural,’ one user commented on X, while another posted a photo of the president with his eyes closed in the Oval Office, appearing to be asleep, writing, ‘This is a far more accurate depiction…’” reported The Daily Beast's Wiktoria Gucia. Another person was reported as posting “What’s wrong with this one?” while attaching a picture of Trump with his eyes closed. Still another user was reported as quipping, “Well at least he’s awake.”

While the internet is having fun mocking Trump’s apparent difficulty staying awake during meetings, there is a very real possibility that his seeming struggles at not falling asleep reflect a deeper problem.

“Anybody who has eyes, ears, and a brain... and hasn’t drunk the Kool-Aid or been bitten by a MAGA zombie, can see for themselves that this person is transparently mentally ill and cognitively deteriorating,” Dr. John Gartner, a former Johns Hopkins University professor, told The Daily Beast Podcast, adding that “showing signs of frontotemporal dementia since 2019.”

Dr. Jonathan Reiner, an expert on heart diseases, similarly told CNN News Central that Trump seems to have “severe daytime somnolence” and that this suggests deeper pathologies.

“The president has severe daytime somnolence,” Reiner said. “He falls asleep very often. He’s fallen asleep in the Oval Office on multiple occasions with people talking to him in the Cabinet room, and I was concerned yesterday that he might have fallen asleep at Arlington National Cemetery during Memorial Day observances.”

Reiner then warned, “Chronic insomnia is a severe illness. It can result in an increase in risk of dementia, decrease in cognitive effects in older people.”

Dr. Henry Abraham, a psychiatrist formerly associated with Tufts University, recently told AlterNet that he too is concerned that Trump is exhibiting signs of cognitive decline.

“It’s a red flag,” Dr. Abraham explained. “People perseverate because they can’t think of anything else to say, because they’re cognitively impaired, or they perseverate because their emotional motor is stuck in high gear. In the last five to 10 years, he has planted red flags of concern again and again and again, and they’ve clustered.”

Dr. Abraham added that Trump’s behavior suggests an inability to “internalize certain control over his language.” He further explained that “not only did he have these kinds of linguistic failings, but he began to exhibit more and more signs of really rage and poor impulse control, and at night, what appeared to be manic kinds of episodes where he would tweet, you know, 100, 200 times a night.”

President Donald Trump is promoting his Great American State Fair as a pro-America concert intended to celebrate America’s 250 year anniversary — yet there are competing visions for how to celebrate the country’s semiquincentennial.

“One month from America’s 250th birthday, events and celebrations to commemorate the adoption of the Declaration of Independence are as fragmented as the nation’s politics and culture in 2026,” reported Mike Magner from CQ-Roll Call on Sunday. Describing Trump’s event as a “campaign-style MAGA rally” which numerous artists refused to participate in, Magner mentioned that “America250, the bipartisan commission established by Congress to plan for the ‘semiquincentennial,’ remains the central organizer, but its efforts to get all 350 million Americans to participate in various ways have been overshadowed in recent weeks by the White House sponsor of events, Freedom 250.”

In contrast to this event, Magner mentioned a pair of groups called All of U.S. 250 and Next 250, both of which also have their own plans to celebrate America’s anniversary. They are leading a coalition that will celebrate America’s birthday including a “nationwide day of mobilization” on June 27 that features “marches, rallies, cultural activations, performances, artistic installations, youth storytelling projects, teach-ins, faith gatherings and community events” in Washington and all over America.

“We’re framing it as a counter-commemoration ahead of the 250th anniversary and also a movement-building opportunity,” said Trevor Smith, cofounder of a group sponsoring the event, the Black Liberation Indigenous Sovereignty Collective. “We push back against the kind of whitewashed narrative that the administration is pushing.”

Linda Sarsour, co-chair of Next 250, told Magner that “I think for those of us who are working in grassroots movements right now, a lot of our people are feeling scared. They’re also feeling uncertain about the future. And I think what we’re trying to do here is reaffirm an actual certainty that whatever’s happening right now is temporary. We are on 250 years. And guess what? There’s another 250 years coming, and we can shape that by doing the work that we’re doing today.”

