President Donald Trump is toying with a "menacing" new strategy to meddle in the midterm elections, but as one former prosecutor wrote for New York Magazine, the idea is ultimately too "dumb" to function.

Earlier this month, Trump phoned in for an interview with right-wing commentator Wayne Allyn Root. At one point in the conversation, Root suggested that Trump ought to declare a "national security emergency for elections," supposedly allowing him to forcibly implement the voting reforms that have stalled in the Senate. Trump did not outright dismiss the idea, saying only that "stranger things have happened."

Writing for New York Magazine's Intelligencer on Tuesday, former federal prosecutor and legal analyst Elie Honig warned that Trump is "not joking" about this plan and should be taken seriously.

"Trump is already hard at work laying a foundation of doubt about election security for 2026, and his history makes plain that he will never accept electoral defeat," Honig explained. "January 6 marked a historic nadir, of course, and the president’s 2020 election denialism continues, exasperatingly, to this day. When Trump lost the Iowa Republican primary in 2016, he alleged that his own party cheated and that a new election should be held because of 'fraud.' Even after he won the presidency in 2016, Trump claimed falsely that 'millions' voted illegally and that he won the popular vote in addition to the electoral count. The man has never lost an election, if you ask him, and never will."

Honig suggested that if Trump goes ahead with this "dubious if inventive" plan to meddle with the midterms, things will "get ugly," but ultimately, it is doomed to fail in court.

"First, it simply doesn’t work that way," Honig wrote. "The president cannot declare an emergency in a vacuum and then do whatever he wants. Rather, he must (1) point to a specific emergency-powers statute passed by Congress, (2) demonstrate that there is in fact an emergency, then (3) take the specific steps authorized by that emergency law. Here, of course, there are no facts to support a claim of a 2026 election emergency and there is no law giving the president emergency powers over elections. He can shout out 'Emergency!' all day long, but there’s no legal or governmental mechanism to actually do anything with it. Root has not discovered some magical workaround."

Honig suggested that Root, through his "jumbled" suggestion, was referring to Trump invoking the National Emergencies Act. This idea is inherently flawed, as this act does not give the president new powers when invoked; it merely allows them to expedite certain processes in the event of an emergency.

"Ultimately, any attempt by Trump to enact Root’s nuthouse plan would be resolved through litigation," Honig concluded. "Criticize the federal courts as you please — I’d likely concur in some part — but the judiciary has been a bulwark against Trump’s abuse of emergency powers. The Supreme Court has recently rejected the president’s invocations of emergency powers to impose global tariffs, to deploy the National Guard, and to deport people under the Alien Enemies Act... Trump’s mad quest to tamper with the 2026 midterms has already caused confusion and concern, and if he keeps down this road, it’ll wreak chaos and maybe worse than that. But it won’t work."

President Donald Trump is once again musing about a plot to upend the midterm elections, but as one political scholar revealed to The New Republic, the legal logic behind the idea has a major flaw that means it is likely to be a dud.

During a recent interview, right-wing media personality Wayne Allyn Root urged Trump to declare a national emergency as a means to implement the voter ID requirements and other reforms proposed in the SAVE America Act, which has stalled out in the Senate. In response, Trump did not outright dismiss the idea and, in fact, sounded as if he was considering it.

"Let me just say, stranger things have happened, OK? I'll leave it at that," the president said.

During the Wednesday edition of The New Republic's Daily Blast podcast, host Greg Sargent talked with Rick Hasen, a legal and political scholar who specializes in election law, and pressed him about the viability of the idea that Trump could implement sweeping election reforms via national emergency. Hasen explained that, for all the presidential powers that such a declaration could unlock, it would give Trump no specific powers over elections. Elections, more generally, are also explicitly left for states to manage by the Constitution.

"So there are two reasons why declaring a national emergency doesn't make Donald Trump the election czar in this country," Hasen explained. "The first is, there's no federal statute. Of all those 50 statutes that deal with national emergencies, none prescribe any powers to the president over elections. The other reason is even more fundamental. The Constitution, the United States Constitution, does not give the president power over elections. We have a decentralized election system.”