Trump’s event has proved so controversial that most of the musical acts have dropped out, with many claiming they were booked without being told that it was going to be closely linked to the unpopular president. Five of the nine booked artists have pulled out including Bret Michaels, Martina McBride, Young MC, the Commodores and Morris Day & the Time.

“I was presented with an opportunity to perform at a nonpartisan event but that turned out to be misleading,” McBride explained when pulling out. Similarly Michaels explained that the event “has evolved into something much more divisive than what I agreed to be a part of,” while Young MC stated that “the artists were never told about any political involvement.”

“It’s a no for me,” posted Morris Day, while the Commodores declared, “Our music has always been our voice and we choose not to publicly affiliate with any single political party. We support the betterment of all Americans.”

By contrast artists like Vanilla Ice, Fab Moran from Milli Vanilli and Flo Rida are still participating.

President Donald Trump is reportedly considering a way to pay his supporters from a slush fund in a manner he and his backers hope will be secret.

“The promised end of President Trump’s ‘anti-weaponization’ fund won’t necessarily stop the Department of Justice (DOJ) from making payouts to those who argue they’ve been wronged by the government and who are instead eyeing new pathways to access federal money,” reported The Hill’s Rebecca Beitsch. “After acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said the controversial fund would ‘not be moving forward,’ Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) noted that the aggrieved have always had a pathway for getting settlements from the government.”

Breitsch added, “‘We have a legal system already in place for people to make claims against the government. That does not need to be reinvented,’ he wrote on social platform X this past week, encouraging would-be claimants to pursue settlements under the Federal Tort Claims Act (FTCA).” Breitsch added that Trump could dispense money through the so-called Judgment Fund from a potentially limitless amount, and as a result many Trump supporters who claim to have been the victims of weaponization are filing FTCA claims.

“The anti-weaponization fund was a pleasant surprise, but the Republicans in the Senate, who decided that my family did not deserve restitution, will not stop me,” former Trump adviser Michael Caputo told The Hill. “This [ending of the] anti-weaponization fund is a brief distraction.”

Caputo continued, “It’s not just a beginning for me, it’s a beginning for everybody whose life was destroyed by political weaponization.”

Trump initially created a $1.8 billion slush fund in May as a settlement in a controversial lawsuit. Despite controlling both the IRS and Department of Justice, Trump sued the IRS because an independent contractor leaked his tax returns during his first term, thereby revealing that he had paid little or no income taxes for multiple years and had many undisclosed business failures. Even though no one has ever been compensated for having their tax returns leaked, Trump demanded $10 billion from the IRS, creating a conflict of interest since the Justice Department he controls is responsible for defending the IRS from litigation.

After Judge Kathleen M. Williams ordered all parties involved to appear before her bench by May 20th to determine whether any settlement would be legal, Trump and acting attorney general Todd Blanche rushed a $1.8 billion settlement that would be split between Trump supporters and Trump-affiliated institutions. It also guaranteed Trump will not be audited for his taxes ever. After a public outcry, Trump seemingly dropped his request for the fund while keeping the protection from being audited.

"I assumed we would never see the 'settlement agreement,' or whatever you want to call it, but evidently, DOJ went ahead and posted it on its website,” New Mexico civil litigator Owen Barcala posted on Bluesky about the $1.8 billion settlement. “A couple things are interesting if you can steel your mind for the outrage and horror of its general nature.”

Speaking to AlterNet about the fund, one of the potential applicants Sam Nunberg explained that “I certainly think that the [Robert] Mueller investigation, at a minimum, everyone who was either investigated or a witness should be compensated, because that investigation never should have been initiated.”

Nunberg also told AlterNet. “I don't necessarily fault the rank-and-file staff, but once they opened that investigation, it was really — any association with Donald J. Trump meant you were going to have to hire a white-collar attorney.” Explaining how it personally impacted him, Nunberg said that he had “to inform my clients, as a fiduciary duty, that I've been called into the investigation. Things like that. I thought it was extremely unfair. It was arbitrary. It didn't have to be started.”