He continued: "Most of our election rules come from states, from state legislatures passing statutes. There's a part of the Constitution — it's in Article 1, Section 4 — it says that Congress can override state rules on elections. That's when Congress, for example, requires 'motor voter'; people can register to vote at motor vehicle departments. But Congress has to do that with legislation. The president has no role to play. All that the president can do is take care to assure that the laws that Congress passes are being faithfully executed.”

Hasen also touched on Root's suggestion that this national emergency idea could work if implemented next month, as it would require both chambers of Congress to vote to undo it, and there would not be enough time before the midterms to do so. The analyst explained that, again, this notion is inherently flawed, as no such declaration can give Trump such election powers in the first place.

With the United States' 2026 midterm elections less than three months away, GOP strategists are sounding the alarm about President Donald Trump's weak approval ratings and the strong possibility that Democrats will retake the U.S. House of Representatives — although they are hoping that Republicans will at least hold the U.S. Senate. And CNN's Jake Tapper, in a thread posted on X, formerly Twitter, early Tuesday afternoon, August 11, warned that Trump is quite capable of doing something to interfere with the midterms.

Tapper, in his X thread, was responding to a video of Wayne Allyn Root of the pro-MAGA Real America's Voice declaring, "You have the right to declare a national security emergency for elections. If you do this in the next month, we will get photo ID, proof of citizenship and a limit to mail ballots."

Trump replied, "Let me just say stranger things have happened. I'll leave it at that."

Tapper tweeted, "There is zero reason to not take Trump at his word that he and his team are planning something alarming to disrupt the midterms and beyond."

The CNN host also posted, "We've been covering this for months. Maybe it would sound implausible in a pre-Jan 6 2021 world. But now that we know what's possible, warning signs are there. Just look at what we know about. Now ask yourself what we don't."

Tapper isn't the only one who is warning about the possibility of Trump finding ways to interfere with the midterms if they aren't going his way. Former CIA Director John Brennan, during a Tuesday appearance on MS NOW, commented that he "wouldn't be surprised" if Trump tried to interfere with the midterms election results. Democratic strategist Sawyer Hackett, the same day, told MS NOW's Alicia Menendez that Trump is already "actively engaged in an election theft."

PBS News' Liz Landers, also weighed in on Root's comments — tweeting, "I asked the president about this back in February when we reported on a proposed executive order that was floated by his allies outside the White House to declare a national emergency regarding elections."

Chronicles Magazine's Pedro L. Gonzales, the same day on X, warned, "I don't know if he will go through with it, but Trump absolutely wants to declare a national security emergency to sabotage the midterms in favor of the GOP. And there's no reason to believe that any major conservative institution from Heritage to Claremont would oppose it. The new right has lost the plot and does not recognize limits on what can be done to, in their delusional minds, 'save' the country, even and especially if that means blowing it up."

Gonzales was referring to the Claremont Institute, a conservative think tank that was founded in 1979 and has taken a decidedly MAGA turn in recent years.

While the office of former Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell insists he is merely recovering from a fall at a hospital, conspiracy theories continue abound that the continuously-absent Kentuckian seen carried away on a stretcher is actually in a much worse state.

“Cornyn says ‘we need some transparency’ from McConnell,” reported NBC News congressional correspondent Brennan Leach, referring to an interview with Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX). “Says he wishes McConnell had updated about his health ‘earlier.’ ‘I think it would have resolved a lot of questions.’” Cornyn also said he wants to see toxicology reports on the unexpected death of a different Republican lawmaker, Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina.

“Given where he was and the sorts of things he was advocating for, I think we just ought to resolve all those questions by seeing what the toxicology reports show," Cornyn said about Graham.

Earlier on Monday, Cornyn told NOTUS reporter Igor Bobic that he believes Trump's chief foreign policy adviser, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, disclaimed any interest from the United States in charging for passage through the Strait of Hormuz, even though Trump has reneged on that.

"I recall Secretary Rubio saying that would not be proper for any country. Am I wrong?” Cornyn said.

When it comes to Cornyn's critique of McConnell, he is not alone among prominent conservatives. A different Republican senator, Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, offered a bold argument about what he thinks is going on with McConnell.