President Donald Trump is constantly lying, but according to a prominent political philosopher, it is not because he intends to deceive. He is actually doing something far worse — and it is starting to impact even his own supporters.

“For much of his political career, dishonesty has been without cost for Donald Trump,” wrote Vanderbilt University political philosopher Robert B. Talisse for the Emporia Gazette on Sunday. “He entered into national politics with the birther lie, claiming that Barack Obama was not born in the U.S., and that did not prevent Trump from winning the 2016 GOP nomination. His persistent false statements about crowd sizes, electoral outcomes and the birthplace of his father barely garner press coverage today.”

Talisse noted that Trump’s lies not only seem to not hurt him politically, but sometimes are even embraced by his own backers, such as his debunked claim that Haitian immigrants ate pets in Ohio. There are even studies which suggest Trump’s supporters admire his dishonesty.

“More recently, however, things have changed,” Talisse said. “Data now indicates mounting regret and disappointment among his base. The administration’s failure to sustain convincing messaging about the Iran war, the Epstein files, the tariffs and inflation have left some supporters feeling duped and abandoned by Trump. The president’s recent approval numbers are registering this shift.”

The difference between those lies and his earlier ones, Talisse notes, is that the new lies are about issues that ordinary voters — including millions of Trump supporters — sincerely care about. Just as notably, Talisse argued that Trump’s reason for lying is not to intentionally deceive but to show his contempt for the people he is lying to.

“It seems to me that his purpose is not to convince anyone, but rather to declare to the press, and perhaps also to his opposition, ‘You cannot stop me,’” Talisse wrote. “For a political movement rooted in the idea that U.S. politics is a swamp in need of draining, Trump’s defiant style has been successful.”

He added, “But here’s the catch. It appears that Trump’s supporters are now beginning to feel that they, too, are on the receiving end of his contempt.” From claiming grocery prices are going down and the economy is flourishing to describing the Iran war as a successful “little excursion,” Trump’s new lies show contempt not only for the press and his opponent, but also for his suffering supporters.

“In asserting them, Trump belittles those who must bear the effects of a struggling economy and an ill-conceived war,” Talisse wrote. “From this perspective, the shift among his base is not due to their realization that Trump lies. It’s that he has betrayed them.”

The key question in terms of Trump’s future success is whether enough of his supporters will abandon him to force his approval rating down to politically unsustainable levels. Ashley St. Clair, a former Trump influencer who has since turned on the president, described this potential process as analogous to deprogramming people from a cult.

"[O]nce ... you're with this very controversial crowd online, you cannot just change your political views,” St. Clair recently told journalist Wajahat Ali. “Changing your political views means you're blowing up your whole life — your social community, the way you provide for your family, the roof over your head. It's not just like, ‘Oh, now I believe in less fiscal conservatism.’ It is really going against people who do not take kindly to people leaving their gang.”

St. Clair added, “You're on the receiving end of a lot of smear campaigns, attacks, and harassment — things that frankly put your family in danger — to speak out and go against the grain. And not that it's an excuse — I don't want anyone to think that the things I'm saying right now are an excuse for the rhetoric I was involved in — but rather I'm trying to understand the pathology of how people get stuck in this, and feel like they don't have a way out.”

Similarly Rich Logis, the founder of Leaving MAGA, told the anti-Trump Republican group The Lincoln Project how Trump supporters can become disillusioned.

"And let me just open with my usual customary apology," Logis told Wilson. "I would like to say that I'm sorry for my past support of Trump and MAGA. When I was in MAGA, the Lincoln Project was the devil — loathed and despised. And if I had met you when I was in MAGA, I would have said that you were an existential threat to our country."

Logis added, "My journey really started in 2015. I was very politically disillusioned. I believed that the two parties had been the same — that they failed to represent most of the country, except for the wealthy and the powerful. I was unapologetically all in. I spoke to Trump groups. I donated to them. I was a sponsor. There was probably no one who was as devout a supporter of Trump and MAGA as I was.And born from that apology and recounting of my story was our organization, Leaving MAGA, which we founded as a new community — a new destination for people who are leaving MAGA, who are having doubts."

President Donald Trump, as a Republican, should theoretically support fiscal conservatism. Yet according to a report by a financial journalist, under Trump America’s national debt and deficit are ballooning to dangerous levels.

“The price that the U.S. government has to pay to borrow money for 30 years has already punched through 5 percent a year, its highest level since the financial crisis of 2007,” reported The Washington Post's Matthew Lynn on Sunday. “For 10-year money, the annual price is 4.6 percent and climbing. Amid all the noise about the rise of artificial intelligence and the booming space economy, something far more significant is happening in the financial markets. The cost of borrowing is being reset.”

Lynn added that this raises the possibility that American voters will care enough about deficit reduction that it can become a politically viable issue again.

“The U.S. national debt has reached $39 trillion, with interest payments now exceeding $1 trillion annually, compared to the near-zero interest rate after the 2008 financial crisis,” Lynn wrote. “This could trigger a financial crisis and, even worse, modern political leaders are no longer even paying lip service to the need for deficit reduction.” As a result, “the big space in American politics will be waiting for a leader who can steadily balance the books while restoring competitiveness, keeping inflation under control and maintaining government services.”

Lynn concluded, “That won’t be easy. The U.S. deficit came in at 5.8 percent of gross domestic product in 2025, and it is not likely to be any lower this year. Bringing it down will require sustained hard work, lots of patience and the ability to tell hard truths. Those are not qualities that Washington has in abundance. Even so, it would be a big prize. The only real question is whether there is a leader out there who is willing to step up and take it.”

Lynn is not alone among finance experts who are concerned about America’s growing debt crisis, which has grown worse under Trump due to his tax cuts for the wealthy, war against Iran and spending cuts on programs that help low-income Americans.

“Unless we change course, the debt will only get worse—fast,” Brookings Institution senior fellow William Galston wrote for The Wall Street Journal earlier this month. “The Congressional Budget Office estimates that we are on track to accumulate more than $24 trillion in debt over the next decade, for a total of $56 trillion—120 percent of estimated GDP in 2036.”

He added, “These numbers are so large that it is hard to grasp what they mean. One key measure is the cost of financing this swelling debt burden. Twenty-five years ago, interest payments on the national debt were 2 percent of GDP. This year they will claim 3.3 percent; a decade from now, 4.6 percent.”

Trump’s outsized impact on the budget deficit began in 2017, when he passed another series of tax cuts for the wealthy called the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA).

“The Joint Committee on Taxation and the Congressional Budget Office have published several estimates of TCJA’s expected budget impact,” the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center explains. “These estimates all show TCJA substantially reducing revenues and increasing deficits over its first decade. The specific amount varies—from about $1 trillion to $2 trillion—for three reasons.”

The Tax Policy Center continued, “First, the agencies estimated budget impacts using both conventional methods (which do not account for potential changes to the overall economy) and dynamic methods (which do). Second, the agencies originally estimated the budget impacts against a budget baseline established in 2017, when the act was debated and enacted. They later published updated figures using a 2018 baseline, which included new economic and budget information. Third, official scores typically do not include any new debt service costs resulting from tax cuts or spending increases. Projections for the entire budget, however, do include debt service.”

Adults accept it as conventional health wisdom that we require eight hours of sleep each night in order to be healthy. Yet an expert on human evolutionary biology recently argued that this might actually be misleading.

“Do you lose sleep over whether you sleep too little or too much?” Daniel E. Lieberman, a professor at Harvard University, wrote for The New York Times on Sunday. “You can now relax, because scientists have figured out precisely how much sleep you really need. In a recent study in Nature, an international team of experts reports that the ‘sweet spot’ for adults is between 6 hours 24 minutes and 7 hours 48 minutes. Less or more than this ‘Goldilocks’ zone is associated with faster rates of aging in the brain, heart, liver and other vital organs, plus higher rates of illnesses such as heart disease and depression, and ultimately shorter lifespans.”