“I just heard from some other source that was an older photo, so I really don’t know,” Johnson told Fox News, later emphasizing that “it was a rumor. Just discount it[.] I have no idea. I just, I heard that. I just heard it. So just assume it's false.”

Speaking with conservative podcaster Megyn Kelly, The Daily Wire's Michael J. Knowles admitted that he is “skeptical” about the McConnell team’s claims that he is still alive and conscious.

“I don't know if I buy the excuses[.] I'm pretty skeptical…" Knowles said. Another right-winger, anarchist podcaster Michael Malice, instead decided to joke about McConnell’s health by comparing him to former Rep. Gabrielle Gifford (D-AZ), who was left brain damaged after an assassination attempt in 2011.

“Mitch McConnell is so brain damaged that it's giving Mark Kelly an erection,” Malice said. Right-wing radio host Wayne Allyn Root by contrast humored the conspiracy theories.

“So, is Mitch McConnell photo real, or an old photo being recycled to make us think he's alive & recovering?” Root wrote. “I have no idea. But I hear many are questioning the photo. The guy has been half dead for years...blank stare...then he almost dies in his home...needs CPR...now his wife tries to convince us he's fine.”

He added, “Really? More gaslighting? And what was she doing running to China? Should have been by his bedside. Or maybe at White House with Trump. Why China? Is that who owns her?”

Perhaps to counter the right-wing conspiracy theories, Rep. Jack Kimble (R-CA) asked people to give the Kentuckian his space.

“I posted a picture yesterday from the McConnell campaign that a lot of people claimed was AI and demanded proof it was real,” Kimble said. “Fortunately, Mitch’s team was kind enough to provide proof, but this has to stop. Let the poor man recover.”

At least one prominent Democrat, former Vice President Kamala Harris adviser Mike Nellis, made it clear that he thinks his party should hold Republicans’ feet to the fire over McConnell, citing Kentucky’s own governor as an example.

“Kentucky Republicans have tried to take away Governor Beshear’s ability to appoint Mitch McConnell’s replacement,” Nellis wrote. “Beshear says he’s considering ignoring the state legislature and appointing a Democrat to replace McConnell anyway. He believes the law is unconstitutional, that Kentucky’s constitution gives him the authority, and that he’s prepared to test the GOP on it.”

He added, ‘This is exactly how Democrats should be fighting.”

President Donald Trump has already said that he is considering seizing ballot boxes during the 2026 midterm elections, most recently during a radio appearance with far right host Wayne Allyn Root. Even though his attempts to gain access to state voter rolls have overwhelmingly lost in court, there are still concerns that his efforts could spread chaos and sow doubt as to the legitimacy of the results if Democrats win key races.

Now a former Trump official is getting into specifics about exactly what Trump plans on doing — and who should be worried.

“If you overlay the refusers (the states that declined to hand over their voter rolls to Trump’s DOJ) with this fall’s top battleground races, then thirteen light up as high risk: Arizona, California, Colorado, Georgia, Maine, Michigan, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Washington, and Wisconsin,” wrote former Trump Homeland Security adviser Miles Taylor on Tuesday. “These states are home to some of the most important House and Senate toss-up races. Depending on how the results look after Election Day, the Fulton scheme could hypothetically be carried out in any of them.”

He added, “These thirteen are the likeliest targets, but they aren’t the only states at risk. There are battleground states that actually cooperated with the DOJ’s voter roll demands — including Ohio, Texas, Iowa, Florida, Nebraska, and North Carolina — that could be hit, too. Here the pretext would simply be flipped around: We ran the voter lists they gave us, and we found anomalies. So we have to go investigate.”

Even though Trump’s ballot box seizures are unlikely to hold up in court, Taylor added, he could still tamper with the results. Similarly, all it takes is a single magistrate judge to grant Trump access to the boxes in the first place, which is enough to create distrust in the result.

“In the end, Trump’s team doesn’t care about losing in court,” Taylor wrote. “All they care about is fighting the battle in the court of public opinion for two months — between the election on November 3, 2026, and January 3, 2027, when the next Congress is supposed to be seated. That’s long enough to diminish confidence in the results and to create enough justification for Speaker Mike Johnson to secure support from his caucus not to hand over power. Indeed, under the law, the House majority has the final say over who gets seated in the chamber.”

Taylor offered specific suggestions as to what advocates of democracy can do to stop this from happening.

“Attorneys general should consider sending public letters to the chief judges of every federal district in their states putting them on alert,” Taylor said. “The letters should ask that any warrant application having to do with ballots or election equipment be heavily scrutinized and challenged, or elevated to a district judge. These frontline judges are the last check before the FBI trucks roll in, and after what happened in Fulton County, all of them need to know that they might be served bogus claims from the FBI for seizing America’s votes.”

He added, “In the meantime, every at-risk state must have their emergency motions pre-drafted and ready to file within hours (fortunately, many already do). Secretaries of state should harden the chain of custody for ballots so an FBI seizure can’t feed on ambiguity. Local prosecutors must know their election-interference statutes front and back and be ready to prosecute lawbreaking feds (at DEFIANCE.org, we’ve helped many of them gear up to do precisely that). Finally, states should keep coordinating as a bloc, pre-bunking the ‘uncertainty’ narrative before the Trump administration decides which races it wants to contest.”

Speaking to AlterNet about this issue, Rutgers University political scientist Saladin Ambar — who specializes in the history of race in America — elucidated how the president is likely to play on racist sentiments to validate his actions with the public.

“Without any involvement of, or connection to race, Trump, I think, because of his ego, his obsessive will to power, is more than capable of finding other rationales and/or building blocks to make a ‘case for a national emergency’ to call off or delay the midterm,” Ambar told AlterNet.

He added, “What I will say is that going back, frankly, to our Declaration of Independence, which accused King George of fomenting insurrection and by that [Thomas] Jefferson was alluding to British support for some African Americans who were obviously enslaved to join the rebellion and to take up arms against the colonies at the time, going all the way back to the Declaration, presidents have and/or statesmen in America have used the fear of black uprisings, racial uprisings, riots and so forth as a pretext for declaring states of emergency for engaging in all kinds of unconstitutional acts, perhaps the greatest in the last 100 years being [Franklin Roosevelt's] removal of Japanese Americans to imprisonment camps.”

Speaking to AlterNet in June, Senior Policy Director for Voting and Fair Representation at the nonprofit Common Cause Dan Vicuña provided more detail about the various ways Trump could steal the midterms.

“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 explained to 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.”

He concluded, “I think this all adds up to a desire to ensure that his party stays in power and his ability to do what he wants — to attack vulnerable communities — remains intact.”

President Donald Trump came to Las Vegas Thursday to proclaim working Nevadans are better off thanks to his policies, particularly a provision of his giant tax and spending bill that provides a tax deduction to workers earning tipped incomes.

But the Trump economy, which has been rocked by his war with Iran and its accompanying $5 a gallon gas, wasn’t impressive enough that Nevada Gov. Joe Lombardo wanted to bask in it Thursday.

The vulnerable Republican governor that Nevada Democrats have dubbed Trump’s “cheerleader-in-chief” did not appear alongside him at the public event, which was held at AC Hotel in Symphony Park.

Lombardo’s campaign staff told the Nevada Current the governor would be meeting Trump separately.

In a social media post, Lombardo thanked Trump “for visiting Nevada” and “for delivering your historic promise of no tax on tips or overtime.”

The statement continued, “I look forward to meeting with President Trump during his visit, where I hope to continue our discussions on lowering costs for Nevada families, releasing more federal land for attainable housing, advancing critical solar projects, and restoring the full gaming loss deduction.”

Not appearing publicly with the president could be seen as an attempt by Lombardo to distance himself from the president claiming economic victory when the average gas price is $5 a gallon and the state’s hallmark gaming industry is grappling with a slowdown in tourism.

Nevada Democrats have long attempted to tie Lombardo to Trump’s economic policies.

Lombardo’s campaign did not respond to a request by the Current to elaborate on the decision to not appear publicly alongside the president or address how his absence in public might be interpreted.

For his part, Trump did not mention or allude to Lombardo during his remarks, which largely focused on tax policy changes made through the One Big Beautiful Bill.