Lieberman added that a recent study analyzed self-reported sleep habit data from hundreds of thousands of people. It found that people who sleep more than 8 hours per night suffer health problems just like their counterparts who sleep less than 6 hours and 24 minutes per night. In theory, this would demonstrate that excessive sleep can hurt a person’s health just as much as insufficient sleep.

“However, a major concern with the study is that it analyzed only associations and cannot distinguish between cause and effect,” Lieberman wrote. “Since people who don’t feel well often sleep more, it’s possible that more than 7.8 hours of sleep was falsely identified as detrimental. Another drawback is that the study used notoriously inaccurate self-reported sleep data. (Do you know exactly how much sleep you got last night?) An additional flaw is that the researchers included mostly people of European ancestry. Even so, the study adds substantially to evidence of the health benefits of sleeping enough but not too much.”

Despite these doubts about the dangers of excessive sleeping, Lieberman nevertheless urged readers to monitor their sleeping habits and raise concerns to their doctors about possible underlying health issues that may be at work if someone sleeps too much. He added that, on top of this, Americans need to be aware of the rising epidemic of sleeplessness.

“Maybe learning how lack of sleep accelerates aging will serve as a wake-up call to those who shortchange themselves on sleep and induce them to go to bed earlier,” Lieberman wrote. “Perhaps the relatively small percentage of people prone to oversleeping will set their alarm clocks to get up earlier. My worry, though, is with the roughly 35 percent of Americans who say they get less than seven hours of sleep, many of whom have insomnia.”

He added that when people suffer from insomnia, “emphasizing that their lack of sleep might send them to an early grave could increase their anxiety and stress about sleep, thus exacerbating the problem. Anxiety and stress are major risk factors for insomnia because they stimulate the body to produce hormones such as cortisol that arouse us. Studies have shown that medicalizing sleeplessness sometimes worsens the problem by treating a common issue as a medical matter requiring diagnosis and treatment.”

At the same time, Lieberman said that people should not fret if they fail to get exactly eight hours of sleep. Instead what they need to do is ask themselves basic questions about how their day-to-day health is or is not impaired by their quantity and quality of sleep.

“Are you satisfied with your sleep?” Lieberman wrote. “Do you stay awake all day without dozing? Are you asleep between 2 a.m. and 4 a.m.? Do you spend less than 30 minutes awake at night? Do you get between six and eight hours of sleep?”

He continued, “If your answers to these questions are not ‘usually’ or ‘always,’ then I hope you find relief through well-studied, effective approaches that reduce sleep-related anxiety and stress. These include developing good habits such as exercising, cognitive behavioral therapy and maintaining a regular sleep schedule.”

Speaking with this journalist for Salon in 2023, the inventor of the CPAP — a medical device used to treat sleep apnea — explained that the prevalence of that disorder, in which people frequently wake up at night due to their airways shutting, explains a wide range of other common health problems.

"I've spent a lot of my career looking at pediatric sleep apnea, sleep disorder breathing, and I do think that trying to intervene early, identifying kids who have the risk factors, gives us a chance of preventing it," Sullivan said at the time. "There's no doubt that the size and shape of the upper airway is important. Some orthodontic procedures actually can be very effective. And I think if we can identify earlier, we have a chance of preventing it."

"I don't think the significance of sleep apnea is still fully grasped often by the medical profession," Sullivan explained. "One of the issues that I've become aware of is that I think snoring and sleep apnea put you at risk of getting a number of diseases. I still am astounded when I see patients who have got various cardiac conditions and no one's really looked at or even asked them about what happens to them at nighttime in terms of sleep."

President Donald Trump has weaponized the Justice Department so egregiously, he has literally destroyed an important pillar of American life, at least according to one conservative commentator.