Trump at one point spoke about “fake inflation” tied to fuel and oil prices.

He added, “Let’s see what happens over the next week or so. I think you’re going to be very impressed… and if you are—vote for the Republicans in the midterm!”

Lt. Gov. Stavros Anthony, Clark County Commissioner April Becker, and Assemblymember Lisa Cole all appeared on stage with Trump. Republicans in attendance included Assemblymembers Danielle Gallant and Jill Dickman, Chairman of the Nevada Republican Party and fake elector Michael McDonald, and Wayne Allyn Root.

State Sen. Carrie Buck and wealthy video game composer Marty O’Donnell also attended. The pair have been endorsed by Trump in their congressional races.

Trump endorsed Lombardo for re-election back in November 2025 — a full year before Election Day.

Lombardo did appear with Trump when he last visited Nevada, in January 2025, shortly after Trump’s inauguration.

Tax deduction on tipped income

The stated purpose of Trump’s visit was to herald his “no tax on tips” policy that was enacted in his giant tax and spending bill. Announced by Trump during a June 2024 rally at Sunset Park in Las Vegas, the proposal as enacted in 2025 is actually a tax deduction of up to $25,000 from taxable income.

According to the U.S. Treasury, more than six million Americans have claimed the deduction, and the average deduction —$7,100 — was less than a third of the maximum allowed under the law.

According to IRS data, the average tax refund for all taxpayers as of the week ending April 3 was $3,462, compared to $3,116 on the same date in 2025. That’s an 11% increase, or an additional $346.

Similarly, under “no tax on Social Security,” Social Security income is still taxed, but some recipients are eligible to deduct $6,000 from their taxable income. And under “no tax on overtime,” workers may deduct up to $12,500 of overtime pay.

Tipped workers, however, are “vulnerable to other policy changes in the One Big Beautiful Bill that will offset the benefit of tips deduction,” according to the Center of American Progress (CAP).

For the majority of tipped worker occupations “30 percent of workers’ health care was covered by Medicaid or Affordable Care Act subsidies, and 15 percent of workers were in a household receiving SNAP,” the CAP report said, concluding that many tipped workers will “disproportionately suffer financial losses” due to program cuts and that the “net result is that tipped workers are unlikely to experience significant gains” from Trump’s OBBB.

However, the richest Americans make out well from Trump’s bill, which “delivers $1 trillion in tax cuts to the top 1 percent while cutting more than $1.1 trillion from SNAP, Medicaid and other health programs used by the poorest Americans,” CAP said.

Iran War ‘going swimmingly’

A majority of Americans blame rising gasoline prices on Trump’s Iran war.

In Las Vegas Thursday, Trump said the war “is going swimmingly,”, and that “we can do whatever we want. And it should be ending pretty soon. It was perfect. It was perfect.”

One of the costs of the war—behind the 400 American casualties and 1,701 Iranian civilians killed (254 of which were children, according to U.S. based human rights activist group HRANA)— is gas prices.

Trump’s call for calm towards the pump prices was defended by his Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who shifted blame of increased gas prices away from the war in Iran to California Gov. Gavin Newsom during a press scrum before the roundtable.

The rest of the country, Bessent said, is not feeling the same level of pain as Nevadans are due to the state being tied to the “energy policies of Gavin Newsom.”

Nevada is captive to the West Coast gasoline market, where price of gas tends to be roughly 20% higher than the rest of the country. Gas prices have spiked to more than $4 a gallon nationally, which has little if anything to do with California.

“Prices are coming down, and, I think, this summer we are going to see prices get back to normal,” Bessent said.

That assessment differs from one made by Trump’s Department of Energy. In a report earlier this month, the U.S. Energy Information Agency projected that due to the disruptions created by the Iran war, gasoline would remain high not only through the rest of this year, but into 2027.

President Donald Trump claimed credit for America’s record low murder rate — but top crime experts say the actual sources of the crime drop precede Trump’s recent second term.

“The answer is, we don’t know,” said Jeff Asher, a crime statistician behind the Real-Time Crime Index, at a recent panel covered in a report by the gun violence magazine The Trace. The Real-Time Crime Index compiles data from hundreds of police reports all over America to accurately monitor crime patterns. Using his research, Asher concluded that the crime drop preceded Trump’s second term.

“We saw a record drop in murder in 2023, 2024, and then again in 2025,” Asher explained. “So the roots of it are probably stuff that happened in the 2021-2022 time frame.”

This does not mean that Trump is entirely incorrect in stating, as he did during his 2026 State of the Union message, that “last year the murder rate saw its single largest decline in recorded history.” A January study from the nonpartisan think tank the Council on Criminal Justice found that 2025’s homicide rate may have been the lowest on record since 1900. Yet as Trace reported, “the vast majority of those homicides — around 75 percent — were gun homicides, which spiked in 2020 during Trump’s first term and continued to increase into 2021, before beginning a gradual and consistent decline through the remaining Biden years.”

Indeed, Asher pointed out at the aforementioned panel that Trump’s biggest boast in terms of reducing crime can be clearly contextualized in terms of the years preceding his second term.

“I deployed our National Guard and federal law enforcement to restore law and order to our most dangerous cities, including Memphis, Tennessee, big success; New Orleans, Louisiana, big success; and our nation’s capital itself, Washington, D.C., where we have almost no crime anymore,” Trump said during the State of the Union. “How did that happen?”

Asher pointed out during the panel that “in D.C., you’ve seen a massive drop in crime from the middle of 2023 through the summer of 2025 that just continued at the same level. Maybe there were a couple of weeks of lower gun violence” as a result of Trump’s National Guard deployments, “but again, that’s hard to tease out when you’ve had two straight years of large declines in gun violence.”

Trump himself has in the past acknowledged that, in order to reduce crime, he needs to focus on gun violence — but when he openly states this, he faces pushback from the pro-gun factions of his Republican Party base.

For example, Trump was harshly criticized when Judge Jeanine Pirro told Fox News earlier this month that if “you bring a gun into the District, you mark my words, you’re going to jail. I don’t care if you have a license in another district, and I don’t care if you’re a law-abiding gun owner somewhere else. You bring a gun into this District, count on going to jail, and hope you get the gun back, and that makes all the difference.” A pro-Trump congressman, U.S. Rep. Greg Steube (R-FL), told Pirro “Come and Take It.” He later added, “I bring a gun into the district every week. I have a license in Florida and DC to carry. And I will continue to carry to protect myself and others.”

Trump himself has at times indicated a support for stricter gun control laws. After Minnesota intensive care nurse Alex Pretti was shot to death by border patrol agents during a protest, Trump argued “you can’t have guns. You can’t walk in with guns” when protesting around federal agents. Trump faced significant MAGA pushback for these remarks, but America’s main pro-gun advocacy group, the National Rifle Association (NRA), has lost power since a fifth of its membership left between 2019 and 2022 after former leader Wayne LaPierre was accused of siphoning off NRA funds.

Some speculate that the pro-gun movement is losing clout because of the NRA’s diminished standing. Yet in January, when Trump-appointed US Attorney Bill Essayli said federal agents would be “legally justified in shooting” a person who approached them while armed, certified firearms instructor Stephen Gutowski argued in an MS NOW op-ed that the Trump administration’s “coordinated messages” have “already sparked backlash from some of Trump’s closest allies: gun-rights activists.” The NRA itself wrote on social media that Essayli’s statements were “dangerous and wrong,” adding that “responsible public voices should be awaiting a full investigation, not making generalizations and demonizing law-abiding citizens.”

During his first term, Trump backed down when confronted by the NRA, although on those occasions LaPierre was still in charge of the organization. In 2018 Trump told a White House gathering of America’s governors that he supported “getting rid” of bump stocks and strengthening background checks.

“It doesn’t seem to make sense that you have to wait until you’re 21 years old to get a pistol, but to get a gun like this maniac used in the school, you get that at 18,” Trump told Fox News at the time. “I mean that doesn’t make sense, and, frankly, I explained that to the NRA.”

Trump later walked back these statements and never pushed for these regulations. Scientific studies on gun control (as aggregated by the RAND Corporation, a nonprofit global policy think tank) found a correlation between lowered crime rates and laws like mandatory waiting periods, child-access prevention laws, forcibly confiscating firearms from those prohibited from owning them and banning those convicted of domestic violence from owning firearms. Mandatory waiting periods, minimum age requirements and child-access prevention laws were also correlated with drops in suicide rates.