“President Trump's $1.776 billion weaponization fund to compensate January 6th rioters for their troubles is now (probably—perhaps mostly) dead,” The Bulwark’s Elliot Williams wrote on Sunday. “But that doesn’t mean that you should stop paying attention to it.”

Williams pointed out that, despite Trump saying he is no longer going to dispense money from the fund, the president has already indicated that it could be revived. Even his fellow Republican senators have not foreclosed the possibility, as they pointedly refused to ban the fund as part of the recently-passed reconciliation bill. Similarly, they have not taken a strong stand against the provision of the agreement that gives Trump’s family from IRS audits of any of their past tax returns.

“Those are important dimensions of this story, of course,” Williams wrote. “But the thing that remains most troubling is what’s going on with the underlying case—Trump’s $10 billion lawsuit against the IRS—and the way it attests to an alarming trend in the U.S. justice system.”

He added, “A federal judge in Miami who is involved in the case recently took the step of reopening it because she feared that the Department of Justice might have lied to her. Technically, what the judge said was that she wants to investigate ‘grievous allegations’ that the deal to resolve the suit was ‘premised on deception.’ (That’s federal judge-speak for ‘The United States Department of Justice might have lied to me to get this done.’)”

Williams emphasized that this is not normal behavior in a functioning democracy, and that it indeed imperils the rule of law in the United States.

“But in the age of Trump, it isn’t the first documented instance of the administration upending the abstruse but foundational legal principle that government officials are assumed to have acted honestly and in good faith,” Williams wrote. “It is called the ‘presumption of regularity,’ a centuries-old concept conceived in England and baked into American law. The Trump administration has acted with almost total disregard for it hundreds of times. And its de facto loss has huge ramifications that are being felt throughout our legal system.”

Speaking for MS NOW earlier this month Norm Eisen, co-founder and board member of Democracy Defenders Action and former special counsel for the impeachment and trial of Trump during his first term, expressed doubt that Trump has sincerely abandoned the $1.8 billion slush fund.

“You only need to look at Donald Trump's long history of lies… to disbelieve the notion that the settlement fund and everything associated with it is going to vanish,” Eisen explained. “We are fighting to erase the slush fund. It's a disgrace.” Eisen went on to point to settlement agreements that forbid the IRS from investigating Trump or his family, calling it “the worst example of corruption in the history of the American presidency.”

He added, “If you pull the rug out from under that case, then everything falls down. There's no legal basis to be giving away the store, as they've done with these settlements. The whole thing is illegal.”

President Donald Trump is attempting to compromise future elections by targeting election workers to gaslight America about his 2020 defeat, according to a Georgia election worker.

“We are responding to ‘Fulton seeks to block federal subpoena targeting 2020 election workers, May 5,’” wrote Election Protectors United of Georgia’s Jon C. Greaves in an editorial for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution that was published on Sunday. “As registered voters from Fulton County and beyond, we deeply value the selfless staff and volunteers who facilitate free and fair elections here and across the state.”

Greaves continued, “The effort by the Department of Justice to obtain personal information for these workers and volunteers is shameful. The DOJ should not be involved in the intimidation of poll workers and the dissemination of disinformation. Propagating the lie that there was fraud in the 2020 elections further weaponizes the DOJ against ordinary citizens.”

Greaves added, “We recall the slander of poll workers by former New York Mayor and Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani to further the 2020 election lies. It was wrong when Giuliani did it then, and it is wrong for the DOJ to misuse the legal process now to spread disinformation and endanger the lives of citizens. We call on the DOJ to withdraw its subpoena immediately.”

Speaking to AlterNet last week, a pair of election security experts echoed Greaves’ concerns that Trump’s supposed election integrity efforts are actually part of a plan to undermine democracy overall.

“I think there are two things to consider,” Pooja Chaudhuri, Senior Counsel/Deputy Legal Director at Democracy Defenders Fund who specializes in voting rights as well as election law litigation and advocacy, told AlterNet. “One is that the election is made up of voters, and so the outcome depends on people turning out to the polls and voting. The problem is ... the chilling effect on voters.”

Chaudhuri continued, “When voters hear that ICE may be deployed to the polls, that mail-in voting rules are changing close to the election, a lot of voters might say, ‘I'm just not going to go out and vote.’ That could happen in many different ways. There are vulnerable communities — people may come from mixed-status families — they're US citizens, but they might decide, "I'm not going to vote." So one aspect is the chilling effect on voters that all of these actions would have.” Chaudhuri also expressed alarm that both gerrymandering and the FBI’s seizure of Fulton County, GA election information also could keep voters away from the polls.

“We're going to see consequences in terms of voters saying, ‘I don't want the FBI to get my personal ballot in the future,’” Chaudhuri observed. “So, to sum up, I do agree that putting it all together, it does paint an ominous picture.”

Dan Vicuña, Senior Policy Director for Voting and Fair Representation at Common Cause, also expressed alarm about Trump’s election actions.

“What they all add up to is a desire to avoid any accountability to the voters in the midterm elections — to ensure, to preordain the outcome of a midterm that he thinks is going to go badly for him,” Vicuña told AlterNet. “We know, from the Big Lie of the 2020 election to spurring on a violent revolt to overthrow a free and fair election, that he has no respect for democratic norms, for the voice of the people. This is entirely about his own power and his own ego. He will even invest in protecting that ego and protecting his power at the expense of the needs of the public. People are suffering with high gas prices and affordability issues, and he does not care. All that matters is protecting his power, and he has no interest in whether he does that through democratic means.”

Democratic political consultant James Carville wants Maine voters to back Graham Platner despite the candidate’s flaws — and partly because of some of them. Platner is currently the likely Democratic nominee in Maine’s U.S. Senate race. If Platner wins the primary, he will face Republican Senator Susan Collins, who was first elected in 1996.

“I understand he’s f—— up,” said Carville on his Politicon podcast. “Yeah, maybe we need a combat veteran right on that Senate floor, who is f—— up.”

Carville berated Senator Collins by calling her “the most pliable member in the history of the United States Senate.”

He warned that he believes the country is “in imminent peril — I mean, imminent peril,” and asked: “Who is most likely to slow this criminal in charge?”

“I think it’s Graham Platner.”

“I ask all of you to understand his flaws, and understand the peril that this nation is in, and maybe he might be the right guy at the right time,” said Carville.

“Graham Platner grew up, I think, pretty privileged,” Carville said, sharing some of the likely Democratic nominee’s backstory. “He went to some kind of fancy fancy boarding school. He graduated, he joined the United States Marine Corps. He was in for eight years. He had three combat deployments. He gets out of the Marine Corps, and he goes to GW.”

Then Platner “joined the Maryland National Guard. Oh, you know what happened? He gets deployed a fourth time.”

“He’s f—— up,” said Carville. “He’s been shot at. He’s a veteran. All right? He’s got a little bit weird. He’s an oysterman. I know what oystermen do. I live in Louisiana. I think that oyster harvesting is the same the world over, it’s hard a—— work.”

Carville acknowledged that he has concerns, but said that maybe senators “need to look at this guy before they start sending young people off to fight wars, and see what the consequence of it is. Maybe he ought to run and say, ‘You don’t know, I’m gonna be on a veterans affairs committee, and I wanna be on a mental health subcommittee, ’cause I know something about… Yeah, I might be five degrees off dead center. So f—— what?’ They need that.”

He said he doesn’t agree with Platner’s economic stances, that they are “to the left of anything I’d say I’m for.”

“But you know what? He recognizes this horrific inequality in this country. And it actually would do some good to have somebody in there.”

Carville called Platner’s tattoo “very troubling.”

He said, “what I have to consider first, is this country is about to lose it. The whole goddamn thing.”

“Okay, we gotta win this,” Carville concluded. “And if we got a person who’s understandably got issues, yeah, good. And maybe people ought to see it, and maybe we ought to just be reminded of what these stupid wars have brought about in the consequence of said stupid wars. It’s [what] stupid Susan Collin's been for all her political life.”

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