Unless Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer acts before his Wednesday, Feb. 6, execution date, Demetrius Frazier will be the first Michigan prisoner to be executed in the 188 years since Michigan became a state.

In 1992, Frazier was arrested and convicted in Wayne County, Michigan, at the age of 19, after being subjected to troubling and abusive childhood circumstances. He was sentenced to three life sentences without parole for criminal sexual conduct and murder in connection with sexual conduct.

While under arrest in Michigan, Frazier confessed to committing a similar crime in Alabama, and in 1995, Alabama “borrowed” Frazier, convicted him of murder, and sentenced him to death. Because of his prior Michigan sentences, he was then returned to Michigan’s custody.

But in 2011, Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder and Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley agreed to transfer Frazier to Alabama’s death row. Frazier’s lawyers were not given notice of this agreement and had no opportunity to object.

Alabama now seeks to make Frazier the 785th person it has executed since it became a state in 1819 and the 79th in the death penalty’s “modern era.” He would be the fourth man suffocated by nitrogen gas, using a still-experimental and arguably torturous method of execution.

Alabama’s death penalty is infamous for its racial bias. According to a 2011 study, people convicted of killing a white person are more than four times more likely to get a death sentence than people convicted of killing someone who is not white. And just last year, an Alabama court refused to even con­sid­er the evi­dence of ille­gal racial bias in jury selec­tion in a separate case.

Last week, Frazier filed a lawsuit in federal court in Alabama, challenging his illegal transfer from Michigan to Alabama. Disappointingly, Michigan’s Attorney General Dana Nessel announced that her “department does not intervene in other states’ criminal matters” and declined to request Frazier’s return to Michigan.

Nessel’s position betrays Michigan’s long history of resistance to immoral and unjust laws and practices. In the 1800s, Adam Crosswhite and his family — who escaped enslavement in Kentucky for the freedom of Marshall, Michigan — could have been kidnapped and returned to bondage. Instead, they were saved by the entire town, “including the sheriff and prominent Black and white citizens.” The heroism of the people of Marshall helped spur the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. Those Michigan leaders had no problem intervening in “other states’ criminal matters.”

The state of Michigan has never executed a person in its custody. In 1847, it became the first English-speaking jurisdiction to abolish the death penalty. Michiganders felt so strongly about continuing this policy and practice that in 1963, Michigan became the first United States jurisdiction to include a prohibition on capital punishment in its constitution.

A bipartisan array of governors has upheld this policy. Even Snyder, the co-signatory to the improper agreement to transfer Frazier to Alabama, apparently had a change of heart when it came time to deliver a different person under death sentence to another state to face execution. Just four years after sending Frazier to Alabama, Snyder’s enforcement of Michigan’s policy led to his refusal to turn over Clarence Ray, a Michigan man serving life without parole for murder, to California and its execution chamber. Michigan officials said at the time they would not extradite people to states with the death penalty.

The only obvious differences between Frazier and Ray are their races (Frazier is Black; Ray is white) and the states in which they committed their second (and capital) murders.

On Tuesday, Frazier’s elderly mother attempted to meet with Whitmer and deliver a letter, asking her to demand Demetrius’ return to Michigan. Neither the governor nor any staff member agreed to meet with Mrs. Frazier.

But there is precedent for Whitmer to act courageously. The governors of California, Oregon, and Pennsylvania have each declared moratoria on executions under their leadership. Former Illinois Gov. George Ryan commuted all death sentences in his state, leading to the abolition of the death penalty in Illinois. And most recently, President Joe Biden commuted the death sentences of 37 men on federal death row.

As a leader of a racial justice organization proudly born and raised in Detroit, I know that taking a stand requires courage. And I draw strength and inspiration from the deep roots of resistance in places like Marshall, Michigan.

Demanding Demetrius Frazier’s return to Michigan is simply the right thing to do.

Alabama Reflector is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Alabama Reflector maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Brian Lyman for questions: info@alabamareflector.com.